Bastion x Lemon hatefuck :3
Adelier was a weapon of a man: hard as a stave, stubborn as a bolt stuck in a clavicle, as piercing about the eyes as the two ugly swords on his back. Upon their first meeting, Bastion had noticed those swords before anything else. A pair of them? Even a spellwright knew it was foolish to have both hands harried by weapons rather than carry a blade and buckler, or parrying knife. Was the idiot so arrogant?
“Where is he?” Bastion asked today, entering the side chapel designated for their meeting and seeing only the Soud, “I don’t have time for you.”
“I’ll have to do,” Adelier answered, flickering his attention from a newspaper to the entering Black Tongue. Bastion felt well-sodden by those hateful, piss-coloured eyes. “Besides,” he continued, “There’s nothing left for him to say to you. The plot is settled, the date is in stone, and unless you’ve lost your nerve or decided you can’t do what’s demanded, what more is there to discuss?”
“Payment,” snapped Bastion, “I would have all of it. Now.”
“Creditors breathing down your neck?”
“Something like that.” Bastion fingered the torc at his throat, habitually moved to readjust it. Of course the yoke of Silver hadn’t budged in ten years. Its reaching wires made themselves known; the familiar sting and tug beneath his skin. Adelier regarded it, and his contempt was searing.
“The arrangement’s settled, Ilgan Yag. Remove yourself from this sacred place if you’re only here to whinge for coin like a needy whore.”
“I have expenses,” said Bastion reasonably, ”I’d as well explain cookery to a coon hound as my art to some pissmop soldier, but I must procure an assistant and several rare Materials. This operation will not be as simple as retooling a fucking plod mask.”
Something ticked in the Soud’s jaw; some twitch of emotion that would have lost him money at the gambling hall. Bastion laughed to see it. Two swords. Two swords! “Write it all out,” Adelier said, swallowing, and dropping his eyes, “I will pass it along.”
The sudden vulnerability was a heady fragrance pulling Bastion forward; a break in the impatient soldier’s facade. The boy was so young, really. Soud were an opaque people, but still transparent in their way. There was no subtle dance of etiquette to tease out their age. It was always naked on their face and their body. This Soud was so, so young - a green hedgeapple, hard, wooden, but newly formed and far from ripe. Bastion wanted to bare his teeth against him, see how hard he’d have to bite down to break skin.
He crossed the room. As he walked, Bastion felt wires crinkle like hands around his hips. Did the wires trace his movements? Or were they strings commanding his puppet limbs? Ah, how long had it been since the difference was even discernible!
Coiled, Adelier didn’t flinch as Bastion neared. The Black Tongue raised his hand and faintly touched the curve of his wicked nails to the sharp plane of the other man’s cheek. Adelier looked like he wanted to strike him, but Bastion knew he wouldn’t. He was needed. “I like you much better,” he laughed, tucking a few strands of blond behind his ear, “She does not share my opinion, but that only makes me like you more. You would have been a Black Tongue in another life. You’d sacrifice anything to get what you want. You would become anything it needed you to become.”
“It’s not about what I want.”
Bastion sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “You don’t have a very high opinion of Ssael, do you? Is he so helpless that you must do all his work for him? You must scheme and plot and guess at his wishes rather than trust him to operate in his own time frame?”
“Such trust easily becomes an excuse for inaction and sloth. I’ve seen it in Shadwe Grandvin-”
Bastion murmured something just beyond audibility, and darted forward as Adelier spasmed backwards. The soldier reached for one of those ugly swords but Bastion’s pymary was too swift. The Soud’s muscles seized up, his yellow eyes fluttered, and Bastion caught him like a knight catching a swooning damsel in one of those ridiculous courtyard plays. He slid a knee forward so Adelier bonelessly straddled it as he dropped, and then Bastion collapsed his lips atop his own.
Purple weed, wine, warm and sweaty masculinity. Bastion drank deeply of him, crushing his shoulders to the chapel wall and grinding his prick against his knee. Adelier didn’t return the kiss but he made no noise of protest either. Bastion felt him straining against the brief paralysis, left strength enough only to brace his legs and back, but even his head listed on his neck. Bastion seized his face. He dragged his teeth over his cheek, bit his jaw hard enough to mark it, chewed the rough late afternoon gold sprouted there and reflected on its flavour.
“I’ll take fine care of you,” Bastion whispered, exulting. The soldier’s lips were turning blue. His paralyzed frame couldn’t draw a breath, “You and your... one... two...” Bastion worked his knee thoughtfully against the other’s crotch and snorted with mirth, ”Three swords.”
Desperation seized the Soud in a violent paroxysm. Bastion ended the spell. A trail of inky nothingness broke from his body like his shadow, and Bastion sailed away upon it, leaving the Soud to drop to his knees and gasp for air.
