#gotta finish my pilot’s license | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shyficwriter · 3 years

Text

Temporary Home: Chapter 12

Guardians of the Galaxy fanfic | Reader x Guardians (With Yondu and Kraglin!)

Summary: You want to make a run into town, but you're forced to take one of the Guardians with you if you want to leave. Guess who get's the pleasure of annoying you? If that wasn't bad enough, someone decides to show up at your door...

Previous Chapter here | Next Chapter Here Or click here to: Start From Beginning

Author’s Note: For my records, this is day 17 of the Guardians living with reader.

Word Count: 6,751

"Where you going?"

You turned and looked towards the source of the voice, Peter's voice, coming from a door to the kitchen. You had just grabbed your keys from the kitchen counter and you were finishing up the short list on your phone.

Obviously you had intended to quickly run your errands the other day when you planned to take the raccoon corpse into town to be tested, but when Fury showed up having brought his own doctor and lab to test the raccoon on site, and also sentenced you to wearing your arm in a sling, you obviously hadn't done that.

It had been a couple days since then, you having wanted to get used to the sling a little bit before attempting to drive. You knew it still wasn't exactly the smartest thing to do, but you really wanted out of the house.

"Just running into town," you say, not paying him much mind.

"Why?" he asked, his tone weighting the word, almost as if he wanted to tell you that you weren't allowed.

You look up at him with a raised eyebrow. "Because I need to? Ya know, check the mail, pick some stuff up, post a few bills?" You knew it could all wait, and the bills could be paid online if you really needed to, but he probably didn't know that. "Unless you need something I really don't see what it is to you." You weren't meaning to sound like a dick, but he was acting weird. You didn't like his tone, and his weirdness was only emphasized when you start to approach the doorway to exit the kitchen but he didn't move.

His eyes briefly went to your arm in the sling-brace. "Don't you think you should be taking it easy?"

That's what it was. Knew it. You roll your eyes so hard one might think they'd get stuck. "I'm literally fine." You make a shooing motion but he still doesn't move. Sighing, you make your way toward the other door, only to hear him jogging up the hall to meet you there, the sound making you pause before completing the distance, rolling your eyes before continuing on to see he had indeed done just that. You awkwardly cross your good arm with the one in the sling. "Can I help you?" you say irritably.

Gamora entered the kitchen from the other doorway and you looked to her. "Can you please make your boyfriend stop being annoying?" you ask.

"I'm afraid that's impossible," she quipped with a slight smile, "Why? what's he doing now?"

By now Peter had entered the kitchen through the doorway he had been blocking. He ignored Gamora's quip about him being forever annoying and said, "She's trying to leave, I don't think it's a good idea."

"Well, lucky for me, you're not my boss," you say, admittedly a bit childishly.

Peter then donned a smug grin. "You're right. She is." He nodded in Gamora's direction, referring to the task Fury had assigned Gamora, essentially making her your babysitter as punishment for you neglecting to seek medical attention for your arm.

Your nostrils flared in irritation at him bringing it up and Gamora gave him a look that clearly stated she was uncomfortable. No one had mentioned the incident since the first day. You, because you didn't want to be reminded Fury was treating you like a child, and the others for pretty much the same reason, seeing no reason to provoke you, especially since you were seemingly behaving. (Again, aside from Rocket, but you had taken to keeping your earbuds in for most of the time, so if he did act like a dick to you it often fell on deaf ears.)

"Peter, I really doubt Fury intended for us to keep her locked inside." Gamora said, having assumed Peter was only wanting to refuse to let you go out for a walk, which she didn't understand, because he hadn't said anything when you took one the other day.

"Well I really doubt she's supposed to drive like that."

Finally understanding the issue Gamora grimaced. Peter was probably right.

Just then Yondu and Kraglin came into the kitchen looking to make something to eat, but saw the tense atmosphere.

"What's goin' on?" asked Yondu with a raised eyebrow. He hadn't heard any fighting coming in, but the way you were standing between Peter and Gamora almost implied someone was getting into it.

Peter spoke up, stating how you were looking to make a run into town and how he thought it was a bad idea for you to drive, only he phrased it to group him and Gamora together as having the thought, which prompted Gamora to say back to him that she actually hadn't given her opinion on the situation yet.

Yondu eyed you, or more specifically the brace on your arm. "Can ya drive like that?"

"Yeah." you reply. It was true, the arm in the brace wasn't the one you'd need for changing gears or signaling, so you should be fine, even if truthfully it'd be better if you didn't.

Yondu shared a glance to Kraglin and then shrugged. "Don't see a problem then." He turned toward the pantry, Kraglin following his lead, before he added, "Long as ya take Quill with ya."

You blinked. "Excuse me? Why would I- That's not- I'm not-" You were caught off guard and were now sputtering, clearly not thrilled with his addendum.

Yondu grinned at Kraglin, who was wondering where the elder was going with this, before saying nonchalantly, "If you're too nervous to take a passenger like that, then ya don't need to be going alone."

"I didn't say that!" you countered, pushing down the fact that the thought actually had entered your mind. "Maybe I just don't want to be annoyed by him- and I actually don't know if I can take him. That was never discussed." Again, this was also true. The topic hadn't come up. You had no idea if they were allowed to leave the property. Sure, for some it seemed obvious that they couldn't go into public, but you truthfully had never asked and had consequently never been told.

"He's Terran. Not like you'll run into issue there. I s'pose we could always call yer boss and ask..." His tone was laced with a grin as he turned back to face you with a Terran fruit he'd come to enjoy. A pear, he believed it was called. He was sure you wouldn't go for calling Fury, and he was right.

"No, we don't need to do that," you say irritably. Last thing you wanted to do was call Fury for something like this when he was already unhappy with you.

"I do think it'd be better if someone went with you," Gamora finally spoke up. "It couldn't hurt, at least." She was actually leaning towards the "don't let the Terran with an injured arm drive" party, but part of her believed you'd probably be fine and wanted to soften as much conflict as possible. Being transported in SHIELD vehicles she had seen how the insides operated, and it didn't look so complicated that you'd need both arms. It's not as if you were piloting a ship, and if you did wind up needing help, she was sure Peter could figure the vehicle out well enough.

You give her a mournful look and Yondu speaks again.

"But if yer still set on goin alone, I'm sure Gamora there won't mind callin' that Fury feller. Bet ya just wanna get away so ya can take that brace off without gettin in trouble," he said cooly with a grin. Catching the frown Gamora threw his way he added, "An' if she don't, I can always do it myself."

You tilted your head at the man, expression a mix of confused irritation. "First off, no, I'm not just leaving to do that. Secondly, who do you think you are? My mom?" you snarked.

"Nah, but yer acting like a kid. Somebody's gotta knock some common sense in that stubborn head of yers." Yondu replied, unfazed by your attempted insult as he took a bite of the pear and nodded once more to your injury.

You didn't get it. Why would he care? Why did any of them care?? Was it guilt? Because you wouldn't have been injured if they weren't there? You wanted to ask but settled for just sighing in defeat. You looked Peter over. He wasn't wearing a shirt with any alien writing on it, so at least he wouldn't get any funny looks for that. "Fine," you relented. "Get ready."

Peter let out a triumphant laugh and said he was already ready to go.

You took a moment and opened a couple drawers before finding what you were looking for. "Take these just in case." You tossed him a pair of black sunglasses. "You'll look like a douchebag, but you're probably used to that."

Peter let out a, "Hey!" but you ignored him, making your way past the others to the front door, telling Peter to hurry up.

***

"Can I drive?" Peter asked as the two of you walked to your vehicle.

"Absolutely not." you answered back with an incredulous glare.

"Why not? It'd be easier to let me drive than you try to drive with your arm in that."

"Because I seriously doubt you have a drivers license," you begin to say. Peter opened his mouth to retort but closed it again when you added, "that would be valid here." You open the driver's side door and add, "And because I don't even know if you know how to drive."

"I'll let you know I've been flying a ship since I was ten!" Peter countered.

"I don't care." you reply. "You're not driving. I can't risk us getting pulled over and you not have a license. You're fully free to stay here if you have a problem with that." You gesture back towards the house.

Peter disappointedly huffed but got in the passenger seat. You won this round.

***

Once you and Peter had left out the front door Yondu grimaced. "Might've miscalculated that one..."

"What'dya mean?" Kraglin asked. Gamora also gave him a funny look.

"Thought fer sure tellin' her to take Quill would've made her see that stayin' put wasn't that bad."

"Wait, you were trying to use reverse psychology??" Gamora asked, clearly annoyed.

"If that's what ya want to call it." Yondu shrugged with a frown, watching through the window as you pulled away down the drive, making sure the vehicle looked like it was driving straight. Luckily for you, it was. Otherwise he was fully prepared to whistle and spear a couple of your tires. Kitchen window would've needed replacing too if that happened, seeing as it was closed.

"Doesn't matter what I call it! It didn't work!" Gamora scolded. "If you didn't think it was a good idea you should have just taken our side instead of trying to play games and sending Peter with her!!"

"What'dya mean 'our side'? You were saying she should take someone with her too!"

"I didn't mean it!" Gamora snapped back.

Kraglin looked uncomfortable, not liking the feeling of being stuck in the room while the two of the more intimidating Guardians argued. Not wanting to draw attention to himself by leaving he just stood there and nibbled at his protein bar.

"Calm down, missy." Yondu said. "It'll be fine. And if not, Quill's got one of those phone things SHIELD gave us. Boy can handle himself."

Gamora glared but didn't speak any further, choosing instead to grab an apple off the table and head to her room. Yes, it likely would be fine, but it didn't mean she felt good about it.

***

After several minutes of driving in silence Peter tried to make conversation.

"So... lotta trees out here..."

"Uh huh."

"You make these trips into town often?"

You shrugged.

"I can see you don't feel much like talking..." Peter said awkwardly. You obviously weren't pleased with taking a passenger.

You turned on the radio in response.

Peter tried again after a few minutes when the music cut to a commercial break, trying a different tactic. "So, why are you afraid of doctors?" he asked, turning the radio down.

You gave him a strange look. "What? Where'd you get that idea."

He went into how you seemed tense when the doctor was checking you over when Fury came, and then recounted an incident that had happened the other day.

You had been reading in the sitting room when Mantis came in. You overheard her tell Gamora that her throat hurt, and so you pulled a lozenge from a drawer in the nearby table, telling her to suck on it and to tell you if it still hurt in an hour. If it did, you'd contact SHIELD to inform them she needed to see a doctor. Hearing this, Kraglin had piped up and asked why you would see that Mantis got a doctor straight away, but you had to have one forced on you. You gave him a look before telling him that it was different, and left the room before he could ask how.

"I only just put the two together." Peter said. "It must be because you're scared of doctors."

"No," you said flatly. "I'm not scared of doctors. I just didn't need one. If Mantis was sick, she would have needed one."

"But you did need one." Peter countered. "And Agent Hill told me about what you did in Romania. You needed one then too. Why would you do that to yourself unless you were too scared to go see a doctor?"

You exhale out your nose, annoyed that Maria had been telling him your business. "I'm not afraid of doctors, ok? It was an important job. There wasn't the time to stop and say 'Oops, will ya look at that, my appendix needs out. Better put the job on hold so I can find a doctor.' Not when I can do it myself. Happy?"

"She said you nearly died. That doesn't sound like being able to do it yourself. You can't do things like that. It's insane."

Your face hardened. Who did this guy think he was? Telling you what to do, you barely knew each other! "What's insane is a crime ring that traffics children to the wealthy elite for sexual favors," you snap at him. "So I guess I'm sorry if I wasn't willing to compromise the job to go lay in a damn hospital bed."

Peter didn't know what to say to that. He still thought you were insane for performing surgery on yourself, but he couldn't quite find a suitable argument after what you just said. After a moment he asked, "Did... did they get out?"

You knew he meant the kids. You swallowed. "Most of them. I don't want to talk about it." You turned the music back up, and Peter let it go.

The two of you rode in silence for a good bit longer before Peter turned the music back down again to speak.

"How much longer until we get where we're going?" he asked.

"Not long. Another ten minutes maybe. Why?"

"I need to take a leak."

You almost roll your eyes. "Why didn't you go before we left the house?"

"I didn't have to go then!"

A huffed laugh escaped your throat. "Seriously? You're like a toddler." You shake your head and say, "Do I need to pull over? I can if it's an emergency."

Peter almost pouted from the toddler comment. "No, I can hold it."

"Alright. Suit yourself."

About five minutes later you come up to a town, and a few minutes after that pull into the lot of a shop, the first stop on your list.

"I just have to run in here and grab a few things, they'll have a toilet you can use." you say as the two of you got out of the car, adding, "Don't forget those sunglasses. I don't want to take any chances."

He rolled his eyes but put them on anyway.

Upon entering the store you told Peter he'd find the toilet in the back and told him you'd be looking in the spices, pointing in the direction he'd find you when he was finished. You debated going along and waiting for him since he was technically your responsibility, but you decided against it. The shop wasn't too large so you trusted he wouldn't get lost on his own.

You split off on your separate ways and you grab a hand basket before heading towards the spices. You had only browsed for a short while when suddenly Peter was back at your side. "That was quick." you said to him, locating two of the spices you needed and dropping them in your basket.

"Door said it was out of order." Peter replied, sounding almost pouty.

You shook your head and said, "See, this is why you go before we leave the house." You find the last spice you needed and give him a knowing look as you began walking away from the spices.

"Don't talk to me like I'm a kid!" Peter said indignantly, following you as you left the aisle.

"Don't act like one." you reply, turning to find the cleaning aisle. SHIELD had been kind enough to include other basic things like toilet tissue on their supply drops, which you had been grateful for with eight other people living in your home, and the Guardians had already come with their own toiletries like toothpaste and soap, but you were seemingly on your own for cleaning supplies. You were now running low on dish and laundry soap. Gods, there was always laundry now. At least they did their own. Mostly.

"You're one to talk!" Peter retorted, gesturing to your arm.

You glare over to him as you walked. You swore, if you heard one more time about how you were acting like a child just for being stubborn about not seeing a doctor...

"Ow! You did that on purpose!"

"Did not." You said flatly, though you absolutely had smacked him with the basket on purpose. Not super hard or anything, but enough for him to feel it crack him in the knee.

He pinched you on the shoulder.

"Ow!"

"Didn't do it on purpose." Peter mocked.

You were by the dish soap now and so you set the basket down to grab a bottle. However, you were sure to flick Peter on the back of the head before you did.

"You did not just flick me!" he said irritably, retaliating by giving your exposed side a couple quick squeezes.

Your arm jerked down fast as lightening, having been just shy of grabbing your preferred bottle of dish soap. Your cheeks were burning and you looked around as you scolded him in a whisper-yell. "We are in a public shop! Don't you dare start that!"

"You started it," he countered smugly. However, his the smugness was wiped off his face when you gave him a taste of his medicine.

"See how you like it then!" you say, using your good arm to return his actions. You hadn't been positive it would work, but you weren't disappointed to see the playing field leveled when it did.

Peter's eyebrows shot above the sunglasses, his eyes widening as he crippled away from the touch and grabbed your wrist. "Don't! I told you I had to pee!"

"Oh." You had been so busy bickering it had honestly slipped your mind. "Sorry."

"Truce?" Peter offered, releasing your hand.

"Yeah, fine. Truce." you agreed, reaching up to finally grab the bottle of dish liquid, a little embarrassed as you realized how much like children the two of you had just acted. "Just hurry up and figure out if you or your friends need anything before we leave," you say, making your way down the aisle to grab the laundry detergent.

It was Peter's turn to look embarrassed, only for a completely different reason. "Actually, now that you mention it- if it's ok, I was wondering if they sell... "certain"... things here?"

You put the detergent in the basket and begin to head towards the pharmacy section, realizing it wouldn't hurt to pick up some bug spray and more of that gel for the bites. Mantis had a bad habit of getting bit by midges, and most of the others had started falling victim to them as well. You didn't look at Peter as you walked, saying, "You're going to have to be way more specific than that, dude."

Peter's cheeks we turning noticeably pink by the time you looked at him when he said, "You know... um... the things... for "special moments..." he used air quotes and looked quite uncomfortable, even with the sunglasses hiding his eyes. "Um... you know... uh... When two people like each other very much..."

You wanted to cover your mouth to hide your grin, but one arm was stuck in a sling-brace and the other was too busy holding the grocery basket. "Are you asking if they sell condoms here?" You tried really hard to bite back a laugh, but a tiny chuckle slipped out. It wasn't that he was asking for them that was funny, it was the way he seemed like a teenage boy about it, all nervous and such like you'd call his mother on him.

Peter's face was bright red now. "Don't laugh! Just- never mind."

"No, it's totally cool. It's just funny. I mean, we're adults, you can ask for them. Like, at least you're being safe about it." Suddenly feeling in a better mood and wanting to tease him you say, "Unless... do we need to have 'the talk' young man?" Now you really couldn't hide your giggles.

"So not cool!" Peter pouted, hiding his face in his hands.

You nudged him in the arm and pointed him down that aisle and told him he could find what he needed there. You continued up a couple aisles to grab the bug repellent and itch cream.

You met back up and he wordlessly threw what he had retrieved into the basket, barely looking at you as he did so. You held back giggles at his behavior and asked if he knew of anything else you needed to grab before checking out.

Peter shook his head, and you can tell by his expression he's eager to leave the shop and go back to the house. You almost feel bad for laughing, and you get an idea.

"If your friends liked the Oreos I can pick you up some more. We'll pass that aisle to get to the checkout anyway."

Peter nodded and you grabbed another double sleeve of Oreos before walking to check out. You only hoped you wouldn't get stuck with one of those chatty cashiers.

Wouldn't you know it, of course you did. You weren't super familiar with the cashiers despite frequenting this store, but you had become familiar with the fact that you didn't care for the one who's line you got stuck in, not realizing you had until it was too late.

Normally you feel for retail workers. You knew it was a tough job, but this one cashier just didn't know how to get the hint that not every item he scanned needed a comment.

Laundry soap? "Ooh! Great taste in scent!" Spices? "Someone likes cooking! Anything good tonight? Yum Yum! Ha ha!" Bug spray and itch cream? "Oh those nasty midges are out again. I feel you, haha." Cond-? Oh fuck. "Oh ho! Someone's getting luck-ay tonight! Am I right, my dude?" He winked at Peter, who noticed you looked like you wanted to reach across and murder the cashier.

Peter chuckled nervously and tried to smooth it over. At least, that's what you thought he was attempting. "Oh- aha- no. We're not together. We're uh- She's my sister."

You snapped a glare at Peter as you thrust your payment to the cashier and grabbed one of the two bags before storming off, telling him to keep the change. Peter grabbed the other bag and left the cashier standing there, who at least finally had the decency to look embarrassed by his comment.

Peter caught up with you quickly.

"Don't call me your sister. I barely know you," you say grumpily. That wasn't really the full reason it upset you. Peter wasn't your brother. Your brother was gone. Peter didn't get to call you that.

"Sorry, I panicked," he said.

You brush him off. You knew there was no way he could know. "Whatever, let's just leave. Sooner we finish in town sooner we can go back to the house."

You made your next stop to a nearby petrol station to fill up your car and give Peter a chance to find a working toilet. After the two of you successfully completed both tasks respectively, you stopped by the post office to grab the mail and post your bills while you left Peter in the car. On your way out of the post office you caught glimpse of someone across the road and a brick fell in your stomach when they waved, indicating they clearly saw you. You nodded back out of politeness but hurried to get in your car.

You buckled in and looked in the rearview mirror, only to see the person, a middle aged woman in a flowery blouse, walking towards your car, still not quite to the road yet, and waving her arms trying to get your attention.

"Fuck," you say, putting the car in gear to reverse before stopping to put it back in drive to finish pulling away. This would be so much quicker if your arm wasn't in the damn sling, but you still managed even with having to completely stop to remove your hand from the wheel to safely change gears.

"What?" Peter asked, turning to look out the back window once you began to pull forward.

"Don't worry about it- and don't look back!" you scold. You take a peek in your review mirror to see the woman gesturing in defeat, thinking you hadn't seen her trying to get your attention, and you let a small relieved sigh.

"Who was that?"

"No one." you replied.

"So you ran away... from no one. Sure."

You shoot him a look and turn the radio back up, clearly signaling that you weren't about to discuss it. The rest of the ride was spent in silence.

***

Once home you told Peter to put his "special" items (yes, you called them that, air quotes and all, just to embarrass him) in one of his pockets unless he didn't mind advertising them to the rest of his friends. You had assumed he'd be embarrassed if they were just on display for the others based on how he acted in the shop, and the fact that he obeyed implied to you that you were correct.

Once inside you and Peter made your way to the kitchen to put things away. He had refused to let you carry both bags, and you didn't fight him.

Sitting at the table were Kraglin, Yondu and Rocket. On the table were five empty bowls and an empty tub of ice cream.

You sat your bag on the counter and began pulling out it's contents to put them away. Honestly you were slightly bummed that they had finished off the whole thing, if you had known that you might have picked some more up while you were in town, but you didn't say anything about that. You did, however, say something along the lines of "Looks like you guys had fun without us."

Kraglin, who knew you didn't like the house to be messy and knew they were expected to keep up after themselves, began gathering the bowls to put them in the sink, to the eyeroll of Rocket.

"Yup. Ya two missed the party," said Yondu with a chuckle. "I'll admit, that ice cream stuff ain't bad." He then said to Peter, "Yer girlfriend is the only one who didn't want any."

You froze in place, your eyes widened. It hadn't clicked before. Your mind had been preoccupied with other things. Ice cream. Five bowls. There were seven people left at the house. Gamora hadn't wanted any. Tiny Groot probably shared with someone else. Yondu literally said he ate some. That meant... fuck.

You turned around to face them. Looking right at Yondu you say, "Uh, how long ago would you say you guys had the ice-cream?"

"Not quite half an hour ago, why?"

You bit your lips before saying, "Do none of you think to read labels before you eat things?"

Kraglin rolled his eyes playfully as he sat back down. "What? Ya mad we ate your snack?" he teased.

"No no no-" you state, holding up your pointer fingers like a teacher instructing the class on why they were incorrect. You didn't know if you wanted to laugh or groan. Probably the later. You look over at Peter, who held a slight grimace on his face. You say to him, "You know what ice cream is?"

Peter nodded. He remembered ice cream. He also knew the moment Yondu claimed to have eaten it what the problem was.

You look back to the others. "Any of you know what ice cream is?"

Yondu and Kraglin exchange a strange look and Rocket rolls his eyes, wanting you to get to the point.

