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calumcest · 4 years

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there’s no time for running away now

so me exposing myself: yes i write fics that i never post. here is one of them that i’m pretty sure i wrote while completely out of my fucking mind at like 2am and have not re-read or edited so? absolutely cannot guarantee the quality of this fic in any way shape or form please do not hold me accountable for any of its content. unless you like it in which case please do hold me accountable because i require at least 3 doses of validation a day to survive. also this fic was literally me coming up with the final line and then writing 2.4k just to have a reason to have it

It’s three a.m., and Ashton’s awake.

On the surface, that might not appear to be a problem. And ordinarily, it wouldn’t be - ordinarily, Ashton would either roll over groggily, will sleep to come with every fibre of his being and maybe a quick prayer or two, or read something mind-numbingly boring like his urgent work emails to send him back to sleep. This, however, isn’t the most ordinary situation.

Ashton is awake because of Luke.

And, okay, that’s a bit of an unfair characterisation. It’s actually Ashton’s racing thoughts keeping him up, but since Luke’s the focus of said thoughts swirling in a huge cluster through Ashton’s mind, overlapping and interlocking so Ashton can’t pick them apart from the love love love that’s threading through them all, he’s going to blame it on Luke. And it’s not exactly Ashton’s fault he’s in love with Luke, is it? He’d challenge anyone to spend years crammed in tight spaces with Luke Hemmings and not fall in love with him.

(Michael and Calum don’t count, obviously. Ashton’s never seen two people so blinkered by love in his life, and he’s equal parts envious of their deep, easy love and grateful that they’re not his competition. He’s not sure he could take on Calum’s thoughtfulness if it came down to it.)

The real problem is that Ashton’s alone. They’re in a hotel, some shitty place in northern England that Ashton can’t even remember the name of, but they’d all been so ecstatic to find out that they had a room each (each!) that they hadn’t been able to bring themselves to care. They’d all hopped straight in the shower, washing off three days’ worth of sweat and grime, and then one by one dropped out of the group chat (Ashton had heard Calum’s door clicking open and shut, muted footsteps and muffled voices), until Ashton thought he was the only one left awake.

When Ashton’s squashed in a tour bus with God knows how many other six-foot-something men in their twenties, there’s nothing he wishes for more than a moment to himself. He sneaks the moments in when he can - a few minutes backstage, a few moments on the bus in the morning before anyone else has woken up, before Luke comes padding in with bleary eyes and a sleepy smile that makes Ashton’s stomach flip - but it’s never more than ten minutes, never enough time to feel the solitude. Now, though, he’s got nothing to do besides let the seclusion envelop him, listen to the silence and his tinnitus and let the ringing infiltrate his thoughts.

It’s been so long since Ashton’s been on his own, really been on his own - usually on hotel nights, he’s so exhausted and grateful for a proper bed he falls asleep fully-dressed and wakes up disoriented - that he’s kind of forgotten what it’s like. He’s forgotten the way that his thoughts start to squirm around in his mind, all clamouring for his attention, one following the other in such rapid succession that Ashton barely has the time to process them before the next one is already gripping him by the throat and forcing him to look at it. He’s forgotten how fucking overwhelming it is, how it makes his breath catch in his throat, his stomach churn, thinking himself in spirals that he can’t think himself out of.

The fact that Luke’s next door isn’t exactly helping matters. The hotel walls seem to be a product of a scientific experiment into creating materials that are one atom thick, so Ashton can hear every move Luke makes. He heard it when Luke padded into the bathroom for a shower, when Luke ambled over to the desk, heard the entirety of the news that Luke had on for about twenty minutes (apparently the Queen’s giving a speech tomorrow, and the EU are looking to pass a law about interest rates). He heard it when Luke got changed, heard his fucking jeans drop to the floor, heard him tossing and turning trying to get comfortable on the lumpy mattress. He can hear every creak of Luke’s bed, can almost make out Luke’s deep breathing if he really strains his ears, and it’s making it impossible not to think about him. Not that Ashton’s particularly good at ever not thinking about Luke. Luke Hemmings is definitely the majority shareholder of Ashton’s mind.

Now, though, at three in the morning, in a shitty hotel room in God knows where, a country that isn’t home and never will be, on his own with nobody there to ground him, it feels frightening, more overwhelming than Ashton could ever put into words. He’s so in love with Luke, so fucking in love with Luke, and it puts everything on a knife’s edge. His sanity, his friendship with Luke, his career - everything’s on the line because Ashton can’t say no to those baby blues.

At half-past, when Luke rolls over in bed and makes a little noise of contentment, duvet rustling as he moves, Ashton breaks.

“Wha’?” Michael says groggily when he picks up, sounding too sleepy to be annoyed.

“Are you awake?” Ashton says, as quietly as possible, gnawing at his lip.

“No,” Michael says, and then the line cuts out. Ashton hates him.

“Are you up?” Ashton asks, when Michael picks up again, on the first ring.

“Am now, dickhead,” Michael grunts. “‘s up?”

“Luke.” There’s a pause, then a rustling sound and quiet footsteps, and then the sound of a door locking.

“Ash, it’s three thirty in the fucking morning,” Michael says, and his voice echoes strangely, bouncing off the walls of what Ashton can only suppose is his en-suite, but it’s soft, understanding. He knows why Ashton’s still up, why he’s getting a call from across the hall at three-thirty in the morning.

“Yeah,” Ashton says, hoping Michael understands yeah, that’s why I’m this fucked up. Everything feels worse at night, when Ashton doesn’t have the bright light of day to convince himself that it’s not that bad, he’s not going to fuck everything up that badly. Michael sighs, and it’s tinny and a little staticky, and Ashton’s suddenly struck with the thought that Michael’s voice is being beamed up to a satellite thousands of miles away before being sent back to Ashton, even though he’s about five strides away. It makes him feel a little sick, that level of removal between the two of them. Michael’s a few metres and yet thousands of miles away.

“Ash,” he says gently, which is never a good sign from Michael. “You’ve got to stop torturing yourself like this.” Ashton bites at his thumbnail.

“‘m not torturing myself,” he mumbles.

“Oh?” Michael says, a note of scepticism in his voice. “You’re not lying in bed at three-thirty in the fucking morning thinking about how in love you are with Luke, convincing yourself you’re going to fuck everything up because of it?” Ashton hesitates.

“Fuck you,” he says eventually, and Michael doesn’t even retort, just sighs again, heavy and sad.

“I don’t like seeing you like this,” he says.

“You’re not seeing me,” Ashton says, a little childishly.

“You know what I mean.” Ashton does, and he hates it. It adds a sheen of guilt to all the other confusing emotions bubbling through him, that Michael’s got to deal with this, got to walk the tightrope of being between his two best friends.

“Sorry,” Ashton says, a little too meekly.

“Don’t,” Michael says sternly. “You’ve got to do something about it, Ash. You can’t spend the rest of your life stuck in perpetual limbo.” Ashton tears at a hangnail, relishing the way it stings when he rips it.

“Do what?” Ashton says. “‘s not like I can tell him. Could fuck everything up.” He hesitates, and then adds: “Could fuck your life up.”

“You think that matters more to me than your happiness?” Michael says, sounding genuinely incredulous, and Ashton loves him, absolutely fucking loves him, and absolutely doesn’t deserve him.

“I love you,” he tells Michael, who snorts, the sound echoing strangely in the bathroom.

“You’d better,” he says, but it’s fond. “C’mon, Ash, you’ve got to talk to him at some point. What the fuck else are you going to do? Sit around and wait for Luke to get married and have two-point-five kids?” Ashton blinks up at the ceiling, stomach churning at the thought of Luke with a faceless spouse and a white picket fence.

“Maybe,” he says, counting the stains on the white paint to give him something else to think about. “Doesn’t sound like the worst plan in the world.”

“No, Ash, it does,” Michael’s tinny voice tells him. “Christ. You’re such a fucking emotional masochist.” Ashton sighs, and casts his gaze down to the hem of his shirt, picking at a loose thread.

“What the fuck would I even say?” he says. It’s not like he’s never envisioned it; a grand declaration of love - always returned by Luke, of course - but in his fantasies, it’s a certainty that Luke’s going to feel the same way, so there’s none of that gut-wrenching, stomach-rolling uncertainty, no bile rising in his throat, no clammy hands and dry mouth.

“The truth?” Michael suggests. Ashton rolls his eyes.

“Mike, I can’t just waltz up to Luke and tell him I’m in love with him,” he says.

“Worked for me,” Michael says, and Ashton can almost hear him shrugging.

“That’s different,” Ashton says, because it is. Michael’s not a massive fucking overthinker.

“Is it?” Michael says, a little shrewdly. “I didn’t know if Calum felt the same way. But what else was I gonna do, wait around the rest of my life wasting my time on him? I needed closure either way. Would’ve spent the rest of my life making myself miserable living off hope otherwise.” Ashton knows he’s right, knows from the way his stomach sinks and his heart speeds up, but hates it, wants to rationalise why he doesn’t need to tell Luke, why he shouldn’t. “You’re overthinking it,” Michael says into the silence, like he knows exactly what’s going through Ashton’s mind right now, and Ashton scowls.

“Right, fuck me for overthinking something that could end my career,” he hisses, gripping the phone tighter than necessary because his hands are a little cold and clammy now at the thought of having to actually stand in front of Luke and say the words I’m in love with you.

“You’re such a fucking drama queen,” Michael says, tutting.

“Are you insane?” Ashton demands, incensed, and this is good, this is safe. He can redirect all the discomfort and anxiety into righteous anger; he can handle that. That’s well-worn territory with him and Michael.

“I’m not doing this, Ash,” Michael says sensibly, because he knows Ashton far too well for Ashton’s liking. “You can’t keep running from your feelings the minute they get too heavy for you to bear. ‘S never gonna get any better if you’re not letting yourself process it. It doesn’t go away on its own.”

“I know,” Ashton says hopelessly, because he does, and it’s what he’s been trying to run from. He knows he can’t live in this limbo forever, but he can’t bring himself to take a step in either direction. “Fuck, Michael. I don’t know if I can do it.”

“You can,” Michael says, gentle, encouraging.

“It’d fuck everything up,” Ashton says.

“It won’t,” Michael says. “You’re both mature adults.” He pauses, and Ashton knows they’re thinking the same thing, and then he adds: “Okay, well. You’re a mature adult. I’ll drag Luke into maturity kicking and screaming.” Ashton can’t help but huff out a laugh at that, chest warming as he hears the meaning behind what Michael’s saying - I’ll fight your corner. I’ve got your back.

“What if he doesn’t feel the same?” Ashton says, biting his lip.

“Then at least you know,” Michael says. “And you can start moving on.” Ashton swallows, ignoring the pain of the lump in his throat.

“I don’t want to,” he says, and it comes out a little strangled.

“I know,” Michael says. Ashton waits for something else, for him to justify it, but there’s just staticky silence from Michael’s end of the line.

“That’s it?”

“What, you want a deep, motivational speech as to why you should tell him?” Michael says. “I’m not going to give you that, Ash. Do it or don’t, it’s up to you. But you’ll never be able to rest, never have your mind to yourself, until you do it.” Ashton exhales shakily.

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice cracks, because God, it’s fucking terrifying, thinking that he might have to face Luke and say the words I’m in love with you in order to get his own sanity back. “You’re right.”

“I know,” Michael says, and Ashton huffs out a laugh to cover the flutters of panic in his chest. “Can I go back to sleep now?” Ashton blinks, and nods.

“Yeah,” he says again, voice a little steadier this time. “Sorry.”

“‘S okay,” Michael says through a yawn, and Ashton has to stifle a yawn of his own. Christ, he’s actually fucking drained. Overthinking should qualify as a sport. “Love you. Not as much as I love Calum, though.”

“Arsehole,” Ashton says, rolling his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Love you too. But not as much as I love Luke.”

“I’d fucking hope not,” Michael says. “Don’t want you to be fantasising about fucking me.” Ashton wrinkles his nose.

“I don’t want to fantasise about that either,” he says.

“So don’t.”

“I won’t.”

“Good,” Michael says, stifling a yawn. “Don’t fantasise about Calum, either.”

“Why the fuck would I fantasise about Calum?” Ashton wants to know.

“Hey,” Michael says, sounding a little affronted. “What the fuck are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying neither you nor Calum are exactly at the top of my fantasy list when Luke’s right there,” Ashton says.

“That’s fucking rude,” Michael tells him.

“What the fuck? You just told me-”

"Yeah, but on principle you should want to fantasise about us,” Michael interrupts. “You just aren’t allowed.” Ashton rolls his eyes.

“I’m not fantasising about anyone except Luke,” he says.

“I don’t want to know that.” Jesus Christ. Michael’s fucking impossible.

“Go to fucking sleep,” Ashton says, because arguing with Michael is a waste of time on the best of days, let alone at four in the fucking morning.

“I’ve been trying,” Michael says, and there’s rustling sounds as he gets to his feet. “Night, Ashton. Love you.”

“Night,” Ashton says, but Michael’s already hung up.

He plugs his phone in and rolls back over in bed, the emotional exhaustion starting to kick in, and he closes his eyes, ready to fall asleep, when from Luke’s room he hears a very, very clear-

“Night, Ash.”

Fuck.

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#lashton #5sos fic #5sos fanfic #5sos fanfiction #5sos slash #thats probably the sneakiest britpop title i could possibly come up with #i'm actually dead proud of myself for that one #dithered about whether to put the line before in or not #but hopefully no one will read these tags and realise its britpop #lets be honest with ourselves am i going to post something with ZERO britpop references rn?#actually yes i am bc i did that with soulmate au #god my brand...who am i? letting the fucking team down #yes i've literally spent the entire time since answering that ask searching for a sneaky britpop lyric to put as the title #could have written a fkn sequel in that time but oh well!#i wonder if anyone actually reads these tags and is like bloody hell...glad i'm not in her brain #my tags are literally such an insight into how my mind works. or doesnt <3

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leiakenobi · 3 years

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This Must Be The Place

Fandom: Triple Frontier (2019) Pairing: Santiago “Pope” Garcia/F!Reader Rating: Teen Word Count: 6.7k Summary: On your way to your annual vacation in a cozy cabin in the woods with a few friends from college, you get caught in a snowstorm. Resigned to wait it out, you pull off the highway when you spot a small road-side bar, where the kind but strangely secretive bartender immediately catches your notice. Warnings: bit of language, bit of drinking, and it does get a bit steamy, but no real spice

Cross-posted to AO3 here!

——

It’s not that you didn’t know about the snowstorm when you set out this morning. You’d checked the weather between home and the cabin, and you set off in what should have been plenty of time.

What you hadn’t quite counted on was the traffic. Lots of it. Getting out of the city, but on the expressway, too, an uncanny amount of it. Too many people all trying to avoid the bad weather, you suppose.

That’s how you find yourself driving along a two-lane highway in increasingly wretched conditions, squinting ahead of you through the falling snow in the dim twilight. You’d still be at least half an hour out from the cabin if you were driving in goodweather, but, considering that you can barely make out the other cars breezing past you, you’re… really not sure whether you’d even be able to spot the turn-off if you got that far.

You’re dithering over whether to suck it up and pull over to the side of the road to look for an updated forecast and decide whether to wait it out or find somewhere to stop overnight, when you just barely catch a glimpse of a slightly dilapidated – but lit – neon sign for a dive bar.

Fine.

The tires skid just slightly with your abrupt change in direction, but you make it into the lot alright. If it was difficult to see other cars on the road, it’s impossible to discern something like lines for parking spaces, so you line yourself up next to a nearby pick-up as best as you can before – thankfully – shutting your engine off.

Alright, first things first: how long are things going to be this bad?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like your phone will be able to provide an answer; when you retrieve it from the passenger seat and unlock it, you discover that it has no service. After years of coming out to the cabin, you’re well aware that reception is shoddy at best out here, but somehow, this is a setback that you hadn’t anticipated. Without service, you can’t check the weather, but you can’t call anybody to let them know that you’re stranded, either.

You sigh heavily and peer out the window at the bar. (As well as you can peer—in the minute or so since you turned off the windshield wipers, the snow has already made visibility pretty poor.)

Here’s hoping they have a phone.

Even though it’s a short walk from your car to the door, you opt to bundle up, pulling on your coat, hat, and scarf before scampering out into the bitter cold.

Perhaps you should have guessed as much from the number of other cars that you spotted on your way in, but the place is surprisingly lively when you cross the threshold. There’s ambient chatter and raucous – slightly drunken – laughter and some rock song you don’t recognize playing from the juke box near the door. A few folks near the door look up at you, giving you a peculiar sort of audience as you glance to either side of you and spot a line of coats hung up on a line of hooks. Thankfully, there’s an empty one—you affix yours and shove your hat and scarf into one arm before turning back in toward the bar.

Again: you have an audience. More of one now than when you turned toward the coat rack; it must be at least a third of the patrons looking at you.

A third of the patrons and the man standing behind the bar, leaning forward with his elbows on the glossy hardwood surface and watching you with interest.

“Hi,” he says. “Are you lost or hiding from the snow?”

“Oh, uh, just hiding, I think.” You move closer to him and put on a gracious smile. “And in a bit of a bind. I’d really like to let my friends know that I’m safe and sound, but I think my phone lost service a way’s back. Any chance you have a landline?”

The man nods, smiling back. (A handsome smile.) “Mhm. In the back corner over there.” He gestures toward a little wooden phone booth tucked into the wall near what looks like the restrooms.

Just a regular landline, not a payphone, you discover when you reach it. Thank goodness.

You refer to your phone address book to pull one number, then a second, then a third. Listening with increasing frustration as you’re sent straight to voicemail each time. Again—you understand that service near the cabin isn’t great, but you don’t exactly love the idea of them sitting out there wondering whether you’re safe and sound. The best you can do, though, is leave a voicemail—which you do, three separate times, in the hopes that it will slip through for at least one of them. Same basic information: the name of the bar – Pope’s – reassurance that you’re alive and well, and the promise that you’ll stay off the roads until they’re safe again.

After that… well. After that, you have no real choice but to stick around the bar, for at least a little bit.

The bartender’s in the middle of filling a pint when you return and settle in on a barstool, but he initiates a conversation with you while talking directly to the tap. “Any luck?”

“No.” You sigh and shake your head, more to yourself than anything. “Maybe I should have expected that, but I was hoping I’d be able to reach at least one of them.”

He hums sympathetically. Plops the pint down in front of a gruff-looking woman with a murmured, “There you go, Liz.” And then he’s strolling closer. He stops with little more than the bar separating you, and you feel yourself swallow when he crosses arms. (When your gaze lingers briefly on the bare skin of his forearms, poking out from his soft flannel sleeves.) “Yeah, afraid I’m not surprised. Reception’s never great, but it’s always worse during a storm.”

“Which you’re about to tell me is going to clear up any second,” you say.

Despite the hopeful words, he picks up from your expression and your tone that you know it’s a pipe dream, so he chuckles quite good-naturedly as he shakes his head. “Not so much. Last time I checked the radio, they were saying it’ll be like this until at least midnight. Probably won’t completely let up until early morning.”

Well shit. You were trying to keep realistic expectations, but that… well. That sucks.

As though reading your mind, the bartender grimaces. “Sorry. After breaking news like that, I probably owe you a shot. What do you drink?”

You stare at him for a moment before letting out a laugh. Maybe it wasn’t the news you would have liked to hear, but the offer of a shot is… deeply cathartic. “Surprise me.”

His lips quirk up while he reaches beneath the bar and pulls out a bottle of some dark liquor. “Risk taker, eh?”

Softly, and smirking to yourself – smirking at him, too, because he looks up from pouring and spots you, and you can’t quite bring yourself to wipe it away, then – you concede, “Sometimes.”

***

He tells you his name is Santi.

He tells you that you might also hear the customers call him Pope, but you like the way that Santi falls out of your mouth, and from the way his eyes light up, it seems like maybe he does, too.

Between getting drinks for the customers, Santi makes conversation with you, sometimes leaning against the back wall of the bar, sometimes fussing with the clean glasses or cleaning the taps or any number of other mindless activities for active hands. That doesn’t mean that it feels like his attention is split—he is firmly, entirely focused on you.

“You and your friends honestly come out here every winter?”

“Every winter,” you confirm. “Starting the New Year’s after we graduated.”

Santi grimaces. “Coming from someone who’s been here for nearly ten years… Why? If you know it might get like that.” He gestures toward the door and the arctic tundra beyond.

“Nostalgia, I guess?” Santi raises his eyebrows skeptically, so you elaborate with a gentle smile. “During college, we came out for about a month every summer. But once we started working, that wasn’t really an option anymore. That—” You, too, gesture to the snow. “—was a compromise.”

“Gotcha.” His expression shifts as something humorous seems to hit him. “Is it unfair of me to say that you should know better than to get stuck in a storm like this, then?”

“No, no, hang on. If the traffic I got caught in hadn’t been quite so bad, I’d have gotten to the cabin in good time.”

By which you mean that you wouldn’t have needed to stop in at Pope’s Bar on the side of a two-lane highway. And from the way that Santi’s eyes narrow just slightly, you suspect that this thought occurs to him, as well. Not that he comments on it. In fact, the point fades completely when there’s a call for some whiskey from the other end of the bar.

Instead, Santi takes a round of orders from nearly a dozen customers before returning to you. When he does, you take a sip from the beer that you’ve been nursing for the better part of an hour, and then you lean forward and look at him curiously. “What did you do before?”

“Hmm?”

“You said you’ve been here for nearly ten years. What did you do before you ran Pope’s?”

There’s immediately a hint of pain and reluctance in Santi’s expression, which makes his answer quite predictable. Maybe inevitable. “This and that.”

He’s not evasive about everything. In fact, he’s quite forthcoming about plenty, particularly when it comes to swapping stories about your friends and a group of his buddies that he describes with the utmost affection. He talks about Benny and Fish and Ironhead and suddenly Pope doesn’t seem like such a peculiar nickname.

At least a third of the times that he takes a new order, he also tells you an anecdote about that customer. There’s a lot of affection in his words about his friends in the bar, about his old buddies from his past… It’s striking, particularly as you become increasingly aware that, for all that he’s telling you about a lot of other people, he’s remaining mostly tight-lipped about himself.

Well, that’s not quite true.

Santi tells you about himself by telling you what he sees in other people. But that sure as hell leaves a lot of blanks.

“Did you eat dinner?” he asks you quite abruptly.

It’s only then that you glance at the clock up on the wall and realize that it’s after 8 o’clock. And you’d done a bit of snacking on the drive since lunch. Then the stress of the storm and getting stuck in an unfamiliar town had kind of kept your mind off of things like food…

Now that he mentions it, though, yeah. You’re starving.

You shake your head – no, you haven’t eaten dinner – and Santi rolls his eyes. “You alright with cheese? I’ll warn you that you’re in Wisconsin, so you’re legally obligated to say ‘yes.’”

“I don’t…” You’d been about to argue that you didn’t need him to worry about feeding you—there’s a whole stock of goodies in the cab of your truck. But Santi gives you a stern face. “Cheese is fine.”

He nods before clearing his throat and speaking loud enough that his voice fills the whole bar. “I’m doing a round of grilled cheeses, who wants one?”

Oh. As you turn around and watch the hands shoot up around the room, it becomes quite clear that this is a whole thing at Pope’s Bar, which is confirmed when an older man further down the bar, whom Santi identified as Harry, asks, “Isn’t grilled cheese night not ‘til tomorrow?”

“Change of plans,” Santi replies with a shrug. “But I think I’ve got enough bread in the freezer to keep to the schedule.”

You lean forward on the bar, squinting at Santi while he makes a mental note of the folks asking for sandwiches. “Grilled cheese night?”

“Is that not a thing at your local dive bar? -- thirteen, fourteen… I got you, Ted, you can put your hand down. Alright, anyone else?” His gaze falls to you at last, and when he sees your slight frown, he makes a face at you before elaborating in earnest. “When I first started out, I decided I didn’t really want to use the kitchen because it’s tiny, and I’d probably have to hire someone else to help keep the place running right, and I didn’t really know if I’d be able to afford the gas or groceries… But I’d make someone a sandwich if I got a bit worried about how drunk they were. Just to get a bit of food in them, you know. And then I figured that if I was turning the flat top on anyway, I might as well see if anyone else wanted to eat.”

“Which became… grilled cheese night.”

“Eventually, yeah.” Santi leans on the bar, as well, so that he is… quite close to you. He takes on a low, conspiratorial tone. “Considering the number of butts that it gets in seats, you wouldn’t believe how cheap it is.”

You smirk, mirroring the pleased look on his face. And then he’s standing back to his full height, turning toward the alcove behind the bar that must lead to that tiny kitchen, so you say, “I’m going to try my friends one more time.”

“Go for it.”

***

Luckily, you get through—a shoddy connection that goes out after about two minutes, but you have long enough to commiserate. By the time Santi emerges from the kitchen with a tray, laden down by a few piles of sandwiches, you’re settled back on your barstool watching the action movie that he’s got playing on mute on the grainy television above the bar.

He unceremoniously drops a paper plate on front of you, making you jump. When you look down at it, you frown at once. “I thought you said you were making me one sandwich.”

“When did I ever say that? I said everyone else was getting one.”

On your plate, meanwhile, there are three: golden brown, dripping with melted cheese, and stacked one on top of the other. They do look delicious, but there’s no damn way you’ll be able to stomach that much bread and cheese. “I can’t eat three sandwiches, Santi.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He’s circulating the room now, dropping plates off at tables with little more than a nod to a given patron as he hands off each grilled cheese. “One of those is mine.”

Two sandwiches, then.

And it doesn’t escape your notice that it says something, maybe, for him to make a sandwich for himself but give it to you for the time being. You’re not sure what it says, but it feels significant enough that it gives you pause and maybe makes your heart beat a little faster.

You’re ravenous enough that you’re halfway through the first sandwich when Santi returns, and his eyes widen upon seeing the half-eaten grilled cheese in your hand. “Damn, I should have thought to feed you sooner, I’m sorry.”

“I should have thought to ask. Or maybe I should have gone out to grab some of my snacks.”

Santi waves this off. Picking up one of the uneaten sandwiches and taking a large bite out of it, then chewing before responding, “Like I was going to let you go back out into that even to grab something from the car.”

As if to illustrate his point, a customer opens the door to head home, and the wind whistles aggressively through the bar for a flash of a moment.

“Fair enough,” you say in response to his raised eyebrows. His silent you see what I mean?

While Santi chews on another piece of his grilled cheese, you watch after the patron who left for a few moments before asking, “Do you get many people like me in here? During bad rain or snowstorms like this.”

“Mmm…” He frowns to himself, rushing to finish chewing so that he can answer. “Some. Especially around this time of year, we get some who are in the area to visit family for the holidays, but storms get them turned around. Most people who know where they’re going had the sense not to get caught on these roads in bad weather in the first place.”

You narrow your eyes. “Didn’t we already cover my traffic situation?”

“Hey, hey, I said most people.” Santi throws his hands up in mock defeat—it looks more than a little comical with the sandwich in his hand. “Obviously there are exceptions.”

Obviously.

Both of you smirk, just a little bit, but when you speak, it’s to change the subject. “So I know you don’t want to talk about your this and that from before you ran this bar, but do you have any suggestions for what my friends and I should do this week? Coming from more of a local perspective, I mean.”

“Kind of you to think I do much of anything.”

“You’re joking,” you reply flatly. And you truly are convinced of it, not least of which because he just seems like the type to get bored out here in the middle of nowhere without interests and hobbies. Bartending cannot be that exciting, not day in and day out for a decade.

Santi, though, shakes his head no. “This bar is kind of my life.”

“Really?” When he shrugs, you hesitate for a moment before asking, “Doesn’t that get boring?”

“Maybe I’m fine with being a little bit bored,” he retorts before taking another bite of his grilled cheese.

There’s a bit of petulance in his tone that you can’t quite parse through. Frankly, you can’t shake the idea that it has something to do with the this and that that he won’t talk about.

You frown and finish off your first sandwich.

***

Folks start to clear out in earnest around 11:30 – Santi closes up and heads home at 12 – and as the crowd filters out, you somehow become more conscious of your place as an outsider. Of your lack of a warm home to head back to, a reasonabledistance away. Each time the door opens, you glance outside. The storm still looks bad, but every ten minutes or so, it seems… a little bit better. Going along with the weather report that Santi’s checked on the radio a few times since your arrival, which confirms that things should still lighten at about midnight.

While you’ve been waiting, he’s reached a point of pulling out a pack of cards, teaching you a peculiar version of poker that you are convinced Santi invented. But against your better judgement, perhaps, you’re mostly touched. Maybe you’re a little too conscious of the fact that you don’t belong, but it’s not really possible to feel unwelcome with Santi keeping you engaged.

It’s after you finish playing the tenth hand that you look around and realize that everyone else has left. And that you no longer here the wind rattling the roof above you through the thin ceiling.

“I think it’s safe to say that you should be able to head out.” The words come out as a whisper, as though Santi is disclosing some deep secret. Admittedly, it almost feels like a secret.

Or at least, it almost feels like something you don’t want to be true. Something you wish he’d said so quietly that he didn’t say it at all.

But you nod. “Guess so.”

“Would you like some help digging the tires out?”

A peculiar feeling of relief rushes over you that Santi is prolonging this. “Honestly, that would be great.”

You both bundle up to head outside, Santi pulling on an endearing hat with earflaps. He scowls upon seeing your barely-veiled amusement. “My buddy’s kid gave it to me. I feel guilty if I don’t wear it every once in a while.”

“Makes sense,” you agree. But the implication of, that’s bull shit, is not missed by Santi, and he huffs and rolls his eyes before following you outside. The snow has, indeed, lightened up—it’s almost picturesque, now, looking out into the dark countryside while the white flakes drift past. Compared to the squall you were in before, you think the last stretch of the drive might even be pleasant.

He keeps two shovels in the vestibule for this precise purpose, and while he grabs them, you announce, “I’m going to start the engine so that the cab can heat up as we’re shoveling.”

“Sounds good.”

It’s when you attempt to turn the ignition that you encounter a problem.

Opening the door, you lean on top of the roof and look over at Santi, who’s on the other side of the pick-up. He’s resting with much of his weight on the shovel, staring at you in disbelief as he says, “I don’t like the sound of that.”

That being the angry engine as you tried to turn it on four times.

“Yeah, you shouldn’t. This truck may be a little old, but it doesn’t fight me like that unless the engine’s really dead.”

Santi stares at you for a few moments, hesitating over… something. And because you’ve seen your fair share of men having this fight with themselves, you fill in the blanks. “I guarantee that it won’t do any good, but I won’t take it personally if you want to try it yourself.”

“No, no, it’s your truck, I don’t want to assume…”

You frown and concede, “Well, technically it’s my dad’s truck, I just borrow it to come up here because I know it’ll do better in the country than my car. But yeah, I know my way around it pretty well.” You peer into the cab—the chilly, very unwelcoming cab. “Refreshing that you don’t think I’m missing something obvious.”

“Maybe, though…” Santi begins carefully. You lean on the roof again—alright. “Maybe you could use another pair of eyes? To figure out what’s going wrong. Not saying that I know better,” he rushes to say at once, and you have to bite your lip to refrain from laughing over how much he’s hedging right now. “Just saying that you were traveling all day, and then you had an accidental 6-hour stop in an unfamiliar bar in an unfamiliar place, and now it’s late and you must be stressed and—”

“Alright, fine, get over here, barkeep.”

He leans the shovel against the front of the truck and rushes around to the driver’s side of the car. You get up, and Santi hops in, and almost immediately – before even trying to turn the truck on – he says, “Oh, shit.”

“Oh, shit?” you echo.

The expression on his face is not very promising. Slowly, reluctantly, he points to a switch on the dashboard.

You left the headlights on.

Not that they’re on anymore, though. No, the power’s drained out of them, just as it has the engine. So you say the only thing that seems particularly appropriate. “Oh, shit.”

Santi doesn’t speak for several moments, and you can’t exactly blame him. You’re not quite sure what to say either. Finally, though, he grimaces at your steering wheel before looking out at you. “I loaned my jumper cables to a friend last week, and he still hasn’t gotten them back to me. Is there any chance you’ve got some?”

“No, I left them at home.” You wilt at the thought—you can literally picture them in the trunk of your car.

“Okay.” He hesitates again before pulling the key out of the ignition and turning it over to you. “Let’s get back inside and take care of this.”

He moves with purpose, now, explaining over his shoulder that, “He’s usually up this late. I’m going to call and ask him to bring the cables out.”

“Santi, don’t be ridiculous, I can just…”

Except you don’t know how to finish that sentence, and from the way Santi glances over his shoulder at you, it’s quite evident that he knows it. When you don’t continue, he takes it as the cue to say, “Cool, give me just a minute. Feel free to sit down again, we’ll probably have to wait a bit.”

You glance around; not particularly intent on sitting back down on one of those stools, you settle in at one of the booths. A few near-empty glasses and bottles still sit on the surface, waiting for Santi to clear up, and you bite your lip self-consciously while you look around the room and see just how many tables look like this, if not worse. How much he has left to do before he can go home himself. And instead he’s trying to help you (a near-stranger) get through a damn snowstorm.

When Santi slides into the seat across from you, his expression is immediately worrying.

“I have some good news and some less good news,” he reports.

Raising your eyebrows, you gesture him on. “Go ahead.”

“He’ll be able to get out here, but it’s going to be a while. He lives pretty far down a few dirt roads, so he’s going to have to plow himself out before he can even hop on the highway.”

