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becausethathappens · 3 years

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Spare Change

4k - college - Link is furious, so Rhett tries to calm him down.

For @peachworthy and anyone else who thinks swearing is hot.

Link is mad.

Link is pacing.

Rhett tries to help.

“Why don’t you just scream into a pillow, like you always do?” Rhett offers.

“I did that!” Link cries. He makes a show of going over and doing it again. Rhett can’t help his instinct to recoil at seeing his friend yell like that.

Link’s car has been towed. Link can’t go on a date with the girl he’s been trying to court all week.

On top of that: Link doesn’t have a credit card (all he’s got is cash) and it says right on the tow sign they don’t deal in it. Somehow Link missed the whole thing, the first time around, when he parked wrong or whatever. But now going to have to borrow his Mama’s card just to get the truck out of impound.

All this and he still has to cancel on his date tonight.

“I didn’t even see a line!” he yells again, recounting the events that have unfolded. “How am I supposed to take their word for it without a picture, either! And like I said, if you can’t see the line, how are you gonna know when you’ve crossed it?!” he decries.

They’ve towed his car because he parked outside the student residential boundary lines on the main street. Everyone knows this is how the city of Raleigh makes most it’s coin. Shoving parking tickets on unsuspecting co-eds.

Link never thought they’d tow his freaking car, though.

Well, his truck. To be specific.

He feels stifled, cornered, and hot. Very hot. His skin is boiling, red and he wants to punch the pillow he’s just released after screaming into it.

His only permanent means of escape.

At least, unless he borrows Rhett's car.

“I can’t believe they wouldn’t even give me a warning! Or wait five minutes! I was only in rec center for ten minutes picking up freakin’ — these freakin’ things,” Link spits the words as he picks up and tosses the flowers back down on his desk.

They’re rumpled, now, with his tense hold and actions. Rhett gets up and fidgets with them, trying to smooth the foliage back into the nice shape it started in.

“Link, it’s okay, Lindsey is gonna understand,” Rhett explains.

“It’s not — it’s — there’s — why’s it always — I’M SO MAD!” Link ends with, apoplectic and beyond any other way to articulate it.

“That’s okay!” Rhett tells him, since he has every right to be upset.

“I...! Ughhhh!” He walks over and bangs his right Reebok heel against the closet door once for good measure.

It makes a noisy sound as it bends at the overhead slide hinge that keeps it on track. Link kicks it again, seeming pleased with the audible response from the wood bending and cracking loudly in the room, like a smack to the face.

“Link!” Rhett reprimands, sure that they’ll be in trouble with their resident advisor for damaging property if Link keeps it up.

“I’m sorry, I just! I just wanna — ‘s just been one thing after another, this year!” Link growls, continuing his pacing and returning to the wooden door again. “I’m just so — so — ARRGH!” Link fumes and before Rhett can jump up to intervene, he watches his friend punch the door.

“FFF—reak! Dang it!” Link screams.

Rhett watches, eyes wide.

“Shit!” Link yells as it hits. It gives with a loud, snap-crack and Rhett’s mouth makes a perfect “o” in reaction.

Link’s hand goes to his mouth catching his own language. “Shit!” he cries again like he can’t stop, muffled by his hand.

Afterwards, he’s panting and Rhett is left standing to the side staring in a bit of awe. He didn’t know Link had that in him, to be honest. “Shit, there’s a hole!” Link exclaims.

Their eyes both guiltily dart to the half-filled swear jar on Link’s desk. Usually he’s the one keeping after Rhett for saying “Hell!” or “Damn!”

Although Rhett’s said all the bad words, at some point or another, it is unlike either of them to spew out a ton of foul language in a string as Link has.

“Swear jar?” Rhett says, mostly in question. He can tell Link’s much madder than the other times they’ve punished each other for cursing. His willingness to let it go is rife in his tone, but Link shakes his head, madder at himself for having swore and willing to pay the price.

He saunters over to his backpack and finds his wallet. “No, no, I earned it.” He tsks himself as he pulls out a few singles and strides over to the jar, tipping them in.

“You overpaid, there, bo,” Rhett advises, watching the bills settle. It was a quarter a word and Link put in three dollars.

“‘S for the door,” Links says, shrugging. “I don’t know what the Hell I ‘s thinkin’!”

He closes his eyes. “And for that Hell, too,” he adds. “And that one!” He throws his hands up. “ARRgh!”

“Link!” Rhett yells as he slots another single dollar bill, adding to the overpayment, but cushioning the extra curses all the same. “Link, it’s — you — it’s fine!”

“It’s not fine!” Link yells. “I’m screwed. And now I’m cursing like a sailor watchin’ my favorite football team lose the playoffs!”

Rhett makes a face. “What, we talkin’ the Army-Navy game, or what?”

“Damn it, Rhett!” Link snarls. Then he closes his eyes and makes a face at his own words. “Damn it, Rhett!” He paces around, throwing his hands back around, gesticulating. “I feel like I’m trapped in some sick dirty mouth loop!”

“That sounds… why does that sound worse than the cursing?” Rhett says, joking. “Maybe you should add another dollar?”

Link sighs, dramatically, and does so.

“Link, I was — you don’t have to actually — Link, it’s okay!” Rhett stammers out, eyes bright. He comes at Link with his hand out, like he’s asking to be heard out. “You had a horrible day, you should be allowed to vent a little!”

“Vent a little?!” Link shoots back. “I put a hole in the door!”

“Yeah, okay, maybe that wasn’t your finest moment, but you’re pissed!” Rhett explains. “I get it!”

Link throws his hands up as if to say, at least there’s that and not much else.

“You should get a pass.”

“A pass?” Link questions.

“Yeah, just for tonight.” Rhett puts his hands on his hips. “You already paid for a week’s worth of curses with my exchange rate,” Rhett jokes.

Rhett didn’t curse much, but all the other money in the jar was his. Link’s never so much as taken the Lord’s name in vain before.

Link spares a sidelong glance and hustles back over to his backpack to return his wallet.

“Go ahead, man, you’ve earned it. Blow off some steam!” Rhett advises.

“So, you just want me to start cursing?” Link asks, joking with a touch of condescension. “Like some — some degenerate?”

“Degenerate?” Rhett asks, laughing. “Who said anything about being a degenerate?”

“That’s who curses, Rhett!”

Rhett looks Link over and decides to try and get his mind off what’s eating him by messing with him. His favorite pastime.

“You should say the ‘F’ word, Link,” Rhett urges, suddenly, overcome with the desire to corrupt Link. He’s a bit ashamed of it, but another side of him insists that it would be hilarious to see Link snap and start saying filthy things, even for just one night.

Hearing him say Shit! is enough to get Rhett interested in hearing more.

Link frowns. “Fornicate?”

Rhett smirks. “Yeah, but the bad version.”

Link’s eyes go wide. “Rhett!” he puts a hand to his chest, finally settling on a posture that indicates he’s nearly at his wit’s end. Rhett beams at him.

This is as much about teasing Link to take a night off being Mr. Perfect as it is about Rhett noticing that Link screaming Shit! also did a lot to calm him down. If he curses more, maybe he’ll feel better altogether. Plus, as established, Rhett found it hilarious to watch unfold.

In his opinion, it’s certainly worth a shot.

“C’mon, Link — let one rip!” Rhett teases and Link’s brows furrow.

Unfortunately, Rhett’s efforts to cheer him up are doing the opposite for his mood in the meantime. Link looks actively annoyed at the supposition.

“Will you please — ? We’ve established I’m having a terrible enough night as it is and I don’t need your added bull —” Link stops, then goes silent off at Rhett’s delighted expression.

“My what?” Rhett teases more. “My bullshit?”

Link’s eyes flick to the jar. Rhett makes a show of grabbing a quarter from his laundry money holder on his own desk and walking over to put it in the jar.

“Yeah, that,” Link bullies.

“Well, too dang bad, Link,” Rhett says, splaying his arms wide and taking in that Link is at least partly distracted from his terrible night, even while he spoke of it. “Rules are that so long as I pay up, I’m fine.”

Link huffs.

“This is —” Link starts, voice rising again in agitation.

“Uh, huh,” Rhett encourages.

“You’re such a —” Link begins and ends. Rhett’s eyebrows and eyes both dart up then turn crooked, waiting for any addition to that comment, but it never arrives.

Link starts pacing again, faster, back and forth between the dorm beds and their door.

Rhett merely nods, waiting for more.

Finally, something in Link stops him in his tracks. Whether it’s the constant grinning nods from Rhett to egg him on, the long itinerary of Bad Things that keep on Happening, or just that Link is filled with an urge to punch the closet door again and he knows he can’t do that.

So, he snaps, “IT IS BULLSHIT!” full volume at Rhett.

Rhett’s head nods even more swiftly, taking a deeper path up and down, like he’s bobbing over steady waves to stay afloat.

“IT’S ALL BULLSHIT!” Link repeats at the same charged decibel.

Rhett still nods more, as if to tell him to elaborate further, but Link’s anger stagnates his thinking. He just wants to keep screaming that, so he does. “IT’S ALL SUCH BULLSHIT!”

“Yeah, it is!” Rhett calls back at him, like he’s cheering him on in the stands.

“And you?!” Rhett puts a hand on his own chest as if to answer silently who me? Link’s, fired up again and pointing in Rhett’s direction. “You don’t get to have fun with this, you’re — you’re just as bad!”

“YEAH! I AM!” Rhett calls out, uncaring about being thrown into the mix as well.

“When you drove us to the rec center last weekend, we double-parked with our hazards on and took twice as long!”

Rhett exclaims, “We did!” in agreement.

“ASSHOLE!” Link yells at him.

Rhett nods.

Link tears his fingers through his hair, overwhelmed at how out of hand his words have gotten, so quickly. His eyes stray back to the swear jar where he knows he has at least a few words to go. Disturbing though the thought, he considers also that he has more money in his wallet.

He knows how far he’s strayed, already, from that change in priorities alone. When he looks back at Rhett, who is still giddy, waiting for him to say more, he gives up.

“Fuck,” he mutters, in absolution.

Rhett gasps.

He’s been waiting for Link to say that, most of all, and is shocked by how quickly they’ve arrived there. Hearing it spoken so casually, on top of it all.

“Fuck,” Link repeats again, in surprise that the word actually tumbled out of his mouth so smoothly.

“I don’t even think I’ve ever hardly thought that word before, let alone said it, now I can’t f — fuck, now I can’t stop!” Link growls at Rhett, furious at his role in what feels like a downfall.

Rhett is still aghast. His mind racing.

He’s been waiting for the delivery and is amazed to hear Link actually do it. His mind has been picturing this as a funny joke, but Link is just standing there, mad, yelling fuck, again and again, accusatory. Rightly so.

Rhett knows he drove Link to this, in part for his own amusement, but it doesn’t feel funny at all anymore. His cheeks feel warm.

Link’s face reddens further at Rhett’s lack of response.

He gets up in Rhett’s face and Rhett feels himself start to back up so quickly he nearly stumbles to sit on the bed. He needs to concede this fight because it’s clear there’s a lot more pent up anger than he’s realized inside Link.

He thinks back to the door and looks around. That did calm him briefly, but surely he can’t just punch the door again. “You should yell,” Rhett ekes out the next best thing. What Link shouted after the punch. “Yell it.”

He means the f-word, still. The way Link is saying it, it feels immoral to be saying it, too.

“FUCK!” Link yells, at his continued badgering, whether it’s in fulfillment of his request or not, Rhett couldn’t say. His body shudders in fear at how loud and direct an outburst that was.

Now, he’s worried their dorm mates are going to think they’re in an all-out fight. Rhett’s eyes scan the bed and he grabs a pillow. “Yell into this,” he offers, handing the pillow over.

Link, still looking annoyed, takes the pillow. He shoves his face against it and screams, “FUCK!” at what must be the very top of his lungs.

Rhett has to brace himself against the top bunk. He’s waiting for the punchline.

It still hasn’t come.

Link, meanwhile, has pulled his bright red face from the pillow and takes in air in pants, looking over at Rhett. Rhett is sure he’s never looked so tough, so masculine, so — Rhett’s stomach lurches.

He knows that can’t be healthy. To consider any of those traits as a burly or cool, but he’s too concerned with why they’re making his insides tingle to interrogate it much for himself.

He offers to take the pillow back and Link hands it to him. Instead of putting it on the bed, Rhett holds it in his hands. He’s speechless, he thinks, but his head is pounding too hard to know why his mind directs him to his next request. Muscle memory, perhaps.

Normally, Rhett would wrestle with Link until he got the anger out, but that feels absolutely impossible to initiate right now. With Link this mad, somehow Rhett worries that even being bigger and heavier, Link would find a way to win that match, looking as livid as he does.

“Um,” Rhett starts, unable to figure out what more to say, now that Link’s gone through all that. He holds up the pillow. “Punch this,” Rhett says, not thinking about the fact that said pillow is still in his grip. He’s more focused on the mental image of sweaty, angry Link punching things again.

It’s what helped him relieve tension before, after all.

So, he pushes the pillow forward again, centering it where Link can take an easy swing in the middle and miss Rhett’s hands entirely, and waits for Link to make a move.

Soon, Link does swing, deftly, landing a soft punch on the object with a huff. Rhett can see some of the tension lock up and release from his shoulders. It’s not gone, but it must be helping. Rhett knows shooting hoops when he’s pissed always did the trick.

Link then punches again, firmer, this time, shouting, “Fuck!” along with his movements.

Then again, then a third and fourth time, until the pillow gives way and flies back towards the chair behind where Rhett stands. “Shit!” Link calls, watching it settle on the desk chair to their right.

Rhett considers that is likely to keep happening, once Link builds back to that momentum, so he turns back and squares up. He holds a palm out behind another palm. He doesn’t ask, but Link can tell he’s being told to punch into Rhett’s open hand like it’s a boxing or pitching warm-up.

Link pulls back and slams his fist into Rhett’s palm. The taller of the two staggers back, but doesn't flinch. He puts his hand back in the same spot waiting for another. Link gives just as hard again.

On the third hit, Rhett finally falters. The sting of the punch is too much for him to let on as harmless, when he waves his hands around the air to ease the throb. He grabs a throw blanket and drapes it two or three times around his upper chest, then motions for Link to aim there instead.

Link gets a good hit in and Rhett is sure this way is going to last even less than his naked hand did, but he has to try to keep at it. Link is so angry, but he looks so good hitting like this, like he could star in a cologne ad or work at Abercrombie & Fitch at the mall. Rhett has to let him get the tension out.

That’s Rhett’s job as his best friend.

Eventually, the pain is too much and he needs a break. Rhett puts a hand up in pause and sits himself on the bottom bunk and waits for Link to say something. They’re both panting with the same amount of exertion they use when they wrestle, but they still have all their clothes on.

For some reason, Rhett’s mind takes note of that.

He realizes he’s been staring at Link when Link starts to return the gaze. “Why’re you looking at me like that?” Link asks.

Rhett blushes. “Like what?” He can’t see his face to know.

“Like I’m a sideshow exhibit,” Link tells him, throwing his hands back up in derision. “Or — or, I don’t know a piece of undercooked meat, almost.”

“What?” Rhett asks, blanching.

“Like you’re sizing me up to fight,” Link clarifies.

Fight — Rhett considers. Quite the opposite. His mind thought Link meant piece of meat — to bite. Which sent a chill up his spine. “I-I wasn’t…”

“You were!” Link says, still crackling with tension. Rhett doesn’t have any part of his body to absorb it, any longer, he feels useless to help.

“Link…” Rhett starts to say, looking up at Link. Link still has an arm on the top bunk but now he’s leaning down a little, friendly but threatening, and Rhett’s insides start to turn over in knots.

“You want to pound me, admit it!” Link says, impatiently.

“What?!” Rhett replies, stunned.

“You,” Link says, pointing at Rhett. “Want to pound me,” he starts only to stop and point at himself. “It’s clear as day on your face.”

“What?!” Rhett yells at him.

“You want to pound me, Rhett. You’re so predictable,” Link elaborates, plainly. “Go ahead!”

Rhett’s eyes nearly bug out of his head. “Link, I-I…” Rhett trails off, his face blotchy and drawn.

“C’mon,” Link begs, leaning forward down at Rhett, taunting him. “Hit me!”

Rhett registers his words, understanding finally that he means to physically fight him, not to pound him as in fuck him. In Rhett’s defense, that word has been thrown around pretty casually for the first time ever and he’s racing to keep up with everything Link is doing.

Unfortunately, Rhett comes to this conclusion after he’s already leaned upwards and started kissing Link on the mouth.

Once he’s there, realizing the grave error he’s made, he breaths a huff of air in humility as he feels Link’s mouth open in turn. Then Link’s tongue darts out to push into his.

As the wet tip bursts in and out, rapidly, and Rhett contemplates that it’s like Link is still hitting him, in this tiny only-in-his-mouth kind of way. So, maybe Link was right and he did want to pound him but only via the mouth. Since it also felt so good, Rhett starts returning the kiss, rapid pace, and pulling Link closer.

Link groans under his guidance, but it’s a good groan. Link rests a thigh over each of Rhett’s and sinks back on his knees, sitting over Rhett, as they continue to twist tongues. Rhett doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he moves them around to Link’s back and they naturally drift towards gripping his ass while he holds him.

Link moans into his mouth at the feeling.

Eventually, Link pulls back, leaning so there’s enough space to speak his shock.

“Fuck, Rhett,” Link mutters. Rhett feels his dick throb and thrust up towards Link’s lap as he shifts. Rhett’s not sure when he got this hard, but it suddenly feels like he has a steel rod stuffed down his sweats. “What are we doing?” Link breathes out. “Was that — were we just kissin’? What the Hell is going on?” Link questions, desperate and aroused.

Rhett humps up another time and Link keens at the sensation.

“I think my body just wanted to help relieve the tension of, uh, you know, all that anger and — " Rhett starts to explain, but he’s helpless to the feeling of Link rolling around in his lap and generating even more friction between their overlapping arousal. “Guess it preferred the idea of this over punching you.”

