The key turned in the lock two days later. Kyle heard the familiar sequence, the deadbolt, the handle, the solid click, from the kitchen where he was making tea. He didn’t move. He listened to the sounds of John’s return: the heavy drop of a duffel bag by the door, the sigh of a man shedding the weight of a job, the firm tread of boots on the floorboards.
John appeared in the kitchen doorway, his frame filling the space. He looked tired, but the operational sharpness was still in his eyes, slowly giving way to the softer focus of home.
“Hey, you,” John said, his voice a low rumble.
“Hey,” Kyle replied, smiling like a fool. No matter how many times they repeated this part, it was always Kyle’s second favourite. He turned to lean against the counter. The kettle hiccupped with bubbles of hot water.
They fell into the easy, physical language of their relationship. John crossed the room, not for a dramatic kiss, but to press his forehead against Kyle’s temple, a solid, grounding presence. Kyle felt the chill of the outside air still clinging to John’s jacket.
“You’re warm,” John sighed, pleased, like he always did.
“And you’re freezing,” Kyle complained, wrapping his arms tighter around him, enjoying the solid weight of him, the way that broad frame would never break under the strength of Kyle’s hold.
read the rest on ao3 (cw: explicit sexual content)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary:
"When an angel falls, it becomes a devil. So, where do angels come from?"
Kurapika, an angel who has existed for roughly four years, can not remember anything from his past life. No angel can. There was an unspoken rule among the angels that one must never seek out one's former human life. Otherwise, they risk falling.
After attending the funeral of his former assigned mortal, Kurapika, was assigned a new human to look after. A seventeen-year-old girl named Alluka—who lived with her brother and his boyfriend. Along with a brand new devil, Chrollo, someone who suspiciously wants nothing to do with him.
As Kurapika observes and learns more about Alluka and her life, he soon becomes faced with a predicament—the horror that she's somewhat connected to his former human life. Kurapika is stuck at a crossroads. Does he continue to watch over her, risking his status as an angel in the process, or does he take a step back and let a devil influence her life?
Rated: Teen
Categories: Gen with Background Romances
Main Focus: Kurapika, Chrollo, Alluka, and Pairo
Background Relationships: Killua x Gon, Chrollo x Shalnark, Kurapika x Leorio
Additional Author’s Note: HAPPY HXHBB!!! Make sure to check out everyone's fic and art!!!! @hxhbigbang25
barbeauxbot replied to your post:Kind of want to write cute things Or sad things Or...
Hanzo gets a puppy (It will someday grow old and die)
(I have been thinking about this all day, gdi)
He’s carefully removing his arrows from the bodies of his marks when he hears it; a soft, short sneeze, a quiet snuffle. Not quite human, but he’s on guard instantly. There are many things that aren’t quite human in the world, and it’s better to be wary, especially when one has just eliminated two high profile targets in quick succession.
Hanzo pulls the last arrow freeze of where it’s punched through the diplomat’s ribcage, giving it a quick look has he sets it once again to his bow. Not too damaged, though the mechanism to cause it to scatter is spent.
Good enough.
There is a sound again, a soft whine. Most certainly not human. He steps forward, skirts the edge of the blood pooling on the ground, and follows the sound.
It’s there, underneath the couch, that he sees it. Squeezed into an almost impossibly small space, a small ball of white fluff. Just the paws and the tip of a nose showing.
Hanzo makes a noise in his throat, returns the arrow to his quiver. “Just a dog,” he says, more to himself than to the creature, but it hears him and it whines and it wiggles out from its hiding space.
It’s small and white, with paws that seem too large for the rest of its body. It is, quite undeniably, a puppy.
(Years later, a cowboy will look at the giant creature lumbering at his heels and give a low whistle. “Nice wolf you got there,” he’ll say, and Hanzo will snort dismissively as though he knew that all along.)
It seems a shame, Hanzo thinks, to kill it. But he’s been told no witnesses, and he’s got a contract to fill. But then -
The pup sniffs at his fingers, growls once. He growls back. It looks up at him with wide, pale eyes and then tentatively licks his hand.
