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snlhostharry · 3 years

Text

to be determined / one

harry styles x reader friends with benefits au

soon after moving to new york, you meet harry styles at a party. you convince yourself that there’s nothing between the two of you until it becomes too intense to ignore. if you keep telling yourself that he doesn’t mean anything to you, does that make it true?

a/n: hi everyone! welcome to my first harry styles series. This originally started as a challenge for myself to try and write a harry fic inspired by taylor swift songs so that’s where the chapter titles come from, it’s kind of become something bigger than that but I figured I would keep the theme anyway

chapter 1: welcome to new york

The story starts in New York City.

A place written about in countless stories, about love, about heartbreak, about giving up, about standing tall, and about putting broken hearts into drawers and slamming them shut. It’s easy to say that writing another story about New York is beating a dead horse, throwing characters into the same tired old setting and letting them live out the writer's wildest daydream. But it’s never been about the city itself, it’s always been about the people. Something about the city always manages to be the perfect stomping ground for people, for characters to find each other in a whirlwind of A list parties and harsh billboard lights.

Speaking of which you are suddenly very sick of said harsh billboard lights in the middle of times square. As someone who has read (and written) countless articles describing times square as a flurry of activity but also with some kind of inherent magical appeal, the center of everything it’s own small utopia, you know that everyone who wrote that had to be aware of their own bullshit. It’s a nuanced way of tourist trapping, smart, albeit annoying on a variety of levels. A gimmick to get wide eyed little girls to stand in the middle of chaos and think that maybe they could carve out a place for themselves here.

You’re not trying to carve out a place for yourself, you’re trying to get to a stupid party. That and manage to not get any mud or other stains on this very nice dress you’re wearing. After what seems like forever of looking around and then suddenly looking back down at your phone just in case anyone wanted to even try to make eye contact with you, familiar faces appear out of the sea of people.

You greet them with a look of disappointment, “Two questions: why did you want to meet here-” a tourist elbows there way past you mid sentence, inadvertently proving your point, “-and why aren’t we just taking an uber?”

Molly, a tall black woman with objectively perfect hair (which is somehow gorgeous at all times), smiles and pats your shoulder like a kindergarten teacher, “I thought you would want to see Times Square.”

“I’ve seen it,” You shoot back, squinting again at the bright light coming from directly behind her head, and adjusting your jacket over your shoulders.

She squeezes your shoulder quickly, “And also to teach you that any time someone asks you to meet them in Times Square they’re fucking with you.”

“I figured you were fucking with me,” You tell her, “But thank you, god forbid the midwestern girl gets lost in Times Square waiting for someone to meet her who is obviously not coming.”

Molly laughs, and so do you. She looks down at her phone briefly, and then back at you, “To answer your question, why would anyone ever try to get an uber in the city at seven?”

You shrug, “What kind of self respecting party starts at eight?”

Fletcher, who’s name admittedly sounds like it should belong to anyone but him, finally stops staring at the large elmo mascot a few feet away and jumps into the conversation. “The kind with an age range, twenty somethings to late thirty somethings, who no longer have the energy to go from nine to six am.”

You sigh, “So boring then or-?”

“It’s about networking,” Molly says, “And also drinking, but mostly networking.”

“One of those unique business opportunities where you get free food, and possibly run into celebrities, singers mostly.”

You roll your eyes, “Wow you had me at various singers.”

“Says the woman who did an interview series with Tik Tok kids who all live in the same house,” Molly snips, half joking.

You shiver, half from the memories of that objectively terrible experience and half from a sudden breeze. Needless to say a significant portion of the reason why you’d left LA, was because their entertainment section was suddenly drifting away from profiles on actors and towards compilations of one minute videos made by sun tanned twenty somethings that somehow made them millions a year. That and after you’d spent two weeks semi living with ten of said twenty somethings for a story that had gotten a lot of buzz you never wanted to see anyone connected to the app ever again.

You give Molly your best ‘I’ll kill you’ smile, “You have to decide what you’re going to make fun of me for, is it the midwestern thing or is it the Tik Tok thing because one of those involves you admitting that I lived in Los Angeles for a year which means I’m perfectly capable of handling Times Square in all of it’s elmo public urinating glory.”

Fletcher looks again at the mascot who is not in fact publicly urinating, but honestly if it did suddenly start none of you would be surprised.

Molly looks at you for a second and says, “Both,” She looks at Fletcher.

He looks at you then back and Molly and nods, “Yeah. Both.”

You roll your eyes, “So can we get going now or-?”

The ride to the location Molly had all but refused to tell you was filled with talks of the impending deadlines on Monday for pieces that were anywhere from fifty to seventy percent finished. (your’s is at the lower end of the spectrum because there is only so much one person can write about an art installation that you found less insightful and more literal in the sense that the sculpture was literally just large amounts of clay pressed together in something that shouldn’t even be considered a shape with no metaphor or meaning behind it).

Soon enough you’re standing in what looks like mostly a residential neighborhood, with one precariously nice building in the middle of the block. You turn to Molly, “What the-?”

“Don’t finish that, just be patient,“ She interrupts as a response. “You are very impatient, you know that?”

“I’m a journalist,” You say, “I need to know all of the facts, including what the-” You take a breath, “-heck we’re doing in the middle of a nice little neighborhood, I was expecting something more Gossip Girland Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”

“You’re definition of journalist is a lot looser than mine,” Molly says.

“Have you ever watched Gossip Girl? And isn’t Brooklyn Nine-Nine set in a precinct?” Fletcher adds.

“No, and Jake and Amy live in an apartment.”

“Beyond the fact that you’re a TV writer who has never watched Gossip Girl-” Fletcher sighs, even though you know he hasn’t watched it either beyond random snippets for a hit piece he wrote on it a few months back (not received well by the way), “The top floor of that building-” He points to the precariously nice building, “isn’t apartments its a loft, the floor is huge and only one house.”

You squint your eyes, “You’re kidding.”

“And the rest are offices?”

“How did they get zoning for that?”

They both shrug at the same time.

“Guys I want to know that if the police bust up this party, speaking of loose terms, I’m going to say that you dragged me here against my will.”

“I always knew you had good survival instincts.”

Molly turns to you, “Look when you’re getting special press access to the inside of the met gala you will be saying thank you Molly for bringing me here to catapult my career.”

“I have catapulted my own career thank you, the Tik Tok thing-” You shake your head, “Nevermind can we go in and stop loitering, then we’ll really get arrested.”

Party is a loose term but you learn that's not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not a rager with strobe lights and pumping bass but there is music playing albeit classical. People mill around at tables talking to one another, both twenty somethings and thirty somethings, you recognize a few faces from the media mostly. Fletcher was right about the food, and Molly was right about the drinks. You talk to a few people just to introduce yourself, a couple of them have heard of you, if only because your sudden cross country move to newspapers that aren’t necessarily competitors but might have a bit of a rivalry was something that people talked about. You’d made a couple thirty under thirty lists (no not the Forbes one) while in LA, which meant nothing to you if you were being completely honest but apparently meant things to other people which is fine.

When you’re finally exhausted at putting on a smile and nodding like you’re actively engaged in conversation and not thinking about something completely you hang out by the bar, not even drinking, just watching the room and all of the people there. You never wanted to get a reputation for being the quiet girl in the corner who just watched and listened because those kinds of people are always seen as weird or doormats or both but if you’re being honest this is where you’re the most comfortable. Making small talk just to get some opportunity down the road has never quite been your style.

You turn to go and find Molly when you suddenly come face to face with someone you recognise right away.

In that moment you realize that Taylor Swift was in fact onto something when she said, “Didn’t you flash your green eyes at me?” As weird as it is, the first thing you think when you meet Harry Styles is how that song is definitely about him, because those green eyes are striking and they are staring right at you.

“Hi,” He says, quick to the draw.

You take a step back just because of how close you are and say, “Hello.”

He looks at you like he’s thinking about something, and then holds out his hand, “Harry.”

“y/n,” You shake his hand. You recover from your initial shock quickly, and plaster on that fake conversation smile again, ready for whatever it is he wants to say, if anything. You came here to ‘network’ and you’re not sure what kind of advantage talking to Harry Styles could possibly give you, but for some reason you want to talk to him.

“What brings you here?” He asks you.

“My co-workers,” You shrug, “I would much rather be at home watching Succession on HBO and listening to the Beatles on my record player, like true people of culture would.”

He looks at you for a second, as you try to keep a straight face. Then he laughs, “Seriously?”

“Fuck no,” You say, “That’s my impression of the girl who meets Harry Styles at a party and has to convince him that she is not like all the other girls, she is the one for him.” You smile, “Was that good? Or should I try again?”

He thinks about it, “I think you should try again.”

“Because you think it’s wrong or because you think I’m funny?”

“What do you think?”

“Well if you think I’m funny, then I’ve already won, I’ve tricked you into thinking that I’m not like all the other girls with reverse psychology .”

“Are you screwing with me?”

“Of course I’m screwing with you,” You take a sip of your drink. “If I were home right now I would be playing Lizzo on my record player, and drinking something with a medically unsafe level of caffeine.” You pause, “What brings you here?”

“Honestly,” He looks out over the room, “I thought that this was going to be a much cooler party. Instead it’s just a bunch of reporters, and editors and media people.”

“Who are inherent mood killers?” You ask.

He narrows his eyes at you, “Am I allowed to say yes to that?”

“You can do whatever you want,” You tease him, “You’re Harry Styles, who am I to tell you what to say?”

“I feel like it was a trick question, which means that you are also a reporter.”

You laugh again, “That was funny, I’m going to write that down for my story. ‘Harry is genuinely funny which he tries to use to make up for the lack of small talk abilities’.”

“You’re screwing with me again.”

“Of course I am,” You say, “I work in the arts section of the Times, well not the actual art anymore but the movies and television.”

“TV critic?” He says, “So you’re harsh.”

“TV critics are just harsh for attention, I don’t need to be because no movie snob or well meaning director is going to go to the Times to see what we thought of any given movie. I write honestly, sometimes under the influence of caffeine and try to contain my excitement at narratively unnecessary plot twists.” You explain, “That and I get paid to watch TV, and usually private screenings of movies.”

He leans against the bar a sign that he doesn’t plan on moving anytime soon. You’re not going to say that you’re so awestruck by a celebrity that you have no idea what to say, or that he’s intimidating you but your hand shakes just a little as you clutch your fingers around the glass because he’s objectively attractive. Objectively attractive in the way that if he were on a dating app you would swipe yes and then put a lot of pressure on yourself to be funny and relatable even though you know that you don’t need him.

“What did you think of Dunkirk?”

“Oh!” You forgot that he acted, “That was before my time. I was working at the LA Times doing the music section then I think.” You know what he’s going to say next, “And before you ask yes there is a piece still posted of me reviewing your debut album. I think I reached out to get an interview with you, but I was suspiciously declined.” He looks embarrassed, “I was like under five years out of college I would’ve declined me too. They only gave me the story because it was the time where people weren’t sure that ex boyband members could make objectively good albums that meant something.”

He tilts his head to the side for a second, “And? Can they?”

“I’m in no place to make a generalization,” You say, “But I think you did. Admittedly that album was something, very intimate.”

“I don’t know if I should be taking that as a compliment.”

“I don’t want to give you a compliment because some people have a hard time with them, and this will get very awkward very fast. No shame, personally I have no mechanism to take compliments on my writing.”

He laughs, “I think I can take it.”

“Hmm.. okay,” You take another step back, “Okay are you sure you're ready?”

“Yes.”

“I think the entire album was very good, very unexpectedly good or at least I didn’t expect it to be. It was very open in that way that songs are vulnerable but still leave enough mystery that your fans don’t think you're a shitty person and I really like meet me in the hallway,” You say quickly, “In fact I listened to it just yesterday when I was working.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and then fake sighs, “See I don’t think that counts because it was more of a backhanded compliment.”

“What?”

“You said you didn’t expect it to be good, that’s not really a compliment then-”

“I was saying it pleasantly surprised me,” You say, throwing your hands in the air in mock annoyance. “You surprise me, Harry.” He doesn’t say anything, and for a minute neither do you, but you snap back to life just in time to say, “Is that compliment enough to embarrass you?”

He shrugs, but you know he’s messing with you. “It’s something but I don’t know if it’s really doing it for me.”

“You are impossible, just another out of touch celebrity, is nothing ever good enough for you people?” It’s by now that you realize that you inadvertently closed the gap between the two of you, and you’re standing very close.

He seems to realize this at the same time as you, “I-”

“Are you going to ask me to have sex with you?” You deadpan.

“What?” He looks offended for a second, “No.”

“I had to ask,” You tell him, “It’s happened before.”

“I was going to ask you for your number.”

“See usually when a guy asks me that they’re asking so-”

“It’s not for that.”

“Then what’s it for?”

He looks at you with something in his eyes that you don’t know the meaning of, “In case you want to do an interview, so that they don’t reject you this time.”

You know that’s not it, but you give it to him anyway because he’s Harry Styles (which yes is not a valid reason but this ‘party’ is very boring and this is the most interesting thing to happen to you in at least the past week). It takes you a minute to remember which one is your real number and which one is the fake number you give off if a guy is asking because he wants a booty call, but you eventually give it to him. Then you scurry off with a quick goodbye when you realize how late it is, and how you do have work to do. There’s a new episode of Big Little Lies out tomorrow and you don’t understand why but people are very into the show, and very into your episode recaps.

You corner Molly away from some guy you think might have actually been able to get her press access to the Met Gala and remind her that she also has a deadline tomorrow. The two of you go off to look for Fletcher and find him very close to sealing the deal with an objectively pretty girl, but you politely remind him that he has work to do and is very busy. The girl looks sad but let’s him go without much whining. You would’ve understood if she tried to get him to stay with her, he’s a little bit shorter than Molly but to be fair Molly is above averagely tall, and is nice and fit and has brown curly hair which you know from personal experience is sometimes just kryptonite. (you’ve kissed Fletcher before, long story, and can also say he’s on your top list of good kissers as well right up there with a guy you hooked up with in LA only to realize later that he was Robert Pattinson).

Somehow the three of you are only able to make it back to your apartment. So the night ends with Molly and Fletcher in the living room on the couch and in a sleeping bag respectively, and you are comfortably in your bed. Your phone sits on your nightstand, suspiciously silent. You’re not waiting for Harry Styles to call you, nope, definitely not.

#harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fic #harry styles imagine #harry styles au #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles series #harry styles one shot #my writing

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holy-hyuck · 4 years

Text

Hocus Pocus, Please Focus!

Trying to make a sleeping potion for your parents so you and your best friend can sneak out to a senior party is only ever good in theory; especially since Lee Felix really sucks at being a wizard.

Pairing: Wizard!Lee Felix x Reader

Word Count: 2.2k

Genre: Comedy, Platonic relationship

Warnings: A dead rat?

happy halloween y’all!!!

“Is that a dead rat?” Felix questions just as you enter his parents’ office. He picks up the rodent by its tail, inspecting the bloody ball of fur, and you nearly gag as he dangles it in front of your face.

“Don’t look at me like that! It’s that bloody book of yours that called for it,” you tell him as he puts it back in the box you brought it to him in. “Why do we need it anyway?”

The freckled boy wipes his hands on a rag. “Because-” he picks up the small book, bound in scarlet-red leather, “-it’s in the recipe for a sleeping potion. For our parents. Well, more specifically mine, but you get the point.”

He drops the book back on the table and returns to mixing the liquid inside a small, store-bought cauldron. He said a pot would do but Felix’s just extra like that.

“Have you ever considered, I don’t know...asking them to let us go to this Halloween party?”

Felix shrieks in laughter as an answer, causing you to roll your eyes. “Yeah, and then I’ll ask them for a million dollars.”

“Don’t be silly.” You plop down on a chair. “They’re more likely to give you the money.”

Your eyes lock and you smile at each other. You roll on the office chair towards the table, grabbing the leather book and opening it. A faint smell of roses hits your nostrils, and you trace the pressed flowers with the pads of your fingers. They’re imprinted onto the pages and the covers, and you feel delighted every time Felix lets you even touch that book. He doesn’t trust you any more than he trusts himself, and he’s a shit wizard, so that’s saying enough.

Hearing a plop, you look up to the grimace on Felix’s face.

“The rat?”

“The rat indeed.” He takes the book out of your hands despite the frown it causes on your face. “Eighteen drops of coffee, locust twigs and weeping leaves, lemon juice, hydrochloric acid, and a dead rat.” He sighs. “Well, if they don’t fall asleep after this, they’ll probably drop dead.”

“And we’ll get to go to Brooke’s party! Yay!” you exclaim, urging your best friend to finish the sleeping potion. Only two more hours until the party starts, and you still needed to iron your outfit.

You watch Felix chant, eyes flicking back and forth between the bubbling liquid and the book in his trembling hand. A large bubble pops, creating a vile sound and smell, and despite Felix’s chanting, the bubbling stops.

“Great, it’ll fart them to death at this point.” You turn and grab a newspaper, sending it flying at your friend’s hand. You miss, and it falls into the cauldron.

“Look what you’ve done,” Felix cries and fishes it out but there’s only half of the paper there; the ridges are burnt off, black liquid dripping off of them. “On the contrary...”

“Hocus pocus, Felix, focus!”

Felix groans at your words as you shoot him a stupid grin, ushering him to continue. As much fun as you're having - and, let's be honest, it's not every day you get to witness Felix's failed attempts at magic - the clock is ticking, and the last time your friend's parents found him doing magic without supervision, his voice sounded like Mickey Mouse for a week straight. Yes, you do have evidence. And yes, you are planning on using it as blackmail.

"Okay, done," Felix alerts you after about five more minutes, closing the book and setting it down, then adding, "I think."

You sigh. "So much thinking from you today, Felix, I'm proud."

He smacks you on the head with the half-burnt newspaper as both of you gather around the table, inspecting the liquid swimming inside the cauldron. Felix takes a long wooden spoon - the one you used last night to stir mac and cheese - and moves the liquid around. It comes out thick in consistency, like syrup, except it's dark green and when you look at it in the artificial light, you see specks of glitter.

The boy brings it up to his lips and you look at him, incredulous.

"What if it works and you fall asleep?"

“What do you mean 'what if'? You really have that little faith in me?" The look you give Felix answers his question. "Besides, they need a bigger dose for it to work on them, don't worry."

He offers you some and you reluctantly lick some liquid off the spoon. It tastes tangy, like when you add too much salt to your tomato salad and the taste is so overwhelming it leaves you swimming and drowning in sodium. Well, at least it doesn't taste like a dead rat...not that you know what that tastes like.

"Okay, you get this ready and I will get myself ready. Expect me here in an hour. Don't screw things up." And with your words of encouragement, you leave Felix to do his thing.

The good thing about the large glass embedded into Felix’s front doors is that you can check yourself out whilst waiting for the boy to haul his ass downstairs, admiring the black-and-gold short robe reaching your mid-thighs, with a giant hood and some old, lace-up boots with the crispy remains of mud still atop.

The bad thing about the large glass embedded into Felix’s front doors is that when you lean forward to check you have nothing between your teeth and start using your fingers as a toothpick when you notice doughnut remains wedged between the two top incisors, is the exact time Felix decides to open the door to his house, leaving you looking like a freak of nature by choice.

“Gross,” he comments but locks the doors behind him promptly and changes the subject. “They’re out cold. These potions work for up to six hours but-”

“-with your magic?” you interrupt.

“-I wouldn’t count on it,” he finishes up, giving you a death glare.

Just before you enter your car, you clock the blue, black, and white tunic over the thinnest leggings you’ve ever seen draped over Felix’s body and you shiver at the thinness of the material. Isn’t he cold?

“Is that your actual hat?” you question after you start your car and make your way to Brooke’s summer house, and Felix adjusts the pointy hat on his head.

“Yep, and look at this-”

“I can’t look, I’m in a- Is that your ring? Your actual magic ring? Lix, your parents are gonna cut off your fingers and feed them to squirrels if they find out you’ve taken it outside without their supervision. I mean, you’ve already been doing magic without them knowing, and used a sleeping potion on them, and- and-”

You hear Felix snort.

“Relax. They’re sleeping, and we get to sneak out. That’s all that matters. Besides, I got you something too.”

Finally parking your car in front of a medium-sized house, you get out and rush to your friend’s side. “What’s that?”

“It’s a magic mirror. It’s connected to every mirror in my house, so we’ll see if my parents wake up, so then we can change our names and flee the country. I want you to keep hold of it.” He pushes the small mirror into your hand and you pocket it inside the rather humongous pockets of your robe.

You thought it’d be ironic if you dressed up as a witch because...well...you know. Felix is a wizard? No? But then Felix decided to do the same and you already know you’re never gonna hear the end of the comments from your classmates.

Well, here comes what you’ve been waiting for.

About an hour into the party you’re already tipsy but you expected nothing less going into this. Felix is nowhere to be found, although to be fair, it’s not like you bothered looking for him. He’s probably with Seungmin, Jisung and Hyunjin - his other friends from a book club he promises isn’t as nerdy as it sounds - and up to no good, as always. The last time you left them unsupervised because you couldn’t stand being around Jisung for any longer than necessary, Seungmin’s hair was neon green, and Hyunjin had a bald patch at the back of his head. It was fun being a witness of their stupidity instead of a victim for once.

You walk outside to enjoy the fresh air, into a grand garden decorated with white fairy lights. It’s so beautiful you actually let out a gasp as you admire the work put into it until the sight of the pool makes you sober up on the spot. The pool is small and at first, you think the water’s just unfiltered, giving it its green hue.

But then you feel it; the sticky substance beneath your feet as it makes the most obnoxious sound you’ve ever heard when you lift up your foot. The dark goo travels across the tiles and the grass only to end up in the pool, staining the water green.

It looks...stupidly like what you and your best friend have given your parents - and at that realisation, your eyes widen and you scurry back inside to find Felix.

“Lix, there you are,” you say after good ten minutes of searching, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

He turns to you with the smuggest grin plastered on his face as he hands you a drink.

“I’ve heard this new energy drink kicks ass. Try it.” He ushers you to take a sip and you do, alongside him. It does taste nice, almost like pink lemonade, and you find yourself drinking the whole cup before you know it.

“Where did you get it from?”

“Oh, someone gave it to me.” You slap his arms, causing him to yelp. “What on earth was that for?!”

“Felix! What idiot accepts drinks from a stranger?”

“The one that wants to have-” he stops himself, getting dangerously close to your face, so much you can clearly see his freckles, “-fun. Ever heard of that?”

You push him away with a shove to his stomach, eliciting a laugh. “Whenever you have fun, someone ends up paying the price, Felix.”

You look over to him and brush away some orange hairs from his cheek, only to find them stuck to his skin. You shrug it off.

“Oh, I remember now!”

Without another word, you drag him into the garden, and he spills a bit of his drink in the process.

“What am I looking at exactly?” he questions when you finally stop, motioning to the pool, which brandishes clear water much to your surprise.

"What the..."

You both jump up at the loud thud behind you and whip around to see a body dumped on the ground. You feel like throwing up, clutching Felix's hand, which is...hairy?

Looking down, you notice more of those ginger hairs growing on the back of his hand and you jerk your own hand away.

"How does that feel?"

You hear a female voice alongside a deep laugh and slow clapping. From the shadows of the trees surrounding the garden, Felix's parents emerge, and suddenly you feel yourself sinking into the ground, knowing it won't be long before you join your friend on the floor behind you.

"Mum!" Felix yelps. "Dad! What are you doing here?"

"Well you see, your dad and I were planning to have a movie night but it seems like we took a little nap. Must be something to do with that wretched slime you slipped in our drinks."

"There was a bit of a branch in there, have you noticed, love?" his father interjects, pulling out a familiar book from behind his back. "Eighteen drops of coffee, locust wings and weeping leaves, lemon juice, hydro-"

"W-wings?" Felix stutters out and you observe him for a second before the realisation seeps in.

"Fucking wings," you mutter under your breath so his parents don't hear.

"Yes, I do believe the spell calls for locust wings, but you always were bad at grammar son." His dad smiles. "So anyway, after we woke up, we saw the house number through that magic mirror I believe you gave your friend."

"Um, (y/n)." Felix traces his finger down your cheek with wide eyes, and you do the same, the feeling of roughness underneath your fingertips.

Taking out your phone, you look at the dark reflection on the screen and gasp in horror. The green and yellow scales reach all the way up to your eye, which begins turning a fiery orange colour. You blink your slit pupils and drop your phone in shock.

"I hope you enjoyed your drinks tonight, by the way. We added something special. You'll find out in the next hour anyway. Or, well, sort of."

The adults laugh, and you look to Felix's arm, now covered with thick orange fur.

"That should serve both of you a reminder not to perform magic unsupervised. Because you, Lee Felix, aren't very good at it." His mother comes up to him and pats his hairy cheek. "At least you'll make a cute weasel."

#skzwritersclub #stray kids scenarios #felix scenarios #lee felix scenarios #stray kids imagines #felix imagines #lee felix imagines #stray kids comedy #felix comedy #lee felix comedy #stray kids x reader #felix x reader #lee felix x reader

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jpat82 · 3 years

Text

Secret World

Chapter 17

I sat on the steps of the high school, backpack leaning up against the step. After the talk I had had with Bucky the night before I knew I had to try. Try and do what I wasn't sure but I knew the first thing I needed to do was apologize to Peter for bolting yesterday. I had done so much running in my life it was easier then facing the truth. And the truth of it was I had never processed everything that had ever happened to me.

From the creatures, to the echoes, to my Auntie's death, the betrayal of my uncle for not being there. I never processed the shit that was done to me in the cement room. I didn't want to run anymore, I finally had someone who seemed to care about my well being, people around me that didn't want me to suffer, who wanted to have my back. And for that fact I needed to stand my ground, even if it was against myself.

This morning as twilight hit I left the compound. I needed to walk, to get my thoughts together. Now, I waited, watching as other teens got off the buses. They bustled together, backpacks hanging low on their backs, walking past me.

Peter stepped off the bus with Ned, he was smiling and laughing at something his friend said. They walked in step as he came down the sidewalk and turned toward the building when his eyes landed on me. Peter tilted his head slightly and a coy smile played across his face. He nodded lightly to himself as he came over.

"Uh, I'll catch you later." Ned stated when he looked at me and then Peter. I knew in that moment Peter must of said something to him. I watched as Ned sprinted up the steps and I looked back to Peter.

"Sorry about yesterday." I stated openly looking up at him.

"It's alright, though you really confused my Aunt." He stated with a chuckle.

