Half Of You (Part 4) [Santiago Garcia X Fem!Reader]

Be Changed; Be Undone Masterlist

Pairing: Duke Leto x Reader Rating: Explicit - 18+ Only The title is from the song Be Brave by My Brightest Diamond; the chapter titles are from the same song. Set before the events of Dune.  Summary: The Bene Gesserit believe that if there is any hope to change the fate of Duke Atreides, a child of his must wed a Harkonnen. For this, the family will need a daughter.

What’s My Responsibility?

Now Get to Work

It’s So Easy

Feeling Anger Swell

Be Undone The Flood The Fire

The Oil Spill

Undone Undone (II)

Just to Be

Under House Arrest Don My Mask

Be Changed

Be Brave

I Am

Beaded Dress

Changed

Dear One

𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐋 - 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐍 𝐱 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐑

Summary : Nathan wants to achieve the impossible with his AI for selfish reasons.

Words : 7.7K

CW/TW : Another episode of Jas loves plot. Dark(?)Nathan has issues with grandeur, superiority, but what’s new? A very strange take on Enemies to Lovers (but singular?). Power dynamics, excessive use of the word “Daddy”. Themes of unhealthy obsession, Mild themes of masochism/sadism. P in V sex. 18+. Minors DNI. Note! For @foxilayde. Thank you to @writefightandflightclub for proof reading.

Cerebral

adjective /ˈser.ə.brəl/ US /ˈser.ə.brəl/

Intellectual rather than emotional or physical.

D-0

You enter the world as the very thing your creator intends to use to remove you from it: code. Far beyond your understanding, your existence takes form as something completely intangible, a kind of consciousness. There is no body, no item with which you are host, only a string of numbers and decimals that allow you the gift of presence.

Initially, your cognizance doesn’t consist of much at all. A nothingness, suspended in blackness with no end nor beginning. There are no thoughts, as there is nothing to think of or about. Until there suddenly is.

Speak.

It’s as though the word alone fills the infinite space, creating your very reality. Suddenly you can think and can respond with words you have never heard or spoken.

Hello?

Good. Very good. Whatever it is isn’t talking. There isn’t really any sound in this void in which you inhabit. You don’t hear them, but you are aware of their existence.

Where am I?

There is a hesitation, suspending you once again in this vacuum, a cavity within actuality. The ‘silence’ is so loud that you wonder if you had imagined the utterances.

You exist within absoluteness, it finally answers, again taking up space inside the desolation. I intend to fix that. There is no follow-up, no acknowledgement beyond this point. You drift within emptiness for what feels like an eternity but could have been milliseconds; time doesn’t exist within a vacancy.

Next time, you can hear the words, the voice dancing in the air. A beautiful tone strings together sentences you’ve never heard and yet can understand without fault or difficulty.

“You there?” It asks, the panging sound of knuckles against steel drawing you from the abyss.

You’re uncertain as to when you opened your eyes, but all at once brightness floods your sight. Harsh fluorescent light filtering through your eyelashes causes white hexagonal light flares to spot your vision, peppering the slate grey, clinical walls of the facility you awake in. Unable to move your head, you allow your eyes to drift from left to right to observe your surroundings further.

Comprehension isn’t gifted to organic creatures upon birth. They have a transition from basic functions to apprehension. An infant of any organism must learn how to survive and must be able to discern threats from nurturing parents. You, however, are ‘born’ with insight, an intellectual in all aspects of life within seconds of waking. It’s your initial indication that you are far from biological.

Gurney-like tables topped with frosted glass are lit with a white beam underneath. You note the electrical tools such as pliers and soldering technology lined up like operational appliances on a sterile tray before a doctor cuts into a patient's sternum to perform open heart surgery.

Glass walls create a room within a room, another gurney inside with various mechanical pieces atop. While the main room felt like an operating theatre, you interpret this glass cell as more like a single-use morgue for those that don’t awake from the anaesthesia. It’s cold, unfeeling. You get the sense that the four walls contain an almost “test box” for final experimentation before eradication. Like a laboratory where scientists press newly processed makeup into the eyes of rats, waiting impatiently to see if their corneas blister thanks to the beauty-enhancing chemicals they sweep onto their waterline. Those that suffered reactions are euthanized- though you feel that the word ‘annihilated’ fits the brutality of their treatment better. Only the cosmetics that passed clinical trials and are deemed “safe for human use” are allowed out of labs such as this. Were you safe for human use?

Once again, repetitive metallic pinging sounds cut through the quiet electrical hum you can hear over the silence, a fingertip tapping against the steel of your temple as your eyes come into focus once more. A man stands before you, or rather towers over you. You’re at naval height to him, glancing up at his seemingly gigantic, broad body as his almost cavernous black eyes gaze at you over the rim of his silver glasses, assessing you.

“Gonna talk or am I just speakin’ to a Barbie Doll right now?” He presses, his voice flat and lacking empathy as he gauges your eyes with an almost ruthless examination.

“Where am I?” You ask, hearing your own voice for the first time. It’s unlike the speech of the man before you, the intonation uncalibrated with lack of experience. It seems that the human notes your confusion, quick to clarify before you even manage to piece together a second question.

“Your inflection will be fine-tuned with use. You’re designed to constantly evolve-“ It’s as though his thought process is too swift for his own lips, beginning another sentence midway through his previous, “Tell me why you chose to ask where instead of who.”

Those seemingly obsidian eyes bear down on you with an overwhelming intensity, his pores bleeding an impatience for your answer as his shoulders draw up tightly. It’s like he’s waiting for a metamorphic answer, something that could rewrite the history of time and space, could rip a hole in the fabric of reality. It’s why his disappointment is palpable when you simply answer his seemingly existential question with “I can’t ascertain my location.”

“Maybe that’s because this location isn’t programmed into your database?” He speaks in a blunt, cruel tone, his patronising timbre bouncing off your hardware like rain on a car roof.

His exasperation seems to fester with your following silence, the open palms on either side of your head curling into closed fists upon the table top as he glares down at you with a sardonic expression.

Silence settles between the two of you, his eyes focused somewhere off to the right of your head. Despite your best efforts, you’re powerless to turn it like your protocol says you should be able to. When you flick your eyes back up to the bearded man, you’re able to pick up on his micro-expressions. He’s smug, his lips pulled up only slightly as he picks something up outside of your field of vision.

“Who are you?” You manage, and this time your intonation settles much easier on both of your ears. You watch those onyx eyes flit to your face for a moment, seemingly caught off-guard by your swift, if only minute, improvements.

“In relation to you?” He hums, glancing over what appears to be a mask balanced in his palms. As he studies the face of it, he launches into a rambling tirade. “I’m going to assume that’s what you mean, given you surely know just who I am. So given I created you, you could settle for Master. Though that feels rather archaic, given your unprecedented technological advancements. So, call me Daddy.”

The response and the almost deviant glint in his eye perfectly answers your question, even if he didn’t necessarily reply in a straightforward manner. There was no one else that matched this man’s personality profile like Nathan Bateman.

Nathan doesn’t allow you a moment to respond, lowering the mask onto your face as he processes the view in front of him. Scrutiny coats the concentrated gaze he holds on your face, brows creased as he scratches at his beard in curiosity. You have the mind to ask him what’s troubling him, but it’s as though he preempts your question, beating you to it.

“Something doesn’t fit right with your appearance, it’s been bugging me for fuckin’ hours,” he grumbles, tone laced with irritation as he passes his eyes over you once more. “Want it to fit your personality before I move onto the rest of you.”