“What’s the appeal of living in a place like this full-time, again?” you ask.

Meant as a joke, but Santi shrugs, and you realize abruptly that he’s taking it at least somewhat seriously. “It’s kind of nice to be far away from things sometimes.”

After an evening of conspicuously revealing nothing about himself, it feels earnest in a way that takes you aback. You look away from his face, down at the glasses again, and suddenly, they feel like the perfect way to keep you and Santi a little bit busy for a little while longer. “Let me help you clean this place up.”

“You cannot be serious.”

But you’re already rising to your feet and collecting the bottles by the and then balancing the glasses between your free hands. “You’d probably be on your way home right now if I weren’t here. This is the least I can do. Now tell me where to put these before I start dropping things.”

Resigned, he lets out a sigh and rises back to his feet. “Rinse them in the sink behind the bar and then dump the glasses in the tub and the bottles in the recycling bin.”

“Great. Was that so hard?”

Judging by his expression, the answer is yes.

***

It’s while you’re helping Santi load the glasses into the dishwasher that he says it. Out of nowhere.

“I was in the army. Before I came here.”

“Oh.” Well, that certainly gives more specific context to some of the stories that he told about those old friends of his. Must have been army buddies. You falter halfway to loading a glass in each hand, blinking at him. “Don’t the people around here know?”

Santi looks startled for a moment before the crux of your question sets in. “Oh, yeah, they… they know. I just don’t really like talking about it around them. There’s a lot of…” His eyes linger on a glass that’s already been loaded into the dishwasher while he thinks over his words. “Sometimes I don’t really want to be thanked for my service or told that I brought honor to this country. Things are a lot messier than that.”

You hum softly. Remember the glasses in your hands and set them on the rack to wash.

“Can I ask why you turned into this guy with no hobbies who runs a bar in the middle of nowhere, then? After all that excitement.”

He sniffs—you’re pretty sure it’s a real laugh, as strange as that seems given the matter-of-factness with which you essentially called him boring as hell.

A thoughtful look passes over Santi’s features. It feels like he’s really, really intent on giving you a sincere answer, and it’s just… a little comforting that his evasiveness wasn’t about you. That he wants to give you something akin to an earnest truth. “Trying to shut off a part of my brain that I don’t really like much, I guess.”

“Did it work?”

“Sometimes.” He pauses. “I go to a shooting range, sometimes. And camping, I still like camping. You have no idea how much more tolerable it is when you’re not stuck in tactical gear, trying to sleep through pouring rain in South American wilderness.”

You bite your lip and nod, more to yourself than to Santi. Your focus remains on the last few glasses while you put them away, but then your tub is empty and you kind of have to look at him, after that. “And yet you still came to a place where the weather can do shit like that.” You point vaguely toward the outside world.

The moment immediately feels a little easier, a little less serious, and it makes him smile. “Nice of you to suggest that the weather is the craziest thing about my decision to move out here.”

For a few moments, silence hangs between you. Not uncomfortable, but you’re both so clearly aware that there’s not any obvious way to proceed now that the place has been cleaned up. You’re the one that dares to ask, “Should we have a drink while we wait?”

Santi nods his agreement before his eyes suddenly light up. “After the day you’ve had, I think you deserve some of the good stuff. Grab two of those tumblers, c’mon.” Pointing toward a rack of drying glasses on the wall.

He moves from the dishwasher to the walk-in pantry, which boasts several rows of shelves filled with copious amounts of alcohol and mixers. Large portions of the floor, too, are covered in boxes, so he guides you through a maze of tiny floor space to get to a back corner where there’s enough room to spread out. And he does, sitting down on the floor to peer through one of the shelves before pulling out a bottle.

Then he smiles up at you and pats the space next to him. “My favorite whiskey. It tastes better on the floor in a store room of a dive bar after all of the customers have gone away, I promise.”

“Oh, sure. In your expert opinion.”

But you do sit down, smiling to yourself as you lean against one of the boxes. “Why here, then?”

“Hmm?” Santi’s taken the tumblers from you, and as you watch, he pours about two fingers in each glass. As automatic as breathing.

“If you admit that it’s a little crazy, then, I don’t know…” You shrug vaguely. Clink your glass with his when he hands it over. “Of all the gin joints in all the world—”

“Why’d I decide to run this one?” Santi finishes the question for you, the reference making him smirk. Since you nod and gesture him on, he sighs and leans his head back against his own box. “I was out here visiting another army buddy. He actually lives pretty close to where you’re headed. I was maybe six months out from service? And I was having a shit time, couldn’t really decide whether to apply for a job outside of the military or try to train new recruits, and I wasn’t even sure I knew how to existin an American city like a normal person anymore after everywhere I’d been and everything I’d done…”

A pause while Santi swallows a sip of whiskey, but he’s not done. You can tell he’s not done. “One night he brought me to this place for a drink, and I got to talking to the owner. He was real nice, and he loved running the bar, but he was getting old and his daughter was making him move to Michigan because that’s where she had settled down. He’d tried to sell it, but he wasn’t getting any takers.”

“So you took.”

He nods. “I took. I’m still not sure I could tell you exactly why.”

“Because it wasn’t you,” you say softly. Before you quite realize that you’re saying it aloud.

Maybe it just slipped out, but Santi sighs bashfully. “Yeah, I think that’s true.”

***

Neither of you hurry, much, in finishing your drinks. You sip and he tells you wistfully about what he misses from the army; the stories flow out of him now that he’s let himself get going. He even concedes that he doesn’t think he’d be able to get back into it, at this point, but you feel it radiating from him—the ache of another life weighing Santi down. So much good and so much bad.

“It sounds like you’re ready to leave,” you say at last. You speak into your whiskey, rather than looking at Santi, but oh, he certainly looks up at you fast.

“What are you talking about?”

“Aren’t you?” You set your tumbler onto the floor and turn your head to look at him, and the hint of panic in his eyes is striking. “You don’t seem so oblivious that the thought hasn’t even occurred to you.”

He narrows his eyes. “Thank you?”

You don’t reply. Rather, you raise your eyebrows, inviting him to fill the silence. Inviting him to either deflect or take on the train of thought as he feels so inclined.

Santi rolls his eyes and puts his glass down, too. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

“Thank you.”

“Even if I do leave – which I’m not saying I will,” he rushes to say, pointing at you almost accusingly. You wave this off—no, of course he’s not saying he will. “What the hell would I be leaving for? The army was my whole life, until it wasn’t. I never worked at anything else.”

“Right, right.” You hum to yourself.

When you don’t elaborate, Santi grimaces at you sternly. “Go on.”

Maybe you wouldn’t say this if it were anyone else. If it were someone that you actually would have to face again. But it’s a hell of a lot easier to talk yourself into calling someone out when they’re a near-stranger. (Albeit, a near-stranger to whom you’ve been nearly attached at the hip for the past several hours.) “If you’re scared…”

“Scared?” He crosses his arms tight over his chest, and again, your eyes wander over his forearms, just for a moment. It then seems to hit him that he is quite visibly putting himself on the defensive, because he uncrosses his arms just as quickly. “Scared of what?”

And the thing is… there are a few possibilities. More than a few, probably. Enough that you don’t really have an answer, not without knowing him a hell of a lot better.

So you consider him, in the dim light of the store room. Santi’s set jaw and his dark eyes and, yes, a little bit of fear lurking in his expression. And you tell him, “I’m just saying that if you weren’t scared about something out there, you’d have kissed me by now.”

There’s a moment where you think he’s almost on the verge of laughter, or of arguing with you, or maybe both.

Instead, he leans forward in a flash and grabs your wrist. Pulls you close while muttering, “Al carajo.” The last word falls as barely a whisper against your lips.

From the moment Santi’s mouth slots against yours, both of you are needy and fumbling for each other. He has you sprawled across his body and you clutch at his shoulders to pull yourself up to his lap, settling there. Straddling his legs and grinding your pelvis against his just slightly at the same instant he presses his tongue between your lips.

You haven’t drunk enough to even be tipsy, not really, but everything about the kiss is heady and the most exquisite sort of overwhelming. The taste of whiskey clinging to you both, the slightly smoky smell of Santi’s cologne. His hands settling on your hips before one of them trails up and under your shirt, warm and so damn gentle against your skin. The eager groan in the back of his throat when you grind down on him again, a little bit harder.

Santi’s kisses are slow and intoxicating, just the right amount of tongue and just the right amount of teeth and you think, absently, that this is the kind of man who must love to just make out for an eon, if you let him. But the two of you have been passively flirting from the moment he teasingly called you a risk taker and you don’t think you want to just make out, not right now.

He catches on as soon as you begin to unfasten the buttons of his shirt, letting out a low laugh that goes straight to your core.

Or maybe it’s the way that he rolls his hips beneath you, grinding up and making you moan.

As soon as the buttons are all undone, Santi releases his grip on you so that you can pull the shirt off his shoulders. He flings it away haphazardly before grabbing at you again, but this time his hands find purchase at the hem of your shirt and pull up aggressively. Desperately.

You let him. You pull back from the kiss and allow him to get the shirt over your head, just barely having time to watch it land on the floor near Santi’s before his mouth starts to wander over your neck, your collarbone, your breasts. You gasp at once, arching toward Santi in search of more. In search of everything.

“Pope, you here?”

The sound of another person’s voice has you springing away from Santi in an instant, and in your haste, you accidentally knock over your glass, spilling the rest of your drink. “Shit.”

He bites back a laugh, but he doesn’t bother to conceal his smirk while he rises to his feet and looks you over. You can – admittedly – relate: his hair is mussed where your fingers had been tangled in it, his lips swollen and his chest bare and wonderful. “Just a second, Sam.” Bending down – giving you a great view of his ass in his jeans – he retrieves his shirt, and as he leaves the room, you watch him pull it back over his shoulders.

While Santi head out into the bar proper, you crawl across the floor to retrieve your own shirt. He makes conversation with his friend that you can only half-hear, although you definitely make out something along the lines of Santi saying, “Shut it, pendejo,” followed by a laugh from the stranger.

You hear the front door open and close, and moments later, Santi is back. Leaning against the doorjamb with a hand in his pocket. His shirt is only half-buttoned, and you can’t help but smirk at the sight of him.

Santi smirks right back.

“Got the cables,” he reports, quite needlessly. Holding them up in his free hand, even more needlessly.

“Excellent.”

But neither of you move.

“Do you think it would be rude of me to show up this late?”

At once, Santi crosses his arms and nods gravely. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“It’s just one room, and you can see the lights from the road a mile away. There’s no way that I’d be able to get in without waking everyone up.” You rise to your feet as you speak, wiping self-consciously at your thigh where some of the whiskey definitely got on your jeans.

Santi feigns thoughtfulness. “If you wanted somewhere to wait out the night, my house isn’t too far. We could always take care of your truck in the morning.”

You hum softly. “How far is not too far?”

“About twenty-five minutes.”

“Twenty-five minutes?” you echo. You come to a stop directly in front of him, and you don’t miss the way that one of his hands immediately settles at your hip. “What the hell is the appeal of living out here if a twenty-five-minute drive is not too far?”

“Suddenly, I have absolutely no idea.”

——

READ PART 2 HERE

——

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bridgertonbabe · 2 years

Note

Your explanation is 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻 I'm kinda shock people saying show Benedict doesn't match book Benedict when at least for me they fall in the same line, I think is pretty obvious show Benedict it's just bragging about being a rebel but in reality he would never do something so risky and HE KNOWS THAT even Eloise knows that that's where her conversation with Gen comes from

Tbh I'd say show Benedict is the most similar to his book portrayal than any other character thus far. The show has elevated his character and given him room to evolve so by the time S3 comes along he'll have more depth and nuance to him and the audience will have a more thorough insight into what his way of thinking and behaving is.

Benedict is the perfect example of a character who will talk the talk but even then there's no real drive behind his words, as Henry rightly called out. From what we've seen of him in S1, Ben has a long way to go before he has the guts to be his authentic self and break the rules of convention in order to be with Sophie.

I definitely see Henry's words having an effect on him in a "I'll show you" type of way, but he'll still struggle to prove to his friend that he can truly disregard the opinions of others to live the life he so chooses.

I think in S2 we'll see more of his casual relationship with Gen which will end with her breaking things off because Benedict is too cautious. There could be an incident when some guy says something to Ben in passing at Whites about how friendly he is with the modiste, causing Benedict to distance himself from Gen for a while because he doesn't want the association or gossip surrounding him. Gen can't be arsed with his childish hesitance and effectively tells Benedict to grow a pair or something along those lines, maybe even throwing in a remark that she doesn't think he'll ever be content with his life because he doesn't have the courage to stand out from everyone else.

And of course, Eloise is always on his back, daring him to be bold and encouraging him to push the boundaries that their society as put upon them because of their standing. He wishes he could be brave enough to do so, even as a means for his younger sister to live vicariously through him as her gender restricts her further. I'm curious in S3 if instead of Colin convincing Benedict to go for it with Sophie, that they hand over the reins to Eloise instead. Benedict would end up spilling his guts to Eloise about Sophie being his lady in silver and the inner conflict he has about it - and Eloise shouts at him to pull his head out of his arse. Being with Sophie is what all her cajoling over the years has been leading up and he's essentially dithering on whether or not he can do it. Eloise asks him why he's so insistent on standing in the way of his own happiness but also of Sophie's happiness. She would ask him what on earth he's even doing standing around ruminating on the matter when he should be out there begging Sophie to take a chance with him and defy the expectations of the Ton together.

Benedict would then finally take heed of the words Henry, Gen, and Eloise have been saying this whole time and with the motivation of his love for Sophie, he'd at long last prove himself to be the man he had for so long humoured he could be.

#asks #bridgerton #benedict bridgerton #season 2 speculation #season 3 speculation #benophie #sophie beckett #my ramblings

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mymelodyheart · 3 years

Text

Miles Between Us Chapter 15 ~Etched On Wood~

Previously in The Element of Surprise

Annalise perked up at Claire's feeble attempt to sound less grumpy. "Har de har har! I didn't realise you could be funny before coffee. A total package for a marauding pirate if I may say so."

"Tell that to Captain Beard," she mumbled, getting out of bed.

"Aye, matey!" Annalise mischievously winked. "That's if he happens to be in Isle of Harris this weekend. Which is where, by the way, we're going, as in, now! So get packing!"

Claire stilled and shook her head. "Wot?" She began to shake her head, tugging the covers around her as she made her way to the dresser. "Oh no, no, no! I'm not leaving this place for any man or woman, including you, blondie! I've got a pile of work to do. You know I have deadlines."

"Oh no, you don't. You stop right there, missy! Have you forgotten you agreed with Jamie to take a weekend break?"

Claire's eyes widened. "Oh, did he also tell you how he got me to agree?"

"No. But you can tell me later on the plane."

If you wish to read this on AO3, here is the link.

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Claire stood in the quaint wonderland of whisky, gin and assorted spirits, also known as The Island Spirit Whisky Shop. One side of the store was given over to the whiskies, while numerous craft gins and spiced rums were on the other. Absently, she touched one of the bottles of liquid gold, mentally calculating how many bottles she could fit in her small luggage to bring back as presents. When she heard laughter, she glanced up to find Annalise sampling a dram with the owner, effectively ending her dithering and opting to grab just a bottle of single malt in front of her instead. They'd just arrived in Stornaway over an hour ago and decided to put her gift shopping spree on hold .

Annalise raised a whisky glass and winked. "You better start getting busy. Our driver isn't going to hang around and wait for us all day. Found anything you like?"

Claire approached her friend and showed the bottle. "Aberfeldy, sixteen years old. For us tonight."

"Very nice. Glad to see you warming up to this trip for a change. How long has it been since you last checked your phone for Jamie's message?"

"Five minutes," she replied, scrunching her nose at Annalise for bringing up the sore subject. She handed the bottle and her credit card to the shop owner before facing her friend. "I've sent Jamie a message, and he hasn't replied yet. He's got some explaining to do ...sending me away like this with too little notice." She let out an unladylike grunt. "Why can't our men be here? We're in a beautiful location ...romantic even ..." She waved a hand in the air to prove a point. "I don't understand why you're not so bothered not spending time with your boyfriend when you rarely see him, and you're only here until Monday."

"Oh, poor us girls! Without our men! God help us!"

Claire fought a smile. "Hey, now, if I recall correctly, I had to listen to you moan endlessly about not seeing Willie enough. What was that again, you said just a week ago over the phone?" She tapped her chin and pretended to go through her memory bank. "You can't stand living without him."

"Correction, missy. I told you I couldn't stand living on my own in London. Which means I'm not used to not having you around."

"Ah, my mistake. Must have misheard that part." Annalise snorted a laugh and went to grab a bottle of gin from the shelf, leaving Claire once again to thoughts of Jamie. Any day now, John would summon her back to London, probably with Mary Hawkins and Tom Christie in tow. Though she dreaded going back, she'd placated those thoughts by telling herself she'd be moving to the Highlands soon.

Despite the valuable inroads to their relationship, Claire wondered if she would have given up London and her job so soon, supposing that Jamie hadn't had PTSD. Would their relationship have moved this fast? She immediately quelled that thought because deep down, she knew in her heart whatever their circumstances might have been, they would have chosen to be together whether it was too soon or not.

She glanced once more at her phone, inwardly debating whether to call Jamie or not. What the hell is he up to? She hadn't heard a peep from him since she'd left the cottage. Something was definitely up, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

"So, this work of yours is moving along fast. I bet you can't wait to start your life in the Highlands with your love, no less. So, what's the plan? Are you and Jamie buying a bigger property together, or will you be staying in the cottage to see how the relationship pans out?"

"His cottage for now. As for what lies ahead, we haven't talked about that far into the future yet."

"Quite right. Future planning is tedious, anyway. It's pretty obvious you and Jamie are meant to be together, no matter what. I saw it coming from a mile away. The way he looks at you ...you can literally see smoke coming out of his ears." Annalise comically waggled her eyebrows as she eyed the other sample bottles on the counter.

"Well, since we're talking about the future and wotnots," Claire began, lowering her voice, "I have been doing a lot of thinking myself. For starters, I want to have Jamie's babies one day."

Annalise's eyes widened.

She frowned. "Wot?"

"Babies?"

"Yes, babies." When Annalise continued to stare at her, Claire groaned. "Not now, though, silly! Our relationship might be going at full speed, but God ...I have other plans in mind before that happens."

"Yes, I get that ...but ...but have you and Jamie talked about babies?"

Claire gave the store owner an apologetic smile and pulled Annalise into the alcove by the window. "No. As I said, we haven't talked anything about the future. What's wrong with you? I know it's too early to be talking about babies, but everyone knows where our relationship is heading to. Eventually, somewhere down the line, starting a family would be the next step. Or did you think my move to the Highlands is experimental?"

"No! Of course not! It's not that ... it's..."

"It's wot?"

"I, ah ...the babies part."

"Jesus, Annalise, what's your fret about babies?"

"There's no fret!"

"What is it then?"

"I, ... I'm not sure if I should be the one telling you this, but ..."

"Tell me wot?"

"I thought you knew because why else would Jamie ..."

"Know what? For God's sake, spit it all out! It quite apparent you know something."

Annalise shook her head and sighed. "It's something Willie told me. It was right after when Jamie started to remember bits and pieces about his past. Willie thinks Jamie may have been deeply affected by what he'd learned. You know ...him witnessing your parents' death and you becoming an orphan at such a young age." She puffed out a breath. "Jamie confided to his brother that ...he doesn't want to have children because he doesn't think he'd be able to bear it if they would go through something as horrible as what you've both been through. I know that's not really Jamie talking, and I understand those fears are coming from a place brought about by his condition. Maybe it's something both of you should talk about. I thought Jamie might have already mentioned it."

Claire paused for a few heartbeats, absorbing Annalise's words. Should I be worried? A part of her knew it was his PTSD symptoms amplifying those fears in Jamie's head. The other part, she wasn't too sure. But he'd made so much progress, she thought. She waved a hand in dismissal and let out a humourless laugh. "Oh ... don't worry about it. I'm pretty sure Jamie didn't mean to say that in its entirety. You know how men are like ...they tend to have reservations about children and stuff like that in the beginning. Besides, he understands how his condition affects his reasoning, decisions and emotions. He's very aware of that. He told me so. So him saying not wanting to have children is not a projection of what's truly in his heart." She gave her friend a reassuring smile even though a smidge of uncertainty was starting to creep in. "Jamie and I are in love," she said with all the conviction she could muster. "And we've proven that with love, we can achieve anything. As for his current views about not having children, they will eventually change. After what he's been through, it's understandable he'd be worried about history repeating itself. He's slowly but surely recovering, and as soon as the new therapist arrives, it can only get better from there. I'm quite sure of it"

"Claire ..."

"There's nothing to worry about," she said firmly this time.

Annalise grabbed her hand. "Claire ...I have no doubt that he loves you. Even a blind man can see that. But think about this. What if ...what if he can't give you what you want? I mean babies. That's what you want one day, isn't it?" When Claire nodded, she continued. "You should talk to Jamie about your dreams of having children one day before moving here to Scotland. I don't want you to invest your time and emotion in a relationship that will probably end in regrets. I like Jamie, and I love you, and I love the love you have for each other. But I don't want to see the both of you hurt ...just because you failed to see each other eye to eye. Please promise me you'll talk about this with Jamie before turning your life upside down and moving here to Scotland and start playing house. There's a lot at stake here, Claire. Please, just talk to him. At least you know if you're both on the same page or not."

"Fine. I'll talk to Jamie. But under one condition." Annalise nodded in response. "If we're going to have this break together, promise me to refrain from any more baby talks."

"You started it."

Claire sighed. "Yes, I did," she admitted. "But it ends now."

"Alright, but I'm only going to say one more thing and then we can go back to holiday mode." Annalise made a broad gesture. "I can see that our little talk rattled you a bit. And don't you dare deny it!" When Claire shrugged and made a gesture to carry on, she proceeded. "I just want you to know, despite the uncertainties you may be harbouring right now, ...thanks to my big mouth, nothing changes the fact that Jamie loves you. I'm sure after you've talked, you'll arrive at some compromise about this baby thingy."

Despite herself, Claire laughed out loud and rolled her eyes. "Holy hell, we sure are a bizarre duo, aren't we? Poor Jamie. Here we are talking about babies when he probably hasn't even thought about marriage. If he could hear us talk right now, he'll probably put me on the next flight to London."

Annalise looked at her sheepishly. "Or perhaps not. Shall we get going?"

She raised a dubious eyebrow at her friend. "Hey. What's that look for?"

Annalise wandered back to the check-out counter, laughing. "That was my wise, venerable sage look. You like?"

"No, knock it bloody off!"

..........

Jamie pressed the cold pack against his throbbing eye and tried unsuccessfully to tamp down his irritation at Quentin. Stood in the cottage's open space lounge, which comprised the kitchen and dining area, he turned away to face one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. For the first time, he noticed the stunning vistas before him. Looking out to the south, there's the view of the village and valley, and the west the vast, beautiful beach, and to the north, the rolling hills. Under normal circumstances, he would have enjoyed the sceneries, but the crunching sound of Quentin's meat mallet on walnuts might as well have been a tree stump grinder splintering his skull.

"Do ye mind?" Jamie muttered, turning around to glower at Claire's uncle. "That godawful sound is making my headache worse."

"Stop whingeing." Quentin didn't bother to glance up from the chopping board on which he seemed resolved to make continuous head-splitting rackets. "Because of you, I haven't eaten all day. What kind of boys' trip is this anyway? There's no food or booze except for the bottle of expensive champagne... these walnuts ...and that ..." He jutted his chin at the fruit basket and shook his head in disgust. "Sorry I can't accommodate your headache." He watched the walnut shell fly across the counter when his mallet hit the chopping board. "As for the black eye, I'm sorry about that too."

Willie chuckled from behind his open newspaper as he lifted his feet to rest them on the coffee table. "Everyone will now think Claire dropped one on ye. How did it happen again? I didnae quite catch the whole story since both of ye were too busy grumbling at one another when I arrived."

Jamie glared with one eye. "As ye've already gathered, Quentin did this." He pointed his index finger at the evidence and adjusted the cold pack with a free hand. "And I cannae for the life of me understand why it was supposed to be a good thing."

"I told you already ...we had a bit of miscommunication," Quentin shot.

"Miscommunication?" Jamie sputtered, throwing a hand in the air in disbelief. He spun around and faced Willie. "I said to him if I start having one of my panic attacks on the ferry..."

"...you wanted to be knocked out," Quentin interjected.

"Jesus Christ! I never said that, and I wasnae having a panic attack. I was feeling queasy."

"Yes, so queasy he turned green," Quentin added, hammering the walnut with more force this time, making Jamie flinch at the offensive sound. "And here I thought he was having a panic attack. He never mentioned anything about being prone to seasickness. So when he started to act all weird on me, I decked him."

"On my eye of all places!" Jamie shouted, slamming the cold pack on the kitchen counter. "When I said I'd knock myself out, I meant I'd take my medication and sleep it off in the car." He pointed a finger to his eye. "Look at this ...I look like I participated in a pub brawl."

Willie glanced up before turning a page of the newspaper. "Aye, that ye do."

"Well, you should have told me more about your condition," Quentin stressed, pointing the mallet at him. "How was I supposed to know what a panic attack looks like?"

Jamie blew out a breath. "Even if it was a panic attack, what made ye think socking me on the eye is the answer?"

Quentin shrugged. "I guess I get panic attacks too, ...now there!" When Jamie turned away in frustration, he pressed on. "Look at the bright side ...I got rid of your seasickness and saved you from having a relapse."

"I told ye already I wasnae having a panic attack, and I havenae had one for some time now!"

"Hey, may I remind you that I offered to drive Claire and Annalise to the airport and fly in later as Willie did? Your brother would have been in a better position to deal with your condition. I know you wanted to talk more about that bloody bench, but ..." Quentin shook his head as if remembering something. "Say ...I still don't understand why we haven't gone altogether. All this palaver with keeping this whole thing a secret and Willie taking the next plane after dropping off the girls." He paused, his eyes narrowing. "Another thing, no one's told me yet where the girls were heading to."

Jamie gave his brother a warning cough.

Willie sighed and lowered his newspaper. "The lassies are somewhere having fun. Anyway, ye'll be getting yer wish granted. Ye'll be flying in my place when we return back to the mainland. Jamie told me CalMac ferries banned ye for a year."

Jamie bit back a smile at Willie's smooth change of subject.

"So Jamie told you." Quentin popped a walnut in his mouth. "Did he also tell you he didn't even try to explain to the police that it wasn't my intention to knock him out cold? That my intention was to help."

Jamie took a slow breath. "How could I? My head was still reeling from your punch. The police could only take in reports from eyewitnesses."

Quentin cast the mallet aside and flattened both hands on the counter. "All right, all right ....never mind that. What's done is done, and I apologised already." He paused for a few beats and frowned. "So ... what's happening now? Why are we sitting around in this cottage when we could be organising some grub and booze?"

"Just hang fire for a little bit more." Jamie took out his phone and pretended to fiddle with it. It was becoming more difficult to distract Quentin by the second, but he needed to do this right if his plan was going to work. "The landlord is supposed to stop by. It shouldn't be long now."

"Well ..." Quentin glanced at the wall clock. "If the landlord doesn't come anytime soon, I'm going to find the nearest pub. I'm starving. And don't tell me to eat fruits. I want a proper hot meal. And I need a drink after the morning we had."

Not happening! Jamie couldn't have him doing that. "Look, dinnae start lining yer imaginary shots just yet. Pubs open much later here. Maybe while we're waiting, ye can show me that bench we were talking about." He gave Quentin a meaningful look. "Remember? It's one of the reasons why we came here for. Ye've delayed it long enough bashing those walnuts."

Quentin lifted an eyebrow. "Can you blame me? If we'd eaten first, we wouldn't be having this discussion, and we could be looking at that bench already. As it stands, I have to settle for walnuts. Besides, can't the bench wait? You said this trip would be entertaining. And smashing walnuts is not my idea of entertainment."

Jesus, why does everything have to be difficult with this man?

Willie finally took pity on Jamie as he regarded them both with a mixture of impatience and amusement. "Look, I ken ye're both a bit on edge and didn't have a good start to the day." He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "I know ye're hungry, Quentin, and I know yer eye's in pain, Jamie, but bickering at one another is no' gonnae help yer cause." He clasped his hands and gave Jamie a knowing look. "Why don't ye both go and look at that bloody bench while I wait here for the landlord. That way, we're getting something done. Fair enough?"

"Fine." Jamie and Quentin said simultaneously.

Willie's head briefly fell back, and he heaved a relieved exhale up at the ceiling. "Finally, they agreed on something."

Quentin ignored Willie and looked at Jamie. "Right, we might as well." He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. "If you'll follow me," he instructed before heading for the front door.

Jamie glanced at his brother, who just nodded and returned back to reading the newspaper. Rolling his head on his shoulders, he followed Quentin out of the house and to the back garden.

Halfway, Quentin glanced back at him. "So ...about that bench, you still remember this place?"

"Only vaguely," Jamie responded quietly, overcome with acute nostalgia as he began to take in his surroundings.

The last few nights, while Claire had been cooped up in the shed doing edits, he and Quentin had been trying to piece their history together, mostly to help Jamie understand the past. It had been a frustrating feat at best for Quentin, trying to unravel Jamie's memories as a toddler that they'd almost laid the past to rest. Until Jamie had mentioned a bench with engravings in a garden of a coastal retreat, he'd once visited as a wee bairn. To his astonishment, Quentin had immediately known the place. The more they'd talked about it, the more the memory of that day made sense and became vivid until an idea came to Jamie's mind ...to use this trip for his plan.

When they reached the back of the house, they came to a stop, and there in the middle of the freshly trimmed lawn was the bench. Fragmented images began to flood Jamie's brain, colliding together to form a vivid picture. As if being pulled by an invisible force, he made his way towards the seat. Laying a hand on the surface, he caressed the weather-worn wood, relying on his heart to know what to search for. When he found the familiar yet foreign carving, he knew he'd made the right decision to arrange this trip. "Here it is."

Quentin stooped down beside Jamie to take a better look. "Jesus, it is really here," he whispered. "Just as Henry told me." He glanced at Jamie. "And you remembered. How old were you when you were last here?"

Jamie sat on the bench and briefly squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, he took a deep breath. "At the most, I must have been four. It was summer. My ma needed a break from us boys, so Murtagh took Willie and me on a trip here to visit Harry. Jenny stayed behind. I cannae mind what Harry was doing here, but I do remember him showing me this when my godfather disappeared into the house." His fingers traced the engraving. "I never understood then what it meant when he read it out to me. He'd told me it was our wee secret."

"It was a secret, alright. Henry wouldn't have wanted Murtagh to know."

"Aye, I sort of caught the gist of it then even though I was too young to understand."

Quentin spoke with a distant look in his eyes. "Henry told me everything that happened that day and how it had been difficult for him to keep their trip here a secret from Julia. It was supposed to be a surprise."

Jamie couldn't help laughing out loud. He knew the feeling. "Aye, I can imagine," he replied, hoping Quentin would finally take the hint and see the real reason behind this trip.

"Did you know Henry had always wanted a son for his firstborn?" Quentin asked out of the blue. "Don't get me wrong, though. Claire was the light of his life, and he loved her. So much so, he would stare at her for hours while she slept. So Julia told me anyway. But he'd always said he wanted a son. I think it had something to do with him spending a lot of time with you and your brother during the summer, even before he met Julia." He smiled at Jamie. "He had fond memories of you and your brother, and it was very apparent from the stories he told me of you."

"A son," Jamie murmured, shifting on the bench as another memory popped up. "Aye, he'd mentioned something about wanting a son. He used to joke about having one, one day ...a strong lad like me were his words." He got up from his position and scoured the seat once more with his fingers and eyes, trying hard to remember where the other etching was. "I seem to recall myself asking Harry what if the baby turns out to be a girl. I cannae mind his reply, but he told me to pick a girl's name because he'd already had one for a boy. After I picked one, he carved both names we came up with on this bench ... it's here somewhere."

"Really?" Propping his specs on his nose, Quentin hunched over and began to search. "Can you remember the name you chose?"

He shook his head. "I probably came up with something daft ...like some cartoon character Jenny used to watch. "

"Or perhaps not." Quentin hunkered down, gliding his hand over the wooden surface of the edge of the bench. "Take a look at this." He stood up and took a step back to allow Jamie to see better.

What Jamie saw next took his breath away and only confirmed that niggling feeling in his guts. It hadn't been a misplaced memory nor a dream. He unseeingly watched Quentin squat down again to take a better look at the engraving, barely able to formulate words to express his emotions over the thoughts running through his head. Was this Harry's way of sending him a message ...a blessing of some sort? Or was it just some quirk in the universe, and everything had been purely coincidental? If it was the former, he'd been taken on a merry rough ride, and he could almost envision Harry's delight at his handiwork, watching them by the sidelines. Like Quentin, he was momentarily at a loss for words.

"You know, Henry's been gone for years," Quentin finally spoke after a long silence. "And it astounds me that you refer to him by his nickname with such familiarity. Only Julia called him Harry. As a matter of fact, now that I think of it, sometimes you talk about him as if he's still alive. You may have forgotten many of your memories of Harry, but it's quite obvious the special bond you had with him is still there, and it must have made an impact on your life."