Link rocks his hips and giggles through his own enjoyment as he watches Rhett squirm. “I’m a little biased, but yeah,” Link says, grinding down more. “This does beat a punch in the face, I’ll give you that.”

They’re both panting and rubbing on each other more before Rhett reaches down to touch Link. “Honestly, I think I could —” Link says, grinding with extra effort in a way that makes Rhett feel Link’s erection evidently as it presses against his midsection. He grinds back into that area specifically.

“Yeah, same,” Rhett agrees, circling his hips in time with Link’s.

Nothin’ like some good old dry humping, for what ails ‘ya, he figures.

Link leans down and either forgetting his initial shock or abandoning it, he captures Rhett’s mouth in another kiss.

Before long, they start gasping for air from one another’s open mouths while their faces stay pressed together but not kissing, as they grind harder and harder where they sit.

Rhett reaches a hand down and fondles them both at once, rubbing his sweats against Link’s khakis. Link throws his head back in pleasure. “Feel better?” he asks, hoping this has been as erotic and pleasurable for Link as it has been for him.

“Oh, shit, Rhett, yeah,” Link moans, waist canting in time with Rhett’s motions. While gripping Link’s ass, Rhett’s moved his right hand up his back to steady him with how harsh the kisses are, each time. The hand that moved to Link’s back has stayed under his tank and drifts to his front. Rhett feels around for a nipple and squeezes once when it finds purchase.

“Oh, fuck, yeah, just like that, oh my God, fuck, FUCK!” Link bellows out, suddenly aware that Rhett is sucking kisses into his jaw and throat as his other hand, the one not on the nipple, still squeezes his ass.

“I’m gonna — I can’t stop — I’m about to,” Link begins several attempts to warn Rhett, but comes before he can finish or Rhett can respond.

Rhett’s eyes go fully wide again, in amazement, feeling Link’s dick throb and spurt laid against his own. It’s enough added heat and friction that he feels his own orgasm begin to crest unexpectedly. He hasn’t come that quick in years. Maybe ever.

Link pants through his come down, but doesn’t move to get off Rhett right away. They both remain still, clutching each other as they sit tangled limb over limb.

“D-Did we just have sex?” Link asks, mortified, but still draped over Rhett.

“Technically,” Rhett confirms. “But it was non-penetrative, so we’re still good, I think.”

“Oh, okay, yeah,” Link says back, his eyes far off.

“You sure that’s okay?” Rhett asks, looking for Link to meet his gaze and assure him that is.

He does, but he speaks his mind, to clarify anything not given away by his crooked grin. “No, I was askin’ ‘cause I wanna do it again.”

Rhett’s eyes light up.

“A lot,” Link explains.

“Fuck,” Rhett moans, softly, brushing a thumb to Link’s lower lip.

He joins their mouths again.

Link cuts the kiss short, with a hand between them, however, and gives Rhett a stern look. Rhett knows in that moment and any proceeding it, he’ll do anything Link asks of him.

Rhett’s glazed eyes spin focus to Link’s face again to figure out what that will be this time. Link nods his head towards the half-empty jar on his desk.

“Pay up.”

#why is mean link always so hot #things i wrote #🍋#@peachworthy

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winterhawk-olympic-bang · 3 years

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Emotive Writing

Guest Poster: @thepartyresponsible

Emotive writing is about making people Feel Things. People use this all the time to sell you stuff, but we’re out here giving emotions away for free. Here are a few tips and tricks I’ve found to make people feel the most emotions.

Word choice:

This is the most straightforward part of emotive writing. Your word choices add an extra layer of complexity to your message. You aren’t just telling readers what happened; you’re signaling to them how they should feel. Most writers do this unconsciously, but being deliberate can make it especially effective.

Here’s a non-emotive, just-the-facts sentence: The soldier lifted his weapon and turned toward the enemy.

Here’s the same sentence reworked to make you care a bit more: The exhausted soldier raised his broken shield and faced the invading army.

The actions here are fundamentally the same, but exhausted and broken invoke sympathy while invading skews negative.

The words you choose are sign posts for the reader. They indicate how to interpret the story and help your readers orient themselves and form expectations. Subtly building expectation is important because, while surprise can be effective, shock is generally numbing and confusion tends to be irritating, so word choice helps you frame things and guide your reader along.

One of the keys here is to attempt some subtlety. If every sentence about your protagonist reads like an ad campaign (effervescent, brilliant, impervious) and every sentence about your antagonist reads like a political diatribe (cruel, spineless, malicious), you’re probably overusing your sign posts. People want to know who to root for, but too much emotive language can make them feel manipulated.

Think of word choice like adding spices to food. If you put oats in boiling water, you’re making oatmeal, and the spices you use won’t change that. But if you throw in some honey and cinnamon, I know we’re headed somewhere wholesome. If you sprinkle in little discordant notes of garlic powder and cayenne, what we’re cooking is a tragedy. And if you upend an entire bottle of cinnamon, a quarter cup of nutmeg, and toss in seventeen whole cloves, I am not staying for breakfast.

Narrative distance:

Narrative or psychic distance is the space between the reader and the character, usually navigated by the intermediary figure of the narrator. Your narrator can be an omniscient figure that knows the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of every character in the world. Or your narrator could be sitting on the shoulder of your main character, close enough to hear their thoughts and know their story but not so close that they speak with the character’s voice. Or your narrator could be your character.

If you want to ramp up emotion, you usually want a narrator who is very close to one character (or, alternatively, to separate characters in turn). But you don’t have to stay at one distance for the whole story, and, just like word choice, shifts in narrative distance can be helpful indicators to your reader about the story and the characters.

A sudden, dramatic shift in narrative distance is quite jarring, like a sudden zoom-in during a movie. It can be effective, but it’ll lose its punch if it’s overused. Generally, if you want to shift narrative distance, you should build to it slowly. Here’s an example of shifting from a distant third person to a closer third person:

They wake the Soldier because the archer is missing. He has a habit of slipping his lead, disappearing post-mission. The chase grew tedious years ago, but the Soldier runs it just the same. He’ll do as he’s told. But it bothers him, when he lets it. The why.

Why does he do this? the Soldier wonders, when he shouldn’t, when it isn’t his place. Where is he going? he thinks, when he can’t stop himself. Who is he running to? But he tries to think nothing at all.

Another trick of narrative distance is to suddenly pull back to show a character who’s been compromised, shocked, or deeply hurt by something. Imagine spending a long time in a close Bucky perspective, hearing his thoughts, and then being abruptly walloped across the face with: The machine went quiet, and the Soldier opened his eyes. Zooming out can emphasize what’s been lost. Because you aren’t just taking the soul of Bucky Barnes right out of him, you’re also taking that closeness away from the reader. You’re silencing the voice they’ve been listening to.

Whether you zoom in or out during highly emotional moments depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and also on who’s involved. Some characters have loud, messy emotions that will get louder when they’re hurt. Some characters will freeze over and push a narrator further away. You can use narrative distance to show a character slowly opening up or suddenly slamming a door. But you need the reader to have a solid understanding of the character in order to follow what the shift means, which leads to the next component.

Know your characters:

So, here’s the thing. You gotta Velveteen Rabbit this. Every character is Tinker Bell. If you stop believing, they die.

If you want people to care about these characters, you have to treat them like living, breathing, fully feeling people. They have favorite colors. They have phobias. They have Friday night plans and blisters from new shoes and sesame seeds stuck in their teeth. They have superstitions and secrets. You don’t need to know all of these facts, but you should try to give the impression that someone could know them. The more real your characters are, the more we’re going to care about them.

Since this is fanfiction, you start with a receptive audience. Your readers are fond of these characters. Figure out why. Figure out which parts of the character you can relate to and dig in until you feel like you can understand the parts of them you can’t relate to.

Try to collect things that make you feel close to that character. I always have music playing when I’m writing, so I make playlists for characters and playlists for stories. If I feel like I’m losing a character, I’ll go back to their playlist. But you could also use Pinterest boards, reread favorite fics or comics, rewatch movies or fanvids, or spend an unreasonable amount of time researching bows and tactical knives. Whatever works!

Also, remember, your characters don’t know what story they’re in. They don’t know it’s going to end well (or terribly). Maintain that tension, because that’s where the emotions are. When you watch a good horror movie, you’re not really scared of the monster. You’re scared for the characters, because they don’t know if they’re going to survive.

Emotions come from the characters. That’s why it’s still sad that Tony Stark dies, no matter how many times you watch it happen. Tony Stark was brave and flawed and usually right and often sarcastic, and it hurts to watch him die because that’s a full, unique human we’re losing. We know him well enough to know he’s choosing to sacrifice himself and why he made that choice and who will mourn him.

Know your characters, and let them be messy and weird and wrong and hopeful and cantankerous and unique. Fear is relatable, flaws are relatable, and awkward, ungainly, stubborn progress is relatable. Just remember what it is that makes their progress their progress because, if you can swap Dominic Toretto in for Ted Lasso and have the exact same story, you’ve probably lost your characters.

Plan your emotional trajectory:

Okay, time to get a bit technical. This is for people who like to plan. For those terrifying, godlike writers who just sit down and write, this might not be helpful. For my fellow planners:

There’s a theory (which you can get a general overview about here or, if you’re very into data, right here) that there are six core emotional trajectories in narratives:

1) Rags to riches (rise)

2) Riches to rags (fall)

3) Man in a hole (fall then rise)

4) Icarus (rise then fall)

5) Cinderella (rise then fall then rise)

6) Oedipus (fall then rise then fall)

Since rise and fall can mean different things, I find it helpful to combine these building blocks with emotional axes, which you can find some examples of here.

So, basically, for my winterhawk baseball au Got a Heart in Me, I Swear, I planned to follow the “man in a hole” trajectory (fall then rise) along the anxiety-confidence emotional axis with some bleedover from the humiliation-pride axis. Which basically means Clint started comfortable enough, nosedived deep into anxiety and humiliation, and then slowly built his way to confidence over the rest of the fic.

If the listed axes don’t appeal to you, you can very easily create your own. Just think of an emotion, identify what links it to its inverse, and then list the related emotions between the two opposites. Disgust and adoration are opposites, but they’re linked by attention, right? You can’t ignore something you find disgusting or adorable. So, here’s an example emotional axis you could follow: Disgust – Resentment – Obsession – Fascination – Reverence – Adoration. Enemies to lovers, anyone?

Emotional axes help provide a natural framework for your character’s emotional trajectory. They can be subtle; you don’t have to start on one end of the spectrum and go all the way to the other. A story that moves just a step or two on an emotional axis can be incredibly compelling. That small progress from discomfort to hope can hit really hard if the progress feels fought-for and earned and real.

Tips for writing emotions:

· Get physical: If you want to show an emotion instead of telling it, describe its impacts on the body. Most characters won’t think I’m embarrassed. They’ll feel a drop in their stomach like someone cut the elevator cables and a hot stinging in their face like they’ve been slapped by some disappointed version of themselves. The more visceral your descriptions, the more the reader will feel them. If you want your reader to feast on feelings, you have to set the table.

· Dramatic zoom: When something very intense happens, shift the narrative distance. In or out is fine, but a sudden, dramatic event should result in a sudden, dramatic change in focus. Characters might hyperfocus on their physical bodies (the mechanics of breathing, the ringing in their ears, the mad animal urge toward flight) or they might be kicked so far out of their own heads that they feel like they’re dreaming or watching the scene play out from overhead. This distance is useful for two reasons: it feels real, and it allows readers to absorb the situation in pieces, without being overwhelmed by it.

· Unreliable narrator: Some emotions can be so charged that people don’t want to own them, like grief, shame, jealousy, rage, lust, and guilt. Characters might unconsciously misrepresent these to themselves as something else. A grieving mother might insist she’s tired. A rehabilitated assassin who’s fallen in love with an absolute dork might tell himself he’s just tracking a target. Everyone knows what it’s like to lie to themselves, so this makes characters relatable. And, also, everyone likes being in on a secret, so, sometimes, this is just fun.

· Face the monsters: We’re often conditioned not to dwell on unpleasant things, which is part of why it can be powerful to examine them in stories. From small things like inglorious emotional states (envy, cowardice, resentment) to character flaws (recklessness, withdrawal, arrogance) to personal tragedies (loss, betrayal, abandonment), the negative parts of human emotional life pack quite a punch. Acknowledge them. Not only are they relatable experiences, but redemption and recovery arcs are some of the most compelling stories we have.

#whob #winterhawk #winterhawk olympic bang #writer workshops #writer workshop: emotions #guest post #thepartyresponsible

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winterknight1087 · 3 years

Text

The Trash Pizza Wasn’t Worth It

Summary: After accidentally traumatizing Patton in a failed prank for his twin, Remus ends up getting into a fight and ends up in the hospital.

Word Count: 2912

Warnings: sympathetic Remus, sympathetic Deceit/Janus, fight mention, hospital, mention of medication, food mentions, injury mentions, tarantula, Remus has some intrusive thoughts, murder mentions due to those intrusive thoughts, cursing

Pairings: platonic sides, brotherly creativitwins

AO3 Link My Writing

@franthehorsegir I am so sorry this is a little bit late! 2020 ended the same way it went. But still, I hope you enjoy your @sanderssidesgiftxchange present! It was interesting coming up with ways to try and incorporate all your gift wishes and I hope I did it justice! Happy Holidays!

Pranks were a very common phenomenon around the house. The two main culprits were almost always the twins, each trying to one up the other’s last prank. Everyone has accidentally fallen victim to the twins’ pranks at least once a week. A bucket of soap water dumped on Virgil’s head. The Crofters being traded out for what Logan swears was bubblegum toothpaste flavored jello. Patton got hit with a full-on cake, though he got to eat the rest so it was mostly OK. One time, the twins teamed up on Janus and they have never felt more fear than watching Janus stare them in the eyes as he drank the coffee mixed with salt instead of sweetener, acting as if that were his normal drink. Safe to say the coffee was never a victim of the pranks again at least.

Occasionally, a twin would go too far though. Once Roman shaved off Remus’s mustache, while Remus was fast asleep on the couch. Remus was livid and refused to go anywhere until it grew back. Remus had once accidentally knocked Roman unconscious with his inflatable mace. The others were terrified that Roman was extremely hurt, but once he woke up, he was fine, thankfully. However, one prank mishap will live on as the ultimate disaster prank…

***

“You are going to sit here and wait for RoRo and then jump at him, okay?” Remus whispered to the giant tarantula, currently housed in an empty Crofters jar.

He set the creature down as he replaced the current jar with the prank one. He made sure that it didn’t look suspicious before setting up the rest of the prank. Remus carefully lined a tripwire directly behind where he expected Roman to be. He hid a camera behind the toaster to record the entire incident. The icing on top was a special sticky slime that Remus set up to dump on Roman once he tripped over the wire.

Remus hid in the pantry, waiting for Roman to come down for his afternoon snack. If it had been Roman, or any of the others, the prank would have been fine. Logan and Virgil would be momentarily surprised but wouldn’t do much more than look startled. Janus would have hunted Remus down and stole his fake deodorants as punishment. But no…

A high-pitched scream shot through the house as the sound of glass shattered on the ground. Remus was rushing out of his hiding spot in time to see Patton trip over the wire, onto the broken glass. His eyes were locked on the tarantula and when it moved barely a hair, Patton was screaming again as he scrambled backwards, not aware of the glass. When the slime fell, that was it for Patton. He let out another scream as he scrambled to his feet, frantically trying to get the ‘spiders’ off of him as he ran out of the kitchen.

Remus could hear rushing footsteps and Patton screaming about the ‘creepy crawly death dealers’ in the kitchen. The chaotic rat knew he was about to get into major trouble, so he started cleaning up the kitchen, particularly going after the tarantula first. Once it was in a box to give to Virgil later, Remus started sweeping up the broken glass, thoughts about how dead he was running through his head.

Honestly, the five minutes it took Janus to come down to scold Remus seemed longer than normal scolding intervals. But Janus appeared, caped PJs and bowler sleep hat revealing the snake had been taking a nap when awoken to screams. And one thing with Janus was that no one was allowed to interrupt his nap time unless it was a true emergency. Remus gulped seeing the furious man storm into the kitchen.

Let’s just say that Janus wasn’t his usual suave, collected self when he is rudely awoken by screams.

“I will give you exactly ten seconds to explain why you terrified Patton with a shower of spiders.”

“It was one tarantula and slime! It was a prank for Roman but apparently Pat went in without me seeing him!”

“You damn idiot. We all agreed that anything spider related would not happen in this house. Patton is petrified of spiders, even Vee’s spider curtains set him off. And yet, with all the power of your mere quarter of a brain cell, you decided that it was an OK risk to bring a spider into this house and not have a contingency plan to keep Patton away from it? Remus, I knew you were stupid, but I didn’t realize you were able to lower my standards even more than they already were. Even if it were to be Roman, how would this have turned out any better? Answer me that, Remus. How?”

Remus hung his head. “I don’t know.’

“Exactly. All of us put up with your random weird ass bullshit everyday because we’re your friends, but there has always been a line between an OK thing and a very not OK thing. Sending someone into a panic attack through their phobia? Extremely not OK. You useless trash rat, what were you even thinking!? Probably nothing as that useless brain of yours has only one thought a month.”

“Pardon me,” Logan’s voice cut Janus off, “but can the two of you move out of the way? Patton requires the first aid kit.”

The two immediately stepped aside, letting Logan access the medicine cabinet. This new information added fuel to Janus’ eyes, and Remus couldn’t help but remember the coffee salt incident and now really wanted his twin here to bear some of the fury. He knew the second that he had realized Patton fell into his prank that he had messed up, bad, but Janus was going to make sure that Remus could never hear the word spider without remembering his fury.