"It's basically frozen milk."

"Ah." Yondu says, clasping his hands on the table and dipping his head with a slight wince of understanding. He was about to have a bad time. Kraglin and Rocket now share a look that can only be described as 'Crap..." (No pun intended)

Disbelieving laughter bubbles up your throat as you bend below the sink to retrieve a can of aerosolized air freshener and plop it down on the table in front of Yondu. "That's for you, for the inevitable. Use it." You walk to haphazardly throw the contents of your grocery bag in the pantry, leaving your mail on the counter and grabbing your earbuds. "Make sure to open the windows... I'm going for a walk, because there's no way I'm sticking around to deal with that again," you say, giving a mock salute as you make your way out the back door, leaving the guys there to deal with what was sure to be the horrible aftermath of their oversight.

*** You finally came back a couple hours later to find all the windows still open, but no one outside, and decided that was probably a good sign.

You cautiously re-entered the house to find that no bad smells seemed to have stuck around and decided to go look for survivors, but first you needed a snack. You were starving.

You ate a pop-tart just for something quick and then found everyone in the sitting room. Feeling in decent humor you said, "Oh good. You lived." This earned groans from the others. They weren't really annoyed with you for abandoning ship, so much as they were annoyed that Yondu would have messed up and ate dairy for a second time. Well, Peter was a little annoyed that you had just left him there when he hadn't been part of who caused the issue, but he'd get over it.

Your phone started to go off, startling you and a couple others in the process. You checked the caller-id and recognized the number. "Nope," you say aloud, ignoring the call.

"Who was that?" Peter asked.

"No one," you reply, only for your phone to chime with a text almost in response. You open the text and your eyes widen before you make your way quickly but calmly to the windows to shut them and draw the curtains.

This, of course, gathers the attention of the Guardians.

"What's wrong?" Yondu asks, perplexed by your behavior.

"Nothing," you answer at first, before turning to face them and amending it to, "Nobody's home," and continuing your task with the other three windows, still trying to retain a semblance of being calm.

The others watched as you made your way about the room, sharing perplexed glances. Once finished with the final window at the back of the room you started heading towards the door when Mantis grabbed your hand.

"Are you ok? What can we do?" she asked, concerned. "Please tell me?" She could feel you didn't want to ask for help, but she hoped her asking nicely might work.

You barely glance at her, don't notice her antennae are glowing. "I'm fine. If you want, I could use some help shutting the rest of the windows and curtains, please and thank you." You pull away and head to the hall, where they can see you draw the curtains on the front door shut through the sitting room doorway.

"I know you said you can ease people into compliance, but I didn't think you could actually make people do things." Peter whispered to Mantis. He naturally just assumed that's what happened. You, miss "I don't need help from anyone!" had actually asked for help. Clearly that wouldn't happen without some Mantis mojo. The closest you had come to asking for help was the first time Yondu had dairy and you wanted Peter to help open the windows, but still, that was less asking for help and more of telling him what to do if he wanted to live.

"I can't." Mantis replied. "She was genuinely asking. She's very nervous."

Peter shared a look with Gamora and Drax stood up from the couch to follow you, and the they followed him along with Mantis.

Yondu and Kraglin stayed in the sitting room with Rocket, who told himself he didn't care about whatever this nonsense was about and continued to play with Groot. Kraglin and Yondu exchanged puzzled looks, because unlike Rocket they were genuinely curious what was going on to make you as nervous as Mantis claimed. Why were you batting down the hatches for?

In the kitchen Drax helped you close the windows and curtains. As soon as he heard Mantis say she felt you were nervous he felt there must be a good reason and that he should probably help you, just in case.

Then you started shutting out the lights, and this increased the other's concerns.

"What's going on?" Gamora asked, authority in her voice as she followed you out of the kitchen. You may be their host, but she still felt they had a right to know what was going on, if they were in danger.

"Nothing." you say, shutting off the lights in the hall on the way to the sitting room.

"If it was nothing you wouldn't be doing this. Something is wrong. Do we need to call SHIELD?" She asked more insistently, not believing you.

You turn to her irritably at the doorway. "No. We don't need SHIELD," you say, flicking the switch to turn the sitting room's light off, much to the puzzlement of those inside.

"I will if you don't tell us what's wrong."

Just then there was a knock at the front door, and you visibly startled in response before freezing in place and whisper yelling, "Quiet!"

The other's obeyed, not sure what else to do or what was going on.

Peter quietly stepped out of the kitchen where he had been peeking through one of the curtains when he thought he could see the dim glow of headlights through the fabric. He saw a blue car pull up next to yours, and out of it stepped a tall man in a light grey sweater and a woman in a floral print blouse. She looked familiar.

"Hey," Peter whispered across the hall, "It looks like that woman from earlier. The one you ran away from."

"Shut up." you hissed.

Gamora looked at the two of you in confusion, but didn't say anything, didn't get the chance, because the knock sounded again and a woman's voice could be heard from the other side of the door calling your name.

"We know you're in there." said the voice. It wasn't angry or confrontational like the others might expect for someone you were apparently hiding from. "Your car's in the drive and we saw you shutting the lights out when we drove up."

You grimaced.

"We just want to talk." It was the man's voice this time.

Peter and Gamora looked at you expectantly, and you shook your head at them. Drax was now standing behind Peter in the kitchen doorway, Mantis having already moved past him to stand next to Gamora in the hall with you.

"Yes, we just want to talk." The woman's voice again. "We saw you in town today, we've been thinking about you."

By now Yondu and Kraglin had made their way closer to the door to better hear what was being said. They didn't care if they were being nosy.

The man spoke your name now, questioningly, as if to ask if you could hear them. "Ok, we understand if you don't want to see us, but please listen; We forgive you, and we're sorry."

You take in a breath, trying to mask your feelings with the others near. They were looking at you. Gamora's face had softened, wondering what the man meant. Forgave you for what? Sorry for what?

"We shouldn't have blamed you for what happened. We know that now." came the woman's voice. "We've had a lot of time to think it over, and we were wrong."

The man spoke again. "We were just hoping you could find it in your heart to forgive us, too."

You felt your chest tighten and you eyes burn, and so you clenched your jaw and your fists, unwilling to show any emotion to the space-strangers in your home, but they noticed anyway.

Peter gestured to get your attention and mouthed, "Open the door."

You shook your head, and he gave you a confused look. You nodded your head towards Mantis and Gamora as if to say, "Um, not with aliens in my hall!" Although that wasn't completely the reason, and you had the feeling he could tell, as he only sighed and frowned slightly in response.

After a pause the woman spoke again. "Alright. We understand you may not be ready yet. Maybe another time. We're still at the same place when you're ready to speak with us. Hopefully that's soon. We'll be going now."

You waited a few moments before approaching the door, and the other's thought you might finally be going to talk to the couple. You didn't, mostly to Peter's disappointment. Instead you peeked through a sliver in the curtains to watch them leave, not pulling away until their vehicle was gone.

As soon as you stepped back from the door Peter asked, "What was that? Who were they?"

"Nothing and no one," you answer, not meeting anyone's gaze as you flicked the hall light back on and walk towards the stairs.

Mantis grabbed your hand, but you pulled away, telling her that you weren't in the mood to hold hands right then and you were going to go take a shower. She just looked down sadly in response, but you wouldn't look at her to notice.

No one stopped you as you walked upstairs, and when you were out of earshot, Drax whispered to Mantis asking what you had been feeling just then, having noticed Mantis had been reading you when she grabbed your hand.

The other's listened in to her answer as she mournfully replied. She hadn't been able to touch you for long enough to get a full reading, but there had been one dominant emotion when she did touch you. You had been sad.

This only rose more questions from the team. Had the couple been been angry with you? What had you done? Why would their forgiveness have made you sad?

Weren't most people happy to be forgiven?

The sound of your bedroom door opening and shutting travelled down the stairs, followed shortly by the same noise of the bathroom door as you entered for your shower.

Yondu almost thought he could hear the faint sounds of crying before the noise was drowned out by the sound of a shower blasting on.

#guardians of the galaxy #gotg #fanfiction #x reader fic #x reader #peter quill #star lord #fluff #yondu udonta #yondu lives #kraglin obfonteri #gamora #drax the destroyer #mantis #rocket raccoon #baby groot #shopping #drama #mystery

125 notes · View notes

thefloorisbalaclava · 4 years

Text

ludus [pre-pragma]

ludus - playful love

pairing: frankie ‘catfish’ morales x f!reader

warnings: none

a/n: so in my mind frankie is 40-ish in triple frontier and in pragma so each of these little one shots will be either fifteen, ten, or five years prior to the events in pragma/the movie. most of them will also be from frankie’s pov.

summary: frankie hates parties so he’ll find any reason to get away from one and in this case the reason is you.

pragma masterlist

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

Frankie stood in the corner of the room, away from all the riff raff of the party going on around him. Santiago dragged him along although he had said no about twenty times. He kept telling him that this would be their last party with people they knew for a long time, but what finally convinced him? She was going to be there—the girl he’d been crazy about since high school. She wasn’t one for parties either if he remembered correctly. Even on the night of the senior prom he found her outside looking up at the stars instead of sneaking drinks and dancing with everyone else.

He loved her then. Hell, he had loved her forever.

He took a sip of the beer he’d been nursing as Santiago walked over to him.

“You just gonna stand here all night, hermano?” Santiago asked, standing beside him and nudging him.

“Yup.” Frankie took another sip of beer. “Told you I didn’t wanna come.”

“You’ll feel better once your girl shows up, I bet.”

“She’s not…my girl.” Frankie could feel himself getting hot under the collar. She would be if he had the guts to confess.

“She could be. I keep telling you what you have to do.” Santiago waved at a woman that walked by then looked over at the door. “Ah, there she is.” Frankie immediately stood up straighter and wondered if his outfit was okay. Santiago called her over and she floated over with a beaming smile.

“Hey boys! I’m so happy to see some familiar faces.” She hugged Santiago then Frankie. He awkwardly patted her back, trying not to make it obvious that he turned into a mess around her.

“Good to see you. Beer?” Santiago offered and she nodded. He went off to get a beer, leaving her and Frankie alone.

“How you been, Francisco? You’re looking good.”

He silently thanked God that he decided to wear what he was wearing tonight. “Thanks. You too. You look…nice,” he said awkwardly.

“Aww Frankie, you’re such a sweetheart. Thank you.”

“Uh…you wanna—” he started.

“A beer for the lady,” Santiago said, handing her a bottle.

“Thanks Tiago.” She giggled when he made a face at the nickname.

“I’m gonna leave you crazy kids to it. I…got a few things to take care of.” Santiago lifted his bottle of beer towards them before walking off.

She leaned in closer to Frankie. “I hate it here.”

“Yeah, me too. Wanna get outta here?” he asked.

“Please.” She put her beer on a window ledge and headed for the door with Frankie not far behind. “Ahhh, that’s better. I can hear myself think out here.”

“Yeah.”

“So…are we going for a drive or just hanging out here?” She tugged on the bill of his cap—something that he had come to love.

“Whatever you want,” he said, shrugging.

“Let’s go for a drive.” She got into his truck.

“You got it.” He got in and started the car, looking over at her only to get caught.

“You’re always looking at me like that, Francisco.” She grabbed his face and laughed.

“Sorry.” He was happy for the darkness inside the truck because she couldn’t see him blushing.

“Don’t be sorry. I like when you look at me.” She let go of his face and he started to drive. He had no idea where they were going but he was just happy to be with her.

“I like when you look at me too,” he said after some time.

“You’re fun to look at.”

“I…am?” he asked.

“Yup. And I like being around you,” she said. “You make me feel…safe. Safe and calm.”

“You make me feel seen. That probably sounds stupid but…”

“It’s not stupid, Frankie. I get it.” He turned in the direction of the lake and she sat up straight. “The lake?”

“Yeah. That okay?” he asked and she nodded happily. As soon as he parked the car, she hopped out and ran to the edge of the water. The sun hadn’t fully set yet but the moon was already bold in the sky.

“I love it here.” She pointed across the lake. “I’m gonna have a house right on the other side of the lake. I’ll be able to walk a few feet from my house and be at the lake.”

“Oh really?” Frankie stood beside her.

“Yup. And I’ll invite you and Santiago. We’ll have barbecues and go on hikes. Everything!” She was so animated and Frankie fell even more in love. “Do you think the water is cold?”

“Hm…I dunno, why?” She looked at him then kicked off her shoes. He watched her, confused, until she began taking other articles of clothing off. “Whoa…what the hell are you doing?” Frankie turned away quickly.

“Going for a swim.” She stepped closer, letting the small waves lap at her feet. “You can look. It’s not like I’m naked.”

Frankie hesitated more for his sake than hers. He could barely handle looking at her fully dressed and knowing that she had even less on already had him feeling things he’d be embarrassed to talk about even at his age. When he finally looked, she was looking back at him. He was entranced—not by her body but by the way she looked at him. A small smile graced her lips and the setting sun seemed to make her glow, enveloping her in an ethereal light. Soon he was standing beside her in just his underwear as well, ready and willing to do anything she asked of him. The water hit his feet and he hissed.

“It’s freezing.”

“We gotta run in,” she said backing up.

“What?” He followed her.

“The quicker we get in there the faster our bodies will adjust to the temperature.” She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Ready?” He nodded. “Count of three. One…two…three!”

And they ran as fast as their feet could carry them, shouting and gasping as the water hit them.

“Holy shit!” Frankie yelled before laughing wildly. She went under and came back up, gasping.

“Okay. It’s colder than I thought.” She laughed then floated on her back. “Francisco?”

“Yeah?”

“How much longer are you home for?” she asked. He and Santiago were planning on joining the army together and just about everyone knew by now.

“A few more weeks. Gotta finish up getting my pilot’s license. Why?” He watched as she floated then came to a stop to look at him.

“I’m…gonna miss you.” Her face fell and though the light from the sunset still shone on her, she no longer glowed. The only thing that he saw from her now was sadness.

“I’m gonna miss you too but me and Santiago will be back. And we’ll get to do some swimming and camping and whatever else you like, okay?” He moved closer to her, trying to see if he had cheered her up a little at least.

“Is it selfish to say that I don’t want you to go?”

“No. It’s nice to hear someone say that. It’s nice to hear you say it especially.”

“Can I do something?”

“Like what?” he asked as she moved even closer. They hadn’t gone out too far so they were still able to stand and have their heads above the water.

“Kiss you…maybe it’ll give you something to remember me by.”

“I’ll remember you no matter what but…okay.” Truthfully, he wanted nothing more than to kiss her and now that it was about to happen, he tried his best to keep calm. She put her arms around him and closed her eyes as she moved in for the kiss. Frankie knew he should close his eyes but he wanted to remember her face at that moment—her perfectly puckered lips, the small shy smile that played across her lips.

Then it happened and his eyes fell closed all on their own. Her fingers tickled the hair at the nape of his neck as she pressed her lips to his. It was a gentle kiss but it lingered on his lips so much so that he wanted more and luckily, she did too. This time, he kissed her and she made a beautiful sound against his lips. Her fingers tangled in his hair now and he vowed to never cut it too short if only to feel her fingers tug and play with his hair this way again. His tongue played at her lip until she let it slip into her mouth. She made another lovely sound, one that affected him in a way he prayed she couldn’t feel.

When they finally pulled away from each other, they were out of breath and both craving more.

“That was the most amazing kiss I’ve ever experienced,” she said.

“Yeah,” was the only thing Frankie could muster.

“Frankie, I…I think I…” She lowered her eyes then laughed it off. “I think we should go get dressed now.” She swam toward the shore. He lingered for a moment but soon followed.

“Are you okay?” he asked her, shivering against the air.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” She dressed quickly and walked back to his truck, seemingly avoiding eye contact.

“You wanna go home?” he asked as he walked over, pulling his shirt over his head.

“Can we just sit here for a bit?” She hugged herself.

“Here.” Frankie put the jacket he hadn’t put back on yet around her shoulders. “I thought you said I was fun to look at but you’ve been trying your best not to look at me ever since we got out of the water.”

“Frankie, I…I don’t know how to deal with how I feel right now…”

“How do you feel?”

“I’m happy. I’m sad. I’m confused.” She finally looked at him and smiled sadly. “I don’t want this night to end.”

“I don’t either.” Frankie put his hands in his pockets.

“We need to get you a new cap.”

“If you can find me a cap you think I’d wear I’ll switch this one out for it and never take it off. How’s that sound?”

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

Then she hugged him. She let out a sigh as she did. He kissed her forehead and held her. This was all he ever wanted. The feeling of her in his arms, her embrace, would stay with him forever.

“Let’s get you home.”

“Okay.” She let go and got into the truck. Once he got in and started the car, she played around with the radio. “You know, I can’t wait to get out of that shitty apartment.”

“Just keep dreaming of that big house by the lake and it’ll come true,” he said.

“I hope so.” Livin’ On A Prayer by Bon Jovi started playing on the radio and she sat back before turning to him and grinning.

“No…” He shook his head. “Not this time.”

“Tommy used to work on the docks, union’s been on strike. He’s down on his luck, it’s tough, so tough…” she sang. “Come on, Francisco!”

“Gina works the diner all day working for her man, she brings home her pay, for love, for love…” he mumbled unenthusiastically.

She sung louder now. “She says we gotta hold on to what we’ve got. It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not. We’ve got each other and that’s a lot for love. We’ll give it a shot!”

And Frankie finally joined her for the chorus, both of them singing at the top of their lungs.

“Whoa! We’re halfway there! Whoa! Livin' on a prayer! Take my hand, we’ll make it I swear! Whoa, livin’ on a prayer!”

They laughed and sang whatever they could when they finally caught their breath. He pulled up to the front of her apartment building and turned the car off.

“Promise me we’ll hang out before you go,” she said, turning in her seat to face him.

“Of course we will. Promise me you’ll kiss me again?”

“Now or…”

“Yeah.”

She leaned over the center console and kissed him before he could say another word. He pulled her across a little more completely so that she was sitting in his lap now while her feet still rested on the passenger seat. His cap was knocked off at some point during the kiss but he didn’t care. All he felt were her hands, her body, her lips and the rest of the world faded away. They kissed each other as if this would be the last time they ever did. He craved more—so much more, but he stopped himself, pulling away to catch his breath.

“Your…your hat,” she breathed.

“Don’t care.” His forehead rested against hers. “I wanna kiss you every day for the rest of my sorry life.”

“Why can’t you?” she asked. He wasn’t sure how to answer.

No. He did actually but he couldn’t get himself to say the words. They were right on the tip of his tongue but…he couldn’t. He didn’t want to scare her away.

“What’s wrong, Frankie?”

“Nothing…and everything,” he said. She moved off his lap and sat back in the passenger seat. He was so in love with her and she didn’t even know it.

“Do you…wanna come upstairs?” she asked.

Hell yeah I do. “I can’t,” he said. “Not tonight.”

“Oh.” She sounded so disappointed, so let down, but he couldn’t do that with her yet. He couldn’t let her give herself to him fully without telling her those words that he was so afraid to say.

“I don’t want you to think I don’t want to. God knows I do, but…there’s something I gotta do first, okay?” He touched the hand she had rested on the center console.

“Okay, Frankie.”

He took her hand and kissed it then pressed it to his cheek. Say it. Just. Say. It.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said. “Don’t forget about that new hat.”

“You got it.” She smiled and got out of the truck. “See you soon.” She walked away but stopped before she went into the building to blow him a kiss. He pretended to catch it and put it in his pocket.

“I love you,” he said quietly as she turned away. “So fucking much.”

Tags: @cable-kenobi @saltywintersoldat @ahopelessromanticwritersworld @pedrosdoll @psychobillybunny @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead @keeper0fthestars @mrsparknuts @thinemineours @huliabitch @synystersilenceinblacknwhite @lavenderl3mons @mrscrain-x7 @fioccodineveautunnale @gooddaykate @themilkface @tiffdawg @ms-dont-care @mus1caln0tes @awesomefandomsunited @seawhisperer @virtualxjournality @badassbaker @demigod-dragonrider-schoolidol @lokiaddicted @forever-rogue @sloantravels @javier-djarin @jawabear @longitud-de-onda

#frankie morales #frankie morales x reader #francisco 'catfish' morales #triple frontier #pedro pascal #headcanon

269 notes · View notes

4aloysius-porteu · 3 years

Text

Tear In My Heart

pairing: kirishima eijirou x vigilante reader

wc: 1908

genre: songfic, angst, fluff

warnings: mentions of blood/injuries

tear in my heart - twenty one pilots

Kirishima

It was nighttime when I was ordered to guard in Hosu City, in patrol of villains making crimes around. Yes, I'm a certified hero now and I just finished taking down a criminal with a laser quirk, and I'm on the way to my agency to turn over him.

"That's Red Riot for you!" Tetsutetsu greeted me while the police restrained the criminal. We did their usual brofist, "You alright, bro?"

"Why woudn't I be? I'll stay here for the whole night to catch and drive the villains away."

"Anyway, Fourth Kind said you can go home now. The others and I will take over here. Get a rest, man! See you tomorrow!"

"Oh, yeah, see you!" He patted my shoulder as I left to change clothes.

Sometimes you gotta bleed to know That you're alive and have a soul

I finished changing, then I got outside and saw my friends.

"Hey, Kirishimaaaa!" Ashido and Kaminari loudly greeted.

"Hey guys! You finished in your shift? Where's Sero and Bakugou?" I asked.

"Yep! They're on the morning shift now so we won't we seeing them in this month," Ashido replied.

"Dude, your Hero name is so famous around these areas! You sure are close with people after you rescue them, I'm envious!" Kaminari said.

"Don't be, Kaminari. Maybe someday you'll get known too."

"I hope so."

But it takes someone to come around, To show you how

After a litte chitchat they bid a goodbye and I got inside my car and drove it in a moderate speed. When I stopped in the red light, I remembered something important. I haven't texted hy girlfriend for the whole time!

She's the tear in my heart, I'm alive She's the tear in my heart, I'm on fire

Crap, I hope she's not mad at me!

I grabbed my phone and my fingers typed quickly, apologizing for not talking with her. She didn't reply, which made me more worried. I sighed and continued driving.

She's the tear in my heart, Take me higher, than I've ever been

Few minutes later, I still didn't get a reply. Maybe she's really angry, so I made my way to her apartment. While driving, I smiled when I suddenly remembered the first time we met. It was a year ago, in my first hero job.

A car accidentally crashed on her while she was crossing a road, severely injuring her leg. I was on the patrol so I rushed to rescue her. I took her to the hospital and visited her everyday till she gained conciousness. And when she did, God knows how I was caught in her beauty.