I sighed and thought my next words carefully.

"It's not alright though." I stated, my voice shaking lightly. "My Auntie died when I was younger, I was barely a teenager. I miss her, her voice, her face."

Peter sat down next to me, I could see him out of the corner of my eye staring at me but I couldn't look at him.

"Every now and then I hear someone that might sound like her and it makes me pause. But yesterday, that was so different." I looked over at him, concern in his eyes as he focused on me. "I'm not related to the woman I call my auntie. It was just what she wanted me to call her. And you have to understand she was the only person in my world that would of even remotely been family to me. Her name... her name was May Parker. And in a million years I never thought I would see that face again, or hear that voice."

As I spoke I watched as Peter's jaw slowly lowered, I could feel the tears well up in my eyes. Just like that, I felt a weight slowly start to lift.

"And it wasn't till I saw your Aunt May did I realize that I have never had the chance to deal with her death. I never dealt with losing the only person I considered family. I panicked yesterday."

"Echo," he whispered as he wrapped his arms around me. I leaned into him, and allowed myself to relax as I felt the warm tears roll down my face. "I'm so sorry, I can't even begin to imagine what that must of been like. You know what, let's skip today."

"What?" I asked pulling back, looking into his eyes.

"It'll be fine, come on." He said, grasping my hand and pulling me to my feet with him.

"Won't you get in trouble?" I asked as he started to pull me down the street.

Peter turned his head toward as a small coy grin pulled at the corners of his face. He gave a light shrug as he pulled me along.

******************

"Sir," a brisk knock came with the voice as the metal door pushed open. The man at the desk lifted his head from the computer, eyes squinted for a moment as the ruddy haired man stepped in. "I looked into that girl you asked about."

"And?" His British accent filled the room, it was short and crisp much like bull whip cracking in the silence.

"She's not in any data base. The earliest recorded image we have of her is literally appearing some how out of no where on a street corner." The man replied walking over, tension was in the young man's body as he brought the thumb drive over to his bosses computer. He pushed it in and leaned over the keyboard, the British man's annoyed face looked up at the him as he leaned back allowing the young man to bring up the street camera.

Before him the screen changed the grainy quality of the video reminded how little the city spent on security. The young man was true to his word, one minute nothing and then the video blurred a bit and came back to focus and there she was laying in the street. A boy, teenager from the looks of it, came around the corner and rushed to her upon seeing the girl.

"We've caught her on video since then, she seemed very confused most of the day after she was found." The young man explained showing his boss camera footage of her running from him and his buddies, then to a newspaper stand, she left there seemly lost. "The last place she was seen was at this school. Midtown High School."

"Interesting." He replied, the young man exited the archived footage and brought up a camera in real time. He watched as the same kid came up to her and sat down next to her.

"I've done a bit of looking into this other kid, his name is Peter Parker." The young man stated as he stood fully and stepped away from the computer. "He's student enrolled in that high school. Stellar grades, lives with his Aunt, seems to have had ties to the late Tony Stark."

"Thank you." He replied, the young man walked out knowing that was his dismissal, the British man sat back and laced his fingers together and watched as Peter gave the young woman a hug. A slow grin spread across his face as he watched them. A couple minutes later he watched as Peter pulled her to her feet and start to lead her away from the school. "Finally, I got you, Echo."

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hargreeveslftv · 4 years

Text

The Occult: DOOMSDAY | an umbrella academy series

chapter two | word count: 2,832

CHAPTER TWO | careful now ( song | burn the witch - radiohead )

“What’s the date? The exact date?” Five asks, walking around the kitchen in the basement and collecting ingredients while Melanie sits beside Luther, with Klaus sitting on the table in front of her.

All of the siblings just watch Five, shock still radiating from each one of them.

“The 24th.” Vanya answers.

“Of what?"

"March."

Five opens the bread, nodding to himself.

"Good."

"So, are we gonna talk about what just happened?” Luther asks.

Five ignores him, preparing his sandwich instead and aggravating Luther, who stands up beside the much shorter Five.

“It’s been seventeen years-"

"It’s been a lot longer than that.” Five argues, teleporting behind Luther to grab more ingredients.

“I haven’t missed that.” Luther comments.

“Where’d you go?” Diego asks.

“The future,” Five explains, teleporting back to his sandwich. “It’s shit, by the way."

"Called it!” Klaus says proudly, earning a flick to the leg as Melanie raises her eyebrows at him, earning a frown from the man.

“I should have listened to the old man.” Five sighs, making her scoff.

“Never thought I’d hear that one.” She comments quietly.

“You know, jumping through space is one thing, jumping through time is a toss of the dice.” Fife explains, before glancing up at Klaus. “Nice dress."

"Oh, well, danke!” He grins happily, twirling the tassels on the front.

“Wait how did you get back here?” Vanya asks, obviously on the same questioning path as Luther.

“In the end, I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time."

"I was lost at project.” Melanie comments.

“Same I was gone at in.” Klaus agrees.

“That makes no sense.” Diego adds.

“Well, it would if you were smarter.” Five responds, slathering his bread in peanut butter as Diego moves to hit him, Luther putting his arm up in front of him and Melanie grabbing hold of his wrist.

“How long were you there?” Luther takes over.

“Forty-five years, give or take."

Both Diego and Luther sit down again, everyone’s jaws dropping in disbelief.

"So what are you saying? That you’re fifty-eight?"

Five rolls his eyes, obviously annoyed and frustrated.

"No, my consciousness is fifty-eight. Apparently my body is now thirteen again."

"Wait how does that even work?” Vanya questions.

Five doesn’t pay attention though, wandering off to eat his sandwich while he stares into the middle distance.

“Delores kept saying the equation were off. Bet she’s laughing now.” Five rambles to himself.

“Delores?”

Wandering back, Five ignores the questions again, instead picking up the newspaper sitting on the table.

“Guess I missed the funeral."

"How’d you know about that?"

"What part of the future do you not understand?” Five asks Luther. “Heart failure, huh?"

"Yeah."

"No."

Melanie slaps her hand over her face at her brother’s antics, sighing as Five clicks his tongue.

"Nice to see nothings changed."

"That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Allison asks as Five walks past everyone and out of the door, obviously as frustrated as everyone else already was with each other.

“What else is there to say? The circle of life."

Silence washes over the siblings still sitting at the table, before Luther speaks up.

"Well, that was interesting."

Thunder rumbled overhead as Melanie followed Klaus out of the house, Luther leading everyone out into the courtyard for the second time today.

The funeral service was about to take place, the rain from the day before finally coming back as it drenched the grounds, and Diego, who refused to grab an umbrella from beside the door.

Melanie holds onto Klaus’s hand as her only comfort when they finally stand in a loose circle together, the memories of Ben’s funeral strong in her mind as she stood next to Klaus to mourn yet again. Though this time, she felt more relief than sadness.

"Did something happen?” Grace asks cheerfully.

The siblings frown, looking to her with confusion on their faces at her attitude.

“Dad died, remember?” Allison reminds her gently.

“Oh, yes, of course.” Recognition washes over her, along with a sadness that makes Melanie look down to her shoes to avoid seeing.

She can hear Allison and Diego talking, but still stops herself from looking up, memories flashing strongly through her mind as she tries to fight them off.

“Whenever you’re ready, dear boy.” Pogo says to Luther, after checking that everyone was present.

Luther nods, before stepping forward and taking the lid off of the urn holding the one and only Sir Reginald Hargreeves.

The pouring of the ashes isn’t exactly graceful, all falling into a mound on the wet leaf covered lawn.

“Probably would have been better with some wind.” Luther coughs uncomfortably.

“Does anyone wish to speak?” Pogo asks.

Silence washes over the siblings, all either looking to Pogo or their shoes, while Melanie just steps back behind Klaus even more than she already was.

“Very well.” Pogo sighs. “In all regards, Sir Reginald Hargreeves made me what I am today. For that alone, I shall forever be in his debt. He was my master, and my friend, and I shall miss him very much."

Melanie feels guilt wash over her at leaving Pogo to be the one to speak, as a new ball of sadness rises to her throat. But the sadness isn’t for herself, or for her father, her sadness is for her old friend.

"He leaves behind a complicated legacy-"

"He was a monster.” Diego cuts him off.

Klaus is the first to laugh, with Melanie scoffing beside him at Diego’s actions.

“He was a bad person and a worse father. The world’s better off without him.”

“Diego.” Allison scolds.

“My name, is Number Two. You know why?” He ignores Allison’s annoyance, glaring straight at her. “Because our father couldn’t be bothered to give us actual names. He had Mom do it."

"Would anyone like something to eat?” Grace asks, obviously her attention caught by hearing the name Mom.

“No, it’s okay Mom.” Vanya assures her.

“Oh, okay.” She smiles, before Diego takes a step forward.

“Look, you wanna pay your respects? Go ahead. But at least be honest about the kind of man he was."

"You should stop talking now.” Luther warns, his voice low and aggravated.

Diego side eyes him for a moment, before stepping towards him.

“You know, you of all people should be on my side here, Number One.” He emphasises.

“I am warning you-"

"After everything he did to you? He had to ship you a million miles away-”

“Diego, stop talking."

"That’s how much he couldn’t stand the sight of you!” Diego prods at Luther’s chest, and with that, their first fight of the day breaks out.

“Oh come on.” Melanie groans, watching as the two brothers throw punches and kicks at each other.

“Boys, stop this at once!” Pogo scolds, to no avail.

The two yell and taunt each other as they fight, with the others either cheering them on or telling them to stop. Pogo is the first to leave, walking back inside as Melanie steps away from Klaus who is yelling instructions at the overgrown children.

Five is the next to walk away, as Diego and Luther get closer and closer to Ben’s statue, still arrogantly chasing each other with their fists.

“Come on big boy!” Diego yells, and Luther swings back his arm, aimed straight at Diego’s head.

But instead of hitting Diego’s head, Luther’s fist flies straight into Ben’s statue.

The statue flies back, hitting the ground as Melanie pushes Klaus out of the way, rage coursing through her veins as the head of the statue flies off, rolling away behind them as Diego reaches for his knives.

“Enough!” Melanie screams, hands reached out in front of her as dark purple beams rip the two men apart, Diego’s knife thrown off course by the action and slicing Luther’s arm instead.

Tears pour down her face as Melanie watches the two men scramble backwards, Diego towards Grace and Allison, and Luther towards the gazebo, rage still boiling inside her as the purple vines of light illuminate her veins, the power contained in her fists ready to be unleashed at the slightest protest and feet hovering inches off the ground, lifted from the outburst of her powers.

“Look what you’ve done.” She scolds, her voice deeper and serious than any of the siblings are used to hearing for her, the tone alone enough to shock them.

“Get up, and get out. Now.” She warns, dropping down again and storming past them to the statue.

Melanie waits until she hears everyone walking away, only sensing Klaus behind her.

“Can you… can you help me with this?” Melanie asks him over her shoulder.

“Yeah. Yeah sure thing.” He assures, standing up from beside the pile of ashes and holding his umbrella between his chin and shoulder, Melanie’s lost behind them on the lawn.

Using her powers, Melanie lifts the body of the statue back onto the pedestal, the dark purple energy wrapping around it delicately, with Klaus squaring it on its base while she carefully sets it down.

Stopping for a moment to rest after lifting the weight of the statue, Klaus gently rests a hand on her shoulder, checking if she’s okay. Melanie just nods, before walking behind the statue and picking up Ben’s head.

Melanie juggles the weight of the head in one hand while using the other to propel herself upwards, the dark purple glow moving to her feet as she levitates in the air beside the statue.

Holding her hand to the fracture on the statue, heating the metal beneath her fingers, she carefully places the head back on top, holding it for a moment to make sure it stays.

“Good job, Mellie-belly.” Klaus smiles supportively, wrapping his arm around her shoulders as she lands back on the ground, and planting a dramatic kiss to the top of her head as he leads her back towards the inside of the building to change and warm up.

It doesn’t take long for her to warm up again, Klaus offering her a sweater from his room so she could change out of the soaked dress she wore, her leggings and boots dry enough to handle as she sat in the basement practically drowning in the striped orange sweater.

While Klaus hugged one of Melanie’s favorite guitars to his chest, and Five scrambled through the kitchen, Melanie sat with a spoon and a bottle of water, slowly regaining her energy exerted from using her powers as she ate the peanut butter Five left out with the serving spoon.

“Where’s Vanya?” Allison asks, walking into the basement.

“Oh, she’s gone.” Klaus answers.

“That’s unfortunate.” Five remarks, making Melanie scoff.

“Yeah it isn’t like she’s run out of town every time Diego or Luther talk to her."

"True.” Allison agrees, resting against the table.

“An entire square block. Forty-two bedrooms, nineteen bathrooms, but no, not a single pot of coffee.” Five complains, slamming an empty French press onto the table.

“Dad hated caffeine.” Allison reminds him, while Klaus just starts laughing.

“Well, he hated children too, and he had plenty of us."

He’s met with silence, but the three other siblings in the room agree with him wordlessly.

"I’m taking the car.” Five states, hands in his pockets as he walks off.

“Where are you going?” Klaus asks, suddenly interested.

“To get a decent cup of coffee.” He frowns.

“Do you even know how to drive?” Allison questions, pulling Melanie’s attention away from the peanut butter.

“Mario kart on the gameboy I hid from Dad doesn’t count.” She injects, to which Five narrows his eyes frustratedly.

“I know how to do everything.” He states simply, before teleporting away from his space beside Melanie.

“I feel like we should stop him, but then again, I also just kinda want to see what happens.” Klaus admits, getting up from the table.

Only a couple seconds later, the sound of the car starting catches everyone’s attention, it speeding off not long after.

“Alright,” Diego enters the room, “I guess I’ll see you guys in what, ten years? When Pogo dies?"

"Not if you die first.” Allison comments.

“Yeah, love you too sis.” He scoffs, picking up some of the nuts from the trail mix Melanie had abandoned after she’d picked out all the chocolate. “Good luck on your next movie, hope it turns out better than your marriage, huh?"

Klaus and Melanie look at each other wide eyed, Melanie mouthing the word wow at him while he pulled a face towards where Allison stood staring daggers into Diego’s head before walking off.

"Are we leaving?” Klaus asks, chasing after Diego as he slings a bag over his shoulder.

“No, I’m leaving, me by myself.” Diego says firmly.

“Can you just drop me off at home? I can’t walk home after what happened today and it’s late as hell now.” Melanie asks carefully, knowing it was either Diego give her a lift or deal with whatever late cabs were still running.

“Fine but hurry up. No pit stops.” He groans, to which Klaus claps his hands.

“Oh, fabulous! I’ll get my things."

Melanie shoves the serving spoon and peanut butter onto the kitchen counter before running across the room and grabbing her bag, having to jog to catch up to Diego once he leaves the room.

She wordlessly follows him out to his car, walking to the passengers side as Diego throws his bag in the trunk before climbing into the drivers seat.

Just as he’s about to start the car, the back door flies open, Klaus throwing himself in and surprising Diego with his presence.

"Hey!” He greets over enthusiastically.

Sliding to the space between the seats, Klaus puts both his hands on the shoulders of his siblings, looking between both of them.

“You know, every time I close my eyes, I see a diarrhetic hippo about to shit on my face? It’s terrifying!"

"Is it the same one from January?” Melanie asks, hand over her eyes as she tiredly slumps against the door.

“Terrific.” Diego comments as he turns the engine over. “Lean back."

And with that, Two, Four, Six and Eight leave the academy once again.

But apparently, Diego did have one pit stop in mind before dropping his siblings off.

"I love how he said no pit stops then brings us here to have a knock off Batman moment.” Melanie comments, her legs curled up in front of her as she sits sideways to see Klaus in the back seat.

“He’s a funny one, isn’t he?” Klaus laughs lightly, opening the door and leaning out of it.

“Yoo hoo, Diego!” He calls, “I hate to rush you through any kind of brooding moment you might be having, but come on man we’re all starving!"

Diego just glances back at the car, and Klaus gives up his prodding, sitting back and closing the car door, sighing heavily.

"I’m craving… eggs. No, wait it’s too late for eggs. Waffles, huh?” He asks, looking beside him instead of in front to Melanie, making her frown slightly.

“You like waffles right?” He asks the space beside him again, and it’s finally then that she realises the stronger energy she could feel in the car, now she’d rested a bit from the late afternoon.

“Ah, of course you do. And you?” Klaus finally questions Melanie, who shrugs tiredly.

“If I’m with you two, then I’m fine with where ever."

"Everyone likes waffles.” Klaus smiles to himself as the static on the walkie talkie Diego sat on the hood of the car crackles to life.

“Diego, so glad you could join us,” he smiles tiredly as their brother climbs back into the car, “we have decided on, drum roll, waffles."

"I’m gonna drop you off at Melanie’s. I gotta get back to work.” He states simply, and Melanie glances back to a saddened Klaus sitting back in his seat again.

“What, breaking bones and cracking skulls?” He laughs questionably.

“Saving lives, baby.” Diego smirks, and instead of cracking a joke, Melanie just throws a smile over the back of the seat.

“I’ll make you both waffles when we get back to mine.” She reassures.

“Thanks, Mellie.” Klaus smiles, while Melanie rests her head against the back of the seat again, her hand draped over the back.

As Diego drives along, tilting the rear view mirror to try and see this illusive forth person inside the car, Melanie feels her hand go cold, and when Klaus looks beside him, he can see both Melanie and Ben leaning with their backs against the doors, Ben’s hand resting on top of hers for a moment before he closes his own eyes, shifting to look out the window instead.

The longest day Melanie had seen for a while was slowly coming to a close, but really, she wished it had ended hours ago.

chapter three coming saturday, sep 19th

#tua #the umbrella academy fanfic #the umbrella academy imagine #The Umbrella Academy #tua fanfic #ben hargreeves #ben hargreeves fanfic #ben hargreeves imagine #klaus hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #luther hargreeves #allison hargreeves #five hargreeves #diego hargreeves

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shadow-assassin-blix · 4 years

Text

A Picture is a Poem Without Words

Chapter 3

A/N: Swearing. A lot more setting up the basic background of the plot. The museums listed are real museums. Gifs by @nomoregoldfish and @gif-hunts-for-you

‘Thoughts’

“Spanish”

The next morning Blix woke up lying on her stomach, her face buried into a very soft pillow. She became aware of slight tickling situation. It took her a second to realize it was a hand, the fingers tracing over her various scars.

“That tickles, handsome,” She whispered as she blearily opened her eyes, as she turned toward him.

She reached for the sheets and pulled it up to cover her naked chest as the chill of the room hit her. She looked him over as he rested his hand onto her hip and watched his eyes roam over her skin, pausing at various scars.

“Surely, not all of these are from work, are they gorgeous?” He asked with a frown.

“No. Not all of them are from work. Many are from my traumatic childhood that I am not quite ready to divulge,” She explained quietly as she tried not to think too heavily on the memories that tried to creep to the forefront of her mind.

He nodded once and said, “I can understand that. Maybe one day I’ll share my past with you as well.”

She smiled softly and stretched, wincing when she felt the aches and pains from last night make their appearance.

“Last night really happened eh? Guess I wasn’t that hard to get after all?” She conceded as she shifted onto her back.

“I wouldn’t say that. Most women tend to become putty within 5 minutes of meeting me. You made me chase after you and work for it,” He commented as he dragged her closer to him. “It was a bit exhausting.”

“Oh yes. How terrible it must be to have women and men alike fall for you at the drop of a hat, Pacho. What a horrid life you lead,” She teased him as she pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“Truly. It’s awful. Can’t have a moment to myself at all,” He joked as well, with a chuckle.

They fell into a comfortable silence, and she almost fell back to sleep when she suddenly heard the sounds of rain pattering against the windows.

“Lovely. That will be fun returning home in,” She said with a sigh.

“Gilberto and Miguel will be here in an hour. They wish to talk out the details and finalize the deal. So, the storm may have passed by then,” Pacho replied as he sat up. “I had my men buy you a change of clothes, we should probably shower.”

Blix nodded her head and sat up as well. Her shoulder gave a twinge of pain at the change of pressure and she rotated her arm a bit to work out the kink. He glanced over at her as she quietly groaned as it continued to cause her pain.

He motioned for her to follow him and as she does, he leads her into the bathroom. He turned on the shower and allowed the temperature to heat up before stepping in, pulling her in with him. They washed their hair quickly, and as he gathered body wash into his hands, he gently began to massage it on her shoulders. He found a couple of knots and softly worked them out. She couldn’t help the moan of content as he worked out a particularly large knot. Once her shoulders had fully relaxed, they finished up their showers and stepped out. She dressed in the clothes that was provided, a camisole and some jeans, and new underwear/bra.

Once they were dressed, a light lunch was ordered for them both, and as they ate, Gilberto and Miguel appeared. They walked in and sat across from them in the living room.

She took a couple more bites of her sandwich, surveying both men before her. She finished it and took the initiative to start the conversation.

“So, shall we begin with your demands, or mine?” She asked with a raised eyebrow and glancing between the two.

“Please, tell us what you wish from us first and we shall see if we can work with them. Pacho told us some of it, but believed there were others?” Gilberto inquired leaning forward; elbows propped on his knees.

“I need assurances from the both of you that your men, will not interfere with my work. That means no dragging me to your places. No Marta or any other child of yours, to spy on me at work, as the first condition,” She began.

“Second, I am trying to gather info on art thieves, and various other crimes. I need to know who is moving what. What is on the market. That sort of thing. My bosses think that there are criminals selling art on the black market to fuel communism,” She continued with an eye roll at the last part. “I believe there’s something bigger going on. I just need proof of it.”

“I do not mind creating a deal for you with the government. Does it make my skin crawl to be even considering this nonsense? Yes. But you are far better than Escobar and his men who are absolute freaks,” She concluded taking a sip of her iced tea.

They both chuckled a bit at her and Gilberto conceded, “Those are acceptable conditions my dear. As Pacho told you previously, we do not wish to be in the cocaine business forever. We know that it’s only a matter of time before Escobar and his cartel are taken down. We want to be at the top, for a time, and do the bare minimum of prison time, before continuing our life.”

“Does everyone, aka all four of you, agree to this?” She confirmed with the three of them.

“Yes, and Chepe is aware of the plan as well and agrees as well,” Pacho verified as he lit up a cigarette.

There was something in the way he spoke and refused to make eye contact that made her somewhat doubt that. She, however, was not going to push the subject, just in case she was wrong.

“Okay. We can iron out full details in the future. This is all predicated on the idea that the Medellin Cartel will be gone, and as of right now, that is not the case. So, write down everything you want, and when the time comes, I will do what I can,” She assured with a nod. “Shall we shake on it?”

She held her hand out to them, to seal the deal. They nodded and Gilberto shook her hand firmly. As she moved to shake Miguel’s he held her hand and threatened lightly, “Remember Miss Lage, this also means that you do not rat on us. It would be such a shame, to see such a pretty face die because you didn’t respect us or show us loyalty.”

She cleared her throat, shoving the panic that tried to appear back down and shook his hand once.

“Now then, we have business to attend to. Pacho? We shall see you this afternoon, yes?” Miguel asked his tone doing a 180° as he spoke to him.

Pacho nodded and showed them out. Blix stood up and dusted herself off. Once they had left, Pacho walked back over to her.

“I will take you home now, and then in a few days, I was thinking about coming around and maybe we can chit chat over any information we find?” Pacho suggested as he stood before her.

“Sounds good to me. You do have something other than your motorcycle, right?” She inquired as the sound of the rain grew louder and harsher.

He chuckled lowly and nodded his head in response. She grabbed her things, and he handed her a jacket, that was slightly too big. As she put it on, she realized it was one of his, as it smelled just like him. She smiled to herself for a moment and then followed him out. He led her downstairs to the parking garage of the hotel, where a red thunderbird waited for us.

She snorted loudly as she looked at it, causing Pacho to look over at her and raise an eyebrow.

“A Thunderbird? Really? Really nailing that ‘bad boy” persona eh?” She teased as he opened the door for her.

“Hm. But you like that persona, no?” He hummed back pressing a kiss to her lips, as she stepped into the car.

She just shook her and buckled in as he got in on the driver’s side. The drive to her home took a few minutes longer due to the blinding sheets of rain, but when they arrived, she told him goodbye and ran inside, unlocking her door as fast as possible.

She closed the door behind her, and shook off the raindrops, as she took off the jacket and her shoes. She set her things down on the table by the door before heading over to her answering machine to check for any messages.

No messages played. She sighed in relief and then called Jacque at the bar, to see if he wanted her to come in tonight due to the heavy rains. He told her to not bother and enjoy her night off, since the rain was meant to last well into the night, meaning hardly anyone would be coming in.

She made her way into her office and looked over files. She looked over at her crime board, aka the entire left wall of her office. She read over some case files, trying to make more connections, and fill in more blanks.

Shipments of art meant for the Museo Nacional de Colombia in Bogota, Antioqua Museum in Medellin, and Museum of Colonial Art and Religious la Merced in Cali, have gone missing. However, the biggest concern was the heist done at the Gold Museum in Bogota. 20 crates full of gold artifacts, all valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, missing. There were rumors that there were buyers located in Medellin, but the sellers were hiding out somewhere in Cali for the time being.

Every time they got close to figuring out who was selling them, and where they may have hidden the art, they disappear. Blix suspected that there was a high possibility that there was spy amidst her team.

She spent the next couples of hours going over her stack of files, noting details of each one that she found somewhat important. It wasn’t until there was a large crack of thunder that she looked up from her work. She glanced over at the clock and noted it was after 6pm. She stretched, before going into the kitchen to make herself something to eat. Her dinner consisted of some chicken and pasta drizzled with alfredo sauce.

She quietly ate and put away the leftovers before going back to work for a couple more hours. It wasn’t until about 11pm before she stopped for the night and went upstairs to change, sliding under her covers as soon as she was in comfortable clothing.

The next morning, she woke up and as she stepped out to pick up the newspaper, she noticed a yellow manilla folder peeking out of her mailbox. She pulled it out, looking around suspiciously. She slipped back inside, tossing the newspaper onto her coffee table. She flipped it over and saw the words “For your eyes only” in Spanish.

She walked into her kitchen and stepped up to her kitchen island; opening it after getting settled onto one of the seats.

She shook out the contents of the envelope, and out came a handwritten note along with a stack of photos.