Jamie almost laughed out loud. If only Quentin knew. He debated whether to say anything about Harry's mysterious appearances, but after a few indecisive heartbeats, he thought, bugger it. He might as well let the cat out of the bag. "Harry has appeared to me," he blurted rapidly before he could change his mind. "Numerous time. As solid and as real as we are standing here right now."

Quentin frowned. "What do you mean?"

Briefly, he filled Quentin in on the mystery that was Harry, from the first time the appearances began and everything in between and watched an array of expressions register on the older man's face. "I've only shared this story with Willie and Claire, and now ...you. It's not something I like to share with just anyone. But because ye're Harry's brother, I thought ye ought to know as well."

Quentin let out a low whistle. "That's some story. I don't know what to say. I've never believed in all these mumbo-jumbo spirit sightings, but ..." He let out a huge sigh. "...though your story is bizarre, strangely enough, I believe you. That night when you mentioned this place and this bench, I dreamt of Henry after. For the first time in years. He was sat right here, not saying a word. That's why I agreed to go on this trip. The notion that he may be trying to say something did occur to me and thought I might as well see this special place of Henry and Julia for myself."

Jamie let out an exhale of relief just as he saw Willie walking in their direction. His brother made a motion of tapping his watch, which could only mean one thing. He needed to make a move. Straightening up to his full body height, Jamie faced Quentin and cleared his throat. "Speaking about this place ..." He swallowed and braced himself. "I haven't been entirely honest with ye."

"Is that so?"

Willie came to stand beside them, a slow smile spreading across his face.

Jamie disregarded his brother's knowing smirk. "There's also another reason for this trip that I meant to tell ye."

Quentin muttered a curse. "You're going to tell me this isn't the all-lads trip you'd been going on about, is that it?"

"Aye ...no! I mean ..." He tunnelled impatient fingers through his hair. "What I meant to say is ...with everything falling into place ...Harry, the engravings on this bench a-and how our history are sort of intertwined together ...I -I thought ...right here and now would be a perfect time."

"Perfect time for?"

Jamie puffed out a breath. "Perfect time to ask for your blessing."

"Blessing for what?" Quentin's brow puckered, but by then, he knew Jamie well enough, and it only took a quick study of the situation to determine exactly what was going to be asked. Quentin's eyes widened at the realisation. "Holy hell, Jamie! Are you bloody kidding me? Is this what all this has been about?"

"It's been coming to this, cannae ye see it?" He worked to steady his voice. "Ye dreamt of Harry sat on this bench. That must mean something, and ye know it. Everything that's happened to me ...Claire coming to the Highlands ....those ..." He pointed at the bench. "...those engravings ....they didn't happen by chance. All of it has led to this day.."

"Jesus! I can't believe you're making me want to thump you a few hours after I just walloped you on the eye and apologised for it." He rolled up the sleeves of his top. "I was just beginning to warm up to you, lad. But it has to be done. It's a rule."

"Rule? What bloody rule?" He watched Quentin clenched and unclenched his fist. "Ye really are gonnae thump me, is that it?"

"Rule is rule," Willie murmured, watching them closely while sneaking glances at his phone. "But best get this settled soon because we dinnae have much time left."

"Time for what?" Quentin shot. "What the bloody hell is going on now?"

Jamie's patience was swiftly deteriorating. "Look, Quentin ...ye can thump me later, alright? I'll even offer ye my good eye. But right now, I need yer blessing."

Quentin laughed incredulously. "Listen, son, you don't get to schedule your own thumping."

That was the last straw. Whatever patience Jamie had left dissolved. There was no time for pussyfooting. He took two steps forward and brought his face close to Quentin's. The older man looked too shocked to react, so Jamie took advantage. "Listen to me, ye cantankerous ol' git. I tried being patient with ye because I know ye like me even if ye have a funny way of showing it. But this intent on giving me grief for whatever demented reason ye have and deriving joy out of it is bloody mental. So, I'm asking ye in the nicest possible way ...give me yer blessings. Ye're gonnae give it to me anyway. So cut out all this shite and give it to me now."

A tense silence between the men ensued, and they all stood stock-still waiting for each other to give in, and the only discernible sound to be heard was the waves crashing on the beach.

When the phone notification went off, Quentin and Jamie momentarily forgot their stand-off and whipped their attention to Willie. "So gentlemen, what is it going to be? It's nearly showtime."

Quentin's eyes narrowed. "Showtime?"

..........

"Òran na Mara," Claire read out loud as they drove past the hand-carved wooden sign. "Song of the sea. How very fitting."

"I think it's romantic," Annalise whispered in response, smiling at her from the passenger seat in front.

"Weel, here we are," the driver announced as they pulled into the driveway. "Welcome to yer home for the next few days."

Claire leaned forward to take a better look at the cottage with a thatched roof and stone wall. Though it retained its traditional features, the beautiful structure had all the subtle hallmarks of luxury, and she could tell it had been sympathetically modernised without compromising its original character. She smiled when she caught a glimpse of the white sand beach and the turquoise Atlantic ocean. "This is gorgeous, Annalise. Jamie's outdone himself with this surprise."

"He certainly has," Annalise grinned. "Shall we?"

They both hopped out, and while Annalise sorted out the driver, Claire could only stand there in awe of the surrounding. Everywhere she turned, there was something to look at - beaches, rolling hills, and islands on the horizon. She was so taken by the natural beauty around her, she didn't even notice the car drive away.

"Wait till you see inside. Jamie showed me pictures of the interior." Annalise walked up to the house and opened the wooden door, and Claire followed, hefting her luggage.

Inside was just as breathtaking as outside. "Wow," Claire breathed, admiring the views from the numerous windows. "This place is huge. There's probably enough room to accommodate ten people here. What are we going to do with all this space? The boys should have come."

Annalise just shrugged and smiled as she opened the glass door that led to the back garden overlooking the beach. "Why don't you go out and enjoy the view. There's a seat over there. I'll go and find us something to drink."

She stepped out of the cottage and sucked in a deep breath of salty air, and immediately felt at peace. Shading her eyes from the sun, she surveyed the curved bay of the beach and the peninsula in the backdrop. As far as she could see, there wasn't a soul in the area, nor were there passing cars to be heard, just the sound of nature, white sands and blue skies ahead. Oddly enough, the scenery uncannily reminded her of her mother's painting, which hung in her family home in Oxford, making her momentarily wonder if it was still there.

Sighing, she pulled out her phone and swiped the screen. There was still no message from Jamie. She decided it was no use pining over him when he must have spent a fortune sending her here to have some quality time with her best friend. He was thoughtful that way, even though sometimes to a fault. With a shake of her head, she shoved her phone back in her jeans, but something brought her up short as she made her way towards the bench. A familiar scent.

Before she could turn around to seek for the source, a pair of strong arms slid around her waist, soft, warm lips gliding along the back of her neck.

Exhilaration snapped in her veins. "Jamie," she breathed, turning around to wrap him in her arms. "You're here."

"I'm here," Jamie returned gruffly, his big hand rubbing circles on the small of her back. "Did ye really think I'd let ye out of my sight for a whole weekend when ye could be returning to London anytime soon?" He buried his face in the crook of her neck, nuzzling his nose against her skin.

"A part of me didn't think so." She tipped her head back and forced him to look at her. When his face came to view, she did a double-take. "Your eye! What happened?"

His lips twitched. "Dinnae fash, Sassenach. It's just a minor accident. So, do ye like yer surprise?"

Her lungs released the pent-up breath she was holding in a rush. "I love it and even more so now that you're here."

He smiled and took a moment to search her eyes before their mouths joined, warm hands cradling her face. His tongue parted her lips and stroked with the utmost tenderness in a slow, savouring kiss making her aware of their hearts pounding in unison.

"Sassenach ..." He trailed off to brush his lips against her temple. "Before anything else, there's something I have to show ye."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "Another surprise?"

Tongue tucked into his cheek, he momentarily glanced over her shoulder before his gaze ticked back to hers. "I suppose ye can call it that. Have ye been here before?"

She noticed the immediate gravity in Jamie's expression as he kissed her brow. "No. I haven't. But I must admit this place does feel familiar."

"How so?"

"The views ...it reminds me of my mother's painting. She's probably been here at one point."

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. "She was."

"She was? How do you know? Uncle Lamb told you?" she asked rapidly.

"Patience, woman! Too many questions all at once." He tugged her towards the bench, and when he let go, he stooped over the seat and ran a hand over the wooden surface. He glanced up at her and smiled. "Come here and take a look at this."

Claire did as she was told, and as she crouched down, her eyes landed on a string of words carved in what looked like a feeble attempt at calligraphy.

Henry and Julia - At the end, as at the start, through all the in-betweens, until the world stops spinning.

A choppy breath passed her lips as she ran her fingertips over the etchings. "It's my mum and dad."

"Aye."

"They were here." She stood up and looked around her, this time, trying to see the surroundings through their eyes. "It makes sense dad brought mum to this place. It's so romantic, and from stories I've been told, he was just ...that. And I can imagine my mum sitting here on this very spot, capturing the moment with her artwork." An intense wave of gratitude suddenly rose, almost making the moisture in her eyes spill. Jamie had done this for her because he knew, just like him, she was trying to put the pieces of her past together. "God, this is bloody insane. I wouldn't have seen this if we hadn't met."

"Ye want to hear the best part?"

She gave him a wobbly smile. "Go on then."

"Yer da proposed to your ma on this very bench."

She let out a soft expulsion of breath. Something expansive and extraordinary stirred within. It was as if, in this very moment, Jamie's revelation had taken back to her parents' past and was there to witness it. "I don't know what to say."

"The carvings on the bench was yer da's tribute to the day he proposed to yer ma."

"And you know this, how?" she asked quietly.

"Yer uncle and I put two and two together," Jamie explained, with a one-shoulder shrug. "I told ye ....some memories of my childhood have started to come back. Weel, this was one of them. When I mentioned to Quentin about how yer father showed me his handiwork on this bench when I was a wee lad, he'd figured this was the place Harry proposed. Yer father must have spoken of this place to yer uncle. I didnae understand any of it back then. I was too young. I wouldnae have realised the significance of it if I hadn't told Quentin about it. After some thoughts, I knew I had to come back and see it for myself just to prove I hadn't imagined any of it."

"But did you have to put me on a charter plane?" she softly admonished. "With Tom Christie? Are you mates with him now?"

"Tom is often hired to fly some goods to Stornoway for some restaurant. When I heard he'd be flying today, I thought it fitted perfectly with my plan. I must admit it pained me to ask him to take ye girls, but he was happy enough to sneak ye in."

"We could have flown here together."

"Aye, we could have." He took her hand in his and played with her fingers. "But I wasnae sure how I'd fare in the plane with my PTSD. Besides, I had a few personal businesses to attend to.

"Such as?"

He shook his head in amusement and kissed her lips, lingering there before drawing away. "Ye're distracting me, Sassenach and I still have something to show ye."

She heard Annalise's laughter coming from the cottage. "I presume Willie is here with you too."

"Your presumption is correct. Now stop asking questions and take a look at this." He pulled her towards the other end of the bench.

She sighed. "Alright, let's see it then."

Jamie let go of her hand and tapped a finger on the spot. "Take a look."

Claire leaned forward and read the inscription.

Jamie/Claire - the promise of greater things to come.

She frowned as confusion settled upon her. "What's this?" She traced the grooved marks of the words with a fingertip. "This has the same indentation as the other engraving. And it looks old. This couldn't have been recent."

"Yer da wrote it."

She straightened up. "Wot? But what does it mean?"

Jamie blew out a breath. "He wrote the names he would name his firstborn. He chose my name for a boy, and I got to pick yers."

Her eyes widened. "You picked my name?"

"Apparently," he grinned.

A laugh bubbled out of her. "God, so much to take in. Whatever next?"

"This." Jamie picked up a paper bag she hadn't noticed before by the bench and pulled out a padded envelope. "It's from yer workplace." He read the sender. "Dreamcatcher."

She sighed, still reeling from what Jamie just told her. "It's probably from John," she murmured more to herself as she took the envelope. She tore it open and was surprised when she pulled out its content and realised it was a children's book. "It's from Louise." When Jamie gave her a bland look, she sat down on the bench and stared at it. "She's a good friend of Annalise and a children's book author as well as an illustrator. I convince her to publish with Dreamcatcher when she showed me her work. I admitted to her a while back I wanted to be a writer. Every time our paths would cross, she'd asked me if I'd done anything about it. And every time I told her I was still working as an editor, she would give me a disappointed look." She smiled and shook her head. "I wonder why she sent this to me." Admiring the colourful print, she ran her hand over the cover. "What a talented woman."

"So ...what is the book about?"

Claire examined the book. "It's about The Unicorn and the Lioness," she answered, reading the title and leafing through the pages. As she suspected, each page was beautifully and colourfully illustrated. "Well, shall we see what we have here?" She opened it to the beginning and began to read aloud.

There once was a unicorn

That fell for a lioness.

She surprised him with her charm,

And her comeliness.

She grinned as she flipped the page. "Unusual pairing," she observed, making a face at Jamie. "...but hey ...the unusual ones tend to be the best."

She licked her lips and continued reading.

The two, you see,

Were from different worlds

So it made him wonder,

How'd it all unfurled?

"Ah ... makes me wonder too," she added softly. "This is getting interesting."

Jamie laughed, angling his body so he could also see the pictures.

In spite of their differences,

It was love at first sight.

Their feelings grew quickly,

Their hearts took to flight.

She smiled and turned to the next page.

The unicorn, his life,

Once troubled and scattered

Now calmed and on the mend

In all ways, that matter.

She glanced up at him and grinned. "Well, love heals, so they say," she remarked with a wink. "And love is all there is."

"Love is all there is," Jamie echoed with amusement.

She took a deep breath and resumed where she left off.

There were simply no words

For how lucky he'd become.

Without her by his side

Life would be hopelessly glum.

She paused for a beat as a peculiar inkling tugged in her guts. Swallowing the odd knot in her throat, she forced herself to say something. Anything! "We wouldn't want the unicorn feeling glum now, would we?" she managed, suddenly unable to draw breath.

"No," he replied. "A glum unicorn would be a tragedy."

Oh, lordy, lordy! Is this what I think what's happening? She took a fortifying breath and lifted the next page with a shaky hand.

It's hard to believe

Just how happy they were.

He could not conceive

Even one day without her.

"Happy is good," she squeaked, working her throat to be heard.

"Happiness is always a good choice ...grab it while ye can," he returned quietly.

Unable to get a grip of her runaway thoughts, a dull pounding began in her chest, gradually accelerating and drowning out the noise in their surrounding, portraying the moment with a dreamlike quality. She peered up at Jamie. Underneath his handsome exterior, she could see he was anxious, the lines around his mouth more noticeable than usual. The bruise on his eye, as much as she didn't believe it resulted from an accident, added a mixture of masculinity and vulnerability. God, I love this man! She wanted to stand up and hug him and let him know she knew where he was going with this. But now was not the time to ease his anxiety. She needed to pull herself together to see through what Jamie had probably painstakingly arranged for this moment.

"Weel, are ye gonnae finish reading it?" he asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Batting a speck of non-existent dirt from the book, she filled her lungs, nodded and read the next lines.

So he got on one knee

To hand her a gift

A tiny velvet box

Holding a silver piece

A silver piece? A record-scratching moment descended upon her like a heavy lead. What's a silver piece? Had she misinterpreted Jamie's intention? But when she glanced up from the book, there he was kneeling in front of her. Holding an expensive-looking velvet ring box, looking determined and brimming with adoration. It's not a ring, Beauchamp! It's a silver piece ...whatever the heck that is. Get a grip. She mentally shook herself. Of course, it couldn't be a ring. It's too soon for him to be asking her hand in marriage. The tiny box had to contain a key to his cottage, ....but he'd already given her one. Perhaps he bought a new house?

"Are ye gonnae to open it?" he asked, breaking her thoughts.

At a loss for words, she took the velvet box with trembling fingers. She reminded herself to calm down. She wouldn't want to embarrass them both into thinking Jamie was proposing.

"It's no' gonnae open itself, Sassenach. Or do ye want to keep holding it until ye're ready?" His lips twitched at its corner, and a spark of amusement lit his eyes.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. She took a deep breath and opened the tiny box. When she glimpsed its content, she could only manage a weak "Oh!" Nestled in the case was a shiny one-pound coin where the ring should have been. Too confused for words, she gave him a questioning look.

On his knees, Jamie edged himself forward and took her hand. Keeping his eyes on her, he kissed the inside of her wrist. "Sassenach ...ye ken how I've always talked about how fate in some strange, mysterious way brought us together?" Claire slowly nodded in response, unsure where he was going with this. "Weel, to this day, I still dinnae ken how it all works. This may sound mad. But with everything that's led to here and now, I firmly believe some force, unknown or known, has had a hand in bringing us together. And every day, I thank whoever is listening up there for bringing ye into my life."

Her heart swelled with love. "Jamie, you don't have to do this," she said, laying a hand on his cheeks. "I know what's in your heart."

"No." He took the coin from the box and pulled something from the back of his jeans. "I want to do this." Whatever he reached out for inside his pocket, he kept it hidden in his hand. He cleared his throat and gave her a small smile. "Loving ye is the best part of my life, Sassenach. You brought light and colour in, and for that, I'll always be grateful. Ye brought me back to life when I didnae even realise I'd stopped breathing. From the moment I first laid eyes on ye, I wanted ye for keeps. I want to be yers and for ye to be mine, and I promise I will always try my utmost best to keep ye happy."

"I've always been yours. And always will be. My move to the Highlands should have made that clear enough for you."

"Aye, I had no doubt about that. But I ken that stubborn, practical side of ye will try to argue what I'm about to ask ye is too soon." When he opened his hand, she gasped. On the middle of his palm was a three-diamond stone engagement ring with two smaller ones flanking a bigger brilliant round centre. Emotions tangled in her throat as he raised the one pound coin with his other hand. "If ye, like me, believe destiny ...the universe ...yer da or whatever ye wish to call it ...conspired to bring us together, I'm gonnae dare ye to leave it up to fate with this one-pound coin I have here."

"Wot?" Now she was utterly confused.

"I'm proposing a coin toss. The rules are simple, and it only takes five flips. If it comes up heads each time ... ye'll wear my ring. We dinnae have to marry right away. We can wait a day or ten years. Either way, I want ye to know I plan on loving ye straight through eternity. If the coin comes up tails, weel ..." he trailed off, shrugging. "I guess I have no choice but to wait until ye're ready."

She looked down at Jamie's opened palms, a coin in one hand and a ring in the other. He was doing this so she wouldn't feel pressured to marry but feel secure enough in the knowledge he'd always be waiting for her no matter how long. She squeezed her eyes shut and crammed her fingers to her lips to keep a cry from escaping. She was not interested in tossing a coin to prove they're meant for each other. What they felt for one another wasn't based on fate or luck. They'd met, fallen in love, and now they're taking their relationship to the next level. It's something that happened all the time. They may not love each other the easy way, but their hearts were in the right place every single time. They're rock solid, and she didn't need a flipping coin to tell her that.

When she opened her eyes, a sound broke free in her chest. "Bloody hell, Jamie! Just stop with all this silliness, and put the damn ring on my finger," she hiccuped, giving him her hand.

Jamie's shoulders drained of tension as his breath released in a rush. "Did ye just agree to marry me?"

Hot tears rolled down Claire's cheeks as she let out a watery laugh and fell back on the bench, right where her father had proposed to her mother all those years ago. Though it felt right, a slight uneasiness tried to sneak in when she remembered what Annalise had told her about Jamie's doubt about having children of his own. She searched his face, and all she could see was his love and promise to make her happy. Isn't everything supposed to fix itself when two people are in love? She made a decision not to bring it up ...for now. "Yes, Jamie. I did. I want to marry you too," she breathed as she watched him take her hand to slip the ring on her finger. When she gazed at it, she could only make out the twinkle of diamonds through her tears.

"Christ, I cannae believe ye ditched the coin toss. and agreed to marry me ...just like that."

"I don't need the coin toss to know we're meant for each other," she pointed out. "And you shouldn't either."

He gave her a boyish lopsided grin, one that he was very aware always had an effect on her. Damn! He rose to his full height, tugging her along with him. "Ye have no idea how happy you made me, Sassenach," he breathed, pulling her roughly against him and grazing her earlobe with his teeth. "Now, for the love of God, give yer man his engagement kiss."

Committing this moment to her memory, she slipped her hands under his top to feel the warmth of his skin. Standing on her tiptoes, she tipped her head back and laid a soft kiss on his lips. She smiled when his chest and stomach muscles strained and swelled underneath her touch. "Is that better?" she whispered.

Jamie muttered a curse under his breath, rolling his forehead side to side against hers. "Sassenach, I said kiss. Ye cannae touch me like that when there are people that could be watching us from the house."

"Why?"

"Jesus!" Jamie's exhale came out hot against her forehead. "Why? How am I going to walk back in there in this condition? Ye look at me so innocently when ye ken well I feel a little crazy right now. It wouldnae take much to get me going. Look at what ye do to me."

They both dropped their attention to the bulge straining against his jeans. "I see," she whispered with a shrug, drawing away. "Too bad. I guess we just have to have that celebratory kiss later ...when we're alone."

Looking pained, his hand dug into her hair, pulling her back in, in his hold. "Not too fast." His lips swept over hers before his tongue dipped inside to give her his own brand of teasing. Seconds ticked by while he tantalised with a deep kiss, causing a moan to pass her throat. She felt the shudder that passed through him, the ecstasy of this second, his love, the pressure of his lust pressing between their bodies, the awe and gratitude. It was their own private celebration, drowning everything else out and ...

A throat cleared gruffly. Jamie stiffened and dragged his lips from her mouth, pink blooming on the tips of his ears. Just beyond his shoulder, she saw uncle Lamb averting his eyes and rocking on his heels.

"Uncle Lamb?" Claire croaked. "Don't tell me you're on this as well?"

"Trust me, sweetheart, you're not the only one who's been bushwhacked."

"Bushwhacked?"

"I guess this is the part where we say, congratulations." Willie's voice cut through her surprise at seeing her uncle, causing her head to drop forward on Jamie's chest. As the reality of their surroundings slowly began to encroach, Claire somehow found the willpower to unwind her arms from Jamie's neck and turn around. Three pair of eyes were trained on them with a mixture of amusement and joy for their happiness and mild annoyance from her uncle.

"Aye, we're officially engaged," Jamie announced, his arm going around her waist to pull her back against his chest. He pressed his lap to her backside to let her know the situation in his pants.

Claire stifled a giggle and put on her best smile, fully aware of Jamie's mild discomfort. "We are, indeed," she grinned, leaning back to kiss the underside of Jamie's jaw. "I must admit, I never saw this coming." She lifted her hand to show them the ring.

Annalise whooped and clapped her hands. "Well, this call for a celebration then," she beamed, skipping towards them. "Let me see it."

Squeezing her hip, Jamie let her go. She smothered the urge to laugh when she supposed that probably nothing loses a man's erection faster than a sight of her uncle Lamb's tetchy demeanour. Dismissing her silly thoughts, Claire splayed her hand out for her friend. "It's gorgeous, isn't it?"

"Stunning. I'm so happy for you." She looked Claire in the eye and spoke for her ears only. "Did you tell him what we talked about earlier?"

"Which one?"

"Babies. Hello?"

Claire sighed. She didn't want to lie to her friend, nor did she want to taint the occasion by bringing the subject of future babies up. There was a time and place for that and now wasn't appropriate. She hugged Annalise briefly and spoke into her ears. "Everything is going to be fine."

Annalise brows furrowed, but when she saw how happy Claire was, she immediately dropped the subject. "If you say so."

"I know so," Claire smiled, pulling away from her friend at the sight of Willie approaching. "Now, scoot and celebrate with us."

Annalise did an eye-roll and let Willie through.

"Congratulations!" Willie broke in, raising the bottle of Moët in his hand and giving Jamie a high-five with the other. He dropped a kiss on Claire's cheek and grinned. "Welcome to the family, Claire. My not so wee bràthair doesnae mess about, does he?"

"Thank you," she smiled. "And, no, he certainly doesn't."

Jamie received a back slap and a hug from his brother while Claire watched her uncle slowly approached them, shoulders strained, and hands shoved in his pocket. Something was amiss. Quentin was avoiding her eyes, and she noticed his face was devoid of emotions. She strode to his side. "Seriously, uncle?" she hissed, disbelief colouring her tone.

Quentin ignored her. "You sneaky piece of shit!" he barked at Jamie.

"Oh, dear God, here we go again," Willie muttered, rubbing his hand over his face.

"Again?" Claire gasped as she noticed Annalise and Willie's eyes ricocheting between Jamie and Quentin. She was about to scold her uncle when his face broke into a grin. She held her breath and stilled in anticipation.

"Congratulations, son! I couldn't think of a better man for my niece!"

"About time ye realised it, ol' man," Jamie grinned.

"Who are you calling an old man?" Quentin ground out in mock displeasure.

Annalise, Willie and Claire gaped at Quentin.

"What?" Quentin chuckled. "If I'd come right out and told Jamie right at the start, I couldn't think of a better man for my niece, he would never have fought for her the way he did."

"What kind of logic is that?" Claire fumed.

Jamie crossed his arms. "Oh, this is gonnae be gold."

"It's a men thing, sweetheart and complicated," Quentin muttered, giving Jamie a dirty look.

"I'll try and keep up. Explain."

Quentin released an impatient sigh. "Men in your generation have none to too little backbone. Jamie had to realise he was good enough and strong enough for you. And you had to make him realise it. That's the top and bottom of it."

Her uncle was right, Claire thought. A few weeks ago, Jamie wouldn't have thought himself capable of coming this far with his condition. She might have been instrumental in pulling him out of the darkness where he'd lived for so long, but all the hard work had come from Jamie.

When Quentin took her hand and pulled her into an awkward embrace, she relaxed. "I'm not going to be around forever, darling," he said gruffly before pulling away to look her in the eyes. "I wanted to make sure you were in good hands if anything happened to me." He glanced at Jamie. "I had an inkling when Claire first told me about you, and we talked for the first time on that video chat, that your relationship was serious. The second I found out Henry's connection to you, I had to delve more into your history. When you started talking about fate and all that tripe, I didn't believe in it ...but these last few days, after spending time together, you made me believe in you. I saw something in you."

Quentin gestured toward the double-headed one-pound coin Jamie had left on the bench. "So when you tried to extract a blessing for this proposal after dragging me here under the pretence of a boys' weekend, I thought I'd have a little laugh and grant it by giving that coin Henry gave me and challenging you to leave it to fate ...without telling you it was double-headed. As you know, I was still a bit miff with you for not letting me into this big secret thing. But you surprised me when you agreed to take the challenge and told me you'd leave it to Claire to toss it. You really believe in all that destiny nonsense, don't you?" He shook his head in disbelief.

Jamie just shrugged and smiled.

"Uncle Lamb! How could you?" Claire huffed indignantly, crossing her arms across her chest. "For your information, we didn't toss the coin even if Jamie suggested it."

Quentin's eyes widened. "You didn't?"

"I don't need a damn coin to make my decisions, for God's sake."

Jamie slipped his arm across her shoulder and squeezed her. "It doesnae matter, Sassenach. All that matters is he gave us his blessings and that we love each other."

"I know," Claire whispered before glaring at her uncle. "As for you, no more tricks up your sleeves, are we clear?"

"Jamie caught me off guard with this marriage thing. Can you blame me for what I did?"

"Uncle Lamb! That's not the issue here." She pegged him down with a look. "You've been giving Jamie a hard time from day one. No more tricks and no more taunting Jamie. I love you both, and I want you to get along. Promise me."

Quentin raised his hands in the air before placing them on his chest. "Promise. Jamie's read me the riot act earlier today, and you're speaking to the converted. And I meant what I said when I told him I couldn't think of a better man for you. Honestly, I'm happy for both of you." He opened his arms to her. "Forgive me, sweetheart?"

With a roll of her eye, she stepped away from Jamie's hold and threw herself in her uncle's arms. "You know I'll always forgive you," she mumbled against his neck, hugging him close. "Despite you being such a grouch, I want you to know I am happy that you're here."

"Me too, sweetheart, me too," he said gruffly. "Now, shall we start the celebration? I'm parched and starving."

"About time," Annalise chirped with a little dance and fist pump.

Laughing, Willie popped the cork on a bottle of Moët while Jamie handed out the crystal flutes.

Claire watched as their drinks were being poured and smiled. She said a silent prayer for her parents and thanked them. There were so many things to be grateful for. Life was good, and her heart was full. She was moving to the Highlands, start her career as a writer and marry the man she loved. This was what she wanted, and she was prepared for this whatever may come their way. Her only wish was, her parents could be here today, so her father could see what a fine lad Jamie had grown up to be.

Her attention was brought back to the present when Annalise nudged her with her foot. With champagne finally in everyone's hand, they all raised their glasses to their new beginning.

"To Jamie and Claire," Willie began.

"To your happiness," Annalise added.

"To family and friends," Jamie beamed.

"To what's next," Claire breathed.

"To my next meal," Quentin snorted. "Now drink up, and let's go. I'm bloody starving."

..........

"Did you really mean what you said earlier?" Jamie asked Quentin once they were alone, and the rest of the party walked ahead of them on their way back to the cottage from the pub. "About believing in me and being happy for us?"

Quentin glanced at him. "I always say what I mean, son. Best get used to it," he grumbled.

"Right ..." They walked in silence, watching Claire, Annalise and Willie as they began singing the chorus of Living on a Prayer for the umpteenth time. "About that double-headed one pound coin ..." Jamie began.

"That was a clever touch, huh?" Quentin grinned. "Would have come handy for you if Claire had decided to use it. You still got it?"

"Aye." Jamie handed him the coin. "By the way, I have a confession to make."

"What's that?" Quentin asked, taking the coin and shoving it in his pocket.

"The reason why I readily agreed to that coin toss you suggested earlier is that ...Harry gave me one too." Jamie dug his own coin from his pocket and showed it to Quentin. "I knew the coin ye were giving me was double-headed."

Quentin stopped to look at him. "You suggested the coin toss to Claire even though you knew it was double-headed?"

"Aye."

"If Claire had agreed, would you have used the double-headed or the normal coin?"

"The double-headed, of course," Jamie admitted.

"What about all your bloody talk of fate and destiny and all that?"

Jamie shrugged. "Oh, I still believe in fate, but I couldnae take the chance. I love yer niece too much. I think ye would be inclined to agree that the universe has an odd sense of humour, and I needed to cover my arse just in case it decided to turn against me."

Quentin scowled. "Is it too late to change my mind about you?"

"Aye."

They watched as Annalise and Willie, doubled with laughter, latched on to Claire's arms after she stumbled onto the curb.

"Well, then," Quentin grunted. "What the hell are you doing here still babbling to me? Go join the fun."

Jamie shook his head. "Oh no, ye don't, spoilsport. Ye're here to have some fun too. Ye're joining in."

"I'm too old for all that. Now go and leave me in peace."

Jamie narrowed his gaze at him. "Is that really what ye want? To be left in peace?"

Quentin blew out an exasperated breath, but Jamie caught the sheen in his eyes and the smile he was battling. "No. I want you to get used to me showing up," he growled.

Jamie pretended to sound annoyed so as not to embarrass the older man. "Fine, as long as it doesn't involve ye decking me."

"Deal."

..........

Jamie looked up from the mock children's book, smiling when he heard Claire doing her nightly routine in the bathroom. The book disguising his marriage proposal had been Annalise idea. As soon as she'd heard of his intention from Willie, she'd made the suggestion, desperately wanting to play a part in surprising Claire. She even had him adding a few of his own words to the poem. How Annalise's friend managed to illustrate and have the book printed on such short notice, he had no idea. But he must admit, The Unicorn and the Lioness book had been a nice touch.

Claire walked into the bedroom, looking fresh in his t-shirt, her face still flushed from the champagne earlier. He watched her shiver a little, rubbing her arms to generate heat. The sight of her bare legs kicked his heart rate up a notch. He smiled and drew the bedcover back in an invitation to get in.

As she snuggled under the crook of his arm, she smiled when she saw the book on his lap. "I never got to read the ending," she said with a yawn, her arm sliding across his waist.

He kissed the crown of her head and pulled her in closer. "Shall I read it for ye?"

"Yes, please."

"I'll start from where you left off."

"Alright."

Jamie got comfortable and cleared his throat. "Here goes ..."

So he got on one knee

To hand her a gift

A tiny velvet box

Holding a silver piece

Claire giggled. "You got me right there."

"I know," Jamie chuckled, turning the page. "Now wheesht and let me finish."

Confused and bewildered

That it's not a ring

It became apparent

She wanted the real thing

So still on his one knee

He uttered the plea:

"My dearest lioness,

Will you marry me?"

He felt his heart beating

Right out of his chest.

He could do nothing but wait

And hope she'd say YES.

When he ended and a few moments of silence ensued, Claire twisted from her position and looked up at him. "That's it?"

"Aye," Jamie replied, handing her the book. "Louise said you're a writer, so she left a blank page for you to write the ending."

"Is that so?" she said, laughing, reaching for her specs. "Well, let's see what I can do."

Jamie grabbed a pen from the nightstand and handed it to her.

After adjusting the pillow, she sat up and began scribbling, reading the words out loud as she wrote.

When she finally answered

He could not stop grinning

Because he knew, in his heart,

This was just The Beginning!

Claire closed the book and took off her specs. "How was that?" she asked, sliding back under the covers.