He considers that it is, in fact, small enough to easily carry.
(In a happy moment, as he sits in Gibraltar, he’ll watch the wolf and his brother roughhouse out in the setting sun. The wolf is big enough to knock him easily off his feet, but his brother is made of sturdier stuff than more, and by the sound of Genji’s laughter he knows that neither has come to harm.)
It is an easy decision, in the end. One of the easier ones he makes in his life.
(When his hair has grown long and turned white, there won’t be a wolf at his feet anymore. But when he calls on the dragons he’ll find that they have gone white as the wolf’s fur and their cries have turned to howls within the air.)
Bouquet here we come! You can pick any of these that speak to you: Reaper-xeranthemum: eternity, immortality, Lucio-oats: the witching soul of music, Ana and Reinhardt-zinnia: I mourn your absence, McHanzo-gladiolus: you pierce my heart
I.
He thinks he will die.
It’s the end, it’s inevitable. Everything had turned to ash, to dust, all pulled apart and dismembered. He’ll be forgotten, a footnote, the sole commander of a black ops team that did terrible things so that everyone else could go on pretending the world was okay, that things were all right.
He thinks he will die, but he doesn’t.
He doesn’t die once, and he doesn’t die again, and again, and again. And each time it eats a little bit more of him, takes more and more and more. Carves out little bits of his heart, his soul; each life he takes fills those cuts until they are overflowing, fills him back up.
He can’t die. He can’t live.
He wonders if it will ever end.
II.
Here’s the thing, about music. It’s just notes on paper, sounds in the air, until it isn’t. Because when it hits you, really hits you; when the beat hits you right down in your hips and your spine, when it fills up your head and surrounds you, then it’s not just music anymore.
And Lucio knows music like he knows the back of his own hand. He knows the fourths, the fifths, knows how to make things drop just right, so that the notes of the music make your stomach bottom out and make your feet tap. Make you dance. Make you heal all up, because when a note rings in your head, and then another, when you hear it and the sound pulls at your heart? That’s music.
III.
He leaves flowers at her memorial every year. There’s no grave, just like there’s no grave for Gabriel, no grave for Jack. It doesn’t matter if there’s no grave; he brings flowers all the same.
Five years after her death, he can’t. It’s not that he forgets, it’s that he isn’t there, can’t make his way across the country to the little memorial to a fallen hero. To a fallen friend.
He takes a quiet moment that evening instead - he makes a pot of tea and sits by himself and watches the sunset, just like they would some days. He pours out two cups, add too much sugar to one and places the second upon a little saucer. Plain and unsweetened, how she preferred it.
Brigitte doesn’t ask him why he does it; if she wonders, she keeps it to herself.
The next year, he doesn’t leave flowers either. But that next year, he doesn’t need to. He has his cup of tea with an old friend instead.
IV.
There’s an arrow in his chest and its a miracle it’s an inch too high and too far left to punch right through his ribs and into his heart. A goddamn miracle, even if it hurts like a son of a bitch.
Mercy’s gonna give him a lecture on this one, he thinks. If he survives.
McCree snaps off the end of the arrow, but leaves the head of it buried in his flesh. It’s gone right into the weak point in his armor, right near the joint of his shoulder. A good shot, gone a little awry. Damn good shot; he never even saw the assassin who shot it.
Blood seeps down his side, soaking his shirt. A shame; he liked this one.
From his left, he hears the soft sounds of feet upon stone. Light footsteps - for a moment, he thinks it’s Genji, before he remembers that he’s not here. Not on this mission. Angela’s not either, and that’s a damn shame because he could use her patching him up and making sweet, if stern, comments about how he should be more careful.
The footsteps grow louder and he spins around as best he can, lifts Peacekeeper with an unsteady arm. The assassin’s a good shot, sure, but if he’s getting this close then he’s a cocky son of a -
Oh.
Well.
“Howdy,” he says, when faced with a familiar pair of brown eyes and a bow drawn back fully.
“You.”