“It appears you have spy in your midst, lovely. Do not trust this person with anymore information. I look forward to speaking with you in greater detail, in a few days. -Pacho”

She looked at the photos and saw that it was the one person she didn’t personally hire. It was someone that the ambassador had recommended and that her boss forced her to hire because of his political ties. He was the son of one of the senators here in Colombia, and stated he had an interest in law enforcement.

She glowered at the images before her and had to take a deep breath to calm herself down. On the back of one of the images there was a name written down: Augustus König. She looked at the name with wide eyes. She leaned over and grabbed her satellite phone. She dialed the one person she knew on her team that wouldn’t betray her.

“Hello?” A male voice came through after the phone rang twice.

“Theo. I have a lead but I need for this to stay between us,” She began. “Look up the name: Augustus König. Don’t let Marcos aware of what you are doing.”

“Do you think he’s the one spewing intel on our missions? And how do I spell that?” He asked lowly.

“Yes. In fact, I’m quite sure of it. Let’s just say, I have new CI and let’s keep it at that,” She explained vaguely before spelling out the name for him.

“Alright. I’ll let you know what I find and fax it over to you,” He assured as soon as he got the info he needed.

“Thank you. Hopefully, this is the break we need,” She said with a sigh.

“I know, right? I’ll get back to ya boss asap,” He replied with a small laugh.

She hung up and looked at the photos once more and got annoyed all over again.

She made another phone call and as soon as the phone connected, she started, “Horacio. Need a favor.”

“Hello, Blix. I am well, how about you?” He answered back in a mocking tone.

“Sorry. Hi, Horacio. I really need a favor,” She amended with a slight eye roll.

“What’s up?” Horacio asked.

“Do you know Diego Marcos?” She questioned.

“Yes. The senator’s son that’s on your team, correct?” He confirmed after a moment.

“I need for you to investigate him. I have reason to believe that he’s leaking intel on us,” She requested.

He hummed, “He has taken a recent interest in the DEA as well and has been loitering around the office randomly. Explains why a recent mission to find La Quica went to hell.”

She shook her head at that. “I don’t trust him. I didn’t even want him on my team but the powers that be said I had to take him. But… if we gather enough evidence to prove that he’s not on our side, then we can get rid of him.”

“Let me see what I can do, little fox,” Horacio replied, determination in his voice. “Anything else? And how is your Cali situation going?”

“Thanks. It’s settled for the most part. Had to make a deal with the devil but at the very least, I don’t have to worry about dying anytime soon,” She informed him with some bitterness in her tone.

“I hope you know what you are doing. Stay safe. I’ll keep you updated,” He stated before he hung up.

She sat her phone down and studied the photos some more, examining each one. She gets to the last two and paused, blinking rapidly. They were photos of both Miguel Gallardo and Pablo Escobar, meeting with König, paintings in the background; paintings that she knew very well. She had been staring at photos of them for hours just last night.

“Fucking hell. Those bastards. They bought from him… which would mean that… the Cali also probably brought from him. Those fucks. Imma kill them. That’s.. that’s what is gonna happen. I’m going to beat them all to death. Fuckin. Fuck,” She angrily spoke to herself.

She looked on the back of them to see if he had written anything, and there was one note that said, “He has tried to sell art to us before but after making it well known that he does not… tolerate men like me, we washed our hands of him”

She squinted at it with deep suspicion. ‘Uh huh. Sure. We will be talking about this when we meet.’

She tossed the photos down, sighing, a hand running down her face in exasperation. As she tried to decide what to do next, she heard her fax machine come to life. She got up and walked over to it looking at what was coming in.

The first page literally just read in huge handwriting, “Huge files. I found a great deal on him. Apparently, he’s wanted by several agencies. Prepare for a long week of reading, boss.”

‘Great.’

She left it to do its thing, occasionally checking on it to remove stacks of paper, and make sure that there was plenty of paper and ink within it. It took about 2 hours before the fax finally stopped. She began the long process of sorting the papers sent to her. Fortunately, Theo was kind of enough to code each paper with a specific number in the upper right-hand corner to note what files they belong to.

By the time she was done, several hours had passed, and she had 5 different piles sat upon her table. She only stopped every now and again to eat. She was exhausted by the time she had finished and was thankful for having work that night. She needed some space away from work or she was going to set it on fire.

That night at the bar was fairly normal, and she spent part of the night supervising the new bartender.

About 2am, trouble walked in, in the form of the Gentlemen of Cali. She ignored the three of them for the most part, allowing the newbie to take their orders, and see how he did with them.

She was busy jamming out to the rock n roll blasting from the stereos. Most of the time, the music was just a local music station. Every now and again, Jacque allowed them to play mixtapes. Currently, Uptown Girl by Billy Joel was playing, and Blix was singing along loudly. Some of the waitresses would walk up and join in with her. They would dance around and be silly between orders.

The night was coming to close; she was ready to go home and sleep. She watched as Pacho worked his magic on a guy that he settled up next to a few minutes ago. She chuckled when it barely took him two minutes to convince the guy to leave with him. She watched him walk out, with his arm wrapped around the guy.

Gilberto and Miguel stayed until bar closed and walked up to her. “Your tip. Thank you. You were very entertaining,” Gilberto said with a secretive wink. “Pacho also left his tip with us to give to you as well.”

He handed her an envelope and before he and Miguel walked out. She shoved the envelope into her bag, not bothering to look at it, as she gathered the rest of her tips, and stuff. Jacque usually had the new personnel stay behind to learn the closing process, like cleaning and such, so she was able to leave a few minutes early.

She made her way home and sighed in relief once she stepped into her home. She walked upstairs to shower and change. She chewed on her lip as she sat on her bed, thinking about the envelope she had in her bag. Curiosity got the better of her and she opened it up. Inside was about $1k.

“Ooh. Oh boy. Uhhh. Wha-“ She stammered as she stared at it wide-eyed.

‘Great. Now, I have to be responsible and return this when I see them again. This is... far too much… and is essentially a payoff.’

She threw it back into her bag with an annoyed sigh, throwing herself onto her bed. ‘One of the best tips I’ve ever gotten, and I cannot accept it… because it’s from… cartel members.’

She made herself comfortable and as she fell asleep, she thought, ‘New rule: no more ridiculous tips, which I can’t believe is a thing that needs to be discussed.’

As she slept, another museum in Cali, Museo La Tertulia, was in the midst of being robbed.

#pacho x oc #pacho herrera #narcos #narcos mexico

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multifandomfanfiction · 4 years

Text

Mimic Chapter 4

TITLE: Mimic Chapter 4 PAIRING: Klaus/OC/Diego RATING: T CHAPTER: 4/? SUMMARY: Cassie is one of the 43 children born on the same day. Her parents hid her growing up, but her life changed when she met Klaus. Klaus gave her the nickname “Mimic’ because of her power to mimic other’s powers. When Reginald Hargreeves dies, what will the Umbrella Academy think of her secret?

Five disappeared.

“Where’d he go?” Luther asked.

“I think I know,” Vanya said.

They followed her and sure enough Five was in the kitchen. They all gathered around to watch Five make a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich.

“What’s the date? The exact date.”

“The 24th,” Vanya told him as he walked over to the table with a loaf of bread.

“Of what?”

“March.”

“Good.”

“So, are we gonna talk about what just happened?” Luther asked.

Five said nothing.

Luther stood up and said, “It’s been 17 years.”

Five scoffed. “It’s been a lot longer than that.” He jumped through Luther to grab a bag of marshmallows.

“I haven’t missed that.”

“Where’d you go?” Diego asked.

“The future. Its shit, by the way,” Five answered.

“Called it!” Klaus exclaimed from his place on the table.

Five walked over to the fridge and pulled out a jar of peanut butter, before walking back over to the table. “I should’ve listen to the old man. You know, jumping through space is one thing, jumping through time is a toss of the dice.” Five looked at Klaus. “Nice dress.”

“Oh, well, danke!” Klaus said, fiddling with the hem.

“Wait, how did you get back?” Vanya asked.

“In the end, I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time,” Five explained.

“That makes no sense,” Diego told him.

“Well, it would if you were smarter.”

Diego stood up and started to charge at Five when Cassie darted in front of him and put her hands on his chest. She tapped into Luther’s power to hold him back.

“Ah, Cassie. So you’re still hanging around these two dumbasses are you?” Five asked.

Cassie and Five met shortly before he “disappeared”. It wasn’t until she was 15 that she started hanging around the Umbrella Academy more.

Cassie blushed, dropping her hands and stepping back from Diego.

“How long were you there?” Luther asked him.

“Forty-five years. Give or take.”

Both Luther and Diego sat back down.

Cassie stood behind Diego, rubbing his upper back.

“So what are you saying? That you’re 58?”

“No, my consciousness is 58. Apparently my body is 13 again.” Five finished making his sandwich and picked it up.

“Wait, how does that even work?” Vanya asked.

“Delores kept saying the equations were off.” Five shrugged and then took a bite of his sandwich. “Bet she’s laughing now.”

“Delores?”

Five picked up a newspaper, looking at the front page. “Guess I missed the funeral.”

“How’d you know about that?” Luther asked.

“What part of the future do you not understand? Heart failure, huh?”

“Yeah,” Diego said.

“No,” Luther corrected.

“Nice to see nothing’s changed,” Five said leaving the kitchen.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Allison asked him.

“What else is there to say? Circle of life.”

“Well…that was interesting,” Luther remarked.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

They all gathered in the courtyard later.

Cassie stood next to Klaus under his clear umbrella with pink trim.

Ben’s statue stood at the end of the courtyard.

It was always odd to see the statue when she could see Ben whenever she wanted to. Since Cassie was so close to Klaus, her power was almost intertwined with his. She didn’t even really have to try anymore, except when she was trying to summon a particular spirit.

Cassie was a comfort for Ben. Klaus’ inclination for getting drunk and high impaired his abilities, but Cassie was always sober. There were many nights when Klaus was passed out that she and Ben would stay up all hours of the night and talk about anything and everything.

“Did something happen?” Grace asked.

“Dad died. Remember?” Allison asked.

“Oh. Yes, of course.”

“Is mom okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, she’s fine,” Diego said as Klaus took out joint and lit it, “She just needs to rest. You know, recharge.”

Pogo joined them. “Whenever you’re ready, dear boy.”

Luther opened the urn and emptied it on the ground.

Klaus flinched when Luther looked at it oddly. Cassie wrapped an arm around Klaus’ waist, rubbing his side.

“Probably would’ve been better with some wind,” Luther said.

“Does anyone wish to speak?” Pogo asked.

No one said anything.

“Very well. In all regards, Sir Reginald Hargreeves made me what I am today. For that alone, I shall forever be in his debt. He was my master and my friend, and I shall miss him very much.”

Cassie hated Reginald Hargreeves for what he did to Klaus and Diego, but what Pogo said was very touching.

“He leaves behind a complicated legacy…”

“He was a monster,” Diego interjected.

Klaus laughed, causing Cassie to thump him on the back. Cassie glared at him as Klaus rolled his eyes.

“He was a bad person and a worse father. The world’s better off without him.”

“Diego,” Allison snapped.

“My name is Number Two. You know why? Because our father couldn’t be bothered to give us actual names. He had Mom do it.”

“Would anyone like something to eat?” Grace asked.

“No, it’s okay, Mom,” Vanya told her.

“Oh, okay.”

“Look, you wanna pay your respects? Go ahead. But at least be honest about the kind of man he was,” Diego said.

“You should stop talking now,” Luther told him.

“You know, you of all people should be on my side here, Number One.”

Cassie jumped in between the two of them. “Diego, stop it! Walk away!”

“Sweet little Cassandra. Always the peacemaker aren’t you?” Diego shoved Cassie aside, causing her to slip on the wet ground and fall.

Cassie waited for him to apologize or for Klaus to stand up for her, but neither of them did anything.

Vanya helped her up.

“Thanks,” Cassie muttered.

Diego continued to egg Luther on. “After everything he did to you? He had to ship you a million miles away.”

“Diego, stop talking.”

“That’s how much he couldn’t stand the sight of you!”

Luther threw the first punch.

Vanya pulled Grace and Cassie back.

“Boys, stop this at once!” Pogo yelled.

“I could rumor them,” Cassie said.

“No, I think it’s best to just let them fight it out,” Vanya told her.

“Come on, big boy!” Diego yelled at Luther. Diego started wailing on Luther.

“Stop it!” Vanya yelled.

“Hit him! Hit him!” Klaus cheered.

“Klaus! Diego! Stop it!” Cassie yelled.

Pogo shook his head and left the courtyard.

Luther finally grabbed Diego by the shirt and held him back.

“Get off me!” Diego yelled, punching Luther in the arm.

“We don’t have time for this,” Five said, going back inside.

“Come on, big boy!” Diego yelled.

Luther threw a punch and Diego dodged it, causing Luther to punch Ben’s statue.

The statue went crashing to the ground, knocking the head off.

Cassie’s heart stopped. “No!” She ran over to the statue. Her hands shook as she tried to pick it up and set it right.

“And there goes Ben’s statue,” Allison said, as Klaus walked over to his panicked girlfriend.

“Cass, Cass, its okay,” Klaus cooed to her. He put his hands on her shoulders.

The other Hargreeves’ were shocked by her outburst, especially Diego. He hadn’t realized she knew Ben that well.

“I’ll have it fixed,” Cassie said, “He’ll have a newer and better one.” Cassie was too in shock to see Ben watching them with a sad expression.

Klaus smiled. “I’m sure Ben would love that. C’mon. Let’s get you inside and dried off.” Klaus helped Cassie up and wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

“Cassie, I…” Diego said.

“Don’t Diego. Just don’t,” she told him.

#klaus hargreeves #klaus hargreeves imagines #klaus/oc #klaus/oc/diego #klaus hargreeves fanfiction #diego hargreeves #diego hargreeves imagine #diego/oc #diego hargreeves fanfiction #The Umbrella Academy #the umbrella academy imagines #umbrella academy fanfiction #luther hargreeves #allison hargreeves #five hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #ben hargreeves #we only see each other at weddings and funerals

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cheswirls · 5 years

Text

it’s your extension (let me extend) 5/6

ace runs.

he runs as fast as he can. overhead, the comet soars, moving a million miles faster than he is.

he meets kidd at the factory. the powerplant. the entire village’s electrical grid. comes to a stop, slamming into the chainlink, still panting, when he rolls up on his motorbike.

“he says sorry about your bike,” ace calls. kidd cuts the engine.

“who says?”

“i do!” ace corrects.

kidd throws his duffel to the ground, takes out a pair of heavy-duty pliers. “you’re sure about this, ace?” he questions, one last time, a hard glint in his eyes. “that thing’s really coming down?” he points to the comet with the tool.

ace nods fervently. “saw it myself,” he swears.

kidd cackles. “you did, huh? alright, fine.” he steps forward, positions the pliers around the chain lock. “get ready!” he clips it and it falls to the ground, slack. “this means we’re criminals now!”

“you still have to convince your dad!” kidd calls back, loud over the bike’s engine. ace tightens his grip, nodding.

“yeah, i know!” he cocks his head back. “think that thing’s really gonna blow?”

“i sure hope so!” kidd yells. right as he finishes, an explosion echoes from behind them. ace screams, lunges forward, and kidd laughs, steadying his trembling hands on the handles of the motorbike. “whaddya know! dad taught me well, huh!”

“you’re crazy!” ace screams.

“says the guy who came up with this scheme!” kidd screams back.

he skids to a stop when they reach stairs, not risking going down them. ace jumps off, but kidd waits an extra second, caught with the bike’s momentum. ace stumbles on the stairs, glances back. “kidd!” he calls in panic, but kidd’s rolling to a stand too, the bike upturned behind him.

“good, good!” he gasps, grabbing ace’s arm to pull him forward. “c’mon! let’s go, let’s go!”

the power cuts out. all the bombs he and kidd had set at the plant had blown, shot the circuits to bits. ace takes a deep breath as they round the corner into the festival square, booths no longer lit. no comet. not yet. they wouldn’t go for it. he had to settle for something more realistic.

“forest fire!” kidd calls, just as the emergency sirens begin ringing out. “there’s a fire, we have to evacuate! hurry!”

“this is fuusha city council. due to the explosive at the power plant, there’s been a warning of forest fires and other explosions. if you live in the following districts, please evacuate immediately to fuusha high school.”

“fire!” ace calls, sprinting after kidd. “please evacuate! there’s a fire coming!”

he can see it’s not working. the people look confused, and the sirens have them on edge, but they’re not moving. lami’s voice rings out, perfect calm even though she must be terrified. she reminds him so much of-

ace stops dead in his tracks.

kidd whips around. “this isn’t working. we really do need city council to-” his face screws up. “ace, what’s wrong?”

ace doesn’t cry. he doesn’t cry unless things are very emotional, like when dragon left, or when he met sabo for the first time, tonight. he’s not the crier. he doesn’t cry.

he’s crying.

“his name!” he blabs, frantic. “i can’t remember his name!”

kidd’s expression darkens. “are you fucking kidding me!” he yells. his hands wrap around ace’s shoulders. “ace! forget about that! we have bigger problems here, right?!”

ace’s body shakes with effort as he works to keep his sobs contained. “but-! but-” he shakes his head. then he pushes kidd’s hands off, roughly. he slaps his own face hard, twice, thrice. “sorry!” he shouts. “i’ll go, i’m going!” he starts running. kidd takes off in the opposite direction. “i’ll make it!” he promises. “i promise!”

“you better!” kidd calls.

“hey! what do you think you’re doing in the broadcast room?”

lami cuts off with a scream, panicking. “i- uh- i-” three teachers storm in. one councilman grabs her wrist. another turns the broadcast off.

“seriously, trafalgar,” one of the teachers huffs, marching her down the hall. “what were you thinking? do you have any idea of the consequences-”

lami walks between them, tears streaming down her face, audibly crying. “s-sorry,” she says, but it’s not to them. “sorry, ace,” she chokes. “i’m sorry!”

kidd glances up and his heart stops. “it’s really splitting,” he mutters. and not just in half. there were dozens of little comets, meteorites, lighting up the sky now.

“kidd!”

he comes to a full stop, wincing. he cocks his head over, and his dad is coming to meet him down a set of stairs. a couple of his workers are behind him.

“sorry, ace,” he mutters. “this is it for me.”

the broadcast cuts out and ace curses. “no! shit! lami!” he cries. please be okay!

he tears down the street, taking the higher ground, knowing the path to the council building by heart, whether he wanted to or not. he passes by a railing, where the ground jutts, and glances up. the comet! how much ti-

no!

he looks up to a meteor shower. they were almost out of time.

he speeds up, but his foot catches on the uneven ground, and he trips, tumbles. he lands on the ground hard, air knocked from him, and then rolls downhill, until he hits another jutt, flips, crashes to the ground.

he lies there, trying to remember to breathe again. his head spins. his hands are in front of him.

he curls into himself. he was too late anyway, right? it wouldn’t work, right? he couldn’t outspeed a bunch of falling rocks. the plan didn’t work none of it worked-

“so we don’t forget our names when we wake up.”

ace breathes out, slow. he uncups his hand. that was right. his name was right-

he stares.

his name isn’t written on ace’s hand.

his lips tremble. “idiot!” he gasps.

i love you is written in marker.

ace fists his hand, sobs into the gravel. “how am i supposed to remember your name with this!” he cries out, impossibly loud. he lies there for another moment, another, another.

then he pushes himself to his knees, lips stretched into a smile. he wails, laughs, comes to a stand.

“okay!” he calls out, starting to run again.

“fine!”

“i’ll do it!”

“i’m going to LIVE!”

“dad!” ace calls, slamming dragon’s door open. luffy perks up from the couch, clambering to his feet. garp looks over as well.

from behind his desk, dragon stands. “ace!” he growls. “listen, i don’t have time for-”

ace sets his face, stalks closer, and dragon shuts up.

“no. you are going to listen to me,” ace shouts. “for once in your goddamn life! because i’m not dying again!”

the meteor still crashes.

the nucleus of the comet hits right behind ace’s house, near the torii gate that leads further into the side of the mountain.

the ground breaks. wood from whole tree trunks flies everywhere. the lake water evaporates into steam, and then crumbles under the weight of multiple little meteors that had broken off of the nucleus.

sabo wakes up.

sabo wakes up on top of a mountain.

he sits up. the sun is shining behind him. the water from the twin lakes down far, far below glitters.

he looks down at his palm, where a streak of ink was left. he squints.

“where am i?” he mumbles.

five years later

“what’s with the suit? party’s not til tonight.”

sabo pauses right inside the doorway, hand still holding it half closed. he deadpans, resists the reply he wants to say. “i’m not wearing this to the party,” he says instead, finally shutting the front door. shanks’ expression still doesn’t change, seeking an answer, and after shuffling off his shoes sabo sighs and supplies him with one. “i had a job interview today.”

“oh?” shanks steps aside to allow sabo access to the rest of the apartment, but then immediately follows at his heels. “how’d that go?”

sabo stops, resisting the urge to fidget, and shanks barely avoids crashing into him. they stand still in the middle of the hall for a couple moments.

“newspaper market is more competitive than i thought,” he finally mutters.

shanks hunkers down, shoulders shaking in an attempt to contain his laughter. “and-” he pauses as he catches sabo’s eye, the blond turning his head to gaze down at his former guardian. “koala has-”

“two offers,” sabo grunts. he rolls his eyes. “just say she’s better than me. i know you want to.” he pauses again at the entrance to the kitchen, gaze falling to the empty table. “makino’s not here?”

“ah, no. she’s meeting us there.” shanks passes him by, finally, patting him on the shoulder as he went. “i actually have a couple things to do before tonight, so i’m heading out. i’ll call you on my way back, grab lunch. be ready by six, okay? party’s at seven.”

“right.” sabo’s only half listening at this point, tugging his bedroom door open.

well. his former-

it’s been a while. since he graduated high school and moved out. since he’s been back here.

sabo lets the door slide shut behind him. the curtains are open; his bed is made -makino, probably.

he moves over to the bookshelf and his fingers run over the spines of twenty marked notebooks, holding all his daily logs from his time spent with makino and shanks.

they pause at number three, and he pulls it out before he can think much of it, flipping through to the back, where he finds the pages more crumpled, like he’d been looking for something and grew frustrated when he couldn’t find it.

sabo reads a page out of interest and pauses when he gets to a familiar name.

he’s never remembered why he woke up on the side of that mountain, the sight of fuusha, still in ruins, far below. it still puzzles him sometimes, when he takes a moment to recall. he’d been with koala and robin, but they had gone back to goa before him. he doesn’t know the reason. did they fight? did they have to be back earlier than he did?

he’d been on notebook nine at that point, but he hadn’t had it with him, so nothing of his little country travel got logged.

he does remember being obsessed with fuusha, at one point.

he puts the notebook back and slides open a desk drawer, frown forming on his face as he catches sight of all the articles still stashed there.

eight years ago. when the comet crashed. he can remember, faintly, watching it from the roof of the apartment building. seeing it split. watching in fascination as hundreds of little meteors grew closer and closer to the surface.

and then. crashed.

it was on the news for days. fuusha, left decimated. he remembers watching everything, saving every scrap of information, evident by all the papers in the desk drawer. something about it had him fascinated.

he couldn’t, for the life of him, recall what.

the comet crashed on the south side of the lake fuusha had formed around. the shockwaves carried the destruction all the way across, rumbling the ground even at the evacuation point.

thankfully, the town had been performing an emergency drill at the time. everyone had been moved out to the high school, out of reach of the comet’s impact.

they’d had to relocate, their home left in ruins, but at least they were all alive.

that had been it. miran comet had come, left as half its size, and formed a newer, smaller crater in the ruins of an old mountain village.

sabo, for the life of him, couldn’t figure why he was so interested.

he shuts the desk drawer.

shanks brings home yakisoba. sabo picks the mushrooms out, using the brief silence to address the topic from earlier.

“so, remind me. who’s the party for?”

“ah, an old friend of makino’s,” shanks mumbles around his food. thankfully, he washes it down with water before speaking again. “don’t ask me his name.” he waves off sabo’s look. “some old guy. his grandson’s graduating today. that’s what this all’s for.”

“lots of people?”

shanks quirks a brow, stabbing more noodles. “matter much? not like you have anywhere to be, mister unemployed.”

sabo huffs, picking out the last of the mushrooms. “i said i’d come, didn’t i?”

several hours later, he might be regretting those words.

the house of makino’s friend was huge. certainly bigger than he was expecting. the family had some wealth, that was for sure.

the head of the house was an older man with a loud laugh. could hit hard, too, his friendly slap on the back still leaving sabo in shivers if he thought about it too long. he hadn’t seen the man of the hour, but he’d heard of him in passing several times, oh he’s gone to do this or got caught before that could happen or just saw him doing something he shouldn’t.

reckless, was his first impression.

as the night wore on, he’d grown too weary to care anymore. now he was camped out on a small balcony, shielded somewhat from the chatter and attention inside. makino had found him and shanks not long after they’d arrived, and gone around introducing them to more people than sabo could ever hope to remember.

he shivers, moving his shoulders more inward. he’d dressed more down for the night than he had that morning, but his sweater wasn’t quite thick enough to keep out the breeze that had picked up. he shifts, leaning more on the low railing, and gazes out at the cityscape. inside, voices raise as a small commotion picks up. he doesn’t pay it mind.

“twilight,” he mutters, gaze caught on the setting sun sliding just beneath the horizon line, bathing the sky in a dim glow.

“half-light,” a voice behind him corrects.

sabo blinks, turns his head back.

there’s someone standing in the doorway, hand on one of the banisters. the backglow from inside the house makes their features hard to place, but the last of the sun’s light puts it into focus. he seemed familiar, but sabo can’t put his finger on it. then it clicks -he looks like makino’s friend.

“you’re not luffy,” he states. if anything, he looked closer to sabo’s age.

the guy blinks back, a flicker of surprise coating his expression. “i sure hope not,” he answers back, rolling his eyes as an audible shout from back inside reached them.

sabo frowns. “hm.”

he steps forward just as sabo encounters another roaming thought, leaning against the railing a couple feet away, and sabo lets his gaze fall back to the city as he asks. “what’s half-light?”

the guy chuckles, a short, breathy thing that has sabo’s hairs raising. “local dialect,” he answers. “something i picked up back home. it means the same thing.”

sabo blinks, lips closing as his unasked question gets answered. not local to here, he meant to say, but he changes the words now. “what are you here for?”

the color of the sky fades from bright to a deeper blue, and the moon’s glow begins to set in. it catches on his companion’s face as he turns to sabo again, bathes his silver eyes in wan light, bright enough for sabo to catch the confusion before it slips away, like he’s missed something, like he’s asked the wrong question. in another moment it’s gone, and he casually leans against the railing, a smile playing on his lips.

