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ritachachanoir · 3 years ago

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This is great! I didn’t think I would like Keiron as Dimitri but he’s so good with Sisi and you captured their chemistry beautifully!

After seeing the clip of the boxing match in 1x08 from the trailer, I couldn’t get the idea of Rose and Dimitri having an argument about the trials, layered by all the angsty goodness of what happened in 1x07, out of my head. So, here you go:

“Please tell me you’re not actually going to fight for Tatiana?”

Rose finds Dimitri after his name was announced alongside hers. The two of them will face one another in the trials to decide the next monarch of the dominion. Even while actively avoiding Dimitri, she can’t seem to escape him. If she was pious, she might think it was through some sort of sick excuse for divine intervention — but as it is, she’s pretty sure she just has terrible luck.

It’s dark, Dimitri is outlined in moonlight, his arms crossed. Tall and broad and stoic, as ever. His jaw clenches. He takes a measured breath before responding.

“Yes, I am,” he confirms. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Why?” Rose crows, anger bubbling to the surface. “Why would you agree to that?”

Dimitri uncrosses his arms, letting them hang by his side.

“For the same reason you agreed to fight for Victor.”

Rose actually laughs. He can’t be serious. She’s known Victor most of her life. He’s looked out for both her and Lissa. He is a good man. He would be a good king.

“That's not the same at all, and you know it,” she says, venomous.

“I know you like to think you’re above it all, Rose, but you’re not. We don’t make the decisions here. The moroi do.”

Rose feels a stab of irritation, sick and tired of everyone around her telling who she’s supposed to be, how she’s supposed to feel, what she should be doing with her life. She doesn’t get to make many choices about her future. The one thing she really wanted for herself — the one thing she has ever ached for this much — is beyond reach. Even if he’s standing right in front of her.

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Rose cries, taking a step closer. She’s in his space now, close enough she can almost feel his warmth. She has a flash — a dark night, a warm embrace. It’s all gone now.

There’s nothing left of what they were except this painful awkwardness between them.

“Rose, I—” Dimitri starts, but Rose cuts him off.

“You can’t do this, Dimitri. Tatiana is the worst. She’ll set us all back a hundred years. She’s the reason Mikhail is dead.”

Dimitri’s eyebrows snap together, a tick of annoyance. The first crack in the glass.

“You think that I want to fight for her? That I have a choice in the matter?” Dimitri asks, frustration lacing his words.

Of course this all comes down to choice.

When they first met, Dimitri had been buttoned up. He was closed off, and he liked it that way. A dutiful guardian, through and through. She could never get a read on him, and she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to.

But in the months since he unceremoniously tackled her to the ground (which, rude, by the way), Rose had started to recognize his tells. When Dimitri crosses his arms, frustration roils off of him. A roll of his eyes tells her that he’s exasperated — either at her, himself or a situation. When he clenches his jaw, Rose wants to kiss him. She’s pretty sure he wants to kiss her when that happens too.

One thing Rose is painfully familiar with is Dimitri’s sense of duty. His fear of losing control. It shows in his careful gaze, the way he chastises her when she pushes the boundaries a little. She has weeks of wanting so badly her chest feels like it’s going to break open to show for Dimitri’s inability to ever choose something for himself.

She’s tired of it.

“Of course you have a choice! We all do. This place has you and everyone in it so fucking brainwashed,” Rose barks.

Dimitri’s eyes soften for a moment. His gaze roaming Rose’s face. When he speaks, his words are soft, muted. Almost pleading.

“What would you have me do, Rose? Turn her down?”

“Yes!’ Rose insists. “You turn her down. You have to turn her down.”

Dimitri shakes his head, rolling his eyes ever so slightly.

“You want me to say no to the potential future queen of the dominion? A woman who, as you well know, is no friend to dhampirs? And certainly not to those that go against her.”

“If you wanted to do it, you would,” Rose says.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes. It is that simple,” she replies. Rose hesitates for a moment. Then lands her killing blow. Drives her stake home. “You just don’t want to try. Which seems to be a pattern with you.”

Dimitri flinches, like he's been stung. His voice is low and measured. He's angry now. “Rose, not all of us have the luxury of a princess' favour. It's not up to me."

He's lost, Rose thinks. Everything she saw in him locked away, hidden behind a glass of fear and duty and fucked up morality. It hurts to look at him.

“Save it, comrade. I’ll see you in the ring. Maybe then you'll listen."

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ritachachanoir · 4 years ago

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Marinette: I’ve been dropping him the most insanely obvious hints for like a year now. No response. Adrien: Wow. He sound stupid. Marinette: But he’s not. He’s really smart actually. Just dense. Adrien: Maybe you need to be more obvious? Like, I don’t know… “Hey! I love you!” Marinette: I guess you’re right. Hey Adrien, I love you! Adrien: See! Just say that! Marinette: Holy fucking shit. Adrien: If that flies over his head then, sorry Mari, but he’s too dumb for you.

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ritachachanoir · 4 years ago

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What are your favorite Blogs to follow?