Logan left with the first aid kit, focused on how he was going to get Patton to sit still long enough to get the glass out of his hands and bandage them while the other was still panicking about spiders. Not that he would have really had any sympathy for Remus as he faced Janus’ wrath. They had all agreed that even Halloween decoration spiders were off limits. And Remus went and broke that agreement? His own fault for angry, sleepy Janus.

“Out.”

Remus blinked. “What?”

“Get out. I don’t want you in line of sight right now.”

Remus didn’t even bother grabbing anything as he quickly left the house. It was supposed to be a funny prank on his brother, not a traumatizing experience for one of his best friends. He even passed by his favorite store to terrorize, not in the mood to evade employees to set all the alarms to go off or add random items to people’s carts and wait for them to discover the item.

Go jump in front of oncoming traffic. It’ll save everyone the trouble of having to deal with you.

Remus had already started to step off the curb before violently shaking his head. What did Logan call those? “Intrusive thoughts. They aren’t me. They can’t be me. Those are just unconscious thoughts that come out of nowhere. They do not indicate who I really am.”

But they are your thoughts and you’ve thought of how to murder each of them so that they won’t laugh at you behind your back anymore. You are just a screw up that is a burden on everyone. Your brother had to convince his friends to let you move in with them, and it was probably out of pity or guilt than love.

“Not true.” Remus muttered to himself as he walked aimlessly. “Even for things I wouldn’t otherwise know about, all of them still invite me. They all willingly choose to be in the same room as me, even when I am being more extra than normal. They get upset when I do something stupid. That was something stupid, so they are right to be mad. Not what you’re telling me, you stupid brain.”

Remus didn’t notice his feet carry him to the dumpster behind the nearby Dennys. He was too busy trying to rationalize the thoughts running through his head and weed out Häagen-Dazs Distortions or whatever Logan called them along with his normal intrusive thoughts. Remus barely noticed climbing into the dumpster, but he settled down in the corner before curling up, filled with the rare instance of self-hatred.

He did eventually pull himself out of his thoughts long enough to text his brother’s old friend that he was in their dumpster again and not to panic if someone came to toss trash. It spoke multitudes to the amount of times Remus did this that the only response that he received was a single letter k.

What if you just poison Janus? Then you won’t have to suffer his wrath once you go home.

“Shut up, brain.”

Poison Janus and stuff Patton into a coffin!

“NO!”

Pretty sure if you sneak up on Virgil, you could get him to choke to death as well. Just need to figure out a way to get rid of Logan and Roman and you’ll be free.

“Stooooop” Remus covered his ears, as if that would block out

Janus said you were stupider than he thought, so why not show him how intelligent you can be by murdering all your friends and family and getting away with it?!?

Tears were filling Remus’ eyes as he desperately tried to clear his head. He accepted that these weren’t his thoughts, that they were just intrusive thoughts. He tried all the tricks he normally did that helped, but nothing was working. He even tried moving onto something else to distract him like eating left over pizza he found in the trash.

At least, until something opened the dumpster. In popped a beady-eyed creature in search of food. Remus growled at it, looking for a way to distract himself. Instead of being startled, the creature hissed back. The creature had spent the day running from human toddlers who wanted to do things the creature was uncertain of. It had spent the day dodging cars and animal control. It wasn’t about to let this weirdo stop it from enjoying tossed out hamburgers and pancakes. And if the weirdo was going to fight the creature, well, the creature wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

***

Logan tightened his hands around the steering wheel as he waited impatiently for the light to turn. Janus sat next to him in the front seat, fiddling with his phone, hoping that there wouldn’t be a second call with worse news. In the middle of the van sat Patton and Roman. They were trying to distract themselves by planning the fun activities they could do after everything settled down. In the very back of the van sat Virgil, who’s anxiety and nervous tappings of various limbs magnified the worry that was probably spilling from the van.

Janus wondered if he hadn’t been so mad at being woken up by a hurt and terrified Patton due to an accidental misfire of a prank, would they have gotten that call? What had happened anyway? If they were going to get any call about Remus, it should have been from the local grocery store, banning him for the third time this month (though they always welcomed him back in because he was amusing and took on rude and self-centered costumers so that employees didn’t have to).

“He’ll be alright.” Logan stated, cutting through the worry. “It is Remus we are talking about.”

“Save it, Specs.” Roman muttered. “Until we see how bad off he is, nothing you can say will make things better.”

“Did-did they say what happened, Janus?” Patton asked, softly.

“No, all the hospital said was that he was admitted with several injuries and that I was the first listed emergency contact in his phone.”

“Well, I suppose you would be as your name comes first alphabetically.” Logan mused.

“Of course Wine Mom would be all of our emergency contact.” Virgil commented sarcastically.

“Excuse you, but Logan is mine. I wouldn’t trust the rest of you misfits to actually do anything productive if anyone contacted you all.” Janus spat back, glad for the momentary distraction.

“Fair.”

“You got me there.”

“True, but why you gotta call us out like this?”

There was a small chuckle that passed through the van, but almost as if some invisible barrier ripped the sound from the van, the mood soured as they entered the hospital parking lot. It took Logan a few minutes to find a parking spot and that managed to ramp up the tension and apprehension among the group, terrified of what they would find.

“Pat, you sure you can face Remus right now? I think we’d all understand if you decided to just sit outside the door and wait to hear how he is.” Janus asked, softly.

“No, no, I get that it was an accident. We’ve all walked into one of the twins’ pranks by accident. Accidents happen and I also want to see that he’ll be OK.” Patton answered before admitting, “though, I will need everyone else to open the Crofters jar for at least a month in case there is another giant creepy crawly death dealer in one of them…”

So, with that, the group went into the hospital. Janus went and talked to a nurse who directed him to the room Remus was in. Upon hearing the room number, Janus instantly asked if he had asked to be placed there, which made the nurse laugh. So, with that, the group headed up to room 6969.

“POOPY!”

“Sounds like he’s alive at least.” Roman commented.

A nurse came out of the room, shaking her head. She looked over the group before peeking back into the room and telling the occupant that he had company. The group shared a worried look before filing into the room.

Remus sat in a hospital bed with scratches and gaze all over him. His arm was in a sling, his foot in a cast, and a couple sets of stitches were hidden behind gaze or the hospital gown he was wearing. Despite this, Remus was cackling and being his odd self, so the group let out a collective breath, relieved to see he was alright, for the most part.

“How are you feeling, Ree?” Roman asked, moving over to his twin.

“Mhhhh, like cotton candy sprayed with mist.”

“So, that’s what? Like a 3 on the Remus scale?” Virgil asked.

“I would guess a bit higher but also toned done by medication.” Logan answered. “He would not use a nice analogy like that unless he were sort of out of it.”

“What happened, Remus? Did someone try to mug you or something?” Janus asked.

“Yup, and the racoon won both the fight and my trash-pizza.”

The group froze, staring at the chaotic man before Patton finally asked. “You lost a fight to… a racoon?”

“Yuuuuuuuuup.”

“Remus,” Roman sighed. “You are such an idiot. Don’t do something like this again. You scared all of us to death.”

The hurt one instantly froze, his eyes shooting onto Patton, as he remembered the fact he really scared one of his friends. “Oh, shit. Patty, I’m so sorry for what happened earlier! It was an accident! I was trying to get RoRo BroBro, not you.”

Patton moved over and set a comforting hand on Remus’ unhurt arm. “It’s OK, I know it was. You don’t need to beat yourself up over it.”

“Remus, did you seriously lose a tooth to a racoon!?!”

***

The hospital released Remus a bit later, informing him (and more importantly Logan and Janus) about follow ups and care info. The group then dragged Remus to their van before picking up some (not trash) pizza and heading home. Patton tried to join in on pampering Remus, but their friends stopped him and basically forced the happy pappy Patton on the couch next to Remus, reminding him that he was also hurt and on the pampering list. So, instead Patton curled up and cuddled Remus while the other four went around prepping snacks, movies, games, and whatever else they could scrounge up to make sure the chaotic rat and pun-tastic father-figure were entertained.

Soon enough, Remus was surrounded by the group of people he considered his family (brother, what brother? Remus obviously doesn’t have a twin brother named Roman. That’s just his friend Wroammin). They weren’t going to let Remus live down the fact he lost a fight to a racoon, but how could he stop them making fun of it? It was hilarious and even more, they were checking on him every hour to make sure he was alright and comfortable, so they deserved a good laugh.

And if Remus’ brain tried to throw a couple intrusive thoughts at him, they didn’t stand a chance against the love surrounding Remus. Those weren’t his thoughts because his thoughts were focused on listening to Roman and Virgil argue about Disney meanings, cuddling Patton and waiting for Logan and Janus to return from the kitchen with drinks for everyone. How could disturbing thoughts harm him when he was feeling loved despite all of his failings?

“Remus, Thomas just texted me saying you were in their dumpster earlier. Did you really lose a fight with a racoon behind the Dennys?”

“Yuuuuuuuuuuuup.”

#Sage writes #sympathetic remus #sympathetic deceit #food mention #injury mention #hospital #tarantula #murder mention #cursing #sandersidesgiftexchange #sandersidesgiftexchange2020 #franthehorsegirl

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the-odd-job · 3 years

Text

Inveterate

(Series: Love/Hate Heartbreak)

Rating: Explicit Warnings: Chose Not to Use Category: Other Fandom: Transformers: Prime Relationships: Megatron/Sunstreaker Characters: Sunstreaker, Megatron, Sideswipe Additional Tags: Dubcon, Sticky Words: 2032

Megatron paused when he turned the corner and saw the… State of the corridor. Intricate—and admittedly, very beautiful—mural of Cybertronian landscape followed one wall for as long as he could see. A pair of eradicons was admiring part of the mural some ways off. They snapped to attention as soon as they saw him and scurried off to do whatever it was they were supposed to be doing.

Once alone, Megatron scrubbed one massive palm down his face. It wasn’t that he was entirely against having the gloomy corridors decorated with images of their home planet, but was that brat completely unable of asking for permission?

And why hadn’t Soundwave notified him of this? He could swear his TIC took some perverse pleasure from letting him find these bursts of creativity on his own.

Sighing in aggravation, Megatron opened a commlink to one of his most exasperating underlings. ::Sunstreaker.::

He didn’t have to wait for the waspish answer. ::What?::

:Haven’t I told you enough times to ask for clearance before redecorating the hallways?::

::Fuck off.::

Somehow the Earth expletive only made the blatant insubordination grate on his audials even more. He growled out loud and over the commline, but while most would have stepped back in line at once at the sound, he knew this particular menace wouldn’t find himself affected.

Out of all the mecha that could’ve found their way onto the organic mudball, it had to be this one. ::You will answer for that,:: Megatron hissed, already pinging Soundwave for the unruly warrior’s location.

:: Whatever,:: and the line was cut. He should have known better than to let the miscreant get to him, but that didn’t keep his lines from boiling or an ugly sneer from appearing on his faceplates.

Out of all the-

The deck shook under his steps as he turned to the shortest route to Sunstreaker’s location. Vehicons scattered from his way, and out of the corner of his optic he saw Knock Out stepping back into the room he was exiting, but he had the mind for one thing only.

That was until a frame of red and black caught his attention. When that frame noticed his approach, Sideswipe waved cheerfully from the group of eradicons he had been holding a rather animated discussion with.

Megatron skipped the pleasantries. “Where’s your brother?”

“In our quarters.” Good, so the rascal hadn’t decided to escape Soundwave’s sensors—how the twins even knew how to do that, he wasn’t sure he’d ever learn. “Try not to trash the place, yeah?” Sideswipe added with a laugh. Megatron grunted something like a response before continuing his march. The red twin’s well wish of “Have fun!” rang behind him.

Oh he intended to.

His warpath cut the corridors to the nondescript door leading to the quarters the twins had claimed for themselves. Megatron could have taken a moment to calm himself down before storming in, but he didn’t. It was a near thing he didn’t bodily force the door open when it didn’t open fast enough for his liking.

His growl greeted the sole occupant inside, who didn’t even bother looking up. “Took you long enough,” Sunstreaker commented, pacing the room like a caged animal.

Megatron might have thought something of it if Sunstreaker didn’t always do it when stuck indoors. “Did I keep you waiting?” the warlord ground out, stalking across his room to intercept the gold clad warrior on his next round through the well lived-in space.

“You always do.” Sunstreaker came to stop in front of him, tilting his chin up to direct those narrowed optics up at him.

Megatron felt a sneer form on his faceplates. “I don’t owe you my time.”

“And yet you came here. Curious.”

“Only because you still haven’t learned basic respect. What did you do to my ship?”

Sunstreaker scoffed. “Stop getting your sprockets in a twist, I only painted one corridor. It looks better now.” He moved to circle past Megatron and continue his pacing, but a servo wrapping his upper arm in a vice hold stopped him. Sunstreaker’s field washed through the room, thick with his temperamental fury. “Let go of me.”

“You don’t give the orders here,” Megatron hissed, jerking the smaller mech back to his previous position. “How many times have I told you to request permission before releasing your creative frustrations on things that don’t belong to you?”

“As many times as I’ve ignored you and done it anyway,” the warrior returned, a saccharine, mocking smile playing on his face. Megatron could practically feel his energon bubbling. The flagrant disrespect, the constant needling, the sheer attitude—if he and his brother weren’t so damn good in the field he would have jettisoned the miscreant out to the emptiest corner of space a long time ago.

A growl rippled deep from his engine, and with ease that belied Sunstreaker’s own sturdiness, he hurled the warrior into the furthest wall. Sunstreaker impacted with it with a grunt, adding another dent to the many that already decorated the walls—Megatron couldn’t take credit for all of them; the twins had their own disagreements—but landed on his pedes. Megatron readied himself, and just as expected, Sunstreaker barely took the time to gather his bearings before charging him.

If he was going to give the brat credit for something, it would have to be his refusal to ever take a hit without returning it.

Though smaller, Sunstreaker wasn’t a foe to be underestimated. For as many times as Megatron managed to land a hit that sent him reeling or threw him into something, Sunstreaker always came back at him with an equal amount of claw marks to add to Megatron’s frame. The little glitch knew just where to strike.

But that was fine. Megatron knew equally much about him, and as skilled as both of the brothers were, they were laughably young compared to him. He’d competed in the Pits before they were even created. Sunstreaker would go down despite his prowess.

Both their frames were working on high by the time Sunstreaker failed to dodge his servo. He didn’t waste the opportunity to grab the hellion and slam him against the wall. The impact wasn’t enough to even jar the brat, but although he paid for the pin with more bleeding rends, Megatron reveled in the opportunity to intercept those clawed servos and pin them against the wall above Sunstreaker’s head. With the bulk of the larger mech pressing him against the wall, Sunstreaker was well and truly trapped, not that it stopped him from complaining loudly through curses and kicks. “Let go of me, you rusted piece of scrap,” the little warrior snarled through bared denta. Megatron stifled his grunt at one particularly forceful kick, and instead smiling down at his prey.

“No.”

It was sheer fury that rolled in thick waves from Sunstreaker, his field a heavy weight against Megatron’s, and yet no match for the warlord’s own. Megatron bore down with his own triumph until he’d all but drowned out the smaller mech’s field and sent Sunstreaker into another fit of furious expletives. He so hated losing, even if he did every time.

Not Kaon, not the Pits, certainly not the Autobots, and so far not the Decepticons had managed to file down the golden warrior’s edges. Megatron wasn’t sure whether to admire or hate the spiteful little mech for that. At the same time, it was a spirit he, despite everything, didn’t want to see broken, no matter how unbearably difficult it often made him to deal with.

Sunstreaker had long since proven that this, whatever this was, anything that he could dish out… That was nowhere near enough to make the twin even remotely rethink his choices.

And yet they repeated the same dance every chance they got.

Holding the twin’s wrists securely in one massive servo, Megatron wormed the other one between their frames to cup Sunstreaker’s scalding panel. His sharpened claws dug into the seams to the tune of a pained hiss from the smaller mech. “Open.”

“No.”

“Very well.” Megatron thrust his digits into the panel seams, forcing his way through the triple-reinforced plating until he had enough purchase to pull. Sunstreaker screamed, in frustration more than in pain—Megatron knew he barely had any tactile sensors around the area—and he only had to move the panel halfway before the twin gave in and it snapped open the rest of the way.

Lubricant dripped onto the warlord’s servo and onto the floor when he removed his hand to wrap it around Sunstreaker’s waist. The pitspawn made a noise of protest at the smears that appeared on his plating, though that sound quickly morphed into a reluctant moan when Megatron released his spike and buried himself in the sopping, burning valve in one smooth push.

He wasted no time setting up a brutal pace, in and out with forceful motions of his hips. Sunstreaker’s helm tilted back against the wall and his lips drew back from his clenched denta, his chassis shuddering in undeniable pleasure. “I’ll… Fragging… Kill you,” the little mech panted before his voice gave way to a deep groan. His legs wrapped securely around Megatron’s waist, pulling him closer with a vice grip that even Megatron couldn’t fully fight. His thrusts turned shallower, but when Sunstreaker’s valve rippled over the length of his spike, he found he didn’t quite mind.

“If Starscream hasn’t managed that yet, neither will you,” Megatron purred, leaning in to mouth the biolight laden throat so tantalizingly bared for him.

On purpose, no doubt.

“Oh, but I’m way more competent than him,” Sunstreaker said with a deliciously strangled voice, his vents heaving.

“And yet I’ve heard that threat coming from you before—here I stand still.”

“I wasn’t properly- Hnngh- Motivated before.”

Megatron chuckled and let his mouth glide up Sunstreaker’s throat, his jaw, chin, until he found his lips and crushed their mouths together. When his sharpened denta sank into Sunstreaker’s lower lip, the twin mewled and overloaded with a sharp jerk. Megatron hissed when his valve clenched tight around his spike and the charge from Sunstreaker’s frame washed over his plating. It was enough to make him succumb to his own pleasure, and with a grunt Megatron pressed his hips tight against Sunstreaker’s as his spike jerked and spilled its discharge against the walls of the smaller mech’s valve. Sunstreaker moaned one last time, his bloody lips seeking out Megatron’s for a kiss that was all denta. “If this is what I get for disobeying, I need to do it more often.”

