violet

Adjusting was a difficult thing for anyone.

It presented itself differently for different people, and for you, it had been somewhat challenging in the first few months after arriving at Hawkins. You’d been born and raised in California, and you were used to the sun and the temperate weather. You were used to being able to go to the beach when you wanted to and being around people who you had grown up with.

Things changed when your mother met someone. He wasn’t a pleasant man. You were between Max and Billy in terms of age, so you had some understanding of what was happening at home, but you didn’t know how to deal with it. All you knew was that you were someone who was used to helping people; you weren’t one to allow someone to suffer for no reason when you believed that there was something that you could do about it. You’d been the one to try and help Billy, even though he bore no real relation to you as anything other than a step-brother instead of someone related by blood.

The first time that you ever saw him being berated, the first time that you saw things get physical, you tried to interject; there was only so much a fifteen-year-old girl could do, though. Billy didn’t want you to protect him, anyway. Maybe because he was too prideful to admit that he was being abused, or maybe because he didn’t want you to have to deal with what he dealt with. Either way, there was little you could do to help.

So you adjusted to Hawkins, instead.

Max and Billy both had a hard time adjusting for different reasons. They made friends after a bit, but it was clear that neither of them really wanted to be in the new place that they were in. But you made peace with it. You were on the straight-and-narrow. Your grades were top-notch, you were respectful and polite, and you ended up trying out for the volleyball team and the cheer squad.

While you were studying and joining clubs, it became somewhat apparent that everything in Hawkins wasn’t as it seemed. You were involved with something called the Upside Down, something that resulted in everyone you knew nearly dying before your step-brother actually did die. Once Billy was gone, so was the man who was footing most of the bills. You ended up moving into a trailer park with your sister and mother, but neither of them was really taking it well.

Not you, though. You kept up appearances and spent most nights sleeping over at Chrissy Cunningham’s house when you were allowed to. But through it, you became one of the more respected, popular girls at school. People liked you because you were nice and normal, and people questioned how you were related to Max, who had become more reclusive since seeing Billy die.

It wasn’t that you weren’t affected by it. Seeing anyone die, let alone your own step-brother, and then having to move and keep the secret of what really happened at Starcourt Mall that night was hard. But you were in therapy, you didn’t pull away from the people who were close to you, either. You let them help you, let them comfort you when they figured that you were probably upset. You let people in while Max pushed people away, and that made it different for you when everything went down.

But there was some context needed, really.

The thing was, when Billy was still alive, you weren’t really allowed to be around boys. He was only two years older than you, but he was still older than you, and you were still in the same school. He didn’t trust boys around you, so you were mainly only around the girls at school. Chrissy was one of your closest friends. She was sweet, she helped you adjust to being new to the cheer team, and she helped you practice when you were having trouble with some harder moves that everyone had trouble with in the beginning.

She also happened to know that you had a massive crush on Jason Carver.

It had come out one night when you were at her house. She was close friends with Jason. The two had dated a few years back, but she said that they had decided that they were better off as friends. It wasn’t that they didn’t care about each other, because they did, it was just that they had gotten what kind of care they felt wrong when they started dating. So, when you were talking about him, and you got all mousy, it wasn’t hard for her to figure out that you liked him.

She knew that you had to keep it under the radar if you were going to be talking to him, so as to not upset Billy, so she helped you keep it a secret from him when she played matchmaker and tried to get you two together without anyone else present. Through her matchmaking scheme, you did end up being close friends with Jason. But the summer had been difficult with Billy dying, and fall had been mainly spent getting used to everything again. And then the year was just going by so fast.

You and Jason were both still deciding where you wanted to go to college, and that meant that neither of you knew if you were going to see each other ever again after the school year ended. It almost felt counter-productive to admit that you liked him when you knew that you had such limited time together before graduating, but you did find yourself hoping that he would ask you to prom.

The night of the championship game, you had ended up going back to Benny’s old diner with him and the team to celebrate their win. It was the first time that Hawkins had won in years, and it was all thanks to Lucas Sinclair, someone whom you had grown to know well because of the Upside Down. It was nice seeing him fit in, but it was mostly nice being able to spend the night with Jason.

Things weren’t so nice in the morning, though.

The news of Chrissy came a little bit after everyone woke up, but something seemed off. The most obvious answer was that it had something to do with Eddie. He was the last person there with her, and he had run away after she died. There was no one else there, and no one else who knew Chrissy. But why would he do something like that? If you weren’t somewhat (vaguely) familiar with him, maybe you wouldn’t give it any more thought because, to an outsider, it seemed like a pretty clean and dry case. The older boy, who happened to be a drug dealer on the side, had a dead girl in his trailer and was on the run. Sure. Easy. But it wasn’t that easy when you knew about the Upside Down and when you knew that a death like that just wasn’t physically possible.

But it was like Jason had gotten some kind of tunnel vision. It was the easiest answer, and one of his best friends was dead. He needed someone to blame, and he didn’t know anything about the Upside Down. On the one hand, maybe it would be better if he stayed like that. Knowing about the Upside Down put people in danger, people like Billy, like Chrissy. You didn’t want him to be in danger. But Chrissy didn’t know about the Upside Down, neither did Fred, and yet they had both just died in the same way, and there was no way that Eddie could have done anything to Fred - he didn’t even know Fred.

All of that could only really mean that he wasn’t the one to do it, and even if he did somehow develop serial killer tendencies overnight, the things that had happened weren’t physically possible for one human being to do to another human being. Something else was happening, and based upon everything that you knew, that something else had to do with the Upside Down. This meant that Jason was putting himself in harm’s way every single day just because he didn’t know what was happening.

While the others might be somewhat okay with that, they also didn’t really know him. But you did. You were close with him, you spent a lot of time with him, and the idea of him even being involved with this was something that put you off. But he was actively trying to hunt Eddie down, and that meant that he was somehow getting himself tangled up in the Upside Down. So, while the others were investigating a lead on someone named Victor Creel, you were looking for Jason to see if you could try to reason with him.

The words of your sister rang in your ears as you sat across from him. He was partially ready for Chrissy’s funeral, his hands adjusting his tie while you made sure that your hair was in place. But you knew that you needed to say something, you needed to do something. But Max had made a good point earlier - what if he just doesn’t believe you? What if you go out of your way to tell him the truth, and he thinks that you’re insane and ends up getting himself killed anyway?

But he’s willing to believe in the supernatural, isn’t he? He believes that Eddie’s ‘satanic cult’ is somehow behind all of this, so clearly he’s willing to suspend the element of disbelief at least a little bit; otherwise, he wouldn’t be getting involved with this at all.

“Can you help me with this?” Your eyes left your hair as you heard Jason speak from across the room. He seemed to have given up on his tie, a sadness in his eyes that lingered even when they connected with yours in the mirror. Had Jason ever lost someone he cared about before? You were almost tempted to believe that he hadn’t, and now he was experiencing all new emotions for the first time.

Moving to stand in front of him, your fingers wrapped around his tie as you started to do it for him. You’d seen Jason with them on before, but it was possible that he was just too upset to do it right now or that he usually had someone do it for him.

“Doesn’t feel real that we’re going to her funeral, you know? I mean, I know that she’s dead but- it just sucks.”

“I know, I-”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that to you. I know what you’ve been through.”

It hadn’t been even a year since you saw Billy die. As far as everyone in the town knew, he had gotten you and Max out of the mall and ended up dying in the flames. In reality, he had been the one to take the brunt of the attack from the Mind Flayer. But people couldn’t know that there was a Mind Flayer, so the fire excuse was just something that had to stick.

“It’s okay. Just because my step-brother died doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to be upset about our friend dying.” Your voice was soft, gentle. “She was my best friend, it doesn’t feel right that I’m not with her right now but… here we are.”

You adjusted his collar around the tie once it was on properly, smoothing down his suit before looking at him. His features were always so perfect, even the birthmark on the side of his nose made you feel all soft inside. Jason was almost too perfect, too pretty, but you could never get tired of watching him.

“I need to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

He let you take his hand, let you bring him to the bed so you could sit down next to each other while you tried to broach the subject that you were trying to bring up. You had to tell him about the Upside Down; there had to be some way. But everything felt insane. Was it really any more insane to trade one monster that you can’t really see right now to thinking that Eddie Munson was possessed by some sort of demon that gave him the ability to murder people without touching them?