OH NO THERES SO MANY i’m gonna have to apologize in advance for not getting them all

@authenticcadence18: my beloved, she posts about lots of fandoms (especially phineas and ferb) and writes and draws, and she’s super lovely friend ♥️

@coccinelle-et-chaton: she writes, and does meta, and she can be an angst machine when she wants to be and she’s awesome

@carpisuns : awesome art and all around wonderful blog and person

@thesquipproject : amazing content and she makes me laugh a lot haha

@hamsternamedmarinette : literally some of my favorite comics. I spent an hour showing my irl friend alllll of them one day and we were laughing and had a great time

@chatonne-rousse: honestly has some of the fluffiest love square fics (have you read the Gifts from the Heart Series? HAVE YOU??? go do it)

@dandelionrumpancake: her art is sooo soft i cry. also she’s hilarious

@miraculouslycool: THE METAS AND THE WRITING! everything is fantastic

okay okay that’s all for now (I love lots of blogs though I can’t tag them all I’m so sorry 😭🥺)

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ritachachanoir · 5 years ago

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Such a delightful reveal fic @chatonne-rousse 💕

Adrien’s striptease and commentary was hilarious 🤣

I loved reading this and the tender moment that followed. ❤️

My favourite exchange was this though:

“I forced myself to get over you...because I'd fallen in love with you."

Marinette nods again.

"And I turned you down over and over because I was in love with you."

Wow. That packed a punch.

The Pole Kit and Kaboodle

Written for @smutember, Day 3: Striptease

@tsuki-chibi, I owe you one for all your encouragement and the great ideas you provided. You’re the best! ♥

This can also be read on Ao3.

They break apart for air, heaving breaths amplified in the silence of Adrien’s cavernous bedroom. Marinette’s hands still clutch at his back beneath his t-shirt; he lowers his head to her bare shoulder and sucks a possessive mark into her skin.

Her sundress is long gone, unbuttoned an hour ago by eager yet careful hands and parted reverently to reveal the lacy bra that now hangs from one shoulder.

Lips and tongue and teeth explore that same shoulder now, claiming every inch of skin up, up the curve of her neck and oh! The jolt of arousal that zings down her spine has her hips pressed to his of their own accord, while he soothes the spot his teeth have just nipped.

“You like that, Mari?” He purrs, huffing a pleased laugh against her skin before dipping back down to do it all over again just behind her ear.

Keep reading

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ritachachanoir · 5 years ago

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Such a fun, naughty and beautifully written fic @chatonne-rousse 💕

I love this peek into Adrien’s thoughts, and the reveal that accompanies the release.

In the recesses of his mind, he’s sending himself a message!!!

Mirage

This one is 🔥🔥🔥, so you’ll find the story under the cut below. Enjoy! 🚿

Read it on Ao3 here.

For @ritachachanoir - thank you for pre-reading this and for just generally being awesome. ❤️

Keep reading

#nsfw

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ritachachanoir · 5 years ago

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Duet

Okay, y’all! I’m going back to my more NSFW roots here for a little series of short, sweet, sexy ficlets that highlight moments of intimacy throughout the relationship of our favorite duo. This is the first in the series, though these won’t be in any kind of chronological order.

Read on Ao3.

*****

Her eyes open to bright sunlight and she squints against it quickly. Holy shit, her head is pounding.

She hears the shower running and Adrien singing a cheesy old American love ballad. Marinette smiles in spite of her headache, a giggle joining her grin when she realizes Plagg is offering his own little voice in harmony. They’re an odd pair, for sure, but when she opens her eyes just wide enough to spot Tikki asleep on Adrien’s pillow, she knows she wouldn’t change a single thing about the journey that led them to this crazy life.

Except maybe whatever they got up to last night.

Bleary eyes finally take notice of their bedroom. Clothes are strewn across the floor. An empty magnum of Dom Pérignon stands innocently on her bedside table beside a wine glass marked with the red lipstick she faintly remembers wearing on their date last night. The remnants of a deep burgundy wine have settled at the bottom. She rolls over carefully to squint at a second bottle of wine on Adrien’s nightstand, that one empty as well. (Oh god, they drank the Pétrus? She was saving that for a special occasion!) His wine glass is nowhere to be seen; she vaguely wonders if it’s on the floor and makes a mental note to check. Later.

She’s suddenly cognizant of a pleasant ache in her thighs and finds herself rubbing a thumb over her opposite wrist without thinking. Leaning her head back on the pillow, she spots the culprit still dangling from the headboard, a wicked smile crossing her lips. So that’s why her hamstrings feel like they got such a workout.

Adrien’s baritone reaches her ears again - same group, different song - and she uses the overwhelming surge of affection for him that washes over her to finally gather the energy to sit up. She feels like she was run over by an alcohol-fueled train, but morning sex is supposed to be a great hangover cure, right? She’s ready for both a shower and for another round with her beloved - one she’ll actually remember every delicious detail of afterward.

Plagg can just find another place to eat his breakfast cheese.

Letting the covers fall from her still-bare body, she stands, stretches, and makes her way to the en-suite to join her duet partner in the shower.