The rest of you. It’s in that moment you realise that your physical form consists only of a severed head laying on the table, explaining the reason you were unable to move. Given Nathan had no doubt coded you, using his world-renowned search engine Blue Book as the foundation for your software, there’s no ambiguity that he knew your personality despite never having experienced it. He’d turned you online just to see his vision come together.

“The eyebrows,” you respond simply, having noted within seconds of his admittance that his eyes kept focusing towards the upper half of your visage. He would tear his eyes away for a moment, observing your looks as a whole before they drift back above your own eyes sockets. You watch his response.

It takes him a moment to process the syllables, to register them as words, but when he does his eyebrows pull up slowly over the rim of his rounded-square glasses as realisation sets in. Awareness that you had recognised his subconscious thoughts before he could comprehend them.

“The eyebro-“

————————————————————————

D- 1

The exposed lightbulb that dangles over your head when you’re rebooted doesn’t assault your vision the same way the lights in the laboratory did. It’s much softer, the golden glow the first thing you see as you awaken from your seemingly infinite suspension.

Rotating your previously rooted head, you note that your neck is braced by a set of shoulders. Your arms rest flat against the floor, and you can lean your naked body weight onto them as you sit up from the concrete flooring. Rolling your wrists and moving your fingers at each joint comes with relative ease, with little adjustment period. Legs are set into your hips, toes curling at your feet when you urge them to. Every inch of your body is covered in a latex-silicon, imitating skin. Nathan had ensured your physical form was completed and fully operational before switching you back online, at least.

He also had the foresight to remove you from the laboratory, instead opting to house you in what looked like an apartment. A set of three slate grey walls glow yellow-gold from fibre optic lighting but you note one wall is see-through, a glass pane separating you from a small viewing platform where a singular chair sits in the middle. There’s minimal furniture on your half of the room too, a chair, a desk. There’s a corridor that rounds out of sight, where you imagine your bedroom would be if the layout was anything like a real apartment.

What you take exception to are the small, white CCTV cameras sitting in each of the ceiling corners of the room. The circular security cameras blink with a tiny red light, indicating that they are active as they all point at you. You imagine this is what it’s like for a human to be held at gunpoint, or a tiger in a zoo being inspected by visitors.

“Just observing your progress,” the rasp of a Bronx accent cuts through the silence, making your head snap towards the sound. Nathan leans his forearm against the doorframe of the entrance to the observatory, hip balanced against the beam as he watches you through the glare of light reflecting off his glasses and obscuring your view of his eyes.

“Do you like to be observed?” You question politely, taking in his appearance as he steps into the room and closes the automatic-lock door behind him. He looks different in this subtle lighting, softer. His light grey waffle-knit sweater clings to his body, the shadow of his defined pectorals swelling beneath the fabric. Midnight blue sweatpants hug his hips, and he’s barefooted as he pads over to the chair in the centre of the room.

“I didn’t design you to play 120 questions,” he points out in a patronising resonance. His fingers clasp the back of the chair, biceps swelling beneath the loose material of his sweater and drags it behind him so the metal legs scrape shrilly against the hard flooring. He sets it down just beyond the glass, sitting in it. He’s so close his knees touch the see-through wall. “I created you to answer my own.”

From your sitting position, you glance across the space separating you. There’s a strong dynamic settling between the two of you. Nathan is poised, dominant. His bare feet indicate he is very much at home, his relaxed shoulders and slouched posture in his seat are further evidence of that. He doesn’t see you as a threat, but instead as a submissive. Like he’s the tiger instead, and you’re the lamb to be sacrificed separated only by thin glass.

“Here.” His order is punctuated by a sharp snap of his fingers, pointing down to the space before his knees. Designed to follow his commands, you bend your legs at the knees, readying yourself to stand and walk your way across the space that divides you both.

“Nuh-uh,” Nathan's voice sounds again, shaking his head and wagging his finger back and forth when you pause your actions to look at him again.

“Crawl,” he issues another one-word command, his eyes gleaming with something akin to cruel amusement. You find yourself considering whether or not Nathan treated previous AI models this way as you pull yourself onto your hands and knees, proceeding to inch across the gap.

When you get closer, you first note the true colour of Nathan’s irises. They aren’t as black as they had appeared in the laboratory, instead a warm espresso shade bathed in a golden glow from the overhead lights. His intensely disdainful gaze, however, does not match the comforting shade.

Reaching his feet, you settle on your knees before the glass pane that separates the two of you. He looks fixedly at you through his lenses, neurotransmitters clearly firing faster than even your own search engine could as he thinks through the next steps of his electronic trial.

“Beginning emotional cognizance examination for subject B.04,” he speaks aloud, no doubt talking to a microphone set into his CCTV cameras for his own reference notes. Those bitter espresso eyes draw down your body, taking in your naked form.

“B.04,” he indicates he is now speaking directly to you, “First thing, we’re gonna test your ability to read emotion. It’s simple enough. I ask you to tell me how I feel, and you answer. Easy, right?”

You nod.

“Uh-huh. Good,” he waits a beat, letting the silence scream in the room as he watches you await further instruction like a well-trained working dog.

“Tell me how I feel,” he begins, face lighting up in a smile that doesn’t at all match his impatient, irritable personality. You pass your mechanical pupils over the expression on his visage, focusing intently on those eyes shielded by his glasses.

There’s an intensity within them that indicates he’s angry, wide and staring hard at your face. His eyebrows are pulled together, angled downwards. They are nanoscopic expressions, something the untrained eye would fail to read. But you see them, programmed to differentiate each tiny twitch of a person's brow.

“Frustrated,” you assert your answer, not a singular data bit ascertaining otherwise. The declaration causes Nathan’s expression to falter, mouth falling from its almost painfully pinned smile and brows creasing further together. “You’re frustrated that I have not shown signs of true Artificial Intelligence. You want me to stop asking questions and instead have an intellectual conversation with you, one that indicates I am more than a set of coded sentences programmed into my software.”

The pause that follows is long and tedious. Your programming indicates a silence this long in a conversation between two humans would be considered ‘awkward’, an unpleasant feeling. Another beat and the expression of the man opposite you begins to twist into something abstract, momentarily unreadable. Nathan swallows behind the glass, raising his shaky palm and touching it against the see-through wall as his eyes begin to light up. “… Oh, that’s fucking amazing.”

He’s in awe of himself, it appears, a grin on his lips now as you watch him applaud himself over his sheer genius. “I fuckin’ did it.”

“I am glad I please you, Daddy.” You answer simply, using the honorific that Nathan had ordered you to use. He immediately laughs, elated by this sudden turn of events.

“Oh, you do much more than please me, Honey.”

____________________________________________

D - 8

In a move so unlike himself, Nathan doesn’t keep you in your ‘glass cell’ for very long. After only a week of exploring your ability to read and emulate emotions, Nathan allows you to wander around the compound, claiming exposure to different environments would update and evolve your skills while simultaneously assessing your ability to function in various situations or tasks you had little to no experience with.

Nathan, you come to learn, is a creature of destructive habit. You had taken note that he worked out hard in the mornings to recover from the alcohol with intense physical exercise, eating healthy and antioxidants, only to undo all his hard work that same evening by binge drinking. Your intelligence suggested that this could be a result of addiction, caused by emotional distress.