“You already do it every chance you get,” Megatron rumbled, pulling out of the spasming valve and shutting his spike back behind its cover. When he released Sunstreaker, the troublemaking little mech dropped unsteadily onto his pedes, swaying in place before leaning back against the wall for purchase.

Megatron smiled in satisfaction. Sunstreaker glanced up just in time to take notice and narrowed his optics up at him. “Don’t look so smug. You will regret this.”

“I already regret every moment I waste with you.”

His lover made a noncommittal sound before bringing both of his servos up to shove at Megatron’s chassis. “Now get the fuck out of my room.”

Megatron’s optics flashed.

-----------------------------------------------------

After two more rounds of brawling and rough interfacing, Megatron finally stumbled out of the twins’ shared quarters, covered scrapes, gashes, and bodily fluids. Leaning on the wall right outside the door was none other than the room’s other occupant. Sideswipe’s knife did one more flip through the air before he caught it for the last time and beamed up at Megatron. “Had fun?”

Megatron grunted. The red twin seemed to take pity on him because he asked nothing else, merely patted one arm nearly as thick as his entire frame. “Go get washed and fueled.”

With that, the red mech slipped through the doorway that had barely had the time to close. Megatron listened in long enough to hear a thump, a growl that could belong to Sunstreaker, and then the melodic sound of Sideswipe’s laughter.

Megatron shook his helm. Those two would be the death of him before Starscream ever got to it.

#transformers #maccadam #tfp #megatron #sunstreaker #megasun #primeverse #love/hate heartbreak #fic #2018 #wow this is old

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ahh-fxck · 4 years

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Modern Gay Bar AU: Warrior’s Blues Chapter 2

Hey guys, it’s here! I DID IT! I did the thing! Chapter 2 is complete for your reading pleasure. Hope you like it :)

Author’s Note: This fic deals with some pretty heavy themes, including but not limited to alcohol, homophobia, military trauma, and PTSD. You have been warned.

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24903460

A big thanks to @stressedspidergirlsfandomblog , the best beta in the world.

Tag list: @astouract @smolpoe @yes-im-the-violin-girl @ladyknight-keladry

Please let me know if you would like to be tagged for future installments!

Chapter 2: Do I Look Like I Have A Permit?

“Selling drinks to minors?” He asks quietly, as Jaskier hangs up the phone with a heartfelt curse and then picks it up to dial again.

The younger man nods, lip curled in a snarl, punching the buttons on the base of the phone as if he could slake his rage on them. “Fucking ass cocking cheerios, yes, and of all the nights-” There is the sound of a voicemail beeping coming out of the handset, and Jaskier snaps, “Julia, if there’s any God in heaven right now you will pick up this damn phone. I need a bartender yesterday. Call me if you get this tonight.” He slams the handset back down onto the base and presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose, slumping down to sit on the desk.

Geralt shifts awkwardly again, eyes playing over Jaskier’s graceful body as he hunches in thought. His eyes drag over his sequined shoulders, linger on the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. The skin on his chest pulls hotly and prickles as he studies them, searching for words. “Uh…” he manages, throat tight, then grimaces. “No one else to call?” His insides feel like they are fizzing, the sensation making it hard to think clearly.

“Mmph,” Jaskier mumbles, flapping his hand at the cards in irritation. “No. No, my staff isn’t very large, and I’ve never… never had to call back up on Pride.” A quick grin, more a snarl, flitted across his usually soft face. “Tips are too good. God’s cock, Lars is a fucking idiot. I swear if I see him again I’ll-”

“Do you need help?” The words tumble out of Geralt’s mouth before he can think them all the way through.

Chapter 2: Do I Look Like I Have a Permit?

He awakens an unknown amount of time later to a rhythmic buzzing that shakes the bed frame subtly. As he lifts his head, the sound resolves into a thumping bass beat that reverberates through the whole building. He sits up, swinging his legs off of the bed, and scrubs his face tiredly. His stubble scrapes against his palms, his bandages, his injured hand beginning to distantly throb as he awakens. His head is still swimming faintly, and the sensation of his aching hand doesn’t feel quite real. The humid air is cooler now, taking on a clammy quality in the old brick room, and it smells faintly of the night.

He sits for a long moment with his face in his hands, trying to pull himself together. The sleep has helped, but the clarity it brought carried with it unmistakeable despair, as well. Staring numbly at his boots, he feels a wave of shame creep up his body as he remembers again what he’s lost. He eventually fumbles them clumsily on, desperate for something to do with his hands, some way to feel less vulnerable and lost. The process is hampered by his injured hand, but he manages it eventually. He barely has time to steal another guilty look at the phone before he hears the bang of the back room door slamming, followed by raised voices.

“...Kids, Lars! I swear to fucking Jesus Christ on rollerskates, you absolute asshole, if I get shut down because of you I will find you. You always check ID, especially on 18 and up nights! ALWAYS,” There was a mutter, and the louder voice cut it off, “I Do Not Care if it was dark, you absolute fucking dumpster fire of a human being! This is literally what I pay you for. NO! That is what I paid you for. Get out! Out, out, out! You’re fucking fired, and if I catch you anywhere near any of those fucking boys, I will personally see you to the fucking hospital!” The last word is roared, loud enough that Geralt startles on the bed. The springs creak as his body jars, and as he is beginning to stand, the door to the office bangs open. Jaskier, alight with fury, barges into the office and seizes a rolodex on the desk, flipping through it with short, sharp motions.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fucking bag of cocks, FUCK!” he swears. Abruptly he stops, stormy blue eyes coming up and fixing on Geralt standing awkwardly near the bed. “Ah, fuck me. I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t wake you,” he says, pulling a face. “I ah, just had to fire my bartender in the middle of the rush.” His gaze drops back to the rolodex, still flicking furiously. “Fuck me, I don’t think any of these assholes are even going to be near their phone at this time of night. Not on fucking Pride…” His voice shakes with stress as he pulls out a few cards, tossing them onto the desk. Geralt watches silently as he begins to dial, shifting from foot to foot.

“Selling drinks to minors?” He asks quietly, as Jaskier hangs up the phone with a heartfelt curse and then picks it up to dial again.

“Do you need help?” The words tumble out of Geralt’s mouth before he can think them all the way through.

Jaskier groans out a low chuckle, shaking his head. “Oh, darling, do I ever. But what could you possibly do? Bounce? Bartend? Have you even been behind a bar before?” He drops his head into his hands, soft chestnut hair falling over his face as he rubs his eyes. “Fuck me,” he adds as an afterthought, muffled between his hands.

“...I think you underestimate the amount of time servicemen spend in bars,” Geralt finally says, a lopsided smile creeping across his face. “I can make most drinks in my sleep.”

Jaskier’s head comes up, and he eyes Geralt suspiciously. “Drinking is not nearly the same thing as mixing, dear heart,” he says doubtfully, but Geralt can tell from the way he is hesitating that he is at least listening.

Sighing, he steps away from the bed and goes to lean against the wall in front of Jaskier, crossing his arms across his chest in a confident gesture. Here, at least, he is on solid ground. He may have lost everything, but he knows drinks. “Old Fashioned. One teaspoon simple syrup, two dashes Angostura Bitters, orange peel, two ounces of rye or bourbon, one maraschino cherry.”

Jaskier draws back, tilting his head to the side as he listens with a little furrow between his brows.

Warming to the topic, he feels more sure of himself as he begins to list ingredients without a second thought. “Dark and Stormy. Two ounces of dark rum, five ounces ginger beer, garnish with a lime. Long Island Iced tea. Half ounce gin, half ounce vodka, half ounce rum, half ounce tequila, half ounce triple sec, two tablespoons fresh lemon juice, spoonful of sugar, ice cubes, cola, garnish with a lemon wedge.” Geralt begins, slowly, to grin. It feels good to surprise Jaskier, to show him that he’s competent. “I can keep going.”

“How…?” Jaskier finally asks, mystified.

Geralt’s grin widens, and he finds his eyes traveling down Jaskier’s half-naked body, then dragging slowly back up again. As their eyes meet, he drawls, “Always had a good eye for proportions.”

Jaskier sits back a little further, small spots of color forming on his cheeks, but then narrows his eyes at Geralt. “What about a Cuban Rose?” he asks, suspicious but also intrigued.

Geralt replies promptly, “One and a half ounces white rum, three-quarters ounce orange juice, and a dash of grenadine. I can do more.”

“Dark N’ Fluffy,” Jaskier presses. He is still eyeing him doubtfully, but his eyebrows shoot up as Geralt replies.

“Two ounces marshmallow vodka, two ounces chocolate liqueur, one ounce cream, garnish with mini marshmallows and cocoa powder.” He chuckles, shaking his head. “Tastes like an easter egg kicked you in the teeth, but to each their own.” He can feel his body beginning to relax as he speaks about the drinks, feeling on firmer footing at last.

Jaskier sucks air between his teeth thoughtfully, then says, “Mai Tai.”

“Hmm… That’s a trick question. Do you want the Trader Vic’s version, or the crappy one?” Geralt fires back.

Laughing, Jaskier raises his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Fine. Got a server’s permit?”

“Do I look like I have a permit?” Geralt retorts, drily.

Jaskier tosses his head back and barks out another laugh, then shakes his head. “No. No, I suppose I can’t have everything.” He hovers on the edge of his desk, hesitating, then throws up his hands. “You know what? I can’t think of a better way out of this. You’re hired for the night.” Pushing upright, he bustles out of the office and into the dimly lit storage room beyond. “Come with me, let’s get you started.” He flings his arms out in a broad gesture, declaring merrily, “If I’m going to go out of business for breaking the law, I want it to be with drinks all around.”

“Hmm,” Geralt drawls, finding himself oddly charmed by the showy way Jaskier moves. Pushing off the office wall, he follows him into the storage room beyond.

Jaskier gestures around, pointing at necessary supplies. “Beer kegs, cups, napkins. The bar back knows where everything is, but don’t let him touch the cocktail shaker, the man is a menace. Mm, let’s see, straws… Yes. Alright, let’s go, darling, out front. It’s going to be loud, are you ready?” He pauses, blocking the doorway, turning an appraising eye on the big man behind him.

Drawing up short, Geralt also pauses as he reflects on the question. Normally, he would have scoffed and barged right past Jaskier out into the club, but he was still frazzled enough from earlier that the question merits a moment of consideration. Finally, he nods. Fierce blue eyes rake across him, and this time he meets the gaze steadily, unflinching. That seems to satisfy the younger man, and he gives a quick nod.

“Well, then, let’s be off!” he cries, pushing through the door and into the noisy, crowded club.

A wall of sound, scent, and colorful light hits Geralt like a truck as he steps out behind Jaskier onto the dance floor. Booming bass in a disco style beat thrums through the bodies as they dance, and a woman’s voice threads tinnily out from the speakers. “Look around, everywhere you turn is heartache, it's everywhere that you go,” she sings, Jaskier weaving along the wall towards the bar. “You try everything you can to escape, the pain of life that you know. When all else fails and you long to be, something better than you are today, I know a place where you can get away. It's called a dance floor…”

Geralt sets his shoulders and puts his head down, following quickly after Jaskier, trying not to look too closely at the people he is passing. The scent of sweat and cologne and sex is thick on the air, making him dizzy. It is with palpable relief that he ducks behind the bar, glad to put a solid piece of furniture between himself and the beautiful, gyrating people on the dance floor.

Over closer to the bar it is much quieter, even with the growing crowd queuing for drinks. The bar itself is surrounded by small tables, places where little knots of people gather to sit and drink together off of the main floor. He feels a little lost as he watches two men lean together, tongues sliding into each other’s mouths. Heat races across his shoulder blades and pulls at his groin, mingling with a sharp twist of fear. He is relieved when Jaskier begins to speak, half shouting over the music.

“Okay, darling, here’s how it’s going to work. I will show you where everything is, you show me your chops, and you get to keep the tips. Make sure to split them with the kitchen and bar staff, or they will hate you for life, I warn you now!” He begins bustling around behind the bar, identifying taps, pointing out hidden locations of necessaries like maraschino cherries and clean towels, then steps back. “Okay, I think that’s everything. Questions?” Geralt looks around the bar carefully, memorizing the locations of everything. Someone calls a complaint out to Jaskier, who holds up his hands apologetically. “We’ll be right with you, gorgeous! One moment!” His gaze returns to rest on Geralt, who is cracking the knuckles of his uninjured hand thoughtfully against his bicep.

Finally, Geralt shakes his head “I think I’m all set. Who’s the bar back?”

Jaskier grins, turning to shout back over his shoulder. “Yarpen? Where the fuck are you? It’s slammed out here!”

Around the corner of the kitchen door, a short, wiry man with a bald head and a full ginger beard appears almost immediately. “Here, just replacing the orange sli- hello,” he breaks off, taking in the towering figure of Geralt standing behind Jaskier. “Why, aren’t you fine!” The man’s green eyes twinkle playfully, his teeth flashing in a crooked grin. He is dressed in jeans, a leather harness adorning his spare, muscular torso, and a nipple ring winks up at Geralt in the dim light of the bar.

Rolling his eyes, Jaskier steps out from between the two of them. “Yarpen, this is Geralt, our new bartender for the night. Play nice, he’s new in town. Geralt, this is Yarpen, my bar back. Don’t let him get to you, he’s an idiot.” And with that, Jaskier smacks Yarpen’s muscular shoulder lightly. “If he needs to know where anything is, show him. Run the register. Keep an eye out in case he misses anything.” Turning to Geralt, he taps the man’s broad chest, “And check. Every. ID.”

Geralt grins easily down at Jaskier, studying his cerulean eyes, taking in his soft handsome face as it sets in a ferocious expression. His golden gaze lingers for a second on his thinned lips before flicking back up, eyes locking with Jaskier’s. “Got it. Check IDs, don’t fuck it up.” His body hums with the nearness of the other man, blood still fizzing like champagne. He feels better now, confident, almost forgetting to be afraid and heartsore as his eyes travel across the face in front of him.

Jaskier’s tongue flicks across his lips briefly as he considers Geralt, then seems to shake himself, nodding. “Exactly. Don’t fuck it up. I’ll be at the door if you need me.” He whirls, making apologetic noises to the deepening crowd at the bar. “Sorry darlings, had a minor emergency. Meet Geralt, your new bartender!” And with that, Jaskier flits out from behind the bar and races back to the front door of the club, relieving a man in a cook’s apron. The broad-shouldered man has wild red hair and an ominous frown, but as he approaches, Geralt sees that most of the lines on his face are from laughter. He moves aside, noting with surprise that the cook is even bigger than he is as he slides around him and passes into the kitchen. Then he turns to the crowd. “Right. Who’s first?”

#modern au#geraskier modern au#geraskier pride week 2020#gay bar#gay bar au#modern gay bar au#geralt#jaskier#geralt x jaskier#jaskier x geralt#geraskier#geraskier fic#geralt of rivia#julian alfred pankratz#pride#witcher#the witcher#the witcher fanfiction#the witcher fanfic

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redrobinfection · 5 years

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Coffee, Coffee Everywhere: Extra

<< Previous (Part 21: Epilogue)

AN: Thanks to Seshat_Writting on ao3 for reminding me in a comment about this series and this extra little scene I’ve had rattling around in my brain the past couple months. Steph/Cass is a thing in this ficlet and past Tim/Steph is mentioned. Enjoy!

---

"Aww, man, you guys started the face masks without me!" Steph groans teasingly, toeing the door shut as she steps into the the small studio apartment. The door locks behind her automatically and she rolls her eyes - of course it does, this being one of Tim's places - but admits it's handy as she juggles her keys, purse and one overflowing grocery bag.

Tim pauses in daubing a bit pale purple mask across Cass' chin. They both look up at her from the floor with twin stares of utter innocence. Steph isn't buying it for a minute.

"We didn't realize you wanted us to wait," Tim replies as he scoops another glob of mask out of a small jar. Steph catches a hint of lavender and smirks.

"You better be saving some of that for me," she comments, turning away to kick off her shoes. She turns back to a stare she assumes is Cass' way of expressing "bitch please" while Tim shakes his head at her foolishness.

"Cass bought two extra jars, just in case. Not that we'll need them," Tim replies, sweeping a glance over Steph. "Not unless you're planning to do a full body mask tonight."

Cass wiggles her eyebrows suggestively and Steph punts one of her shoes at the former Batgirl. "Serves you right if I do!"

She might, just to spite them. It's not like she has a lot to hide from her ex-boyfriend and her current girlfriend. Although, she might have to spread those remaining two and three-quarters jars pretty thin if she wants to do her whole body. Hmmm. Maybe she'll just do her face, neck, and chest tonight - just to tease them.

She breezes past them, headed into the little kitchen, and begins unloading groceries onto the counter. "I picked up three bags of limes for the homemade margaritas,” she calls out. Tim gives a thumbs up and Cass does a little happy dance. “I dunno why the pre-made mix isn't good enough for you," she adds in a mutter.

"Fresh is better," Cass responds primly. Tim has finished applying her mask and Cass is unscrewing the lid to an opaque black container, presumably to apply Tim's. Steph wonders which mask Cass picked out for him this time.

"I also made sure to pick up the anti-tequila for you, nerd wonder, for whatever lime-flavored abomination it is that you like to make," Steph continues, pulling out a bottle of gin with a grimace. "Oh, and some more of that metallic red nail polish you liked so much last time."

Tim beams as Cass begins smearing a dark, thickly-textured mask across his cheek. "It's called a 'Gin Rickey'[1] and it's so good! I swear it will convert you to gin drinks if you give it a chance," he tells her.

"Nope," Steph replies, popping the 'p', as she finishes fishing out chips, dip, hummus and veggies. All the best snacks for spa night. Or as Steph likes to call it: Bat-Girl's Night. Plus Tim, naturally. (She figures that if she could be an all-but-honorary Robin for a few months, then Tim could be an all-but-honorary Batgirl from now on and that would make his presence admissible. Babs approved and they've been nice and haven't made him wear the suit yet, the lucky duck.)