It was all insane - you just needed him to see that your insanity was the real one.

“I… um- there’s-so… Billy didn’t die in a fire.”

“The mall burned, though. Did-”

“It was… there’s this… this thing. You know the curse, like everyone keeps saying that we’re cursed and that people are always dying in this town and stuff?”

“Yeah, but-”

“And the girl with the superpowers that people kept talking about but everyone decided had to be fake?”

“I… yeah.”

“It wasn’t Eddie that killed Chrissy, it was something else. The same thing that killed Barb and Billy and everyone else who’s died recently. It keeps happening, and the same thing that happened to Chrissy is happening to my sister. Something picked her. There was… she was seeing these things in the last couple of days she was alive. Like… clocks and stuff. There was this grotesque-looking creature that she told me about that was like- shaming her and stuff. Making her sad, miserable, and scared. And now she’s dead, and the same kind of thing is happening to Max, but she’d got her music, so she’s okay for now.”

“I don’t understand. Eddie was the last person with her.”

“Yeah, because of the thing. She was seeing this thing, and it was making her so anxious on top of everything she was going through with her parents, and she went to Eddie for drugs but-”

“Have you seen him?”

You were quiet for a minute, tapping your fingers on your leg before relenting. “Yeah.” You admitted, keeping your voice low. “I know where he is, but I know he didn’t do it. He ran because he thought it was a ghost or whatever, but it wasn’t a ghost. It was… I have-”

Letting go of his hand, you moved to pull up your cardigan’s sleeve so he could see the giant slash marks on your forearm. The scar was unnatural, like some sort of small dinosaur had done it rather than an animal or something of that nature. You’d covered them up from the moment that you got them fighting against one of those creatures because they looked so awful, but you’d show them to Jason if you had to.

“One of these things almost killed me, and you have to at least admit that this shit doesn’t look like anything you’ve ever seen before.”

Jason’s hands were gentle on your arm, inspecting the scar tissue as though it was the first time he was seeing your skin. He’d noticed that you always covered up your arms, but he figured that it was just some unfounded insecurity that you had, so he never mentioned it to you. When you refused to get in the pool during a party he was having, he almost tried to talk to you about it, but he didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, so he never brought it up to you.

“Listen, I know it sounds insane, but it’s not any more insane than thinking that Eddie Munson has superpowers that he uses for evil. There’s a thing, a terrible, terrible thing. And I never told you because I didn’t want you to end up-”

Now you did choke up a bit, your face turning away from him. Everyone who knew was in constant danger; your sister could die if something went wrong in what you were doing, and your step-brother was already dead. Your mom didn’t know what was going on, but just the fact that she had lost so much was making everything a little bit more difficult for her than it needed to be. She hated being in the trailer park, and she hated being in Hawkins now that she had lost the person who had her move here in the first place.

“End up what?” His hand had moved from your arm at some point, one remaining there and caressing your skin with his thumb in a comforting sort of way, while the other turned your head so you were looking at him. “Dead?”

“Yeah, dead. And now… now it’s choosing people so randomly. Chrissy and Fred didn’t know about this, and Eddie was never involved in this stuff before. And it’s like you’re in danger anyway, and I don’t want anything to happen to you. I can’t lose you, I can’t. I can lose a lot, but not you.”

Jason had always meant more to you than most people did, but that was something that you tended not to share. Sure, Chrissy knew you had a crush on him and teased you a little bit for it, but it was more than just a crush.

“You won’t, okay? I believe you. But I need to keep you safe, too. So if you want to go be with your sister after the funeral, you can be. But I want to come with you.”

“No, Jason-”

“What if you’re with her and it picks me just because you said something? What if it’s after the people you care about? I want to come with you, so let me.”

The thing was, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Chrissy was your best friend, and Max was your sister. The Upside Down had killed your step-brother, too. But Fred felt like an outlier, someone who was close with Nancy. Maybe it was punishing the entire Party for standing up against it - maybe he would be next, and maybe it wouldn’t be drawn out like Chrissy was.

“Fine, okay. You can come with me, but don’t get yourself hurt. Promise me that you’re not going to get yourself hurt.”

“I promise, but you need to promise me the same thing.”

Your eyes searched his for any sort of deception, but you found nothing. “Okay, yeah, I promise too.”

So you went with him to the funeral, and afterwards you had to surprise everyone when you showed up with Jason Carver in tow. You had known that they would be gathered at the trailer park to discover what they had learned so far, but they were all a bit surprised to see that he was with you. He wasn’t someone any of them were hoping to see, even though they all knew that you were close.

“Why-”

“I told him about everything; he knows it wasn’t Eddie.” Your voice was calm as you waved one hand to dismiss the concerns that you knew were about to come from Nancy. Your other hand was still holding onto Jason’s, something that neither of you had stopped doing since around the time that you had left the funeral. “I know we’re supposed to talk about it before we tell people, but I needed him to know.”

Max seemed the least surprised out of anyone. She knew that you adored Jason, that you always had, so she seemed almost a bit relieved that you’d at least talked about something of meaning, even if you hadn’t told him how you felt about him.

“Fine, but how much did you tell him?”

“Probably not enough.”

It was Steve who motioned for you both to sit down. He’d gone through something quite similar, from what you’d heard. He had been a bit of an asshole to everyone before, but he changed a bit over time. He had been exposed to the Upside Down, and now he was used to all of this. He seemed more keen on letting you bring your friend into the fold than anyone else did, but everyone still took the time to explain everything to him in great detail until it was decided that the group would part ways for the night.

Max decided that she was going to go off with Lucas, whom Jason had apparently been unable to find for the last day. But you decided to go back to Jason’s home, not feeling comfortable with the entire prospect of him knowing, because you were worried that it was going to put him in some sort of danger.

He was lying beside you in bed, his eyes trained on the ceiling. If any of you got any sort of meaningful sleep, it would be a miracle.

You expected him to just turn onto his side and try to sleep, but you were surprised to find his hand wrapped around yours. Your fingers squeezed against his before you turned your head to look at him, your eyes locking with his blue eyes.

“I had a sign.”

“What?” Your eyebrows furrowed after he spoke, confusion clear on your face while you tried to make sense of what he was trying to tell you.

“I was going to ask you to prom, I made this cheesy sign that I wanted to show you, and Chrissy was supposed to help with it. I just thought- I mean, I never told you, but I always really liked you. I just didn’t want to ruin things, even though Chrissy kept telling me that you liked me back. I figure she’d want me to tell you the truth now, just in case.”

Silence filled the room as you actually contemplated what he was saying, but it wasn’t something uncomfortable. It couldn’t be when you leaned over to press a kiss to his forehead. “I like you, too. I’ve liked you for a while, I just never knew how to tell you. I guess now’s as good a time as any.”

Jason’s eyes had fluttered shut when you kissed his forehead, but he did open them before he spoke again. “Can you kiss me on the mouth?”

There was a light fluttering in your stomach when he asked that, but you obliged. Leaning over, your lips pressed softly against his. It was careful, not like you’d never kissed before, but like you wanted to savour the way that it felt to kiss him.

He was careful with the way that he kissed you, one hand holding onto your cheek while the other remained intertwined with yours. Jason kissed in a way that made it clear that he had been thinking about doing this for a while, that this wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment thing that he was doing because he was grieving. This was something personal to him, and something that you probably should have been doing a long time ago.

When he pulled back, you didn’t let him go far. Your arms were around him, your head resting against his chest. Jason just held you tightly, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. It was easier to fall asleep that way, easier than it had been in a while. Nothing was going to happen to either of you tonight, not without you being there to stop it, at least.

Everything was different now, and the strict line that you had placed between the life that you had known about the Upside Down and the life that you had with Jason and Chrissy was now incredibly blurred. You’d always made a point of keeping the normalcy separate from the crazy part of your life, and it had worked thus far. But it was only a matter of time before all of the people close to you were involved with it in some way. You’d lost Chrissy, and maybe, had she known about what was happening, she could have been saved. Regardless of whether that was true or not, you weren’t going to make the same mistake with Jason if you could help it.

When you’d been assigned to work on a science project with Jason, you didn’t really think that it was going to be much of a big deal. You knew him, and you had known him for a few years. You got along, but you didn’t talk that much, so you didn’t have that big of an impression of him in your mind. He was really just someone who you mainly saw in the hallways.

