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stellarstarwarsimagines · 4 years

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Lie For Me (part IV of V) (Part I) (Part II) (Part III)

Pairing - Modern!Ben Solo x Reader

Summary - You haven’t heard anything from Ben Solo, and you can’t figure out why. It takes a run in with Han, a forced doorstep conversation, and a confrontation in a bar for you to get any answers. Once you do, you’re even more confused than you were to start with.

Word Count - 5.1k

Warnings - Language and a small bit of violence, but that’s it!

It had been over a week since you had heard from Ben Solo.

You tried not to let that fact bother you. In fact, you didn’t have time to let it bother you, because you were starting your new job today.

The job that Ben had helped you get.

That was unimportant though. You had your dream job, and you weren’t going to mess it up for anything. So it was time to focus and prove how you deserved to be here. You wore your favorite outfit, woke up early to make sure you had enough time to get a coffee, and arrived at the bottom floor with ten minutes to spare.

“Someone’s trying to make a good impression.” A voice from behind you said.

You turned around with a smile, happy to see a now familiar face. Vic had joined the company at the same time as you, and the two of you had done all of your training together. You got along rather well, and it reassured you to see him first thing this morning. “I could say the same for you. Are you ready for today?” You asked.

“Ready as can be. Want to walk up together? I want to see the new office.” He teased you.

Grinning at him, you nodded. It was a new perk that you enjoyed, having your own office, and you couldn’t deny you were eager to show it off. You led him there, discussing random things in your life until you reached it, unlocking the door and leading him inside.

“Wow, those are some nice flowers.” He said as he caught sight of the large bouquet sitting in the middle of your desk. Flowers that hadn’t been there the last time you left this room.

While he explored the rest of your space, you walked over, curious as to where they had come from. When you saw the card that said, “Good luck on your first day.” You assumed that they had to have come from one of your friends, but when you flipped the card over, your stomach plummeted to see the name Ben on the other side.

This man was really going to ignore you for a week, and then send you flowers for your first day at work and act like nothing was different? A flicker of irritation went through your body, and you placed the card down on your desk.

Vic called your name, and it took him doing it twice before you heard him. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I was asking if you wanted to go get drinks after work. Celebrate surviving the first day?” He asked, biting his bottom lip as he waited for your response.

It would be so easy to say yes. You should say yes. You liked being around him, and you knew that he was good company. There was nothing stopping you.

Except for the damn card sitting on your desk and haunting you.

“I - uh, can I take a rain check?” You asked, sending him a small smile. “I already have plans tonight with some friends.” It wasn’t a lie . . . but you . . . you couldn’t do it. Besides, if someone saw you with a guy who wasn’t Ben, and the word somehow got around to Ben’s parents who thought you were dating . . .

Even though the relationship was fake, you liked Han and Leia. You didn’t want them to think any less of you.

“Sure,” He said, shrugging his shoulders, and to his credit, didn’t seem disappointed at all. “I will be taking you up on that raincheck sometime.” Vic added as he started to back out of your office heading to his own work station.

“Sounds like a plan.” You said with a smile, waving to him as he closed the door. After he left, you glanced at the clock, and you realized that you had a couple of minutes until work started.

And that card still sat on your desk.

You didn’t even think about what you were doing. In seconds, you had your phone out of your pocket, and had selected Ben’s name in your contacts, bringing it up to your ear as it began to ring. Of course, the longer he took to answer it, the more you thought about what a bad idea this must be. But after about four rings, he did answer, his hello rough and low in your ears.

“Hey, um,” it was a startling revelation to realize that you were kind of nervous. For as long as you had known Ben Solo, you had felt several different emotions around him, but never had you been so anxious to hear his voice. “I - I got your flowers.”

There was a pause, but only a moment. “I ordered those a couple of weeks ago. I apologize for not cancelling them.”

“Cancelling them?” Your brow furrowed together as you sat down in your chair, frowning. The two of you were supposed to be dating, and your boss knew that. Why would he have wanted to stop them? Plus . . . they were beautiful, and you had spotted several of your favorite flowers in the arrangement.

He didn’t give you a chance to ask anything else though. “Someone walked into my office. I’ll talk to you later,” and without waiting for you to say a word, he hung up.

You looked down at your phone in disbelief at the sudden dismissal, and leaned back in your chair with an annoyed sigh.

What the hell was going on with him?

____________________

It was a full week before you found out what had happened. You had decided to take your lunch break at a nearby park since the weather was nice. You were sitting and enjoying your sandwich when a large, brown mass of fur ran and jumped on you, knocking your food out of your hand and licking all over your face.

At once a huge smile formed, and you began petting the large dog. “Well, hi there, Chewy. It’s nice to see you too.” You said through your laughter.

“Get off you fuzzball!” Han’s annoyed voice called, and you glanced up to see the man in question running in your direction, stopping once he realized who you were. “Oh, hey,” he said, and you watched as he ran a hand through his hair, “sorry about him.”

“It’s fine,” you reassured him, giving him an encouraging smile that seemed to put Han more at ease. “I’ve missed the troublemaker.” You said, ruffling the dog’s fur. “I hope there haven't been any more attempts at escape?”

Han let out a chuckle and sat down beside you on the bench. “Not yet, but I’m sure they’re coming. Damn dog’s almost more trouble than he’s worth.”

You let out a chuckle of your own, turning your smile to the dog in question. “Well, if you ever need any help catching him, let me know. I wouldn’t mind helping out.”

At your words, Han gave you a confused look. “You wouldn’t?”

“Of course not. Why would I?” You asked, giving him your own unsure look.

Han shifted around in his seat, his brow furrowed as he responded, “Since you and Ben broke up I thought -”

Everything else he said was muted in your head. It felt like you were underwater, your brain trying to catch up with his words. Ben had told his parents that the two of you had broken up? Without even telling you? You understood that there probably wasn’t a reason to keep the ruse going any longer, but a head’s up would have been nice so there wasn’t an awkward situation like this. Now you were scrambling for something to say, and Han was looking at you like he was waiting for you to speak. “Oh, um, right.”

Thankfully, it seemed your confusion worked in your favor as Han gave you a sympathetic look and placed a hand on your shoulder. “Listen kid, give him time to come to his senses. My son’s got a stubborn side, that he got from his mother of course,” You couldn’t help but give him a small smile at that. “But I can tell he cares a lot about you. He just needs a minute to get his head on straight.”

Ignoring the way Han’s words made your heart stutter, you nodded. “Yeah . . . maybe that’s all he needs.”

____________________

This was a bad idea.

Ever since you had talked to Han this afternoon, his words had echoed in your head, and you hated it. You had never been the type of person to spend hours thinking about a guy’s motives behind his actions, but now it seemed as if your brain could do nothing else. All during work you had been distracted, and that was not how you wanted to be when you were still new. So you weren’t going to let it continue. If Ben wasn’t going to give you any closure on what the two of you had gone through, you would make him.

Sitting on the porch of his apartment with Poe probably wasn’t the best way to get it, but it was the first thing that you had thought of.

You had a general idea of what time he came home, and thankfully you had only been sitting there for about an hour when you heard footsteps on the stairs. Your heart did an odd little stutter and anxiety filled your chest as you stood up, but you brushed it aside as best you could, determined to get some answers.

He was startled to see you, that much was easy to see, but almost as soon as you read it, it was gone, a blank mask replacing the expression as he shrugged his bag higher up on his shoulder. “Are you waiting for Poe? He’s going to be late tonight.”

“Waiting for -” You gave him an incredulous look. “Of course not. I’m waiting for you. Thought it might be a good idea to talk where your work couldn’t interrupt you.”

“Well, you’ve never been here to see me, so I thought Poe was the logical conclusion.” Ben said, walking up the remaining steps and beginning to unlock the door.

A flicker of irritation started to form in your heart, and you clenched your fists at your side. “I ran into Han today.” Even with his back to you, you saw the tension form in his shoulders. “If I had time to prepare, I would have brought a box of your things to return.”

Ben turned back to look at you then, crossing his arms over his chest. “I guess I should have sent you an email. I told them last weekend.”

“An email?” You repeated, your mouth almost dropping in disbelief. “Is that what I’ve been reduced to now? Not even worthy of an email?”

He shrugged his shoulders as if his words hadn’t cut into your chest like a knife. “I didn’t expect you to run into my parents anytime soon. I apologize for that. I decided since we both got what we wanted, there wasn’t any need to keep lying.”

“Don’t you think I should have had some sort of say in -” You started to say, but he cut you off.

“In what? Our transaction?”

The breath was robbed from your lungs. You had come here for closure, trying to discern his behavior, and with those words, you had gotten what you wanted. If, no matter everything the two of you had shared, all he saw from this was a transaction? It was obvious where his ‘caring’ feelings stood.

If only you had been able to keep the same mindset.

You couldn’t stand to look at him for any longer, knowing what you knew now. You wouldn’t dare let him see how much those simple words had affected you. You wouldn’t let yourself appear weak. “I would have liked a head’s up. That’s all, but you’re right. Whatever we had should end. It was going on for too long anyway.” You said, trying to match his tone. You picked up your bag from the ground, placing it over your shoulder. “Let Poe know I’m sorry I missed him.” You said, and without another word, turned on your heel and headed back to your car.

A part of you, no matter how small, hoped that he would call you back, run to you and spin you around, kissing you like he had that day in the bathroom, like you were something precious that might slip through his fingers . . . but he didn’t.

And you didn’t let the tears fall until you were safely in your car.

____________________

It was a lot easier to say what happened between you and Ben hadn’t affected you than to believe it yourself. However, you didn’t think you were that convincing in the first place. Rey and Finn could sense something was wrong. It was obvious in the way that watched your every move, and came up with things to do to keep your mind occupied. You appreciated it, but you hated the fact that they even had to do it in the first place. In fact, you hated that you had let Ben Solo have any affect on you at all.

Which was why you resolved to not let him have any more.

“We don’t have to do this, you know.” Rey said as the three of you walked into one of your favorite bars, arms all linked together.

“We can go back to your apartment, watch the Office again, and order takeout?” Finn suggested.

“Guys,” you shot them a stern look, one after the other. “I want to be out. I want to do things, and most importantly . . .” You pulled away from them with a smirk, glancing around the bar. “I want to get laid.”

“You want to . . . what?” Rey asked.

You turned your attention back to her, crossing your arms over your chest. “I’ve been stuck in a stupid fake relationship for like three months where I wasn’t getting any, and I’ve been working hard on this new job. I think I’ve earned a bit of stress relief.”

Finn and Rey exchanged glances. “Of course, if that’s what you want.” Finn said, shrugging his shoulders.

What you really wanted was to get the sensation of Ben Solo’s lips off of yours, and this was the quickest way to do that.

Right?

“Yes, this is what I want.” You reassured them, reaching out to grab both of their arms and tug them towards the bar. “Now let’s get some drinks. First round is on me.”

____________________

It turned out finding someone to have a good time with was a lot harder than you thought it was going to be. Over the course of two hours, you had talked to around five guys, none of the conversations lasting more than twenty minutes, for purely, you would admit, shallow reasons on your behalf.

One had the most annoying laughter you had ever heard. Another wouldn’t stop saying “really?” every other sentence. Then there was the guy who had smaller hands than you. If it wasn’t going bad enough, then you met the man who wouldn’t stop smiling with too big of a grin, and after talking to the last one, you realized what was holding you back.

None of them made your heart race like Ben.

“I’ve never seen someone looking so miserable at a bar.” A voice said as a body slid in beside you.

You recognized it at once, turning to give Vic a genuine smile. “Well, I am about to run low on my drink.” You teased him.

“Guess I’ve got to fix that.” He said, returning your smile as he gestured to the bartender.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean -” You tried to stop him, your face growing hot, but he shook his head.

“You owe me a raincheck remember?” Vic said.

“All right,” You agreed, watching as he turned back to the bartender and noticing for the first time how nice his eyes were.

Maybe this night was finally starting to turn around.

Three drinks later, you found yourself leaning against Vic’s side, snorting with laughter as he told you, Finn and Rey about the most embarrassing first day of a job he’s ever had. “So you just took off?” Rey said, covering her mouth with her hand in shock.

“Didn’t say a word?” Finn asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

Vic shrugged his shoulders. “Boss told me to get out of there. So that’s what I did.” He said, taking another sip of his drink.

“You’re terrible. I can’t believe they hired you.” You teased him, bumping his shoulder.

“Neither can I.” A low voice interrupted from behind you, a voice that made you freeze in your spot. If you hadn’t known by the voice, the looks on Rey and Finn’s faces told you at once that Ben Solo was standing behind you.

You didn’t want to turn around. You didn’t want to look at him because you didn’t know if you could control your expression. Your heart was already pounding heavy in your chest, and if you looked at him . . .

“Well, if it isn’t Ben Solo.” Vic said, and you glanced at him to find a rather callous grin on his face. A look that you had never seen, and had no desire to see again.

As soon as you saw it, you couldn’t help it any longer, and looked behind you to Ben who had an equally unpleasant expression on his own face as he stared at Vic.

It was at that moment that you realized the two of them must know each other.

And not in a good way.

You glanced back at Finn and Rey who were looking as confused as you did as they watched the exchange. Rey shrugged her shoulders and Finn raised his eyebrows, so clearly they had no idea what was going on either.

Turning back to look at Ben, you felt a shiver roll down your spine. You had seen Ben angry several times. Your mind flashed back to that first night the two of you had pretended to be, ‘dating’, when you had overheard those girls talking about you in particular. The burning rage in his eyes almost seemed tame now compared to the look that he was giving Vic. “What are you doing here?” He asked, venom leaking from his tone.

“Having a drink with a coworker.” He said, and did he lean even closer to your side or were you imagining it?

Nope. You hadn’t imagined it, because as soon as you noticed it, it seemed Ben did too. His jaw tensed so hard it looked as if it had turned to stone. The fire in his eyes turned them even darker, a dangerous black, as his hands clenched into fists at his side. “Coming to get my girlfriend.” Ben hissed through his lips.

You barely had time to stutter out the word, “girlfriend?” before Ben had hauled you up out of your chair and wrapped his arm around you. At once, Finn stood up, ready to intervene, but you shook your head at him, not wanting him or Rey involved in whatever this show of testosterone this was.

“Ah, didn’t know she was your girlfriend considering the way she’s been flirting -” Vic started to say, but you cut him off.

“Excuse me? If I was flirting with you -”

“Come on, we’re going.” Ben said, tightening his grip around you and tugging you along with him as he headed to the entrance of the bar.

You thought about struggling. You thought about turning and screaming at him, and you thought about getting out of his arm, running back to the table, and planting one on Vic’s lips right then and there because it was clear how much that would piss Ben off. But you did none of those things, waving Finn and Rey off once more as they both stood to follow you, and allowed yourself to be taken outside where the two of you were alone.

And then you turned around and let him have it. “What the hell, Solo?!” You yelled, shoving his arm off of you. “I wasn’t your girlfriend, but now that Vic’s involved I am?! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

To your indignation, he ignored every word you said to him. “What the hell were you doing hanging out with him?! He’s bad news.” Ben said, sounding every bit as furious as you did.

Which made no sense. “Bad news?” You let out a laugh lacking humor. “Guess he was fooling me, because other than Finn and Poe, he’s the only guy that’s been even somewhat nice to me.” You took a step towards him, invading his personal space. “He doesn’t treat me like a caveman dragging me around everywhere. He doesn’t avoid me. He doesn’t act like I have the plague after I kiss him!” You yelled, punctuating each sentence with a poke to his heaving chest.

If you hadn’t been staring into his eyes with such intensity you would have missed it. The flash of pain that was gone within a blink of his eyes and replaced with that fiery fury. “You’ve kissed him?” He hissed.

Out of all the things you had said, that was what he had picked up on? You weren’t sure whether you wanted to cry, laugh, scream or a combination of all three. “No, you asshole! I haven’t kissed anyone or anything since your stupid lips!”

He looked relieved.

And it just riled you up more. “You know what? Maybe I should give it a shot. He’s got some nice, kissable lips, might even be a good lay too -”

The breath left your lungs in a whoosh as you found yourself pinned between the cold stone of the building and Ben’s blistering, towering body. Shocked by the sudden movement, you looked up at him, but found the breath gone from your lungs once more. You had been trying to piss him off, make him as angry as you were, and there was no doubt he was from the absolute tension that lingered throughout his whole body. When you stared into his eyes though, you saw something you had never seen there.

Fear.

“Stay away from him. You’ll get hurt.” Ben said, his hands gripping your wrists in a tight grip as if waiting for you to haul off and run back in there to him.

Which a part of you wanted to do, to piss him off, but the biggest part of you was more curious as to why he even cared. After all that talk about the deal between the two of you being over, what should it matter to him if you got into a relationship that would end badly? “Quit bossing me around like you give a shit what happens to me.” You said, trying to sound as vicious as possible.

Ben’s grip tightened on your wrist, his eyes tracing over all of the features on your face and leaving heat in their wake. “You think I don’t care about you? Every second of every day I’m fighting not to think about you.” He told you, equal amounts of anguish and anger in his voice. “What you’re doing, who you’re with, if you’re at that stupid restaurant with the bad breadsticks that you inist are the best in town -”

“T-that’s because they are.” You stuttered, your mind not able to comprehend the rest of the words he was saying yet.

“Don’t ever, think for one second, that I don’t care about you.” Ben said, giving your wrists one more squeeze, and then letting them go.

You watched as he turned and took a step away from you. At that moment, you were stricken with the realization that this could be it. If you didn’t say something right this second, nothing might ever come of you and Ben.

There was no way you could let that chance pass you by.

“Then why are you pushing me away?!” You called out to him, making him freeze. “Ben, I . . .” You took a deep breath, forcing the terrifying words to leave your mouth. “I want to be with you. Not in a fake relationship, but a real one.” You said, wrapping your arms around yourself as you took a step forward.

Ben didn’t move, and kept his gaze locked on the ground in front of him when he spoke. “You think that you want that -”

“No. You’re wrong. No matter how big of an asshole you’ve been . . .” You said, shaking your head. “I know it’s what I want. I thought it that night when we were looking for Chewy, and I knew it when I kissed you. I know you felt it too.” You insisted, even though you knew no such thing, not anymore at least, but you had to hope. “Stop fighting your feelings.”

You felt the tension release somewhat as he turned to look at you, but his face was so, so insecure that it took your breath away. Even more so when his hand, with the most gentle touch, cupped your cheek, his thumb brushing across your cheekbone. You closed your eyes as you felt him draw closer, his forehead resting against yours, his lips so close you could almost taste them. “Why do you always push?” Ben said, but it sounded more like a plea than a question.

His lips brushed yours, and you knew, without a doubt, you couldn’t do it. If you let him kiss you, you wouldn’t have the strength to stand firm on what you wanted, what you needed. Your hand rested against his chest, exerting enough pressure to stop him. “Don’t,” you mumbled, shaking your head. “Don’t kiss me unless you’re willing to open up to me too.” You opened your eyes, gazing into his intense dark brown ones. “I can’t take it if you don’t.”

Ben’s eyes closed, almost as if he couldn’t take the emotion in yours. You waited breathlessly for him to say something, do something, and finally he opened his mouth -

Vic called your name from behind Ben, and your eyes flickered over his shoulder to see him, Rey and Finn a few feet behind, all watching the exchange. “Are you okay?” He asked, but you got the feeling he didn’t care. He just wanted to rile Ben up.

It worked. As if that switch had been flipped, Ben took a step away from you, turning around to glare at Vic, hiding your body with his own. “She’s fine.” He answered for you. “Now get out of here.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Vic snapped, moving so that he could look at you. “You all right, Sweetheart?”

“I’m fine,” You answered, annoyed at him for interrupting and annoyed at Ben for letting Vic get to him. “I’m ready to go.” You called to Rey and Finn who nodded and went back inside to get your stuff.

“Do you need a ride to your place?” Vic asked, and before you could say no, Ben answered for you.

“I’m sure she can get home fine.” Ben hissed, moving to step between the two of you again.

Vic smirked, taking a step even closer and holding his hand out to you. “He sure is possessive of you isn’t he? I promise if you stick with me, you won’t have to deal with that.”

Ben stepped forward and good God was he menacing, towering over Vic, who was not short either. Everything about him in that moment screamed dangerous, and you found yourself wanting to take a step back yourself. “If you try to touch her again, you’re going to regret it.” Ben growled, sending shivers down your spine.

“Ben!” You said, shocked by how angry he was getting when Vic was clearly trying to irritate him for God knows what reason.

“What are you going to do about it, Solo? Wimp out like last time?” He glanced at you, and then looked back at Ben. “Does she even -”

It happened so fast you almost missed it. One minute Vic was taunting him, the next he was on the ground, clutching his nose, blood hitting the concrete beneath him. “Ben! What the hell?!” You gasped as soon as you realized what he had done, hurrying around him to Vic to check and see if he was okay. “Are you okay?” You asked him, trying to see how bad he was hurt.

Vic nodded, glaring up at Ben, but didn’t say anything else.

Biting your lip, you looked up at Ben who was still staring at Vic with poorly concealed fury. “You need to get out of here.” You told him.

That’s when Ben turned his attention to you, disbelief on his face. “What?”

Did you want him to go? No, you didn’t, but you couldn’t ignore what he had done. He needed time to calm down, and he wasn’t going to get that here, with Vic hanging around. You couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t goad him into another fight, and that was the last thing that needed to happen right now. “Go, Ben.” You insisted. “Get your head on straight.” You said, the words having more meaning than one.

You couldn’t miss the flash of hurt that crossed his face, but then it was replaced by something almost worse. He almost seemed . . . resigned. Like he had expected you to order him away, and he wasn’t surprised that you had finally done it. Your brow furrowed, and you started to say something else, but before you could, he had turned and walked away, his hands clenched into fists at his side.

As soon as he was gone, you turned to look at Vic who was staring after him with a clenched jaw. “Listen, I’m sorry about him, he’s -”

“He’s a dick,” Vic spat, moving away from you and standing up, “and if he’s your boyfriend, you don’t have a fucking idea what kind of person that he is.”

Your eyes widened at the venom in his tone, and you watched as he stomped away as well, so distracted by his words that you didn’t even notice Finn and Rey coming up behind you.

“Hey, are you okay?” Finn asked, rubbing your back with his warm hand.

Sighing, you let yourself lean against his shoulder while Rey took your hand. “Not even remotely.” You admitted. “Can we just go back to my place and watch the Office like you guys suggested, and I can pretend I’m crushing on a Jim Halpert instead of a hot head who punched someone and won’t let me in?”

Rey squeezed your hand with a reassuring smile. “You’re on.”

#ben solo #kylo ren #ben solo x reader #kylo ren x reader #ben solo imagine

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abreathofthewild · 4 years

Text

I Need A Hero, Chapter 1/?

Summary: After Y/N finds out that her late grandfather has willed his rural Montana ranch to her, she decides it’s time for a little change of scenery. At least until it’s in a condition to sell. Along the way, Y/N finds a renewed appreciation for hard work, new friends, and possibly even love. She has the land. Can Thor help make it a home?

Word Count: 11559 (I have no idea either, trust me)

Warnings: non-main character death, mentions of alcohol, some thematic elements, eventual smut.

A/N: I have so many people I could tag on this post, so many. For now, I'll just say thank you to @spacelabrathor for allowing me to use this idea and to @itssimplydior for going above and beyond in helping me grammar check and just being a great hype person. Thank you thank you thank you! And thank you to everyone who has waited so long for this. I have an amazing circle of friends on here. I hope this first chapter was worth the wait!

Edit: The banner is by the amazing @frankiemorales who designed this moodboard because she loves the story so much ♡´･ᴗ･`♡

Links: Thor Odinson Masterlist and AO3 Version

Skyscrapers cut through the blue sky like ancient monoliths; they weren’t ancient at all but the way the sun glinted off the glass and steel of their structures made them look like modern interpretations of old gods. Car horns and shouts and ongoing conversations hummed through the air, the constant buzz of life an undercurrent that was all at once hard to ignore and easy to be lost in. There in the middle of it, beneath the heartbeat of the city, you sat in an office chair trying to clear your head around a different type of ringing in your ears.

Your grandfather had passed away. Your estranged grandfather. And yet here you were, listening to his attorney tell you that he had willed you his ranch. The ranch you had spent almost six summers at as a child. The ranch where you had learned to ride a horse. The ranch where you had learned how to skip rocks and climb trees. The ranch where you had decided that one day you’d have a big ranch of your own, “just like Grandpa”.

“Miss? Miss, are you still there?” A breath rattled from your lungs as you tried to form a coherent sentence. “I’m sorry, I can imagine this is difficult but were you able to hear me on the line? Hank has passed away and he’s left you his ranch. We’ll need you to come sign some paperwork. There are some stipulations that I’d rather discuss in person. Then you’re free to get the details settled to sell it if that’s what you want.” Another pause.

“Um, yes, I’m sorry. I heard you. Can you email the initial documents?” The barely-managed response felt odd on your tongue, stiff.

“Ah, yes, I’m sure we can manage that. I’ll have to apologize, things move a little slower around here so sometimes it slips my mind that electronic signatures are an option now. Like I said though, the final details will need to be worked out here, in Dove’s Reach.” After that, you tuned out; the man’s voice on the line seemed to drone on. Your brain honed in on “it’s not really in a state to sell” and “I’ll put you in touch with a licensed appraiser just to make sure”. Then the call ended and you realized somewhere in there you must have hung up the phone but you honestly couldn’t remember.

A ranch. A whole ranch. 500 acres of rolling hills in Montana. Your breath caught and you quickly brushed away the tears that had welled in your eyes, pursing your lips and glancing at the paperwork spread in front of you. There was so much work to do here with the Harrison case. Your eyes roved from the physical documents to the spreadsheets on your computer screen and back again. It would be foolish to take time off now when you were so close to finishing it up. You could see your father’s frown as if he was standing in front of you.

And yet… Your grandfather hadn’t been a part of your life for so long. In the beginning, when your parents had told you abruptly that Grandpa had done something bad, been mean to them, you took it hard. Seven years old is a horrible time to lose a grandfather who taught you how to milk a cow and showed you the wonder in the small things. But as you got older and your parents became more embroiled in work, more distant, you put it to the back of your mind. You were still young enough that you had no choice but to take their word for it. The thoughts tripped around your head like a broken record; you felt a little queasy. You wiped brusquely once more at a stray tear and, taking a deep breath, turned to your monitor. You minimized one tab and opened another, preparing to write an email. It was a little more difficult than you had anticipated though and ten minutes later when your assistant walked in reminding you of your 2 o’ clock, you startled from a blank daydream and an even blanker screen. Your surroundings rushed back in around you on a pinpoint vortex and all at once, you knew you had to go. Regardless of parts of the will needing to be handled in person, something split in your heart. Right now, your place was at the ranch.

“Reschedule that appointment please. Let Clark know we’ll be switching it over to a Zoom call. Actually, cancel the rest of my appointments for the next two weeks. I’ll let you know if I need you to move anything around after that.” She widened her eyes but nodded all the same, turning and exiting your corner office with purpose. You began typing out the email to your father letting him know that you’d be taking advantage of all those vacation hours you had stored away for a rainy day. You would take the Harrison case with you and could easily finish it remotely. It would be on his desk by the deadline. Your rainy day was today but despite the circumstance, you were beginning to catch the feeling that there wasn’t a cloud in sight. The ranch house flashed across your mind’s eye and you blew out a breath from your lungs you hadn’t even realized you were holding.

