There’s gravel under his feet. It digs into the soles of his feet, hard and sharp and uncomfortable, but it is nigh preferable to everything else — the throbbing pain inside his skull, the fractures in his ribs, the long gash across his forearm from King’s sword. He feels his hold on Wadou slacken between his teeth, and bites down — he can’t afford to be lax. Not now.
“Oi, Cook,” he says. “You there?”
The gravel makes a low crunching sound under Sanji’s feet as he treads on them, his steps loud, almost careless. It triggers all kinds of alarm bells inside Zoro’s head — this isn’t the Cook, he instinctively knows; not the soft, graceful cook he knows, whose every movement is always deliberate, always done with such care.
Just listen, I’ll be quick. After we’re done, if I’m not in my right mind, I want you to —
“Sanji,” he says. He tightens his grip on Enma as Sanji’s left leg starts to catch fire. He doesn’t let go.
-
“Do you have someone important to you?” Mihawk asks.
It is a simple question, but jarring, in its suddenness — only seconds ago he was flung over a cliffside with a knife embedded in his guts, falling into the sea below. Now he is lying on the beach of Kuraigana, out of breath. His right eye has closed shut, swollen. Cold waves lap at his legs, numbing the pain.
It might be the throbbing stab wound, or the fact that he can’t even lift his own head now, that compels him to indulge Mihawk. “You know I do,” Zoro answers. “My captain. My crew.”
“Not the kind you would die for,” Mihawk says slowly. “Not the ones you would show your back to.”
Zoro watches Mihawk walk through the shallow water, ripples spreading. His legs are freezing and his stab wound burns hot, like a brand. “What do you mean.”
“Not the ones you protect,” Mihawk says as he stops to stand beside him. “Nor one you swear your loyalty to. But someone you would stand with, side by side.”
A certain blonde immediately flashes through Zoro’s mind, and he looks away. “And what if I do?”
Mihawk bends down over him, and for a moment Zoro thinks he’s going to offer him a hand; but Mihawk’s outstretched hand reaches towards the hilt of the knife instead, and Zoro can barely react as Mihawk pulls — the burning in his guts explodes to a fever-pitch as he doubles over in pain.
“Fuck!” He yells, clutching at his stomach. The seawater leaves pinpricks of pain against his wound. He thinks he’s going to throw up. “Fuck fuck fuck — why would you do that —”
“Remember this pain,” Mihawk says, and he rests the bloodstained blade against Zoro’s eyelid. “I will ask you another question, next time.”
“You fucking asshole,” Zoro yells, no longer caring about Mihawk’s cryptic words. Red floods his vision as Mihawk presses, and Zoro lets go.
-
“Stupid Cook,” he yells, staggering backwards as he tries to block the flurry of kicks aimed his way. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Sanji doesn’t answer. He spins instead, the movement blowing dust around them and catching Zoro off guard; he coughs just as a kick manages to slip past his defenses, slamming straight into Zoro’s chest. It knocks the breath out of him.
Remember this pain, he remembers Mihawk said, and grits his teeth around Wadou. He bats another kick away from him and slams the hilt of Enma against Sanji’s throat. “Oi, Swirly,” he growls, yanking him by the collars with his free hand as the Cook chokes and sputters. “Stop ignoring me — what do you want?”
Cold, dead eyes stare back at him. Zoro remembers the freezing water of Kuraigana, lapping at his feet.
“I don’t want anything,” the thing says — with Sanji’s mouth, with Sanji’s voice; but not with his warmth. “You’re simply in my way,”
Zoro makes a piercing cut with Kitetsu, and his heart sinks as he sees Sanji block the attack with his hands — the treasured hands of a cook.
Zoro thinks of his bleeding arm and bruising ribs and split lips — of Mihawk’s knife, slicing through his eye — and he knows none of those hurt as much as the cold way Sanji looks at him right now.
-
“That Cook of yours,” Mihawk begins.
Zoro scowls at him. Lightning flashes overhead, and the rain is soaking the bandage over his eye; the wetness makes it itch, but it doesn’t hurt anymore, and it is the least of his concerns right now. “He’s not mine —”
“The Cook, then,” Mihawk concedes. “What would you do if he was going to die?”
He immediately sits up straight. Mihawk has parried and flung all his swords away during their earlier spar, but he instinctively reached for them anyway, only to be met with empty hilts. He clenches his fist, frustrated. “What the fuck kind of question is that.”
“It invokes a different kind of pain, isn’t it?” Mihawk continues, clearly ignoring Zoro’s reaction. “You are used to wounds left behind by sharp blades and closed fists.”
“What is it to you,” he rasps.
Mihawk shakes his head. “Your enemy will not always be so kind.”
He bends down to pick Wadou up from the ground, and throws it back to its owner. “You need to be prepared for everything, Roronoa,” he says, unsheathing Yoru once again as Zoro staggers to his feet, Wadou back in his hands. “Now tell me — what would you do if he were to die?”
-
It has started raining, but Sanji’s fire burns bright still. Smoke fills the space between them; Zoro coughs, suffocated.
“You know,” Zoro says, together with a swing of Kitetsu. Ever bloodthirsty, it manages to nick the underside of Sanji’s leg. “Someone important to me asked me to stop you.”
The thing that wears Sanji’s face doesn’t seem particularly interested, kicks unrelenting. “I don’t care.”
You need to be prepared for everything, Roronoa, Mihawk’s voice says, like a ringing in his ears. What would you do if he were to die?
He crosses Enma and Kitetsu in front of him, but instead of blocking, he tips the dull sides of the blades towards Sanij’s leg. He steps back and swings upwards just as Sanji kicks, tipping the Cook backwards, and he rushes — pushing the Cook’s calf against his chest and using his own body weight to pin him down.
His whole body aches; warmth leeches out through his sodden boots. He can feel the effects of Chopper’s medicine fading, swallowed by the pain.
“He asked me, ” he repeats, mostly to himself. He bends down, placing Wadou’s blade against Sanji’s neck. “Because he believed I could do it. Because he believed in me.”
He earns no response; Sanji doesn’t seem to care that he could die at any moment.
Zoro has held Wadou ever since he was twelve, but the sword has never been heavier between his teeth.
Zoro lets go.
-
“Don’t move, dummy,” Perona scolds him. Zoro glares at her, but tries his best to stay still — she is being nice enough to help him with the bandages, and her company is not entirely bad, once in a while. She always wraps them a little too tightly, but is perceptive enough to loosen them up when Zoro grunts at it.
The comfortable silence they fell into was broken with Perona’s inquisitive, “Hey, what’s up with that thing you and Mihawk always do?”
Zoro tilts his head. “What thing?”
“The questions,” she says. She then lowers her voice, in what seems to be an impressively accurate impersonation of Mihawk, “What would you do if he were to die? What a grim way to start every sparring session with.”
Zoro remembers Thriller Bark. Death clung to the place like carrion birds and carcasses; half-dead humans and fully-dead zombies and Perona’s own ghostly apparitions roaming its grounds. Perona doesn’t get to complain about something being too grim.
Perona tuts as she finishes wrapping Zoro’s right arm, and gratitude fills Zoro enough to stop him from starting an argument. “It’s… at first I thought he was trying to rile me up,” he tries instead. “But I understand now. It is only a thought experiment; a way to be prepared, and draw one’s strength from it.”
“Whaaaaaaat,” Perona says, elongating the word on purpose. Her ghosts pop up from behind her, as if to join in on the mocking. “You guys are so weird.”
“What’s not to understand?” Zoro asks, indignant. “It is unpleasant to think of, but swordsmen and martial artists alike have trained through mental simulations for a long time.”
“Not that part, silly. You have to make yourself think about it first, right?” Perona points out. “It is not something that comes naturally to you. ‘What would you do if he was going to die?’”
Her ghosts dance around him, and Perona laughs. Death clung to Thriller Bark and its residents, but Perona wears it like a royal garb. “Zoro, how did you ever convince yourself he wasn’t?”
-
“Why did you do that?” Sanji demands. He looks unlike the way Zoro has ever known him — face twisted, eyes haggard, like he hasn’t slept for days. He’s wearing an oversized blue sweater, and he looks like he’s drowning in it.
Zoro’s body aches all over, the pain deep and close to the bones. A few hours ago, Sanji stood before him with shaking shoulders, Bartholomew Kuma towering over them both. “Why did you?”
Sanji jerks back, as if struck. “I can’t —” he slumps into the chair by Zoro’s bedside, nails digging into the cushion. “Between the two of us, I received less injury. You could even barely stand.”
“And what do you think I should’ve done? Just sit down and let you walk into slaughter?”
“You offered your own life!”
“I survived,” Zoro crosses his arms, ignoring the pain shooting up his joints at the movement. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters,” Sanji stands up again, face leaning close toward Zoro’s. “To me.”
Zoro opens his mouth to retort, but Sanji places his palm on Zoro’s forearm, the touch soothing and warm. “Next time, you need to let me go, Zoro.”
Zoro jerks away from the touch. “There will be no next time —”
“We’re pirates, Zoro! There is always a next time,” Sanji says, voice turning desperate. He grabs Zoro by the shoulders. “I’m not invincible, and neither are you. Of course I don’t want to die. But maybe, in some distant future, you’ll have to make this choice again. And if it ever comes to this, I need you to let me go.”
-
Kuina stands before him. She always looks so big, like this — head held high, her sword steady in her hands. She has cuts and bruises all over her body, but she smiles like she’s invincible.
That night, he will lose to her for the two-hundredth time. That night, she will stay undefeated. That night, they will share a promise.
Tomorrow, she will never smile again. Undefeated, but not invincible. Koshiro will hand him her white sword with shaking hands and barely-concealed tears, and Zoro will never let it go.
-
“What would you do if he were to die?” Mihawk asks, under the rain. It is not the only question he asks. “Would you let him go? Or would you let yourself be taken down with him?”
-
There is gravel digging against his back. Sanji is leaning on top of him, pinning him down.
“Why didn’t you do it?” Sanji asks, and it’s the first time Zoro hears a hint of emotions in his voice — something akin to distress. “Why did you let go of your swords?”
That one is a much easier question than Mihawk’s. “Because I love you, Cook.”