The songs on the radio are okay But my taste in music is your face

Since her parents were already gone and her older brother was working overseas, I was the one who took care of her, other than the hospital nurse. We soon got closer and talked with deeper topics, like our chilhood, families, and random experiences. It was really fun to be with her.

When she got better and was able to get out of the hospital, we exchanged numbers, and texted almost every hour.

But it takes a song to come around, To show you how

I also took her on a lot of dates, before we admitted our feelings to each other and her and I became 'we'.

I was taken back to the reality by my phone beeping. At last, she replied! Although, her text is just composed of a location that was 2 blocks away from me. I decided to go since I trust her and I think she's already there.

She's the tear in my heart, I'm alive

I drove on the way but all I found was a dark alley. It was very quiet and shady, why would my girlfriend lead me here? I walked inside, but I came up with my fighting stance in case something bad happens.

"Hello? (Y/N)? Are you here?" I called.

She's the tear in my heart, I'm on fire

No response. I continued to walked, until a figure showed up above me. I fought to restrain it, but I feel like its fighting back so desperately, so I decided to back off a bit and let it pin me on the ground.

She's the tear in my heart, Take me higher, than I've ever been

It was panting hard, but still managed to restrain my wrists. I looked at its face, and when the light of the moon showed up, I instantly recognized her face.

Than I've ever been...

"K-Kirishima?" She weakly said.

"(Y/N)!" She let go of my wrists as I got up and held her in my arms, "Are you okay? Hey!"

Than I've ever been...

"I think I'm alright... but I'm glad you came."

"What happened?"

Than I've ever been...

"K-Kirishima... I'm tired. I-I can tell you when we get to your place..."

I quickly carried her to my car and laid her down for her to rest. Now, I noticed that she has wounds and bruises on her arms, and her stomach has a blood stain. I have a hunch on what happened, but I'll ask it to her later.

You fell asleep in my car, I drove the whole time But that's okay I'll just avoid the holes So you'll sleep fine

I started to drive, but the road holes makes it hard to drive properly. (Y/N) might wake up because of my recklessness, so I decided to drive slowly.

I'm driving here I sit, Cursing my government For not using my taxes To fill the holes with more cement

I observed her sleeping figure at peace before taking my focus on the road. There's a lot of road holes, I wondered where it came from, since its still fine when I passed here. Maybe its the villians' or hero's battle fault.

You fell asleep in my car, I drove the whole time But that's okay I'll just avoid the holes So you'll sleep fine

I'm driving here I sit, Cursing my government For not using my taxes To fill the holes with more cement

When I reached my house, I parked my car in my garage and carried her out of the car then inside. I laid her on the bed and get a medical kit to treat her wounds. It wasn't too deep or serious, but its many. I raised her shirt, but first I promised not to do inappropriate things, and proceeded on treating on a medium sized cut on her stomach.

Sometimes you gotta need to know That you're alive and have a soul

I covered her wounds and cuts with a clean gauze and band aids, and that's when she woke up.

"Oh, sorry to wake you up, (Y/N). You can go to sleep now. I treated your wounds now, don't worry."

I was about to stand up and get her a blanket, but she pulled me back and hugged me from behind.

But it takes someone to come around, To show you how

"(Y/N)? Is there something wrong?"

She muttered, "Stay..."

I did what she said and sat beside the bed. I sighed and asked her again.

"You're still continuing your vigilante activities, aren't you?"

She's the tear in my heart, I'm alive She's the tear in my heart, I'm on fire

"Yes."

"Are you mad at me?"

"Yes."

She's the tear in my heart, Take me higher, than I've ever been

"I'm sorry for not texting you for the whole day, but (Y/N), I told you to stay out of danger! We've been through a lot of arguments here! First off, there are strong villains scattered everywhere, and second, you don't have a Hero License, so the authorities can arrest you when they caught you! You're between the two parties, and when you mess up, none of those sides will help and rescue you!"

A sound of a slap echoed through the room.

My heart, is my armor She's the tear in my heart

She replied, sobbing, "So are you underestimating me? Do you not believe and trust my abilities? And what do you mean that none of those two sides will help? You are on the heroes' side aren't you? Won't you come and rescue me if I'm about to get killed? Will you forget me for your commitment in the Heroes' society? God damn it, Eijirou! I'm being a hero in my own way because the society rejected my ideology and ability!"

She let go of me and cried. I felt bad for making her cry, but I just had to tell those things.

"I thought you understand me, Eijirou, but now I felt that you're just the same as the others! I hate you, Eijirou! I really hate you!"

She's a carver, She's a butcher with a smile

I moved to reach her but she slapped my hand away. That didn't stop me though, I still hugged her, even if she's struggling against my grip.

"Let go of me, Eijirou! I'm leaving now!"

Cut me farther, Than I've ever been

She beat my chest multiple times, but I refused to loosen my embrace. I held her tight and forced her against my chest, trying to stop her from moving.

"I'll never let go of you, (Y/N). You know that well."

Than I've ever been...

She ceased, but she gripped the sleeves of my shirt, tugging it and continued crying in it. I patted her hair and back.

"I just said those things because... I was worried. I don't want you getting hurt. I'm sorry for being hard on your feelings, (Y/N). I'm really sorry."

Than I've ever been...

"I-I was worried too. You didn't message me for the whole day. That wasn't your habit, so I went out to find you but I messed with some villains who was breaking in the bank in my way." She managed to say between sobs.

Oh, than I've ever been...

I kissed her forehead, "I'm glad you're safe."

"But Eijirou... about earlier. Aren't you going to come to me when you're stuck in your hero work and I'm in terrible danger? Please, answer me honestly."

My heart, is my armor She's the tear in my heart

"Of course not. I promise with all my heart that you'll be my first priority. I know I'm the only one, and once I'm not around you anymore, promise me to take care of yourself, okay?"

You turned away, "Don't say that. It scares me."

"Just do it."

"I promise not to make a fuss and take care of myself when Kirishima Eijirou is not around anymore."

She's the tear in my heart, She's a carver

"I hope that time won't come." She mumbled.

I held a stray strand of her hair and tucked it beside her ear, then placed my hand on her cheek, "You're so beautiful, (Y/N). I can never think of losing you."

She's a butcher with a smile, Cut me farther,

"I love you, (Y/N)."

"I love you too, Eijirou."

Than I've ever been.

I leaned in and gave her the most passionate kiss I can give, and at that time, I feel very happy and secured with her. I could tell she feels the same because tears stopped flowing from her eyes.

Loving makes you feel alive, after all.

30 notes · View notes

a-table-of-fics · 3 years

Text

Oddworld: Conar's Ambition, Chapter 4, Draft 1

In the meantime, he puffed on his Lungbuster some more, thinking about what they could do next. Once they were all in the scrapyard, and found a secure spot, that’d be a good time to see about that map Mark probably had. From there, he could hopefully find out where Zeb’s offices were, and from there he and Slim could take him down, and Conar could finally have a fortune of his own.

His happy daydreams were interrupted when he heard another vehicle come rumbling down the road, and the sound of screeching metal against concrete. He leaned to look past the wall, and he had to cover his earholes as he saw an ugly yellow truck coming to the garage, sparks flying behind it as it carelessly dragged an enormous three-pronged hook behind it on a thick metal cable. He leapt back, afraid the tow cable might swing his way and obliterate him. Thankfully, it was nowhere close, and the truck was slowing to turn into the parking space anyway.

A Slig wearing a work vest came out, putting a well-worn yellow cap onto his head. He slammed a fist on the bed of the truck, and three Scrubs sat up groaning, and climbed out of the back.

Conar turned to the sleeping Mudokons, and was quick to tap them both with his Blunderbuss. They stirred, slowly standing back up. Just in time, too; the Slig had looked their way. He nodded before walking over to the passenger side. The door opened, and Conar heard the tell-tale sound of a Glukkon’s cheap dress shoes rapidly clattering. He was smoking an even cheaper cigar, and oil-stained suspenders over a hideously yellow plaid shirt. He sneered as he looked over at Conar and the Mudokons under his care, but his face softened as he saw the cab they came in with.

He hummed, running a few mental tallies.

“Quite a wreck,” he finally said. “Almost wish I’d seen the accident!”

He laughed, and if there was one thing any Slig learned quickly, it’s that a Glukkon’s laughter is contagious… or else. The Mudokons had no such obligation; while Slim and Mark were trying to keep their heads down, the three Scrubs in yellow loincloths just unloaded the truck of its six toolboxes. They politely waited by the door, struggling to stand up under the weight they were carrying.

“I take it you’re Clunk?” Conar asked.

“You ain’t as stupid as you look,” the Gluk snorted. “Why do ya ask?”

“Your guard over there says we need a ticket from you to get this scrap into the yard.”

Clunk turned around, seeing a wide-awake Slig waving his way from his booth, his magazine hidden from view.

“He’s right, you will need one. We gotta make sure we can’t fix it first.”

Meanwhile, his assistant Slig was watching the overly encumbered Mudokons. He was taking great pleasure in slowly opening the doors, at a couple of points even “accidentally” letting the doors fall a little, chuckling as the Scrubs groaned. Finally, he let them in, and they were able to set their equipment on the workbench.

“Right,” Conar nodded. “So when can we get started, sir? I’m already running late…”

“250 Moolah,” the Glukkon replied, simply. “We also gotta get your name and everything for our records. If we start going a little late, maybe I can let your boss now. Who knows?”

He leaned forward, enough to breathe smoke into Conar’s face.

“He might be feeling lenient and just dock your pay.”

He chuckled to himself, while Conar reached into his bag. Having only around 1400 Moolah to his name, this was quite a bit, but what choice did he have?

The other Slig happily accepted his payment, and turned towards his workforce.

“All right, get ‘er in so we can take a look!”

Conar and company watched as the cab was taken in, and followed when Clunk beckoned them in. They were directed to a lobby that had two very greasy chairs in it, as well as half another chair that was haphazardly lying against the wall. Clunk moved behind the front desk, where his assistant was waiting.

“So, you got an ID, ‘valued’ customer?”

“39872-A,” Conar said, automatically.

“Right. Place of employment?”

“Slog Hut 1884.”

“Quite a ways from here. What happened?”

“Got caught in some crossfire around home, sir.”

Clunk nodded.

“Right, we’ll see what we can do. You have a seat.”

Conar nodded, keeping the seat on his Pants rather than anything he could actually feel. The Mudokons, after one glare from the owner, shared the half-seat, keeping their feet splayed so they didn’t tip it over.

Clunk chuckled at the sight, and so Conar did too.

“Which of these chumps was the driver?”

Mark shrunk a bit, knowing what was going to come next, but before anyone else, Slim piped up.

“I was driving, sir.”

Mark was about to say something, but Slim’s elbow made a point against that. Clunk looked, and nodded.

“Brave Mud to admit that,” he said, turning back to Conar. “Make sure to get his license. Should have a number you can call on this phone here. They’ll take care of ‘im for losing company property, I hope.”

With that, he waddled over through the doorway, to the noises of metal clanging and tools hissing and whirring.

As soon as he was gone, Slim looked at the shaken Mark, then turned to Conar.

“Can you… can you pretend to call?”

“You ain’t tellin’ me what to do!” Conar replied. “I gotta call, that’s what he said…”

Slim’s look said it all, but he added “You want everyone to know where we are?”

“…Yeah, why don’t I just… not call, then?”

“Clunk’s probably gonna pop in at any moment. You really want to blow your cover here?”

Conar thought about it for a moment, then nodded. He’d have to ask about how Slim knew about this kind of thing later, but for now, he had a “call” to make to the taxi company. He stood up, holding a hand out expectantly. Mark looked at it for a moment, then sighed and produced a card from a pouch on his loincloth.

Conar snatched it and took a look. So he was supposed to call the Durtminch Taxi Service, but he punched random keys on the phone in rapid succession. He got a busy signal, but he pressed on.

“Yeah, hi… I wanted to report a Mud who drove through a gunfight…Yeah…We’re at Clunk’s… His name’s Mark…”

Clunk walked back in, watching while Conar finished his conversation.

“…ID, uh, 5928-22555…And this was 39872-A… Yeah, thanks.”

He looked up at the Glukkon.

“They said they’d discipline correctly.”

“Good,” Clunk nodded. “It’s important that they… learn. Anyway, we got some fixes underway. It’ll be ten minutes, but if it still don’t work, we’ll take it off your hands and getcha a ride.”

“Gotcha,” Conar nodded, walking back to take a seat.

Unfortunately, Clunk was staying at the desk, watching a monitor. No chance of using this time to rest, then; despite Conar’s reason for being late, he could still get reported for sleeping during work hours. Being late to the Slog Hut was one thing, but using this as an excuse to sleep was a one-way path to being detained until a co-worker could arrive and perform disciplinary action. Talking to the Mudokons was out of the question, too. No Glukkon liked seeing security being buddy-buddy with the workforce. So, he waited, listening to the sounds of mechanics hollering and metal clanging for ten minutes until, finally, the other Slig came back into the lobby.

“W-well,” he said, uneasily, “Got as fixed as we could, boss.”

The three Scrub mechanics walked in, covered in considerably more oil, soot, and burn marks than the Slig was.

“Well,” Clunk smiled, “Why don’t you have your driver friend there get the thing started, and we’ll see you off?”

Slim felt many eyes on him, and he slowly stood up. Mark followed suit, letting their half-chair slide and collapse onto the floor. He and Slim scrambled to get that back onto the wall, and then moved to follow the other Slig, with Conar following after.

He swallowed, climbing into the driver’s seat while Mark and Conar made it into the backseat.

“Hold up,” the head mechanic asked, raising a hand, “What’s the deal with the other Scrub?”

“You know better than to ask questions like that!” Clunk scolded, causing his Slig to wince. “It’s like you know nothing about keeping customers!”

He coughed, nearly dropping his cigar.

“Right then,” he continued, turning his attention to Conar through the window, “Explain why you’re commutin’ with a Mudokon!”

“Ah, y’see, er…”

“’M a student,” Slim meekly offered. “Y’see, he’s my instructor, isn’t that right, ‘Slim’?”

“I—” Mark started, before having his toe pressed by Conar’s metal foot. “Y-yeah, I am. L-lemme give ya a… refresher on how t’start this thing… yeah…”

He reached over, adjusting the levers to get the thing started. A rumble and whining noise, but nothing happened.

“Try again,” Clunk said.

“O-okay,” Mark nodded, having another go. Same result.

“Oy,” Clunk muttered, shaking his head. “All right, my boys’ll ger this into the scrapyard and we’ll getcha a new ride.”

“Actually,” Conar piped up. “I got two perfectly good Scrubs here. Betcha they could do with a bit of exercise, y’know what I’m saying?”

“Not gonna happen,” Clunk laughed. “Can’t have your Muds diving under a hunk of metal and escapin’, can we?”

“No sir,” Conar said, nodding a little too hastily. “Can’t have ‘em fleeing.”

He lifted his gun up meaningfully.

“I’m sure Tess and I could keep an eye on ‘em, though… heh heh…”

Clunk looked at him, and laughed.

“Ah, you really wanna teach ‘em a lesson, huh? Can’t blame ya for that; even a Mudokon should know not to drive into a firefight.”

He turned to his assistant.

“You focus on keeping our boys in line. Let our friend here take care of scrappin’ that piece of crap.”

“Er, all right, sir…”

It was hard to see with his own visor and the other Slig’s pilot-like goggles, but Conar could swear he was getting a side-eye from the guy as he turned to gather his mechanics.

Conar, for his part, simply shrugged, grabbing a ticket as it printed before giving a somewhat forceful jab to Slim’s back with the barrel of his gun.

“Get movin’, you two! I wanna see that cab in the scrap heap, and I wanna see it there now!”

He gave a bit of a chuckle to keep appearances, and the three of them moved the cab out. Well, Slim and Mark did, while Conar kept pace behind them, cradling “Tess” in his arms, still keeping it quite visible in the tried-and-true “Slig At Work” pose.

“Some escape,” Slim muttered under his breath. “Make me wish I was back shoveling Slog poo.”

“Wait, we’re escapin’?” Mark asked, perking up. “I can quit driving Sligs around? No more chokin’ on smoke?”

Before Mark could get too excited, though, he had to flinch as two shots rang out from behind him. Both he and Slim immediately put their hands over their heads, resting their faces onto the car’s trunk. They were just able to turn their heads enough to see Conar looking at them, his smoking gun pointed straight up in the air.

“Enough yapping!” he barked. “You’re slowin’ down when you do that!”

Mark was shaking a little, but Slim just sighed before beginning to push the cab again. On the plus side, the guard had woken up from that, and was already watching them pull up. Conar was already waving the ticket up for him, so he pulled the lever on the left of the control panel.

The three of them watched as the gate shook, groaning and creaking as it dragged along the ground. In the twenty-two seconds it took for it to open, Slim and Mark were able to take a breather, which they gratefully took. They almost didn’t notice when Conar shouted for them to start pushing again, but self-preservation kicked in regardless, and the cab was shoved through the gate again.

It soon became clear that they were not moving past multiple piles of discarded metal, but instead walking on one enormous heap. There was enough rust to pass as dirt if you weren’t walking on it, and they could hear metal creak not just under their feet, but everywhere. In the distance, a stack collapsed onto itself. A crane with an enormous magnet lifted junk into a new pile, and a bulldozer shoved more onto it.

As Conar looked around, the two Mudokons took note of the red eyes floating around. They didn’t seem to be taking any interest in the trio, instead panning over the various machines.

“Now, let’s get this thing outta the way,” Conar said. “I think I see some room over there.”

He gestured over to a place between an old FeeCo train car and a pile of refrigerators. It was a tight fit, but nothing a bit of elbow grease and Slig threats couldn’t take care of.

“Right,” Conar said, “We should find a place to lay low, then. We can figure things out from there.”

He looked either way, and found the door was taken off the train car. That was as good an option as any to look, but Slim put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him from going into it.

“There’s a hideout in the fridges already,” he said. “Might wanna check that first.”

Conar paused to look at the pile on the other side, but outside of various graffiti tags, he didn’t see anything of interest. Besides, the train car was right here.

“I don’t know what you’re tryin’,” he said, pulling his shoulder away from the Mudokon, “but if you think you can pull one over me, you’ve got another thing coming!”

“I’m not—”

“Get in the train!” Conar shouted. “That’s an order!”

“Fine,” Slim sighed, clambering in. It was dark and cold down there, and the air had a metallic scent that was just powerful enough to be uncomfortable. Mark and Conar followed, landing next to him.

“It ain’t much,” Conar admitted, “but at least we should be hidden pretty well here.”

“I guess,” Slim shrugged, while Mark just nodded.

“It’s been a long night, so we oughta rest for a bit. We’ll work on getting started later.”

Conar watched as the Mudokons found a darker corner, huddling together for warmth. Despite the conditions, they found sleep far more easily than Conar did. The Expresso had long since lost its kick, but this was a far cry from the bed he was used to. What was worse, he was watching over recently-freed Scrubs. He could manage one, but what if the two were to gang up on him? Hell, Slim was already giving him orders! He was already getting a lot of nerve!

#oddworld fic #oddworld conar's ambition #Oddworld #draft 1 #chapter 4 #oddworld conars ambition full chapter

3 notes · View notes

mor-beck-more-problems · 4 years

Text

The Fast and the Furious: Spectral Drift || Morgan, Nell, & Constance

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @nelllraiser @constancecunningham @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Just gals being pals.

CONTAINS: car theft, drowning

For once, Nell was gaining a moment of mediocrity in her otherwise far too lively existence. Not that she minded the chaos. Parts of her thrived on it, but she’d been learning as of late that not all chaos was good, and a spot of normality was welcome in an otherwise unforgiving world. She and Morgan had gathered at Coffee Plus, taking advantage of the quiet day to do a bit of catching up between one another. Leaning forward to take a hearty bite of her chocolate muffin, Nell finished chewing and swallowed before finishing the story she’d launched into. “I’m just saying- maybe if he couldn’t handle the whole sandwich, he shouldn’t have stuck his fingers in the hanyo.” Her tone was bright with a laugh as she remembered the ridiculous expression that had been on the man’s face. Ready to launch into another joke about the poor guy’s predicament, she stopped mid-sentence— realization dawning over her as movement caught the corner of her eye. “Morgan...isn’t that...your car?” Pointing towards the vehicle in question, Nell stood to get a better look. Sure enough, she recognized the license plate that was ever so slowly inching away from the curb, the back of a mysterious head seeming to fumble with the controls. “Someone’s taking your car!”

Morgan was relieved that Nell wasn’t so bothered by her Constance drama as Blanche had been. She missed her young friends and whatever good she was able to imagine she did for them by being around. They certainly did plenty enough for her. Nell, especially, never backed down from a fight or a favor if it seemed right to her, and she could brighten any day with stories from her daily whirlwind adventures. Even though Morgan couldn’t really enjoy anything at the cafe, she didn’t feel ill at ease slurping at her seltzer water with Nell across the table. Listening to the latest turn, Morgan couldn’t help but snort. “You know not everyone is in your league, right, Nell?” She asked. “A lotta guys who call themselves brave would pee their pants getting up to some of the stuff you do. Although, gotta say, even I’m not woman enough to go anywhere near that ‘hanyo’ stuff, even for money.”

She had another question on her lips when Nell’s face changed. “M-my what?” She couldn’t have heard that right. But she followed Nell’s finger and— “That fucking bitch,” she hissed, tearing her bag off the chair. “I gotta go, I’m sorry, Nell, you might wanna run.” She stumbled outside in disbelief. “You’ve got three seconds to get out of my fucking car!” She cried.

Constance jumped, startled at the fury in the woman’s face. She was still getting used to being seen by any old soul, and not just her fellow damned and dead. She could still get out. Apologize for the mischief. This crime was small, impulsive, childish. She had only been wondering at the miraculous contraptions since they had first frightened her months ago. And seeing Morgan, this other Agnes, slide in and out of hers with more pride than any girl she’d seen give to a bicycle. It hadn’t even been locked. How grateful could this woman be for it if she didn’t think to have it locked? Thus, Constance’s resolve solidified. “I think you’re wrong!” She called. Her foot tested one of the pedals and a delicious roar came out of the engine. “I only need three to get away with it.” She moved the lever next to her and pushed the pedal again. The automobile shot backwards, crunching into something behind her. Constance fixed the lever again and she was flying forward, into the road like a comet. “Try and stop me, Bachman!” She cried.