You clicked send and stood, throwing on your coat and gathering the necessary paperwork from your desk. You let your assistant know you were leaving and walked out the door, not bothering to pay attention to a few pairs of wandering eyes who watched as you entered the elevator and headed down to the ground floor. With each minute of descent through the high-rise building, you felt your heart beat faster. It felt like there was a balloon in your chest waiting to burst. Your heels clicked on the marble floor and as you pushed through the doors into the spring air of New York City, you felt just a little more alive than you had moments before.

The redeye flight and extra two-hour drive put you in Dove’s Reach before the sun had completely risen. Last week if someone had told you that you would be standing here right now looking at your grandfather’s ranch house with the notion that you could fix it up, you would have laughed in their face. But as the sun rose in the east, it felt as if anything was possible. To the north was a range of mountains that could have looked menacing, but from your vantage only served to leave you in awe. The immediate land was just miles and miles of green fields that met with forest. The trees were behemoths; the sun bathed everything in a rich golden light adding unbelievable depth to the scene before you. The air smelled clean and fresh and alive.

You resisted the urge to pinch yourself because if this was a dream you never wanted to wake up. There was your grandfather’s house right in the middle of all of it. It still held the country charm that you remembered but there was so much that was… off. From what you could see with the naked eye, the wooden fence was sagging and falling over in a lot of places. The barn was missing slats of wood and one door hung precariously on its hinges. The house was a relic, the paint dry and peeling. You knew your grandfather as a strong, stout man who even in his older age was capable of running a whole ranch. The state of things now left a hollow feeling in your stomach and left so many questions unanswered.

A suitcase, carry-on, and laptop bag was all you had with you as you took the key from under the mat and opened the front door. It groaned loudly as if it hadn’t been opened in a long while but it made you smile to know that your grandfather had left the key in the same place after all these years. You walked to your left into the kitchen and set your keys on the counter. The familiarity of it all suddenly made you pause with a sudden sense of Deja Vu. The magnets on the fridge, the little table with four wooden chairs, and an old fashioned clock hanging on the wall that had faded from a once dark blue. The checkered yellow and white curtains were rolled up above the farm-style sink and an old mason jar with some dried flowers sat in the sill.

You found yourself choking up as you realized your grandfather’s coffee mug, the big one with some western painting of a bucking bronco, sat ready next to the coffee pot. You walked over to it and cradled it in your hands as the feeling washed through your bones that it was your mug now. There was so much you remembered about him and yet so much you never got to know, never would know. It nagged at you as the realization began to set in that there was so much to get done to sell this place. And after it was gone, there would be nothing of your grandfather left. A shaky sigh escaped from your lips.

Sleep. Right now you just needed to sleep. You made your way upstairs, the wood groaning in protest as you went, and headed to the right where one of the two guest rooms were located. Again, it was like a museum, in a state of preservation. With a wrenching in your stomach, you wondered if he’d ever had visitors after you. The bed sat against the opposite wall under the window and the sunlight filtering in passed the tree outside left dappled patterns on the patchwork quilt. You brushed your fingertips across it and marveled at how soft it still felt.

The room smelled faintly of dust so you cracked the window. You were rewarded by the cool breeze laced with the scent of pine wafting gently into the room. It was the beginning of spring but mornings were still chilled with the end of winter. You were pretty sure that in the shade of various trees on your way in there were small drifts of unmelted snow and the dried grass in the fields outside had sparkled with frost. You flopped down on the bed, covering yourself with the knitted throw that was tossed across the bottom.

As your eyes fluttered shut, you had a distinct feeling that you had always lived here. The thought crossed your mind as you edged into sleep that maybe you should stay.

It was well past noon when you startled awake. This time, it felt like there was a weight on your chest. You cracked your eyes and let out a small ah when you were greeted by a plump silver and white cat with green eyes sitting on your stomach. It chirruped when it realized you were awake. The cat hadn’t been in the house when you arrived (that you had seen). Maybe it climbed the tree and hopped in the window. Either way, it had been a long time since you’d last had a pet (your long hours didn’t allow for it back in New York) and your heart did a light skip as you scratched behind its ears. Its purr sounded like a motorboat.

The breeze coming through the window was a little warmer now and after a while of trying to stay lost to the world outside, you knew if you didn’t get up right then, you wouldn’t feel motivated to do so for the rest of the day. And there was a lot to do. With an exaggerated grunt, you deposited the cat on the other side of the bed. It sat there licking a paw and periodically giving you an irked look. You let out a small snort and grabbed a pad of paper and a pen from the desk and began writing down your goals for the day.

The main one was a basic grocery list (you were pretty sure there was nothing in the fridge or cupboards), and now getting some cat food. If you remembered correctly, the actual town was about another half hour from the ranch in the opposite direction you’d come. You stood and winced as pins and needles prickled up and down your legs from sitting cross-legged on the bed. You glanced at your computer bag tucked in next to the desk on the floor. The Harrison case would have to wait.

Main Street hadn’t really changed much from what you could remember of your time here. A lot of red brick and dark wood. It was quaint and about as small-town as you could get. Something lurched in your chest when you pulled to a stop in the grocery parking lot. Everything was so foreign to how you lived in the big city but at the same time… it sang of a home you had not experienced before. Part of you thought it was a shame that you had to go back in two weeks. You brushed the thought aside as quickly as you allowed yourself to feel it. There was no use indulging that line of thinking and besides, it was the first day. You were sure you would feel differently at the end of that time after you’d put in the work that would be required.

The grocery store was bigger than you remembered; you were pretty sure it had been expanded. Maybe the town wasn’t as little as it used to be. A cartful of basics and what felt like 500 mental notes later, you brought your groceries to the front. You daydreamed for a moment as the steady beep of the register sounded in the background.

“You’re not from around these parts, are you darlin’?” You came back to yourself, shaking your head. The woman ringing you up was older, with short-cropped white hair and glasses perched on the end of her nose. Her name tag read “Rose''. “I thought so. We don’t get many people around here that buy tofu. Is it any good?” She wrinkled her nose in such a way that made you giggle. You shrugged your shoulders.

“There’re a few different ways I make it that taste pretty good. I’m not vegetarian or anything, I just like all sorts of foods.” She brightened at that; you guessed there were also not very many vegetarians in Dove’s Reach either. “I’m actually here to handle my grandpa’s estate. He just passed away…” You trailed off, surprised by the lump that was suddenly in your throat. Her eyes widened just a bit before she reached out to pat your hand.

“Do you mean Hank? Was Hank your granddaddy? Yes, he must be, I can see you have the same eyes now. Well, I’m so very sorry, hon. He was a good man. It seems like only yesterday he was here picking up groceries.” There was a tear in her eye now and it made you wonder how close the two were. “It had actually been quite some time since he was able to make it in here on his own. Months at least.” Months? So he had been sick for a while. Why hadn’t he told you? Rose saw the look flash across your face. “Oh,” she breathed out quietly, “you didn’t know, did you?” She clucked her tongue as you paid. “That Hank, always thinkin’ he didn’t need help. We were all surprised when he finally had Jonesy coming ‘round to do things in town for him. Jonesy was his attorney, you’ll probably be speaking to him soon, I’d reckon. Well, if you need anything, you just let me know, okay?”

You grabbed your bags and put them back in your cart. There would be time to ask Rose questions about your Grandpa later, you hoped. But right now, you needed to focus on getting help with the ranch.

“Well actually, Rose, I’m looking for some help to fix the ranch up. Do you know anyone off the top of your head?”

Rose had told you to go across the street to On The Wings of A Dove, the local hang out after a day’s work had been finished for a lot of folks. It was surprisingly modern with an old feel. Deep red brick, exposed black pipe, and low lighting. The smell as you walked in the doors made your mouth water. Luckily the owner, Gus, was in and was more than happy to help a young lady such as yourself.

“Thor! This lady here needs some help fixin’ up her ranch to sell. You lookin’ for work?” You glanced in the direction the portly man was facing, down the bench, and around a couple of other patrons. A man leaned out and smiled in your way; the flash of white teeth made your heartbeat stutter.

“As a matter of fact, Gus, I just finished up at the Finch’s farm helpin’ them with that young colt.” He stood and walked over to you. If he looked big from a distance, there was no denying it now as he moved into your space. You looked up at his face and the golden hair framing blue eyes was enough to make your brain go foggy. He held out a hand, the chorded muscle across his chest and in his broad shoulders evident even with such a small movement. You took it and something bloomed in your chest when his hand enveloped yours. His skin was rough with calluses. It was warm and a vision flashed across your mind unbidden: those hands grasping at your face, roving down your arms, across your chest, gripping your hips, and moving lower… You shook your head and tried to listen to the words coming out of his mouth.

“The name’s Thor. Thor Odinson. How may I be of service, pretty lady?” Normally, someone being so forward would irk you. But somehow hearing Thor say the words “pretty lady” in a slow drawl didn’t bother you in the least. You offered him a smile back, quirking your head to the side. Taking inventory. He couldn’t be much older than you if he was older at all.

“Thor Odinson? That’s an interesting name.” He nodded, ducking his head and running a hand through his hair. It looked ridiculously soft to the touch and you had to stop yourself from snorting in good-natured annoyance.

“Yes, ma’am. My family comes from the Old Country. They wanted a strong name for a strong man. Gus said you’re lookin’ for help though?” He crossed his arms and leaned in, the white t-shirt he was wearing stretching across his chest. You forced your eyes to move back to his face where you were met with a little crook of his lips. You were pretty sure he saw that but there was no embarrassment in the knowledge. “I can help you do just about anything. Pick your poison.”

It was a lot. And you were certain there was more than you even realized with your knowledge of how to run a ranch being zero. You listed off how the house needed a good cleaning but you could take care of that. It probably needed a new coat of paint inside and out. Several of the shudders on both stories needed repairing. The barn looked pretty run down but you hadn’t gotten up close to it yet. One of the doors had definitely been hanging crookedly on its hinges. Then there was the fence… You could probably use more than two people for that. You had no idea of what state the ranch hand cabin was in. You looked up at him and gave him a shrug. His eyebrows were up near his hairline as he leaned back and whistled.

“Boy, we’ve really got our work cut out for us, don’t we? Well, I think we’d better start with those things you mentioned first. Trust me, if there’re other problems we’ll find ‘em real quick. Might cost ya a pretty penny. Are we tryin’ to stay within a certain budget?” He looked you right in the eye and Lord help you, it had been a long time since someone looked you in the eye with any sort of sincerity. You were used to working with less-than-savory types in your corporate world. You cleared your throat and shrugged again.

“Not really. If we fix it up good enough, there won’t be a loss. It’s a pretty place. Just needs some TLC. And the land is worth its 500 acres in gold.” The silence was palpable but not in an uncomfortable way. Thor leaned in and you caught a slip of his scent. Sweat and leather and woodsmoke. You took a deep breath, pulling the smell with it. You realized he was listening. He wasn’t just hearing your words, he was taking them in and mulling them around in his brain. “But wait. Does that mean you’ll do it? We haven’t even talked about wages or anything like that.” He waved a hand in dismissal, rolling his eyes.

“We can talk about that later. What matters is you need help and we like to help people ‘round here. Maybe that’s not somethin’ you’re used to where you’re from? It’s all right though. I’ll introduce ya to small-town hospitality. When are you wanting to get started?” You threw him a sheepish grin before glancing down at the floor as if the pattern there was the most interesting thing in the world. If your parents could see you now, you knew they’d be appalled. Thinking of doing the work yourself, of hiring someone you literally just met and someone who was only suggested to you by a cashier at a grocery store. It was a little ridiculous you admitted but you brushed the thoughts away.

“Tomorrow? You can stay in one of the guest rooms in the house. There’s a ranch hand cabin but I have no idea what it looks like. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been a working ranch in a while so there’s really no telling what state it will be in…” Again, he held his hand up slowly, politely putting a stop to the words pouring from your mouth.

“The cabin is just fine. I don’t need much anyway. Depending on how long I’m there, the only thing I ask is to bring my dog, Tucker, with me. He’s as good a help as any man I’ve met and twice as friendly.” You nodded enthusiastically. “Well, all right then. Sounds like everything is as settled as it gets for now. Can I get the address from ya? I’ll head over around 5 PM, get settled in if that suits your plans for the rest of the day.

“Perfect.” You smiled as he shook your hand again.

It occured to you that this is the first contract you’d ever made without a signature on paper and yet somehow, it felt like the most foolproof one as well.

It didn’t take long for Thor to settle in. He had insisted on taking the ranch hand cabin despite your protesting. When the two of you looked it over, it wasn’t as bad as you would have guessed it to be, even though there was a thin layer of dust on every surface. You searched through some of the cupboards and luckily came up with a spare sheet set. You took the old one to wash, holding your breath against all the dust motes that flew into the air as soon as you took the sheets off.

“Tucker didn’t want to come?” You asked with a teasing tone,one that Thor responded to with a laugh. He took his baseball cap off and roughed his fingers through his hair. He shook his head.

“No, ma’am. We’ll see how things go here but guessing by the fence line I saw on my way in, he’ll definitely be coming to stay here with me. Don’t worry, either way you’ll get to meet him. He’ll be tickled pink.” Again, a duck of his head that made you wonder how someone could have such good manners. You looked down, shuffling your feet. That seemed to be a regular thing for you now as well. Not being able to look someone in the eye? Not a good look on a big time lawyer. But you had an excuse, right? You glanced up through your eyelashes as he turned away and looked around.

He stood tall, straight-backed. You absently wondered if it was from riding horses. He probably looked great on a horse. He was no longer in just the white shirt from earlier but his Carhartt jacket didn’t swallow him, it just somehow emphasized how big he was. Every movement brought that into sharp focus. The floor creaked beneath his boots as he flipped switches on and off, watching with concentration as each lightbulb somehow still worked. They took a few moments to crackle on but crackle on they did. And with each one his smile somehow got bigger. After a little while of inspecting the little space he turned to you again.

“This will do just fine. No worries need be wasted on my behalf. Tomorrow I’m thinking we should head down to Redwood Hardware and see if we can get an order in for some fence posts. They might have some in stock already but the amount we’ll need is probably not gonna be in store. You might also wanna consider hiring other help besides me. I stand by my work ethic but we’ll get the job done a lot faster with more people.” You blew a breath out of your mouth and pursed your lips. He was closer in an instant, placing his hand on your shoulder. He lowered his head to make sure you would meet his gaze. It threatened to take your breath away. “I know it might not seem like it right now, but we’ll have this place up and running, sale-worthy in no time. A place your granddaddy would be proud of.”

You did meet his eyes then, glancing back and forth between them. You nodded. If anyone was going to tell you how a thing was going to go and you would believe them… It was going to be Thor.

The day came when it was time to actually set up the new fence posts instead of just staring at them with a certain bit of dread each day when you went outside. The sky was a blue that seemed to go on forever and the air itself smelled alive but still, you stood, hands on your hips, ticking off all the other things you could be doing. There were loads of things. But Thor stood next to you, a smirk on his face and you knew there was no way you could put off starting this any longer. He placed a hand on your shoulder and squeezed.

“It’ll be alright darlin’! It’s a lot of work, hard work, but you’ll get the hang of it. I’ll be right there every step of the way to help ya out.” Again, the uncanny wave of reassurance swept over you at his words and so it was you found yourself climbing into the passenger side of his old Ford and marveling at what pristine condition it was in. The last couple of days you’d been driving your rental car; there was an old Jeep in the barn but it needed more repairs than you could focus on at the moment. You’d seen his truck the day he drove up to the house and the days after but you hadn’t seen the interior and you were impressed.

You didn’t know many hyper-specific details about any vehicle but you guessed this one was old and yet… the seats were a rich brown leather, worn in certain places from use but not split. It even had a sheen to it still, as if he wiped it down on a regular basis. There was one little piece of plastic up near the passenger air vent that was slightly cracked but the rest of it still shone as close to new as it would ever get again. A reddish brown darker than the seats but just as fine. Nothing had been replaced or updated it seemed, just kept in the same condition it always had been. But looking around, you knew it had been used. It had worked many long years. You quirked your mouth and glanced at him as he shifted the truck into gear and drove through the gate, driving along the rutted pathway that ran along the length of fencing. The field stretched out for miles and miles beyond you in gentle sloping green hills. There were some wildflowers starting to sprout up but from what you understood, it was nowhere close to peak season yet. The fence closer to the buildings was in better condition; the farther away from there you got, the more obvious it became that the ranch had been non-operational for some time. As it was apt to do regularly now, your mind wandered. You were lost in two vast landscapes, one physical, the other in your memories. It took Thor slowing and then parking at the point where the fence literally ceased to exist to bring you out of yourself.

The two of you hopped out and started grabbing supplies. After figuring out how much you wanted to get done for the day, the two of you started in on the fence posts. Or more like Thor jumped right in and you took a split second to watch him as he began working. Almost immediately he shrugged off his flannel; he was in a simple white tank top and those ridiculously well-fitted Wrangler jeans and boots. Even the gloves on his hands looked slightly tight as if his hands were too big even for the large size. His motions were smooth and concise; he turned away from you, leaving his back on full display. You leaned on your post hole digger for a minute, taking in the way all the parts of his body worked together. From the muscles in his arms, the ones chord across his shoulders and back, all the way down to how his hips swayed with the movement.

An eagle cried out overhead and you moved in about ten feet away from him. You wanted to think that you knew how to do this right away just from watching him. The soil was no problem. It was soft and dark and easy to dig. The smell curled through the air and reminded you of being a kid, when the most you had to worry about was if the dirt was the right consistency for a mud pie. But after a few tries, you realized you must be doing something wrong because your hands kept slipping and Thor had already moved past you to dig and place two more wooden posts. Still, you don’t say anything just yet. You were determined to do this.

As the day waned on, slow as molasses, you could feel him watching you. He didn’t move in to stop you, didn’t tell you you were doing it wrong. He let you struggle. There was a war inside of you at that moment, part of you wanting him to jump in and show you how and the other part being refreshed by him letting you figure it out. That inner monologue went on for a while before he nudged you and handed you a bottle of water. You stopped, relieved. The sun was somehow high overhead now. For every one post you were finishing with difficulty, Thor was getting two done. Frustration flared over your whole body. He cleared his throat and raked his hand through his hair.

“I noticed it looked like you were havin’ a bit of a hard time diggin’ the post holes. Would ya like if I gave ya some pointers?” You watched him, the earnestness in his blue eyes, and nodded. A smile lit up his face and you wondered how many people got to see it. It was bright and put the endless Montana sky to shame. “Perfect. Let’s eat lunch now and then I’ll show ya a thing or two.” You munched on the turkey sandwiches you had thrown together, sitting on the ground in front of the truck where there was still some shade. The ground was cool beneath you, the air around you smelt like something that should be written about in a book; the earthy smell of grass , the distant hints of pine, the promise of wildflowers. Thor was sprawled out next to you but not in an overbearing sort of way. He just took up a lot of space. You tried not to concentrate on the fact that your knees were touching.

“So your granddaddy left you all this? I’d be pressed to sell it. It’s too bad ya can’t keep it.” You stiffened before catching yourself quickly, though you were pretty sure he had noticed He took his last bite before standing up. “You’ve got a life back home though. It’d be hard to leave that behind.” He held out his hand and you accepted it, wanting to push that cagey feeling behind you. He looked off in the distance, hands on hips, then back to you. “Well, ya ready for those tips?”

“Yes, sir.” You brushed dirt off your backside and put your gloves back on. “It is too bad,” you mumbled. Mumbled because you were too afraid that saying it out loud would change something for you. “That I can’t keep it, I mean.” He turned to you, not the least bit of surprise on his handsome face. But there was understanding there. He got it. You grabbed your post hole digger and went ten feet from the last post readying to dig the new hole. Thor watched your position for just a moment before you heard his footsteps come up behind you. And then he was standing there, at your back. If you took one half-step back you would be met with his chest. The day was warm but heat radiated off of him like a steadily growing fire. Something pooled low in your belly and your mouth went dry as he moved into your space and then you were flush with him.

His arms came around yours, his hands engulfing your own. His breath was warm near your ear as he rumbled “No, darlin’, like this.” He shifted your hands from the middle of the handles to the top. You were hyper aware of the way his arms felt around you, acutely aware of his scent. Sweat, and musk, and dirt. “That way you have more leverage and you’re not leanin’ over when it goes in the dirt.” He stayed like that for a moment, probably only seconds, but it felt like longer. You heard his breath catch from behind you before he slowly removed his hands, backing up just a pace. You immediately tried to retain the feel of him against you, the way his voice settled into you when he spoke. The way his smell engulfed you, making you feel like the safest person in the world. When was the last time you had felt that way?

Your limbs moved slow, as if your body was now full of lead. He moved back in again, briefly, sliding his boot between your feet and nudging them just a tad bit farther apart. “That’ll help too,” he said. And this time, when you raised the digger up and heaved down, you immediately noticed a difference. While it didn’t necessarily feel easier, it definitely didn’t hurt as much and your body didn’t feel as stiff, didn’t feel like it was being pushed into an awkward angle. You took a couple more plugs from the earth, digging down far enough to keep the pole stable and when you stood straight and looked at him, there was that grin written all over his face again. This time, that smile leapt to your face.

Thor pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, red with a white paisley pattern, and raised his hand, slowly, as if he was touching a wild animal, wiping a streak of perspiration from your cheek. “That’s my girl! Keep that up, we might not need help like I said before,” he exclaimed with a wink. Time seemed to slow to a halt. That’s my girl. That’s my girl. That’s my girl. The words thundered through your brain, down out your limbs, between your legs. That’s my girl.

You looked down at your watch, surprised to see the hands tick forward without delay. As the day went on, a thought tickled at the back of your mind, like a horses’ whiskers on your palm. It’d be easy to be his girl.

The night came in cold enough that you were filled with relief when Thor stood to his full height and stretched, slotting the post hole digger in a pile of soil and suggested the two of you call it a night. Goosebumps had already peppered your skin and the breath coming from your mouth was visible in the air. You nodded and stretched a little too, trying to ignore that stiffness you knew would turn into full-blown pain by tomorrow morning. Thor watched you quietly as you slowly put your jacket on; he glanced from the ground then to the sunset when you looked his way. You let out a small barking laugh and almost immediately regretted it, wincing as the cold night air ripped its way into your lungs.

You managed an uncomfortable grunt as you stuffed your gloves in your pocket and Thor grabbed the keys to his truck. You examined your hands; your palms looked like one huge blister. The skin was bubbled and inflamed and if you were being completely honest, it was one more thing you really had no idea how to take care of on a scale like this. Thor started the truck and even though it was only a ten-minute drive back to the house, you were already thankful in anticipation of him cranking the heater just a bit. It would hopefully be a small relief for the contracting sensation in the muscles along your shoulders and arms and back.

There was not a whole lot to gather since the only portion of the fence that went up today was the posts; still, you moved in to help him by grabbing some smaller loose supplies and your post hole digger. You could feel his eyes on you, feel the way he noted you navigating around your raw hands. It took a moment but soon he was wandering over to you and taking the items from you, nodding his head kindly to the truck. You mumbled your gratitude as you got in, frustrated with yourself. It was only the first day but Thor was already picking up your slack. You watched him from the passenger side mirror as he slammed the tailgate shut. There was not a bit of annoyance in his expression. You had small inkling you were being a bit too harsh on yourself.

When he got in, the truck groaned and immediately the cab that felt huge and open before now felt full; crowded but not in an unpleasant way. You sneaked a sideways glance at him as he settled in. He didn’t shift the truck into gear right away but instead sat back, gazing out the windshield at the sunset. Even from your vantage point, it was stunning. The sky was a variation of colors from deep black-blue, to a soft blue, to pink, to orange. The sun slipped back below the mountains to the north and west and the only detail you could make out on them now was their peaks; they were in shadow and looked like a great set of black teeth.

The light coming into the truck had softened, illuminating the planes of Thor’s face. The slip of his golden brown hair, the strong cheekbones and slope of his nose, the clean jawline that now had a five o’ clock shadow. It was quiet, save for the lulling roar of the truck engine and somehow you knew in that second, you wanted more of these moments. Your brain hadn’t quite latched onto how you would get them but you were going to try. Maybe it was Thor. Maybe it was the gentle heat in the cab with the chill outside. Maybe it was the clean smell of spring scented air. Maybe it was a hard day’s work that was so different than the long hours you kept at home. Right now, it didn’t really matter. You sat back with a sigh of content, able to ignore the subtle aching in your limbs. Finally, Thor let out a gentle hum, a sound you guessed actually reverberated through his body.

“When we get back to the house, we’ll take care of those hands, all right?” You nodded and he shifted the truck into gear, turning back the way you came this morning and it was suddenly all you could do not to reach out and rest one of those hands on his arm.

The gravel crunched under the wheels of Thor’s truck as he dropped you off at the front of the house, telling you he was gonna take a shower and then he’d be back up to bandage your hands. You tried to tell him you would take care of it, really, but he insisted. Deep down, you knew you had taken care of blisters on your heels before but nothing like this so you gave in, hiding a smile as he drove the truck down to the other cabin.

When you got to the bathroom, it took every effort not to just quit and wallow right there on the old tile floor but after a few struggling moments, you peeled your clothes from your body and stepped into the warm water, ignoring the stinging of the wounds. It took a few tries with washing off the dirt of the day, with every contact with soap intensifying the hurt in your hands. As you stepped out, you knew you’d be popping some Advil tonight; it would be foolish not to, you guessed.

You threw some leftover chicken noodle soup on the stove and plopped unceremoniously into one of the kitchen chairs, leaning your head against the wall as you relaxed. The fact that you hadn’t worked on the Harrison case for two and half days now nagged like a trapped rat at the back of your mind. Your laptop was currently upstairs though and there was no way you were forcing yourself up those steps again until you absolutely had to. Instead, you checked your emails on your phone, briefly scanning over the subjects on each of them and filtering out the spam. You set it back down with satisfaction. You’d just worked one of the hardest days in your life and you guessed it was probably going to remain tough from here on out. Despite that, you felt more nervous energy bubbling in your veins.

You decided to pull out the old maps you had found at the little desk in the living area. The house was small compared to the expanse of the land itself. Your grandfather hadn’t been a person who needed extravagance, that was for sure. Maybe you’d convert one of the guest rooms into a study. It would certainly be a lot easier to spread out property maps in an office rather than a little desk in the living room. You put little x’s where you thought the boundaries were. You were somewhat familiar in your work life with reading property maps but these… the maps were old enough that you were second-guessing if the plot already marked was accurate. Another thing to put on the to-do list for a town run. Land maps would be public record, especially in a town as small as Dove’s Reach.

A knock on the front door snapped you out of your thoughts. You hollered that the door was unlocked as you rolled the maps up and put them back on the desk out of the way. You ladled soup into bowls, setting them back on the counter to cool just a bit. You heard him knock his boots on the door jam outside and then set them with a thump just inside the door as he ambled into the kitchen. You reprimanded yourself as you turned and got caught off guard again by his size. His arms were crossed and he was leaning against the wood of the kitchen entrance, completely filling it up, quietly surveying your movements. You thought he was zoning out but you were not entirely sure.

“Uh, I hope chicken soup is okay,” you let out. His eyes met yours and he nodded enthusiastically as he shot you a dazzling smile. You gave him one back. “Somewhere else just then?” He nodded and you took one bowl at a time to the table, a heavy cloth in between your skin and the bowls. You hissed as the edge of one of the bowls caught a patch of the blister, the hot ceramic making the burning more intense than it should be. Thor was behind you immediately, taking the bowl and steadying it. It was a good thing because you were certain you couldn’t have prevented a spill at this point.