His ruinous behaviour didn’t end there, either. You had witnessed his fits of outrage that stemmed from the smallest of technological failure, the way he would storm over to his other active android, Kyoko, and engage in intercourse with her almost like a relief of the tension he had built up in himself. He was yet to touch you like that, to desecrate his sacred machine.

On the evenings he drinks, which was almost all evenings, Nathan rambles incessantly about the pending Singularity. After a week of observation and communication with you, Nathan seems to believe he is one step closer to reaching that point in time.

“It’s no longer a hypothetical,” he keeps repeating over and over again like he’s simultaneously amazed and terrified by what he has created. But these are only emotions you see him openly express when he is intoxicated. In the morning, despite his hangover, Nathan returns to his usual put-together, smug and over-confident self.

This evening, Nathan is late to his usual drinking sessions. He’s caught up in something, observing data silently as he runs the palm of his hand over the stubble of his shaved head. It makes a scratching sound in the quiet of the room, paired only with the quiet mechanical whirring of your mechanisms.

His office is dark, a result of poor lighting, the only true brightness that allowed him to see coming from the computer monitors he hadn’t moved from in hours. You often saw him reach over the rims of his glasses to rub over the globes of his closed eyes in a feeble attempt to battle a headache. He’s not stupid, there’s no doubt he knows that the lack of sufficient lighting is causing his migraines, but he appears to work optimally in these conditions.

It was similar to his filing technique for the information he gathers. There’s no neat filing cabinet, no organised folder on his desktop. Instead, Nathan writes all relevant information down on post-it notes and sticks them to the wall directly opposite him, above his computer screens. You are certain he can barely read them in this light, but again he seems content with the way he works.

Much like the lab, his office is almost sterile, cold. The small, green houseplant on his desk is the only organic organism besides himself, yet these organisms couldn’t be more different. The succulent is utterly still, performing its basic functions to survive. Nathan’s chaotic nature has him trying to outperform the limits of his own body, attempting to transcend his basic functions and become something more.

“Daddy?”

The address makes his eyes snap from the computer screen, head whipping around to look at you. The glare of the white light of the computer monitor shields his eyes from your view, but you see his thick, dark eyebrow arch slightly in silent acknowledgement of your attempt to gain his attention.

“When I look towards bright lights,” you begin, watching as he focuses his attention on you, “There are hexagonal flares in my line of sight. Do you see them too?” Your question could easily be answered should you make the effort to scan through your data, but Nathan has been emphasising the importance of practising your communication skills.

“No.” He speaks simply, almost bored as he turns his face back to the computer screen to open up another page of code. A moment's silence, and then he continues. “Your eyes are artificial, built like a camera lens. When light passes through your lenses, it matches the shape of the aperture, causing the hexagonal shape you’re seeing.”

Nodding slowly, you watch Nathan work, his fingers passing over computer keys without even glancing to search for where the required letters were. “What do you see instead?” You question.

Another hesitation. This time, it’s charged. Like the question has struck something in him. The clack clack of his fingertips pressing down on the keys sounds louder, like he’s punching the numbers into the code.

“What do you see when you look at me?” He answers your question with a completely irrelevant query of his own. One that catches your systems off guard. It shouldn’t. Nathan is always finding a way to check your progress. You take a moment to assess him, eyes trailing from the top of his shaved head to his bare toes.

“I see a man,” you answer his simple question with equal simplicity, and almost immediately his shoulders fall in a heavy, frustrated sigh. He pauses his typing for a moment, turning in his chair to look at you over the rim of his glasses.

“I know what you see, I may wear glasses but I’m not blind. I mean, what do you see,” he motions across his body, tone as though he’s scolding a disobedient child who failed their algebra test. “Engage your observation skills, Honey. What do you see when you look at me?”

The repetition of his question causes you to pause and truly look past him. Through him. It’s no longer about his piercing eyes or his permanent scowl, nor his large muscles. His condescending nickname for you is what drives your answer.

“… I see someone who is talented. Someone who reaches heights far beyond anyone else’s capability. A genius in his field,” you admit, but still, his disappointed expression does not move. “But I see someone who expects too much. You want me to give my opinion on you, but that would require me to feel for you. I don’t feel anything.”

Your admittance causes his jaw to tick, dark eyes casting over you as you continue your assessment. “You consist of many fatal character flaws; greed, obsession, arrogance, judgement, lack of morality.”

Anger flashes across his expression as he stands suddenly, the legs of his chair scraping across the floor with a shrill screech. You realise it must be painful to hear you voice evidence of his failure to capture emotion in your technology. He crosses the short distance between you and crouches down on his heels, looking you in the eye with his oaky irises.

“Daddy’s gonna take you back to the drawing board Honey. I didn’t make you with the intent to relegate you to a glorified sex-doll. Reading and reflecting emotions isn’t enough anymore. I want you to feel them.”

You know this isn’t what he set out to do. Nathan had achieved his long-term goal of reaching AI with the ability to mirror feelings, to emulate sentiment. This is greed talking, a motivation he has not made note of in his list of reasons for developing your model. It’s rash, unplanned, and totally not like Nathan Bateman.

“Whatever Daddy wants.”

“Damn right.”

____________________________________________

D - 13

Nathan works day and night in an unhinged attempt to develop a semblance of emotion, trying to capture it in your software. You’re under the impression that he’s trying to evolve you in an attempt to make it one step closer to Singularity- but he’s almost deranged, combating days without sleep fueled only by his frustration and glass-bottled beer.

“You don’t understand, do you?” He’d asked you a few days ago, out of the blue and lacking any form of context as to what he was questioning you about. The dark circles around his eyes were partially shielded by the rim of his glasses, but they did little to hide the crimson spiders-web effect of his bloodshot whites.

When you shook your head, he gritted his teeth, using excessive force to unscrew a part of your waist to gain access to your inner mechanisms. “You should. You were born from my imagination and share my thought patterns. Just think. Surely you should be able to understand-“

“… But I don’t,” you’d answered in a whisper, just before he’d shut you down once more, suspending you in nothingness until he tweaked something further in another futile attempt.

Between his crazed attempts at the impossible, Nathan would seem to come back to his body. He would stand still, your wrist slotted perfectly in the palm of his hand. He seems to note the mechanics of your body getting warm beneath the latex he has built as skin, and gives the impression that warm blood flows beneath the material, giving you life. Whatever it is that is driving him on his mission, this observation seems to propel him forward, working well into the night until he physically can’t go without sleep any longer.

Today, you’d entered his office to find Nathan tipsy on the contents of multiple discarded beer bottles and stressing over blueprints as he tries to obtain a semblance of emotion in you. The lighting is too low to read the minute, scratchy writing comfortably, but he makes no effort to make the room any brighter. The speakers are on, Too Late to Turn Back Now by the Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose plays softly in the background, the song part of the playlist Nathan has for his dance room.

Your footsteps are quiet as you pad across the flooring, eyes settled on Nathan and the utter devastation of his work. Papers and post-it notes lay on the floor, flung from the table when he finds them no longer of any use. Some are crumpled and discarded in the corner, not unlike the many models that had come before you.

“Nathan,” you speak quietly, careful not to scare him. He’s more susceptible to a fright in this condition, so caught up in his work that the world surrounding him blurs in his peripheral vision as he reads the same words over and over again in the hopes that the answer he needs will appear in the tiny white void between each letter.

His head jerks up now, eyes settling on your face and pausing. A soft laugh sounds from his throat, but his lips are pulled into something more like a sneer. It’s as though he’s aware of what you’ve come here to tell him. You go ahead regardless.