"It was good, but I'm left hanging. I'm dying to know what happened after?"

"Hmmm ..." She climbed on top of him and nipped his lips with her teeth. "They celebrated with their loved ones, ate a lot of food and drank too much champagne." She drew circles on his chest. "Although I have a sneaking suspicion, their night is not over yet."

Jamie flipped her on her back, making her yelp. He scanned her face for a few heartbeats. "Ye're absolutely right. He's gonnae tell her how happy she's made him," he whispered, his words thick with emotions. "And show her in so many ways how much he loves her."

She blinked away the tears blearing her vision and smiled up. "Well, he's got all night to prove he's not just a bunch of talk."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "A bunch of talk, huh? He's a big man, Sassenach, and he makes love twice as long."

She slipped her hand past the waistband of his boxer brief and gripped him hard, making him catch his breath. "We'll see about that," she challenged.

He rewarded her by grabbing her hand and slowly pressing his hips into her. "You're on, Sassenach, you're on," he groaned into her mouth before silencing her with his kisses.

Dear Readers,

Firstly, apologies for the delay in the final chapter of this series. As some of you already know, if you read my Tumblr posts, I've had a bad reaction to my vaccination. Though I feel a little better, I don't feel quite right yet hence the delay of this update. I'm easily tired and have been writing sporadically, depending on my energy level. So, after this chapter, I will take a long rest before starting the next series.

Secondly, I'd like to thank everyone for the kudos and comments on AO3 and on my Tumblr and those who left best wishes in my inbox. I appreciate them all from the bottom of my heart. Though I haven't replied individually, please know I enjoy reading them and look forward to what you have to say.

Thirdly, as you may have gathered, this is the final chapter of this series. There will be a third series. When? I have no time frame yet as I will need time to recuperate. If you wish to be updated, you can always subscribe to the WONDERWALL series by clicking here. Or follow me on my Tumblr site here.

Lastly, I hope you've enjoyed this last chapter. It's the longest chapter I've ever written, with 11560 words. If this update is all over the place, I blame it on my bad days. I personally think it's alright, but I can never be sure. I believe my reaction to the vaccination has dulled me a bit. So, thank you all from the bottom of my heart: for your continued interest, readership, kudos and comments. I look forward to reading your remarks and constructive criticism on this latest update. Kudos to you all, my friends, and be safe. Keep the positive vibe rolling. Much love. X

PS I will compile a Masterlist for WONDERWALL and post it on my Tumblr site, either tomorrow or in the next few days, depending on how I feel.

#melodyheart #wonderwall #milesbetweenus #claire beauchamp/jamie fraser #claire beauchamp #jamie fraser #outlanderfanfic

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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Chapter 4 of The Quiet Room (ao3 or tumblr pt 1, pt 2, pt 3)

The ceiling of the hanshi looked strange when Lan Xichen woke up.

His mind was fuzzy, his mouth dry and disgusting in taste, and it took a few moments before he realized that the strangeness was the position of the light: he had overslept for the first time in years, and the sunlight on the ceiling was that of mid-morning or later, not pre-dawn. How strange – he almost never slept so late, he thought vaguely, and wondered almost idly what had caused him to be so tired.

It took another few moments before he realized why sleeping late, or even at all, was such a problem.

He sat up with a gasp, hand flying to his throat in horror, and Jin Guangyao, seated not far away and awake already, looked up at him, already starting to smile in greeting.

“Why did I sleep?” Lan Xichen demanded, but he already knew the answer – his tongue had a greasy feel on it, herbaceous, that suggested that he had been drugged, and anyway he only remembered having a single cup of tea with Jin Guangyao’s coaxing, then nothing. “A-Yao, why…?”

“You were panicking,” Jin Guangyao said, smiling fading a little, his lovely soft eyes turning melancholy at the perceived blame in the question – Jin Guangyao was so sensitive about the merest suggestion that he wasn’t wholly trusted. It was trauma remaining from his upbringing, Lan Xichen knew, and never blamed him for it; he took every effort to remind him that he was loved and appreciated now, that he respect him, even honored and treasured him, and one day he was certain his efforts would be enough. “I thought it would be good for you to sleep, so that you would be calm again. Er-ge…”

“I was supposed to be monitoring da-ge!” Lan Xichen exclaimed, struggling to get out of bed, his limbs still unwieldly and unresponsive. “He shouldn’t – I only meant to put him in there for – for half a shichen at most –”

Jin Guangyao hurried over to him at once, his facile face upset. “But you said that he needed more time,” he pointed out, confused, and oh, it was Lan Xichen’s fault, wasn’t it? He should have been clearer. With Jin Guangyao’s too-perfect memory, both benefit and curse, for him to make a mistake like this meant that it must have been a misunderstanding between them. “You said that the benefit of the room was only very small to start – I thought you said he needed stronger medicine than what he was taking? We discussed it, I’m sure of it. A sharp shock to the system to restart it properly – when you said yesterday that you only planned to leave him for a short time, I honestly thought you were just talking yourself of out of what you needed to do…”

It was not unreasonable, but of course Jin Guangyao was never unreasonable.

His words now were echoed the ones he’d raised when Lan Xichen had been dithering – uncertainty and irresoluteness were his worst faults and he knew it – over whether he should even take the current approach, even knowing how much Nie Mingjue didn’t like the idea of the quiet room.

Not that he’d ever even given it a proper try.

Jin Guangyao had pointed out that Nie Mingjue was declining, and it was true, visible, painful. It was one thing to know that your beloved was likely to have a short life and another to see him begin to lose himself when he’d barely had any time to live. Nie Mingjue had spent his whole life on avenging his father, had finally succeeded, was finally unfettered and free from the burdens of his parents the way Lan Xichen had always so desperately wanted for him, and now, now he was dying? Succumbing to his inevitable fate, fading into a creature composed of nothing but rage the way his father had, the way he’d always feared more than anything?

It wasn’t fair.

Jin Guangyao had helped Lan Xichen see that it wasn’t fair to him, too – to either of them, really. They both loved Nie Mingjue so much! He was their lifeblood, their backbone, the foundation of the earth beneath their feet. The thought of him dying panicked Lan Xichen beyond all reason, and the thought of him dying when it could be prevented, when they could have done something, when he could have done something if only he wasn’t so unreasonably stubborn…it was simply intolerable.

Jin Guangyao was right, of course, that Lan Xichen would ultimately hate himself if he stood by and did nothing. He’d been so passive all his life, his father his mother his uncle his sect, but this was his lover – and the Lan sect was always so unreasonable about lovers. That was something Nie Mingjue well knew, so surely some strong measures could be forgiven, could be understood.

Nie Mingjue would understand.

It wasn’t like Lan Xichen’s father’s situation at all, Jin Guangyao had assured him when he had raised the concern. It wasn’t as though Lan Xichen was imprisoning Nie Mingjue for his own selfish reasons, claiming to protect him when in fact all he wanted was not to lose him.

He was trying to help him.

Help him when he wouldn’t help himself.

That was what hurt the most, really. That was what Jin Guangyao had so passionately argued was unfair: that Nie Mingjue had stopped trying. He’d stopped letting Jin Guangyao play Clarity for him, the technique Lan Xichen had worked so hard to find and develop for him; he’d stopped trying even his own sect’s techniques for calming and healing qi. He was no longer looking for solutions. No, he’d turned instead to start arranging his affairs: to make plans and provisions for what might happen, to prepare his sect for Nie Huaisang to take charge, to ease the transition that would happen after he – after he –

It’s not his fault, Jin Guangyao had said gently when Lan Xichen had driven himself into a frenzy of panic, heart beating wildly and lungs burning even as he breathed too quickly. Jin Guangyao had held him in his arms, counted his breaths with him, calmed him; he was so good, good to Lan Xichen, always thinking about what he could do to help him, and he’d been so good to Nie Mingjue, too, even if they were fighting right now, even if Nie Mingjue was holding him at arms’ length.

Jin Guangyao had remembered what Lan Xichen had not. He’d reminded Lan Xichen that even if it was unfair, even if it hurt him, even if he resented Nie Mingjue for having given up on life, on them, so easily, that him doing that when he’d always sworn he wouldn’t? That was wrong, too.

And that meant that it wasn’t Nie Mingjue’s fault, not really.

It was the qi deviation.

After all, as Jin Guangyao had recalled to Lan Xichen’s attention, wasn’t it a known symptom of qi deviations that they affected the person subtly as well as strongly? Death by qi deviation wasn’t just the single killing blow with the sword, but the insidious destruction of poison, tearing apart the person from the inside out until they weren’t even themselves any more.

If he had had a small qi deviation, it would make Nie Mingjue more stubborn, more rigid, more angry, less flexible, less forgiving, less willing to listen to reason. It would take Nie Mingjue away from Lan Xichen, take Nie Mingjue away from himself, and make him an accomplice in his own deterioration – as Jin Guangyao pointed out, why else would Nie Mingjue suddenly refuse to be helped? Why else would he grow so distant from Jin Guangyao, who he loved?

It must be the qi deviation speaking, not him. Not his Mingjue.

With Jin Guangyao’s words, Lan Xichen had felt the sudden and overwhelming relief of understanding – of knowing that it wasn’t anything he’d done or failed to do, of knowing that there was still hope. If they only took stronger steps to get rid of the vile thing affecting Nie Mingjue, he would return to the way he was, return to them both, and they would stand shoulder-to-shoulder in this fight against the invisible enemy the way they had against the more corporeal enemies they’d faced in the Sunshot Campaign.

Nie Mingjue hadn’t minded aggressive moves back then, after all. He’d put his life on the line time and time again to win the smallest advantages – win a battle here, rescue a village there…he’d been willing to consider the wildest stratagems, accept help from strange sources (Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation came to mind), if it meant they could free the cultivation world from Wen Ruohan’s cancerous tyranny.

It really wasn’t asking so much for him to try just as hard to fight his own doom, was it?

No, Jin Guangyao was right. It really wasn’t.

And if it was only the qi deviation that made Nie Mingjue refuse their help, then maybe Jin Guangyao was right about the rest of it, too. He’d made an apt comparison: if Nie Mingjue had put blinders on himself and was stumbling around in the dark, heading the wrong way, then surely it was their duty to help him see the light, even if he initially refused their assistance in his artificially induced stubbornness.

He would see the benefit of what they’d done when he was better. He would thank them.

He’d see that it wasn’t that they were being malicious, overriding his stated wishes like that, but rather that they loved him – loved him too much to let him stand aside and let him hurt himself like that.

He’d forgive them.

After all, hadn’t Lan Xichen forgiven him?

When Jin Guangyao had first confessed his past with Nie Mingjue to him, he’d been heartbroken, of course. Nie Mingjue was his lover – how could he take another man to his bed? Even if that man was as charming and beautiful as their A-Yao, as competent and righteous, as kind and generous…

Lan Xichen had liked Jin Guangyao from the very start, back when they’d had nothing to do with each other and not even friendship to bind themselves together, when he had exerted himself to help when Lan Xichen had had nothing with which to repay him.

He’d admired him so much for having come through everything that he’d suffered all the stronger, that he’d still remained noble and good despite all the humiliations and embarrassments. He’d been flattered when Jin Guangyao – then Meng Yao – had flirted with him, lingering touches and sly innuendo and the sparkling tension of will-he-won’t-he-what-will-he-do-next. Nie Mingjue had never engaged in any of that with him, not really; his beloved was too straightforward in his affections to take a circuitous route in expressing them (they’d been barely more than children when Nie Mingjue had blurted out a love confession, much to Lan Xichen’s delight), and he’d been too familiar with the burdens of being the sect heir or sect leader to play around with implications that could harm their position.

Lan Xichen appreciated that consideration, really, but flirting with Jin Guangyao had been…nice.

Fun. Meaningless, of course, because Jin Guangyao was strictly off-limits – everyone was off-limits, he already had a lover! – but the banter was flattering. It made him feel the joy of being desired by someone he liked, that feeling of excitement and newness and discovery that had long ago faded out of the comfortable and happy relationship he had with Nie Mingjue.

It’d been a passing crush, nothing more. And with Jin Guangyao as Nie Mingjue’s deputy, he could still be friends with him – they could both be friends with him. The conversations between the three of them had flowed smooth and easy back then, all of them casual and as relaxed as they could be given the circumstances; he had been so happy then. They had all been happy.

The war had taken that from them.

Lan Xichen still didn’t know exactly what it was that had divided Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao so bitterly – Nie Mingjue had both wanted to tell him and hadn’t, knowing how close they were – and he had known that he’d only made it worse by honoring Jin Guangyao’s desperate request to hide the fact that he was the source of the information that had helped them. But in the end Nie Mingjue had agreed to swear to brotherhood between them despite all that, so it couldn’t be that bad, surely?

He’d expected that one day Nie Mingjue would finally be able to swallow the hurt and pain in his throat and speak clearly to him about what his grievances were, and that once they were out in the open, he would see that they were all misunderstandings the way Jin Guangyao swore they were. Once it was in the open, they could work through them and return to the way they’d been.

Lan Xichen hadn’t expected Jin Guangyao to confess first – and to being Nie MIngjue’s lover during the war.

Lan Xichen hadn’t believed it at first, thinking that Nie Mingjue would never, would never, but Jin Guangyao’s confession had been so detailed: the way Nie Mingjue liked to stroke his hand along his arm as if petting a large cat, the expression of stunned pleasure on his face, the little things he did only in private, even the secret things like how his hips stuttered in the moments before he reached completion…it was almost as if Jin Guangyao were reciting back one of Lan Xichen’s own hidden encounters with Nie Mingjue back at him, the same in every respect.

And while Lan Xichen was absorbing that, Jin Guangyao had apologetically explained that he had never meant to trespass – that Nie Mingjue had said that forgiveness was better than permission in affairs of the heart, that Lan Xichen liked Jin Guangyao so much that he wouldn’t mind, that he would clear things up the very first instant he had a chance to.

It was wrong of him to have agreed to have done that to him, his good friend, Jin Guangyao said, his face full of sorrow and guilt. But he had been in love – surely Lan Xichen understood how love could blind you and dizzy you? How it could drive you to do things you’d once thought were crazy?

He only spoken up now, he’d explained, because it seemed as though Nie Mingjue had not told Lan Xichen the truth – he hadn’t – and it seemed, moreover, that he wasn’t planning to tell him, ever. That he’d planned to just forget it had ever happened, to pretend that they had really just been sect leader and deputy, been only friends.

That had seemed to him, Jin Guangyao had gently explained, to be rather unfair to Lan Xichen. And so, even though it might cost him everything, he had chosen to explain it to him now.

Lan Xichen had been heartbroken, of course. He’d been so angry at the betrayal – but also secretly a little thrilled.

After all, if Nie Mingjue could do it, Lan Xichen could do the same, couldn’t he? And he’d always liked Jin Guangyao so very much...

Jin Guangyao, it seemed, felt the same way.

Sometimes Lan Xichen felt bad about it, knowing that even if Nie Mingjue had once been lovers with Jin Guangyao he certainly wasn’t now. But Jin Guangyao was so reassuring in his certainty that Nie Mingjue would understand – that he’d even fantasized about the two of them together many a time, that it was his own words that had said that forgiveness and not permission was the right way to go about these things. This way, Lan Xichen could work out his little anger at being betrayed, get his own little version of revenge: just a kiss, at first, he’d only planned on it being just a kiss, but then one thing had led to another and then there was more that he would have to explain, more that he’d have to get forgiveness for, and after a while it was just easier to remind himself that this was something Nie Mingjue wanted, that when it was revealed to him that he would be happy, that it would all work out perfectly with everyone getting everything they wanted, than it was to try to think of having to explain.

Jin Guangyao had even volunteered to be the one to talk to Nie Mingjue on the subject when the time was right, relieving Lan Xichen of the anxiety-inducing burden of serious emotional conversation, which he hated.

(It was his job to smile and be happy, comforting, supportive; the sect elders had always made that very clear. Lan Wangji could get away with a scowl firmly on his face only because he was younger, a spoiled little brother and not the future face of their sect – Lan Xichen’s uncle might have run the sect on his behalf, but everyone knew that Lan Xichen was as good as sect leader from a young age, and he’d had to act like it. It was easier for him to smile and nod and simply not bring up unpleasant subjects, just the way he always had, than to torment himself with having to break through his long-established façade.)

Besides, as Jin Guangyao had worriedly remarked, Nie Mingjue’s worsening condition made it difficult to talk to him openly about such things. According to Jin Guangyao, Nie Mingjue had suffered a qi deviation in the fight at the Fire Palace, and it had made him untrusting and paranoid, reluctant to trust or forgive in a way that wasn’t like him. If they brought it up to him too early, before they’d solve the underlying problem of the qi deviation, Nie Mingjue might lash out and ruin the wonderful thing that all three of them wanted so much.

Lan Xichen had wept when Jin Guangyao had told him that Nie Mingjue had admitted, in a moment of weakness, that he wanted to make sure that Lan Xichen would still be loved after he was gone – that he wanted to leave his lover in good hands, hands he trusted, in Jin Guangyao’s hands.

That had been before they’d fought, of course.

And anyway, there really wasn’t anything to worry about, not really. Nie Mingjue loved Lan Xichen, and he’d loved Jin Guanyao, and he always forgave those he loved – one need only look at how spoiled Nie Huaisang had become over the years to know that.

Even if he might get annoyed that they didn’t tell him at once, he’d understand why they delayed.

Just like he’d understand why they had to help him.

Lan Xichen rubbed at his face tiredly. “A-Yao, I know your intentions were good, but there’s strong medicine and then there’s strong medicine. We need to go check in on him at once.”

“Da-ge’s strong,” Jin Guangyao said, loyal and loving as always. “And anyway, didn’t you say you spent your first full night in the jingshi before the age of fourteen? And he’s a man full grown, as powerful a cultivator as I’ve ever seen. I’m sure he’s fine.”

When the arrived at the jingshi, though –

Lan Xichen’s stomach, still churning from the drug, abruptly dropped, his whole body stiffening in sudden freezing terror.

The inside of the jingshi was a mess, the walls battered, blood smeared all over, scratches on the wall –

“What happened?” he gasped, horrified. This couldn’t be – the jingshi didn’t do this to people – it was just quiet – “What – where’s da-ge? Mingjue! Mingjue!”

“He may have been too close to the edge,” Jin Guangyao said, his own face creased with genuine concern as he examined the scene. “A severe qi deviation – he could be unstable. Out of control, paranoid, and with that saber of his, with the spirit goading him on…he could do anything. He might attack someone. Some innocent – me, or even you.”

Lan Xichen opened his mouth to deny it, because Nie Mingjue would never hurt him, but the words couldn’t make their way out of his mouth. He remembered what Nie Mingjue had said about what had happened after his father’s saber had broken, the whispered confessions in the dark as his tears had dripped onto his shoulder – terrible things, unconscionable things, things old Sect Leader Nie would never have done if he had been in his right mind.

It was, as much as he hated to admit it, possible.

“It’s my fault,” Jin Guangyao said suddenly, distracting Lan Xichen from his horrible thoughts, horrible thoughts that made his pulse race and his heart beat too fast and the panic start to rise up to choke him. “It’s all my fault, er-ge – I’m the one who thought you needed to rest, I’m the one who misjudged how much da-ge could take without breaking. It’s my fault!”

“No, no,” Lan Xichen said at once, instinctively. He was the one who gave comfort, not the one who was comforted; it was easier than anything to fall back into his usual role. “You meant well –”

“I never meant any harm,” Jin Guangyao agreed, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I only wanted to help, I only thought you were anxious – I didn’t realize you would fall asleep, and when you did, I thought there wasn’t any harm in you getting some rest…if da-ge does something terrible, he’ll never forgive himself, and neither will I.”

“No, A-Yao, it’s not your fault, don’t blame yourself –”

“Sect Leader Lan!” someone shouted, and Lan Xichen turned at once.

“What happened?” he asked urgently. If Nie Mingjue hadn’t gotten far, or if what he’d done could be hidden, they could join hands to hide what had happened – no one would ever need to know. Just like with Lan Wangji, they could preserve his reputation and allow him freedom in the future.

It would be fine, they could handle it, they could find a way –

“Reporting to Sect Leader: the Unclean Realm has put up its defensive barrier,” the disciple said, saluting with a deep bow.

Lan Xichen stared at him, not understanding. The only person who could order the protective shield raised was an acknowledged master of the Nie clan, and that meant Nie Mingjue himself; he was the only one who would, since Nie Huaisang, the only other candidate, never cared for such things. But hadn’t he just been here, in the Cloud Recesses? It would take half the night and all morning, flying without end, to get to Qinghe so quickly…

“Are you sure?” Jin Guangyao interjected, a frown forming on his normally placid face. “From whom did you receive word? Are they reliable?”

“We’re certain of it. The responsive beacon lit in the guard-house,” the disciple said.

“We exchanged beacons after what happened with the Cloud Recesses and the Lotus Pier, it will activate reflexively in response to the barrier being raised, there can be no doubt,” Lan Xichen said numbly. Nie Mingjue had pressed it into his hand personally, murmuring promises that Lan Xichen would never need to fear a repeat of that terrible night: the Wen sect breaking the Cloud Recesses’ barrier before they could call for help, the flames that flooded his home, that terrible escape with his sect’s most treasured books clutched in his hands as he fled in a state of terror – he’d thought that Nie Mingjue had given the beacons out to all the sect leaders, he knew he’d traded ones with the Lotus Pier, but maybe he’d left Lanling Jin out for some reason. Or maybe Jin Guangshan simply hadn’t informed his least-loved son about it, for whatever petty reason. “But – why? Are they under attack?”

Who would be attacking the Unclean Realm now? Who would dare try something against the domain of Chifeng-zun – but no, Nie Mingjue was incapacitated now, surely unable to fight to defend his sect…but who would know that? Who could predict that he would have a qi deviation now?

“It could be da-ge himself that did it,” Jin Guangyao said, and Lan Xichen looked at him, surprised. “If he escaped and returned home, he could be suffering under paranoid delusions and believe himself under attack, even if there is none…should we get people and go to help?”

“Yes,” Lan Xichen said, grateful to seize on something constructive to do. “We should go at once. But we cannot take too many people – we’re not a threat to him, and we should be clear about that.”

“Naturally,” Jin Guangyao said. “But er-ge, I worry – what if da-ge has truly lost all sense and thinks of us as enemies, as if we were Wen? Let me send word back to Jinlin Tower, which will send people to meet us there. That way, if things go badly, da-ge will blame only me.”

“He won’t blame either of us,” Lan Xichen said, because he had to believe that his lover hadn’t descended to such madness. “But if it makes you feel better, send word. Only remember – not too many people. We cannot give the impression of being an invading force, even if it is by accident.”

The Unclean Realm did not raise its protective shield often – indeed, even during the Sunshot Campaign itself, it was only raised thrice as anything other than drill, and of those three times, one was a false alarm and the other two resulted in the Wen retreating voluntarily. The last time Lan Xichen could remember it being raised to deal with an actual imminent invasion was when Nie Mingjue’s father had died. At Nie Mingjue’s order, the Unclean Realm had sealed itself away as thoroughly as a powerful spiritual owner refusing to admit any but its owner, a snapping turtle within its shell and just as dangerous, and Wen Ruohan had been unable to seize the prize he had schemed to obtain.

To a certain degree, once the shield was raised, it did not matter the reason for which it had been raised, whether Nie Mingjue had done it out of true anger or mere paranoia, actual reason or a mere supposition. The people of Qinghe, cultivators and common people alike, were trained to expect war: they would react to strangers as if to vipers, and Nie Mingjue’s ancestors had made their land rich in obstacles to trap and destroy an unwary army. Even if Nie Mingjue belatedly realized his folly, an overly large group arriving at his door might end up dead at the hands of his people before he had time to correct the error.

No, Lan Xichen had to go himself. He had to find out what happened.

He had to rescue his beloved, his lover, from himself yet again.

He only hoped they were not too late.

#mdzs #lan xichen #jin guangyao #nielan #xiyao #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #the quiet room #yes it's LXC POV time #cw: infidelity #cw: gaslighting #cw: everything really #Do Not Be LXC #I say again #do NOT be like LXC #also please recall the tags on ao3

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ketamineharry · 3 years

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Dancing On My Own - Joshua Bradley

Requested: Yes ~ Hi my bestest💗💗 Please can I request something based on Dancing On My Own by Robyn? Love u always Queen xx

Saturday nights only meant one thing for you, going to the club to get absolutely wasted with your friends. The alcohol provided the excuse to get up and dance like idiots. It was finally your turn to go up and buy the shots. As you entered the queue, a bearded man stood next to you. It only took you a few seconds to register who it was. Joshua Bradley.

You had both dated for a few months when you were eighteen, before breaking it off. He always remained your standard for relationships, no matter how hard you tried though, you couldn’t find someone who could quite meet those standards. Things would go well and then a few months in, things would fall flat. Your friends would accuse you of having standards so high that most average men couldn’t reach them.

A few months after things had ended between you and Josh, he had gotten with another girl. You knew nothing about her, but she must be really special to have him captivated the way that he was. You had seen on your social media, just how pretty she was; you didn’t have the heart to remove Josh, as there wasn’t any bad blood between either of you. The relationship just didn’t work, partly because you were too young and partly because he was too focused on his career, YouTube had really taken off for him after putting in the grind for a few years. He was a better man now than when you knew him.

“Twelve cherry sours please.” You said, as you ordered the round for your friends table. As you did, Josh turned to look at you for the first time. Despite it being only a couple of years, he looked so much older now. More mature. The success he had achieved, was etched on his face in every laughter line, the grey in his hair an indicator of the stress that he had put on himself to make sure he gave his all.

He gave you a small smile before sauntering off into the crowd, beer in hand. You followed him with your eyes, desperate to see if he was still with that girl. He hadn’t posted anything about her in a while. Your doubts were reassured when he slung his arm around the smaller blonde, the one you had seen in many Instagram posts where he had gushed over her. He let her take a sip of his beer, the froth formed a little moustache on her upper lip. When he noticed, he tilted her head up and kissed it off of her. The love between them tangible even if you were only watching from afar.

The barman shoved the tray in front of you, coughing to snap your attention away from Josh and the girl that he was with. You carefully picked the tray up and made your way back to your friends. You placed the tray on the table, everyone eagerly taking a shot, their gaze now turned to you as you dithered about whether you actually wanted the shot or not. After all, coincidences like this don’t happen often.

Nevertheless, you downed the shot. The burning liquor provided you with the confidence to hit the dance floor. The many attempts to get one of your friends up with you, were in vain. So, you just had to dance on your own. The music being loud enough to drown out the memory of Josh, as well as any thought of him with another woman. You hadn’t anticipated how much seeing him again would open wounds that you thought had healed years ago. Even though the breakup was amicable, it was clear that you loved him a lot more than he loved you. Regardless of the many times he had attempted to reassure you that, that wasn’t true -- it was painfully obvious now that it was.

You made the quick decision that seeing him only validated one thing. It was time to say goodbye, to him and to the standards that you had surrounding relationships because of him. He had moved on completely, you were sure that his standards were by no means influenced by you -- someone he had dated for a few months four years ago, when you were both teenagers. As you made that promise with yourself, Dancing On My Own by Robyn blasted through the club speakers. An affirmation that you needed as you took one final glance at the man you once adored.

Losing yourself in the music was the best thing that could have happened to you. As two hands were placed around your waist, as the person moved to the beat with you. The timing was perfect. Down to the second, you didn’t believe in miracles being granted by the universe. But perhaps this was your chance to move on from everything.

“Hi darling, can I buy you a drink?” The voice asked. You turned your head to take a quick glance at him. He was alright looking and had a decent sense of style.

“That would be great, thanks.”

The lights go down, the music dies.

The light that you had put on Josh, had faded. In reality, he probably was an amazing guy but you had placed him on a pedestal that was purposefully so hard to reach because it hurt you having to let go. But little baby steps would ensure that getting over him didn’t have to be such a laborious task. Even if it all started with someone buying you a drink.

#sidemen #sidemen imagine #sidemen x reader #sidemen oneshot #Joshua bradley #Joshua Bradley imagine #Joshua Bradley x reader #Joshua Bradley oneshot #zerkaa #zerkaa imagine #zerkaa x reader #zerkaa oneshot

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sabraeal · 3 years

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Climb to the Rooftops

[Read on AO3]

Written for @another-miracle; a birthday fic that is COMING OUT ON TIME would you look at that (though I am definitely doing some fancy footwork to make it work out in both time zones 😂 Yixin asked for the Post-Rescue Tanbarun Tree Scene for WFB, and then I said, I could give you that, but what if I told you about a secret scene instead...

And then Yixin told me to write whichever one was Obi POV

He knows her.

That’s what keeps running through his head’s hamster wheel as he clomps up the student center steps. He knows her; he’s always known her. If he reached out on that park bench, if he’d grabbed her with both hands and just said, don’t leave me--

He would have been laid flat on his ass, courtesy of that mean right hook her dad taught her before he bounced. And there’d be another demerit on his record to boot, one more instance of anti-social behavior to make him even more unadoptable than he already was. Doc was always destined to go to a loving home, complete with cozy hideaways and towers of books, with warm firesides and even warmer grandparents, and he...

Well, he wasn’t meant for anything like that, no matter who he clung to. Sometimes shit just happens, and no wishing on stars thirteen years gone can change that.

It’s good to see her though. He’d always wondered what happened to his muppet girl, whether she’d gone off and had her happy ending just like she said she would. And now he knows she did.

He glances down at the peanut butter canister in his hand. Well, at least for a little while. That’s the thing about happy endings; they don’t really stick.

Obi hesitates, one foot poised over a step up, his hand wrapped around a ruddy safety rail. “Um, Doc.”

It takes her three steps to bounce to a stop, just enough to let her look down instead of up or across. He’s got double vision for a moment: Doc in the here and now looking at him with so much hope and anxiety that he’s half-afraid she’ll shake apart like a Hot Wheel in a blender; superimposed over the little girl in his memory, round face beaming up at him and her worries far behind her.

She’s got more freckles now, though most of them are hidden beneath her coat, fading without the direct application of summer sun. More inches too, though not as many as he’d given her in his head; for once he’d given more benefit of the doubt than nature could provide. And her hair-- well, that’s the same. Red. Fluffy. Muppety, too, if it’s the morning.

“Obi?”

He should really be paying attention to this conversation he fucking started, instead of just staring at her like a creep. “I just wanted to check in.”

“Oh.” She goes rosy under the freckles he can see, shifting the urn from her hands to her elbow. “I’m-- I’m fine. I’m glad that we could find--” one arm juts out, trying to encompass both them and the containers-- “everyone.”

“Yeah, I got you, but I meant...” He angles a pointed look over her shoulder. “Why are we going up?”

Doc’s jaw drops, and he sees it, the way panic crests right behind her eyes.

“Not that I’m suggesting we don’t.” He takes the next step slow, just enough to put them on equal standing. Except it doesn’t, it puts him a little above her; the beginning of really looking down. His heart flutters in the exact way it shouldn’t when he’s carrying human remains. “I’m just saying, if we’re going to carry geriatrics up a few flights, the elevator’s better for their hips.”

He expects her to laugh at that one, or maybe even roll her eyes, but instead Doc breaks out into a full-body Chihuahua tremble.

“Obi.” Her eyes are so big in her face they might swallow him whole. “We can’t take the elevator.”

“We...can’t?”

Her head jerks in the scarcest side-to-side. With one long, steeling breath, she informs him, “We’re going to do something a little illegal.”

His brows raise. “Illegal?”

The urn bobbles treacherously as her hands fly up between them. “Only a little!”

“You cashed in your favor with me,” he repeats slowly, savoring the thrill that zips through him with every syllable. “To do something illegal.”

Doc deflates with all the gravitas of a popped kiddie pool. “I’m sorry, I should have asked if that would be okay. Especially with, um...”

She’s far too polite to say, your presumed preexisting criminal record, Doc just hasn’t realized it yet. Not when she doesn’t know for sure whether it does exist or not. It’d be easy to help her along, but it’s kinda satisfying to watch her flounder, fishing for the pieces of him she does know.

“If it’s a problem,” she says finally, lifting her eyes to his. “You don’t have to--”

“The only problem is how hot that is, Doc.” He wraps a hand around the rail beside her, leaning in close enough that her eyes nearly cross watching him. “Are you gonna get into your old field hockey kit and punch a girl up there too?”

She blinks, heels clunking into the concrete rise. “I don’t think it would fit. The skirt would be too short, at least.”

Are you sure, he wants to say, stretching every last inch over her, but instead he rumbles, “Honey, you’re saying all the right things to me--”

“Hey.” A finger presses into his nose, hauling his words up short like a pileup. “No call list.”

“Ahh.” Her mouth twitches as he pulls back, rubbing at his nose. “Haah. You know I hate that.”

“Then stick to the list,” she informs him pleasantly. “Besides, are you really trying to flirt with a girl in front of her grandpa?”

“Well.” He holds up the tin, giving it an experimental shake. “You think they’d mind?”

There’s a quality to the silence in the stairwell that clues him in to the fact that he’s cocked up real good this time. First with the tomb joke, now asking if grandma might be watching from beyond the grave, objecting to his game. At least he knows he never had a chance; otherwise he’d have to go take his hopes out behind the woodshed--

“No,” she hums, confident. “They’d like you.”

