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writingsbychlo · 3 years

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smoke and fire (17)

word count; 8202

summary; after a dangerous call, neither of you can handle the waiting around anymore, and everything finally bubbles over.

notes; you’re welcome.

warnings; descriptive injury, reference to death, reference to arson, minor character injury.

“Holy fucking shit, I know they prepared us for this stuff with all those drills and what have you, but I never expected this.”

You smacked at Newt’s arm roughly, covering your face as you stared up at the building, smoke curling up from the top of the building, and scared students were all gathering on the grasses and the tennis courts, filtering out of the buildings and lining up, and it was eerily quiet. The usual fires you attended were loud, screaming and shouting of worried relatives as chatter went up, and big ones like this had news cameras and reporters gathering around, hounding victims for interviews and information.

This time, it was unsettlingly calm.

The kids had all followed routine, lined up with their teachers, each of whom were going along with attendance records, checking off the kids that had arrived and making sure they were where they were supposed to be, while tickling names off. Only the gentle voices of teachers talking in low tones to their classes could be heard instead of the usual clamouring, and you could still hear the alarms of the school’s fire alarms from inside as they rang.

Glowing flames licked up into the sky, windows shattering as glass got too hot and the smoke was black as possessions burned. Kids were crying, and at the gates were camera flashes and news team, all of whom held back out of earshot as they weren’t allowed to film the children, kept back from school property, and it was a blessing you were thankful for, because they would have been overwhelmed. You let out a slow breath, three other ambulances all pulling up, and you swallowed thickly while staring at the burning remnants of a once productive high school.

Even if they weren’t injured, you’d be required to check every kid here, and you were grateful for the assistance of other paramedics. They were already beginning to shift their equipment, setting up with tables and chairs that staff were carrying out from a sports hall storage room that wasn’t connected to the main building, safe from the flames and creating a makeshift triage bay.

Even just as you looked around, there were hundreds of kids that you and Newt would have to sort through alone. The firemen were buzzing around behind you, undoing rolls of hoses and taking them to the nearest hydrants, trying to come up with some kind of game plan, and you stared up at the building, nothing but pure confusion and empathy for the terror these students must be feeling.

“There’s gotta’ be, like, two thousand kids here.” You mumbled, cupping a hand over your eyes to look up at the glare, and your body sank a little.

“Yep, and you get to pick a piece of paper, choose your year group.” You jumped slightly, an unfamiliar voice, and your eyes found a similar uniform to your own, stretched over broad shoulders of a man who was a lot taller than you were, hair pulled back neatly behind his head in a ponytail, tattoos peeking out from under the collar of his shirt, and a beard neatly tucked away underneath his chin. “I’m Arthur, firehouse ‘46, and I’m apparently the one in charge of dividing up all the classes.”

“Is it too much to hope we get the freshmen?” You chuckled, taking a piece of the folded paper from his hands as he tried to keep it fair, and a deep chuckle vibrated through him as he nodded.

“Unfortunately, it would be, because my partner already picked that one out for us. No favouritism, I swear, just luck.”

“I’d challenge you on that, but your fist looks like it’s about the size of my head, so you’d probably win that fight.” He let out a louder laugh at that, raising a brow as you opened the piece of paper, his messy handwriting illegible for a second, and you studied it, before he was letting out a low whistle. “Juniors. Tough break.”

Newt let out a groan, what was arguably going to be the rowdiest and loudest group, protesting the most and kicking up a fuss, and you shrugged, accepting his final pitiful smile before he moved on. Newt watched him go, eyes scanning along him slowly for a second, before you clicked your fingers at him. “Hey, you just fixed things with your boyfriend! You gave me shit for being friendly with other firefighters, stop checking out other paramedics!”

“I wasn’t checking him out!” Newt gasped, cheeks tinting pink. “I was just looking, I guess. He’s not my type, I don’t want them too tall, it makes me feel tiny. I hate that. I want to be pushed up against the wall, not thrown around like a rag-doll. Too much muscle.” You glanced at him again, noting what he meant, because the man did look like he spent every free minute he had at the gym, and you shrugged.

Your eyes wandered then, you couldn't help it, flickering over the others around you before finding your team. The Truck team were all reporting to Thomas, no step-in lieutenant having arrived in Gally’s place yet, and didn’t like the idea of being a firefighter down on your team. He seemed to be coping through, giving out orders to a team twice the size, each breaking away in the usual pairs he made as they divided off to complete tasks.