Immediately electing to ignore Morgan’s recommendation of running, Nell’s head whipped around in search of something that might help, an idea that could get Morgan’s car back, and possibly give Constance some hell at the same time. It came to her in the form of a bright and shiny sedan someone was just pulling up in, putting their own vehicle into park alongside the curb. They didn’t have a chance to take the keys out of the ignition before Nell was on them. “Can I borrow this?!” she yelled at the startled driver who was frozen in shock. His confused voice matched the hopeless alarm on his face.

“Wha-? No! It’s my car! Who the hell are you?” Without answering, Nell wrenched open the driver side door, grabbing the shirt of the poor man to firmly remove him from his seat, and deposit him on the asphalt. “Sorry!” Nell quickly apologized, another idea quickly coming to her. “Uh- official police business! Detective Vural thanks you for your service and so does White Crest!” It’d only taken her a quick second to Summon the fake badge she’d magically made when she’d pretended to be police to Regan and shove it into the face of the driver. As Constance and Morgan’s car rocketed down the street, Nell quickly put her ‘borrowed’ car into gear, also ignoring the fact that she didn’t have a license, and had mostly driven tractors. “Morgan!” she called out, rolling the car to her friend. “Morgan, get in! We’ll catch her!”

Morgan screeched with outrage. “My girlfriend bought me that Subaru!” She started pelting the car with whatever she had on hand. Her drinking straw, crumpled up receipts, post it notes, half used packs of Trident, pens, embroidery needles, her planner. They all bounced off the red car and fell pathetically into the road as Constance reversed right into a light pole, switched gear, and drove straight into traffic.

Morgan followed her as far as the stoplight, screaming wordlessly until the car behind her honked. “Hey, lady! Don’t make us late too!”

Morgan stumbled back into the parking lot, just in time to see Nell wielding a police badge as she dove into a random suburbanite sedan. “D-detect--yeah! Detective Stryder thanks you for your service too! Call the station with my name if you have any questions!” She didn’t slide so much as topple into the shotgun seat, junk still spilling from her bag. “And thank you!” She called behind her. They sped off in the direction Constance had gone, fast enough for Morgan to feel plastered to her seat before she could even buckle up. “I uh--didn’t know you had a lot of getaway experience, Nell,” she said, laughing breathlessly.

Broken glass and confused drivers littered the road ahead of them. Skid marks striped the road. Up ahead, the faintest streak of banged up red zig zagged through the lanes before jumping the curb and tearing into the town common.

A snarky chuckle fell from Nell as the familiar name of Marley Stryder was thrown into the mix. “I didn’t know you knew Marley,” she said as casually as a person could while beginning to give chase to a car that had been hijacked by a ghost who could have belonged in Downton Abbey for all Nell was concerned. As for getaway experience… “Oh, I don’t! Unless you count racing games and tractors!” she answered brightly, the rush of piloting a car that was careening down the street in a chase already causing delicious adrenaline to pump through her veins. It’d been a long while since she’d gotten to enjoy a high like this without also fearing for her life. “Actually, I’ve always wanted to drive a getaway car! Or be in a car chase! I just didn’t think I’d get to since I don’t have my license or whatever.” The witch dropped the news as if it were the most inconsequential fact one could say at a time like this, accelerating all the while. A light turned red. Nell didn’t hesitate as she blew through the intersection. Thankfully, Constance had run the same light, clearing the way for Nell to pass through safely. “Don’t worry, we’ll get her!” In a jerky movement, Nell followed the ghost onto the grass of the common.

“We’re acquainted,” Morgan said, wincing at the memory. It clearly wasn’t in any way that could be considered ‘good.’ “Wait, what do you mean you--oh my fuck, Nell, no!” Morgan yanked the wheel, swerving the car away from a tree, bouncing painfully back onto the street. She could see her red Subaru swerving down towards the docks in the distance, the bumper just barely hanging on and sending a fireworks show worth of sparks down the street. “She can’t get much farther like this,” she hissed between her teeth. Morgan let go of the wheel and reached into her bag for her salt pistol.

This wasn’t really the ideal time for Nell to question Morgan further about her and Marley’s relationship, even if her need to be nosy was in full force and trying to get her to ask anyway. Later, she told herself before punching her foot to the gas once more. “Hey!” she objected as Morgan jerked the wheel. “I wasn’t gonna hit it! Talk about a backseat driver,” Nell grumbled. But the disgruntled mood was quickly past her. How could she stay upset when she was zooming along in a car chase? A grin split over her lips as she took the time to roll her window down, laughing as the wind whipped her hair with the sudden gust of air. “What is that?” Nell asked, not entirely sure what kind of gun the strange thing in Morgan’s hands was. However, she did know that if Morgan was going to get any kind of decent shot, they needed to be closer. Yet again, Nell stomped on the gas, laying the pedal flat against the floor of the car. Finally, she managed to catch up to Morgan’s car, the front bumper of Nell’s ‘borrowed’ car kissing against the back of Morgan’s Subaru. The nudge was more than enough to knock the Subaru’s bumper loose. “Ha!” Nell exclaimed as the piece of plastic clattered beneath them before remembering that it was Morgan’s car she’d just tapped. “Ah- I mean- oops?”

Morgan cried out to see her poor bumper. Her fingers stretched out helplessly to the windshield. “S-subaru…” she whispered. That did it. Morgan cranked down the windshield, because of course it still had a fucking crank, and leaned out, pistol raised. Three short pops burst through the air. Three brusts of smoke. The salt rounds exploded against the Subaru. One landed in the spiderweb break in a window, melting on contact.

Constance’s joy was short lived. These monstrosities were no relief, no freedom. The beastly thing seemed to have a mind of its own! Then the windows began to cave in, dripping with salt. “No, no, no, no…” She whimpered. She tried moving the lever, but this only made the car jerk and fit. Panicked, she rammed her foot to the pedal. The automobile screamed as if she’d cursed it and spun out of her control. Constance shifted, ready to drift out like it was no matter of all, but no, her solid form was now her prison. The automobile crashed onto the docks. Wood shattered everywhere in its wake. Finally, it came to a stop, and Morgan Beck, the last of the Bachmans, was right behind her. Constance picked her way out of the debris and stumbled into the car’s path, her body clenched and unyielding. Let her do her worst, cruel coward that she was. To ruin even one of her ill-gotten treasures was worth the trouble this had cost.

As Morgan hung out the window of the car, Nell reached for her own door handle— ready to launch herself into whatever showdown it was that Constance was hoping to have here. What she was going to do she wasn’t all that sure yet. But Nell had to do something. If she didn’t, who knew if there would be another Maxine sooner rather than later? But as her hand reached for the plastic of the handle, she heard a click of the locks, and in a single second the witch found herself momentarily trapped in the car by some no good ghost mischief. If only it had stayed mischievous rather than lethal. Before Nell could so much as search for the unlocking mechanism, a weightlessness overtook her. She was...flying? No, the entire car was flying. Straight over the side of the dock as Constance wielded her power once more, sending the borrowed vehicle right into the hungry fingers of the waiting waves of the ocean. Morgan was gone from the window before Nell could make sense of what was happening, probably thrown adrift by the sheer force of the launch. And then...an icy coldness as water began to pour in through the open window, the car sinking steadily below the surface of the water while Nell remained trapped inside. She jerked uselessly at the handle as more saltwater began to fill the cab of the car, it not taking long to rise to her knees. It seemed whatever Constance had used to keep the doors shut wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Constance, don’t.

The voice wasn’t in Constance’s ears, but it shook through her strange body as she tried to stop the car. Locking it was no matter to her, but the rest, becoming an immovable object to its unstoppable force. If she were her full self, it would already be in the air. If she were herself, she could have gotten hands around Morgan and snapped her to pieces. She could have thrown her across the room, smashed her up and down and gathered the dust of her bones for--

Constance, don’t.

It was the girl’s voice. Blanche Harlow. And in remembering her warning, Constance stepped back from her rage. But the car was already trembling in her grip. There was someone besides Morgan inside. Another girl, as frightened as the school children had been, maybe more. She could see Constance. She knew exactly what was happening to her, and perhaps even why. Constance let go, it was too much, all of this was too much, she didn’t want to be cruel to innocents, but she couldn’t let Morgan cower behind her friends all the time either! Constance’s self-control was like that of a child and the car didn’t come gently down to rest. It soared into the water and crashed through its depth, hard enough to disrupt the waves. Constance watched it sink, helpless to move, to think. “Help!” She screamed at last. “Someone help! There was a crash, did you see a crash? The automobile just-- there’s more than one person inside there! Help!” She sprinted up the docks, arms waving like mad. “Help me, please!”

Even Morgan’s zombie nerves felt her body hit the water. She plummeted downwards, muscles burning as she wriggled to slow herself down. The ocean was veiled in salt and murk before her eyes, but she could just make out the outline of the subaru in the distance. She opened her mouth once to call, only realizing how stupid that was when water rushed into her mouth. Fuck. She had to get to her. She was not losing another person to this spoiled brat of a witch. I’m coming, Nell. I’ll make this right.

As the water got higher, and only the murky depths of the ocean could be seen out her driver’s side window, Nell screwed her eyes shut for a long moment— trying to assess, to find her way out. She hadn’t come all this fucking way to die via being tossed into the ocean by a god damned ghost. The sound of rushing water, and the coldness of it rising to chest height was enough to push Nell into action, and in a quick moment she’d drawn one of her hidden daggers, slamming the butt of it against a backseat window. It did what it was meant to, shattering the glass and allowing more water to fill the car. The witch couldn’t remember where she’d heard it, but somewhere along the way she’d gotten it into her brain that letting the car fill with water would make it easier to open the door and make her escape. A quick spell made easy work of the locks, and the whole handle flew off of the side of the door as the dire need of the situation had given her a little too much juice when it came to casting. Whatever. It would work. She’d been submerged enough to float towards the roof of the car at this point, and now all there was left to do was wait. Wait for the car to finish filling. Wait for the perfect moment to take her last breath and make a break for it. Finally, the moment came— and she took a shuddering and deep last breath of precious air as the car became entirely filled.

Nell fumbled it. Half of her final breath became water where there should have been air, and suddenly a reflexive cough was wracking her. In all of two seconds...her air was spent, and she hadn’t even gotten out of the car yet. It didn’t matter. That was what she told herself. It didn’t matter because dying wasn’t an option. Kicking open the door, it felt like time moved in slow motion as she finally came out from the car. She raised her eyes towards the light filtering above her to find that the sun seemed impossibly far away. Shit. Shit shit shit. Had she really sunk that far so quickly? Should she have tried her chances with getting out of the car earlier? It didn’t matter now. Swimming had never been a problem for her, but the surface seemed impossibly far. Nevertheless, she kicked her legs, making a desperate attempt to live. It wasn’t long before her lungs were screaming for air, begging her to take that breath of seawater that would begin the sealing of her fate and death. Just a little closer. Just a little more. But the little more wasn’t enough. It felt like every gallon of the ocean was pressing on Nell— her eyes, her ears, any crevasse it could manage to find. Dizziness began to take its hold, and Nell vaguely wondered how it was even possible to be dizzy underwater, the inane thought crossing her mind as spots began to appear in her vision. She wasn’t going to drown. She refused to drown. Barely aware of it, sheer will seemed to propel and jet her higher, and whether it was her legs or her magic, she wasn’t able to say.

Morgan was no expert swimmer, but she had determination and stamina on her side. She tore through the water, muscles aching. The pull of the ocean was not her friend this time. It weighed down her arms, making her slower. Salt and floating debris flung into her eyes. Morgan continued to swim. She could see her now, a limp ragdoll figure in the blue.

No. Not today. Not one more fucking person is dying because of Constance.

Morgan grabbed her around the waist and propelled them to the surface.

“There they are!”

“Look!”

“Someone toss ‘em a rope!”

“Grab on, honey! Don’t let go!”

Morgan’s eyes were blurry with seawater, but she made out the shadow of a life preserver flying towards her. Morgan dragged her and Nell towards it, trying not to focus on how much distance there was between them and the shore, the ruin of her Subaru, the weight of Nell’s motionless body in her arms. “We--” she called, her throat choked with salt. “We need-- CPR! She--” Morgan gagged on more seawater. Nothing was moving fast enough. Not her legs, not the human chain forming on the docks, not the clouds gathering over the blinding sun. Morgan kicked in the water to help move them along, but it felt like she was still being pulled down, squeezed until she broke and gave up.

When they reached the surface, Morgan remembered to give a few dramatic coughs and wheezes while a woman she recognized from Amity Row felt for Nell’s pulse. “How did you… did you see? What happened?” Morgan asked.

The crowd looked uneasily at each other. “Just the end,” one of them admitted. “Wouldn’t have seen it at all except for that weird little girl.”

They began to describe her in bits and pieces, red hair, funny dress, maybe a cosplayer, but Morgan had already heard too much. She didn’t care what Constance had or hadn’t done for them, what kind of crowd she wanted to draw for her latest maneuver. If she was still gawking by the time Morgan was through here, she’d take her new solid body and pound it into dough. “Out of my way!” She snapped. “She just needs CPR! Fuck, it’s not rocket science!” She started pumping on Nell’s chest, blocking out the rest of the world. She’d taken this training enough times to remember; she could get this right. “Come on, Nell…” She whispered. “I can’t let her get you too. Come on…” She breathed into her mouth. “We’ve got this, Nell. We got this… we got this…”

#wr nell #wr chatzy #wr nell chatzy #wr constance #wr constance chatzy #wr group chatzy #wickedswriting

9 notes · View notes

scribbles97 · 4 years

Text

Left Behind -- Chapter 29

PART 1 / PART 2

Chapter 22 / Chapter 23 / Chapter 24 / Chapter 25 / Chapter 26 / Chapter 27 / Chapter 28

It wasn’t really a family meeting, per say. He was too tired from spending the day trying to learn business to hold a proper meeting.

It was Mom’s job to be the one in charge of those meetings, Scott wasn’t ready to take on that role yet.

It was more a discussion of what the hell they were going to do.

If that involved the whole family, plus their extended friends, then that didn’t really make it a meeting. Did it?

Not if it was over chinese food and involved them all lounging around in the main room of the hotel suite.

It didn’t matter that he had claimed the armchair at the head of the circle, framed by the large window at his back. The armchair Grandma had taken across from him could just have equally been viewed as the head.

Alan was sprawled out on the rug between them, not really part of the circle but definitely within it tearing apart a spring roll and dropping more of it on his plate than he was actually eating. Gordon was propped up against the side of the sofa Penelope and Kayo were sharing, picking at his chow mein. Virgil and John had taken the other sofa, sharing a bowl of fried rice and kung-po sauce. Scott tried to ignore the fact that any normal night each of them would have had a double portion easily to themselves. Reminding him that it wasn’t a normal night, and food was probably the last thing on any of their minds.

Aunt Val and Uncle Lee were sat opposite one another, each occupying one of the dining chairs stolen from the table on the far side of the room. Scott was trying to ignore the tension that had been fizzling between the pair since he and Hugh had gotten back with the food. He’d gotten in between one of their arguments before, been burned by the sparks that flew between them. Since then he had known better than to get involved.

As for Hugh, he had taken the cushion from behind Scott and parked himself on the floor at his feet. The older man had been quiet since their late visit to the hospital when the Doctors had updated them both on Mom’s condition.

The swelling had gone down, but the brain activity hadn’t increased.

It was still so early, he had insisted to them, begged them to tell him that Mom still had time to show improvement. Maybe things were just going slow for the time being and soon it would all change for the better.

Hugh had clasped his shoulder when the Doctor had shaken his head. The other man’s hand had been the only thing to hold him together, to block the lump that had formed in his throat and dry up the tears that had stung the backs of his eyes.

“What are we going to do about Mom?” Virgil murmured, as if reading his older brother’s thoughts.

“What is there to do about Mom?” Gordon looked up, shovelling noodles into his mouth before the fell back to the box in his hand, “The Doc said she’s in a coma and we jus’ gotta wait until something changes.”

“She wouldn’t want us sitting here waiting for her,” Aunt Val murmured, setting her own box of noodles in her lap, “She would want us to keep doing our job.”

“Little sister never did know what was good for her.” Lee muttered as he stabbed at a piece of beef with his fork.

The glare thrown across the room was deadly.

“Val is right,” Hugh sighed, “Lucy wouldn’t want us to sit and dwell.”

“We can’t leave her!” Alan exclaimed quickly, eyes darting from Hugh to Grandma to Scott. He could see the fear there, could guess that the youngest didn’t want to contemplate being in a different city to their mother, never mind a different continent.

Scott couldn’t say he blamed him.

“We have an infirmary on the Island.” John glanced up, “We have the same equipment that the hospital does.”

Grandma tutted, drawing all their attention as she shook her head, “You would need someone to monitor it all and manage your mother’s care.”

“Hey, Grandma,” Gordon piped up, “I don’t know if you remember--”

“I am not qualified for this, Gordon.” She cut him off, “Licensed practitioner, yes. Neurologist, no.”

Scott couldn’t help but bite at the suggestion his brothers had made, “Do we know anyone who is?”

“Yes.” John answered almost before Scott had finished his question.

Looking across his younger brother had his datapad out. Food forgotten he was tapping away at the screen, swiping along a list and dismissing irrelevant information.

“One person.” He looked up, “And I think we can trust him.”

“Who?” Alan sat straighter, eyes wide and hopeful.

Scott couldn’t deny he was interested.

“Doctor Elliott Gluszko.”

“Eli?” He smiled, remembering the dark skinned and even darker haired twins from his basic training.

“I remember.” Grandma nodded, “He left after one of the Europe team sustained a serious head injury. It made him want to specialise in something and understand the protective mechanisms of the brain.”

“Do you think he’d come?” Gordon asked, eyes bright with youthful optimism, “Can we at least ask him?”

“Hang on,” Scott held up a hand looking back to John, “Are you using the IR database?”

Everyone in the room straightened, eyes landing on John as he shifted in his seat. The ginger’s cheeks reddened as he slowly set his tablet down in his lap, never one for being the centre of attention and never good with peer pressure from the family.

“I didn’t hack it.” He muttered, eyes darting from face to face, “Not like I did when I wanted to use Five to test my NASA project.”

“How did you get in, son?” Hugh frowned up at him.

John shrugged, “Mom gave me a login. In case of emergency kind of thing.”

“You don’t have the training or authorisation though.” Lee grunted.

John shook his head, “I have everything I need to become an official IR operative. Except a signature on the papers.”

Scott had intended on thinking up an argument for why he shouldn’t join IR. Except the day had been busy and his brain power spent. He didn’t have anything to fall back on.

“You have a job at NASA, kid.” Lee frowned, “Stick with that.”

“I quit NASA.”

“You what?” Virgil exclaimed, “When?”

“Late last night.”

Scott knew his younger brother was avoiding his gaze, focusing on those in the room that would no doubt support him in his move rather than those that would rather him keep a safe distance away.

“We could do with a spare pilot for Three.” Aunt Val nodded, raising her can of pop towards John, “Scott sign the damn papers, get your brother up to speed.”

“No!” Alan exclaimed, sitting up from where he had been lounging, “No you can’t! That’s not fair!”

Scott winced at the protest from the youngest, knowing exactly where it was headed as he jumped to his feet, spring roll completely forgotten.

“Thunderbird Three was gonna be my ship! You can’t just come in and take it! I won’t let you.”

John’s smile fell, “Allie, I won’t--”

“You will!” Alan snapped back before he could finish, “You are doing! None of you want me to join in!”

“Sit down Alan.” Scott commanded, “You know that isn’t the case.”

“Scott.” Grandma warned quietly, drawing his attention away from Alan. Her eyebrows were dipped behind her glasses, lips pressed in a firm line as she twisted her head just slightly. Not a full head shake, just a slight turn, enough to warn him off of provoking little brother.

“You will still have Thunderbird Three as soon as you’re qualified Alan.” John filled in, “It’s just a case of going through the process like the rest of us did. I’ll even train you on her myself.”

Alan huffed but didn’t respond, going back to picking at the bits of shredded veg on his plate left from the spring roll.

It was better than him continuing to protest at least.

“It sounds to me,” Kayo murmured softly looking around the room, “Like the decisions are made.”

Scott couldn’t deny she had a point.

None of them were going to leave Mom.

All of them wanted to get back to work.

“Sounds like it to me too Kayo.” He sighed, dumping his fork in the box of rice, food entirely the last thing on his mind.

#thunderbirds are go #Thunderbirds 2015 #thunderbirds fanfic #Scirbbles writes #Scott Tracy #John Tracy #Virgil Tracy #Gordon Tracy #Alan Tracy #grandma tracy #Tanusha Kyrano #Hugh Creighton-Ward #Kyrano #Aunt Val #Lee Taylor

10 notes · View notes

myexplicittarotjournal · 3 years

Text

🌚 New Moon in Capricorn ♑️

I haven't finished contextualizing my life, so you'll probably have no clue what I'm talking about when interpreting the cards from this New Moon in Capricorn Tarot Spread. But I intend to make everything clearer as I advance with my biography, so my dear readers will have more context when interpreting the cards with me.

For now, bear with me.

New Moon in Capricorn Tarot Spread:

We'll be using @lightningwildflower 's New Moon in Capricorn Spread, which consists of the following questions:

What is being cleared away with this New Moon in Capricorn?

What past events should I remember as I set my intentions?

What hurdles will I have to climb to reach my goals?

What new structures am I building in my life?

This is the only tarot spread that I found here on Tumblr that relates the New Moon with Capricorn in an intelligent way. So thank you for that, @lightningwildflower .

Shall we begin?

My New Moon in Capricorn tarot spread cards:

I'll be using the Rider-Waite deck because I've been reading tarot for a bit more than a year, and the imagery really helps me connect to the energy of the cards.

New Moon in Capricorn question 1: What is being cleared away with this New Moon?

Five of Cups Reversed: I was heavily emotionally invested with my previous career goal of getting a position as an airline pilot. That hasn't happened, and I'm coming to terms with the possibility of this dream never coming to manifest. However, as in the picture of this card, there are still two cups standing up. Which means I need to be thankful for what I have. During my time in aviation, I traveled the world and my home country, which has always been my dream. Also, even though I don't have a job, I am a pilot. I have finished all my training, and I've got my license. And that's a fantastic accomplishment too.

New Moon in Capricorn question 2: What past events should I remember as I set my intentions?

The Star Reversed: I should remember that our dreams can manifest in ways that we could not imagine. That doesn't mean, however, they didn't come to fruition. That's because the language of the feelings translates in unpredictable ways on the material world. When you set an intention, please pay attention to that dream's emotional aspect rather than its rationale. In the card, feelings are represented as the water, and the grass represents the material world and its fruition. The woman is mother earth caring for our desires, dreams, and intentions. When you previously set your intention of becoming a pilot, the rationale was I need a pilot job. But on the emotional level, you wanted to travel the world while leaving the boring corporate world. And you've got just that as a flight attendant. You did it.