“Let’s take care of those blisters first. Looks like that soup is a little too hot to eat just yet anyway.” You nodded as he placed a gentling hand on your shoulder, maneuvering you to the chair you were sitting in earlier. The pain was pretty bad at this point; you had taken Advil about fifteen minutes ago but it hadn’t taken effect yet so here you were, miserable, and trying to fight the hot tears welling up in your eyes. It was embarrassing. Thor cleared his throat. “Did your granddaddy have a medicine cabinet around here?” You took a shaky breath and pointed to the little doorway off the kitchen.

“There’s one there in the laundry room on the opposite wall from the door.” He stepped away from you and into the little room. You could hear him open the cabinet door and rummage around. You hadn’t looked in there yet to see what supplies were available but you doubted any of it was still usable. Yet here was Thor, a huge grin on his face, some bandages in one hand and a questionable-looking jar in the other.

“I knew if your granddaddy was as much of a working man as you had mentioned that he’d have some of this here with him. Best ranch and farming remedy for just about anything.” You knew the look on your face was one of clear skepticism because he laughed, a deep booming thing that made you want to listen over and over again. “I know you city folk probably like to go to the doctor’s for everything but let me tell ya, if we put this on your hands twice a day and keep them all wrapped up, those blisters’ll be gone in no time. Three days tops,” he murmured as he finally looked at the ragged state of your palms. He was moving slower again, pulling out a chair and placing it right in front of you.

He sat down and despite the pain, or maybe because of it, your breath hitched when he caged your knees with his own. “Let me see ‘em up close, darlin’” he breathed as you held out your hands for closer inspection. He let out a low whistle as he gingerly took one, then the other to examine the raw skin. He rubbed a small circle on the inside of your wrist and you were acutely aware of every little detail as his calloused thumb against the soft skin there elicited an erratic heartbeat. He sat like that for a moment before seemingly catching himself; leaning back and reaching over to open the jar of salve. It was not a bad smell but you wrinkled your nose a little at it. He glanced over at you and smiled.

“This might hurt a bit. But it’ll help.” You nodded and braced yourself just a little. The balm itself didn’t sting but the contact of fingers on the blisters definitely did. There was no use hiding your grimace so you just let yourself go, taking deep breaths and letting them slowly out through your mouth. He was so gentle. This close and with his concentration on your hands, you allowed yourself to watch him unhindered by the threat of getting caught. His fingers were steady and slow and he was so sure of himself. You found yourself leaning into his touch, holding your breath. After he was satisfied with one hand, he took the roll of bandage material and slowly wrapped it around your palm, down around your wrist, and back up again to secure it in place.

“You did real good today,” he said quietly, still looking down, almost as if he was unsure he should say it. As if he thought you may not want his opinion. A smile spread across your face as you let out an exasperated groan.

“If you say so,” you replied, willing him to look up at your face to see that you mean it. He must have felt your eyes on him because he turned to you then, looking back. Searching. You felt the heat rise in your cheeks and creep down your neck and something leaped in your belly. He was so close. You could see his eyelashes. See how his eyes weren’t just one shade of blue but several different ones. You could smell him. A similar scent to when you first met him but also mixed with a fresher element from his shower. You could smell his wet skin and how it went from a day of work to warm water to the chill outside to the warmth of your house. It made you want to lean forward and bury your face in the place where his neck meets his shoulder.

You must have been staring a hole into him because he bit his lip then leaned back, finishing up with your other hand before grabbing the supplies and heading to the laundry room. “I do say so,” he rumbled from the little room. When he came back out again he’s smiling. His hands were on his hips and for whatever reason, it was exactly the release of whatever emotion that had transpired moments ago. You laughed, grabbing some bread slices and dropping them in the toaster. They popped up and you spread on some butter, ushering him to sit back down.

The conversation was easy, more idle chatter than anything else. Questions about each other’s lives. How long had he lived here? All his life. When did you know you wanted to work in law? As long as you could remember. You wanted to help people at the heart of it. How did he learn to train horses? From his daddy and his grandaddy before him. Would you ever consider keeping the ranch? The question caught you off guard and a rush of emotions flowed just beneath the surface of your calm exterior. Your pause told Thor what he had guessed the moment he saw you go to work on the land that morning.

“Of course I would,” you murmured as you pushed your empty bowl aside. You leaned onto the tabletop, one arm across its surface and the other supporting your face as your eyes stared off into space. “I just… I just don’t think it’s in the cards for me right now. If it had fallen into my lap under different circumstances or at a different time, maybe. But now? I don’t think so.” Your words trailed off and sounded empty even to your own ears. But as you glanced back up at Thor, there was no judgment there. Looking into his eyes, you could almost imagine a future here.

A future here was a dream though. A dream you were not keen on indulging. You tossed him a smile and grabbed the bowls to put them in the sink. Dreams were good. They could keep a person going. But you were already living a dream back home so you plastered your best convincing expression on your face just as he stood and brought the toast plates to the sink. You watched as he washed both of the plates, slowly, like he was waiting for you to amend your words. But you didn’t and he thanked you for dinner and headed for the door.

You followed him to it, leaning in the doorway as he stepped outside into the cold night air. He zipped up his jacket and turned back to you, a curious expression on his face. If he had thoughts about any of the night’s conversation, he didn’t voice them. Instead he just gave you that lopsided grin and bid you goodnight. Without a second thought, you reached out and grasped his wrist. He turned to you, looking at where your hand held on and then back to your face. You let go immediately.

“Um, thanks for… for today? For your help. Thanks for your help so far. I really appreciate it.” He chuckled low and quiet, a sound that seemed to continually get under your skin, and warmed you up from the inside out. He nodded.

“The pleasure’s all mine, ma’am.” You watched from your place as he stepped off the porch; you could still see how his breath fogged up the air. “Good night,” he called over his shoulder.

You did not retreat into the warmth of the house until the darkness swallowed him up.

“This is ridiculous. What do you mean there’s a stipulation?” Another ten days had gone by and you were just now getting around to meeting with your grandfather’s attorney. Thaddeus Jones was emblazoned on the golden placard on his desk. The man before you did look like a Thaddeus but at the beginning of the meeting, he had insisted that you call him Jonesy. He sat back in his chair with a look somewhat like that of a golden retriever being scolded.

“Well, your grandfather wanted to give you time to… enjoy the little things in life again. He thought that maybe you’d need a break from all the hustle and bustle in New York. As such, in his will he specified that you could only sell the ranch if you stayed there for one year. If at the end of that year you decide that you still want to move forward with the sale, then you are more than welcome to and will receive any and all profits made from said sale. If, however, you have a change of heart, the ranch is also yours to run as you please. But if you decide to sell any time before then, all profits made from the sale will go to our local youth program.” There was no use trying to hide the stunned expression written all over your face. You had to stay here for a year? How were you even supposed to go about this without feeling torn about one thing or the other? You weren’t in it for the money. You knew that with a certainty that sat deep in your gut. And donating to a youth program was a great use of anyone’s money.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. I just thought this wouldn’t be so complicated.” Jonesy nodded solemnly, his round spectacles sitting towards the tip of his nose. “I thought this would be a sign and done deal. I thought I wouldn’t feel so conflicted about leaving,” you finished quietly and suddenly it was as if the air had been punched from your lungs. There it was. There was the real reason this whole thing felt so ludicrous. It wasn’t the stipulation itself--it was the fact that you were actually considering it. You glanced out the vaulted window of Jonesy’s office. It was on the second story of his building and gave you a sweeping view of Dove’s Reach. It also gave you a focused picture of the huge storm brewing outside. Massive cumulus clouds gathered not so far away, the heart of them dark and foreboding. It mirrored the storm in your heart.

“I suppose the good news is that you have a while to make a decision. I’ll just have you sign some preliminary papers today and then you take all the time you need. It is a lot to take in but your grandfather was a good man, one of the best. I’ve known him since we were young colts ourselves. I’d like to think he knew what he was doing when he made this decision.” It was difficult to argue with any of that, considering you didn’t get the chance to know him better yourself. Maybe this was a good thing.

“Thank you, Jonesy. I really do appreciate it.” You bit your lip and glanced outside again. “That should work for today. I have a feeling I should be getting hom--getting back to the ranch before that hits.” You pointed and Jonesy watched you for a moment before nodding.

There really wasn’t much for you to sign at this point. Mainly papers about you having seen the will and that you had a knowledge of what was going to come of it. You gathered your copies and shook Jonesy’s hand before leaving; you were instantly glad that the two of you had decided to speed things up a bit because as soon as you exited the building, a cold gale hit you in the face, ripping back the hood of your jacket and nearly blowing your hair out of its braid. It would have been twice as cold had Thor not given you direction on which clothing was worth spending money on. You gave him a call, letting him know you were on the way back. It was a new routine, one that you had started. It felt good to have someone to stay in touch with. It was unlikely you’d get lost in such a small town, but still.

“Drive safe, darlin’. The closer you get out here, the harder the wind’s blowin’. I already put all the tools away and got most of the larger open spots on the barn boarded up. Also dropped some buckets on the front porch just in case. From what I could tell, the roof seemed pretty sounds but just in case.” A pause. “How did the meeting go?” You sucked in a breath.

“Different than how I thought it would go. I’d rather talk about it later though. I’m thinking I’m gonna head straight to bed when I get back. It’s just a lot. See you tomorrow morning?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

The drive back was definitely worse than the drive out. Wind and rain pelted your vehicle, so much so that by the time you got home your knuckles were white and your hands were aching when you released the steering wheel. Thunder rumbled closer and closer and lightning flashed in the distance. A warm bath and warm pajamas were currently at the top of your list. Then bed. You smiled when you saw there were indeed buckets on the front porch, all mix-matched colors and various sizes but they would do if the roof started leaking. At least you wouldn’t have to be scrambling to find anything if it did. There was also a note taped to the door, scrawled in surprisingly loopy handwriting.

Grabbing some clothes and things from my place, won’t be back for a couple hours. Call if you need anything :)

You smiled and stepped inside, glad to be out of the weather. As you turned again to glance out at the land, the sky darkened visibly even as you stood there. It looked like it was going to be a long night.

Your phone screen was too bright in the dark space of the living room. 8:30 PM. The power had gone out and it had taken you a little bit of time to scrounge up some candles to keep things lit. You knew you should just go to bed but quite frankly, you knew that wasn’t a possibility. The storm raging outside was unlike any storm you’d experienced before. Sure, there were big storms back in New York but this… the wind and rain was coming down so hard, you were sure the roof was going to tear off. It was doing surprisingly well right now but with each big gust, the whole house groaned. The thunder and lightning were even worse. The sound of both was so close, so loud, so frequent that your ears were ringing. There was no way to research now with the internet out but you were pretty sure you had read something about lightning being able to strike you in a house.

You paced, already familiar with the location of the furniture, every wall, every corner. It was a comfortable dance around the couch, passed the coffee table, to the window by the fireplace and back. A flash of lightning burst in the sky, illuminating every contour of the layout of the house. Almost immediately the clap of thunder sounded like some ancient drum and despite the logical part of your brain telling you it’s fine it’s fine it’s fine, you dropped to your knees.

“Holy shit,” you breathed through clenched teeth. Your hands were shaking as you brought the phone to your ear. Thor was probably already asleep. He had gotten back about an hour ago and was a naturally early riser because he somehow was able to fall asleep early every night. He was probably asleep--

“What’s wrong?” The sleepy gravel in his voice sent shivers tripping down your spine. He had been asleep. But those two words were still calm. Concise. Protective. You were silent. Now you felt stupid.

“Uh, it’s--it’s nothing. I’m sorry I woke you. I can’t sleep. This storm is pretty wild. Um. I thought maybe you’d still be awake and wanted a drink but it’s fine. We have--” You didn’t know if it was your rambling or if he sensed the fear in your voice.

“I’m comin’ up.” That was that. A dial tone. He had already hung up. There was no chance for you to object. You waited by the front door, listening to the rain and watching for more flashes of lightning. You heard Thor’s heavy footsteps as he came up the porch steps, saw him as a flash of lightning illuminated his outline from behind. You hastily opened the door. He hesitated for a moment, only long enough to watch as you nearly leaped out of your skin when another boom of thunder cascaded about you.

He stepped into you, wrapping you up in a hug. It was unexpected but you felt yourself sag into him. His jacket was wet from running through the rain so he slipped it around you and suddenly you were enveloped in warmth. You buried your face in his chest, as he rested his chin on the crown of your head, rubbing his hand down your back. You took deep pulls of his scent as his voice rumbled above you, into you from his chest.

“Aw, it’s just a little lightnin’, darlin’. Just a little storm. You’re safe. Nothin’ to worry about, I promise. You’re safe.” He kept murmuring it as he nudged the door shut behind him with his boot. Murmured your safety into existence like a mantra. As you rested there in his arms, your hands under his jacket around his back, you tried to remember the last time you felt this way, like nothing could touch you in the world. The house could crumble around you and you would be fine. In his arms, you would be fine. You gripped a little tighter, noticing with mirth how your hands could barely touch around his abdomen.

“How about that drink?” You said it into his chest as he stilled above you, breathing in slow and steady as he nodded into the top of your head. You reluctantly backed up from him as he slipped passed you into the living room making straight for the fireplace. He had it roaring as you brought two glasses of whiskey on the rocks and set them on the coffee table. You sat, dragging the blanket around your shoulders and allowing yourself to zone out while you stared into the fireplace. The crackling of its embers still couldn’t drown out the maelstrom outside, however. Thor took off his jacket and hung it on the coat rack by the door. When he sat next to you, the couch sagged under his weight. He took a sip of his drink before sitting back and opening his arms in invitation. You didn’t wait this time, instead scooting over to nestle up against him. Heat radiated off of him.

“Did you know the diameter of a lightning strike is actually only about the size of a quarter? Think about that, that big ol’ powerful force of nature the size of a coin.” No you didn’t know that. Another flash of lightning, another clap of thunder. This time you didn’t jump. “And thunder can actually be heard as far away as twelve miles from the actual strike.” Another sip of whiskey. “Lightning can also strike outside of the rain zone. Those strikes are called anvil crawlers.” A log shifted in the fire and your eyes drooped. He chuckled quietly as he intoned “In Norse mythology, the sound of thunder supposedly comes from my namesake as he rides his chariot across the sky.” You offered a lazy smile even though he couldn’t see it.

Thor continued on with more various facts about thunder and lightning and the storms that brought them. The taste of the whiskey sat light and spiced on your tongue, and your eyelids became heavier as you relaxed into him more. The fire burned steady and even though the storm continued to rage outside, at a certain point Thor’s voice faded into nothing as you fell asleep.

You woke up to the sun shining directly in your eyes. You groaned, shielding them from the crisp light and instantly regretted taking your hand out from under the blanket away from your heat source… Thor was stretched out behind you on the couch. It could barely fit the two of you but his arm was locked around your waist, caging you in. His breath came slow and steady on your neck. You could hear the rooster calling from his coop by the barn, hear his hens clucking about him. The cat you still hadn’t named was curled up on the rug by the fireplace, the embers almost completely died down. Thor took a huge breath, tickling the hairs on your neck as he rumbled something into the skin there. Your heart ballooned in your chest.

“I guess my facts weren’t that interestin’, seein’ as how we both fell asleep. Want some coffee?” You nodded as the two of you sat up. The cat chirruped from his place on the rug. He stood and arched his back in a stretch as well, coming over to the two of you for his morning pets. You both reached down to touch his hand, your hands meeting in the middle. Thor offered you a sheepish grin as he stood. “Uh, coffee is… ?”

“In the cupboard above the pot.” You smiled back, not bothering to hide any of the warmth in its shape. You stood, letting the cat out the front door. He seemed a little indignant at the fact that it was so wet outside but his ears swiveled and he was out the door and racing down the steps. You added some kindling and more logs to the fire, satisfied as flames leaped into existence. Thor handed you a mug of steaming coffee, with cream and a little bit of brown sugar. How he knew how you liked your coffee you didn’t know. But you liked that he knew.

The storm had cleared. A peek of blue sky could be seen from the window. With the clear sky came clear thoughts. It had been two weeks already since you had come to Dove’s Reach. Two weeks since you learned you had the rights to a whole ranch. A day since you had learned that you had to stay here for a whole year if you wanted to see any profits from selling. And only a night since you had realized that a year was no time at all.

#thor x reader #thor odinson x reader #thor #thor odinson #cowboy thor #western thor #i need a hero #inthorantine writes #i did it!!!!#i finally am posting it!#i hope chapter 2 will be just as good

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secret-rendezvous1d · 4 years

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Blogmas having the miss announcing she is pregnant on christmas to P and H?

Hello, hi!

Welcome to Blogmas 2020.

Many more blurbs, many more chats and a lot more festivities to come; my inbox will be open all through December this year for blurb prompts for Blogmas so don’t feel afraid to pop in a prompt to get written for tis year; all I can say is that if you’re asking for a lengthy prompt, I’m not the right person right now, haha.

I’m welcoming absolutely anything for this year; any AU, any characters, any ideas.

Reblog, like, comment and share your thoughts with me. Please let me know what you think because feedback is always appreciated on here; much more appreciated now given that I’ve not written a lot in a long while. Please let me know what you think.

Enjoy!

DECEMBER, 2022.

YN was no stranger to a positive pregnancy test.

If you told her six years ago that she’d be a mother to a little girl the following year, who was the spitting image of her father, then she’d have told you that you were taking the piss and that they were dreaming all kinds of madness. So, if you told her three days ago that she’d be a mother to a second baby, she’d have laughed in your face and told you to jog on because “one’s enough for me right now.”

Of course, she’d grown up wanting more than one child to teach life skills and nurture and mould into such a beautiful young thing who cared and loved like there was no such thing as tomorrow. She’d been an only child herself and found life to be rather… different. Especially to her friends in school who were children of many in their families. Of course, YN had cousins and she saw them whenever she wanted (moreso on festive holidays and family birthdays rather than her parents appearing on their doorstep for a cup of tea and an offer for the kids to play in the garden until dark) but it never amounted to the same feeling as seeing a sibling on a daily basis, after school or in the morning, someone to wind up and irritate out of love but someone to trust when something came up that she didn’t want her parents knowing.

So when Persephone was born, freshly cleaned and m minutes old and laying her father’s arms in the most pinkest blanket found in her hospital bag, YN deemed it necessary to silently promise to never let her experience a childhood alone. Not that she thought it was a bad thing to be an only child; heck, she was thankful she never had the bickering brother to deal with that only fought for those he loved or the snotty older sister who told her what to do and not to do with her life but loved her all the same. She felt envious of Harry when she was introduced to his older sister but soon felt that Gemma was an older sister of her own flesh and blood with how welcoming she’d been and seeing the brother-sister bond that Harry had, she found it was only necessary to let her own child have that exciting life growing up.

“You’re not eating much this morning,” Harry said softly, inhaling the smell of honey porridge before wrapping his lips around the spoon in his hand and swallowing the thick textured substance. Eyes focused on his wife as sat in her own world, stirring her tea in her china mug, an ashen look on her face - because morning sickness had been a bigger bitch to her the second time than the first time and she wasn’t expecting it to be as bad- as she hid behind a smile. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I think I’m a little stressed out. I have too much to do this coming week and too little time to do it and I feel so rushed,” she murmured, setting her teaspoon upon the plate that did hold her dry toast before Harry came and joined her for breakfast, fingers curling around the handle of her mug. “I might have to cancel lunch with your mum this afternoon. I need to start wrapping, decorating, planning Christmas day, getting the food in.”

“You’re looking a little sick, I’m sure she won’t mind if you want to cancel.”

“She was so excited though.”

“She’d feel even better if you took some time out for yourself and felt better. Besides, she’s coming next week with Gem and Michal for Christmas dinner so she’s got that to look forward to,” Harry said, plunging his spoon into his porridge before taking another bite and swallowing it, honey sticking to his pink lips, “what can I do to make you feel less stressed? Give me something to do.”

“You could go and pick Seff’s main present up from that toy shop on Oxford Street for me. I got an email saying it arrived yesterday morning so we just need to go and get it. I can wrap the last of her presents up whilst you’re gone and hide yours somewhere where you don’t go snooping,” she stated, cocking an eyebrow up on her browline and staring at him over the rim of her white mug, “like you did last year.”

“In my defence, you did ask me to go and get a pair of knickers from your drawer after your bath.”

Harry had always been one to go snooping when it came to gifts. Anne had told her that the first Christmas she spent with Harry during a conversation that spiked up when YN pulled Anne aside to ask her for tips on what to get him, whether he'd asked for anything specific and whether he was allergic to anything specific that would give her gift idea away if she asked him. And it stuck in the back of her mind every year.

Although, in his defense, he didn’t necessarily go snooping through her underwear drawer to find what she had brought for him, given the fact that she had a brainfart and had forgotten where she hid his most expensive gift for that year; a six-hundred pound watch that she’d seen him eyeing up in the shop window of Gucci every time they wandered passed. She knew he’d reach into the drawer, grab his favourite pair (that she always placed at the front of her pants) and chuck them into the bathroom with a joke that hinted to a little bedroom action when Persephone was in bed.

“You didn’t have to get a pair from the back end of my drawer. Since when do you reach for my period pants when I put all my nice, lacy ones at the front?” She huffed, rolling her eyes as she took a sip of the warm tea and felt it slide down her sore throat, goosebumps rising on her skin because there was a sense of warmth yet a sense of burning; acid reflux had become a bitch, too, and she was looking forward to sending him to the supermarket pharmacy, late at night, to grab a bottle of Gaviscon and heartburn tablets. “Plus, it was in a box with my name on it, sellotaped up on both ends, and put left in the box it came in. You had to open the box to find out what was inside the other box.”

“It fell out?” He shrugged sheepishly and sent her a cheeky smile. Tight-lipped, regardless of how sticky his lips were, and showing off his dimples in the middle of his cheeks. But YN was having none of it and she made sure her face told him that, her fingers tapping her mug. “Okay, fine. Curiosity got the better of me when I found it and I peeked. I promise I won’t this time though. The silent treatment you gave me on Christmas day was horrible.”

“You deserved it. I was excited to surprise you with it and you ruined it.”

“I know.”

The kitchen fell into a comfortable silence and all they could hear, coming from upstairs, was the bathroom tap running as Persephone brushed her teeth and got herself ready before school. Her uniform folded up and placed on her desk, like every morning, right next to the hairbrush that YN used to tie her hair into whatever kind of hairstyle she fancied for the day; today, it was plaits… thankfully, because YN really didn’t want to go through the hassle of doing space buns again. Her school bag and her lunch box were hanging off the back of the chair at the head of the table, homework left in her red folder on the table so she could double check her name was written on it before slotting it into her bag, shiny black shoes with a buckle left in the living room where she’d kicked them off yesterday. Coat hanging on the hook in the entryway, where she could reach for it on her way out before clambering into Harry’s Range Rover so he could drive her to school; her favourite mode of transport, she made sure to tell him every night.

“Can you get it by lunchtime today? So I can wrap it before she comes home from school. Otherwise she’ll see it and want it as soon as possible and this is probably the best one of the lot. And we know she follows in her father’s footsteps,” YN smirked, nudging her toe into his shin, “aren’t I right?”

“Like father, like daughter.”

The problem with wrapping presents was the backache.

Chronic backache experienced after an hour of being hunched over on the living room floor, sat cross-legged and leaning against the sofa, surrounded by rolled up balls of sellotape that got stuck to itself and useless pieces of wrapping paper that had no purpose on a present because it was too small or too wonkily cut. Bags upon bags full of Christmas presents, all named for family and friends, that she needed Harry to deliver before Christmas eve.

By the time she’d reached the bottom step, after her fourth trip up the stairs to take the newly wrapped presents into her office (locked to save the wandering eyes and the curious toes of her little girl finding them in the corner of her home-office), her husband had arrived home with an excitable Persephone and a guilty look upon his face as he shrugged his coat off and unwrapped his scarf from around his neck. His nose pink, Persephone’s cheeks red, but both their jumpers decorated with crumbs from what she could only imagine came from a cake in their favourite local bakery down the road.

“Mummy! Mummy, daddy took me for a cake afterschool today. I had a chocolate one with sprinkles and a flake and it tasted like an orange and-”

Harry’s eyes widened and he looked to his wife, who had a knowing grin on her face, and he knew he’d been busted from the moment he walked through the door.

“Seff, you promised me you weren’t going to blab to mummy. That was our secret, little lady,” he chuckled softly, cupping the back of her head with his palm, fingertips cold against her scalp, “mummy wasn’t supposed to know.”

“But it was really good and I wanted to tell mummy about it because she can get one when she goes out shopping with auntie Gem and they can taste it and tell me it was yummy,” Persephone grinned, the gap between her two front teeth starting to fill in with a brand-new adult tooth, all pearly white and jagged, “mummy can buy me another one and herself one and auntie Gem one and we can share them together.”

“Did you bring me anything back?”

Her gloved hands dug around her school bag, school shoes long forgotten by the front door and kicked off haphazardly, her scarf hanging round her shoulders and her hand tucked into Harry’s fist because, YN could only guess, she didn’t want to mess up the plaits still perfectly done up. A rustle of wrapping coming from the flat of her pocket, bringing out a carefully wrapped gingerbread man with a purple ribbon tying it together at the top, a bobble stuck to the top as some kind of festive decoration.

“I brought you a gingerbread man, mummy! With the money Nana gave me in my Christmas card,” she thrust her hand towards her mother and passed it to her; YN was sure the money her own mother had given to her was for something she could use herself but she was thankful, of course, entirely grateful that she’d chosen to share her money to get her something.

“Thank you, baby. We’ll share it for pudding after dinner later, yeah? With some strawberries.”

“Yeah and some chocolate sauce!”

And with that, she ran off into the living room and found a comfy space on the sofa to watch whatever YN had left on the television, leaving her mother and father to tidy the mess left behind in the entryway.

“Maybe a little sauce,” YN said as she reached for the coat on the floor, hanging it on the hook beneath her’s and Harry’s, hanging her scarf over the top and leaving her gloves on the radiator to warm up, “you’ve had some chocolate already today.”

Harry grinned and pressed a kiss to his wife’s forehead, squeezing her arm before sneaking passed her and into the living room, bending over the sofa to look at his daughter from an upside-down position, “come on you, let’s go do your homework at the table.”

“Actually,” YN blurted suddenly, standing in the archway before them, smiling softly at them as they looked at her, “before you do that, can I tell you something? Well, not tell you something. Show you something. I want to give you both an early Christmas present, I guess.”

Persephone perked up and pushed herself to her knees, an excitable grin on her already excitable face as she looked between her mum and dad, a confused look spread across Harry’s features.

“What is it?”

YN disappeared for a second, footsteps heard going up the stairs and a creak heard from a bedroom being opened - and if Harry was right then it was the spare room, because he’d promised to fix the squeaking door but had yet to get round to it, where nowhere really went into because it was empty and desolate and had no decor in it yet. There was a sound of some rustling, faint but still audible if you listened closely, the creak heard again before footsteps were heard descending the stairs, a deep breath escaping her mouth before she turned the corner. A white box tucked under her arm.

“Mummy, what’s in the box?”