That’s not to say that he hadn’t made any sort of meaningful impact on you, though. He made some impact, but you just weren’t sure how to properly explain it.

Jason was popular. You, too, were popular. Just not on your own merit, which made it a bit different. You were popular because your brother was Steve Harrington, and Steve was one of the most popular boys in the school. People knew him, and they knew you because they knew him. But that didn’t mean that people really knew that much about you separate from Steve.

Some did. Some people really did want to get to know you; they had no reason not to. You were good at school, you got straight-a’s, you were a cheerleader, and you were on the academic decathlon team, so a few different types of people knew you all the same. But Steve, more specifically, after everything had happened with the upside down and The Party, was a bit more protective of you than he had been when you were both a bit younger.

That’s not to say that Steve wasn’t protective before, because he was.

When you were younger, he let you come to the parties that he threw and some of the parties that he went to. But he made sure that you weren’t getting too close to any guys. He let you come along to hang out with his friends, but if he got a whiff of an idea that one of them was going to try something to either hurt you or flirt with you, he made sure to shut it down immediately. The idea of anyone trying to be with you irritated him because he knew teenage boys - he knew himself, didn’t he? - and he knew that they couldn’t be trusted.

Then everything happened. He got a little less weird about the idea of boys hitting on you, but you got weird about it in turn. What if a boy did hit on you? There were dangers in the world that they could never know about, and being with someone meant putting them at risk of being exposed to something terrible. It meant putting more people in danger, and that wasn’t something that you were willing to do. You were a junior, anyway. Once you got out of Hawkins, everything was going to change - maybe things would get better.

Even so, you still wanted to finish school normally. As far as you knew, you didn’t need to worry about the upside down anymore, and Steve was going to graduate this year, meaning that the final year of school would be up to you. He did his best, as of late, to keep you from people who he figured were genuinely bad. People who were like he was a few years ago, or people like Billy Hargrove. But he had laid off a bit; he wanted you to finish on a high note, and you were sure that you would.

Really, it was supposed to be clean and easy. You would finish school in a year, Steve would finish in a month, and you would try to put the whole upside down thing behind you without any romantic strings attached.

Two things happened around the same time that put a wrench in that plan.

The first issue, and really the main issue that caused the other, was Jason. You were assigned to work on your final project for Physics with him, and that wasn’t something that you were particularly stressed about. The first day, you went to the library with him. It was supposed to be easy and simple, just an hour or two planning before you met up the next day at his house to discuss it. But you ended up spending an hour or two talking about the project and about three hours talking to each other about anything that you could think about discussing.

Then, the next day, you got a lot of research for the project done at his house before you ended up sitting on the couch together and watching whatever was on the television. You weren’t really paying attention, though. Jason was right next to you, and you hadn’t really noticed until then that he was attractive. While you noticed. Everyone noticed. He was incredibly popular, and people liked looking at him; you knew that. But you hadn’t noticed that you, personally, found him attractive until he was recalling how he got his silly little shark watch while on vacation, and you were listening intently like he was telling you something massively important.

That was how you realized that you liked the way that his blond hair fell over his forehead and the blue in his eyes. It was how you came to understand that you wanted to listen to any word that would come out of his mouth if you got to look at him for a little bit longer. He was beautiful, and that was a problem. And even with it being a problem, you went out to dinner with him like it was something normal. Maybe it was. Going out with friends was something that you did all the time. But this was different. He was cute, and he talked to you in a way that made you want to keep talking to him. It didn’t really take a rocket scientist for you to realize that you had a little bit of a crush on him.

With that realization in mind, it made all of today a bit more complicated.

Jason was at your home - he was in your room with the door wide open while you both focused on studying for about an hour before you recalled that your brother was downstairs cleaning because he was having a party later in the night. That was the second issue: the party. Because all night you had been trying to figure out if you should just ask him if you could bring a plus-one.

Steve was graduating in a month. He was throwing a party to celebrate graduation with his friends before the official grad party the following month. It was more like the house parties that he had been having while you were growing up. Something to ring in the end of everything that he had known for most of his life, and something predominantly for the seniors. You were only invited because you lived in the house, and even with that itself being a problem, you had also never once asked to bring a plus-one to one of Steve’s parties. If you started now, especially for such a hyper-specific sort of party, Steve was going to know why. But the more time that you spent working with Jason, the more time you realized that it was probably your best shot at making a move. He was popular, and he wouldn’t be single for long; you knew that you needed to do something.

So, swallowing your pride, you were sitting on the couch in front of Steve while you tried to figure out the best possible way to broach the subject.

“So, uh- you know that party you’re having tonight?”

“I’m… I- yeah?” He seemed a bit incredulous, and probably rightfully so, given that he had been in the middle of setting it up when you decided that you needed to come downstairs and ask him something so important that you had to abruptly stop studying for your final project.

“I was just wondering if I could bring someone, maybe.”

“Someone like who? It better not be one of the kids; this is a grown-up party.”

“You’re hardly a grown-up, Steve.”

“Stop avoiding the question.”

“Fine, jeez, I wanted to ask Jason. You know, he’s in the house already, and it’s uh… it seems… mean to not invite him since he sees you setting up.”

“I don’t think it’s mean, he’s a junior.”

“Yeah, but so I am I.”

“Uh-huh, and you live here.”

Clearing your throat, you toyed with your fingers for a moment while you tried to figure out the best way to respond without giving yourself away. The last thing that you wanted to do was openly admit that you had a crush on anyone, much less Jason Carver. But the whole point of even asking was to try to make a move, wasn’t it? Steve was going to find out one way or another.

“Can he still come, though?”

“You’ve never, ever, ever asked if anyone can come.”

“Yeah, but-”

“Are you hiding something from me?” His tone made it clear that he knew just as much as the way that he sat down beside you with the most smug grin that you’d ever seen on his face in your entire life did. “Like, I don’t know, maybe you’re not just spending so much time with him for school.”

“Well, we’re like very much working on the project.”

“Mhm. And what else? Chemistry, is it?”

“Physics.”

Steve’s gaze was unwavering and far-too-knowing, but you didn’t want to actually say it. You had to, though. He wasn’t going to give in if you didn’t just admit what you didn’t want to admit and you knew that. Steve could be like an immovable object when he wanted to be.

“Fine, Steve, I like him, okay? Can I please invite him?”

“Aww-”

“I’m gonna hit you.”

“Save it.” He held one of your wrists to stop you from smacking him with one of the pillows on the couch. There was a glare on your face as you looked at him, but he seemed to have never been happier in his life. For someone who had never wanted you to be in a relationship before, he seemed to have had a change of tune. Or, maybe he just found it funny to hold above your head. “Invite him, but you better not chicken out.”

“I won’t, I promise.” You might, but you were going to pretend that you wouldn’t when you finally left to go back to your room.

“How’s Steve?” Jason was waiting rather patiently, fiddling with some part of what you had already set up. It wasn’t much, but you had started working on the ideas that you’d been coming up with. All you really needed to do was make something that worked, but you both got straight-a’s in all of your classes so you were going to come up with something a little better than that.

“Good, good, um- he’s having a party here tonight. I was wondering if you would want to go? I mean, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. It’s just for the seniors anyway, but I kinda… live here, and like-it would be-I-I want you to go.”

“Tonight? Uh-”

It was a weekend, but he had rather strict parents. Even so, he smiled in a way that told you that his mind was made up before he even really said anything.

“You want me to go?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’ll be there. Or, here. I’ll be here.”

“I mean, downstairs, probably, the party isn’t in my room.”

The party wasn’t really in your room for everyone else, but it was for you.

It wasn’t that it was awkward downstairs with all of the seniors and the two of you being the only juniors, or even really with Steve staring you down like he was going to make his own life-sized Ken and Barbie dolls kiss. It was just that, after about an hour or two, you’d naturally migrated upstairs.

Jason had jumped in the pool at some point for a swim, and you told him that he could use your blow dryer and whatever he needed on his hair. But you went with him up to your room, and now you were sitting on your bed with a bottle of beer that you were sharing between both of you. He let you lay your legs against his lap, and neither of you seemed too bothered about how close you were sitting. You’d reasoned that it was so the beer didn’t spill on your bed, but that wasn’t really why you wanted to be close to him, and you knew that.