#beautiful #of course they drank the Pétrus because every day is a special occasion #I want to know what happens in the shower #I am obsessed with your shower fics #keep the cheese away though

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ritachachanoir · 5 years ago

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@chatonne-rousse ❤️

youtube

Trace of you | Adrien & Marinette

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ritachachanoir · 6 years ago

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I love everything about this @chatonne-rousse 💕

It’s such a sweet story- love between two friends and two heros.

You write so beautifully- with vivid imagery and depth of emotion. You need to write more!

The Best Gift Ever (Maybe, Probably, Hopefully)

This is a birthday gift for my dear friend, @tsuki-chibi. I haven’t written in more than a year, but she’s been so encouraging, I felt like she deserved a sweet little birthday story to celebrate her big day today.

I hope you had a wonderful day, full of everything that makes you happy. Thanks for everything, my friend. ❤️

Read on Ao3

Knit one, knit two. Purl one, purl two. Knit one…

It’s a late-summer paradox of an evening, warm enough to spend time outside but cool enough to warrant a blanket, a night when it feels like summer in name only.

Marinette is comfortably curled in her lounge chair, lights twinkling from the canopy above her, as her knitting needles clack a quiet rhythm. Below her in the bedroom, Tikki is propped against the cat pillow on her bed, watching the season finale of The Great British Baking Show.

In the next arrondissement, Chat Noir makes his way across the rooftops, vaulting alleys and baton-coptering over parks bathed in the last copper glow of the evening. He’d leapt from his window twenty minutes prior, limbs jittery with the need to move, sick of the endless solitude of a weekend spent in his bedroom. As dusk approached, the shadows of the window frames had crept across the space like the ever-encroaching bars of his own personal prison and the desire to leave, to run, was overwhelming. Now, the evening air is a breath of freedom, whipping his unruly hair around his ears.

Just for fun, he lets gravity take over and touches down momentarily on a monument’s plinth before pole vaulting to the roof of the school. It’s no Tour Eiffel, but it’s high and flat and sturdy, and he often stops there for a while before moving on during patrols or when he’s out for a run. It’s familiar and comfortable, a building filled with the memories of time spent with people he loves. And if Adrien’s sweet, kind classmate and friend - who welcomes the occasional chat with Chat Noir and often has pastries - lives next door, well, that’s just a bonus, isn’t it? He looks toward the bakery and can’t help but grin when he sees her. Marinette is a vision en rose, curled in her pink-striped chair, wearing a pink sweater, draped in a pink blanket. He’s leaping across the alley before his mind has caught up to his body.

Keep reading

#marinette dupain-cheng #adrien agreste #chat noir #ml fan fiction #miraculous ladybug

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ritachachanoir · 6 years ago

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This could be an original novel @whiskeykneat

You’ve used the characters but Gale and Madge are so much more fleshed out here, and set in this different time and place, it’s it’s own enthralling universe created by you.

The sex was intense and hot but there was love there as well and that’s what moved me the most.

It was good to get a snippet of Peeta and Katniss. I wanted them to kiss!

ONE MORE SATURDAY NIGHT chapter 3 is up!

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19768651/chapters/46972627#workskin

#nsfw #gale hawthorne #gale x madge #madge undersee #everlark #underthorne #n*fw

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ritachachanoir · 6 years ago

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I loved this so much @whiskeykneat

I felt it.

The longing for Madge, the rescue and that raw fight and the temptation that neither can resist. You’ve converted me to team Gadge!!!

One More Saturday Night [2]

CHAPTER TWO

Smoke curls upwards from the cigarette dangling out of Joanna's mouth as she looks Gale up and down. It's near ten o'clock, long after the street lamps have clicked on, and the air outside the carhop smells of oil and grease. Gale has just gotten off his shift at the mine, he's scrubbed and scrubbed at the coal dust in the seams of his hands, but with back to back twelve hour shifts, they'll never be clean.

The letter that came this morning from the capital is burning a hole in his pocket.

He'd taken one look at it sitting forlornly on the kitchen table next to his warm dinner, and when his mother's step had creaked on the bottom stair, Gale didn't have to look past the washtub curtain to know that she'd been crying, he could hear it in her voice.

[[MORE]]

I'm going out, Ma, he'd said, but hadn't stopped her when she'd drawn him tight to her thin body for a fierce hug.

You tell Katniss, Gale. Tell her tonight, Hazelle had whispered, wiping her eyes. And give her my love.

"Katniss?" Joanna purses her red lips, sucking on the cigarette so hard he can imagine what those sinful red lips would look like wrapped around his cock, and Gale gives her a once-over of his own. "She's working. Took my shift." She brushes past him, letting him feel every inch of her pointy brassiere pressing up to his chest. "You're gonna have a hard time prying her from that dump up to Lookout Point tonight." Joanna rolls her eyes, nodding towards the parking lot, full of every warm-blooded teenager in town, as if there's nothing better to do on a Saturday night in 1964, in every house in town a television, on every radio the sound of the devil's music.

For the times they are a-changin’...