New Moon in Capricorn question 3: What hurdles will I have to climb to reach my goals?

The Empress: I've asked this same question a few times before, in different contexts. And the card I would get was always The Emperor. Meaning I needed to concentrate on becoming more confident, mature, and own my shit. Now, curiously I've got The Empress. I suppose this card indicates that once I conquered others' respect, and now that I am more confident, it's time to nurture others and give back to society. Sometimes, I think that many of my insecurities come from being too self-conscious and selfish. I am afraid of what others will think of me, and I let that fear blur my actions. Now, it's time to concentrate on the good you can bring to the world. And not to yourself only. Selflessness is courage. And when you combine The Emperor and The Empress Cards, you get a complete leader and inspiring person. Both internally and externally.

New Moon in Capricorn question 4: What new structures am I building in my life?

Six of Wands Reversed: I have just started a new business during 2020's pandemic. At first, I was trying to be an online tarot reader. Believe it or not, I was a bit embarrassed by other people knowing I was into tarot. So I started my business anonymously and exclusively in the English language. My thought was that if I didn't speak Portuguese, none in my inner Brazilian social circle would notice my online activities by any chance. (That's the same idea with this blog here on Tumblr).

Later, I realized that there was too much competition in the tarot reading market, and inspired by Biddy Tarot, I decided to offer my services to other tarot readers. Why? Well, if there are too many tarot readers out there for you to compete, it means they are a consumer market in themselves. So I thought I should change my business and care for the needs of other tarot readers. I won't reveal at this moment what my services are. But I can say it's very fulfilling, as I am working with tarot, as I wanted, though not reading for others specifically.

Now, what does it all have to do with the Six of Wands Reversed card? Remember when I said I was embarrassed about being a tarot reader? Now that my business is doing well, I am slowly trying to be more proud of it. I told most of my friends and family. And, well, nobody judged me as I thought they would. At least not on my face. My biggest fear was that others would think I am a charlatan and delusional about metaphysical matters. Like, I thought they would think tarot was bullshit, and I was silly to think that works in any way.

And I think the reversed position of this card is representative of just that. Six of Wands is a card about recognition, praise, status, admiration, and so on. The reversed position may indicate self-consciousness, shyness, and shame. And when it comes to building new structures, I think I need to choose what basis I want to lift my business on. Be proud of what you're doing. Be proud of your feminine spirituality. Tarot is cool- It's not a charlatan thing. You are not a fraud. Perhaps I have that impostor syndrome, idk. But hey! You gotta wake up. Whatever foundation you are building your business, it must be a solid one. And there's no space for insecurities there.

Now, go get it.

#journaling #tarot #new moon spreads #art #books & libraries #my life #anonymous #tarot witch #tarot journal #tarotart #tarotreading

3 notes · View notes

hobi-gang · 4 years

Text

community | knj/ot7

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 – an unlikely group of people at a Greendale Community College form an unlikely Spanish study group. One thing Kim Namjoon wants to know about the standoffish girl from Spanish class is; "What's her deal?".

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞 – pure crack, humor, community college au, angst if you squint, they’re all 100% stupid

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 – knj x reader

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 – 9.5k

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 – mentions of aspergers, mentions of past drug abuse, namjoon is a bit of a dick oops, smoking (cigarettes)

𝐚/𝐧 – this is like... a straight up copy of the pilot to the tv show ‘community’, but i desperately wanted to see bts in that hilarious enivornment. i do not own the show ‘community’ nor do i own bts. this is just straight up crack. mcthank you.

"What is 'community college'?" A voice blared through the speakers around the quad, causing many students to pause and look at Dean Bang on his small podium with his microphone at the center of the busy square, the stupidly bright sun shining a light on him and all his khaki and white button-up glory. "Oh, wait, that's... That's the wrong card, let me start over."

After an awkward moment had passed and Dean Bang had properly sorted his notes, he spoke up into the microphone again, "Okay, good morning! Many of you are halfway through your first week here at Greendale Community College and as your dean, I thought I'd share some thoughts of wisdom and inspiration," he smiles then continues, "What is 'community college'? I know most of you have heard that it's loser college for remedial teens."

At the mention of remedial teens, Jeon Jungkook, a young boy with dark brown hair and jock attire, stopped scanning the campus map for his English class and looked around himself to find the source of the voice behind the speakers, tugging on his Letterman jacket nervously.

"They say it's for 20-something dropouts."

____ looked up from her Spanish study book and her eyes fell on the Dean and his pathetically small podium, rolling her eyes at him and feeling somewhat attacked and embarrassed by his accurate but harmful words.

"Or middle-aged divorcees."

Kim Seokjin, a tall and straight-back young man with kind eyes, plump lips, and short brown hair stops reading the pamphlet in his hand given to him by a member of the Chess Club that passed him by, looking around to find who's voice was blaring from the quad speakers. I'm not middle-aged... am I? he asked himself thoughtfully.

"And old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity."

Min Yoongi's ears perked up at the mention of that, sitting up on the bench that he was slowly falling asleep on. His light violet hair making him stand out, he pulled his hoodie over his head so only his face was visible through the opening, scowling at the words 'old people', being reminded of how often he gets called a grandpa by his classmates for his somewhat lazy demeanor. I'm not middle-aged... am I? he asked himself thoughtfully.

"That's what you've heard, however," the Dean grins excitedly, "I wish you luck!" He thrusts his arm into the air in a victory pose.

He looks around at the small number of students that had bothered to stay in the quad in front of his small podium, looking at them expectantly before realizing and looking at his cue cards, "Oh, okay. Uh-oh. There's actually more to this speech. Can you all look around your immediate areas," He asks the students awkwardly, "There's a middle card missing, I actually really wanted to finish that properly-"

"I'm actually fully Korean, the son of immigrants. My parents are U.S citizens now, but they're not threats to national security. A lot of people wanna know that because my dad has an angry energy but he's not angry at America, he's just angry at my mom for leaving him. Although she did leave him because he was angry and he was angry because she wasn't. My name's Taehyung by the way."

"Well, Taehyung," Namjoon says wearily, glancing next to him at the younger, slightly shorter boy with ridiculously bright blue hair and a boxy smile following him like an eager puppy around the quad, he shakes his hand, "It was nice to know you and then meet you, in that order," he says to him with raised brows, "Now, about that question that I asked?"

"Oh, it was," Taehyung checks his watch, "11:05 when you asked-"

"Taehyung," Namjoon says abruptly, raising his hand to stop the younger boy from walking beside him, nodding towards the young girl across the quad with her face stuffed in a book. "What's the deal with the hot girl from Spanish class?"

"I only talked to her once when she borrowed a pencil," Taehyung says monotonously which makes Namjoon deflate a bit but he is quickly impressed by what the younger boy says next.

"But her name's ____, she's 23, birthday in September. She has two older sisters and one of them teaches a dance class that I might wanna lookup. Oh, and she thinks she's gonna fail tomorrow's Spanish test so she really needs to focus and she's sorry if that makes her seem cold," Taehyung finishes his gesturing and his confident spewing of words, looking up at the older, pink-haired boy with no indication of emotion.

Namjoon's mouth hangs agape for a moment, "Holy crap, Taehyung," he says in awe, "I see your value now." He pats Taehyung on the shoulder and gives him a meaningful look before he turns to walk into the school, leaving the younger boy behind.

"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me!" Taehyung shouts to his older classmate as he's walking away, his finger pointed in the air as if for exclamation.

"Kim Namjoon, genius at law!"

"You gotta stop saying that, Lee Hyun... I'm kidding, keep going," Namjoon grins widely, closing the door behind him and stepping forward into his former client's cramped office to shake his hand across his wide, messy desk littered with papers and tools of all sorts.

"So," Hyun leans his arms atop the slew of papers on his desk and tilts his head slightly to look up at his much taller friend, "Tell me. What is my lawyer doing here?"

"Actually, I'm... a student now," Namjoon says with a timid smile, taking a seat on the couch of Hyun's office.

Hyun raises his eyebrows in surprise, "Well, that can't be an inspiring story."

"I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm in a bit of a kerfuffle... The state bar has suspended my license and they found out that my college degree was... less than legitimate." Namjoon confesses with as much confidence as he could muster, finding it difficult to spill the beans to his former client turned friend.

"I thought you had a degree from Columbia?" Hyun questions him, brows knit in confusion.

"Now I have to get one from America," Namjoon chuckles then sighs longingly, "And it can't be an email attachment."

"Well, you've picked a fine school," Hyun smiles, leaning back in his office chair with his arms crossed behind his head.

Namjoon snaps his fingers and agrees, "Yes! And I'm hoping that our friendship will yield certain advantages. You're the psychology professor, y'know, so I could really do with some academic guidance, maybe some moral support and... every answer to every test for every one of the classes that I'm taking this semester," Namjoon pulls a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his sport's jacket. "This is my schedule-" "Okay, Namjoon, just by asking that you are insulting the very integrity of this entire institution," Hyun chastises his friend, abruptly standing up which mildly alarms Namjoon but he is surprised to see Hyun grabbing a cane next to his desk and knocking on the window behind him. Through the open blinds and dirty windows, Namjoon can see the shape of a person that appeared to be urinating on a garbage skip. "Oi! Not a bathroom. Not. A. Bathroom." Hyun shouts out the window and then he scowls when the assailant quickly tucks their business away and runs off.

Namjoon exhaled noisily through his nose, "Hyun, you seemed less into integrity the day I convinced a dozen of your peers that when you made that U-turn on the freeway and tried to order hot wings from the emergency call box that your only real crime was loving America." He said with the hope that Hyun was finally going to turn over for him and help him cheat his way through college.

A moment passed and Hyun sighed, "I'll look into it."

"Thank you," Namjoon immediately took to his feet and reached over his friend's desk to shake his hand one last time. "Hyun, you are a good man." he smiled, going to the door.

Hyun rolled his eyes, "Namjoon, are you familiar with the adage 'cheaters never prosper'?"

The taller of the two scoffed and opened the door, "No, and if I wanted to learn something, I wouldn't have come to community college."

Hyun sighed and gave his friend a concerned look before waving him out of his office.

Namjoon found himself wandering the maze-like corridors of the school and ultimately ended up in the cafeteria. After purchasing a bottle of water and a suspiciously cheap packet of apple slices, Namjoon was lucky to spot a familiar head of soft brown hair. Walking over quietly, he steps closer to the girl from his Spanish class and spoke to her with an expression of surprise, "Oh, hey, Spanish?"

"Don't hit on me, okay?" the brown-haired girl answered with an annoyed tone, too engrossed in her work to even look up at the person speaking to her.

"I... wouldn't dream of it," he saved face, chuckling nervously. "I just wanted to let you know about... my Spanish study group!"

At the mention of a Spanish study group, she finally looked up and couldn't hold back the snicker bubbling inside of her at the prospect of who was standing right in front of her. Though his ego was a little hurt, he put on his charming smile paired with his signature dimples, almost as if he were modeling for her.

"Woah, the guy sitting in the back of class playing on his phone all day has a Spanish study group?" she gasps with faux excitement, raising a brow of suspicion at him. "Can I sign up twice?"

"Ha-ha," he precedes, "I'm taking the class for an easy credit, I'm actually a board-certified Spanish tutor," he says in a matter of factly manner to sound as convincing as possible.

"Can you say that in Spanish?" the brunette girl quickly responded.

Namjoon was stumped for a second but said the first few Spanish sentences that first came to his head. "Duermo tarde español, una hora más, no rasque mi coche," he said as smoothly as possible with a smirk. He didn't know it, but what he actually said was "I sleep late Spanish, one more hour, do not scratch my car," and he was praying that she didn't know either.

The look she was giving him was making him nervous, it was as if she knew he was lying and he was just about to tell her that he was lying until she slammed her book shut and leaned closer to him with wide, desperate eyes. "I really need help with Spanish," she confessed in a low voice.

"Yeah, I was willing to bet," Namjoon chuckled, extending his hand to her as a sign of goodwill. "I'm Namjoon by the way, or... Jefe," he smiled as she took his larger hand in her much smaller one. The comparison alone made his heart just a little bit more tender.

"The, uh, group meets in the library at four."

"I'm ____, and thanks." She smiles up at him, letting go of their handshake. She gathers her things and shoves them into her well-used canvas side bag and she stood up to leave.

"You're gonna be there, right?" he asks her and she just smirks at him one last time before turning her back on him and walking away.

"Un poquito más!" he shouted after her. "That means 'see you there'!"

Nope. It really meant 'a little more', but he could care less as long as she believed that he was right.

Namjoon sat alone at an eight-seater table in one of the library's study rooms, repeating the phrase for 'good afternoon' to himself in solitary, the library's population lowering as the minutes went by.

"Buenos tardes, buenos tardes, buenos tardes..." he repeated under his breath while tapping his pencil against the table, making sure he was right. With such a simple phrase, he couldn't get it wrong otherwise the hot girl from Spanish class would finally figure him out and he just can't let that happen.

"Hey," she enters the study room with a cheeky grin, her heavy bag slapping against her hip as she walked.

"Buenos tardes!" he says to her with pride, immediately straightening his posture and giving himself an internal high-five for getting it right, "Welcome to my Spanish study... uh, group. I've got the whole table."

"You've got the whole room," she adds with raised brows, taking the seat closest to him.

Namjoon digs around in his pocket for a piece of paper and he brings forth a crumpled chess club pamphlet that he remembers getting from the quad earlier that day. He flattens out the paper as best as he can before thrusting it towards her on the table along with his pencil. "Here's the, uh, contact sheet. Just put your number down there," he asks her and she snickers before accepting his pencil and jotting down her number.

Namjoon pretends to look around the room and out the doors to the rest of the library with exasperation, "Man, where's the rest of the group? They must be running late... But you and I can get acquainted in the meantime."

She finishes her jotting and puts the pencil on top of the paper before pushing it back towards Namjoon, "You might have noticed earlier in the cafeteria, I'm not that great at small talk."

"That's actually kinda great, I like big talk. What's your deal?" he smirks, leaning an elbow onto the table and raising his brows at her.

"That's not small talk?" she tilts her head to the side with a tight smile.

"What's your deal and is God dead?" he quickly adds to his previous question to make it fit her requirements.

She inwardly scoffs and lays her hands flat onto the table, "Okay, you wanna know my deal?" she asks him and he nods in response, "My deal is, above all else, honesty."

"Honesty..." Namjoon repeats, biting his cheek nervously.

"Yeah, if you're honest with me, I will like you. If you lie to me, I will never talk to you again. That's my deal."

With it all laid out in front of him, he felt compelled to tell her the truth. Sure, he may have lied to her before but he won't just lie to her now that she had just asked the truth of him so... He'd give her the truth. Well, an incomplete truth. It wasn't entirely lying but it wasn't entirely telling the truth either. It was a gray area, and as much as he liked this girl in front of him, he also liked having a smidge of integrity.

From the first day, he saw her in Spanish class and his attention was mostly on her throughout the entirety of each lesson. He'd look above the screen of his phone to watch her soft brown shoulder-length hair moving against her slender neck, he'd observe how her back was always straight and her shoulders were always pulled back. He also observed her unique and incredible fashion. He liked the bold, solid-colored sweaters and t-shirts and her high-waisted, wide-leg pants paired with stylish shoes of all kinds, all of it just made her hard to ignore, though she always carried the same, tattered canvas bag. Her sense of style clearly indicated that she preferred comfort over the other hundred pleasantries that women's fashion often offered, such as heels and skinny jeans. He liked that about her.

Today, her bright orange shirt and beige high-waisted, wide-leg pants only managed to highlight her feminine features more, making his focus and his breathing stray by just the smallest bit. The smallest. He didn't want to admit just how breathtaking she was, and she tended to take his breath away a lot without even trying and that's what was driving him to do whatever it took to keep her there in that study room with him, within reason of course.

"That's a pretty good deal," he told her honestly, irony aside.

"So," she crossed her arms over her chest, "what's your deal?"

"My deal?" Namjoon repeated, and she nodded in return.

The incomplete truth.

"I..." he looked at her and gulped, "I would, um, I would have to say... Uh, honesty. Because... I, uh, would say anything to get what I want and I-I want you to... To like me," for the first time since he had known her, and that hasn't exactly been a long time, he looked away in embarrassment and didn't look back up at her until she spoke up.

With a reluctant hmph, she says "That was a very honest answer. Okay, I like you now." And that makes his eyes widen in surprise.

"Really? Wow, you're easy," he says with disbelief, his heart slowing down just an ebb.

"Hey, guys!" someone spoke up behind Namjoon, making him turn in his chair to see that familiar head of bright blue.

The young brunette squealed with joy, "Taehyung in the house! Woo, yeah!" waving the blue-haired boy over excitedly.

"Woo!" Namjoon unenthusiastically whoops, brows knit in confusion watching as the boy grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and bringing it over to the table. "Woo! Woo-why?" he laughs confusedly.

Taehyung places his chair in the middle of both of their chairs, seating himself between the brunette girl and Namjoon. "Oh, ____ invited me! Is that cool?" he smiled, looking at the older boy with an oblivious smile.

"I can't think of a single logical reason why not!" Namjoon says through gritted teeth, a faux smile gracing his features. His eyes fall on the sheet of paper on the table, he immediately thrusts it towards the blue-haired boy, urging him to put his information on the paper.

"Cool... Cool, cool, cool," Taehyung murmured to himself as he slowly wrote his number down onto the paper. "This is kind of like Breakfast Club, huh?" Taehyung quips randomly.

"We are in a library," the brunette girl points out, patting Taehyung on the knee. Namjoon spotted that gesture out of the corner of his eye and felt the jealousy growing in his chest. Jealousy aside, he looks at Taehyung's number on the paper and he pulls his phone out, drafting a text to send to the blue-haired boy seated between him and the girl of his dreams.

"Yeah, I'm sure we've all got an issue balled up deep inside us that would make us cry if we talked about it," Taehyung says to his peers nonchalantly, but the worry etched on the brunette girl's features were all too serious.

She places a hand on his forearm and earnestly asks him, "Do you have something balled up inside of you?"

Taehyung looks up to the ceiling as if in thought and he responds, "Well, I do have a little doozy in the chamber if thing's get a little emotional."

Suddenly, Taehyung's phone pings and Namjoon puts his phone away, looking at the blue-haired boy expectantly, watching as the boy brings his phone out from his pocket and his eyebrows are raised in surprise, "Ooh, it's a text message! Let's give this bad boy a read," he says cheerily.

Namjoon panics, realizing that if he reads the text aloud, then the brunette girl sitting across from him would find out that it was him. "Oh, Taehyung," Namjoon says nervously, "I think it might be private."

"I've never gotten one of these before," Taehyung continues, ignoring the older boy's urgencies. Namjoon would've felt a little bit of pity in his chest at the sound of how sad that sentence actually was if it weren't for the fact that he was very close to being exposed.

"Say you have to pee, I need to talk to you." The blue-haired boy reads aloud with a confused tone. "Say you have to pee," he repeats, holding his phone screen towards the brunette girl so she could read it and she looked just as confused as he did. Her confusion quickly turned to suspicion, looking at the two boys sitting next to her.

"That is weird," she commented. "What does that even mean?" Taehyung questions both of them and Namjoon quickly shrugged.

"I don't know man, that sounds strange. Do you even have to pee?" Namjoon asks and Taehyung shakes his head 'no'.

"Hmm," Namjoon murmurs, "I'm stumped, that sounds very creepy."

"That makes two of us," Taehyung concurs with a shrug. In the corner of his eye, Namjoon can see the brunette girl eyeing him and he knows that she knows that it was him.

Namjoon's phone chimes and he looks to make sure that it wasn't Taehyung messaging him back and further making him fall into a pit of mortification. He reads the text that was sent to him and realizes it's Lee Hyun, his former client and now his possible conspirator and hero.

'con-4-s-8-tion on football field now!!! - Hyun"

"What's that?" The brunette girl asks him and he is brought out of his bubble.

"Does it say 'you have to pee'?" Taehyung asks.

"Oh, no, it's just someone with an impossibly bad grasp on abbreviations. I've gotta step out for a bit," he says, getting out of his chair and shoving his phone into his pocket, "I'll be back in like five minutes but, uh, go ahead and start studying verbs... In, uh, Spanish," he concludes, waving to his peers before stepping out of the study room.

Once he's out of ear-shot, the brunette girl smiles and nudges Taehyung on the knee, "What's your read on that guy, Taehyung?"

Taehyung looks at her and tilts his head to the side, appearing as though he were analyzing her.

"You look like my interpretation of God," he says randomly, making her raise a brow in confusion.

"Ethnically ambiguous," he adds, and she forms an 'o' with her mouth and nods at his words.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the school, Namjoon's light jogging has turned into a brisk walk as he finally spots his friend standing at the edge of the school's football field, the football team on the field practicing on a variety of equipment in the heat.

"Suppose I say to you 'it's possible to get those test answers'?" Hyun says aloud once he realizes Namjoon is next to him.

"I would say 'go with that' and 'you could've put that in a text'," Namjoon responds frustratedly. "I'm asking you if you know the difference between right and wrong," Hyun eggs on.

"I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I can make anything right and wrong. So, either I'm God or truth is relative. In either case, booyah."

"Oh, interesting! It's just that the average person finds it difficult to say 'booyah' to moral relativism."

"Hyun, you don't have to play the shrink to protect your pride. I accept. You're chicken," Namjoon smirks at his friend, expecting a reaction that came faster than he anticipated.

"I'm a professor, you can't talk to me that way!" Hyun huffs loudly.

"A six-year-old girl could talk to you that way!" Namjoon retorts with a scoff, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Yeah, because that would be adorable!" Hyun thrusts his arms into the air in exclamation.

"No, because you're a five-year-old girl and there's a pecking order!" Namjoon bites back.

"Fine, I'll do it!" Hyun argues back with his hands flapping about.

"Thank you," Namjoon smiles, patting Hyun on the shoulder before walking away and leaving Hyun to stand in the field by himself with a look of shock etched into his face.

Namjoon found himself getting closer to the entrance of the library study room and began reciting his prepared excuse aloud from memory, "You guys aren't going to believe this but the rest of the study group-"

The words were snatched right out of his mouth when he finally came to the doorway and found that all but 2 seats were full. 2 empty seats remaining for him and... for the brunette girl from Spanish class.