“I’ll let daddy open it but sit together to open it because it’s for the both of you and I can’t wait till next week to give it to you,” she stepped across the carpet and passed it over, letting him get a good feel of how heavy it was before he sauntered around the sofa and sat on the sofa beside his daughter. Her hand coming across to touch and stroke the white box, looking at it with furrowed eyebrows, waiting for her father to open the flaps and pull whatever was inside out for them to look at.

Harry’s fingers timidly opened the box, sellotape coming undone as he pulled the contents out and set them upon the top; a white babygrow, a white hat and matching mittens and a sonogram of the ultrasound she had during her doctor’s visit. Biting her bottom lip, she couldn’t help but feel the pit of her stomach drop; unexpected or not, they were expecting a baby and she couldn’t have been more excited - she just hoped his silence meant he felt the same.

“So, what do you think?”

A gasp left his mouth.

“What- does this explain why you’ve been so ill?” He stood to his feet and left the contents behind, stepping around the sofa to grab her into a hug and squeeze her against his chest. The sting of happy tears burning the corners of his eyes as he twirled the both of them around. “God, I had a hunch in the back of my head that you were pregnant but I didn’t want to say anything in case it wasn’t. Christ, you think I haven’t heard you vomiting in the bathroom in the mornings before I wake up? Not eating your usual breakfast? All the same mannerisms from the first one?”

He set YN back on the floor and cupped his forehead with his hand.

“I found out this week, Monday evening actually. I wanted to wait till Christmas day to surprise you but I was too excited and it was killing me keeping it from you. I wanted to come back and shout it at you on Monday but- well, surprise.”

“Daddy, what is it?”

They both looked at Persephone and saw her holding the black and white photograph; a scene they hadn’t ever imagined but never wanted to take for granted. Bracing his weight on his elbows, he leant on the back of the sofa and took the picture from her hands, using his pointer finger to show her just what they were so excited about. His eyes scanned the photo before he found what he was looking for, turning it back to Persephone so he could show her the right place.

“You see that little white blob there? Right here,” he spoke softly, pointing to the middle of the sonogram, waiting for her to nod before carrying on “that’s going to be your new baby brother or sister, little lady.”

Her eyes widened and she looked at him.

“Where are you getting them from? Will they be here for Christmas? Can I come with you to pick one?”

Harry chuckled and looked over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of a tear dribbling down YN’s cheek, his own eyes threatening to flood.

“They’re in mummy’s belly right now. A little tiny dot, no bigger than your fingernail. That’ll grow, just like you did, in mummy’s belly until they’re nice and ready to come out and join us next year.”

“Why next year?”

At this point, YN had taken the space next to her husband, standing straight. She reached for her daughter’s hand, bringing it beneath her jumper and placing it on her bare tummy.

“Because they need to grow nice and strong in mummy’s belly before they can come and meet us,” YN smiled, squeezing her hand as they kept their joined hands underneath her bellybutton, “just like you did. That’s where you started, where you came from, until you came and joined us here. Growing and blossoming until they’re ready to come and see us.”

“Like a flower?”

“Yeah,” YN grinned at Harry, his arm resting over her shoulder as he pulled her into his side, squeezing her tightly to his body, “like the most delicate flower in the world. They need the space and time to grow big and strong in my belly, nice and healthy so they can come out and be a part of our family when they’re ready, and be your little brother or sister.”

“That’s great news, huh, little lady? You’re going to be a big sister.”

“The best big sister ever.”

#harry styles imagines #harry styles blurbs #harry styles prompts

70 notes · View notes

smol-and-grumpy · 4 years

Text

Light My Fire - CH20 (FIN)

Pairing: CEO!Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: She always thought her boss was an ill-tempered man, but when he presents her with a proposition she can’t quite deny, she gets to know him better. It’s not bad, right? Because all she has to do is being fake married to him for six months, sounds do-able, right? Right.

Warnings: Angst but also teeth rotting fluff

WC: 4111

A/N: This is the end guys. I hope you had a blast reading it as much as I had fun writing.

Please share your thoughts with me, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Beta’d by @deanwanddamons <3

SERIES MATSTERLIST

BECOME A PATRON ~ BUY ME A COFFEE

Y/N wakes up to the sound of her alarm. It takes her way too long to realize where she is.

She opens her eyes and takes a look around. Her room kind of looks small compared to the room she called her own in Dean’s apartment.

Today is Monday, which means that she’s supposed to go to work and she kind of doesn't want to. She hasn’t heard from Dean. He didn’t text her, nor did he call. Maybe it’s over before it’s over. Maybe today, he’ll say that she can get out if she wants. He and Sam have the evidence and they can build up their case around it. There’s really no need for him to fake it with her anymore.

Yesterday she had to go out and buy clothes because all her stuff is still at Dean’s, and she didn’t want to go there. She spent the rest of the day in her bed, buried in her novels. It would have been relaxing if she hadn’t thought about Dean so much.

She’s so nervous about meeting him again that she has had an awful night’s sleep. She’s nervous, when it should be easy. He’s her boss. She’s his employee. It should have always stayed like that, she realized. She should have never let them talk her into crossing the line.

Her anxiety peaks as she takes the subway to the office. She feels nauseous. It doesn’t help knowing that her period is a little late too. She hopes that she’s not pregnant. She’s been taking her pills regularly. It shouldn’t be a problem and honestly, she doesn’t need to add it to her pile of worries.

Arriving in the office, she sees that Ruby’s already there but it’s awfully quiet. She sits down and starts her computer.

“Psssst,” Y/N hisses at Ruby who’s engrossed in a paper.

“Oh, hey! How was meeting with the parents?” Ruby grins.

“Sam didn’t tell you anything?” She frowns, wondering why Dean hasn’t updated Sam on what happened. On how she walked out of there and left him behind to hole herself up in her own apartment.

Ruby shrugs, “No?”

“Ruby, I’m late.” She says, because she wants to get that off her chest first.

Her friend raises her eyebrows and she sees that Ruby’s eyes travel to the clock, “I’d say your early, Dean’s not even in yet.”

“No, I’m late!” She hisses, her eyes widen as she tries to get Ruby to understand.

Ruby’s mouth forms an ‘O’, “Ooooh, shit.”

“Yeah,” She sighs.

“How many days?”

“Three.”

“That’s nothing, right? Maybe it’s the stress? You’re under a lot of pressure.”

Y/N knows that Ruby’s just trying to cheer her up, “Yeah, maybe.” She says and types in her password.

“Lets work, alright, we can think about it on our break. I can go get a test for you. Now, I want you to distract yourself with work or else you’ll go mad.”

“Yeah, okay,,” She tries to smile at her friend. The last thing she wants is for Ruby to be worried about her and Ruby’s not wrong. If she throws herself into work, it’ll definitely help distract her mind from all of the things that’s making it hard for her to breathe.

When her computer starts up her email box begins to fill itself. She sees that she has an unusually high amount of emails. Half of them are from Dean. Sent during their fake honeymoon. She wonders why, as they were practically together all the time?

She opens up the first email.

Saturday, [00:24AM]: I’m sorry that I’ve upset you.

Saturday, [01:12AM]: Do you think I’m crazy when I tell you that I can’t fall asleep without you next to me?

Saturday, [05:21AM]: You’re the cutest crankiest person I ever laid eyes on.

Saturday, [08:31AM]: You fell asleep right after take off. I’ve taken a picture of you. Sorry not sorry.

Saturday, [09:23AM]: You’re sleeping again. You really do need a lot of sleep, don’t you? Or maybe it’s because you’re too nervous of flying. I’m sorry I didn’t even ask if flying would be okay for you. I never took it into consideration that you might not like flying. The thought had never crossed my mind. I’m trying to help you through it, though.

Saturday, [11:42AM]: You’re cute when you’re all giddy about being here and I’m happy that you let me bring you here. Can’t wait until I can show you our room. I have a feeling that you’ll like it.

Saturday, [01:12PM]: You didn’t need to ask if you can take a dip in the sea but you still did. That’s what I like about you. You don’t take anything for granted.

Saturday, [02:57PM]: For god’s sake, you fell asleep on the lounger. You’re going to get sunburned!

Saturday, [04:32PM]: You’re still distracting me. But I kind of like it. Maybe I’m a closet masochist.

Saturday, [09:22PM]: You know what I absolutely love? I fucking love how you taste, how you want me to fuck you harder. How wet you are for me. I love how you look when you’re laying on the bed, spit slick and pink all over.

Saturday, [11:46PM]: Jesus, you’re laying there, pink pussy in full view. You have no idea what you’re doing to me.

Tears start to pool in her eyes but there’s more.

Sunday, [11:21AM]: It was nice waking up to you beside me. I can get used to it. Would love for it to happen every morning.

Sunday, [03:42PM]: You really love snorkeling, don’t you? Don’t even want to get out of that water. You’ll be sunburned if you’re not careful, baby.

Sunday, [08:23PM]: You fell asleep before room service arrived. I had to take a picture. I don’t think you know how much you affect me.

Monday, [03:12AM]: I woke up thinking you’re not here, but you are.

Monday, [09:34AM]: You locked yourself in the bathroom because I woke you up. Definitely the crankiest person ever. Wonder why you think that I’m the grumpy one here.

Monday, [02:22PM]: I’m working inside and you’re distracting me again. Stretching yourself half naked on the lounger. It’s not really fair.

Monday, [11:43PM]: Would you think I’m crazy when I tell you that I have fallen for you? Because I think I have. More so than I already had.

Yeah, those are definitely tears that streak down her face. She tries not to make it obvious to Ruby but she has her nose buried in the paper, so she should be good.

Tuesday, [11:43AM]: You woke me up with a smile. I’m the happiest when I get to be inside you. I urged you to send a picture to Ruby. But in reality, I want her and Sam to see it too. Little do you know that I already have many pictures of you in my phone. By the way, I love how you get wetter when I talk dirty to you.

Tuesday, [12:01PM]: I think I might love you.

Tuesday, [01:59PM]: Gearing up for my conference call but all I can think about is you in the pool.

Tuesday, [03:44PM]: I’m hearing your moans while you get massaged. This is torture.

Tuesday, [05:02PM]: I can’t stop myself from showering you with affection. I hope you don’t mind.

Tuesday, [07:23PM]: Waiting for you to come out of the bathroom. You take your sweet time but I don’t really care about it anyway. I’m sure you look stunning whatever you wear or put on your face. Prettiest thing if I ever did see one. I don’t know how I can make you understand that this is real. This is all me, and all of me wants all of you.

Wednesday, [02:11AM]: You looked absolutely stunning tonight. I’m sorry that she pulled your brother into this. That was never my intention. I was never going to hurt you or your family and I’m doing my best to help you protect him. And I try my best to protect you, too. You know, you managed to calm me down. I don’t know how you did that, but you did. I remember hearing your faint voice in my rage. And when I turned around, it’s only you that I saw. I told you that you’ll be able to go back to your old life soon. That’s true. I don’t want you to think that you can’t. I’d just prefer if you’d stay, but that’s not on me to decide.

Wednesday, [03:02AM]: Yeah, it’s definitely love.

Wednesday, [05:34AM]: I’m up because I’m partly nervous about meeting your brother.

Wednesday, [10:27AM]: You looked so peaceful in your sleep. I might have taken another picture. You asked if we can stay in bed a little longer and honestly, all I wanted in that moment was to cancel everyone and stay in bed with you.

Wednesday, [03:11PM]: On my way to go fishing with Jack. He’s a great guy. I like him a lot. He reminds me of you.

Wednesday, [07:18PM]: We’re back. We talked things through. He’s very protective of you. We both are. He knows how I feel for you. That’s all I want him to know. I want him to work at the company, he’s more than qualified.

Wednesday, [11:18PM]: Currently waiting for you to wash your face and come to bed. I love seeing you happy. It literally makes my day. Some might call it love. I think I do too.

Thursday, [02:24AM]: Can you tell why I’m always waking up in the middle of the night? Mostly it’s because I have to make sure that you’re still here. I meant it when I said that Jack could live with me. I hope that by that time you’ll still be living with me too. I’d love that, because I love you.

Thursday, [05:52AM]: I don’t know how I should feel about the new development. It means that what we have will be over soon, doesn’t it? What if I don’t want it to be over? Would you be game?

Thursday, [06:31AM]: I’ve made a decision. I want to keep you a little longer. Even if it’s only for two weeks. I know that I told you that you can go back into your old life. It’s because I’m a coward and can’t tell you the truth. If I had my way, I’d keep you forever but you make your own decisions.

Thursday, [10:34AM]: I lied about getting back and building a case. It’s only partly true. I want to take you to my parents, I want them to understand that there’s nothing fake about what we have. I want them to get off my case so I have one less thing to worry about. I’m sorry if that sounds selfish.

She has to pause to blow her nose. Ruby still doesn’t notice that she’s sobbing, because she’s on the phone now.

Friday, [04:21AM]: You’re still here. Thank god.

Friday, [04:21AM]: I love you.

Friday, [02:11PM]: I watch you splash around with Jack and Ruby. I can get used to seeing your genuine smile more often. I want you to be happy. You deserve everything good in your life.

Friday, [06:44PM]: You’re getting ready in the bathroom. I’m sad we’re going home tomorrow. I want you. I want you so fucking bad.

Saturday, [03:03AM]: We’ve made love but I’m up and I want more. I want to stay inside of you. I want to show you how much I love you.

Saturday, [07:10AM]: The alarm has already gone off twice. I couldn’t bring myself to wake you up. I don’t even care if we’ll be late. It’s good like this. Waking up with you in my arms.

Saturday, [10:32AM]: You’re talking with Jack. I like that. I like to see you happy. Like to see him happy. It literally makes me happy seeing how you two treat each other. Jack knows that I only want the best for you. I hope he doesn’t tell you what we talked about, though. Because we would both have to kill you if one of us does.

Sunday, [02:01AM]: That backfired, didn’t it? You left and I didn’t hold you back. Not because I don’t want to. It’s because I don’t want you to think that I haven’t given you any options. I don’t want you to think that you’re not allowed to walk away, even when we have a contract. I want you to know that you can get out any time you want. I don’t care about the Amara case anymore. All I care about is for you to be happy.

Sunday, [04:33AM]: I can’t sleep. You’re not here.

Sunday, [10:28AM]: I don’t want you to think that me not calling you is because I don’t care. I do. But I want to give you the space you need, even if it kills me.

Sunday, [08:47PM]: It’s weird around here without you.

Monday, [03:49AM]: I’m still awake because I don’t know if I should go into work. You probably don’t want to see me, so I’m taking the day off. Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you on Tuesday.

Monday, [03:51AM]: If you see your emails when you get to work, you’ll probably think that I’m crazy. It’s just… I’m not really good at expressing my feelings, and it’s especially hard when it comes to you. I get tongue tied and my heart does somersaults. I know that it’s unlike my work persona but that’s just how I am. That’s why I’m sending you emails, hoping that I can get you to understand how much you actually mean to me.

Monday, [04:00AM]: I wish you were here.

Monday, [04:01AM]: I love you.

Y/N’s full on wailing and even Ruby notices it now, how can she not?

“Babe, are you okay?” Her friend stands up and walks over to her, sees her screen with all the opened emails and reads some of them, “Oh my god, the boss is such a fucking sap!” They both have to chuckle.

Y/N fishes her phone out of her purse and thumbs over a number, “Tell me what he told you, Jack. I need to know!”

Her brother sighs on the other side, “Fine, but don’t tell him I told you!”

“I won’t,”

“He made sure that I understood his feelings for you. That it was never a fake marriage to him. He was just too nervous to ask you out and when that thing with Amara happened, he saw it as an opportunity to do the right thing. He’s thinking about marrying you for real if you want that in your future. But I told him that he had to get my blessings first — which I gave him by the end of the finishing trip.”

“Jack!”

“I’m sorry. He’s good, Y/N. You know how I’m always overprotective and I was with Dean, too. But his intentions are good. He told me how you met. He knows every little detail. He could even tell me what you wore that day. Dean knows more about you than you think he does. Hell, he knows more about you than I do!”

“Well, then he’s a stalker.” She scoffs.

“Y/N, you wouldn’t know what’s good if it hit you in your face.”

“Did you talk to Ruby?”

Jack laughs, “I don’t have to talk to Ruby to know that about you.”

“Okay, thanks, Jack.”

“Anytime, sis. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

She hangs up and stands up from her chair to look at her friend, “Ruby?”

“Yeah, I can manage here. Go get him!”

Dean’s on the terrace, his hands on the railing. He’s already dressed in trousers and a button up shirt even though he has taken the day off. Old habits apparently die hard.

She slides the door open quietly.

“I was wondering if you’d show up,” He says and he turns around, rests his lower back against the railing. He’s not smiling.

Y/N walks closer, takes off her suit jacket and leaves it on the ground, feeling hot from running here. She already took off her shoes by the door. She’s sure that she’ll have blisters tomorrow.

His eyes are on her as he watches her clutching the railing next to him. She’s looking out when he’s looking towards his penthouse.

“How could I not?” She says after a long while and she hears him exhale.

“You’ve seen the emails.”

She nods, “I have,”

Dean turns around and moves behind her, places his hands on either side of hers and presses his body closer, caging her in. She feels him lowering his face, feels his lips on her throat. He kisses her and leaves them there. Her heart’s almost exploding.

“I don’t know how much you’ve heard before you left,” He’s talking about the dinner at his parents' place, she knows, “If you’d have stayed and listened longer, you would have heard me telling them that even though it’s fake, it feels fucking real to me. You would have heard me telling them that I wanted to ask you out properly and they would have to accept that I want you. That we were going to get an annulment and maybe one day I’ll get to pop the real question,”

“Would you want that?”

He chuckles, “More than you know. I’d love for you to come back and spend the next two weeks here until this is all over. And after that, I’d love for you to stay. But also I’m not holding you back. If you want out, I’m gonna tell Sam to release you out of the contract.”

She turns in his grip and wraps her arms around his waist, places her cheek on his chest. Dean’s heart is beating as fast as hers.

After a while, she looks up at him, stands on her tip toes and kisses his cheek.

“I hope that means that you’re coming back,” He smirks at her.

“You want me to come back.”

“I’m lonely when you’re not here. I want you to move in, for good, if you want. Come on, tell me what it takes for me to get you to come back.”

She thinks about it. It would be too soon to move in with him and right into his room, no? She raises her eyebrows, “I still want my own room.”

“It’s yours. You can have all the rooms you want.Maybe you want a room for your novels?” He’s laughing and she punches his chest.

Y/N gnaws on her bottom lip, “I want to take Fridays off occasionally because I want to see Jack more often,”

He purses his lips into a thin line and grins, “Granted,”

She looks at him, squints her eyes.

Dean chuckles, “Come on, what else? We’re negotiating. I like that,”

“Okay, when I say I want my space, you gotta give me that,”

“Of course,”

“No making fun of my books.” She’s pouting.

“I would never. At least not anymore.”

She looks at him to see him holding in a laugh.

“I don’t want you to treat me different to the other employees,”

Dean frowns, “You contradict yourself, because you basically just asked me for Fridays off.”

“That’s different,” She grins and he throws his head back to laugh, and she adds, “I don’t want you to wait for me every morning, because I don’t want to start as early as you do.”

“That, I can do. Try to be quiet so as not to wake up cranky — got it.” He winks, which earns him another punch to the chest.

“I might be pregnant,” She drops it like it’s fucking hot and Dean’s smile disappears. She goes on before he can utter a word, “And I know that you don’t want kids so I don’t even know what to think of it.”

Dean’s brow meets in the middle of his forehead, “Who said that I don’t want kids?”

“You? When you were telling it to Chuck and Naomi to excuse my outburst.”

He breathes out a weak smile, “That was just that, an excuse,” He kisses her forehead, “I would take full responsibility if you are. Maybe I’m hoping that you really are? Would it be bad?”

“Well, yeah? I’m not ready yet.” She gestures wildly with her hands.

Dean pecks her lips, smiling before he digs around in his pants, goes down to his knees and she’s full on frowning.

“Do you wanna marry me, for real?”

“No, Dean,” She says but she smiles, “I don’t want that. At least not yet.”

If Dean’s surprised by her saying no to him, he doesn’t let on. He stands up, takes her hand and slips the rings back onto her finger anyway because they’re still pretending for the next two weeks. His arms come around her and she hugs him in return, pressing the side of her face against his chest, listens to the staccato beat of his heart, “I won’t stop asking, though. You know I can be persistent.”

Oh yeah, she knows that. She buries her face into his shirt, breathes in his scent and mumbles, “Why do you want to marry me for real?” She has to ask. She’s too curious now.

“Because,” Dean holds her a little tighter, kisses the crown of her head, “You deserve good things and I wanna be one of them.”

She chuckles, “Jack told me what you talked about.”

“And he didn’t kill you?” Dean squints his eyes at her. He looks comical, it makes her smile, and then he adds, “That’s not what we agreed on, dammit, Jack!”

Dean’s laughing and she punches his chest, “Is it true that you know every detail of how we met?”

“Yeah,” He moves to kiss her forehead when she looks up, “When I told the reporters on our first social outing that I fell for you the moment you bumped into me, and I told you later that I fell for you when you smiled at me? That’s all true. It took me a week to go into that damn coffee shop, always backed out before I got to the door so many times. And then, when I finally found the courage and stepped in, you greeted me with a smile. However, the smile disappeared when you saw that it was me.”

She grins at the memories, “I was scared that you want me to pay for your ruined suit. I don’t have that kind of money,”

He chuckles, “That’s okay. I was going to ask you out then, but I chickened out. So instead, I offered you a job, thinking that if I’m too nervous to ask you out, maybe I can have you close and see you every day. Your smile is addictive. I thought that I was going to work on my courage in asking you out. Or maybe I thought that seeing you every day might put me off, maybe I thought that I’d see a side of you I don’t like, but that never happened. I liked every fucking thing about you. It had been a year and I still hadn’t asked you out.”

Dean lowers his forehead to her shoulders and her hand goes up to stroke his head.

“You’re so good with words, how come you couldn’t?”

“Because,” He looks up again, kisses her, “I had such a huge crush on you, and every time I was around you, I was angry at myself for not being able to ask you out.”

“‘S that's why you were so grumpy all the time?”

He lets out a huff of air, “Yeah,”

“You’re the worst,” She smiles.

“I know,” Dean says, “But I’m much more confident now,” He kisses her again. His lips feel familiar on her own, “What do you say. Reckon you can skip work for the day? I’m taking you on a date, I heard you like aquariums?”

Y/N really does. How does he even know?

Frowning, she looks at him, “I don’t know, my boss can be a dick sometimes. He probably won't give me the day off.”

Dean grins, licks his lips before they curve into a big and wide smile, he kisses her forehead, her nose, her lips, “Baby, I’d give you the world.”

FIN

EPILOGUE

#light my fire #dean winchester #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester fic #dean winchester fan fic #dean winchester fan fiction #ceo!dean winchester #nathalie writes

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lucy-268 · 4 years

Text

Revelations

A/N - This is ‘the talk’ and it takes place a week after Regrets. You can find that on my masterlist. Also, this meets the requirement for the @choicesweeklychallenge. You belong to me can be found in bold.

Disclaimer: Characters belong to PB

Warnings: none? I don’t think even language.

Series/Pairing: Open Heart - Ethan x f!MC (Charley Valentine)

Word count: 4,466

*****Thursday*****

“Has Denver General sent us any more information, or will I just find out when I get there?” June asked.

Consulting his notes, Ethan answered her. “Dr. Morgan said that he would send us the remaining test results as soon as he gets them. He’ll be sending them to all of us, so if you want to discuss the case with any of us we’ll all have the same information.”

June never looked up from the report she was reviewing. “I doubt it will be necessary.”

“Regardless of whether you think it’s a necessity, you will keep me informed of the case.” Ethan reminded her.

“Of course, Ethan.” June said. “If you don’t need me for anything else, I’m going to get ready for my flight?”

“You don’t want to hear about my new patient?” Baz asked her.

June glanced at him. “My flight leaves in less than three hours, so no. At least not right now.” She gathered her files and left saying goodbye to the rest of the team.

“Baz, what is going on with your new patient?” Charley asked.

“Late-onset Chediak-Higashi Syndrome. For me as an immunologist, I find it extremely interesting, especially as the patient is thirty-two and just diagnosed.”

Charley looked between Baz and Ethan. “Is this a team patient?”

“No. This is a patient of Baz’s. We will have a new patient coming in on Monday for which you will be primary.” Ethan held up a folder.

Baz briefed them on his patient, excusing himself when he received a page saying the patient was being admitted.

“And then there were two,” Ethan handed her the folder.

She flipped it open and read through the file. “Twenty-five year old male. Diabetic. Joint pain and muscle weakness.” Charley looked at him. “Do you know what it is and you want me to figure it out?”

Ethan shook his head. “I have a couple of ideas but I don’t know for sure what it is. You should have several ideas right now.”

“The symptoms can be just about anything. You said he gets here on Monday ?”

He nodded. “He’s already been to Mass Kenmore several times. Even though we have sent a release signed by the patient, Terrance hasn’t sent the files to us. So we may start with spinning our wheels testing for things that they have already tested for and eliminated.”

Charley studied the file again. “Did you see the iron levels here? I think the first thing is a liver biopsy?”

“Are you telling me that’s what you are going to do, or asking me if I think that’s the right choice?” Ethan asked her.

Her head snapped up. “That’s what I’m going to order. I’ll even have the order written so the test is run as soon as he’s admitted.” Charley met his eyes. “What?”

Ethan smiled. “There aren’t a lot of doctors who could have figured out to start with that test after reviewing a file for less than fifteen minutes. Let alone a second year resident. So I am impressed.” He reached over and stroked the back of her hand. “You often impress me.”

She turned her hand and laced their fingers. “It’s Thursday.”

“So it is.”

“Last week you texted me and said we would talk on Saturday.”

“Yes. And we decided we’d have dinner at six.”

Charley met his eyes. “You aren’t going to change your mind?”

“We’re meeting at my apartment. I’ll be there. We are long overdue for the talk. And I’m sorry for that.”

Charley smiles. “Will I finally get my chicken?”

“You will not. We’ve made the chicken together,” he held up his hand when she was going to interrupt, “this time, we’ll make something else. You plan the meal.”

“We may have made the chicken together but I never got to try it.”

“I want to see what you come up with. You can create any menu you want. Email me what we need and I’ll go shopping.” Ethan smiled at her.

Charley considered for a minute. “Anything?” When Ethan nodded, she continued, “My grandma had an amazing pot roast recipe. We could roast it in the oven or use a crockpot. It’s always best if it cooks on low in the crockpot, so that would take about seven or so hours. I’ll email you the list, and I guess I’ll be there late morning. I guess we’ll also have lunch together, too. That’s alright, isn’t it Ethan?” She didn’t even wait for his answer before she left the office.

Charley watched the office door to see if he was going to come after her and inform her they would not be spending the entire day together.

Ethan sat at his desk, he smiled as he realized that life would never be boring around Charley Valentine.

*****Saturday*****

Sienna pushed open Charley’s bedroom door. “Are yo-” Sienna stopped mid-sentence. She heard several loud thuds and wanted to ask if Charley was okay, but she did not expect the scene she witnessed. She also didn’t see her roommate. “Charley!”

“I’m here,” Charley called, pushing herself out from under the bed. “I was looking for this shoe. That I can’t wear now. Thank you, Lucy!” The shoe had become a chew toy for their pet.

Lucy, their fennec fox, sat in the middle of Charley’s bed, looking proud of herself.

“Forget the shoe, we understand what happened to it.” Sienna looked around the room. “Was there a bomb? Are you telekinetic? Did your closet and dresser decide to vomit every article of clothing you own into your room?”

