TisAyeMate

Hello there, I go by the name Lauren. I'm a reader, writer and student. Enjoy my blog!

[tisayemate]

ABOUT ME 🕊️:

>> I go by Lauren (she/her, I’m straight)

—> Lauren is not my actual name, but it’s the name of my oc which I’ve used for a while to keep my identity safe online

>> I am 18

>> I am a student— currently in school

>> I am Asian with French roots

>> Contributing to this blog is a hobby

>> My English is not perfect, but I try

>> I write what I feel like (I’ll list characters and fandoms down in my masterlist** over time)

RULES:

>> I am currently: OPEN/closed to asks and requests

>> I 𝘿𝙊 𝙉𝙊𝙏 write smut. (It is uncharted territory for me and I personally don’t think I’m at that level yet, but if necessary, I will try.)

>> I ONLY write for fictional characters and universes (I prefer to create stories that respect the boundaries of real-life individuals. Writing for real people, especially those unaware of such content, can feel intrusive to me, so please refrain from requesting non-fictional character scenarios.)

>> I’m a human too so please be nice. (People pleaser problems, I have to set boundaries for my sanity)

>> I want this to be a safe space where we can all come together to read and talk/write about ideas, thoughts, characters and what not so I don’t want to be strict but I’m just going to put out here that I will not tolerate bullying. (I mean in writing, if you want angst—sure) but I hope you get what I mean

—> but that being said (even though I would not like to), if I have to block your account, I will.

>> Lastly, this is my first time doing all this so go easy on me, but do drop by some constructive criticism where you see fit.

>> Okay maybe not lastly but this is my last point now, promise. This is important to me so I hope you respect it. If you want to use my writing or my fics, at least credit me and drop me a text about it. I’d appreciate if you did both but generally, crediting my work should suffice.

MASTERLIST **

Wattpad

Spotify

** Not much content yet, I’m afraid; but I’ll populate it in time to come. Please have some patience because I am still a student with other priorities and a personal life, thank you

(Enjoy and have a lovely time 🥰)

[aquaticmercy]

Maybe This Time

Summary : John Walker trying to manage his anger issues accidentally turns into a second chance at love.

Pairing : New Avengers! John Walker x reader (she/her)

Warnings/tags : Tower-ish fic? FLUFF!!! divorce, co-parenting, you are John's crisis de-escalation trainer, workplace romance, Olivia has a new boyfriend, you are mentioned to have a sister and a niece, shooter mention, dental anxiety, food. (Let me know if I miss anything!) 

Word Count : 17.3k

Requested by : Anons! This is a combination these requests: X X

Notes : First time writing a full fic just for John! I swear I intended it to be 5k words but I am incapable of restraint when it comes to writing, apparently. Enjoy!

John didn’t want Olivia back.

He didn’t sit outside her place mourning the life they had lost. He didn’t picture himself walking back through the front door, walking back into her life like no time had passed, picking up where they had left off. There was nowhere to pick up from. There was no bookmark wedged between the pages of their nonexistent marriage, waiting for them to find it again.

There were too many dead versions of them scattered between the two teenagers they used to be and the two adults they had become. The high school sweethearts to military couple pipeline was simple enough. What came after, though? The serum and whatever he was now? No, they simply were two different people. They simply grew apart. 

John had made peace with the fact that they were over. The problem was that Olivia had started dating again first. Which meant she was winning the divorce.

Which was insane.

He knew it was insane. He knew divorce wasn’t a sport. He knew healing didn’t come with a scoreboard, and there was no prize for being the first person to look normal again. But this was John Walker we’re talking about, and Olivia moving on like a functional adult meant that she was beating him at life. And John was nothing if not competitive. As far as he was concerned, Olivia had points on the board and he didn’t.

John had government-monitored rage incidents and a search history full of “how to not hate your ex-wife’s boyfriend.”

Every other weekend, John would pull up to pick up his son, prepared to be mature, steady, and reasonable. A father, a grown man, a person who had done therapy-adjacent breathing exercises with Bob and therefore considered himself emotionally evolved.

Then the front door would open, and Olivia’s new boyfriend would be there.

The guy wasn’t even easy to hate.  If he had been smug, John could have worked with that. If he had been condescending, or handsy, or one of those guys who tried too hard to prove he was comfortable around another man’s kid, John could have filed him away as an asshole and let the anger fester without feeling guilty. 

The boyfriend’s name was Nathan, and Nathan wore clean sneakers and quarter-zips and had the calm face of aman who had never once been dragged into an international incident. He had neat hair, good posture, and a normal job. John didn’t know what the job was, because asking would imply interest, and John refused to be interested in Nathan on principle.

Nathan opened the door with his son’s bag on his shoulder, “Hey, John,” like they were neighbors.

Nathan remembered the stuffed dinosaur. Nathan knew the diaper bag needed the blue cup, not the yellow one, because the yellow one leaked if it tipped sideways. Nathan crouched to zip up tiny sneakers with patient hands while Olivia gathered a jacket from the hallway closet. So every time Nathan handed over the bag, John felt the score shift. Bing bing bing! 2-0!

Olivia: one emotionally stable boyfriend who knew the snack schedule.

John: one tactical vest in the trunk.

Nathan smiled at him one Saturday morning with a mug in his hand in John’s old kitchen.

He had signed the papers. He knew the house was Olivia’s now in every way that mattered. But his body hadn't received the update. Some stupid, territorial part of him still recognized the front hall and the little hook where his keys used to go. And then there was Nathan standing barefoot on the tile with coffee like he had spawned there naturally.

“Morning,” Nathan said. “Good to see you, man.”

John almost laughed. “Yeah,” he said instead. “You too.”

It came out flat enough that Olivia looked at him tilting her head.

His son squealed from the living room, and John stepped around Nathan to get him.

The kid launched himself at John’s legs with complete, reckless trust, and for half a second the whole world rearranged itself around the feeling of small hands gripping his jeans, his son shouting, “Daddy!” like John had never been anything other than wanted.

He bent down and picked him up.

There. That helped. That always helped.

For three seconds, the scoreboard didn’t exist. Then Nathan came out with the diaper bag.

“Packed extra wipes,” Nathan said. “He had a thing with the applesauce earlier.”

When John took the bag, his hand closed around the strap too tightly. “Great,” he said.

Nathan smiled politely. If he had been insincere in any capacity, John couldn’t spot it. “No problem.”

John wanted to bite through concrete. He hated that Nathan had packed the wipes. He hated that Nathan had been there for the applesauce thing. He hated that he knew there had been an applesauce thing at all. He hated that Nathan’s mug said something stupidly wholesome on it, probably from a farmer’s market. He hated that nobody was doing anything wrong.

Still, he knew Olivia was allowed to date. Nathan was allowed to be nice. Their son was allowed to be comfortable in the house he lived in, and in fact, John was relieved that he was. But that must mean John was allowed to feel complicated about it, too, right?

He was not, however, allowed to turn the whole thing into a personal war.

When he buckled his son into the car seat and glanced back toward the porch, Olivia and Nathan were standing side by side in the doorway. Olivia lifted a hand in goodbye, and Nathan did too.

John lifted his hand back because he wasn’t a monster. Then he got into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and sat there for one second too long with both hands on the wheel.

Winning. She’s winning!!! The thought flashed hot and stupid behind his eyes.

His son babbled a Bluey song in the back seat.

John looked at him in the rearview mirror and forced his grip to loosen. “Yeah, buddy,” he said, calming down almost immediately. “We’re going.”

He drove away like a normal person.

He made it three blocks before he muttered, “Goddamn Nathan,” under his breath like it was a curse.

His son repeated, “I call him Nay-fin because he has pet fish!”

John winced. “Don’t do that.”

“Nay-fin!”

“Buddy, please.”

“Nay-fin, Nay-fin, Nay-fin.”

By the time John pulled into traffic, he was considering whether crashing the car very gently into their mailbox when he came back counted as a setback.

—

There had been incidents, but not capital-I Incidents.  John would have made that distinction very clear if anyone had been brave enough to stand in front of him and call them that. 

They were simply… small things. Stupid things. Yes, he might’ve put a dent in the elevator panel because the doors stalled. Yes, he might’ve cracked a mug in the kitchen because Ava had asked him if he was “coping”. Yes, he might’ve punched a training dummy hard enough to take out half a weapons rack, which, in his defense, was what training dummies were technically for. 

If anyone saw them as individual, isolated incidents, none of it would be considered catastrophic. Nothing made the news, no one got hurt, no country issued a statement. No blurry civilian footage hit the internet with his name trending in all caps. But together, apparently, it made his teammates raise an eyebrow.

Bob noticed first, which made it worse. Bob didn’t make accusations or corner John and tell him to get his shit together. He just stood in the training room after the dummy incident, staring at the wreckage with those worried eyes like the dummy had a soul. Later, he told Yelena that he thought John was “having a hard time.” Yelena told Mel because of course she did. Mel told Valentina because she was contractually obligated to, and Valentina, naturally, couldn’t have cared less. John breaking things barely registered as a crisis to her. It was just another line item in the budget, somewhere below ammunition, blackmail, and whatever Alexei kept charging to the company card under “team morale.” Then Bucky overheard. 

So Bucky Barnes, of all people, ended up standing in front of him with his arms crossed and that irritatingly calm look on his face, like he had become the emotional adult in the room through some administrative error. Bucky, who had once looked like therapy was a foreign intelligence operation. Bucky, who had trauma spanning two centuries and nine decades. Bucky, who now apparently had the nerve to look John in the eye and say, “You need help.”

John laughed because the only other option was putting his head through drywall. “You’re lecturing me about anger?” he asked, because there were very few moments in his life where the universe felt this committed to humiliation.

Bucky’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t take the bait. “Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

“That’s rich.”

“Maybe,” Bucky said. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

Bucky didn’t sound smug or superior. He sounded like someone who had already crawled through the same swamp and hated recognizing the mud on someone else’s boots. John hated being read like that. He hated that Bucky could stand there, calmer than him, more put together than him. His life had to be spectacularly fucked if the Winter Soldier was now the emotionally stable one.

“I’m fine,” John said.

“You punched an elevator,” Bucky replied.

“It got stuck.”

“For eighteen seconds.”

“It was still stuck.”

Bucky blinked at him in a way that made John want to throw something just to justify the conversation. “You hear yourself, right?”

Unfortunately, John did. He could hear exactly how insane he sounded. He could hear the pattern Bob had noticed. He could feel the way everyone had started looking at him, measuring the distance between him and the nearest breakable object in the room. It made his skin crawl.

Bucky sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Look, I don’t care if you’re pissed. Be pissed. But we can’t have another international incident involving you.” Bucky stepped closer, voice dropping, and John hated how serious he looked. “So you’re off missions unless you do a couple of crisis de-escalation training sessions.”

There it was, the leash. It didn’t belong to Val this time, who made him go on various suicidal black ops mission. It wasn't even the military’s. It was his own teammate’s.

“You can’t do that,” John said.

“I can.”

“Since when?”

“Since the team agreed.”

The team, huh? Is that what this has come to?

John’s nostrils flared. For one stupid second, he wanted to swing at him. Not really, and not all the way. It was just an old reflex, the urge to make the nearest solid thing pay for how cornered he felt.

Bucky saw it. “Don’t.”

John hated him for that, too. He hated everyone because they were right. John had been angry for weeks, if not months. He had been angry before, but this wasn't battlefield angry. Not useful angry. Not the kind of anger that pointed toward an objective and burned through it. 

This was different. This was ugly, sour, domestic anger. Divorce anger. Nathan-knows-where-the-extra-wipes-are anger. It had nowhere honorable to go, so it kept finding walls.

“Who am I seeing?” John bit out.

“Someone I worked with during recovery,” Bucky said. 

John scoffed. “Great. So you’re outsourcing me to your therapist?”

“She’s not a therapist,” Bucky shook his head, “she does oversight, that’s all.”

“Your anger babysitter, then.”

Bucky looked exhausted. “You’re really making my point for me.”

John stared at him. Bucky stared back. Neither of them moved, and then John snatched the file out of his hand because apparently that was what his life had become. Mandatory rage oversight, arranged by Bucky Barnes, because even a former Russian asset had managed to become more emotionally regulated than him. Fantastic. Wonderful. Humbling in a way that made him want to chew glass.

“Fine,” John said.

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “Fine?”

“I’ll go to the stupid sessions.”

John looked down at the file. Your name was printed neatly across the top, along with your credentials. He hated the font. He hated the folder. He hated the idea of sitting in a room while some calm, professional woman asked him where he felt his anger in his body. He felt it in his fist, obviously.   He tucked the file under his arm and turned to leave.

Behind him, Bucky said, “For what it’s worth, she helped.”

John swallowed. That was it: proof standing right behind him that a man could crawl out of worse things and still become steady enough to lecture somebody else.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Well. Good for you.”

Then he walked away, already certain you were going to be the worst person he had ever met.

—

Two days later, John attended his first mandatory rage counselling session in an empty conference room on the thirty-second floor of the tower.

He had spent the entire morning in a foul mood about it. He had woken up angry, showered angry, gotten dressed angry, drank coffee angry, and glared at the file Bucky had given him angry.

The conference room was empty when he got there, because of course he was early. Not because he cared. Not because he was nervous. John didn’t get nervous about talking to some government-approved feelings babysitter in a glass-walled room with a bad view and a table long enough to host a hostage negotiation.

He was early because being late would have given Bucky something to say.That was all.

He stood near the window with his arms crossed, watching the city move beneath him like he had somewhere better to be. Which he did. Literally anywhere. A mission, a sparring mat, a shooting range, his truck. Nathan’s front porch, even. Jesus, that was how bad this was. He would rather stand in Olivia’s doorway and watch her boyfriend hand him the diaper bag than sit in a room and answer questions about his anger.

The door opened behind him.

John did not turn right away. It was petty, but he had already committed to being difficult, and there was no reason to abandon the theme this early.

“John Walker?” Your voice was not what he expected.

It was steady, but not cold. Professional, but warm. He turned, already prepared to be unimpressed, already prepared to hate the woman who thought she was brave because she could sit across from an angry man and ask him to breathe.

Then he saw you. And his first thought was: She’s cute.

John actually felt his brain snag on it.

You stood in the doorway with a bag on one shoulder and a folder tucked under your arm, dressed like someone who did home visits all the time. In this case, Tower visits. You looked composed without looking stiff, kind without looking naive.

John blinked. Then, he forced himself to snap out of it.

No. Fuck no.

That meant nothing.

He was just touch-starved, that was all. Recently divorced and hadn’t gone on a date in a while. A pretty woman walked into a room and his brain did the humiliating male thing it had been biologically programmed to do. That didn’t mean anything, right? That wasn’t a crush. That wasn’t even a thought worth dignifying.

He was just being a guy. A tired, divorced guy with bad impulse control and a mandated appointment.

You gave him a small smile, “Thanks for meeting me here.”

John looked around the empty conference room. “Didn’t really have a choice.”

“No,” you said, setting your bag down near one of the chairs. “You didn’t.”

Huh. He had expected you to soften the blow, to say something like, I know this isn’t ideal, or I understand this must be frustrating, or some other fluffed little statement designed to make the whole thing feel less like punishment.

John narrowed his eyes slightly. “That’s it?”

You glanced up from your folder. “Were you expecting me to pretend this was voluntary?”

“No.”

“Good. Then we’re already starting from a place of honesty.”

He hated that he almost smiled.

You pulled out a chair, but you didn’t sit at the head of the table. You sat along the side instead, leaving the chair across from you open. Not a power move, as John had learned to read. For a second, John had to remind himself that you had no reason to take an interrogation setup. John stayed standing.

“I understand Mr. Barnes spoke with you,” you said.

John scoffed. “That what we’re calling it?”

“What would you call it?”

“A threat.”

“Was it?”

“Yes.”

“Was it effective?”

John stared at you. You looked back, patient but not passive, pen resting lightly between your fingers.

He hated that question, but the answer was yes. Bucky threatening to bench him had been effective. Bucky telling him he was becoming a liability had worked because John could argue with feelings all day, but he couldn’t argue with being taken out of the field.

He pulled out the chair and sat down. “I’m here,” he said. “That’s what matters, right?”

“It’s a start.”

He leaned back, folding his arms. “And what, you’re gonna fix me?”

You didn’t flinch. You didn’t look wounded or challenged or impressed.

You just looked at him for a second, thoughtful in a way that made him feel more seen than he wanted to be, and said, “No.”

John blinked.

You opened your folder. “I’m going to help make sure you stop throwing government property through walls.”

For one full second, John could not decide whether to be offended or laugh. Offended won, but only barely. “It was one wall.”

You looked down at the page. “According to the report, it was two walls, one elevator panel, one training dummy, a mug, three chairs, and a decorative glass installation.”

“The glass was ugly.”

“I’ll add that to the mitigating factors.”

He did smile then, and you saw it. Even more unfortunately, you were kind enough not to look victorious about it.

Instead, you made a small note. “I want to be clear about something before we start.”

John’s shoulders tensed. “Here we go.”

“This isn’t therapy,” you said. “If you want a shrink, get a shrink. I have a recommendation list the size of a novella, but I am not that.”

His eyes narrowed. “I know.”

“Good. Then you understand I’m not here to hold your hand through a breakthrough.”

John stared at you.

You continued, voice even. “I’m not here to humiliate you. I’m not here to decide if you’re a good man or a bad man. I’m not here because the director of the CIA cares about your emotional well-being.”

John let out a humorless breath. “At least you know that.”

“Oh, I know that very well.” You clicked your pen once. “I work risk management and crisis de-escalation. I used to work in personal coaching, but now I work for corporate. I am not new to enhanced individuals. I’ve worked with soldiers, fighters, mercenaries, people who can turn a bad mood into a property damage claim. My job is to make sure you don’t cause another PR incident.”

“So I’m a liability.”

“You’re behaving like one.” you said. “Unlike therapy, I’m allowed to be harsh. I’m allowed to be direct. I’m allowed to be mean if mean keeps you from putting your fist through another wall. Got it?”

John leaned back, arms crossed. He still looked pissed off, obviously. That seemed to be his default setting. But now he looked interested too, against his will.

“So what?” he said. “You train me like a dog?”

You looked him dead in the eye. “If that worked, Mr. Walker, Mr. Barnes would've brought treats.”

For one second, he only stared. Then he laughed. You made a note.

His eyes dropped to your pen. “What are you writing?”

“That you’re trainable.”

—

By the second meeting, John had convinced himself the first one had been a fluke.

It was a weird day. He was in a bad mood and drank too much coffee. Of course John had noticed you were pretty. Anyone with a heartbeat and a preference for women would have noticed. That wasn’t a character flaw, nor was it a problem. That was certainly not the beginning of a little crush on the woman assigned to make sure he stopped damaging government property like an overgrown toddler with security clearance.

Except then you walked into the conference room again, two days later, with your bag on your shoulder and your folder under your arm, and John’s first thought was, oh, good.

Not, oh, fuckin’ great, therapy. Not, look, the feelings police have arrived.

You smiled at him. “You’re early again.”

John looked down at his watch like this was news to him. “Traffic was light.”

“You live in the building.”

“Elevators were fast.”

“You took the stairs,” you said, “I ran into Mr. Reynolds in the lobby. He mentions something about you always taking the stairs after the… elevator incident.”

His eyes ticked a bit.

You sat down across from him like you hadn’t just dragged him by the collar into the truth with one hand. “So. We can start with why you feel the need to lie about it. Panels in this building cost taxpayer money, and frankly, John, you are not interesting enough to justify a renovation budget.”

John leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed. “Are you always this charming?”

“Not always,” you said. “Sometimes I’m much worse, but I try to save that for people with better excuses.”

He hated that you were funny. He hated that your voice stayed even when he pushed. You let his attitude lay itself on a silver platter, looked at it, and then kept going like it was mildly inconvenient rather than intimidating.

John hated that you were basically a leash on him. He hated the way you could walk into a room, say his name once, and suddenly everyone expected him to behave like a domesticated pet with paperwork. He hated that you were basically a corporate muzzle with a company badge. Most of all, he hated that it worked. He hated that you were good at crisis de-escalation, that when you told him to sit down, he sat.

That session was worse than the first because he talked more. Not willingly or gracefully. John didn’t spill his guts; he leaked under pressure and acted indifferent when anyone noticed the puddle. But you were good. 

You didn’t say, “Tell me about your feelings” like a shrink would. You asked practical things. What happened before the elevator stalled? What did he think before making the decision to do it?

He told you the elevator made a noise. He told you the noise reminded him of a transport door jamming during a mission that went badly.

You nodded.

John hadn’t realised until now, just how much that helped.

By the end of the session, he had only snapped at you twice, which apparently counted as improvement.

“That was progress,” you said, clicking your pen closed.

John scoffed. “Barely.”

He stood too quickly, because staying seated under your steady almost-smile felt too intimate. He picked up his jacket, glanced at you, then glanced away.

“Same time next week?” you asked.

“Yeah,” he said, and then, because his mouth had apparently decided to ruin his life, he added, “Works for me.”

Works for me. Like he was looking forward to it. Like this was a coffee date. Like he was not going to spend the next ten minutes in his room mentally punching himself in the face.