“We should do this next year.” Jason mused, leaning back against one of the pillows on your bed while you took a sip from the beer in between you and passed it to him.

“What, throw a grad party? I was probably planning on it, anyway.”

“No no, we should. Like, both of us.”

“Mm, that would be cool.” You agreed, though you weren’t sure what good throwing a party together would be; it could be fun. But wasn’t that the in that you wanted? Or, at least some sort of confirmation that you weren’t crazy in assuming that Jason wanted something to do with you after everything was said and done.

There was a part of you that was still worried. You’d gotten involved with something incredibly dangerous, and you didn’t want to involve someone else in it by being close to them. But you wanted to figure that it was over. It had been months since everything happened, and there hadn’t been a single peep about another attack that you knew of. A new mall had just been opened, and the town seemed to be moving on from the attacks at the school and around town.

Maybe you could be happy - maybe you deserved to be.

“Have you been to the mall yet?” You asked, leaning forward so you were resting against the pillows that had been propped up against the wall as well. You were shoulder to shoulder now, and that made your heart flutter with nerves, but there was a bit of excitement in that feeling, too.

“Not yet.”

Jason took a moment to think about his next words, though. A long enough moment that you both spoke at the same time with the exact same idea.

“We should go together.” Came out of both of your mouths, which made him laugh in a way that made your stomach get all mushy. He was way too attractive to be sitting next to anyone in bed, but he was next to you, and all you wanted to do was kiss him and get closer to him.

“I’m free tomorrow.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Okay, I’ll pick you up.”

He took a sip from the beer before offering the last bit to you. You took it happily, hoping that the bit of liquid courage would stop making you so jittery over what was going on. He was just asking you to go to the mall; it wasn’t a date. Or, maybe it was. You wanted it to be a date, you wanted him to come to this party because you wanted to go on a date with him, and you were sitting with your legs draped over his lap like you were halfway to sitting on top of him. None of those aspects was platonic, but it was difficult to get out of your head.

It stopped being so difficult when you felt his pointer finger brushing along yours. He was doing that on purpose, and you weren’t going to let it pass by. Your hand turned over so he could intertwine your fingers, your eyes locked on your hands together, while you tried not to overthink what was happening.

“Hey, look at me.” His voice was soft, but not commanding. He was a confident guy, but he was generally a nice one, too. The kind of clean-cut boy who people’s parents liked to meet, the kind that would go to the ends of the Earth to protect his girl if he had to. But he was being gentle right now, maybe because it was obvious that you were a bit nervous. He urged you to look at him, rather than making you, and when he did, his next question was equally as careful. “Can I kiss you?”

When you nodded, his free hand moved to cradle your cheek. You leaned into the touch, your eyes fluttering when you felt his mouth against yours. His kiss was sweet and soft, experimental in all the ways that you wouldn’t expect from someone who everyone wanted. You were sure he’d been kissed before, but he didn’t do it all sloppy, or like he just liked to get his rocks off. He did it like he cared. He took it low and steady, and he didn’t mind when your fingers tightened around his hand, nor when your other arm moved to wrap around his neck.

Jason helped to hoist you so you were at a more comfortable angle, your legs on either side of his hips, and his body pressed against yours. His tongue brushed against yours, a sigh exiting your mouth as you tried to stabilize yourself a bit. Your arms were around his neck, but his kiss stopped after a moment. He breathed heavy against your mouth when he pulled back, his forehead pressed into yours.

“I know we’re already in bed and all, but I want to take you on a proper date before… you know.”

“I’d really, really like that.”

The amount of hairspray that you had in your hair should be considered an obscenity of some kind, but you didn’t have much say in the matter if you wanted to present yourself well at work.

Everything was so new and experimental at Vought. You were brought on as an assistant, but had in your agreement that you would be given Compound when they had a replacement lined up for you, ‘just in case’. That alone should have deterred you from the project, but some part of you figured that you weren’t actually going to be given Compound V after working for the company for a month. They probably could have found someone rather easily within that period of time to replace you, but they didn’t.

It wasn’t that you didn’t want the experimental drug, because you did. The entire reason you were on the company’s radar was that you had signed up for it, but they decided that they had a better, more temporary use for you.

You weren’t upset about it, anyway. You couldn’t be. Not when you had made friends with some of the people you were working with.

Mainly, you had made friends with Bombsight, or Robbie, though he tended to be okay with either. He was your favorite out of the group of new Supes. He was easily one of the most attractive people you had met before, and he always seemed to have a way of keeping you entertained. He talked to you before anyone else did, even though you were just there to take the coffee order of everyone in the room. He took the time to make you laugh, even though he really didn’t have to.

From what you had gathered about him, he at the very least knew that he was good-looking. But he wasn’t in your face about it, even if that was true. He didn’t sit around, making it clear that he knew that half of the people in the room were going to turn and stare at him whenever he walked in. Though he did seem to be at least somewhat aware that you found it rather distracting when he sat with his legs wide open half of the time. But you didn’t let on that much, and you didn’t see much of a purpose in doing so, anyway. You wanted to, but you sort of worked for him, and he seemed to respect the fact that this entire thing was very new. Vought, the company having assistants and superheroes. The last thing that anyone needed was him misreading the signals that you’re putting down and getting the company sued before it could even really get off the ground.

Another Supe on the new team, Soldier Boy (or Ben, either worked, he claimed), didn’t have a single problem with flirting with you in front of everyone. You knew that he was flirting; anyone with a pair of eyes knew that he was flirting. They knew that he was staring right at your chest when you happened to bend over enough that skin could be exposed if you weren’t so keen on wearing undershirts. Everyone knew that he started at your legs, and your hips, and your ass when you were doing just about anything in the same room as him. He made it no secret that he was interested in you, but you weren’t quite sure how to feel about that.

It wasn’t that he was unattractive; it was quite the opposite. He was a good-looking guy, and he knew it better than anyone did. But he also seemed to have other people who had caught his eye. He was a clean-cut player. He got around, and he got around with other people whom you worked with, like Liberty. You knew that he didn’t mind sleeping with anyone or anything, and that made it difficult for you to deal with the teasing and the flirting. Because the thing was, you’d never call it harassment.

If you really wanted him to stop, he would. You doubted that he’d even tell anyone if you confronted him. He could be a bit intimidating, but he didn’t seem like the type to fuck you over for telling him no. You got jittery when he touched you, you felt something in your stomach and between your thighs when he got too close to you, and sometimes things got a little bit out of hand. Or, really, one time things got a little bit out of hand, and every other time things were pretty under control.

You just remembered that you had been standing in front of a window, looking out into the city by yourself. You’d never worked in a building like the one that you were working in, not really. You had office jobs before, sure, but nothing like this. The scale that was going into making sure that everything was perfect was something that you had never seen in person before, and something that you weren’t sure if you would ever see again.

It almost made you feel important to be able to look into the city like this, knowing that Supes were the talk of the town and that you were in line to get injected too. Truthfully, you might die if you did. There were only five people who had been injected and lived to tell the tale, and a part of you wasn’t sure why you were even counting down the days until they told you that it was coming. You weren’t sure that you wanted it to come.

The thought had been stressing you out enough that when Soldier Boy came into the room, when he flirted with you and stood so close behind you that his chest was pressed against your back, you couldn’t help the way that you leaned into it. The way that your ass pressed against his hips, or the way that you let his hands rest on your waist for just a moment before one of them inched between your thighs.

Everything else had been a blur. You remembered being pressed against a bookshelf in the study that you were in. You remembered the way that his lips felt on your neck and the way that he felt inside of you. But you also remembered that you realized, pretty succinctly, afterwards, that you didn’t have half as much interest in him as you had in Bombsight. Soldier Boy was good in bed; he knew how to please a woman, and he knew how to keep you interested. He even cleaned you up afterwards and made sure that you were okay. But there was just some emotion in you that was missing, something that you were quite sure that you would have felt if you had been with Bombsight instead.

How would you know, though? You hadn’t been with Bombsight, and you weren’t sure if he was going to give you the chance, even though he had lightly flirted with you when he had the opportunity to do so.

Things changed, though. Faster than you would have liked, too.