It’s a good thing she doesn’t get it in her head to try the nose trick again; it’d push him right over. He can survive a lot, but four flights is pushing it. “Doc,” he huffs, scratching the bristle at the back of his head, “I don’t think--”

“Well...” She’s thoughtful when she puts her back to him, bouncing up the next couple of stairs. “Opa would. Oma would think you needed to be fattened up.”

He laughs, but even to his own ears it sounds busted up, wings broken. “Sounds like my kind of lady.”

“Ugh,” Doc sighs from one landing up. “She’d love that you said that.”

“That just makes her even more--”

“Don’t.”

RESTRICTED ACCESS, the doors says, bright red letters fading against the plastic sign. ALARM WILL SOUND.

Doc’s been bullish these last few flights, pushing a pace that makes him want to remind her he’s a hitter, not a runner, but now--

Now she shuffles on the stairs, daunted. “Do you think it will really...?”

Obi thinks this might be a private university, funded by mommy and daddy’s pockets to keep their babies safe, but alarms go off all the time. Unless this building has a rent-a-cop watching daytime TV down in the atrium right now, it could take hours for someone to answer the call, especially mid-afternoon on a Saturday.

“Who knows.” He’s not sure what she’s got up her sleeve that involves two dead people and a rooftop-- especially when even Doc is quick to admit it’s got at least a toe on the wrong side of legal-- but it probably won’t look good if they’re interrupted, even by the Diet Coke of the law enforcement vending machine. “Maybe you should plan to keep the fancy speeches to a minimum.”

“Eulogies.” Her thin fingers flex over ceramic, white where they press in. “You mean a eulogy.”

“Gesundheit.”

Doc turns her head, real slow, letting him soak in every drop of her disapproval. Well, that’s one pigtail successfully pulled.

With a breath so deep it makes her pea coat really earn the name, Doc nods. “Right. Okay. I think...”

Obi expects some dithering, some real soul-searching doubts being dragged out for airing right here in the stairwell. Doc likes that sort of thing, taking everything out of her head so she can fold it all up real nice again, but instead--

Instead she barrels across the landing, plowing right through the metal door, a whole stretch of gray winter sky stretching out before her. There’s one blink, two, and then-- well, the sign wasn’t kidding. The alarm does, in fact, sound.

He catches the door with a hand; it’s weighted, ready to swing right back into place and-- if he knows his doors-- lock right behind her. Not that it’d be a problem if he meant to stand around on the stairwell and act as look out; a role he’d be happy to play if that’s how Doc wanted this whole show to run. But right now she’s slumped at the ledge, every last ounce of her usual moxie wrung out.

Maybe she might tell him to stand back, that this is something she’s got to take on alone, but Obi knows every aching line of that pose by heart. A car can keep going for fifty miles once it hits empty, but that just means you’ll never know when the tank runs dry. That’s where she is right now, stalling out at her limit.

And that’s what he’s here for, to push her that last inch over the finish line. Besides, he can’t just stand back, not when he’s grandpa’s ride.

“So.” There’s a shim in a corner-- a naughty thing to have around an emergency door like this, but Obi’s not about to tattle. He’s perfectly happy to wedge someone else’s problem right where the paint’s flaked off the door. “What’s the problem?”

Doc blinks, one hand trembling on grandma’s lid. “W-what?”

He settles grandpa on the ledge, arms folded around him, taking in the sprawl of buildings below. Clarines isn’t as big as one of those state universities, but it makes Tanbarun look like a college playset instead of a campus. Both of them have those stuffy brick and marble buildings they like up here, the kind that say academic and too good for you loud and clear, but whereas Obi’s walked across Clarines for thirty minutes and still never hit the edge, it looks like he could lap this place in twenty. No wonder Doc was miserable here; the real mystery is how she managed an entire year in this fancy rat cage.

“There’s got to be one.” He knows better than to look at her; if he’s going to make her talking about feelings, the least he can do is give her the privacy to have them. “You were all gung-ho a minute ago, ready to do your thing even if you had to punch out a cop to do it--”

“--I didn’t say that,” she murmurs--

“--but now you’re just standing here.” He shrugs, chancing a glance from the corner of his eyes. “Looking lost.”

“I just...” She shifts, head twisting toward him, he doesn’t need to meet her gaze to know it’s wild, desperate. “It doesn’t feel right that they don’t go together.”

It’s his turn to stare now, lost. “O...kay.”

“What if...” Her teeth fold over her lip, worrying at places already worn. “What if I left them go, and they don’t find each other?”

“Ah...?” It seems like a bit of an oversight now, not asking what the plan is, but he ventures, “You mean...the ashes?”

Her mouth twists up, annoyance in every wrinkle. “It sounds weird when you say it like that.”

“No, no, I’m just...” He glances down at the tin between his arms. “I’m just putting things together. There’s nothing wrong about how you feel, Doc. Not like anyone’s really written a book about how this works.”

She looks up at him, so guileless. “Of course they have, Obi. There’s a whole section in the bookstore for it. It’s just that they’re all written by charlatans and quacks.”

Whatever the conversational version of whiplash is, Obi’s experiencing it now. For a minute all he can do is stare, taking in the abject disapproval rumpling her face, and then he-- he--

He laughs. Because this is what he’s into. The sort of person who pumps the breaks and spins the conversation 360 without even a courtesy ‘buckle up.’

“Listen, I’ve been thinking...” He taps the top of the tin, the metallic ting drowned out by the blare of the siren. “What if we just...mixed them? Then when you release them--”

“--They’re already together.” Doc blinks up at him, eye shining like he’s her savior, the center of her world, the answer to her cosmic question--

The way she really shouldn’t, when she already belongs to someone a hundred times better than he’ll ever be. Not when she’d never mean to get his hopes up.

“Thank you, Obi,” she breathes, a smile dawning on her lips. “That’s exactly what we need to do.”

Like all his good ideas, it’s easier said than done. On the ground, it’d been breezy, the sort of gentle push he’d come to expect from New England right before it got its first good snow, but up here--

“Here, take this.” Obi shrugs off his jacket, hurriedly pushing it into Doc’s boneless hands, but it’s too late-- they’ve already lost a bit of grandma. “Hold it up.”

She stares down at it, thumbs rubbing over the leather in a way that makes his shoulders itch. “Hold...?”

He swings out one arm-- the one not holding a geriatric-- yanking it wide. “Like a wind screen. I don’t want to lose Oma’s pinky toe or something.”

Doc blinks, stretching the coat between her hands. “Pinky toe?”

“Wouldn’t that make you cranky in the afterlife?” he asks, shaking more of Oma loose in a lull. “Losing a toe? Or a finger. Like just the last knuckle. A bit of your nose.”

The leather starts to ripple as the wind spins back up, and Doc stomps a foot down on the end of it to keep it from smacking up into his face. He appreciates the effort; it’s hard enough trying to pour from a large container to a small one without his zipper clocking him over the eyebrow. “Would that really matter?”

He shrugs. “To some people, probably. I got plenty of nose to spare.”

Doc mouth curves shyly, hunching down to hide behind his coat. “I think it’s fine just as it is.”

“Haah.” It’d be nice if she could give him a heads up when she plans to make his heart pound like that. “Think you might be the first to think that.”

“I don’t know,” she hums, eyes electric with some mischievous spark in their depths. “Maybe I’m the first to say so, but you certainly weren’t getting any complaints a few nights ago--”

He huffs. “Drunk college girls aren’t exactly arbiters of taste, Doc.”

She fixes him with that steady stare of hers, the one that’s so earnest it makes his heart make a bid for freedom through his throat. “I think,” she says, each word weighed before she lets it free, just like a good scientist, “that they did just fine.”

He smothers a whimper into a sigh. “Maybe your grandparents don’t mind me flirting,” he mutters, hunched over that stupid peanut butter tin, “but I’m sure they wouldn’t like you returning the favor.”

She blinks, head cocked. “Did you say something Obi?”

“No,” he says, just a little louder. “Just talking to myself.”

“You know--” he sets down the urn, wiping the sweat off his forehead-- “this would have been a lot easier going the other way.”

“We can’t.” Doc’s mouth twists up into that troublesome knot. “Opa always said he never wanted to be in one of those big fancy vases. And even if he would never know, I...”

Obi sighs, hanging his head. “Yeah, I know, I get it, just...complaining to complain. You know how it is.”

She stares down at him like he’s a fish on a dock telling her about the dangers of air. He shakes his head, stifling a laugh. Of course Doc wouldn’t get it; she could lose a limb and she’d still be thankful for the other three. Probably point out how much better things were now that she didn’t need to keep track of all of them. He might complain like it was as easy as breathing, but Doc-- Doc would take every last uncharitable thought to the grave.

Haah, give her some time. A few more months around him, and she’d discover some things to complain about. People always did.

“So,” he says, picking grandma back up. “Why here?”

Doc blinks. “Huh?”

“You know, on top of the roof of the campus center at one of the prestigious universities on the East Coast?” He raises a brow. “I know you used to go here, but most people just settle for leaving dog shit on the stoop when they want to send a ‘fuck you,’ you know.”

Doc unleashes a sound that can only be termed a squawk. “What? What do you mean most people--?” She shakes her head. “No, I don’t-- I mean, it’s not supposed to be a, um...”

“Fuck you?”

“Ah...yes. That.” She grimaces. “They met here. And when I tried to think of places they might want to be...”

Her words drift to a stop, but it’s gentle. They don’t abandon her, leaving her high and dry, but she just...stops saying them, letting the wind carry them away.

“I couldn’t think of any place else,” she admits, fingers tightening in the leather. “They always talked about Tanbarun so fondly, and I...I always thought it sounded like paradise.”

“But the roof?” Obi asks, incredulous. “Is it just easier to scatter the ashes, or...?”

“It’s where they met,” she repeats, like that makes any sense at all. “They used to have movie nights up here, played on one of those reel projectors,”

Her gaze swings out over the concrete like she could see it; all the hippy bean bags piled up, big screen pulled down and movie hardly able to be heard over the wind. Not a bad picture, he’ll admit. Wholesome, just like he’d expect out of the people who raised this Precious Moments doll of a person. Doesn’t really explain Mukaze, but well, shit happens. Half the people who raised him don’t deserve the person he’s become either. “Nice story.”

She’s hardly here with him, eyes hazy and distant, stuck in a past only she can see. “That’s what I always thought. I always wanted...” Her voice trails off again, but this time her smile falters, topping like china from a wobbling shelf. “I always wanted to have a story like that too. But it, um, didn’t really work out that way.”

He shouldn’t say anything. He’s not some neutral party, here to give her that impartial, unbiased pick-me-up she wants to hear, like telling her won’t rips a strip right off his back, so-- he should keep his big mouth shut.

But he’s never been good at any of that being smart shit. “It’s not like you didn’t have your own meet cute, it just wasn’t here. It was, er...”

Huh, now would you look at that. He’s never actually asked.

“At a record store,” she supplies slowly, like she has to think on it too. “Between the aisles after I missed my bus. No--” she laughs, more bitter than he’s ever heard her-- “after I chose to miss it.”

“See?” he hums, vibrating the knife deeper. “That’s already a good start.”

Her lips press thin. “I suppose...”

“No supposing about it.” He taps grandpa so the ashes sit flat before he starts another pour. “If I know anything about your Oma and your Opa-- and I don’t know nothing besides what you told me--” and what he saw a decade ago, sitting on that park bench-- “I don’t think they care whether you met your person at a rooftop movie or in a Walmart--”

“Record store.”

“They have CDs too,” he informs her, just as prim as Doc gets with him when she indulged the one pedantic bone in her body. “But the point is, they wouldn’t care where it happened, they just wanted you to find what they had.”

“I...” She deflates, the leather bowing over her legs. “I know. I think they used to worry that I wouldn’t, especially since I wasn’t really, ah...”

“Looking for it?” he offers.

She nods, relieved. “Yes, that. After my parents, I think they expected a much more, um, active interest in...anything. And I wasn’t.”

He doesn’t need to hear her say it to know that there’s more to it than that, that what she means to say is, and I don’t think they understood.

“Well, nothing for them to worry about anymore, is there?” She blinks up at him, alarmed, and he adds, “You and chief are kind of a done deal right?”

“Ah!” It’s hard to tell with the wind slapping both their cheeks red, but he could swear Doc’s blushing. “I don’t-- it’s not-- we haven’t really talked about--” she heaves a heavy, resigned sigh-- “I mean, I...I guess?”

“As done as it can be without getting PR involved.” He gives her the sort of eyebrow Kiki might. “I’m sure that if they’re out there floating on clouds or whatever, or, i don’t know, free energy in the universe, molecules just bumping around...they’re happy for you.”

“Right.” Her reply’s so faint he nearly misses it, but the wind that snatches it away carries it right by his ear. “Yeah.”

“All right, I think I’ve done as much as I can do.” Obi levers himself to his feet, brushing off his lap before handing her the tin. “You ready for this?”

Doc stares down at the canister, jaw set, the same way he’s sure it looked right before she threw herself out a window. Certainly looks the same way it did when she tried to bean Itoya with her purse.

“Yeah,” she breathes, fingers tightening around the metal. “I think I am.”

The wall’s not tall, but neither is Doc; she has to go up on tip-toe to throw an arm over it, the wind already pulling at the ashes laying loose at the top. Her brow furrows, mouth working for a good minute before she manages, “It’s time to say goodbye, I think.”

Obi stares. Sure, he’d said to keep it short and sweet, but if it’s taken this long for the rent-a-cop to hustle up, maybe she can spare the people who raised her more than--

“Thank you.” He’d thought it might be hard to hear her over both the alarm and the wind, but somehow all her words fly true, brightening the air. “For...everything. I don’t really know how you...”

Her breath catches, but her eyes are clear, no tears streaking down her face. “But that doesn’t matter, does it? You did everything and more. But I think...” She sniffs, taking a moment. “I think I can take it from here. I’ll miss you, Oma. And Opa...”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I forgive you. For whatever still needs forgiving. Rest well.”

Her hand tips, just the barest degree, and the ashes scatter, wind whipping them past, twisting high over the quad.

“Hey.” Obi steps up beside her, shrugging his coat on over his shoulders. If it’s a little gritty-- well, good thing Doc thing thinks Oma would like him so much, because part of her might linger until the next wash. “I’m pretty sure it’s super illegal to scatter human remains like this.”

“Oh,” Doc hums, shoulder bushing his arm. “It absolutely is without a permit. I was not joking about the slightly illegal thing.”

Obi grins. “Well good thing that no one ever came to check on the--”

As if summoned by the mere mention of potentially having something approaching good luck, the door bar rattles, accompanied by some creative cursing.

“Who the fuck is leaving this open?” A gruff yet feminine voice demands, as if she might be able to shake down the universe and pick up the answers from what fell out of its pockets if she just rattled it hard enough. “Bill, is it you? God, what did I say about using the roof for your smoke breaks--?”

The door swings all the way open, and there she is, a security guard with shoulders that could have dropped straight from the Lowen family tree. Obi would take a picture if he wasn’t sure that would get him thrown in the campus drunk tank.

She takes one glance at them, then another angrier one. “Who the fuck are you?”

“UM,” Doc shrills informatively.

“No, wait.” One broad hand waves in front of her. “I don’t care. What are you doing up here?”

Doc flounders in the face of authoritarian disappointment-- which is fine by Obi. This is his wheelhouse, after all. It’s nothing to reach out, cinching Doc’s waist against him, grin wide. “Sex, obviously.”

If it were possible for a body to choose the time and place of its expiration from this earthly dairy aisle, Doc’s mortified stare suggests she might curdle on the spot. “Obi.”

The guard’s glare is a study in skepticism, taking in the both of them, and then the concrete wasteland around them. “Here? With your clothes on?”

“It’s our kink.”

“Please,” Doc mutters against his shirt. “Don’t talk.”

The guard spares them one last weary look and sighs. “You know what? I don’t care. Just get out.”

Doc certainly doesn’t need to be told twice. Obi’s got his mouth open, what can’t you let us finish first about to spill right out, but her small hand clamps around his, and she drags him right off the roof.

“SORRY,” she yelps as they pass. “WON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN.”

“Yeah,” Obi agrees with a grin. “Next time we’ll fuck on some other roo--”

Doc pauses for one moment, just long enough to raise a finger and inform him “DON’T.”

This time he lets her drag him off, grinning.

They’re halfway down the stairs when Doc finally slows, her cheeks reaching a shade of red that looks more lipstick than lobster dinner. Her hand wraps tight around the rail, and it’s not until he saunters down the last couple steps to stand beside her that he realizes-- her eyes are screw tight, breath coming in ragged bursts.

“Hey,” he murmurs, trying to ignore the spark of alarm zipping under his skin. “Did you just realize we could have used the elevator?”

Her fingers, already wrapped tight around his palm, squeeze. “Obi...”

The muscles in his arm lock, the way he’s sure lizard tails do, right before they drop them off and run. “Doc?”

Her head turns toward him, and when her eyes flutter open, they’re bright, clear. “Thanks. For being there.”

“No. No, no,” he murmurs, his fingers spasming against hers. “You’ve got it all wrong. I should be the one thank you for letting me. No one...”

No one has ever asked me to be there, he doesn’t say. No one but you.

It’s too much when she’s looking at him like this, like he’s not just a stand-in but her first choice. Like there’s more to how he feels than some one-sided over-investment. It brings him so close to feeling like someone, like the kind of guy who might be her person--

And maybe he could have been, if he hadn’t let some asshole rip her right out her arms in the middle of the night. If he had a record of being something other than a professional disappointment.

The grin doesn’t sit right on his face when he says, “No one’s ever asked me to get rid of a dead body before.”

Doc blinks, then rolls her eyes. “Come on,” she sighs, tugging his hand. “Let’s go.”

“Back to the hotel?”

“Well,” she wheedles. “That. And I dropped the tin when the guard surprised us...”

“Ah I see.” He slips his hand from hers, grin finally sitting the way it should. “So we’re adding evidence removal and obstruction of justice to our list of crimes.”

She tips a dubious look back at him. “Are you complaining?”

“Doc,” he breathes, pressing a hand to his chest. “I would never. I’m touched that you would even think that I could--”

“Come on, Obi,” she laughs, hopping down the steps in front of him. “I’d like to do this sometime today.”

His mouth curls as he watches her back. “Your wish is my command.”

#obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #The Wide Florida Bay #modern au #ans #this has been a scene I've had on my radar since I started plotting out this fic #i knew that Tanbarun Arc needed to end with a request #but a request to come back to this old college didn't make sense #so i wanted to make it purposeful rather than a promise #an invitation to stay in her life #and I knew she'd cremate her grandparents #but hadn't done anything with the ashes #so i wanted to drop the hints in the sanddollar fic hoping someone would seize on it #but the sand dollar part proved too interesting 😂#though not to worry i'll be coming back to that part too #but when Yixin asked for this Joanna was like ASK HER IF SHE WANTS TO ASHES SCATTERING PART THOUGH #SO HERE WE ARE

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Text

Whumptober Day 21: Infection

CW: sick whumpee, abdominal pain, medical whump, emeto mention, nausea mention, pet whump references, recovering whumpee, fever, sickfic

TIMELINE: Chris’s first year after rescue

Nat makes the call, her jaw set in a grim line as she puts her phone up to her ear, and Jake has never seen the laugh-lines and crow's-feet wrinkles as clearly as he does in the dim yellowed light from the single lamp in the corner.

"We can't do this," Jake says, softly, but he's outvoted by sheer necessity and he knows it, he knows before the protest ever leaves his mouth. It doesn’t stop his heart from racing, dread pooling deep inside him. "Nat, we can't, he isn't-... they’ll turn him in, Nat, god damn it-"

"Hey," Nat says into the phone, ignoring Jake entirely. "It's me. Yeah. I'm calling you for help."

Next to Jake, lying on the couch while the big man balances himself seated precariously on the coffee table, Chris whines weakly in pain, pressing the back of Jake's hand to his clammy, sweat-soaked forehead. Coppery hair sticks to him, soaked the color of old pennies.

Jake half-expects to see the blue-green tarnish growing and taking over.

"Hurts," Chris whispers, and Jake's heart breaks open. They didn't know - Chris had collapsed this morning, thrown up his breakfast and then blacked out in the bathroom, it was the first they'd seen of his illness.

Only when he'd been bundled down here to the couch, temp taken - 102 degrees Fahrenheit, holy fuck, he’d been fine yesterday, right? - had Chris admitted he'd been hurting for two days, a pulsing pain around his navel that felt like it was taking over his whole right side now. He told them he’d been so scared they would make him take medicine again that he hadn't told anyone.

When Chris pointed to the right side of his stomach and said that it hurt there, and it kept getting worse... that was when Nat had given that serious, firm nod, said Dr. Masood couldn't help them this time, and picked up the phone.

"Nat, he still has his barcode, they'll fucking turn him in-"

"My money’s on appendicitis," Nat says flatly into the phone. Her eyes move to Chris, lips thinning at his pale skin, freckles and two bright red splotches standing out on his cheeks, the way his green eyes are glassy, hazy, lost until the pain spikes and they briefly clear, just enough for him to start crying again. "Guarantee it. I can't use our guy." A pause. "Listen, he's eighteen - I think - and was routinely subjected to dehydration, starvation, and sleep deprivation. His medical care inside isn’t exactly nothing, but... this is appendi-fucking-citis and that motherfucker is going to burst if we don't get someone to cut it out of him ASAP. I don't have the time to waste going back and forth on this with you. Take one fucking look at him and you’ll know it!"

Nat never swears like this, with such intense hostility and insistence. Chris tightens his grip on Jake, and moans, frightened, turning to look up at him with wide green eyes far too big for his pinched expression. “S-sorry, I’m, I’m sorry… ‘ll... ‘ll b’good...”

The plaintive haunted fear and hurt in him makes Jake wish there were an enemy, someone he could fight. Sitting here watching Chris get sicker by the hour, able to do absolutely nothing about it, is so much worse than anything else ever has been.

“It’s okay,” Jake murmurs, stroking over his hair, carding his fingers gently through the damp, sweaty strands. “She’s not mad at you, little man, I swear. You’re sick and she’s trying to get help, it’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Fuck those motherfuckers who made you too scared of pills to tell us you were hurting.

"Jake-" Chris starts, and then stops, swallows as his face goes a little green around the edges and he tenses, whimpering, torn between nausea and the way muscles tensing makes him hurt even worse. Jake watches his internal battle written openly across his expression. Tears slip from his eyes, running down his cheeks, as he chokes back a sob. "It, it, it hurts so much... Jake, I, I need… I could take, take, could… could could could take something now."

Jake nods and starts to move but Nat puts up a hand. "No drugs," She says, quietly. "They'll give him something there to put him under. We don’t want anything to interact badly.”

“Nat-”

“I’m sorry,” She says, her voice firm and calm. “But nothing until my contact has him.”

“Who is your fucking contact, anyway?”

Nat gives Jake a small, tired smile. “Not yet, Jake. Have to keep these things under wraps.”

"Mom, please," Chris pleads, and Jake and Nat both turn to look at him, shocked, eyes wide. "Mom, it, it, it… It hurts!"

Neither of them says anything at first, and Chris stares at them, eyes pleading but far away. It isn’t them he sees at all.

“Nat-”

“Just go with it,” She says, and goes back to the phone.

“Please, Mom-” Chris whimpers.

"Sorry, we can't," Jake whispers, fighting back the burn of hot tears himself as he goes back to stroking through Chris’s hair. Guilt twists inside him, sharp as any knife. Being helpless is tearing him apart.

Chris’s eyes move, lock on Nat, struggle to maintain their focus, go hazy again. His flush is layered over a gray-green paleness that makes him look like a corpse with makeup, pouring sweat that doesn’t cool him down at all. “Mom, please, please help me, please… don’t, don’t, don’t let them take you out, out of my head, Mom, please!”

Nat listens to the voice on the other end of the phone. Her eyes glimmer and her jaw is starting to tremble where she has it locked, visible in the low warm light coming from the lamps, but her voice stays steady. "No. Yes. Yes, that’s him you’re hearing. Yes… 102.3- yes, I'm sure. Fifteen minutes ago, more or less. Abdominal pain - he even said he thought it was a stomachache at first. Fever. Nausea, vomiting, yes. Getting worse and moving down and to the right. Yeah, I know. So how do we keep my rescue safe without the solution being to sit here and watch him die from infection?"

Jake ignores the cold fear that squeezes bony fingers around his heart and wipes Chris's forehead with a cool wet cloth.

"Mom, m'sick," Chris whispers. "No, no school. Please, please…" His eyes track blearily over Jake's face. "Dad, tell her. Tell, tell, tell-... tell her m’sick…”

"I know," Jake says quietly, his voice shaking and thin. Nat is speaking softer now, lightning-fast whispers with her contact, somebody she's worked with for years with the hospital. "I know, Chris. We’re going to take you to see a doctor, okay?”

Chris blinks at him once, twice, and then his eyes are gone, shifting away. His lower lip starts to tremble, jerking fast, shallow breaths, nearly panting. “I’ll be, be, be-be, be good, don’t… don’t hurt me, sir, I’ll… I’ll be good.”

“I know, buddy, I know.” Jake can’t listen to this much longer. “I know you will.” Chris’s voice is small, losing all his sense of himself. Timid, scared, sweet.

“Be good… can, um, can, can be good f-for… you…” Chris whispers, eyes closing, new tears run out the corners as he whimpers and curls up against the pain. “Just, just stop… hurting me… b-be good, handler, good for, for, for you...”

Jake’s stomach flips and he has to fight the bile trying to rise in his throat. “Nat-”

“Hush, Jake.” Nat’s voice is still calm, and her attention is on the phone. "Mmhmmm. Christopher, um... say Yoder-”

“Stanton,” Jake says from the couch.

Nat might smile. The expression is too tight, too pinched with worry, to really be called that. “Strike that. Christopher Stanton." Nat listens for a long time, then says quietly, "Eighteen…. We think. No known health problems or pre-existing illness. Autistic."

Jake looks up, blinking, and Nat calmly looks back at him, giving a firm nod while speaking into the phone. "Yes. Yes, I'm confident. He is sensitive to fluorescent lights, scared of needles, and terrified of sedation. Yeah, I realize that I just described the exact environment of a hospital.” Her voice starts to shift, then, and Jake watches her free hand close into a fist. She speaks with increasingly open anger, badly masking her worry and fear. “For the love of Christ, just put on the fucking papers that Christopher Stanton is fucking autistic, because that's what my goddamn rescue is and he still needs care - I'll sell someone else's firstborn to fucking Satan if he isn't autistic, god damn it, mark my fucking words - and we're wasting time goddamn dithering over whether you believe a diagnosis while he gets worse!"

Nat's voice rises, nearly shouting, and Chris whines and curls up closer to Jake, then winces and cries out in pain, straightening back out again.

"Sssshhhhh, it's okay," Jake murmurs, but his heart is racing, too, his nerves are jagged with memories of swearing, shouting adults. Some part of him that has never stopped being a child braces for the sound of impact. "It's okay."

Nat is quiet for a long time, then snaps, "Yep, nope, I know, I know you needed to confirm," fast and angry. “See you then.” She hangs up, turning to look at Jake and Chris. "My contact is on their way. If the surgery works, two days and he's home. If his appendix bursts... Could be two weeks in the hospital, Jake."

"No," Jake says, lips barely moving. "No, Nat. Two weeks… he can't fake being someone else for so long."

"He better give it his best shot," Nat says, pushing herself to her feet. "I know this sucks, Jake, but sometimes what we do is make the hard choices they can’t make. And… and even if they turn him in, being turned in is better than dying."

Is it? Do you know that?

"What do we do, then?" Jake says, resting his hand on Chris's sweat-damp hair. Chris doesn't seem aware anymore, staring off into space, weeping silent tears and hitching soft sobs, promising in whispers to be good and obey his handler if only he’ll make the pain stop. “What’s the next step? Give me a fucking order, Nat, because I’m lost, and-” Jake gives a nervous, humorless laugh. “-I’m pretty fucking scared for him.”

"Yeah… yeah, I get that. Just pack some clothes and toiletries," Nat says flatly. "And prepare to swear on the fucking Bible to doctors and surgeons and fucking cops if we have to that his name is Chris Stanton and he's your little brother. We’re about to put on a show, Jake."

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not leaving him. You are going to be the most concerned and caring big brother the world has ever seen. When he gets out of surgery, you’re going to meet him in recovery, you’re going to stay with him in his room day and night. You’re there from day one until he walks back out the door.” Nat’s jaw is set again. “And he will be walking back out that door with us.”

“Visiting hours-”

“He can’t make his own medical decisions,” Nat says, leaning over a little, staring Jake right in the eyes. “So someone has to be there all the time. Do you understand me? He can’t.”

“He’s not-... he could, if he was a little further along-”

Chris whines, and his hand grabs weakly at Jake’s and squeezes. Jake can hardly feel it.

“He’s not. Okay? He’s not that far into recovery yet. We’re going to pretend he’s a lot less capable than he is, to get him through this. We are going to pretend he can’t do it himself, because right now it’s not pretending, he wouldn’t remember what to do yet. And I feel like shit treating him like a toddler, Jake, I really do, but… but he can’t do this alone, and I can’t exactly tell them it’s because he was a pet and they’re trained to be dependent, now can I? We’re going to have to lie about his condition.”

“That wasn’t actually a lie, though, right? We do think he is actually-”

“Yeah. We do. But he’s not incapable - or he won’t be, once he’s older. That’s what we have to lie about. And I don’t-... right now I don’t give a shit about a damn thing except buying him more time to fucking grow up.”

"What about his barcode?"

Nat takes a deep breath. "My contact is going to bandage it over, say it was part of when he passed out and they’ve taken care of it and we're going to hope to Christ no one who they don't trust checks under it. We're out of options, Jake, unless you know how to do an appendectomy and you’ve just been holding out on me. I’m not prepared to do kitchen table surgery. Are you?"

There’s a pause while they stare at each other, and then Jake takes in a deep, steady breath.

You can do this. Chris needs you to do this.

"His name is Chris Stanton," Jake says, meeting her eyes, "and he's my little brother, and he's autistic. I’m his medical power of attorney, I make medical decisions when he’s incapcitated. He’s scared of hospitals because of bad childhood experiences and needs someone nearby at all times or he’ll lose it.”

Nat gives a terse nod. "Good. Pack your shit, and hope his fucking appendix hasn't burst while my contact dicked around."

Nat went up the stairs like a lightning bolt, and Jake let out a shuddering breath.

By the time they hear the ambulance pull up a few minutes later, sirens and lights carefully off, they're packed and ready to follow in Nat’s old truck.

Chris's fever is still rising.

---

Tagging: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @slaintetowhump , @astrobly, @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker , @boxboysandotherwhump , @oops-its-whump @moose-teeth , @cubeswhump , @cupcakes-and-pain @whump-tr0pes @whumpiary

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bomberqueen17 · 3 years

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First Line Meme

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favourite authors!

I was tagged by @runawaymarbles ages ago and have sort of dithered over this because gosh, every of my last 20 stories has been Witcher.

So I fear this will be monotonous, but, here we go. I also have really rather consciously avoided doing anything particularly artistic this past year because everything has been So Much, so. Let’s see whether there are patterns.

I don’t see a way not to make this punishingly long so I’ll cut here for length!

From most to least recent:

Decent Forage: It was cold enough that Eskel was keeping an eye out for this rain to turn to snow.

An Involved Process: Grinning, Ciri grabbed Geralt by the wrist and yanked, and he stumbled after her through several hundred miles of instantaneous nothing.

Under Torture: Yennefer wasn’t a cottage-in-the-woods kind of witch.

Dusty Corridors: The revelation of what it felt like not to be in any pain from his eye came pretty close to flooring Aiden, but he managed to scrape himself back into an approximately human-shaped object in time to peer out the window as the mage left.

Learning Experiences: It wasn’t Geralt’s first year on the Path, but it was his first time coming back to Kaer Morhen.

Shorts: Geralt followed the sound of Ciri’s laughter through the house and out the back door.

Very Dark Magic: He spent a lot of his time in a kind of fog, unaware of the passage of time, unaware of his surroundings.

Trust: “Do you trust me?” Keira asked Lambert, and she had her hands behind her back for two reasons, maybe three-- firstly, because then she wouldn’t twist them together and show her agitation, secondly, because that meant her chest was the frontmost part of her and the way she was dressed now meant her tits were on display for him to look at, so he would, because that was the shorthand they’d settled on about that, and thirdly because then maybe he’d think she was hiding something in her hands, something either dangerous or fun or maybe both, which was the thing she knew he liked most about her: she was both dangerous and fun.

A Delicate Hand: Keira had never lived domestically with someone like this before.

The Ideal Man: Lambert stood uneasily at the door of the tidy little farmhouse.

Embroidery: The library at Kaer Morhen was… not what Jaskier had hoped.

Aretuza Craftsmanship: Yennefer raised her eyes from her desk to look at the sorceress in her doorway.

What Mages Are Like: Geralt laughed at himself, finding he had sore muscles in his legs that made it hard to walk.

The Ancient Sea: Even though Ciri understood why Jaskier had left them, it took her a long time to forgive him, in her heart.

Fugitive: The last time Geralt had been to this city, some twenty years before, there had been an extremely good herbalist with a shop on the high street.

Dangerous Comforts: “Again,” Vesemir said, pretending impatience, though he was actually fairly pleased; clearly, Eskel had overcome another developmental plateau in settling into his new mutations, and the gangly teenager set his jaw in determination and repeated the exercise, with even better proficiency.