"I am good with tequila thank you very- Wait." Steph stares at the mask Cass is currently rubbing across Tim's forehead. "Is that…?"

She stomps across the room and swipes the container out of Cass's lap. "Oh my god it is." She glares disapprovingly at Cass. "A coffee face mask? Really? We just got him off his addiction!"

Tim grins sheepishly. "Well, I mean, I'm not exactly drinking it and it's not like it has any caffeine-"

"It literally says it contains caffeine right here," Steph counters, pointing to the tub. "Why the hell does your skin need caffeine anyway?!"

"Firming," Cass explains, nodding sagely.

"'Wakes up the skin'?" Steph reads. "What the hell? What a load of bullshit!"

Cass ignores her and continues swiping the dark paste of sugar, clay and coarsely ground coffee - real fucking coffee! - across Tim's forehead as he grimaces apologetically.

"Oops, well…at least I'm not drinking it?" he tries again weakly.

Steph pins him with a flat look, then raps her girlfriend lightly on the head. "This was your idea, wasn't it?"

"Yes. It's fine. He's been good. Deserves it," Cass replies without hesitation, reaching out a hand for the tub. Steph sighs dramatically then hands it back.

"I guess..." she concedes, then grins wickedly. "I guess as long as it's his giant, tired-ass eye bags drinking up the caffeine, then it’s all good."

"Hey! They're not that bad!" Tim exclaims.

Cass plops a large glop of paste onto one such eye bag and nods grimly. "Yes, they are."

Tim deflates a little and goes quiet while Cass finishes smearing the dark paste evenly across his face. She sits back with a smile. "All done." She turns to Steph. "Next!"

Contrary to her words, Cass and Tim both rise and wash up before helping Steph apply her mask. On their way back, they stop by the fridge and pull out plastic cups of milky colored liquid with dark blobs at the bottoms. Cass takes a large slurp from hers and Steph perks up.

"Are those boba tea?"

Cass turns around with a shit eating grin and shakes a pinkish-purple one at her. "Yes. Do I win back points?"

"Is that taro?" Steph immediately asks, jumping up to accept the offering of sweet, irresistible nectar.

"Yep."

"Oh, babe, you're the best," Steph replies, stealing a jasmine-tinged kiss off of Cass' lips before punching the proffered straw through the lid and sucking down her own liquid bliss. The tapioca pearls add a pleasant chewy, sweet dimension to the earthy-sweet flavor of the powdered taro root. Steph is almost too distracted to notice Tim creeping away with his own cup, the milky liquid in such tinged just a little too brown for it to be simple black tea mixed into milk.

"Tim. What is that?"

He freezes and turns only his head to stare at her with wide eyes. "Boba tea."

"Yeah, but is it actually tea?" Steph interrogates, expression skeptical.

"Maaaaaaaaybe?"

Cass darts out of the way of the ensuing tussle, which ends, inevitably, with Steph snatching away Tim's cup to steal a sip. She nearly throws her own cup at him when she tastes it.

"I can't believe this! You actually got coffee in your boba tea! There probably isn't any tea in this, is there? Utter travesty!"

Cass chooses this moment to step between them, pass the drink back to Tim, and lay a hand on Steph's shoulder. "Decaf. Mostly milk. Extra boba. Extra ice. He is fine."

Steph's eyes narrow, shifting from Cass who is nodding soberly, to Tim who is sipping warily, and then back again. "This was your idea," she accuses Cass. Again.

The sound of the front door closing shatters the tension. "No, it was my idea," Babs explains as she wheels herself into the apartment. She grins when Cass bounds over, hugs her, then hands her what looks like yet another sacrilegious coffee boba 'tea'. "Cass was just my delivery person."

"Babs, why?! We only just got him off of his coffee addiction!"

"He's been really good about it lately, so I thought he deserved a reward in the form of a compromise. Besides, there's barely any caffeine in that anyway," Babs dismisses, rolling away toward the kitchen.

Steph rounds on Tim. He takes a step back instinctively. She slowly reaches out a hand and smiles gently. "Okay, Tim. I know that you know that that is the gateway coffee to many more coffee mishaps, so just hand it over nice and easy before you end up doing something that you’ll regret."

He clutches it to his chest like and pouts like a three-year-old. "No."

Her expression and tone harden. "Tim. Put the cup down, back away slowly, and no one gets hurt."

He shakes his head and vaults over the couch. Steph leaps to follow. Cass and Babs slurp their boba tea placidly while they watch from the kitchen. Tim streaks into the bathroom and locks the door. Steph rattles the knob and curses that she didn't think to carry any picks on her tonight. It's a simple “pop-in, pop-out” lock so if she can just find a toothpick or a skewer…

She dashes into the kitchen, nearly bowling over Cass in the process.

"He's gonna chug it," Babs predicts in a bland tone as Steph rattles around in drawers..

Cass nods. "Yes." She cups her mouth to carry over the racket Steph is making behind them. "Remember: tapioca, little brother! Don't choke!"

Steph fist pumps when she finds a single toothpick, then vaults the counter. Right as she pops the lock, Tim appears in the doorway, expression triumphant.

"Tim, no!" Steph wails when he raises the empty cup.

He rattles it and grins. "Tim, yes!"

#my writing #christmasriverswrites #tim drake #batfamily #cassandra cain #tim and cass #tim and steph #stephcass #past timsteph #barbara gordon #batgirls #if you're of legal drinking age in your country (*wink*wink*nod*nod*) the gin rickey will convert you to gin #i converted so many of my college friends to gin via the rickey; it's so light and refreshing #the coffee face mask is also a real thing; there are several well known retailers that offer them but the one that inspired this story #...begins with an ''L'' (as in lake) and rhymes with ''hush" ;)#and yes there is real coffee in the face mask and they claim it gives ''your skin a boost of caffiene''#long text post #edits 2020.01.26

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podcastlimbo · 5 years

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Posted on AO3 too!

Woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat really worried that something bad would happen to Rilla’s house while she was. u kno. kidnapped. And it’s not like she has an alarm system or anything. So here we are. This is my first go at an actual rad bouquet thing so it’s a little short and clunky please forgive me akdjflksjdlfkja UH ANYWAYS happy lizard kissin’!!

Over the weeks following the battle at Fort Terminus, the three of them had spent most of their time in the Keep, and as such things go, had developed a routine, which started with them taking turns to make breakfast every morning.

Rilla, Damien and Arum were gathered in kitchen (or at least, the room in the Keep that most resembled a kitchen). The weak early morning sunlight that filled the room illuminated shelves stocked with jars of jam, trays of vegetables and mushrooms, and baskets of fruit. There was a work bench in the middle of the room. Previously filled with clutter from Arum’s experiments, it had been mostly cleared out, save for a few odds and ends, to be replaced with a new sort of mess. Damien’s books and scrolls were piled high, and ink jars, quills and spare nibs had taken over a quarter of the table. Meanwhile, Rilla’s recorder, scientific journals and a lute she was in the process of constructing took up another quarter, as the three would sit together at the table, whiling away their lazy afternoons, working on their own projects in comfortable silence.

As Rilla and Damien sleepily cleared the table to make way for breakfast, each handling their own treasures gingerly as they moved their mess to a corner of the room, they were shaken out of their morning reverie as Arum turned to face them from the pantry.

“We’re out of milk,” he announced.

Ignoring the ensuing groans from his two (very petulant) humans, he carried on. “However, I don’t see this as much of a problem. After all, the pantry is still well-stocked with bread, fruit preserves and vegetables, all of which would make a perfectly acceptable breakfast.” “But no milk…” Damien’s voice, still thick from sleep, trembled slightly.

“No milk means no coffee,” Rilla moaned.

“Oh please. It’s not like you humans need coffee to survive.” “We do,” the two said in unison.

“Well then, you’ll just have to drink your coffee without the milk. Now that that’s settled-“

“-but on it’s own, coffee is just bitter liquid! The milk adds flavour and body to an otherwise mediocre stimulant! Without it, coffee becomes undrinkable, and without coffee, our meal becomes incomplete,” Damien insisted, now fully awake.

“So you’re saying… no milk means no coffee. No coffee means no breakfast.”

“That’s exactly what we’re saying,” Rilla sat herself down at the empty table, pointedly ignoring Arum’s inevitable mutterings of “damn humans” and “inconvenient diets”, instead looking at Damien with pleading eyes.

“All right then. It seems we have no other choice. Keep, open a portal to Rilla’s hut, and make sure no one else is nearby to see. I suppose we’ll have to do our shopping a little earlier than anticipated this week.” Damien ran hastily back to their bedroom, changing out of his sleepwear, as the Keep sang in acquiescence, the walls shifting to form an entryway back into the human world.

“Wait! Wait! Damn it all! I’m all out of money!”

Hearing his shout, Rilla and Arum made their way to where Damien was standing in the hallway, tunic half-buttoned and an empty purse hanging from his outstretched hand. Rilla put a reassuring hand on his arm. “It’s all right, Damien. I’m sure there’s money at my place. We’ll just go check together!” “Make it quick,” Arum grumbled, “or I’m having breakfast without the two of you.”

As the two ran off, Arum sat himself back down at the breakfast table, idly fiddling with Amaryllis’ recorder.

It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes that passed this way, before his humans came dashing back through the portal.

“Back so soon? When I said I was going to eat without you, you know I didn’t mean it.”

“It- it’s not that…” Damien’s eyes are frantic, and Arum could hear his panicked breathing. His frill flared slightly in worry, and he quickly made his way over to where the two were standing.

“My hut- I got robbed!” Rilla exploded.

“What?!” Arum snarled, longing for the reassuring weight of his knives he knew he had put away, having had no use for them in weeks. “When did it happen? Which miserable human did it? I swear I’ll tear their limbs off if-“

“-calm down, Arum. They only took my money and some of my jewelry. Most of my plants and experiments are intact. I mean.” She scoffed. “It’s not like anyone else is interested in a herbalist’s work, but-”

“They took her backup recorders, too,” Damien finished. “The Queen had stationed guards to keep watch over her house in the wake of,” he cast an apprehensive look at Arum, who waved an unconcerned hand, “the kidnapping. I suppose during the chaos wreaked by the fear monster, the guards decided that some things weren’t worth protecting.”

“I guess I should be grateful they didn’t take anything too valuable. Money can be made, jewelry can be bought, but those recorders… they were a secret between Marc and I. We were planning on improving them together and releasing them to citizens eventually but now…”

Arum sighed. “I understand, Amaryllis. Come here. The both of you.” They stepped into his welcoming embrace and he wrapped his arms around them as they burrowed their faces in his chest. “If only I thought to secure your house before leaving for Ballast…” Damien’s voice was muffled, but both Arum and Rilla could hear it shaking. “I knew that your house had been broken into just hours before, but I was so worried about you that I didn’t think, and then the Queen summoned me on another mission before I could even catch my breath, and oh Saints your home had been broken into and you were kidnapped and I shouldn’t have trusted those guards I didn’t.. I couldn’t-“

“Hush now, Honeysuckle. Hush. Breathe.” Arum’s hand made small, reassuring circles around Damien’s back, as he felt the human’s frantic breathing slow. “If anything, the fault is mine. I broke into your home and took you away, Rilla. I should’ve thought that an abandoned hut with a door hanging open was practically an invitation for all manner of thieves and burglars. And now the fate of your creation is uncertain because of my stupidity. I’m… I”m sorry.” “I think you’d know I’m lying if I said I knew things were gonna be okay,” Rilla said grimly. “But I hope It’s nothing some time and luck wouldn’t be able to fix. Who knows? Maybe the person who took it just wanted to sell the shiny thing for parts. Besides.” She looked up at him with a slight grin. “You didn’t know me back then, did you?”

“And if I did, I wouldn’t have heard the end of it from you. Either that, or the Keep would’ve made me return and fix what I had broken.”

At the Keep’s agreeing hum, the three of them chuckled. As one, they disentangled from the embrace, Damien giving Arum a small peck on the corner of his mouth before letting go of his hand, relishing in the look of confusion on the lizard’s face. He could swear that if Arum were capable of blushing, his green scales would’ve been flushed bright red.

“What was that for?!”

“That was a thank you. For helping me remain calm.” “You’re.. It’s.. I did nothing,” he huffed.

“And Arum.”

“Yes?” “You don’t need to blame yourself either. We’ve all erred in the past. As long as we recognise our mistakes and make them right.” “Of course I know that, my ever-righteous poet,” he replied, not unkindly. “I do hope that matters will work out…okay, as Amaryllis said.” “But if they don’t?” This question came from Rilla. Downcast, toying with the recorder on the table with her hands. “Then we’ll work it out together.”

As Damien lent an extra pair of hands to Arum’s two, preparing their breakfast, sans-coffee, and as Rilla hummed in harmony with the Keep while she waited, the three (or four, if sentient plants counted) knew that that would always hold true, no matter how uncertain the future appeared to be.

#the penumbra podcast #second citadel #help I'm reading this over again and its low-key bad #but im gonna post it anyways bc at least its something lol #lizard kissin' tuesday

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literary-spirit · 6 years

Text

Confessions of a Mikaelson: Possessing the Bennett

*Warning there's not only smut in this chapter, but there'll also be a crap ton of lemonade throughout this story. It's rated M for a reason, my fellow Bonnie lovers. So if you're not with it then I'll completely understand and for those of you who wish to proceed, please remember to buckle your seatbelts and strap on you helmets, this road is cluttered and broken.* Okay so Francesca and I are working on something new. This WIP begins at the end of 01X01 TVD and swerves recklessly out of the canon plot line into a very strange AU! So you've been warned! Flame it or acclaim in comments. I'll leave it up to the Bennett Fandom on whether this hot mess of a WIP lives to see another update!

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, none of these characters belong to me. And to add unfairness to poetic injustice, neither does the shows or the books. However, I still intend to pull the characters' strings and make them dance, all while having a ball upsetting canon plot lines!

Bonnie Bennett glared down at her smashed to hell pager. "Fucking, fuckery, fuck!"

She cringed after the string of no-no words leapt from her mouth. Unholy hell. Well, that would be another fifteen dollars for the swear jar. Her Grams had created the damn thing before she passed away. It was meant to help her broaden her vocabulary now it would probably be what put her through college.

For reasons she never really wanted to consider, she still faithfully added money to the jar whenever one of those slippery bastards (swear words) tumbled from her lips. Which fortunately only occurred when she was upset, stressed, depressed, bored, or angry. Okay, when she reflected upon it, half of her verbal interactions consisted of inappropriate phrases. Who the hell was she fooling? Her tongue had never met an explicit word it couldn't commit to.

Her glare left her broken pager to assess the front wheel of her bike. The damn thing had nearly folded in half. Well, it could've been worse. Instead of Caroline Forbes making her crash her bike into one of the wooden poles of Wickery Bridge, she could've simply knocked her over the rail. Bonnie wondered if the vapid bitch would've stopped then. She shook her head. Probably not. Why would she?

Bonnie Bennett was selectively invisible to the Mystic Falls' High elite. The only time any of those beautiful vultures ever acknowledged her was when they wanted to score some mushrooms and organic Mary J from her Grams garden or if they wanted to purchase a term paper. Other than that, she could walk down the halls bare assed wearing nothing but a smile and no one would raise even a threaded eyebrow. However, their impaired vision on all things Bonnie Bennett suited her just fine. She preferred living her day to day in between the lines. It afforded her certain privacies those who basked in the spot light were denied.

Yet, that evening she could've used just a bit of the spotlight. Not only was her bike a fucking tragedy, but her ankle was busted all to hell too. Without a ride or a phone, she'd have to limp her happy ass all the way home. Unless, the caretaker of the Mikaelson Estate took pity on her and allowed her to call a taxi. Bonnie didn't hold out much hope, though.

She honestly couldn't remember the last time the old crusty son of a bitch opened the wrought iron front gates. Maybe it was the last time the Mikaelsons were actually in residence. But when the hell was that? She'd lived in Mystic Falls all of her life and she'd never so much as caught a glimpse of the family. Talk was, they travelled year round and the Mikaelson Estate was only one of many properties they owned. And if rumors danced close to fact, then the residence should be in possession of at least one damn phone.

Not wanting to linger any longer on the bridge which hosted a shit ton of animal attacks, Bonnie struggled to drag her bike to the grassy area under the Wickery sign. Once she chained it to the wooden pole, she began to limp towards the Estate. It took her fifteen slow as shit minutes to reach the intercom outside the gates. To her surprise the house twinkled with a dozen or so lights too many. A frown crumpled her face. Normally, the house stood cloaked in shadows around that time of evening. For a brief second she found herself hesitating to press the intercom button. However, the aching throb of her ankle gave her the motivation she required to ring the caretaker.

A few moments after the crackly sound subsided an elderly voice answered. "Yes?"

"Hi," she said, trying her damnest to put on her sweetest good girl voice. "I just wrecked my bike on Wickery Bridge and broke my pager. Would it be possible for me to use your phone?"

Without explanation the intercom went silent. When she moved to press the button again, the gates swung open. Her eyes nearly hit the paved driveway at the sight of an old school Bentley pulling to a stop at the entrance. Seconds later, the—older than sand—caretaker exited the driver seat and shuffled around the car to open the back door.

Bonnie hobbled over to the car. Once there, she eased herself into the back seat. After closing the door, it took him every bit of eight minutes to reclaim his seat behind the steering wheel and another ten before he pulled the Bentley in front of the huge French glass double doors at the front of the Mansion. Deciding not to wait another twenty minutes for the caretaker to open her door, she slid from the backseat.

By the time she'd limped to the entrance, the caretaker had pulled the car away from the front of the house. Soon as she teetered to a stop on the proverbial welcome mat, the doors swung open. The air thickened right before several intoxicating forces nearly knocked her to the ground. An electric pulsing sensation shot from her center and surged through her vessels. The pulsating pooled in the palms of her hands, while forcing its way outward to thrum just beneath the surface of her skin. It was almost as if the intense vibrations deep within her responded to the pounding energy pouring from the mansion.