You’d anticipated that maybe, someday, someone would come to you and remind you that you had signed up to be tested on, too. That they were working on finding a replacement just in case. Or, really, no matter what. If it worked and you lived, you would probably take on a different role in the company. But if it didn’t work and you died, then you were just going to have to be replaced anyway. It didn’t make much of a difference. No matter what, that day didn’t seem like it would ever come, but after two months, it did.

The memory of being injected with Compound V was something that was gone the moment it happened. You somewhat remembered that Bombsight was there, that he was the one person they allowed to be with you when it happened because he was the first one to ask. You knew that, if you were to die, you didn’t much like the last image that he would have of you, but you figured that you would rather be with him than be alone or be with anyone else. But if he held you or stayed awkwardly in the corner, you would never remember.

The injection seemed to fry that part of your memory.

When you woke up, your entire face was covered in blood. There was blood clotted along your cheeks and your lips from where you had probably been coughing, and someone was in the process of cleaning it up. But you were alive, and that much seemed to be a shock to them.

“Y-oh my God.” Bombsight was beside you the moment that your face was cleaned up, his glove coming off so he could feel your neck, right below your jawline. “I don’t understand. She still has no pulse.”

“You thought I was dead?”

“You have no pulse.”

Right. That makes sense.

“It could be a side effect of whatever power she got, sir.”

It was, you’d come to find out rather quickly. You had a pulse, your heart was beating, but no one could feel it. It was like there was an impenetrable barrier around your vulnerabilities that was being protected. You were stronger than before, much stronger, and you were better with weapons that you had certainly never trained with. It seemed like it gave you talents more than it gave you straightforward powers, but you weren’t too offended by that. It made the next step in Vought’s position for you to make more sense, anyway.

If you had something harmless, being told that you were a secret weapon would make no sense. You wouldn’t wear a cool outfit like the other Supes, nor would you be in the public eye like them. To anyone else, you would just appear as an upper-level employee at the company. You were business-savvy, so they could genuinely use you in those areas. But you would handle grittier work, the type of work that would typically be assigned to a bald man in a suit with leather gloves and a suitcase. Someone who no one would suspect could easily overpower them, but could.

But that meant that you weren’t an assistant anymore, and that meant that you were essentially equals with the man who had chosen to be with you when you took the injection in the first place. The shift had been palpable within him, but that also meant that it was palpable with Soldier Boy. Soldier Boy, with whom you had sex with two weeks ago, and it felt like they were in some sort of silent competition that you wanted no part in. Bombsight had no qualms with being with you now, at the very least, he had fewer qualms with expressing it out of fear that he’d upset you, since you were more on an equal playing field.

But Soldier Boy never had any issue with expressing himself, and Soldier Boy had no issue with expressing that he wanted to fuck you again. You, however, were rather aware that you preferred Bombsight. You knew that from the moment you’d been intimate with Soldier Boy, and you weren’t sure how to tell him that. What if you were being presumptuous and Bombsight didn’t want that? What if he was just a nice guy and you thought he was hitting on you when he wasn’t? Plus, you weren’t afraid of Soldier Boy, but you had never been good at doing things that you knew might hurt someone’s feelings.

And yet? You were well aware of what you wanted. You didn’t need to listen to them bicker with each other or have Private Angel and Torpedo remind you that they’re both clearly vying for your attention to realize that. They were both flirting, but you really only wanted one of them. It was Private Angel who eventually got you to actually admit that, and Private Angel who sent Bombsight your way with all of that information to finally (hopefully) stop the bickering and pining that has been going on for as long as she’s known you.

“How’s… this? What is this, actually?”

Your attention was diverted from the papers that you were working on. It was a speech that was being planned for Soldier Boy to give in a few days' time with Liberty, something that you knew was incredibly important to the company and its image. But it also needed to be planned just right. You would be there, and the company knew that a party interested in dismantling Supes would be there as well. There needed to be a big enough diversion in the speech to feel natural and not incite conspiracy, but enough that people wouldn’t notice if you took the party at interest out during the speech.

“A speech, nothing. You’ll see in a few days.” You shrugged it off, leaning back to sit up straight when Bombsight approached you. “Business as usual.”

“Another defector?”

“Something like that, yeah. Disgruntled guy who got rejected for the trials, says that he was denied his ‘fair shake’ at being a Supe when his DNA didn’t align with Compound V. Guess he’d rather die than be told no.”

“Mm.”

Bombsight usually talked a bit more, and he almost always had something more to add to conversations. But right now, he was eerily quiet, and it wasn’t something that you were used to. You watched him with your eyes squinted a bit as he pulled up a chair, sitting beside you. His legs were spread enough that you were watching him quite clearly, but you could swear that there was more of a bulge in his pants than normal.

“You can keep writing.”

“But you’re here, maybe I wanna talk to you.”

“Maybe I want you to keep writing.”

“But-”

“Please?”

“Fine, Robbie.” You huffed as you leaned back down to keep writing, but after you got a paragraph or so done, you could feel one of his hands on your arm. You watched the way that his fingers grazed delicately against the cotton button-down’s sleeve. The way that he undid the button at the wrist was just so his fingers could brush against your arm. He was doing it on purpose, touching you just to get a rise out of you. But he was sitting closer, too. His leg brushes against your thigh, his chin moving to rest on your shoulder. “You’re far.”

“What?” He paused when you spoke, almost sure that he misunderstood you. But you understood what was happening here. Private Angel had done you a favor, and you were getting what you wanted. You weren’t going to let that pass you by, especially since it took two to tango.

“You’re sitting too far away.”

Your eyes met his when you let your pen fall.

“How close would you suggest I sit?”

“I don’t know, maybe we could share a chair?”

He pretended to think about it for a moment before you were both shuffling. He was in your chair, his hands on your hips, and pulling you down to sit on his lap. You were seated rather comfortably against him after a moment, before you picked up your pen and started writing again. But he was kissing your neck the moment that you were writing, and you were really trying to keep up the ruse that you were still invested in the speech and not rather wet and pressed up against him.

“Did he hold you like this?”

So he knew that, too.

“Not really, no.”

“Did you think about me?” His tongue dragged against your skin when he asked that, and you were certain that you almost felt your soul leave your body when he nipped at your neck.

“Yes, I thought about you.”

“Did you wish it was me?”

Bombsight was getting bolder, you noted. He had removed his gloves and placed them on the desk, one of his hands cupping yours so he could make sure that you were still working. His other hand was pressed on your inner thigh, his fingers trailing past your lace garters before pressing lightly against the dampness that was coating the center of your panties.

“I did-I-” You were certain that your brain short-circuited when he pushed his fingers underneath the fabric of your panties, his middle finger sliding through the slickness of your folds. He moaned against your neck, and some part of you knew that no one else could ever make you feel this way. “Tho-thought about you, I wished it was you. I wanted it to be you so bad, and I-after-all I co-ould think about was you.”

“I bet.”

Admittedly, he seemed a bit distracted. He did have two fingers inside of you, though, so you weren’t shocked that his mind wasn’t entirely thinking about whether or not you thought about him when you were with someone else. But he did take your pen out of your hand, urging you to relax against him. The moment he did, you leaned back against him. Your head pressed into his shoulder, your lips parted as a soft sigh left your lips.

“Robbie-”

“Mhm?”

“Please don’t stop.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart.”

His fingers moved a bit quicker, pushing deeply inside of you and curling just where you needed them. You could feel his thumb brush upwards to press circles into your clit. The pressure was just enough to make you squirm but not enough to feel overstimulating. He seemed to know just how to make you feel good, and he must have known it, given the obscene sounds that were leaving your lips as your body pressed back against his.

Bombsight’s lips were pressed against your neck again, muffling his quiet moans as your hips slowly ground against his bulge on instinct. Everything he did made you squirm, and that made you brush up against him. He was just as much of a wreck as you were, and that was definitely saying something.

He held you through it, though. Keeping you close while his fingers worked inside of you until your pussy clenched around them. His grip was rather tight as you cried out softly, trying to keep yourself from making too much noise that it would draw anyone’s attention, but knowing, too, that there was a part of you that didn’t mind too much if anyone heard.

It wasn’t until you came down from it enough to pay attention to your surroundings that you noticed that he was kissing your neck again. Though he did seem a bit surprised when your hands moved underneath you so you could undo the belt on his pants.