"I'll arrange an invoice, then~"
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SO SCARLET (IT WAS MAROON).
I have ... no explanation for this. this is technically a "three times dick thought Charlie was beautiful, and one time he said it" which also meets ... boxer! Charlie x former boxer! Dick universe. And it's in 90s New York for the visuals. And Harry is a boxing trainer. I don't know what happened here but I like it. Yes I know her main fic isn't even published. Everyone stop looking at me like that. I am also now well-acquainted with boxer jargon I otherwise would not have known.
I.
Just one match, Harry bargained, just one and I’ll leave you alone.
So here Dick sat, as close to the ring as Nixon money could buy, the man sat right next to him, and the final round’s timer shaving down precious seconds.
This girl, “Chuckles” as Harry calls her, is light on her feet and hard to keep track of. Her shaggy black crop falls into her eyes and he can’t get a good look at her face as she hops from one foot to the other, bobbing and weaving with almost dancer-like grace.
It’s a little hypnotizing.
It’s either gonna be a knockout, or she’s gonna run this clock down.
Parry, cross, feint, corkscrew — it’s dizzying trying to keep up with her. There’s no pattern to it, but somehow she maintains a rhythm that he can’t hear. The crowd around them is in an uproar, the only thing he can hear is cheering and heckling in his ears. Across the ring, Harry’s face is lit up with the same fire he’s had since they were in the ring themselves. Dick’s own heart is pounding a little harder.
Her head snaps to the right as her opponent lands a decisive blow to her cheek. She stumbles, knocked off her balance, and takes another blow to the opposing cheek.
Dick holds his breath.
Lead right.
Another uproar, Harry shouting something unintelligible, drowned out by the din of the people around them. She shifts her weight. She winds up the fist.
Haymaker.
It’s a decisive, heavy, sharp blow to her opponent’s jaw that almost sends the other woman spinning. She stumbles, then crumples to the floor.
It’s the longest eight count Dick’s ever seen. Then the ring of the bell, cheering, and “Chuckles” turns around to face them entirely, face him, as the other woman is brought to her feet, and moved to a seat on the outside of the ring. Harry quickly slides in to grab her wrist and thrust it upright with a smile.
She pops out the mouth guard, with the free hand, looks out with a wicked grin — all bloody teeth and sweat and pointy canines. There’s a cut on her swelling cheek, dark hair sticking to her forehead, chest rising and falling as she takes labored breaths. Pride oozes from those red-stained lips, and now that he’s got a better look at her face he sees that fire in her eyes. It stirs something in him and he feels a flush creeping up his neck like he’s just gone the distance himself.
She wears that pride and those bruises like a starlet’s gown — and it looks gorgeous on her.
II.
The rain casts a hazy glow on the street outside, and makes this diner that much warmer in comparison. He watches for a moment, lip twitching into a grin as she dunks a fry into the Oreo shake. Feeling his eyes, she looks up and raises a brow.
“See something you like?”
And he could say a lot of things to that. The burger in front of him. The coke and fries. The rain droplets clinging to her hoodie (and in that respect, the hoodie itself, how cozy it looks, how it almost swallows her frame, and the bright red RICHMOND on the front).
Instead, he gestures to the fry.
“You get that one from Harry?”
“He’s persuasive when he wants to be.”
There’s a fond annoyance to the way she says it, coupled with an eye roll and a ghost of the smirk she always wears, be it for self-gratification or pride or the secret third thing Dick hasn’t been able to discern yet. Dick chuckles a little, bowing his head for a moment to take a bite out of his own burger, watching through his lashes and trying not to grin as she plucks pickles from her own with a look like they’d just insulted her.
Evidently, he fails at that.
“Winters, whatever pickle-related remark you’re about to make, I’d keep it to myself if I were you.”
“I didn’t have any remark. Should I?” he tries, teasing. But Dick watches as Charlie’s smile drops immediately, her face becoming deathly serious.
“Pickles took out my mother, Dick.” The way she says it, with no room for laughter, knocks him off his own balance. He stares at her, lips parted, in the midst of confusion and trying to discern if this is a joke or not.
“You’re messing with me.” He throws back, and the corner of her lip twitches as she tries to maintain that serious expression. But it cracks and Charlie ducks her head as she snorts.
“Caught me — but if I wasn’t you wouldn’t be living that one down, so we’re clear.” Dick rolls his eyes. When she looks back up the smile is softer, less challenging — he doesn’t know this expression of hers very well. Amusement brimming at the surface, but softer edges, less deprecating, more playful like a kid who might’ve told a knock-knock joke.
Her smile’s pretty, even when she’s not baring her teeth.
“Of course I wouldn’t.” is what he settles on, with another fond roll of his eyes.