"You could come up to Lookout Point with me." Joanna's red nails lightly trail down his forearm, and goosebumps pimple along Gale's skin. She looks up at him from under her lashes, biting down on the tip of her thumb. And he considers it for a moment, he really does, but he's been down that road before: sinking down into her warm wet softness, hearing her mewl as she claws his back, begging him to empty himself inside of her, anything to fill the gaping hole inside them both.

Joanna purrs as she runs a finger up his chest, playing with his collar. "It ain't as pretty, but we can go down to the Slag Heap if you've a mind to get ham-hocked." There's no reason he should refuse her. Thom will be there, after all, and every other man on the crew. Right now, nothing sounds better than drinking so hard he can't see straight, anything except thinking about the letter in his pocket.

Gale looks down at Joanna for a moment, and he hears what she's saying to him, offering him a way out tonight, a way to forget that in two days, he’ll be on a train to his army training, where they'll put a gun in his hands and send him off to the jungle, and there will be no more Saturday nights like this one, where all he has to worry about is which pretty girl he’ll be taking home.

(All of them. None of them. Any of them except the only one he wants, the only one he's ever wanted, the one he can never have at all.)

He fingers the ribbon wrapped around his wrist, threadbare now, but once as sky blue as the bottles that hang from the chinaberry tree outside his mother’s front door -- as if it is what is keeping him tethered to this town, like a candle burning against the darkness. "Nah, not tonight."

"Well, if you want something to take the edge off, you know where to find me." Joanna pouts dramatically, one hand on her hip. She winks, then, and leaves him, a cloud of Chanel in her wake.

As if his body has a mind of its own, Gale finds himself hopping back in the truck, and bringing it around to the parking lot. The carhop is jumping tonight, hormones and energy pumping out of every sleek car, on beat with the music.

Stay… just a little bit longer…

Gale parks in the back, near the tree line, and cuts the engine. The place is full of Townies, all dressed to the nines, the boys with shaggy Beatles hair and the girls in mini skirts and beehives. In his work denim and his button down plaid shirt, Gale feels suddenly old beyond his years and out of place, as though he's peeped into a pinhole camera of an era gone by, one he never belonged to, was never a part of. These boys have never spent twelve hours down in a mining shaft, working every muscle as they lay waste to the mountain. They've never left school to become breaker boys, separating the impurities from the coal. They do not know what it's like to descend down into the darkness, day after day after day, until it is like you have never known the light.

“What would you like?” The voice, a car over, arrests him in his tracks, and Gale feels his whole body shiver with recognition.

It's the voice that's haunted his dreams since the summer of 1961, sleepy afternoons and strawberry kisses. It's the haunting melody of the piano drifting through the dusty air as he makes his way to the mine in the dawnlight, pricking memories long buried: of her in his arms, twirling around in that big, empty gazebo. That slate-tiled gazebo, with the big cupola, with lots of shady corners for stealing kisses. It was where Madge Undersee had her debutante ball, as Gale watched from the shade of the sycamore tree in his ill-fitting suit, and knew he could never be a part of her world.

He'd taken employment in the mine the very next day, and the day he'd turned eighteen he'd gone down in the pit for the first time, the memory of the girl he could never have seared forever on his heart.

•••

Gale hasn't seen Madge Undersee since the morning after the debutante ball, when he'd met her under the sycamore tree just past the edge of the sprawling gardens, where once he'd carved their initials together: M+G.

She'd been wearing white, he recalls: a frothy camisole, so fine he could see the outline of her breasts and feel the answering swell in his denim jeans, and pine green silk pajama pants that hugged her delicate curves. Gale knew that if he touched her, the silk would whisper over her skin, that she'd make a little moan in her throat, and that her lips would be velvety and plush, tasting of clouds and cream as he parted them with the tip of his tongue.

If he kissed her, he'd be unable to finish what he came to do, and that's the one thing that killed him, to take the only thing good and fine in his world, and make what lay between them something cheap.

He thought about her father, and the suitcase of money, money that could have fed his whole family for a year, and bought a new house besides, were he the kind of man who didn't have his pride, the kind of man who didn't know right from wrong. He was seventeen, but he's been a man since he was twelve, the night his father died and mantle of responsibility, of family, came to lay on his shoulders.

Madge smiled up at him, handing him a tiny teacup filled with black coffee, his big, rough working man's hand nearly engulfing her own. For a moment, he let his hand linger on hers, until her cheeks turned pink, and then he took a step back, the space between them thick with words unspoken. There was an eyelash on her cheek, he wanted to blow it off, he wanted to make a wish. But the time had passed for such foolish fancies.

My daughter is not for you, Gale Hawthorne, Mayor Undersee had said gently, the suitcase lying on the table between them like Pandora's Box, the sounds of the party drifting up from below. There was a line of coal smudged along the cuff of Gale's suit jacket, and he tugged at his sleeve, feeling the poorly constructed seams give out just a touch.

The tux belonged to Thom's pa, who was as of a mind as Gale's in that a suit was only for marrying and burying. Not fucking around at a party to impress some high class piece of tail. Gale had never wanted to deck the elderly man more in his entire life.