“I’m looking for something to wear, and I don’t have anything! I got off at five yesterday, I should have gone shopping!”

Sienna remembered the day a couple weeks ago when Charley got home late clad in someone else’s clothes. Based on her own conversation with a certain someone, Sienna had a pretty good idea who. Now she was frantically trying to find something special to wear. “What’s his name?”

Charley froze. “What’s whose name?”

“Obviously, the guy that you’re spending your day with. The same one you were with when you came home wearing clothes that were way too big for you. So, who is it?”

“No one,” Charley stated. “I’m not spending the day with anyone.”

“Yet you canceled on Bryce and me for today.” Sienna picked up a Columbia t-shirt and a pair of jeans with a rip in the knees. “Here, put these on.” She smiled. “I mean, if you aren’t doing anything special today, it doesn’t matter what you have on.”

Charley looked at the clothes that Sienna tossed on her bed. She had to leave for Ethan’s before Sienna would be leaving to meet Bryce, and she still didn’t know what she was going to wear.

Sienna watched her. “I heard that Dr. Ramsey also has today off. And he did when you had your second day off two weeks ago.”

Charley froze and looked to the door. “Everyone else is working today and they’re gone?”

Sienna nodded and sat down on Charley’s bed. “Uh-huh.”

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“So it wasn’t just the one night when he spent the night here?”

“That day we went to the country club and later I went to his apartment to talk to him? That was the first time, and the night after my hearing was the second. It was also the last time.” Charley sighed. “Then he went to the Amazon so we could ‘reset’ since he would be my director supervisor.” Charley sighed. “Since he’s been back he says we need to stay away from each other, but then he’ll kiss me. Today we’re going to ‘talk.’ We’ve been supposed to talk since right after the softball game, but it kept getting delayed.”

Sienna smirked at her. “You had on his clothes the day you came home.”

Charley's face turned red. “We spent the day together with his dad in Providence. We took his dog for a walk and I fell into a mud puddle.”

“You’ve met his family!”

“His dad. He hadn’t told Alan that he was bringing me with him. Ethan had never taken anyone home with him before, not even Harper Emery.”

“Dr. Ramsey and Dr. Emery were a thing!” Sienna’s mouth dropped open.

“I don’t know if it’s really common knowledge. Aurora probably knows. I saw the two of them talking once and it seemed intimate. It was the day before they announced the opening on the diagnostics team. I did ask him about it later and he said he likes to keep his private life private, but he did say they had an on-again, off-again thing but it ended permanently when she became chief.” Charley rested her head on her hand. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. Don’t tell anyone.”

Sienna mimed sealing her lips. “I thought that you and Bryce were kind of together.”

“We hooked up a couple of times but we both agreed to be casual.”

“And with Ramsey, you don’t want casual?”

“I don’t.” Charley chewed on her lip. “Sienna, I’m terrified about today. I know that everything is going to change.”

“Well then, let’s get you ready.” Sienna picked up the t-shirt and jeans. “This probably won’t do; we’ll find something else.”

Charley was just getting ready to leave when her phone rang. She looked at the caller id and sighed. “If you’re calling to cancel-” she started.

“I’m not,” she heard his rich baritone as well as a smile in his voice. “I had to go to the hospital to pick up something. If you haven’t left yet you can ride with me. I’m outside your building.”

“I’ll be down in a minute.” Charley disconnected, smiling.

Soon they were in his apartment. She kicked off her shoes at the door and stood there when he walked further into the apartment. He got half way through the living room when he realized she wasn’t with him. He turned to find her at the door. “If we want to make this pot roast we need to go to the kitchen.”

Charley gave a nervous laugh and stepped away from the door. She tossed her purse on the couch as they walked into the kitchen. They washed their hands and Ethan pulled his crockpot out of the pantry while Charley pulled the roast out of the refrigerator. She saw the printout from her email with the image of her grandma’s recipe. Ethan gathered the rest of the ingredients while Charley brewed a pot of coffee.

“Why the crockpot instead of a roasting pan in the oven? I saw the recipe had directions for both with cooking times for either low or high in the slow cooker.”

“It tastes better and is more tender.”

Ethan smirked. “It does not. And we need to use the Dutch oven even if it’s just to brown the roast.”

“Maybe it doesn’t do a lot for the taste, but it is more tender.” Charley watched as the coffee finished brewing, standing with her back to him. “It takes longer to cook in the slow cooker on low and I wanted to spend more time with you.” She gave a short laugh. “Funnily enough, now that I’m here, I’m nervous.”

“Why?”

She turned to face him. “I think that today may change everything, and I’m hopeful but I’m also scared. I’ve been wanting to sit down with you away from the hospital with just the two of us for so long, but now that we’re actually going to do that...” She bit her lip.

“Now you understand why I’ve been putting it off. But I’ve done a lot of thinking. And I talked to Naveen. We are long overdue. Today will change everything but we will be in agreement with it, I think.”

Charley nodded. Ethan turned back to the counter. “Let’s get this set for dinner, fix lunch, and talk.”

Charley browned the roast in the Dutch oven while Ethan chopped the vegetables and herbs. Once the roast was in the crockpot, Charley cooked the onion. Once they started to soften, they added the rest of the ingredients, including the coffee. “Why coffee?” Ethan asked.

Charley smiled, watching the mixture simmer. “Is this a quiz, same as ‘why neat’ that first night at Donahue’s?”

“Genuine curiosity. As much as I love coffee, I’ve never had pot roast cooked in coffee. I found the recipe interesting.”

“It helps to tenderize the meat and gives the gravy a richer flavor.”

Once the gravy and onion mixture was cooked, Ethan poured it over the meat and set the timer. While Charley washed the accumulated dishes, Ethan fixed salads for lunch. They took their plates to the living room and sat side-by-side on his sofa.

“You talked to Naveen about us.” When he nodded, she continued, “I talked to Sienna.”

They fell into a silence while they ate. Charley glanced at him every so often.

He pushed the last piece of lettuce around on his plate before finally setting the plate on the coffee table. He turned to her; she mimicked his moves and faced him.

“Ethan, I’ve said for a while that a relationship with you is an easy decision for me. It’s what I want. I think that we could be good together, amazing even.”

Ethan nodded. “I know. You aren’t the problem, I am. I want to be able to push you to be the best doctor you can be.”

“You can do that professionally, regardless of any personal relationship we have. I can take criticism from Dr. Ramsey and know that it isn’t coming from Ethan.”

“You’re assuming that I can also have that division.”

That got Charley’s attention. “You’re Ethan Freakin’ Ramsey. You can do anything you try to. If you want to make the distinction you will. And if you cross the line, I’ll let you know.”

“Another problem-”

Charley put her hand on his arm. “If you just want to list a lot of potential possible problems, why are we even having a discussion? Earlier you said that today would change everything and you thought we’d be in agreement.” She folded her arms across her chest and focused on a picture hanging on the wall. “If you thought that I’d change my mind about us, you’re wrong. If you thought you could list all the reasons why we can’t be together and why you won’t be with me, I was right to be nervous about this. If that’s-”

Ethan reached over and grabbed her chin, forcing her to face him. “What I want to do is identify the obstacles or potential obstacles we face so we are both aware of them, and to decide how we need to handle them in the future.” He wiped a tear out of her eye. “Because in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I very much do want to be with you.”

Charley grabbed his hand and kissed his palm before lacing their fingers together. She smiled at him. “I’m sorry for my outburst. Continue, please.”

“Another problem is the board. They don’t like interoffice romances. Naveen seems to think this won’t be an issue. He seems to think that as long as it isn’t impacting the care of the patients, or the bottom line of the hospital, they wouldn’t care, nor would they even need to be aware. I disagree with him on this. I think the board makes it their business to know what goes on in the hospital.”

Charley interrupted again. “I know that there are married couples at the hospital. Was it a problem when you and Harper were together?” Ethan drew in a deep breath when she asked that. “If you don’t want to answer that you don’t have to.”

“I will. It was not a problem and the board did not have an issue with it when she was head of neurosurgery and I was a fellow on the diagnostics team. If our relationship would have continued when she was chief or if I had been a surgeon, it would have been a problem. Any other couples at Edenbrook do not work in the same area, and one member of the couple is not another’s supervisor.”

Ethan continued, “I don’t want anyone to think that you got the position on my team because of our relationship. I don’t want anyone to have any doubt about that. You earned it.”

Charley nodded. “I did earn it. You weren’t even the one who put me on the team. Naveen did.”

Ethan agreed that while that was true, many people at the hospital could have thought that he asked Naveen to do that.

“If anyone has doubts, I graduated at the top of my class at Columbia. Not near, I was ranked first. In fact if anyone had ranked all med school graduates my year from around the country, I’d probably be in the top fifty.”

Ethan laughed. “Someone did. And you are higher than that. You are somewhere in the top twenty. I’m not going to narrow it down more than that for you.”

“Based on that, I think I earned the right to be on the team. Not to mention helping to cure Naveen last year. Our relationship had nothing to do with it. Well except for the fact you inspired me to go to med school in the first place. And I wanted to work with you, which is why I came to Edenbrook.”

“We probably don’t want to advertise our personal relationship at work. The hospital has a wonderful gossip network and we’ll need to be careful. That being said it probably won’t be long before everyone knows about us.”

“That sounds okay. But some people will know. I told Sienna and you told Naveen. My roommates will know I’m seeing someone, and will make it their mission to find out who.” Charley wasn’t sure if she should mention the next part, but figured she might as well. “June does, or she thinks she does. At least that was what she implied the day I caught her with my personnelle file.”

Ethan froze. “She had your file?”

Charley nodded. “She said that she reads the files for everyone she works with. She tried to tell me you asked her to get it for you, but I knew you wouldn’t have.”

“I’ll deal with her when she gets back from Denver. Your roommates and Naveen are fine.”

“If my roommates know Bryce will also know; and if Aurora does, Harper might.” Charley looked up at him. “Can we talk about Harper?”

“I thought we already had.”

“You ended things when she became chief. If she wouldn’t have, would you still be together, do you think?”

“We would not. We were together because it was mutually beneficial to the both of us. But we were never going to last.”

She smirked at him. “By ‘mutually beneficial’ do you mean it was convenient and the sex was good?”

“Yes.” Ethan said. “But then last year something happened that I knew would never lead Harper and I together again.” When Charley tipped her head to show she was interested in his answer, he continued. “Last year, an intern showed up and turned my life inside out. And I can’t get her out of my head.”

Charley started to move towards him, and he stopped her. “What about the scalpel jockey?”

Charley lips twitched. “His name is Bryce.”

“I’m aware, and you didn’t answer the question.”

“We hooked up twice, once at our housewarming party and again once after we were at Donahue’s. We almost did the night we researched treating Mrs. Martinez, but you’d already kissed me in Miami. I wasn’t interested in anyone else at that point.” She looked at the ground before meeting his eyes. “Bryce is a friend and a good one. I trust him. I also know if I ever did want a relationship with him, I’d have that choice. I don’t, and Bryce respects that.”

“As long as he knows that you belong to me.” Ethan pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her.

“And you belong to me!” Charley shifted slightly on his lap and felt his hardness under her thigh. “We could continue this in the bedroom.”

“A very good idea.” As Ethan stood and lifted her, she wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her into the bedroom.

Several hours later, they were laying with their legs tangled together, voices soft in the quiet room when an alarm on her phone beeped.

“Somewhere you need to be?” He kissed the top of her head.

She pushed herself up. “Actually, yes. The kitchen. I need to start the vegetables.”

He walked over to his closet and pulled out a robe that on him would reach mid-thigh. He tossed it to her, before grabbing another for himself. This one hit him at mid-calf. “You could have this one if you wanted.” She indicated the robe she hadn’t yet tied. It fell below her knees.

He snorted. “Be responsible for you tripping in this one? I don’t think so.”

As Charley gathered what she needed for the roasted cauliflower, Ethan grabbed the green beans. Charley explained that sometime they would fix potatoes with the roast, but her grandfather grew up near Idaho and often decided he wanted anything other than potatoes, so they would have cauliflower. “I don’t like raw or steamed, but I really like them roasted with this mustard sauce.”

Charley watched Ethan pull a cake plate out of the refrigerator. “Dessert?” At Ethan's acknowledgment she asked what it was. He wouldn’t tell her, saying he wanted it to be a surprise.

They worked efficiently together in the kitchen, getting dinner ready. Ethan selected a red wine for them and opened it to let it breathe. He carried their plates to the dining room table.

“This is good; the coffee does make the gravy richer.”

“Grandma knows best. My grandfather grew up in Spokane and grandma in Seattle. They had a restaurant in Seattle that my dad and all my aunts and uncles worked in while they were growing up.”

“You have a big family?”

“My dad had three brothers and two sisters. But even though they had six kids, my grandparents only had four grandchildren. There was my brother and me; we grew up in Pennsylvania. My one uncle had two boys and they were in Oregon. All of my dad’s family is in the northwest and we didn’t see them often. My dad moved there after he retired and I started med school.”

Ethan watched her. “Are we going to talk about your mom’s family?”

Charley shrugged. “Not much to tell. Her parents were killed in a car accident when she was in college. She was an only child and you know why I don’t talk to her.”

As they cleared the table and kitchen he asked her what he had been wondering about. “Why did you decide to do your residency in Boston with most of your family now out west?”

“It doesn’t feel like home to me there. I figured I could do my residency anywhere; it wasn’t a commitment to stay somewhere for my life. It’s only three years.” She smiled at him. “Besides coming here let me learn from the best.”

Ethan poured coffee and set the mugs on a tray with two dessert plates. Charley watched as he lifted the cover off the cake.

“Lemon! How did you know lemon was my favorite?” Charley couldn’t resist. She swiped her finger on the edge of the cake to collect a sample of icing. She popped it in her mouth.

“I asked Sienna the other day and she told me.”

Charley stared at him. “She helped me get dressed this morning and she didn’t say anything!”

Ethan laughed. “You need help getting dressed in the mornings?”

She felt her face redden. “I… well… um. I didn’t know what to wear this morning.”

“I would have gone with clothes, but I understand that some people are fussier than others.”

“I wanted to look nice.”

“You always look nice.”

“I thought that I always looked satisfactory.”

Ethan cut two pieces of cake and added them to the tray with the coffees.

“I thought we could take these into the bedroom. If that would be satisfactory to you?”

She nodded and he carried the tray to the bedroom and set it down on the bed. He flipped a switch causing the gas fireplace to spring to life. Charley picked up her cake and snuggled back against Ethan. “I like the fireplace here.”

“I don’t often use it.”

“Why tonight?”

“Must be the company I’m keeping.”

Charley turned and straddled his lap. “You better be careful. This company could end up corrupting you.”

“I look forward to it, if that’s the case.” Ethan rolled her unto her back.

Several hours later, Charley looked at the clock. “I should go home. I have to work tomorrow and my boss can be tough if I’m late.”

“If you stay with me, I’ll be sure you’re not late,” Ethan buried his head in her neck.

“I don’t have clean clothes for tomorrow.”

“You can either grab some scrubs from the locker room or ask your roommate to bring something for you.” Ethan pointed to his dresser. “I cleared both of the bottom drawers for you, if you want them.”

Charley chewed on her bottom lip. “You knew what the outcome of our talk was going to be before we actually talked today. When did you decide you wanted-”

“The night of the softball game, when I kissed you.”

Charley stared at him. “Then why did you keep putting me off when I wanted to talk?”

“Because I kept coming up with all the reasons why we shouldn’t be together. And I decided not to do that anymore. I’m tired of avoiding whatever it is we have.”

“Why do I get the two bottom drawers?”

“You’re shorter than me!” He indicates the drawer on the right. “You actually do have clean clothes in there. What you wore when we went to my dads. You at least have something to wear to the hospital.” Ethan watched her. “Any other concerns for tonight?”

“Do you have an extra toothbrush?”

Ethan shrugged. “Yes, but it’s one of the standard ones dentists hand out. It should be fine until we can get you one to keep here.”

Charley put her head on his pillow. “Then I can’t think of a single reason to get out of the warm bed right now.”

He turned off the light and slipped under the covers with her. “Neither can I.”

Tag list (if you want to be on or off let me know) @oofchoices @openheart12 @jamespotterthefirst @ohchoices @catchinglikekeronsene @aylamreads @nerdydinosaursweets @eramsey28 @txemrn @starrystarrytrouble @queencarb @thegreentwin @lion-ess24 @caseyvalentineramsey

@choicesficwriterscreations @choicesweeklychallenge

#dr ethan ramsey #dr. ethan ramsey x mc #ethan ramsey #ethan jonah ramsey #open heart fanfiction #open heart #choices open heart

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thexam-union · 3 years

Text

Riverside Relaxing

First fic to be put up here!! It’s the Chessy Boys up first, which surprises me just as much as it might surprise you! It’s just some soft fluff because that’s what got made :>

Length: 2031 Words

General Overview: It’s too hot outside, and the gang get together to cool off by the water in Land of the Tiger. Also ship moments between Tevel and Apollyon!! They’re grooving!

Warning(s): Mentions of heatstroke (no incidents or harm done, simply concern)

( If you need anything else tagged/forewarned about let me know!! )

The worst thing about the Digsite was the heat. The baking sun made it borderline impossible to work during the middle of the day, the sun’s glare roasting everything through to the point of burning without any hesitation. It was fine when nothing was scheduled, but when you were stuck there all day waiting for sunset? Pain. Suffering, even.

Tevel half-heartedly pushed open the door to Alcor’s office, the beige and yellows of the walls being anything but welcoming as they set themselves down in the chair after haphazardly hanging their jacket on the back of it.

“Please don’t say what I think you’re about to say, but what are you here for?” Alcor said with a short, sharp glare in their direction, before looking back at the computer screen on their desk. He seemed taken aback when they gestured towards the ceiling he got in response. Specifically, the fan. Normally when Tevel comes in all sheepish, it’s probably because something broke, so this was a surprise. “Right.”

“How mad would you be if I said I’m just hanging out here for that and that you’ll have to put up with me or let me go elsewhere.”

“Not very, but that’s just today.” Alcor simply shrugged behind his glasses, sipping at his drink before putting the fan in front of him in Tevel’s direction. “I’m glad you haven’t broken anything.”

“In this weather? No way, I wouldn’t. Thanks, by the way. But yeah, who’s in your personally-manned hell of emails today?” It was a joke, but clearly not anything rough-sounding. Surprising, given it’s Tevel of all people, but he already knew they didn’t like his email practices.

“The Marquess, and a few other people. You don’t get the emails.”

“I’ll level with you, chief, I’ve got your address marked as spam. Doesn’t work, though, you’ll be glad to know. Also, Aludra’s letting people hang out. I know you’re as antisocial as they come, and that neither of us like each other, but it’ll hurt my one entire moral,” They very dramatically put up their index finger, “If I don’t tell you and you get heatstroke.”

“Right. I’m glad you’re conscious of safety on the digsite. I’m actually surprised you didn’t just go.” Tevel shrugged. “Or did you want the go-ahead for tonight to be cancelled first? I know you used the last workplace safety book I gave you as a fuse to spite me. Impressive, but you know how I feel about that sort of thing.”

“Yeah mostly I guess. Heatstroke sucks, and I like to annoy you. Not almost kill you with negligence. Anyway, if you want to CC the information to people that don’t even go here, fine by me, I’m leaving. See you there, yeah?”

“Mhm. I’ll be right out. Thank you, Tevel. Are you sure you’re alright?” They’d just stood up and picked up their jacket, holding it over their arm as their sunhat covered their eyeline. “You’re acting a little strangely, today.”

“I’m fine. It’s too hot to blow up the place, and I can’t burn down Aludra’s place, I’ll feel so bad.”

“I thought you had one moral standard.” Wait, did Alcor just make a joke? What the fuck. What the fuck? He even laughed and everything.

“Uh-- Right, uh, stay hydrated? I’m going.” And with that, the office door was closed and they were braving the sun again. That was so weird? Alcor had never made a joke, and they’d known each other for years. It was mostly disappointed and annoyed glaring in their direction. At least he was going to cool off later? Acting weird is a heatstroke thing, even when you have the fans in the area in your office you’re not safe, they supposed. But, they did their bit, and it was time for some - as Lesath put it - “much needed splashy splashy”.

To be honest, everyone apart from the Marquess was going to be there now Alcor’d been convinced, and even then, Aludra had been trying to set up a nice canopy so the Marquess could get out more? Unsure, though, they weren’t in the building things business. More the blowing things up business. More their speed.

Walking down to Aludra’s perch took a very short amount of time, and getting under the forest cover was all they needed to get going, really! The comfort of the running water was also very nice, although they didn’t expect a short tap on the shoulder. There, but short.

“Hey, chief, what’s up?” They asked, knocking their hat brim up a little.

“I haven’t been officially invited, so I think my presence would go over better if I’m with someone who was invited, if you get what I mean.” Tevel shrugged. “That’s common practice for social engagements.”

“Yeah, but it’s also Aludra. If she can put up with your slew of emails, she can put up with you in person. Plus I don’t think she dislikes anyone. I gotta say, you’re acting off.”

“Off..? How so? I feel fine.”

“Yeah. Too... Person-y.” Tevel made a vague gesture with their hands, like someone would when describing the movement of a bug. “And that sorta thing’s a sign of heatstroke. You’re my boss who’s allergic to fun, and I heard you make a joke earlier.”

“I assure you, I’m fine. I’m not allergic to fun, I’m allergic to your idea of fun. You’re about as self-aware as a teabag at times.” He sighed, shaking his head, but Tevel seemed… happy with that response? And he was the one that was acting strangely?

“That’s the Alcor that I know.” Tevel half-cackled as they tended to, swinging their jacket so it was over their shoulder rather than over their arm. “Good to hear you’ve still got it, chief. Was actually half-worried something’d happened to ya.”

“I appreciate the concern for my safety? That’s weird coming from you, though.”

“Eh. I like things being consistent and-”

“You’re a demolitionist. What part of that is ordered?”

“Explosions happen in the same way almost every time, and it’s pretty. Consistent behaviour’s what helps me sleep at night, I’m sure you can agree on that.” Tevel laughed, nudging Alcor with their arm as they got to the clearing, and the others were starting to come into view. “Besides, I do pay attention to safety laws. I’m qualified, actually.”

Apollyon had their shirt - jacket? - open over her swimsuit, Lesath was curled up on a well-made perch, Aludra had her laptop open a bit away from the water, and even the Marquess was out here! She was sitting on a deck chair near the side of the water under a parasol, though clearly not dressed for it. Hell, even Citala’d been convinced to drop by! That was slightly less impressive than Tevel of all people dragging Alcor along, but the gap wasn’t that big!

“Yo, you brought him along? How?” Apollyon asked as the pair got up to the side of the water, Tevel sitting on the edge of the waterfront beside her and Alcor settling near Aludra, who’d put down her laptop. Probably to talk to each other rather than sending emails.

“Concern about heatstroke.” With a wink and a slight poking of the tongue, Tevel yawned and leaned back. “It’s so cool here I love it so much.”

“And he set with that? I’d thought he’ll drag you over to my place to toss you in the hoosegow instead of coming over!”

“Consider the following, Apple, it’s Aludra’s thing, right? And look at them.” Apollyon nodded a little. “No one can say no to Aludra, sure as hell not him, you know?”

“Them? Mashed? I didn’t know she had taste that bad!” They looked around everyone else, who seemed quite happy to spend a hot afternoon there. “I didn’t know she did that at all to be completely fair. Same with Alcor, he’s a barn sour and that’s it, I thought. Clawing at the gate when he has to leave it.”

“Yeah? I don’t know, I don’t talk to her much and Alcor’s harder to talk to than a brick most of the time.” Apollyon laughed a little at that. “But yeah, bad taste if true, but also the only thing I thought he loved was his email inbox, and I’m probably right on that one.”

“Yeah, he’s a bit of an odd stick, isn’t he? But enough about your work, how you doing, Tev?” Apollyon reached into a small covered hamper crate on their side of the water, and passed over a can of soft drink, cold to the touch. Perfect. “Also, love to see everyone get together like this, y’know? So glad Morava had the idea.”

“This was his idea?”

“Well yeah. Aludra can’t say no to anyone, and Morava’s all over logistics. He got all of us a half-crate of our favoureds, who else would get that done? Even Ali’s roaming around here, she’s having a great time!”

“True! I’m just glad I don't have to do work today, you know how it is.” Apollyon nudged Tevel in the side for that, setting both theirs and her own hat down on top of the drink crate in that order.

“You? Not wanting to blow things to high heaven?” She gave a slight laugh in response to her own point, before taking a sip of drink.

“More likely than you’d think, Apple! It’s dangerous in high heat. You should know that. As much as I joke about ignoring safety, I do pay attention to a little bit. Don’t tell anyone, though, I have a reputation.”

“Secret’s safe with me, Tev. Will say, very surprised the Marquess came down. Must be awkward. She’s just kind of sitting up there with Citala, y’know?”

“I mean if she’s happy to be here? I don’t know her that well. And no, not your time to go ‘I’ll check it out’ and get us both in it. I like being the spooky chaos one no one knows in any meaningful way.”

“Consider the following: Some of us want to know you. Perceive you. Behold you, even.” Apollyon said, looking directly at Tevel for a moment. “You’re knowable! Sorry Tev, I know you! I don’t know how you got here without letting me be there to see you.”

“And to that I say: I better not be! You’re different, though. You know that.”

“If I don’t get to know you I’ll actually be a little upset.” Apollyon laughed a little, yawning before stretching, although it was a quiet invitation for Tevel to lean on her. “You’re one of the funner people to be around.”

“I’m sure you would think that, Apple. You’re also very biased.” Tevel replied, pulling Apollyon’s arm over them in a way that was comfortable for both of them. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, though. You get to see me outside of work.”

“Mhm. Don’t you think your relationship with everyone else would improve if you were knowable, though? I know you want that.” Apollyon had started to gently run their hands through Tevel’s hair with a gentle smile, as they were just comfortable with their eyes closed and resting more on her lap than her shoulder at this point.

“But having to actually talk to people though. Plus, I’m not moving. You can suffer.”

“Oh, I’m suffering with my beloved lying on my lap. The struggle of being with the person I care about most. The anguish that comes with having a day off and spending it with you.” She said with a dramatic emphasis and feigned a fever for a moment. “We’ll improve your mess later.”

“I can’t believe this.” Tevel sounded offended, but didn’t really mean it. After all, how could they? They did in fact sign up for it.

“I hoodwinked you real good, darlin’. Until then, just us, okay?” A wink from Apollyon, and a laugh. This was going to be a rough few weeks, but if Apollyon really thought it was this good idea, then it probably was? Who knew. But hey, it was something for Future Tevel to think about, not the Tevel at this moment by the river. They were more than content.

#chessington ocs #fic #theme park ocs #🗺️ } The Adventurers' Realm #🖋️ } Beltrame's Writing #🎠 } Beltrame's Jesters #📜 } Forbidden Kingdom #🐯 } Land of the Tiger #🧭 } Tevel #📒 } Alcor #🦂 } Apollyon #everyone else is mentioned but anything but loadbearing #cw heatstroke mention #didn't expect this to go where it did #love it all the same though!