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to, though.” You responded, turning back to face him. His cheeks were a little flushed, his lips parted and somewhat wet. But his blue eyes were blown out, all dark, his blond hair a bit of a mess. He looked good, but he looked good every single time that you looked at him, so you weren’t too surprised. “Do you want to? I only want to if you do.”

There was a small bit of your brain reminding you that you needed to be careful with this - there were certain things that were considered polite and impolite in society, and having sex with someone like this was certainly not considered to be polite. But he had just fingered you, so you figured that some of those manners that you were brought up on weren’t in the picture anymore. Really, they had probably flown out of the window the moment that you sat down on his lap.

“I do- God, I do.”

The smile that covered your lips was a bit infectious, but neither of you focused on it for too long. Bombsight worked on his pants rather quickly, while you took your damp panties off so you weren’t just trying to keep them out of the way while you were together. But that was taken care of soon enough, and when he was inside of you, you couldn’t bring yourself to understand why you hadn’t done this sooner.

Your hips moved slowly against his at first, taking him deeper than you had anticipated in the first move, but getting used to it in the long-run. His body felt like it melded against yours perfectly, his hands finding your hips and holding you to him while your soft moans filled the room. But you tried to keep quiet, mainly. Not just because there was a risk of people hearing you, but because you really, really wanted to hear the noises that were coming out of his lips. You’d heard him make little noises here and there before. Mainly, whenever he got hurt in some way, nothing that you were overtly getting off to. But this was different. He was moaning because he was inside of you, and he was doing it so close to your ear that it would have been impossible to miss.

One of his hands moved to the front of you, pressing you back tighter against him when you started to move faster. Your head was pressed back against him, resting right at his collarbone, while you leaned into him. Your eyes were rolled back just a bit, though you bit down into your inner cheek to avoid making a noise that was too loud when you felt him hit just the right spot inside of you.

Everything felt like it was slow and fast at the same time. You were with him, you were moving with him, and you could feel him inside of you over and over again, and that was all that mattered. You weren’t really sure how long it went on before you both finished; all you really knew was that, at some point, you’d both ended up slouched against the desk with one of his hands gripping your hips so tightly that it may have hurt if you felt pain in the same way that a human did still.

Bombsight was as careful about cleaning up as he was about anything else. He kept you close while he cleaned you up before setting you down in the chair that he had been sitting on. But you stopped him when he went to put his gloves back on, taking hold of one of his hands and tugging yourself up on moderately shaky legs so you could meet him in the middle.

“Don’t run off.”

“I’m not.”

“You totally are.”

He stopped, though. His hands found your shoulders to stabilize you when he realized that you had been a little shaky standing up. But Bombsight didn’t run off, even though some part of him seemed to want to.

“It should have been you from the beginning, anyway.” Your voice was so quiet that it was probably easy to miss. But he was so close to you, there was no way that he missed anything that was coming out of your mouth. “I just figured- it just felt like-”

“I get it, it’s… complicated.”

“Yeah.”

His eyes averted to your mouth, and you realized for perhaps the first time since he came in here that he’d kissed your skin but not your mouth. You wondered what his lips tasted like, what he would feel like pressed even closer against you. It didn’t really seem like you needed to wonder for long when one hand slowly moved to your face. One of you closed the distance, and it really didn’t matter which one. But someone did, and all you could really think about was how good he was at kissing you. He was good at everything, and it was almost insufferable, but you had your fingers tangled in his hand and tugging him closer before you could really spend too much time thinking about that.

“The fuck did they put in your hair to get it so stiff?” You teased, breaking a bit of the tension when he pulled back. His smile was adorable, the dimples in his cheeks making you feel weak at the knees in all the ways that you figured he was supposed to.

“The same stuff they put in your hair, don’t be a hypocrite.” He wasn’t wrong, especially given how stiff your hair was when he twirled it around his finger. “We should go wash it out together.”

The first day that you met him, everyone warned you that you needed to be nervous around him. He was volatile, cruel, and not to be trusted.

Maybe for a moment you had been nervous, but it didn’t last. Not when you got into a room with him, anyway. You weren’t like one of the other picks for The Seven; Homelander had picked you personally because he believed that your good image would be good for the team. There had been some behind the scenes controversies, some people claiming that there was too much violence being propagated by the movies. There wasn’t really a hero that was clear-cut as being a good guy, besides, in their eyes, maybe Homelander and Queen Maeve.

You, on the other hand, were a kid’s television show star.

Ultraviolet, named for the rainbow colors that the flames that came from your hands could make. Your powers weren’t all too similar to Lamplighter’s, and as opposed to his more gritty persona, you came off as bright and colorful.

In reality, your hands didn’t shoot the colors of rainbows; they were only edited to look like that on television. There was a hue that would surround your hands and your feet when the flames came out, a natural protection from the heat, but the colors came out different every time. The most common was bright blue, like the flame from an oven once it was on high. But they could also come out red, or yellow, or any other color that would be associated with the rainbow. Sometimes it was two or more colors, but often it was just one. More lackluster in person, but the persona that Vought had created for you made up for it.

You wore a one-piece bodysuit with a blue background and a rainbow across the stomach, with a cape that was supposed to emulate a cloud. The shoes of choice for the show were a pair of roller skates that were often edited to look like there was something coming from your feet - typically a rainbow trailing behind you. You weren’t the most powerful Supe, to be sure. Your powers weren’t necessarily weak, but they weren’t all that special, sparing the color that set them apart from most other people with powers to do with fire.

But your image was squeaky clean. So Homelander recommended you personally, and when Vought pushed back a bit, saying that your image was a bit too different from some of the others and that your color-scheme was too similar to A-Train’s, he insisted. So you weren’t nervous when you met him, because you were fully aware that he was the one who wanted you in the first place.

It was such a small thing, really. Not being afraid of someone you were only just meeting was something that… most people could say in most situations. But that tiny thing for you made all the difference for him. You were the first person, in a long line of people, who wasn’t afraid of him. Your heartbeat didn’t skyrocket any more than it would when anyone would when they met someone for the first time. You didn’t disrespect him, but you weren’t walking on eggshells around him, either. You treated him normally, and that was odd for him.

Something small for you was how you ended up being so close.

Irritatingly close, for some.

When there was an issue, he went to you with it. To handle it, to vent about it, to complain about something that other people would judge him for. When he did something bad, he was candid about it. He told you when something went wrong, he told you about the flight, he told you about everything that had happened between him and Maeve and everything that had led Starlight to hate being on the team so much that he knew of. And it was mainly current things that he complained about until it wasn’t.

There was one particular night that he had come to you, clearly upset. He told you a lot about his upbringing, how he had been made in a lab without anyone who really cared about him. Without anything to bring him any real comfort. He had been made for one purpose, and one purpose only. You’d gotten a lot closer that night, but it was also the night that you realized that you felt more about him than what a friend should feel.

Maybe you shouldn’t have been petting his hair and letting him rest against you. And you definitely shouldn’t have had sex with him before he left, because you were certain that wasn’t what normal friends were supposed to do. But you weren’t normal friends, and no matter how much you knew not to think about that, you couldn’t help it. It made it a whole lot more irritating when Stormfront came into the picture, though you didn’t let it show. You never really let any emotions show unless it was a smile on your face. That was how you’d been raised, that was all you really knew.

But everything kept changing. More people died, you hooked up with Homelander again at Herogasm, and despite everything you knew that he did you remained close to him. Unafraid of him. It was almost cathartic to have someone who was comfortable with it. With the violence, with the pain. With the way that sometimes, every so often, he expected you to hurt people, too. And you did. Most times without question. The lack of fear you had around him didn’t change, but you did change.

There was one particular day that made that incredibly clear.

​

He’d gone to visit the people who ‘raised’ him, and that was something that you knew was incredibly personal to him. You’d expected that he would have gone alone, but he didn’t.

Your fingers - now covered by a white glove that went up to your elbow as opposed to your original costume that didn’t have any gloves - were intertwined with yours as you walked down the hallway that he had surely walked out of years ago, thinking that it was the last time that he would ever see it. But this was different. You knew that everyone here was going to die this time, that they couldn’t hurt him like they used to. Most people might go to therapy, but even if Homelander were most people, something like that was never going to work on him.

For most of the visit, you’d been sitting there. Letting him do what he needed to do, watching while he tormented the people who he hated for tormenting him in the first place. You were quiet, but not nervous. You didn’t feel bad for the men who were dying in front of you, and maybe the version of you that had first been recruited into The Seven would have. There was a part of you that was wholly aware that you had changed in a way that was entirely unrecognizable to some.