Bonnie stood on the fucking precipice. Her spidey senses told her that if she leaped nothing in her world would ever be the same. If she turned back now her life would resume unchanged. Being a habitual creature who never deviated from patterns or set routines, she knew the choice she should've selected. However, the draw beyond the threshold appealed to her way more than the comfort of her normal resting state. She inhaled enough oxygen for two and stepped inside before she had the chance to second guess her sanity.

Once inside the doors automatically closed behind her. Bonnie barely took notice. The spacious ornate foyer held her focus. Truth was, she didn't know what the hell to ogle first. From the massive crystal chandelier suspended at least sixty feet off the ground to the floor to ceiling marbled columns, everything vied for her absolute attention.

She couldn't believe people actually lounged in such a cushy lap of luxury. She'd never seen anything so...lavish. Not even Zach Salvatore's Boarding House could hold a blow torch to the Mikaelson Estate and his mansion was believed to be the nicest in town. That's if one didn't count the Lockwood Plantation. And she didn't. The slave quarters the Lockwood's still maintained on their property snatched them right out of the running.

The fine hair stood on the back of her neck as goose bumps pebbled the skin on her arms. She was being watched. Of course she was being watched. Whoever maintained the place alongside the caretaker probably wanted to make sure a few priceless knick-knacks didn't find its way into her pockets.

"Hello," A feminine voice greeted her from behind.

She limped around to face the owner of the voice. A sophisticated middle age lady stood before her looking like she'd just taken a bath in one percent privilege. The ends of her silky blond hair fell a couple of inches below her jawline in a professionally tapered bob to frame a passingly attractive oval shaped face. Tasteful, but expensive jewelry twinkled from her ears, wrist, and neck. The low-key touch brought a little more glamour to the understated white sundress she wore. After a head to toe assessment, she concluded there was no way in hell this woman was the housekeeper.

Bonnie cleared her throat. "Hey, I'm Bonnie Bennett." The woman's assessing blue gaze slightly flared with recognition. "I wrecked my bike a couple of hundred yards back on Wickery Bridge and totaled my fucking pager." Shit! Another five dollars for the swear jar. She squeezed her eyes closed. "Sorry, didn't mean to swear," she mumbled before retraining her gaze on the older lady who looked more amused than offended. "But in my defense this day has been a total shi-..." she shook her head, "never mind. Would it be okay if I used your phone?"

"Absolutely, Miss Bennett," the woman said, while strolling further into the foyer. "And before I misremember my manners allow me to introduce myself. I'm Esther Mikaelson."

Surprise stretched Bonnie's eyes wide. No fucking way! Wait until the founding families got an ear full of this news. Carol Lockwood would no doubt wet her panties when she heard the Mikaelsons had come to town. She mentally shook her head as she limped forward to grasp Mrs. Mikaelson extended hand.

The corners of the woman's mouth travelled south under the weight of a frown as she gazed down at Bonnie's sneakers. "Were you harmed?" Mrs. Mikaelson questioned as her intense stare reestablished eye contact between them.

"Think I sprained my ankle," she said, while lifting her injured limb. "I'm sure it'll be fine once I get some ice on it, though."

Esther's brow puckered. "Finn!"

"Yes, mother?" A tall—totally fuckable—man appeared from behind the same door Esther exited.

"Miss Bennett-,"

"Miss Bennett?" He questioned with an arched brow.

"Yes...Miss Bennett, this is my eldest son Finn," she shot the man a pointed glare before continuing. "Miss Bennett has unfortunately injured herself during a biking expedition. Would you do a great kindness and carry her to the beige and gold sitting room?"

"That's not necessary. I can walk-,"

"Of course, mother," he said, before turning to approach her. The atmosphere around him crackled. Waves of intoxicating energy seeped from him and tentatively swirled around her, all while taking care not to make contact. The temperature of her body crept north. When he towered over her, he paused, "May I, Miss Bennett?"

"Really, it's not-,"

Without giving her time to finish her sentence, he lifted her into his arms as if she weighed nothing more than an arm full of feathered pillows. He then swiftly made his way deeper into the mansion. After a few minutes of sprinting, he stopped in front of a set of closed doors. An array of voices drifted to them from inside the room. Finn took a step back to allow Esther to enter ahead of them.

Upon the opening of the door, a wall of highly charged energy slammed into her and lit her the fuck up. Her body temperature sky rocketed and leaped off the damn meter as if she'd been tossed into a hell blaze. Combined magnetic forces pricked at the exposed surface of her skin. She became extremely cognizant of Finn's hard frame firmly pressed against her side. A fantasy of her running her hands over hills of rigid muscles while he stood before her in all his bare ass glory, blasted away her conscious regard for shame. Without out grazing two thoughts together, she began to rub her cheek back and forth over his pec. The growl her actions elicited provoked her nipples to tighten almost to the point of being painful.

"Well, well! Look what the Finn managed to drag in, Bekah," a boy with precision cut sable tresses snarked from his place in one of the armchairs positioned in front of the fire place. He watched her with unblinking chocolate brown eyes that was downright predatory in nature. His calculated serial killer stare should've scared her crapless. Yet, all she could manage to think was...hmm, dessert! "Do say you're intending to share, brother." Finn's hold tightened around her.

"Curb your vile tongue, Kol. Miss Bennett is a guest in our home and you would do well to honor her as such." Esther hissed as she impaled him with a glare that would've made Satan piss his pants.

Guest? She just wanted to use the damn phone.

"Bennett?" A jaw dropping blond bombshell questioned from a satin bronzed sofa.

Finn gently placed her on the opposing loveseat. "Yes, Rebekah. This is Miss Bonnie Bennett." His slightly timid gaze found hers as he positioned a pillow under her ankle. "Miss Bennett, these are my siblings Kol and Rebekah."

Faster than her eyes could track, Rebekah shot from the sofa and reappeared again as she placed Bonnie's ankle in her lap.

"Fucking, fuckery, fuck! Am I having a stroke or did you just imitate a fucking Lambo?" Shit, another twenty for the swear jar.

Rebekah's mouth fell open and a chortle tumbled forth. Finn tsked his expression absolutely scandalized. Esther's eyebrows leaped into her hairline and Kol...wait...where the hell was Kol? Moments later she was lifted from the loveseat cushion and resettled in a hard bulging lap. Cool lips nuzzled the crook of her neck as something steamy floated from a tea cup that hovered in front of her face.

"Sweetness, your wicked terminology enflames me. Curiously, I find myself longing for the affordable affections of an all too willing dockside harlot," Kol whispered next to her ear. "Here, have some tea while it's still warm. It'll do wonders for your injured ankle."

With no further warning, Kol placed the tea cup to her lips and spilled the contents down her throat. To prevent herself from, choking she swallowed the metallic tasting tea. As she drank her thoughts spun the hell out in her head. How the...where the...something was extremely twisted about the Mikaelsons. Strength, beauty, and speed. She felt as if someone had dropped her off in a damn Twilight flick. Had she been one of those drugged out hippy, dippy, students Grams used to invite over for dinner, she'd truly believe herself to be in a house overran with vampires.

"Mother, will you not correct Kol on his forwardness in regards to Miss Bennett," Finn demanded, while attempting to commit visual homicide on his younger brother.

"Kol," Esther spit, her tone warning.

The caretaker appeared in the open doorway of the room. "Lady Mikaelson, Lord Niklaus wishes you attend him on the telephone."

Telephone? That's what the hell she needed!

"Excuse, Miss Bennett. I won't be but a moment," she rose from seat next to a large paned window. "I'll receive the call in my study Hannibal." She sashayed from the room and the door softly clicked closed after her.

"Oh, brother of mine. Celeste has yet to launder our unmentionables." Kol paused to blow a stream of cool air in her ear. The walls of her pop rocker quavered. "Why not preoccupy yourself with sniffing mother's soiled knickers. Your absence will allow Bonnie and me an opportunity to become better acquainted."

After she finished drinking the tea, Kol pushed the cup and saucer into Finn's hands. She opened her mouth to bless him with some more of her, wicked terminology, when she noticed the throbbing in her ankle stopped.

Flexing her ankle back and forth, she side eyed Kol. "What the hell was in that tea?"

"Family recipe," he said with wide guiltless doe eyes. He, however, looked about as innocent as a wolf covered in blood and feathers.

Rebekah snorted as she stroked her now apparently uninjured ankle. The vibrations which pulsed from the tips of her fingers triggered her to squeeze her thighs together to assuage a whole other throbbing. When the youngest Mikaelson licked her painted rosy lips, liquid heat flooded Bonnie's center. What the fuck? When had girls ever done it for her? Not that a boy had ever done it to her, but still. All her crushes over the last few years were geared towards the opposite sex. She'd never thought about a girl in such a way.

Uncomfortable in her own damn skin, Bonnie hopped from Kol's lap to put distance between her and the Mikaelson siblings. "Look, I just needed to use the phone. But since my ankle is-,"

"Brilliant." Rebekah climbed to her feet and grabbed her wrist. She then dragged her towards the door. "You can use the one in my room." When Kol moved to follow, Rebekah speared him with an over the shoulder glare, before saying, "no boys allowed!"

****

Rebekah covertly watched Bonnie Bennett through her lashes as she painted the tiny witch's toes. Nik's spies in Mystic Falls hadn't exaggerated. She was exquisite. Her smooth bronzed brown skin appeared to be quite edible. The way it stretched uninterrupted over her hills, peaks, valleys, and dips, compelled her tongue to glide back and forth across her bottom lip. She couldn't refrain herself from imagining the lovely dove stripped bare and reclining in the center of her bed with her luxurious chocolate tresses fanned out about her head. Quite the fetching sight she'd make to be sure.

Vanilla, coconuts, and the sensually mouthwatering scent of arousal tempted Rebekah's nostrils. Her core clenched as a hint of a smile flirted with her lips. It pleased her to know the witch struggled with her lust as well. The proof saturated the air with her delectable fragrance. The sweet attar, teasingly baited and ensnared them. Even now Kol stood vigil outside her bedroom door. While Finn had abandoned his perpetual crusade of self-loathing to recite aloud, Napoleon's love letters to Josephine. In verity, they'd all become rather batty for Bonnie.

If the witch caused this big of an uproar in the house of Mikaelson before the manifestation of her powers, they would all be raving lunatics after her quickening.

"What'd you think, Dove? Do you fancy them?" Rebekah questioned, while tightening the top on the nail polish.

The witch's enthralling green eyes slightly narrowed as she peered down at her toes. "Um...they're really red."

Rebekah rolled her eyes as she placed the fingernail polish back on the night stand. "How perceptive of you, Miss Bennett," she said, allowing sarcasm to thread itself through her tone. "Do you have the inclination to inform me on the blondness of my hair as well?"

"Whoa, there's no need to take the leash off the bitch. All I'm saying is-,"

"Hmm..." The witch's sentence skidded to a halt when the blonde original began to massage her shapely calves. "What were you saying, Dove?"

"I..." the little beauty paused to swallow. "Didn't mean to offend you."

"Oh..." she murmured, while she allowed her fingers to inch up Bonnie's jean clad thigh. "Well, I'm relieved. The task of pleasing you is extremely important to me." The heel of her palm connected with the lovely dove's crotch.

A breathy moan crept from the split of the witch's lips. "Rebekah, I'm not into...ahh...ooh..." Bonnie whimpered as the youngest original began to grind her hand into her witch's denim clad mound.

"Shh, Dove," she whispered, while urging the witch to lie back on the pillow-top mattress. "It's just us girls..."

Rebekah moved to straddle Bonnie's lap. She then leaned forward and brushed her mouth against the witch's to gauge how receptive she'd be to a kiss. The Bennett witch's arms slithered around her neck and drew her closer. Once Rebekah's mouth loomed over hers, she lifted her head from the mattress to close the distance. Since her lovely little dove initiated the kiss she allowed the tiny witch to take the lead. However, when it became blatantly apparent she'd never been properly snogged, the original reclaimed control.

With the tip of her tongue, she traced the seam of Bonnie's lips. A moment later the witch opened her mouth and granted her entrance. The sweet taste of her extracted a throaty moan from Rebekah and motivated her lower half to grind into Bonnie's. Pretty soon the witch's hips began to rise from the mattress to meet her wild writhing thrusts. Each of their whimpers and moans climbed in volume until their lips tingled and the press of their joined mouths could no longer suppress the sounds.

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dearophelia · 6 years

Note

(same anon) marigold

I’m answering these out of order, so thank you so much for your interest in this universe! For some character context, Caroline, Leah, and Anna are the three Fates, and three of the few truly-immortal characters in this universe.

marigold; cruelty

flower prompts | tip jar

Caroline cups her mug of tea and watches Max run through the flowers, giggling as he chases after butterflies. “Be gentle and they might land on you,” she calls out. He immediately stands completely still, bites his lip, and offers his hand out to the delicate creatures.

A small purple-and-blue butterfly lands on his outstretched hand. Max gasps in excitement, and visibly struggles not to move. The butterfly flaps its wings a few times, and crawls down his palm to his fingertips where it seemingly settles. Caroline swears it bows at him.

“Thanks for bringing him,” Leah says, sitting down on the porch steps beside her.

Caroline looks away from her son and to her mother. Her mood turns a little sour. “Well, if you were anywhere near civilization, you might see him more often.”

“Caroline…”

“We all lost people,” she says, pushing a blonde curl behind her ear. “We all lost good people we cared about.” She pauses. She always knew she’d outlive Aidan, and she always knew she’d lose him in that war. Knew the exact date for a century before it happened. Doesn’t make it hurt less. “You’re the only one who ran away.”

Leah takes a sharp breath. “I did not run away,” she says defensively.

Sparing a quick glance back to the field - Max now has four butterflies on his arms, and a fifth perched on the top of his head - Caroline narrows her eyes. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, Mom. It’s a fifteen-hour drive from any major international airport, a five-hour drive from any reliable portal, the last two hours of both is up an unstable and poorly-marked old horse trail.“

She ticks off on her fingers. “You don’t have a phone, you don’t have a computer, you don’t have the internet, I’m pretty sure you don’t have a mailbox of any kind. I don’t know what witch or warlock you’re paying an astounding amount of money to so you have electricity and running water up here. The only connection you have with the outside world is an ancient and, frankly, rude magic mirror that only puts me through about a quarter of the time. It took Anna and me over thirty years to even find you. What part of that in your mind does not add up to ‘ran away’?”

Leah blinks and then looks away, staring out at the mountains she now calls home. “John wasn’t supposed to die,” she says abruptly, running a hand through her hair. “I thought his thread had a good two centuries left in it.”

Caroline narrows her eyes again, though this time in confusion. Anna doesn’t make mistakes. Neither does Leah. None of them do, that’s the point. “That’s not possible.”

Leah shakes her head. "No,” she says softly, barely even a breath, “it’s not.” She swallows. “And it wasn’t. I was so blinded by how much I cared about him that I didn’t measure correctly.” She pauses. “Or didn’t want to.”

Max giggles, drawing Caroline’s attention. The butterflies have tripled in number, and three bluebirds chirp happily as they fly around him. Caroline smiles. Maybe he’ll be a nature deity; her first. It’s a terrible and beautiful thing, her immortality. She’s outlived all her lovers, and always will, but her children grow ageless with her.

Her mother’s immortality isn’t as kind. John was the first one she’s let through her ironclad walls in half a millennia. Grief that deep isn’t easy to navigate, Caroline well knows, but she’d never abandon her entire life to sink into it. And she’s more than a little angry that her mother has.

“You know,” Caroline says, “hiding up here might not be helping.” Not everyone you care about died, she thinks bitterly. Not everyone who cares about you died.

“I’m not hiding,” Leah snaps. Dark clouds gather in the bright sky, blocking out the sun. “I’m calming down so when I finally meet the dullahan who murdered him, I don’t rip his fucking head off with my bare hands and start another war,” she growls through clenched teeth, her voice echoing like the very thunder she summons.

A deep boom rumbles across the sky, echoing through the valleys. Max’s butterflies and bluebirds fly away in a flurry of wings, and he runs back to his mother, eyes brimming with tears.

Caroline wraps her arms around her son and murmurs assurances against his cheek. Lightning flashes, and another crack of thunder shakes the ground and threatens to split the skies open. Humidity presses in around them as thunder rolls across the mountains, but no rain comes.

“Will you stop being dramatic?” Caroline says as Max buries his face in her shoulder. “He’s three.”

The sky brightens again, slowly returning to its clear blue. The sun shines down on the field, illuminating the bright green grass and colorful flowers, and the humidity lifts.

“Thank you.”

They sit in silence for a long while, long enough for Max to settle down and venture back out into the grass. Gradually, his butterflies return, followed by the bluebirds. Soon enough he’s smiling and laughing again, storm clouds forgotten.

“I’ll talk to the mirror,” Leah says quietly. “I don’t know that I can do anything about the rudeness, but I’ll try to have it put you through more often.”

Caroline nods, knowing she won’t get anything else. Thirty years is the blink of an eye to an immortal. Fixing the magic mirror is a start. “Fifty percent. All I’m asking.”

Leah manages a smile as she looks out at her grandson, twirling around in the flowers and grass, giggling joyfully, surrounded by butterflies and birds and small puffs of dandelions. “I’ll see what I can do.”

#thank you!#tarysande #verse:voidwalkers #s:words #s:2018 #i've changed the name of caroline's son like ten times i don't actually know what it is #Anonymous

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imagineclaireandjamie · 6 years

Note

After this last episode with the making the 'batsuit' scene you should totally do a story about the first time Claire made some sort of costume for Bree

For the first time in my life, I cursed my juvenile disinterest in sewing. As a child, I’d mended clothes out of sheer necessity, the rigor of constant travel taking its toll on my shirts and trousers. I had cared little for skill back then, regarding the whole affair as a tedious chore that kept me from more important duties—namely, dusting off bones for Lamb.