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aitarose · 4 years

Text

my gaang for nationals part 1

contains: permanent appreciation post for some of my really really close friends/mutuals (if you’re not in this i’m sorry, but i’d love to talk more if you’re interested!) in no particular order. where they fit in the scenario in which we’re all in haikyuu

notes: i love making these and i love you all, so here’s something that randomly came to mind when i read hesther’s love fest :) also, i’m clearly a libero asdjfkl. oh and there will be a part two to this for my other mutuals, but i’m tired and want to stop typing sooo that’ll come tomorrow maybe

↳ directory

@firelordhesther: hes

↳ general words:

hello mother, i’m rewriting this paragraph because i’m pretty sure you managed to read the first draft and i wanted to surprise you so here’s something new. i’m going to be nice since this is a public post and i don’t want strangers to see how much ~love~ i have for you. you’re the only one who can tell me what to do, like i actually listen to you which is weird..i don’t even listen to myself usually. ngl you scare me sometimes, but it’s a good kind of scary. ily..i guess. see you whenever i decide to drive down to the yeehaw land.

↳ team position: captain

besides the icky stuff up there, i think that you’d be the team captain if we were on a volleyball team. you have a way with words in which you can reign chaos in with a simple paragraph. you’re also very authoritarian, whether you mean to be or not, and then you give everyone advice in a nice way that doesn’t make us feel stupid. i’d listen to you if you were my captain, and i think everyone else would too.

@nekomabvc: lina-chan

↳ general words:

you’re my favorite person to harass. you’re literally me but in a nicer and whiter font. i really like making obscure memes about you and then emailing them to your personal email. that’s funny—besides all of that you’re like my bff lina-chan..my internet bff. my irl’s get really annoying sometimes and it’s nice to know that i can just text you and you usually answer, unless you’re doing your million step bathroom routine. and whenever i’m on the phone, ella always thinks i’m talking to you and it’s really annoying because i don’t like you..but also like..aishiteru.

↳ team position: setter

you always say that setter is the only position that you’d physically be able to play, but i feel like you fit the position personality-wise as well. you’re very in control with everything around you, you like things to be a certain way and get frustrated when they’re out of place. you think logically over creatively, and would take control of the team in a way that no one else could. when you get in the zone, you can be really motivating and you’re good at guiding steps and practice. you’d be a really good setter.

@calcifers-newjersey-accent: ella

↳ general words:

hello. i hate you. cancel quesadillas.

↳ team position: middle blocker

first of all, you’d be total middle blocker perfection considering your height and stature. bitch be literal tsunami in femal forme. you’d be jumping and popping and going BOP BOP to all those balls, and everyone would be like woah! she’s really good! anyways, you’d be a good defense because you’re always ready to help someone in need, whether that’s physically or emotionally. that’s it. my brain hurts from saying nice things.

@agniikaii: kyle (kaail)

↳ general words:

kyle you’re my favorite asian, other than my little irl asian bitch named after a fucking spice, and i love calling you kyle and making frat references that you don’t understand. you’re very funny and i really like horny hours because i get to see all of the hot men that you like, even if they’re blonde..ew. you’re twelve hours ahead of me, and that twelve more hours that you have to do calculus homework, and that sucks..deal with it ig. find that derivative!!

↳ team position: wing spiker

you’d 100% be on offense. you’re like hinata, you’d bounce around and just pop those balls down to the floor. you’re small and probably fast if you really tried?? i don’t know how online gym works, but i bet you’re killing it girlfriend! you go! keep those boys thirsty! i’m laughing at myself idk what else to say. you have an aggressive side sometimes, and i can just imagine you bringing it out on the court.

@pxnk-velvet: angie

↳ general words:

angelina argentina anal michael. you are so very talented in the creativity it astounds me. you’re such a good artist and have so much potential as a writer it’s just, augh, so proud. you make me laugh when you say Periodt! with that peppa pig meme, and you always send it even when it makes no sense in the conversation and it just makes me giggle hehe.

↳ team position: ace

i don’t know if you know what the ace does yet, but they’re basically the powerhouse of the team. you definitely DEFINITELY have an aggressive side, and we’ve seen it come out a couple times and you would be perfect for this position. mwah. just perfect. with you as our ace, we’d never have to worry about that stupid wall and you’d just be the best. that’s it. the best.

@councilspectres: my new wife (just married)

↳ general words:

HELLO HANNAH. i don’t know if you’re ever going to see this, because you never saw my last one pain, anywho that doesn’t matter. what matters is you’re very nice and funny, also horse girl, and you pop in at fun times. i can’t wait to go on our honeymoon to wyoming and have a great time with those horses. love u.

↳ team position: teacher advisor

i don’t think you watch haikyuu, and this is obviously not an actual position on the team—but you give off such takeda energy it’s crazy. he’s such a nice guy and just wants the best for everyone, he’s always there for them when things get tough, but also doesn’t hover. you’d be the best teacher advisor, and all the other clubs would be jealous.

@probablydisgusting: sophia

↳ general words:

hi sophie. your dog is super cute and i added myself to the private story today, but besides that you are very VERY funny and i really enjoy listening to your tangents, because it feels like i’m not the only one who can talk forever. you were the very first person to interact in the original chat and that’s really cute and i miss those days even though the snap gc is much better.

↳ team position: pinch server

you definitely don’t watch haikyuu, but if you know anything about volleyball you’d know that the pinch server is someone that the entire team relies on to change up the game. they come in when the team is at their wits end and save the say, which is just like you when you randomly pop into the chat and entertain us! you’d be a fire pinch server and would cheer SO loudly from the sidelines.

#.appreciation #my gaang

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brianprobablywill · 5 years

Text

This Quiet Night (Gwilym Lee x Reader)

summary: you and gwilym both have dates for the night. so why are you both at your place on valentine’s day?

word count: 2.6K

warnings: swearing, implied smut (blink and you miss it)

this was written for @bluesfortheredj, my somebody to love event valentine!! i’m so sorry this is late, lovey, but i hope the fic makes up for my lack of punctuality!!! thank you, @dtfrogertaylor for hosting these events, they’re really wonderful!! enjoy! :)

You aren’t expecting a mug of coffee on your desk when you arrive at work, but it is what you find. But what’s odd is the post-it note stuck on it. As you sit down, shrugging off your coat and dropping your bag under your desk, you peel it off carefully.

‘happy valentine’s day, officemate :)’

You can’t help the smile that blossoms on your face as you spin in your chair, looking for your cubemate. “Office room mate.” You call out, rolling over to his table.

“What is it, officemate?” Gwilym’s face holds a wide grin. He clicks his pen over and over again in his left hand, looking at the post-it held in your hand in utter confusion. “Why, what is this? Who could have put it there?”

“Cut the theatrics,” you say. You want to lean forward and give him a kiss, but you settle for a pat on his back, smiling at him. “Thanks. But, um, I didn’t get you anything.” Your hand retracts quickly, wrapped up in your other.

“Oh, don’t worry about that at all!” Gwil rotates your chair till it faces your desk and gives it a push. “Just get to work. Harry asked for your expense report for January. Why haven’t you turned it in yet?”

You huff, tucking your hair behind your ear, “Just behind on stuff. Oh, Natalie wants to meet you in the evening.”

“It’s fourteen days into the month. Another fourteen and you’ll have to turn in another.”

It’s hard for you to admit to yourself that you feel shame at what Gwilym was saying. It was true, you were falling behind on stuff. You’d only recently taken on a new, more important role, and with that had come a lot more work than you’d anticipated. You mutter, “Just meet Natalie, okay?”

You and Gwilym get to your respective work, sending out emails and answering phone calls. Gwilym makes a trip down to the reception and brings back a bouquet of roses for you, sent by an anonymous person.

“I think it’s Harry.” Gwilym coughs, keeping his vision to the floor as he slides back to his desk.

You smile, setting the bouquet down, remembering to ask Harry about it.

Gwilym coughs again, and then once more. Loudly.

“Hey, you okay?” You ask, spinning around to face Gwilym in time with him.

“Yeah, of course.” He’s almost turning around again before he stops himself, pointing a finger towards you. “Have you got plans today?”

No. You’re going to stay late and catch up on all the work you’ve been putting off. But Gwilym doesn’t need to know that. “Oh, yeah. A date.”

Gwilym’s eyes widen, “Oh. Okay. Great. Me too.”

“Sweet,” you utter softly. You don’t want to keep this conversation going, so you turn around quickly, muttering, “Email, Natalie, expense reports, scrum call.”

The rest of the day passes by uneventfully. Harry gets your expense report, you and Gwilym catch coffee in the afternoon together, but stay silent for most of the time. As Gwilym’s packing up for the day, you stand up, too.

“Leaving? Don’t keep your date waiting.” Gwilym sings.

You smile softly, shaking your head. “Just getting myself some coffee from the rec room. Oh, Nata-”

“Meet Natalie. I’m going, I’m going, I’m going,” he groans exaggeratedly, throwing his head back before heading out of your shared cubicle.

Gwilym is not back by the time you’ve grabbed your coffee. Assuming he’s left for the day after meeting your boss, you decide you can sit in the rec room to finish up the rest of your work, since it is the end of the day and most people must have left by now.

It’s the buzzing of your phone - a call from Gwilym - that distracts you before you’ve even started working, and you can’t resist pushing your laptop aside and answering at once.

“Hey, what’s up?” you ask, trying to make it sound as nonchalant as possible.

“I’m staying late.”

“What?” you hope your voice doesn’t deceive you, because you have to admit, it did spark excitement in you, getting to spend time with Gwilym.

Gwilym huffs on his side of the line, “Natalie wants me to work with some of the QA folks in New York,” he groans, and you can hear a soft thud.

“But you’re not even part of the QA t--”

“The new project with Ridgemond?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Your new hot-shot role?”

“What about it, Gwil?”

“She’s assigned me on that project. I can’t believe I have to work with fuckin-- I’m a software developer! How can I-- oh my goodness.”

You can’t help but smile at Gwilym’s frustration, finding it absolutely adorable. You rest your chin on your hand. “Have to cancel your date?”

Gwil lets out a moan of sorts, filled with indecisiveness.

“Me too.”

“What?”

Yeah, I didn’t have a date at all, but this is a convenient excuse, seeing as I’m going to get to spend time with my crush of-- No, Y/N. “Yeah. Catching up on work. You know how behind I am.”

That’s how the both of you end up on the dirty couch of the rec room, almost entirely pressed up against each other so you can put your papers on either side of your body. Gwilym mumbles from time to time, counting on his fingers and biting his lip, while you stay considerably silent for the most part.

Around 8.00 p.m., Gwilym gets a phone call, which he answers immediately. “Yeah? Christ, is that the time already?” He runs a hand over his chin, the friction of his palm against his stubble making a soft noise in the quiet room. “Yeah, I don’t think I can, mate. Just, oh, I don’t know, I’ll figure it out. You go ahead.”

You don’t want to pry, but you can barely help yourself. “Your date?”

“Flatmate. Told him I’d find a place to eat dinner.”

You furrow your brows. “I thought you’d be having dinner with your date…”

Gwil fumbles with his words for a minute before finding what to say, “We were just going to meet for the evening. No dinner.” His tight smile gives away that there’s probably a bit more to that answer. But you’re not one to pry, so you let it be.

He shuts his laptop, letting out an audible breath before turning his attention to you. “It’s getting late,” his voice is soft, and his gaze is fixed on your eyes, a small smile on his face.

You mirror his smile, silently shutting your laptop and gathering all your stuff.

Gwilym grabs your attention pretty quickly again with a gentle hand on your shoulder.

When you turn around, Gwilym shyly asks, “What are you doing for dinner?”

You shrug, looking around nervously. “Not anything in particular. Why?”

“Do you, uh… Never mind.” Gwilym almost laughs himself off, shaking his head. He turns his attention towards his shoes before you call him again.

“Hey, what is it?”

Gwilym still looks unsure. Doubt flickers in his eyes, and he bites his bottom lip before biting the bullet. “Fancy doing something with me?”

You have to stop your face from immediately blossoming into a smile at his words. You settle for a nonchalant, “What do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know…” Gwilym rubs the back of his neck, fussing with his collar in the process. He adjusts the strap of his satchel repeatedly while he formulates his next sentence. “Forget it.”

“No, no, come on!” You take a hold of his hand, ignoring the butterflies in your belly telling you to kiss him!!!!! “I think I know what we can do.”

Admittedly, your idea? Not the best. It’s the first thing that came to your mind, though.

It’s awkward, getting Gwilym into your house and telling him to make himself comfortable. You stood awkwardly in front of him as he took off his coat and put it beside him on your loveseat, running his feet forward and back on the rug on your floor.

He looks up to meet your gaze. “Your apartment is very nice. Cozy.” He smiles, gripping one hand with the other in his lap. “So…”

“So?”

“What now?”

“I… don’t know,” you say, grinning sheepishly. You clearly hadn’t thought this out before inviting him over. Really, what now?

“I mean,” Gwilym begins, chuckling to himself, “It is Valentine’s Day.” He raises one eyebrow, pushing his tongue into his inner cheek.

You put your hands on your hips, cocking your head at him, “What exactly is it that you have in mind, Lee?”

“We had to cancel on our dates. Why don’t we just… make this a date?”

Goodness, what? Was Gwilym implying you were on a date with him? “Sure.” Sure. Motherfucking sure, Y/N.

“Really? You’re up for it?” Gwilym stands up, making his way towards you. “Just like that?”

“Yeah,” you say with a giggle, unsure of what you were getting yourself into. You know it’s not a conventional date, for sure.

“Okay. Dinner time.” Gwilym winks at you, grabbing one of your hands and leading you towards your own kitchen. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking around, he muses, “What must these cupboards hold, I wonder.”

You lean against the counter, letting him take the reigns.

Gwilym claps his hands, turning to you. “Can I look through your fridge?”

“I don’t know, can you?” This is fun.

Gwilym rolls his eyes. “I’m looking through your fridge.”

You find yourself following him to the fridge, watching from behind him as he leans over to look into your vegetable compartment. He mumbles, “Stir fry, salad-- hey, do you have eggs?”

“Yeah… There’s chicken in the freezer.”

“Perfect.”

You follow Gwilym’s instructions the entire time, following closely and learning. Honey glazed chicken, he’d said. Sounds good. You decided to make some rice with that. Once you’re done with your part of the work, you climb onto the counter, watching Gwilym as he does all the work. His shirt stretches deliciously over his shoulders when he moves. He has this intense look of concentration on his face that makes your belly coil.

“Oi!” he says to you, raising his eyebrows, “you’re just going to sit there?”

“I’m watching and learning!” You laugh, climbing off the counter. “Wine?”

“Oh, yes please, if you don’t mind.” Gwilym says without looking at you, focusing on his chicken.

“Red or white?”

“Ooh, I get to pick!” he sings, following it up with, “White, please.”

He’s so polite, you think as you pour out two glasses of white wine, placing one on the counter next to him.

You smirk, clinking your wine glass with his for a second. “Your date is missing out.”

Gwilym laughs at that. “Yeah?”

“Yeah!” you exclaim, as if it is obvious. “You’re a really nice guy,” you say after a sip, smiling softly, “Like, really nice. You’re kind, and sweet,” you take a step towards him as he turns off the flame under the pot, “And dare I say, a sight for sore eyes.”

Gwilym doesn’t make eye contact with you. He sniffs, rubbing a finger over his nose before mumbling, “This is done.”

You’re mindlessly picking up cutlery as you continue praising Gwilym. “And you’re so hard working, you know? And you can cook! You can fucking cook!”

Placing plates on the table while Gwilym followed closely behind with the pot of chicken, you say softly, “You’re like, peak husband material.”

Gwilym lets out a snort, “Rice?”

“I’ll get it. I work with you, you’re so tolerant of the people you manage! And I share a cubicle with you, and I don’t have a single complaint about you!”

“Yeah, that’s enough,” Gwilym said shyly as he dragged a chair back as you did the same. He laughs as if he found your praise funny, “How about yourself, miss perfect?”

You blink, saying nothing as you sit down in the chair opposite Gwilym. As Gwilym talks, you grab a fork and pick up a piece of chicken from the pot itself.

“Wait, let me serve you!” Gwilym says in the middle of his rant, which you have very conveniently blocked out completely. “Huh? You’re… so beautiful. So beautiful. Have you seen yourself?” He ladles out some of the rice and chicken onto both of your plates while you only passively watch.

You’re unable to look at Gwilym. You only tuck a lock of hair behind your ear and pick at the chicken on your plate.

“Okay, okay.” Gwilym clears his throat. “I think that’s enough. Shall we eat?”

After a small toast from Gwilym that left you in giggles, you dig into your meal, and it’s delicious. Worth it.

Pretty soon, you’re both on your loveseat again, passing the bottle of wine between each other.

Gwilym has his eyes closed, head thrown back on the backrest. His eyebrows are furrowed, nose crinkled slightly. It makes him look adorable. He lets out a sigh, letting himself relax into the plush leather of the couch even further. “I like this.”

“Yeah?” You ask, resting your head on your knuckles, watching as Gwilym breathed in and out, breath by breath.

“Your date is missing out.”

“What?” You chuckle.

“You said my date was missing out? You were wrong-- yours is.” Gwilym opens his eyes, gazing at you softly.

Ha.

You hum amusedly. “All that from just a meal? Where you did all the cooking?”

Gwilym proceeds to sit up straight, bringing one hand up to tuck your hair behind your ear. “Yeah.” His eyes hold a look of adoration. “You were there. That’s what made this dinner amazing.”

“Really?” Your voice is soft. Gwilym’s face is closer to yours now. You can’t help but notice how his chest rises and falls as he inches himself even closer to you.

“Can I try something, Y/N?”

At this point, you have a good idea of what he’s implying.

“Go right ahead.” You glance up at his eyes before turning your gaze to his lips. His bottom lip is caught between his teeth, and he releases it to lick his lower lip.

And then, his lips are on yours.

It only lasts a second. Gwilym pulls away immediately, shooting you a curious look. “Sorry.” His voice is nothing but a whisper. There is no other sound in the room, just your breaths, which you can only hear because you’re sitting so close to Gwil.

“What for?” You don’t waste a second in bringing your hand up to cup Gwilym’s cheek and pressing your lips to his. It happens in haste, but Gwilym is quick to react. He brings his hands to your waist, wrapping them around tightly, and you slide so close to him that at this point, it’d be more practical to just climb into his lap.

Gwilym pulls away again, giggling this time. “Maybe the wine is getting to us.” He touched his lips, as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened and he needed physical proof.

“I don’t know, I haven’t had that much.” You stare at the bottle of wine, which was only a third of the way empty. “You?

“No, not that much, really.”

And then Gwilym’s giggling again, and you’re giggling again and you both know why.

After you’ve both quietened down a little, Gwilym sneakily grabs your hand, interlacing his fingers with yours. “Tomorrow’s a Saturday.”

“Yeah, it is.” You sneak a look at him through the corner of your eye.

“Let me cook breakfast for you.”

“Getting ahead of ourselves, are we, Mister Lee?” You tug at his collar playfully only to get your hand swatted away.

“I’m not saying anything!” Gwilym said between laughs, running a hand over his face.

“Okay.”

“Okay, what?” Gwilym’s eyes are wide.

“Okay, you can cook me breakfast.” You push your body up against his, wrapping your arm around his. “But what comes before the breakfast, good sir?”

“This quiet night.” Gwilym smiles in earnest, and your heart swells at the way he’s looking at you.

“Yes. This quiet night.”

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

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#gwilym lee #gwilym x reader #gwilym lee x reader #gwilym lee fic #gwilym lee imagine #gwilym lee fanfic #gwilym lee oneshot #gwilym lee one shot #gwilym lee fanfiction #bohemian rhapsody #bohemian rhapsody fic #borhap #borhap fic #borhap x reader #borhap gwilym x reader #brianprobablywill

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pikapeppa · 4 years

Text

Professor Abelas/Lavellan: Lunch

Chapter 10 of Inadvisable (professor Solas modern university AU) is up on AO3!

A spotlight on Abelas and Athera this week! In which Abelas take an unprecedented lunch break, to Athera’s great surprise.

~7700 words; only Athera’s POV is here. Read the whole thing on AO3.

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

- ATHERA -

Athera scowled at her emails. Abelas was micromanaging her, and she was sick of it.

A week had gone by since she’d started working at the Ancient Elvhen Studies lab. By the end of the week, she’d gotten into a nice little routine: she arrived at eight-thirty and put on some coffee and turned on the kettle for whoever showed up that morning, and she had a quick friendly chat with anyone who was kicking around in the lab that early — usually Solas or Merrill. She turned on her computer and started up her music, then checked her emails to see if Solas or Abelas or any other lab members wanted her to do anything specific, and she made up her to-do list for the day. Before nine o’clock rolled around, she jumped into knocking things off of her to-do list one by one. Around noon or one o’clock, someone usually showed up to eat their lunch, so Athera would pause her duties for the day and have lunch with whoever happened to be there. After her hour-long lunch, she’d get back to work, pausing only to chat with anyone who stopped by, and when four-thirty rolled around, she would stop what she was doing and head on home.

Or at least, she was doing her best to stop her work at four-thirty. She was often tempted to work late, especially if she was in a groove, but Athera knew only too well that she had to be careful not to overwork herself.

All in all, it was a good routine, and she was really enjoying her job. The other members of the lab seemed to be happy with her work as well; Solas had told her more than once that he was pleased with how quickly she was getting things done, and Merrill and Dagna had both commented on how much easier it was to find what they were looking for since Athera had started digitizing the contents of the archive room.

The only problem was Abelas. He just had such a crappy attitude. He was always here at the lab before Athera was and he was still here when she was leaving, but he never came out to chat with her, even if they were the only two people in the lab. During the entire course of the week, he had yet to smile a single time, and the way he looked at her always made her think that the next words out of his mouth were going to be ‘get off my lawn’.

Worse yet, as the week wore on, he’d started watching her while he worked. For the first couple of days that she was here, he’d largely left her alone to do her job. By the middle of the week, however, he’d started coming out of his office to monitor her activities. He would ask why she was doing certain things and why she wasn’t doing them the way he used to do them, or why she was doing one task before the other one he’d asked her to do. After Athera answered his nitpicky questions — very politely, she might add — he would watch her. He’d stand there in the doorway with his arms folded over his muscular chest and that stupid handsome frown on his face, and he would watch her in a way that made her wonder if he’d been a prison guard or something in a former life.

And then there were the emails. She always started her day by checking her emails, but she’d started dreading the ones from Abelas. He always gave her a list of things that he wanted her to do, which she didn’t mind at all, but he’d add a bunch of micromanage-y instructions about how she should do those things. Then he’d send a second email with criticisms about the way she’d done things the previous day and how he would do them differently — differences that, in Athera’s opinion, were either less efficient or equally efficient as the way she was doing them.

It was now just before lunchtime. Athera had spent the better part of the morning digitizing the bottom shelf of the first bookshelf in the archive room, and she was in the process of uploading the files to the lab’s shared server. She was about to take a break for lunch while the files uploaded, but just before she left, she’d checked her inbox to find an email from Abelas.

Athera,

You must change the file name format for the articles you have digitized thus far. You have been naming them by author and title consistent with the Minrathous Academic Standards (MSA) citation method, but our lab follows the Arlathan Language Association (ALA) citation method. You must rename the files to be consistent with the ALA standards.

I expect you to use the ALA standards in the naming of all digitized articles from now on.

Abelas

By the time Athera had finished reading the email, it felt like her head was about to explode with frustration. Solas had told her that using MSA standards for the file names was fine. If she really had to rename each of the files one by one, it was going to take her the rest of the afternoon. No, wait – it would take longer, actually, since it would mean she’d have to cancel the current upload to the university server and re-upload them with the proper names.

Oh Creators, even worse: it would mean she’d have to delete all the files she’d uploaded over the course of the week, rename them on the local drive, then upload them to the server once again. It wouldn’t just take all afternoon: it would take days.

It was a ridiculous request. A total makework project. Besides, why did it matter if the file names were MSA or ALA standard? Both formats included the author’s last name and the full title of the article or book chapter, so both formats made it equally easy to find the files by using the search function. It made no practical difference whether the file names were MSA or ALA. It was just another example of Abelas being an overly controlling pain in the butt who didn’t seem to trust Athera to do the job she’d been hired for.

She glowered at her screen. She knew she would be better off dealing with this after lunch; her stomach had already started grumbling even before she’d read this email, and Athera was a notorious example of the concept of ‘hangry’, to the point that even Tamaris would avoid her when she was starving. The smart thing to do right now would be to leave the lab, go get some lunch to soothe herself, then come back and have a calm adult discussion with Abelas about why he was wrong.

She took a deep breath to calm herself, then stood up and started getting ready to go out and buy some lunch. But as she was putting on her coat, she couldn’t stop thinking about Abelas’s email.

Creators, he was such a jerk. Not only was his email unreasonable, but it was so curt and commanding. He kept acting like he could boss her around, like she was his personal assistant who had to do exactly what he said the way he said it, but that absolutely wasn’t the case. She had a clear role here, and by bossing her around like he did, he was being so freaking rude.

She plonked her purse down on her desk. I can’t wait until after lunch, she thought angrily. She opened her office door and stepped into the hall, then glanced down at the other end of the hall.

Solas was stepping out of his office as well. “Athera,” he said politely. “Are you heading out?”

“I — yes,” she said distractedly. “I was, um. I was going to get some lunch.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Is it lunchtime already?”

“Yep,” she said. “It’s almost noon.”

“Ah. Of course,” he said. He shook his head slightly as though at a private joke, then looked at her once more. “I was just going to step out for some fresh air. Would you care to walk together?”

She hesitated. She really ought to go with Solas; he was always pleasant to chat with, and some fresh air was probably a good idea to cool her temper.

She shook her head. “Thanks, but maybe another day. I have to talk to Abelas about something.”

Solas nodded. “All right. I will see you later.” He left the lab, and Athera squared her shoulders as she turned to face Abelas’s office.

She rapped sharply on the door, and his voice called through. “Enter.”

She stepped into his office, then closed the door behind her and launched right into her complaints. “The email you just sent me about the file names is totally unreasonable.”

He looked up from his computer with a frown – no surprise there. “Excuse me?”

She strode over to his desk and folded her arms. “Your request to change the file names from MSA to ALA is totally unreasonable. Both formats include the same information. The only difference is a slight change in formatting, and it doesn’t make a difference in terms of finding the files later using the control-F function.”

His frown deepened. “Our lab exclusively uses ALA formatting in all of our publications.”

“But this isn’t for a publication!” Athera exclaimed. “This is just for how the digitized files are being stored! Nobody except the people in our lab will see those file names, and nobody but you will care whether the file names are in MSA or ALA format.”

She knew she was being too snappy and that she should pull back, but she was too hangry — sorry, rightfully angry — to curb her tone. Unfortunately, Abelas clearly noticed her tone; he rose slowly from his chair and rested his palms on the desk.

“You seem to forget that you were meant to check with me before making major changes,” he said in a hard voice.

“This isn’t a major change,” she argued. “It’s just the file names. Besides, it’s not like you had digitized files with standardized names already. I’m not changing anything, technically. I’m doing something new.”

“You still should have checked with me,” he insisted.

“I couldn’t check with you,” she said. “You weren’t here. You were teaching a class. Besides, I told you that you should let me use my own judgment about certain things.”

He narrowed his eyes, then started making his way around to the front of the desk. “You said you would continue to check with me for the first two weeks of your employment here. It has only been one week.”

“Well, you’ve been watching me so closely for this one week that maybe I figured you’d collected two weeks’ worth of observational data by now,” she said snarkily.

He stopped in front of her. “What are you referring to?”