Around the entrance to your ambulance, two tables had been set up, one on each side and a third one across them, forms being laid out in stacks with pens, each to be filled out by a student and held with them to take home, ones you’d have to sign every time to show you dismissed them, and you flexed your fingers, already anticipating the ache that would come.

The lines were beginning to shift again, teaching staff arriving with their lines of students, waiting to be told what to do, and you shared a look with Newt, before diving right into it. Splitting off the classes, you sat down behind one table, kids slowly filling out each form and coming to sit with you, letting you do initial checks across their eyes, their pulse and their reaction times, before signing each form.

Some were a little more injured, with small cuts and grazes, jostling in the halls knocking them around or to the floor, and you had quite a few bumped heads. Some had worse smoke inhalation, and some had been closer to the initial blast. Those were the worst ones, the ones with head injuries that were filling up the chairs laid out to wait for parents, and you had to not only sign your name on their forms but fill out medical information cards for them, ready to be sent to the hospital, and only an hour in, you felt like your hand was going to drop off. You’d scarcely made it to the other side off half of the kids, watching them all slowly being collected by crying and fearful parents, let in at the gates to find their kids, when you found out what had happened.

The gas taps in the science labs had exploded, a leaky seal that hadn't closed off and a bunsen burner that was too close to the leak. The science experiment gone wrong had sent flames bursting through all the labs along the floor, and you had to choke back bile when the kids who’d been sitting closer to the flames had come in.

They were shaking, sobbing tears and blood from burned skin that still smelled of gas. Melted plastic on smart uniform ties and burned clothing that still looks smokey. Ash was beginning to fall from the sky, blowing in your direction from the wind, some still glowing until it reached the ground, and they were all trembling from the trauma just at the remnants of it. You didn’t blame them.

The kid coming forwards next was shaky, an empty form clutched carefully in his hands as he handed it over, and you scribbled your name on it, looking up at him with a raised brow. “You know you gotta’ fill this out, right? I can’t let you leave until you have.”

“I know.” He whispered, the hands that were clenched under the table being lifted after a moment's hesitation, and he held his palms out, open hand facing you, backs pressed to the table. “I would but it hurt, I tried.”

You could see the etched strains of dotted ink at the top, your eyes wide as you took in the damage to his hands. He seemed alright everywhere else; a little red along parts of his skin where he’d gotten too close to some flames, but other than that, nothing too bad, but the damage to his palms was extensive. Blackened skin was charred and burned, bleeding and red flesh exposed underneath and raw to the cold air and you imagined it would be agony, the injuries travelling all the way to his wrists. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I, um, my hands got burned when I was trying to get out.”

I can see that, kid, but how?” You were filling in the form yourself, scribbling down the notes you could do yourself, and letting him substitute his name, date of birth and class number as you reached those sections, pen moving quickly over the paper as you waited for a reason. “I can't let you go until you tell me.”

“A door got stuck. I had to push it open.”

“How stuck was this door, because these aren’t the kind of burns that happen with quick movements, this took prolonged exposure.” He squirmed in his seat, avoiding your eye, and you gave in. Beside you, scattered around on your table and in the ambulance were the contents of your medkit, and the drawers, all running low on supplies as you’d tended to many injured kids, and you shook your head at his reluctance to speak. “Alright, fine, we’ll wait it out. Any allergies?”

He shook his head, chin wobbling a bit, and you handed his form back over to him, a neat crease down the middle where it was folded in half, and he held his hands out for you upon request. His face screwed up at the sting of the antiseptic spray, soft warnings on murmured apologies on your lips as you sterilised the wounds, before beginning to wrap them with aloe and cream soaked bandages. He shed several tears during the process, twisting to wipe his face on his shoulder as you patched up the first hand.

“Ready to talk, yet?”

He looked up at you again, shaking his head slowly after a second, and you let out a disappointed sigh that you hoped might make him cave, but he held strong. You worked on the other hand, wrapping the medicinal bandages slowly and carefully over his skin, weaving between his fingers and around his thumb, making sure to cover all of the exposed flesh right down to his thumb, before tucking it in carefully and sealing them with tape.

“You can go and wait over on those chairs until you’re ready to fess up, and you’re gonna’ have to go to the hospital for real treatment.” You nodded to one of the teachers as he went, head hung low and sulking as he walked away, before you turned to the next kid.