That night, he dreamed about you.

The first dream was almost merciful because it was vague. Your voice, mostly. The conference room, dimmer than it should have been, the blinds drawn over the glass walls. Dream-you said his name in his ears, and it sounded sensual.

John woke up annoyed at himself. 

Fine. Whatever. People had weird dreams. That meant nothing.

Then it happened again. And again.

By the fourth dream, his subconscious had apparently lost all interest in being PG-13.

In the dream, you were still in the conference room, but you weren’t sitting across from him anymore. You were on the edge of the table, folder abandoned somewhere behind you, your knees bracketing his hips as he stood between them. His hands were on your thighs, warm through the fabric of your skirt, and he knew even then that he should not be touching you. He knew there were rules.

But dream-you did not care.Dream-you looked at him with your head tilted, eyes steady in that same infuriating way you looked at him in real life, except there was nothing professional in it now.

“You’re very good at pretending you don’t want me,” dream-you said.

John’s hand tightened on your thigh.“I’m not pretending,” he lied.

Dream-you smiled, and hooked one finger beneath the collar of his shirt and pulled him in like he weighed nothing at all.

The kiss was filthy. It was hungry and open-mouthed, your fingers in his hair, his body crowding yours back over the table until the folder slid off the edge and papers scattered across the floor. He could feel your legs tighten around him. He could feel your breath break against his mouth when he dragged one hand under your shirt and you said his name like you were giving in.

John woke up hard, furious, and staring at the ceiling like God owed him an explanation.

“Nope,” he muttered to the dark.

Fuck!  

He spent the morning in the gym punishing a punching bag for crimes it did not commit, then took a cold shower and told himself, very firmly, that this was normal. He had been through a lot. You were pretty, direct, and unfortunately the person his idiot brain would latch onto after being emotionally starved for a year.

That didn’t mean anything.

It especially didn’t mean anything when he got dressed for the next session and changed shirts twice.

The fifth meeting was where you noticed.

Not the dreams, obviously. Christ. He would have walked into the Hudson before admitting those. But you noticed something.

“You seem tired,” you said.

John’s hand tightened around his coffee cup. “I’m fine.”

“You have shadows under your eyes.”

“I have a face.”

You paused, then you smiled down at your notes, and it was so small he almost missed it.

“Okay,” you said. “You have a face. Gotta do better than that if you want to be on the full mission roster again, John. I might have to tell Barnes you should work strictly recon only.”

He hated you.

Liar, liar, liar.

Still, he was starting to like the rhythm of the session. You didn’t chase him when he dodged, but you also didn’t let him disappear completely. You remembered details from the last session without having to flip at your notes. You asked about his son without making it feel like a test. You said Olivia’s name carefully, like you understood there was history there but didn’t assume the whole story.

You asked about Nathan once, asking how much of a liability he made him.  John groaned so hard you actually laughed.

“I’m sorry,” you said, still smiling. “I shouldn’t laugh.”

“No, go ahead. My pain is hilarious.”

“It is a little pathetic that you hate him mostly because he packs a good diaper bag.”

“I don’t hate him.”

You looked at him and lifted an eyebrow.

John sighed. “Fine. I hate him a little.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s there.”

You didn’t write that down right away. You let it sit.

See, you never rushed to dissect the truth. You didn’t pounce like you had caught him revealing evidence. You just let the truth breathe for a second. Then you said, “Because he’s where you used to be?”

John stared at the window. His reflection looked back at him, eyebrows furrowed, shoulders too tight. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Maybe.”

It was the first time he had admitted it without turning it into a joke.

You didn’t say that was progress immediately, which was good, because he might have thrown himself through the window. Instead, you said, “That makes sense.”

John looked at you. His muscles loosened so suddenly it almost pissed him off. That was all he wanted, apparently. Not permission. Just someone saying the feeling itself was not insane.

Then, after the talking part of the session, came the training part of it. That’s the whole point of these meetings, right?

You weren’t gentle with him. You didn't treat his temper like a tragic creature that needed to be understood by candlelight. You treated it like a workplace hazard. Like bad wiring. Like a loaded weapon left too close to civilians.

“Again,” you said, tapping your pen against your clipboard. “You’re in a hallway. Civilian contractor panics. He raises his voice and gets too close. You do what?”

“Tell him to back the hell up.”

You sighed. “Try again.”

He looked at the ceiling like he was praying for patience, which was funny because you had been fairly sure God had blocked his number.

“I create distance,” John said tightly. “I keep my hands visible and lower my voice.”

“Beautiful,” you look pleased. “Look at that. A whole adult sentence.”

“Do you have to say it like that?”

“Yes,” you said, sipping your cold brew. “It’s how I stay awake.”

You circled him once, unimpressed, watching the set of his shoulders, the way his hands curled when he got annoyed, the way he always shifted his weight forward like every conversation was one rude comment away from becoming a contact sport. “There,” you said.

“What?”

“That.” You pointed your pen at his right hand. “You made a fist.”

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t lie to me when I’m literally looking at the problem. That’s embarrassing for both of us.”

John looked down. His hand was, in fact, half-curled. He didn’t even realise. He flexed his fingers open, irritated.

“That,” you said, “is the part we fix. Not your childhood. Not your marriage. Not whatever patriotic hellscape lives in your frontal lobe. That. The two seconds between insult and impact. That is my jurisdiction.”

You stepped closer, lowering your voice just enough. “When someone escalates, you do not match them, do you understand? You don’t get to make it a dominance contest because your ego gets lonely. You create space, you name the behavior, and you give one clear instruction.”

He looked unconvinced.

You sighed. “For example: ‘Step back. Lower your voice. We can talk when you’re calm.’ See? Simple.”

“I know how to talk to people.”

“You know how to issue commands,” you corrected. “That’s not the same thing. Golden retrievers know how to bark. We don’t make them hostage negotiators.”

His mouth twitched up into a smile before he could stop it.

You caught it instantly. “Oh, good,” you said. “There’s a sense of humor under all that rage.”

“Are we done?”

“No.”

You made him run the scenario again. And again. And again.

You played the panicked contractor. Then an angry civilian. Then a reporter shoving a phone in his face. Then a teammate ignoring his order. Every time he got too mad, you stopped him. Every time his posture turned threatening, you pointed it out. Every time his voice dropped into that dangerous register, you made him start over.

“Less divorced drill sergeant.”

He tried again. 

“Better. Still terrifying, but now in a way HR can plausibly defend.”

John looked like he wanted to throw your clipboard through a wall. But he didn’t.

By the end of the session, he had forgotten to be hostile for nearly ten whole minutes.

—

Unfortunately, everyone else noticed him being weird about these sessions before he did.

It happened after the eleventh meeting.

He had put on some fancy cologne. Maybe he had sprayed once more than usual. Maybe twice. Maybe he had stood in front of the mirror afterward, frowned, and changed his shirt because the first one looked too tactical and the second one looked like he was trying too hard, which meant he had landed on the third shirt, which looked like he was trying exactly the right amount.

Whatever.It wasn’t a thing.

He walked into the common area afterward feeling, unfortunately, good. The session had gone well. You had smiled at him twice, called him out on his bullshit once, and told him he handled a frustrating call from Olivia better than he would have a month ago. He had pretended that meant nothing when it meant everything. 

He was still thinking about it when Yelena looked up from the couch and sniffed the air.

John stopped walking. Ava, sitting beside her with a bowl of cereal, paused mid-bite.

Yelena sniffed again. “Oh,” she said. “Interesting.”

John’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

Ava looked him up and down. “That’s a lot of… smell.”

“It’s cologne,” John said flatly. “I wear cologne.”

Yelena leaned back against the couch, pleased. “People wear cologne. You are marinating in it.”

Ava looked him over, not unkindly. “The training went well?”

John pointed at her. “Don’t.”

Yelena’s grin sharpened. “Oh, it went very well.”

“I’m leaving.”

“You wore the good shirt,” Ava pointed out.

“Oh!” Yelena made a delighted little sound. “He knows it is the good shirt.”

John felt heat crawl up his neck. “I don't know what the hell you guys are talking about.”

“You have many shirts,” Yelena said. “Most of them say divorced military action figure. This one says”—she waved a hand vaguely—“please think I am emotionally available.”

Ava snorted into her cereal, which by the way, she was eating at four in the afternoon.

John stared at them both, wishing briefly and sincerely for a mission, an explosion, a portal to hell, anything. “I don’t have to stand here and take this.”

John left before he could prove exactly why Bucky had sent him to counseling. But he did not slam the door.

—

John had a dentist appointment that day, and he only found out his regular dentist was on leave while he was already in the chair.

Great.

He already hated the dentist on a good day, but most people did, though. Nobody liked being tilted back beneath a blinding light while someone told them to relax with cold metal in their mouth. Nobody enjoyed lying flat and useless with their mouths forced open, unable to swallow properly, unable to answer questions, unable to do anything except stare at the ceiling tiles while the scrape of instruments were shoved in there. It was an inherently vulnerable place to be.

The angle of the chair was bad enough. The bib against his chest, the plastic suction tube pulling at the corner of his mouth, the hygienist’s polite voice telling him to open wider, the scrape-scrape-scrape of metal against enamel was worse.

He had one hand curled around the armrest and kept telling himself he was being ridiculous.People did this every day. Accountants did this. Schoolteachers did this. 

John was already in a bad mood when the hygienist leaned back, pulled off her gloves, and said, “Dr. Hayes will be in to do the final check.”

John went still. Hayes?

It was a common last name. That was what he told himself first. It could be anyone. New York was full of Hayeses. Thousands of them. Maybe millions.

Then the door opened.

The dentist stepped in wearing scrubs, gloves, a mask, and magnifying loupes pushed up over his forehead. For one glorious, stupid second, John didn’t recognize him. The mask hid enough. The entire situation was absurd enough that his brain tried to protect him by refusing to connect the dots.

Then the dentist looked at the chart and said, “Hey, John.”

John’s soul left his body.

Nathan.

Nathan Hayes, D.D.S., apparently.

John knew he should’ve listened to what he did for work.

Of course Nathan was a dentist. Of course Olivia’s boyfriend had a respectable job where he helped people and owned tiny mirrors and probably lectured about gum health with sincerity. Of course John had somehow ended up flat on his back, jaw aching, beneath the one man in the city he least wanted to see, while said man held a small, gleaming instrument between gloved fingers. There were levels of hell, apparently. This was a new one.

Nathan’s eyes crinkled above the mask in what John assumed was a smile. A normal smile. A professional smile.

“Dr. Miller’s on leave this week,” Nathan said. “I know this is a little weird. I can keep it quick.”

A little weird. Ha!

John stared up at him, pinned by the chair, pinned by the light, pinned by his own body’s immediate reaction to being trapped.

The overhead lamp hummed. The air smelled like mint paste, latex, antiseptic, and the sterile bite of metal, though it just smelled like a fresh magazine of bullets. The tray sat beside Nathan’s elbow, lined with instruments John’s brain catalogued before he could stop it: Probe. Mirror. Scaler. Suction tube. Polisher. Little hooked things. Silver points. Thin handles. Glass jar on the counter. Cabinet door half-open. Exit to the left. Nathan on the right.

John’s fingers tightened around the chair until the vinyl creaked.

He wanted to break something, but he didn’t, not even in a million years, want to accidentally hurt Nathan.

He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He just wanted out. Out of the chair, out of the room, out of his own head, out of being compared and found lacking by a scoreboard nobody else knew existed.

Nathan just adjusted the light and asked, “You okay?”

John felt the breath catch in his chest. “Fine.” It came out too flat.

Nathan paused, just barely. The hygienist glanced between them. He didn’t push, though. He nodded, lowered the loupes over his eyes, and said, “All right. Open for me.”

John almost laughed because there was no way this was his life.

No way Nathan’s gloved hand was braced near John’s chin, steady and gentle, while John’s whole body buzzed with the urge to move, to sit up, to take control of the room by force simply because lying still felt unbearable.

Still, opened his mouth.

The first touch of the dental mirror against his teeth made his spine twitch.

Nathan told the hygienist something about the back molars. He heard the scrape of the instrument traveled through his jaw in a way that felt too invasive and too loud. John stared at the ceiling and tried to breathe through his nose, but even that felt wrong, like he was barely holding the lid down on a volcano.

Then, Nathan’s phone rang. 

He said something about being done anyway, and told the hygienist to take over as he went outside to take the emergency call.

Then he heard Olivia outside the room.

He caught it by accident. The door wasn’t shut all the way, dammit. It’s not like he was actively trying to eavesdrop.

“Hey, Liv. Everything okay?”

Nathan’s voice was quieter now, but John could still hear it, because the serum made sure there was no privacy from the things that would ruin him.

“Yeah. No, I can help. Give me twenty minutes. Is he still fussy?”

John’s vision narrowed around the ceiling light. His son.

Olivia had called Nathan because she needed help with his son, and Nathan had answered like that was normal. Like he was allowed to be the easy call. Like John was not sitting there twenty feet away with mint on his tongue and a paper bib on his chest.

The hygienist said something about rinsing. John did it automatically.

He wanted to break something. A tray. A light. The plastic cup. His own knuckles if that was what it took to keep the feeling from becoming bigger than the room.

Then your voice came back to him. You weren't there, but he remembered your advice: Name the feeling before it names you.

John squeezed his eyes shut for half a second.

Fear. Loss. Control. No. Lack of it.

That’s it. He felt out of control. His normal dentist already made him feel out of control, and Nathan holding metal near his mouth while Olivia trusted him with John’s son made him feel like control was a house fire and he was standing there with a cup of water.

His hands shook once against the chair.

He breathed in. Four counts. Held. Out for six.

He had mocked the breathing exercises when you taught them to him. He had called them tactical breathing with better marketing. You had looked at him and said, “Mock it while you do it correctly, then. You think you’re helping the team with that mouth?” He had almost smiled. He had done it badly on purpose. You had noticed. 

Now he did it the way you had taught him. Again. Again.

By the time Nathan came back in, John hadn't broken anything.

By the time Nathan finished the appointment, John hadn’t said anything cruel.

By the time he got to his car, John could finally breathe normally again

He sat behind the wheel with both hands gripping it, staring through the windshield at nothing. His mouth tasted like fluoride. His teeth ached. His heartbeat was still too fast. He hadn’t shoved the tray over. He hadn’t crushed the armrest. He had recognized that he was standing on the edge and backed away from it.

So why did he feel like he was breaking apart?

—

He did not remember deciding to drive to your place.

Your address was in the file, because you, for some reason, hosted emergency sessions for selected individuals. Because you were a professional and John had no business using that information because he felt like he was coming apart.

But the thought of going back to the tower made his skin crawl, and you were the only person he could think of.

When he reached your building, there were two cop cars outside.

John stopped on the sidewalk, every nerve going cold.

Then the door opened, and two uniformed officers came out, speaking quietly into radios. Behind them, you stood in the entryway with one hand on the doorframe, your hair a little loose, your shoulders set. You looked… tired.

You looked up and saw him. “John?”

It was not your session voice. It was just your voice, surprised and worried all the same.

His throat tightened so suddenly he almost looked away. “I need to talk about something,” he said.

Your eyes moved over his face, quick and careful. He watched you read him the way you always did. “John, this isn’t—”

“I know,” he said quickly. “I know I shouldn’t be here. I know it’s not appropriate. I just—” His voice cracked, and he hated that it did. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

And because you were kind, you sighed and stepped aside. “Come in.”

The second your apartment door shut behind him, the effort of holding himself together finally gave in. He did not explode. Instead, he just stood there in your entryway, too broad for the narrow space, breathing too hard through his nose, eyes burning.

You turned toward him.

He reached for you before he could stop himself.

It was not a romantic gesture, at least not yet. Not like this. But it was too desperate to be anything casual. His arms came around you, and for one terrible second he held on like you were the only real thing left in the world.

You went still.

He felt the professional calculation, the boundary, the line drawn and redrawn in the beat between one breath and the next. Then your hand settled between his shoulder blades.

You hugged him back just enough to keep him from falling apart.

He closed his eyes. His face turned slightly toward your shoulder, not buried, but close enough that some aching part of him wanted to stay there. He wanted to press closer. He wanted to let the day end inside the mercy of your hand on his back.

He pulled away first because he had to. Because if he didn’t, he might forget himself.

Your eyes searched his face. “Sit down,” you said gently.

He did.

You brought him water.

He sat on your couch like a man trying not to collapse through it, staring at the glass in his hands while you took the chair across from him. 

“What happened?” you asked.

He laughed once. “My dentist was out on leave.”

You blinked.

He rubbed a hand over his mouth, then dropped it. “Nathan was covering.”

Your face changed. “The Nathan?”

“Yeah,” John said. “The Nathan.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” He let out a breath that almost shook. “Oh.”

Then it came out of him in pieces: The chair. The light. The tools. The fact that everyone felt a little powerless at the dentist, but for him it had been worse, because he could hear too much and see too much courtesy of the serum and his body kept cataloguing exits and weapons like everything was a threat courtesy of the military training. He talked about Nathan holding tools in his mouth. Olivia’s voice outside. Nathan saying he could help with John’s son.

He stopped there.

For a second, all he could do was stare at the water glass.

“I wanted to break something,” he said, voice low. “There were so many things in that room. And I knew where all of them were, and I hated that I knew. I hated that my head went there.”

You were very still.

“But I didn't want to accidentally hurt him,” John said, and that broke slightly on the way out. “I didn’t. I don’t. He’s not doing anything wrong. He’s good to Olivia. He’s good with my son. He’s just—” He swallowed hard. “He’s there. And I hate him for being there, and then I hate myself because he’s just being a good boyfriend and a good dentist and I’m sitting there thinking about breaking the tray.”

He dragged a hand over his face. “I felt like I was losing control.”

You didn’t rush him. You didn't jump in to make him feel better. You didn't perform comfort.

Then you said, “But you didn’t.”

John shook his head. “It felt like I did.”

“John.”

He looked at you.

Your voice was gentler now, but no less firm. “You were in a setting that already makes people feel vulnerable. You had someone in your personal space holding metal instruments, and then the person holding those instruments was someone tied directly to a major emotional trigger. You recognized that. You recognized that you didn’t want to hurt him, or yourself. You used the breathing exercises. You left without escalating the situation.”

He looked down.

“You came here,” you added, trying to hide the painfully obvious amusement and failed. You chuckled a little, “And we do need to talk about that boundary. But the dentist’s office was not a setback.”

He stared at you.

“It wasn’t even an incident,” you said, almost proud. “Because you handled it.”

Oh. Right. This was the point.

Still, tears came before he could stop them. Not many, but a few hot and furious tears that blurred his vision before he wiped them away with the heel of his hand. “Fuck,” he muttered.

You tilted your head and gave him a box of tissues, and that somehow made him want to cry harder.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For crying?”

“For showing up here.”

“I’m glad you looked for someone,” you said, a faint smile along your lips, and it was the most beautiful thing John had ever seen.

John looked at you. Someone, you had said, someone?

That was a polite way of saying it. It was professional, safe enough to sit between you without making him admit what was probably painfully obvious on his face.

That someone had been you.

He could’ve driven around the city until the anger burned through the soles of his shoes. He could’ve wandered Manhattan like a lost man, fighting the urge to snap a street sign in half or put his fist through the nearest lamp post. But he had not done that. He had come to you.

You.

And there was a hint of something in your face when you said it that he couldn’t quite read. Professional concern, sure. But beneath it, he could’ve sworn he caught something warmer. Something that had no place in reports or progress notes or mandated training in empty conference rooms.

Fondness, maybe. Affection?

No.

No, he couldn’t do that to himself. He couldn’t convince himself of that. That was just heartbreak in a bottle, because there’s no way you feel the same about him, right?

Right?

—

After a while, when his breathing stopped sounding like it was trying to crawl out of his chest, John started noticing your apartment.

He didn’t even mean to. He just needed somewhere to put his eyes that weren't you.

The place was warmer than he expected. You didn’t seem like the sort of person who arranged throw pillows for emotional fulfillment, but there was a lived-in clutter that was almost charming. Books were stacked near the couch, a mug was abandoned by the sink. A cardigan was draped over the back of a chair, one sleeve turned inside out. Shoes had been kicked off by the door like you’d come home in a hurry and forgotten.

It was endearing, how human it all made you.

Of course you were human. You had a kettle. You had overdue-looking mail on the counter. You had a slightly crooked lamp and a blanket folded badly over one end of the couch. You probably had preferences about laundry detergent and favorite takeout and stupid little routines you did when no one was looking.

Then he saw the photos on the wall.

Sam Wilson, smiling beside you with VA badges around both your necks. You with Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers, caught mid-laugh. You with Natasha Romanoff in a theme park somewhere. And beside them a photo of you standing next to the late King T’Challa of Wakanda, doing a peace sign together.

Huh. 

Apparently every person designed to make John feel like an underqualified replacement came with a personal connection to the old guard.

“You know them too?” he asked.

You followed his eyes and nodded. You looked almost embarrassed for a second. You, who had no problem calling him a patriotic parking violation to his face, suddenly shy because he had noticed your wall of impressive friends.

“Oh,” you said. “Yeah.”

He turned back to you, eyebrows raised. “You said that like it’s normal.”