Sanji’s hands tighten around his neck, but it’s nowhere near his real strength. Zoro isn’t using any armament haki; Sanji could break his neck if he wanted to. He doesn’t. “I’m not — you know I’m different, now. I’m a monster now.”
“You are loud, and annoying, and such an asshole,” he says. “But you’re not a monster. You’re our Cook, and there is no world where I could imagine ever seeing you die. Not while I’m alive.”
Perona was right. It is not about being prepared — either he can, or he can’t. And Zoro can’t. Not when the Cook stood in front of Bartholomew Kuma on that graveyard of an island all those years ago, and not now, with Sanji’s fingers around his neck.
Mihawk thinks he needs to be prepared, or he’ll die. Perona thinks he should simply accept death — his own, and Sanji’s.
But there’s something Mihawk and Perona will never understand.
“You believed in me,” he says. “So I’ll believe in you. You’re not a monster, Cook.”
He reaches out then, resting his palm on Sanji’s cheek. The skin is cold to the touch, like steel; but the wet tears that fall on his fingers are warm.
synopsis: with no friends and a wallet full of cash, you concoct one last idea to make your final semester one to remember. paying everyone's favorite pretty playboy to pretend to be your boyfriend to complete your college bucket list before you start the life your family is forcing you into. but you might be buying far more than you bargained for.
pairings: broke!Geto x rich!Reader x dropout!Sukuna
content: mdni, smut and angst, college au, fake dating, pining, yearning, reader is a bit oblivious, emotional discomfort, anxious reader, arranged marriage mentioned, making out, fingering, piv sex, car sex, condom breaking but plan b is taken NO ONE is getting knocked up on my watch, drinking, piercings, confessions, multiple povs
art by @aransmind !!
Suguru didn't wake up next to you.
He knew he wouldn't. That even when you nodded and accepted his aftercare, curling up on your side in one of his t-shirts, that you weren't his to keep.
The morning sun came - and you left with it.
And even though you didn't have a car anymore, he guessed you called someone to come get you or forked out cash for a cab.
He could still smell your perfume on his pillow, clinging to his skin and his sheets. Could pretend you were there if he shut his eyes.
Except, his bathroom door swung open, and you actually stepped out. One of his ratty old towels wrapped around your body, tired circles under your eyes as you yawned and blinked up at him.
"Did I wake you up?" You asked, still concerned for him in that stupidly cute way.
"I thought you were gone," He breathed, choking on the fucking lump in his throat.
"Oh,'" You awkwardly mumbled, clutching the towel tighter. "Do you want me to go?"
"No," He answered too quickly, heart thumping loudly in his chest as he tried to swallow the spit starting to pool in the back of his throat.
Sitting up straighter, threading his fingers through his hair to detangle some of the knots that formed in his sleep while you walked over to pick up your clothes from where they somehow ended up under his bed. Your nose scrunched up as you sighed at the wrinkles in them.
"Um, could you close your eyes?" You shyly asked, as if he hadn't just seen you naked last night. Maybe for the last time.
"Sure," He muttered, even if it stung. Putting a hand over his eyes if it would make you feel safe, listening to the rustle of your towel hitting the ground and the shuffling of you getting dressed.
And then your hand was brushing against his, pulling it back down as your equally nervous eyes shined into his.
"Thanks," You half-whispered, your voice a little hoarse.
"I'm at your service," Suguru swallowed. Whatever you wanted.
You didn't smile though. Just bit your bruised lip before bending over to grab your purse from the ground. Ready to return to your real life.
He got out of bed, the practically ancient mattress creaking underneath him as he stood up next to you. Looking down at you, holding onto the way the sun hit your face through his small window, leaning in until he could smell his own soap on your skin.
"Look, um, after graduation, a few of us are going on a trip," He slowly said, loathing how strained it came out. "Gojo booked a whole place. You should come too. It'll be-"
"I can't," You interrupted, frowning hard. Lips pushed together in frustration, letting out a little exhale like you were upset over your own answer. "I'm sorry."
The way you said it, all soft and small like some wounded animal, made him sorry for even asking.
He stepped closer, and you went stiff. Shrinking back how you always did.
"My parents made plans for me," You added. He had never heard you sound so bitter before.
"It's cool," He lied. "I get it."
"No, not really," You mumbled, rubbing your nose like you were trying to stop yourself from sniffling. "They have my passport and-"
"You don't have to explain yourself to me," Suguru reassured, reaching out to rest a hand on your shoulder and squeezing softly. You didn't need to defend yourself - even though it did make an uncomfortable twist in his stomach stab at his judgment at the new information you didn't even have your own passport.
"I'd rather spend it with you," You practically whispered, glancing down at your feet before looking back at the door.
God, you knew just how to fucking gut him.
"And Gojo," You belatedly added, as if it would make it sound less intimate.
"Well, if, um, something changes, you can sleep in my room," He casually shrugged. Or, well, as casually as he could, considering it felt like his organs were all straining inside of his chest, being squeezed just by that infuriatingly pretty puppy dog pout of yours.
"Suguru." You said his name like it hurt. Like you were peeling off a fresh scab on some old wound while you poured salt on his.
"Yeah?"
"You don't have to keep pretending to be my boyfriend," You awkwardly said, bringing your nails up to your mouth to bite the corners of them out of habit.
Wringing the last drop of blood from his heart, driving a dagger in his lungs too when he couldn't manage to get any air in them.
It had never been real. But he still felt hollow at the thought that you wouldn't be waiting for him in the halls, that you didn't want everyone to think you were his anymore.
"Done with me already?" It was hard to make his voice sound light, disguising the sharp edge of hurt as teasing.
"Don't say it like that," You frowned up at him, and he was already rubbing small circles into your shoulder, trying to reassure you that he wasn't mad at you.
Just fucking frustrated that he fucked this up with you so badly that he was being left behind. That he was about to watch you walk out of his door - and pretty soon out of his life.
"We're still friends though, aren't we?" He said, watching your brows knit together as you tried to understand what he was getting at. "Friends help each other out. I'll still come pick you up and take you to your classes. Work too, if you want."
"You don't have-"
"I want to," Suguru insisted.
It was obvious you didn't know what to say. How to accept help.
"You know, you've done more for me than anyone else ever has," You mumbled, forcing out a shaky inhale before holding your breath.
Suguru couldn't believe he ever thought you were spoiled. Couldn't reconcile the stuck-up image he used to have of you to the open vulnerability of your shattered pride in front of him.
"You never had to be so nice to me," You said, like the bare minimum was more than you deserved. "So, um, thank you, Suguru."
And once again, he didn't know what the hell to say to you.
"Do, uh, do you need a ride home now?" He asked instead.
"Yeah, I've got a class in a couple hours, so-"
"I'll take you."
A week without a car wasn't as horrible as you thought.
Suguru was constantly there, texting you when he wasn't to check if you needed anything. You weren't sure if he felt bad for you, or if this was really just what a real friend would do.
It hurt if you thought too hard about him.
If you let yourself fantasize about him having feelings for you that weren't just platonic.
You shut those ideas down though.
Told yourself that this was all just fine.
Suguru driving you to school and work. Sukuna taking you back home at the end of the night - although he grumbled and gritted his teeth when he noticed Suguru was the one giving you the ride there.
Always standing by the door, arms folded across his chest to wait for you, mumbling that he would've rescheduled his appointments to give you a ride. He didn't push it though.
Neither of them did.
Both tried to ask a couple times about your parents, but you dodged their questions. Narrowly managed to cancel your mom's appointment for you with her esthetician too, claiming a cold and coughing over the phone - although you were sure she'd probably call you out over it at brunch.
Threaten to take you there herself even if she'd probably go on to paint it to all her polished friends as a mother-daughter day.
But the only thing you were good at was pushing your problems off for the future you to handle.
"Um, I don't think I'll need another ride after this," you murmured as Suguru's car parked in the corner of the parking lot Friday afternoon.
His dark eyes leveled you, left you squirming in the passenger seat as you struggled to breathe around him.
It was almost fucking impossible to meet his stare after you had sex with him.
Difficult just to be around him when you couldn't help but think of what it had been like when he was buried inside of you. How nice it had been for him to kiss you. To be held like that.
Suguru was still acting normal though. Completely natural, like it wasn't even on his mind at all.
"Are you sure?" He asked, his stare narrowed as his hand rested on the gear shift. You unbuckled your seat belt, looking in the side mirror to see Sukuna watching from the thick-paned window.
"Yeah, um, I should be getting my car back Sunday," you said, even though you weren't really sure they'd actually follow through. The only text you'd gotten from either of your parents this week was saying they'd send someone to pick you up before brunch.
"Okay," Suguru muttered, forcing a tight smile.
"So, I, uh, guess I'll see you around," You nodded, holding your purse tight against your chest as you pushed your car door open.
"Call me if you need anything."
You knew Suguru meant it.
That was probably why you waited until you were inside to send the last payment through your phone to him. He had never asked for it. Even said he didn't want any more of your money.
But you didn't know how to handle him if it wasn't a transaction. Didn't know what to do with his kindness when you didn't feel like you deserved it.
You sent him extra, as much as you could without making anyone tracking your transactions suspicious - adding one last note to him.
For everything.
It was easier with Sukuna. In some ways.
He was rough around the edges, blunt enough you knew where you stood. Well, mostly.
You weren't dating. Weren't in a relationship.
But he liked you enough that he wanted to be with you. You guessed it was better he didn't seem that serious about it, that his interest seemed to be on your body judging by how often his fingers found your body. Settling on your side or ruffling your hair, tugging you against him if someone else stared too long at you.
You had been shoving it down, pushing it away, but graduation was getting closer - and so was the end of all of this.
By the time he'd be getting tired of you, you would be preparing for wedding planning to some other stranger.
You guessed that was what the brunch was about. Your parents only ever wanted to see you when they wanted to use you.
There wasn't much left on your list of things to do before you were shackled to a stranger.
"You free tomorrow?" Sukuna grunted after the last customer left, his sharp eyes focused solely on you from where he was counting up the cash behind the counter.
You paused cleaning the windows, heart thumping hard in your chest as you shrugged.
"Yeah, if you don't need me here," You nodded slowly.
"Be ready at six. Wear something pretty."