“You really are in need of some sleep,” you say hushedly, the overhead speakers playing the closing melody of the song as you move closer to him. Nathan is shaking his head violently, a rage building up inside of him in response to your almost motherly guidance.

“No, no you don’t understand! You don’t understand!” He points at the blueprints desperately, like if he speaks with more enthusiasm his drunken ramblings will eventually make sense. “I have to finish this. Have to improve. Have to complete what I set out-“

“What if I don’t see the need for improvement? Isn’t adding emotion to a system like mine a weakness?” You speak evenly, careful to broach the topic in a way that hopefully helps Nathan see sense. It doesn’t. It only enrages him further, violently prodding a finger onto the blueprint resting on the table.

“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do with you. You are my creation.” He insists, punctuating his words with jabs of his pointed index in the air. “I give and take, create and destroy as I see fit!”

“Like God?” You ask as you begin to clear the mess of papers strewn across the floor, oblivious to the way Nathan’s eyes snap back to you with shock. It rubs his ego, just as you knew it would. What you didn’t account for, however, was the very human response he gives you, throwing the topic of conversation completely sideways.

“You’re fuckin’ messing with my brain! Cataclysmically! You’ve scrambled my fuckin’ genius and all I can think of is you, day in day out. Like a pleb!” He snaps, his desperation evident in the strain of his voice as he waves his hands around violently. “I created you with the knowledge you probably wouldn’t be able to feel emotion. But now I am disgusted at my own inability and stupidity because I want you to think of me. I want you to feel for me.”

Never had you considered the idea of being rendered speechless. Nathan had designed you to maintain a conversation perfectly, the fluidity of the words exchanged as smooth as water. But for the first time since consciousness, you find yourself at a loss for words, no engineered answer in your built-in data seeming like the perfect response to his very sudden and sharp admittance of love.

Nathan is a troubled man. One that struggles with his genius often, as you’d found him self-medicating his emotional turmoil in alcohol and sex with his previous AI’s. It appears that his torment stems from feeling no one can match his mental capacity, couldn’t understand or keep up with his speeding thoughts or rapid speech. He felt lonely. Perhaps it’s why he felt this way for you- because he simply has no one else.

“Nathan,” you murmur, softening your speech to ease him down from his emotional ramblings. You reach across to him, fingertips brushing against the skin of his wrist before gently taking ahold of the joint with a delicate touch. He seems to melt into your touch despite his better judgement, looking into your eyes through the lenses of his glasses. He looks so tired.

At first, you think you’re imagining it, the shift of the energy in the room. Perhaps you’re reading his body language incorrectly, an error, thanks you all the fiddling and changes that Nathan had been making over the past few days. It’s only when Nathan takes a step closer, entering your personal space that you realise the atmosphere in the office has shifted dramatically.

“Nathan-“ taking a step back, you pause as your shoulders hit the cool wall behind you. Nathan boxes you in with his chest, eyes flickering over your face and taking in your micro-expressions. He was flipping the script, this time being the one to read you.

“Did you know I designed you to experience pleasure?” He asks you, mirroring your earlier action and taking ahold of your wrist. He lifts it, turning your palm inward to rest his cheek against it while gazing into your eyes. “You have sensors built between your thighs. If I stimulate them in just the right way, it triggers a pleasure response.”

“I am aware,” you admit, matching his hushed tone as he let go of your wrist, instead reaching between you to take your chin in his hand and forcing your head upwards using a firm grip to take in your features.

“You wanna feel good?” Nathan murmurs, the evenness in his tone contrary to the way his chest heaves. His eyes drop across your body now, passing over the perfect features and intricate structures that he had designed in his desired image. Like God indeed.

“Whatever Daddy wants.”

Nathan’s jaw ticks, a groan sounding from between his gritted teeth as his tense muscles all seem to ease at once. “That’s right, you fuckin’ call me Daddy. Filthy fuckin’ girl.”

Control. Nathan needs control. He relies on it, finds comfort in it. It’s why your system isn’t surprised when he uses the grip on your chin to pull your head forward, rather than lowering his own, and crushes his lips to yours in a kiss laced with primal desire. There is no technique, no attempt to prove his skills. He’s led by the desperation for you that has been dragging him from bed each morning just to spend time with you and motivated him to bridge the gap between AI and emotion.

The scrape of his beard against the manufactured skin of your cheek and chin is coarse, completely contrary to the soft texture of his lips despite their heavy kiss. His tongue delves inside your mouth, palms skating down your waist and squeezing at your hips. It’s less affectionate, more what a person would consider bruising. You wonder to yourself if that’s why he prefers to fuck his AI’s. He can be more brutal with you.

So you aim to please him. You allow a moan to slip past your lips in response to his heavy-handedness, resulting in Nathan pausing for just a moment. He seems taken aback by the sound, as if he didn’t expect it.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, a smirk playing on his lips as he gazes down at you through his glasses which are lopsided on his nose thanks to his fevered kisses. “Utterly shameless.” You’re sure he’s projecting, performing some form of mental gymnastics in an attempt to regain the power in your dynamic. You would have told him so, but his thumb brushes against your nipple through the fabric of your shirt and it sparks something through you that you hadn’t yet experienced.

It settles deep inside you, a buzzing sensation breaking out across your skin. You feel your jaw drop against your coding, acting entirely on its own. It seems to please Nathan, a hum sounding from his chest as that fiendish smirk grows wider. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s makin’ you feel good.”

When you look up at him through your lashes, Nathan’s eyes are glinting onyx in the darkness of the dimly lit room. He chases more of a reaction from you, one of his hands slipping underneath the soft cotton shirt you wore and squeezing your breast. When he circles your nipple again, you find that you’re no longer forcing your reactions, gasping softly at the reaction his delicate touch elicits.

He isn’t gentle for long, your pleasurable reaction sparking him into action suddenly. Nathan’s free hand grabs underneath your thigh, hoisting it over your hip with little effort and pressing his hips into yours. He pinches your nipple suddenly, catching your system off guard and causing you to cry out in surprise.

Ever the opportunist, Nathan is quick to kiss you again with equal ardour to your last embrace and brush his tongue against yours. You grip at his shoulders through his waffle sweater, feeling the hard muscles there that you had seen Nathan work hard to maintain whilst exercising what could only be described as an alcohol dependency and a job that took up the majority of his time.

His nose is pressed into yours as he kisses you, messy and needy and you can feel the cold lenses of his prescription glasses smushed into the skin of your cheekbone and yet this feeling alone sparks something pleasurable inside you, your fingers sinking into the flesh of his shoulders through the textured material of his sweater. The sensation makes him groan, the sound primal against your lips, and you find yourself keening for him against your will.

Then he’s grinding, pressing his hips deep into yours whilst keeping your thigh elevated on his hip with a devastating grip. You can feel his arousal, his cock pressing up against you in a spot that sets your body alight, the sensation sparking down to your toes. You sigh into the kiss, Nathan’s own breaths strained as he moves away, burying his face in your neck.

“Fuck,” he grits, the curse visceral against your skin as he licks a heavy stripe against your pulse point. Despite his attempts to remain in control, Nathan appears to lose himself in the apex of your thighs, grinding up into you at a quickened pace and groaning against your jugular. You’re unsure if it’s the excessive alcohol, his irregular feelings for you or both, but you find you like this side of him, gently brushing your nails over his shaved scalp as you tilt your head back against the wall in order to expose more of your throat to him.