That you knew two of the other Captain Americas, and yet you didn’t tell me. 

For once, he wasn’t really angry about it. For lack of a better word, he felt blank. Like great, nothing I ever do will impress her. 

You looked down at the mug between your palms, thumb brushing the handle in a small, unconscious circle. 

“I used to work for Homeland as a hostage negotiator,” you said, as if it was nothing. “Then I worked with Sam at the VA for a while. Y’know, reintegration and risk assessment.” You glanced toward the photo of Sam again. “Sam was better with people than I was.”

Yeah, tell me about it, John wanted to say, but kept his big mouth shut for once and listened.

“He still is,” you said. “He could sit down beside someone and make them feel like they had room to breathe. I was more…”

“Mean?” John offered.

You looked at him with half a scowl. “Practical,” you corrected. “After that, he asked if I could consult with Steve and Nat on a few things.”

You shrugged, like any of that was casual. 

His eyes flicked back to the photo of Bucky and Steve. “So that’s how this became your… niche?”

You huffed a small laugh. “Enhanced individuals with authority issues? Yeah, it pays very well.”

“Oh,” John said. It was a stupid answer, but the only one he had.

You looked down again, and he could have sworn you were hiding the beginning of a smile, and not even a professional one. Not the weaponized one you used when you were about to call him a liability in three syllables or less. This one was private. As if you were amused by him and trying to be decent about it.

He looked toward the door, partly because he needed to put his eyes somewhere else, and partly because the police cars outside had finally pushed their way back into his mind. The flashing lights had been turning the street blue and red for long enough that he had almost forgotten to ask the obvious question. “What were the cops about anyway?”

You sighed and looked down. You were anxious, and that set off the slightest alarm in his head. “You’ll probably see it on the news.”

John straightened. “What happened?”

You were quiet for half a second too long. Then you said, “I was on the subway earlier.”

John waited.

“There was a shooter in my train car,” you said. “I had to talk him down.”

Shit.

For a second, John couldn’t speak. His mind gave him the picture before he could stop it: Crowded bodies pressed too close together, nowhere to go, doors shut, the violent metallic shriek of the tracks. He saw a gun in someone’s hand pointed to you, standing there with nothing but your voice and the infuriating calm you used on guys like him when they were too angry to know they were scared.

Anger rose in him so fast it scared him. Not at you, but at the world. At the train. At the man with the gun. At the fact that you had been there, trapped underground, while he had been sitting in a car losing his mind over a dentist appointment like an idiot. At the fact that someone he…

Someone whose apartment he had come to, had been in danger.  You had been in danger, and he hadn’t known. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been able to do a single thing with the useless, violent instinct that roared awake inside him now.

His eyes moved over you before he could stop himself: Your face, arms, torso. He was searching for blood. Bruises. A limp. Anything that signalled that you were anything but okay. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, John.” His name sounded different when you said it like that. You weren’t irritated. You were trying to reassure him. 

It made the anger worse for a second because he had nowhere to put it. He couldn’t hit the past. Couldn’t storm onto a train that had already stopped. Couldn’t grab time by the throat and drag it backward until he was there between you and the danger.

He could only sit on your couch with his hands curled uselessly around his knees. And he could tell you knew what was happening, too. But you weren’t in a great state of mind right now, so maybe you couldn’t waste your energy to tell him to come down.

So he did a new-ish coping mechanism. He cracked a joke. “Kids these days, huh?”

He hated that that was what he said. He hated it even more when shook your head.

“No,” you said quietly. “He was a vet. Vietnam, I think.”

John’s attempt at humor died immediately. “Oh,” he said.

For a while, the room was silent.

The anger didn’t  leave him. It lost the directionless edge and became… more familiar. 

He looked at you again, at the fatigue under your eyes, the tension still sitting in your shoulders. He wondered how long you had been holding yourself still while he ranted about his stupid Nathan. 

You had let him into your apartment while your own hands were still shaking.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

You gave a small laugh, but it didn’t quite reach your eyes. “You’re not my shrink, John.”

“You’re not mine either,” he said. “And yet.”

That got him half a smile.

You leaned back slightly in your chair, studying him with that careful, cutting attention he had learned to dread. “Why do you wanna know?”

John swallowed.

Because you were in a train with a gunman. Because I care. Because the thought of you being scared makes me want to tear the world apart, and that is exactly the kind of thing you keep trying to train out of me.

He said none of that. He wasn’t brave enough. Not yet. “I’m asking as a friend,” he said instead.

Friend. The word felt small the second it left his mouth. But it was the only one he was allowed to use. Even that felt like reaching across a line.

You looked at him. Then your eyes dropped briefly to his hands. When you looked back up, your eyes had changed a little. 

“Yeah,” you said finally. “Yeah, I am.”

John nodded once. He didn’t believe you completely. You seemed to know that, because your mouth curved faintly.

“Mostly.”

It was not what John wanted.

He wanted to do something. To fix something. To stand in front of something. To put his body between you and every terrible thing that had already happened, which was useless and stupid and exactly the kind of impulse you would probably write down in your notes with a little disappointed frown. So he just sat there, close enough to notice the tremor had started to fade from your hands. 

And because you also used humor as a distraction, you gave him a sad smile. “The gunman has nothing on me, John,” you said, “I’m actually good at my job.”

John chuckled.

That, you were. 

—

The next meeting was supposed to be easy. You had prepared a mandatory mission readiness evaluation for John. It would maybe take forty-five minutes, and be made up of observation notes, updated risk profile, and recommendation to Barnes by end of day. You had printed the forms. You had set up the conference room. You had brought three different colored pens because, apparently, somewhere between Homeland, the VA, and corporate risk management, color-coding had become very important.

Then your sister called. Which was how you ended up standing in the middle of a government training room with a clipboard in one hand, a half-eaten protein bar in your mouth, and your four-year-old niece sitting cross-legged on the floor beneath the evaluation table, coloring a dinosaur pink.

Her parents were both paramedics. This meant their lives existed in a state of organized chaos: Shifts changed and childcare fell through, so you had babysat her before. Sometimes, someone got stuck transporting a patient across town. Someone else got called in because two ambulances were down and the city, apparently, was held together by caffeine, duct tape, and exhausted women with emergency medical certifications.

Your niece’s name was Mina. She was four and a half and you loved with all of your heart. 

You really did, but not in the way people were when they wanted credit for liking children. You didn’t coo or perform sweetness. You didn’t become a different person around Mina.

You were still you, efficient and as practical as a legal memo. But your hand automatically moved the juice box farther from the forms before Mina could knock it over. You noticed when she chewed on the end of the crayon and swapped it out without hesitation. You opened her apple slices one-handed. You brushed purple crayon dust off her cheek with your thumb, and Mina leaned into it without even looking up, like that touch was ordinary. 

“Yes, I can take her for an hour,” you had said to your sister on the phone. “No, I cannot take her for six. I have work. Actual work with unstable adults.”

Your sister had said something frantic.

“Fine,” You had sighed. “And no, that was not a dig at your child. Mina is emotionally more regulated than half my roster.”

And now here you were. Mina was under the table, humming to herself as she gave a stegosaurus what appeared to be purple lipstick. Her plushie sat beside your shoe, slumped with the weary dignity of a stuffed rabbit who had survived a lot of childcare emergencies.

“You can use blue,” Mina said, holding a crayon up toward you without looking away from her dinosaur.

“I’m working.”

“You can work in blue.”

“I can’t evaluate a federal asset in crayon.”

Mina looked up at you, deeply unimpressed. “Why not?”

Hm. That was a good question.

“Because,” you said finally, “corporate is joyless.”

Mina nodded like this made perfect sense (it didn’t) and went back to coloring.

That was when John appeared in the doorway. He stopped dead when you looked up.

He looked at you. Then at Mina. Then at the juice box on the table. Then at the open packet of baby wipes beside your neatly stacked mission readiness assessment forms.

For several seconds, nobody said anything.

Mina looked him up and down with the suspicion of a tiny secret agent. John looked like he had walked into the wrong room. 

You took the protein bar out of your mouth and said, “Before you speak, choose your words with the same caution you should be bringing to crisis de-escalation.”

His eyes came back to yours. “She yours?”

“Do I look like I have time to produce children?”

His mouth twitched.

You pointed your pen at him. “No.”

Mina crawled out from under the table just enough to examine him properly. She had your sister’s eyes, which meant she could look judgmental without trying. It was honestly impressive and slightly unsettling. 

John noticed her staring and immediately adjusted. He shifted his weight back and lowered himself just a little, enough to seem less like an unwelcome wall.

“Hey, buddy,” he said. His voice was gentler than you expected.

Mina narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?”

“John.”

She looked at you. “Is he in trouble?”

John’s eyebrows rose.

You took a slow sip of coffee. “Constantly.”

Mina nodded with grave understanding, like she too had dealt with federal compliance issues. Then she held up her stuffed rabbit. “Auntie works with people in trouble.”

John’s gaze flicked up to yours. “I’m not in trouble,” John told Mina.

Mina considered this, then looked at you for confirmation. You tilted your hand. “He’s in evaluation.”

“What’s eval-vul-wation?”

“It means we check whether someone can behave in public.”

Mina looked back at John. John looked at you like he was trying very hard not to smile.

Mina held up her stuffed rabbit. “This is Mr. Bun. He has anxiety.”

John’s attention shifted immediately to the rabbit, not fake attention and patronizing adult attention. He gave her real attention, serious enough that Mina seemed to approve of it.

“Mr. Bun,” he said solemnly. “Good name.”

“He gets scared when people yell.”

John’s eyes flickered to you, and you just smiled brightly. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t train the rabbit.”

He didn’t quite laugh, but some of the tension left his mouth. His shoulders settled by a fraction. He looked down at Mina’s coloring page and, without thinking about it too much, picked up a green crayon she had abandoned near his boot.

“What’s the dinosaur’s name?” he asked.

Mina looked pleased, because this was apparently the correct question. “Princess Stomp.”

“Strong name.”

“She bites bad guys.”

“Useful skill.”

“John,” you said.

He looked up, innocent in a way that did not suit him at all.  You went back to your clipboard immediately.

“Mission readiness evaluation,” you said. “Slightly modified.”

“Modified how?”

“My niece is present, so we will do our written evaluation first and the practical one next week. It means no shouting, no tactical demonstrations involving doors, no threats, no furniture damage, and no saying anything that will get repeated to my sister in law while she’s holding trauma shears.”

John looked at Mina, and she smiled back at him with a colourful crayon mark smeared on her cheek.

John looked back at you. “Trauma shears?”

“Both my sister and her wife are paramedics,” you said. “Which means Mina can identify a tourniquet, tell you why you don’t move someone with a suspected spinal injury, and constantly asks grown adults why they look tired.”

Mina, without looking up, confirmed, “He does look tired.”

John stared at her.

You pressed your lips together to hold back a smile. “See?” you said. “Gifted.”

John cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

Mina looked at you. “He’s lying.”

You sighed. “We’re working on that, honey.”

John gave you a look. You gave it right back.

This should have been irritating. One more stupid thing shoved into an already overpacked day. Instead, John stood there with his hands loose at his sides, and Mina pushed a spare coloring page toward him like she had decided he was permitted to exist.

“You can color if your work is boring,” she told him.

John looked at the coloring page. Then at you. He picked up the green crayon.

Oh?

“You do realize,” you said, “If you draw during a mission readiness evaluation, I will include it in the report.”

John looked down at the paper. “What if it’s good?”

“That’d be more concerning.”

Mina leaned over to inspect his work after approximately fifteen seconds of scribbling. “That’s not a dinosaur.”

“It’s a tank.”

You looked up from your clipboard. “John.”

“What?”  he asked defensively. “It’s not armed.”

“It has a turret.”

“It’s decorative.”

Mina frowned. “Make it a turtle.”

John paused. Then, in grave resignation, he drew legs and a head on the tank. Mina nodded approvingly. “Better.”

You stared at him. John did not look at you, but the tips of his ears had gone slightly pink.

You wrote something down.

John tried to look annoyed, but he was terrible at it with a child in the room. 

He was not awkward with Mina. He was good with her. He listened when she spoke, even when she was explaining that Mr. Bun couldn’t sit near the door because he hates doors. He didn't laugh at her or rush her. When she dropped a crayon, he bent and picked it up without comment, placing it back beside her little hand like it mattered.

John Walker, who could turn a hallway into a warzone, somehow knew not to make a four-year-old feel small.

You hated that your heart noticed before your brain could tell it to stop.

John seemed to notice things you did for her, too: The apple slices you had cut into careful half-moons because Mina liked them that way. The way you reached down without looking when she leaned against your calf, your hand landing briefly on the top of her head before returning to your clipboard. The way you were brisk with her but never careless. Practical, but never cold.

You told Mina not to wipe her hands on your trousers, then handed her a napkin before she had to ask. You fixed the little cardigan slipping off her shoulder with one hand while reading John’s file with the other. You were not nurturing in an obvious way. You were efficient love. Competent love.

The kind that remembered snack preferences, packed extra socks, and still said, “No, you cannot lick the marker, even if it smells like grapes, because capitalism is trying to kill you.”

John watched you do it and felt his brain go very still.

Oh shit. 

His crush had been manageable when it was only about you being hot. It was easier when he only thought of sinful things when he looked at your mouth. But this was worse.

This was you with a child leaning against your leg. You with crayons and classified paperwork sharing a table. You telling Mina no with the same clean confidence you used to tell John to unclench his fists.

John’s mind, apparently determined to ruin his life, supplied an image of you in a kitchen, feet kicking over the edge of a counter as he cooked dinner. 

Oh, no, he thought. No, no, no.

No, because now he was thinking about coming home to you, and not even in the fun, stupid, crush way. Not in the she’s pretty when she’s mean to me way. Worse. So much worse.

Desire was simple. Embarrassing and inconvenient, sure. But it was simple. This was not simple.

Now he was thinking about the sound of your keys in a lock. About your shoes kicked off by the door. About you by a dining table, practical and beautiful, telling him not to hover while you cut apple slices into moon shapes because a child liked them better that way.

Now he was thinking about your coffee going cold because you got distracted helping a child zip up her cardigan. About your hand landing automatically on a child’s head when she leaned into your leg. 

And then his mind went somewhere sweeter. His son.

Oh, God.

John imagined bringing him around you. He imagines the way you would speak to him like he was a person, not a prop in John’s life, not a fragile little extension of his failures. You would be direct with him, gentle in that dry, practical way that made care feel less like pity and more like a crutch. 

You would remember what he liked. You wouldn’t let John dote, like he always did . You would probably look at him over his son's head after you woke up in his bed and say, “Stop making that face, John. He’s eating cereal, not defusing a bomb.”

Oh, no. Because that was it, wasn’t it?

He didn't just want to sleep with you. He wanted to build a life with you.

He wanted mornings, errands, and arguments about nothing. He wanted your jacket over the back of a chair. He wanted a second chance at something he hadn’t even let himself admit he still wanted.

Family. Not the perfect kind. A patched-togethed, difficult one. 

And that was when John realized, with a stomach-dropping horror, that this was not a crush.

It had probably stopped being one weeks ago. Maybe it stopped being one the second you let him sit on your couch after the subway and asked for nothing from him but the truth.

He wanted to be with you.

“John?”

He blinked hard.

You were watching him, clipboard lowered, a bit concerned because he usually didn’t space out this long. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said too quickly. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

You clearly didn’t believe him. Before you could say anything else, though, Mina tilted her head, looked from him to you, and said, “I think he likes you.”

John forgot how to breathe.

Mina hugged Mr. Bun to her chest. “Like likes you.”

John cleared his throat, desperate for a way out. “I don’t think she’s qualified to make that assessment.”

But you weren’t laughing. You just looked down at your clipboard, and there was… a flush on your cheeks. 

For the first time since he had known you, you looked shy.

John’s heart did a stupid little flip. 

Mina leaned against the table, peeking over it, pleased with herself.

You lifted the clipboard like it could still save you. “Back to the evaluation.”

John nodded once, and neither of you looked at each other for the next several seconds.

Mina sighed as if she was the only adult in the room.

—

By the time the written evaluation was done, the room had settled into a strange middle ground, where your printed leg forms sat beside Mina’s half-finished coloring page, and John sat still, trying not to look too pleased while you reviewed his final notes.

You read in silence for a moment, pen tucked between your fingers, your mouth composed in that way he had learned meant you were thinking rather than judging. Mina was near your chair, humming softly to herself while trying to fit Mr. Bun into your tote bag. She was failing, but Mina wasn’t one to give in easily. 

John kept his eyes on the floor for as long as he could. It lasted maybe three seconds before he looked at you again.

You had that slight crease between your brows. The one that appeared when you were concentrating. Your jacket sleeve had ridden up your wrist, and there was a faint crayon mark on the side of your hand where Mina must have gotten you earlier. You hadn’t noticed. Or maybe you had and decided it wasn’t worth the battle.

Finally, you lowered the page.

Mina seemed to notice as she appeared beside your knee and leaned her whole weight into your leg. “Is John done?”

You set your pen down and rested a hand lightly on top of her head without looking. “He is.”

“Did he do good?”

John raised his eyebrows.

You looked at him for half a second, then down at Mina. “He did,” you said.

Oh. 

Good. John let out a deep breath he didn’t even realise he was holding.

Mina nodded, satisfied, then looked up at him with a thumbs up. “Good job.”

He swallowed a smile. “Thanks, Mina.”

You seemed to notice his voice changed for her. It made you pause for just a breath while packing your clipboard into your bag.

John wanted to offer something. Anything. He wanted to stay in the orbit of this little half-chaotic scene for a few seconds longer, which was insane because he had spent most of the session being dismantled by a woman with a toddler snack container in her bag. “I can walk you to the elevator.”

You paused again, just enough for him to wonder if he had overstepped. You shifted your bag higher on your shoulder. “Sure.”

His heart made a hopeful jump.

Mina immediately lifted both arms toward him. “Uppies.”

John froze.

You looked down at her. “Mina.”

“My legs are tired.”

“You have been sitting on the floor for an hour.”

“They got tired from coloring.”

“That’s not how legs work.”

Mina only held her arms higher.

John’s gaze flicked to you, careful now. He was asking without asking.

Your eyes softened, assessing, like you were checking a bridge before letting a loved one cross it. Then you nodded. “My sister said any Avenger I trust is allowed to give Mina uppies.”

Any Avenger I trust.

You said it lightly, like it was just logistical. Like it didn't matter. 

How well had he done on that assessment?

Because you’re not just tolerating him. You’re not just professionally managing him. You trusted him.

He must have looked as pathetic as he felt, because your smile softened by half an inch before you covered it with impatience.

“Well?” you said. “She’s not going to levitate.”

John crouched in front of Mina. “You sure?”

Mina nodded fiercely. “Uppies.”

So he picked her up carefully. Mina settled against him immediately, one arm looping around his neck, Mr. Bun squished between them. John adjusted his hold with the caution of a man  who knew kids were not fragile exactly, but precious. 

Your eyes glittered before you could stop it.

John saw it. He looked down at Mina quickly, like that might save him.

Mina rested her cheek against his shoulder and pointed toward the door. “Elevator.”

You cleared your throat and reached for your bag. “Bossy,” you murmured.

John looked at you over her head, a helpless sigh at his mouth. “She learns from her aunt.”

You shook your head and started walking out of the conference room. 

And John followed you out with Mina in his arms, feeling trusted and doomed in equal measure.

—

That night, John Walker paced into the common room like a race car doing 200 laps in the Indy 500.

He wasn’t even sure when he had started. One minute he had been standing in his room, staring at his own reflection in the dark TV screen with his arms crossed, and the next he was out here, walking the same ugly little path around kitchen island like a man trying to wear a trench into corporate flooring.

Do not ask out your crisis de-escalation trainer. He turned at the window and came back. Do not ask out your team-mandated crisis de-escalation trainer.

He stopped, dragged both hands over his face, and made a noise between a groan and the beginning of a breakdown.

Because, sure. Fine. He could admit it now, in the privacy of his own head, where nobody could testify against him later.

He liked you.

No, actually, that was stupid. That was insulting. He didn’t just like you. Liking you would’ve been manageable. Liking you would’ve been noticing your mouth when you smiled, or standing a little straighter when you said his name, or feeling vaguely pathetic because you wrote a note down and he wanted it to be good.

This was worse. This was full-body, humiliating, high-school-level idiocy with the added horror of being a grown man with a divorce, a child, a government file, and a history of public property damage.

He liked you so much it made him feel unstable. He liked you so much that your approval pulled a physical reaction out of him. It got under his ribs. It made him want to show up on time and do the exercises properly. It made him want to be better in a way that had nothing to do with mission clearance and everything to do with the way you looked at him when he managed not to be the worst version of himself.

John resumed pacing.

And then there was the other problem. The worse problem. The problem so embarrassing he almost said it out loud just to hear how pathetic it sounded.

He hadn’t asked a woman out since high school.

High school.

He had no idea how to do this now. What did people even say?

Hey, I know you were assigned to me because I’m a liability, but have you considered dinner?

No.

What if he was bad at it? What if he came on too strong? What if he didn’t come on strong enough? What if you gave him that calm face and told him this was inappropriate in the same voice you used when he had to restart a de-escalation scenario?