“Yeah, me.” His finger rests against the side of the trigger; Peacekeeper will go off in a heartbeat if there’s a need, but there’s this aching hope in McCree’s chest - just a little below and to the right of the ache from the arrow - that it’s not going to be necessary at all.
Genji and Mercy, Camellia- my destiny is in your hands. :3
Oh god. Well I’ve just tried to summarize an entire character growth arc in like less than 1000 words, so here we go:
****
Here is what he remembers, years later: white-hot pain, anger, agony. Things missing from where they should have been, and a dragon curling frantically around his spine, desperately clawing to a life that should have ended. And then something warm and bright and alive. Wings, a hand outstretched, everything gold and glittering.
He’d tried to force a word past ruined lips, a shattered jaw. Tried and failed, throat too mangled, tongue too raw.
Here is what she says: I am with you.
This, he remembers.
***
He sleeps.
***
Here is what he forgets, for too long: waking to voices, eyes too blurred at first to see more than indistinct shapes and colors. But he could hear.
His body is rejecting any tissue I try to transplant, she says. I am running out of options. I have reconstructed his jaw, but the rest of his body -
We’ve discussed options, says a man, all blue and gold in his periphery.
I will not turn him into a weapon. She is harsh, she is brittle, she is angry in a way he will so rarely see in the years to come. I will not, Jack. I - oh. Oh no, he’s waking up.
She wears medical scrubs. There are no wings.
He would swear she had wings.
***
The man in blue explains. The options. The option. Singular, like there is no other.
Through a synthetic jaw, with vocal cords that create distorted sounds within his throat, in a voice strange to his own ears, Genji says yes.
He does not consider consequences.
***
She makes him into something new. Something terrible and strange. Synthetic muscle and metal joints and armor that sits upon his as though it is skin. It is not just her who builds his new body, he knows this, but -
Is there any discomfort? she asks him, when he takes his first steps on new legs. Please, let me know. There are adjustments I can make -
I am fine. He says it, but it is not true. She knows this; she can see it on a face not yet hidden behind a mask.
As your doctor, I need to know if anything is wrong, she says, later, when he returns from his first mission. If there is anything I can do -
There is nothing, he tells her, and that is a truth. Nothing she can do.
There is nothing, for a long time, except anger and revenge.
***
Here is what he holds dear to, in the years after: the sight of her face, the sound of her voice, the way she overflows with compassion.
Genji, she says. Her voice is gentle, soft. You must remember that you are not a weapon.
I wish that were true, he tells her. I am but what you made me.
He remembers her face, in that moment. It is one thing he cannot forget.
***
It is very easy to hate. For a long time, it is easier than anything else.
***
When you find your brother, do not kill him. Violence will always bring more violence.
I cannot promise that.
***
It is so easy to hate.
And then, it isn’t.
***
We often find ourselves mired in hate and anger, Zenyatta says, as they sit together. There is much in life to inspire such emotions. Yet you have sought my guidance to move past it.
I wish to heal, he tells him. I wish to make peace with what I have become.
To heal from this, you must release your hate for yourself, his master says, and Genji shuts his eyes. It is no easy task, and it will take time.
You will help me?
Yes. I will.
***
“This doctor you speak of, do you hold hate for her, for what her actions resulted in?” his master asks him, and he pauses. He tilts his head up to the sky and thinks of things bright and beautiful, sunlight that tried to shine where desperate darkness clung.
You are not a weapon, she had said, and he had not listened. It has taken him so long to listen.
“No,” he says, and this is a truth. “I do not hate her.”
He cannot.
It has taken him a long time to realize this as well.
“Move a foot to the right, Reinhardt.” Her line of sight is clear to the archway is clear, but he’s half hidden by the wall; from her position she cannot hit him. “I need you in my sights.”
There is the sound of laughter over the comm; bright, loud, boisterous. “Hah! I knew you could not keep your eyes off my handsome face!”
She smiles, but does not laugh; to laugh might jar her arm, to jar her arm would shift her rifle. Her aim must be precise; Reinhardt is a large target, but she is at a far distance from him.
He moves as requested. She releases her breath, stills, fires.