“school, at first,” he hums. “that’s over with now. it’s strange, though. i’ve always dreamed of coming to goa, of getting away from that life.” he shrugs. “i didn’t think i’d be bringing my entire family along, though.”

it’s an offhand gesture, next, that catches sabo’s attention. a wave of a hand, back to the house, and his mind feels open. it could mean different. he could be referring to more of the guests. somehow sabo doubts this, and he latches on to the suspicion. his eyes narrow. “are you sure you’re not luffy?” he asks again, because shanks had only ever mentioned one grandson, and he didn’t appreciate being strung along-

laughing snaps him out of that thought before he can finish it. it’s certainly a different reaction than before, and sabo prepares himself, ready to have the rug ripped from under him, yeah, i was messing with you, i am.

instead, his expectations are ripped to shreds. again.

“no,” the guy insists, laugh petering off. “i’m his older brother.”

before sabo can think much on that, he tips his head, eyes glinting. “and you? never seen you around before. who’d you come with?” he pauses for a moment, eyes going wide, and stifles another laugh with a hand over his mouth. “more like, who drug you here?”

sabo huffs before he can help it. “i came willingly,” he insists. when the guy doesn’t budge, he deigns him an answer. “makino. and shanks.”

the guy’s expression brightens. “oh, makino!” he says, and his tone is entirely different now. brighter. happier. “right, i saw her awhile ago. i didn’t know shanks was here, though, haven’t seen him yet-” he cuts himself off, blinking, as if he had just realized something. “wait. they brought you? no offense, but that seems kinda odd, if you didn’t even know . .” he trails off. “how do you know them?”

sabo hesitates. he hadn’t realized shanks was formally familiar with the family as well, leaving him the outsider in the mix. he’d assumed it was just makino, and that they were both there with her. guess he was wrong. guess- “i lived with them for a bit,” sabo admits.

he purses his lips, relenting as he sees the statement was getting nowhere, his companion still trying to piece it together. “for . . a long time, actually. since i was a kid.” he raises his hands at the alarmed expression across from him. “it wasn’t anything like what you’re thinking,” he says. “it was . . well, they looked after me, and i appreciate them, but they weren’t like my parents or anything.” he shrugs. “they kinda have their own kid now, right? it was similar, but it wasn’t the same.”

“oh. okay.” the guy blinks again, then turns around. he stares at the city for a while, at all the flashing lights, like he had expected different. like he was surprised that the moon was out. he turns back to sabo again. “you don’t know much about us, do you?”

it’s sabo’s turn to look away. kinda obvious at this point, considering he didn’t know there was a second grandson. and yet, instead of defending himself, he felt like admitting. “i didn’t even know your family existed until earlier today. this party was kinda . . sprung on me.”

he blinks, and then turns back to the even gaze of silver eyes. “you said ‘back home’, earlier. where is that?”

“ah.” he rubs at his head. “well, don’ go around saying that,” he mumbles. “not something i like to admit, that i still consider it . .” his lips screw up; sabo squints as he catches it. they even out as his gaze lifts again, looking back into sabo’s eyes. “you’ve heard of fuusha, right?”

sabo’s lips part, but he stumbles on his reply. he shivers through his sweater. his gaze whites out for a moment, and he blinks it away, desperate to hold on yet feeling like he was missing something, like it was finally right there, on the edge of his consciousness. there’s a roaring in his head, blocking everything out, and when garp’s grandson steps forward, says something out of concern, sabo can’t hear a word over the noise.

he doesn’t hear, frozen stiff, until hands lay on his arms, near his shoulders, and he’s being shaken, just a little. “hey, you’re kinda scaring me here,” sabo hears, and then he blinks, and he’s snapped back to the present, silver eyes right in front of him, cast with concern. he lets his mouth finally fall shut. his gaze shifts away.

“sorry,” he mutters.

the hands fall. the warmth where they once were lingers, just for a moment. “you good? you sure?”

“fuusha,” sabo says instead of answering, still feeling weird, off, and wanting to draw the topic away from himself. “so you’ve been here five years.”

the guy blinks. “give or take. about.” he moves his hands from hovering in the air, as if sabo would have another fit and pitch forward, to down by his side. sabo’s gaze catches on his wrist, where a red band was looped around. he recalls one of the articles he glanced at earlier in the day, and then nods to it.

“that’s a braided cord, right?”

a hand wraps around the cord, shielding it from view, before slowly moving away. he lifts it up for sabo to see more clearly, the ends fading from red to yellow to blue, slightly frayed at the edges. “yeah. my mom made it for me.”

right as he says that, ace has a startling realization. one that casts him away from the conversation for a moment, that puts perspective into a different light.

the blond reminded him of his mother.

maybe that’s why the interest was there.

rouge had light hair. it was stringy, most of the time, like she barely bothered taking care of it, instead of meticulously doing so only for the wind that day to blow it out of proportion. though every picture they had left of her had her smiling, he remembered her sunny smiles as rare; she had an array of expressions, and she liked to cast things into doubt, questioning at every turn, much to his grandfather’s annoyance.

she smiled when ace did, though. just like the blond was now, lips quirking up almost in response to ace’s smile, born there from reminiscing about her.

the moonlight was heavy, now, and ace can see his face clear. his fair skin, something he hadn’t picked up from rouge, and was thankful for, whenever she would come home red and blotchy, a sunburn welling up easily from being out for too long. he remembers her crying to dragon until he offered to rub lotion onto her shoulders, and screaming as luffy came up after and climbed into her arms, rough handprints harming the sensitive skin.

she was stubborn as all hell, and was always willing to get into it with anyone that rubbed her the wrong way. the scourge of fuusha, they called her. and they weren’t wrong, no matter how well she had charmed gramps and dragon into believing otherwise. ace remembers, starkly, her coming in late one night, cupping a bruise on her face, and wincing when she saw ace had caught sight of it.

he blinks, and then she fades into the blond, looking disgruntled, and the bump above his eyebrow put into full view as his bangs are swiped out of the way, evidence of the scuffle he’d gotten into put on display.

ace tugs on the knot tying the cord to his wrist, loosening it. he unravels it and holds it out, between the two of them. “you can look at it, if you want,” he offers, eyes flicking from the cord to the blond.

slowly, he reaches out to take it from ace, fascination shown on his face. “it’s well-made,” he notes, loosely taking it up and holding it closer.

rouge was cunning and smart. she could talk her way out of any situation, from what ace had seen. when she couldn’t, well, she knew how to get away if she couldn’t win in a fight, sporting bruises but still holding a victory overall.

she taught ace how to scrap, but he never really used it. that was more luffy’s thing, when he grew older.

but she taught ace more than how to use his fists. ace hadn’t entered primary school until she’d passed, stubbornly insisting that he was too good for an institution, that she could school him just fine, at home. she’d been good at it, too, despite the deceptive intentions she had, her reasoning more on the lines of having ace all to herself, instead of believing whatever she had spouted about fuusha schools being corrupt.

she taught him how to weave and braid thread. she taught him how to write, how to spell. she taught him the laws of fuusha no one talked about aloud, the silent expectations everyone held. she taught him how to charm gramps into doing whatever he wanted. she taught him how to get away with messing up.

she taught him what love was.

and. he remembers.

as his hand slips back down to his side, wrist bare.

sabo, studious. always complaining at ace for leaving him without homework to turn in, or slacking on class notes and making him stumble on a test. to waking up with his arms covered in ink, angry rant sprawled onto his skin.

sabo, eyes rimmed red from staying up late to study, leaving ace to drag him from the bed far too early, refreshed mind doing nothing when the body he was controlling was bone tired.

he remembers angrily taking a marker to sabo’s skin on days like those, scribbling notes in almost illegible handwriting for him to take care of yourself and go to sleep at reasonable times and, his favorite, get your shit together!

he’d write that one over and over, big and bold, across his arms and down his legs, all over his face, so he’d be forced to see it and reevaluate how he treated his body.

sabo, who was quick-witted and scrappy, but too late to throw a punch. ace couldn’t count the number of times he’d woken up in the blond’s body with a split lip or nasty cut or yellowing bruise. then he’d drag himself to school and get yelled at by koala for being reckless again and making everyone worry again. he’d go home and cover it and ignore makino’s worried eyes the best he could.

that was right. makino and shanks. he lets sabo’s earlier words play back and can’t help but think differently, from what he’d experienced. so they had a baby, a real child, now. it didn’t change the fact that they cared about sabo.

sabo, meticulous. writing notes to ace with a careful script, detailing each event that had transpired while he was in ace’s body. excelling at classwork with knowledge three years ahead of ace’s own. pissing off old man crocus with smarty replies, the exact answer he didn’t expect to each of his tough questions to things ace shouldn’t have learned yet. managing to do all this, yet never getting ace’s hairstyle right, and tangling his cord, and messing his speech, and attempting to flirt with people he definitely shouldn’t be attempting to flirt with.

sabo, teasing kidd and lami, living ace’s life for him, all those months splitting a body with a guy he had never met. scribbling in thick, crisp font reminders for ace before he went to sleep and woke up in his own body. making sure ace took care of himself. fretting when he didn’t. writing off his own worries and trying to figure why ace was unhappy with life, even as the people around him, ace included, insist he care for himself for a change.

sabo, who wrote and wrote and wrote, detailing his life so that he’d never forget again, like he’d forgotten most of his life before makino and shanks.

sabo, who reminded him so much of his mother, not just in appearance, but in everything ace had learned and cherished and forgotten, all those years ago.

sabo, who taught him so many things. who taught him, just like his mother, how to love, how to hold dear, how to forgive, how to remember.

“it’s nice,” sabo mutters, then holds the cord back out for ace to take.

his breath catches. but. bu-

so he really didn’t remember?

ace shuts his eyes for a moment. works on breathing again. he opens them and reaches for the cord, trying not to let his frustration show. before he can grab hold, though, a voice startles the pair of them.

“sabo, there you are! we’re ready to leave now. coming?” shanks is smiling, eyes only for the blond, who flinches back at the noise, and ace’s hand catches onto air as the cord is moved away. he furrows his brow, but doesn’t reach out again.

that’s when shanks seems to notice him. “oh! hey, kid, haven’t seen you in a while!” shanks steps forward to wrap ace in a hug that quickly turns into a mock chokehold, and ace forgoes the cord entirely in favor of latching to shanks’ arm, trying to pry it off.

“yeah, it’s been real nice,” he rasps. “not having to see your ugly mug-”

“ah come on now!” shanks whines. “you don’t really mean that!”

a call of his name has him settling down, and he releases ace when he remembers he was on a time crunch. “right, well, good to see you again. gotta head out now, i’ll stick around longer next time.” he winks and ace does his best exasperated expression, the luffy you are being ridiculous to extreme lengths and i am on my last straw look, but it breaks when shanks turns away, and he has to smile with his back turned, a little glad he’d gotten to see the redhead again after all this time.

“ready, sabo?” shanks asks. sabo only has time to nod before shanks flashes him a thumbs-up. “great! meet you at the car.” he’s gone after that, skipping back inside, leaving sabo to furrow his brows in confusion.

“car?” he mutters.

“makino drove,” ace tells him, and his attention snaps back up.

“oh.” he nods. his hands tighten into fists. then he realizes. “oh! here’s -this, back.”

he reaches out again, but ace waves him off, turning slightly away. “keep it.”

sabo’s brows raise. “isn’t it important?”

this meeting is important, he thinks. “give it back the next time you see me,” he says instead, because he’s not willing to give up.

sabo blinks, unsure of how to respond, but another call of his name reaches them before he can decide. so, instead of a proper answer, he holds out the band again to ace, and his bare wrist with the other. “tie it for me, then,” he says, and ace feels a grin forming as he steps forward, because it’d been a long time since he’d heard words so daring coming from the blond.

#saboace #SABOACEWEEK2019P2 #acesabo #writing #one piece #iye/lme #so i checked and i shouldve ended where i wanted to last time hah #i didnt realize there was so little left #im busy all day today so im throwing this up early

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gloves94 · 4 years

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The Munter [Paul McCartney] 4

Warnings: None Pairings: Paul McCartney/OC Summary: Sage O'Shea is a hardworking woman of the 1960's. A strange combination of brains and- well- Let's just say she is not your average beauty. Au contraire she's a Munter. John bets Paul that he wouldn't dare date such a monstrous woman. Despite his best judgement Paul agrees and takes John on his daring bet. Will Paul be able to see Sage's true beauty? What's going to happen when poor Sage finds out about their nasty bet? Whether the results are pretty or not- one thing I can say is love works in mysterious ways.

My fanfiction: M A S T E R L I S T

4. The Offer

Friday, November 22nd, 1963

Yes.

It had been possible.

Paul had been shamelessly flirting with her and she had been right to mistrust him. It had all started with the influence of the most troublesome band member corrupting the most impressionable one.

"Didn't know you fancied Brian's little gargoyle," John teased. "Got her a little gift and everything," John Lennon chuckled maliciously as he spun on Brian's desk chair childishly. Opposite of him Paul sat on a sofa chair with his legs crossed. He was calmly reading the newspaper. The small box white box he had gotten his accountant sat on the coffee table at his side.

"Oh, sod off," Paul responded mindlessly under his breath as he flipped a page of the paper. Unluckily for Paul McCartney, John was very bored this morning. "Is it the glasses? That beasty hair mane? The caterpillar brows?" Paul lowered his paper to look at his best mate who was leaning across the desk wiggling his eyebrows. He looked at John with a bored expression and shook his head.

"John, leave her be," Paul sighed.

"John, leave her be," John retorted in a mocking tone as he babbled like the buffoon he was. Sometimes Paul didn't understand why John had been baptized as the "Smart Beatle". He could be so obnoxious sometimes.

"There you go again defending the Four Eyes," John taunted.

"Why?" Paul glared. "Why are you so fixated on her appearance?" He frowned as he put his newspaper down. The edge of John's lips curled

"Ah, I know what you're doing Macca. See I think what you're doing is very clever."

"And what exactly am I doing?" Paul arched an eyebrow.

"You're buttering up the little monster so she can do your bidding. Clever man. I hope you can pull some strings for me, eh Paulie."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Paul rolled his eyes as he returned his attention to the day's dull news. "Oh yeah?" John's voice dripped like honey as he sought out the best way to stir the pot to push all of Paul's hot buttons. "But wouldn't it just be grand?" He pressed on. "I can't stand the thought of having to cut my budget. And it won't be long before she's bossing us around on Brian's behalf. Breathing down our necks. Locking us up for the weekend with a ball and chain!" He declared dramatically.

"She'll be a bug John, but it's her job," the other shrugged.

"You see I - I need to keep my affairs in order." John tossed a pencil against the desk and looked terribly smug.

Again Paul lowered his paper. This time he ripped a page out.

"Which ones? Financial or romantic you swine?" Paul said as he crumbled up the paper ball and threw it at John hitting him on the head.

"Both," Lennon replied shamelessly with an eat-shit grin.

"You're a pig Lennon, and Cyn- she's expecting."

"It’s not the same when they are expecting. Everything changes. All she does is bitch and bitch and bitch. You’d think I married a mouth instead!" John laughed. Paul once again rolled his eyes.

"Enjoy it while you can- and always - alwayscarry a rubber with you!" John gave Paul an unwanted penny for his thoughts. Paul shook his head and stood up ready to leave the room and maybe flirt with that new blonde girl just to kill time.

"Wait! I just had the grandest idea!" John exclaimed as he snaked around the desk like the vile creature he is and stood before Paul blocking his way out. "Bet you can't seduce the Munter," he slapped his friend's arm. "Oh I bet you!" He said giddily.

Paul scoffed. Please.

"I'd be a ball. She'd do whatever you say. We'd have her under our thumb!"

It was ridiculous. It was incredulous. John had to be joking. Both laughed at John's ridiculous proposal. "Very funny you git," Paul laughed.

"Unless- you don't think you can?" John pressed with a mischievous glint on his eyes. This struck a chord in Paul. John knew exactly what he was doing how he was riling his best friend up.

"Can't? Of course, I can," Paul said smugly puffing up his chest. "Would I?" he huffed. "Not in a million years. I'm not the one that needs glasses Lennon."

"Why don't you do it?" Paul suddenly shot back. Slapping his best mate's arms back. "You seem to have a bitching good time doing it to others."

"Paul, I'm a married man," John opened his arms innocently as he retreated back to Brian's desk chair.

"Alright mate, you're only married when it suits you."

"But which one of the Fabulous Four would have the greatest success? I am after all loyally committed," He stuck out his wedding band finger. "Ringo is not even half as charming as you are- and well George is well George." Lennon shrugged.

"John," Paul found himself almost magnetized as he retreated back to his original seat. "She's a little- alright - she's hardon the eyes. I'd be monstrous to do something so horrid to her – to anyone."

"Fine, if not you. I guess I'll just have to find somebody else," John tempted as he spun in his chair with an innocent façade. "Unless, of course, you don't think you can tame the wildebeest." John chuckled quietly, his light brown eyes lingering on his bandmate.

The gears in Paul's brain quickly ticked and turned and taken over by his weak male ego he grinned. "Alright then. What's in it for me then?"

"What do you want? Money? I'll wear drag for a week if you want," John chuckled. "Anything you want Paulie."

It was then that his conscience got the best of him.

"No John. We can't do this," Paul hesitated.

"Why not?" John said a bit too quickly. He had been so close to getting Paul wrapped in his evil scheme.

"What if- what if I'm not her type?" Paul sought out an excuse out of this sure to be mess. It was wrong. It was unethical. It was a horrid thing to do to anyone. "What if she rejects me?" He deadpanned.

"Oh, so you are interested then?" John grinned. The other sighed. "Oh, You dirty dog!" John slapped his palms on Brian's desk.

"John!" Paul exclaimed. "Just what had he gotten himself into. She's a Munter," he whispered in an agitated hiss. Even if it was only the two of them in the room. "I-I can't even picture myself holding her hand!"

"Do you want to?" John poked.

"Want to what?"

"Hold her hand?"

Paul rolled his eyes.

"Let's shake on it then," John stretched out his hand. He truly was the devil and not in disguise. His hand was even twitching with eagerness. "Let's be real, you'd be doing her a favor. You paying attention to her would be the grandest thing to ever have happened in her sad little life. You know what? We'll do this for fun, bet you can't get the gargoyle to fall in love with you." John laughed.

It was childish. It was so unnecessary. How old were they again? Did they not have anything better to do?

But it hurt Paul's pride. He knew he could. Girls of all ways of life practically threw themselves at him. What would make this one any different? It would be easy. Besides, he was never one to back down from a challenge.

Paul should've thought about it a little more. Should've been more empathic more mature about the entire ordeal.

"You're on mate," he slapped his palm on John's.

Saturday, November 22, 1963

I swung my bag over my shoulder as I made my way home. On my other hand I my heavy messenger bag now loaded with George and Ringo’s accounting paperwork.

“Sage!” I turned around and stopped dead in my tracks. It took only a moment for a person to tackle me into an aggressive embrace. “Thank you!” Isabel shouted into my ear. “You saved my life!” She exclaimed as I had to pry her arms from around me.

"Not your life, just your job," I clarified in a bored tone.

"Still!" She insisted reaching for my hands.

"Why did you do it?" She asked the million-dollar question, her brown eyes wide.

I shrugged. Maybe it had been Ringo’s expression. Maybe it had been the desperation in the woman’s eyes who knows. I mean I’m not the devil, it wouldn’t have made me a better person.

I simply shrugged and turned away.

"I'm sorry!" Isabel called out as I walked away.

Xxx

"Mum! I'm home!" I called once I arrived home, but surprisingly mother wasn't home. "Odd..."

I made my way to the living room and began to play an old Sinatra record and just momentarily unwind. Throwing the bag with all the paper work to the sofa with an exhausted sigh. You'd think a girl would catch a break on the weekends. I fished out the little paper where Paul had neatly written his phone number and address. “’To the loveliest vision," the other note that had been found alongside the gift was burning in the pages of the diary I kept in my night stand's drawer. I didn't dare ask if he had written that or even what it meant. So I decided to phone him, it wasn't late enough that I would inconvenience him or early enough that he might be out an about. I toyed with the phone cord nervously as it dialed. It was then that a voice much to gruff to belong to the Cute Beatle picked up on the other line. "Hello?" "Hello," I retorted politely. "Hi- Good evening. Is Paul there?" The line went dead with a ring. I looked at the phone confused before once again dialing hoping we had gotten cut off or something, but alas nothing. I mean- why call him? Wouldn't it be easier if I just went over ahead and dropped off the papers? There was no need for chit-chat. Deciding to get over with it, I once again dressed up in my winter gear and decided to make my way over to his place. It was then that the phone rang. It could only be him. Who else? "Yes, Paul?" I picked up on the second ring sounding a little too eager. "Paul?" It was a woman's voice. "Why is Paul phoning you?" the voice asked. "Isabel," I greeted curtly. "Never the mind, Sage, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come over? So that we could review some accounting terms?" I didn't hesitate in hanging up the phone. The nerve.I had already done enough for the woman. xxx The address that he had written wasn't too far away from my own home. Once I arrived, I had to do a double take at the address. Yup, this was it. It wasn't the place where I would image a Beatle lived. It was a simple red brick house with a luscious green garden. Approaching the front door, I rang the doorbell. The door opened and an older gentleman opened it. He visibly cringed when he saw me and with a groaning noise slammed it on my face.

"Hey!" I protested banging on the door. This was the right address, I was certain. And what a rude man!

"I'll tell lol you something girly, you're not the first or the last to come by today, but you really are the ugliest one!" The grouchy man said in a rough voice through the door.

"I'm here to see Paul!" I shouted back ignoring the insult.

"Oh, I know. You're the one that's been ringing incessantly! And don't even get me started-" I could hear him stepping away.

"I work for Brian Epstein!" I shouted. "Paul asked me to come deliver some papers," I explained breathlessly. The older man opened the door wide this time and eyed me curiously with mistrusting eyes. "If you don't believe me, here," I handed him a note. "It's his handwriting." It was.

Moving aside like a troll block an entrance the older man moved and allowed me to come inside the house which smelled like fresh paint. I figured he probably had just moved here. He lead me to the living room and instructed for me to sit before going into the kitchen.

He returned escorting two young girls out of the house.

"Ladies, thank you for cleaning my floor, dishes and shelves. I promise you; I'll ring you when Paul gets here. Buh-bye," he waved as they left.

They both called out a "Thank you Mr. McCartney" and left.

By the resemblance and attitude I could only guess that the man was Paul's father.

"Sorry about that," he began as he clapped his hands off as if dusting them off.

"They are driving me absolutely looney! Ringing all day, breaking into my home. These two offered to clean, figured they might as well make them useful," he chuckled.

I sat uncomfortably in the new living room with my legs shut tightly together and my bag guarded in my arms anxiously.

"Tea and biscuits?" He offered.

This was very awkward. I wasn't sure what to say and Jim McCartney, Paul's father sat across from me eyeing me as if I had two heads.

"You're not like the others," he said wisely as he sipped on some tea. "I know these things," he pointed wisely. "If I may ask- why don't you shriek and sob like the others do with my son? Or lust after him like a rabbit in heat?"

I rudely spluttered some of the tea I had been sipping back in the tea cup I had been drinking from. I put the cup down and cleared my throat.

"Well sir, I'm a professional you see? I work for a Brian Epstein and the rest of the band, that is, including your son. I'm his accountant." I explained.

"A working woman," he nodded impressed. "I was young once as well- so if you would just tell me the real reason," his tone changed to a bored one.

Mr. McCartney really didn't beat around the bush.

"Well," I took in a deep breath and let out an uneasy laugh.

"You said it yourself, I'm the ugliest girl that's come by the house all day long," I shrugged. "And yet- you don't allow that pessimistic opinion to defeat you. You really are different," he sipped some of his tea.

"I'm a realistic person Mr. McCartney, I am well aware that your son or any other Beatle or man would be sent to a mad house if they even considered laying their eyes on me. I know that perhaps beauty isn't my affinity, but I'm pretty brilliant in other areas. Also, at the end of the day they are just humans like you and I,” I offered with a small smile.

He couldn't help but chuckle. "Well best watch out for Paulie, that's never stopped him before," he wiggled his arched eyebrows.

"Dad!" It was Paul. The voice came from upstairs. He came down from the stairs with his hair soaking wet. He was dressed in casual clothes and wearing his house slippers. His face was pink, and he looked terribly embarrassed. Had he been eavesdropping?

"What are you doing you twisted old man?" He protested as he joined them in the living room. He looked around swiftly for the fan girls. "Are they gone?" He asked in a hushed tone.

"Oh, relax son. Yes, they are gone. These girls are starting to come in handy, they're cheaper than a maid!" He said with both his brows raised.

"They steal my underwear and socks dad!" Paul protested.

"You don't even live here!" The other retorted.

"Sorry that you got stuck here with my old man. I hope he didn't bore you to death," Paul apologized. "Bored her? Ms. O'Shea has proven to be one of the most pleasant conversation that I've had in weeks! All of your other girls are all brain dead 'where's Paul?' 'Can I see his pictures?' 'Paulie this, Paulie that, yadda, yadda,'" he rolled his eyes. "Its refreshing to have someone that doesn't want to talk about you all the time!"

Paul ran a hand through his wet hair nervously.

"Yeah, remember that you were just going to bed?" Paul said through gritted teeth.

Mr. McCartney waved him up and made his way upstairs.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. I'll leave you two kids to it."

Paul sighed and shook his head.

"Sorry about him, he gets lonely in the city. More so, now that I don't live with him." He sighed. "Oh, that's fine. My mother is the same," I nodded understanding.

"I'm remodeling my pad so I'm crashing with Old Jim for the time being."

There was an awkward silence. I was unsure of how to proceed. I fidgeted with my thumbs I eyed the door nervously ready to escape. It was simple just drop off the papers and get out.

Here I was. Alone with Paul. His hair was wet and sticking to his forehead. He wore a white t-shirt and a pair of brown pants. Drop the papers and get out.

"Some scotch?" I was caught off guard by Paul preparing himself a drink.

"N-No thanks," I answered warily, "I don't drink," I explained. Get out. The voice inside of my head said to me.