He didn't have to tell you this time for you to know it was a date.
Sukuna was waiting against his car in your apartment parking lot for you. Leaning against the door, sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose and one hand slung in his pockets, the early evening sun painting pretty shadows across his face.
You were almost skipping to get to him, and he was suddenly standing straight, squaring his shoulders and walking over to meet you halfway.
He picked you up, those huge hands of his firmly planted on your waist to lift you in the air and pull you flat against his chest in an almost crushing hug.
"Should I change or-" You started to ask, but he only squeezed you tighter, cutting off your voice in a surprised squeak.
"Stop thinkin' so much," He scolded you, carefully setting you on the ground just to grab your chin seconds later, tilting your head up to meet his stare. "You look good."
You really just liked to hear him say that.
Saved every compliment he ever paid you so you could replay them on a rainy day. Storm clouds were already starting to form - and you knew the bottom would fall out sooner or later.
Tomorrow could be doomsday. A funeral for the girl you'd become these last few months of freedom.
Tonight, though? That was still yours.
And you wanted to share it with Sukuna.
For a guy who looked like he was only made of jagged edges, harsh lines, a rough exterior that cut and scratched when you got close, his softness continued to stun you. Holding the door to the shotgun seat open for you, grumbling about a surprise that turned out to be a show at a local bar.
Live music and a loud crowd, buying you drinks and leaning in to murmur in your ear despite the noise. Dragging your barstool over until your thighs were touching. Taking photos of you in his phone when you weren't expecting it, slipping a hand down lower on your side to keep you firmly planted against his hips.
Kissing your throat when you weren't expecting it, his nose grazing against the tendon there, sucking softly even when you squirmed on the barstool, glancing around almost embarrassed.
Sukuna didn't care who was watching.
Mouth marking you as his, sharp canines sinking into your collarbone as you gasped his name.
"Kuna," You whined, swallowing the spit pooling in your mouth. He didn't pause, continuing to stain your skin with more rough kisses. A few other patrons were glancing your way, eyeing the way he was holding you, how your dress had started to push up on your thighs. "People are looking at us."
He snickered, pulling back to squint at you.
"Does it seriously bother you?"
You felt stupid for saying yes.
But you couldn't focus on him when you could still feel so many stares sticking to your skin.
He spared you the judgement though - just dragging you back out to his car before the band's set even ended. Pulling you in his lap in the driver's seat, reclining it back as you straddled his thighs, his fingers tethered deep in your hair.
Tearing at your clothes while he stuck his tongue down your throat, the radio playing low in the background. You shivered, and you weren't sure if it was from the chill of the ac running or his teeth nipping at your bottom lip.
One of his hands groped at your chest, squeezing your breast right as you moaned into his mouth. You could feel his cock straining in his jeans, throbbing against you and only flustering your fuzzy brain even more.
He let out a low hiss when you squirmed, readjusting to pull down his zipper. His fingers in your hair tugged hard when you started to break the kiss and come up for air, and you let out a strangled noise of surprise that made him stop.
"You're not, like, a virgin, right?" He paused, thick brows scrunched together as he studied your face.
"No," You huffed, hoping he wouldn't realize that you had been a week ago.
"Good," he grumbled, and your stomach churned. You understood why. Knew it came from a place of concern instead of condemnation.
But it still felt bad.
Still clung to the corners of your mind when he slipped a finger inside you instead, distracted you even when he was driving it in deep.
You tried to make all the right sounds, the right expressions, leaning forward to keep kissing him while he slotted in another finger to scissor you open.
With Suguru, you just let go. Forgot about how fucking embarrassing he felt for someone to see you for a little while. But Sukuna was the sort of cool you couldn't help trying to keep up with.
Hanging onto the hope he hadn't realized yet you were really just a mess he didn't have time to clean up. Struggling to seem like someone you knew you weren't, cutting off bits of yourself and cramming yourself into a spot you wouldn't fit in otherwise.
"I want you so fuckin' bad," he groaned into your mouth, and there was some distant relief at knowing you were at least on the same page there.
Sukuna's finger slipped out, and he reached over to the center console to fish a condom out of it.
How many girls had he fucked in the front seat to start carrying them there?
You didn't let yourself believe you were special enough to be the first.
He grunted as he rolled the condom on, lips pursed together as he tried to do it fast. In a hurry before he unceremoniously shoved your underwear to the side, guiding himself back to your entrance.
God, everything was happening so fast and-
Fuck.
It burned.
More than Suguru's had, unable to stop yourself from squeezing down on him, every single muscle in your body going rigid at the feeling of him spearing you open.
Maybe it was the position, the lack of space his car offered, but you were stuffed. Convinced there couldn't possibly be any more of him just for him to force another inch in.
"You sure?" He groaned, his hips driving up as you let out a strained whimper.
Trying to nod when you couldn't fucking move with how full you were, burying your face in his neck so he wouldn't see how fast you were falling apart.
"Relax," He chided, clicking his tongue as he pushed your hair out of his face.
"C-can't," You stuttered, despising how desperate you sounded. His hips drove back up in short thrusts, each one driving you even crazier.
Clenching down tight as you tried to hold yourself together. He murmured something you couldn't make out, one of his hands moving down to rub circles on your clit like that would help.
You melted into him, moaning into his skin while he drove his hips up, his free hand helping guide your hips up-and-down. Sinking into your warmth, his deep groans etching themselves into your brain every time your thighs started to shake.
"Shit," he cursed, suddenly rubbing your sensitive bud faster, massaging this thumb over it.
"I think-" You whimpered, but he knew. Anticipated your own rubber band of restraint snapping before his did.
Making you cum hard and fast before he was suddenly pulling out to cum on his hand, your brain belatedly processing that the condom was now broken and only half-on. Your own pleasure slowly subsiding, your orgasm short-lived when reality was right there waiting for you.
Your head was spinning, body trembling as you tried to focus on the cum on his fist.
"Fuck," He groaned, rubbing his brow with his clean hand. "Sorry, should've stretched you out more."
"It's okay," You mumbled, your voice still coming out small, throat sore.
"I don't think any got in you," He muttered, but his Adam's apple bobbed anyway. "But I think Choso keeps planning b back at the shop."
"Oh, um, okay," You nodded along.
Discomfort still swirling in your chest when you had to crawl back over the center console, bumping your head on the ceiling of the car to get in your seat. Buckling up and ignoring the ache between your thighs when he put it in reverse and pulled out of the parking lot.
Trying to subtly stare at his side profile when he drove you back to work, keeping a hand on your leg, rubbing little patterns you guessed were meant to be soothing.
"You know, if you were a virgin, that would be fine too," He eventually awkwardly added, glancing over at you when he stopped at a light.
"I know," You said, lips twitching up in a practiced smile.
What would he have done if you were? Gone slower? Insisted on waiting again?
You didn't say anything the rest of the way there. But you got out of the car after him once he was parked, folding your arms across your chest as you followed him back to the front door. There was only one other car in the lot, one with a vanity plate that just said YUKI.
The light was on inside - but when he tugged on the door, it was locked.
He rummaged through his keys for the correct one, letting you lean against him for support. Chewing on the inside of your cheek while you touched the sensitive spot just above your collarbone he'd been sucking on earlier.
Counting how many hickeys you guessed he'd left - all of which you would have to cover with concealer tomorrow.
"Should I come in with you or-"
He was already halfway through the entrance though, letting out an exasperated groan as his keys jingled in his hands. "I swear to god if you guys are fucking in here."
They weren't.
But when you trailed behind him to Choso's work station, Yuki's top was off.
Laying on Choso's chair, reclining back casually as she waved at you. Her tits were pretty, perky, now freshly decorated with two silver barbells going through her nipples.
"Hi, guys," She grinned. "Have fun on your date?"
Choso was unbothered, cleaning off his machines, barely sparing a glance up at either of you.
"Where's the plan b?" Sukuna grunted, and his employee just jutted his thumb over to the cabinet.
"I'll take that as a yes," She laughed, sitting up straight as her breasts bounced.
You were staring. You didn't mean to, but you really couldn't stop yourself.
Yuki noticed, giggling at how openly you were gawking.
"You should get yours done."
Sukuna dragged you away before you could respond, passing you a plain box. Taking you back to his own station and patting the chair for you to sit, swinging your legs off the side as you tore it open to take the tiny pill inside.
He spread your thighs, and you almost choked on it.
"Just making sure there isn't any of the condom left in there," he grunted, and you clamped your lips shut again.
Leaned your head back on the chair as you swallowed it, humiliation simmering under your skin as his fingers shoved back and swirled around inside you.
"Do you like that?" You awkwardly asked Sukuna, blinking up at the ceiling and holding your breath.
"Piercings?" Sukuna frowned, brows scrunched together as he glanced up between your thighs to study your reaction.
"Yeah," You mumbled.
"I guess," He shrugged. "But if you're asking if I think you should get some, that's up to you."
You wanted to ask if he'd like it if you did. If he would like you more.
Your chest still felt warm, the alcohol still clouding your system probably to blame for the next question that fell from your lips.
"Would you do it for me?"
"Wake up."
You knew it was Sukuna the second you cracked your eyes open, felt the calloused hand nudging you as your alarm blared in the background.
Recognized your own bedroom as you rubbed your eyes and sat up, your head swimming and your whole body aching as you reached over to shut your phone off.
The sun was barely rising outside, half the sky still shades of orange and pink as you swiped your alarm away.
"The fuck you have that thing set so early for?" He grumbled, trying to drag you back under your blankets next to him while your brain scrambled to piece together last night's memories.
The bar. His car. The tattoo shop.
Your-
You looked down, sucking in a sharp breath as you remembered the reason for the dull throb in your chest. You let him pierce your nipples.
"Shit."
Your parents might murder you.
Sukuna said your name, but you were begrudgingly rolling out of bed on unsteady legs, padding barefoot over to your mirror to take a peek at your appearance.
Exhausted circles under your eyes, swollen lips, dark hickeys staining your skin. And poking through your shirt was a brand new set of matching silver barbells.
"Come back to bed," Sukuna muttered, still half-asleep.
"I, um, can't," You said for the second time this week. It sucked just as much. Left that terrible taste in your mouth as stared at your reflection.