This one was worse, the same burns but these ones travelled halfway up his forearms, another empty sheet placed down in front of you, before he too was glancing at the last kid with burned hands, and your eyes narrowed on the two. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I got stuck, behind a-”

“A closed door? Is that what you're about to say?” A guilty look flashed over the second boy’s features, wide-eyed as he swallowed the lump formed in his throat, and he nodded. “That’s total bullshit. I don’t know what the two of you have been up to, but you don’t think I know what causes burns when I see them? I work in a firehouse, my firemen get burned up all the time, and this isn’t what happens when you push open a burning door. This is what happens when you hold onto something hot for a long time.”

He didn’t say anything, he just held out his hands, hissing in pain but managing to blink away his tears, unlike his friend, when you began to treat his wounds. The more severe they were, the more supplies you required, and you opted to dab the aloe gel and burn cream mix up to his elbows on each hand with a cotton pad, gentle not to let the tips of your fingers drag on open flesh as dry rubber from your gloves irritated the wounds.

“You need to tell me what happened, because I can’t let you go when you’ve got burns like this. You know it’s criminal evidence, right? If you don’t fess up and tell me the truth, you’ll have to tell it to the police. Why didn’t your teachers bring you forwards first if you had these kinds of injuries?”

“Because we weren’t in class.” He eventually whispered, and now the tears flowed, something inside of him seeming to crack wide open as hot tears flowed, the kid breaking down before you in a sob. You were wrapping his second arm carefully by the time he managed to catch his breath, his reaction shocking you a little, you didn’t want to make the kid cry with your threat of talking to the police, you just wanted to know what would happen. “We didn’t do this, I swear! We weren’t involved!”

“I know that, this was a freak accident, we already know that much, but you can tell me what happened.” Once you were finished, you took a seat before him, taking off blood and ointment stained gloves and throwing them in the bin bag you and Newt were rapidly filling up. As you did, you noticed Newt treating a kid with much the same injuries, your eyes narrowing a little on them for a second, before you sat down, picking up your pen and beginning to fill in the empty form. “We were skipping class.”

“All kids do that.” You chuckled, taking his name and date of birth as he worried his lower lip between his teeth, and just like that, all of a sudden, he was twisting to the side in his seat, retching violently onto the floor, as more tears began to flow. You abandoned the forms, rounding the edge of the table and the area around you where parents had been collecting their kids and teachers had been dismissing them suddenly fell silent, everybody turning to look over, and you rubbed his back gently, the contents of his stomach emptying.

When he was finished, he sat back up, trying to wipe at his mouth and wincing when he rubbed his mouth against his bandages by mistake, before lowering his hand. He slumped, seemingly drained of energy, eyes hooded a little, and you checked his pupils and his reactions again but they came out perfectly fine, and so this reaction wasn’t related to any injuries. “There were four of us.”

“Four of you?”

“Yeah, four of us skipped class.” You glanced around, noting only three with burned hands as Newt dismissed his kid to join your first, and a chilling feeling settled like a pit in your stomach. “We were in the theatre rooms, they’re below the science floors. We were messing around, and Ian went to the toilets in the corridors. When the explosion went off, the floor started to collapse, and a beam went over the door.”

You hated that you already knew where it was going, and your eyes impossibly wide as you glanced around, trying to find the yellow stripes of any fireman you knew to be free from your house, or any house, but they were all busy and out of view.

“The beam caught fire, and we tried so hard to move it, we tried but it hurt so much, and there was so much smoke and it got so hot, and we couldn't do it anymore. We had to go, we tried so hard but we had to go!” He was borderline hysterical, stuttering over his words as he cried, before he was gagging again, and you stepped out of the way, just avoiding his upchuck as he emptied his stomach again, guilt and anxiety taking a physical reaction on him. You processed his words, before the heavy truth settled over you again.

“Oh my God, Newt, there’s a kid still trapped in there.”

“What?” Your partner whipped around in his seat, eyes wide, before looking to the kid still heaving, and the other two with matching injuries. “Go find someone on the team, I'll finish up here!”

You nodded, pausing for a second to look around, before catching sight of a few metallic strips glinting in the light not far from the Squad truck. You stumbled over your feet, your heart pounding in your chest as you tried to get there. Rounding the edge of the red van, you found Winston sitting on the edge of the truck, door open, one foot on the floor by his helmet as the other was pulled up, his back pressed to the wall, and he was panting for breath, sweating as his mask lay beside him.

He cracked an eye open as he looked up at you, confusion taking over his face for a second, before concern was replacing it. “What’s up? Aren’t you dismissing kids?”