“You know exactly what I’m referring to,” she snapped. “You hovering around me like a vulture and watching everything I do.” She lifted her chin. “I know you don’t like me, okay? You don’t like me coming into your lab and changing things around. But do you really think I’m doing that bad of a job?”

He folded his arms and glared at her. “It is not the work you’re doing that I take issue with. It is your attitude.”

She blinked. “My attitude?” she said blankly. “What’s wrong with my attitude?”

“You are not taking this job seriously,” he said. “You are not treating our work with the respect it deserves.”

She gaped at him. “I — you — how can you say I don’t take this job seriously?”

“You spend half of your time making idle conversation with the other members of the lab,” he said. “Not only are you not performing your own duties, but you are distracting them from theirs.”

“Half my — half my time?” she said incredulously. “I don’t spend half my time making conversation! I’m just being friendly!”

“It is unnecessary,” he announced. “Time spent chatting is time spent not doing your work.”

She planted her fists on her hips. “Is my work suffering?”

He narrowed his eyes, and Athera waved a hand impatiently. “Come on, tell me. Have you noticed that I’m not getting my work done?”

He pursed his lips. “No,” he grunted.

“Okay, then what’s the problem with chatting sometimes if I’m still getting everything done?”

His scowl deepened, but now he just looked like he was pouting. “The chatting is unnecessary,” he repeated.

“Everything you do in life doesn’t have to be necessary!” she exclaimed. “That would be so boring! Besides, you should enjoy the company of the people you work with. If you can’t have a little fun with your colleagues sometimes, then what’s the point?”

He jabbed a finger at her. “That is my problem with you. This is not meant to be fun. This is not meant to be a place for socializing and making friends. This is a place of dedicated study.” He folded his arms once more. “I take the study of ancient Elvhen culture very seriously, Athera, and I expect everyone in my lab to take it just as seriously. You have not been treating our work with sufficient gravitas.”

Athera glared at him. His unfair accusations were raising her heart rate, sending adrenaline pumping through her veins and pounding in her ears, and the way he was looming over her with his big muscly body only made her more annoyed. Seriously, how did a full-time professor find the time to maintain such a muscular physique?

She gestured sharply at him. “Why do you do this?”

“Do what?” he demanded.

“This standing-over-me thing, like you’re trying to get in my face,” she said. She gave him a knowing look. “If it’s supposed to be a power move, it’s not working. You don’t scare me.”

His pale eyebrows jumped up, and to her surprise, he took a step back. “I… that is my mistake. It wasn’t my intention to overpower you. I did not realize what I was doing.”

She nodded, deflated slightly by his willingness to back down. “It’s, um. It’s okay.”

There was an awkward pause. Abelas was still frowning, but he wasn’t quite looking at her anymore, and she suddenly felt weird looking him in the eye as well.

She inhaled slowly through her nose, then forced herself to look him in the face. “I got job offers at three other labs, you know,” she said. “One of them was for Professor Genitivi’s lab here at U of O. But I chose to work with you and Solas because I have nothing but respect for the work you do.” She gave him a pleading look. “Do you know how much it means to the Dalish and the city elves alike to have someone from Arlathan actually teaching us about Arlathani culture? Teaching us about the ancient people that we were all born from, even if our cultures are so different now? It’s…” She trailed off and shook her head in wonder. “You and Solas and your colleagues back in Arlathan who have shared their work — you’re giving us information that we’ve never had access to here in the rest of Thedas. I almost wish I was doing my undergrad now so I could specialize in ancient Elvhen studies instead of being forced to focus on the human-centric history of Thedas.”

She paused. Abelas was finally looking her in the eye once more, and for some reason, his clear golden gaze made her nervous.

She took another bracing breath. “I have nothing but respect for the work you and Solas and the others are doing here,” she said again. “And now you’re accusing me of not respecting your work here because… why? Because I’m friendly? Because I like talking to people and making friends?”

He frowned but didn’t reply. Athera tilted her head. “Can I ask you something? You haven't read my undergrad thesis about the Well of Sorrows, have you?”

“I haven't, no,” he said.

She nodded, not at all surprised. “I sent it to you and Solas by email when I was hired, because Solas asked me about it. But you’ve never asked me about it once, even though it’s your area of special interest.” She took a small step closer to him. “I’ve read every article you’ve ever written — all the ones that were translated to the common tongue, at least. Your book chapter about the importance of metaphor and poetry for analysing historical Elvhen texts was the reason I wanted to write my thesis on the Well of Sorrows.” She frowned at him. “I respect the work you do here, Abelas. I think your work is fascinating, and I really would love to hear you talk about it more. But you won’t even give me the time of day.” She shrugged. “If you ask me, you’re the one who has no respect.”

He didn’t reply. The muscles in his jaw were jumping with tension, and a tiny wiggle of anxiety tugged at her belly. Creators, she really should have had her lunch before blasting in here.

Tired now from her outburst — and from her grumbly stomach — she waited glumly for him to tell her to get out of his office.

He bowed his head. “You are correct.”

She blinked. “Huh?”

He pursed his lips. “I said that you are correct. About your respect for our work, at least. You do take our discipline seriously. My criticism in that respect was unfounded.”

She gaped at him stupidly, stunned that he actually was admitting that he was wrong. Then she straightened and folded her arms once more. “You still think I’m having too much fun at my job, though.”

He shot her a flat look. “I can only concede so much. Furthermore, I do not like your music.”

She wilted in exasperation. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I can just use earphones.”

“That is not necessary,” he said. “I bought earplugs.”

She stared at him. He’d bought earplugs rather than telling her off for playing her music? That seemed out of character.

She had a sudden mental image of Abelas wearing big foam orange earplugs with his sharply tailored blazers, and a snort of laughter escaped her.

He scowled. “What is so funny?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she said hastily. She rubbed her nose to hide her smile, then looked up at him once more. “So… so the file name thing. Are you seriously going to make me change the file names? I’ll tell you now that it will take the entire day and it’ll delay the upload of the archives to the university server.”

He frowned at her for a moment longer, and she widened her eyes hopefully. He finally ran a hand over his impeccable white braid and sighed. “Fine,” he grunted. “Leave the file names as they are.”

Victory, she thought happily. She straightened and beamed at him. “Okay. Well, I’m going to go get some lunch.”

He nodded and returned to his chair behind his desk, and Athera studied him appraisingly as he settled back into his chair. For someone who was so stubborn all the time, it turned out that he was actually capable of admitting when he was wrong. It was honestly the last thing she had expected.

But then again, how could she know what to expect of him? Aside from his academic background, she didn’t know anything about him.

On impulse, she opened her mouth. “Would you like to come for lunch with me?”

He looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

He was looking at her as though she’d asked him to help her hide a body, but she stood her ground. “Come and have some lunch with me,” she said. “I never see you eating lunch. Do you even eat lunch?”

“I eat in my office while I work,” he said.

That figured. “Do you bring your lunch from home, then?”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I eat a meal replacement bar and a smoothie from home, yes.”

“A meal replacement bar?” she said. “That’s… not very tasty.” She was going to say that it was sad, but that would seem mean.

He frowned. “I do not eat large lunches. They make me sluggish.”

She smiled at the thought of Abelas getting sluggish after a big meal. It probably offended him to have his body getting sleepy without his permission. “Well, you should make an exception today,” she said firmly.

“For what purpose?” he said.

She gave him a chiding look. “For fun, Abelas. Just this once.”

His frown deepened, so Athera hastily tried a different tack. “Fine then, for a collegial meeting. I mean it when I say I want to hear about your Well of Sorrows work. Will you come and tell me about it over lunch?”

He pursed his lips into a very thin line, and Athera waited for him to say no. But once again, he surprised her.

“Fine,” he said. “I will make an exception just this once.”

She perked up. “Okay, great!” She waited while he put on his coat and tucked his phone into his pocket. He politely gestured for her to step out of his office, and she was oddly aware of his broad shoulders and superior height as he followed her down the hall. But as they left the Ancient Elvhen Studies lab, Athera realized something: she was going to have to make conversation with stoic, stern, silent Abelas for an entire hour.

Well, this ought to be interesting.

Read Abelas’s POV on AO3!

#abelas #abelas/lavellan #abelas x lavellan #abellan #professor solas au #inadvisable #pikapeppa writes

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carryonsimoncarryonbaz · 5 years

Text

BITE DOWN

A new hurt/comfort, isolation, Snowbaz sick fic that wouldn't leave my head and that I cranked out in the last 24 hours.

Baz and Simon shelter in place in London during the pandemic but they are not aware SImon has been infected until he falls ill. Baz does the care taking as Simon descends into illness and then Baz has some very difficult moments to face and decisions to make. Angst with a happy ending.

*trigger warning from frank descriptions of severe pneumonia and respiratory illness*

BITE DOWN

Day 1

Simon

Penny left this morning. Her mum wanted her home once the shutdown order came through and with her uni having gone all online there wasn’t much point in her staying around.

Other than for me, that is.

She wanted to but I told her that’s daft. She should be with her family. I’d never choose to cross Mitali Bunce and there’s no reason for Penny to, not for this.

I’ll be fine. My classes are all online. I can buy what I need at the corner shop and the curry place is staying open.

And I’ve got Baz. He’s staying too. Spouted some rubbish about not wanting to possibly transmit something to his family, seeing as they’re half-isolated as it is, way out where they are.

And don’t I know it. I made that jog from the road to their place more than once. Isolated doesn’t do it justice. It’s remote.

But I also know that’s not the real reason he’s staying here. I know he’s staying for me, the sappy git.

I tried to make him go. Tried to convince him he should be with his family.

He’d turned his sea-grey eyes on me then and said, “I am with my family.”

There’s not much I could say in answer to that. Not with words that is. I practically knocked him off the sofa in my attempt to snog him senseless. He says things like that and I . . . well, fuck, it makes me believe it’s all been worth it. All that came before.

No, I know it’s worth it. I’d give up my magic again in a heartbeat to have what I’ve got with Baz. Give it all to the Humdrum, fight mutant vampires in the desert, deal with that fucking Lamb character—I’d go through it all over again for him. Every moment of it, to be where we are now.

Together. In love and able to say it. Out loud. To each other.

My therapy appointments are down to once a month now. Baz and I have one together every few months. I was surprised when he started seeing someone, a few months after we came back. After everything had finally settled down.

Fiona found him someone she trusted.

It made it easier for me to do it, once he started. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why he did it. But there’s never been a point in asking him that. It doesn’t serve a purpose. He wouldn’t have kept going if it wasn’t something he needed as well. So why he started doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he did.

And I did.

And we’re here now, better than we’ve ever been.

Well, other than this pandemic shit.

I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as they say. They’ve shut the whole damn country down. Hospitals and clinics at ready. I think it will take time, but it’ll pass.

It’s done a right number on all of our plans, I’ll say that.

Last year of uni for Baz and Penny. I basically fucked away my first year so I’m a bit behind, but still. We’re all moving forward, not looking back.

I hope this doesn’t fuck up Baz’s graduation. He’s top of his class here too, the swot. I want to see that. See him graduate.

I didn’t get to see him give his leavers speech at Watford.

Baz says he’s not fussed about graduation. What he’s fussed about is possibly having to cancel his graduation gift from his parents. They’ve sprung for a two-week vacation on the Continent for the both of us.

I’m part of the gift, it seems. Daphne came right out and said it like that, when they told Baz about it. I thought I was going to go up in flames right there and then.

It’s right embarrassing sometimes, the things she and Malcolm say. I call him Malcolm now, as if that doesn’t take the bloody cake. Took me long enough. (It’s still awkward as fuck, but he likes it so I try.)

It was bad enough when they assumed we were shagging and we weren’t. Yet.

Now they’re even less inhibited. Sending us away on romantic weekend trips. Buying us matching gifts. Asking us when we’re going to move in together (yes, we’ve talked about it) (probably this summer) (or we were planning to, before this bloody thing started) (just hadn’t told anyone but Penny yet.)

But this. This is like some wedding planner’s ideal honeymoon trip. Paris. Venice. Barcelona. The bloody Amalfi Coast.

It’s as if Daphne looked up every romantic location on Pinterest and added it to the itinerary.

Every bloody romantic proposal location, I mean.

That’s what it feels like to me.

Because I’d been thinking to ask him, after graduation. And I’ll be good god-damned if I don’t get to do it first.

Knowing Baz, he’d probably try to get the drop on me, just to be a competitive arse.

No, he wouldn’t actually. Not for this. He’d want me to be sure, he’d want to know I was the one who really wanted it.

And he’d want to see me try to set up something romantic. For him. He’s such a sappy git. I think he’d be just as thrilled if I did it in the Tesco car park as the Eiffel Tower at sunset.

Which is where I’m currently planning on asking, when I let myself think about it. Paris, that is, not the Tesco. Although last week it was a gondola in Venice. And by next week it may well be somewhere else.

It’s not as if I’ve bought a ring or anything yet. I was waiting a bit. Getting comfortable with the idea rather than just letting myself daydream about it.

Not that I’ll be getting any ring shopping done anytime soon.

Not even online, not with his meddlesome self looking over my shoulder when I’m on my laptop, now that he’s going to be here every minute, not just a few nights a week.

He’s here more than a few nights, to be honest, has been for a while. Unless he’s got a big paper or some sort of group project and I’m too much of a distraction.

Baz basically moved in at the start of the fall term. I mean, he still has his place in Camberwell. He’s just rarely there anymore. His clothes fill my closet, he’s got a colourful array of spare pants in the dresser, his toiletries on my sink and in my shower—not travel sized versions carried back and forth in his knapsack anymore.

There’re orderly pints of blood in the fridge and cold vampire feet in my bed every night.

I’m not complaining one bit. It’s taken us long enough to get here.

And so here we are, our coursework done for the day, curled up on my sofa watching Derry Girls again, my head resting on his shoulder.

I’m feeling all right. None of the symptoms they’re blathering on about in the news updates and emails from the uni health centre.

And Baz . . . well, he’s being Baz. Calm in the midst of the anxiety that’s overtaken the city. Meticulous about his personal hygiene and bloody annoying about mine.

Like now.

“Go wash your hands, Simon.”

“I just did, when I went to the loo a bit ago.”

“You just touched your nose. Wash them again.”

“Bloody hell, must you watch me every minute?”

“Not about to change my habits now, they’re ingrained.” He’s smiling, the prat.

“Don’t I know it.”

His eyebrow goes up. “Someone has to, you’re an absolute menace to cleanliness as a rule.”

“Piss off.”

But I love him for it, so I go and wash my hands. I know why he does it. I know it’s out of concern.

I’m being careful. I am.

I’ve not been out other than for a run, not since uni shut down. I mean other than to go to the corner shop for snacks a few days ago. And to the curry place for some samosas yesterday.

Baz has put a stop to all that now though. Said he’s doing the shopping and the food runs from now on. I watched him empty the shopping bags earlier—wouldn’t even let me help, the tosser. He’s stocked up on paracetamol, thermometer covers, zinc throat lozenges, throat syrup, and whatnot.

“Didn’t you get any crisps? I thought you were going to get more crisps?” We’re not going to make it long without crisps.

He just rolls his eyes at me. “We’ve got bags of them, Simon. We’ll be fine.”

Baz

I’m trying not to let on to Simon how worried I am.

I’ve seen the projections. It’s not looking good. This government has bollocksed the entire situation from the very start. Even my father is appalled at the Tories and has not been shy about saying so, which is unprecedented and not doing anything to dampen my anxiety about all this.

It’s end times when my father is to the point of vehemently condemning a Tory government.

I don’t know what Simon and Penelope were thinking. They’ve not stocked up on much other than toilet paper and crisps. I had to purchase the bare necessities today and it took me to two Tescos and one Boots to find any paracetamol.

I do know what Penelope was thinking—that a few well-cast spells would sort it.

She sorted Simon when I thought we’d lose him. I can understand her confidence but it’s wildly misplaced.

This isn’t like that.

This is, for lack of a better term, insidious. Fuck. I hate that word. I can’t use it and not think of the bloody Humdrum. That leads to thinking about the Mage and Simon’s magic and then I’m off on tangents that make me want to rage.

I know it’s been years now. I know he and I have both talked through it, with each other and with Simon’s therapist.

But at moments like this, in the middle of this fucking plague, all I can think about is how much easier this would be, how much safer, if Simon still had his magic. Not that it made him impervious to injuries or illnesses. It didn’t, I know that first hand, from all those nights he’d drag himself up the steps to our turret, bruised and battered and a bloody mess.

But he had a capacity to heal, to bounce back, without needing to be coated in spells. He’s not got that anymore.

But he acts like he still does.

Like he did in America. Like he’s acting now. Like somehow, he’s resistant to it all, that he can barrel through as he is and still come out relatively unscathed.

I’ve put a stop to all that. No more trips to the corner shop or the curry place. No unnecessary activities outside of the flat. None. I’ll be damned if we’ve made it this far only to have some rogue virus destroy it all.

I’m the one who’s impervious. I’m the one who will still be standing at the end of the day, when this is all over. And I want Simon at my side.

I need him to be.

He can content himself with sitting at home, on the sofa, watching the telly. I’ll even buy him some cider, if he’ll just bloody well stay inside.

Here I am, wishing that Simon Snow would just lie the fuck down on the sofa and not argue about it. Who would have thought we’d come to this? Crowley, the world is upside down.

At least now I get to lie down with him.

READ THE REST AT AO3!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23287240

#simon snow #baz pitch #snowbaz #carry on #wayward son #hurt/comfort #sickfic #isolation #quarantine #angst with a happy ending

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ikenbar · 3 years

Text

Mr. Love: Ike’s Choice CH5 PT2

Warnings: Some swearing but like Ike is having a hard day so give her a break, talk of strippers and bikinis but it is literally just talk, some angst, the tiniest pinch of fluff, anger, hate, disputes between sisters, near death experiences and cLiFfHaNgErS!!!! :D

Also! This part is dedicated to one of my favorite teachers ever. Hats off to you Senior Olson... you got featured in a fanfiction... I know this must be the most riveting part of your entire teaching career...

(Chapter Five (Kiro and Youran) Prologue and part one can be found here~)

((Please read the author’s note (and the beginning of the story) on chapter one part one if you’re new here :D))

Chapter Five:

Part two:

I ran up the steps to the school in aggravation. My driver and I had been sitting in traffic for twenty minutes, killing all my time and patience slowly and painfully. I threw open the doors to the school and immediately locked eyes with Adri, who was slouching in one of the chairs just outside of Mr. Olson’s office. She sat up quickly in her chair.

“Oh thank goodness they called you!” She smiled, “I was afraid they’d call-”

“Zip it!” I snapped, taking Adri aback, “Need I remind you that you’ve been suspended?! Just because Bart or Maria didn’t pick you up, doesn't mean you have gotten off scot-free, lady.” Adri’s once excited face grew pale. Someone opened the door to the principal's office.

Out stepped a tall man in his late sixties. With his back arched and his cane in his hand, he walked with a limp that screamed intimidation. His hair was receding and graying but most of the grey was centered on the bushy beard he brandished like a Norse god. Mr. Olson was a man that showed his years, but his eyes were still lit with the same fire that his younger self held. Even if they were hidden behind his thick, oval glasses.

“I thought I heard you out here.” Mr. Olson smiled at me, “It’s good to see you again Ike.”

“Sir.” Though I spoke impatiently, I still bowed with respect, “Listen, I would love to sit and talk but I’m running late for a shoot for a show. Is there any way we can speed this up?”

“Oof.” Mr. Olson chuckled and turned to Adri, “You chose the wrong day to be suspended.” Mr. Olson looked back at me and gestured into his office, “I just need you to sign some papers for me. Then I can send you on your merry way.” I nodded and followed him into the office, grabbing Adri and pulling her by the collar to follow us. I was handed a small packet of paper by a smiling receptionist as Mr. Olson pulled Adri aside.

My phone buzzed from my pocket. Without looking at the ID, I answered.

“Speaking.”

“I have a bone to pick with you.”

It was Bart.

“What?” I moaned as I flipped through the pages of the packet.

“You know the filming studio we rented for the day?”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you tell me we had changed the location?”

I froze.

“...what?” I asked through clenched teeth.

“The studio stopped me from going in and said we didn’t have the studio today! Then, when I told him who I was, he told me that we had cancelled our time there! I called the crew and they told me that they got an email that we had changed to a different location! So now, I look like a fool! Why didn’t you tell me we switched studios!?”

“Because I didn’t!” I signed the papers quickly and handed the receptionist the packet, “I have no recollection about sending an email! What studio do we have now?”

“The FASL Studio. On the other side of town. It’s a good thing I decided to come early! The donuts ended up being cold though.”

“OTHER SIDE OF TOWN?!” I roared, despite my calm surroundings, “I’m at the school! I’m going to be late!”

“The school?” Bart asked, suddenly sounding worried, “Why? What happened?!”

“Your new daughter reenacted a scene from a 80s highschool sitcom.” I huffed, holding the bridge of my nose, “Does the cast know about the change?”

“Yeah. They are already here. What do you mean by-”

“I’ll tell you when I get there. I gotta go. Bye.” I quickly hung up and grabbed Adri’s arm. “Sorry, Sir.” I said hurriedly. “I gotta go. I’ll be sure to make sure Adri is doing her work and feeling guilty about what she has done. Goodbye.” I hurried out of the principal’s office.

Mr Olson shook his head as the girls left. “Still the same Ike.” He said, turning back into his office.

I pulled Adri into the car and gave the driver the new address of the studio. “And try to find a way around that traffic.” I huffed, “I’m going to be late as it is.”

“I’m not going home?” Adri asked, stupidly.

“No.” I kept my eyes glued on my phone as I pulled up my email, “We are going to the studio. But you aren’t going to be doing anything but work. Did Mr. Olson give you a packet to work on?”

“Yeah.” Adri hesitated, showing me the large packet in her hand, “It’s just busy work. They don’t even grade me for it.”

“I don’t care.” I stretched my jaw, “You’re doing it.” Adri opened her mouth to protest but closed it as I cursed. In my sent emails was the email Bart was talking about. It talked about moving locations for the day and how I was sorry for the inconvenience it might bring.

Except I didn’t write it.

I would have called Bart to tell him. I would have even told the crew in person if I had the chance.

There was no way I had sent that email.

I scrolled down to look at the email's information.

But before I could read it, my phone screen glitched. I growled and hit it. A high pitched noise radiated from my speakers, causing me to yelp and hold the phone away from me as Adri covered her ears.

“Turn it off!!” She called.

“I don’t know how!!” I screamed, jamming the volume down button on the side of the phone. The ringing stopped and the phone’s screen turned white. A cursive black text gradually appeared on the screen.

“Brought to you by your friend, Key”

Then, the screen went black. Adri and I stared at the phone, trying to process what had just happened. I tried turning the phone back on.

Nothing.

I tried holding the power button down.

Still nothing.

“Oh come ON!” I boomed, pressing the button repeatedly, “You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve only had this phone for a week! Victor told me it was the best they had! What the hell?!” I growled and threw my phone into my lap. I rested my elbows on my knees and threw my head in my hands. An awkward silence washed over the car.

“... would it help if I said I feel really bad for what I did?” Adri asked timidly.

>>>

I pulled Adri by the wrist as I ran into the studio. We were only a few minutes late thanks to a shortcut past the traffic but I wasn’t taking any chances. I flashed the guard my id card and pushed open the door. People were bustling around the large studio carrying various tools, set pieces, and props. I pushed through the crowd and searched the faces. I spotted Bart speaking to someone by the snack table. He was a young man with beautiful blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and a stunning smile.

“Ho thank goodness.” I breathed deeply, “Kiro made it.”

“WHAT!?!” Adri exclaimed from next to me, “KIRO’S-” I tugged at her wrist, quieting her.

“No.” I hissed, “Not for children who don’t respect the few who don’t get paid nearly enough to deal with their bull.” I flagged down a crew member, “Excuse me. Where are the dressing rooms?” The employee gestured to a wall with multiple doors on it. I thanked him and pulled Adri with me as I walked to them. I opened one and pushed her inside. “Now you’re going to sit in here and work on your packet.” I pointed angrily to her.

“What?!” Adri scoffed, “I am literally within spitting distance with my idol, and you won’t even let me see him?!”

“No.”

“Why?!”

“You know why!!” I barked, “You started a riot in the middle of class!! I had to be pulled away from an important breakfast to pick you up!”

“What, with the friend you met a week ago?” Adri snapped, “The little producer that is so small even I can-”

“Shut your mouth.” I spoke menacingly through my teeth. The air in the room became tense and strangely cold. Adri stopped talking, “You say anything insulting or degrading about that woman and I swear you'll regret the very second you met me, do I make myself clear?” Adri seemed at the verge of saying something but, in fear of her life, she kept her smart mouth shut. “Now I’m going to go do my work and you’re going to do yours. And you'll do it in this room and silently. End of discussion.” I turned and headed out the door.

“Worst sister ever.” Adri said under her breath.

“Deal with it, princess. This is what happens when you break the rules.” I slammed the door shut with those last words. The entire studio went silent as the bang of the door echoed through the hall. I took a moment to catch my breath. Never had I ever lost my temper like that. Sure, it has been a stressful day but… the moment she brought up Youran… Something in me snapped. Like it was my job to- I shook my head, Now was not the time to be thinking about this kind of thing. I've got shit to do.

I cleared my throat and looked around. My eyes landed on a security guard nearby. “You!” I called, pointing at him. He jumped and came to attention. I pointed to the ground next to me. He quickly walked over to me.

“Yes, mam?” He asked.

“I want you to stand at this door and not let anyone in or out without letting me know first. Do you understand?”

“Yes, mam.” The guard assumed his position at the door. I looked around the still silent studio. “Young!” I walked briskly over to the director, “Fill me in. And make it quick.”

“Oh no.” Bart hissed as Young took Ikamara around the studio, “Ike’s in a bad mood.”

“Ike?” Kiro asked, watching them as well, “Is that the Ike you were talking about? Your other producer?”

“Yup.” Bart sighed, “I was hoping you would catch her on a better day. She is a very kind person, really, but she can sometime be-”

“Why is this not done?!” Ike’s harsh voice carried over the quiet studio, “I’m late once and you guys think it’s time to slack off?!”

Bart leaned close to Kiro and whispered softly to him, “... I know you asked for her specifically, but I would be more than happy to spend the day showing you around if you’d prefer it.”

“Don’t worry.” Kiro smiled sweetly, “I think I can handle it.”

I shoved the clipboard back into Young’s arms, “Too much needs to get done in too little time.” I growled, “Quit lollygagging and do your job. I don’t pay you to sit back and do nothing!” Young skulked off, clearly embarrassed.

“Man!” A familiar voice spoke from next to me, “You really tore into him!” I turned and saw Minor walking to me. He wore a pleasant smile but that vanished when he saw my face. “Something wrong boss?”

“'Something wrong?'” My tone dripped with anger, “You’re twenty minutes late, Minor! I’ve fired for less!”

“S-sorry, boss!” Minor’s tone quickly changed, “I-I went to the wrong location! I didn’t know we had changed studios! Th-then I couldn’t get a hold of you and got stuck in traffic... I promise it won’t happen again!” I glared at Minor. He gulped and bowed deeply. After a moment, I loosened my jaw.

“Don’t worry about it.” I grumbled, rubbing the bridge of my nose to steam my growing headache, “I was late for the same reason. Sorry for snapping. It’s… been a long day.” Minor relaxed and stood up straight again.