"Is here..." Namjoon finishes under his breath, looking at each of the new faces in the room, except they weren't very new. He recognized them from somewhere, he just couldn't pinpoint where.

"Are you the 'board-certified' tutor?" One of the new faces asked, his light violet hair peeking out from beneath his hoodie and both hands tucked into his pocket, a bored expression on his face.

"That means you'll do my homework, right?" A rather young boy with a letterman jacket spoke arrogantly, a cheeky grin on his face and his hand already extending out towards Namjoon, a thin stack of papers gripped between his fingers.

"I'll need to call my babysitter if we're gonna be staying later than 10," Another young man spoke up from the table, his proper attitude shining with his posture and articulate words, his plump lips pulled into a gentle smile.

"What board certifies a tutor?" A rather small and slender boy speaks up from the side of the table, his eyes examining Namjoon beneath his clementine bangs with a speculative gaze, both arms crossed over his chest tightly.

"Aren't you the guy that plays games on their phone in the back of the class?" A giddy boy chirps from the other side of the table, his round cheeks and light brown, gleaming eyes drawing his attention.

Namjoon raised his brows at the group of rather attractive young men gathered at the table. His gaze falls on Taehyung's bright blue head. "Where's ____?"

"Not sure, but I invited more people from Spanish class. Is that cool?" Taehyung says. Ah, so that's where he can recognize them from.

"That's the... coolest," Namjoon manages to squeeze out from between his teeth with as enthusiastic a tone as possible, trying his best to hide his frustration. Taehyung gives the older man a thumbs up and a smile. "I'm gonna go to the bathroom," Namjoon begins to say, collecting his things that he had left on the table previously, "and I'm gonna bring my jacket, wallet and my keys with me... In case there's a fire."

Namjoon tucks his items in his arms and leaves the study room.

Exiting the library, Namjoon bumped into someone and almost chastised them until he realized who it is.

"Busted," she says with a smirk, making Namjoon's heart pound in his chest. "Uh, listen-"

"Now you know. I'm a smoker," she says shamefully, lifting a lit cigarette into view and putting it back down to her side so the smoke doesn't get in their way.

"Yeah, but... They're filtered so that makes them safe," his chest rumbles with a chuckle, making her smile after she had made quite the admission.

"You ready to get started? Looks like the rest of your group showed up," she asks him, teasing him with a gentle bump of her shoe on his shin.

Namjoon hisses in faux pain and laughs, "Yeah, that's not my group. I think maybe Taehyung took out an ad on Craigslist," he says with uncertainty, "and I was trained never to say this but... I think that group may be untutorable."

"Oh really?" she says in a sing-song fashion, only egging him on.

"So, why don't you and I study verbs over-"

"Dinner?" she says in an attempt to finish his sentence.

"Or, uh, drinks..." he shrugs carelessly.

"I think we should actually prioritize here and study first and then go to dinner," she offers, "And if they really prove to be untutorable, we'll slip out early."

Discarding her finished cigarette butt to the ground and stomping out the heat with her chunky sole, she slipped into the library and the look she gave him before slinking away behind the closing door made Namjoon bite his cheek to contain his excitement. "Oh they'll be untutorable, alright," he says to himself, his minding already running with ideas on how to make or ruin the fastest study session in history.

Namjoon wanders into the study room and finds everyone in their seats, looking up at him with anticipation. He finds himself at the head of the table and he musters up the energy to try and turn this night into a disaster or into the fastest study session anyone has ever seen.

"All right," he begins with a tight smile, "Look at this group, ready to study all night."

"Well, I can stay at least till ten," The proper young man says amongst the quiet murmurs coming from around the table.

"But," Namjoon interjects, "Who studies with strangers, right? My name is Namjoon."

"Namjoon, it's a pleasure. My name is Min Yoongi," the man at the end of the table stands up to reach over the table at an attempt to shake Namjoon's hand, "And yes that is Min as in Min's Mics," Yoongi stops his reach for the handshake, making Namjoon awkwardly slink back into his chair, "The award-winning microphone production company."

"I was just about to ask..." Namjoon bumped his eyebrows up in annoyance.

"I'm also a toastmaster, so perhaps I should do the introductions!" Yoongi insists with a lazy grin.

"Definitely!" Namjoon encourages, already sensing that Yoongi's loose and unbothered energy was bound to mess things up in the room.

Yoongi claps his hands again and immediately gestures to the brunette sitting beside Namjoon, "You already know ____,"

The brunette girl immediately corrects him and Namjoon can't help but snicker at the incredibly fast screw-up.

"Hockey sock," Yoongi points toward the boy sitting to Namjoon's right side.

"It's Hoseok," the brown-haired boy spoke up, pausing his sketching to correct the man at the other end of the table with an amused look.

"Tater tot."

"My name is Taehyung," the blue-haired boy chided.

"Junk food."

The boy sitting beside Yoongi gave him a look of confusion, "I literally just told you my name like four minutes ago, dude, it's Jungkook."

Yoongi then gestures to the orange-haired person on the other side of the table, "That's Prince Jam."

"Jimin," the young boy narrowed his eyes at the self-proclaimed toastmaster.

"And finally, this is Seokjin," Yoongi smiled gently, staring for just a second too long at the man sitting right next to him.

"Is that even close?" Namjoon asks the supposed 'Seokjin', and he receives a timid nod in return, the young man squirming uncomfortably under Yoongi's continued gaze.

"Can you teach us how to say curse words in Spanish?" Hoseok asks, tapping his pencil against the table. "Unfortunately, no," Namjoon answers with a sigh.

"How do I become board-certified? And I actually agree with Jimin, what board certifies a tutor?" Hoseok persists, Jimin agreeing with his questions with a curt nod.

"That's actually a really great question. Next?" Namjoon smiles innocently, turning his attention elsewhere to avoid any more questions about his faux tutoring origins.

"Yeah, well, I'd like to know why I had to find out about this group on accident," Jimin sits up, raising his chin in a show of confidence.

Taehyung's brows are knit in anticipation, "Oh this is getting way more like Breakfast Club now."

"There's breakfast?" Yoongi asks confusedly.

"Okay, um, maybe we should-" the brunette girl began to speak up in an attempt to break the tension.

"You know," Namjoon interrupts her and he receives a glare in return, "I've been a part of a lot of study groups that fell apart because of unresolved tension. Shouldn't we address Jimin's concern? Did we not invite him?"

"Oh, Jimin, honey, it's not behind your back. We just didn't want to-" Seokjin tries to comfort the younger boy sitting next to him but is immediately interrupted. The brunette girl was starting to notice that interrupting each other was becoming a trend, and she didn't like it at all.

"Can we stop with the 'honeys' and the 'sweeties'? Being younger does not make me inferior, if anything, your age indicates that you made bad life decisions!" Jimin responds sharply, almost shaking with equal amounts of nervousness and irritation.

Seokjin inhales quickly and starts shaking his head, making noises of disagreement, as though he were trying to hold back the hurtful words that wanted to slip off his tongue by instinct.

"Seokjin has a reply to that," Namjoon says, making the brunette girl's head snap in his direction, utterly confused as to why he would try to stoke the flames of this argument.

Everyone around the table except for the brunette girl murmurs their agreements, seeing Seokjin narrow his eyes at the smaller, younger boy sitting beside him. "Okay, okay. I'm sure... I've made s-some bad life decisions, I am a single, divorced father of two after all but maybe Jimin's life decisions will be better! But I think he needs to decide whether he wants to be considered a child or an adult because children get pity but not respect, and adults, they get respect! They also get the back of their heads grabbed and their faces pushed through jukeboxes!" Seokjin quickly says at the end of his sentence, his eyes wide, fierce and full of unsubtle rage.

"Why don't we try learning 'jukebox" in Spanish?' The brunette girl speaks up, trying to divert everyone's attention but it doesn't appear to work.

"What are you doing? Are you seriously falling asleep right now?" Seokjin says aloud, everyone's eyes falling upon the purple-haired Yoongi at the end of the table, who is dozing off on the spot.

Jungkook snorts, "Really, grandpa?" he says jokingly to his older classmate, Hoseok unable to hold in his laughter at the teasing going on in front of him.

"Hey. I am a prominent business leader and a highly sought-after dinner guest and I will not be made fun of by some- some teenage boy," Yoongi responds with a sloppy snarl.

"Well, this teenage boy is a quarterback and a prom king," Jungkook retorts, adding a flourish to his argument with a tug of his collar.

Jimin scoffs amusedly, "You're not prom king anymore, Jungkook. This isn't Riverside High."

"How'd you know I went there?" Jungkook asks Jimin with a confused expression.

The orange-haired boy's smile falters from his face but he straightens his back nonetheless, "Because you're still wearing your stupid letter jacket, and more importantly... I sat behind you in Algebra!" Jimin scans Jungkook's face for any sign of realization and he feels a bit better once he sees it flash across Jungkook's features, but his stomach drops with what he hears next.

"Wait, aren't you the guy that got hooked on pills and dropped out? You're little Jammy Jimin," Jungkook laughs, clapping his hands and doubling over.

Jimin gasps, "Oh yeah? And you're a stupid jock who lost his scholarship by dislocating both shoulders in a keg stand!"

"Keg flip! They are very hard to pull off! No-" Jungkook corrects him, then everyone erupts into overlapping arguments. As everyone begins shouting at each other, the brunette girl's face is that of a witness to absolute horror, especially once she sees Namjoon looking at all the drama unfold with an amused look. Suddenly, Taehyung slams his hand down on the table, garnering everyone's attention and effectively shutting them up.

"You know what I got for Christmas? It was a banner year at the Bender family. I got a carton of cigarettes. The old man grabbed me. He said, 'Hey, smoke up, Johnny.'," Taehyung says animatedly, "No, dad! What about you?" he ends with one last shout, leaning back in his chair, the satisfied smile on his face indicating that he had completed his bit.

"Well, that actually was from Breakfast Club," Namjoon points out and everyone finally understands what Taehyung was talking about, their mouths forming 'o's.

"Nobody puts Baby in the corner," Taehyung murmurs again. "Dirty Dancing," Namjoon responds and he receives a smile and an excited 'yeah' from the blue-haired boy in return.

In the midst of everyone looking at each other with confused expressions, Namjooon's phone buzzes once again and sees that someone is trying to call him.

Namjoon answers his phone and is greeted by Hyun talking in a deep, unusually gravelly voice. "It's Professor Lee Hyun, come to the parking lot now."

"What's wrong with your voice?" Namjoon scrunches his nose at the unpleasant sound coming through the receiver. "I'm... disguising it." Namjoon was about to smugly inform his friend that there was no point in trying to disguise his voice if he was going to tell him his name in the first place, but Hyun hung up on him before he had the chance.

Tucking his phone back into his pocket, he announces to the group that he is leaving for a bit, "but while I'm gone, you guys need to hash this stuff out. No stone unturned... Go!" he declares, quickly escaping once more. Before he even laid a step outside the study room, he could already hear the sounds of their bickering - a sign of their very close and very eventual turmoil and his very inevitable date with the hot brunette from Spanish class.

As soon as Namjoon stepped outside the school gates, he spotted Lee Hyun in a comically small blue smart car right in the front of the school. After managing to squeeze his gangly limbs into the passenger seat, he slammed the car door shut and reached out for the large and thick manila folder that was resting in his much smaller friend's hands.

"Every answer to every test in your curriculum this semester," Lee Hyun said proudly. "I knew you could do it, buddy. Thank you," Namjoon sighed thankfully but Hyun was snatching the folder away before he managed to grab a hold of it. "Woah there, cowboy. What do I get out of all this?"

"Uh, the satisfaction of being even?" Namjoon says as if it's the most obvious thing that there was. "Even, fairness, right, wrong, there is no God, booyah, booyah," Hyun listed off in an annoying tone that made Namjoon cringe.

"What do you want from me?" Namjoon asked reluctantly.

"Your Lexus."

"My car? For a semester's worth of answers?" Namjoon scoffed in disbelief.

"Will it be just a semester though, Namjoon? Won't you be taking the easy way out for the next four years? I want payment in advance. I want leather seats with built-in butt warmers," Hyun grinned mischievously.

"What am I supposed to drive?" Namjoon asks through gritted teeth, "You should take this car! It's good for the earth," Hyun smiled at him.

"So is wiping your butt with a leaf but it's not how a man gets around!" Namjoon shouted in frustration. Hyun visibly deflated, shoulders slumped and manila folder waiting patiently for the taking from the palm of his hand. Namjoon eyed the folder in his friend's hand and weighed the options in his head. With a groan, Namjoon snatched the folder out of his hand and hopped out of the impossibly cramped blue smart car as quickly as possible.

____ spots Namjoon weaving through the library entrance and she darts out of the study room to leave the arguing mess of a study group to confront its creator. "It is a disaster in there!"

"Yeah, untutorable. Do you like Thai food? I love Thai food."

"Wait, so... This is a game to you?" the young brunette girl asked with arms crossed over her chest and resting her weight on her right leg. "You put a group of human beings into a state of emotional shambles just for a shot at getting in my pants?"

"Why can't you see that for the compliment that it is?" Namjoon stressed.

"Unbelievable," she sneered, clenching her fists against her chest in anger. Namjoon didn't mean to look at her chest at that time, it was just where her hands were and the sight of them clenching and unclenching somehow made his heart race. It wasn't fear or disbelief, but he couldn't quite pinpoint what the emotion was. As he noticed that her brown eyes were intensely watching him, he quickly averted his gaze and pretended to submit to her to see what she wanted and if he felt like he was bothered enough to keep jumping through these high hoops for her.

"What do you want me to do?" he asks her, tilting his head to look down at her. "Oh, maybe one decent thing you can do is go in there and clean up your mess," she tells him, looking at him expectantly.

Namjoon pursed his lips and looked into the "Okay, if I do that, then dinner... Right?" he questions her with a perked brow.

The young brunette's mouth hung agape in disbelief and she laughed quietly, her eyes unable to leave the sight of the unbelievable man she'd ever seen. As selfish and egotistical as he was, there was an underlying part of her that felt flattered by his drive and want for her. It was a very small part and the group's needs very clearly trumped that.

"Yeah, fine, whatever," she said with a shrug, stepping back into the study room. "As if there's a dinner on earth that can make me forget that you are a shallow douchebag."

Watching her walk away was something he had the pleasure of doing a handful of times already, and each time felt better than the last but this time, he couldn't quite find the appeal when she was very clearly mad at him. "Oh, you are gonna eat those words when you see my new car!" His face falls when he remembers the trade he had just made with the psychology professor just moments ago.

"Alright, everybody!" Namjoon shouted above everyone else, slamming his Spanish textbook onto the table, everyone's attention now on him. "I wanna say something. Everybody, sit down." "You don't have to yell," Seokjin muttered under his breath, situating himself back into his chair, the others following suit.

"You know what makes humans different from other animals?" Namjoon asks rhetorically, but Jungkook immediately answers, "Feet."

"No, no. Come on, beers have feet," Yoongi said smugly but by the look on Seokjin and Jimin's faces, it was clear he was wrong.

Namjoon quickly put them back on topic, "We are the only species on earth that observes 'Shark Week'. Sharks don't even observe 'Shark Week' but we do, for the same reason I can pick up this pencil, tell you it's name is Steve and go like this," Namjoon picks up his pencil from the table and snaps it in half, earning a quiet chorus of gasps and pained groans.

"And part of you dies just a little bit on the inside because people can connect with anything. We can sympathize with pencils, we can forgive a shark and we can give Ben Affleck an Academy Award for screenwriting."

Yoongi cringes at the mention of Ben Affleck and Taehyung agrees with him, everyone at the table nodding their agreements.

"People can find the good in just about anything but themselves. Look at me, it's clear to all of you that I am awesome but I can never admit that because that would make me an ass but what I can do is see what makes Jimin awesome," everyone turns to look at Jimin who is fighting the rush of blood that is desperate to get to his cheeks and the pull of a smile against his lips, "Jimin is driven. We need driven people or the lights go out and the ice-cream melts," Namjoon says.

"And Yoongi. We need guys like Yoongi. This guy has wisdom to offer," Yoongi scrunches his nose. "Is this part of the grandpa joke? Come on-"

"We should listen to him sometime! We wouldn't regret it. And Seokjin," Namjoon gestures to Seokjin with a pointed finger, "Seokjin has earned our respect. Not as a husband, not as a father, but as a man. And don't test him on that because the thing about the jukebox was way too specific to be improvised," Seokjin's eyes widened a little bit at Namjoon's speculation but he gave no indication as to whether he thinks Namjoon had stumbled upon the truth or not.

"And Hoseok, the guy that keeps asking questions. We need intuitive people like that, we need people that keep asking questions otherwise people we will never find the answers, Hoseok is the answer," he points at Hoseok who is giving him a shy smile in return.

"And Jungkook. Who cares if Jungkook thinks he's all that? Maybe he is," Jungkook looked nervous from the moment Namjoon started giving his opinions on each of the group members but a small smile fell on his face after hearing the caring words that the older boy had for him.

"And Taehyung. Taehyung is a shaman. You ask him to pass the salt, he gives you a bowl of soup. Because you know what? Soup is better. Taehyung is better. You are all better than you think you are, you are just designed not to believe it when you hear it from yourself," Namjoon tells them, his gestures becoming wilder to continue to be engaging as his speech went on.

"Soup?" Yoongi says confusedly.

"Turn to the person next to you," Namjoon tells them. He watches as Jimin turns to Seokjin, Yoongi turns to Jungkook, Taehyung turns to Hoseok, as the young brunette girl turns to him and looks up at him with her wide, gleaming eyes.

"I want you to extend to the person the same compassion that you extend to sharks, pencils and Ben Affleck. I want you to say to that person 'I forgive you'."

He watches Jimin, Seokjin, Taehyung, and Hoseok express their forgiveness to each other, inwardly smiling to himself at the warming sight but his attention is piqued when he sees that Yoongi is being reluctant.

"I forgive you," Jungkook says to his partner earnestly. Yoongi rolls his eyes and calls him a little twerp. "Yoongi," Namjoon urges, "I'd like you to say 'I forgive you'."

Yoongi exhales slowly through his nose, his features tense as he quickly and quietly mumbles out an "I forgive you" to Jungkook who grins in return.

"You've just stopped being a study group, you have become something unstoppable. I hereby pronounce you a community," Namjoon proclaims proudly.

Seokjin awe's, "Oh, that's nice," he shares with a gentle smile, joining the rest of the people on the table in applauding Namjoon for his powerful speech.

"This isn't like Breakfast Club anymore, now it's like Stripes or Meatballs, anything with Bill Murray really," Taehyung adds with a pointed finger. "I agree with Taehyung here, tonight has been very special. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a dinner engagement with ____," Namjoon says, looking down at the brunette girl with a grin and an extended hand.

She looks up to him sweetly before saying, "I lied. Thanks for calming everyone down but since you're not a Spanish tutor, just a lying creep who purposely upset everyone in an attempt to get with me, I'd appreciate it if you left and stopped wasting all of our time."

Namjoon quickly digested his shock and muttered out, "Fine, and I'm happy to report that one of the benefits of being a lying creep is having all the answers to tomorrow's test," he gestures to the thick manila folder on the table in front of him. "And I'm happy to share them with anyone who's time I've wasted more than they've wasted mine," his eyes glance over to the young brunette beside him, noting the way she is glaring at him with, somehow, adorably flared nostrils.

"Uh, Namjoon. If you have all the answers, why the hell did you start this study group?" Yoongi asks with an appropriate amount of confusion.

"I don't have a study group, I made it up," Namjoon stated frankly.

Jimin's brows knit in dejection, a small but noticeable pout becoming more obvious as his bottom lip starts to tremble just by the slightest, "But... What about your speech?"

"I made it up! That's what I do, I make things up and I got paid a lot of money to do it before I came to this school shaped toilet, I was a lawyer."

Everybody moans and groans at the mention of the fact that Namjoon was a lawyer, eyes rolling and noses scrunching.

"I thought you were Bill Murray in any of his films, but you're more like Michael Douglas in any of his films," Taehyung tells Namjoon with the same monotonous tone he'd been using all day, though this time it seemed to be tinged with a bit of disappointment.

"Oh yeah? Well, you have Asperger's." Namjoon says bluntly before gathering his things in his arms and slamming the study room door behind him. The young brunette girl's gaze falls to the vacant spot at the doorway left by his vacuous presence, horrified at his change in attitude. There wasn't a doubt in her mind that this dude was sketchy, from the moment she laid her eyes on him at the back of Spanish class, sitting uninterestedly in each lesson with his phone in his hand paying attention to nobody, not even the teacher which she considered to be quite the feat since the Spanish teacher was... an inconceivable character, to say the least.

What was scary was that she had also doubted that he was telling the truth about his deal with her earlier. Maybe he really is honest. The real difficulty in this was deciding whether that was a good thing or not.

"Did he just say 'ass burger'?" Jungkook snorted, slapping the table.

"It's a serious disorder," Jimin tells Jungkook, "It really is," Seokjin concurs, becoming upset that Jungkook, and now Yoongi, appear to be making fun of the name.

"If it's so serious, why don't they call it 'professional burger'?" Yoongi wheezes, lightly slapping Jungkook on the arm as they quietly laugh with each other.

Taehyung didn't seem to mind one bit. If he did, he didn't show it which helped to settle the brunette girl's worries by a smidge.

Namjoon stepped outside the library building with a huff, exasperated from being in such a draining situation. In the back of his mind, he couldn't believe that he had done what he did to these strangers. Well, they were his classmates and that made it worse, him realizing that he would have to see these people again in the future. Pushing those thoughts to the very darkest depths of his mind, he inhaled the cold air of the outside, staying under the light of the library veranda so he could actually get a good look at those papers that Hyun had given him. At least one good thing came out of this day, or so he thought.

Opening the seal at the top of the large manila, he proceeded to pull out a thick pile of papers, the first of which appeared to be blank. Namjoon's heart began to race as he flipped through the hundreds of papers in his hands to find that they were all blank on both sides except for the last paper which had the word 'booyah' written in all caps in Sharpie.

"Hyun," Namjoon growled under his breath, shoving the papers back into the manila folder angrily and making his way to the professor's office.

There sat Hyun with his feet crossed on top of his desk, leaning back in his office chair and sipping on a glass of brandy when Namjoon slammed his office door open.

"Okay, now before you say anything, I want you to think about the gift you've been given," Hyun hummed happily, raising his glass to Namjoon leaning against his office doorway.

"An excuse to punch a pathetic professor at a community college?" Namjoon tilts his head with a far too serious expression.