It didn't feel like you.
"Don't make me get up and drag you back here," He yawned, his own voice thick with exhaustion.
"I'm s'pposed to go to brunch with my family," You murmured, and something invisible compressed down on your heart.
It was a few hours away, sure, but you wouldn't put it past either of them to send someone to get you absurdly early - and you had to be cleaned up enough that you wouldn't get crucified in front of all their friends for being a complete fuck-up. You couldn't take out the piercings, but maybe you could find some way to cover them up, wear something loose enough they wouldn't be able to notice them through your clothes.
Sukuna sat up, brows scrunched together in annoyance as he started to wake up.
"Brunch?" He scoffed, rolling his eyes as if the idea of it was absurd. "Who the fuck has brunch?"
"My family," You mumbled.
"Cancel on them," He huffed back at you, and you couldn't meet the expectation in his stare.
"I really can't," You insisted, and you knew you needed to come clean. To let him know now instead of later that you weren't really someone he could change.
"It didn't even sound like your mom liked you," Sukuna scowled, painfully accurate in his astute observation. "Why would they want you there?"
"I'm, um, kind of engaged."
a/n: sukuna will be back next chapter guys dw. alsoooo for my girls that love the Geto/reader/Sukuna dynamic I am working on a new long fic here featuring them <3
You didn't know what you were expecting when you agreed to marry Dr. Zayne, but it surely wasn't love.
A man still haunted by the voice of his late first love, you knew you'd never be able to replace her. Yet, knowing can't always result in acceptance. And when your heart begins to yearn for more than just to be a responsibility to your cold husband—what are you supposed to do with these unwanted feelings?
Warnings: Expressions of grief, heavy angst, non canon compliant, cold!Zayne, mentions of death, mentions of humiliation, emotional trauma, canonnical inaccuracies, implied toxic family dynamics, no usage of Y/N.
A/N: I lost Zayne's myth card and decided to torture myself by writing angst lmao (smiling through the pain ;'))
Divider Credits - @saradika-graphics
<Series Masterlist> | Chapter 2
“Zayne Li, do you take this woman to be your wife? To have and to hold her in sickness or in health, in richer or in poorer, for better or for worse; To love and honour her for the rest of your days and forevermore?”
You had seen this before.
Plenty of sappy, romantic movies ending with the man and woman tying the knot at the church. If not for the climatic music, melodious chirping of birds or the lustrous sun peeking amidst the clouds just to shine on them—as if nature itself had twisted it's course for the couple to feast on their union. Bouts of joy would trail down their eyes as they promised devotion to one another and share a chaste kiss whilst memories of all their beautiful and tragic moments—in which they held onto each other—would dance before their eyes.
Zayne and you shared anything but that.
Therefore, when he said I do you didn't mind the lack of cadence to his tone.
You didn't mind the chill pricking your skin when he held your hand. You didn't mind the scarcity of desire or warmth in the kiss that he pressed on your lips.
You didn't mind that this marriage was only a farce; a union made in order to appease the public rather than join two hearts into one.
After all, when you agreed to marry Zayne, you knew—wishing for love would only end in shambles.
Several Hours Earlier
Zayne's shoes scraped on the pavement, echoing the soft, rhythmic beat of his steps amidst the stale morning air. Sunlight filtered through the leaves of the giant oak trees, gleaming in his eyes once in a while. Although December had sauntered in with its chilling wisps of wind, snow hadn't begun pouring in Linkon city and for a winter morn’, he'd consider today to be pretty warm.
Maybe some of the last days of mellow ambling over Linkon city before the thick blanket of white covered it all.
It was on these days that families planned all their picnics and get-togethers of this year. Days on which departmental stores stayed open an extra hour because Christmas would follow in three weeks.
Something about winters always bothered Zayne. He couldn't pinpoint it but maybe it was the contradiction of it all. He never understood how the bleak and empty season could ever stir a mood of festivity in anyone.
The central park was a common spot for Zayne. He'd find himself strolling the grounds every time he’d need an escape. The pond glittered with the golden light falling over it, gusts of wind swirling the leaves and the pink camellia blooming on the shrubs just made the scenery all the more beautiful.
Zayne didn't want to find it beautiful.
Because beautiful meant he was alive and if he were alive then it meant he had memories, and in those memories lived a woman. A woman whose beauty transcended heavens; a woman, for whom he’d sacrifice forever just for a chance to hold her once. And if he thinks about holding her then he’d remember he can't hold her.
He can't hold her.
He does not have her.
He does not have his life.
Then how could he be alive?
Because beauty was in her eyes when she held his gaze, beauty was in her voice when she called his name, beauty was in her mien when he watched her bath under the moonlight and he had silently thanked fate for sending this woman to him.
She was beautiful but she wasn’t here anymore. And when she left, she took all the colours, all the birds and all the sunlight—leaving this desolate world to plunge into a grayscale crest.
That's why he can't find it beautiful. He can't find anything beautiful.
It was suffocating.
Two hours had passed since the wedding and now, you are sitting in your bridal suite with a woman touching on your make-up. You had changed into a particularly lighter gown—meant for your reception and you'd had taken a second to admire the dress, if not for the turmoil brewing in your mind.
Honestly, it was easier at first.
The only reason you said yes to this marriage was because you wanted to escape from your family. You wouldn't essentially speak bad about them; after all, they never swayed from paying for your education and lifestyle—something you'd eternally be grateful for. But it was the unnamed things that stirred the tension in you.
It was your wedding today; a day you are supposed to cherish for the rest of your lives but you had just spent the last two hours sitting ideally in your bridal suite as the walls taunted you for your doomed marriage.
Zayne had said that he needed to answer an urgent call and that he'd return soon. But as you saw, the soon transcended seconds into minutes and minutes into hours. So much so that your makeup artist had arrived but not him.
But you weren't complaining. You stepped into this arrangement with your own will and you could understand why Zayne would behave the way he did. Any man would.
You were a taint on your family's name. Tarnished and ruined beyond repair; if only you weren’t so stupid, none of this would have happened. In spite of your family drowning the scandals, some rumours never truly die and this was one of them.
Therefore, it was more than enough that someone had agreed to marry you. And you shouldn’t be greedy when the tides are against you.
“My, my, you look so beautiful!”
As if plunged out of a dream, you look up to see your makeup artist grinning down at you. God, you had forgotten she was still in the room. Deflecting your gaze towards the mirror, you beheld your expression.
“Wow,” you gasp, completely fazed out with the work she had done on your features. Nothing heavy, and it'd be a lie if you say you say you weren't impressed by her craft. “I look… good.”
“You look beautiful,” she exclaimed, “I bet your husband wouldn't be able to take his eyes off you.”
Only if he looked at me…
You decided to keep the unwarranted thought to yourself and plaster a half smile on your lips to show your content. “Thank you. You are very skilled.”
The corner of her lips curl up, eyes narrowing into half moon, “All the credits belong to my model.”
Before you could reply, you heard the click of the lock to the suite and soon enough, a man emerged inside—decked in a crisp navy blue suit with white floral patterns stitched on the fabric—her husband. Looking every ounce of handsome and unbothered yet when his eyes fell on you, you averted your gaze as soon as possible.
Because what were you supposed to say to a man you had married only hours ago?
Thankfully, your makeup artist didn't wait around to bombard your husband with her questions; seems to have been picked up on the uncharacteristic dynamic shared amid the couple. Whatever the reason may be, she passed a soft smile to you before bidding her farewell.
You heard some rustling; probably Zayne going though his belongings. From the corner of your eyes, you caught him fixing his cufflinks, his back turned to you. You hadn't noticed but the suit he donned currently was starkly different to the charcoal suit he had worn to the wedding.
When did he change?
Although curious, you refrained from asking any idiotic question and worsen the awkward heat swirling in the room. Lifting your phone from the dresser, you swiped it back to life—not upset by the lack of messages to pop up on your screen. You had one unread text message from your mother—timed to have been sent just after the ceremony.
Why do you have to be so… You didn't need to read the entirety of the message to know its contents. Besides, there was enough evidence of plight as the seconds ticked by, you didn't need her to remind you of everything.
“Did you order room service?”
Caught off guard, you whirled your neck to see your husband staring back at you. “Huh?”
“Did you order room service?” He repeated.
“I, uh–” Stretching your gaze across the vast expanse of the room, you tried to pinpoint what caused him to ask that, “no…?”
Great way to make an impression.
You shut down the devil in your head, masking the quiver in your voice with a cough, “I didn't…”
“You should have,” he said, picking his watch from the nightstand and wrapping the silver belt on his wrist, “It's been long since the ceremony ended.”
“Yeah but I just… I thought– the reception…”
“I understand.”
With that, your first conversation ended with your husband.
What was wrong with you? You were acting like a nubile school girl dousing in dopamine whilst she talked to her crush. However, unlike the dopamine or butterflies in reference, what settled in the pit of your stomach was a gnawing nausea on the verge of climbing up your throat. You resisted the urge by downing a tumbler full of lukewarm water.
“Oh, before I forget,” Zayne spoke, walking up ahead, “your mother said she will come to meet you.”
“Why?” The squeak in your voice wasn't expected but Zayne didn't seem to catch on it. Clearing your throat, “I mean… why? Why would she want to meet me?”
“If you don't want to then it can be arranged as well,” He replied with the same diplomacy.
It's not everyday that you are being asked for your wishes but you ignored all the Sparks that alighted your mind. He is just being decent.
“I don't mind,” you said, twisting a strand of your hair, “as your wife, I'd meet anyone you want.”
“No, you wouldn't,” He snapped and you immediately bowed your head like a child on being caught for their miscreants, “And you are not my wife. If you have forgotten, then let me remind you that this marriage means nothing to us.”
Were you stupid?
Can't you just get one thing straight into your thick skull?
They had told you Zayne was cold and aloof most of the time but with the knives he threw at you, you pondered on the possibility that whether he was a capricious man.
No. What were you thinking?
Zayne's stance wasn't venomous. No, he was entirely right in his place, only you had to go on and utter such rubbish. Still… why did his words send beads of anguish through you? Pain bubbled up to your eyes, throat clogging with hundreds of apologies—none spoken aloud and if you heart were a living which you could clasp in your fist, you could feel the blood leaking out the crevices of your fingers.