Forty: “So he’s forty now,” Eskel said, and Geralt didn’t startle because he’d smelled that Eskel was or had been in this room, but it was a near thing; he really hadn’t been expecting Eskel to be standing behind the door as it swung shut.

Little Fishie: Geralt really hadn’t expected to ever see the bard again, after the misadventure with the elves.

Warmth: He’d almost left it too late to get through the pass to Kaer Morhen, but the snow held off until he was nearly there, and he only had to fight through it for the last couple of miles.

Innermost Depths: Yawning, Jaskier put the collection of books and papers into the drawer, closed and locked it, and, rubbing his face, shuffled out of the room and down the hall to wash his face and go to bed.

As I was assembling this I was like “ah, I never open on dialogue,” but then I did several times. I sometimes seem to declare a thing, and sometimes I have a concrete action-- I don’t seem to open up right in the middle of action sequences very much, I could try that a bit. It does almost feel a little unfair, as all of these stories are from the same series and so tend to pick up one from another a fair amount, so they all start more in medias res than they would if they were all standalones. Which-- isn’t that what they tell you in writing school? Don’t have long introductions? I know I was given the advice to start writing a thing, and then on the first editing pass chop off as much of the beginning as possible. But like all writing advice, sometimes I follow it and sometimes I don’t. I feel like a lot of very good classic fantasy literature starts with establishing statements; I’m like, spiritually ripping off in a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit with my Yennefer wasn’t a cottage-in-the-woods kind of witch even if mine’s got training wheels on because if you’re reading this you already knew that.

Anyway I don’t see any patterns (except that fics featuring Yennefer often start with her name, which is funny and suitable) but I also don’t see anything I’m particularly ashamed of, LOL. Overall i’m largely pleased with the actual craft bits of my writing, it’s just the decisions about it that make me tear my hair out. (Let’s not talk about how long I spent last night tabbing between windows trying to figure out what to work on next. It is killing me not to have a backlog to post from, I could really use a pick-me-up today, but-- instead, here is my back catalogue.

No, I don’t have a favorite, I don’t think. I’m probably the most attached to Trust, because I wrote that wildly out of order from how I posted it, and had to do a great deal of editing and didn’t have the heart to cut it down as much as it deserved. I think that one could’ve been a really great story if I’d made it much tauter, but I did not have the capacity at that point, and I still rather like it.

(I also have a weakness for Shorts because it’s such a weird little oddball that doesn’t fit with anything but is just a part of a thing I wrote a bunch for and haven’t been able to make into a thing.)

Hoo boy I was tagged so long ago I don’t remember who else has already been tagged. I am doing my usual cop-out and saying I want you, yes you, to consider yourself tagged if you have any number of works to compare, whether it’s five or the full twenty which honestly is kind of a lot. Please tag me when you respond though, I have been having horrible trouble getting through my dash lately.

#first lines meme #about the author #my writing

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papermoonloveslucy · 3 years

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‘MY GOOD WIFE’ v ‘MY FAVORITE HUSBAND’

June 23, 1949

"My Good Wife," an added starter on KNBC, 6:30 p.m. PST Fridays, is another comedy about a young married couple, as if we needed another one. I must admit this one is a little different. This married couple, Steve and Kay Emerson, are not nearly so fast with a wisecrack as, say, Lucille Ball and her husband on "My Favorite Husband," 9:00 p.m. PST the same night on KCBS. Great night for matrimony, Fridays, and if those two programs don't provide enough for you, tune in Dorothy Dix at 1:45 pm. (not broadcast in west). She'll tell you how to win back an erring husband.

I haven't yet made up my mind whether the Emerson's ineptness at repartee is deliberate - after all, not every young wife talks like Groucho Marx - or whether the script writer isn't very good at it either. Anyhow, whether by accident or design, the Emersons are a very restful young couple, possibly a little too restful to get anywhere in the entertainment world. In radio, they're a real novelty.

As a wife Arlene Francis who plays Kay Emerson, wins out on points over Lucille Ball In other regards - talent and looks, for example - Miss Ball is way out front. But how long could you live with a girl who says: "Oh, we don't miss television. I climb in the Bendix and sing and George looks at me through the little window." Imagine having a girl around the house who said things like that before breakfast. It'd curdle the milk.

STARTS OFF FAST

“My Good Wife" started out at a gallop two weeks ago, NBC deciding to set the stage and get everything out of the way all at once. The first program resembled one at those synopses of previous in installments in the popular magazines. Steve met Kay, quarreled with her, married her, taught her how to drive, learned he was about to become a father, and became one - all in 15 minutes. One minute later, the dialogue went like this:

"It doesn't seem like we've been married 12 years."

"We've been married 10 years."

"Well, that's why it doesn't seem like 12."

That, incidentally, Is a little brighter than the conversation around the Emerson household generally gets.

On the second show of the series, the pace settled down to a walk. During the first few minutes the Emersons and their neighbors lay lazily on the grass, not even talking very much. This may be taking realism too far. I mean there ought to be some crickets chirping or something. Things quickened a bit later when Mrs. Emerson decided she was going to help her husband out with his law practice and, of course, messed things up.

YALE, NO LESS

The Emersons are quite upper middlebrow as radio's young married folk go. He went to Yale, for heaven's sake, and she not only went to Vassar but led the daisy chain or whatever they do with that daisy chain. What is this - counter revolution? Oh, yes, they live in Larchmont up to their ears in other upper middlebrows. I don't know what else to tell you about the Emersons except they sound like a nice young couple to have over for a drink some time but conceivably a little mild to entertain you much on the air.

My favorite young married couple is still Ozzie and Harriet Nelson - I put Goodman and Jane Ace off in another category entirely - and while we're chatting about this sort of thing, I ought to point out Ricky and David Nelson, Ozzie and Harriet's children, are now playing themselves on that program which solves a lot of problems. I have a spy in the Nelson household, named - in case any congressional ears are pricking - Harriet Nelson, nee Harriet Hilliard, and she is not now and has never been a Communist nor worked on the atom bomb nor designed the B-36.

Anyhow, my spy informed the Nelsons had a little trouble with the kids. The real Ricky and David I listened to the radio Ricky and David and discovered them doing things they weren't allowed to do or wouldn't do voluntarily if they were allowed. Being children, they got confused over their own identities. Well now the real Ricky and David are the radio Ricky and David and the split personalities in the kids has been averted. You run into a lot of funny problems in radio.

# # #

FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

It seems pretty clear that NBC was counter-programming CBS’s “My Favorite Husband”. Not only are the names very similar, they were scheduled on the same night, as critic Crosby points out.

The episode of “My Favorite Husband” described above might apply to any domestic sitcom, but was actually titled “Budget - Mr. Atterbury” broadcast June 3, 1949. However, this newspaper is still calling Lucille Ball’s character Liz Cugat, when her name had changed to Liz Cooper in January 1949, to avoid comparison with the well-known bandleader (no, not Desi Arnaz).

Counter-programming by NBC would not stop on radio. When “I Love Lucy” was a juggernaut hit for CBS TV, NBC created a similar show titled “I Married Joan” for star Joan Davis. It was billed as “The adventures of the scatterbrained wife of a respected city judge.” Substitute “bandleader” for “Judge” (played by Jim Backus) - and you’ve got “I Love Lucy.” Like Ball, Davis was a film star of the ‘30s and ‘40s getting aboard the TV bandwagon. Like Lucy, Joan wanted to be in showbusiness. Many of the same situations that Lucy got into, Joan did too. The series even featured a few “I Love Lucy” refugees: Jerry Hausner, Elvia Allman, Bob Jellison, Margie Liszt, Shirley Mitchell, Ross Elliott, and many others. "Lucy” and “Joan” even employed the same director in each show's first season, Marc Daniels. "Joan” lasted three seasons, from 1952 to 1955 and is all but forgotten today.

Kay Emerson was not the first domestic radio role for Arlene Francis. In 1940, she took over the role of Betty on “Betty and Bob”, which had been the first successful soap opera. She was one of the hosts of the quiz show “What’s My Name?” beginning in 1938. The show was seen as a model for TV’s “What’s My Line?” which premiered in 1950. Francis would stay with the show for its entire run, including six mystery guest appearances by Lucille Ball.

The husband to “My Good Wife” was played by John Conte. From 1944 to 1946 he was married to Marilyn Maxwell (1944-46) who would later appear with Lucille Ball in the 1963 film Critic’s Choice. He had also been seen with Ball (and Maxwell) in As Thousands Cheer (1943). In 1960 he would work for Desilu in an episode of “The Untouchables” (1960).

Unlike “My Favorite Husband’s” mythical mid-Western Sheridan Falls, the Emerson’s livid in the real New York suburb of Larchmont, an affluent village located within the Town of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, approximately 18 miles northeast of Midtown Manhattan. Nearby was the town of New Rochelle, whose most famous fictional resident was Rob Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (filmed at Desilu Studios). Danfield, New York, another fictional town in the area, was the residence of Lucy Carmichael and Vivian Bagley for the first three seasons of “The Lucy Show.”

“My Good Wife” began airing in June 1949, and by April 1950 was nowhere to be found. In October 1949, Billboard reported on a new NBC Gallup Poll that placed the show dead last - with 32 stations voting it poor and only 8 saying it was excellent. The future of “Wife” was bleak. The sitcom was cancelled after 18 weeks to make room for the new Jimmy Durante show. Meanwhile, Ball’s “Husband” (on CBS), thrived. Coincidentally, the show was initially a replacement for Red Skelton’s show. Skelton and Durante had both worked with Ball on films.

Crosby’s quote from “My Favorite Husband”

"Oh, we don't miss television. I climb in the Bendix and sing and George looks at me through the little window."

was spoken by Lucille Ball in the episode titled “Television” on June 17, 1949. A Bendix is a brand of front-loading washing machine. The porthole-like window was similar to the size screen of early television sets.

Crosby’s observation that Liz talks like Groucho Marx is attributable to the show’s writers Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and Jess Oppenheimer. And let’s not forget that Lucille Ball acted opposite Groucho Marx in Room Service (1938)!

After making the obvious comparison to “My Favorite Husband,” Crosby lets readers know that neither “Husband” nor “Wife” will ever displace “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett” in his domestic dome. The show launched October 8, 1944 and a total 402 radio episodes were produced. When it was optioned for television, it was upstart network ABC that made the sweetest deal to the Nelsons.

As Crosby alludes to, their real-life sons, David and Ricky, did not join the cast until the radio show's fifth year. The two boys were played by professional actors prior to their joining because both were too young to perform. Crosby’s allegations of possible identity crisis due to watching their parents with other sons on television, might easily apply to “I Love Lucy”, where the real-life Desi Arnaz often lived in the shadow of the young actors playing Little Ricky on television. Mrs. Ricardo and Mrs. Arnaz giving birth to both boys on the same day only added to the confusion - one that still lingers today.

Crosby declines to compare the aforementioned shows with the popular Goodman and Jane Ace. The real-life marrieds had a show titled “Easy Aces” Goodman Ace cast himself as a harried real estate salesman and the exasperated but loving husband of the scatterbrained, malaprop-prone Jane ("Time wounds all heels"). “Easy Aces” became a long-running serial comedy (1930–1945) but did not make a graceful transition to television, lasting only a few months on the ill-fated DuMont Network. Coincidentally, Martin Gabel, who married Arlene Francis in 1946, had a recurring role on “Easy Aces” during the 1930s.

In a more sarcastic shout-out, Crosby mentions capping off this slew of domestic dithering by listening to Dorothy Dix. Author Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (1861-1951) was widely known by the pen name Dorothy Dix. As the forerunner of today’s popular advice columnists, Dix was America’s highest paid and most widely read female journalist at the time of her death. Her advice on marriage was syndicated in newspapers around the world with an estimated audience of 60 million readers. Naturally, radio was not neglected, getting their Dix fix when her column took to the airwaves. Due to Lucy’s insistence on interfering in the Mertz’s personal affairs, Ricky compares Lucy to Dorothy Dix in “Fred and Ethel Fight” (ILL S1;E22) on March 10, 1952.

We haven’t yet mentioned this 1940 gem, but we’ll save that for another time!

#My Good Wife #Arlene Francis #John Conte #My Favorite Husband #Lucille Ball #radio #1949 #I Married Joan #John Crosby #Dorothy Dix #Ozzie and Harriett #Easy Aces #Groucho Marx #Desi Arnaz Jr.#Larchmont NY

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technicallymilkshakes · 4 years

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If You Say You Love Me [3]

Genre(s): Hurt/Comfort, Angst Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader Word Count: 2.3k

[Previous] || [Next]

Too loud.

Baekhyun and Sehun are up to some mischief with Jongin in the background egging them on. Low thumps like running echo through the apartment, laughter thundering along with it. Music starts playing and several protests ring out. Someone, Jongdae, he thinks, yells to turn the volume up.

It’s so loud that it’s painful. He strums louder, hoping to drown them out, to drown out everything--the way his heartbeat races to catch up to the rhythm, how his skin prickles and tightens. But the noise bleeds in and pollutes the song. He shudders, grips the neck of the guitar tightly before depositing it gently on its stand.

His hand automatically reaches out to his phone. It’s set three hand lengths away. He pulls his headphones on and his fingers move in a rhythm that has become as natural as a smile.

One ring, two rings. It goes on like that. He counts them in his head and the pattern calms him down, reassures him. He doesn’t even pray anymore. He hasn’t earned the right for someone to grant him wishes.

The call goes to voicemail, as it has for the past two weeks. He pulls his headphones off and lays down on the bed, closes his eyes, and lives in the noise that other people make. He is quiet. Quiet. He’s given his voice away.

All of the sudden he feels hot. He strips his shirt off then spreads out on the covers of his bed. They’re grey and soft and light. They were expensive, too, but he doesn’t regret buying them. You told him that he shouldn’t skimp on good sheets. He’s gotten some of the best nights of sleep on them, though not lately.

He rolls over.

There’s a soft knock, barely audible over the music. Chanyeol blinks slowly. He forgot about the noise.

“Oh.” Jongdae stares at him, eyes wide. “I didn’t think you were actually in here.”

Chanyeol stares back at him.

Jongdae frowns. “You’ve been awfully quiet lately…” He walks over to the bed and moves Chanyeol’s legs over so he can hop up. “You okay?”

Chanyeol just closes his eyes, hums something that is either word or song or both, and turns on his side.

He feels a brief flutter of gratefulness when he feels fingers massage through his hair. The boys, EXO… He’s so glad he met them, these people who have become part of his family. A hot tear streaks its way over the bridge of his nose and down the other cheek to soak into the covers.

It’s still not the same, though. Jongdae doesn’t know how to do it properly, only brushes over the same spot. His fingers don’t pull languidly through and down, down, walking their way along his neck and easing the tension from his spine. They don’t curve around his ear.

He bites down on his lip viciously. He’s an awful friend, an awful person all around.

But his heart beats and he knows. This isn’t the kind of quiet he was looking for.

Chanyeol wakes with a gasp and a flail, dislodging the pillow that’s been suffocating him.

“If I’m up, you’re up,” Jongin says, stalking out of the room. Chanyeol collapses back on his bed with a groan.

He aches something fierce. Concert preparations have begun in earnest and they’re spending hours and hours each day in the studio, running through the choreography and the details of the performance, taking promotional photoshoots, and scheduling fittings for stage outfits. All he’s had time to eat have been convenience store sausages and ramen, all eaten while he’s barely awake. Sometimes he wakes up with a half-eaten sausage on the pillow next to him.

If the managers and trainers are feeling nice, they’ll order food for them. Junmyeon sometimes talks about taking them all out to eat, but even he can’t seem to muster up the morale to drag all of them to some restaurant after practicing for hours, just another stop before home and bed. The farthest they’ve managed has been the tteokbokki place nearby, and only once at that. It’s one of the first places they went as trainees who would debut under EXO. Returning instills humility and awe at how far they’ve come now. To remember what they wished for themselves, what already seemed like a pipe dream, and to know this is where they are now, preparing for a world tour. Sehun especially seems to gain energy from going there and it cheers the members up, to see the maknae excited and regaling them with stories from pre-debut that they’re all heard a hundred times already.

It’s hard to keep the momentum, though. After a few minutes spent battling sleep, Chanyeol flips himself over. He grabs his phone and does a cursory check while he’s heading to the bathroom. He sets the phone down on the counter and calls.

Ring, ring, ring….

The voicemail kicks in while he’s in the middle of washing his face.

“Happy Sunday morning,” he says. “It’s… 3:07 AM right now, crap, that’s really early, isn’t it…. Sorry if I woke you up, go back to sleep, back to sleep…” He dithers, unsure whether he should hang up or not. “But since you’re up anyway if you’re listening to this, hey… Jongin actually woke me up today. I think his back’s been bothering him again and I guess I’ve been really tired because of the concerts coming up. I… I hope I’ll still see you there? You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, though! I understand…” Emptiness settles in him at the thought. You haven’t missed any of the tour kick-offs or the DOTs. “Anyways, I should get going… If you ever need me, ever need to talk or anything, I’ll be right--”

The voicemail ends abruptly, his here echoing in the bathroom.

Jongin knocks on the door. “Five minutes, Chanyeol!”

It’s 2:41 AM the following day, and Chanyeol’s just stumbling out of the bathroom before he falls into unconsciousness for a few hours. Practice had been an all day affair. He hardly feels like a person at this point. He sets his alarm on his phone and then jerks and sits up.

“Shit.”

1 Missed Call From Lucky Charm 2 minutes ago

He presses the call back button frantically. “Come on, come on,” he mutters, chewing on a fingernail, leg jumping up and down.

The call goes to voicemail.

“Come on!” he whisper-screams at his phone, shaking it. “It’s been two minutes, where could you have gone in two minutes?!”

He calls again.

It rings and rings and there’s a click that has him hoping, believing--

“Chanyeol.”

It must be the shock. He didn’t actually believe you would pick up. He sits there, dumb, staring at nothing until his eyes begin to water.

“Chanyeoool,” he hears you whine. There’s a little beep and you start muttering something.

“Hey,” he says softly. “What’s up?”

“It’s your fault. Can’t get in.”

He frowns. The way you’re talking…

“Are you drunk?”

“Like I said,” your voice is pointed this time, “this is all your fault.”

“What’s wrong? Where are you?” He’s already standing, searching for a jacket.

“I can’t get into my apartment.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t get into my apartment, Chanyeol!” He hears a beep and a thud.

“Okay, okay, don’t yell. Did you forget your pass code again?” It’s hard to fight the smile that creeps up on him. How many times has he had to do this?

You don’t say anything for a long time and he has to hold the phone away and clap a hand over his mouth to stifle his chuckle. You’re extra irritable when drunk and have a habit at taking offense at everything.

“It’s 12671, dummy.”

“It’s not and I am not a dummy.”

“What do you mean? You didn’t even try!”

“I did. It’s wrong.”

“Try it again.”

There’s a sigh and then he can hear the soft beeps as you press the numbers in and the little tone that plays back when it’s entered incorrectly.

“I told you.”

He frowns this time. “Are you sure you put it in right? One.”

“One.” A corresponding beep.

“Two.”

“Two...”

It goes on like that until the same tone from before plays.

You huff over the line. “I told you.”

“I bet you didn’t change your battery,” he says, shoving one arm into his hoodie. “Hold on.” He sets his phone down while he slides on the rest of the hoodie, ruffles his hair, and quickly presses the phone back up to his ear.

“--changed them.”

“When did you change them?” He slips out of his room and pads to the entrance. The automatic light clicks on and he kicks the mound of shoes around until he finds a pair of his buried at the bottom.

“Three weeks ago? Yeah. Something like that…..” He can hear the sleep settling in your voice and his heart picks up its pace in urgency.

“Okay, okay… Listen, I’ll be right over. You’re alone, right?”

“Mhm.”

“Then stay there,” he says, pointing a finger although you can’t see it. “I’ll be there soon, so just hang out a little, okay?”

“See you soon, Chanyeollie.”

It takes ten minutes driving to get to your area. Chanyeol runs into the nearest convenience store to buy batteries, pulling his hood up on the way. The cashier doesn’t seem to register who he is as she quietly reads out his total and lets him go without question once he’s paid.

Five minutes later, he’s sprinting down the hallway to your door. He slows the closer he gets. He can see straight through to the end, and you are nowhere in sight. Chanyeol spins around, glancing in the opposite direction, but the same scene unravels before him. Empty.

Dread begins to sink in. Maybe you got in? He rings the doorbell, standing in frame of the telecom camera. A minute ticks by and there’s no answer.

It’s okay, he tries to reassure himself even as his heart drops. Maybe you just fell into a drunken slumber once you got inside. You had sounded tired over the phone and he knows your drinking habits.

He flicks open the keypad. The light is green, so the batteries should still be good. That’s a good sign at least, there’s a chance you could be inside. He enters the code and is immediately denied.

Again, he tries, slower this time, repeating the numbers in his head. 12671.

Rejected.

Not once, in all the time that he’s known you, has he been locked out like this. That this has happened now, after the biggest fight the two of you had ever had, feels personal. Like you meant to keep him out. And the strangest thing is, now that he’s locked out, it’s not just you he misses. He misses this place, the security of it and the good memories harbored within. It’s home in a way that the dorms aren’t, not even his childhood bedroom.

All the horrendous thoughts of what might have happened flit through his head. He’s spent so much time, so much time, trying to keep you safe. Sure, he’s told you of sasaengs hiring cars to follow him around or some of the creepy letters he’s gotten. But never all of it. Not the time that that housekeeper ambushed him in a hotel, trying to lock him in with her in the bathroom. Or the time that a restaurant owner, upset with how much his daughter mooned over him, had hauled him up by the collar and threatened to sick his gang connections on him if he didn’t either marry his daughter or disappear. All that time he had been protecting you. He kept careful boundaries, everything he never said meant to be a buffer, a deterrent to keep all the monsters haunting him from reaching you. Not once did he ever suspect that he, himself, could be one of them.

“What did you do,” he moans quietly to himself. He grabs his phone and makes another call. It goes straight to voicemail this time. Your phone’s either off or dead.

He scrubs a hand over his face and tries the code one more time. It doesn’t let him in. He starts pounding on the door, just long enough before he gets too nervous that your neighbors might come check what’s going on.

Where are you??? He texts. I’m outside your door. I told you to stay put. Are you okay? Call me back as soon as you see this If I don’t hear back from you by morning I’m gonna call the police I’m not kidding Please call me back

Despite his complete and utter exhaustion, it is almost impossible for Chanyeol to sleep that night. He paces around the apartment, prepared to rush out at the drop of a hat. A few times, he turns to wake up another member. He can’t handle this alone. It feels like there’s too little air and too much quiet. Pressure builds in his ears.

But then he remembers what you said. It’s your fault. This is all your fault. He’s worthless, isn’t he. Can’t do anything. Why does he always try to get other people to solve his problems?

Chanyeol sits on the couch with the TV on in the background, cradling his phone in his palm. He feels paralyzed. He nods off a couple times only to jerk back awake a moment later, desperately checking his phone.

He makes no less than 72 calls that night.

At 5:19 AM, his phone pings.

I’m fine the text says. I fell asleep at a friend’s Attached is a blurry image of you, cheek mushed against a pillow accompanied by a sleepy smile and a victory sign. Sorry for worrying you You can go to sleep now, Yeollie

Junmyeon walks out to find Chanyeol crying.

“Chanyeol?” he asks. “What’s going on?”

Blurry-eyed, Chanyeol gets up from the couch and rushes over to Junmyeon, who folds him into a hug. He curls into the leader, smaller and smaller.

“She’s okay,” he mumbles wetly against Junmyeon’s shoulder. “Thank God. She’s safe.”

A/N: Thank you, as always, for reading! It’s been a while since I updated this story. I am wishing you all happiness and health. If this story comes as a welcome distraction, so much the better.

#exowritersnet #exo fanfiction #exo fanfic #chanyeol fanfic #chanyeol fic #exo fic #chanyeol fanfiction #exo imagines #exo scenarios #chanyeol scenario #exo #chanyeol #park chanyeol #chanyeol imagine #chanyeol angst #exo angst

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calumcest · 4 years

Text

i took a walk with my fame down memory lane (i never did find my way back) - chapter six

[ao3]

can you believe i’ve actually been posting this on time on schedule every week bar that one week that i accidentally posted it at like 1am but lets not talk about that. i’m a changed woman i really am nobody come for me about unfinished chaptered fics again

as ever i have to thank the brilliant @tirednotflirting for putting up with the horrors of my huge google doc which is still half-bolded because i change all those things in the ao3 posting box because i write like an absolute mess i believe the document is now around 140 pages so...you are a trooper for sitting with me through all of that every time i see you in there i get very happy and your little comments always make my day

and of course where would this fic be without @kaleidoscopeminds at this point maybe i’m sustained by your validation...maybe so

It would have been too much to expect that having to have The Conversation with Michael would be the only thing Calum would have to contend with.

In fairness, the day doesn’t get off to too bad of a start. Calum can’t eat breakfast, stomach churning too much to swallow anything more than a glass of water before he runs out of the house at half-eight, just managing to make the bus to Piccadilly, but, unusually for British Rail, his train’s actually on time. It’s idling on the platform when Calum gets there, a few people dressed up in suits looking at their watches before getting on, like they can’t really believe it’s two whole minutes before the train leaves and it’s already there, and it’s not too busy inside. Calum finds himself an empty two-seater and slides in, putting one elbow on the slight ridge of the window and resting his chin in his hand as he stares out, trying to focus on the people milling around on the opposite platform rather than the uncomfortable lightness of his stomach.

The train leaves on time too, pulls itself out of Piccadilly with heaves and groans, all rattling and hissing, but then they’re on their way, and Calum watches as the industrial sites and red-brick houses fade into flat, green fields. It starts raining somewhere past Leamington Spa, or maybe Milton Keynes, but Calum doesn’t mind, picking out specific raindrops and watching them as they trickle down the window. Someone’s etched COCK into the glass - or is it plastic? Calum’s never sure - and the raindrops sliding past it make it look oddly artistic, like something Calum thinks he might find in the Whitworth. He’s so entranced by it, watching the droplets framing the second C, that he doesn’t realise they’re in London until people start standing up and gathering their things together, and the train starts slowing as it pulls into Euston.

Calum hasn’t got much to gather, but pats his pocket to make sure his wallet’s in there all the same, pulls his coat closer around himself and shoves his hands in his pockets as he stands up, smiling politely at the woman that gestures for him to go ahead of her. The crowd of people that have gathered by the door are slowly starting to trickle through it, jostling impatiently as they wait for an elderly man to make his way off the train, and Calum just shuffles along with them, swallowing to try and clear some of the dryness in his mouth. He’s here, now. He’s in London. This is it.

Euston’s big, impersonal, has none of the charm of Piccadilly - not that any of London does, really, Calum thinks - and he joins one of the queues by the dirty ticket barriers, fumbling in his pockets for his ticket that hadn’t even been checked once on the entire train journey down as it slowly shuffles forwards. The machine doesn’t spit it back at him, just swallows it down and flings itself open for him to walk through, and he hesitates for a moment before going through. It feels like crossing some kind of threshold, but he’s swept up in the bustling hordes of self-important-looking Londoners weaving in and out of each other before he has too much time to think about it. They always seem to be in a permanent state of transience, Calum thinks, as he manages to duck out of the crowd and lean against WH Smith; he’s never seen a Londoner look like they’re actually where they want to be, always seem to be heading somewhere else.

It’s getting close to lunchtime but Calum’s still not hungry, feeling a little sick with anticipation. Or maybe it’s just travel-sickness. Or maybe it’s the adrenaline that spikes every time he thinks about the fact he’ll be near Michael again, that Michael will be within reach. He tries not to dwell on that as he joins the crowd heading for the tube, digging around in his pocket for some change to buy a ticket. He’s not even sure what he needs - a single should do it, right? He’s not sure how returns work, whether he’ll need to use it by a specific time, not even sure what time he’ll be leaving Michael’s. London off-peak might be different to Manchester off-peak.

There’s even a queue for the ticket machines - fucking hell, is there anywhere in London that he doesn’t have to queue for - but Calum’s slight irritation is quickly replaced by a cold rush of fear when he hears an unmistakable voice shout: “Eeyar, ‘s that Calum? Hey, Cal! Cal!”

Oh, shit.

For a split second, Calum dithers between turning around and legging it, but by the time he’s glanced over at possible exit routes, a hand’s clapping on his shoulder and pulling him around anyway.

It’s Liam, with Noel in tow, because of fucking course it is. Jesus Christ. It’s like the universe is spitting sign after sign at Calum, flashing red neon warnings that say don’t be a cunt, you owe it to the two of them, don’t go behind their fucking backs, only escalating with every one that Calum ignores. Well, he thinks, a little bitterly, as the guilt that’s been quietly gnawing at his stomach flashes its sharp teeth. The universe shouldn’t have sent him Michael in the first place, then, should it?

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Liam says happily, not sounding more than a little curious. Noel, though, is frowning, having the answer to the equation and one constant, and trying to figure out the coefficient and the variable.

“Just...running a few errands,” Calum says, and hopes it doesn’t sound as evasive to Liam and Noel as it does to him. “Mum wanted some stuff done.” It’s not exactly implausible, is it? It’s a week ‘til Christmas; it’d make perfect sense if Calum’s mum wanted some stuff done. It might not explain why she’d need it doing in London, but Calum hopes that that part of it won’t get prodded at too hard by either of the brothers, and if it does, chucking in a few embassy s and work visa s should do the trick.

“Why didn’t you say?” Liam says, but he doesn’t sound upset, just curious. Calum shrugs, and steps forward to the ticket machine as the lady in front of him walks away, buying himself time to come up with a semi-plausible answer. Noel and Liam follow, much to the annoyance of the guy behind Calum in the queue, who tuts and mutters something under his breath that just earns him a lazy two-fingered salute from Liam.

“Only found out last night,” Calum says, which is absolute bullshit, because he hadn’t got back from the pub until long after last call, and his mum goes to bed around ten. Liam seems to have forgotten that, though, because he just nods, and turns to the machine.

“What d’you reckon we need, then, eh?” he says, glancing over his shoulder at Noel, never mind that Calum’s the one who’d queued for the fucking machine, and all.

“Probably best to get a travelcard,” Noel answers. “Got a lot of places to visit.”

“Where’re you going?” Calum asks, as casually as he can manage. Maybe a little too casually, because Noel’s eyes narrow fractionally, but then Liam responds as he’s stabbing buttons on the ticket machine.

“Hampstead Heath, wasn’t it? And I’m looking in Kentish Town.” Well. Calum has no fucking idea where those are, but at least they aren’t Camden.

“Why’d you go and tell him to follow me down here, eh?” Noel asks, throwing Calum an exasperated look, but there’s no heat behind his eyes or his words.

“You’d rather he sleep on your floor every night?” Calum says, arching an eyebrow. “Done you a fucking favour, mate.” Noel grins, inclining his head a little in concession.

“On the floor?” Liam says, sounding a little incensed, and holds his hand out for Noel to give him some money. “I’d be sleeping in the fucking bed, me. Our kid can kip on the floor. Tiny cocker can probably curl up on an cushion or summat, anyway.”

“Get fucked, you, ‘s my fucking bed. And why’m I paying for your fucking ticket?” Noel demands, even as he’s digging in his pocket for change.

“You get more of the royalties,” Liam says, and Noel rolls his eyes as he slaps a selection of coins in Liam’s hand.

“That’s three travelcards, then,” Liam says, turning back to the machine, and Noel makes a noise of outrage, and tugs at Liam’s shoulder as he starts slotting the coins into the machine.

“Hang on a minute,” he says indignantly, but Liam shakes him off, pushing coin after coin in until the machine makes a groaning sound and starts churning out tickets. “Cheeky cunt,” Noel grumbles, and Liam throws him a winning smile as he presses Calum’s ticket into his hand.

“Aye,” he says happily, and steps away from the machine, Calum following in his wake, not wanting to listen to Noel grumbling to himself about Liam or risk him yanking Calum’s ticket out of his hand.

“What about my money?” Noel demands, because the machine’s spitting out coins now, and Liam just shrugs, already engrossed in a map of the Northern line. Noel flips him off anyway, and then scoops the assortment of coins out of the machine and sticks them in his pocket as he wanders over to where Calum and Liam are stood.

“Where do we need to get off?” Liam asks, and Noel frowns at the map.

“Hampstead, I think,” he says, and Liam nods, before turning to Calum.

“Where’re you off to?” he asks. Calum hesitates, wondering whether he should lie or not, and then realises as he’s squinting at the map that they’ll probably be on the same tube, so he can’t. Now that he’s looking closely, he’s realising Kentish Town looks uncomfortably close to Camden - it’s the next stop after Camden Town - but given how fucking massive London is, that should be fine, right?

“Camden,” Calum says, a little reluctantly.

“Oh,” Liam says, and shrugs. “Alright.” He doesn’t seem to think anything of it, and for once neither does Noel, who’s too busy patting his pockets and frowning.

“Where’s my ticket?” Noel says, as Liam starts for the ticket barriers, and Liam holds his hand up as he walks, waving two tickets in the air. Noel jogs after him, reaching up and trying to snatch one of the tickets out of Liam’s hand. “Give it here, you prick. How’m I meant to get through the barrier?”

“Not my problem,” Liam says, but he lets Noel take one of the tickets when he gets up to the barrier, sticking it in and forcing himself through when it swings open. “Fucking hell, these things are small, innit? Who are they made for, Noely G?”