Paul raised his eyebrows surprised. "Try it then, it won't kill ya," he said with a coy smile as he poured her a cold glass old fashioned scotch. It was that same smile, the one that would make girls bend over backwards to do anything for him. It worked wonders. Not wanting to look lame, I thanked him quietly and took the glass in my hands. I swirled the golden drink in my hand inspecting its density and realized that he had put a record on.

The song was more than familiar.

“Y-you like Sinatra?” I asked surprised. What a stupid question. Who doesn't like Sinatra?

“Old Blue Eyes?,” he responded. “I know you do.” There it was again - that damn smile.

Oh, right. He had been in that cave hole that is considered to be my office. I figured he must’ve seen the framed portrait I keep on my desk.

“Right,” She retorted curtly my eyes darted for the door. Out. I really didn’t like the way he was looking at me. Paul approached me and sat in the sofa next to me. His body was pivoted so that he was facing me. His arm was casually arched resting over the sofa’s seat. He took a heavy sip of his drink. I inched away from him as inconspicuously as I possibly could.

Romantic music, alcohol, his body language. My mind began to race, there was no way in hell he had invited me over with the malicious intent to seduce me. Then again there was that note. I looked at him oddly. Paul was called the Cute Beatles by the obsessive groupies that stalked and followed the band around everywhere. With his perfectly arched eyebrows, full lips, petite nose and dangerous bedroom eyes in my eyes he was the most handsome of the Fab Four.

“Try it,” he said leaning over and raising up the glass slightly to my lips. I took a drink from her glass just like he had done and just how I had seen people do in flickers whenever they wanted to appear cool headed.

I felt my throat clamp shut and groaned as the strong liquor burned. I couldn't help it, I began violently coughing.

"Hey easy there, it's not Lemonade," Paul said after a chuckle. "Water?" He offered kindly touching my shoulder. This gesture was enough to send me overdrive.

I managed to nod through coughs as I patted my chest.

This was too much. Too weird. Too awkward. I looked at the door only a couple of steps away. I had delivered the papers. I could make a go for it and just leave.

As soon as he was gone, I swung my coat on and made a go for the door as quickly as I could.

I was about to reach the doorknob-

"Running away?" I could almost hear the smirk on his lips. I had been caught. I felt my face turn scarlet and flush with embarrassment. There was a smug expression on his face he held a glass of water on his other hand.

"It's late, it's getting dark. I best get going," I spoke quickly with a raspy throat.

"Nonsense!" He replied approaching me and handing me the glass of water. His cold hand touched mine as he did. It lingered there for a second, enough to make my heart skip a beat. I must've been imagining thing because the edge of his lip slightly curled into a grin before he turned to reach for his coat from the coat hanger.

"A lady should never walk home at night unescorted," he said picking up a set of car keys. "Come on, I'll drive you home."

"No. It's close by-" I protested but he simply pushed me out the door. He wasn't even wearing shoes! He was on his slippers!

Outside he ducked his damp hair from the November winter. "Paul!" I opposed. "I'll be fine, I swear."

"Inside," The gentleman said as he opened the car door open.

My eyes slightly widened at the gesture. No man before had ever offered to escort me home before, much less had bothered to open the car door for me.

Without an alternative I stepped inside of the silver convertible. I sat inside of his nice car stiffly. It was an Austin Healey 3000, the type of car that I had only seen in James Bond flickers or in toy form much less been inside of. Like the house the convertible also smelled new.

I clenched my shaky hands in an attempt to appear more composed. This was so inappropriate, nothing good would come out of this, I know it. He clearly does not like me; he could not like me. He could not be flirting with me. Not one boy had ever reallyfancied her, and the one that had- well... let's just say it is not a pleasant story.

He got in the drivers seat and turned to smile at me. I turn away hoping he won't realize just how nervous I really am. He set on the ignition and drove on to the address I gave him. Neither of us exchanged a single word during the entire car ride. I was too nervous and well- only God knows what was running through his head. "Music," he said. It was more of a factual statement not an offer as he turned on the radio.

“Yes music!" I retorted louder than intended. Finally, they were outside of my house. The home was your stereotypical middle lower-class British home.

"Thank you very much Paul, goodnight! Ta!" I said hurriedly as I opened the door almost running for her dear life.

"Sage wait!" His hand reached for my arm as he held me in place.

"I'll confess," he began, and I shallow a knot that had formed in my throat.

"I invited you with an ulterior motive." Uh-oh.

I looked at him with both of my eyes wide. For a moment I could've sworn that her heart stopped. It wasn't possible. His grip tightened around the fabric of my coat. He looked at my terrified expression. "I-I actually wanted to…” there was a hint of hesitation on his tone.

I held her breath as he pondered on his words. I wondered just what in the world he could've wanted to do with me.

The music, the lighting, the booze, I prayed it wasn't a some ruse he played on all the new members of Brian Epstein’s team.

xxx

There was an angel standing on Paul’s right shoulder. It reminded him of his mother, may she rest in peace. It reminded Paul that the eyes of a person are the windows to their soul and hers were kind. They were innocent, and vulnerable, pure and hidden away from the word shielded by two framed glass walls.

On his other shoulder however was a horned imp wearing red suit that resembled his best friend, John.

“You dirty dog,” it laughed inside of his head. “Don’t tell me you’re begging to get sappy over the Munter? Ya pansy cakeboy!”

John’s imaginary voice reminded him of the bet he had agreed to be a part of. Maybe he was right, maybe it would be fun. Considering she had almost ran away from him twice now it was definitely going to be a challenge. And the only challenge wouldn’t be getting her to fancy him-

He tried not to stare at her massive eyebrow, her poor skin, her bushy untamed hair and just overall awkwardness.

How was he supposed to even kiss her? Would he have to find a way around it? Turn off the lights? Do it in pitch darkness.

Paul wasn’t a masochist but- now he hadto do it. His hubris was on the line. Besides, he still had time to think just what vile thing he would ask John to do once they got even.

So he pulled a malicious lie out of his ass.

"Sage," he looked down to reach for her hand but she kept them tucked close to her body looking terribly uncomfortable.

"You're-" he ransacked his brain for a compliment.

Paul was a man of words, he had to select his adjectives with a keen eye to detail. He really should've thought this more thoroughly.

Beautiful? Nah. Too much, too fast - besides it would sound like a hollow compliment. Pretty? Too overused.

Suddenly he found himself stuck. This really was going to be harder than he had assumed. It was so easy to tell any woman that they were beautiful. They might be bashful about it, but they would believe anything that came out of his lips. This one- what would he praise?

"Smart," he blurted. "Brilliant!" He said more to himself at the comment. "You're a woman whom I don't have to pray to the Lord to throw some brains down from heaven. You're efficient-"

Her eyes were wide in shock and confusion as he spoke.

"Point is-" he mumbled to himself. How would he go on about this? "I want you-" He paused for a moment. How would he word this? 'Have dinner with me?', 'Come out with me?', 'Come out. We could go dancing have a good time.' He was at loss of words and he looked at her, this time he really looked at her. The innocence that was reflected on her face. He couldn't do this to her. "-be my personal assistant," he finished dully.

She remained mute. This was too weird. "I-I'll pay you handsomely, twice whatever it is that Brian pays you."

It took her a moment to regain her composure. "I-I don't know what to say," she responded flabbergasted. "Paul, I'm flattered, I really am, but I'm looking for something more serious and I'm happy with my current position."

"Which is why I'm paying you more," he pressed.

"I'm sorry, but I can't." She said shaking her head, "I didn't kill myself studying just to end up as- an assistant." She said lowly sounding frustrated. He let go of her arm and she excited the car.

Paul was struck, had she just rejected his offer?

He rolled down the window as she rushed up the stairs. He had to do something, say something.

"This is exactly why I need you!" He shouted after her.

She froze in her steps and turned to face him in the cold night. Hands shoved deep inside of her pockets. She looked at him expecting him to continue. to her surprise he even got off his car and stepped towards her. She looked at his tall frame approaching her. Maybe he had been completely wrong about her.

He guessed there were simply something's that money couldn't buy. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, his brows furrowed. "Thanks for the ride," she mumbled before reaching her door.

"You are one of the few people that see and treat me- actually treat us. As actually human beings." He spewed unsure of where all of this was coming from. "You don't put me or the others in a godly pedestal. You-You respect yourself, which makes you an even more valuable… team asset." He licked his lips, and shifted on his feet uneasily. “Think of it as a steppingstone in your career.” Her eyes lingered on him for a second. There was something about his offer that made her uneasy. Something that didn't sit right with her gut.

"Goodnight Paul.”

xxx

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#the beatles #beatles #fanfic #John lennon #Paul mccartney #George harrison #Beatles fanfic #ringo starr #lennon #mccartney #oc

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nhlarchived · 5 years

Text

NYC ~ Mathew Barzal

Chapter Two

Ch. One ~ Ch. Two ~ Part Three ~ Ch. Four ~ Ch. Five

Word Count: 2,752

Warnings: Mature Language

Wattpad

The next morning I woke up and started getting ready before planning to go see my family next door. I decided to shower in the guest room because I liked their bathroom better than the one in my parents’ house. After getting ready, I left my hair out to air dry, changed my clothes and started walking down the stairs.

Upon entering the kitchen I noticed Mat was sitting at the table reading the daily paper. I stopped in the hallway and began to contemplate whether I wanted to walk past the table to the side door that was closest to my parents' house, or avoid him and walk out the front door.

“Good morning.” I heard Mathew speak from the table. I jumped as I was not expecting him to notice me. I peeked farther around the corner and his sight stayed locked on the newspaper. Not even looking up when he spoke, so then I was left to wonder if he was even talking to me.

“Good shower?” He questioned, peaking an eye over the top of the paper he occupied himself with. Yeah, he was definitely talking to me. My mind began scanning for answers. I didn’t know how to respond, and I was still shocked he was even in the home.

“I️.. uh.. yeah. Yeah, it was nice.” I stuttered. Kicking myself in my mind for being so awkward. Normally, I was very confident and didn’t have problems speaking to people. But for some reason he throws me off. Especially since he’s staying in the house.

He found my stuttering amusing. Giggling after I finished speaking, leaning his head further down to hide his smile behind the paper. “So, what are your plans for today?” He inquired once containing his light laughter. Sparking loads of questions I began to ask myself.

“Why is he asking me that? Do I appear to be doing something? Is he asking me to hang out? Wait, no. He wouldn’t. We just met. Do I tell him I’m hanging out with my parents? Or make up some cool story? I don’t want him to think I’m boring or something. Ugh.” After staring off into space for several seconds too long, I decided the easiest route would be to tell the truth.

“My parents live next door. I’m going to go hang out with them for the day.” I answered. Beginning to walk closer to the side door in hopes of a quick escape from the awkward tension I accidentally created.

“Aww, you’re not going to stay here today? Maybe you should come over later for a game of street hockey?” He proposed placing the paper down onto the table. My heart began to beat so loud that I thought he would be able to see it. So many thoughts started to flow through my mind that I couldn’t even understand myself anymore.

“I️ just figured it would make it an even 2 on 2.” He added. “Plus, the kids said you were pretty good.” He continued, this time leaning back in the chair, crossing his arms. An instigating smirk plastered across his face, making it clear he was trying to compete with me, and boy was it intriguing.

“I️ don’t know. I️ wouldn't want to embarrass you.” I retorted. Finally, the confidence I knew and loved coming back. I crossed my arms over my chest, giving him the exact same smirk he had just given me.

“Well then maybe you’ll just have to play on my team.” He proposed. At this point the organs in my body felt like they were melting. He was so damn good at knowing what to say and I’ve only known him for less than 24 hours. But it was fun to have a little competition around.

“That wouldn’t be fair to the kids.” I acknowledged. Even though I wanted to be on his team more than anything else at the moment, I wanted to make him work for it.

“In that case, we’ll just have to play one on one after dark. That way no one would be around to see you get embarrassed.” He teased, fueling the fire that had started in my stomach.

“Driveway at midnight. I’ll meet you there.” Mat concluded. Picking himself up from the chair and walking out into the other room. Refusing to break eye contact with me until he was behind the wall that covered the hallway.

Once he disappeared around the corner all my senses started coming back to me. I can’t figure out how he makes me feel that way. Almost as if I was floating and the room is spinning around us. This was definitely something I wasn’t used to.

The rest of the day I spent enjoying time with my family. We took a trip into the city to do a little shopping and find something good to eat. However, no matter how much we did that day, Mathew sat in the back of my mind. I wouldn’t say I was thinking about him constantly, but whenever my mind had a break, it would anticipate the date we had semi planned for the night.

Midnight rolled around, and not wanting to seem too thrilled about the meet up, I decided to be ‘fashionably late’. Which, only ended up being about five minutes past midnight due to the anticipation building up inside of me.

Looking out from my parents side door I saw Mat occupying himself already by shooting pucks into the net. It may have been dark out, but I could still notice him in the dim moonlight. Covered by a tan jacket and again, black skinny jeans.

Quietly, I walked out of the house and headed to my parents garage where I had kept some of my old personal sticks. I used to play when I was younger. Always stuck on the all boys team either by myself or with one other girl. I absolutely loved playing but once I started college, I didn’t have time anymore. Either way it earned me enough skill to not embarrass myself tonight.

“You’ve got your own sticks, eh?” Mat questioned as I began walking to where he was standing. He hesitated shooting a ball he had prepared to give me his full attention.

“I️ played a little bit in my days.” I admitted, taking a tennis ball and stickhandling to show off a little bit.

“That’s cute.” Mat said giggling under his breath. Turning his back to me so he could assemble his shot once again. He then hit the crossbar deflecting his shot. That’s what he gets for making fun of me.

“That’s cute.” I imitated before taking a shot of my own, sending it straight through the right corner of the net. He then turned around to face me with an impressed grin across his face.

“So, where are you from?” He questioned, leaning against his stick to watch me. His cheek gently resting on his hands that sat on the top knob. I couldn’t help but smile due to the soft appearance he had. I felt comfortable talking to him, his personality made him inviting and it seems as if all the first impression butterflies had now settled.

“Here. What about you?” I responded, continuing to take shots from the pile of plastic pucks and tennis balls on the concrete.

“Canada.” He answered continuing to admire my company from just a mere foot away. Luckily no lights were on outside, that way he couldn’t see my features. As they were probably equivalent to someone who just found out they had won the lottery.

“I’ve always wanted to go there.” I confessed now focusing only on my stickhandling to avoid possibly staring at him absentmindedly like I did last night.

“I️ can take you one day if you want. I’ll bring you to a game. Take you around the city.” He offered. I paused my actions then stared up at him. Unfortunately, there was a confused demeanor across my face due to his proposal as it wasn’t something I was expecting, since this was the first real conversation we’ve truly had.

“I️.. uh.. I’m sure the kids would love it too. They seem to like hanging out with you.” He attempted to correct himself, making it seem like it wasn’t only for me. I began to snicker under my breath, flattered.

“I️ would love that actually. I️ mean.. we would love that.” I stated with a smirk, which Mat clearly took a liking to. He started smiling from ear to ear, looking towards the ground that way I couldn’t notice his cheeks blushing.

Throughout the night the conversations never stopped. He was very curious to figure out my personality and see the things I liked. Comparing and contrasting to his own personal preferences. There were lots of laughs and smiles being exchanged, making it feel as if this was something out of a fairy tale.

After a while Mat had positioned himself in front of the net to block the shots I was making. Purposely to upset me. So, I kept getting closer to the net that way it'd be harder for him to stop them.

After about three more shots of making it past him and into the goal, he dropped his stick and started walking towards me. He grabbed me from behind and wrapped his arms around my body that way I couldn’t shoot anymore. Both of us began laughing like little preschool children.

“You’re cheating you can’t do this!” I argued in between cackles.

“Goalie interference! No goal!” Mat began to yell back in between his own laughter. Butterflies infested my stomach as I felt his body up against my back with his giggles in my ear. Eventually, I gave up trying to fight him off as it was impossible with the grip he had on me. I allowed him to basically just hug me from behind, enjoying our intimate moment.

His grip eventually loosened releasing me. Still giggling, I turned around with my back now against the side post of the net and Mathew standing in front of me. Once steadying my breathing, I looked up and noticed his eyes reflecting seduction, accompanied by a smirk that made my body feel hot even with how cold it was outside.

He was standing only centimeters away when we found ourselves staring amusedly into each other’s eyes, wondering what was going to happen next. His eyes watched every move my eyes and mouth made. Studying me. Making me want to kiss him desperately, but I refused to make the first move.

He started inching closer making my mind race a million miles a minute. I felt his curled index finger gently lift my chin up towards his while his opposite hand pulled my back into him, causing our stomachs to touch. My eyelids slowly began to shut but before either of our lips made contact we were blinded by two headlights pulling into the driveway. My hands shot up to cover my face and protect my eyes as I couldn’t see anything other than the beaming white orbs. Mathew quickly backed off to watch the lights himself, wondering who was coming home this late at night.

The car pulled up almost as close as it could get to us as we simultaneously observed the vehicle waiting for answers. I heard the engine cut off yet the lights were still too bright to even make out what kind of car it was, no longer who was in it. Soon enough the driver side door opened and shut right before Dennis walked around the front, blocking one of the lights, making it possible to see him.

“You guys are out pretty late huh?” He inquired while his hand was fumbling his keys and sight flicking between Mat and I. My body practically froze. Not only from trying to process almost making out with Mathew, but now from being caught alone with him at 2:30AM.

“Believe it or not, she was showing me some shooting tricks.” Mat spoke attempting to cover the ground with Dennis. Thank god he could speak because I couldn’t even think of a single letter in the alphabet at the moment.

“At 2:30 in the morning?” He continued to press leaving Mat speechless. Damn, now I didn’t have a choice but to say something.

“I️ was with my parents all day, so we didn’t have a chance until after they went to bed because I️ didn't want to neglect them.” I added in hopes of sounding convincing enough to be left alone. Which, it seemed to have worked.

“Understood. Just try to keep it quiet, the kids’ rooms are right above your heads. Also, you should be heading to bed soon Barz. You’ve got practice in seven hours.” Dennis finished before entering the door to his house, the car lights finally shutting off.

Relieved, Mat and I both sighed after he entered. Happy we didn’t have to go through a lecture. Knowing very well he saw what was going on, letting us off the hook, for now.

Ignoring what had happened, I began to retrieve the tennis balls to help clear the driveway for the night while Mat moved the net and our sticks over by their garage. I finished putting the last ball in the bucket and noticed him fiddling with the sticks nervously as I walked up the concrete to place the bucket next to him.

“So, I’ll see you tomorrow?” Mat questioned. Turning his body to face me as I grabbed my stick from the top of the net.

“I’ll be back home and at school tomorrow.” I admitted just above a whisper, beginning to walk towards my parents side door.

“Back home? I️ thought you lived here?” He then questioned apprehensively. Following by my side to make sure I arrived home safely.

“Well, my parents live here..” I said pointing to the house. “I️ live in an apartment in the city.”

“By yourself?” He continued to ask. I laughed at his curiosity while we now stood at the destination with my left hand on the door knob.

“Yeah, by myself. You might have to stop by sometime.” I offered, hitting the side of his arm with my elbow trying to deplete the uncomfortable tension Dennis had created that had clearly made Mat nervous.

Unexpectedly he pulled me into a hug. The aroma of a fresh cologne taking over my senses. I relaxed myself into him as I wrapped my arms around his waist. Resting my head on his chest, allowing my eyes to shut for a moment and enjoy the embrace.

The hug loosened so I dropped my arms down by my side and when to open the door next to us, but before I could turn the knob Mat placed his hands on either of my shoulders, positioning himself to speak into my ear.

“So basically, I'll see you tomorrow.” He whispered, then placed a kiss on my cheek before quickly jogging across both driveways to his own house. Once he got to his door he turned around and waved one last time while we both entered our heated homes. I shook my head and rolled my eyes while a flattered scoff left my lips. My cheeks feeling sore from the amount of smiling I’ve done throughout the night.

After entering the dark kitchen, as I was kicking my shoes off, I noticed my stick was still in my hand and I had forgotten to return it to the garage. Too tired and lazy to go back outside, I placed it in the corner by the door planning to put it away when I leave tomorrow. However, something at the foot of the stick caught my attention. It had distinctive black markings across the tape, which was strange since I had only played with plastic pucks and tennis balls. Curious, I flipped it towards the dim moonlight shining from the window to get a better look. I then noticed Mathew had written his phone number followed by a winky face across the tape on the foot.

A permanent smile plastered onto my face that nothing could prevent. I felt the interior of my body warm up like an oven with excitement. Now knowing 100% that Mat was just as interested in me as I was to him, and I couldn’t wait to see where this was going to go. Especially with how amazing tonight went.

#Mathew Barzal #Mat Barzal #New York Islanders #NHL #Hockey #Imagine #AU #Fan Fic #Fan Fiction #Series

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ununniliad · 5 years

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LNH20 Comics Presents #22: "The Return of Captain Killfile"

She fell

and she fell

and with a rude THUMP! she fell back into the world.

She scrambled to her feet. Disorientation. A sudden confusing sense of place.

Cold, but not the cold of space, a natural, wintery chill. Dark - night. Greenery, trees, bits of snow - nearby, a fence. Quiet here, but the quick rushing-river nose of traffic nearby, the clouds glowing softly. A city. Not a battle.

Last memory. Fighting. People she loved. ...fighting the people she loved. Because... because she had been Hildy, but now she was Captain Killfile, and they were trying to stop her from saving the world...

And then the wind kicked up and a copy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer hit her in the face.

She flailed around, electric crackling coming out of her gauntlets, and eventually managed to rip the paper off her face and examine it. What the-- Cleveland!? What was she doing in the second-most boring city in the nation[*]!?

[* In fact, the 2010 census shows Cleveland as the fourth-most boring city in the United States, with the current frontrunner being West Lafayette, Indiana! - Ed.(UE)]

She stared at the lines of ink, fragments of thought, memory, emotion bouncing into each other, forming new patterns before splitting and recombining. New city transit plan... tax breaks for people... protest against new law... rogue net.heroes... mmm. Something about that last one felt... off...

And only then, in her haze, did she paid attention to the date. February 20th... 2019?

Out of the fog, the memories rose up. The confrontation with her old team, now her enemies - the Saviors of the Net. Activating the great machine that would begin the process of healing. Sig.Lad, her mentor, her hero, the one who held her back and told her no until she had to leave, raising that damn sword, the Sword of .Sig, Excalibur, and pulling them away into a space where time blurred and softened... waking up and feeling the energies draining away, and draining away with them...

It had been twenty years.

Well, shit.

How had it ended? Had her machine worked? Had she taken away the corrupting power of the net.humans - and had humanity managed to heal themselves?

She looked at the crumpled newspaper. Rogue net.heroes... But the printed words swam before her eyes. No. She had to see for herself.

Captain Killfile... no, she told herself. Let's put that name aside. Right now, I am just myself; I am just Brunhilda.

Brunhilda seemed to still be wearing the gaudy gold-and-blue costume, from... before. When she'd taken over the airwaves, when she'd announced her plan to the world, standing in front of the camera and waiting. It'd been a bit spiteful; Sig.Lad had sent it to her a few months before as part of some weird attempt at reconnecting. That guy never knew how to do things in a normal way, just a net.hero way. That was part of...

Mmmm. Her mind was wandering, the fog still curling around it. She turned the hood and cape inside out, exposing the dark blue lining, and pulled the hood down over her face. Much less gaudy, pretty warm, and it'd let her see what 2019 was like without detection. Hopefully.

She slipped into the streets, keeping to the shadows, not hiding herself from passers-by but giving them more than a moment to pay attention to her presence. Subtle, like a ghost. Or like someone who lived in the world of ghosts, fighting them, death to a meaningless half-life...

Like Ghost Exterminator, the mysterious masked enigma of the 1950s. He (people thought it was a he, but nobody knew for sure) wandered thru the streets of San Francisco, stopping to help those in need. He didn't have any net.human powers, just skills, insight, and determination. Nobody knew why the name, either, but the big theory was that he was trying to rid himself of the ghosts who haunted him by helping others.

There had been more Ghost Exterminators in the decades since. It was an identity taken up by those who didn't want to operate under an identity of their own, living ghosts who fought the invisible specters that made society shudder and brought them into the light. Like she had. She'd seen what was wrong with the world that everybody else was too distracted or self-satisfied to realize, and fixed it.

Right?

Suddenly, action - damn, she'd left herself open in her distraction. Some kind of bright light next to her, and a loud voice-- "Greetings, Cleve.LAN.d!"

She rolled to the side and reached for her sword-- and it wasn't there. Falling back on net.hero instincts already, tch.

It was a giant TV, on the side of some kind of sports stadium. On it was a woman, a decade older than her, in a gaudy blue-and-gold mask and hood, with a megalomaniacal expression on her face. "I certainly hope you've missed me! But let me reintroduce myself!" She threw her arms out, flinging her gold-sequined cape to the sides. "I am... CAPTAIN KILLFILE!"

Brunhilda blinked. "...the heck you say," she murmured.

The fake!? took a step back, gesturing grandoisely at an enormous, complicated machine, all neon lights and chrome. "I have rebuilt my patented Kill-O-Ray, and am ready to unleash its awesome force!"

"That's not what it was called," snarled Brunhilda, her back going up. Some kind of awful parody, what was this?

"The fine government of this fair city has an hour to deliver ten million dollars in unmarked bills to the observation deck of the Terminal Tower - or I'll activate my device, and allow the dreaded Killfile to sweep over the land once more!" She pushed her face back into the camera, grinning with devilish glee. "Yes, you don't want that, do you? You may complain about your net.heroes, but ohhhhh, how you hated them going away! Ha ha!"

It felt like Brunhilda had been kicked in the stomach. What. No. Okay. No. Calm down. Fuck. Ugh. No. She pushed the storm of screaming thoughts out of her head and tried to concentrate on the screen.

"That's right!" shouted the masked face. "This is... THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN KILLFILE!"

"ugh shut uuuuup," she muttered, listening. Terminal Tower. Observation deck.

"And in case you doubt me..." The faux Captain stepped to the side, revealing a table with a shiny apple on a plate painted like a bullseye. Brunhilda noticed the glass lenses sliding along the machine's surface, passing past each other, clicking into place. They hummed, and the lights in the room seemed to darken, especially around the apple, which seemed to-- not disappear, nothing as sudden as that, but become less noticeable, more like the background, layer by layer, until it was completely gone.

Damn. That was absolutely real Killfile Energy. Sometime in the last twenty years, someone else had gotten up to her level - insult to injury.