III.
Dick has half a mind to turn back.
He doesn’t know when, during his visit, that he became Harry’s stand-in but he suspects it had something to do with last week, when Harry came back, and when his eyes lingered on Charlie for a moment too long at the gym and his smile grew and Harry, ever the perceptive one, refused to let him live it down.
Well I already told her you were coming, Harry defended, and it’s just a cabinet, Dick.
One day, he and Harry will sit down and have a chat about his friend volunteering him for things, but that’s a discussion for a later time.
The sweet old lady two doors down directed him here, to the right apartment number, and outwardly wondered about “Charlotte never mentioning a boyfriend,” to which Dick had to speedily correct her.
Now he’s staring at the door with the peeling paint and the peephole and the golden “6D” on the front, trying to surmise the courage to knock on the door, as if this is anything more than what it is. It’s just a cabinet, Dick, Harry’s voice is an annoyingly correct echo in his skull — and he wraps his knuckle on the door, cringing when he thinks it’s too heavy-handed.
There’s some shuffling, a hushed swear, and then the door opens, just enough to see the chain, and a pair of dark eyes meeting his.
“Oh! Dick just — give me a second,” The door slams, there’s a clicking of a lock, and then it opens again, Charlie in the doorway in a dark blue crewneck sweater and faded jeans. “Alright, come in. Pretend you don’t see the mess.”
He steps into the apartment, recognizing that scene from Dirty Dancing playing on the small TV, the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, and a handful of children’s toys littering the floor. Barbies with their clothes strewn about, a discarded teddy bear, and an unfinished game of Candyland — the blue gingerbread man is, evidently, the winner. Dick grins a little bit, looking over to her — and the way her cheeks almost seem to flush is a sight to see.
“Do I need to cover your eyes or something?” The thought of her hands on his face is… not an unwelcome one. Less in the light of covering his eyes, but a hand on his cheek, maybe. He gestures to the TV, to Patrick Swayze laid out on the floor.
“It’s Annie’s favorite scene.” He offers, and that gets a smile out of her.
“Should get her in contact with Hazel then. She has me watching this once a week,” She guides him into the kitchen, with the toolbox on the countertop, and sure enough, an old cabinet door with broken hinges. He looks back, at the flush returning to her cheeks. “I’d do it myself but…” she waves her hand, flippantly, at the two bandaged fingers that she’d ended up with after that heavy apartment door slammed on them.
She came to the gym fuming and Dick wrapped those fingers himself — they took a rain check on training, which she begrudgingly agreed to.
“I don’t mind.” Dick affirms, with what he hopes to be a reassuring smile. Charlie nods at that, leaning against the small table. She went through the work of buying new hinges and the right sized screws, it was just a matter of fixing it now. He’s a little grateful for his father’s refusal to ever call a repairman and his insistence on showing Dick how to do this stuff in his teens.
They lapse into comfortable silence — Charlie pours apple juice into mismatched cups. Real high-society stuff here, trust me, she drawls as she tucks the Motts bottle back into the fridge beside him. He’ll catch her staring every now and again, as she works around him with the sort of precision he can only assume comes from living in a seven-person household. Sometimes her gaze is on his arm, or his face, the screw he’s holding in his teeth, and they won’t say anything of it but her cheeks will flush scarlet and something in Dick will stir. He doesn’t know if it’s pride or nerves. He doesn’t care.
He… likes seeing her that way — the one blushing, instead of him. And the color is lovely when it’s dusted on her cheeks like that.
IV.
There’s a lot of things about New York that make his head spin.
The way people will scurry across crosswalks even during the greenlight, the impossible parking, the way she draws her curtains at night to keep the bright lights of the city out (and even then, cars will honk all through the night regardless). It’s busy and it’s loud and it’s nothing like rural Pennsylvania.
But there’s a welcomed quiet here, in her bathroom of all places. She’s propped up on the sink, one of his flannels tucked tastefully into faded jeans, her fingers grazing his skin. He swears this is the only place where his routines get disrupted, and one of the few places where he doesn’t actually mind it. So if he forgoes shaving a couple of times — getting her like this just makes it worth it.
She’s doing away with the beginnings of his beard in slow strokes, lips pulled into a pout, her fingers tilting his chin for a better look at what she’s doing.
Dick likes the feeling of her hands on his face. She likes knowing that her touch is still gentle — even with the scabbed knuckles and the callouses. It’s a win-win, really.
“So what’s the plan for today?” he asks, because she doesn’t hit the gym until six, and she has the day off today, too. She looks at him through her long dark lashes.
“Paulina wants to do ax-throwing in Brooklyn. She invited us — I think Alice might be going too, if you wanna give Lew some incentive. But Joe should be there anyways and if there’s Joe there’s gonna be Bill and so on and so forth,” Dick has to do his best not to shudder and break her concentration, but Charlie still snorts nonetheless. “It’s a birthday thing. Could be fun.”