Hyun coughs, "Erm, no, not that. An important lesson, my friend. You see, the tools you acquired to survive out there will not help you here at Greendale. What you have here my friend is a second chance at an honest life."

"Give me my keys," Namjoon demands from him, clearly ignoring his friend's pitiful attempt to teach him a lesson about integrity, honesty or what have you.

"W-what? No, I have to keep your car for the lesson- Okay, don't hit me!" Hyun shrieks and tosses the car keys to Namjoon once he begins to storm over to his friend's desk with rage-filled eyes.

Namjoon walks away quickly, desperate to be anywhere but at that school at the moment. "Are we cool!?" Hyun shouts out the door as soon as he's gone, pausing for a moment to wait for a response. When he gets nothing in return, he just shrugs and sips his brandy, "We cool.".

"I like you, Namjoon," Yoongi says to the younger man as he spots him walking briskly past the entrance to the library, "You remind me of myself when I was your age."

Namjoon pauses and sighs, hanging his head low at the prospect of being similar to this older and, from what he's seen so far, a horribly awkward but entitled individual. "I deserve that."

He walks up the stairs to sit next to the older boy, seating himself one step down on the stairs so they were equal in height. "Y'know, I've been called grandpa nine times now? I mean, there are literal grandpas here on campus but even they don't called grandpa. They get called by their first names, like normal grandpas. Sometimes I think I'm doing something wrong."

Namjoon put his hand on Yoongi's shoulder and said to him, "Maybe it's because of the way you act. You fall asleep everywhere, you always ask the most random questions and you scowl at everyone and you say stuff like 'when I was your age' to people that aren't that much younger than you. You've gotta stop doing that, man."

Yoongi sighed, "I've never looked at it that way..."

"Hey guys," Hoseok spoke up, coming up from behind them.

"Oh, hey," Namjoon said to him. "Aren't you guys supposed to be studying right now?"

Jungkook emerged from around the corner and shrugged, "It kinda got boring after you left," he admitted. Following him out of the entrance of the library was the rest of the group, Seokjin, Taehyung, Jimin and the brunette girl.

"Shouldn't you be rolling around on a bed covered in test answers," the brunette girl smirked down at him, her hands holding the strap of her bag.

"I don't have any of the answers," he said with a tight smile, abandoning the manila folder on to the steps below him, "I'm just gonna fail the test."

"If you just study for like an hour, it's not that hard," Hoseok told him, "Yeah," Jungkook agreed. "You seem pretty smart, you have a sports coat," Jungkook told him, gesturing to Namjoon's jacket.

"Well, the funny thing about being smart is that you can get through most of life without ever having to do any work. So, uh, I'm not really... Sure how to do that," Namjoon confessed with solace, hanging his head low.

Behind him, the group began silently gesturing to each other. Jimin mouthed to the brunette girl, "Please? he's so sad." In return, the brunette girl mimed, pointing at Namjoon and then putting a finger in her mouth and pretend-puking. Seokjin expressed saddened shock, clasping his hands together as if he were begging the brunette girl into agreeing with them.

Taehyung looked at the scene with confusion and he spoke up, "What's going on? Can you guys hear me right now? Am I deaf, can you guys hear me talking? Can you guys hear me talking right now?" the group all said "Yes" in response. "Ah, okay, good," Taehyung said, giving them a thumbs up.

"Y'know what? Namjoon, we actually didn't get that far without you so if you wanna come back inside..." the brunette girl said to him.

"Really?" Namjoon asked with an uncertain tone.

"Well, it is your study group." The brunette girl said with a lopsided grin, turning around and stepping back into the library.

"Come on, let's study," Seokjin said to him sweetly, following the brunette girl back into the building. "Sounds good," Yoongi replied, patting Namjoon on the shoulder and going back inside with Hoseok, Jungkook, and Jimin trailing behind him.

"I'm sorry I called you Michael Douglas and I see your value now," Taehyung said to him, stepping past Namjoon and entering the library.

"Well, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," Namjoon said to himself, pushing himself off the steps and walking back into the library to join the unlikely group that he had just created, a group that he somehow feels he will be close with. Sure, they had gotten off to a rocky and deceitful start, but he can tell that some of them are already warming up to each other despite having argued for hours both in and out of his absence. That's gotta say something.

Perhaps it's saying that they really are a community now.

8 notes · View notes

weaselle · 5 years

Text

DEAD EARTH MASTER POST

DEAD EARTH CHAPTER ONE

Breen was in over his head, he could tell that much. But when the crowd in the arcade pit had started to close in on the man with the ears, Breen had stepped up beside him without thinking. The man was tall, with dark skin, and when his hat had gotten knocked off revealing ears that were, fox? cat? well, several of the crowd were Colony Loyalists, and they began hissing things like “shifter” and “genie” and one of them shoved the man from behind. Breen shoved that man back, and when the man with the ears had darted away through the crowd Breen didn’t fancy being left alone with a bunch of loyalist knucklers, so he dipped along with him.

They exited into an alley through a door that caused alarms to sound, and footed it fast just ahead of a six pack of the loyalists, turned a corner, and found themselves trapped in a dead end alley. The man with the ears was pressing buttons on his belt.

“Hey,” said Breen, “those guys are gonna be --“ and then they were, and it was too late.

____________________________________________________________________

Three of them turned out to have sticks of some kind, and two of those went for Mr. Ears while the other one paired up with an unarmed buddy of his to lay into Breen.

It was happening too fast for him to keep track of, he took a numbing blow to the shoulder, landed a punch to someone’s ribs, caught a fist on his cheekbone, grabbed a wrist and yanked someone hard into the wall to his back. The three combatants next to him were a busy blur “Get them down so we can tie ‘em” yelled one of the two still in the mouth of the alley, and Breen had an ankle kicked out from under him and went to one knee. The man with the ears and his attackers brushed by him and the attacker facing Breen was sort of gathered into that brawl. “Fuck!” somebody shouted, as someone else screamed in horror and pain, and all of a sudden there was nothing happening, as the group of men stood back from them.

Breen stood back up. The man he’d yanked into the wall had retreated halfway down the alley and was leaned over with his hands on his knees pouring blood out of his nose. One of the others was in a crumpled heap at the feet of the dude with ears, a messy hole in the side of his neck. Ears, crouching slightly, was covered in blood and grinning a fanged expression devoid of humor.

“You gene-shifted piece of shit,” said one of the men, stepping through the rest to stand in front of them. He unzipped his light jacket, and they could see the butt of a gun holstered under his arm. “you’re gonna die”

“I may,” said the man with the ears, “ but you definitely will. I’m a Galloglas”

That seemed to faze the man facing them, and he stopped. Into the second he spent frozen, a woman’s voice sounded from the mouth of the alley. “Hoy, Jackal, you need a hand in here?”

The man with the ears, Jackal, wiped his hands on the back of his pants and straightened, “Good to see you Captain, these fellows and I were just playing a game of Guess Who’ll Die”

“Oh,” she looking at the men in front of her “for fun? Or, are we taking bets. Because I bet it’s them.”

Their attackers were stuck between Jackal, Breen, and the woman behind them, and they didn’t like that at all. Some of them had turned and Breen got a look at her, leaning a shoulder against the wall nonchalantly, one hand hanging loose near her hips while she inspected the nails of the other. One of the loyalists glanced back at Jackal, looked at her again, said “Fuck this” and left, edging very carefully past the woman at end of the alley. The guy with the busted nose went with him.

“And then there were three,” said the woman, tilting her head and looking at the remaining men with mild interest.

The guy with the gun said “Galloglas, hunh?”

“I am,” said the woman.

“I hear you folks think you’re hot shit”

“Some people seem to think so,” she shrugged

The man with the shoulder holster sneered, “Well I think --“ and his hand snaked under his arm.

“He’s -- !“ Breen started to shout a warning, but suddenly the woman’s fist had a pistol in it and she had somehow already fired three shots and was holstering it before the man ever got his own weapon out.

“-- got a gun...” Breen finished, shocked, looking down at the three dead men.

The woman ignored him and brushed past, going to Jackal. “You okay, Jacks?”

“Yeah, lost my hat, these fools got a look at my ears, made a thing out of it. Sorry, Captain”

“Here,” she said, unwinding a scarf from her neck and handing to Jackal, who used it as a headscarf to conceal his ears once more. “Who’s your friend?” she asked him, indicating Breen with her head.

“Dunno, he stepped up when these colony boys closed on me in the arcade.”

“Any good?”

Jackal lifted a shoulder “He can take a punch”

“Hey,” said Breen, “Hey! I’m like, right here”

Neither of them looked at him; Jackal grinned. “Sticks up for himself” he observed, then quirked an eyebrow, “and for others...”

“Right,” said the woman, turning to face Breen “I’m Hex, what’s your name?”

“I’m Freghzer Breenlund, from Americo Lunar 4, but my friends call me Breen; nice to meet you” he said, holding out his hand.

Hex left his hand hanging there and squinted at him in amused judgement “You always tell such long stories Breen?” Before he could come up with a reply she said “C’mon fresh-face, this is an awful lot of dead bodies for this part of the system, we gotta get out of here. But first you’re gonna help me an’ Jacks stick these fuckers in bottom of this garbage tank.”

A little while later, they arrived at a bar. Well, a place that sold alcohol and had places to sit, anyway. Jackal had led them there, saying “the drinks would be overpriced if they paid you to have one, but nobody’s likely to notice some suspicious stains. Or a gunbelt, probably” eyeballing his captain, who had rolled her eyes and shrugged into a long thin coat from her small pack.

Hex sniffed her shot glass and set it carefully back down. Wouldn’t do to spill it, she mused, probably melt the table. Her crewman Jacques was sitting comfortably looking around the room in an idle, way, but she’d known ol’ Jackal for so many years she could tell when he was on edge.

And embarrassed. He was supposed to stay on the low, not cause a four body pile-up - that was shitty, she caught herself, he shouldn’t have to be embarrassed that those bigots were willing to fight to the death over their hatred of what, of who, he was. This trouble was not his fault, and she’d have to be sure to remind him she knew that when there was time. It was still trouble though, and had to be dealt with.

“How’d the thing go,” she asked him. He looked at her and gave a very small shake of his head. Ah. Well, the bad luck was just rolling in today, wasn’t it. She briefly laid her hand on his while looking directly into his eyes, broadcasting reassurance and respect. He blinked and nodded slightly and took a deep breath. Went back to scanning the room for trouble.

Fresh-face had almost stopped choking on the shot he had downed. Dumb-ass from the Triad Lunar Colonies. Sure was pretty though. “Hey kid,” she said, wondering how old he was “ if you’re from Americo 4, whatchew doin’ in the Euro Quarters?”

“What? I’m-“ he coughed again, “I’m like, the same age you are.”

“Doubtful” said Hex, baiting him, rolling her eyes.

“Well” he seemed less sure, “I’m no kid, anyway. I’m 32 years old”

That wasn’t so bad. Carried himself like he was ten years younger though, fucking colonists. “So what brings you to the EQ?”

Breen’s eyes went sideways, and he ducked his head slightly as he mumbled “tried to win the VR Sprite Class Obstacle Open”

Hex narrowed her eyes “Really. VR pilot, are you?”

“No.”

“No?!”

“No, I’m an actual pilot. Real ships.”

Hex laughed “Oh no, Breeny, Breeny no, tell me you didn’t think you could win in the Lunar Pro VR racing circuit because you can fly a real ship.”

“Yes. I’m good at it.” he declared sullenly.

“Oh! Well then,” she responded too cheerfully, “I didn’t realize you were a good pilot. Won the Sprite Obstacle Cup no problem then, I imagine, good pilot like you, hmm?”

She could see he didn’t like it, but he just looked down into his empty shot glass. “No.”

Awww. She stopped teasing. “So... how’d you do?”

“Lost in the 5th heat”

Shit, that wasn’t bad, really. For a non-pro newbie. “Don’t feel too down, Breeny, VR is very similar to reality, but it’s not exactly the same as racing a real ship, and the people you were racing, they live in that difference every day.”

“Yeah,” he said bitterly, “I sort of caught on to that”

“So what is it that has a good pilot like you entering the VR pro racing circuit, anyway? Can’t find a real ship to fly?”

Breen sighed a big sigh. “That’s not it. I have a ship, nice little sprite class hauler. Saved up for a decade, thought I found one just needed a bunch of cosmetic work, real good price. Then as soon as I bought the ship, these new licensing fees got voted in, plus it turns out the guy I bought from had rigged the torque rings with fucking pig iron bearings -- worked fine for the test flight, broke the bearings to pieces on the way back to Luna. Half melted one of the torque rings and damaged some of the back end frame running her dirty to get to a dock.” He stared morosely at the table top, drawing invisible circles with the bottom of his empty shot glass. “By the time I had the paperwork cleared and the frame repairs done, replaced the inner ring and outfitted it with proper chromed titanium bearings, I’d spent all the money I had saved to start my first venture. So. Got a ship. Got a crew even. But I’m broke and I can’t use my ship and crew to go earn some money ‘cause I can’t fuel up or supply the ship at all, and the crew wants bank trust receipts up front. Fuck. Fuck! I really needed to win that race.” He looked ready to cry.

Hex was intrigued. He wasn’t cutting very fine a figure as a captain, but she could respect the hustle. Plus, the whole thing was lining up to work out just the way she needed it, and that was a rare thing indeed. “Hey,” she said, waiting until he met her eyes. “Sometimes these things have a way of working out. I just may be the answer to your problems. Although, in true Galloglas fashion I’d be answering your problems with more problems.” Breen was looking confused. “Breen, my lad, you’ll never guess what Jackal and me were doing at the EQ Arcadium... care to guess? No? That’s no fun, okay fine, well, as a matter of fact, we were there trying to hire a ship. And we can pay up front.” She half turned her head without letting her eyes leave Breen’s. “What do you think, Jacks?”

“What do I think?” said Jackal, staring over her shoulder toward the front door “What I think is those two assholes from the alley went and found some friends from higher up the food chain, that’s what I think”

#fiction #scifi #writing #dead earth #dead earth 1

48 notes · View notes

thefloorisbalaclava · 4 years

Text

eros [pre-pragma]

eros - erotic love - a passionate and intense form of love that arouses romantic and sexual feelings

pairing: frankie ‘catfish’ morales x f!reader

warnings: light smut - reader’s first time

a/n: this turned out longer than i expected but i had fun writing it although it made me a little sad.

summary: frankie is leaving tomorrow so he spends his last night with you.

pragma masterlist

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO - ONE DAY BEFORE FRANKIE LEAVES

The past few weeks had been hectic for Frankie—from getting his pilot’s license to…her and all the complicated feelings that came from just seeing or being around her.

“I don’t understand why you just won’t tell her. Especially now,” Santiago said as he drove to the beach. They all had went hiking a few days ago and, as always, Frankie could focus on nothing but her. Anytime he tried talking to her though someone else came up and took her attention.

“Park here,” Frankie said trying his best to avoid the change in conversation. Santiago parked then just stared at him.

“Tell her something,” his friend pressed. “Obviously, you both feel it. She invited you upstairs, man.”

“And I turned her down.” Frankie got out of the car and grabbed the cooler from the trunk, mumbling to himself.

“I don’t understand you.” Santiago helped him carry the cooler onto the beach and towards the little fire that their friends had already started.

“About time!” one of them yelled and everyone else cheered. Frankie smiled and greeted everyone but was distracted with trying to find her. There was someone standing at the water's edge a little further down the beach and he knew it was her right away. He grabbed two beers and headed her way. She hadn’t heard him until he was only a few feet away.

“Francisco…hey,” she said. Right away he could hear that something was wrong.

“Hey. Bought you a beer.” He handed her the beer then stared out at the water.

“Thanks.” She only held the can without opening it.

“I…well, we leave tomorrow,” he said, turning to her again.

“I know.” She started walking away, heading away from the water to sit.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, following her.

“What do you think? I don’t want you to leave, Frankie. Either of you.” Finally, she opened the beer and took a few sips. “I don’t wanna say goodbye.” She looked at him as he sat beside her.

“Then don’t.”

They were quiet for some time. He finished his beer and she gave him the rest of hers to finish.

“Pilot, huh?”

“Yeah. Helicopters to be exact.” He smiled but it faded once he saw that she wasn’t.

“Why Frankie?” she asked sadly.

“I’m tired of being useless. I mean…look at me.”

“I look at you all the time,” she confessed. “You should know that by now.” She sighed then closed her eyes. “Will you miss me?”

“What kind of question is that? You know I will.”

“Are you running away from something?” she asked, and he bristled. “From me because you love me and don’t know how to say it?”

“God…” He shook his head and looked down at the sand. “I don’t wanna do this now,” he said.

“Then when, Frankie? What if there is no other time?”

“You saying I’m gonna die?” he snapped.

“No! You know what forget it.” She stood and started to walk away.

“You fuckin’ idiot,” he said to himself before standing and following her. He grabbed her arm gently and turned her around. “Look…I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

When he opened his mouth to answer, Santiago walked over. “You two leaving already?” He nudged Frankie.

“Stop, man.” Frankie spoke through his teeth as if that would make it harder for her to hear.

“I’m going home,” she said. “Gimme a hug, Santi.” He hugged her and kissed her cheek. “You better come back, soldier, or I��ll come looking for you myself.”

“Oh boy, we gotta come back now, don’t we Frankie?”

“Yup.” Frankie stared at her and she shrugged before walking to her car. “Dude, what the hell?”

“What?” Santiago threw his hands up.

“Why’d you say leaving like that? I don’t want her to think…the wrong thing.” He looked at her standing by her car.

“Is it the wrong thing though?”

“I don’t know. I just…”

“Just shut your mouth and go to her.” Santiago patted his shoulder and walked away. Frankie took a deep breath and made his way over to her.

“So,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets.

“So…” The silence stretched and the only sound they could hear was the cheering from their friends on the beach and the waves crashing. “Oh, I got you something.” She opened her car door and pulled out a cap. “Here.”

“You really went and found me another hat to wear?” he asked looking at it.

“I said I would. Put it on.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He pulled the old hat off and threw it into his truck before putting the other hat on and holding his hands out. “Well?”

“Perfect. You gotta wear it forever now.”

“I will.” He held out his hand for her to shake.

“I’d rather have a hug.” She moved closer and he automatically put his arms around her. They stood wrapped in each other’s embrace for a long time. He heard her sniffle a few times, but he didn’t say anything about it. “Kiss me, Frankie.”

“You’re so bossy. I kinda like it.” He smiled before cupping her face and kissing her gently. It was going to end there, but she deepened the kiss. Her hands gripped his shirt, holding him where he was. The tears that stained her cheeks now stained his.

“We should go,” she whispered.

“Go where?” he asked stupidly. “Oh…oh!”

“If this is my last night with you, I want to make it special.” Tears still fell from her eyes.

“We don’t have to do that to make it special…” What the hell was he saying? He could kick himself right now.

“I want you to make love to me, Frankie,” she said confidently. There. It was out in the open. No hesitation on her part, but he was frozen in place.

“You…want…are you…what?” He shook his head then blinked at her.

“You heard me.”

“But we…I…”

“If you don’t want to, I understand.” She turned to her car.

“Wait!” he said a little too loudly. “Are you for real? Are you sure?”

“I am. I’ve thought about it for a long time.”

“Like…how long?” To tell the truth, he had thought about it all the time, even when he was with someone else.

“I don’t know exactly how long, but…a long time. Long enough to know that I’m sure about this.” They stood in silence again while Frankie tried to think of reasons to say no. He didn’t want to say no but he also didn’t want to seem overly eager. Once your heart desired something it was hard to turn it down.

“My place or yours?” he asked, unable to look her directly in the eye.

“Yours.” Once again, no hesitation. Her mind was made up and once that happened, it was hard to change it. He really didn’t want to anyway.

“Okay…so…okay.” He stood there awkwardly as she got into her car and rolled down the window.

“I'll follow.”

“Right.” He got into his truck and his hands twisted at the steering wheel. Why the hell was he so nervous? He had done this plenty of times. But never with someone he felt so much, so deeply for. “Okay,” he breathed, starting the car.

The entire way there, he kept checking his rear-view mirror to make sure she still followed. He had to know this wasn’t a dream or some kind of joke she decided to play on him.

As he pulled into the driveway of his house, he felt a sudden overwhelming sense of desire and lust, but his heart knew it was more than that. She was more than that. He fucking loved her—there was no doubt about that.

He got out of the truck and watched her walk over to him, a smile playing at her mouth.

“You look even more nervous than I feel,” she joked, and he smiled. He loved how she could joke even when something so real was about to happen. She always had a way of relaxing him.

“Let’s go in.” He fumbled with the keys as he walked to the door and unlocked it, holding the door open for her. She immediately kicked her shoes off by the door out of habit. Her eyes fell to the pile of bags that sat off to the side and she looked away quickly, not wanting to linger on it.

“I don’t want you doing this just because I want to. Do you really want to do this with me?” she asked.

The truth shall set you free, he thought.

“I’ve wanted to do this for as long as I can remember,” he confessed. She wasn’t a priest and he wasn’t super religious, but he felt as though he could tell her every sin and not be judged for it. “I thought about it…a lot.”

“Me too.” She walked up and kissed him, making him stumble backwards a bit, knocking his new cap off as she carded her fingers through his hair. He could lie and say it was because she caught him off guard, but he knew it was because she made him weak in the knees.

“Bedroom?” he asked, and she nodded. He took her hand and led her to his room. If he had known this was going to happen, he would have cleaned up a bit, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention to any of that. Why was he? The woman of his dreams was getting undressed in his room and…

“Wait,” he stopped her just as she was pulling her shirt up.

“What?” She pulled the shirt down again.

“I always wanted to…I’d like to…may I undress you?” he finally got out.

“Oh…sure.” She couldn’t look at him at first but soon she felt drawn to him the same way he felt drawn to her. His eyes never left her face as he pulled her shirt up and off. He had to make sure she was okay. “You can…look at me.”

“I am.” He captured her lips in a dizzying kiss and she pulled at his shirt. They broke apart long enough for her to get it off him.

“Okay,” she whispered to herself or to him, he couldn’t be sure, but she climbed onto his bed and laid down. He found himself on top of her, kissing her some more and she pressed herself against him. The embarrassment of knowing that she could most likely feel him was making him move stiffly. “What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing. I just…” He looked down and she giggled.

“There’s no reason to be shy about that. I don’t have much experience, but I do know that’s supposed to happen."

He sat up on his knees. “What do you mean you don’t have a lot of experience?”

“I’m…I never…you’ll be my first,” she said.