"One hour, ladies, gents and honored guests! The clock starts--" Her hand hovered over a huge digital readout, pushed a big red button on it, and it started counting down. "Now!" The image disappeared, the screen turning an all-over blue with a big 'VIDEO' on it.

Brunhilda breathed in. Captain Killfile breathed out. All right. All right. Calm down. Breathe.

This was why she came out in Cleveland, twenty years later. To be shown this, to... stop this? To... understand? Ugh. But she didn't understand. Not yet. Why didn't... hated? Maybe it was a lie. Maybe it had made life better and this clown was like one of those politicians who talked about how much better things were with the new trade agreement even as it ground people into dust.

Or maybe she'd ground people into dust, thoughtlessly, caring only about herself-- no, calm down Hildy, you're okay, said the voice in her head that sounded just like Sig.Lad and ugh didn't that sting now. But she listened, and it said: See what's going on, take the time to understand, and see if you can help.

Okay.

Her Killfile Gauntlets were on the fritz, and she didn't have much time to tinker, but she knew just how to set up a killfile that would absorb energy weapons and shield her from detection, not to mention keep any externally-imposed killfiles from being placed on her. As for non-energy weapons, well, she'd just have to fall back on her fight training.

Now. Where was the Terminal Tower? Well, when you weren't sure where to find someone to fight, follow the police cars.

It turned out to be only a few minutes' walk. There was a big plaza around it with a bunch of expensive-looking restaurants and stores, now evacuated as the police set up a cordon. She kept back half a block, staying in the shadows to maximize the stealth effect of her killfile. How would she get in? Sure, she wasn't especially visible, but someone with that level of killfile technology would have ways of seeing thru it...

"Hi!"

"GAH!" She leapt in the air, spinning around and landing in a defense position, ready to strike at... a ten-year-old? What? Not only that, but a ten-year-old standing in an alleyway, wearing something that looked like miniaturized night vision goggles, but with googly eyes glued on them. He was looking right at her...

Then she recognized him. This kid wasn't just a kid, he was Kid Enthusiastic, an immortal who was actually older than her. (Not a lot older, but still.) He'd occasionally worked with the Saviors, but had never wanted to join - he had his own stuff going on. But it looked like he had a team now; there were a bunch of figures in colorful spandex behind him in the alley. Looked like teenagers, actually. Kinda familiar, but they must've been born after she disappeared...

"Who are you?" said the Kid. Damn, she was still zoning out. Okay, focus. "I thought I knew all the net.heroes operating in this area!"

"I'm, uh..." Captain Killfile was out, and she sure as heck wasn't going back to Kid Killfile. She flicked a switch on her gauntlet, appearing in the teenagers' vision like a spectre manifesting. "Ghost Exterminator."

"Ohhhhh!" Kid E clapped his hands with his famed energy. "One of them, gotcha gotcha. Well, I'm Kid Enthusiastic, and these are.." He gestured to the teens, who stepped out of the alley and posed! "The Ultimate Saviors!"

"Saviors?" Waaaaait a minute... she squinted. "As in... the Saviors of the Net?" There were five of them, all wearing masks, but their facial structures were clear as daylight, and... oh boy. Oh boy.

"Yeah, that's right! Apparently W.H.A.T.E.V.E.R. wanted to clone them and have their own set of mind-controlled net.heroes! So we all busted out, together!" He spun around and pointed at them. "Ultimate Saviors, roll call!"

"Super Scary Dazzle Bird!" A young man in his late teens stepped out at Kid Enthusiastic's call. His costume was part black and part holographic sparklies, with long wings drooping off of the arms, and held a long fighting staff in a defensive pose. His eyes twitched back and forth, making sure that despite Kid E's loudness, no one was looking towards them. Brunhilda knew from the color choices alone that this must be the clone of Chromium Age Very-Scary-Disturbed-Creature Man.

"Robot Girl!" A girl whose skin glimmered chrome, with cat ears and a feline muzzle, wearing a green belly-shirt and shorts with a bright red belt, gloves and boots. She swept her long silver hair out of her face as it fluttered in the cold February wind and gave Brunhilda a level gaze, sizing her up. The outfit was terrible for this weather, but it didn't matter - this was the clone of MechaKat, who could nanobiologically turn flesh to titanium alloy. And if they had her, they probably also had...

"Action Lad!" A boy in a red wraparound jacket with silver trim and silver pants and wearing a transparent red visor, with a friendly but focused expression, and his hand on a sword hilt at his belt. Yep, that was him but younger - Sig.Lad, her old mentor, her new-old foe. She kept her face steady as the feelings whirled. Could this night get any more tuned to probe her insecurities?

"Kid Kindle!" This one was even younger - thirteen, maybe fourteen, with red hair that flickered with little tongues of fire as she watched, wearing a white robe with flames flickering along the bottom and a long scarf around his mouth. His eyes were excited, taking in the new visitor, and it was hard to keep her face steady, because boy did she ever know those eyes and that fire, boy did she know that boy - Flamebroiled Lad, avatar of the cosmic entity of intense emotion, the Flamebroiled Force. Her nemesis, her archrival, that stupid jerk who kept hogging the other Nintendo controller. Her brrrrr... o. Her bro.

And with a sudden shuddering shock that made the February evening feel balmy by comparison, she realized who the last clone would be--

"Kid Killswitch!" And there she came, in shining white armor with a bright red "power off" symbol on the chest, that familiar face, those familiar eyes, intelligent and curious and driven and broken, no, not that, said the voice in her head, but eyes that had known both pain and joy, like and unlike her own - the clone of Captain Killfile.

Brunhilda tried to release the churning whirlwind of emotions into some form that could be understood by men, but all that came out of her mouth was a murmured "...I'm too young to be my own mom..."

"...a?" Kid Enthusiastic tilted his head to the side, looking up at her curiously.

She shook her head, took a deep breath, and put away every feeling she didn't have time for right now. An incredibly useful skill from the life-or-death battle days. "That is, uh... Saviors, huh? So how are they ultimate?"

"Because they're the best and I love them!" Kid Enthusiastic spun around and posed, holding his arms wide as he showed off his team.

"Right yeah." Mecha-- er, Robot Girl stepped forward. "And apparently the lady what messed up the original Saviors is back and serious, so it's our job to stop her since they can't. Got a problem with that?"

Brunhilda couldn't help but smile. Well, well, the kids are all right. "Nope. Was just thinking the same thing."

"I don't know if I'd say it's our job," said Action Lad, stepping forward non-confrontationally into Robot Girl's confrontation space, "that seems to be basic survival."

Kid E nodded! "We've been laying low while we try'n contact the LNH. It's hard - W.H.A.T.E.V.E.R. has facial recognition technology they use on all the security cam footage they can grab, and they can grab nearly all of it. So we've been keeping under wraps."

"But we still have to get out there and save people!" Kid Kindle's hair burst briefly into full flame, and he grinned in enthusiasm. Great, another one taking after his mentor. "We can't just stay in a safehouse and send emails!"

"So we wear facial-recognition-defeating face paint when we're undercover, and go on missions without it, since it's going to be obvious either way that the team of five teenage net.heroes that appeared out of nowhere are the same five teenage net.humans that disappeared from not-so-protective custody." Super Scary Dazzle Bird (what a name!) looked off towards the Terminal Tower. "Speaking of which, if you're coming with us, we'd better get going. The clock is still ticking."

The LNH must be the Something Net.Heroes, and Whatever... Net.villans? Government agency? Something else? Bad guys, or so Kid Enthusiastic thought, and she had to admit, cloning her old team in order to have some kind of controlled force didn't seem like an especially ethical thing. Had they taken over during the Killfile, when there weren't any net.heroes to stop them?

Brunhilda released her anxious feelings again, though this time it was harder. "Right. Time to team up and beat the bad guy." Just like the old days, only now, the bad guy was her...

No, the bad guy was a cheap copy who had no idea what she'd actually been trying to do. And she could at least take responsibility for her imitators, and deal with whatever else she'd unleashed later.

Heh. W.H.A.T.E.V.E.R. else.

Kid Killswitch hadn't said anything. She was still looking at Brunhilda. But she nodded and followed along with everyone else.

Brunhilda took a battery from Super Scary Dazzle Bird and wired it into her gauntlets, extending the killfile to cover all of them. They snuck past the cops, Robot Girl and Action Lad keeping their eyes on the perimeter in case someone caught a glimpse.

There were a couple of muscly dudes in gold-and-blue suits standing next to the entrance. Kid Kindle reached out, a lance of emotional fire shooting out and hitting one of them in the back; nostalgia and guilt flared in Brunhilda's chest at the display of power.

The goon straightened up from his slumped position and pushed the other one roughly. "Hey, wake up! I don't wanna lose my paycheck because of you!"

Another blast of energizing anger, and the other goon pushed back. "Shut up! You're the one who said this was gonna be an easy job, and now there's ten thousand cops out there and we're probably gonna be left holding the bag!"

"You shut up! God, I should never have dated you!" The one goon slapped the other goon, and the other goon slapped back, and they grabbed each other and started rolling on the ground, passionately making out, and Brunhilda and the Ultimate Saviors snuck inside.

Down a small, lightless corridor, and down to the elevator. Robot Girl leaned in, removing the panel and sticking her fingers in among the wires. She stretched out her hand and a screen appeared showing datastreams zipping back and forth; Kid Killswitch and Super Scary Dazzle Bird leaned in to analyze it. Action Lad and Kid Kindle spread out, keeping watch.

Kid E bounced in place, watching his charges figure out the puzzle. Brunhilda leaned back on the wall next to him, watching them as well, especially the one who was-and-wasn't her. "They have a heck of a lot of personality, for people who came out of a vat not long ago."

Kid E nodded enthusiastically! "They're not just regular clones, they're biotropic duplicates! W.H.A.T.E.V.E.R. stole the device that Sig.Lad used to copy people's power signatures and used it to template them as they were growing? They even lured a Salamander[*] in to possess Kid Kindle! But we stole the device back and now Action Lad's using it!"

[* Also known as Ifrits, Salamanders are the fiery elemental offspring of the Flamebroiled Force which possessed and empowered Flamebroiled Lad! - Ed.(UE)]

"Ahhh." Brunhilda ran the tip of her tongue over her lip. "So... their personalities are clones too?"

"Sort of." Kid E wiggled his hand. "They're definitely their own people, tho - I knew the originals, and these guys aren't making the same choices they would've."

"Mmmm..." Brunhilda breathed in deep, let it out. "That's good, that's real good..."

"All right." Super Scary Dazzle Bird stood up and turned to them, all business. (God, that name. Not that it was any sillier than Chromium Age Very-Scary-Disturbed-Creature Man.) "We've hacked the elevator so that it'll take us to the top without triggering alarm system notifications. But to do that, it has to go slow - it'll take us fifteen minutes to get up there."

"We only have, like, twenty minutes left before the deadline!" Kid Kindle brought his fists against his chest, eyes wide in passion and fear. "What if she actually brings back the Killfile!?"

"She won't." Brunhilda straightened up, squaring her shoulders. "As you can probably tell, I have, uh, some experience with killfile tech." She gestured at the ceiling. "That machine she's got is advanced, but there's no way it could project a subject-based killfile broad enough to cover Ohio, let alone the world." You'd need a much bigger power source, and the one she'd used... wasn't available. As far as she knew.

"Could still do some damage, though," remarked Kid Killswitch, looking up at her.

Aw, baby's first words... Brunhilda regretted the sarcastic thought immediately. "Oh yeah, and how. Killfiles can mess with all sorts of important shit. She could take Cleveland down hard, and her next blackmail scheme would seem all the more real."

"So we'd better hurry." MechaKat closed her hand, the screen disappeared, and the door of the elevator opened. They all shuffled in, and silently, it began to rise. In the background, a jazzy instrumental version of "Mad World" started playing.

"Right," said Action Lad. "Ultimate Saviors... waiting mode!!"

Brunhilda watched as all five of them sat down and immediately pulled Magic: The Gathering decks out of somewhere in their costumes, shuffling up with practiced speed. "Turn one, mountain, lighting bolt Action Lad." "Why me!?" "Because we don't have time for one of your weird blue shapeshifter decks!" "Awww..."

Kid Enthusiastic leaned back against the wall next to her. "So~"

"...so?"

"Feels like you've got some more questions in you! And we've got time."

The side of Brunhilda's mouth turned down at his easy poke at her boundaries... but it wasn't like she didn't have a thousand and one questions, bubbling and burning in her belly, about this new world she'd found herself one of the creators of. And the most burning of them all... "Well... you were around back then, right? What was the Killfile like?"

"Oh man. It mega sucked," Kid Enthusiastic chirped. "I mean, life was kind of normal, but the kind of normal where you're working a crappy job and it's gray and depressing outside, you know?"

"...oh." It felt like cold water had been thrown in her face. The boxes that she'd put her feelings in earlier burst open, flooding her system with complicated griefs.

"Like," continued Kid E, not noticing her face's fall, "there were so many bad guys and even though they couldn't build Kill-O-Rays or send robot goons at you, they could still just keep making things worse all the time." He hummed, looking off into the distance in appreciation. "Even though things really suck right now, people are really fighting, too. Back then, it seemed like hardly any of us could fight - or could even see there was anything worth fighting!"

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. That was... that was...

Brunhilda Ampulle had been just another kid kicking around the foster care system, just kind of existing, and then she looked up and someone had reached out a hand and she'd taken it. And she'd become a net.hero because that hand had belonged to a net hero.

But that was only why she'd started doing it. She'd kept doing it because she could just reach out and help people, right in front of her. And she'd done that for a while and she wasn't just existing, she was living, and she was... getting better, most days.

And eventually she'd gotten better enough to where she could lift her head up, and look out at the world... and see that, actually, there were a lot more awful things going on out there, outside her city and her team, than she had realized. Things she couldn't just reach out and affect. Things none of the net.heroes seemed to be able to affect, even the stupidly powerful ones who Kept Watch Over The World. But those net.heroes kept going, kept getting into big splashy fights over things that seemed so small, and those faraway troubles just kept getting better, just kept getting closer. And then...

Look, people died all the time, she knew that, you fought guys with guns and that happened. But this hadn't been in a fight, and it hadn't been someone who signed up for it, and... it was so unnecessary, so meaningless, and Alice wasn't even... She was nice and kind and good and people like that weren't even supposed to...

Well. So she left. She left, and one of her little theoretical ideas turned into a big not-so-theoretical idea, and... and she became one of those troubles, and...

"It wasn't all bad, tho."

"--oh!?" Brunhilda jerked out of her reverie, hardly even caring that the Ultimate Saviors had all looked up at her half-squeaked exclamation. She settled back, and they returned to their game.

"Yeah, like..." Kid Enthusiastic rubbed his chin, teasing out a complex emotion. "I feel like... After the Killfile, people appreciated us more. No, like, not just us, the whole... the whole idea." He put his hands out, squeezing something invisible. "Even when the government was trying to control us and there were a lot of people pushing against us, there were so many people who, it seemed like... had woken up after decades, maybe their whole lives, and realized that actually fighting evil is good?"

"I..." She closed her mouth, a little puff of breath escaping out her nose. That answer was... frustrating. Not exactly the positive impact she'd wanted from her efforts - "people suffered so much that they realized they had to give a shit".

...on the other hand... maybe that was the best outcome she could've hoped for...

She rested her head against the wall of the elevator and listened to the soft rumbling as it moved. Even before Alice... did it, Brunhilda had realized that there was something wrong with the world. A huge, low-level grossness, an apathy, spreading over it. She remembered seeing cartoons about Saving the Planet, and thinking they were lame, and then realizing that no, this was a real problem that kept getting worse as people kept laughing at it. She heard how stupid that woman who spilled coffee on herself was, and came to understand that the "joke" was that someone would want to get money and apology from a trillion-dollar corporation that just kept growing and growing and taking and taking, and how foolish and lazy that was. She saw that bombs were being lobbed every day straight into schools full of little kids who weren't white and weren't Christian and the generals shrugged and said "oops, accident" and it just kept going on in the background and everyone was grumbling about it but no one was shouting, no one really and truly cared and...

And it had to be someone's fault. It hadn't always been like this, someone had caused this, but who was powerful enough to change the entire world like that?

And she looked around herself and realized: It was us. The net.heroes, the net.villains. They were powerful and everyone looked up to them, the celebrities and heroes of the world.

And the more she looked for it, the more she saw it. Their, our, weird self-obsession, our attachment to their own battles, and especially, the way that, whenever we tried to confront wars and environmental damage and real suffering, it never produced a solution that stuck. Even the Saviors, even Sig.Lad, only ever put band-aids on the problems.

And then... Look, sometimes you stretched out your hand to someone and they were in too bad of a place to take it. She knew that, she'd always known that, but when... When you got someone out of a burning building, especially when you sat and talked with them, and they turned out to be really cool, and nice, and maybe were going to join your game group, and said "I'll be okay", they weren't... Alice wasn't just supposed to... if you saved their life they didn't have the right to...

With effort she pulled herself out of that loop and glanced at Kid Enthusiastic. He gave her a cheery smile, then turned away, seeming to sense that she was done talking for now. She wouldn't have chalked him up for that kind of social awareness, but it was already clear he had a lot going on under the facade...

The music kept playing, a weird, jazzy loop, and as she watched the teen she had once been play, she slipped back into her memories...

So she'd taken a leave of absence from the Saviors.

...so she'd had an enormous screaming crying argument with the Saviors and left. And after she'd parked herself in a cheap hotel and cried everything out, she had made some plans.

She'd used the Saviors' wages she'd saved up and the modest royalties from her patents to buy a workshop in Clearwater Hill, one of Net.ropolis's poorest neighborhoods. And she set about working in the solution. The Killfile Device.

She'd been thinking of it as something she could present to the smart, reasonable heroes, talk it over and use it as a tool to scrape the worst bits out of net.humanity before it was too late. A decision she wouldn't have to make alone.

But... a few months in, people had noticed she wasn't with the Saviors anymore. Action Bimonthly, a mid-level magazine about net.hero goings-on, contacted her for an interview. And she was so excited, she could tell people - no, not all the details, but what she'd noticed, her goals, and get the message out, and there would be like-minded people who would come to her and they could work together...

And the interview came out and... nobody seemed to notice? Nobody came out of the woodwork to join in her cause? She didn't hear anything?

No, it had been worse than that, because she had certainly heard things when she read the letters to the editor in Action. How people like her were making a fuss, distracting from the real issues, making the people who were actually trying to fix things look bad.

So she didn't take any more interviews after that. She just worked. She had already started and she couldn't stop now and she didn't think about what would happen when she was done.

But there was one thing she couldn't figure out, one thing she'd been hoping to get help with from somebody - a power source.

And a little voice was whispering in her head. Quietly at first, and she pushed it away and kept working, but louder and louder as she went deeper and deeper into single-minded focus. The net.heroes caused this problem. The net.heroes had the power.

Killfile Energy filtered, separated. She could separate the power from those who had it, use their own wasted might that had tried and failed so many times to save the world, to finally save it once and for all.

She built a power-channeling device. Just to test the idea. And if she found someone who wanted to help and had the power she could use it for that, right?

And the day came when every part of the device was done and there weren't any more tweaks left to make, and there weren't any more tests to be run, and she had to stop and face the prospect of actually using it.

By this time, the obsessive thoughts were a constant background pounding. She had to show them. She had to stop them. Before it was too late. It was almost too late. Something awful was going to rush up at any second, some net.hero with too much power was going to make a mistake, and smash the world flat, and it would be her fault. But it was okay. She had the machine, and she could use it and fix things, save the world...

And she knew how she could get the power.

She knew how to bring net.heroes running. Net.heroes with the power to feel her machine. And part of her knew just which heroes it would end up being. Part of her begged her not to. She broke down into crying fits, finally telling herself that she would just talk to them first, that they'd have to hear her out when she had this power at her back.

She cleaned herself up. She put on that costume. She activated her stealth killfiles. She walked straight into the big national news studio with no one seeing, put every living soul who could stop her in a half-hour killfile bubble, put the cameras on her and sent out her message.

This time she wasn't able to hold it back like she did in the interview. She told the world what was wrong with it and why; how the net.heroes had gone too far, and not knowing or understanding, had betrayed the rest of humanity. She announced her plan to clear them away and let the world heal. And she told them where to find her. Then she turned her killfiles back on and walked away.

And of course when she got to the workshop the Saviors were there already and of course they would have seen her coming in and of course there was no time to talk, right, it wasn't that she was striking the first blow because she knew in her heart that if she said what she meant she would be rejected again, of course not of course not

Even though Sig.Lad was already trying to reach out as she pushed them back with a killfile shell, even though Lurking Girl broke her solitude to ask why, even though she could see the bitter sadness in MechaKat's eyes

And the only one strong enough to break thru her shells burst in, as she knew he would, knocking her back against the machine, Felix, her stupid little brother fighting her again, she'd never told him she thought of him like that, he was yelling at her about how she was betraying them all, and she yelled at him about how he didn't understand because he only cared about fake shit like anime and being a hero

And she pulled the lever

And the killfile activated, splitting him in two, Felix Landers and the Flamebroiled Force, never to be reunited, discarding the one and sending the other into the machine, straight thru her

All the rage, all the fear, all the resentment, all the secret impossible buried hope, channeled straight thru her body and mind and into her machine and she felt it unfold, the dampening blanket enfolding the world

And in the distance, a glint of metal, Sig.Lad raised his sword, and somehow she could see his eyes, great and sad and knowing it was over, and summoning his own death, because the wielder of Excalibur could only have one end, opening the gate to the fairy world to sleep forever, and time slowing down and slipping away

and she'd been right some net.hero with too much power made a mistake and smashed the world flat and it was her that's what she was that's what she'd done it was her fault she wasn't a hero she'd never been a hero that's why Captain Killfile was the worst net.villain ever

"Hey... are you okay?"

Brunhilda jerked back to reality. Without realizing it, she'd slumped to the ground, legs folded up against her. Kid Enthusiastic and the Ultimate Saviors were gathered around her, looking down with concern and/or worry. Her head and face were tingling, and she reached up with a shaking hand to touch her face... yes, it was covered in tears.

"I..." She swallowed thickly, trying to find words, but all that came to mind was... the Killfile wasn't set with an ending date. It could have lasted for centuries. Somehow, the Saviors had stopped that but... it could have been so much worse and it was all her fault...

Wait, something was wrong, other than everything...

"The music stopped," she said.

Everyone's head turned. With a click, the doors began to open...

Kid Killswitch grabbed Brunhilda's wrist, grabbed the loose wire and touched it to the battery. The stealth killfile spread out to cover them.

The doors slid open. The guards stationed on either side of the elevator peered inside. Everyone held their breath...

The guards looked at each other, shrugged, and settled back in place. The door slowly closed. Everyone breathed out.

Robot Girl leaned in and slapped her hand on the button panel. "Keeping the door closed, keeping us in place."

"Right. Everybody, put your fingers in your ears and go la-la-la," said Kid Killswitch.

"...why!?" said Super Scary Dazzle Bird, throwing his hands in the air. "This isn't the kind of--"

"Just do it, nerd!" Kid Killswitch rolled her eyes.

Kid Kindle turned. "Kid E, what do you--"

"La la la la-- were we not supposed to yet?"

Super Scary Dazzle Bird sighed. "Okay, okay, fine... la la la la..."

"I gotta keep my hand here," said Robot Girl, "but I'll turn off my audio inputs, okay?"

"Sure yeah whatever." Kid Killswitch waited until everyone was la-la-la-ing, and turned to Brunhilda. "Okay. Get up, Captain Killfile."

"I..." She took in a shuddering breath, let it out. Too late to deny it and she didn't have the composure anyway. She didn't even feel as shocked as she should. "How?"

Kid Killswitch rolled her eyes again. "We know who we're supposed to be. You think I don't know that face from splashing cold water on it at three in the morning, wondering when I would start feeling the urge to Go Bad?"

"...fuck..." The guilt stabbed right back into her brain. "sorry."

"Look--" Kid Killswitch shook her head and made a pushing-it-away motion. "Don't worry about it. I don't think there's anybody who didn't get their parents' anxieties. Maybe Kid E. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to say and we don't have much time." She ran her hand thru her hair, looking off to the side. "I read that interview. I wanted to know who you were and why you did it and I dug that up and... it made sense."

Brunhilda blinked, a bit of the haze of grief and guilt lifting, replaced by intrigued confusion. "...seriously?" She actually found a copy after twenty years? How-- wait, it made sense?

"Yeah. Like, I dunno if I agree with you twenty years on, but like, you were clearly not crazy, you clearly had a good goal in mind, you were clearly tryin'a help." She grinned that same always-a-bit-smug grin. "After I read it I didn't have quite as many nightmares."

"...wow." The huge weight hanging on Brunhilda's nerves and bones started to rise off a bit. "Y'know, you're the first one who's ever said that?"

"Not surprised. Controversial shit, and you were shooting it into the void. You didn't have anybody to talk over ideas with, did ya?"

"I mean..." She sighed. "The Saviors, but..."

"Yeah. They didn't get it." She looked over her shoulder, at everyone going 'la la la'. "It's different with these nerds. They support my stupid ideas, even if they give me shit for them. And I support theirs, even if they're morons half the time."

"Yeah..." Brunhilda was... jealous and happy at the same time. Today was just a smorgasbord of new emotions, huh. "You don't have to be like me."

"Hey, look." Kid Killswitch stuck her finger in Brunhilda's face. Jeez, she couldn't have been this rude, right? "My point is? I want to be like you."

"...kid." Brunhilda squinted in disbelief. "Thanks for being nice to the crazy lady, but. I just broke down crying because I fucked up the world so bad."

"EXACTLY, crazy lady!" Kid Killswitch gesticulated passionately. "You fucked up and you know it and now you're gonna try and fix it, right?"

"..." Flashes of what she'd done - the blanket, formed from her own resentment and pain wrapping around the world. "I don't think I can..." But under that pain... that purpose. To be the hand that reached out. "But... fuck it. Whatever I can do, I'll do." She breathed out, and a little more of that awful weight floated away. "That's who I am now. Someone who makes up for the Killfile."

"Right." Kid Killswitch nodded firmly. "That's who I want to be. Someone who makes mistakes and makes up for it and keeps going." She looked Brunhilda in the eye. "A hero."

Brunhilda sucked in her breath. "Damn. How are you this smart when you just came out of a tube?"

Kid Killswitch giggled, with that bit of familiar bubbly snottiness. She'd missed feeling that way. "I got it from you, bozo. I literally have your brain."