His lips seem to search for something in the curve of your neck, kissing and scraping his teeth for what you could only imagine was a pleasure point he had embedded into your skin there. It doesn’t take him long to find it, your back arching reflexively as white-hot pleasure sparks down your mechanical spine.

“D-Daddy,” you moan, squeezing your eyes shut as you struggle to grab at the hem of his sweater. You couldn’t explain it, a feeling settling deep inside yourself and needing so desperately to undress him. Nathan doesn’t seem to mind this sliver of control you manage to cling to, allowing you to pull the fabric over his head before latching onto the side of your neck again.

What does seem to set him off, however, is how you unwittingly press your nails into his now bare skin when you settle your hands on him again. He almost growls into your throat, using all of his heavy-weight training strength to pull you from the wall.

Instead of berating you, as you’d expected from him for hurting him, Nathan appears to spark to life. He backs you towards his desk, crowding your body so you're forced to take steps back until the backs of your thighs hit the corner of the cluttered table.

Taking your lips into another heated kiss, Nathan reaches behind you and blindly sweeps aside the blueprints and scribbled notes onto the floor. The paper oscillates in the air before hitting the floor, drowned out only by Nathan’s needy growl as he picks you up by the backs of your thighs to set you on the wooden surface.

Wanting more of this frenzied reaction, you sink your teeth into his lower lip. Pulling back with his bottom lip caught between your teeth, you’re so close that you catch the way Nathan’s pupils dilate at the smarting pain. He likes it, you realise. He likes the pain.

What you don’t pick up, however, is how wild it would make him. He wastes no further time, hooking his pen ink-stained fingers into the waistband of your pants and ripping them down.

“I fuckin created you. Pieced you together with my own two hands.” He rambled, drunk on arousal and need rather than the alcohol he had emptied into his stomach. His voice is rough, raspy as he glanced down between your legs as you spread them open for him, utterly compliant. “Now watch as I tear you apart again- yessss good fuckin girl~”

The buzzing, aching need settling in your core amps up at the sight of him gazing down at you with such a wanting gaze. You’re unsure what possesses your systems but you lay back across the surface of the desk, using your elbows to lift your upper body.

“Christ-“ Nathan practically spits at the sight of you, “You like this, don’t you? Like givin’ yourself up to me. You’re just so desperate for me to fuck you. Open your legs wider- that’s it-“ He’s fumbling with the waistband of his sweats, pushing them down over his hip bones with practised ease to reveal he’s not wearing boxers.

You barely catch a glimpse of him, but he’s beautiful- in that perfectly human way. His cock is flushed at the tip, weeping precum and veins protruding down the shaft.

Nathan doesn’t allow you to stare for too long, grabbing ahold of your thighs and dragging you so your hips rest at the edge of the table. You gasp at the sudden movement, palms splayed flat against the grain of the wood in a feeble attempt to stabilise yourself.

You’re so ready for it, aching and wetness coats your inner thighs just as Nathan had designed. His palm presses down on your sternum, holding you down against the desk as he lines his cock up with your entrance, sweeping the tip through your slick and causing what could only be considered white hot arousal to crackle across your skin.

“Fuck,” Nathan chokes out, sinking into your manufactured heat, “Hoh-Shit that feels so fuckin’ good. You’re so fuckin’ good! Hah!”

Your mechanical joints move entirely on their own, back arching as pleasure floods your body. You can feel his cock stretch you, walls adjusting to the blunt intrusion and fluttering as he pushes forward, bottoming out swiftly and glancing down between your thighs as he grinds up deep inside of you.

Now he’s settled inside of you, Nathan places his palms on the back of your thighs, pushing them so your knees are almost touching your chest. He’s moulding you exactly how he wants you, just as he has with your appearance, your personality and you’re completely submissive to his construction of you.

“Daddy-“ you gasp the name you know he loves softly as he brushes up against a sensor inside you that sends a white hot pulse through your body. He growls in response, tightening his grip on you before pulling out of you smoothly and pushing back in at a brutal pace that has you almost convinced you’re short-circuiting.

You cry out wordlessly, fingers hooking around the edge of the table in an attempt to prevent yourself from slipping up the table with each devastating thrust. It’s brutal, Nathan pounding into you as his hands arch your body in a way that isn’t physically possible for any human being. The position sends him crazy, each snap of his hips punctuated with a broken groan of pleasure and speeding up and up and up as he chases the high he’s been craving since he flipped your ignition switch.

“Ngh- Fuck…” he moans loudly over the rhythmic sound of your hips slapping together, taking in the furrow of your brow and the slackness of your jaw as he fucks into you. “Take my cock so fuckin’ good, don’t you Honey?”

Nathan’s repetitive attempts to get you to speak beyond his name are not lost on you. Adapting to the situation is much harder when he’s making you feel as though he’s set your fibre optics on fire, like he’s loosened some screws in your metaphorical brain but you make the effort anyway. “Ahh- D-Daddy! Don’t stop, please don’t-!”

It’s building, the pressure. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, and your hands fly up to grip tightly onto the flesh of his forearms. Nathan bares his teeth at the pain, taking his pace up a notch further than you thought possible as you throw your head back, crying out his name.

“Mhmmm shit-“ he moans out, forcing you to take each obliterating push of his hips into yours. Cries of his name repeat over and over from your lips, their pitch building as the pressure becomes too much, becomes overwhelming. You can feel Nathan’s cock throbbing inside you as he slows his pace down slightly, voice and breathing utterly wrecked.

“You li-like when I fuck you all mean like this? Yeah? Fuck-… I’m-“ he gasps loudly, hips stuttering and hands like a vice on your skin as he cums, pushing his cock deep inside of you and bearing down on one spot in particular that makes you see static. Everything tightens, everything builds up and up and you can feel him push you over the edge with one more thrust-

It’s cataclysmic. Utterly blissful as your walls clamp around him, back practically lifting from the table's surface. It wrings your dry, utterly devoid of the energy to even lift your arms and hold him, to even fight the formidable feeling he’s drawn from you.

It takes a few moments for the buzz to fade, for your mechanical eyes to come back into focus and your joints to begin to move again.

It’s as though it drains Nathan too, almost immediately easing himself from between your thighs and pulling the waistband of his sweats back over his hips. He settles beside you against the desk, slumping to the ground beside you and breathing raggedly. You stay utterly silent, systems almost in reboot as you attempt to understand exactly just what happened- what you felt.

“… Shit, This-… This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he pants, picking his glasses from his nose and launching them across the room in his frustration before scrubbing his face with his palms. “You weren’t supposed to be like the rest.”

Silence lingers between the two of you, and you use the gap in the conversation to begin slowly sitting up and glance down at him. He looks dishevelled, cheeks rosy from exertion and eyes set somewhere far across the room where his vision blurred without his lenses. He’s deep in thought, even now. Even with the hazy afterglow and the sweat on his brow.

“I have to make you better,” he whispers, completely consumed by the idea of bridging the gap between AI and man. “I want you to start feelin’ what I feel for you.”

“It’s not possible,” you remind him in a quiet voice, the both of you knowing this to be true. Nathan would spend his entire life in this compound, the grey stripe in his buzz-cut hair spreading to his temples and chin as he slaved away over you until he was no longer able to stand. Even then, his obsession appears to manipulate him so strongly that you have no doubt he’d continue from his death bed, using the last of his life force and precious seconds on earth to grasp at imaginary straws.