“Fuck off,” Noel tells him, but Calum can see the small, fond smile playing at his lips as they start down the escalator.

Liam’s absolutely buzzing with energy, even more so than usual, pointing out adverts on the wall as they pass and commenting on what people on the other escalator are wearing and asking how old d’you reckon the tube is, then? Hundred? Two hundred? It’s proper deep, innit? How far underground d’you reckon we are? until Noel cuffs him upside the head irritably and says shut up, Liam, for fuck’s sake.

“Are we northbound or southbound?” Liam asks, stopping abruptly in front of one of the huge maps and making at least three people behind them tut and swerve pointedly around them.

“North,” Noel says, dragging Liam towards the platform by the elbow. Calum throws the map another quick glance just to double-check - yeah, he’s northbound too - and then follows in their wake, letting their quiet bickering wash over him as he gulps in the hot, sticky air of the underground, hoping it’ll do something to counteract the way his stomach feels like a block of ice, cold and heavy in his abdomen. It seems to get heavier with every step, like it’s trying to stop him being able to get himself onto the tube and lean against the door next to Liam and Noel, who are now arguing about whether it’d be better to have a Tesco or a Sainsbury’s nearby. He’s not sure whether the fact that Liam and Noel are here, not a care in the world, buying Calum tickets and joking around with him not knowing what he’s here for, or the prospect of the conversation with Michael is making him feel worse. He knows he has to do this, knows that he and Michael can’t toe the tentative line they’ve been dragging themselves along forever, but doesn’t want to think about what the possibility of crossing it might mean. There’s no going back from that, and Calum’s not sure he’s going to like what he finds on the other side.

Camden’s only two stops away, and much as Calum wants to put off getting there, he’s sort of glad it’s not far, because he always forgets how fucking loud the tube is. He does enough damage to his ears in his profession, and he feels out of place being the only person wincing at the rattling that’s probably pushing legal decibel levels. Even Liam and Noel don’t seem to care, just raising their voices to shout over the sound of the carriages hurtling along the tracks, enjoying their latest spat too much to care about anything else.

“This is me,” Calum says, when the tube pulls into Camden Town and starts to slow.

“When’re you heading back?” Noel asks, and Calum shrugs. He hadn’t picked a specific train back to Manchester, just bought an open return. He doesn’t know whether Michael wants to pull him in to shout abuse at him for half an hour and then kick him out again, or spend half a day talking about everything that’s happened in the past five years.

“Not sure,” he says. Liam nods inattentively and turns back to Noel, but Noel cocks his head a little, eyes flicking to the doors as they open.

“Alright, well,” he says. “I’ll probably call you tomorrow.” Calum nods, ducking out of the doors and throwing both of them a quick wave, hoping his nervousness isn’t written all over his face, the combination of shit, shit, I’m here, I’m here and what the fuck does Noel want to call me to say that he can’t say right now?

Liam’s already turned back to Noel and started saying something before the doors have shut, but Noel’s eyes linger on Calum for a minute, something Calum can’t quite pinpoint on his face. He doesn’t have time to worry about it, though, caught up in the crowd as they make their way up the escalator and out of the station, blinking once he’s standing in the road and trying to remember which way his dad’s old London A-Z had told him to go. It was two lefts, he knows that, but was that after a right? Or was the right after the second left? He should have written it down, really. Although, given how today’s gone, the piece of paper would probably have blown out of his pocket and straight into Liam’s face, or something, big red letters that say Michael Clifford (from Blur, y’know, my ex)’s Address on the top.

He decides to just take the two lefts first, thinking he can always just ask someone if he gets really lost, and it turns out to be the right decision, because he’s on Michael’s street after about ten minutes of pushing through angry-looking Londoners walking at the speed of light. It’s a smaller street, a little tucked away, surprisingly quiet for the fact it’s just off a main road, lined with identical Georgian houses. Number thirty-nine, Michael had said. That’s thirty-one, thirty-three, thirty-five, thirty-seven-

Thirty-nine.

Calum stares up at it for a moment. It looks exactly the same as the other houses on the street, a house Calum usually wouldn’t bother glancing twice at, except it’s got his childhood best friend, his first love, his fucking competition inside it. It seems to loom a little more than the houses either side of it, and a sense of foreboding creeps around the edge of Calum’s veins, constricting his lungs a little. He doesn’t fucking know what to expect. He doesn’t know what Michael wants.

Calum takes a deep breath as he steps up to the door, wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans, and rings the doorbell. He holds his breath as he waits, feeling like he really needs to piss, and tries not to hop from foot to foot in nervous anticipation when he finally hears the sound of someone heading for the door and sees a figure looming behind the frosted glass.

The door opens, and Michael blinks at him.

“Hi,” he says. His voice sounds different in person, smoother and richer than Calum remembers - but then again, he’d been off his fucking head the last time he’d seen Michael. His eyes are greener than Calum remembers, too, still with a hint of blue, blinking a little hesitantly at him from behind dark lashes. He’s dressed in jeans and a blue jumper, one that Calum hasn’t seen before, and he looks so oddly out of place here, on a residential street in the heart of London. Something about it makes Calum’s head spin even more than the first time he’d seen Michael on stage, or when he’d seen him in that magazine, or at the awards show. He shouldn’t be here, his brain is trying to say, throwing up memories of Michael in shorts and a singlet on the beach, while his eyes are saying but he is here. And he looks fucking good, too.

“Hi,” Calum says, when he remembers to speak. He clears his throat, trying to clear out the embarrassment. Fucking hell; great first impression after what, six months?

“Come in,” Michael says, and steps aside, holding the door open. Calum throws him a polite smile and heads inside, hesitating just past the door as Michael clicks it shut again.

“Um, should I-” he says, gesturing at his shoes.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Michael says, a little apologetically. “If you don’t mind.” Calum shakes his head - it’s Michael’s house, why the fuck should he mind? - and kicks off his shoes, taking his time arranging them next to the blue-and-white striped Adidas trainers placed a little haphazardly next to the radiator, before straightening back up again, looking back over at Michael, who’s staring at him. He feels strangely naked standing in Michael’s hallway in his socks, a little disarmed, like he’s just willingly carved out a chink in his own armour.

Michael looks away quickly, cheeks a little pink, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been, and turns around, walking off down the hallway.

“D’you want something to drink?” he asks, heading into a room to the right. Calum follows him in; it’s the living room, big and light and beige and decorated by someone that definitely wasn’t Michael, all damask walls and sun-and-moon decor.

“Uh, no, I’m good, thanks,” Calum says, hovering near the sofa. Michael gestures at him to sit, and hesitates for a moment, clearly dithering between sitting down next to Calum or on the overstuffed armchair opposite him, before heading for the armchair and curling up on it. It’s probably for the best, Calum thinks, as he arranges himself on the sofa. His skin’s already prickling at being in the same room as Michael, fingers itching to reach out and touch what used to be his.

“I thought we’d go out for lunch,” Michael says. “Probably better than me trying to cook.” Calum feels his lips twitch at that - it’s good to know that hasn’t changed. Michael being in a famous British band feels more realistic than Michael knowing how to cook anything more complicated than pasta.

“Fine by me,” Calum says, clasping his hands on his lap and then unclasping them again. It feels so horribly formal, being sat like this with Michael, stone-cold sober and six feet apart. It feels so fucking wrong.

Michael sighs, and casts his eyes down at his feet.

“So,” he says, and Calum’s stomach flips. The Talk.

“So,” Calum echoes. He hopes the lump in his throat isn’t audible.

“I don’t even know where we should start,” Michael admits. “There’s- there’s so much.” He pauses, and then smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Why don’t you tell me about Oasis?”

“What?” Calum’s a little taken aback. He was expecting why the fuck did you stop writing back, you absolute cunt, tell me why I shouldn’t deck you right fucking now. Maybe he’s been spending too much time with Liam.

“Well, y’know,” Michael says, waving his hand a little awkwardly. “I only know what I’ve read in the papers. Last I heard from you you were working in construction.”

“Oh,” Calum says. “Yeah. Uh. Well. I dunno, really. Bonehead started this band, and Liam knew him through a mate, and then their singer dropped out and Liam managed to join somehow, and they needed a bassist, so.” He shrugs, a little uncomfortably. “And then Noel came back from roadie-ing for the Inspiral Carpets, and Liam got him to join, too. And- well. That’s about it, really.” He’s not sure what else there is to say, but it feels a little clinical, like he’s reading Michael an excerpt from his autobiography, or something.

“You went to school with Liam, right?” Michael asks, and Calum nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “We were Chemistry partners. Gallagher and Hood, y’know.” Michael hums, like he’s thinking about it, and Calum just waits, tries not to hold his breath in anticipation as Michael turns the information over and over in his mind. Fuck, he hates this, hates the fact that he’s shuffling forwards with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back, no way of knowing whether he’s walking in the right direction.

“I like him,” Michael admits after a moment, and Calum can’t help but smile at that.

“Yeah,” he says, and he hears the fondness and pride in his own voice. It’s sort of impossible not to like Liam, really. He’s a cunt, but he does it so well and so earnestly and with such an innocent expression on his face that you can’t really hate him for it. Well, if you aren’t Noel, at least. And Michael and Liam both have that kind of anarchy to them, that same spark of joy lighting up their eyes when they spot something chaotic happening. “You’d get on. Well, if-” Calum cuts himself off, smile suddenly dropping off his face as the all-too-familiar guilt churns in his stomach. If he didn’t hate you on principle.

Michael doesn’t seem to have thought anything of it, though, just nods a little thoughtfully, and Calum can see from the way his eyebrows are drawn that he’s moved past that, isn’t thinking about Liam anymore. Sure enough, after a few seconds of silence, Michael opens his mouth again, and asks:

“What about Noel?” There’s something a little calculating in his eyes, and his tone a touch too casual, and Calum frowns.

“What about him?” Michael shrugs, the smoothness of the movement belied by the way his shoulders stay a little hunched.

“What’s he like?” Calum opens his mouth to respond - he’s exactly what he seems like - and then realises that that’s not quite true, and closes it again. Noel’s exactly what he seems, and then a little bit more, and also a little bit less.

“Complicated,” he says eventually, and Michael cocks his head.

“He’s a cunt,” he says, which, honestly, is a fair enough assessment of Noel Gallagher.

“So’s Liam,” Calum points out, and Michael nods.

“Yeah.” There’s a moment of awkward silence, and Calum feels he might have been wrong-footed by Michael somehow, like there was a second, unspoken part to that question that he missed. It’s too late now, though, no matter how much he replays it in his mind - the way Michael had looked at him, the way he’d shrugged - so instead, Calum clears his throat, and asks:

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. I read that you knew Graham through someone back home?” Michael smiles for real this time, and Calum tries not to let it hurt, that he’s smiling about Graham like that and couldn’t manage it for Calum. It’s not like Calum’s done anything to deserve it, is it?

“Through Luke, actually,” Michael says, all conversationally, like it’s perfectly normal that one of Calum’s closest friends from Sydney knew Graham Coxon and never thought to mention it. Calum stares at him. That makes absolutely no fucking sense.

“What?” he says. “How- what? Luke knows Graham?”

“Yeah,” Michael says. “The Hemmings’ went on a holiday a few years ago - that cruise, I think? Remember, y’know, the one where Jack thought he got that girl pregnant?” Calum nods - yeah, he remembers that one. Luke had been beside himself, although Calum still thinks at least thirty percent of that was because it was his ticket into Ashton’s arms. “Yeah, and you know what Liz is like, making conversation with anything that moves. They ended up talking to Graham’s family over dinner, and Graham and Luke became mates over the rest of the cruise, swapped numbers and sort of stayed in contact.”

“Oh,” Calum says, and tries not to sound bitter. It feels strangely unsettling to know that Luke knows Graham, like the solid image he’d had of his past life is being shaken up. “He never mentioned.” Michael shrugs.

“He never mentioned to me either,” he says. “Not until I said-” he cuts himself off. “Well,” he says carefully after a moment of awkward silence. “When I decided to move here.” Calum swallows.

He’s wondered, in the moments that he’s had time to think about anything more than the permanent guilt swimming around in his stomach and the sickening feeling that seems to creep its way around the edges of everything to do with Michael, what had made Michael move to the UK. He’s even wondered, in brief moments of weakness, whether it had had something to do with him. After all, Michael had always said he’d come here to see Calum, hadn’t he? Calum had just never stopped to think that maybe he’d meant coming here for good, for more than just a visit.

But then Calum had stopped writing as often, and Michael had stopped sending as many letters back, and the weed and booze in Calum’s veins had made him forget that Michael had ever said he’d fly over, and so the brief moments of weakness pass and Calum thinks no, he wouldn’t’ve done that. Not in the state we were in.

(It doesn’t stop him wondering the same thing the next time he’s staring at himself in a cracked hotel mirror on a comedown, though, doesn’t stop the what if s from floating around in his mind.)

But since he’s here, he might as well ask. This is supposed to be all about sorting all of that shit out, isn’t it? Calum knows that they can’t move anywhere with the huge wall between them, knows that they’ve got to dismantle it brick by brick before they can see all the possible roads they could travel. So, he takes a deep breath, and says:

“Why did you decide to move here?” Michael cocks his head and blinks at Calum, like he’s a little surprised Calum’s even asking.

“For you.” Fuck.

A new guilt surges through Calum’s entire abdomen, something that isn’t as well-worn as his Noel-and-Liam guilt, making him dizzy with the suddenness with which it pulls all the blood from his head down to his stomach. Michael had moved here for Calum, even after Calum had stopped writing. Michael hadn’t forgotten; only Calum had.

“Oh,” Calum says, and it comes out barely more than a whisper. Michael looks away, cheeks burning.

“Yeah,” he mumbles uncomfortably. “Well. Changed my mind after I got here, but stayed anyway.” Calum bites his lip.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s the first time he’s said it, and probably the millionth time he’s thought it, but the words still trip off his tongue clumsily, like they weren’t rehearsed often enough, like maybe he should have made it a million-and-one.

“Are you?” The words are harsh, but Michael’s tone is soft, a little sad.

“I am,” Calum says truthfully. “I- fuck. I’m a cunt, honestly. I just got so caught up in everything, in Noel and Liam and the drugs and the band, and-” he cuts himself off. He’s making excuses, and Michael deserves better than that.

“You stopped caring,” Michael supplies before Calum has the chance to think about what he wants to say next, matter-of-fact, but Calum catches the tiny grimace that flits across his lips.

“No,” Calum says hastily. “I just- I thought I did. Or maybe I just hoped I did. Or- I don’t know. But I saw you a few years ago, and I felt the same. And then I saw you this year, and I felt the same. So I don’t think I ever stopped.” He can’t bring himself to say stopped caring, because it feels too revealing. He doesn’t know if he can actually admit out loud that he still cares about Michael, not with all the shame burning hot in his veins. It feels like something he should keep to himself, a burden he deserves to be laden with, the ball at the end of his chain of disgrace.

“You saw me a few years ago?” Michael says, frowning, and Calum’s stomach drops. Oh, fuck. He’s never told Michael that, has he?

“Uh,” Calum says intelligently, and looks down at his feet. “Yeah. Ninety-two, I think. At the Boardwalk in Manchester.” Michael’s frown deepens, like he’s scanning through memories, trying to find the one he needs.

“I didn’t know you were there,” he says after a minute, still frowning.

“I didn’t know you were either,” Calum says. “I mean. I didn’t think it could be you.” Michael shifts, pulling his legs closer towards him, looking like he’s trying to fold in on himself. It looks defensive, and it makes Calum’s heart crack a little. Is it him doing that? Is that because of Calum?

“That was a shit gig,” Michael says after a moment, and the ghost of a smile crosses Calum’s lips, but he can tell that’s not what Michael really wants to say.

“Wasn’t too bad,” Calum says. “We definitely played worse ones than that.” Michael huffs out a short laugh.

“Yeah, like LA,” he says, and Calum’s lips manage to twitch in a tiny smile this time. Even though he knows it means nothing, something about the fact Michael remembers that, remembers how awful the gig had been and remembers that it had been in LA, makes Calum’s heart skip a beat.

“Yeah, like LA,” he agrees, and Michael smiles back at him, something heavy and sad in his eyes. It’s sort of disconcerting to be able to tell what Michael’s feeling but not being able to place why, feels like Calum’s sat here with some kind of Michael-Mike hybrid. It just drives the past five years of distance home, makes Calum realise that the gap between the sofa and the armchair is bigger than he’d wanted to believe.

Almost like he knows what Calum’s thinking, Michael’s lips hitch up in a small, mournful smile.

“It’s been a long fucking time, hasn’t it?” he says, and his voice is saturated with so much melancholy that it makes Calum swallow, gulping in a breath of Michael’s air.

“Yeah,” he says.

“I sort of keep forgetting,” Michael says. A slightly bitter laugh almost bubbles out of Calum, but he just about manages to force it down - he’s not sure how Michael can forget, when it’s the only thing that’s ever on Calum’s mind when they talk, when he can’t push it away for more than a few minutes at a time.

“I don’t,” he says, and Michael frowns.

“You don’t?” Calum shakes his head. He spends all his time trying his best not to think about the gulf between the two of them, trying to relegate it to some dusty corner of his mind, but it always rides back to the forefront of his thoughts on a wave of guilt.

“It’s hard not to think about it,” Calum says, which is the closest he can get to saying I spend all my time trying not to think about how you’ve changed.

“I guess,” Michael says, with a tiny shrug. “Maybe I just don’t want to.” Calum gets that too.

"Maybe you're just better at it than me," Calum says, and Michael smiles, tinged with sadness.

“Maybe,” he allows. “Or maybe I just want it more.” What? Wants what more, to forget? To pretend-

Oh.

“Oh,” Calum says, and his mouth is suddenly dry. Michael’s holding his gaze, forced defiance written all over his face, but Calum can still see past that, can still see the vulnerability in the way the corners of his lips are tilted down and the way he’s blinking a little too fast.

Michael wants this.

“Yeah,” Michael says, and Calum can hear the heartache beneath the veneer of bravery. “That hasn’t changed, at least.” It’s a little bitter, and it makes Calum frown. What does Michael mean, that hasn’t changed?

“What d’you mean?” Michael shrugs uncomfortably, his cheeks a little pink.

“Well. Y’know. I always wanted you more,” he says, and his voice cracks on the you. Calum stares at him for a moment, trying to wrap his head around what Michael's just said.

He wants to say no, you didn’t, but he can’t. Calum had forgotten, and Michael hadn’t. And maybe now Calum wants Michael more than Michael wants him, can’t push Michael out of his mind where Michael can push Calum out of his, but that doesn’t change the fact that Calum had let Michael slip out of his mind to make room for Liam and Noel and drugs, while Michael had moved to the UK for him. And he can’t lie to Michael, can’t lie to himself either.

“Maybe then,” he says. "But not anymore." Michael blinks at him.

“You don’t know that,” he says. "You don't even know how I loved you." Calum swallows, but it doesn’t go past the lump in his throat.

“I loved you too,” he says. “I did. I really did.”

“Not enough,” Michael says, and Calum winces, but doesn’t say anything. It’s true. He can’t have loved Michael enough, can’t have loved him well enough, if the Gallaghers and drugs and music and distance could fill the Michael-shaped hole in his heart.

“Maybe,” he says, and the word sounds heavy and leaden. “But I was seventeen. I don’t think I really knew how to love.”

“Do you now?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t- not since-” he stops, not wanting to say I haven’t been in love since you, but Michael gets it anyway.

“Oh,” he says, and he sounds a little warmer now, like he’s pleased to hear that. “Me either.” Calum’s heart flips, but, for the first time in almost the entire conversation, not unpleasantly.

“Oh,” he says, echoing Michael. He wonders whether the mild, tingly feeling spreading from his fingertips to his toes is echoing Michael too.

“Well,” Michael says hastily. “I’m not, like. I didn’t stay single for you, or anything. I just- not like that.” Calum nods. He’s the same. It’s not like he hasn’t fucked hundreds of girls and guys in the past few years; he’s just never felt what he felt with Michael with anybody else.

Suddenly, and a little guiltily, Noel’s face flashes in his mind’s eye. That’s the closest he’s ever got, a hollow echo of what he’d had with Michael. It had only been a night, one that Calum could almost pretend hadn’t happened if he didn’t hear Noel’s pretty little sounds playing whenever he harmonised with him onstage, but Calum knows if Liam hadn’t been on both their minds it could have blossomed into something more. They’d never spoken about it, and Noel would deny it if Calum ever asked, but he knows they both stopped themselves going further because neither of them wanted to lose Liam, the weird, brash little cunt more important to both of them than they were to each other.

And now, Calum thinks, here he is, talking to his ex who happens to be his biggest competition, betraying both his best friends and his band, pitting his ex against his fling, pitting himself against the fucking lot of them. It makes his fucking head hurt, makes his eyes sting a little bit with something he thinks might be frustration but could be guilt, because that’s fucking all he seems to feel these days. Guilty for forgetting Michael, guilty for picking the habit of him back up again, guilty for going behind Liam and Noel’s backs, guilty, guilty, guilty.

He grits his teeth and curls his hands into fists, digging his fingernails into the palm of his hand, hard, hoping none of the shame and guilt in his veins is finding its way to the surface of his skin, betraying him with a blush or a visible, too-fast pulse. Michael’s watching him carefully, eyes searching Calum’s face for the little hints he still knows how to find, and it should maybe make Calum feel a lot more vulnerable than he already does, but instead, it settles him. Michael still knows Calum’s nooks and crannies, still knows where to look to see what he’s trying to hide, and it’s oddly comforting. Michael hasn’t forgotten a single inch of Calum, eyes flitting from the corners of his lips to the crease between his brows, and that’s got to mean something, right?

“I thought I’d never see you again,” Michael says suddenly. “I never- I thought about it, sometimes, but it was never- y’know.” Calum doesn’t know. At all. He has no idea what Michael’s trying to say, but before he can ask, Michael’s continuing. “And then I saw you on a poster, looking cooler and older and hotter, and I started thinking. About seeing you again, I mean. I wondered if we’d ever bump into each other. And then Damon started saying you were our main competition, and I didn’t know how to tell him about us, and I thought you must know about Blur and you hadn’t said anything, not even hello, so. I just thought that was it.” He speaks half-stilted, half in a rush, like he’s got a hundred things to say but none of the words to say them in, or maybe none of the courage.

“Did you want to?” Calum finds himself asking.

“Did I want to what?”

“See me again.” Michael hesitates.

“Yeah,” he says eventually, softly. “I was angry. I wanted to see you and show you how well I was doing without you.” Calum swallows. The words sting more than he thought they would.

“Oh,” is all he can say. He thinks it probably says it all, anyway.

“I thought I’d hate you,” Michael says. “I thought I’d see you and I’d be so furious. You made me-” he cuts himself off, and bites his lip, like he’s thinking about whether or not he wants to say it. Calum shifts, pulls his legs onto the sofa and wraps his hand around his ankle, holding himself in place. He can feel the tension of his muscles under his fingertips, strained and stiff and wanting to move, and it feels fitting, feels like the muscle of his legs is echoing the muscle of his heart, tight and uneasy. But, just like the muscle of his legs can’t slacken until Calum’s hand lets go, the muscle of his heart can’t relax until the grip around it is loosened, too.

And Calum, loath though he is to do it, knows how to pry that iron fist off.

“Say it,” Calum says. “I- you- we should, like. Just get it all out.” He doesn’t want to, and he’s pretty sure it’s written all over his face, but he knows that they should. That’s the whole reason he’s here, after all, isn’t it? It would have been easy for him to put it off, to stay in Manchester, to say he was busy, but he’s here, because how can they ever move on if there are still things left to say?

Michael nods, inhales deeply, and tries again.

“You made me feel so worthless,” he says quietly, and Calum can’t help the small grimace that crosses his lips. “So rejected. Like I was nothing. You left, and suddenly I didn’t matter anymore. To you, to myself, to anyone. It was like I was only ever temporary to you.” Calum’s throat is dry, heart pounding at the words and somehow sinking at the same time. He’d never stopped to consider how Michael might have felt, so wrapped up in his own world. He’d never taken a moment to think about whether he might be hurting Michael.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice cracks on the words. He doesn’t think he’s ever meant anything more. He feels it in his lungs, in his heart, in his stomach, in his fucking fingertips; the guilt, the shame, the remorse. Michael looks at him for a moment, and then casts his eyes back down to his feet with a small shrug.

“I wasn’t, though,” he says, even more quietly than before. “Angry, I mean, when I saw you. I thought I’d be fucking livid. I had so many...uh, revenge fantasies, I guess you’d call them. I imagined seeing you again so many times, imagined what I’d say, how I’d feel, but…” he trails off.

“But?” Michael shrugs again, staring steadfastly at his socks.

“I saw you up on that stage at Glastonbury,” he says, “and I just felt-” he purses his lips, like he’s considering his next words. “Warm.”

“Warm?”

“Warm.” Michael doesn’t elaborate, but Calum thinks he understands. It must take a lot, he thinks, for Michael to say that, to admit that instead of feeling angry, instead of all the hurt that’s been simmering for years, he’d felt something almost positive. Calum doesn’t know whether he would have had the courage to say that in Michael’s position, to bare himself and make himself vulnerable like that.

“I didn’t think I’d feel like this either,” he admits. A concession for a concession. Glastonbury in reverse.

“Like what?” Michael asks.

“Y’know.” Calum doesn’t want to say it.

“I don’t.” Michael wants him to say it. Fuck’s sake. But he deserves it, really, doesn’t he, after all this?

“Fond.” Michael blinks at him for a second.

“Fond?” he asks, voice wavering slightly. Calum shrugs, more of a defensive movement than anything else.

“Yeah, I guess. I dunno. I didn’t think I’d still care as much as I do.” Michael cocks his head, like he’s considering it.

“That’s why you wrote that song about me,” he says, and Calum blinks.

“You heard it?” He can’t help the surprise in his tone. Michael’s never mentioned it, so Calum had just assumed he hadn’t heard it. It’s not like he was about to be the one to fucking bring it up, is it?

“‘Course I heard it,” Michael says, and for the first time in a while his lips twitch in what looks almost like a tiny smile. “You fucking named it for me.” That’s true. Drunk Calum has never made the best decisions.

(But sober Calum was the one who’d looked the other way.)

“What about the one you wrote?” Calum says, deflecting. “The one about collapsing in love, making it to the end.”

“What about it?”

“Well, y’know,” Calum says, waving his hands around vaguely, because he’s not really sure what he’s asking. “When did you write it?”

“Years ago,” Michael says. “Two, three, maybe?”

“Why?”

“I was throwing all your letters out.” Oh.

“Oh,” Calum says. He hadn’t been expecting that. It smarts, but he deserves it. He’s not even sure if he has many of Michael’s left, and the ones he does have will have survived by accident, not on purpose.

“Yeah, well,” Michael says, sounding a little embarrassed. “Alex always says the best way to get over someone is to forget about them.”

“Did you?” Calum can’t help but ask.

“Did I what?”

“Forget about me.” Michael hesitates.

“Almost.” Calum can live with that.

They sit in silence for a moment, but it’s not uncomfortable. It feels a little heavy, a little sombre, but Calum can feel both himself and Michael in it, and Michael’s not pulling away, not holding himself back. It’s almost nice, he thinks, to co-exist like this with Michael, neither of them pulling or pushing. It’s definitely better than it had been ten minutes ago, at least.

“What about you?” Michael asks after a minute. “Why’d you write Columbia?”

“I was drunk,” Calum says honestly. “And I saw a picture of you in a magazine.” Michael scrunches his nose up in the way that he does when he’s thinking about something, and it makes something sharp shoot through Calum’s heart, that he still recognises that.

“I like it,” Michael says, after a moment.

“Like what?”

“Columbia.” Calum swallows.

“Yeah?” he says, a little shyly. He’d never even really expected Michael to hear it, and it’s fucking embarrassing, the drunken words swimming to the forefront of his mind as he watches Michael’s eyes search his own for the answer to a question Calum doesn’t know.

“Yeah,” Michael says, and Calum sees the corners of his lips twitch in what looks like the tiniest of smiles. “It’s a good song.”

“Well. Thanks,” Calum says, and then, in a brief moment of courage: “It’s your song, so. I’m glad you like it.” The tiny smile turns into a small smile, and Calum sees the corner of Michael’s eyes crinkle a little, and his heart almost stills in his chest. He didn’t know he could still do that to Michael.

“I’m glad it’s mine,” Michael says quietly, even shyer than Calum, and maybe Calum’s imagining it, but there seems to be a pink tinge to the top of his cheeks. He really is fucking pretty, Calum thinks dimly; white teeth sinking into a full pink lip, long lashes covering his blue-green eyes. Calum doesn’t know he ever managed to fucking forget that.

They sit in silence for a minute, a little tense and a little uneasy, until Michael sighs, sags a little, and rests his head against his hand.

“Where do we go from here?” he says. Calum swallows, and shrugs. Wherever you want, he wants to say. I’ll take anything I can get.

“I don’t know,” he says instead. “What do you want?” Michael hesitates.

“I’m not- I don’t-” he cuts himself off, and sighs. “I want this,” he says, and gestures between the two of them. “Us. Whatever that is. We’re both different people now, so I don’t- I don’t know whether it’ll work like that again. I want to give it a chance, though. But I can’t pretend the past five years didn’t happen.” Calum nods. That’s fair. He doesn’t think he can pretend the past five years didn’t happen either, can’t fucking forget it in the lines on Michael’s eyes and forehead that weren’t there before, but they’re both different people now. They need to relearn one another, rediscover the familiar landmarks in the new maps on both their faces and feel their way around the new ones.

“Okay,” Calum says. Michael wants this, whatever form this takes. He wants Calum, in one way or another, and that’s enough for him.

“What do you want?” Michael asks. Calum shrugs again.

Anything isn’t quite right. He would take anything, but the word is too desperate, doesn’t quite express everything Calum wants it to. Everything isn’t right either, too greedy, too much too soon. Calum’s vocabulary’s a little too limited to get across I want you, I want this, I want whatever you’ll give me in any which way in the exact way he wants.

Well. He supposes he’ll just have to try and get as close as he can.

“You,” he says, quieter than he’d intended.

“How?” Fucking hell. Michael’s really fucking good at picking at loose threads.

“However,” Calum says. “Acquaintances. Friends. More.” He tries not to look nervous as he shrugs, but he can tell from the look on Michael’s face that he fails miserably.

“Okay,” Michael says, gently. “But then we’ve got to stop tiptoeing around each other like this.” Calum nods, stomach churning a little as he thinks about what that might mean. Is this the moment where he chooses between Michael and his band? He’d never thought his fork in the road of fate would come in a beige living room in London.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay.” Michael blinks at him for a minute, and then smiles, small, hesitant, but one that reaches his eyes.

“Okay,” he says again, smile still on his lips, nothing big and bright and brilliant but the most radiant smile Calum thinks he’s seen in years all the same. “I’ll start by telling you Supersonic’s got the worst fucking lyrics I think I’ve ever heard.” Calum laughs, startling himself with it.

“You’re telling me?” he says, still a little hesitantly, dipping his toes in before he sticks his foot and then his leg and then his torso in. “Imagine having to hear it every single night and listen to Liam talking about how it’s mega, yeah, fucking mega, Cal, and it makes perfect fucking sense and all, don’t know what you’re on about...eeyar, Noel, what is it about?” Michael laughs, clear and amused, and Calum can’t help the way it makes his own lips quirk up in a smile, something warm spreading from his ears to his heart at the sound.

“You do a fucking good Liam impression,” Michael says, and Calum snorts, gaining confidence.

“You would too if you had to spend as much time with him as I do,” he says. “Cunt never shuts up.” Michael grins.

“Seems like a laugh, though,” he says.

“Yeah, if you know you can give him back to his handler after fifteen minutes,” Calum says, and Michael laughs again. It’s fucking heady, the feeling of making Michael laugh like that, makes Calum want to dredge up every memory he has and pick it apart until he has a whole fucking stand-up routine just for Michael.

“Liam with a handler?” Michael sounds amused. “I don’t even want to imagine the salary he’d have to offer for someone to take that job.”

“Salary?” Calum echoes, with a grin. “Fucking hell, don’t give Noel ideas. The prick gets paid enough already.” Michael cocks his head at that, a curious frown appearing on his face.

“Noel?” he echoes, and Calum nods. “Don’t they hate each other?” Calum blinks.

“D’you think we’d be here if they did?” he says, and Michael opens his mouth, then closes it again, and his brow furrows further.

“Huh,” he says, sounding a little surprised. “But- y’know.” Calum does know. He knows what it looks like to anyone who doesn’t look closer than the black eyes and split lips, which is exactly where Liam and Noel both want people to stop looking. Neither of them can stand to be weak or vulnerable, and their greatest vulnerability is each other, so it’s better to keep everyone else at arm’s length, stop them from seeing how to get to either of them. That, and they really do hate each other half the time.

“Well, they don’t, and they do. But you can’t really spend a lot of time with Liam or Noel and not hate them,” Calum says. “And you can’t spend a lot of time with either of them and not love them, either.” Michael hums, like he’s mulling it over.

“Your band shouldn’t work,” he says, and Calum laughs.

“I know,” he says, and Michael grins back at him. God, it feels oddly surreal and yet like the most natural thing in the world, laughing and joking and listening to Michael chat shit about his best friends like that. “But imagine what we’d be like if Noel and Liam were normal.” Michael pulls a face.