You had dug your own grave by your own stupidity, the least you could do was sit and writhe on it like you were meant to. Expecting love from Zayne would be equal to a dream come true; unfortunately, you had been shrouded by nightmares your entire life.
“I don't like to repeat myself,” he continues, turning his back to you—oblivious to the throes his utterance did to you, “But please, refrain from associating such titles with yourself.”
Zayne didn't know when it became a ritual but sooner than he could comprehend, he found himself retracing the steps he took with her five years ago.
He had always enjoyed his own company and with her gone—he didn't find any meaning in filling the gap with anyone else. He doubted anyone else ever could.
“Here you go, sir,” the old lady in the flower shop said as he handed him a bouquet of fresh purple hyacinths. “Lovely choice of flowers sir, I assume they are for your wife.”
“My… Love,” because what else could he possibly call the woman to whom he had lost his heart ages ago; and now, lost her altogether. “I need to apologize to her.”
The lady tilts her head, clasping her hand back with a soft beam gracing her lips. She mutters something about young love which he couldn't hear before adding, “Well, I hope she forgives you and next time, I hope you get her red roses” she hums, “a young man like you must know what they mean.”
He did.
But he didn't think he'd ever have to buy roses. She never had any interest in them in the first place. However, he kept the words to himself.
When Zayne retraced The steps to the Graveyard, he was glad. This was that one place where he didn't have to pretend; didn't have to explain the tightness in his chest or The reason his hands trembled as the leaves crunched beneath his boots.
Grief was a funny thing.
At one moment, he’d be perfect—fine even. The next second, his breath would escape in short bursts of white, his shoulders would tremble with the weight of the world and again, he'd find himself wandering in this soulless world. Grief didn't arrive dressed in black, never with wailing in the corners—it came quietly; sitting beside him, as he'd meet his patients in the chamber, or when he'd hear someone laugh and remember there was one he hadn't heard since long.
And even now, five years later—grief would twist him in its chains, take him hostage to the home he once had shared with her and upon asked, why can't he leave that home, he couldn't give an exact answer. Therefore, he laid on the bed, looking for the fragrance she had left behind, looking for the visage which haunted him everywhere.
Zayne lowered himself in front of the headstone; vines had grown deep, clambering to the apex with the dirty green leaving it's marks on her name inscribed on it.
He placed the bouquet of purple hyacinths near the base, clasping his hands to utter a solemn prayer.
Purple hyacinths. A florist would say they were a symbol of sorrow and deep regret. A flora advised to gift someone when one would like to request forgiveness.
But when Zayne offered those flowers to the only woman he loved, his intent wasn't to ask for forgiveness.
“I hope you never forgive me for marrying her.”
You didn't mean to snoop around. Honestly, you didn't.
But what were you supposed to do in this huge family home with no one else to keep you company.
4th April
I dreamt about you today. You were standing in the meadows, you had your favourite lilies in your hand and you were smiling. God's, you were smiling and I didn't just how much I missed it. Yet, you asked me to bring you roses. I don't understand; you never liked roses. Do you like them now? I suppose, this is your way of telling me to bring you roses the next time I visit. But you hadn't mentioned the colour, I guess I'll just have to bring you each of one colour now.
Five years since you have left me and I can't fathom how am I still alive? Days bleed into nights, the seasons change and yet, I try to find bits and pieces of you in every face. And every time, I drown in disappointment because a semblance of you resides in neither. I carry your voice in my heart like a melody, playing the soft lilt that I have grown to love.
Would you like to know a secret, my love? If I could trade my life for yours, I would.
❀⋆.ೃ࿔*Chapter 2: Tell me how (you loved before)❀⋆.ೃ࿔* Sugar Daddy!Michael Robinavitch x Reader
w.c: 2.5k
summary: You and Robby are slow to ease into your arrangement. A long day for the two of you breaks the ice.
f.c: Anxious Robby (ish), he just gets insecure when it comes to this whole dynamic
masterlist ❀⋆.ೃ࿔* chapter 1 (previous)
Robby's presence in your life is gradual. Growing bit by bit while he settled into it and got comfortable. You think that might take a while, but it's fine by you. You weren't easing into this faster than he was, anyway. It's an odd thing, you think, to wake up and suddenly need to make space in your life for just one more person.
A few days after that first dinner date, as Robby showed no signs of putting that phone number slip to use, you'd decided to break the ice by sending him a good morning with a smiley face. The worst that could have happened is he regretted the entire thing and simply threw away the paper, intending to forget about you and the website by blocking you.
You were surprised to see the read receipt not even a full minute after your message was sent. His text bubble had appeared and disappeared for a few minutes, but his reply was eventually sent.
Good morning
You'd smiled into your scarf while on the bus then, relieved his silence hadn't been particularly voluntary. Maybe he was just shy.
After that, it was a little ritual between the two of you before the day began, messaging each other. You'd even started snapping a picture of the morning chai (coffee gave you stomachaches, you'd mentioned to him later) you bought on your commute to the salon. And it worked as you'd hoped.
Robby, rather than only responding with his simple good morning, had begun attaching a picture of his own mug, still steaming in the crisp morning air of his kitchen, the skyline of the city just barely visible in the blurred background.
You always hearted the images, and Robby had to Google how to do the same with yours.
One of the first things about the arrangement to be grounded were the bi-weekly money deposits. All through Apple Cash, once Robby did embarrassingly long research on the safety and anonymity of the feature. Per the agreement, your "allowance" (God, he really needed to think of a better word to use), so to speak, was $500. A few hundred dollars to cover groceries, or whatever you wanted to use it on. Anything you needed taken care of, Robby had it covered.
At least, that's what he insisted. So far, you'd yet to give him specifics, and repeatedly assured him half a thousand dollars went a long way for you.
You two hadn't seen each other since the restaurant nearly four weeks ago. Mostly, you stuck to morning texts, only due to Robby's hectic hours at the Pitt, though you'd also started an evening ritual where you called after his shifts, taking lead in the conversation while he laid back on his couch and dozed off (something he blamed on exhaustion after a twelve hour shift in the ER and not the lovely timbre of your voice that never failed to lull him into a calm).
Those were the long day calls. The ones where he just needed to shut down his brain for a while, step down and let someone else take charge. He was a bit embarrassed at how little it took for him to become comfortable over the phone with you, especially the first time he'd fallen asleep when you were talking. The next morning, after he'd rushed for an apology, you assured him it was more than fine, and you were glad he was getting some well-deserved rest.
…The calls become a bit longer after that.
Robby opens his apartment door with jangling keys and a heavy sigh, swinging it closed while he trudges towards the couch. He throws himself down, face buried into the leather arm, stethoscope still around his neck. Reaching to turn on the end table lamp seemed too demanding of a task at the moment, so he lies in the dark.
Just one of those shifts.
No casualties, no patients Robby would regret not taking better care of, not trying harder for, even if there was nothing left for him to do, but just a…frustrating day. A bunch of Dr. Google's trying to override his treatment with their own ideas, uncooperative patients making diagnoses difficult, and some of Myrna (she'd taken to calling him fudge-packer today, which was….yeah) was enough for Robby to be left entirely drained of energy.
He wanted nothing else but to take a long fucking shower and go straight to bed. And listen to you talk for a while. You didn't tell him big things, your life was a bit quiet for that, but just small details of your day. Things like:
"I've been trying to finish this book on the bus for days now, but it gets so bumpy I can't focus at all."
"I gave coffee another chance this morning but I had a stomachache my entire three o'clock appointment."
"I'm making dinner. My mom sent me this stuffed mushrooms recipe I've been dying to try. What about you, have you eaten yet?" (It was 8PM and he had not.)
The normalcy of your life brought a slice of it into the chaos that was his. It was a lighthouse in a raging storm, shining bright and keeping him afloat. He looked forward to these calls because he knew even when he swayed at the edge, feet just tilting over, you'd always be there, steady-handed to pull him back.
Except it's quarter past eight and you still haven't called.
Your hours aren't hectic like his. They're firm and you're in charge of them, given that you own the salon you work at. Usually got out by seven o'clock and called him by seven thirty after your commute on the bus, or an Uber, if you were feeling lazy (your words). Of course, he'd texted you (in the privacy of a restroom stall, free of prying eyes and loose mouths) before clocking out that he'd be late today. But after opening his text conversation with you, he sees the message hasn't even been read yet.
Unlike you, she probably has a life outside of work, Robby, a snide voice in his head tells him. But even through his disappointment of what's most likely a fact, something keeps nagging at him. However, that insecurity that's always lurking and tends to come when the topic concerns you makes him second guess calling you.
Way to look desperate.
"Am not," he scoffs. He scratches his beard restlessly and shakes his head. Just…worried?
Shower, microwave dinner, then maybe, possibly call you. Okay. Plan set.
Fifteen minutes later, Robby's in his kitchen, out of his scrubs and in flannel pants, drying his hair in front of the microwave and looking down at his phone while his thumb hovers over your contact.
What if she's out right now, having a good time with her friends, and you called for no goddamn reason except for being mopey that she hasn't paid attention to you? What then?
Robby has no time to wonder because his thumb's slipped and now there's ringing as his phone waits to connect with yours on a call.
"Fuck!"
Riiing…Riiing…Riiing…
He could still hang up, right? He'd just blame it on butt dial if you asked and-
"Hello?" It's mumbled, heavy with what sounds like sleep, and it's you.
"Hey. Uh, sorry. Did I wake you up?" There's some rustling on the other end.
"Oh. Mm, yeah." Then, you gasp. Glanced down at your phone and saw the time, probably. "Oh no," you rush, and even though subtle details in calls are usually drowned by static and other noises, Robby can still hear a thickness in your voice. Have you been crying? "I fell asleep as soon as I got home, I didn't even see what time it was-"
"Don't worry about it," he tells you. "You OK?"
"No no, yeah, 'm OK!" You squeak. High pitched and cracking. He thinks a little more prodding and you'll spill. "I'm sorry, Michael. Have you, um, been waiting long?"
"I just got home a bit ago," he assures you. "You didn't read my message, so I, uh, I got a little worried."