Your family, your friends. Many of them were worried. Publicly, you were very close to Homelander. You were always with him, always speaking entirely positively of him. And that was something that worried a lot of people. Too many people, really.

But maybe they had no right to be worried.

“Could you help me with this last one?”

His voice was quiet as he spoke. He was going to enter the room again, the one that you knew he had been locked in when he was younger. He was speaking lowly so he didn’t entirely reveal his plans to the others, but you were certain that they had to know.

“Yeah, sure.”

Help with ‘this last one’ was an understatement, you’d realized. You hadn’t fully realized it until you’d already killed two different people. People who you were certain were uninvolved with him, in particular, but they knew about it, didn’t they? They knew about it, so should you really feel bad when you had their blood on the wall and a hole burned through one of their eye sockets?

Maybe you should. Maybe not all of these people knew about it. You didn’t speak much when you had your hand pushed through someone’s stomach, when you could feel their organs in your hands. There was a certain power in it, even knowing that Ashley would be irritated when she found that she needed to replace your costume again because it had been stained.

But when it was over, you were sitting back against the wall. There was blood on it, blood smeared all over your cape and your legs; it would be a sensory nightmare if you weren’t wearing thick tights. Your hand was over your cheek, feeling your skin. You were pretty sure you had been trying to clean the blood from your face, but you’d forgotten what action you were doing entirely by the end of it. You were in a bit of a daze until you noticed a hand in front of you.

“We should go.”

“Mhm…” You took his hand, but trailed off as you thought back to your own childhood. “You know, I wasn’t treated like you were. Not like… in a room like this, not made to be the most powerful but-the most-fucking-obident. My dad resented me for a bit because my powers didn’t develop immediately; he figured that the V was a scam. But my mom was smart; she knew that they’d come. And she knew I needed to be just fucking perfect when they did.”

There was a bit of an eerie, dazed laugh that came from you when you recalled it. “Fucking perfect. That’s what they made me. And when I wasn’t, she hit me, or she screamed at me, and one day my powers did come because of her. Because she was screaming, because I knew she was going to backhand me or sack my dad on me. And then my powers came out, and-I guess she didn’t hit me anymore after that.”

Homelander, for once, didn’t actually respond immediately. But you did take his hand. You did meet him in the middle, standing up. Your eyes were still glossy, but there was a smile on your face that best displayed the slight confusion that came from that much gore. “They deserved it, all of them.”

“They did.” He almost seemed to be contemplating something before he stopped. His free hand was on your chin, the blood smearing from his glove onto your already stained cheek. You didn’t stop him when he kissed you, and he didn’t stop you when your fingers were in his hair, pulling him closer. It was supposed to happen like this, you reasoned. When you were both a little bit fucked up, talking about how everyone in life loved screwing you over. It was supposed to be just like this. But he pulled back, and you almost fought him on it before you remembered where you were. “Home. We need to go home.”

“Yeah, home.”

​

It wasn’t much of a home, anyway.

Things continued to shift and change. Members of The Seven came and went, and you got over your irritation about Firecracker trying to take Homelander’s attention away from you when you figured that he didn’t really like her very much. But things got worse, too. With him, with his mental health.

He felt entirely too low and alone, no matter what happened. Even when Soldier Boy came back, it was clear that he was just fighting for the attention of a man who was never going to want to play the role of a father figure in his life. He wasn’t really his father, anyway. Biologically, sure, but the man had come out of a test tube. He was an experiment, not really much of a child to anyone. And deep down, you were sure that he knew that. Which was why things got worse, and why you got clingier. Maybe it would help, you figured. It certainly wasn’t hurting.

You’d been close with him in public, incredibly so. Just about any time you were out together, you were holding hands, but there was no real way to define your relationship. It was… codependent. You both relied on each other, but you relied on each other in the same way that you clung to each other. Hooking up had become more normal, making out had become more normal, but it wasn’t really something you spoke about. It just kind of happened, and then you brushed past it.

Until it wasn’t, apparently.

​

Your afternoon had been normal, mainly. Soldier Boy had been woken up about a day ago, but that was something that you’d already moved past. You had a habit of moving past just about everything strange that happened in your life. So what if there was a hundred year old man who you used to have a poster of on your wall on the team now? That wasn’t something that you ever really fretted about before, so you figured that there was no purpose in starting now.

Homelander’s penthouse had become the place that you were in more often than any other place in the building after being on the team for a bit. You spent most of your time with him, so it was only natural that you would also spend most of your time on his floor. There wasn’t really anywhere else that you wanted to be, anyway.

He’d been sitting with you pressed into him, your cheek pressed into his shoulder, while he watched people speaking about him on the news. You weren’t sure why he did it. You knew that he hated watching people talk about him, but it had become worse lately. He was miserable and sad, even with Soldier Boy being woken up. He’d sent him off to deal with something, but Soldier Boy had nearly died, and Homelander had been a bit distraught, even though he’d come back alive.

“Vi?” A shortened version of your Supe name, Homelander didn’t really believe in using human names because he didn’t really believe in humans. The only person who was now a Supe you’d heard him refer to with their human name was Ashley, but that was a bit different. Still, you were used to it by now.

“Hmm?”

“Everyone knows that we’re close, and my image has taken a hit with the Starlighters.”

“Yeah.”

“We should get married.”

“M-Homelander, people don’t even-are-wait, are we dating?”

“Such a human concept.” He brushed that off, but you figured that was answer enough. You were together all the time, and he let you cling to him. He let you be just as codependent as he was because nothing he ever did freaked you out, and that was something that he knew was rare. But he also did like you; he clearly cared about you enough to make sure that you weren’t in harm’s way. He didn’t like people who didn’t like you, and you knew that. “I guess in a technical sense, yes.”

“Mm.” You hummed, thinking about what he was saying. You knew that he probably (maybe) wouldn’t make you if you said no, but did you even really want to say no? You’d kind of tied yourself to him already in every way that counts. There wasn’t a chance that you were going to leave, no matter what, so did it really make all that much of a difference if you were married, besides there being a title to your relationship? Maybe it did. Maybe it did in the sense that you wanted that. “Yeah, okay. Let’s get married.”

“Perfect.”

“It’ll help your image, though?” You asked him, your voice quiet as you moved your head so your chin would rest on his shoulder. Your eyes traced over his face, taking in the familiar features that had become so normal for you to see. You were so used to him that there wasn’t really a way around it. But you felt that you were used to him in a good way. You liked him more than you were supposed to ever have liked him, but it was like second nature now. You couldn’t really imagine your life without him. “I mean, people already know we’re close, so-hmph-”

Your words were cut off when he kissed you. One of your hands was around his shoulder, your fingers tightening in the padding of his suit. You had never seen him without the suit on, and you found that you wanted to. You wondered what he looked like without the suit on, and maybe he would show you if you were married. Maybe, now that you knew what this was, you could actually see him. Physically, anyway. You knew pretty much all there was to know about him otherwise.

His kisses got deeper, though. His tongue brushes against yours, your back pressing into the couch as your body adjusts to fit below his. He was so close to you now, his body hovering over yours. Your fingers found one of the clasps on his suit, but he stopped you before you could take it off, despite the pout on your lips.

“Not just for my image… entirely.”

Oh.

Well, that kind of made sense, anyway. There weren’t very many people who stuck with him. In fact, there would be none if it weren’t for you and, you suppose, The Deep. But he didn’t really care about The Deep. He was a member of the team, but he didn’t respect him, though. He didn’t have any reason to kill him or doubt his loyalty, but he didn’t think very highly of the man, either.

“Can you take the suit off?”

“I’ll consider it.” His eyes broke contact with yours, his lips trailing against your throat. Your back arched closer to him when you felt him suck a bit of skin in between his lips, a sigh leaving your mouth as you clung to him just a bit. “When we’re married.”

“Ugh. Tease.”

The smile against your skin was entirely, entirely worth it.

​

The entire ordeal had been quick. Oh-Father and Ashley put together a ceremony quickly, and you ended up married in front of the general public. Though the people there were specifically chosen because they had a favorable view of Homelander. That didn’t really change anything, but things still changed in a pretty big way. Mainly, that Homelander had also gone insane.