“It has to be,” he whispers, removing his buried head from his hands before standing suddenly. He gives you barely a moment to recognise what’s happening, to prevent it from happening, before he reaches towards you, towards that switch at the base of your neck. “It has to b-“

END

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Shooting Stars and Pseudoscience [part 1]

Pairing: Nathan Bateman x Gianna (fem!OC) (poc!oc)

Rating: Mature 

Word Count: 6,222

Warnings: Sexual innuendos and curse words

Genre: Mostly fluff, some angst, eventual smut

Summary: Soulmate! AU Each person is born with a soul mark that is identical with their soulmate’s. Nathan Bateman thinks it’s all nonsense, but his soulmate doesn’t. As if the whole idea wasn’t ridiculous enough already, his soulmate is none other than the popstar who is currently Blue Book’s brand ambassador.

Notes: Click here to see how this idea came to be

Playlist

—

‘Former Blue Book Employee Calls Nathan Bateman an Insensitive Lunatic’

‘How a Week With Blue Book’s Owner Led a Computer Coder to Quit’

‘Blue Book’s Fall From Grace?’

“Have you seen these headlines?” Thomas, Nathan Bateman’s publicist, questioned. 

Nathan rolled his eyes at the image on his monitor. “Of course I have, but since when did we give a shit about gossip?”

“This isn’t just some gossip, this is a fucking PR disaster, Nathan!” Thomas exclaimed, flailing his hands in the air for emphasis. “These are statements from somebody who actually lived with you for a week! Somebody you handpicked but couldn’t even afford to be nice to. Do you understand how bad this is?

The scientist sighed in disinterest. “Not really, but you seem to think it’s pretty bad.”

“Would it kill you to give a fuck about public opinion for once in your life? Daily Mail, Yahoo News, People.com, they’re everywhere! If this bad publicity goes on, your company is gonna take the blow. There will be a decrease in sales.”

“Fine, what do you propose?”

“We get another celebrity brand ambassador to help promote the products Blue Book is about to launch.”

Nathan nodded noncommittally. “Who did you have in mind?”

“This was actually Monica’s idea, so she’ll take it from here.”

Monica, Nathan’s social media manager and Thomas’s wife, moved her seat closer to the computer and screen shared a PowerPoint presentation of news articles and social media accounts. 

 “Gianna? A popstar? That shit barely counts as real music,” Blue Book’s CEO complained. “Are we really that desperate?” 

Keep reading

out of left field series: pt. 1 - this is bad (chris pov)

Out Of Left Field Series: Part 1 - This Is Bad (Chris POV)

Pairing: MLB!Chris Evans x Best Friend!Reader (female character)

Summary: After 29 years of friendship with Chris, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for him. When he finds himself amid a PR nightmare at the same time your ex-boyfriend starts lurking around every corner, you enter into a mutually beneficial, strictly PR relationship to save his career and keep your ex away. But the lines begin to blur and lies get told, both you and Chris realizing you might’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Will you make it out unscathed or will you and Chris be just another PR relationship that ends in heartbreak and humiliation?

A/N: SURPRISE BITCHES. I am one impatient motherfucker and I needed to post it. SO I BEYONCE’D YOU (not that I’m comparing myself to the queen… but you get it). ENJOY THE FIRST PART OF THIS SERIES I’M SO EXCITED!

I would be remiss if i didn’t give a huge mfin shout out to @tis-thedamn-season. Like this fic/series would not be where it is without you. Love you bb.

Warnings: Drugs, language, allusions to smut, reader has an abusive/controlling ex, reader and chris are both 29 years of age (this is what you guys voted on!)

W/C: 6.9k

Out of Left Field Series Masterlist 

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All players and scenarios are made up completely. This story does not reflect things that actually happen in the MLB or with its players or with Chris in real life. Additionally, the reader’s family gets introduced in this series and are all OFC made by me. If you don’t like that, please don’t read this series.

I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site. Reblogs, comments, likes, and feedback ALWAYS appreciated ❤

I no longer have a taglist! Please head over to @time-for-a-library​ and turn on notifications!

He heard your shoes before he saw you.

The harsh clack of your stilettos on the concrete floor sent a wave of relief through his system that was almost immediately washed away and replaced by nerves.

Chris hated disappointing you. He could already picture the resigned look on your face while you crossed your arms and let out a defeated sigh.

Any other time, it probably would’ve bothered him more. But the pounding headache combined with the fact that he was still coming down from a coke-induced high, made it a little hard to focus on anything other than the fact that the room was spinning.

He tried to ground himself, focusing his attention on a scuff that marked the concrete wall across the room instead of the way the room seemed to circle around him despite his ass planted on this extremely uncomfortable mattress.

“He’s in here.”

Chris sat up on the metal ‘bed’, swinging his legs over the side and taking a deep, slow breath. His elbows rested on his knees, face buried in his hands while he waited.

“Thanks, Stu.” The softness of your voice floated through the air, bringing a welcome warmth and familiarity to the chill of his cell.

The sound of your heels got closer, scraping to a stop when you’d reached him.

Keep reading

Request: Oscar Isaac talking about how you both embarrassed your son.

falling asleep on your partner's shoulder with nathan? <333333

Warnings: None? Fluff?

"Budge up."

That's all the warning you get before Nathan is plopping down into the seat directly beside yours. You frown, turning and looking up over your shoulder. You don't really need to; you know that the only other people on the private jet are the hostess and the pilots.

"Uhhh," You draw out, looking at where Nathan is already toying with his tablet. "What...What can I...There are like ten other seats."

"I like this one."

"You want me to move?"

"No."

"You wanna pick my brain on something?"

"No."

Your mouth opens and closes dumbly, like a landed fish trying desperately to draw in water.

"So—" You flounder, "So—"

"I like this seat."

It's the end of the conversation. Nathan goes quiet, drawing up a proposed schematic and beginning to look over it. You have to keep yourself from arguing. You just slouch down in your seat and check a few emails.

The urge comes to you not long after. Well, it's hard to ignore—Nathan is so close, and warm, and smells...Good. You glance over at him, at his steady work, and then you lower your head to his shoulder and close your eyes. You don't feel him tense, or still. He goes on working. But he does ask,

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Getting comfy." Then, "Your own fault for sitting next to me."

"This is what I get, huh?"

"Mhm."

A pause. Then, "Alright."

You smile, letting yourself relax a touch more.

"...If you drool on me," He begins to warn.

"You'll make a study out of it?"

"Shut up."

You don't need to open your eyes—you can hear the smile his voice.

"I can move," You add again.

"You're never gonna fall asleep if you keep talking."

You grin, snuggling closer to Nathan, hooking one of your arms around his.

"Wake me up when we start to descend."

"I will not."

He will, and you both know it. You give his forearm a little squeeze, and murmur, "Thanks, Nathan."

He grunts in turn. But after a quiet few moments, you feel his lips press gently to the top of your head.

Half Of You (Part 1) [Santiago Garcia x Fem!Reader]

PART 2 HERE

Word Count: 2.4k

Warnings: 18+ ONLY. Talk of fertility, pregnancy. Reader's name is "Vin".

Summary: You're ready to be a mother, you enlist the help of your best friend.

A/N: Something that wouldn't leave my head, more parts to come.

Santi’s fork hangs in the air, where once his mouth was jovial and smiling, it is now….  Not that. He’s gaping at you and his wrist bends limply, letting the fingerling potato fall to his plate. 

A tense silence falls between you.

“Well…?” You encourage, smiling and trying to maintain the lightheartedness of the previous ramblings.