“There’s still a kiss trapped in there?”

“We did a sweep, everyone did, they checked every room and every floor, all the rooms.” You shook your head, hands shaking a little with your fear, and you felt the tremors spread over your body.

“No, no, there is someone.” You took a deep breath to steady yourself, and he sat up a little further. “There’s three kids, burns all over their hands and up their arms, because they were skipping class. They were right under the explosions, a kid was in one of the bathrooms and a beam fell over the door, they tried to move it but they couldn't, he’s trapped inside.”

“He’s been in there since this fucking happened? That was hours ago!” Despite his shock and disbelief, he was on his feet again, grabbing for his mask and his helmet, being the first one to finish his set of tasks clearly not coming much in handy, because he was going to be going back inside. “Where was he?”

��Uh, they said they were near the drama and theatre halls.” He nodded his head, hooking his mask back up to his oxygen tank as he pulled it up and adjusted the straps on his shoulders. “Winston, I gotta’ go with you.”

“No way, it’s falling apart in there.”

“I know, but you said it yourself, it’s been hours. That kid is gonna’ need immediate first aid, and how much first aid do you know?” He looked conflicted, tapping his foot a little and glancing around, watching as a few more members of your team, as well as others, all began to emerge from different exits. There was only so much of the fire they could risk putting out, when the building was igniting faster than they could contain it, it would have to simply burn itself out. “C’mon, Winston. Just grab me gear and let's go.”

“Fine, but stick by my fucking side and don’t take a step away, okay?”

“I promise!” You nodded, and he opened up one of the spare lockers. You knew the drill, kicking off your shoes and grabbing the heatproof gear that was labelled in a silver tin with your name across the front in permanent marker. Tugging the pants up your legs as fast as you could, you sealed them at the waist, tying them tightly and grabbing your jacket. You buttoned it up, fingers shaking as you did, before kicking off your shoes, uncaring of where they landed.

Pulling on your boots, you knelt down to tie them, your med bag landing beside you as Winston had retrieved it, and he looked more than anxious as he stared at you, letting you tuck the laces into the edge of the shoes to hide them once they were tight. “You’re gonna’ have to carry your bag, because you need to wear a tank and mask.”

He shook the other objects in his hands, and you stood, turning around and guiding your arms through the straps as he held it out, your breath forced from your lungs as the heavy weight settled onto your back. Following it, he rested the mask over your face, the glass fogging up for a second as you took heavy breaths, clearing a second later when cool oxygen was twisted on and began to come through. He fixed his own mask, gloves and helmet following as you copied him, checking it was all sealed up tight around your skin, before grabbing your bag.

You always felt like an astronaut in this gear, big and puffy and baggy, like you were walking with added gravity following behind him in wide and shuffling steps as quickly as you could, nerves and fear riding more and more as you headed towards burning entrances. It was something you’d never get used to, the idea of walking straight into flames, of walking into a burning building, and you patted deftly across the front of your helmet to find your torch, turning it on as Winston did the same, and then, you were plunging into thick black smoke.

It was like something from a horror movie, you could see other firemen wandering around, their shadows as they tried to at least secure as much as they could as the fire ripped through the building, burning through whatever fuel it could, and none of them paid you any mind. Clutching your bag up to your chest, you kept your eyes fixed on Winston, not daring to take your eyes off of him in case you lost him, and he was following signs as he went, trying to find the downstairs floors of the drama and theatre.

Your steps left footprints in the ash that was lining the floor, each footstep padded to silence by the thick grey layer, like a breadcrumb trail as you went, and it was a guiding light that was brushed away seconds later with the air currents created by flames.

You knew it when you finally arrived, large amphitheatres and halls, Winston pausing as he tried to identify which way the toilets would be, and his head twisted as he looked from one end to the other.

“You check that side, I’ll check this one. Do not go out of yelling range or sight.”

You gave him a mock-salute, peeling off to the left when he went to the right, and you scanned along the walls for the doorways.

There was nothing, just places where posters had been on the walls, the smashed glass of photos or peel offs to more corridors, but no toilets or burned beams. Just as you reached the end of the hall, only one direction coming off of it in a short pathway, you noticed something. It was crumbled now, black and crumbled but it could definitely have once been a solid beam, and as you squinted through the smoke, you could just about make out a doorway.