When Soldier Boy came back, he was pretty irritated with Homelander for sending him somewhere without a proper warning that he might die. Soldier Boy almost died, really. But he didn’t because his blood had something different in it. The V that the rest of you had been given was more diluted than what the originals were given, and Soldier Boy couldn’t die from the virus that had been created to be a cure-all for getting rid of Supes. He was immune, but no one knew that going in.

He’d insulted Homelander, and Homelander had a breakdown. But then he went a bit insane.

He claimed, the very next moment that you saw him, that he had seen an angel. The angel had told him everything that he needed to know, and that the reason why everything was so hard for him was that he was the one true God. It was one of the most insane things that you had ever heard come out of his mouth. And while you weren’t scared of him, you were concerned. Concerned because this wasn’t a remotely normal thing to be thinking, because you were quite sure that he was going to get himself in trouble if he kept this up.

There was really only one way that this was going to end, and you knew it. If someone else didn’t kill him, he was going to get burnt out. You really didn’t want him to die or get hurt, but you weren’t sure that there was really any possible way to protect him. Most people wouldn’t remain by his side, but you would. You always did, and you always would. Maybe you could protect him, then. It was better than leaving him to his own devices, anyway.

But now you were just with him, standing there, wondering how to proceed while you were barely comprehending that he was bringing you into the bathroom with him until you were standing directly in front of a tub if…

“Is that milk?”

“Breast milk.”

“Oh.”

“Get in.”

Clearing your throat, you turned back to look at him. You weren’t sure that you wanted to get in, but you wondered if you could get something out of it if you did.

“Can I see you without the suit on? Fully?”

“Yes, if you promise to get in.”

“Okay, perfect.”

You didn’t really need much more prompting. You started with your cape, undoing the claps and letting the cloud-like fabric fall to the floor. Your hands moved down to remove your boots, followed by taking the suit itself off. You were left in just your socks and gloves, which quickly joined the pile of clothing on the floor. But you were stopped before you could get in.

“You wanna see me so bad?”

“Really, really bad.”

“Then you can take it off. I trust you.”

Your eyes moved up to meet his, but you let your hands do the work. Removing his gloves first, knowing that you’d seen and felt his bare hands more than once. Next was the cape, then the boots. But you were careful when you got to the claps on the suit, your eyes not leaving his. Searching, clarifying. But he nodded, knowing that you were making sure that he wanted you to do it. So you did.

Seeing his skin for the first time was an odd experience, but not a bad sort of odd. It was odd in the sense that you rather liked seeing him. You’d felt him inside of you before, you’d seen part of his legs, and you’d seen his butt. But you hadn’t seen anything else, so actually getting him fully undressed was interesting in a way that you hadn’t known it to be when you’d seen anyone else undressed before. Yet, all you could really do was kiss him. On the mouth, on the cheek, on the neck. He let you kiss his chest, let you feel the hair on his chest, and the fact that his stomach wasn’t as toned and muscular as the padding on his suit. He was rather slim, which was a contradiction to the bulky padding.

“Bath.”

“Right.”

You were with him in the bath rather quickly, and thankfully so.

Soldier Boy was in the room on about a moment’s notice. The milk in the tub wasn’t clear, so he couldn’t see anything below the water. But you listened while he talked to Homelander, you moved off of him while he seemingly asserted his dominance by standing up entirely nude. You resisted reaching up to touch him in any way, letting them have their conversation even though it was a conversation that Homelander clearly didn’t enjoy very much.

But the moment he was back down again, you were in his lap, and he was being… odd. Still. You watched as he dipped his fingers in the milk, watched as he sucked the milk into his mouth. His eyes didn’t really leave yours, though his free hand had moved to rest against one of your thighs.

This was a weird situation, you knew that. It was weird to be sitting here in the tub with him because the tub was filled with women’s breast milk that he had taken from a hospital, apparently. You were bathing in breast milk, actively, and that was a strange thing. He was being incredibly odd because he believed that he was God now, and everything was all sorts of messed up. And yet he was looking at you like he wanted to fuck you, and, for reasons that you’d unpack when you weren’t on top of him, you were getting a bit turned on.

“Can a God still get fucked?” You asked him, turning back so you were facing him. His answer seemed pretty succinct when he leaned forward to press his tongue against one of your nipples, licking the bud before wrapping his lips around it. “I suppose that means yes, then.”

You could feel him hard against your thigh, now. You could feel his hand moving his erect cock in between you both until it was settled directly at the entrance to your pussy. Your eyes had yet to leave his, but he also had yet to speak. He didn’t really need to. Not when he was pressing inside of you. Not when your lips parted around a moan that fell through them as you adjusted to the feeling of him being inside of you. It wasn’t new. You’d been with him before. But you enjoyed it just as much each time.

“Do you like this?” His tone changed, almost like he felt human again, as he grabbed your hand to show you the two rings on your finger. There was a wedding band, one that matched his. But there was also a diamond engagement ring. It was pretty, it was exactly the sort of thing that you would have wanted, and he knew it. It was a shame that it had to be worn underneath gloves, but you figured that he hadn’t suggested the change because it was personal.

“I love it, it’s perfect.”

Whatever honesty he was looking for in your eyes, he found.

His hips moved against yours, finally giving you permission to ride him. But you were mainly focused on the way he reacted when you did. Homelander was always a bit noisy in bed, but there seemed to be a bit of increased arousal by being in the milk while he was inside of you. His hands were tight around your hips as you rode him, taking your time.

“I really like that you’re my husband now.” You stated that your voice is a bit breathy now.

“I like that I’m your husband now, too.”

Human. Entirely human. Wanting to be married to someone was a human trait, and one that he seemed to have. But it was something that you weren’t surprised by. As much as Homelander wanted to claim that he was above being a person, you knew that he wasn’t. He was just as much a person as anyone else was, if not more so. But that wasn’t something that you felt the need to say to him. You wouldn’t.

“Fuck-”

The way his head fell back when he moaned, the way he whimpered when you squeezed him just right, did things to you that you weren’t sure how to process. You felt one of his hands caress your hip before moving to collect some of the milk, smearing it over your breasts, before his head tilted back up so his lips and tongue could attack the flesh.

None of this should be a turn on, but it was. It felt good. It was demented and strange, but you found that you liked it. Like him. There was nothing normal about him, nothing that you should really like, but there was never a moment in which he wasn’t your favorite person in the room. Your movements got faster, your moans more erratic. He didn’t seem far behind, either.

And it was your favorite type of sex because you came at the same time, or at least so close that you weren’t sure who finished first. Your fingers tug into his shoulder as you come with a cry of his name, his face still pressed against your chest.

It wasn’t until about an hour later that you were dried off and back in his bed, covered by nothing more than a fluffy blanket. You couldn’t get over the way that it felt to curl up with him, to feel his skin entirely against yours while you were in bed. It was different this way; you liked it far more.

“I really like your body.”

“Yeah?”

Your fingers trailed from his chest to his stomach, resting there for only a moment before moving back up to be placed right above his heart. You liked to feel the beat of it, to know that he was a person even if he didn’t want to be one. But you couldn’t really blame him, could you? He was raised to believe that he was being made to be the best. He was raised in the same way that cattle or a prize pony would be raised. Not to see himself as a person with feelings, not to see inherent value in himself, but to be the best. To be the prodigal son.

Years ago, when you first joined The Seven, maybe that wasn’t how you would have seen things. You were normal back then, despite your past. As normal as you could be, anyway. But you weren’t someone with blood on your hands on purpose. You’d killed a parent by accident, and that was an almost common occurrence in new Supes - if it wasn’t a parent, it was a sibling or a friend. But it was often discovered through tragedy.

Yet, you weren’t the one to kill people just because you could. You avoided it; you didn’t like violence. But now you were comfortable with it, apologetic about it. And maybe you weren’t just as bad as him in every sense, but the inherent codependency that had formed had made you practically inseparable. His crimes felt like they were your crimes, and maybe they were to some, since you looked past them. But it didn’t scare you; nothing about him really did. Not from the moment you first met him or now, with your hand leaving his chest so you could rest your face there instead.

“I think you’re one of the only people who’s never disliked me.” He spoke like he was whispering, but no one was here to hear it, anyway.

“I love you, you know. That’s why.”

“I know.”