John stopped again and stared at the ceiling.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

“Jesus is not here.”

John turned.

Alexei stood in the doorway wearing a robe and sweatpants. He had a bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, like he had wandered in for a snack and discovered live entertainment.

John stared at him. “What are you doing?”

“Eating cereal.”

“At 9PM?”

Alexei looked down at the bowl as if this explained itself. “Yes.”

John exhaled through his nose and turned away. “Forget it.”

“No, no.” Alexei stepped farther into the room, eyes narrowing. “You are pacing.”

“I’m not doing this.”

“You are thinking about woman.”

John’s shoulders went rigid. How the fuck did he know?

Alexei gasped, delighted. “Ah! It is woman.”

“No.”

“It is the trainer woman.”

John closed his eyes. Great. So everyone knew before he did.

Alexei pointed his spoon at him. “Crisis lady.”

“Don’t call her that.”

“Oh-ho.” Alexei’s grin widened. “You defend title. Very serious.”

John turned back. “I said forget it.”

But Alexei had already moved to the kitchen island, and John was suddenly reminded that Alexei had never once taken a hint as anything but a challenge. “So ask her out.”

John stared at him like he had suggested setting himself on fire for morale. “I can’t just ask her out.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s my crisis de-escalation trainer.”

Alexei shrugged. “So be very calm when you ask.”

John blinked at Alexei, who looked pleased with himself.

“That’s not—” John stopped, dragged a hand over his mouth, and tried again. “There are rules.”

“Always there are rules.” Alexei waved his spoon. “Rules for missions. Rules for weapons. Rules for not microwaving fish in common kitchen. Rules can be respected. This does not mean you die alone.”

John hated that there was a point somewhere in there. Sure, you were his trainer, but you weren’t his counselor. You weren’t his therapist, or his doctor, or some sacred keeper of his deepest psychological wounds You were corporate. A well-paid professional brought in to stop enhanced idiots from turning emotional dysregulation into infrastructure damage. And honestly? People dated at work all the time, didn’t they? Accountants dated other accountants. Lawyers dated other lawyers. Half of corporate America was probably one badly timed office romance away from an HR seminar. So, yes, there were rules. But this wasn’t impossible. It wasn’t simple, but it wasn’t forbidden by the laws of God and man either.

“She’s assigned to me,” he said anyway. “It’s not like I can just show up and say—” He cut himself off.

Alexei leaned in. “Say what?”

“Nothing.”

“Say it.”

“No.”

“You want practice?”

“I will walk into traffic before I say it to you.”

Alexei nodded sagely. “Bad opening line.”

John glared.

Alexei ignored him and set his bowl on the counter. “You go to her. You say, ‘Hello. I like you. I understand this is problem. Can this be problem later, when you are not making me less angry?’”

John stared at him for a long second. “That is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

Alexei shrugged, just a little. “You are allowed to want things, Walker.”

John’s throat tightened. For a second, the common room felt too quiet. The city glowed cold beyond the windows. John stood in the middle of the room, feeling too big for his own life and too old to be this scared of a woman saying no.

Alexei picked up his spoon again. “Worst case, she says no.”

John looked at him.

“If you do nothing,” Alexei said, pointing at the floor, “you keep moping. Then we all suffer. I am already suffering.”

John looked toward the hallway.

He thought of you in the conference room. He thought of Mina announcing his feelings to both of you like she had been appointed by the God of crayons. He thought of the flush on your cheeks. 

Maybe he was being stupid. Maybe this was a terrible idea.

Maybe he was about to ruin the one thing in his life that had started making him feel like he could actually become something other than angry.

But then again, maybe he wasn’t.

John grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair.

Alexei’s eyebrows shot up. “You are going now?”

“Yes,” John was already heading for the door. “Before I change my mind.”

—

By the time John reached your building, the bravery had started to wear off. That was inconvenient, considering he had already parked.

He sat in his car with both hands on the wheel, staring through the windshield at your apartment building like it was an enemy compound.

He wasn’t going to lie, he considered leaving. 

He should’ve gone home. He should’ve sent an email, which was what normal people with impulse control probably did when they developed feelings for the person assigned to help them stop behaving like an angry forklift with a gun license.

John let his head fall back against the seat and shut his eyes.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself. “You can still not do this.”

Then he pictured Alexei’s disappointed face if he came back.

Nope. Not coming back to that.

John got out of the car.

The air was cold enough to bite through his jacket, which helped a little. It gave him something else to focus on besides the fact that he was walking toward your front door. He had faced down armed men with steadier hands than this.

By the time he reached your door, he had rehearsed and discarded six different openings.

Hi.

Too casual.

Can we talk?

Too ominous.

I know this is inappropriate.

Great start, Walker. Lead with the lawsuit.

I have feelings for you.

Jesus Christ, no. Absolutely not. Was he twelve? Was he about to hand you a folded note in the homeroom?

He stood outside your door for three seconds too long, staring at the chilled paint on the frame. Then he raised his hand and rang the doorbell before he could lose his nerve.

The apartment stayed quiet.

For one second, relief flooded him. You weren’t home. Great. Perfect. Act of God. He could leave and pretend he had made an attempt. 

Then the lock clicked.

John’s spine straightened.

The door opened just enough for you to look out, and he immediately forgot every reasonable thought he had ever had.

You were in home clothes. You were wearing a loose sweater, your hair gathered messily away from your face, one sleeve slipping down your wrist. 

Your eyes widened slightly when you saw him. “John?”

“Can I ask you something?” he said abruptly

Your brow furrowed, and you glanced behind you into the apartment before looking back at him. The hallway light caught the side of your face, and John thought it was the most angelic sight he had ever seen. “Why are you here?”

John opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Amazing. Wonderful. He had made it all the way across the city and failed at the first hurdle.

Your eyes moved over his face, reading him. He watched concern take over. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said quickly. “I’m not- uh— this isn’t a crisis.”

You sighed, relieved. “Okay.”

“It’s not that kind of thing.”

“John.”

He swallowed. You were already drawing the line. He could see it happening. The professional part of you stepping forward because that was the safe thing, the right thing, and he knew it. He respected it.

He hated it.

“I know,” he said. “I know this is probably crossing every line.”

Your face went still.

Behind you, he could see the dim gold light of a lamp. There was a small pair of tiny shoes near the wall outside your unit, Mina’s, probably, because her parents were still clocking in a late shift. 

“Mina’s asleep,” you said quietly. “So if this is going to be loud—”

“No,” John said, too quickly again. He lowered his voice at once, almost wincing. “No. I’m not here to be loud.”

Your eyes flicked back to him, and your pupils in them softened. “This,” you said, still quiet. “Is usually not the beginning of a calm conversation.”

“I know.” He looked down. “I know. I’m sorry.”

And he meant it.

John took one step back, creating more space between you before you had to ask him to.  

He couldn’t make this worse by standing too close to you in a hallway like a man who didn’t understand how doors and boundaries worked. “I can leave,” he said. “I should probably leave.”

You didn’t say yes, though. In fact, you looked like you wanted him here.

Huh.

You didn’t step back and close the door. You didn’t give him the clean professional dismissal he had probably deserved. “What do you need to ask me?” you asked.

John let out a short breath.

This was it, then. The line was right there. He could still back away from it. He could make something up. He could say this was about his next session, or his evaluation, or some bullshit about the remaining paperwork. He could spare both of you.

Instead, he looked at you and found he was tired of being brave in every direction except the one that mattered.

“Okay,” he said, more to himself than to you.

Your mouth twitched into a small smile. “That’s not a question.”

There was that dry little edge he was so fond of. Fuck, he was done for.

“No,” he said. “It’s me trying not to make an idiot of myself.”

“Is it working?”

“Not even a little.”

You chuckled, looking over your shoulder again, listening for Mina. Your unit remained quiet. When you looked back, your voice dropped even lower. “John, whatever this is, you need to say it carefully.”

Did… did you know? 

“I know.” John gulped.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” Your fingers tightened around the doorframe. “I am still assigned to you.”

He nodded once. “I know.”

Your eyes searched his face.

That was another thing you had taught him, even if you had never meant to. How not to crowd. How not to fill the room just because he was nervous. How not to make the size of his feelings everyone else’s emergency. So he stood there, hands visible, shoulders tense but back, voice low.

“I’m not asking to come in,” he said. “I’m not asking you to make this easier for me. I’m not asking you to pretend this is normal.”

You tilted your head in curiosity, and he took another breath.

“I just need to say it.  And then you can tell me to shut up, and I will.”

For a second, you said nothing.

The silence was deafening. He could hear someone’s television through a wall somewhere down the hall. A car moved along the street outside. 

John immediately lowered his voice even more.

“I like you,” he said finally.

The words came out rough.

“I like you,” he repeated, because apparently he needed to make sure he had really done it. “And I know this is inconvenient.”

You didn’t smile, but he could tell you felt something.

It was not nothing.

It was so clearly not nothing that John felt his chest loosen, just a fraction.

“I don’t like you because you’re nice or some shit,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “You’re actually pretty mean to me.”

You looked down, cheeks burning with a smile you couldn’t help anymore. He almost smiled back, but he was too terrified to let himself have that much.

“And not because you’re helping me,” he added. “Not only that. I mean, yeah, maybe that’s part of it. You got stuck with me at a bad time and somehow made me feel less like a walking lawsuit, so I’m sure there’s some stupidpsychology in there.”

Your eyes narrowed faintly. “That was self-aware.”

“Don’t start.”

“Sorry,” you whispered, not sounding sorry at all. “Continue.”

Fuck, you were awful. He still adored you, though.

John looked away for half a second, then back at you. “You don’t let me get away with anything,” he said. “And I know I need that. I know that’s the whole point of why Barnes brought you in. But it’s not just that. You don’t look at me like I’m already a lost cause.”

Your face grew very still again.

This time, he knew it was because he had gotten too close to something real.

“You see me,” he said, and the words were quieter than he meant them to be.

Your breath caught on something that almost became a laugh.

He looked at you then. Your hand was still on the door. Your thumb moved once against the painted wood, a nervous motion. Your hair had slipped loose near your temple. You looked like you were trying to keep every feeling behind your teeth, and for the first time since he had known you, it didn’t quite work.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” you said.

“I know.”

“You really shouldn’t have.”

“I know.”

“You’re making this difficult for me.”

His heart flipped. “Am I?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

The hallway seemed to shrink around the two of you. 

Your voice, when you spoke again, was very quiet. “Yes.”

Oh.

John forgot how to breathe for half a second.

“You need to understand,” you said, “that me saying that doesn’t change the rules.”

“I know.”

“I can’t encourage this.”

“Of course.”

“I can’t say anything that blurs the line.”

“You’re not.”

You looked back at him then, and the look on your face nearly ruined him. 

You were being so careful.

You were so obviously trying to do the right thing, but the right thing looked like it hurt a little.

“And I can’t invite you in,” you said.

He nodded. “I’m not asking.”

“But I also…” You stopped. You closed your eyes for one brief second, like you were annoyed with yourself. When you opened them again, your voice had become a teeny bit more professional. “I also don’t want you to think I’m… dismissing what you’re saying.”

John swallowed.

Again, not nothing.

“Okay,” he said, because his vocabulary had apparently been reduced to one-word responses.

Your mouth softened. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” He nodded once, then again. “I know there are rules. I’m not asking you to break them. I’m not asking you to do anything you don’t want. But if there’s a way to transfer me to somebody else, or close this out, or whatever has to happen so this isn’t…” He grimaced, searching for the least terrible phrasing. “A whole ethical disaster.”

Your lips pressed together. He could tell you were fighting a laugh. 

“A whole ethical disaster,” you repeated quietly.

“Is that not the technical term?”

“No,” you said. “But it’s vivid.”

“I’m trying to respect the seriousness of the situation.”

“You drove here at night to confess feelings to the woman.”

That time, you did laugh. Then your eyes widened slightly, and you glanced back into the apartment unit.

Both of you froze.

From somewhere inside came the faintest sleepy rustle, then silence again.

You turned back to him, relieved.

It was stupid, how much that he wanted you, even when you were just standing there in the doorway, trying not to smile because Mina was asleep, because rules existed, because the world was inconvenient.

John said the next part before could stop himself. “I’d like to take you out.”

This time, there was no joke to hide behind this time. No self-deprecation. 

Your eyes changed again, and he saw the answer before you said anything.

And then your gaze dropped, just for a second, like you needed somewhere safer to look. When you looked back up, you had pulled yourself together.Mostly.

“John,” you said softly. “You can’t ask me out while I’m training you.”

“How many remaining?” He asked.

“Four.”

John stared at you. “Four,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

He looked briefly toward the ceiling like patience might be stored there. He thought the next session was the last, but apparently three more had been added for whatever fucking reason. He assumed Barnes had something to do with it (he was right).

You folded your arms loosely, still half-hidden behind the door, and there was something almost teasing in your eyes now. The kind that kept both of you on the correct side of the line while acknowledging that, unfortunately, the line was very much there and both of you could see it.

“You survived worse,” you said.

“People keep saying that to me.”

“Maybe you should start believing them.”

“I’d rather complain.”

“Ha.”

He looked at you again.

Your emotions were unguarded second, and he could see the things you weren’t saying. It wasn’t permission. It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t you reaching across the line.

But it was interest.

John lowered his voice. “What happens after?”

You went quiet.

Inside, Mina slept on, blissfully unaware that the adults were being stupid in the hallway. Thank god.

You looked at him for a long second, and he watched the argument happen behind your eyes. He watched you measure ethics against honesty, professionalism against whatever had just happened between you. He watched you decide exactly how much you could give him without breaking the rules you clearly cared about.

Then, finally, you said, “After four sessions, you can ask again.”

John nodded like you had just handed him coordinates for rescue. “Yeah.” He breathed out. “I can do four sessions.”

Your smile broke through.

Suddenly, he felt the bright, aching, want-to-be-good-for-you feeling climbing up under his ribs and made a home in his heart. The same feeling that made four sessions feel less like a punishment and more like a mission he intended to pass with honors.

He stepped back, giving you the space again.

“I should go,” he said.

“You should.”

Neither of you moved.

Your fingers were still curled around the edge of the door. His hands were loose at his sides. The hallway light hummed above you. Somewhere inside your apartment, Mina made one tiny sleepy sound and then went quiet again.

You lowered your voice even more. “And John?”

“Yeah?”

“Call me first next time, like a normal person.”

“I can do that.”

You lifted an eyebrow.

“I can learn to do that,” he corrected.

You smiled again and he felt hopeful. “Goodnight, John.”

He swallowed. “Goodnight.”

Then, before either of you could make it worse, you stepped back and closed the door gently, careful not to wake Mina.

John stood in the hallway for one second after the lock clicked.

He didn’t move.

For once, it was not because he was frozen or furious or trying to wrestle his way out of his own head. He just stood there, staring at your closed door while his heart skipped several beats, in a good way. 

He could do four sessions. He could wait. He could earn it.

He could do it right.

For you, he wanted to do it right.

John turned toward the stairs with the stupidest smile of his adult life pulling at his mouth.

And for the first time in a long time, John wanted to be patient.

He didn’t throw anything through a wall that week, or any of the weeks after. 

He did, however, spend the next day thinking about you the entire drive to pick up his son. 

And when Nathan helped carry the diaper bag out to the car, John managed to take it and say, “Thanks, man,” without sounding like he was chewing glass.

Olivia noticed.

She gave him a small, knowing look while he buckled his son into the car seat. “You seem better.”

John tightened the strap, smoothed a hand over his son’s little jacket, and tried not to smile too much.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

—

Eight months later… 

John was standing in your kitchen wearing an apron Mina had picked for him.

It had tiny unicorns on it.

He had argued, briefly, that he was a tough superhero and he didn’t need to wear the unicorn apron. Mina had stared daggers at him, held it out, and said, “Chefs wear aprons.”

So now John was wearing the Unicorn apron.

And for the last six months, that was your life.

He had held up his end of the bargain: he asked you out after the sessions were complete, kissed you on the first date, and never looked back. 

You stood beside him in your apartment now, trying not to laugh while he stirred soup on the stove. His son and Mina were in the living room, sitting cross-legged on the rug, making Mr. Bun and a toy dinosaur get married under a blanket fort. Mina had been another last-minute addition, because your sister and her wife had a last-minute shift. John had only looked at you and said, “Good. More taste-testers.”

You kissed him then and there.

Olivia and Nathan came over, too.

That should have been strange. Maybe it still was, in tiny little ways. But it was also sweet. Nathan brought dessert. Olivia brought wine. 

Somehow, against all sense and probability, you and Olivia had become friends. And not even polite co-parenting-adjacent friends. Not awkward, mature, “we are all adults here” friends.

Actual friends.

It made no sense. You two were polar opposites.

Olivia was soft-spoken where you were snarky. Olivia asked gentle questions; you asked questions like you were trying to locate immediate weakness. And yet there you both were, basically best friends. 

Olivia had started texting you pictures of terrible PTA emails. You had started sending her voice notes about work drama with all names redacted for legal reasons. The two of you had brunch without John once, which had made him pace the kitchen for twenty minutes until you came home and told him, very sweetly, that you weren’t going to break up with him because his ex-wife aired all his dirty laundry. Because “remember, there was nothing Olivia could say that wasn’t already in your file, honey.”

John made up for it by teaming up with your sister to make fun of your cute little snores. But anyway. 

It was strange, but it had become one of the best things in his life, because his son had more people loving him in one room than John had ever known how to ask for. 

“I can’t believe you finally learned how to make vegetables taste good,” Olivia said, poking at her plate.

John pointed his fork at her. “Don’t sound shocked.”

You leaned toward Olivia and said, “He needs praise or he gets difficult.”

Olivia nodded solemnly. “I remember.”

John looked between you both. “I hate this alliance.”

“No,” Nathan chuckled. “I don’t think you do.”

He was right. He loved it.

He loved watching you and Olivia lean over the table together, laughing quietly while Mina and his son bartered potato cuts like tiny criminals. He loved that Nathan could ask him about his dental health without making it a big emotional event. 

And when John mentioned wanting to join a veterans support group, it felt… easy. 

“After listening to your subway thing,” he said, glancing at you. “And everything else. I think it might help.”

Your hand found his under the table first.

Olivia smiled at him sincerely. “I think you’d be good there, John. And I think it’d be good for you.”

Nathan nodded. “Sometimes it helps to be around people who understand without needing the whole story.”

You just kissed him on the cheek. “M’ proud of you, sweetheart.”

John looked down, thumb brushing over your knuckles, clearly trying not to get emotional about everything. 

Then his son looked up from his peas, very serious. “Do you get snacks at support group?”

John blinked. “Probably.”

His son nodded, satisfied. “Then you should go.”

Everyone laughed.

Later, in the kitchen, while the kids were distracted and Olivia was explaining something to Nathan, John caught you by the waist and pulled you gently toward him.

“Hi,” he murmured.

You smiled. “Hi.”

Then he kissed you.

It was supposed to be quick— it was most definitely not. Your hand curled into the front of his shirt, and John smiled against your mouth like he still couldn’t quite believe he got to have this. You, in his arms. Dinner in the next room. His son laughing. Olivia and Nathan not annoying him. Mina yelling something about Mr. Bun requiring surgery.

“John,” you whispered, laughing against his mouth. “Children.”

“They’re busy.”

You rolled your eyes, but kissed him once more before slipping out of his hands.

Near the end of the night, his son got sleepy and serious, leaning against John’s side while Mina sat on the floor beside him with Mr. Bun in her lap.

“Daddy?”

“Yeah, buddy?”

He pointed between himself and Mina. “Are me and Mina cousins now?”

Oh. 

John looked at you. You looked back, before glancing at Olivia. Olivia looked like she was trying not to cry, which immediately made Nathan look concerned, because Nathan was Nathan.

You smiled first, a wordless permission without making it a whole thing.

So John shrugged, easy as anything, and kissed the top of his son’s head. “Sure,” he said. “Think of it that way, kid.”

His son beamed.

Mina nodded once, very pleased. “Can I be the in-charge cousin?”

“No,” you and John said at the same time.

Olivia laughed. Nathan smiled. The kids immediately began negotiating cousin rules on the carpet.

For once, nothing in his life felt like a scoreboard. It didn’t even feel like a competition.

It just felt like family.

—end. 

[cherryhatter-deactivated2015072]

KICK THE CAN!

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

To kick the can, reblog it. I wanna see how long this can go on for.

[visibun]

the oldest reblogs for this post that i can find are from january 2nd of 2013. this can has been getting kicked around tumblr for almost 13½ years now

[drtanner]

And yet somehow this is my first time kicking it!

[avayarising]

I have never seen this can before. Kicking it.

[delicatefury]

New to me!

*kick*

[tisayemate]

Is it possible to get another Janson x reader? Dude has no redeeming qualities but he is hot 😳 haha

Competitive edge.

AD Janson x AD! Reader fluff summary: You and Janson can’t stand each other, and working in the same place only makes it worse. Petty moves turn into real consequences, tempers snap, and somewhere along the way things cross a line neither of you meant to cross.  AN: HELL YEA!! and so sorry for replying so late!! Saw this request earlier and it slipped my mind-- but thank you so much! Happy new year, hope this was what you were looking for. story under the cut

You knocked on Janson's office door at 7 AM, two coffees balanced in one hand.