"I'm sorry," you say again, a little quieter and slurred with that little drowsiness. He can almost see the picture that's on the other side of the line. You, sleep-tousled, biting your lip with furrowed brows. It's oddly domestic and it makes his chest tight. "I was just tired, I guess. Long day."
"You…wanna talk about it?" The question you usually ask him feels unfamiliar on his own tongue, but it sits well. Doesn't make him squirm.
"A client today, she, she hated her nails," you say, and you're slipping, sounding like you're going to cry again. "She wasn't even nice about it, either. I tried to fix whatever she didn't like, but she just kept going on about how her usual tech did them, and I'd done it nothing alike."
"Why didn't she just go to her usual place then?" The scenario reminds Robby of similar he's had at the Pitt.
'This is not how I'm attended at Urgent Care!'
"That's what I was thinking!" You groan, sniffling. "Anyway, she wouldn't tell me what was wrong with them, so it's not like I could've fixed the issue. So I just refunded the entire service and she walked out." A shaky sigh. "I spent like, four hours on them, so I lost a lot of my day just for that. People are such…"
"Assholes?" He offers.
"I was going to say bullies, but, yeah," you say with a small, watery laugh. Then groan again. "My hair hurts."
"Maybe you just need a day off," he says. "To just…rest, or, y'know, do whatever helps you feel better." Now he was starting to realize why Dana kept throwing that saying at him.
Physician, heal thyself.
"I like shopping," you tell him, voice raw and a little shy. Your vulnerability is what gives Robby a push of confidence. His need to take a turn at comforting, to protect, overwhelmed the constant shame he felt when he became sentient about his unconventional relationship with you.
"Yeah?" he says in a tone that borders on teasing. Not enough to upset you, he hopes, just some ribbing. "That why you haven't asked me for anything since we've met?"
" 'S not the same," you mumble, but the growing smile he can practically hear in your voice is undeniable. "I don't wanna make it seem like, y'know…"
"Like what? Like you're taking advantage of an old man like me?" he prods, a grin of his own decorating his lips. "Bleeding him dry of his money before he drops into a casket?"
"Michael," you whine, but you smile wider when he laughs. A genuine, boisterous laugh that's so unlike his usual quiet chuckles. He's showing himself to you and something about the sound brings a light feeling to your chest. Even makes your night a little less bleak. "I just don't want to outright demand things from you, OK? I feel bad."
"Don't," he replies earnestly. He hopes it doesn't come off as weird. "I…actually think I'd like it if you did. Would make me feel less like a pervert trying to gift you things, and more like, y'know..." Now it's Robby's turn to be bashful.
"My sugar daddy?" You offer, and he can hear the shift in your tone going from shy to a little teasing yourself. He shudders a little. He didn't mind small humiliations if that's what they sounded coming from you.
"Not that those two men are mutually exclusive from the other, but yes," he says with a small grin. His voice softens when he asks you, "When's the last time someone took care of you, sweetheart?"
Your mind is too wrapped up in considering his question to allow yourself to properly process the nickname. On the other line, the older man wants to punch himself in the face.
What the fuck, Robby?
"Do you want to?" You ask, worrying your bottom lip between your teeth immediately after. Fuck, was that too forward?
"I mean," Robby clears his throat. "I did sign up to a website to do just that."
Your lip quirks. "I guess."
An hour later, after you promised to call back once Robby had eaten dinner (which you made him swear he'd do) and you'd gotten ready for bed, you're both back on call in your respective bedrooms.
"I don't know, today just wasn't very good," you whisper, grunting softly as you settle under the covers, Sonny already curled at your feet. Even in the worst days, there was something soothing in them when you knew one thing was promised: some way or or the other, you'd end the day in the comfort of your bed. "Have you ever had a bad day like this?"
Yeah, and they collectively led me to this moment, right here with you, he wants to say. But, instead, he clears his throat. "Yeah."
So, he tells you about his day for a change. Much more than he usually does, anyway. He talks about the aggravating patients, frustrations (arguments) he shared with Gloria, and some of Myrna's colorful choice of wording for him when she came in today with another alleged seizure. Your breathing's slowed by the time he's short of his own, taking a moment to rest once he's run out of things to talk about. He's almost sure you're asleep, until there's a small crackle on the line and you're speaking again.
"I lied," you mumble. "Back at the restaurant, when you asked why I signed up for the website. I told you it was because I needed money for my job. I mean, I do, but…"
"Yeah?" It's murmured, layered under the background noise of the movie playing on TV.
"I was lonely," you confess, and you're not ready for a heavy weight to be lifted off your chest as soon as you say those three little words. It feels…good to finally say it out loud. "I know the whole point of moving across the country is to start over, but I just, I don't know." You sigh. "I didn't think it'd feel this alienating. I just miss my family, my friends." You smile a little with misty eyes, laughing quietly. "The ocean."
Robby swallows. Wants to say he felt the same, that he was also lonely and that's why he made the choice to go to that restaurant, to meet you and have that hopefully change. But he thinks you might know that already.
Just like his age, he's sure his misery is obvious to others.
"You ever think about moving back? To California?"
"Mm, I did, the first few months living here," you murmur. "But… the first time I visited my family after moving, I don't know. I guess I just realized I didn't want to stay there. Which was funny, because I didn't want to stay in Pittsburgh, either. Now, I'm just..."
"Trying to find your place in the world?"
You let out a breath that's almost a laugh. "Something like that."
The next morning, while you're spoiling yourself to a late lie-in and drinking tea in bed with a stretching dachshund, you receive two chirping notifications on your phone.
Michael
Sent $2,000 with Apple Pay
Michael
I hope today is better to you than yesterday was. Treat yourself.
You smile, a small warmth gathering on the apples of your cheeks. You reply with a heart and a sweet thank you.
Robby immediately hearts the message.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°
next
a/n: Does the constant POV switch make sense?? I want to keep a balanced-ish perspective of both reader and Robby but can't tell how it's coming off to you all 👩🏻💻 I'm not particularly proud of this chapter, just feels a little rushed, but it might be because I've been working on it for the past week and it's totally different from its original outline. Hope you still enjoy it!
ok i do have to get something off my chest re: moby dick which is that i feel.......... SO lied to about the whale sections of the book. the whale sections slap. they fuck supremely. they are the parts where melville is truly just cooking and, i usually don't like to say this about matters of taste but, people who don't like them are literally wrong. they are wrong the way that i was wrong when i was in high school and read watchmen for the first time and thought the tales of the black freighter insets were boring. i felt this way at the time because i did not pick up on the fact that every black freighter excerpt/caption/etc. in watchmen comments on the action of the story as it unfolds, sometimes thematically, sometimes just in the juxtaposition of a sentence with a panel depicting action happening elsewhere, sometimes both at once. when i reread watchmen as an adult and was able to tune into what was going on i was like, wow this fucking rules, alan moore is a genius, and when i was bored about this it was because i was literally wrong about how to read this book.
so too with the whale sections of moby dick: they are absolutely, manifestly NOT herman melville attempting to list out for you all of his incorrect whale facts which he naively believes to be unimpeachably correct because of the primitive state of whale science. they are herman melville fucking flexing as one of the best to ever do it, where "it" is "the english language." if you read them as attempts to communicate knowledge or with an eye towards getting back to "the plot" you will, yes, be bored. if you read them waiting for the next time melville does something so awesome it makes you laugh out loud and/or want to hurl yourself into the sea you will be happy all the time. also they are literally so fucking funny. here, for example, is the infamous - infamous! - proclamation that the whale is a fish:
The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnæus declares, “I hereby separate the whales from the fish.” But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnæus’s express edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan.
does this sound to you like a guy uncritically repeating the wrongful classification of the whale as a fish? no. this is a guy writing a character who is saying, "i know the literal father of biological taxonomy said that whales 'are not fish,' but consider: fish live in the ocean; whales live in the ocean; ergo, ummmm checkmate???" he goes on to say:
The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain have banished the whales from the waters, he states as follows: “On account of their warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem,” and finally, “ex lege naturæ jure meritoque.” I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.
literally LITERALLY he's like "who are you going to believe: the father of biological taxonomy, or My Two Friends?" hysterical!!! like i was already feeling the book but it was truly this, the first whale chapter, where i was like, is this maybe the greatest book ever written by anyone ever? and, like, i really think it might be.
The door doesn't give so much as come apart, colorful lights splitting the metal as the blast leaves her hands. Uncontrolled and bigger than she meant it to be, more powerful than she's let it be in vorns. Then suddenly the barrier is gone, scattered across the corridor floor in pieces still glowing at the edges, crackling with residual heat, and Supernova stands in the gap with her palms open and something in her chassis that isn't quite triumph or terror.
Supernova stares at her servos. Danger, Sentinel's voice says, somewhere in her helm.
She's distracted from the voice when Deadlock lets out a low whistle. "Okay, that was…" A beat, almost reverent, "you should definitely do that more often."
The tension in her chassis cracks, just slightly. She doesn’t laugh, she can’t quite get there, but the sound that comes out is similar, "Maybe I should."
She is… standing in the corridor. The door that has held her since she was small, that she has sat behind, pressed her back against and counted endless joors inside of, is now in pieces on the floor around her pedes, she did that, in mere kliks, it was-
It was that easy. It was always that easy.
That’s- Okay then. She files that revelation away with the rest of others that she’ll have to deal with later. She arranges her posture into something that looks composed. Her shoulders pull back, her wings high on her back. “Let’s go."
Deadlock falls into step beside her, hurrying to keep up with her longer strides. She fights the urge to reach over and pick him up, she needs her servos free in case of... Well in case something happened.
The corridor beyond is empty, that's the first wrong thing. The tower has never once in her entire life been devoid of someone, even if they were just drones. There’s always guards on rotation, attendants cycling through, the constant noise of a place that runs on order. The silence that replaces all of that has weight to it, feels oppressing.
"Not like I come here much," Deadlock lies, he sneaks his way in constantly, "but even I can tell this place feels off."
"It’s… never this quiet." She whispers back.
He gives a low hum, "Well, it sounded like there was something going on in the main chamber before, maybe everyone’s there?"
She nods, "It’s our best bet. Let’s go there first."
They hurry there in silence.