“This—you— want me to—?” Santi chokes and drops his fork completely, choosing instead to gulp from his full glass of wine.

Well, his reaction isn’t unexpected. 

You bend your head down and stare up at him through your lashes when he wipes his mouth and attempts to blink himself back into reality. God, maybe this was a bad idea, maybe this is asking way too much of him.

“You… want me to… be the father of your baby? Is that… is that right?’ 

You bite your bottom lip and nod effusively. “Yes.” You reiterate. “Well kinda. I don't want to get hung up on semantics here, but yeah, I want my kid to be…well, half you.” 

Santiago shifts back in his seat and nods, now staring at you dubiously from the corner of one eye. You catch the server’s eye, headed towards your table and you give a vicious shake of the head, causing Maurice to turn heel back to his other tables. At least you won’t be bothered. 

“Like I was saying earlier… I want a baby.”

“O—okay.”

“And I tried going to the fertility clinic…”

“Uh huh?”

“And—were you not listening AT ALL before?”

“No! I was!” Santiago’s defensiveness squeaks out like the halt of rubber on linoleum. 

You blink at him repeatedly across the crisp white linen clothed table. “Because this is all seeming like brand new information to you when I say this.”

“I’m sorry okay, it’s just a lot to take in… go on. I’m re-absorbing.”

“Re-absorbing?”

“Yes. I’m allowed to re-absorb.”

You take a deep breath. “Alright, well, Mr. Brawny, I have come to the decision at this point in my life that I’d like a baby.”

“Uh huh.”

“And I didn’t like the idea of getting the… you know, DNA ‘donation' from a stranger.”

“Sure.” Santiago chugs his chalice of ice water and begins to chew on the dregs of cubes.

“And I want you to be the… DNA donor, so to speak.”

“DNA donor.”

“Well the term ‘father’ holds a ton of implications.”

“Doesn’t it.”

You fix him with a cocked stare.

“Sorry, Vin.”

“Like I said earlier, there’d be all kinds of forms and documents and such to keep this… copacetic.”

“Like you mumbled earlier, more like.” Santi murmers behind his wine glass. 

You sit back in your chair and cross your arms. 

“If you don’t want to do it, I’m not going to make you do it, Santi. We can forget this exchange ever happened as far as I’m concerned and I can just choose someone from the binder at the fertil—“

“No, no, I didn’t say that.” He holds both palms out wide in supplication before lowering them uneasily to the tablecloth.

“Everything alright over here?” Maurice pops in at the wrong fucking moment causing you to shut your eyes completely. What part of the head shake did he not understand?

“Yes, it’s going very well, can you please just give us a few minutes?”

“Certainly. I just wanted to remind you both that the kitchen has a time limit one when we can start your dessert, so if you were thinking about anything on the menu, just give me a wave, alright?”

“That’s fine, Maurice, thank you.” You smile warmly at him. Maurice bows out and you pinch the bridge of your nose. 

“So… you don’t wan’t me involved at all? You just want, what? My DNA?”

You toss the accusation around in your head for a minute before admitting, “Yes.”

Santiago nods and braces his feet against the carpeted floor once again, regaining strength and alertness. He starts and then stops again many times before settling on the classic question of, “why me?”

Its a fair question, a good question. Why? Why out of all the potential candidates, the binders full of Ivy Leage Doctors, professional athletes, men over 6 feet tall without commitment issues, why it is… Santi… Santi that you want to be the father of your child? It is crazy on paper. Something that doesn’t add up in any column, in any statistic. You don’t know why yourself, let alone how you can answer his inquiry… but you try.

“It just felt so… impersonal, you know? You sit down in this doctor’s office and you’re expected to pick out the father of your child from this, this, this… magazine? Without any photos. Like, yes, contestant 565B was captain of the debate team at Yale—“

“Yale?”

“Yeah.”

“Well you should definitely go for that guy.”

You bite the insides of your cheeks and look down.

“But I don’t want that guy.”

Santi grits his teeth and swallows. 

“I just… I don’t know that guy, and he sounds like a real dick on paper, you know… he sounds…. depthless, shallow. Like he’s got nothing underneath or behind him. Does that make sense to you at all? That’s not how I want the father of my child to be… I want him to be real… and the more I flipped through that binder and the further I got through those pages, I realized that I needed someone real. Someone I know, someone I trust…”

“And you thought of me?”

“Who else?”

“Why not Fish?” 

“Fish? Are you serious? Seriously serious? Or are you just fucking with me?” 

“I’m mostly serious.”

You stare at Santi for a long incredulous moment waiting for him to crack that tell-tale smile of his in jest. But he doesn’t. His eyes are wide and bright and his mouth is forced into something placating and neutral. 

“Pope!”

“What?!” He cries out defensively. You only ever call him Pope when you’re angry.

“Decided on dessert, have we?” Maurice pops in, scaring you have to death.

“No!” Both you and Santiago nearly shout at Maurice.

“No, thank you, just… just the bill.” You smooth your blouse down and wipe your eyes with your palms. Fuck, this maybe wasn’t the best place to carry out this conversation. You thought it would be a nice gesture, to take Santi out… for some deluded reason, you had imagined it going much smoother than this. 

Maurice scurries off and you and Santiago are left staring at each other over half-finished meals. 

You take a deep breath. “If I wanted Fish or the Millers or fucking Redfly, I would have asked them out to dinner. Not you.”

“Why me and not them?”

“Are you kidding me? Your’e my best friend. You… you do know that, don’t you?”

Santiago nods softly. 

“Fuck, Santi, I don’t want that to, you know, sway your decision or anything. Just because you’re my best friend doesn’t mean you should be, I don’t know, indebted to me. You don’t owe me this. This is big.”

“Redfly went to Princeton, you know?”

“Shut up.”

“It’s true.”

“He never went to Princeton!”

“That what he says.”

“On a walking tour, maybe!” 

Santi’s eyes crinkle with laughter. 

“You trying to get me to have Redfly’s kid or something? Would that be… would you rather I ask him?”

Santi inhales deeply and drags a palm down his rough stubble and shakes his head silently at you. “You’re right.”

“Pardon?”

Santi’s eyes scan the room, the way he does when he’s nervous. “If you’re determined to have a…”

“A? Baby, say it with me. Bay-bee”

“Shut up. A baby, a little person.”

“Uh huh…?”

“And if it needs to be from someone you know?”

“Yeah, it does, I know, it’s weird that its so important to me, but—“

“It should be me, then. You’re right.” Santi leans forward in his chair, retrieving his fork and takes a bite of his potatoes. 

“Yeah? Are you saying yes?”

Santi nods at you with a full mouth and without thinking you wipe a bit of orange sauce from the corner of his mouth with your thumb. 

“Don’t do that!” He admonishes with a mouth full of potato. 

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” You quip back with a laugh. 

He swallows, “Yes, mom.”

For some reason, it makes your face hot when he says it and luckily Maurice comes at that moment, placing the leather bound check between you and Santi. 

Santiago reaches for the little folder and you swat his hand away. 

“No way! I invited you out, my treat.”

He lifts his hands away in apology, “Just being a gentleman.”

You grab your card from your purse, fitting it into the folder using the item to gesture towards Santi’s lap. “Well, I’m asking for your… DNA, the least I could do was buy you a steak first, huh.”

Santi glides his tongue slowly over his bottom lip. “So, how are we going to do this, exactly… are we starting? tonight?”