I wanna hold your hand, crooned Paul McCartney on the record player.

Under the ancient sycamore tree, Madge's eyes were as deep and blue as the Delft china plates in the display case at the five and dime, and the little gold flecks danced like specks of sunlight as she gazed up at him. When he spoke, tears sprung to her eyes, and her teacup fell to the roots of the tree, shattering and spilling like the sound a heart makes when it breaks beyond hope or repair.

High in the tree, a pair of mated bluebirds sang, to usher in the morning.

•••

There she is, Miss Prim and Proper, the Debutante herself: Madge Undersee. And she looks better than ever, if that's possible: golden and slender, with legs that go on forever. Gale can't help but drink every bit of her in, as if he hasn't been able to stop thinking of her since the day they parted, as if he’s never thought about walking up to the front door of her house and asking if she's home. But he heard from Katniss that Madge went up to university in Charlottesville, and he’d thought that after that, she'd never return.

He's heard a rumor that Madge got engaged, that she's marrying Seneca Crane, the son of a senator, the china already picked and the invitations sent out.

If that's the truth, why is Madge working at the carhop? She should be making her wedding trousseau. She should be shopping all over Paris with her Daddy's money, and buying French lingerie for that stuck up rich man, to lie in his big bed with the hundred count sheets, and let him taste her sweetness.

Like clouds and cream. Like strawberries.

"Fuck!" Gale presses his forehead to his hands, which are clenched on the steering wheel.

He should drive out of here right now. He should go home and get a good sleep in his own bed. He should… But he won't. And, catching himself rubbing the satin ribbon around his wrist again, he knows why.

Madge Undersee.

He's halfway out of the car already when he hears her voice again, and this time nothing can stop Gale Hawthorne from getting what he's come back for, from the one person he can't leave behind without saying goodbye.

•••

“Please, please don't.” Madge vainly bats at the hands groping her ass, and for a moment she's back in the frat house, trying to push Seneca off of her as his tongue goes down her throat and his knee forces her legs apart.

You're so frigid, Margreta. Don't be such a goddamned prude.

“You heard the lady. She said no.”

It's like she's imagining things. Gale Hawthorne. Standing between her and Cato Curlew, steel in his tone. His voice ripples with command, and Madge feels a trickle of warmth low in her belly, though she's still angry with him, after all these cold years apart.

Why is he here now, when he's stayed away for so long? Doesn't he know that she no longer needs him, that she stopped waiting for him long ago? “I don't need your help,” Madge informs Gale’s broad shoulders. “Go away.”

She can hear the sneer in Cato’s voice. “That ain't no lady.” He spits a stream of tobacco on the asphalt. “Everyone with half a brain knows that she's been spreading her legs for any Seam bastard who asks since she was sixteen.”

Gale grabs Cato by the shirt, and blood sprays against the mirror on the door. Cato comes out swinging, shaking his head like a bull before he charges at Gale. Madge screams, and they all come running, the boys laying bets, the girls huddled to the side and watching through their fingers, titillated and horrified all at once.

The two men square off on the blacktop, Cato big and square and stocky, Gale tall and broad-shouldered but with a latent strength honed from years swinging a pickaxe. Cato is bleeding from the nose, and his fists are up as he and Gale circle one another. Madge has heard the stories, Cato killed the last man he fought in a brawl, down in Wheeler.

“Don't! Stop!” She tries to dart between them, but Wheatley Mellark grabs her arm, hauling her back.

“You'll just make it worse,” he murmurs in her ear.

“Get him, Cato!” Cato’s friend Marvel cups his hands and lets out a wild yell, and Cato surges forward like he's been shot from a cannon. “Show that Seam bastard what we do to coal miners who think they can touch Town women!”

Madge is pale, she is shaking. “Stop them,” she begs Wheatley and Delly, who has appeared at her other side, a serious look on her face.

Gale and Cato circle one another on the gray, cracked asphalt, dust rising in the air.

“That's right,” Gale taunts, his voice deep and carrying. “These dirty, coal-stained hands have touched Town women… While you're at your office with your secretary, I've been plowing your girlfriends… Your wives… And your momma, Curlew.”

Cato roars, and charges Gale. Gale dodges Cato, turning and socking his fist into Cato’s jaw. Cato spits out blood, lunging for Gale, and then both men are on the asphalt, rolling over and over with the smell of heat and blood in the air.

“Stop it! Gale Hawthorne, stop it right now!” Katniss comes gliding across the pavement, but Peeta Mellark, near the edge of the crowd, catches her arm, his mouth moving in words that Madge cannot make out, even if she wanted to.

She can hear nothing except the thud of flesh on flesh, and then Gale is on top of Cato, punching and punching him, and suddenly the wail of police sirens can be heard coming down the avenue, and Madge snaps out of her coma.

“We have to go!” Madge yanks on Gale’s arm, hard, and he resists her for only a moment before snapping back into focus, his dark gray eyes gone soft as he looks at her. She doesn't want to think about what that means, not right now, not when this could all be taken away in an instant. Cato is Town, and his daddy is a rich man besides. Gale is Seam. A night in jail would be the lightest of sentences Gale could pray for.