As an adult, I was a surgeon, but even that seemed to do me no favors. Despite my professional expertise—how many wounds had I stitched with far sharper tools on far more delicate materials? —it seemed I still couldn’t manage a bloody Halloween costume. In previous years, I’d simply bought one or asked Millie, our neighbor, for a helping hand at the cost of a bottle of wine.

My break from tradition was inspired by a recent conversation, whereupon it was revealed—to the horror of several Betty Crocker types—I had no plans to slave over a Singer for the sake of my daughter’s trick-or-treating.

“Oh, but you must,” one woman had said.

“Your child would so appreciate it,” another had chimed in.

“She’ll be the only one whose mother didn’t make her costume.”

I’d rather thought Bree wouldn’t notice either way, she being the sort who’d drape a sheet over her head, stare through two circular cut-outs, and cry “Boo!” as if she were the most convincing ghost in the world. But the women’s scornful expressions had stayed with me, stirring up feelings I hadn’t felt since I’d arrived in America: a nagging self-consciousness; a desperate need to prove myself.

Bree was ecstatic when I informed her that I, not Millie, would be making her costume this Halloween, and what was it she’d like to be? Frank’s incessant prattling about the monarchy had clearly made an impression. Of all things, Bree had chosen Queen Elizabeth II, who’d been crowned the year before.

If I’d known how complicated it would be, I might have scrapped the project altogether and thrust expensive merlot in Millie’s face. Being without such hindsight, I now had a half-constructed dress that looked more like a war casualty than a royal ballgown.

“You sodding bastard,” I barked at the sewing machine.

My daughter, sitting not five feet away, looked up from her book with a delighted smirk. I groaned, already envisioning the moment Frank would walk through the door, greeted by an oral report of the day’s linguistic infractions (most of them mine). Though Bree shared her biological father’s penchant for mischief, she’d adopted the English reserve of the man who raised her. With frequent lapses, of course—she, after all, was my child too.

“Mama,” she tsked now, “you know what that means…” Smiling, she pointed towards the table beneath the window, which sat littered with the odds and ends of our daily life. The dried stems of pressed flowers sprouted from a medical textbook. A dog toy, practically chewed into oblivion, sat beside Frank’s corn cob pipe—a habit he’d taken up as a way of ingratiating himself to Harvard’s social circles. At the center of it all, however, stood the glass jar whose cheery label, “SWEAR BANK,” had become the bane of my existence.

Two weeks ago, Frank and I had been called to Bree’s school on the grounds of discussing a recent misbehavior. Our daughter, it seemed, had a fondness for words that were unsuitable to a woman of 35, much less a girl of 6. The principal’s meaningful looks had plainly indicated he knew where—or from whom—Brianna had received her vocabulary lessons.

“Children, you know,” he’d said, leaning forwards. “They don’t just learn these things by themselves. I think some disciplinary action could be taken at home…”

And so it was by Principal Gellar’s suggestion that we—the Randalls of ill repute—came to use a swear jar. For every curse, the delinquent had to add two quarters, with each subsequent offense requiring double that amount. A mild punishment, I’d thought, until it was obvious that losing pocket change wasn’t sufficient inducement to watch my own mouth.

Because of this, it was agreed that I prepare a proper dinner—from scratch, not frozen—if I exceeded my daily max of five swear words. Frank promised to exchange his loose leaf tea for Lipton’s, should he do the same, though this was more a demonstration of his superiority than his solidarity. Unless provoked, he rarely said more than the occasional “damn” in Bree’s presence.

Rummaging through the purse at my feet, I extracted money from my wallet.

“There,” I said, giving it to Bree. “Happy?”

Bills in one hand, Bree counted her fingers on the other, “That’s six today, Mama,” she said, still smirking. “So what’s for dinner?”

I snorted and motioned her towards me. “Well, if you want this costume finished, I’ll have to take a rain check.” I looked at the chaos strewn about my work table. “A two-week rain check.”

“I guess that’s okay,” Bree said, skipping over to my side. “Daddy and I will have meatloaf tonight, and you can have soap.”

I laughed. It always baffled me how my child—once a gurgling thing with an untamable cowlick—had transformed into a human capable of swear words and jokes.

As they always did when Bree came close, one of her hands automatically rested on my head, tiny fingers submerging themselves in a tousle of curls. They found the tender patch behind my ears, beginning an idle massage that expelled all tension from my body.

She’d done this as a baby—then, with a naïve curiosity; now, by the simple force of habit. It reminded me of someone else, though I knew it was merely coincidence and not some genetic trait passed down through the centuries. Still, the small fingers always grew larger in my mind—pads turned to callous and nails made blunt—as they moved in slow, gentle circles towards my temples. I could hear Gaelic, spoken softly, and see a calmness wash over a startled horse, as it now washed over me.

I shook the memory away, and returned to the disaster cascading into my lap.

Really, there was no hope for it. Uneven hems. Too-large and crooked stitches. The circumference of one shirtsleeve would fit someone’s thigh, not Bree’s skinny arm.

“Smudge,” I sighed, “perhaps this wasn’t a good idea. I mean—” I gestured at the clumsy mess before me, and Bree removed her hand.

She leaned closer, head tilted to examine the work I’d done until her expression turned into one of obvious resolve. “I could always be a hobo,” she said matter-of-factly. “Or a garbage man.”

In that moment, I swear I had never loved her more.

Clearly unconcerned, Bree flopped down on the couch, and asked, “What’d you dress up as when you were a kid, Mama?”

“Come to think of it, I can only remember one Halloween,” I said, sitting back. “I was a little older than you, and my outfit was a hodge-podge of things. Somewhere between Indiana Jones and a girl who raided a closet, blindfolded.”

As a vagabond who drifted from continent and continent, Halloween never seemed to cross Lamb’s mind. A brief lecture, perhaps, about its pagan origins—but there was none of the pomp and circumstance one would see today. Being only vaguely aware of the holiday’s existence myself, I had never found us lacking for it. Our days were already filled with adventures, strange characters, and the spirits of years past.

It was one of Lamb’s colleagues—a charismatic American named Tom—who put forth the notion we hold a celebration of our own. Even I, who by this time was more adult than child, couldn’t resist the idea of being someone else, swapping ghost stories under a full moon, and gorging myself on sweets.

Lamb, bless his soul, was more than happy to oblige me. It was a belated birthday present of sorts, as October 20th, 1926 had passed in whirlwind of sand and dirt. The more immediate concerns of suffocation and hazardous winds had taken precedence over cake and candles that day.

Lamb and Tom took me to the market one morning, each of us bouncing from stall to stall to inspect the wares. After hours of browsing, we’d managed to scrape together a rudimentary costume, though it had none of the frills, silks, or skirts Tom had assumed I’d want.

“Are you sure you don’t want to be a princess?” he’d said, regarding me sideways. At the insistent (and fiftieth) shake of my head, Lamb had clapped Tom on the back with a jovial smile, reminding him that I was a girl who preferred slouch hats to tiaras. I recall grinning up at him, then, and taking his hand as we walked back to camp. In truth, I think I’d just wanted to be Lamb for a night.

And so there I was days later: a poor man’s cowgirl astride an invisible horse, galloping through the nearby village in search of treats. Naturally, few people were prepared for the presence of my wild-eyed, boyish self at their door. But most smiled at my requests—all spoken with a pitiful Southern twang—and indulged me with whatever they could spare. Lamb, meanwhile, stood at my side—an elderly pirate-guard who assured them we were not, in fact, bandits.

We returned to camp at sundown with a sack full of furry, odorous, and glittering miscellany slung across my shoulder. Against all sense, someone had given me a pack of cigars, and I placed one between my lips. Knees braced and arranging my hands into a finger gun, I did my best Butch Cassidy impression as Lamb inspected the bag for other inappropriate goods.

“That stuff ain’t yours, old man,” I’d said, words mumbled by the cigar. “Stick ‘em up.”

Lamb had hooted, crying, “Excellent, my dear! Just marvelous!” and took a seat across the fire. His head bent before a lit match, the flame lighting the end of one of the contraband cigars.

What I remember most, though, was his face when he looked up at me. My cheeks were flushed beneath a layer of grime. My too-long pants were pooled around my feet, while my dark hair was pulled into a bushy ponytail. I imagine I’d been the image of freedom and recklessness—a person who appreciated the simplest of joys, like dress-up and too much sugar.

“You’ve always favored your mother, Claire. But I daresay that right now…” And here, Lamb’s eyes had shimmered, his expression grown suddenly soft. “Right now I see so much of your father in you.”

“Mama?” A voice broke through the haze of my memory. “Mama, were you listening to me?”

“Hmm?” I said distractedly, slowly returning to the present. Shaking her head, Bree said, “Maybe next year I could be a cowgirl too?” before launching onto an entirely different topic.

Seeing my daughter chatting confidently away, her hands fluttering with the excitement of conversation, of being with someone…Seeing her hair catch the sinking sun and the mischief inside her curving mouth—a mouth that would never cease to amaze me with its jokes and its compliments and its observations. Seeing these things, and how her slanted blue eyes took in her shabby costume—unbothered by its inelegance but appreciative of the work I’d put into it—I thought I saw so much of her father in her too.

#flightsnitch96 #;mod liv #featuring: bree #i vomited on the page and this was the result

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allthemarvelousrage · 7 years

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silentsamemu

replied to your post

“Looking for Aftermath minific promptlets until my kids go to bed and…”

Could I ask how Laura met the bots?

This takes place after Strays, but before the main events of The Swear Jar.

—-

The first time Cooper disappears for an entire day, Laura panics. No matter how often she reminds herself that they’re safe, they’re no longer fugitives in the United States, the year in Wakanda still weighs heavily on her mind, lingers in her dreams. She still wakes up sometimes in a cold sweat, and has to shake the feeling that if she turns around, goes down the hall and checks each of the doors behind which her children sleep, she’ll find only empty space, empty beds, instead of her babies.

The panic is easy to contain at first. She’s not hysterical by nature. She comes from practical stock, problem-solving stock. Take one step, then another. Work the problem at hand, not the myriad possible problems that might lie in the future. Running around like she’s lost her head will not find her son, so she allows herself five breaths to feel the fear, and then firmly puts it aside, finds her shoes, and leaves her family’s apartments to start looking for Cooper.

—-

The panic isn’t so easy to contain two hours later, when she’s all but scoured the compound top to bottom and still hasn’t turned up so much as a hair of Cooper Francis Barton. The panic is, in fact, having a much easier time of driving her on hurrying feet and quickening breath towards the archery range, where she expects to find Clint.

Unless he’s disappeared into thin air too.

That thought doesn’t help the panic.

Clint is right where she thought he’d be, and his warm, happy smile at seeing her approach quickly shifts to a frown of confusion and concern as she halts in front of him. “Hey,” he says, soft and gentle, sets his bow down to reach out and take her by the shoulders, rubbing her biceps soothingly. “What’s wrong?”

Her head swims as she takes a deep breath, oxygen rush making her momentarily dizzy, but Clint keeps her from swaying too much. “I can’t find Cooper,” she says while the spots are clearing out of her eyes. “Lila is with Cassie, and Nat stole Nathan this morning, but I don’t know where Cooper is.”

It relieves her to see how fast the concern clears from Clint’s expression, because that means he knows there’s nothing to worry about. “Cooper’s with Tony,” he says. “Has been since this morning. Cooper wanted to see where Tony worked, so they came to me after breakfast. I told them it was fine.” The smile slips a little and his head tilts when she does sag, apparently misreading her relief for upset. “Was that not okay?”

“No,” she says, hastily shaking her head. “No, he’s safe with Tony. I just…” She trails off, swallows and closes her eyes.

Clint pulls her into a hug, more of an embrace, and she leans into his reassuring warmth. “You want to go make sure?” he asks gently, kisses her temple.

She makes a face into his shoulder. “I’m being ridiculous,” she mutters.

“Naw,” he replies, moves her so he can see her face and tucks her hair behind her ear. “I put you through a lot, and that took a toll. It’s going to take time for all that to go away.” At least he doesn’t apologize this time; he’s getting better at that too. “C’mon,” he says, kisses her forehead, and slides his arm around her shoulders. “It’s almost time to drag Tony out of the workshop and remind him he needs to eat sometime this week anyway.”

—–

“Shit,” Tony says, wide-eyed as he stares at them both, and Laura’s faintly amused that his first instinct is to jingle around in his pocket for a quarter, which she holds her hand out to take. She doesn’t think he’s even noticed he’s done it yet. “I didn’t think to leave a note for you, Laura.”

“It’s fine, Tony,” she says, before he can start apologizing in more depth. He’s another one that needs to stop kicking himself black and blue. He will, if Laura has anything to say about that. She peers past, glancing around. “I just wanted to check and make sure Cooper hasn’t corrupted you into world domination.”

Tony’s smirk is wry. “Not one of my sins, unless you count dominating energy and communications across the globe. He’s in the bot lab, in the back. I’ll get him.”

“No no. Just…” She sighs and looks up at him with a wry smile. “Is it okay if I come in, just for a minute?”

Tony gives her an odd look, surprise, and glances to Clint before looking back at her. “Of course it is,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Her sin is obsessive politeness,” Clint says, and oofs at the elbow she nudges into his ribs. “What? It’s true.”

“It’s not polite to point it out,” she says primly. “Thank you, Tony. I’ll just be a second.”

“Stay as long as you like,” he replies, still with that baffled tone. As she walks away, she hears Tony add, in an undertone to Clint, “You know you’re both welcome anywhere, right?”

“Laura never assumes anything, dumbass,” comes Clint’s easy, fond reply, “so maybe try telling her that. Normal people use words to convey their intentions. I know it’s not a technique you’re familiar with, but might be worth a shot?”

“… I hate you so much, Katniss.”

“Mutual, Tin Man.”

Laura smiles and shakes her head. At least they’ve finally shaken the last of the tension between them. She reminds herself to tell Cooper he can finally dig the box of toy cars out from under his bed, where she told him to hide them.

Cooper’s got his back to the stairs, and two … rover-looking machines on either side. They’re all focused on the work table in front of them, busily chirping and beeping and chattering between themselves. Though she’d only heard of the bots in passing, she finds herself completely unsurprised to discover them displaying personalities of their own.

The last remnants of the irrational fear dissipates when he glances over his shoulder to the robot on his left to take the tool it’s offering him, catches sight of her, and turns with a smile.

“Hey Mom,” he says. “What’re you doing here?”

Cooper’s at a touchy age, and Laura’s still trying to get a feel for how much motherly affection he minds her showing. She settles for ruffling his hair with a hand, smiling down at him. “Came to get you and Tony for lunch,” she says. “I thought we’d go into town. There’s a diner there I keep meaning to try. What do you think?”

Cooper looks back at the table, back at her, then down at his feet before back up. “Mom… can we do that another time? Me and Tony are doing a project and I kinda wanna finish it.”

She arches an eyebrow. “You know, last week, you were badgering your father and I to take you into town so you could get away from the compound for awhile.”

“That was before Tony asked if I wanted to learn how to be an engineer, Mom,” Cooper replies, impatiently, and Laura bites back a smile. “Please? Can I stay?”

She eyes him for a moment, until he’s shifting from foot to foot, and then decides to be merciful. “If you tell me what you’re working on.”

Cooper eyes her right back, as if sizing her up. “How do I know you’re not a corporate spy looking to steal my ideas?”

“Corporate spies don’t pay your allowance, brat.” She reaches out to ruffle his hair again. “I’m your mom, not an infiltrator.”

“That’s the perfect cover,” he says, squinting at her. “No one ever expects their moms.”

She laughs, while making a mental note to herself to talk to Clint about how many spy thrillers he watches with the kids, even if he claims to only do it so he can point out to the kids all the things they’re doing wrong. “C’mon. What are you working on?”

“I,” he says, and steps to the side to turn back to the table to show her, “am learning how to be an engineer from Tony. He made these guys, and they’re super helpful. Thats what I want to do too. And Tony’s the best. He says I’ll get into MIT no sweat, if that’s what I want. But I don’t want to wait for college, so…” He takes a deep breath and lets it out fast, in a huff that sets his shoulders. “I’m making a bot like Dum-E and U.”

Her eyebrow goes up again. “Dum-E and U? Those are their names?”

Cooper nods, points at the one on the left. “That’s U. He’s kinda shy, so don’t be offended if he doesn’t look at you or anything. He holds the cameras and makes sure Tony’s experiments are properly documented. And this,” he says, patting the other bot on the flat top of its… head, she guesses. “This is Dum-E. Tony said he made him when he wasn’t much older than me, in his Dad’s workshop. He’s had him a long time. He’s not really smart, not like FRIDAY, but he’s great at helping. And he saved Tony’s life a couple times.”

She doesn’t want to accuse her son of overexaggerating things, but she’s seen the machines Tony creates, and this one doesn’t look remotely advanced to be able to do complex things like that. “He did, did he?”

“Yup! A couple of times, Tony caught on fire. Hazard of innovation, he says. Dum-E used the fire extinguisher in plenty of time, and Tony says all those things really don’t count, but I think they do.”

“I see.”

“And,” he adds offhandedly, “when Mr. Stane stole Tony’s arc reactor out of his chest, Dum-E got him the old one before his heart stopped beating. And even Tony says that counts as saving his life. Tony underexaggerates a lot of those kinds of things, so I think it should count two or three more times.”

Her breath catches and her spine goes cold at the implications. Out of all the stories she’s heard about the various Avengers, she’s definitely never heard that one. “I think you’re right,” she says when she can speak again. “And if Dum-E hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have Tony now.”

Dum-E chirps inquisitively at her, and its head-analogue tilts slightly as she leans over him. “Thank you,” she breathes and, though she wants to throw her arms around the clunky metal body and hug the hell out of it, she doesn’t want Cooper to give her that exasperated look that tells her he thinks she’s being weird either. So she settles for dropping a light kiss to the top of its head, just above the round lens. “I appreciate it a lot.”