He looked up from his desk, surprise flickering across his face before smoothing into polite neutrality. "You're here early."

"Big day. Thought we could both use the caffeine." You set one cup on his desk, took the chair across from him without waiting for an invitation. "Truce? At least until after the Ava briefing?"

He eyed the coffee like it might bite him. "What's in it?"

"Dark roast, no sugar. Relax, Janson. I'm not that petty."

"Could've fooled me." But he took a sip. His shoulders dropped slightly—good coffee, and he knew it.

You hid your smile behind your own cup. The files you needed to see were right there on his desk, angled just wrong for you to read upside down. If you could just get him distracted for thirty seconds...

"So." You gestured at the stack of folders. "Ready for today's assessments?"

"Always." He leaned back. "You?"

"Please. I could do these in my sleep."

"Confidence. I like that." His tone was mild, but his eyes were sharp. Watching.

You shifted in your seat, letting your elbow bump the desk edge. The movement was natural enough, but it made him glance down at his coffee, checking if you'd jostled it.

In that half-second, you caught three names on the top file. Thomas. Teresa. Aris.

"Actually," you said, standing smoothly, "I should get going. Just wanted to—"

Your hip caught the edge of his desk. The coffee tipped. Spilled across the files in a dark wave.

"Shit!" You grabbed for napkins, but the damage was already spreading. "I'm so sorry, I don't—how did that—"

Janson was already on his feet, rescuing what he could. The top three files were soaked through, ink bleeding across pages of carefully compiled data.

"It's fine." His voice was tight.

"Let me help—"

"I said it's fine." He looked at you then, really looked, and something in his expression made your stomach flip. He knew. Maybe not the specifics, but he knew this wasn't an accident.

"I'll just..." You backed toward the door. "Sorry. Again."

His smile was thin and dangerous. "Don't worry about it. These things happen."

You were halfway through your third interview when your assistant knocked on the observation room door.

"Sorry to interrupt, but there's an issue with your samples."

"What kind of issue?"

"They're... contaminated. All of them. Someone left the refrigeration unit door open overnight."

Your stomach dropped. "All of them?"

"Every sample from this week. They'll need to be recollected."

Three days of work. Gone.

You found Janson in the commissary an hour later, sitting alone with his lunch and a satisfied expression.

"Heard about your samples," he said as you approached. "What a shame."

"You." The word came out flat.

"Me what?"

"Don't play stupid. It doesn't suit you."

He took a bite of his sandwich, chewed slowly. "I have no idea what you're talking about. But if someone on your team made an error, that's hardly my fault."

"My team didn't make an error."

"Then it was an equipment malfunction. These things happen." His eyes glinted. "Just like coffee spills."

You wanted to throw something. Wanted to wipe that smug look off his face. Instead you smiled. "You're right. These things do happen."

"Glad we agree."

"Although it's interesting that the refrigeration unit has a automatic lock. And an access log."

His expression didn't change, but something flickered behind his eyes.

"I'm sure when I pull that log, it'll show a perfectly innocent maintenance visit. Nothing suspicious at all." You leaned on the table. "But we both know, don't we?"

"Do we?"

"Game on, Janson."

His smile widened. "I'm counting on it."

The briefing room was tense. Ava stood at the head of the table, reviewing preliminary reports on the holographic display.

"Janson. Your interview completion rate is impressive."

He inclined his head. "Thank you."

"However, your cooperation metrics are abysmal. The subjects actively avoid you when given the choice."

A muscle in his jaw twitched.

"By contrast—" Ava turned to you, "—your interviews take three times as long, but your compliance rates are significantly higher. The subjects request you specifically."

"I focus on building rapport," you said. "They've been through trauma. They need to feel safe."

"They need to provide useful data," Janson cut in. "Rapport is secondary to—"

"Rapport IS useful data," you countered. "You can't get honest responses from people who hate you."

"I don't need them to like me. I need them to cooperate."

"Which they're not doing."

"Because you're coddling them—"

"I'm treating them like human beings—"

"Enough." Ava's voice cut through. "You'll each continue your current approaches. We'll evaluate effectiveness after the next round. Dismissed."

You gathered your files, jaw tight. Janson did the same, his movements precise and controlled.

Neither of you spoke until you were in the corridor.

"Coddling," you muttered.

"It's an accurate description."

"You're just mad because they actually talk to me."

"They talk to you because you bribe them with false promises and extra dessert."

You stopped walking. "Excuse me?"

He stopped too, turning to face you. "I reviewed the meal logs. Your subjects get supplementary rations. Special accommodations. You're buying cooperation."

"I'm meeting their basic needs so they're not too hungry and scared to function—"

"You're compromising the integrity of the research."

The accusation landed like a slap. "Take that back."

"Why? It's true."

"It's not—" You stepped closer, voice rising. "I work twice as hard as you do to get real results, and you can't stand it because it makes you look lazy and incompetent—"

"Lazy?" His voice dropped dangerously low. "I complete more interviews in a day than you do in three—"

"Completing interviews isn't the goal, you asshole, getting actual useful information is—"

"And you think treats and sympathy get useful information? You're delusional—"

"I'm effective! The data proves it! You're just pissed that I'm better at this than you—"

"Better?" He laughed, sharp and cutting. "You're manipulative. There's a difference—"

"Oh, that's rich coming from—"

Footsteps. Ava's voice, getting closer. "—need those reports by end of day, I don't care if—"

Janson's eyes widened. So did yours. If Ava heard you two fighting like this, unprofessional and loud in the middle of the corridor—

He moved.

His hand caught the back of your neck, pulled you forward, and his mouth was on yours before you could process what was happening.

The kiss was hard. Desperate. His other hand found your waist, pressing you against the wall as footsteps approached. You froze for half a second—shock and anger and something else entirely—then your hands fisted in his jacket because if this was the cover story, you'd sell it.

Ava's footsteps passed. Paused.

"Get a room," she said, voice bone-dry. "And then get back to work."

The footsteps continued. Faded. Gone.

Janson pulled back. His pupils were dilated, breath coming fast. You were breathing hard too, heart hammering against your ribs.

"You—" Your voice came out rough. "What the hell—"

"She was coming. You were yelling." His hand was still on your waist, thumb pressing into your hip. "Would you prefer I'd let her hear you accusing me of sabotage?"

"You did sabotage me—"

"I didn't sabotage anything. I simply accessed the refrigeration unit during a routine inspection and may have... forgotten to fully close the door." His smile was infuriating. "An accident. Like your coffee spill."

You shoved him. He let you, stepping back with that satisfied expression firmly in place.

"This isn't over," you said.

"I certainly hope not." His eyes dropped to your mouth, just for a second, before meeting yours again. "That would be disappointing."

He turned and walked away, leaving you against the wall with your lips still tingling and your mind racing.

What the hell just happened?

And why did part of you want it to happen again?

[tisayemate]

The poison garden

Elena Thornwood (OC) Angst, TWs: persecution/false accusations, threat of execution, exile, body horror elements (supernatural transformation), revenge, destruction of a community. Summary: A healer accused of witchcraft flees into the wicked Witherhallow forest, where the land itself transforms her into the very thing her village feared.

I wouldn't say this was a request, but its something long overdue that I've been putting off for a while, thank you to @teathepumpkinmoth for suggesting: There's one I'm not sure how to make into starter format, but the basic idea is that a woman is banished from the village she called home due to rumors of her being a witch urned to accusations. She had fled before they could blame anymore of the villages misfortune on her and try to burn her at the steak. With little possessions, she had disappeared into the forbidden forest to escape bandits that would surely get her on the path. She discovers the forests are safe. There are no monsters of myth there. And obody dares fallow her in. From then, she makes her own solitary home and garden So0n enough, becoming an actual witch. Destroying the village that had betrayed her story under the cut

The first stone hit Elena's shoulder.

She didn't see who threw it--the crowd had become a single writhing beast, faces blurred by torchlight and rage. The impact drove her to her knees on the packed dirt of the village square, and the pain was bright and clean and real in a way the last three days of accusations hadn't been.

"Witch!" Someone's voice, cracked with fear or excitement or both. "She cursed the Miller's boy!"

"My crops rotted because of her!"

"Burn her! Burn the witch!"

Elena's fingers clawed at the ground. Her breath came in sharp gasps that tasted of smoke and sweat and the particular electricity of mob violence. She'd delivered half these people's babies. Set their broken bones. Sat up through fevered nights with their dying children and pulled them back from the edge.

And now they wanted her blood.

Old Marta's face swam into focus, twisted with something that might have been satisfaction or might have been terror, Elena couldn't tell anymore, didn't care. The old woman raised her gnarled hand, finger pointed like a blade. "She has the devil's mark! I saw it!"

A lie. All lies. But truth didn't matter when fear had taken root.

Another stone caught Elena's temple. Hot blood ran into her eye, turning the world red. The crowd surged forward and she could smell them; unwashed bodies and ale-breath and something else, something animal and hungry. They would tear her apart right here if someone didn't stop them.

No one was going to stop them.

Elena ran.

She didn't think, didn't plan, just ran. Her legs found strength she didn't know she had, terror pumping through her veins like liquid fire. She burst through a gap in the crowd, heard them roar behind her, felt hands grab at her skirts and slip away.

The village blurred past. She knew these streets, had walked them every day of her twenty-six years. The baker's shop where she'd bought bread that morning, a lifetime ago. The well where she'd drawn water. The church where she'd prayed.

All of it meant nothing now.

Her grandmother's book, wrapped in oilcloth, slammed against her ribs where she'd tied it beneath her dress. The kitchen knife tucked in her belt dug into her hip. Everything else--her home, her herbs, her life--abandoned.

The torches followed. She could hear them, a constellation of rage bobbing through the darkness behind her.

"Find her!"

"Don't let the witch escape!"

"The Lord's work! We do the Lord's work!"

The forest rose up ahead, a wall of absolute blackness that made even the moonless night seem bright by comparison. The Forbidden Forest. Where the old stories lived, where children were warned never to go, where reality supposedly frayed at the edges and let terrible things slip through.

Behind her: certain death by fire and fear.

Ahead: possible death by things unknown.

Elena chose the unknown.

The tree line swallowed her whole.

The sounds of pursuit cut off so abruptly it was like falling into deep water. The sudden silence pressed against her eardrums, made her stumble. She could still see the torches behind her, distant fireflies now, wavering at the forest's edge. None of them followed. Not one.

They were more afraid of the forest than they were eager for her death.

She should have felt relief. Instead, her heart hammered harder, because what could possibly be worse than burning alive that an entire village feared it more?

Elena forced her legs to move. Branches whipped at her face, drew lines of fire across her cheeks. Roots tried to trip her. The darkness was complete. She couldn't see her own hands in front of her face, couldn't tell if her eyes were open or closed. She moved by touch and terror, hands outstretched, feeling her way deeper into whatever hell she'd chosen.

The ground sloped downward. She slipped, caught herself, slipped again. Her palms scraped against rough bark. Something skittered away from her foot--too many legs, too fast. She bit back a scream and kept moving.

Time dissolved. She might have been walking for minutes or hours. Her lungs burned. Her legs trembled. The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving exhaustion in its wake like the tide going out.

And then she smelled it.

Sweet. Wayyy too sweet. Like fruit left to rot in summer heat, like flowers dying in a vase, like honey gone to poison. It coated the back of her throat, made her stomach clench. The air itself felt thick, viscous, like breathing through wet cloth.

Elena's vision began to swim. No--wait--there was light here. Faint, blue-green, emanating from the trees themselves. Fungi growing on the bark, glowing with bioluminescent beauty. They illuminated a landscape that looked wrong, feltwrong. The trees were massive, ancient, their trunks black and slick with something that caught the fungal light and reflected it like oil on water. Their branches twisted overhead in patterns that hurt to look at directly, geometry that didn't quite make sense.

She tried to turn back.

Her legs didn't obey. They folded beneath her, muscles turning to water. She hit the ground hard, and the moss rose up around her like a living thing. It was soft, impossibly soft, and that somehow made it worse. Like falling into a mouth.

The sweetness intensified. Each breath brought more of it into her lungs, oh, she could feel it now, particles suspended in the air, invisible but present. They settled on her exposed skin like snow. Tingling. Burning. Both at once.

No. The word formed in her mind but wouldn't reach her lips. Not like this. I didn't survive them just to die here alone.

But the forest didn't care what she wanted.

Her vision fragmented. The glowing fungi multiplied, became a thousand watching eyes. The trees leaned in, curious, hungry. She saw--or thought she saw--the moss reaching up in tendrils, wrapping around her wrists, her ankles, pulling her down into the earth like it meant to plant her.

Maybe it did.

Elena's last conscious thought was visceral, primal: I refuse.

Then the darkness took her, and this darkness was different from the one she'd run through. This darkness was alive. It crawled down her throat and filled her lungs and seeped into her blood and wrapped around her bones. It unmade her, cell by cell, and built something new in her place.

She drowned in it.

She became it.

The dreams were not dreams.

She was underground, vast networks of roots spreading through soil, drinking in minerals, tasting the decay of fallen leaves and dead animals. She could feel the slow, patient pulse of the trees, their ancient consciousness distributed through millions of connected cells. They were speaking to each other in chemical signals, warning of disease, sharing nutrients, nurturing their young.

And they were speaking to her.

You are not one of us, they said in the language of spores and sap. But you could be.

What are you? she tried to ask, but she had no mouth, no voice. She was dissolving, her human boundaries breaking down, bleeding into the forest itself.

We are survival, the trees answered. We are adaptation. We are poison and antidote, death and transformation. We are what remains when everything else has fallen.

What are you doing to me?

Making you useful.

The spores (she figured) were the forest's immune system, its defense against intrusion. They knocked out threats, broke down foreign bodies, recycled them into fuel. She should be dying. She was dying. Her cells were rupturing, her proteins denaturing, her DNA unraveling.

But something else was happening too.

The forest's chemical cocktail--whatever nightmare of alkaloids and proteins and unknown compounds the trees produced--was reacting with her human biology in a way it never had before. Instead of simply breaking her down, it was incorporating her. Rewriting her. Her cells weren't dying; they were changing. Mitochondria mutating to process new energy sources. Cell walls shifting, becoming semi-permeable in impossible ways. Her blood learning to carry chlorophyll alongside hemoglobin.

It hurt.

God, it hurt. Like being burned from the inside out. Like every nerve was a live wire. Like her body was a battlefield and she was both armies, tearing herself apart and stitching herself back together in the same breath.

She wanted to scream but had no lungs.

She wanted to die but was being refused.

The forest held her in its patient, implacable embrace and would not let her go.

Time meant nothing here. She existed in the eternal present of growing things, where a second and a season were the same. She felt her hair growing, impossibly fast, reaching down into the soil like roots. Felt her skin harden, develop a waxy coating. Felt something like photosynthesis begin in her cells, drinking in what little light filtered down through the moss.

Please, she begged. Please, I just want--

What do you want?

The question stopped her. What did she want?

To go back to the village? To the people who'd tried to kill her? To her small life of healing the ungrateful, of making herself small and useful and safe?

No.

No.

The word echoed through the root network, through every tree in the grove.

She wanted power. She wanted to never be helpless again. She wanted them to see what they'd created when they'd driven her into the dark.

Then take it, the forest whispered. Take what we offer. Become what you were meant to be.

And Elena, who'd spent her whole life being gentle and careful and good, who'd swallowed her anger and her pride and her want in service of people who'd repaid her with stones and fire- -

Elena reached out with hands that weren't quite hands anymore and took.

The power slammed into her like lightning.

She woke screaming.

Her back arched off the ground, every muscle locked rigid. The scream ripped from her throat raw and ragged and triumphant. Energy coursed through her veins, electric and green and alive. Too much!

Her hands slammed into the earth and the power discharged.

The moss beneath her palms erupted. It spread in a wave, covering everything, moving like a living carpet. Fungi burst from the soil in riots of color--red and purple and orange, caps unfurling, spores puffing into the air. The fallen log beside her moved, bucking like a living thing as mycelium raced through its rotting wood. A dead branch overhead suddenly sprouted green shoots, leaves bursting from desiccated bark.

The clearing came alive around her, and Elena was the center of it, the source, the cause.

She rolled onto her hands and knees, gasping. Her hair fell forward in a curtain and she saw it, black still, but threaded now with green, living vines woven through the strands. Tiny white flowers bloomed and died and bloomed again in her curls.

Her hands. God, her hands. The skin had a faint greenish cast, like light through leaves. When she flexed her fingers, she could see veins pulsing beneath the surface, but they weren't quite the right color. Too dark. The color of sap.

"What--" Her voice cracked. She swallowed and tried again. "What did you do to me?"

The forest didn't answer in words. But she could feel it now, the vast network of life surrounding her. Every tree, every plant, every microscopic organism connected through invisible threads of chemical communication. And she was part of it. She was a node in the network, a voice in the choir, a cell in the body of the forest itself.

Elena staggered to her feet. The world tilted, then steadied. She felt good. Better than good. The exhaustion from her flight was gone. The fear that had driven her for days had burned away, leaving something else in its place.

Hunger.

Not for food. For... more. For use. The power inside her was restless, demanding, like a living thing that needed to be fed.

She looked around the clearing with new eyes. Saw the potential in everything. The fallen log was fuel for new growth, a seed bed, a home for a thousand organisms. The moss wasn't just moss, it was a network of simple plants that could be made to grow, to spread, to conquer.

Elena pressed her hand against the nearest tree trunk.

And felt it respond.

The sensation was overwhelming, so overstimulating, so-- everything! She could feel the tree's roots spreading deep underground, taste the minerals it drew up from the earth, sense the fungi wrapped around its root tips in symbiotic embrace. She could feel its age, centuries old, ancient beyond her comprehension. And she could feel its awareness of her.

Child of poison, it seemed to say. Sister of spores. You are Changed.

"Yes," Elena whispered. The word came out reverent, awed. "Yes, I am."

She pulled her hand away and looked at her palm. For a moment, green light flickered beneath her skin, bright as new leaves in spring.

She could make things grow.

The understanding settled into her bones with absolute certainty. She could accelerate growth, direct it, shape it. She could take a seed and make it a tree in hours instead of years. She could heal wounds by forcing tissue to regenerate. She could...

oh.

She could destroy, too. Growth and decay were just two sides of the same process. If she could make things flourish, she could make them rot. If she could heal, she could harm.

The village.

The thought rose unbidden, but once it surfaced, she couldn't push it back down. The village that had tried to burn her. The people who'd thrown stones. Old Marta with her accusations. The baker who'd sold her bread that morning and called for her death that night.

They'd called her a witch when she was innocent.

What would they call her now that she actually had power?

Elena's lips pulled back from her teeth. Not quite a smile. Something sharper.

"Let's find out," she said to the forest, to herself, to the new and terrible thing she was becoming.

The trees rustled overhead, and it sounded almost like laughter.

She built her home in the poisoned grove where no one would ever find her.

The cottage grew more than it was built. Elena pressed her hands to saplings and asked them, politely at first, then with more force, to bend to her will. They did. The trees wove themselves together, branches interlacing to form walls, roots rising to create furniture. Moss grew thick on the roof, insulating. Vines covered the exterior, camouflage and defense in one.

Inside, she planted her garden.

The seeds she'd brought sprouted in hours. Carrots and turnips, herbs and vegetables--they grew with obscene speed, swelling and ripening under her touch. She learned to modulate the power, to coax instead of force. A gentle nudge to encourage growth. A firmer push to accelerate it. A sharp twist to direct it exactly where she wanted.

She ate well. Better than she ever had in the village.

But food wasn't what she hungered for.

Elena spent her days experimenting, testing the limits of her gift. She could make flowers bloom out of season, force fruit to ripen in winter, coax mushrooms from bare rock. She could heal--she tested it on herself, cutting her finger and then pressing her other hand to the wound, watching in fascination as the flesh knit together, cells multiplying at impossible speed.

And she could kill.

That discovery came by accident. She was pruning a thorny vine that had grown too aggressive, reached out to push it back, and felt the power surge through her wrong--twisted. The vine blackened and withered in seconds, leaves crisping and falling like ash. The rot spread up the stem, turning healthy plant matter to mush.

Elena stared at her hands, heart pounding.

Then she smiled.

By the first snow, she was no longer entirely human.

Her skin had taken on a permanent greenish tint, subtle in dim light but obvious in the sun. Her hair grew constantly now, and she had to cut it every few days to keep it from dragging on the ground. The flowers that bloomed in her curls were permanent fixtures, their petals soft as silk. Her eyes had changed too. The brown had become flecked with green and gold, and in certain lights, they almost seemed to glow.

When she bled (which happened less and less) the blood was dark and thick and smelled like cut grass.

She stopped thinking of herself as Elena the healer.

She became something else. Something new. The forest had no name for what she was, so she didn't bother naming it either. She simply was.

And when the first whispers reached her, that the village was suffering, Elena felt nothing.

No.

That was a lie.

She felt satisfaction.

Their wells had gone dry. Not all at once, but slowly, the water level dropping week by week until people were rationing, until mothers were measuring out cups for their children like gold.