So instead, Madge leans forward, cupping Gale’s jaw, and whispers in his ear, “Now,” and Gale, stumbling like a drunk in the dark, doesn't question her when she jumps into the truck beside him and grinds the gears, and they speed off into the night.

•••

“You're an idiot.” Madge presses the damp napkin a little too hard to Gale’s jaw, and he winces, trying to pull away. “You know that?” Her voice is low and furious, and he thinks he's never been more intrigued by her than at this very moment, all her ladylike poise gone, the air between them crackling like lightning about to strike.

“Maybe if you had stayed where you were supposed to be --” Gale growls, turning his jaw from her ministrations. “On your side of town -- Then I wouldn't have had to step in in the first place!”

“I don't see how it's any of your business where I spend my time, or who I spend it with!” Madge pushes on Gale’s chest, and he laughs darkly. “What's your problem?”

“You are! If you had just stayed in your place -- the princess in her tower -- instead of slumming it --” He’d kill any man who touched her without her permission, she has to know that.

Tears spring to the corners of her eyes, and for an instant Gale feels like a monster for wounding her, but -- You deserve this, he reminds himself. She can't know that all he wants to do is to take her in his arms and kiss her tears away. He's already made his choice.

“I…” Madge turns her face away for a moment, composing herself. He wonders if she still sings to herself in her head. He wonders why he can feel the space between their bodies so keenly, why he still wants to pull her close, to open the door they locked so long ago. “I think you should take me home.”

Gale swallows, turning his face to hers. In the moonlight, her profile would look at home stamped on an antique bronze coin, too beautiful to be anything but legendary. Wars have been fought over women like Madge Undersee, in times of old. She's everything that's wrong and right for him, and even though his heart says it's right, his mind whispers that it's wrong, wrong, wrong.

Gale leans toward Madge, who tenses, and as he wraps a finger around single golden curl, she turns her face up to him with a question in her eyes, that indent on her lower lip enchanting him as it did when he was a boy, begging to be explored by his tongue. His hand comes up, and he caresses the line of her jaw, feeling her tremble uncontrollably at his touch. “What are you so afraid of?” Gale whispers huskily, even though he knows the answer.

What he isn't expecting are the next words out of her mouth.

“I don't want Daddy to hear about…” she waves a hand to encompass their surroundings, or maybe the events that have taken place. “...this.”

“I didn't ask for his damned approval.” His laugh is rusty, as though it's been a long time since he's had anything to laugh about. “I bet Daddy approves if he's got cash in his pockets instead of coal.”

Madge reels back, as if she's been slapped. “Fuck you.” Before Gale can process what's happening, the car door slams behind her, and she runs barefoot across the dark parking lot, and straight into the Slag Heap.

“Fuck!” Gale slams his hands on the dashboard, wincing. He leaves the door swinging, and runs after her.

She's standing at the bar when Gale catches up to her, her shoulders heaving, downing a shot of something amber, the heady scent of it already purring on her skin. “What do you want?” She slams the shot glass on the bar with a hiss, and Gale grabs her by the shoulders, unsure of what he intends to do right up until this moment.

“Another shot,” the bartender drawls, and Gale slams it down, and then he's kissing Madge Undersee, his hands cupping that little heart shaped face, his thumbs stroking her jawline, the taste of her as raw and real as though it's been home all along, as if he's never known it until she's back in his arms, pliant and soft, nipping at her bottom lip, his tongue meeting hers, tasting of amber and cream and the mist that rises off the mountains in the morning.

Madge pulls back, and slaps him, hard. “You bastard.” There's a round of shocked applause, led by Joanna, who blows Gale a sultry kiss and a wink, leaning against her pool cue before lining up her shot.

But Gale isn't here for Joanna tonight. “Madge!” Gale bellows, past caring what anyone thinks. His long strides overtake her in the parking lot, and he finds her leaning against the cab of his truck, her shoulders shaking.

“Get me out of here, Gale,” Madge whispers, her voice raw.

He touches her gently, as though she is a wild doe that might startle or frighten, and she surprises him by turning around and falling into his arms, her face pressed to his chest, her heart matching the beat of his own. He lifts her tear streaked face with one finger, and then she stands on tip-toe, and they are kissing again, slow and soft and sure, as if all the time they've spent apart has been leading up to this moment.

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ritachachanoir · 6 years ago

Text

I love this @whiskeykneat

You write so beautifully and I’m suddenly transported to another country and another time.

You paint all the characters with such precision and vivid imagery.