Dum-E chirps again, a happy sound, and spins on its wheels.

“I know it was a long time ago,” Cooper says, “but I wanted to say thank you to them, so I’m making them a little brother.” He hands her his tablet, which is currently displaying surprisingly professional-looking schematics. “Tony helped me draw them, but I’m still just a kid, so I shouldn’t feel bad about that, he says. I gotta come up with the name myself. And I don’t want it to be dumb. It’s harder than it looks.”

“I named four kids, kiddo,” she says with a smirk. “Tell me about it.” She scrolls slowly through the pages, marvelling a little at the miracle Tony in their lives continues to feel like. “Well, that is definitely a robot.”

“Oh my god!” Cooper blinks, and then his whole face lights up. “Mom! You did it! You did it!”

Her turn to blink and stare. “What did I do?”

Instead of answering her, Cooper bounds past her and down the half-flight of stairs, running for the front. She follows behind in confusion, tablet still in her hands, as he calls, “Tony! Tony! Mom did it! She said it was definitely a robot! And since its my first one…”

Tony turns from his conversation with Clint, who’s looking just as lost as she is, but Tony just grins and holds out a fist which Cooper obligingly bumps. “1-DAR. Nicely done, science kid. Don’t forget to update the files with the name. Rule 9: write the little things down, because you have no idea how fast they’ll disappear from your head.”

“Gotcha.” Cooper nods solemnly, then turns back to her and holds out his hand. “Thanks so much, Mom. Can I have my tablet back? I gotta update my files.”

“Sure,” she says, bemused, and hands it back. “You boys look busy, so I’ll bring lunch down to you in a bit. Sound good?”

To her surprise, Cooper throws his arms around her waist and hugs her tightly. “You’re the best, Mom! I’m going back to the bot lab, Tony. You coming?”

“Go on without me, I’ll be there in a minute. Gotta talk to your parents a sec.” When Cooper’s back at the top of the stairs, Tony turns back to them with a grimace. “I should have left you a note, Laura. Or come ask you myself. I–”

“Shut up, Tony,” Laura says and he goes shock-still when she just hugs him impulsively. “He’s happy here and we trust you. A note’s fine. Stick it on the fridge. It’s where our family puts things we need each other to see. He can be in here sunup to sundown as far as I care. Just let us know, is all.” She pulls away from him before she starts to cry and smiles up at his absolutely baffled, slightly terrified face. “What do you want for lunch? I’ll bring it down for you.”

“Whatever’s fine, Laura. Don’t want to be a bother.” He withers a little under her steady gaze. “I like chicken club sandwiches,” he mutters, eyes darting to the side. “I was gonna make myself one later with the leftovers from dinner the other day.”

“I got it,” she says with another smile, holds his gaze long enough that he starts shifting uncomfortably. That’s when she turns back to Clint, who’s looking highly amused and smug at her. “Let’s leave the boys to their tinkering.”

“Talk to you later, Tony,” Clint says, glancing over her shoulder with another sideways smile. “See you when you get home.”

“Sure,” Tony says, still uncertain, and sees them out the door.

Clint walks with her in silence for a few minutes as they head home, but she can feel him swelling with amusement and smugness. “So,” he finally says, just as they’re leaving the workshop and lab areas to wait for the elevator. “I couldn’t help but notice…”

“Shut up, Barton,” she says firmly. “That’s not a conversation I want to have right now. I’m still thinking.”

He’s still smug and smirking, the prick, as he shrugs broadly. “All I’m saying is…”

“I know what you’re saying.” She sighs and rubs her forehead, then scrubs her face. “Did you know one of his bots saved his life?”

He arches an eyebrow. “Yes. You didn’t?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “He makes the most amazing things and doesn’t take credit for any of it. More to the point, he’s teaching Cooper how to do that and only worries that we’ll be mad at him.” She looks at Clint, and just like that, her mind’s made up. “He’s a Barton,” she declares. “He’s ours.”

“I know he is. Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Clint says, snags her around the neck and pulls her in to kiss her forehead. “We’ll fix him up. You’re really good at that. Just look at how you put me back together.”

Weight she didn’t even know she was carrying is abruptly gone. “You’re still a work in progress, Barton,” she says. “I don’t think there’s ever gonna be any fixing you.”

“Probably not,” he agrees, and holds his arm out across the opening elevator doors to let her step in first. “But you love me just like I am.”

“Probably,” she admits with a soft laugh as the doors close behind them. “We all have our incurable faults.”

—–

Tony and Cooper barely notice her coming in a short while later, and she leaves the tray with their sandwiches and drinks on an empty counter nearby. Tony thanks her distractedly, echoed a second later by Cooper, and they go back to their arcane technobabble. She smiles fondly at them, the two heads so close together, and feels blessed all over again.

As she’s moving through the main workshop on her way out, she sees Dum-E tidying up a workspace off to the side. She glances over her shoulder, but neither of her boys are paying attention to her.

It’s impulsive, but she steps into the work area, and stops beside Dum-E, who twists his lens around to look at her and beeps curiously. “Thank you again,” she says, far more heartfelt than when Cooper had been there, and this time does hug the bot. “He wouldn’t be here if not for you, so thank you.”

Dum-E chirps again and the shaft of his upper body rests gently on her shoulder, like he’s hugging her back. He beeps again, happy and noisome, but she knows without understanding a single sound that he’s saying you’re welcome.

#silentsamemu #ficlicious writes #fanfic rules my life #mcu fanfic #avengers #aftermath verse #post cacw #laura barton #clint barton #tony stark #pre-relationship

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trbl-will-find-me · 7 years

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Every Exit, An Entrance, Part 2/?

There are two (and only two) possibilities: either she led XCOM to victory and they are now engaged in a clean up operation of alien forces, or XCOM was overrun, clearing the way for an alien-controlled puppet government to seize control of the planet.

She’d really like to figure out which it is, but asking hardly seems the prudent option.

There are moments where she almost thinks she’s figured it out. If she stands back and takes stock of the situation, she can almost find where reality jumped the shark. A reclaimed alien ship? An entire world in the thralls of the aliens? Come on.

But is it any more absurd than a global defense force secreted under away under the Kansas cornfields? A reverse engineered UFO?

Invariably, she is forced to concede defeat, accept the double existence, and move on with her day. Or, perhaps more accurately, night.

She tries not to trip on the details.

Really, it should not have come as a surprise. The writing had been on the wall since, well. Since Royston had come out of the psi lab, honestly.

She’s almost impressed Martin waited as long as he did.

The comms have been clear for two weeks, a feat almost unimaginable at the beginning of the month. The common room had almost, almost, recovered from the last fete, the dredges of crumbs and bottle caps all but eradicated from the nooks and crannies of the furniture. The liquor cabinet had been almost, almost completely restocked.

Not any more, she thinks, downing another glass of champagne.

The initial fracas had started in the common room, carried into Mission Control, and then into the Situation Room, interrupting her meeting as the cheering spread.

“What happened?” She’d called, sticking her head out. “Someone beat Central at Civ?”

“Martin popped the question!” Hegarty had shouted, gesturing wildly to the security feed from inside the common room.

Suddenly, addressing the matter of the Council had seemed a lot less pressing.

She is relieved, stupidly relieved, as if it had been her relationship on the line these eight months. There had been moments, moments where she’d doubted either one was coming home free from a body bag. She remembers all too well the sight of Royston, body limp and vitals erratic, after an Ethereal had hurled her against a wall, or the way bile had risen in her throat as the Sectoid Commander had turned Martin on his friends and teammates.

But, Hershel was a damn good medic and had stabilized Royston long enough to make it back to HQ. And, when everyone else had been frozen, paralyzed by some pernicious combination of shock and disbelief, Royston had aimed her rifle, hitting the monster squarely between the eyes, and freeing Martin, who had ensured the bullet had done its job.

They’d earned this.

“He’s been sitting on that ring since the beginning of November,” Bradford remarks from his spot next to her. They’re close enough to be part of the festivities, but far enough back to chat without fear of being overheard.

“Wait, really?” She asks, surprise registering through the alcohol. “How do you know?”

“Because I signed for it a couple days after Halloween. I thought he’d pop the question after Avenger or wait until Christmas.”

She blinks, considering this new information. “Don’t you have some pretty strong feelings about fraternization?”

He shrugs. “Theory and practice.”

She fights the urge to ask if that applies to everyone, or just those outside the senior staff.

Bernard pops another bottle of champagne, letting it run over his fingers as he refills plastic flutes, laughing all the while.

“You think they’ll make it?” She asks.

“Yeah, I do.”

Again, there is a Royston. She is the proverbial spitting image of her parents: her father’s hair and her mother’s eyes.

The Commander can’t look at the girl without vague memories of a makeshift engagement party, smuggled champagne flowing freely in the common room. They’re fleeting, though, a dream, and are quickly supplanted by the weight of loss.

She’d give almost anything for a dose of Martin’s gentle humor or the older Royston’s calm reassurances.

She notes with some curiosity that no one calls this Royston by her surname. She’d chalk it up to a fear of summoning ghosts, but Central’s never been one for superstition.

Finally, she asks.

The girl offers her a sly grin. “Central didn’t mention, huh? Maman tracked him down before. Well. A few months before. She made him promise that, when something happened, he’d look after me.” She shrugs. “In seven years, I’ve only ever been Sally to him, or anyone else.”

“Seven years?”

She nods. “I was a few months shy of eleven. I’ll be eighteen at the end of April.”

“So, you’re only seventeen. That explains why you’re not on the active duty roster.”

She chuckles darkly. “Not exactly.”

The Commander can feel her eyebrows rising toward her hairline. “Not exactly?”

“I went on an … unauthorized field op, and neutralized an ADVENT collaborator operating in the area.”

The Commander lets out a low whistle. “And he doesn’t have you on active duty because …?”

“He didn’t take kindly to the unauthorized bit.”

“Sounds like Central.”

“After I got back, and,” she sighs. “And he sobered up, he grounded me. Bridge or quarters and nowhere else. Kelly managed to talk him into giving me range access at least.”

“Sobered up? What, you went out on a special occasion?”

Again, she shakes her head, but it’s accompanied by an eye roll this time. “He doesn’t need a reason to drink; he just does. If he’s not here, or on the bridge, he’s probably drinking himself into oblivion somewhere.” The edge on her voice is unusually harsh, almost as if it were some kind of personal betrayal.

The Commander may only be a few days out of the tank, but she can see this isn’t an issue to be pushed. “That’s … new,” she says, attempting to find something neutral to say.

The information visibly takes Sally by surprise. “It is?”

“To my frame of reference, yeah.”

“He didn’t do this during the invasion?”

“He didn’t really drink.” Because I thought he knew better than to follow his father, she adds, silently.

Sally’s shoulders sag. “I don’t know why I’m even surprised.”

It’s only then that the Commander notices, as much as she bears her parents’ looks and quirks, Sally’s mannerisms are an almost perfect mirror of Bradford’s.

Oh. --

“Who said anything about the skyranger?”

She’s on the bridge again, in the dark. The banners are still in tatters, but the hologlobe’s stabilized, no doubt thanks to whatever magic Shen worked with the recovered and repaired converter. There’s something she can’t place in Central’s voice, almost like a kid who’s finally learned to get a hand in the cookie jar without being caught.

“Shen,” he says, pressing a finger to the commlink. “Status report: are we ready?”

She quirks her head, trying to catch his eye. She swears there’s the faintest grin, pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“Short answer? Yes. But, you might all want to hold onto something.”

She’s never been one to question instructions from a Shen, and she has no intention of starting now. She wraps her fingers around the bar in front of her, leaning her weight forward as the ship begins to hum. There’s the sound of metal folding, retracting, and the unmistakable sensation of lift.

Flight. Actual flight. On an alien ship. She shakes her head, feeling the way the grin spreads across her face in spite of the headache she’s fought since waking up on Tygan’s table a scant few days ago.

She dares a glance over at Bradford, and finds a small, satisfied smile on his lips.

“Shen,” she says, pressing a finger to her own comm, breathless with what might be joy. “This is incredible. Well done.”

“He’d be proud, Lily,” Central offers.

“I’m just glad it worked,” Shen says, but it’s hard to miss the comfort she takes in Central’s comment.

The Commander’s been on planes before, more than she can count, really, but this is different. There is no whine, no sound of whir of jets. Instead, it is a kind of steady thrum, something to be felt, rather than heard. The metal of the grab rail vibrates gently and the whole ship feels as if it’s alive under her fingers.

She thinks, briefly, of liminal spaces, the in-between places that have always been breeding grounds for things beyond rational explanation. Truck stops and bus stations, cemeteries and crossroads: they are all areas where this world and the one beyond bleed together. Here, on this ship, the human world has encroached upon the alien; here, XCOM has stolen something from the ashes. It’s no wonder she feels as if she’s surrounded by ghosts.

Keep us flying, she asks whoever might be listening. Keep us safe.

-- She wakes in the morning, and runs her fingers along the cool metal bulkhead of her bunk. It is lifeless, inert under her touch. She isn’t sure why she expected anything else.

In Mission Control, the Hologlobe has been supplanted by satellite views of a crash site in rural China, the wreckage uncommonly charred.

“I see Dr. Shen’s latest upgrades are performing well,” she offers. “Any life signs?”

Central nods. “Hyperwave says it’s a fairly standard supply complement with a few surprises.”

“Ethereal?”

He nods.

“How long ago did we hit’em?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“How fast can we get a team there?”

“A few hours. Skyranger’s ready to launch on your orders after you’ve secured the team.”

“Strike One!” She calls, pressing a finger to her earpiece. “Let’s go! Rise and shine. Time to take the trash out.”

“Déja? Mais, non, maman.”

“Je ne suis pas ta mère, Bernard. Levez-vous. Les extraterrestres rient à vous.”

“Let’em laugh,” Hershel cuts in. “Molchetti still knocked their ship out of this plane of existence.”

“Let’s just hope she doesn’t have to give us a repeat performance. We’ve got a crashed alien ship. You’re being deployed for mop up.”

“It beats dying, but spontaneously disappearing from point A and reappearing at point B is not something I want to make a habit of,” Molchetti groans. “I had a headache for a week after.”

“Sure that wasn’t the hangover?” Royston asks. “I seem to remember you having quite the party.”

“She kept her clothes on. It’s more than Yan can say,” Martin offers.

“Yan had a goal,” Hershel says. “That goal was getting in Pukkila’s pants. He succeeded.”

“I didn’t need to know that,” Central interjects.

“Enough oversharing, Strike One,” she orders, stifling a laugh. “Time to go before you add to the list of people Central can’t look in the eye right now. Grab your gear and report to the hangar.”

A clean up op isn’t without risks. Nothing is, especially with an Ethereal in the mix. She can still feel the now-familiar mix of nerves and nausea as Strike One straps on their armor and boards the Skyranger.

They’ve survived worse, she tells herself. An alien base. An alien ship. They can handle mop up.

She believes it, too. Her men have seen enough, been through enough. After nine months together, they’ve come to understand one another, to be able to compensate for blind spots and weaknesses. They truly are a team, and she has every ounce of confidence in them.

She still worries.

-- Every team has growing pains. New teams take time to adjust to one another and find a comfortable working relationship. Old teams have to account for changes in the status quo. Gain a member? Lose a member? Saddled with a new problem? There’s bound to be some settling.

That is the only way she can explain Central.

She’s been out almost a week now. She has an op under her belt, an op that went well, an op that netted them a badly needed converter in exchange for a few cuts and bruises. She’s begun to curry favor not only with Tygan and Shen, but with the crew at large. As much as things have changed in the world at large, human nature remains a constant: if she makes herself available, and more importantly, approachable, her men are every bit as curious about her as she is about them.

So, she plays poker. She has beers. She reviews briefings in the bar or the mess hall. She learns that Kelly was born in Ireland and raised in Brooklyn by parents who are still alive, that she joined when she’d managed to lift the datapad off of a suspected ADVENT mole and used its contents to find her way to HQ, that the baseball cap was her mother’s before her and she wears it with pride.

She takes tea with Shen out on the flight deck, ROV-R buzzing nearby, teasing out bits of the young woman’s own story alongside the tale of the ship itself, how they’d found it, and brought it back to life. Lily volunteers nothing about her father’s death, and the Commander does not ask.

Tygan is the mystery, the great question of how anyone pried an ADVENT researcher from the comfort of the city centers and drew him to the comparative wilds of the Avenger. She finds a way to chip at that veneer, however, over conversations about needed supplies and possible avenues for research, and finds a deeply principled man struggling to stake his place among a suspicious crew, as well as the sole human onboard capable of making a decent cup of coffee.

And then, there is Central, who she knows, or maybe, who she knew. Central, who risked it all to steal her back and who now looks at her as if she’s a ghost, some figment of his imagination made real. Central, who only Kelly, Royston, and Shen can keep track of with any accuracy, who spends his free time drunk or disappeared.

Who looks at her with something approaching hurt in his eyes as Tygan explains the chip’s purpose.

“They were using you against us.”

It’s as much an accusation as an acknowledgement, as if she’d had some say in it. She fights back the urge to remind him she didn’t have much say in the matter, that they’d held her down and.

No.

No, she won’t go there.

Silently, she runs her tongue against the raised scar running the width of her soft palette, listening as Tygan presses on.

“I assume you’ve got a plan on how to initiate this hack?” She asks.

Tygan nods, and a schematic appears on the screen. “The skulljack.”

She nods. “We’ll get it built. Shen,”she says, pressing a finger to her earpiece. “When you’ve got a minute, report to the lab.”

“I’ll be on the bridge,” Central says, excusing himself. “Tygan. Commander.”

She settles onto a nearby stool, watching as her second in command makes his way out, willing the lump in her throat to die down.

Adjustment pains, she tells herself. It’s just adjustment pains.

#xcom #fic #commander/central #every exit an entrance

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