The main chamber opens up ahead, she stops abruptly at its entrance.
Supernova has walked through this room a thousand times, explored every corner as a child, she knows every line, every angle, every place the light falls just so. But now she barely recognizes what she is looking at.
The chamber is destroyed. Scorch marks clawing up every wall, debris across the floor in pieces too large to step around and too many to count, small fires still going in scattered places. The cold grandeur this place once held is gone, what's left is just wreckage and the smell of smoke.
Most shockingly, running straight through the middle of it, side to side, there’s a train.
She stares at it for a long moment. "You weren't joking about a train crashing here."
Deadlock scoffs. "Like I would lie about that." He's already turned away, crouching down to inspect a blaster dropped haphazardly on the ground that's almost as big as he is.
She hums, noncommittal. With Deadlock, you genuinely never know. She doesn't say anything, keeps moving her gaze around the room instead, cataloguing the damage. Same as the rest of the tower, there’s no one present, just grey frames, scattered across the floor in pieces or slumped against the walls. Thankfully, they’re only Sentinel's creepy security drones, those were never alive in any way that counted.
All the destruction tells a story, there was a fight, a big one with multiple people involved.
She mutters under her breath, "But where did they-?"
There’s a sudden bright light in the corner of her optic that almost blinds her. It comes from outside, flooding through the balcony, it flashes the entire chamber white for one suspended klik. She moves before she fully registers the decision, drawn toward the light.
The moment she clears the doorway onto the balcony, it feels like the air shifted, like it’s charged, humming faintly with energy at the edges of her field. She quickly glances back behind her to see Deadlock struggling to keep up, weighed down by a stolen blaster from one of the drones.
She turns back just as she reaches the railing, Iacon stretches out beneath her.
The chamber wasn't the only place destroyed. Scorch marks streak across buildings, blackened lines cutting through otherwise gleaming metal. Windows are shattered. Sections of structures are dented or blown out in jagged patches. Statues that once stood pristine now bear fresh damage, half destroyed.
The streets below are far too crowded. Bots fill the place in dense clusters, movement tangled and disorganized. Some are still arguing, others shoving, a few raising weapons. But most helms are tilted upward, optics fixed in the same direction, the light.
The streak of white slams down with enough force to rattle the ground beneath it, flaring outward on impact in a wide arc of dust and debris. At the center of it a figure rises. Even from this distance, she can see it, recognizes it. The glow coming from his chassis is unmistakable.
The Matrix of Leadership.
"No fragging way." Deadlock lets out a disbelieving breath beside her, "Orion?!"
"Orion Pax," she echoes, quieter.
The cogless miner who kept getting into trouble because he wanted more than the life he'd been assigned, so he kept pushing against limits, even snuck his way into the Iacon 5000 just to prove he could. The one Sentinel had wanted buried before anyone followed after him. The one she had sought out herself, had trusted with Alpha Trion’s distress signal, had sent him in search of the Matrix.
Her optics fix on the glowing shape in his chest, it’s just as she remembers it. “He was chosen by the Matrix. By Primus.”
“I don’t- why him, though?” Deadlock cuts in, still staring. “It’s not like the guy’s unlikeable. Maybe a bit too optimistic, sickenly positive really, but a Prime?” He huffs, disbelieving. “How could he possibly be a Prime?”
She didn’t have an answer for that, no one does.
The ancient artifact was more like an entity than a mere object, it was a mystery, even to the Primes that once held it. But it was clear it had chosen Orion Pax to follow in their legacy. She could understand this decision, he seemingly had every quality she'd been taught was befitting of a Prime. He inspired others whether he meant it to or not, he had an inability to look at something broken and simply walk away, possessed the conviction that things could be better and the recklessness to act on it.
Sentinel had seemed that way too, once.
She needs to find the Prime (does the title even fit him anymore?). Although she’s still not sure what she’ll do to him once she does.
She glances around, trying to make sense of the situation, cataloguing the scene below with the careful habit Airachnid trained into her. There- something catches in the corner of her vision, the familiar shape of a wing.
Her helm turns sharply. For a moment her processor refuses to make sense of what she’s seeing.
His frame is wrong. Still and broken, laid out in a way no living mech could be, upper and lower halves separated, severed violently, bundles of cables spill out from the split, snapped and frayed, their ends sparking weakly as if the current hasn't stopped. Energon pools beneath him, bright pink still spreading slowly. The pristine finish he always maintained, polished blue, gleaming silver, gold accents without a single flaw, is gone. His plating is flat grey, the unmistakable color of a mech who is no longer.
Sentinel Prime is offline.
Her world narrows until there is nothing left but him, what's left of him. Everything else falls away muffled, indistinct, like something happening very far away. The clash of the city below. Deadlock calling her designation. Even the hum of her own systems.
She loves him.
The thought surfaces without warning, uninvited. But it's true, she loved Sentinel the way you love the only solid thing in the world, loved him because he was her last remaining hero, loved him with the particular desperation of a sparkling who needed someone, anyone, to comfort them.
She knows what he did, watched him do it, heard him confess his crimes. Not that long ago, she wanted to kill him, desperately. Take revenge for Megatronus, Starscream, the Primes, the miners, everyone.
But she still loves him. Yet she hates him. And both of those things are true at the same time, tangled so completely she can't find where one ends and the other begins.
Every rule placed on her. All the expectations she didn’t dare disappoint. The scraps of affection she worked herself raw for. What did any of it mean?
Did Sentinel ever love her?
There was no possible way to get an answer to that now. Even so, what would it change, if he had? Would it make any of this better? Worse? The lies are still there, threaded through every memory she has of him, woven so tightly there’s no way to tell where the truth ends and his deception begins. Whatever he felt for her, if he felt anything at all, he still chose this. Chose to use and control her for his own gain.
The realization settles cold and heavy in her spark.
Because it means there is nothing left to hold onto. Her sire, the Primes, her family, are all gone. Alpha Trion was the only exception, and she stood by and watched as he was murdered. Her carrier and the High Guard vanished as well. Sentinel, the last one she had, the one she built herself around, was never who she thought he was, and now he is grey on the ground below and she is-
"-ova?" Deadlock's voice is distant. It sounds like it's coming through static.
"Nova!" She can feel a grip on her servo, pressure, something that has grounded her more than once in the past, but now slides off.
Supernova is alone.
She has always been. Every person who was supposed to be here, wasn’t. It was only a matter of time before Deadlock was gone too. The only truth she can really trust is that she is alone.
And now she is standing on the balcony of a building whose residents have all been killed, looking down on a city that’s coming apart, no idea of what comes next, how she could possibly fix this. She doesn't even know who she is outside of everything that just turned out to be a lie-
The sound of distinct thrusters split the air, her thoughts come to an abrupt stop.
Sharp and controlled, the steady powerful roar of flight, cuts across the chaos with a precision nothing else has had since everything began to fall apart. She knows that sound. Knows it from a time where it meant safety, warmth, love, before she even had the language to name those.
The world starts to snap back in pieces. Shapes, movement, sound, Deadlock's solid grip around her servo, his posture gone rigid and his optics fixed on something behind her.
There’s a heavy thud. Someone landing on the other side of the balcony. She turns slowly, her frame hasn't quite caught up.
The figure standing at the far end of the balcony isn't real.
That's the only explanation. None of this happened. Deadlock never found her, and she never left the room. Her mind finally snapped, and she’s just suffering through a very realistic and painful hallucination.
"Winglet?"
No. No, that’s- Her thoughts stutter, trying to reject it, it’s just another trick. Another fragment of her processor finally giving out under too much strain.
But he sounds real, achingly so.
There’s a roughness to his voice that wasn’t there before, scraped raw by time or damage or both, but beneath it, the cadence is the same. Not soft, he was never soft, but with something underneath filled with affection.
She searches frantically for the flaw that will prove this is wrong. Red armor matching her own. White wings flared slightly behind him, stark and unmistakable. The shape of his helm, her own almost an identical copy of it.
He looks exactly like he did the last time she saw him. When he left her.
She doesn't move. Any motion feels like it might shatter whatever is keeping this moment intact. She doesn't know which outcome frightens her more, that he disappears, or that he doesn't.
Deadlock moves for her instead. He puts himself squarely between her and the seeker, blaster up before she even registers he's moved, stance firm and confident despite the fact he’s never shot somebody before.
"Who the frag are you?" He growls.
The wings twitch outward. Sharp with offense. "...Excuse you?" Cold and cutting, every syllable precise. "Watch your tone, you insolent little pest."
Panels along his forearms shift. Twin null-rays deploy, already aimed straight at Deadlock.
That snaps her out of it.
"Wait!" She moves fast, stepping between them, servos raised, optics tracking both at once. "Just- wait. It's fine." She glances pleadingly at Deadlock. "Deadlock, this is my-"
The word catches. She turns back. Her optics meet the seeker's.
"...He's Starscream. Head of the High Guard." A pause, smaller. "My carrier."
"The High Guard?" That didn’t calm him down, if anything, just fired him up more, "Aren't they supposed to be offline?"
Starscream breaks her gaze to glare at the miner, "Do I look offline to you?" he replies, perfectly dry.
"Unfortunately, no. Which is worse." Deadlock's stance doesn't falter. "The almighty, prestigious defenders of Iacon aren’t offline. Big whoop. You just- what, bailed? Left the rest of us under Sentinel's rule while you went and did something more important?"
Something moves across Starscream's expression. There and gone, too fast to identify. His wings flare behind him. "You have no understanding of the reality of things, mechling."
"Then explain it, your high and mightiness." There isn’t a trace of fear in Deadlock. She’d be impressed at him holding his ground against someone he clearly couldn’t win a fight against, if it wasn’t her carrier he was pointing a weapon at.
"I suggest," Starscream says, his servos shifting minutely, null-rays angling with deadly precision. “That you consider your words very carefully before you continue speaking.” The low hum of charging energy rises threateningly.
"Enough!"
The yell comes out before she consciously decides on it, and so does the energy. Smaller than before, more controlled this time, twin bursts explode from her raised servos. Deadlock stumbles back a couple steps. Starscream's wings flare wide, null-rays knocked off target.
She takes a moment to check them both. No damage. No burn marks. She lets out a slow ex-vent.