"Right." Brunhilda shook herself out, ran her hands thru her hair. "Well... thanks."

Kid Killswitch snerked. "Don't thank me, I'm being selfish. The others get to be clones of heroes, why shouldn't I?" She reached out a hand. "C'mon. Get up... Ghost Exterminator."

Brunhilda grinned and took the hand, pulling herself up. She still didn't feel like a good person, exactly. But hell. She didn't have to be, to be a hero.

Kid Killswitch tapped Kid E on the shoulder, and they got the others to stop la-la-la-ing while Brunhilda smoothed herself out. Super Scary Dazzle Bird fluffed out his cape irritably. "So what was that about?"

"Simple. Remember when Kid E told us about secret weaknesses, like Captain Minority being vulnerable to artificial vanilla flavor?" Kid Killswitch gestured to Brunhilda. "Well, Ghosty here just got hit with her secret weakness, and I figured out what it was and helped her out."

"'Cause you're so smart," grinned Kid Kindle, and held out his fist.

"'Cause I'm so smart!" grinned Kid Killswitch, and bumped it.

"And you didn't wanna expose the secret to everybody!" Kid Enthusiastic pumped his fists. "Good job!"

"Yeah, nice, there's problems," said Robot Girl, hand still on the panel. "The mayor gave in and there's a chopper that's gonna set down on the roof in like two minutes with the money."

"I mean, better for her to get away with the money than for people to get hurt," said Action Lad.

"Yeah," said Brunhilda, cracking her knuckles. "But even better to kick her ass."

"Just tell me when," said Robot Girl.

"Everybody!" called out Kid Enthusiastic gleefully, even though they were all literally right there. "Cool team pose!"

"Come on," groused Kid Killswitch, but she was grinning. She and Kid Kindle lined up on one side of Kid Enthusiastic, Super Scary Dazzle Bird and Action Lad on the other, forming a V. Brunhilda got over on the left side of the door, mirroring Robot Girl on the left. All seven of them got into action stances, and Robot Girl took her hand off the door.

With a ding, the door opened. One of the goons was kneeling down, whistling, examining the mechanism. She looked up, still whistling...

And Robot Girl's metal fist plowed into her chin, knocking her back and away.

The other goon straightened up, going for the ray gun at her side. "Ey, it's some kinda ghost!"

"More like a Ghost Exterminator!" Brunhilda's gauntleted knuckles impacted the goon's stomach. The banter was comforting.

"Oofda!" She went down too, and Super Scary Dazzle Bird and Kid Killswitch grabbed the dropped ray guns. The seven net.heroes ran down the hall and Action Lad kicked the door in.

The fake Captain Killfile was gloating at the cameras, as her goons moved her machine onto a dolly. "Thank you for your service, Cleveland! You've got a lovely city here - hope it stays that way, haha!"

Kid Killswitch lifted the ray gun she'd grabbed, aimed, fired it at the impostor... only for the beam to fade into nothing before it hit her!

"Shit!" said Brunhilda. "She's got a personal defense killfile!"

"Ha-hah!" the impostor crowed, turning to face them, pumping her fist in glee. "We have guests! Blacklisters, activate the Killfile Killfile!"

One of the goons hit a switch on the big machine, and Brunhilda felt a soft wave of dampening energy roll over the room - dropping the Killfile that kept them hidden.

"Looks like we're doing this the hard way, guys!" Kid Enthusiastic leapt into the fray, and the team followed in his wake of morale.

She turned to the camera and gave it a wink. "Now the whole city will see the true might of the legendary-- Captain Killfile!!"

Of course she had to keep saying that, grumbled Brunhilda. And now "killfile" didn't sound like a word anymore.

Robot Girl lashed out with metal claws, slicing ray guns in two. "You have a team name for your minions? That's way too retro, lady."

"I dunno, though." Action Lad took the hilt from the scabbard he wore, and pulled out an enormous pen with a sword-like hilt and a glowing blue tip. He inscribed a name in the air, writing "Linguini Lass" with liquid light, in loopy, flowing cursive. "I'd say it's so retro it's cool again." He pulled the pen away, and the looping script flowed into his body, outlining him in neon blue. His limbs stretched out, noodle-like, to entangle the goons.

Kid Kindle shot empowering energy into the bodies of his teammates. "Yeah! I'm glad we got a net.villain with some style!"

Robot Girl knocked two goons' heads together and sighed. "Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say."

Brunhilda scooted sideways in the fray. "Hey," she murmured to Kid Killswitch, "I got an idea."

"I'm listening..."

Super Scary Dazzle Bird was attempting more shots at the impostor, reasoning that if the Killfile Killfile had killfiled their killfile, then her own killfile must also be killfiled. (And now "killfile" *really* didn't look like a word anymore.) Unfortunately, said impostor had made it over to the Kill-O-Ray, which seemed to be protected by a non-killfile-based forcefield, and was flipping switches and cackling.

Brunhilda stepped directly in front of the cameras. She summoned all the performative net.hero drama she was capable of, and pointed dramatically at the impostor with her right hand, bare now, her index finger aligned perfectly with her target. "Stop right there! I know you're not the real Captain Killfile!"

The impostor's body stiffened, and she spun around, her manic grin a bit stiffer and less real than it had been a moment ago. "Hah!" She straightened, tossing her arm so that her sparkly cape billowed dramatically. "And why would you make such a foolish proclamation? Some kind of net.hero trickery?"

"No." The heavy weight of grief and guilt was laying against Brunhilda's chest. But she knew, now. She'd let guilt fester in her, guilt over not being the one to fix the world all by herself, and it had lead to a lot of terrible things. You were supposed to share the weight of the world, because it belonged to everybody; you weren't supposed to hold it up alone until it crushed you and everybody else in the process. She didn't need to be the one to solve everything. She just needed to let out the knowledge, the feelings, she was holding inside - spread them to the world, as far as she could, and let everyone know the truth.

"It's because..." Brunhilda pulled down her hood, and looked up at the impostor. "Because my name is Brunhilda Ampulle. And I..." She looked directly into the camera. "I was Captain Killfile."

Everything was quiet for a moment.

"...wait, what!?" shouted Kid Kindle, before dodging yet another kick by a Blacklister.

"You..." the impostor's eyes narrowed. She ripped the gaudy cape and hood off, tossing it on the floor. From her belt she pulled a metal tube and hit a button on it, and out popped a blade of searing gray-white nothingness that hurt the eyes to look at - coherent Killfile Energy. "It's YOUR FAULT!"

Action Lad undropped his jaw. "G-- C-- Ghost Exterminator, catch!" He tossed his pen-sword thru the air.

Brunhilda caught it as it came down, just in time to block the impostor's blade. "Yeah, it was. All my fault." She danced back, parried, thrusted. "What's your story?"

"Jessica Blackstone, heiress to the scientific traditions of Patricia Blackstone!" Jessica dodged the thrust, going in with big, wild slashes - not as wild as they seemed, though, and Brunhilda had to twist and counter with expert timing. "I was eleven when the Killfile went up! My mother had been an expert in the field of killfile weapons research! Courted by governments, showered in grant money, treated like a queen! And I, her princess! We had money and wealth! And then it all went away!"

"Gotcha. This is a revenge story." Brunhilda's attention was focused. She didn't think about the plan going off in the background, just on the woman in front of her. Keep her talking. Keep her fighting. "So what happened?"

"Hah, as if you didn't know!" The two blades, energy and narrative, locked against each other, and the two fighters were face to face. Jessica shouted in Brunhilda's face, little flecks of spittle flying - ew. "With the great Killfile up, killfile technology lost much of its power, for it's difficult to put a killfile over a killfile! My mother knew that problem could be cracked, but the powers that were did not care! We lost our prestige, our wealth! I had to go to public school!"

"...right. And then?" Brunhilda pushed back and fell into a defensive position, her back to the machine. She's ranting now, let it happen, no matter how dumb it is.

"And then the Killfile fell, and I dedicated my life to cracking the problem! I became the world's preeminent specialist in Killfile Energy! And I swore I would use the position to take back the wealth and power that you had denied me!" She was far too angry at Brunhilda to attack her now, glaring, yelling, wanting her to hear every word. "I'm greater than you ever were! Stronger! Smarter!"

Kid Killswitch stepped forward, on Brunhilda's left. "Hey, bitch," she called to what's-her-name. "If you're so smart, do you know what happens when you bring together two rapidly fluctuating opposite-polarity killfiles?"

"...yeah," said Jessica, looking at Kid Killswitch like she was an idiot for asking. "You create a standing watchlist wave that destroys... destroys any killfiles--"

She jumped towards them but it was too late. Kid Killswitch lifted the right-hand gauntlet that Brunhilda had given her, the one she'd spent the fight rewiring to the opposite polarity and setting to fluctuate. Brunhilda lifted her left-hand gauntlet, still radiating Killfile Energy, and slammed them together.

A sphere of un-energy burst from the point of contact, knocking them apart, knocking back the impostor, knocking down the Blacklisters and the Ultimate Saviors. The room shone, dazzling and bright, everything standing out against everything else. The Kill-O-Ray sparked and smoked, and with a pop! an apple reappeared.

Everything was quiet for a few moments. Then Kid Killswitch pulled herself up in front of the cameras. "Hey, folks... hope you enjoyed. City is safe, Captain Killfile is no more, and..." She thumped her chest. "You can call me Captain Killfile now." She clicked off the camera and sighed. "That feels good."

Kid Enthusiastic hopped up next, running across the room. "OMG good job!" He pulled out a glob of green goo and used it to stick Jessica's hands together and stick her to a pillar.

"...hey..." Jessica muttered, woozily.

He tossed another glob of goo between his hands, watching Brunhilda as she pulled herself up. "Don't suppose I need to stick you in place for the cops too~"

Brunhilda shook her head. "Think you probably guessed that I'm not gonna be fighting heroes anytime soon."

He giggled, but his eyes were a bit more serious, looking her up and down. "Yeah... I don't think you are." He put the goo away. "But what are you gonna be doing?"

"Better question, what are we gonna be doing," said Super Scary Dazzle Bird, dusting off his cape. "What happened to keeping a low profile?"

"That's net.heroing," said Action Lad. "This was gonna be big one way or another. Can I have that back?" He nodded to the pen-sword.

"Oh, sure." Brunhilda handed it back.

"Wait wait wait wait wait," said Kid Kindle, popping up. "Are we just gonna ignore that she just confessed to being Captain Killfile?" He turned to Kid Kill-- nope, she was Captain Killfile now. "Why do you want the name?"

Captain Killfille grinned. "Right of conquest. Claiming my heritage. And maybe I just wanna shock the norms."

Brunhilda grinned. "Hey, I'm not using it."

Action Lad grinned. "I guess this really was... the return of Captain Killfile."

Robot Girl covered her face. "Why."

Action Lad shrugged exaggeratedly~ "I've decided to lean into dad jokes."

"Seriously, tho," said Kid Enthusiastic, bouncing in place. "What's your plans? You're pretty clearly messed up, twenty years out of time by the look of it-- you gotta tell me how that happened-- and you probably don't have anywhere to go."

Brunhilda rubbed her face. "Yeah, you're right. And I gotta.." She closed her eyes, and felt the pain suddenly well up again, felt a tear threatening to form in the corner of her eye. The weight wasn't gone just 'cause she'd done one thing. But it didn't hurt quite as much.

"Actually..." She rubbed her eyes. "I think I was wrong, before. I think I definitely need to be taken into custody." She looked over the six of them. "But the 2019 cops sound like they suck. So how about y'all taking me in until you can remand me to that net.hero team you've been trying to contact?"

"...oh, good idea," said Action Lad, doing his post-battle stretches.

"I suppose that's the safest option," harrumphed Super Scary Dazzle Bird, crossing his arms.

Robot Girl rolled her eyes. "I guess--"

"WAIT WAIT WAIT." Kid Kindle skidded in front of Brunhilda, waving his hands at the rest of them. "You're really saying that we literally take in the biggest bad guy of all time!? Right after-- ALL THAT!?"

Captain Killfile stepped forward. "Dude." She looked put her hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. "I trust her."

"..." He siiiiiiiighed dramatically, flopping his head back and rolling his eyes. "Fiiiiiiine. I guess somebody's gotta keep an eye on her."

"Welp, that's settled!" Kid E clapped his hands. "Now... let's scram already, the cops will be here soon!"

"Right!" The Ultimate Saviors clattered down the hallway, but Kid Enthusiastic took Brunhilda's arm before she could follow.

"By the way," he said. "Hildy. If it's okay to call you that."

"Heh... you can call me anything you want, now, I guess," she said. "What is it?"

"Just wanted to let you know. Felix?" He smiled big up at her. "He's the leader of the LNH!"

One more burst of cold surprise for the evening. "...ah heck." She'd have to face him, eventually. She'd have to apologize... She could feel the tears welling up again, and quickly rubbed her eyes. He'd survived. He... her brother was okay. "Always... always knew he'd make somethin' of himself."

"Yeah." He smiled up at her, and took her hand. "Let's go, Ghost Exterminator."

And they walked off into the chill winter night.

#Original Fiction #Superheroes #Adventure #Drama #Legion of Net.Heroes #LNH20 #LNH20 Comics Presents

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blizzardfluffykpop · 5 years

Text

Punk Rock Prince

Summary: Punk rock lead guitarist Jinyoung, and (Y/n) the bassist of Nonchalant Disruption, a punk rock band looking for a new lead guitarist.

Jinyoung X Reader

One-shot

It was the third time watching Jinyoung play all by himself, his riffs floating through the room, if only I could ask him if he was looking to be in a band. My band was lacking a lead guitarist ever since Gwen had decided she had better places to be, and no longer wanted to play in a punk rock band. She wanted to be in a pop band, and be the lead, and I had offered her countless times to take lead and each time she had declined. Her passion lies in pop music, and we decided to let her go so she could achieve her dreams. And the rest of us were left searching for a guitarist, posting flyers everywhere, putting ads in newspapers, we still have yet to receive a call.

My friend Mark, the drummer in our band, comes up to me and he’s like, “You’ve been watching each time he plays, he seems like a pretty good replacement” I nodded at the fact, “I think he’s going to make us big, he’d be more than just a replacement but we have to ask…” He rolls his eyes, “Why don’t you ask Joy to do it?” I look over to where she is in the bar, and she’s flirting with a man, “Well, I would but you know her.” He laughs, “I’ll just do it, once he’s done with his setlist. Although, if I’m being honest he could make it on his own, he’s so talented-” “Like Gwen?” “Yeah, I loved her” “You’ve always had a thing for lead guitarists-” “You’ve always had a thing for rhythm guitarists-” “You didn’t deny it” He tries to tease me, “Nor did you~” I smirk at him, and he rolls his eyes, “I should have became the lead guitarist, instead of being the bassist” He laughs at me, “Yeah maybe, but here we are now… Anyway, I think he’s almost done” I shake my head at him, disagreeing, “You know in November Rain where they have a dip in the middle? Yeah, that’s what this is going to be” I was right, and I head up to the bartender and ask him about Jinyoung, “Why doesn’t anyone every ask about me?! Ah yes, Jackson, how are you? I’m fine, thank you” He looks at me pointedly, “Fine,... How are you Jackson?” “Little late now, anyway, Jinyoung has been looking for a group, although he is pretty good solo he likes company, he doesn’t want to be lonely.” I nod gesturing him to go on, “There are three groups and a few companies looking at taking them into their arms” I grumble, “Of course there are-” “But I bet with your sweet charms, you could do it-” “Jackson… How’s the love life?” “They’re mad at me…” “Why?” “I didn’t remember our cats birthdays…” “Jaebum will get over it, but you need to make it up” “I know, plus I only flirt with customers to get better tips” “Everyone knows that” He scoffs at me, “Well, your man is packing up his guitar” My eyes go wide, realizing I had talked to Jackson too long.

People piled up where he had to walk, already asking him to join their group, and I almost screamed, when I see a well-known act talking to him and garnering his full attention. After he walks away he doesn’t talk to anyone else, it’s not like I can reach him anyway, with the way he moved out the back door exit. I go back over to Mark and almost screamed again, he knows immediately what happened. “Don’t worry, if he joins with Jolly Roger, we’ll just figure it out okay? You never know, someone better than him might come around” I nod as we eventually get Joy to come back to us, and leave the joint.

Three hours later, laying in my bedroom about ready to scream because every time I’ve wanted to ask Jinyoung to be our guitarist something always comes in the way. The first time, Gwen had saw us and talked our heads off about the pop world. The second time being Joy getting drunk off her ass and trying to beat someone up twice her size. Dragging her away and apologizing for her was horrifying. That man was so pissed off, thank god I’m friends with Jaebum and Jackson. Mark and I would have been beaten to a pulp, after Joy was. This last time I screwed it up, I mean it was only a matter of time before I had.

As I lay on my bed contemplating what I’m going to do, maybe start screaming from rooftops to join my group if you're a lead guitarist. That’s when I get a call, I immediately roll over, and answer and it’s just a spam call. I nearly threw my phone against the wall, thankfully, it hit my bean bag. I grumble shoving myself under blankets, and curling into my pillow, and not a minute later after getting comfy. My phone goes off, and I roll my eyes, getting up, and I answer, “Is this uh (Y/n) from Nonchalant Disruption?” I nod, realizing they can’t hear that I answer, “Yeah” “I saw your advertisement that you were looking for a lead guitarist, and I was wondering if I could audition?” “Um is tomorrow good for you?” “Yeah, what time?” “Let me go see when the others are free, give me a second?” Covering the receiver up, I quickly yell if 10 am is good for everyone to see our potentially new lead guitarist, the two shout back a ‘sure’. “Are you good with 10 am?” “Yeah” “Perfect,” I grin, “can I get your name?” “Oh uh, yeah, Park Jinyoung” My jaw drops, and I’m so glad he couldn’t see, get yourself back together, (Y/n), I scold myself internally, before telling him, “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you Jinyoung, I’ll-We’ll see you tomorrow” With that we hang up, and I throw myself into my bed and scream into my pillow.

Joy comes rushing in, “You okay?” I grin up at her, “More than okay” “It’s Jinyoung isn’t it” I nod at her and she laughs at me, “So wanna talk about him~” “He’s going to be our new guitarist, and-” “You have a thing for leads you know that?” “Yes, and what about it…” as I whisper in her ear, “Drummer girl” “Shut up, he won’t go for me” I roll my eyes at her, “Are you going to play this game of horrible charades with him for much longer?” “This is about you not me” “Yeah, yeah, I know… Anyway I think he’s cute, and man do guitarists always have to be that hot?” She winks at me, “Not you, ew…” “You’re mean” “Yeah, and?” “How did Gwen put up with dating you” “She didn’t, that’s why she broke up with me and left the group to play pop music” “Still sour over that, it’s been three months since she left the group.” “I’m over that, very much so, but doesn’t mean I can’t grumble” “Yes and no” I sigh, "She broke up with me two years ago, she was in our band up until three months ago and it's still a sore wound just like for you guys because even if I wasn't with her romantically, it was just nice to be with her, she really played a good roll in the band" "I know your over her romantically but we'll see if Jinyoung wants to join us. And then we can began anew, alright?" I nod and lay back on my bed, Mark knocks on the door that's open, "Takeout is here" I pat my bed and he walks over plopping himself on it, and we feast like well cheap kings, tomorrow gleaming in our eyes.

Jinyoung arrives thirty minutes early, thankfully we were all ready and cleaned up. Like always, the people that live in the other apartments are at work right now. We sit on the couch and ell Jinyoung to start when he’s ready, and just like at his gigs he plays loud and fast riffs which transition into still loud but slow riffs that leave your heart pounding wondering what is to come next. Mark looks over at me and grins, Joy does the same, before I say, "How about this we play and you try to keep up" Jinyoung smirks at us, "I think it'll be you trying to keep up with me" all cocky like, not many people know but we start on two on practice, for shows we start on five. Mark goes, "A one and a two" without missing a beat Jinyoung starts on two with ease and we start playing our fastest song, "New Girl" (by suicide machines if you like punk rock music I suggest it) Mark and I singing the main, Joy doing the backing vocals, Jinyoung catches on pretty fast not only catching onto backing vocals but on guitar. Gwen was a fan of fast chord progression and he is playing it effortlessly, like he's heard the song a million times, when we finish, I look over at him, "How do you know that song so well?" He grins at us, "I've been following your band for a long time, you guys got me into punk rock music… And once I got a taste of how fast you can play I never wanted to let it go. And when Gwen left the band, it felt like my heart being ripped out. I thought you guys were going to disband and never play again. Then, I started seeing Nonchalant Disruption flyers, and I was trying to find free time in between playing little gigs… and it would be my honor to play with you guys" He humbly bows his head just in case he wasn't going to be let in. Before I can say a word, Mark lets out, "You're in" he looks at us so shocked, he starts to sputter not expecting us to accept him, "You're the only one that audition" I agree with Joy, and let out my own view, "We've been watching you play for the past couple days and… we were trying to get you in the group-" "You were trying-" "Besides the point Mark" Mark laughs at me, and Jinyoung grins, "So um can you play all our songs-" "Yeah, I know (Y/n) has mentioned how they love The Ramones and I figured out half of their songs, Mark loves Death a protopunk band, Gwen loved the The Queers, and Joy loves The Clash"

"You decided to follow all our favorite groups and learn most of their songs?" He nods, "And in doing that I found my favorite punk rock band The Sex Pistols" I grin at him, "That's one of our favorite groups too, we look at them for inspiration a lot, hoping that we can get one of our albums banned." He smirks at us, "Well I'm going to be the one that’ll get you there and beyond." Joy puts her hand on my shoulder before stepping next to me, "Oh is that so?" Mark questions as he gets up from his stool, Jinyoung nods, I look at the other two and put my hand out, Joy lays her hand on mine, Mark on top of that, and we gesture Jinyoung to do the same, he puts his hand in, and we shout loudly and proudly, "To Nonchalant Disruption"

We celebrated, and it wasn't long before we were back on tour. Jinyoung's skills made us so much better, no offense to Gwen but he could out play her any day. To say the least, I was slowly falling for him, from his cockiness to his motherly nature. He’d act cocky about his skills as a guitarist--although he is fully valid in that cockiness--to cooking dinner for us or giving us a look that tells us not to do something idiotic. But his laughter is something that holds a place in my heart like no other. Gods wished to have his laughter, it's so cute. But oh dear, when he gets mischievous glint in his eyes, and gets in on the joke. Like where I was the one to have spilt the flour all over the floor,... it was 3 am in the morning, and before I could clean it up, Joy was screaming as she slipped on it and landed. I ran back to my room as she started screaming that she was going to get Mark back. And she did, I acted to be asleep through it all and Jinyoung came in when the other two went to sleep, "You did it, didn't you?" "What are you talking about?" The glint in his eyes glowing bright, "Fine,... don't tell Joy" He smirks, "What do I get out of it, if I don't tell her?" I look at him, "My dignity-" "Since when you did you have that?" "Don't get smart on me, Jinyoung… but I'll buy you that Gibson you've been looking at" Needless to say, I bought him the white Gibson, and Joy got Mark back by going into the shower and pouring blue dye on him. Oh, not only was his hair stained blue but his skin too, the smurf jokes that went on for weeks. And I was so glad Jinyoung kept it a secret because that would have been my fate.

When Gwen had called us and told us she was going to get married, I was floored. With her being gorgeous and all, the stunning personality, there was no reason to say she wouldn’t make someone fall for her, but I never thought she would reciprocate those feelings. After all, she had told me she was never the marrying type, Gwen was a very private person. She had always been, no one knew I had been with her, just like every other band that kisses their members to fuel the fangirls and fanboys, that's what we did. No one knew what we were up to, except those within the group. That's how she liked it, so when Jinyoung found me crying in the closet he was so shocked. I was over her but it felt like she never felt anything for me. She was making her marriage public, for everyone to know that she is going to be happy with the man she was marrying… The only part private is who is on the guest list. It felt like our whole relationship was a sham, as much as I was over Gwen I couldn’t help but feel like during the time we were together she didn’t feel the same. And that I was hopelessly in love with him, that I may be crying of Gwen, I know where my true feelings lie. Gwen just caused me pain from her antics. I cried all of this to Jinyoung, he just held me as talked it out. Not saying a word to me but just rockin’ me back and forth, and I could have stayed in those arms forever.

I guess I got tuckered out crying in his arms, because when I woke up I was in my bed and it was 7 in the morning. As I sat up, I heard a knock on my door, I looked up and told them to come in. Low and behold, it was Jinyoung and he had a tray full of breakfast food, and he tells me, “You had a rough night last night, I made you breakfast, got you some Motrin just in case you needed it.” The breakfast he made me was enough to feed an army. But I wasn’t about to complain about this, rather I start thanking him over and over again. “Didn’t she say you needed to bring someone as a date to her wedding?” I groan as I nod at him, shoveling a big bite of pancake, with whip cream, syrup, and butter on it. “Would you want to go as my date?” He asks softly, my eyes go wide as I gulp down the big bite. My cheeks a rosy red, as I careful and quiet voice I say, “I would love to” He grins, “We can show her what’s she’s missing out on. I mean for god sakes who would leave someone like you, your everything someone dreams about. And she left you for some guy whose money is as big as his ego” I chuckle at him, “Thanks, Jinyoung, you don’t know how much yo-I mean that means to me.” He rolls his eyes, “Just admit it you love me” I look up at him, “Yeah I do, I love you a lot Jinyoung. And I don’t know why my heart was fussing over her last night, when I have everything I need right in front of me. You’re everything I could want and more, you punk” He laughs, and takes whip cream off the top of my pancakes, I pout as he eats it. “You’re right I’m a punk, but I’m your punk, baby, just like you’re my punk.”

So maybe I didn’t end up with my dream girl. I ended up with someone better, the dreamiest guy, that makes me breakfast in bed. Who kisses my hand whenever he takes it in his. Who twirls me around as we listen to the Sex Pistols, who sat besides me holding my hand as we got matching tattoos. Maybe we shouldn’t have done it, but I do know I want to spend the rest of my life with him. And a tattoo was just the way to do it. We didn’t want a grand wedding, a small wedding as The Ramones played as we kissed. Mark and Joy hollering, because they were the two to witness it. The priestess wishing us well, Joy and Mark attached cans to the back of my car, them clattering as we drive through the pouring rain after we ran to get into the car. And I wouldn’t have had our wedding any other way. Dancing in the rain as we listened to The Misfits. Later that night, getting those matching tattoos, kissing in the alleyway behind the shop, everyone dreams of someone kissing them the way Jinyoung kissed me behind that shop.