“Can you guarantee I won’t get axed?” Dick poses, teasing.
“No but I can put a band-aid on it and kiss it better.”
“Mm. You may have to talk to Alby about that. He takes those Rugrats band-aids very seriously.”
At that, she pauses and laughs, tilting her head back for a moment and setting the razor to the side. Dick turns his half-shaven face to look at her — at the mark on her collarbone peaking just past his shirt, at the amused look in her eye, the smile stretching across her face. When she looks at him again, he reaches out to let his fingers graze the curve of her cheek.
“What is it?” She raises a brow at him, curious. Dick shakes his head.
“Nothing, just…” he lets his hand drop, leaning fully on the counter to bump their noses once. “You’re beautiful, y’know that?” It tumbles from his lips clumsily and unapologetically — he’s never been much of a smooth talker, but apparently it’s endearing.
Charlie smiles, and her face flushes, and it just further proves his point as she runs her hand down the shaved side of his face, and mutters a quiet thank you.
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Nusquam aliud est vertere (Nowhere else to turn) Chapter 47
‘Harry sighs. “Must you two constantly rub our noses in your overblown romance?” he snipes; his remonstration carries a sharp edge that is markedly unlike his usually equable temperament.
Poor Harry – he is taking on too much. He still looks dog-tired: he mustn’t have gotten a wink of sleep last night. Hermione doesn’t get a chance to soothe her old friend’s unrest before Pansy jumps in.
“Leave off, Lightning Bolt! Just because you’re a bitter bachelor – it doesn’t give you the right to piss all over our friends’ happiness,” she censures. “Look to what’s lacking in your own life before you criticize other people’s.”
Harry stands up, gripping the edge of his sturdy desk as he snarls, “Going to bang that drum again, Pansy? Since when did you become such an advocate for sloppy sentiment, anyway?”.
“Around the same time you first had that stick lodged up your arse, Harry,” Pansy retorts with vim. “What’s your problem with me? You’ve been grimacing in my direction ever since I walked in.”
Harry sucks in a deep, angry breath. “You want to know what my problem is? Go back five years, Pansy – back to the day you were oh-so-willing to give me up to Voldemort without a second’s hesitation. And yet you’re waltzing around here now like that never happened – as if saving your own skin wasn’t more important than overthrowing a demonic terror,” he rasps furiously.
The room has fallen utterly silent; even Mac has ceased his diligent chomping as he soaks up the sudden melodrama with astounded eyes.
Oh, Harry. There’s more to this than meets the eye, Hermione sadly ponders.
Pansy unfreezes, precisely laying down her plate and wooden cutlery. She swivels elegantly off the desk, standing to face the angry man behind it. Her carefully blank eyes and rigid spine betray her turmoil.
“I apologize, Auror Potter. For both my reprehensible actions that day, and my oversight in not asking your pardon sooner. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you to enjoy your lunch with your friends.” Pansy smiles tightly and manages to not look a single one of her ex-schoolmates in the eye as she glides toward the door, opening and closing it almost noiselessly.
Everyone remaining in the office stares at Harry with varying degrees of concern and accusation. Before any of them can speak, Harry fists at his hair and moans in self-directed frustration.
“I know - I’m an arsehole, alright? I’m sorry – I don’t know what came over me… just seeing her sitting there, baiting me… swinging her legs…” he growls anew.
“I have a fair idea what’s going on,” Theo murmurs, as Harry’s head whips around to glare at him.
“I’d best go after her; you really hurt her then, Harry,” Hermione begins to slide off Draco’s lap, but his arm hooking around her waist holds her in position.
“No you won’t, Granger – Potter is going to find her, and apologize profusely,” Draco sternly intones. “He will do whatever it takes to restore her equilibrium, and bring her back to his office. Go on, Harry – run along,” he urges.
To Hermione’s surprise, Harry hustles to the door without a word of objection, leaving it ajar in his haste.
“His Excellency Master Harry Potter speaks cruelly to the Perfectly Presented Mistress Pansy Parkinson,” Macdolas sorrowfully remarks. He looks longingly at Pansy’s half-finished plate, swiftly dropping his avaricious eyes as Draco frowns at him.
“Well, that escalated quickly, didn’t it?” Blaise jabs a chopstick in the air as he announces, “I’m running a betting pool: I’ll stump up fifty Galleons that those two will be rolling in the sack by the end of the Spring Equinox Ball. Any takers?”.
“Blaise!” Hermione’s squawk is drowned out as Draco and Theo simultaneously reply, “You’re on.”
https://archiveofourown.org/works/23994118/chapters/65246014
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