“You’d be like, U2 or something,” he says, and Calum scoffs.

“U2?” he echoes. “Fuck off. Bono’s mental.”

“Yeah, but what about the rest of them?” Michael points out. “Bet Larry Mullen goes home after a gig and sits in front of the fire with a pipe and a cup of tea.”

“Larry who?” Michael grins.

“Exactly,” he says, and Calum just grins back at him, relishing the way his fingertips are tingling at this new rapport, this foray into new and yet familiar territory. His stomach feels lighter now, too, almost empty, even, and- oh. Yeah. He hasn’t eaten yet.

As if on cue, his stomach growls loudly, and Michael snorts.

“Fuck off,” Calum says, but he’s still smiling.

“What d’you fancy for lunch?” Michael says, stretching his arms out in front of him, a comfortable, trusting move. It catches Calum off-guard, making him reply a moment too late, if the frown on Michael’s face is anything to go by.

“What’s going?”

“Fish and chips?” Michael suggests, as he stands up. “Can’t go wrong with fish and chips, can you?”

“You’ve clearly never been to America,” Calum says darkly, getting to his feet, and Michael laughs, and Calum’s stomach feels like it’s soaring and sinking at the same time.

“I’m just not stupid enough to try and get any there,” he says, grinning at Calum as he heads for the living room door, pausing halfway there to look over his shoulder at Calum.

"Coming?" It's just one word, but Michael says it so casually, says it like he used to when they were skipping school, or when they were going to get drunk in the park, or when he was about to get in the shower, and it sends something exhilarating and powerful coursing through him, washing over him from head to toe. It's a little slice of them, the first peek at what was and what could still be.

"'Course." He always would.

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ahh-fxck · 4 years

Text

Gay Bar AU: Warrior’s Blues part 4

Hello folks! Here is the next part of my gay bar AU, featuring Geralt and Jaskier.

Big thanks to @stressedspidergirlsfandomblog for being such an amazing beta!

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

The link to the rest on Ao3 is here.

“Geralt?” A muffled voice calls from outside of the door. Geralt recognizes Jaskier’s voice instantly; Would recognize it anywhere, even though he’s only known him for a night. A flush creeps across his whole body as he dithers, damp towel clutched tightly. “Geralt? Is everything all right?” Jaskier calls again, sounding worried. “Just, it’s two o’ clock in the afternoon… I thought you might be hungry. May I come in?”

Geralt turns to look at the door, seeing the lanky shadow of the handsome man through the shade. He rasps, “I’m fine.” The words seem to unstick him. He strides across to the bed in a swift, efficient movement, drops the towel, and calls gruffly, “I’ll be right there.” He tucks the rest of the items back into his bag in a neat roll, followed by the discharge papers. His injured hand flashes with bright hot pain as he stuffs the papers into his bag, and he growls under his breath. Then he rises and quickly opens the attic door for the man waiting patiently outside.

He is greeted by a charming, crooked smile as Jaskier greets him over a little tray holding two coffees and a couple of open faced bagel sandwiches. There’s sugar, even cream, each in little bowls that bear a buttercup motif. Jaskier himself is dressed in a loose yellow tank top and denim shorts, though these are significantly longer than yesterday, hanging down to just above his knees. His face is lightly stubbled; he hasn’t bothered to shave yet today. Seeing this, Geralt isn’t sure whether to be irked or charmed by how informally the man comports himself.

“There you are,” Jaskier sighs happily, tilting his head and fixing Geralt with a wide smile. “Breakfast?” As Geralt steps stiffly aside to let him in, he nudges past him and into the loft, humming, “Well, I suppose it’s more like lunch, but never mind that. How are you today?” Bending over, he places the tray on the little table, then straightens and glances over his shoulder at Geralt.

Above Jaskier’s house was a small attic studio. It was painted a mellow sky blue inside, with white moulding, furniture, and decorations. It consisted of one room divided into two parts. First, there was a sitting area on a white tiled floor, with wicker chairs and a wicker table with a clear glass top. On a shelf below a windowsill there was an electric kettle and a box of rather rumpled looking tea sachets in their paper envelopes. Mugs were visible on the lower tier, stored neatly upside-down. Behind a half-wall, there was a sleeping area with a twin-size bed and two small dressers emblazoned on the sides with painted cornflowers. By the dusty, empty smell, no one had been up here in some time. There was a bathroom in the corner, with a full sized bathtub and a little sink above which a white mirror hung with makeup lights sat. There was only one entry, a simple white door that led to a steep staircase wrapping around the outside of the blue house and terminating in the driveway.

The light in the room turns to grey, dim fingers of it penetrating through the windows to caress the simple wicker decorations on the low half-wall separating the sleeping area from the main room. In the bed, Geralt breathes deeply, head lolling awkwardly where it rests halfway on his pillow, his injured hand resting on his chest.

By the time he had arrived here last night, he had barely been able to hear Jaskier explain the little apartment over the roar of exhaustion in his ears. He had fallen into bed, fully dressed save for his boots, and had moved only once during the night to pull the creamy blue and white duvet over himself when the temperature had finally dropped. He had barely even managed to get his head on the pillow.

Now the temperature creeps back up again as the dawn light warms, turning a rich buttery color as the sun comes up over the horizon. Geralt’s eyes flicker open, habit and light conspiring to rouse him from slumber. He glances around, disoriented, then closes his eyes again quickly. The blue and white room is frighteningly unfamiliar, friendly colors and new smells crushing up against him as he begins to wake. It stirs half-remembered guilt and shame, burning feelings that he would much rather escape. Dimly realizing that he is no longer on a schedule and doesn’t have to wake, Geralt heaves a heavy sigh. Rolling over, he puts his arm over his head and curls softly under the covers. His arm blocks out the light and he retreats into the warm hollow that his body has made in the blankets. With a yawn, he drifts back to sleep.

This process repeats several times, until the room is bright and hot and Geralt’s bladder is achingly full. Each time the guilt and the shame press harder, a growing static that gnaws at him even in his sleep. Finally he is forced to open his eyes. As he lays there with his arm over his face, squinting out at the hot light of the attic, he hears a stereo turn on below him. It’s muffled, too quiet to pick out the words, but the beat is happy and strong. His heart speeds up and stutters as he tries to parse the addition of the music to his already overwhelmed senses, and his lips pull back to show his teeth as he growls in irritation. Sudden tension races along his arms, whipcord strong and hot as lightning. His hand lashes out, bandaged knuckles slamming into the wall before he can think. The world vanishes for a moment in a brief, hot flash of pain that whites his vision out.

The wall reverberates, and below, quiet footsteps pause. A moment later the stereo volume lowers, and the rhythmic sounds of daily living resume. Geralt shakes his head to try and clear the cottony feeling away, tries to shake off the stars exploding behind his eyes from the pain in his hand. Rolling, he staggers out of bed and cradles it to his chest as he limps towards the door he faintly remembers Jaskier indicating as the bathroom.

The little room is clean and quiet, with very little to say for itself aside from an empty towel ring and a plastic basket full of half-used toiletries sitting on a back shelf. As he passes the mirror he spots his stubbly reflection out of the corner of his eye and remembers that he needs to shave.

After relieving himself he retreats to his backpack. Squatting down, he eyes the khaki sack critically, bracing himself to confront the contents within. His mouth tastes like ashes as he reaches out and tugs open the zipper. The discharge papers tumble out, pages upon pages of his career on trial sifting to the carpet like dead leaves. Pages of reminders of what he has lost. He can feel his face go numb first, then his tongue, a wave travelling outwards until it robs even his feet of sensation.

His eyes go blank as he paws automatically through the rest of the sack, retrieving his last pair of clean fatigues, his socks, underwear, straight razor, and soap. He sets these aside jerkily on one of the dressers, then turns and kneels, gathering the papers back into the folder. His movements are sloppy and disjointed as he fumbles the papers together, scanning them without reading them, placing them back in order on autopilot. Then he shoves the folder under the bed, right next to the sack, and straightens. Below him there is still the faint sound of music, and someone’s voice, presumably Jaskier’s, breaks out into a muffled song. In a fog, he grabs his things off of the dresser and heads for the shower.

After he is clean he gets out, dressing himself. The music has stopped by now, and the bathroom has descended into dripping silence. The soggy bandage is still on his hand, but he’s not ready to confront it yet. Instead, he takes his dirty shirt to the mirror, scrubbing some of the steam away. He eyes his reflection critically, then the makeup bulbs, giving them a puzzled grimace. Turning, he retrieves his shaving implements from the shelf next to the plastic basket, coming back to the mirror only reluctantly. The last of the fog from his shower is beginning to clear, and he eyes his reflection uneasily.

His white hair is shaved short, too short to be mussed by sleep and showering. He has a handsome face. It is pale, with high cheekbones, a square jaw, and lips that have a surprisingly lovely cupid’s bow. Under his wide amber eyes there are shadows though, dark and hollow. The lines of care in his face are graven deeper than usual, darkened by stress and tight with pain. His heart aches as he tries to meet his own gaze, finds that his stomach churns when he tries. Worse, his face is littered with white stubble, making him look grizzled and unkempt. Untrustworthy looking, he decides; undesirable. Still, he realizes as he gingerly flexes his injured hand, there is no way he can safely shave with his straight razor. With a disgruntled sigh, he tosses the shirt back onto the toilet and begins to clean up after himself.

By the time he is done, there is a tentative knocking on the outside door. Feeling his whole body contract with sudden tension, he stops dead in his tracks halfway out of the bathroom. The rest of the little loft is suffused with light and warmth, a peaceful heat that sinks deep into his bones. He stares about the little room, searching for answers as he tries to figure out how to react.

Geralt is still standing in the doorway, studying the other man with quiet intensity. While he’s been around civilians before, he’s never seen one quite like Jaskier up close, never seen a man so perfectly comfortable in his softness. It makes him want to bark at the man to fuck off, it makes him want to run away… it makes him want to sit and eat and never stop looking at him, ever again. He clears his throat as he feels Jaskier’s gaze upon him, closing the door with a little soft ‘thump’ that he half-feels, half-hears.

Jaskier turns and sits himself down in one of the wicker chairs, gesturing an invitation at the other one. Giving the chair a long stare, Geralt weighs his options. He is right next to the door; all he has to do is turn and walk away. It’s not like he needs anything in his backpack, not really. Even the documentation proving his identity is practically worthless now, and what isn’t, he can eventually replace.

As if sensing Geralt’s thought process, Jaskier carefully picks up his coffee cup and leans back in the chair, fixing him with a gentle but frank look. “Breakfast makes vanishing into the wild blue yonder a little easier, Geralt. At least have a bite before you go?”

Geralt fixes the younger man with a look of guarded astonishment. His injured hand twitches on the doorknob, then slides down to rest at his side. It gives a dull throb, but he crams the pain down, ignoring it with practiced skill. Rumbling doubtfully, he rocks back and forth once on his sock feet before tentatively advancing towards the empty chair. His ears burn as he realizes that he is so disoriented that he was genuinely about to run out the door without his shoes, and subsides into the chair across from Jaskier with a sheepish grimace.

“There, now,” Jaskier says, pleased, and pushes the coffee towards Geralt. Geralt takes it gratefully, humming with pleasure as he picks the warm cup up gingerly in his left hand. He leans his elbows on his thighs and blows on it, feeling the pleasure of the warm steam and rich scent playing across his lips. Unlike the coffee available on base, this smells lively and rich. He takes a tentative sip and raises his eyebrows, impressed. Jaskier beams and pushes the sandwich towards him, too.

Geralt tentatively tugs the sandwich towards himself with his bandaged hand, cradling the coffee mug in the other. Jaskier’s eyes flicker as he grimaces in pain, his gaze dropping to the soggy bandage that Geralt is still wearing.

A little furrow appears between his brows, but instead of addressing the pain Geralt is obviously in, he says, “Normally at this time of day today I’m off at work, but luckily for us, I have the day off.” He fixes Geralt with a sunny smile, picking up his bagel and taking a bite out of it. “Which means I’m at your disposal for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Day job?” Geralt inquires, his voice thick and a little hoarse. He grimaces again and takes a swig of coffee to clear his throat.

Jaskier nods pleasantly, chewing. He watches Geralt’s sore hand out of the corner of his eye thoughtfully as he continues, “Mmhm! I’m an adjunct professor at the college a few blocks from here, get to ride my bike to work on nice days. It’s summer so it’s only office hours and faculty meetings once a week right now, but in fall it picks up.”

Geralt tilts his head to the side, considering this information, trying to conceal his surprise. “What do you teach?” he asks, after a moment, then picks up his bagel and takes a bite. There’s ham on it, lettuce, tomato, cheese, even a fried egg. The mayonnaise has hints of garlic and rosemary, sharp and delicious. Probably not store made, then. Impressed despite himself, he eyes the sandwich, then Jaskier.

“Medieval music theory!” Jaskier proclaims, eyes twinkling. “Terribly arcane, I’m afraid, but I simply fell in love with it as a young man, and now here I am.” He sips his coffee and licks a drop of it off of his lower lip reflectively. “At least it helps pay the bills. Worse things could be said for a passion.” Shrugging, he sets the cup back down and takes another bite of his sandwich. “Do you have any plans for the day?” Despite himself, he finds his eye straying back to Geralt’s bad hand, watching with concern as the other man painfully cradles his bagel.

“No.” Geralt replies shortly, taking another bite of his sandwich. Now that he’s started eating, he can finally feel how hungry he is, and he makes short work of the food.

Jaskier watches in fascination as the bagel vanishes in only three or four big bites. Geralt finishes by unceremoniously draining his coffee cup. Jaskier searches for something to say, settling on, “Well then. Let’s at least take another look at that hand of yours, darling. I have a first aid kit downstairs.” He puts his half-eaten sandwich back on the tray, along with his empty coffee mug, and stands. “I’ll meet you down there. Do you remember where the front door is?”

“Yes,” Geralt says, who doesn’t remember anything of the sort. He was far too tired to remember what his name was last night, much less the exact location of the front door of the house. He figures it won’t be hard to find, though, and he is desperate for an excuse to be alone for just another moment while he tries to collect himself. Jaskier nods and heads for the door, beginning to fumble with the tray in an attempt to get the doorknob. Standing hurriedly, he steps around him and pulls the door open. It puts him face to face with the smaller man, and when Jaskier turns another thousand-watt smile on him, he feels like the floor has dropped out from under him, leaving him in free-fall.

Jaskier studies Geralt’s face for a moment, kind blue eyes tracing the contours of his scarred cheeks and square jaw. He lingers briefly on his lips, chapped and cracked from dehydration and stress. A quick sad expression flits across his face, and he turns away. “All right then, I’ll see you in a moment Geralt.” As he turns and exits, the tension humming between them snaps and dissipates, leaving the air of the attic feeling oddly empty in its wake.

Geralt closes the door behind him as he leaves, slow and soft, like he half doesn’t want to shut it. He steps back from the door bewildered, feeling his hand pulse and ache with the sudden pounding of his heart. Reluctantly, he glances down at it. The bandage is beginning to dry again, a stiff, disgusting brown from where the blood has soaked into the gauze. His hand itself is swollen and red, far worse than it was yesterday. Running his eyes across it, his lips pull back in a grimace as he notes the mangled skin peeking out from the place where the bandage has come loose. He would take care of it himself, Jaskier be damned, except that he doesn’t have any medical supplies. Deep down, he knows that an infection isn’t worth his pride.

After a further moment of delay, he returns to the bedside and sits next to his wet towel, staring at his tan leather boots. They are worn but well-cared for, stained, a little thin around the heels on the inside. He ponders how to get them on, as his hand is becoming stiffer by the moment. The pain is growing from a distant misty throb to a full blown, gnawing ache, which makes it difficult to think properly. Gritting his teeth, he decides to just grab them in his good hand and shove them on. The laces he pulls carefully tight. He fumbles with them for a long moment, trying to tie them, but his injured hand is so stiff that he can’t manage proper knots. Grumbling with frustration, he shoves the laces into the top of his boots and stands.

He looks around for the keys to the attic, spotting them on top of one of the dressers where he tossed them the night before. Those go into his pocket before he heads for the door. But, as he reaches it, he stops. His heart constricts in his chest as he hovers there, feeling the weight of his vulnerability pressing down on him. The idea of going into yet another new setting, of sitting across from that unbelievably kind man and letting him touch his hurting hand, is too much to handle. He feels like the oxygen is going out of the room as he stands there with his fingers on the doorknob, unable to move forward, unable to retreat. The room fades into a blurry blue and white impression as he begins to pant, lips numbly tingling. He steps back from the door instinctively, staggering to one of the wicker chairs and sinking into it.

Time swims as he hunches in the chair, awkwardly pulling his hand in close to his chest and huffing short breaths. Shame sweeps up his body, his posture collapsing as he tries to fight his way out of the panic. When he was young this never happened to him, but recently it had been coming on more and more frequently. He begins quietly, subtly rocking in the chair, pressing his face into his arm. The warmth of it is grounding, the smell of his skin bringing him slowly back into himself. In the end, he stills, leaning back into the chair with a heavy sigh as the tension in his body begins to run out. A fuzzy haze settles over him, and he closes his eyes as the numbness sweeps up and blankets him in darkness.

He becomes dimly aware of footsteps on the stairs some time later. Stirring, he sits slowly up in the chair, gold eyes focusing on the door as the footsteps come closer. The tall shadow of Jaskier shows through the curtains again, and he hears a gentle knock. “Geralt? Is everything ok?”

It is not ok, but Geralt doesn’t know how to say that, so instead he calls thickly, “M’fine. Got distracted.” Outside, Jaskier is silent for a moment. Then he says, “I brought my first aid kit upstairs. Would you mind terribly if I came in and looked at your hand?”

Geralt sits stiffly, hand cradled along his collarbone, feeling uneasy and a little trapped. Even his closest friends had rarely treated him with such persistent kindness; had rarely needed to. He was not a person who made himself vulnerable easily, and had gone to great lengths to keep his distance from anyone who might see him that way. On one level, he knew that accepting the man’s kindness was fine. Sensible, even. On the other, all he wanted to do was run until he found someplace dark and quiet to hide and never emerge from, ever again.

Outside, Jaskier sighs. “Geralt, are you sure you’re okay?” His voice carries a little worried note in it this time that makes Geralt flinch.

Geralt is tempted to lie again. It comes right to his lips, but stutters and stops before he can speak it as he watches the little movements of the man outside. Feeling oddly light, he stands to walk across the room and opens the door. He steps aside and looks down into Jaskier’s uncertain face, his own expression unreadable, then gestures shortly for him to enter.

Jaskier does so without argument, ducking inside before the ex-soldier has a chance to close the door on him again. He places the first aid kit on the little glass table and sits, making himself smaller immediately, and Geralt feels himself relax. Seated, the man looks softer, less demanding. He notices that his face is cleaner, too, all the stubble shaved away. Geralt’s bright gaze rakes over him sitting in the wicker chair, taking in the gentleness of his posture, the frank kindness that he regards him with. Stomach still churning uneasily, Geralt notices that he is nevertheless warmed by the gaze fixed on him. He feels his own face soften from a glare into an expression of uncertainty, eyes flicking between Jaskier and the empty chair.

Jaskier makes no movement whatsoever, his body language quiet and gentle as he continues to watch Geralt in the doorway. He can feel the man’s hot golden gaze searing across him, feels the weight of his attention as he considers what to do. He is hummingly aware of how dangerous the tall man looks, his toned body alert beneath his fatigues. Despite that, he finds that he is unafraid. He slowly leans back, sweeping his hand towards the first aid kit.

“I won’t touch you if you don’t want help. I just thought you might need this.” He feels his heart constrict a little in his chest as the man obviously relaxes, uncertain expression easing. All he wants to do is stand and push the man into the chair, to lavish him with gentle affection, but he gets the sense that this could cause the man to shut down or worse, lash out. So he holds still, exquisitely still, allowing Geralt to come to his own conclusions.

Geralt relaxes as Jaskier leans back, offering him the first aid kit. He feels by turns ashamed and relieved, his throat tight and his cheeks burning. Flexing his good hand slowly, he pushes at the numbness that is trapping him, urging it to abate. Feeling begins to return to the tip of his tongue, his lips, slowly spreading until he finds himself able to move freely again. Clearing his throat, he walks to the empty wicker chair and sits without further comment. Rummaging through the first aid supplies, he pulls out what he needs in silence.

Jaskier watches as the man bends to the task of caring for his hand. When he peels the bandage off, he leans over to the side and grabs a small wastebasket from near the tea shelf. He extends the basket to Geralt, and Geralt flicks his gaze briefly to him, nodding an acknowledgement as he tosses the bandage into the bin. Then he begins to methodically clean his wounds, face tight and wooden as he wipes them clean with cotton balls soaked in soothing antiseptic.

Jaskier inspects the wounded hand from a distance as he does so, finally able to get a clear look at it for the first time since yesterday afternoon. The skin is raw and ugly around the knuckles, pitted from the impacts with the tree. His fingers are curled thickly inward, held in place by the swelling that makes his whole hand look angry and bruised. There is a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as Jaskier realizes that these are no mere abrasions that he’s looking at. Not anymore, at least; unless he’s missed his guess, Geralt’s hand looks broken.

Silence stretches as Geralt cleans, wraps, and tapes his hand. Then, he looks up and flicks his eyes to Jaskier’s for just a moment before cutting off to the side. “I need a hospital for this,” he rumbles, his deep voice cutting through the silence.

Jaskier’s thinned lips pull into a grimace of dismay and he nods, unsurprised. “There’s a hospital not far away from here. I can drive you.”

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miss-tc-nova · 4 years

Text

Fluffcoat - Bragi x Reader

It’s here!!! I’ve had this on hold for a while now, but I’ve been dying to share it! I can’t guarantee this is accurate to Bragi’s character, but I love it anyway!

Oh! Also, THIS GUY was an amazing inspiration! I don’t know if I believe the whole Bragi/Braig theory yet, but he’s my official voice head canon until proven otherwise.

~~~~~

The sky above grows irate, preparing to let loose on the citizens of Scala Ad Caelum. The humid air thins out in the rising heat, giving signal to all living things of the impending showers. The lively streets begin clearing out—people returning to their homes in a bustle while animals scurry about in search of shelter. We are among those people.

“Whose bright idea was it for us to come out before a storm again?” Urd mumbles.

Xehanort’s argent gaze glances to her. “Today? Vor’s.”

The petite blond frowns at him. “I’m sorry. I really thought it was a Heartless.”

Eight of us—the students of Master Odin—trek through the clearing streets back towards the citadel. All too eager to see some real-keyblade-warrior action, the rest of us naively jumped into action and chased after little Vor and her mistaken monster.

“At least she had the instinct to do something about it,” Hermod reasons.

Baldr nods, “If it had really been a Heartless, it needed to be dealt with as quickly as possible.”

Urd is not so forgiving. “It was a dog.”

“A pretty ugly dog,” snickers Bragi. He’s right; it was the scruffiest looking dog we’d ever seen with a crooked under-bite and a ridiculous walk.

I catch up with the boy. “His owner was still happy to have him back. And he wasn’t that ugly.”

“His under-bite was so bad I’m surprised he could smell anything other than his own breath.”

“It gave him character,” I argue, hardly able to stifle my laughter.

Eraqus turns to put his two munny in. “And he was pretty happy-go-lucky.”

“Aww, feel like a kindred spirit?” Xehanort teases, shoving his best friend and watching him stumble. Mr. Fleetfoot manages to stay standing.

A drop patters before me and I make the mistake of looking up in time to be struck on the nose. I shove Bragi in response to his mocking. “We got rain incoming fast.”

Hoods are pulled up while Hermod declares, “We’d better pick up the pace.”

I follow suit after my classmates until a shimmer of silver catches my eye. Before I can lock on and process what exactly it was that I saw, it’s gone.

“Hey.” With a simple word, Bragi drags my attention back. His head jerks towards the others leaving us behind. “Stop day dreamin’ or you’re gonna get left behind.”

“Coming.”

The red-head questions me as I catch up, “What was that about?”

Smarmy Fluffcoat, I mean Bragi, and I have been good friends since we began our keyblade training. I’m good friends with all my classmates technically, but I don’t have a crush on the others. As aloof and smarmy as he can be, the moments of genuine enthusiasm remind me he’s not as cool and collected as he’d like everyone to think. Those are the moments I love most; the childish excitement, the pure happiness, the rare frazzled mess. While I find those flustered occasions adorable, I know inside that he’d have me a complete wreck should he know my secret. It doesn’t help that Bragi seems able to read me like a book; he just hasn’t gotten to those last few pages that give me away.

“Nothing. I thought I saw something,” I reply.

“Do you want to check it out?”

I hesitate. The correct answer is ‘yes’ but the heavens are threatening to come down on us at any moment. “No, it’s okay.”

“Are you sure?” His face draws closer, his honey-colored eyes taking in every detail, looking for a contrary sign.

I break the stare, trailing after the others again. “Yeah. I’m sure I was just seeing things. Anyway, come on. We don’t all have the same insulation you do, Fluffcoat.”

We arrive home just in time; the sky has just started dumping buckets of rain. Coinciding with said occurrence, guilt begins to set in. My brain starts questioning whether or not I actually saw something. The thought that I did is enough to become a distraction. Then the lightning strikes.

I stand, unable to take it anymore. Hermod lifts his gaze from his book. “You okay?” That grabs Vor and Xehanort’s attention—the four of us were trying to take on the homework due in a few days.

“Yeah,” I say, scooping all my things back into my bag. “I just can’t focus right now.”

“We can work on something else if you want.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll work on it myself later.” They get a brief wave from me before I abandon the study group.

In the students’ quarters, I literally throw my things in my room, snatch up my jacket, and rush outside. With the rain pouring down on me, I break into a run. Some people may think it’s ridiculous, but I won’t be able to forgive myself if I don’t check—perhaps in that aspect I’m more soft-hearted than Vor.

Upon reaching my destination, I peer around for any sign my guilt is founded. My body heat is slipping away while the rainfall doesn’t let up even a little—clothing in Scala isn’t exactly made for such dramatic weather. Without finding what I’m looking for, it’s time to move on.

My foot stutters and I hesitate. The prattle of the rain fills the void of silence, making my world feel so much smaller—meaning it must be close. Eyes closed, I mentally shuffle through the white noise in an attempt to pinpoint what I’d heard. It sounds again, beneath a line of shrubbery. The leaves rustle as I kneel and when I push past the greenery, I’m met with a pair of large blue eyes. Pointed ears flop forward and the silver fur sticks to a small frame, making him appear all the more pitiful. I was right.

“Hey,” I coo softly. His reply is a loud cry. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.” The feline gets a good sniff at my frozen fingers before suddenly winding between my legs and wailing at me. Not liking the feel of his shivering, I strip my jacket and cover the cat. “Let’s get you out of the rain.”

Suddenly, there’s a weight across my back and fluff on the verge of blinding me. “Yes, let’s. Before you catch a cold.”

“Bragi?” Just beyond the fur, I get a look at said boy standing over me.

“Grab the furball and let’s go,” he insists, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.

Shoving my arms through the sleeves and scooping up the small creature, I quickly comply. “What are you doing out here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he replies, amber eyes glimpsing the bundle. “But I guess I have my answer.”

His hair hasn’t soaked up much rain and his jacket is relatively dry; he hasn’t been out here long—he knew exactly where to find me.

Back at the citadel, Bragi is trying to hold back the tremors. On the other hand, my toes are cold but I’m actually pretty warm.

“Are you okay?” I ask, peeling off the wet shoes at the entrance.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” The quake in his voice says otherwise. Even so, Bragi speaks as if his words are true. “You better get that fluffball something to eat after he’s dry.”

We part ways there. In a fresh change of clothes, I wrap my new friend in a towel and head to the commons where there’s a fireplace.

“There you are,” Urd greets from a chair. “Bragi was looking for you.”

The thought that he’d asked around for me combats the chill. “Yeah, he found me.”

Eraqus hops up. “Wha’cha got there?” I show him the cat happily bundled. “Oh cute. Find him in the rain?”

“Yeah.”

Xehanort shakes his head. “So that’s why that smarmy guy announced he was going out.” Urd giggles. “I see you have his coat too.”

Indulging in the warmth of the fire, I try to ignore the little implications. In hopes that it’ll dry, I spread the fluff-coat in front of the fire before turning my attention to the feline. He’s perfectly happy to be out of the rain, purring away and putting up with me.

“Aren’t you supposed to be feeding him?”

I look up at Bragi, dry and wrapped in a blanket. “I had to get him dry first.”

“Well since you gotta make him something, you should make me a hot chocolate,” he grunts, plopping beside me.

“Fine,” I laugh. “But you gotta watch him.”

“And sit in front of the warm fire? No problem.”

Entrusting the cat to Smarmy, I make my way downstairs to the student kitchen. It’s one scrambled egg and two hot chocolates later that I return to the commons, spying the red-head teasing the cat with a hand beneath the blanket. It warms my heart to see that smile.

“I never would’ve pegged you as a cat person,” I announce. The plate is set on the floor and, once he gets a whiff, the cat is all over it.

“Cats are alright,” he replies while receiving a cup. “Those classmates of ours though—kind of a pain.”

I glance around; I hadn’t even noticed that they were gone. “Where’d they go?”

“I dunno. Urd said something about birds and dragged those dorks away. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

We enjoy our time in front of the fire talking nonsense. Basking in front of the fire, playing with a cute cat, and hanging out with my favorite person, I couldn’t ask for more. Okay, there is one thing I could ask for; the fire can only warm up one side of me at a time.

“Alright, gimme your cup,” I say. The snoozing cat protests when transferred into my friend’s lap.

“Hm? Where are you goin’?”

The empty dish is also collected. “To put the dirty dishes away. Also I need a blanket too.”

“You cold?”

“A little.”

Bragi sets his cup aside and reaches for the coat I forgot about. It feels like he’s playing with my insides when, for the second time tonight, he wraps his coat around me. “There. No excuse to leave.”

My nerves twist at my guts more. I pull the toasty fabric tighter around me, hiding my face in the fur of his namesake.

Instantly my anxiety melts away. Wafts of cinnamon and spice consume me, immediately turning intoxicating—I can’t get enough. It’s comfortable and sassy and perfectly Smarmy.

Is this what he smells like?

With another deep inhale to numb the dither, my eyes flutter open. He’s there, within my reach, watching me as if expecting something. There’s a dust of pink in his cheeks.

“You didn’t catch a cold did you?” The quietness of my voice is surprising yet it’s plenty loud for our proximity.

“No.”

I graze my hand against his cheek. “Are you sure? You’re warm.” His face falls from my hand and his laugh encourages the jitters to attempt a comeback. I am so confused. “Bragi?”

The laughter dies. “Yeah. I’m okay.” Those aren’t the words he wanted to say. Nevertheless, Bragi sits up, smile in place along with the faint tint on his skin. Without warning, he pulls the hood of his jacket up and over my face. “You worry too much.” Too perplexed to fight back, I push the hood up enough to get a look at him. That flush becomes more prominent and Bragi heaves a dramatic sigh. “You’re killin’ me.”

Muscles go rigid when he puts a hand behind my head. The chill, the concern, the cat, everything is completely forgotten in the instant that Bragi begins to lean in.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

He responds in the same hushed tone. “Do you want me to stop?”

“…No.”

Shock mitigated, I easily conform to his slow, undaunted demands. Each move comes with a craving for more which seems to be part of his agenda. I thought I would be a nervous mess but I’m at peace. The scent from his coat is stronger on him, sending me further down that spiral of content.

A tongue glides across my lower lip and my peace upturns like a flipped table. Jerking away, I’m fully aware of the knots writhing in my stomach and my racketing heart rate. That, I had not been prepared for.

Fluffcoat’s chuckle makes his coat a bit too warm for me; the fact is, no doubt, plain on my face based on his smirk. The offending tongue swipes around his mouth.

“Never thought second-hand cocoa would be so sweet.”

Gods, does he know what he’s doing to me?! “Why?” It’s the only thing I can manage to say, even then my voice nearly fails me.

Eyes roll towards the ceiling in thought. “Mmm, I couldn’t really pick one specific reason.” That gentle expression agitates the knots. “You’re sweet and a little crazy and everything about you is amazing.” A hand slips under my chin, forcing me to meet his smarmy gaze. “And you just look so damn cute in my coat.”

The attempt to hide my embarrassment using the fluff is pretty pathetic. He doesn’t dwell on it though.

“It’s getting late. You should get to bed,” he hums. “You’re going to be out all day looking for this floof’s owner.”

I take a risk, revealing my face to take a look at the comfortable cat. “Yeah.” It chirps when Bragi scritches at his ear. “Someone’s probably worried about him.”

“Lucky he had you looking out for him.” It takes a lot of discipline not to hide when Fluffcoat winks at me, but I still look away.

“Come on, kitty,” I coo, cradling the creature in my arms.

The fire goes out along with the lights and we head towards the bedrooms. At his door, Bragi stops.

“See you in the morning,” he yawns.

“Don’t you want your coat back?” I question.

There’s that signature Smarmy smirk. “You hold onto it for a while.” I don’t understand his motive, but I’m not really up to arguing—not with my new addiction. “Good night.”

“Night.”

That night, both the cat and I sleep beneath the fluff-coat that kept us warm today.

#bragi #kh bragi #khdr bragi #bragi x reader #khdr #smarmy fluffcoat #love that smarmy bastard #xeha-non #novas requests #gender neutral reader

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