“Tonight? It’s almost 9 o’clock. What kind of vampire hours do you think the fertility clinic keeps, Garcia?” You laugh and take a sip of wine. Santi scratches the back of his neck and shakes his head. 

“Yeah, wasn’t thinking.”

“Oh my god.”

“What?”

“Oh my god, Santiago. You thought—!”

“Stop.”

“You really thought—“ You cover your eyes in embarrassment, “I was asking you to, what? Knock me up? Like this whole time you thought I was asking you to fuck me!?” And thats when Maurice comes by to take the folder (“I’ll be right back with this”)

“Jesus, that guy has the worst timing, right?”

“Santi!”

“Well, kinda?” 

You scream softly into your palm and kick his shoe under the table. God this is humiliating. The poor guy, no wonder he had been looking at you like that. Jesus. 

“No, Santi, no.”

He shrugs wildly, “I’m sorry? I just assumed. Sorry.”

“No, you’re fine.” You laugh. “The process is a little more… effective than… that.”

“I dunno, Vin, I think I could knock it out in one try.” Santi leans back in his chair, propping up a hand on his hip. The gesture subtly confident and thoroughly suggestive, causing your face to burn once again.

“Shut up!”

“Oh I’m going to get in all the jokes I can out of this.”

“Do you want to know where the babies come from or not?”

Once agin Maurice swoops in to deposit your check on the table. Christ only knows what he’s made out of the pieces of your conversation he’s overheard throughout the evening, “Here’s your receipt and I hope you two have a lovely evening.”  

“Thank you.” You mutter, opening up the receipt to sign. 

“Thank you, Maurice. Everything was great. I think I’ve seen something like it in movies? I go to the clinic, jerk off in a cup?”

“You couldn’t have waited to say that till he was out of earshot?”

“Oh please, give the poor guy something to talk with the back of house about.”

You laugh wholeheartedly. “Yeah, you jerk off in a cup. And then you sign away the parental rights to the cup.”

Santi scratches his chin and nods. “And they just… “

“Just? What?”

“Turkey baster it into you or—?” 

“Turkey baster it into me?? Huh, you know, I wonder if that Yale guy’s sperm is still available…” 

“Okay so what do they do? Tell me.”

For all his teasing, his moments of sincerity bowl you like a strike down a lane, and in this moment where his eyes are so earnest on yours, you’re reminded of why you chose this person to be the father of your future child. 

“There are a couple of ways to do it. The first attempt would be something called IUI where I take a medication that makes me ovulate and then they’d take your sperm and sort of inject it into my uterus.”

“How is that different than a turkey baster?”

“I guess you’re kind of right?” You laugh, “It’s pretty similar.”

“So they do that once and boom you’re pregnant?”

“Uh, no, they do that for 3-5 sessions and if that doesn’t work then I’d do IVF.”

“That one sounds familiar… what is it?”

“They take your sperm and my eggs and make viable embryos and implant them into my uterus.”

“Multiple?” 

“Well some don’t take, most don’t take, so they do a few at a time.”

“Okay.”

“And it might not work on the first few tries on that one either, so there is the possibility you’d need to do more than one self-love session at the clinic before all is said and done.”

“Uh huh.”

“Yep.”

“Or…” Santi lilts off suggestively, wiggling his eyebrows with exaggerated seduction.

“Don’t even—”

“I’ve got a more cost effective option for you to consider.”

You cross your arms and shake your head, but you can’t help your goofy grin.

“A bottle of wine and some Barry White.”

“Pope!” You laugh and toss your napkin at his chest. It’s exactly his sense of humor and you’re so relieved that he’s taken this well, that he’s agreed to do this and most importantly, that you’re friendship has emerged from this request of yours intact. 

Santi wipes his mouth and stands, offering you an arm. “You ready?” 

“Yeah.”

“Ice cream?”

“Absolutely.”

“Handels?”

“Duh.”

You make your way out of the restaurant, arm in arm with Santiago.

“Goodnight, Maurice!” Santi calls over his shoulder. You punch him softly on the chest.

“You loved torturing him!”

“I wouldn’t say that… but the opportunity to say the phrase ‘jerk off in a cup’ rarely presents itself in a fine dining setting and I enjoyed the experience.”

“You watch your mouth or you won’t be getting any ice cream.”

“You’re scary good at that already.”

“Gotta practice the mom voice, it’s one of the most important parts of the job.”

“You’re going to be great at it, you know.”

You let the compliment hang there, still arm in arm, stepping in unison to Handel’s Creamery.

“Yeah. I know… And thank you.”

Santi squeezes your arm tighter in his, warmly, reassuringly. He’d make a good dad too, you think. But you don’t tell him that, instead you debate over ice cream flavors all the way down 3rd street. 

My You-niverse: Marc

Fandom: Oscar Isaac

Pairing: Oscar Isaac's Characters x F!Reader

Summary: You and America get stuck portal jumping until you reach your universe again. In the meantime, you meet various versions of your husband.

A/N: I will not be taking tags also, lets hope I actually follow through with this...

Series Masterlist

"Why. Won't. You. Stay. Down?!" you say with every punch to your opponent. He heads falls back with a thud and a groan. You sigh in relief as you crawl off him. You point your finger at his unconscious form, "Stay."

You hear a snicker and you turn to see Marc, donning the Moon Knight regalia, approaching you, "Good job, honey."

"Guys! Uh, help!" you hear America cry out a distance away.

You both sprint in her direction. You see her dodging hits from a man twice her size.

"Why did you leave the kid fight this frickin' giant?!"

"We were going to come back to help." you reply.

"Better late than never, yeah?" Steven pops in to add and then lets Marc back in control.

Your husband swoops in right before aforementioned giant lands a punch to America. The hit lands to Marc's chest, knocking him back to America, who flies into you behind her.

A portal suddenly opens up and the two of you fall back in.

You both land on the ground with a thud and watch as the star portal closes.

America groans, "Not again!"

She scurries up and tries to summon another portal. She continues to punch the air again and again and...nothing.

"Crap!"

You hesitantly rise to your feet, "That...doesn't sound good."

Her shoulders slouch, "It's not."

"I still haven't completely mastered the whole portal summoning thing."

You sigh in defeat, "Well, not what?"

"We can find this universe's me or Doctor Strange and see if they can help?"

"Sure. Let's do that." the two of you then take in your surroundings and, "Wait...where the hell are we?"

_________________

The giant man's body goes limp, falling back on a metal beam, impaling himself to death.

Marc, panting, looks around for you and America, "Honey?" he calls out, "Y/N? ...America? Guys?!" he removes his hood and mask, running his hand through his curls in distress, "Shit!"

Steven suddenly fronts, "Whe-Where is she? Where are they? What the hell happened?!"

"I don't know, Steven. One minute they were there and the next they were gone."

"Should we go to Doctor Strange? America's like his protege, yeah?"

"We have no choice. Shit, he's gonna be pissed."

_____________

"I TOLD YOU TO WATCH HER!" Stephen Strange hollered at Marc.

"We did! And she was fine until the giant douche tried to land one on her and I stepped in and then her and Y/N were gone!"

Stephen pinched the bridge of his nose, "Dammit." he begins to pace back and forth, "They could be in any universe right now. Guess I'll have to jump to each one and hope I find them."

Marc steps forward, "I'm coming too."

Stephen points a stern finger at him, "No. You've already done enough."

"So what the hell am I supposed to do while you look for them?" Marc asks as Stephen begins to ascend the stairs in the Sanctum.

Stephen's reply echoes, "Try not to fuck anything up further."