“Shit,” he breathed. Something stirred within him, but something also made him stop. “You’re serious?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t want this to happen with anyone else. It’s okay.” Funny that she was the one reassuring him when he was the one who had been through it already. “I know you’ll probably make fun of me later with Santiago.”

“I’d never make fun of you especially for that but…are you sure? One hundred and fifty percent positive?” He looked at her as she sat up on her elbows.

“One hundred and fifty percent, sir.”

He laid down beside her and touched her bare skin, his fingers skimming across her stomach. She trembled and moved closer to him as he slid his hand to the waistband of her jeans and unbuttoned them. He was careful when he moved away to slide them off her, leaving her lying there in nothing but her underwear. He had fantasized about how she would look with nothing on more times than he cared to admit, but this…she was spectacular, and she wasn’t even fully naked yet.

“Your turn.” She sat up and unbutton his jeans. He looked up at the ceiling as she bent to pull them down his legs. Now they both stood there in nearly nothing.

“I’ll um…” She reached behind her back.

“I’ll do it,” he offered. She nodded and turned her back to him. He made quick work of the bra, kissing along her back and shoulders as the straps slid down and the bra finally fell away. When she turned to face him again, he kept his eyes on her face respectfully.

“Go on, Francisco.”

He swallowed hard, finally allowing his eyes to trail over her. He let out a shaky breath followed by a “wow" and she laughed.

“Why thank you.” She looked down at her panties and Frankie immediately got down on his knees. He looked up at her as he hooked his fingers over the waistband of her panties. With a nod from her, he was slowly pulling them down and helping her step out of them. He kissed her stomach, her thighs, and her mound making her gasp.

“Too much?” he asked, moving away quickly.

“No. It was…nice.” She pulled at his arms to make him stand. Following what he had just done, she got on her knees and pulled his underwear down.

“God help me,” he said quietly, quickly pulling her to her feet. If she kissed anywhere around there this whole thing would be over before it started. Instead, he kissed her lips and laid her down carefully, slotting himself between her legs. “I have to, well, get you ready,” he told her.

“Okay. I trust you.” The words were so sincere, so real. She really did trust him and that meant more to him than anything ever will.

“Is there anything you don’t want me to do?” he asked, and she shook her head. “Okay. Well.” He kissed her again before moving lower, kissing her neck, licking across a particularly sensitive part that made her moan quietly. Everything about her was beautiful, even the sounds she made.

When he got to her breasts, he looked at her nervously before swirling his tongue around her nipple. Her hand flew to her mouth as she whimpered loudly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He pulled her hand away from her mouth and held it. “It’s okay.” He moved to the other nipple and this time she moaned without any hesitation. The hand he wasn’t holding found its way into his hair as he kissed down her stomach. Her breathing was uneven, and he looked up to make sure she was okay.

“I’m okay, Frankie. Please.”

He nodded, carefully pushing her legs up and open around him as he kissed lower. She looked away shyly, turning her head to look over at the wall, but he squeezed the hand he was holding.

“Look at me, baby.” When she turned back to him, he slowly dragged his tongue along her, tasting her. A weird sense of pride flowed through him knowing that he was the first to get to do this.

“Oh…oh my god,” she whined.

“You okay?” he asked before kissing her thigh.

“Mmhm.” She bit her lip as she prepared for whatever he did next. He spread her open with his fingers and licked her again, latching onto the bundle of nerves this time. “Frankie, I…I…” He didn’t stop, his tongue and lips sending her into a pleasurable frenzy. She cried out and tried to squirm away from his mouth, but he held her there, drinking her down, closing his eyes in satisfaction.

“Damn,” he whispered, lifting his head. He wiped his chin then crawled up to kiss her. She didn’t seem to mind that, in fact, she seemed eager to kiss him while he tasted like her. “You just…”

“I know what an orgasm is,” she told him with a smile.

“I should, well…” He slid his hand between her spread legs and rubbed her. She was still sensitive from her orgasm and he was able to get one finger in. She gasped and grabbed his wrist. “It’s okay. Look at me.” When her eyes were on him, he pressed his forehead to hers and slowly added another finger. He’s had sex before, but he can’t recall having such an intimate moment with someone. They looked at each other as he touched her and pulled all sorts of sounds from her. He eventually pulled his fingers from her and she giggled, looking away as he brought them to his mouth.

“Frankie…”

“Sorry. You’re just…really good.” He chuckled as she hid her face against his chest.

“Do you have protection?” she asked, and he nodded, sitting up to reach into his bedside table. “Can I put it on?”

“If you want.” He handed her the condom almost immediately regretting letting her touch him there. Her hands were gentle as she wrapped them around him and stroked. She brushed her thumb along the tip, and he grunted, his hips moving with her hands of their own accord. He wanted to whine we she took her hands away to carefully roll on the condom.

As she laid back down and he moved between her legs, she exhaled deeply. “Just keep looking at me, okay? And you tell me if I’m hurting you.”

“Okay.”

He lowered himself over her, reaching between their bodies with one hand to carefully line himself up. “You ready?”

“Yes.” She wrapped her arms around him just as he slid into her. She whimpered and he stopped moving. “Keep…keep going.”

“Eyes, baby.” He wouldn’t continue until she was looking at him again. “I’m here. It’s me.” Just a little further and he was completely inside her, cursing under his breath at the feeling of her. “Still okay?”

“Yeah. Please move.” Her hips squirmed beneath him. “I want to feel…” He kissed her before she could finish, sliding out of her slowly only to push into her again. “Yes.”

“This feels better than I ever imagined.” He moved slightly faster, keeping his eyes on her the whole time. Her eyes closed in pleasure as her hands found their way into his hair, tangling there and keeping his forehead against hers as he made love to her.

“You feel amazing, Frankie,” she moaned and that was nearly his undoing. He kept up the pace since she seemed to be enjoying it just like that but then he noticed the tears and nearly rolled off her. “No. It’s okay. I’m okay,” she cried.

“What is it?” He slowed down but didn’t stop.

“This is just perfect in every way,” she sniffled. “And I’m gonna miss you so much.”

Now he felt tears stinging his eyes. “I know. I’m gonna miss you too.” He moved faster now, his heart and soul breaking but also whole as he made her his. Their bond was something indescribable and not just because of the sex. There was so much more, something that would never go away no matter how far apart they were.

“I…” she started but only smiled then kissed him.

“I know,” he said. “Me too.” He moved his hand between their bodies and touched her. He was close and wanted her to finish first. It only took a few touches for her to come undone beneath him and that was enough to have him groaning her name and finishing with a few thrusts that were slightly harder than the rest. He thought that he should roll off her, but she anchored him there with her arms and legs…and lips. She just couldn’t stop kissing him, her tears wetting his face.

“You’ll always be my Frankie, you know?”

“I hope so.” He rolled off her and she quickly sat up and got out of bed to go to the bathroom. While she was gone, he took care of things on his end. He wondered if he should put something back on but before he could decide, she came back.

“All yours,” she said, climbing into bed and hiding under the covers.

“Be right back.” In the bathroom, he washes himself off then looks in the mirror. He had never felt quite so fulfilled before but…he was about to leave it all behind. The woman lying in his bed right now had given herself to him, heart, body, and soul, and he was leaving. What the hell was he giving her in return? Sleepless nights full of worrying about him? Sadness? Loneliness? She held his heart in her hands and he couldn’t even be here for her.

He walked back into the bedroom and climbed into bed beside her. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” she looked at him, puzzled.

“That I’m leaving like this. We did this and…I’m just leaving. I’m no better than all the other creeps out there.”

“Francisco Morales, I knew what was coming and I gave myself to you knowing that. I don’t regret a moment. Do you?”

“Of course not, but…,” He turned to her. “If you wanna see someone else while I’m gone, you can.”

“What?”

“I have no right to keep you hanging on waiting for me. We probably won’t see each other a lot.”

“I don’t care. There will be no one else, Frankie. I want to be yours and I want you to be mine.” She snuggled up against him.

“Really?”

“Yes. Hold me, please.” Her voice cracked and she cried against his chest. “You better come back; you hear me? I would wait forever and a day for you but please don’t make me.”

He lifted her head, wiping her tears away. “I'll come back. I promise.”

“And you’ll stay?” she cried, wiping the single tear that fell from his eye.

“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away,” he said before kissing her.

Tomorrow would come and he would be gone, but they had right now, and he would make the most of it.

#frankie morales #frankie morales x reader #francisco 'catfish' morales #triple frontier #pedro pascal #headcanon

239 notes · View notes

iamonlypartlymajestic · 4 years

Text

KAIJU FORCE (SPACE FORCE/GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS FANFIC)

*Co-written with @awildtrashcan*

AO3 LINK CHAPTER 1

Chapter 2 - Mark and Mallory (and Fuck Tony and Sam) Go to Washington

Sam smiles when he sees Dr. Mallory walking towards him, but the grin wilts when he sees how annoyed the older man is as he walks closer. The Monarch director had already finished any work pertaining to his actual job and since he was already in the area, decided to make a visit to Space Force. He was having a quite invigorating discussion with Dr. Chan about the effects of MUTO radiation on terrestrial plant life (his PhD may be in computer science, but he’s always up for learning new things), when he noticed Dr. Mallory’s ID lying forgotten on one of the nearby tables. Having recently been informed about the upcoming budget hearing that day, he figured the chief scientist was with the general getting ready.

"Dr. Mallory, I saw you left your ID back in the botany lab."

Mallory's eyes widen in surprise as Sam holds his credentials in front of him, before he breaks into a relieved smile. "Thank you, Dr. Coleman. I was just on my way to grab it."

“No pro—blem?” Rather than take the ID from Sam’s hand, Mallory drags the younger man by his jacket down the path he just came from and through the main building, all the way into General Naird's office waiting room, and pushes him in front of a guard. Why do people in Space Force want to manhandle him all the time? However, unlike with Fuck Tony, Sam doesn’t want to be rude and resigns to letting the chief scientist do as he pleases.

Mallory silently holds Sam's arm which is still carrying the older man’s ID and pushes it into the guard's face. The guard squints to stare at the small rectangular piece of plastic attached to a random man’s arm. "Thank you,” he says pleasantly, “Doctor...Mallory."

Dr. Mallory abruptly drops his hold on Sam causing the younger man to stumble on the ground. “You knew that,” Mallory says utterly deadpan.

Sam stands up and straightens out his suit and tie when the general’s assistant, Brigadier General “Just call me Brad!” Gregory, informs him about General Naird’s last minute media prep with Fuck Tony.

Mallory just sighs deeply. And walks out of the waiting room.

“Wait! Dr. Mallory!” Sam picks up the dropped ID and quickly goes after the man.

~O~

It was just supposed to be a quick hang out sesh with the science team, despairs Sam as he trails after Dr. Mallory. Now the chief scientist has asked (read: forced) Sam to pick up what is most likely the science team budget binder for the older man so he wouldn’t have to walk back to the lab himself.

Having finally found the general (and Fuck Tony), Mallory commands his new manservant to chase after the two.

“Gen-general Naird!” Sam’s voice cracks, his lungs tired after having to jog back and forth the entire length of Space Force so many times (he's definitely met his weekly physical activity quota within the last hour). Thankfully, the general stops, allowing Sam to take a break. He holds the binder out like a shield as he pants.

“Where is my rat blood pressure research funding?!” Each of Mallory’s words are emphasized as he walks up behind Sam.

Sam barely registers that the three men have started walking again when he finally catches his breath.

“Uh, er. Dr. Mallory?” He strides up to the two arguing men, “I hate to interrupt, but now that the general is here, I’ll just head out myself.” Sam wants to just go home and take a nap. He wasn’t expecting the sudden work-out today.

As Mallory takes the binder from him, General Naird stares at Sam with a raised eyebrow. The general hums and asks, “Isn’t one of your tasks in Monarch to speak in Senate hearings?”

Bewildered by the sudden question, Sam answers with a hesitant yes.

“Do they include budget meetings?”

“Um…” Sam glances behind the general’s shoulder at Fuck Tony’s obviously amused expression.

“Perfect! You’re coming with us.” General Naird continues walking, firmly ignoring any of Sam’s and Dr. Mallory’s protests. The two PhD holders look at each other in commiseration before following.

Outside, a young woman bounces up to the general. Sam, Tony, and Mallory stand a couple feet back as General Naird and his daughter speak. Sam takes the time to look at the pilot waiting in parade rest and the helicopter behind her. It’s been a while since Sam has been in a helicopter as Monarch typically uses an Osprey to carry multiple passengers as well as important cargo over the long distances between outposts. Having looked his fill, he turns back to the conversation in front of him.

“...gave the teacher the finger,” says the general’s daughter proudly.

"Nice! Y’know, one time my history teacher gave me a C so I planted drugs in his desk, and now? He lives under a bridge like a troll!" Tony excitedly informs the teenager. He elbows Sam in camaraderie and wiggles his eyebrows.

"I never went to high school,” Sam pipes up after Tony, but quickly finishes his sentence when the general turns around to give him a hard look. “I mean—I graduated university at fourteen...so I didn’t have to?” Sam gives the older man a pained smile and tells himself to shut up.

Tony rolls his eyes and scoffs, “Nerd.”

Sam doesn’t miss Dr. Mallory’s nod of approval, however, and tries hard not to blush.

The three men watch the very uncomfortable (at least for Sam) conversation between father and daughter. General Naird then commands the pilot of their helicopter, Captain Ali, to basically babysit his teenage daughter, which Sam honestly thinks is uncalled for.

Sam gives the captain a sympathetic smile, who returns an unamused glare. A bit scared for his life now, the Monarch director hurries after the three other men into the helicopter.

“At least someone else here knows how to fly,” General Naird says gruffly as he sits himself onto the pilot’s seat. Sam’s surprised but pleased that the general remembered. Nervous about the awkward start of their first meeting, Sam had told the older man about having a pilot’s license as to create some common ground between the two.

“Kiss ass,” Fuck Tony calls him in a hushed sing-song voice. Sam rolls his eyes and refuses to answer back, buckling up his own seatbelt. As the youngest, they were both delegated to the back seats of the helicopter with Dr. Mallory up at the front passenger’s next to the general.

Sam wishes he could say he gets the last laugh upon learning how freaked out Tony gets during their flight, but the brunet man is an utter nightmare to sit next to on an aircraft.

After flying for a few minutes, Mallory takes the time to continue his argument, “Rat hemoglobins are substantially—”

“Jesus, just let him fly the fucking thing!” Tony ends up screaming into Sam’s ear as the asshole bends closer towards Dr. Mallory, who’s in the seat directly in front of Sam. “You’re talking, he’s gotta fly!”

Sam pushes the panicked man off of him, and not one to be so easily deterred, Fuck Tony pushes back, which eventually leads to a slap fight between the two younger men.

"Oh, for the love of—I will turn this helicopter back around if you don't knock it off, do I make myself clear?!" The general yells at the two behind him who quickly stop and settle down.

Sam just hears Mallory sigh wearily over the microphone.

~O~

"So why'd you come here?" Tony asks him, eyes still fixed on his phone. The two younger men sit on wooden benches outside of the Chief of Staff Gold Room, waiting for General Naird. Unlike Mallory, who settled himself right outside of the door, he and Tony are in an empty hallway nearby, not wanting to disturb the other visitors.

"What?" Sam says, taking a pause from twisting and flexing his fingers (a nervous tic he’s developed since childhood from his need to constantly tinker with something).

Tony finally looks up from his phone and waves a hand at Sam, gesturing...something. Sam doesn’t know what. "It wasn't that surprising to see you act like Mallory's personal gofer, you science dudes tend to travel in packs. But letting Naird drag you with him? You do know the general doesn't really have power over you, right? He's your business partner, not your boss."

"I...I just thought I'd help him out? Since we're business partners I may as well make sure the group I'm working with doesn't implode weeks into our partnership." Sam chooses to ignore the fact that Fuck Tony has a point, embarrassed at his own lack of a backbone.

"Well, if you say so. Honestly, he'll need all the help he can get." The brunet sends Sam a pointed look.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Sam stretches his fingers even tighter, his eyebrows furrowing in worry.

"You'll see," Tony says in a tone implying lots and lots of experience with the matter, and goes back to playing with his phone.

~O~

As they walk into Capitol Hill, Sam feels his back straighten automatically, holding his head up higher to show he’s much more confident than he really is. A Pavlovian response that formed from having to speak to several crowds on behalf of Monarch.

It probably doesn’t work considering many senators still tend to disregard his existence.

Sam startles at seeing a balding senator grab the general in a forceful hug and almost bumps into Dr. Mallory in front of him.

“Well! That was awkward and horrible,” Tony declares with a grin. And Sam is about to agree until the other man continues, “The man is about to grill you, let him bring it in for the real thing. Remember!” He points a finger to emphasize his point, “You gotta embrace to get those dollars for space!”

“What? No!” Sam blurts out. Unfortunately, his warning goes unheard when an older woman passes by.

The secondhand cringe Sam gets seeing General Naird give his own non-consensual hug to Representative Pitosi makes the younger man’s skin crawl.

“What the fuck, Fuck Tony?” Sam whispers and gives his own look of disbelief towards the brunet as they wait to be let inside. The Monarch director then turns to the general and says placatingly, “Maybe you shouldn’t follow Tony’s advice, sir.”

Tony cocks his head toward the shorter man and narrows his eyes. "I'm sorry, since when were you the PR guy?"

“Oh no, I’m sorry,” Sam gives Tony a sarcastically pitying look, “I’m just the man whose job is to speak at these things.”

"Great job you're doing when you tell the general's daughter to skip school as you're telling her not to skip school." Tony raises his eyebrow and crosses his arms.

“What the hell does that even mean?!” Sam throws his hands up in the air.

“Gentlemen…” Dr. Mallory’s voice creeps up from behind the two, irritated by the noise. Sam and Tony face the chief scientist. His eyes stare coldly at them.

“Sorry, sir.” Sam says meekly.

“Whatever,” sneers Tony at the same time.

~O~

Sam closes his eyes and focuses on breathing slowly so he doesn't end up bashing his head into something as he's forced to listen to a fucking flat earther that somehow got a position in Congress. Granted, considering the fact that the current POTUS is a Piece Of Shit he really shouldn't be surprised but holy crap, he is losing brain cells by the second. Brain cells that are very important to MUTO research, thank you very much…why the hell is here, again?

Tony obnoxiously lets out a fake guffaw and pats Sam’s shoulder harshly as the general makes a joke. Sam gives his own awkward giggle since the rest of the crowd behind them laugh along.

He really doesn’t want to be here.

Tony pulls his phone out yet again and starts typing away. Sam’s already beginning to tune out the whole hearing when his phone vibrates inside his jacket pocket. He ignores it.

Tony continues to text. Sam’s phone continues to vibrate.

Sam’s noticing a trend here. He pulls out his own phone, staring disapprovingly at Tony and then at his messages.

Told you so

You enjoying your front row seat for the cringe show?

Saaaam

Sam takes a quick peek at the senators sitting above them and then leans towards Tony, whispering, “Why are you texting me right now?”

Tony presses a finger against his own lips and shushes him, “It’s rude to talk when others are speaking.”

Sam huffs and returns to his phone. What an asshole!

You’re an asshole. Stop texting me.

bold words for someone texting me

Sam leaves Tony’s messages on “read” and tries to refocus on the meeting. Representative Pitosi is holding a stack of documents filled almost entirely with black lines.

Wow. And people thought Monarch—a literally secret (or rather semi-secret now) science organization—had a problem with being open about their experiments and research?

Sam frowns as he sees the general begin to tap a pencil on the desk and clear his throat an unnecessary number of times. The Monarch representative glances around in case anyone notices him and then types out a text.

Is Naird ok?

dw this happens anytime all of us depend on him being able to talk like a human being :/

Wow How does Space Force function?

we dont

Sam doesn’t even bother to reply back, pressing his hand to his forehead. “Jesus…,” he whispers.

It also doesn’t help Sam’s anxiety when the general seriously says—out loud, he wants to emphasize—that “Space is hard.” He receives another text.

"Space is hard." - General Mark R. Naird, 2020 #newmotto

Sam sinks deeper into his seat.

But then straightens up again as General Naird continues to speak.

“...I want her to have a taste of the Earth and remember what she’s fighting for.” The general’s voice trembles slightly but stays strong as he talks. It shames Sam to say this, but before this moment, he hadn’t realized how passionate General Naird is about Space Force and its role in helping society. The older man’s speech reminds him of Dr. Serizawa. How the Monarch scientist would speak in their own Senate hearings, fighting for the respect Titans deserve as fellow beings living with us on Earth. If we took care of our home and its inhabitants, they would take care of us in return.

A symbiotic relationship, if you will.

Sam smiles, his regard for the general increasing.

Incoherent chanting echoes from the back of the room. The crowd turns around to find a group of women wearing Handmaid’s Tale costumes and holding up signs with various “Pro-choice” slogans.

Bad timing, but good for them, Sam thinks.

Tony shakes him as they watch the protestors leave. “Hey, quick! Take a picture of me with them.”

“What?! Do it yourself.” But Tony has already thrown his phone at the other man and leaves Sam to juggle to not drop it. He quickly takes the picture and gives Tony back his phone. Sam’s own cell vibrates not long after.

cant even take a proper pic smh

Below the message is the photo Sam just took. More than half of the picture is covered by his thumb, completely obscuring Tony’s face.

Who said it was accidental?

He sends Tony the middle-finger emoji.

Tony sends three back.

Sam sends a GIF of a group of people flipping off the camera.

You win this time Coleman this time

Sam smirks and puts away his phone. Just in time for Dr. Mallory to classily put the young senator on blast. He could see the woman get increasingly more embarrassed from his front row seat.

Sam wants to be like Dr. Mallory when he grows up.

Representative Pitosi finally dismisses Space Force, and Sam and Tony quickly get up to follow the general and chief scientist.

Fuck Tony glides through the center walkway, holding his hand out for high-fives along the way. However, unlike the social media director, Sam is not a child and just stares admiringly at the two older men as they walk out of the room.

"So, Dr. Coleman," General Naird turns to him and Sam has to physically shake his head to remove the heart filter over his eyes. "How was our first Space Force budget hearing?"

Sam's casual smile vanishes into a thin line. He brings his hands, palms pressed together, over his mouth and inhales sharply. Next to him, Fuck Tony grins.

#fanfic #middleditch & schwartz #middleditch and schwartz #space force #Godzilla #godzilla: king of the monsters #longer chapter #woohoo #sam coleman #f. tony scarapiducci #dr. mallory #general naird

3 notes · View notes