The last scene actually made me feel Madge’s fear and loss of control. Wonderful work 💕

One More Saturday Night [1]

Notes: trying something a little different since the ao3 link doesn't seem to be working for some people. I made a cut but if it doesn't work this is tagged #long post. // Summary: For everyone else, it's just one more Saturday night in 1964, but for Gale Hawthorne and Peeta Mellark, they’ve both received letters that will change the course of their lives forever. // Rating: this chapter is T, but some parts will be N*FW

I. Fortunate Son (1964)

CHAPTER ONE

It's eight o'clock on a sultry July night in Twelvetrees, West Virginia. Down at the carhop, Katniss Everdeen has just switched shifts with Joanna Mason, and as she leans against the freezer, stretching her sore calves, she's unaware that the boy who's just rolled up in the parking lot with his brothers, the one who carries fifty pound sacks of flour to the back door and gets tongue tied in her presence, would give her the world if he could.

While Joanna slicks red lipstick on her sultry mouth and clips on her garters under the flickering yellow light of the washroom, Peeta Mellark sits in the parking lot of the carhop and turns the words he'll say to Katniss Everdeen over and over again in his mouth, the official decision letter from the draft board burning a hole in his pocket.

He ain't needed here. Got some brothers. That son of yours has always been useless. Let the army straighten him out, Mr Mellark. His mother's words feel like they've been seared into his soul, deeper than the burns from his many years of tending the ovens in their family bakery.

[[MORE]]

"Peet! Cat got your tongue?" Delly giggles, elbowing Peeta in the side. Delly is like a sister to him, they grew up side by side in the garden between the shoe shop and the bakery, fast friends since the day she found him hiding from his mother under the rose bushes.

Unlike Peeta, Delly has always known what she'll do when she grows up, and that's marrying the boy with the easy, charming smile who sits even now with one arm slung over her shoulders -- Peeta's second eldest brother, Wheatley. Their lives are laid out before them like the instructions for a gingerbread house, all it takes it for the pieces to be iced together, like a fairy story, falling into place.

The letter crinkles in Peeta's shirt pocket when he pats it, and as if he knows what's on Peeta's mind, Wheatley nudges him unsubtly. "You gonna tell her?" Peeta has never been close to his older brothers, and this spirit of bonhomie at the eleventh hour feels like they've already picked out a plot at the VA cemetery for him.

Peeta shrugs, feeling a blush heat his cheeks as Katniss skates on by.

"My, I wish I could pull off those dungarees!" Delly chirps, pointing at Katniss.

"I think she looks..." Like a stone cold fox. "...Outta sight." And Katniss does. She's got her dark hair pinned up like old posters of Rosie the Riveter, with a plain scrubbed face and not a hint of makeup. Yet something about her is still so inexpressibly arresting that Peeta can't help but stare at her, lost in thought, as she skates between the cars, taking orders left and right.

She's a devil on skates: her form needs work, but she can serve five cars in under fifteen minutes, with nary a drop of root beer float spilled in a single lap. She never smiles, but Peeta knows any boy in town would love to take her to Lookout Point for some necking. The sexual revolution may not have made it this deep into the mountains yet, but when there's nothing else to do, people make their own fun.

Still, the line is drawn between the Seam and Town, Katniss is the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and Peeta may not want to admit it to himself, but that's the real reason any town boy would take her out, to see if she'd go all the way, or if she'd keep her legs locked up tight.

As she passes by the finned Buick Electra, she looks up and meets Peeta's eye, and though she never breaks the flow, he sees her look back again, and he could swear she almost smiles.

•••

I don't know how you do it, Joanna had said earlier, with a tone in her voice that might have been a slap or a smile. You might just make something of yourself and get out of this town, kiddo. What she doesn't say is written on every silver scar that marks her flesh, but Katniss lets Joanna keep her secrets, and that's why they're friends.

When Joanna slams out the back door, Katniss hears a Caddy roar in the alley like a tiger, and there's the scream of her friend's high laughter before the only sound left in the waiting night is crickets and the catchy song trickling from the kitchen radio: Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do...

For a moment, Katniss is lost in the past, and she stares out the back door as the moths flutter at the neon lights, feeling every year of her eighteen summers and twenty more besides, as though she's faded to a pale reflection of herself before she's ever gotten her or Prim out of this place.

"You look like you're run off your feet, girl. Sit down and take a breather. Them Town kids can wait." Chaff plucks the order pad from Katniss's fingers and starts putting up the tickets as he steers her to a chair beside the fan. "'Sides, Mitch would kill me if you fainted on my watch." Chaff passes Katniss an ice cold bottle of pop, and she feels herself sag in relief.

Chaff once flew planes with Abernathy, back in the war with Germany, but beyond that she hardly knows him at all, for Chaff never talks about the city he left to come to their little town that sleeps as the rest of the modern world passes them by.

The bottle of pop sweats in her hands, and it makes her think of the way her pa would bring home one as a treat when she was little, to be shared sip by tiny sip with her baby sister, each fizzy bubble held in their mouths for as long as they could, to make the sweetness last.

"Shit, Miss Undersee was supposed to be here an hour ago." Chaff smacks a hand on the counter, but Katniss can tell he doesn't half care. "If she's late one more time, I'll fire her ass. I don't care who her daddy is."