Elena sat in her cottage and remembered Old Marta's face, twisted with hate. She remembered the stone hitting her temple, the blood in her eye. She remembered running while they screamed for her death.

And she thought: Good.

But it wasn't enough.

Their crops failed next spring. The fields that should have been green with new growth stayed brown and barren. Seeds rotted in the ground before they could germinate. The few plants that did sprout grew twisted, their leaves spotted with disease, their fruit bitter and inedible.

Elena had nothing to do with it.

Yet.

She was simply... waiting. Watching. Letting them suffer the same fear and uncertainty they'd inflicted on her. Letting them turn on each other, wondering whose fault it was, who they could blame.

But her patience had limits.

On the first anniversary of the night they'd driven her out, Elena walked to the edge of the forest.

She didn't leave the tree line, she wasn't stupid. But she stood there in the darkness, hidden by shadows, and looked out at the village. Smaller than she remembered. More pathetic. The buildings looked run-down, the fields sparse. Even from here, she could sense the desperation, the hunger, the fear.

It made her feel powerful.

Elena knelt and pressed both hands to the earth. Closed her eyes. Reached out with her gift, following the root networks, the fungal highways, the patient creep of living things. She found the boundary where forest met farmland, where wild gave way to cultivated.

And she whispered: Cross it.

The forest responded.

Not quickly--that would be too obvious. But slowly, steadily, roots began to creep under the boundary stones. Fungal filaments spread through the soil of the village fields. Spores drifted on the wind, settling on stored grain.

The invasion was invisible. Inexorable.

And Elena guided it with vicious precision.

She didn't just want their crops to fail. She wanted them to understand that nature itself had turned against them. She wanted them to feel the same helplessness she'd felt running through the dark with torches at her back.

The blight that took their summer planting was absolute.

Every seed they put in the ground died. Yes, died. Turned to black sludge that smelled like corpses. The few plants that survived grew monstrous, their stems thick as trees, their leaves huge and waxy and inedible. Strange mushrooms appeared overnight in the fields, massive things with caps like dinner plates and gills that wept black liquid.

The livestock that ate the diseased grain sickened. Their eyes filmed over white. They staggered in circles, too weak to stand. One by one, they died, and their bodies bloated and burst, releasing clouds of spores that made the farmers vomit just from breathing them.

Elena felt every death through the network. Tasted their fear in the air.

And she laughed.

The sound echoed through the forest, wild and joyous and utterly without mercy. She'd spent her whole life being good, being helpful, being the woman who healed instead of harmed. She'd swallowed her anger and her pride. She'd made herself small and useful and safe.

And they'd tried to kill her for it.

Well. She wasn't small anymore.

She wasn't safe.

She was power, and she would use it.

Through the fall and into winter, Elena orchestrated their destruction with patience and precision. A failed well here. A tainted granary there. The slow creep of fungal disease through their remaining food stores. She never did anything overtly supernatural for it always looked like bad luck, like natural disaster, like the kind of suffering that could happen to anyone.

But it was her. Every bit of it.

She watched from the forest's edge as they grew desperate. Watched them ration food until children cried from hunger. Watched them turn on each other, accusations flying, fists swinging, all the community bonds fraying under pressure.

They fractured.

They broke.

And Elena felt nothing but savage satisfaction.

She'd spent weeks being afraid. Months being isolated. A year becoming something new and strange and powerful. She'd died and been reborn in poison and darkness, had given up her humanity for strength.

They deserved everything she was doing to them.

Every. Single. Thing.

On the winter solstice, Elena walked to the very edge of the forest. Closer than she'd ever dared. She could see the village clearly now, see the boarded-up houses and empty streets. See the graveyard that had grown.

And she raised her hands and pushed.

Every plant in the village square erupted at once.

Weeds burst through the cobblestones, growing man-high in seconds. Vines erupted from between the houses, wrapping around walls, pulling at shutters. The great oak in the center of the square cracked down the middle with a sound like thunder. From the crack poured a flood of luminescent fungi, the same kind that grew in her poisoned grove, and their glow turned the whole square blue-green and eerie.

In the middle of it all, Elena made a tree grow.

Not just any tree. A massive thing, trunk thick as a house, branches spreading like grasping hands. It grew from nothing, erupting from the earth with violence, roots heaving up stone, branches punching through roofs. It grew in minutes, a year's growth compressed into heartbeats, and Elena poured all her rage and power and pain into it.

It was beautiful.

Terrible.

Hers.

The villagers came running, screaming, terrified. They saw the tree, the vines, the glowing mushrooms. They saw nature itself invading their safe human spaces.

And Elena stepped out of the shadows where they could see her.

She knew how she looked. Knew her skin was too green, her hair too wild, her eyes too bright. Knew the flowers blooming in her curls and the veins visible beneath her skin marked her as other. As not human. As exactly what they'd accused her of being.

Old Marta saw her first. The old woman's face went white, then gray, then collapsed into an expression of such pure terror that Elena felt it like wine on her tongue.

"Witch," Marta whispered.

Elena smiled. Teeth white in her too-green face.

"Yes," she said, and her voice carried across the square, amplified by the rustling of ten thousand leaves. "I am."

She raised her hand. Every vine in the village square moved at once, writhing like snakes. The tree groaned and stretched, branches reaching for the sky. Mushrooms bloomed on every surface, glowing brighter, filling the air with spores that made people cough and stagger.

"You called me witch when I was innocent," Elena said. "You drove me into the dark to die. You made me run. You made me afraid."

Her hand closed into a fist.

The vines tightened. The tree's roots buckled the street. The mushrooms released a cloud of spores that made the air itself shimmer.

"And now..." her smile widened, sharp as broken glass "--you're going to learn what happens when you create a monster and then give her time to grow."

The villagers broke and ran.

But Elena was patient. The forest was patient. And they had nowhere to go that her roots couldn't follow, no place to hide that her spores couldn't find.

She walked back into the forest, the darkness welcoming her home, and behind her the village began its slow, inevitable collapse into green chaos.

They'd made her into this.

And she would make them pay. AN: I've gone offline for the longest time now, buried myself under so much work in preparation for my exams... which are finally over now. Thank heavens. I'll be continuing to write my stories, accepting requests and being present here on this platform more often so please, do interact, chat, request, my door is always open. I hope you can tell from this piece that I've been practicing my writing and I hope it's better... more interesting. If not? feedback/constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. miss you all lots!

[adventures-of-impala]

fictober day 12: Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird (I’ma give you the world)

So this did NOT turn out how i planned, so its much more fluffy than i thought it'd be. im considering a part 2 just bc i loved writing this so much and it was ridiculously easy to write but dont hold me to it.

anyway: bucky has a daughter au. thats it. thats the summary.

russian used: ты маленький умник- means something along the lines of "you little smartass" pronounced: ty malen'kiy umnik

ao3 link here

Bucky was getting really goddamn tired of cleaning up HYDRA’s messes. This time it was an abandoned warehouse in rural New York that they had used as a training facility. For what? He wasn’t sure. He did find some papers that talked about both the Black Widows and the Winter Soldiers. The moment he read that, a pit formed in his stomach, and an uneasy feeling rose up.

“Lena,” He says, activating the comms. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

“Why?” She asks, appearing in the doorway a few moments later, making her way to his side quickly, looking at the papers in his hand.

He doesn’t need to respond to understand what’s making him so uneasy. It’s not the papers themselves, but the ‘project’ that they detail. The project that forced the Soldiers to procreate with the Widows.

“Shit.” Yelena breathes, glancing at Bucky.

“Uh, yeah.” He mumbles, his face pale. He knows that somehow, he was involved. He was always involved, being the original Winter Soldier and all. They wanted more of him. Bucky feels sick to his stomach, having to shove the papers in Yelena’s hands so he can turn away, holding a hand to his mouth, eyes squeezing shut. Yelena flips through the papers, glancing at him occasionally with a concerned look. And then she sees it.

‘Original Winter Soldier procreation event: Successful.’

Her breath hitches as she looks for any sort of proof that somehow, maybe, it wasn’t him. But the next page seems to confirm their fears, with his full name printed in bold across the top of the paper.

“I’m- I’m sorry, Bucky. This is horrible.” Yelena murmurs, glancing over at him.

“It was successful, wasn’t it? There’s a kid out there?”

Yelena hesitates, eyes flickering between him and the paper again. “It only says it was successful. Looks like the Widow program took over documentation after…”

He nods, taking a shaky breath. “I can live with that.”

Bucky had finally calmed down, ready to move on, when John came onto the comms, screeching for help.

“There’s a wild Widow here, guys! The fuck-” he grunts, panting. “Fucking get here.”

Bucky and Yelena exchanged a look and then bolted, running as fast as they could to the floor that John had been on. When they reach him, Alexei and Ava still haven’t gotten there. So they jump in, assisting John with dealing with the Black Widow that he was not equipped to handle, despite the serum running through his veins. Somehow, the Widow’s attention gets turned onto Bucky, and surprisingly, she’s able to knock him over quite easily with a kick between his legs and then to his chest. She fights off all attempts to pull her off of him, pressing her knee to his chest.

“James Barnes?” She rasps out, pulling a folded paper out of her pocket.

He nods, hesitating to actually do something about her on his chest. He watches her closely, noticing her features, her movements.

Shit. She’s barely even eighteen. It’s obvious.

The moment he realizes that, he glances at Yelena, giving her a glare that meant to stand the fuck down, which she understands immediately, putting her arm across John’s chest, shaking her head at him. The paper that the Widow- well, really, kid- pulls out has a bunch of scientific jargon that he doesn’t understand. But she points to the bottom margin, where the whole thing is summarized.

This kid… she was his daughter. He doesn’t know what to say, with an oblivious look in his eye. She doesn’t need him to say anything.

“I’ve been looking for you.” She states, getting to her feet, stepping back, leaving him to get to his feet on his own.

“Why?” Bucky asks, stepping closer, but she steps back.

“Why would anyone go looking for their father?” She deadpans. John chokes out a breath, eyes wide, but Yelena… Yelena seems relatively calm, as though she had already had an idea.

“That’s… a good point. But, still. You know who I am. Why would you look for me?” He emphasizes.

“Again. Why would anyone want to find their father? It doesn’t matter who you or I are. I still wanted to find you.”

“What’s your name, kid?” Bucky sighs, staring at her, already getting frustrated.

“They didn’t give me a name.” She huffs.

“Well, I can’t just call you kid, now can I?” He exclaims, putting his hands on his hips, exasperated. Yelena and John glance at each other, holding back laughter.

“Fine! You choose one!”

Bucky pauses, lips parted in surprise. But he recovers quickly.

“English or Russian, ты маленький умник?”

She rolls her eyes, recognizing the foreign language easily. “Why would I want a Russian name?”

“You’re part Russian, I’d assume.” He deadpans.

He gets a scoff and an eye roll from the girl, who’s become eerily silent, obviously having no retort for him.

“Thought so. You coming with us, kid?” He asks, daring her to refuse.

“Where else would I go?”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s go.” He grumbles, turning on his heel, glaring at Yelena and John, making them back down from any questions they were about to ask. “She’s coming with us. Not a debate.”

They pass by Ava and Alexei as Bucky leads the girl out of the building, awkwardness building now that they’re not butting heads. Yelena quickly explains the situation to the others before following Bucky, assuming the mission is over.

“Get in,” Bucky says, holding the passenger door of the van open for her, unsure what else to do. She nods, watching him closely as she climbs in. But the moment she’s sat, he shuts the door and climbs into the driver’s seat. He starts the engine, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel as he waits for the others to get in.

“You’re, what, eighteen?” He asks awkwardly, glancing over at her. She nods, arms crossed over her chest.

“This would be way easier if you’d talk to me, you know.” He huffs, unable to help the smile pulling at his lips.

“You’re moody. Grumpy, even. It’s kinda funny. Who knew a kid could have such a personal vendetta against the world?” He teases, smirking over at her.

“Oh, shut it.” She grumbles, rolling her eyes. Her lips part as though she was going to say something, but she hesitates. And right as she’s about to speak, the rear door opens, and she slams her mouth shut as the team clambers in. It’s immediately loud and chaotic in the vehicle, with everyone asking questions at a million miles a minute.

“Shut up!” He yells, giving her an apologetic look when she flinches, his heart aching at the sight. “All of you, quiet.”

He puts the car into drive, glaring in the rearview for a moment, before driving off. But, of course, the silence is too much, and he’s soon being nagged about music.

Bucky ignores every single one of them until the smaller voice next to him pipes up.

“Can I turn on the radio?” She asks, already reaching out for the knob, but hesitating, as if she were afraid that she’d be punished if she dared to do so anyway.

“Free range, kid.” Bucky nods, trying not to frown at her hesitation. He also ignores the snickers coming from the rest of the team, knowing that it’s his awkward way of interacting with this girl that’s got them laughing at him.

The ride back into the city isn’t long at all, and if anyone else had complained about being hungry or needing the restroom, Bucky would’ve ignored them. But the moment the girl next to him pipes up, albeit quietly, about being hungry, he immediately rummages through the glovebox, pulling out some of the snacks that he has stashed in there. Her smile and the way it absolutely lights up her face make it worth the loud protests coming from the team. The moment she’s done with her snack, now left with a crumpled wrapper in her palm, Bucky holds his hand out for it, not even looking away from the road.

Finally, when they do get back to the tower, the team has grown tired of complaining and bickering. The sky is fading into darkness as the sun disappears on the horizon. Bucky parks the van wordlessly, shutting it off and getting out, hesitating at the front of the vehicle, waiting for the girl to follow.

His girl. His little girl. He has to admit, it does make him a bit giddy, now that the initial shock has worn off.

“We probably don’t have any rooms ready to move into right now. We weren’t expecting anyone new to join us.” He says awkwardly, leading her inside. “You can sleep in my room. But if it’s more comfortable, I’m sure Ava or Yelena wouldn’t mind bunking with you.”

“I wouldn’t mind being with you.” She says, fidgeting with the hem of her jacket as she follows him. Gone is her confident demeanor, that of a Black Widow who’s ready to kick anyone’s and everyone’s ass. Replacing the Widow is a teenage girl who’s been reunited with her father, who has no real knowledge of how to navigate such a circumstance. A teenage girl who feels so little, so naïve, compared to the man walking beside her.

“I’ll show you around, then.” He says, seeing through the tough façade she has painted on, getting a glimpse of the vulnerability underneath.

He eventually reaches out, resting his hand on her upper back as he shows her around, trying to make her feel a little more welcome. Finally, when they get to his room, he opens the door and lets her in. It's the same basic setup as all of the other rooms: a dresser, a walk-in closet, a desk, a sofa, a mounted TV, and a full-size bed. And sure, his room is a bit messy, a fact he’s suddenly embarrassed by.

“I’ll uh… I’ll get new sheets and then you can take the bed.” He offers, unsure of himself. “And I’ll see if Yelena has clothes that you can borrow. I doubt you’ll wanna end up borrowing mine.” He chuckles awkwardly, but smiles when he sees her own soft smile.

“Thank you.” She breathes, glancing up at him.

“You don’t gotta thank me for anything, alright? You came to me, I ain’t gonna turn you away. We’re family now, kid.” He says, moving toward his dresser to find a change of clothes as he continues to speak. “I can bring you to Yelena now, if you’d like. Or I can just have her come here with some clothes while I shower. Up to you. And then after, we can eat, then maybe decide on that name?”

She smiles, nodding. “That- that sounds good. She can come while you’re showering, I guess. I don’t wanna get lost or anything.” She rambles, getting comfortable on the sofa.

“Got it,” Bucky says, sending a quick text to Yelena before heading to the connected bathroom. “She’ll be here in a few minutes. I’ll be quick, ‘kay?”

“Okay.” She says, watching him disappear into the bathroom before hesitantly grabbing the TV remote, flipping it on.

She flips through the channels, but the moment the door creaks open, she sits up straight, eyes attentive to the woman walking in.

“Hey. I’m Yelena.” She says, shutting the door behind her. “I got you some clothes.”

The girl looks up at her, smiling. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Yelena says, handing her the stack she had picked out from her closet. “I don’t wear most of these, anyway. We could probably go shopping for some clothes for you later, if you’d like. I’m sure Mr. Grumps wouldn’t mind spending his money on you.”

The girl laughs, eyes lighting up as she goes through the clothes. “I hope so.”

“Well, I know so,” Yelena says, sitting on the arm of the couch. “He’s already let you break so many of the rules that he’s set for the rest of us. And he’s already looking at you like… like you’re an angel, of sorts. Men are weird like that, I guess. Some would rather swallow a knife than be a father, but some… some are like him. They worship the ground their kids walk on. He’s headed on that path already. I can see it. He’ll be awkward for a bit, but that’s how he always is. You already have a good dad, kid. And with him, you got a family.”

She looks up at Yelena, lips curled into a small smile as the blonde speaks. “I- thanks.” She breathes, nibbling her lip.

Yelena nods, squeezing her shoulder as she stands.

“Anytime, kid. You’re family now.” Yelena says, heading to the door. She glances back at the girl with a small smile before leaving.

She sits on the couch, staring down at the clothes in her lap. She’d have never guessed that looking for her father would end up like this. That she would’ve gained an entire family, and a loving one, at that. She tears up, lips trembling as she runs her fingers over the fabric.

“Hey, kid, I’m done in here if you wanted-” Bucky pauses when he sees her on the couch, her cheeks glistening with tears. He drops the towel he was using to dry his hair, making his way to her side immediately.

“Hey, hey, what’s the matter?” He asks, taking her hands in his, trying to figure out how to soothe her.

“I- I just…” She sniffs, squeezing her eyes shut. “I’m overwhelmed.”

“Okay, that’s okay.” Bucky breathes, sitting on the couch next to her, naturally pulling her into his arms. “I got you. Just breathe. It’ll be okay.”

She chokes out a small sob, curling into him, clutching his shirt. He hums softly, rocking her in his arms, one of his hands cradling her head to his chest.

“Does this help you?” He asks, gently running his hand through her hair when he notices her slowly calming down. She nods, not loosening her grip.

“Gotcha.” Bucky murmurs, continuing to hold her. His chest pangs with every sob that falls from her lips, wanting nothing more than to fix whatever made her so upset in the first place. But she needs him to do this, not to fix every single thing that may be a problem. So he stays right there, rocking his girl in his arms.

Eventually, when her sobs turn to sniffles and she starts to pull away, Bucky lets her, still keeping his hands close.

“You wanna talk about it?” He asks, leaning against the back of the couch, waiting for her to speak.

“I just… Wasn’t expecting this. I don’t know what I was expecting, really. I… I went looking for you and now I have an entire family, and I dunno how to really process that.” She starts, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. “It’s a lot.”

“Yeah, it is. Trust me, kiddo, I get it. But I’m right here, alright? I ain’t leaving. I’m staying right here as long as you need me.” He says, reaching out to swipe away a stray tear. “How about you go take a shower, alright? Then we can figure out dinner. Maybe watch a movie or something after. Okay?”

“Okay.” She sniffs, swiping at the remaining tears on her face. She gets up, clothes in her arms. But halfway to the bathroom door, she hesitates, turning back to put the clothes down and wrap her arms around his neck. “Thank you.”

“Oh, hey, okay. I got you.” Bucky chuckles, pulling her close, running his hand in circles over her back until she pulls away. “You don’t gotta thank me, kiddo. Keep that in mind. You ain’t owing anybody anything.”

“Okay.” She nods as she steps back, grabbing the clothes once again. She turns toward the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

As she takes a shower, Bucky sits at his desk, scrolling through countless lists of names, trying to find something that he could hear belonging to his little girl.

And eventually, he finds it, after scrolling through the third list of Russian baby names that he came across.

Liliya.

He knew it from the moment he read the name. Sure, he made sure to find a few back-ups, but he was dead-set on this one.

So he waits patiently, cleaning up the room as she showers. And when she eventually comes out, looking a bit more human than she had earlier when they first met, he smiles.

“I think I found a name for you.” He says as she sits down next to him on the couch.

“What is it?” She asks, genuinely curious, and slightly hopeful.

“Liliya,” Bucky says, smiling softly. “Dunno, I just think it suits you.”

She nods, tearing up. “I like it.”

“Good. That’s good.” Bucky breathes, unable to contain a soft laugh as he pulls her into a hug. “Liliya. My sweet Liliya.”

She can’t help but giggle, wiping her eyes, leaning into his embrace, slowly warming up to him. But she can’t sit there forever, especially not when she starts feeling as though she’s starving. She doesn’t even have to say anything. Bucky immediately gets up, leading her to the kitchen downstairs in the common area.

There, he starts a simple dinner for everyone, inviting Liliya to join him in the kitchen. At first, she hesitates. But she eventually warms up to the idea, easily finding herself at his side, watching as he cooks and doing everything he instructs.

“So, you got a name yet, or are we just gonna keep calling you kid?” John asks once they’ve all sat down to eat.

“Liliya.” She responds, a proud smile on her lips.

“Ah, a beautiful name for a beautiful little girl!” Alexei exclaims, genuinely excited- for too many reasons to name.

She can’t help but laugh, feeling more at ease as the night rolls on. They make her feel like family as they pull her into their jokes, immediately filling her in on every little secret. It’s home already.