"Stop." She orders, voice tight but steady now, something firm settling beneath it. She turns her helm sharply toward Deadlock. "Drop the weapon."
He hesitates exactly long enough to make it clear he's choosing to comply, not obeying. The blaster lowers, but he keeps a tight grip on it.
She turns to Starscream. "Carrier. Put those away." A beat. "Please."
He doesn't, not immediately. He looks at her instead, stares more like, his optics moving across her face like he’s running calculations, cataloguing. Taking her apart feature by feature and putting her back together into something he can understand, he lingers a moment at her servos, she balls them in fists self-consciously.
Then the null-rays fold away, panels sliding shut with a soft click, his arms lower. He is still watching her, something in his expression she doesn't have a name for yet, too complicated.
"You are just like your sire." Quiet. Almost to himself, like the words escaped before he decided to say them.
The question forms before she can stop it, slips through all the careful control she has left, because she has been not-asking it since the moment she saw Alpha Trion, since she saw him. "Is he-" The word catches in her voicebox. Alive feels too final. She tries again. "Is my sire actually offline?"
Starscream is quiet for a klik, like he’s bracing himself, and that says enough.
"...Yes." His tone isn’t soft or gentle like one might expect from someone else delivering this kind of news. It’s careful, controlled in a way that has nothing to do with indifference and everything to do with how long he has been carrying this particular weight. "I saw it myself."
She briefly considers asking what state Megatronus was in when Starscream found him. It was the kind of question she would normally ask, she needs complete information, because incomplete pictures make her processor work in circles trying to fill the gaps. She knows that about herself. She’s aware that the not-knowing will haunt her the rest of her life.
She lets the question go anyway.
She simply nods. The motion is mechanical, the polite acknowledgment of information received. Her field doesn't shift. Her expression doesn't move. Something in her spark chamber twists, but that's internal, and that’ll stay where it is.
Starscream doesn't speak immediately. She can see him almost deciding something, the small shift in his weight, a motion that starts and doesn't finish, like he'd begun to step forward and thought better of it halfway through. His wings settle, then resettle, the microadjustments of someone managing themselves carefully. She recognizes it because she does it too, has done it her entire life, the constant internal negotiation between what the frame wants to do and what the mind decides is appropriate.
He's looking at her face. Not the analysis from before, but searching for something. Looking for permission, she realizes, for some indication that closing the distance would be welcome, that she wouldn't pull away, that somewhere underneath everything, she is still the sparkling who used to press her face against his cockpit when the rest of the world felt like more than she could handle.
She almost gives it, she wants, so badly, to close the distance and be small again, hide in his arms where it’s safe. She is bigger than him now, but it doesn't matter. Some part of her that never had the chance to grow up is looking at him and thinking her carrier will make the bad things go away. She hates how much she means that, and hates that she can't let herself believe it, because she already gave all of her trust away to the wrong person.
"Deadlock's right." The words come out even, surprisingly. She had expected them to shake. "If you've been alive this whole time," alive, the word she couldn't say a moment ago, landing now as something that isn't quite an accusation but holds the same weight, "then where were you?"
Why didn’t you come for me? Goes unsaid.
Something moves across Starscream’s expression. Like before, it goes away before she can identify it.
"The surface." His voice is careful in a way she doesn't think she was meant to notice. Precise, choosing each word the way you choose footing on uncertain ground. "I've been on the surface since the High Guard was deployed for the last time. We knew what really happened to the Primes, we knew Sentinel was responsible. And since he wasn’t able to kill us outright, he made sure we couldn't get back."
"Iacon was unreachable, he had every access point monitored. If we'd tried to breach the city he'd have known immediately, and he had enough security to-" a fractional pause, "it would have gotten people killed. More people. People I am responsible for."
Starscream holds her gaze, if he was anyone else, she would say his look is pleading.
"So we've been fighting him from the outside, disrupting his supply to the Quints. Hitting him whenever and wherever we could. It wasn't-" another pause, smaller this time, "It was the only thing I could do."
Supernova looks at Starscream, really looks, spots the wear on his armor she hadn't let herself catalogue before, the places where the finish isn’t quite as pristine as he always kept it, an old scar along his left wing that looked like it never healed quite right, she carefully catalogues every small tell of a frame that hasn't had proper maintenance in a long time and has learned to function anyway.
She looks at his face, understands that expression. Not because she's seen it on him before, but because she's made it herself, in every reflective surface, in the moments she had to be composed more than she could afford to be seen. It's the look of someone desperately holding themselves together.
But she finally catches what’s underneath, hidden well enough that she would've missed it if she wasn't as familiar with it as she is. She recognizes the hurt, the longing. He missed her. It was present in every carefully chosen word, every checked motion, in his optics. He wants his creation back. As much as she wants her carrier back.
And that, more than anything else, is what tells her that her carrier is telling the truth. He couldn’t come back for her.
But that doesn’t make it right.
Because the vorns are still there. The first time her outlier activated, Sentinel telling her what she was before she'd stopped shaking. The first time she won a sparring match against a mech twice her size, she looked up for someone to share her excitement with and found only Airachnid, who nodded once and told her to go again. Her final upgrades completed quietly, the frame of an adult staring back at her in the mirror, she felt nothing in particular about it because there was no one to feel it with.
Starscream was far away on the surface during all of it. He had reasons to be, real reasons. He still wasn't here.
Her intake opens, pauses there, then closes. She is one misstep away from saying something she can't take back. She can feel herself start to come apart at the seams. Carefully, she makes sure her expression doesn't shift. But her field does, just slightly, but it’s enough to notice. A small servo closes around hers.
She looks down. Deadlock isn't looking at her the way people look at someone they're worried about. He's not doing the thing where the optics go soft and the expression asks are you okay in a way that would absolutely destroy her right now. He's just there, holding her servo tight, not planning on letting go. His expression is steady. Whatever happens, it says. I'm here.
Supernova forces herself to believe that for now, holds onto it. She raises her helm, vents out once, slow and controlled. She can hold this together a little longer. She opens her intake again-
And then she hears them. The High Guard.
Supernova turns to see them rising in the air in perfect formation, moving through the sky like a single organism that happens to be made of many parts, the kind of coordination that takes vorns of shared experiences to build.
She notices Starscream receiving a comm out of the corner of her optic. His expression shifts, a flicker of displeasure across his features, whatever he’s listening to, he doesn't like it.
"Understood." He cuts the comm.
She turns back to him just in time for his optics to lock onto hers, she almost flinches at the intensity of his look.
"We have to move." His voice has changed, hardened. The Head of the High Guard, giving an order. "Optimus Prime has ordered the High Guard to stand down and leave the city." He stops. Starts again, quieter, the professional cadence dropping just slightly at the edges. "I need you to come with us."
She can’t contain the flinch this time, wings flicking in alarm.
Deadlock takes half a step in front of her, still not dropping her servo. "What?" The question has an edge to it, sharp and incredulous, "You can’t just suddenly come back into her life and take her from her home."
Starscream doesn't even look at him. "Supernova. Listen, I have spent every vorn since I was last deployed trying to find a way back to you. You don’t understand how many attempts there were, all of the failed plans, how every time we got close-" he cuts himself off up abruptly. Closes the distance between them by half, servos twitching, almost reaching for her, but held stubbornly at his sides. "I cannot leave this city without you. I won't."
He says it like an order. Almost. It’s direct, the tone of a commander, but there’s something in it that doesn’t come out like he wants it to. His voice almost trembling. Too much weight on certain words, a fraction too long on you.
What is she supposed to say to that? What is she supposed to do? She looks at Deadlock, hoping for answers.
His optics are locked onto Starscream with the kind of attention earned through painful experience, he has learned to watch authority figures very carefully. Today has been its own kind of brutal for Deadlock, he didn’t come through unscathed. He has spent his entire life under a system that saw him as a tool, that took his cog, his choices, and dared to call it order. He has earned every ounce of that distrust.
Starscream is not Sentinel Prime. She knows that, Deadlock does as well. But Sentinel is offline, and all of that has to land somewhere, and Starscream is right there.
Then, like he felt her looking, his optics slide to hers, edge softening instantly. He doesn't let go of her servo. But his grip loosens slightly, the difference between holding her in place and simply being there for her. He’s a steady presence, one with no expectation, no direction. Just a nod, small but certain. Whatever you choose.
She gives the tiniest shake of her helm. She doesn't know what to choose.
Her entire life has been spent being told what she was, her purpose, where she belonged, and only now she noticed she’s never once been asked. But now there’s a genuine choice, one with weight, sitting right in front of her.
She digs in her processor, scrambles to come up with something. Iacon is her home, it's people her responsability, now more than ever. But this was her carrier. How many nights had she cried herself to recharge, begging, praying, to have him back? It's a miracle that he's standing right in front of her now, within her reach.
She feels like she's being torn in two, and there’s nothing in her that knows what the correct decision is.
Starscream moves. His servos come up slowly, telegraphed, giving her every opportunity to pull away, she doesn't. Can’t. He cups her helm, tilting her face toward his. The grip is careful, and it reaches straight through every wall she has built since the last time he held her like this. She leans into the contact without any conscious thought.
"Stay with me," he says. “Please,” so quiet that she almost doesn’t catch it.
And just like that, the choice is made. She cannot lose him. Cannot watch him rise into the sky with the rest of them and disappear again. She is so tired of losing people.
Her free servo comes up, finds his, and holds on. Her other servo tightens around Deadlock's, he squeezes back in response.
She stands there for one moment holding both of them. The only two solid anchors in a world that has stopped making sense, and ex-vents.
"Okay," is all she can say.
———
:D there it is, the happy (?) reunion! Honestly, at first it was suppossed to be way fluffier than this, carrier and creation finally back together, yipee! But then I thought about it again, and it didn't make sense for either of them to let their walls down and be vulnerable with who is now practically a stranger. Yes they love each other, but they don't know each other, too much has changed.
But! luckily now that they're reunited they can spend more time together! Surely this will develop into a very healthy child-parent relationship, their collective trauma won't have any lasting consequences. Ha ha. Hm.
Also I sort of lied, this is the last chapter, yes. But I do have a small epilogue planned. It’ll explain how and why she ends up joining the decepticons.