Before Katniss can make up an excuse for Madge (the secret of how sick Madge's mama is lies on her tongue like a wedge of pitch, sticking her gums together), Chaff passes her a twist of greasy fries and a milkshake (strawberry, like the wild berries she used to sell door to door with her best friend Gale, before he went down the mine). She can't believe how ravenous she is, anyone would think she hadn't eaten since breakfast, and that's as close to the truth as she's willing to admit to herself.

Ever since the mine explosion that killed her father, back in '55, Katniss has had to shift for herself and her sister, keeping their small family afloat. The mine owner sent their mama to a sanitarium in Richmond to recuperate. When she returned, she seemed half the person she used to be, and had to return again and again to be put back together for something called hysteria.

But that's all water under the bridge now, and Katniss is no longer that frightened eleven year old girl, forced to survive on the kindness of strangers. Abernathy took pity on her and hired her as soon as she turned fifteen to work for him at the carhop, and she'll spend her life trying to repay a debt that can never be quantified.

Mr Abernathy passed out hours ago, he's almost as fond of white lightning as Katniss is of making extra tips, anything to get out of this town before it's too late. She's got a scholarship to the university, the same place Abernathy went to, even though she's no more likely to study physics than she is to sprout wings and fly away from the dust of this coal town.

At midnight, when the neon lights shut down, and all the moths in town flock to the lustrous glow the stars make over the quarry pond, she and Chaff will use all of their combined strength to roll Abernathy over and make sure he doesn't drown in his own vomit. That's part of her debt, and she'll be deep in it until she shuffles off this mortal coil.

So when Madge bursts through the door, not a single strand of blonde hair out of place, Katniss is too full of sugar and grease to protest when Madge insists she'll take the next orders out.

"Been pilin' up." Chaff nods to the tickets. "That little Cartwright gal came by and dropped 'em off while Katniss took a breather. By the sounds of it, they're gittin' liquored up out there." But he doesn't make a move to stop Madge from going out the door.

Madge blows a strand of golden hair off her forehead and adjusts her headband, her pale fingers flying over the laces in an intricate pattern as she re-ties her skates. They're pristine white, the kind that Katniss's little sister Primrose would give her eye teeth for, but nothing in the Seam stays white for long, not with the coal dust that gets onto everything, coating it like funerary ash.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she says to Katniss, biting her lip and looking away from her friend. Chaff makes a sound of deep disgust in his throat, and passes Madge the tray. Once she's skated from sight, he turns back to the fryer, and turns up the radio.

Come gather 'round friends and I'll tell you a tale / Of when the red iron pits ran a-plenty / But the cardboard-filled windows and old men on the benches / Tell you now that the whole town is empty (North Country Blues, Bob Dylan)

•••

Madge has skated eleven blocks to get here, refusing to take her daddy's car like some spoiled little debutante, although she might have a year ago, before she went to university, before everything began to fall apart. There's a run in her stockings that will have to be repaired soon, and a burning in her lungs that reminds her she's alive. Now that she's been to university and back, this town feels smaller than ever, but it's a good feeling, as if nothing bad could ever happen here, cocooned from the world outside.

When the lights turn down low, and the town sleeps, she'll lie in her bed and listen to the hum of the locusts in the sycamore tree, where the initials M+G are still scarred across the trunk, as if life followed a pattern, laid out like a children's jumping rhyme.

•••

It is quite propitious, as far as plans go, Miss Undersee. Seneca dabbed at his lips with his napkin. His mustache was damp with moisture, and she felt her stomach curdle at the way it gleamed wetly under the lights. She just hoped he got this whole breakup over with soon, because she was sure that one more minute of having to endure his rubbery lips and his mechanical groping on her knee would make her commit an entirely unladylike act.

As Madge fantasized about flipping Seneca the bird, he laid a clammy hand over hers and took a deep breath. With my money and your breeding, I think a marriage would suit the pair of us, don't you agree?

But my degree... I haven't finished it yet. Madge's smile froze in place, suddenly entirely too aware of the predatory gazes of the waitstaff, as though the entire moment had been orchestrated. She felt blindsided, and furious all at once. But good manners won out, and she smiled again, with a cheer she did not feel.

Seneca laughed, a touch of condescension creeping into his voice. I'm not marrying you for your mind, Margareta. Your father said you might be stubborn.

Madge reeled back in shock, stunned. Suddenly it all seemed too much: the soft candlelight felt as garish as the cheap lights of a carnival fanfare, the white wine in her glass tasted like rotgut mash. She tried to tug her hand back from Seneca's, but he held it fast. You talked to my daddy already? Her voice seemed to be coming from far away.

Why, of course I did, darling. Seneca squeezed her arm tight, a warning. Now, if you want to finish your university degree by mail, that's fine with me, but you won't need any of that when you're Mrs Seneca Crane, wife to the next senator of West Virginia. He continued his monologue, the room fading to a single pinprick of light until all Madge could see was that flashy diamond, all she could hear was the sound of champagne corks and applause, and all she could feel was the tightness closing in on her, as if Seneca's ring was around her neck instead of her finger.

#gadge #long post #gale/madge #gale x madge #everlark #historical au #hunger games #hunger games fic #underthorne #gale hawthorne #madge undersee #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark

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