And Bucky watches her proudly throughout the night, partly in amazement that someone as good as her could ever come from an experiment as intrusive as the one she had been created in. The fact is, plain and simple, that she’s his little girl. It was written in stone the moment he found out about her. Nothing could’ve stopped it.

Not that he really wanted it to stop, anyway. Not when he finally has everything he could ever want or need from life. Liliya simply just sealed the deal for him.

[0blobthefish0]

Hii how are you? Are you still taking Owen Grady requests? If you are taking, I have one... Owen and the reader have been friends for a long time. They have been with the raptors since the very beginning. There's even some light flirty interactions between them. Yet the reader never gives herself a chance. She never thinks that Owen could ever really be interested in her in any way. So much so that she has convinced herself that Owen likes Claire. But the reader is so focused on everything about it that she never notices Owen's intense gaze upon her.

You've got it all wrong

owen grady masterlist | main masterlist

Owen Grady x Reader 1,357 words

a/n - thank you so, so, so much for the request anon, sorry it's taken me so long to write it! I hope you enjoy 🫶

Owen Grady was an unlikely friend, to put it honestly, he was cocky, sarcastic, a little full of himself, but he had managed to worm himself into friendship with his persistence and smug smile. It wasn’t as if you could get away from him anyway, the two of you having worked together since the raptors had hatched. 

“Y/n.”

“Y/n!”

A large hand lightly wrapped around your shoulder, the warmth of it spread through your skin and your eyebrows furrowed as you slowly gained consciousness. The first thing you noticed was the cold, and you hid your nose in the crease of your elbow as you let out a groan. A groan which only grew as you shifted in your seated position, the aches of your bones cried out with every movement. God, who let you sleep at your desk?

“Jesus Christ, you’re fucking cold,” you hear Owen chuckle before he begins to rub his hands up and down your arms. Not due to his efforts, but solely a reaction to him, you feel yourself warm up instantly; he was so close you could feel his chest just centimeters behind your head and you couldn’t help but unconsciously gravitate towards him. The warmth of him was magnetic and you were slowly being pulled in, your head leaning, leaning back, and back, and back, before suddenly coming into contact with the fabric of his shirt. Quickly, you jolted forwards, eyes wide with embarrassment as you cleared your throat and mumbled out a croaky apology. You move a hand to the mousepad of your laptop, desperate to move on and forget, and the screen instantly illuminates.

“What were you workin’ on?” Owen questions, a smirk on his lips, and he moves his hands down to the arms of your chair, trapping you as he leans forwards, his face dangerously close to yours. His blue eyes scanned the model of DNA, certain genes had been highlighted.

You swallow before speaking, “It’s Blue’s, just wondering if um,” he was impossibly close without touching you and you caught another glimpse of his eyes moving across the screen, “if her DNA had been influenced by her environment and if that’s why she’s so different, behaviour wise. Epigenetic stuff, some guy was saying, so I thought I’d have a look. They’ve all had a change in expression, but I read that it’s quite common as it’s changing to accommodate the modern environment, compared to what, previously, their DNA had naturally been adapted to.”

Owen let out a hum as he took in your words, and you felt it travel straight to your stomach, awakening the buzzing butterflies. Shit, you weren’t going to get over your little crush any time soon. Last night, before you had mistakenly fallen asleep, you had promised to yourself to try to move on. It was distracting you from the whole purpose of you being here, and if it continued to get in the way of your work you might have to do the proper thing and leave. But who were you kidding, getting over him as if it were simple? You had already been head over heels for the guy for a few years now, you weren’t going to get rid of your feelings even if you willed it.

“And your conclusion?”

“Inconclusive,” you reply sheepishly, “maybe when they all reach adulthood, it’ll be a bit more established. Hopefully.” You crossed your fingers and turned your head to give Owen a smile. Somehow, forgetting how close he was, you slightly drew back in surprise as he turned to face you as well. Your heart pumped wildly in your chest when the two of you locked eyes. You averted your heart-eyes as quickly as you realised you were staring. “Oh, look at that! It’s feeding time.” You call out, pointing at the corner of your screen before jumping up from your chair, forcing him to pull away from you. 

Owen straightened, watching, as you collected your things, rubbing a hand over the stubble of his beard, before letting out a small defeated sigh and following you out of the door. 

You turned to him with furrowed brows once he had caught up to you, “What’d you even wake me up for?”

“It’s feeding time, you said you wanted more practice doing it,” he shrugged and a soft smile spread across your lips, he remembered.

It was surprisingly warmer outside than it was inside, and you listened intently as Owen went over, once again, how to feed the raptors, and to stay safe. He shows you where to move with an outstretched hand pointing at the enclosure, and you nod your head, following the moment. That’s when you notice her. Bright red hair contrasting against the lush greenery. Claire Dearing. She stood just within the base, her arms crossed over her chest as she eyes the two of you: Owen more likely. 

Owen’s still talking, not realising that your attention had been divided, and you nudge him with your elbow. He opens his mouth to complain, but you wordlessly nod your head in Claire’s direction, and his eyes quickly find her. She’s easy to see in this environment, sticking out like a sore thumb in her pristinely ironed skirt and blazer. 

“Okay,” he pats you on the shoulder, already taking a step in her direction, “stay safe, I’m trusting Barry if anything goes wrong, you can do it.” You give him a thumbs up before he saunters off. She greets him with a friendly nod, and- you’re staring, you quickly turn away spinning on the heel of your foot and distract yourself with the task at hand.

Even with the distraction of four hungry dinosaurs, you can’t help but steal glances every so often; Owen talks with a smile on his lips and with his hands on his hips, you can hear his loud laugh as it travels with the gentle breeze. She’s so pretty, you can see why Owen, or any guy, would be interested in her. So elegant and put together, things that you weren’t. God, you were being immature. You’re whole feelings fiasco for Owen was immature, there was no reason to be so wrapped up about it. Why would he ever think of you as more than just a friend, when girls like Claire were his type?

“Owen, are you listening? This is very important.” Claire sighs as she waves a hand in front of his face.

“It always is,” he snarks back with a smirk, finally turning to face her for the first time since their conversation began. She squints her eyes at him, and he responds with a questioning look.

“You like her, huh?” She teases, and it’s clear that she’s talking about you. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of you since he joined Claire, not because he was worried you couldn’t handle yourself - he knew you could feed them no problem - but because he liked seeing you. Every day he woke up in a good mood because you’d be there, waiting for him, ready to start the day. Owen shakes his head and averts his eyes, but he can’t hide his flustered face. “Just don’t wear those shorts when you take her out,” she warns teasingly.

“I’ll have you know that she likes them,” he scoffs with faux defensiveness. 

Just as you’re finishing up, you see the two approaching. You feel your heart drop to your stomach as you notice the shy smile and light blush dusting across Owen’s face. He found his place next to you, and Barry soon joined the conservation. You wished you had that effect on him, he looked so sweet, a glimpse of a side of him reserved only for lovers. Your gaze travels over to Claire.

Owen can see the sad look in your eyes as you stare at her. You’re looking at her, but he’s looking at you - if only you’d look at him for longer than a second, then maybe, just maybe, you’d see that he was in love with you, but you’re too scared that he’ll notice that you’re in love with him.

[tisayemate]

Hey 💌 I’m Saja — a mother trying to hold onto hope through days that feel impossibly heavy.

I know you probably see a lot online, but if you could take just a moment… I’d be so grateful.

💫 A reblog of my pinned post could help our story reach someone who cares.

🌿 And if you’re in a place to give, even a small donation could bring comfort to my daughter and help us feel safe again.

@sajagz, thank you for listening.

Even gentle support creates strength.

From one heart to another — thank you 🤍

^^

[tisayemate]

Maybe do a scene where he actually slams a clipboard on the table 😂

I saw your post...and I thought...

"Why not make that scene..."

Honestly he's so fine I definitely would be folding like a lawn chair ...💀💀💀

Tether

AD Janson x Reader

Bit of Angst, tension (lots of power play)

Not exactly proofread

Summary: She’s composed, controlled, impossible to crack… until Janson steps in, asking questions no one else dares to ask, and watching far too closely when she answers.

Story under the cut

The room is freezing.

But you never shiver.

Because shivering gets noted. And nothing in WCKD goes unrecorded.

You sit like you always do. Neutral, composed, spine aligned with the back of the steel chair. You fold your hands just loosely enough to look relaxed, but never so tight you look scared.

You’re not scared.

You’re watching.

That’s the key to survival here—watch more than you speak.

Play helpful. Play small. Play invisible.

It’s why you didn’t flinch when the guards dragged in Thomas last night. Or when Minho screamed his throat raw. Or at least, tried not to.

You watched the cameras. You watched the mirrors. You watched him.

Because Janson doesn’t operate like the others.

He doesn’t threaten.

He studies.

Ironic. The least likely to hurt her was the biggest threat of all.

When the door opens today, you know it’s him before he steps in. The air shifts. Thicker. Heavier. Like he brings the storm in with him.

He closes the door. Doesn’t bother to announce himself. You don’t look at him until he sits down across from you.

“I’ve read your file,” he says, calm as ever. “But files lie.”

You tilt your head—just a little. Feign interest.

“So I prefer asking the subject directly.”

Your lips press into a polite line.

Good. Keep the act warm. Cooperative. Non-threatening.

He opens a folder. But he doesn’t look at it.

“What did you whisper to Newt before the lights went out two nights ago?”

You blink slowly. “I told him I was cold.”

“You weren’t.”

A beat.

“You never show discomfort. Not even when they turned the vents up to freezing.”

You offer a ghost of a shrug. “Maybe I was trying to comfort him.”

“You don’t comfort people. You observe them.”

His voice is soft. Accusing.

Too accurate.

You breathe through your nose.

“What’s your point?”

He watches you for a moment. Silent. Like he’s peeling back skin.

“You play quiet. Play cooperative. But you never give.”

You open your mouth to speak—

—but he slams the clipboard down like a gavel, fast and loud.

SLAM.

You jerk slightly, then lean back just enough. Your thighs press against the edge of the chair. You shift. It’s subtle, practiced. But your lip catches between your teeth for half a second. Just one.

And it’s one second too long.

His eyes catch it. And stay there.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t smirk. Doesn’t speak yet.

Just watches you bite your lip and recover.

“Interesting,” he says finally.

You shake your head. “Reflex.”

His brow lifts. “That wasn’t fear.”

His tone is lower now. Controlled. Curious.

“That was something else.”

You meet his eyes again, voice cool. “You’re imagining things.”

“No,” he says. “I’m not.”

He leans in.

You feel it in your chest. The weight of his gaze. The way the air closes in like it’s watching, too.

“Tell me something, then,” he says, voice just above a whisper. “If you’re not afraid of me… if you’re so calm, so unbothered… why are your pupils dilated?”

Your throat tightens.

“I’m in a cold room. Low light.”

“Wrong,” he murmurs. “That light hasn’t changed in sixty hours.”

Silence. Thick. Loaded.

He tilts his head slowly, examining you like you’re some rare, caged creature on the verge of revealing its real shape.

“You’re trying to stay in control,” he says. “And it’s beautiful to watch you fail.”

Your nails dig into your thigh under the table, but your face? Still smooth. Still even.

“What do you want from me?” you ask, voice quieter now.

He breathes out through his nose. Almost a laugh. But it isn’t kind.

“I want you to stop pretending.”

Another pause.

“Because the moment you do…we’re going to get somewhere real.”

He stands. But not to leave. Not yet.

He leans both hands on the table. Closer now. Close enough that if you wanted to, you could flinch. Or slap him. Or maybe—

But you don’t.

You can’t.

So instead, you say the only thing you can.

“I’m not pretending.”

His eyes darken. Something shifts in them. Some quiet little thrill.

Because you’re lying.

And you both know it.

He leans down, voice curling against your ear like smoke.

“Then why does your heartbeat sound like a fucking metronome?”

And then—

He walks out.

Leaves the door wide open.

But you don’t move.

You don’t chase.

You just sit there.

Heart hammering.

Pulse ringing.

Still pretending.

Still calculating.

But this time…

not so sure you’re winning.

[tisayemate]

Hi there,

I’m reaching out with a quiet hope in my heart. These days are heavy, and my family is living through a reality filled with uncertainty—but I’m still here, doing my best to hold on and keep going.

If you have a moment, please check out my pinned post.

A simple share could help it reach someone who might be able to make a difference.

If you’re able to give, even the smallest kindness can bring light into the darkest places.

Your time, your voice, your compassion — it all matters more than you know.

With deep gratitude,

@nadinfamily

^^

Sending prayers. I know some of you may be tired of seeing these posts but honestly, they are recurring for a REASON. They need help.

So if you can, donate. If not, spread the word.

[tisayemate]

Tides of Tension

Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga x Reader (ft. Jealous!Moana)

Fluff, angst

Inspired by a comment by: @eragon-and-arya98 on part one of this story called Tides of Change.

Summary: As Maui, Moana, and a reluctant eel guardian journey together, an unexpected bond forms… but jealousy and unspoken feelings threaten to tear them apart.

Story under the cut

The mist thickened again, swirling around us like a web of secrecy. I stood at the edge of the boat, my gaze fixed on the water, trying to ignore the way Maui kept glancing over at me. I wasn’t sure if it was the dim light, or something about his grin, but there was something in his eyes today. Something softer than before.

The boat rocked under us, and I shifted my weight, feeling the current pull against the hull. Moana, still gripping the oar with her usual focus, glanced between Maui and me. She raised an eyebrow, her lips pressed into a thin line.

“You alright there?” Moana asked, her tone casual but with an edge. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was watching us more than she needed to.

Maui gave a lazy shrug, turning his back to her. “Yeah, just… you know, taking in the view.”

I stiffened, but it wasn’t the insult that bothered me—it was the way he said it, the way he looked at me as if there was something more. Something I didn’t want to acknowledge.

Moana’s eyes flickered to me, her gaze sharper now. Her lips parted, and I saw the muscles in her jaw tighten. She was pissed.

“You’re not… flirting with her, are you?” she shot out, her voice too casual for the sharpness in it.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Moana.” I turned my attention to the water, trying to ignore the unease stirring in my chest. The last thing I needed was more drama.

But then Maui’s voice broke through the silence, his tone a little too light. “Relax, Curly, I’m not flirting.” He grinned at me, and this time, it didn’t feel like a joke, it felt like something else, something I couldn’t quite place.

Moana’s glare hardened, and I saw her grip the oar a little too tightly. The tension in the air thickened, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. All I could think about was the way Maui had looked at me just now. The way his eyes seemed to linger longer than necessary.

I wanted to hate him. Really, I did. He had that smug, overconfident air about him that should’ve made him unbearable. But every time he looked at me— every time he brushed past me with that cocky grin or leaned just a little too close… it did something to me that I couldn’t shake.

It wasn’t love. Of course not. I wasn’t naïve. But something in me stirred, something I’d buried deep for so long.

I didn’t know what it was, but I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Moana shifted her weight, the frustration practically radiating off her as she glanced between us again. “Maui, stop. I can tell when you’re trying to make things awkward,” she muttered.

Maui just raised an eyebrow, unbothered by the tension. “What? You don’t like my charm?”

I couldn’t help the slight smirk that pulled at my lips. “I don’t think anyone could like that charm.” My voice was sharp, but there was a hint of amusement that I wasn’t ready to admit to.

He chuckled, leaning back casually. “Fair enough, Legs. But don’t worry—I’m just here for the ride.”

The boat swayed again, and I found myself stepping a little closer to steady myself. Maui didn’t move, but his proximity was undeniable. The air between us shifted once more, and it was suddenly hard to breathe.

For a second, I thought I might have imagined it, but then I felt the warmth of his hand brush against mine as he reached for the oar.

I stiffened, eyes flicking to his face. He was still grinning, but there was something else behind it now—something that didn’t belong in the quiet tension of the boat.

“You okay?” Maui asked quietly, his voice lower than before. His thumb grazed my hand, and I had to force myself to breathe normally.

I nodded, swallowing the sudden dryness in my throat. “I’m fine,” I muttered, not trusting myself to say more.

Moana, on the other hand, had had enough. “I don’t get it,” she spat, her words sharp enough to cut through the fog. “You’re not… seriously flirting with her, right? I thought we were past that, Maui.”

Maui paused, and for the first time, I saw something flicker in his eyes. It wasn’t his usual teasing, cocky expression—it was something more. “What if I am?” he asked, his voice quiet and uncertain for the first time.

I felt my heart skip a beat, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Instead, I turned away, my gaze returning to the mist ahead, trying to keep my composure.

Moana’s voice was barely a whisper when she spoke again. “You’re really going to mess with her, aren’t you?”

Maui didn’t answer right away, but his expression softened as he watched me, and I saw the faintest hint of something like regret flicker across his face.

But it didn’t last. Instead, he grinned again, leaning back with a nonchalant shrug. “You know me. I like a good challenge.”

And with that, I felt it—my resolve weakening. Because no matter how much I wanted to pretend I didn’t care, I knew that this… this thing between us was far from over.

Moana glared at him, but her gaze flicked to me for a moment, her expression unreadable.

I couldn’t tell if she was more jealous, or if she was just worried. Maybe both.

But I didn’t care. Not anymore.

Perhaps… I was finally done pretending.

[tisayemate]

Is it weird I want to request a scene that involves Janson? I've been seeing a lot of posts about him and ngl he's kinda hot...is this just me...???

GO FOR IT. I wholeheartedly agree. I don’t know what it is but well… let’s just say I wouldn’t protest because he could slam a clipboard on the table and I’d fold like a lawn chair 😫

PLEASE PLEASE SEND IN REQUESTS 🙏🙏

[tisayemate]

The Knight

OC (Duncan Patellio)

Angst, Gore (it’s quite graphic, be warned) if ‘Edge of Tomorrow’-style time looping is not your thing, this may not be the story for you.

Summary: When a knight explores the ruins of an abandoned church, he uncovers a secret that refuses to let him go.

Duncan Patellio stood before the ruin—a bleak monument of despair. The remnants of a once-hallowed church, its charred walls rose like jagged ribs against a blood-tinged sky, while blackened stone arches reached upward as if in a silent plea. The air was heavy with the acrid stench of burnt incense and scorched wood, a bitter perfume mingling with the damp earth and the faint echo of lost prayers. Every shattered shard of stained glass on the cold, ashen ground whispered memories of brighter days now buried beneath endless ruin.

Sent by the king to salvage what little remained, Duncan moved with a measured caution that belied the weight of secrets in his step. His eyes, alert and unyielding, scanned the debris—a scattered mosaic of warped candle stubs, tarnished trinkets, and splintered relics—each piece a muted echo of former sanctity. The silence, punctuated only by the occasional whisper of wind through broken walls, pressed in on him, urging him onward through the forgotten corridors of this desecrated sanctuary.

Then, without warning, the ground beneath him groaned in protest. A subtle tremor rippled through the dust-laden floor—a prelude to betrayal by the very stone he trusted. In a heartbeat, the ancient foundation shattered. Duncan’s world tilted as he plummeted into darkness, the sensation of freefall replaced by a violent, bone-jarring impact as he collided with a bed of loose rubble.

Duncan slammed into the cold, unforgiving ground with a grunt, twisting into a defensive stance in a heartbeat—a move honed by years of silent, deadly precision. His armor scraped against jagged stone as he dropped into a crouch, every muscle taut and alert. The torch in his hand flickered erratically, its quivering light revealing slick, damp walls and a maze of dark, uneven rubble that groaned under the weight of ancient secrets.

Just then, a sharp crunch—crisp and unmistakable—resounded beneath his boot. Duncan’s eyes locked onto the shattered fragments of an egg; its once-smooth, pearly shell was now a spiderweb of cracks, weeping a viscous, iridescent fluid that caught the sputtering light like ghostly tears. The scent of cold metal and decaying matter rose in his nostrils, making his skin crawl with dread.

Behind him, the darkness stirred. A slow, deliberate clicking began—click… click… click—a measured, metallic cadence that echoed through the narrow passage. With each relentless tick, the sound grew louder, more insistent. Duncan’s hand went to the hilt of his sword as beads of sweat formed on his brow, his senses sharpened to every sound.

Then, without warning, the clicking gave way to a horrid chorus. A grinding, scraping noise—SCRRREE—filled the air as if something massive were dragging itself across stone. The sound was interlaced with a sorrowful, keening wail—AWWOOO—that reverberated off the cavern walls like the anguished cry of a damned soul.

Duncan’s heart hammered as he slowly turned, torch raised. Emerging from the inky shadows was a hulking, alien beast—a mass of sinewy flesh and glistening, chitinous armor. Its limbs, grotesquely elongated and ending in sharp, clawed appendages, moved with a deliberate, nightmarish grace. With every step, the creature’s feet scraped against the stone, a wet, gurgling sound that punctuated the oppressive silence.

The beast paused, its head cocking to one side. From its hide, a series of clicking sounds escaped as it advanced. Its eyes, luminescent and unblinking, fixated on Duncan with a predatory hunger. The creature’s gaping maw emitted a low, guttural rumble that vibrated through the ground beneath him, mingling with the relentless drip of unseen water.