Mark and Joy eventually got together, two punk power couples in the same band. It seemed impossible but it only made our group stronger, having double dates with them is honestly cute. Joy got on her knee one time while we were on a double date, Jinyoung and I knowing about this for weeks and being in on the planning. As she asked him to marry her, Mark’s eyes flooding with tears as he joined her on the carpet and agreed. Jinyoung nestled his head into my neck and sighingly said, “Young Love” We all rolled our eyes at him, but I agreed.

I never thought I would end up with such a great guy like Jinyoung, but here I am sitting on a porch as it rains, and he’s sprinting from the car, and has flowers, I look at him like he’s crazy and he sits on the porch swing seat next to me, “It’s our anniversary of the day we meet and I got you flowers” I grinned, and bring him into the house, “You think I’d forget such an important date?” He raises his eyebrows at me, I can be quite forgetful, I forgot our marriage anniversary so many times, until the last minute. I tell him to go get changed into something warm, he agreed and Joy and Mark came out of their hiding spots, “Get to your rooms, you two, dastardly devils” The snicker, “Yes, (Y/n)” I roll my eyes, as I go to the cabinet and pull out the wrapped present I’ve been hiding, knowing that the three of them can find anything unless it’s glaringly obvious that it’s there, then they’ll just pass over it. I pull out the mini cake to find spelled out on the cake, “Happy mini anniversary, babe” Knowing I didn’t ice that, I have to remind myself to thank those two devils.

Jinyoung comes down as I get out two paper plates, after putting the flowers into a vase. I gesture for him to sit down, his anarchy tattoo showing proudly on his neck. “Open your present babe” He does so slowly, taking the bow apart and taking it open piece by piece. He lets out a loud gasp, one of the hardest albums to get, God Save the Queen by The Sex Pistols, and I tell him to open it up, and it’s signed. He carefully places it back on the counter, and jumps over the counter and pulls me into him, kissing me deeply, “You didn’t have to do that babe, thank you so much” I grin at him, “You deserve especially with dealing with forgetful old me, I love you so much. And I know how much every anniversary means to you, along with birthdays and I just want to show that appreciation I have for you… Plus if you think this is a little much wait till your birthday--” He shuts me up with a kiss, “Thank you so much, baby” I hear a knock as I cut the cake into two slices, I groan and Joy gets the door to reveal, Jaebum and Jackson.

They come in, “Happy mini anniversary you two, we were here to pick you four up for a big celebration after all it’s your eighth anniversary of the day you met, so…” I look at Jinyoung he shrugs, “After we eat the cake” They grumble, and Jinyoung and I eat comfortably, not caring about dressing up that much for the date. Knowing we were just going to celebrate it in the kitchen of their bar.

Jinyoung’s hands intertwined with mine as we walked into the bar and he danced with me on the empty dance floor. After a little while we join the rest of them in the kitchen. Bambam and Yugyeom coming in with a keg of beer, Youngjae coming in with boxes of pizza, and there is no other way I would want to celebrate our mini my anniversary with Jinyoung. With his hand intertwined with mine under the table as we eat. I kiss his nose as we exchange stories. Our friend group got big after we met Jinyoung, and it feels like a big tight knit family.

I guess I should tell you Gwen’s wedding was spectacular for those who were famous. But for us it was boring except Jinyoung and I dancing to the songs, singing horribly to them. We danced the night away, and Jinyoung is right like he usually is, she knows what she’s missing out on, and there is no way she can get me back. With the way he dips me in his arms, to swaying back and forth, or dramatically twirling one another. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, for all these people to see me happily with Jinyoung. Although, being there did help in our rise to fame, more people wanting to know what a punk band was doing, after all she asked us to sing a song at her wedding, pop appropriate of course. Although I may or may not have slipped a curse word into the song that didn’t have a curse word in it… while playing at Gwen’s wedding.

I guess I do have a thing for lead guitarists, if their name is Park Jinyoung, of course. No one can beat his charms, his heart, his laugh, his everything. And he would say the same about me if not more, I love him as he loves me. I lean into him and kiss his neck discreetly and he shivers, and rolls his eyes at me, “I love you” I whisper into his neck, “I love you too” he says softly to me, ruffling my hair.

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tialightwood-blog · 5 years

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18+ Rough Waves -One-

Four Days Earlier.

May 6, 2017.

My alarm kept making repeated noise. I hit it hard and opened my eyes. As I stretched my body, I sat up and looked at myself in the mirror in front of my bed right next to the bedroom door, next to it was a picture of my mother. I look just like her; same gray almond eyes, thick curved eyelashes, same freckles across the nose and cheeks, same features and height. The only obvious difference was my black wavy hair that I got from my dad, she had a beautiful silky red hair just like grandma.

I don’t know her at all; I don’t know if my life would be different if she hadn’t died while giving birth to me. I can’t really complain about my life; My grandma Delilah was the one that raised me. I vividly remember the day my dad left me here to live with her in Mykonos. I was about four years old; I was living with my dad in London; we went back and forth between London and Mykonos. My dad noticed how much I loved being with grandma and decided to leave me live with her.

My grandma told me years later that she begged my dad to leave me right after my birth, but dad refused. She said that he loved my mom so much that he couldn’t let go of me especially that I indeed look like her. On the day he left me here; he told me how much he loved me, and it was for the best to leave me be raised by my grandma. Despite that, I don’t see my dad that often, I know he loves me enough to let me be away from him.

I got up and walked towards the mirror; I put my hair in high tied pun then looked at a picture of me and grandma on my tenth birthday. Grandma looks so young for her age; she doesn’t have a single white hair and her skin is always glowing as if she is in her twenties. Many people mistake us as mother and daughter. She once told me that women in our family are fortunate with beauty and luck. I believe her; I consider myself very lucky to have her by my side.

“Bunny!” my grandma shouted from outside. I went to the Balcony railing and looked at her.

“Good morning,” I said and blew a kiss to her.

“Breakfast is ready sweetheart.” I looked at the table next to her, it was filled with freshly made pastries in different kinds. it smelled so good my mouth was already watering. I went to the bathroom to take a quick shower. After seven minutes I was already half dressed but stopped when my phone ranged; it was my childhood friend Lara. I answered her and put the call on speaker and continued putting on my clothes.

“T,” she sounded weird, she only calls me T when she is in a bad mood or serious.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“I’m coming back.”

“What?”

“I can’t stand living here any longer.”

“Why? What happened?”

“My mother and her husband are unbearable,” she said firmly. I didn’t get surprised by that; it’s simply Lara; she is a moody type of person. She is a master in drawing and she likes to live her life freely. Both her mother and her stepfather are in fact super nice, her stepfather loved her as if she is his own daughter. She never denied his caring and good-hearted nature yet simply she doesn’t like people controlling her in any sort of way.

“What happened?” I asked and put a blue t-shirt on.

“They are so annoying; Both wanted me to work with them at the hotel and I told them like a million times before I am free spirited; I can’t do their work and dress in a certain way and talk politely, Fuck normality you know!”

I laughed.

“I’m serious! I got my stuff and left! I can’t be around them any longer!”

“You know it’s not that bad to work with them; just give a try, you may like it.”

“T, come one! I’m an artist for god’s sake! And I do have a job, it’s not like I’m setting on my ass the whole day doing nothing!”

Lara is very stubborn, she doesn’t even want to try to meet them halfway, but I can’t really blame her; she was working for years on her online comics and she is very good at it and kind of famous too. Her mother can’t see her job as an actual career; she wanted her to work with them to know everything about their business. Lara is her only daughter and she will inherit the hotels even if she doesn’t want to.

“I know you have a great job and I fully support your dream, but you know my opinion; it won’t hurt you to try,” I said and took the phone and put it on my right ear then went outside heading to the garden.

“I don’t want to. End of discussion,” she said firmly.

“Okay, when are you coming?”

“In like two hours.”

“Okay, take care.”

“Bye,” she said then ended the call.

I went to the backyard garden to find my grandma reading the newspaper and drinking her tea right next to the pool.

“Lara is coming,” I said and sat next to her.

“What happened this time?”

“They told her about the hotels again.”

“I see,” grandma said and flipped the newspaper.

I started eating my breakfast while my grandma read the newspaper quietly. The weather was sunny and warm as usual. I was enjoying the pastries and looking at the view of the sea. My grandparents’ house laid in Mykonos town limits near the windmills. The house was painted in white like all houses in the city. The main colors of it were shades of blue and gray. It was surrounded with olive and lemon trees, several crete flora, poppies flora and one full grown peach tree. The house was in a private area where both my grandparents preferred to live in rather than in the area where their restaurant is.

One hour Later

I was at the restaurant checking everything out before people starting to come. The restaurant is enormous. It was built as a house, but my grandparents turned it into a restaurant where both enjoy cooking together. My grandpa opened several restaurants in Greece and Italy, he enjoyed making people happy with his food. I didn’t get the chance to meet him; he died five years before I was born. I walked to the second floor where I found grandma sitting with the head of the waiters. I always wondered why my grandma never considered marrying after grandpa’s death despite that she was in her late twenties at the time; one day I got the chance and asked her. What she said changed my view of love and loyalty.

Two years ago.

“The love I have for your grandpa will never die, it’s like this tree,” she pointed at the only peach tree in the house which she always cares for more than any other plant in the house. I looked at the peach tree not understanding what she meant.

“When we built this house your grandpa wanted to plant one tree only,” she said and smiled remembering that day and then continued, “He knew how much I love this fruit, he told me that our love would never die unless we let it…we made a promise to each other to keep the tree save and let it grow stronger just like our love” she said and wiped one tear ran on her cheek and looked at me deeply.

“Sweetheart, true love can’t be stopped by anything…it will forever live inside of you…” she said and moved my hair and embraced both of her hand on my face. She laid a kiss on my forehead and her loud fun spirit came right back to her.

I smiled remembering her words. She suddenly noticed me and waved for me to come to sit with them.

Three hours later.

The restaurant was already crowded. I was walking back and forth between the sitting areas and the kitchen to make sure everything was on the right track. At that time of the year, it’s very normal to be full all day by tourists. I checked my watch to notice that Lara was one hour late. I went to a quieter corner and called her. “Tia,” she shouted from far and sounded a bit tired.

“Where are you?”

“In my house.”

“Why?”

“Huh?” she didn’t hear me.

I heard a dropped sound. “What was that? What are you doing there?”

“I’m cleaning,” she said and coughed.

I rolled my eyes and said. “You idiot! why bother cleaning the house, you’re staying with me.”

“No, thank you, I want to be alone.”

“I’m not letting you! Head to the house now!”

“T, No.”

“Lara, don’t get me mad, your house was closed for more than a year, you can’t clean it by yourself in one day.”

I heard her sigh from the other side. “I will tell grandma!”

“NO! Okay… okay, I’m coming,” she said and ended the call. My grandma has this twisted personality; she is very fun and outgoing yet when she gets angry it looks like as if you had awakened a monster that is ready to eat you alive. Lara knows what could really happen if grandma knew she wanted to live alone, she gave up fast and agreed to come over.

Ten minutes later.

Lara parked her car outside the restaurant and went inside looking for me. Grandma noticed her and walked toward her.

“Hello darling,” she said and opened her arms to give Lara a hug.

“Hey,” Lara said and hugged her back.

“What with that sad face?” grandma said and pinched her right cheek.

“Well… I left the house,” Lara said and looked at the floor.

“I see…why?”

“I can’t be there any longer.”

“Then you’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”

“Thanks, grandma,” Lara said and smiled softly.

“That doesn’t mean you are a guest, you’re going to work here just like Tia and smile more Lara you’re wasting your beauty in sadness,” grandma said and walked away.

“I know!” Lara shouted and laughed.

Lara looked the opposite to me. She has hazel hooded eyes, fair skin tone. She is 5’8 and her body fits the measures of a supermodel. She has a silky light blonde hair with bangs. On the other hand, I am 5’4 and my body is much curved. My skin tone is much tanner than her; sun-kissed to be exact. Not only our appearance are different; also, our personalities are much different from one another.

Lara is very free-spirited while I like to be organized and thoughtful of my action, she was into drawing since I could remember. She has a bohemian artistry type of style and while I enjoy the causal-sporty type. She is very outgoing and love adventure but for me, I like to take the safest path, I have a very small circle of people that I enjoy being around. I loved writing so much that when I was choosing what to study in university I choose journalism. Most of our arguments were revolving around convincing me to work with her and create a graphic novel. I refused every time; I thought about it but couldn’t think of a good story to create. I’m used to write about day to day news. I know I’m good with words but not to the point of writing a story out of my imagination.

I was upstairs when Lara arrived at the restaurant. I was talking to one of the waiters while she was talking to grandma. When they finished I walked down the stairs heading to her. “Hey, you,” I said and hugged her.

“Hi.” she sounded tired.

“You look awful.”

“Thanks!” We both laughed.

“You don’t know how to clean your room and wanted to clean a whole house,” I said sarcastically.

“Yeah…It was a bad idea,” she said and tapped on her shirt and some of the dust which was still visible on her flew in the air.

We both laughed and went to the bathroom to get her cleaned up.

Midnight.

The whole day was tiring. I was relieved that were heading home already. Grandma left two hours earlier where Lara and I stayed and closed the restaurant. We rode her car and head to the house. The ride was about ten minutes, we talked about her new comic she was working on and I told her about the new online magazine I was currently working with.

“What the magazine about?”

“Fashion.”

“You, Fashion no way,” Lara gasped.

“Yeah I know, I couldn’t believe it either, but they were like wanted me to write some pieces about old fashion in Greece.”

“Old fashion?”

“It’s a London-based magazine and they want to write about the history of fashion and I’m sure I got to write this piece just because I’m Greek.”

Lara smirked.

“When they told me, I was like people please look at the resume; I have experience in tabloid journalism, but they were like we only care that your Greek and a woman,” I said and took a deep breath.

“You know it’s not that bad to write about fashion,” Lara said.

“I know,” I said and smiled at her. We arrived at the house, Lara parked her car then I helped her with her luggage and we went inside. Grandma was holding her iPad and drinking calming herbs. “Hi grandma,” I said and sat next to her while Lara was putting her bags on the room she always stays in when she sleeps over. I noticed grandma was reading something; I get closer and saw that she was reading my latest article.“You like it?” I asked her with a little smirk on my face.

“It’s good sweetheart; you’re great with words,” she said and looked proudly at me.

“I know,” I sounded cocky. She laughed and then stood up. She shouted goodnight to me and Lara then went to her room to sleep.

I went to my room to change and when I get back I found Lara organized the setting outside. I went out and saw that she brought a big bowl of mixed chips and two cold soda cans. She was sitting on one of the big white chairs across from the pool. I sat on the chair next to hers and took a couple of chips to eat. “Lara,” I said and chewed some chips.

She didn’t respond, she was looking at her phone without blinking. I get little closer to her, she was watching a video of a masked person singing. I didn’t notice at first that she was wearing her earphone; it was covered by her long hair. Her hair was covering most of her face. She didn’t see me nor hear me. I grabbed the chips bowl and opened my phone to check my email.

Ten minutes later.

I finished half of the bowl. I put my phone down and looked at her. She didn’t move a muscle only watching the video on repeat and not blinking. I felt a little bored; I took a small pillow beside me and throw it at her. She startled and her phone flew and fell on the ground between the two chairs. “What!” her eyes were wide open in shock.

“Hi,” I said and smiled softly at her.

She noticed that I ate half of the chips and looked at me in shock. “How long have you been sitting here?”

“Like ten minutes,” I said and continue eating.

“Really!” she reached her hand to the floor and grabbed her phone.

“What was that important in the video? You didn’t even blink.”

“Oh god, Tia; His voice is just…amazing!” she said and reached to open one of the soda cans.

“Whose voice?”

“Jungkook! It’s like an angel singing! It was a song from last year in a show, but man! He was killing it,” she said and took a sip.

I didn’t respond; I had no idea what she was talking about. “His cover is like better than the original but if you ask me my favorite voice of all of them it’s definitely Taehyung, his raspy voice is everything,” she looked at me with a big smile.

“What are you talking about?” I looked completely bewildered.

“What? You don’t know Jungkook and Taehyung?”

“Should I?” clearly my answer made her angry, she frowned so hard I couldn’t help but giggle.

“You know BTS right?” she said suspiciously.

“Behind the scene?”

“OH MY GOD!” she screamed hard that made me jump a little.

“You don’t know who BTS are!!?”

“No,” I said calmly, I wasn’t really following what she was saying.

“Bangtan Sonyeondan? Bangtan Boys?” she sounded as if she’s trying to make me remember something I know.

“No.”

“Tia! BTS, the Korean band! They are like taking over the music industry by storm!”

“Never heard of them before.”

“Oh my god! You’re basically living under a rock!” she looked at me as if she seeing a stupid little kid talking.

I don’t know what the big deal was of not knowing about them. “So, who are they?” I asked causally without realizing what I was stepping myself into.

The little I know; my life was about to change forever. Literally change forever.

#bts #bts fic #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts jungkook #bts v #bts jungkook x reader #bts v x reader #bts taehyung #jungkook #taehyung #greek mythology #magic #fantasy

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pandabearisaunicorn · 5 years

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You Are My Weakness (SPN Fanfic)

You Are My Weakness Chapter 9 Demons

Previous Chapters: Intro Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

Warnings: Mention of violence, hurt and angst Word Count: 2198

…Theresa’s P.O.V…

Me and Louise was out on our first hunt together and alone. The boys weren’t happy when Louise told her idea and didn’t get happier when I actually tagged along. Sam was worrying his ass off and called me every 20 minutes. Sure, his actions were cute and all but I sure don’t have time to answer his every damn call. Louise and Dean on the other hand, he had called her once and it wasn’t pretty. I have never seen Louise so mad at anything human before, it sure was a sight to see. I guess he was really mad at her for even going after a demon by herself, yet alone with me, another girl and not him. I did understand his concern but Louise is a good damn hunter, she will make this just fine, we will make this just fine.

“You want to talk about it?” I asked and she glanced over at me. My hands still tight around the steering wheel. “No, he’s a total sweetheart every other hour of the day except when I could be in danger, then he can be a total pain in the ass” She said, I could almost feel her eyes rolling. “He cares about you Lou, I guess he just has a weird way of showing it” I said almost with a laugh. “You can say that” She said and in that moment I thought maybe she would just confess whatever was happening between the two of them but no.

We sat in silence for a while, not that awkward silence that gets when no one knows what to say or when you dislike someone. No, that comfortable silence you get when you really like the person you spend time with. I like that kind of friendship, I like Louise. She’s such a good friend, a friend that’ll always be by your side, I feel like she’s one of those.

Soon we were nearing the small town Boulder, Colorado. It has been so many killings in a short amount of time. Brutal killings and sulfur was found on almost every murder sight. It couldn’t be anything other than demons, it just couldn’t. Maybe it was a bad idea for me and Louise to take a demon or more by ourselves but we at least had to try. I mean the boys needed to fight a wendigo in a town in Alaska, I wasn’t sure which town they were in and that sure scared me. Hunting wendigo wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t easy. They could just as easily die as me and Louise. Realizing that I got scared, damn my Sam was in real trouble. I pulled up by the sheriff station, our badges in hand as we walked inside. Louise and I were wearing black suits with white dress shirts. Our hair pulled back by sunglasses as the sun was beaming down. Confused eyes met our bodies as we moved towards the front desk, a young boy maybe in his early 20’s looked up at us. A flirty smile evident on his lips as Louise leaned onto the counter. “We’re here because of all these unsolved murders” Louise said and showed him her FBI badge, I did the same. “Oh, yeah uh what to you want to know?” The boy said and sounding nervous as he spoke. “I want every document about these killings, every single one” She said, saying the last three words slowly.

And like that, the boy were gone and his scent was still evident. Louise looked up at me, a proud smile and a raise of her eyebrows. I just smiled and laughed at her. Soon the boy was back, a huge pile of files in his arms. He dumped them on the desk and Louise handed me half of them.

“Thank you so much dear” I said before we walked out the station and I could feel the boys’ eyes staring into our backs.

We were now back in our car, Louise was now driving as I looked through the files. It was almost ridiculous how similar all these killings were, every man or woman was killed exactly the same way and by the same knife. How stupid could the police be? I mean almost anyone could solve these.

“It’s almost funny how similar these killings are, it’s like the demon wants us to find him” I said and a shaky breath left Louise’s lips. “That’s almost humoristic, I mean I do have a bad past with demons” She said and I looked over at her, her face looking sad yet tense. Her grip on the steering wheel tightening. “That’s how your parents died wasn’t it?” I said with sympathy in my voice. “Yeah, Sam and Dean saved me. I don’t know what I would if they didn’t” She said, a tear rolling down her cheek and I could tell that this had been tearing on her soul. “Yeah, those two are truly knights in shining armor” I said and continued to read.

The car feel silence as Louise suddenly stopped the car, it was now dark outside and I light the papers in front of me with a flashlight. I turned it off as I looked outside, a huge family home. The house was painted red with white details around the windows and doors. You could tell that this family once loved to take care of the garden and keep the house looking fresh and clean. Now, it was dead flowers, leaves all over the once green grass. It looked abandoned and I was hit with sadness. I was shook out of me dreams as the car door slammed shut, I followed Louise outside. She stopped walking as she neared me, her arms hanging by her side and her whole body slumped. I had never seen her like this. She started walking again, walking up the stairs of the house like she had done it a million times. I followed her inside, walking past the mailbox who was filled with letters and newspapers. My face turned into a frown as she bent down and took a spare key out from the doormat, her eyes scanning it for a bit before opening the door and walking inside. I hesitated before walking with her inside as the smell of rotten flesh hit my nostrils. I had no idea what I was expecting or why Louise knew all of this. It’s like she had done those actions a million times before, like she knew this house by heart. Then it hit me.

“This is your family home isn’t it? That’s why Dean’s so mad over this” I said, her face turning to look at me. Eyes wet from tears. “Yeah, I want to be the one who kills the demons who possessed and killed my parents” She said, her eyes darkening and I didn’t like this look on her. “I understand that but maybe we should do some more research on this demon” I said with a shaky voice.

Suddenly the house got extremely cold and windy, the lights flickering. I could feel panic raising inside of me, I was scared. I could tell Louise was too. Her body standing completely still and jumped as a loud bang was heard in the living room. To my surprise she walked into the room, her shoulders tense and to my dislike I had to follow her. My gun securely trapped in my hand. As I turned the corner of the doorframe I saw a tall man, maybe in his 40’s, standing in front of Louise, his black demon eyes looking harshly on her. I loaded the gun to be prepared for anything that could happen.

“Louise Chapman, nice to finally meet you” His dark and evil voice spoke up as he walked closer to her. “What do you want her?” I spoke up, surprising myself as I opened my mouth. “Oh, you brought a friend, that didn’t really include in my plan but that could be rearranged” He said and that was all I remember.

After that everything went black and when I woke up, they were gone. She was gone. I stood up in panic and started to look through every room in that god damn house. Fear taking over my body. If she had killed that demon she would still be here with me. She would never leave me here alone. How long has it been since I passed out? And why did everything hurt?

I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket and I was quick to pick it up. I was hoping Louise’s number would be listed but no, it was Dean. Fuck. I pressed the answer button and held the phone up to my ear, trying to get my breathing under control as I sat down on the porch outside the house. “Finally one of you picked up, what the hell has happened? Are you okay?” Dean’s worried voice triggered my tears to fall, the tears I had been holding in for so many minutes running around looking for her. “Tess, you hear me?” “She’s gone Dean” I whispered out, tears falling uncontrollably down my cheeks. “Who? Where is she?” I could hear his voice getting more and more worried. “She’s gone, it wasn’t anything I could do, when I woke up she was just gone. I have been looking everywhere Dean” I sobbed into the phone, feeling myself panicking. “What happened Tess, tell me what the hell happened!” Dean’s voice was getting angry and the panic inside of me getting worse. “The demon, he took her”

…Louise’s P.O.V…

My body felt heavy as I opened my eyes, feeling like I had been out for hours. I looked around the room, it was filthy. Bloodstained carpet and the walls almost falling apart. I tried to move but I was tied against a chair. I moved my arms and legs in panic as my breathing got heavier. Still not able to move them. I could feel my legs hurting, my head hurting, everything hurt. The last thing I remember is the demon throwing Tess into the wall and she passed out and now I’m here. What has he done to Tess? Is she hurt? Fuck, she must be wondering where the hell I am. I took a big look around the room again, trying to figure out anything. To my loss, there wasn’t even a window. It was just a dark filthy room. Soon the door opened, the lights turning on and there he stood. That filthy demon.

“What have you done to me?” I whispered out, not being able to speak louder. “You my dear, have really pissed us off” He said as he kneeled down in front of me. “How?” I said, my voice weak and my eyes could barely stay on him. “You see, when your lover Dean Winchester killed two of my men, I sure was mad. I wanted you” He said as he dragged his knife against my cheek, I hissed at the sudden pain. “Why me?” I said, a bit more louder as I started to gain more power in my body. “Oh if you only knew. When we possessed your parents we got a huge insight of who you really were. You were chosen to fight us, to beat us Louise. You were chose, just like Dean was once” He said and I looked at him in disbelief. “Why me? I’m not anything special” I said, thinking that he just had a lame excuse to kill me. “Oh, you’re special. Truly. But you know, you’re not even going to have a chance to be anything special”

…Dean’s P.O.V…

I stood up quickly from my chair as I heard the garage port close and Tess’ footsteps in the corridor. Sam and I hurried down to meet her. I barely recognized her as she walked towards us, her face scratched, her back hunched and tearstained cheeks. She looked up at us, her eyes getting glossier as she ran into Sam’s arms. I tried to wrap my head around all of this. I was hoping Louise would walk inside with her, that all of this was just some cruel joke. But she never came, I could be standing there all day waiting for her to walk inside that door but she wouldn’t.

“I have done everything I could to find her. I have been searching the whole town but she’s gone” Tess sobbed out as she looked up at me. Her blue grey eyes looking deeply into mine. “I know you did” I whispered out, trying not to take my anger out on her. This wasn’t her fault. “I can barely live with myself, what if she’s dead” She whispered out and something inside of me snapped. “SHE ISN’T DEAD, I WILL FIND HER” I screamed out making them both to look at me in fear. “We will find her Dean, I promise” Sam said as he held my head to look at him, my eyes watering as the thought of losing Louise hit me. “We will find her”

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