“No problem.” He smiled kindly, “It happens! Maybe it’s just in the air. I was told an email went out about the location change? But I didn’t get one. Maybe we were both meant to have a bad day.”

“Right.” I said slowly, “... you have a thing for conspiracies, right, Minor?”

“Yeah.” Minor chuckled, "You can say that."

“What about hackers? You know anything about them?”

“Of course!”

“What can you tell me about a hacker named, Key?”

“Key??” Minor asked excitedly, “Man, what don’t I know about them?? Let’s see, well, to start off, they are a white hat hacker. Meaning that what they do what they do ethically.” I huffed and folded my arms. Ethically?? What is so ethical about sending my company on a wild goose chase and killing my phone?!

Someone tapped my shoulder. I whipped my head around with a glare, only to drop it as my eyes met a familiar ocean of blue.

“Hi!” Kiro smiled kindly, “I’m Kiro. I think you’re the person that’s assigned to help me around the studio today.” I froze and examined his face up close for the first time in weeks.

“... You’re supposed to be in makeup.” I growled, “Where is Gina? Gina!”

“I’ll let you be.” Minor chuckled nervously, backing away from my once again rising, wrothful mood.

I dragged Kiro around the studio, preparing him with makeup and costumes and scripts, giving neither of us a break from the hustle. “Young.” I stopped the stage director and pointed to Kiro, “Get him ready for the first scene.” Young nodded and gestured for Kiro to follow him. I turned and began to walk away

“Give me a second.” Kiro grabbed my arm and held a finger up to the director. He pulled me aside, “Can I ask you a quick question?”

“Is it about the shoot?” I asked seriously.

“...No?” Kiro answered slowly. I opened my mouth to protest, “It’ll be super fast!” Kiro begged, clapping his hands together, “I promise!” I looked at him with an arched eyebrow. He clutched his hands together and brought them up to his mouth, smiling sweetly. I sighed.

“Fine.” I placed the clipboard down and gave him my full attention, “What is it?”

“It’s about the girl that gave you my information.” Kiro asked excitedly, “When will she get here? She said we would be working together today.”

I froze, my heart sinking to my feet.

Didn’t he recognize my voice? We’ve talked a fair few times. Maybe he forgot what I sounded like… or maybe I had scared him that day with how awful I was treating everyone. Maybe he thought Super Stranger wouldn’t be so hard on her employees. Maybe he didn’t want it to be someone like me… maybe he didn’t want it to be me.

I cleared my throat, “She called and canceled. Something about having something important come up... Sorry.” Kiro’s face fell slightly.

“Oh.” He nodded, still holding a soft smile, “Ok. Thanks!” Kiro forced a larger smile on his face as he walked away from me. I sighed, fighting the lump in my throat. This is why you never meet your idols.

>>>

Kiro stood on stage for his first scene. I stood next to the camera man, correcting his poor angle. “Ike?” I looked over my shoulder and spotted the costume designer walking over to me with one of the extras dressed as a motorcyclist. “The clasp is stuck on his helmet. I think It’s jammed. Bart said I should go to you?” I took off my blazer and motioned for the extra to come closer to me as the lights in the room dimmed.

“Playback!” Young called through her mega phone, “And… ACTION!” Keeping most of my attention on the extra, I glanced at the stage. Kiro was sitting in a chair by a large desk. He was leaning back, carelessly kicking his feet up onto the table. There was a knocking sound.

“Come in.” Kiro said, nonchalantly. Even though Kiro was normally so bright, the character he played wasn’t. We had written him to be someone no one would like. Though I was scared Kiro wouldn’t be able to play the character well, his acting was as amazing as ever, stifling any doubt I had. Kiro had this in the bag.

“Dexter Stackman?” The female actor asked as she entered on cue, “The Private investigator?”

“Is that what it says on the door?” Kiro asked.

“Yes?”

“Then you’ve obviously got the wrong person. Try the next room over.”

The crew stifled their laughter. I finally got the clasp undone and helped the extra take the helmet off. “I’ll keep it with me.” I assured the costume designer as she reached to take the helmet, “I think I know how to stop it from doing it again.” She nodded and backed off. I looked at the clasp as I continued to listen to the scene.

“So you're Dexter.” The actress pouted, “I need your help.”

“What help could I give? I’m just some dude sitting at the wrong desk, apparently.”

A creaking noise came from the stage. I looked up.

“Please, sir. You’re the only one who will listen!”

“Obviously not. Goodbye now!”

I searched the stage carefully with my eyes. Where was that creaking coming from? That’s going to mess with the audio!

“But this case is one you’d be interested in!”

“Does it involve strippers that have had their bikinis stolen?”

“No?”

“Then you’re wrong.”

I huffed and looked up. My breath hitched in my throat. A light swung tediously above the stage. It was rocking unnaturally, almost as if it was about to fall.

I looked straight down from the light. Right under it sat the nonchalant, quipping, boneheaded Dexter, completely unaware of the predicament he was in.

I threw on the helmet.

“But I-”

“Listen lady,” Kiro stood from his seat and pointed at the actress, “I’ve already told you, I’m not-”

There was a loud snap. Kiro looked above him in time to see the light come hurtling towards his head. I dove into the scene, leaping over the desk and ramming myself into Kiro’s chest, sending us both flying off of the stage. We hit the ground hard as a crash came from behind us. I propped myself up hurriedly to look at Kiro.

“Are you ok?” I asked quickly, inspecting Kiro for any obvious injuries. Nothing was strange except for the rising smile on his face

“Super Stranger!” He threw his arms up in triumph, “I thought you were-” Something clicked on the floor below us. Kiro and I froze. Suddenly, the ground we were laying on flipped backwards, sending Kiro and me into the hole it created. Kiro quickly grabbed onto me tightly as we were launched into darkness.

(Next)

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houkagokappa · 4 years

Text

I’ve had a really shitty day.

I’m sorry to vent on tumblr again, but part of it is that I realised how I don’t have anyone to comfortably turn to.

First my plans for the day got cancelled, which sucked because I was really looking forward to them and they were an escape for me, but you know, it happens. I figured I could try to be productive instead, but nope, as soon as I began typing out an email I got a panic attack. It’s something I’ve only dealt with once before and I do not know how to deal with them or make them stop. Last time I got one at 2am and had to call my mom to calm me down. She thought something was wrong with my sister, so that’s kind of a sour memory of mine for multiple reasons, even though she did manage to comfort me.

This time around it was the middle of the day. I couldn’t call my mom because she was working, I didn’t wanna bother my dad either, since he was also at work and this would be a lot for him to deal with. Same with most of my friends, not that I’d think to call any of them regardless. I was crying hysterically and hyperventilating, unable to do much anything and that’s not something you can suddenly throw at someone. I’m also at an awkward spot with any psychologist and doctors, I don’t currently have the right to be in contact with those who helped me this spring and I don’t have a doctor-patient bond with anyone else yet. There’s probably some number I could’ve called for help, but in the moment nothing came to my mind. It didn’t feel like an emergency and for everything else the health center puts you on a waiting list?? (I’m honestly ashamed how bad I am at adulting and taking care of myself...).

Eventually I managed to google instructions and try to do some breathing exercises. It took me a while to calm down, but eventually I managed to focus on my breathing and stop hyperventilating.

After this I was scared to do anything. I was too much of a mess to go outside, I didn’t dare start any of my fun projects, because I was scared of having to think about anything too much and through associations get back to stressful thoughts. I listened to some emotional music and that kinda helped. I managed to send that goddamn email, but since the recipient hasn’t replied to my two previous emails I was prepared for him to not reply to this either. The plan was to call him instead, but I figured I could give emailing one last try and then call him a few hours later. No chances of that happening anymore...

I cried some more. Decided to check my email if by some miracle I would’ve gotten a reply - which I had, and which resulted in some more tears. I got my shit done, but at this point I wasn’t even happy about it. I was just feeling awful about how terribly alone I am and how I don’t believe I’ll get through this, making my whole application pointless and something that’ll only cause me more stress and tears in the future. (At the same time it’s the only thing I have going on, so it’s not something I feel like abandoning either).

After another hour of more crying I was able to sober up enough to call my dad. I had multiple things to discuss with him. I began by telling him about how I managed to send in that goddamn application, but he didn’t really get it and then I switched over to talk about all the issues I’m still having so I didn’t get any praise or approval from him, I only made myself feel worse. Then he told me he was about to head home, which made me feel guilty for bothering him. He was also not interested in talking to me later, since he wanted to “enjoy the last days of summer by going for a swim”, which he absolutely should, and it’s not like I told him about how I’m really feeling to which he could’ve reacted more accordingly.

I feel really hurt by my parents. They don’t seem to understand what I’m going through, even though I feel like they should because my sister went through something similar when she was a minor, making them responsible and involved in getting her help. Not that I know anything about that, since they never discussed it with me... It’s also on me not to have them more involved in what’s going through my mind, but with that too I feel like they don’t really listen or understand where I’m coming from the few times I’ve tried to talk to them about it.

I guess I do have depression and/or anxiety and I guess it’s something you have to have experienced yourself to understand it. I know I didn’t understand my sister’s situation when she was at her worst. Last week I told some of my friends how I don’t see a future for myself and how I really struggle with some basic tasks, and while they’re loving and supportive, they’re super unhelpful, asking me about what I want from my future or suggesting I pick up a new hobby and telling me how they also hate writing emails...

Now I have a headache from crying 4-5 hours straight, I’m super dehydrated and hungry, but I also feel nauseous so it’s tough getting anything to eat or drink. I know a walk could help, but I tried that an hour ago and began crying again while I was out so now I’m scared of trying that again. I tried listening to something that previously made me laugh so much it hurt, but I couldn’t due to my headache. I’ve considered contacting friends, but I don’t feel like I’m up for it right now. I have no idea what to do. I’m super tired so maybe I should try to rest for a bit.

Writing all this has helped calm me down.

If you read all this, thank you for caring enough to do so. My mind feels a bit better now that I got to process all this, but my body is still feeling awful. I know I’ll have a shitty rest of the day and a shitty night, which will result in me feeling awful tomorrow too, but I’ll try to come up with something fun.

I was just about to press post when my dad called me back and now I got to go through my other business with him so that’s good.

#my nonsense #negative

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herondaleholly31 · 5 years

Text

Love On The Weekend Chris Evans X Reader

overview: Whenever you can you and Chris spend a weekend together just the two of you. This weekend is different.

A/N Hey guys!! I’m currently in the middle of exams but I wanted to start writing some of the requests that was sent to me after my last post. Thank you so much for all your kind messages and follows after that post, it really means so much to me. I’m working through the list so I will try and upload as much as I can I promise. I hope you enjoy this one, make sure to keep sending me any requests!

Like and Reblog!

word count: 3,738

4:55. Five more minutes to go. You were impatient, and having already cleaned your desk three times in the past hour you were checking your emails one last time before you clocked out. Delete, delete, asos discount code saved, the rest thrown in spam. That’s it. All done. Only three more minutes.

“Y/N!”

Jack entered your office without knocking, an ominous stack of papers under his arm. “you’re still here, great. I need you to sort these files out before you go.” The stack fell with a thud onto your desk.

“I can’t,” you shook your head “I’m just about to head out.”

“Oh I’ve also put you on call duty this weekend,” Jack ignored you “so any plans you have cancel them.”

Your spine chilled “I can’t do this weekend. I cant I-“ you shook your head to try and stop your rising panic “I have to have this weekend off.”

“Tough luck. You’re going to want to keep you phone charged, I get a lot of emails.”

“No Jack-“

“Is there a problem?” He scowled.

The clock had struck five, he was going to be there any minute. “I can’t reschedule this plan my boyfriend’s job-“

“sweetheart can I be frank? I don’t give a shit,’ your bosses patient demeanour had gone and his normal irritation came through “I’ve got a golf game tomorrow and you were the last person to ask for time off. So you’re on this weekend.” He slammed his hand on top of the stack of papers and then turned to leave when suddenly a deafening sound came from outside. Shocked, Jack smacked his arm onto your computer, causing him to swear colourfully “WHAT IS THAT?” But you had already rushed to the window, your smile widening.

“He’s here.”

“WHO?”

You weren’t listening, grabbing your bag and throwing your coat over your arm “I’m going.”

“Is that for you?”

“Yes.” You turned once more, determination overruling your fear “Have a nice weekend Jack.” And with that, you flicked off the light switch and walked out the office. The honk was ringing down the corridor as you took the stairs two at a time before bursting out the door. A black range rover was sat in the middle of the carpark, and leaning against the bonnet was your boyfriend Chris. His eyes were covered with sunglasses but you knew his eye brows were raised in a teasing expression as he watched you stride over “are you always that dramatic when leaving work?”

“Only when my boss is being a dick.’ You reached him and cocked your head back so you could kiss him, both smiling against each other as the realisation that this moment had finally happened washed over. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Chris rested his forehead against yours and you breathed deeply, feeling the anger ebb away. “I missed you,” he whispered.

“I missed you too. I couldn’t get out of that place fast enough.”

‘I saw” Chris laughed. He pulled away to open the door next to him to reveal leather seats and your battered rucksack, bulging at the seams. “I packed everything on the list.”

“including the-“

“including my grey jumper for you to wear in the car.”

“thank youuuu,” clambering up into the seat you started to get changed, tights getting ripped and pony tails being loosened. Chris’s jumper had been washed one too many times, the fluffy interior bobbled and stretched to fit his physique; however you always wore it on these trips and had therefore become a running joke. “Where to this time?” You asked, popping your head over the collar to look over at Chris who was fiddling about with the Keys. He slid them in and a second later the car roared and shot out of the car park, the revs barking through the quiet. He didn’t answer until you had made it onto the highway.

“I’m going to keep it a surprise this time.”

“ooooo” you perked up “we haven’t done that for a while. Do I get a clue?”

“nope.”

“pleaseeeeee.”

Chris shook his head chuckling “you’ll like it I promise.” Still determined to know you sat up on your knees, leaning over the gear stick to kiss his cheek “not one hint?”

“No!” Chris laughed. You continued to ask, peppering the half of his face and neck with jokey kisses until his death went slightly ragged. “you’re going to make me crash.” He didn’t move away though, enjoying the way you bumped your nose against his cheekbone as the car steamed ahead. The car flew like a the air of you were on the run, Chris only realising when cramp started to form in his ankle from the clenching. You were so present to him in that moment his mind seems to have fogged over. Luckily You only kissed him a couple more times before sitting back, defeated. He was able to calm his pulse once again. “fine” You rolled your eyes teasingly “I guess I’ll trust you. Give me the aux cord.” You propped your bare feet up onto the dash board and plugged it into your phone and scrolled down until you found the playlist: Love on the weekend.

The weekend was something you and Chris had done for a long as you’d been dating. Although you lived in Boston near his family and spent stints in LA, work and business sometimes kept the pair of you apart for weeks if not months at a time. This had been difficult, until on a whim Chris had done what he would come to do every time; text you the night before that he was picking you up and that you two were going away together. That first time he’d taken you to a beach house where you’d spent the weekend getting a suntan and much needed alone time. That had been nearly two years ago and since the pair of you had taken trips all over the country, with nothing but a car and essentials. They had become your favourite tradition together.

The first song of the playlist started and Chris nodded his head in satisfaction “yessss!’ He pumped his foot on the gas and the car shot down the fast lane, leaving the traffic behind. The music swelled until the rough voice of Journey’s “Don’t stop believing” was blasting through the speakers, matched only by Chris’ rendition. He was tossing his head about and giving it his all, making you laugh so hard you felt the breath pound against your throat and your chest started to tense. The tipping point was when on the final high note your boyfriend’s voice cracked dramatically, to which you had to dig your hands in-between your clenched thighs to stop you from peeing. God it was so good to laugh like this again.

The speakers continued to blast out classics, raging from Kanye West to Disney to Prince until both your voices were frayed and your chests ached from laughing. At one point there was no sound from either of you except for wheezing and knee slapping. You were like children, bubbling with energy and excitement as the feeling of each other there made you giddy.

“We’re nearly there,” Chris was able to heave out later, breathing deliberately to even out his chuckles “keep an eye out for the right exit.”

“exit for what?”

“I’m still not telling you.”

“How am I going to know what the right exit is if I don’t know where we’re going?”

“Hey I gave you a name just trust me.” He reached out and patted your knee, before slowly moving his hand up to rest on your thigh. There was nothing suggestive about it, but you felt your body melt under his touch as he continued to drive. He hummed to the dulcet tones of John Mayer and would occasionally have to shift in his seat but he made sure to keep your thigh at arms length. His palm stayed soft and warm against you as the car pulled off the highway and drove down strips of long roads under golden sun stained foliage. One rumbling dirt track later and the car rolled into an opening, where it stopped and slumped, exhausted. Chris breathed, smiled, and squeezed your leg “we’re here.”

The house sat snuggled in the trees, overlooking a lake that shone brightly. White walls, blue tiles roof, a rickety dock that rocked slightly against the wind. It looked exactly the same as it did in the pictures that were hung around the Evan’s family home. You gasped in excitement “This is the place-“

“From my childhood pictures,” Chris nodded.

“The place you said you’d always take me,” you placed your hand on top of his “I can’t believe you did this.” In your excitement you leant over the gear stick and grabbed Chris’s face In between your hands “Thank you thank you Thank you!” You planted one big kiss on his lips causing him to laugh loudly before leaping out the car, your bare feet lacing with the grass. The pair of you grabbed the bags from the car and dragged them up into the house, abandoning them in the hall way to explore your home for the weekend. An open floor plan of polished wooden floors, white furniture and blue wallpaper stretched through the house, with soft corduroy sofas and shelves of thumbed classic books and board games. It was a weird mix of modern and old; as if time didn’t effect it. You were running around the house, calling for Chris to see something before discovering something else and getting even more excited. When Chris still hadn’t come after the fifth time you called you went clattering down the stairs to find him in the kitchen, already pulling things out of the stocked fridge “pesto eggs?” He asked.

“MMMM YES!” You yelled in excitement. “Sorry,” you quietened “sorry. Yes please.”

“I take it you like the house then?’ “Is this the part of the story where you tell me you’ve bought it?” You slid onto one of the stools by the island, nicking a bit of red pepper from the chopping board.

“ Unfortunately not.”

“shame. I would’ve quit work on the spot to move.”

“It’s that stressful huh?”

“You have no idea.”

Chris stopped stirring “so tell me about it.”

You shook your head, running your hands through your hair once before letting them fall on the table “I don’t want to weigh you down with that. You don’t wanna hear about that.”

“Yes I do,” Chris said “its obviously bothering you.”

“Not tonight Chris. Please.” You didn’t want to think about anything negative this weekend. Not with the limited time you had with him. “your eggs are burning by the way.”

“Huh? Oh Shit,” Chris went back to wildly stirring the contents of his pan, and the conversation was dropped.

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

The next couple days felt like the montage to a rom com movie, a warped bubble where negative thoughts and emotions weren’t allowed to penetrate. There was a lot to Catch up with so the pair of you didn’t waste a single minute. Swimming in the lake, running together through the woods, playing chess whilst drinking too much beer. A lot of random hugs and heated make outs that lead to other things that caused your skin to flush and tingle. This was partly due to Your shoulders getting burnt, resulting with Chris finding great pleasure in occasionally smacking the sensitive skin causing you to scream blue murder whilst chasing after him.

‘I still think I’ll have a hand imprint on my shoulder forever,” you joked. It was the last night and you were cooking whilst Chris picked the movie. He was crouched by the shelfs, his recently showered hair peering his grey t shirt with droplets. “What movie we thinking?” He called.

“hmmmm How about Captain America?”

“Funny.” Chris rolled his eyes. You laughed before diving down to retrieve the steaming dish of Chicken and vegetable pasta from the oven and dishing into bowls.

“Babe! You’ll never guess what movie they have.” Chris lifted the DVD case like a trophy, the title in your direction. You read it and gasped excitedly “About Time? Oh my days yes!”

“You’re gonna cry.”

“I am not.”

“You say that every time.”

“well this time I can definitely say that I will not cry!”

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

“It’s just” you stuttered, “it just so…so” you had to gulp loudly through the raked sobs “so sad!” Bill Nighy and the little boy started skimming stones on the beach, causing you to whimper loudly, more tears streaming down your flushed cheeks.

“I told you you would cry,” Chris said, but his own eyes were watery and his jaw clenched in emotion. Seeing this made you even more upset and you started to grip onto the pillow, holding your breath so to stop the sobs. It didn’t work. Chris couldn’t stand it anymore; part of him obviously wanted to comfort you but also your turmoil was starting to become comical. “sweetheart,” he laughed “come here.” He dragged you over to sit in between his legs, your back against his chest so he could try and stop you from crying. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,” you breathed “I’m not going to-oh my god they’re hugging.” The crying was uncontrollable now “This is the last hug they’re ever going to have together.”

“Okay you need to tell me whats wrong now,” Chris’ tone shifted to worry. He’d never seen you this upset over this movie before “hey, hey. Talk to me.”

“I don’t want you to leave me tomorrow.”

“what?”

“You’re going to leave tomorrow and I’ll be left with an apartment that is too big for just one person, a job I hate and the constant reminder that these weekends are the only things that I actually enjoy in life.”

The movie continued to play but Chris wasn’t watching anymore. Instead he sat there, struggling to find the right words to say. He didn’t want to ask, you’d specifically told him not to ask this weekend, the itch of knowing was starting to burn in his brain. “What’s wrong with work?”

You huffed, flinging your head back to knock against his shoulder “I hate it Chris. I used to love working there, but I just can’t do it anymore. The last time I had a weekend off was our last weekend 3 months ago.”

“why?”

“Because Jack makes me work so he can piss about golfing and spend the weekends screwing his assistant. I see the texts,” you nodded as Chris’s eyebrows shot up in surprise “they’re just as awful as you can imagine.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“about the affair? It’s not tha-“

“No. About work.”

“Oh.” You shrugged, wiping the back of your sleeve across your face “I didn’t want you to worry about me that’s all.” Feeling your boyfriend huff you felt yourself get defensive “you’re away for so long I didn’t want you to have to take off anymore time than you had to just because my career turned shit.”

‘That’s not fair,” Chris shook his head “I should’ve known.”

“Why? What would’ve you done?’ You were sitting up now, frowning at him, arms crossed “Quit your work and moved back full time to Boston?’ “Maybe!”

“No you wouldn’t of!”

“But at least I would’ve had that option!” His eyes flashed with a mixture of pain and annoyance “Y/N how am I supposed to be there for you if you don’t tell me these things?”

“That’s not fair Chris.”

“NO,” he snapped “what’s not fair is finding out that you’re feeling like this and yet I was the last person to know!”

“If you were here more YOU’D KNOW!”

There was a horrible silence. Shocked, you put your fingers over your lips, as if trying to grab back the words that were still ringing through the room. You were both shocked; hurt plastered on both your faces. You wanted to take them back, to rewind time so you could start this conversation again, to finish this weekend in a way that you will treasure and picture for the next weeks as you wait for him to come home to you. “I’m sorry.” You finally spoke “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

Chris nodded slowly, and you noticed that his eyes were glistening with tears and you felt your brain screaming in fear and your heart be squished like a juice box “yea you did.”

“NO! No I didn’t.” You pulled him closer “I’m just upset about work, I’m taking it out on you.”

“But you do wish It don’t you?” Chris whispered.

“Of course I wish you were here more,” You nodded “but acting’s your dream. Of course I want you to be doing that.”

“Im so sorry Babe,” he pushed out a heavy sigh to stop the emotions from stunting his voice “I wish I knew how bad it was.”

“It’s not your fault You didn’t know. I wasn’t telling you.”

“I should’ve picked up on it. If I’d known I’d-“

“It’s not your fault Chris. I’m sorry for not telling you.”

Chris smiled softly. He wrapped his arms around your shoulders, locking his hands together so you were pressed against his shoulder. He kissed the top of your head, nodding slightly “This was not how I was thinking this conversation was going to go.”

You laughed, snorting slightly due to the snot that had built up from your previous sobs “me neither.”

“And I was looking forward to telling you about my plans for after the movie.”

You felt your heart sink slightly. These conversations were always awfully painful. “Did your agent get another script for you?”

“Actually no. He won’t be getting me any for a while.”

“What?’ You looked up at him, confused “why?”

“because I told him I didn’t want any. Because I’m taking a little break.”

‘Chris? Please say you didn’t do that because of me!”

“only partly,” Chris smiled guiltily “I just miss Boston. I miss my parents, My nieces and nephews, You. I just want to spend some time here. Spending time with my family.”

The tears were falling again, only this time they were ones of happiness “you serious? You’re coming home?”

Chris nodded, savouring this moment for as long as he could. “5 more weeks and then I’m yours.”

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

The Boston skyline had never looked so unwelcoming. Despite the sunrise bathing the windows with molten pink and blue reflections, they were a reminder that you were back in reality. You’d left the house early that morning with the remise you’d return in the summer with the whole family. It had still been difficult to say goodbye. The entire drive back you and Chris only spoke a few times, both too nervous of what to say in these last moment. Chris’s hand was back on your thigh, but this time your hand was intertwined with his, your only lifeline from breaking down into uncontrollable tears once more. Although this was the last goodbye you’d have to say for a long time, this one felt the most difficult because of the reality of what they were going back to. The buildings of the city grew thicker and thicker as you drove down main streets and over bridges until all too soon the looming signs floor your office building started to come, and then the ruling for the carpark, and in no time at all Chris was pulling into one of the visitors spots and switching off the engine. “we’re here.”

“yea.” A silence. “ Thanks for dropping me off by the way.”

“Yea of course.” Chris swallowed. Neither of you moved. No one made the move to say goodbye. But you knew it was going to happen, and your grip on his hand got tighter as you realised that now was the moment to let go.

In the end it was him. It left you feeling empty, like you’d dropped something into water and you knew that you were never going to get it back, and that’s when the tears started to fall again. In a moment Chris jumped out of the car and ran over to your side of the car, opening your door so he was able to scoop you into a hug. “ I know,” he whispered as you clung to him “ I know.”

“i don’t know if I can do this Chris,” you sniffed into his neck.

“Yes you can. You can sweetheart. Remember what we said.” He kissed your ear lightly “Just five more weeks. Five more weeks and the I’m home, you can quit your job here and we’ll figure something out together okay? Okay?” His tone made you move your gaze so you were looking at his wide eyed expression, full of promise and reassurance “We’ll figure this out together.”

“Five weeks.”

“five weeks and then I’m yours.”

You nodded, sniffing “Okay,” You breathed “Okay I’ll do it.”

“You can do it.” He kissed you then, and his lips tasted of salt but they were familiar and warm and his, and you already missed him so much five weeks suddenly felt like a lifetime.

“I am,” he rested his head against yours once more “so proud of you. I really am.”

You nodded. You kissed him as long as your lungs could muster and this time you let go, flattening your skirt and slipping on your heels as Chris grabbed your bags from the boot and handing them to you. He kissed you once more, told you he loved you and then walked back around to sit in the car. You walked around to his door and leaned in through the open window to kiss him again.

“I can’t watch you walk away,” he confessed “because if I do all I’ll want to do is stay.”

You nodded “That’s fine. I’ll see you in five weeks.”

‘Five weeks.”

“I love you Chris.”

One more kiss, and then he pushed the car into gear and pulled away, leaving you to wave goodbye to him. As he did, the windows rolled down, and a second later you heard the opening chords to “Love on the weekend” play. He didn’t look back, but you knew that he too was already counting down the days until the next time you two could see each other.

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