Duncan’s breath came in shallow, rapid bursts as he slowly shifted his stance, his gaze never leaving the beast. Every nerve in his body screamed to act, to fight, yet he remained rooted in place, acutely aware of the fatal precision required to survive this moment. He raised his sword, its blade catching the flickering light, and his fingers tightened around the grip. His eyes darted to the shattered egg at his feet—a silent, eerie omen of what was to come—and back to the advancing horror.

The creature lunged suddenly—a terrifying blur of sinew and exoskeleton. Its claws sliced through the stagnant air with a resounding slash, narrowly missing Duncan as he rolled to the side. The beast’s low, mournful wail transformed into a terrifying snarl, each sound a visceral promise of violence.

In that heart-stopping moment, as the alien predator’s form loomed larger in the swirling torchlight, the ground beneath them seemed to tremble with the echo of impending doom. The cacophony of clicks, scrapes, and guttural roars crescendoed into a singular, unrelenting assault on the senses…

And then, with a final, ear-splitting shriek that shattered the oppressive darkness, the beast pounced—its claws reaching out, its eyes burning with a merciless intent…

Duncan barely had time to exhale before the creature struck.

It didn’t just lunge—it detonated forward, a blur of sinew and chitinous plates, its momentum an avalanche of force. He tried to pivot, but it was too fast. Too massive. A split second of resistance, then—

Impact.

The breath wrenched from his lungs as a solid wall of muscle and exoskeleton drove into his ribs, lifting him clean off his feet. The world snapped sideways. A sharp, sickening pop burst through his torso, followed by a white-hot splintering sensation—bones giving way under unbearable pressure.

Then came the wall.

His body struck the jagged stone like a ragdoll hurled by an angry god. The first thing to hit was his shoulder—his dominant one. A sharp, electric burst of pain rocketed down his arm, turning his fingers numb. He heard—felt—his collarbone snap. A brittle, unnatural crack vibrated through his skull.

Then his spine.

His back arched violently, pain exploding through every nerve as something inside him shifted—something that wasn’t supposed to move. His armor crumpled inward, metal biting deep into flesh. He gasped, but the breath wasn’t there. Only agony, only raw, suffocating fire filling his ribs, seizing his lungs in a merciless grip.

His head slammed last.

The world fractured into a storm of black and red—shards of sound and light flickering in and out of existence. A deep, resonant thud reverberated through his skull, an unbearable ringing swallowing every other sensation except pain. His vision swam. He didn’t even realize he was falling until the stone beneath his feet gave way.

The ruin devoured him whole.

He plummeted through collapsing wreckage, tumbling through dust and darkness. His body twisted, weightless and broken, every jerk and jolt another fresh agony. The fall seemed endless, a slow-motion descent into nothingness.

Then—

Impact.

Again.

The ground beneath him was solid—unforgiving stone biting into his knees, his palms, his boots scraping against dust-laden rock. His breath tore free from his throat, ragged and desperate, his fingers clenched around the hilt of his sword before he even realized he was moving. His body was whole. His ribs no longer screamed with broken agony, his shoulder no longer hung uselessly from its socket, his head—his skull—intact.

But the pain was still there. 

His body remembered.

A tremor racked through him, his stomach twisting violently, the phantom ache of shattered bones making him dizzy, nauseous, wrong. He could feel the moment his ribs had caved in, could still hear the snap of his shoulder dislocating, could still taste copper on his tongue from the blood he’d swallowed when he’d hit the wall.

But none of it had happened. Not anymore.

A sharp, brittle sound echoed beneath him.

Duncan froze. His breath caught in his throat. A slow, creeping dread slithered up his spine, sinking its claws into his chest and squeezing until his heart was hammering against his ribs.

He knew that sound.

His gaze dropped to his boot, where a delicate, pearlescent shell lay shattered beneath him, iridescent fluid weeping onto the stone in slow, glistening rivulets.

The egg.

It was whole when he fell. It was whole before. But now, it lay broken at his feet, just as it had the first time, its yolk-like contents bleeding out in eerie, shimmering pools.

Behind him, the darkness stirred.

Duncan didn’t need to turn around to know what came next. He didn’t need to hear the slow, deliberate clicking—the metallic, measured cadence slithering toward him—to know what was there, waiting in the shadows. He felt it. The weight of its presence, the anticipation of its movement, the way the air shifted as it drew closer.

He had lived this moment.

Every breath, every flicker of torchlight against the damp walls, every shudder of his own broken body—he had already been here. Died here. And yet, here he stood again, whole and unbroken, standing in the exact same place, stepping on the exact same egg, listening to the exact same sound crawling toward him from the dark.

Click. Click. Click.

The noise cut through the silence, piercing, rhythmic, steady. It was waiting for him. Just as before.

But this time, he wasn’t frozen.

This time, before the beast could charge, before he could be broken and shattered all over again, before the cycle could begin anew—

Duncan moved first.

————————————————————————————————————

Thank you to @teathepumpkinmoth for the story idea: The knight (insert any name. For this example I'll use the name "sir goobus") sir goobus was sent by the king to the charred skeleton of the church, once a beacon of faith now clawed at the sky like a blackened hand. The king had sent him not to investigate the blaze, not to mourn - "a clumsy lightning strike, nothing more," the royal scholars hath declared - but to scavenge anything of value before the rubble swallowed it whole. as well as any human remains. Whilst he searched, he expected to find warped candles or perhaps a few bits of gold here and there. What he did not expect was for the floor to give way, plunging the knight into a abyss darker then he would realize. With only his dimming torch to light his way, and the way he came quickly smothered in rubble, the knight soon came to find a dark secret buried deep within the church.

[tisayemate]

send help

Y’all I wanna write but I’ve been having writers block 😭 I want some requests so badddd like it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything. I promise I’m still active but I genuinely don’t know what I should be writing about. I’ve been caught up in school so I haven’t had much time to watch or read anything new either 😔

so please pleaseeeee if y’all have any ideas, even unusual ones, send them in! I have no problem with it and in fact I highly encourage it! No judgement on my end, I swear.

[tisayemate]

The Life I Never Led

Obi Wan Kenobi x Padawan!Reader

Fluff, comfy cozy comfort 🥰

Summary: Obi-Wan begins to notice the quiet weight his Padawan carries, and in his own way, makes sure she doesn’t carry it alone.

Inspired by:

AN: I just auditioned for a role in a play using this song and I’ve just been so obsessed with it! Please, please go watch Sister Act if you haven’t or even just listen to the soundtrack because it’s so damn good 😭 I was inspired by this song and thought, hey. Why not write something based on this? Anyways, please enjoy.

Story under the cut

Obi-Wan had never been one to eavesdrop. It was unseemly, unbecoming of a Jedi Master.

And yet, as he passed by her quarters that evening, he found himself pausing just outside the door, breath held.

Because she was singing.

Not humming absentmindedly, not muttering a tune under her breath, but singing.

“I’ve never talked back, I’ve never slept late…”

It was soft, almost hesitant, as if she weren’t quite used to letting her voice carry. But it did. And it was full of something else, something he rarely ever saw in her.

“I’ve never sat down when told to stand straight…”

Longing.

“I’ve never let go and gone with the flow, and don’t even know really why…”

His fingers curled slightly at his sides. Force.

Obi-Wan had always known she carried… something. Not anger. Not defiance. But a distance—a quiet resistance that never quite settled. She trained, she listened, she fought when she had to, but she did not believe in the way Jedi were supposed to.

“I’ve never asked questions or taken a dare…”

That was untrue. She asked questions all the time.

Just never the ones that mattered.

“I’ve never rebelled or stood up and yelled, or even just held my head high…”

His jaw tightened. She did hold her head high, even if she thought she didn’t.

“And all of the feelings unspoken, all of the truths unsaid, they’re all I have left of the life I never led…”

Obi-Wan exhaled quietly. So that’s what this is.

He had suspected, of course. It was hard not to. The way she lingered when the Temple doors opened to the bustling city beyond. The way she watched non-Jedi with something unreadable in her gaze. The way she trained—not for peace, not for duty, but because she had been given no other choice.

And the way she never spoke of it.

He could have stepped inside. Could have said something.

But no. This was hers. A moment she hadn’t meant for anyone to hear.

So, silently, Obi-Wan turned and walked away.

The next day, he watched her.

Not openly, not in any way she would notice, but watched nonetheless. The way she fought during sparring. The way she moved—sharp, disciplined, but always holding something back.

Not her skill. Not her strength.

Something deeper.

The match ended with a sharp clang as their sabers locked. She was breathing heavily, strands of hair falling loose from where she had tied them back. But there was no fire in her eyes, no satisfaction in the fight.

There never was.

He deactivated his saber first. “You never fight for the sake of victory.”

She blinked at him, still catching her breath. “What?”

Obi-Wan tilted his head slightly. “Other Padawans fight to win. To test their limits, to sharpen their form. But you—” He studied her, watching as she stiffened under his scrutiny. “You fight because you feel you must.”

Her grip tightened around the hilt of her saber. “…Isn’t that what Jedi are supposed to do?”

Obi-Wan hummed, expression unreadable. “Perhaps.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Is this another lecture?”

He let out a quiet breath, then, in a tone far softer than she expected—“I heard you.”

That made her freeze.

Her eyes darted up to his, cautious, searching. “Heard me what?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Just looked at her, gaze steady, unwavering. Then, finally—

“Singing.”

She inhaled sharply. “Oh.”

Silence stretched between them.

She dropped her gaze, fingers fiddling with the edge of her sleeve. “You weren’t supposed to.”

“No,” he agreed. “But I did.”

She pressed her lips together, shifting her weight. “It was just a song.”

Obi-Wan stepped forward slightly, voice quiet. “Was it?”

Her breath hitched.

He saw it then—that flicker of hesitation, that warring battle behind her eyes. The part of her that wanted to say something, that wanted to let it spill free, but held it back as she alwaysdid.

So he made the choice for her.

Without warning, he reached forward and pulled her into his arms.

She sucked in a breath, body going rigid. “M—Master—”

“Shh,” he murmured. His grip was firm, grounding. Not a gentle pat-on-the-back hug, not an awkward one-armed embrace, but solid. Steady.

She didn’t move at first. Didn’t react. Then, slowly, something in her posture unwound. Her hands gripped at the fabric of his robes—not clutching, not clinging, but holding.

For the first time, Obi-Wan felt her breathe.

They stood like that for a moment.

Then—

“I thought you weren’t a hugger,” he mused, voice tinged with dry amusement.

She let out something between a scoff and a weak laugh, muffled against his shoulder. “I hate you.”

“Mm.” He smirked. “Sure you do.”

She didn’t pull away.

And he didn’t let go.

[tisayemate]

Stormbound

Thalia Grace x Percy Jackson

fluffy

Summary: Thalia and Percy navigate the unspoken tension between them, where a single confession could change everything.

Request by @Blake7255 on Wattpad:

I have a request for Perlia from Percy Jackson where Thalia has a big crush on Percy when she first sees him when she gets out of her tree without realizing that he has a even bigger one on her 1 year later she decides to give herself a makeover to try to get his attention dyeing her hair blonde and giving herself big curly hair and wearing a purple dress after she gets done she decides to tell Percy how she feels and asks him out they go on their first date and kiss at the end and on Percy 21 birthday he asks her to marry him and the end can be the wedding thank you for your time

story under the cut

The First Glance

Thalia Grace wasn’t the type to swoon, okay? She didn’t do hearts-and-flowers crap. But the moment she stepped out of that stupid tree, she locked eyes with Percy Jackson, and the world stilled.

He was sweaty, shirt clinging to him as he fought some monster she couldn’t care less about because—damn it—why did he have to look like that? Her pulse quickened, and her lip curled to hide it. Great, my first day back, and I’m already losing my edge.

Meanwhile, Percy froze mid-swing, staring at her like she’d walked out of a dream. He shook it off and grinned, that lazy, lopsided grin that made her stomach flip. “Thalia, huh? You’re taller than I imagined.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you’re dumber than I thought.”

“Oh, this is gonna be fun,” he murmured, but his heart was pounding because—yeah, Zeus’s kid was terrifyingly gorgeous.

The Year That Followed

Their banter became routine. A jab, a smirk, a laugh that lingered just a second too long. Everyone saw it—the way Percy’s eyes lit up when Thalia entered a room, the way she softened (just barely) when he was near. But they ignored it, both too stubborn to admit what was blindingly obvious.

It came to a head one night during a campfire. Percy, oblivious as ever, was joking with Annabeth, and Thalia’s stomach twisted. She hated how her chest tightened whenever he laughed with someone else, how her eyes darted to him even when she didn’t mean to. Get it together, Grace.

Later, when she caught him by the lake, she couldn’t help herself. “You and Annabeth sure are cozy.”

Percy turned, confused. “Annabeth? She’s like my sister.”

“Sure she is,” Thalia snapped, hating the heat in her voice.

He stepped closer, brows furrowed. “What’s your deal, Thalia? You’ve been acting weird.”

“My deal?” she shot back, stepping closer too, electricity crackling in the air between them. “You’re the one who—” She cut herself off, clenching her fists. “Never mind. Forget it.”

Percy stared at her, his voice softer now. “Thalia…”

She shook her head and walked away before he could see the storm in her eyes.

The Makeover

Thalia hated feeling vulnerable. That’s why she decided to take control. If Percy couldn’t see her as more than his sparring buddy, then she’d make him.

The golden curls were Aphrodite’s idea. “Blonde will make his heart stop,” the love goddess had said with a wink. Thalia hated that she was probably right.

When she finished, she barely recognized herself. The purple dress felt strange, too soft against her skin. But her reflection smirked back at her. Let’s see you ignore me now, Jackson.

The Confession

When Percy saw her, his mouth opened, but no words came out. He blinked, twice, as if trying to process what he was seeing. “Thalia… you… wow.”

Her heart raced, but she played it cool. “You like it?”

“Uh… yeah, you could say that,” he stammered, cheeks flushing. “What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion.” She shrugged, stepping closer, her confidence wavering only slightly. “I just… wanted to try something new.”

He was staring at her like she’d hung the stars herself, and it made her stomach flip.

“Look, Percy,” she started, her voice quieter now, “I need to say something, and I need you to not laugh.”

“I’d never laugh at you,” he said, his voice steady now, serious in a way that made her chest ache.

“I like you,” she blurted. “And not in the let’s-train-until-we-drop way. I mean, I really like you. I think I have since the day we met.”

Silence. The kind that stretched too long and made her want to bolt.

Then Percy took a step forward, his voice low. “Thalia, do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that?”

Her breath hitched. “What?”

“I’ve liked you since… forever,” he admitted, his hand brushing hers. “I just thought you’d deck me if I told you.”

“Not deck you,” she said, her lips twitching into a smirk. “Maybe zap you, though.”

He grinned. “I’d take it.”

And when he kissed her, it wasn’t soft or tentative—it was a storm, wild and consuming, leaving them both breathless.

The Proposal

On Percy’s 21st birthday, he knelt on the same beach where they’d shared their first kiss. Thalia stood before him, arms crossed but eyes shimmering.

“What are you doing, Jackson?” she asked, though her voice was lighter than usual.

“Something I should’ve done ages ago,” he said, pulling out a ring shaped like a thunderbolt. “Thalia Grace, will you marry me?”

For once, she was speechless. She stared at him, her mind racing, her heart pounding. Then, with a shaky laugh, she muttered, “Took you long enough, Seaweed Brain.”

The Wedding

The wedding was chaos, of course. Leo set something on fire, Apollo flirted with the entire bridal party, and Zeus glared at Percy the whole time.

But when Thalia walked down the aisle, curls bouncing, blue eyes locked on Percy’s, none of it mattered.

“You ready for forever, Jackson?” she whispered when they met at the altar.

“With you? Always,” he said, grinning.

And when they kissed, the sky erupted in lightning and waves, a perfect storm for a perfect pair.

[tisayemate]

Hello again Lauren! I'm positively giddy about the newest post you wrote, and would like you to create another one, perhaps some angst this time. I watched Death Cure and Scorch Trials with my friend, and I was swooning over Aidan Gillen, but my friend didn't get me. If they wanted to cast a rat looking person, they casted the completely wrong person, I mean, Aidan Gillen is the hottest person in that movie, no denial.

Slip of the tongue

AD Janson x Runner!Reader

Angsty, confrontation

Summary: A single slip up reveals that you happen to know more than you should and that makes you a threat— to Janson.

AN: You ask for angst, I deliver. I hope this is better bcs I wanted something different from the usual Doctor-Lab setting.

story under the cut:

The hum of the fluorescent lights buzzed faintly, the sound blending into the sterile silence of the interrogation room. You sat at the cold metal table, posture composed, hands folded neatly in front of you. No fear, no fidgeting—just enough calm to look cooperative, but not weak.

Janson stood across from you, his presence filling the room despite his unassuming posture. His pale blue eyes studied you like you were a specimen under glass, his hands clasped behind his back.

“I’ll ask again,” he began, his voice smooth, controlled. “You woke up in the Box. No memory, no understanding of who you were or where you came from. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you adjusted well to the Maze,” he continued, tilting his head slightly. “Better than most.”

You shrugged. “Instincts, I guess.”

He nodded, his eyes narrowing just slightly. “Instincts.”

The silence stretched, heavy and taut, as though he was waiting for you to slip, to flinch. You didn’t.

“And when the Griever serum was administered,” he pressed, stepping closer, “you didn’t recover any…memories?”

Your heart skipped, but you kept your face neutral. “No. Just the same flashes everyone else got. Useless stuff.”

Janson hummed, circling the table now, his boots echoing faintly in the small room. “And yet, you seem remarkably…intuitive. Observant.”

“Survival’s a good teacher,” you replied, your voice even.

“And yet,” he said, pausing behind you, “survival doesn’t explain everything, does it?”

The tension coiled tighter in your chest, but you didn’t respond.

Janson moved back into your line of sight, his gaze sharp and unyielding. “So tell me, how did you know about the Control Rooms?”

Your blood ran cold.

“What?” you asked, the word coming out too fast, too startled.

“Control Rooms,” he repeated, his tone calm, but the weight in it made your stomach drop. “The ones monitoring the Variables. Something you shouldn’t even know existed.”

“I don’t—”

“You slipped,” he cut in, his voice low and deliberate. “You mentioned it when Ava was briefing us. Quietly, but I heard you.”

Your mouth went dry, the memory flashing back. A careless comment, a muttered observation during the chaos of a group debriefing. You hadn’t thought anyone had caught it, let alone him.

“I was just guessing,” you said quickly, your voice firm despite the fear clawing at your chest. “Everyone knows you were monitoring us—cameras, sensors. It wasn’t hard to piece together.”

Janson didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he leaned forward, placing his hands on the table, his face inches from yours. “A guess?”

“Yes.”

His lips twitched, just barely. Not quite a smile, not quite a sneer. “You’re a terrible liar.”

Before you could respond, his hand shot out, gripping your arm in a vice-like hold. The chair screeched against the floor as he yanked you to your feet.

“Hey!” you protested, struggling against his grip. “What are you doing?”

Janson didn’t answer. He was already pulling you toward the door, his pace brisk, his silence more unsettling than any threat he could have made.

“Where are you taking me?” you demanded, your voice rising with panic.

He didn’t respond, his grip tightening as he dragged you into the hallway. The bright, sterile lights overhead did nothing to ease the sense of dread clawing at you.

“Janson, stop!” you snapped, trying to pull free. “You’re hurting me.”

He ignored you, his jaw set, his eyes forward.

The corridors blurred together as he led you deeper into the facility, each turn making you feel more disoriented, more trapped.

“Janson, please,” you said, your voice breaking now. “I don’t know anything. I swear.”

He finally stopped, spinning to face you. His expression was cold, calculating, but there was a flicker of something sharper in his eyes—something dangerous.

“You expect me to believe that?” he asked, his voice quiet but cutting.

“It’s the truth!” you insisted, your chest heaving.

He stared at you for a long moment, the silence heavy and suffocating. Then, without another word, he turned and dragged you forward again.

The hallway ended at a heavy metal door. Janson entered a code on the keypad, the soft beep sounding louder than it should have. The lock clicked, and the door opened with a low hiss.

“What’s in there?” you asked, panic bubbling in your throat.

Janson didn’t answer. He pulled you inside, the door hissing shut behind you.

The room was dimly lit, the faint hum of machinery filling the space. It was empty, save for a single chair bolted to the floor in the center.

He released your arm, gesturing to the chair. “Sit.”

You hesitated, your heart pounding. “Janson—”

“Sit.”

The authority in his voice left no room for argument. Slowly, you moved to the chair, sinking into it as your hands trembled slightly.

Janson stepped back, his gaze fixed on you like a hawk watching its prey. “You’re smarter than you let on,” he said quietly. “That much is clear.”

You swallowed hard, your mouth dry.

“But if you’re lying to me,” he continued, his voice dropping, “you’ll regret it.”

The words hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.

He didn’t wait for a response. He turned on his heel and left the room, the door sealing shut behind him with a final, ominous hiss.

And you were alone.

The hum of the machinery grew louder in the silence, pressing against your skull as you stared at the door, your chest tight with fear.

For the first time, you realized just how dangerous Janson really was.