“Winston! I think I got it!” You yelled as loud as you could, turning around to find him spinning to look at you, and you held an arm out in a point down a connected corridor. He took off in a jog, as fast as he could move in the heat and the layers of clothes, and while it took him only seconds to reach you, it felt like it dragged on and on, the emergency making everything seem too slow as you worried for the trapped kid’s well-being.

He stepped ahead first, pacing towards it, and you followed after him, a slightly relieved breath leaving you when you were close enough for your head torches to reflect on signs signalling for the toilets. Winston placed a hand on the beam as the two of you approached it, pressing down on it as best he could, and the beam groaned at the pressure, but despite the force he applied, it didn’t crack.

He held out an arm, pushing you back slightly as his hand went to the toolkit around his waist, and unhooking a small hand axe. He held it up, adjusting it carefully in his grip, before swinging it up high and bringing it back down. It dug in, getting stuck for a second, and a large splintering sound filled the air, but it didn’t break.

He tried again, and again, and your anxiety was almost ready to burst when it finally cracked, hitting the floor with a loud thud, and you jumped, wincing slightly at the sound. The half still attached to the ceiling fell down, bringing a little more of the ceiling down, and it all became unstable again. Pieces of the roof were crumbling away, crashing down in bundles of flames to the floor, but at least one problem was solved.

Putting away the axe, Winston kicked open the door, waiting to see if any fire would come out. There was fire crawling along the roof, but the tiled floors were clean, the room smoky and filled with ash but reasonably safe, and the two of you entered.

As promised, there he was, the fourth student was unconscious on the floor beside one of the sinks. You glanced around, noting the jacket he must have been wearing was soaked with water, lay over his face as he’d tried to breathe through it to stop too much smoke inhalation, and Winston glanced at you as you sunk to your knees.

“Smart kid, that move probably saved his life.” You peed it back, checking for any signs of breathing, and you found his vets to be rising and falling very slowly and weakly, barely taking in any oxygen at all. Lifting up the torch from your keyring, you raised an eyelid, bloodshot eyes encasing pupils that were hardly responsive, reactions that took over a second to come into focus, and barely moving.

Scanning along his arms, you noted the raw burns that were forming along his flesh, tugging your bag open quickly and grabbing for the aloe inside. If he was to be carried back through the building, you wanted to minimise any risk of his wounds getting any worse. You didn’t try to be delicate or gentle, you were rushing, knowing you had to put speed over gentleness now, and that you could treat them properly once you were back outside.

Twisting on down on the taps, not much water came through, dripping through the pipes, and you used your teeth to pull off one glove, daring to touch the water. It wasn’t exactly cold, the pipes underground being heated by the fires above, but it was cool enough, and you dropped piles of bandages down into the sink to begin to soak. Taking open the gel, you squeezed out thick rows of it onto his arms, using your bare hand to rub it in, trying to be fast as the skin on the back of your hand began to hurt. Once it was rubbed in, you began to pick up dripping bandages, not even bothering to ring them out, before sealing the cool wrapping around his arms as best you could to keep them secured.

As soon as they were on, you were pulling your glove back on, and rubbing at the back of your hand through the material to soothe the pain there.

“He needs oxygen, with reaction times like this, I’m surprised he’s still breathing.”

“I can give him my mask.”

Winston reached for his mask, and you shook your head. He was covered in burns, he was out cold, and there was no way he’d wake up anytime between now and the hospital, it at all. Despite being alive, you had no idea what the long-term effects would be on him, and you hoped for the best, but you knew there wasn’t much Winston could do without his mask. “You can’t, you’re gonna’ have to carry him out of here. He takes my mask.”

No way, I’m trained for this, you aren’t. You’ll choke up in here before getting back to the main corridors.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t exactly carry this kid. So, if we want to get him out of here alive, we’re just going to have to risk it.” You didn’t wait for his response, ignoring his protests as you took off your helmet, reaching behind your head for the elastics of the mask, and pulling them off. The second it was gone, your skin flared up at the rush of heat, and you took a gasping breath. Your lungs were searching for oxygen, the flames burning most of it away, and you were getting so little now that your pure source was gone.

Hooking the mask over the kid’s face, you took off your tank, holding it on your arms as Winston glared at you from behind the glass, crouching down to pick the boy up from the floor, and you placed the tank onto him too, waiting for Winston to adjust his grip before letting go of the pair. Putting your helmet back on, you tucked your hair under the collar of your jacket, protecting the back of your neck.

Zipping your bag back up and draping the damp hoodie over his head for added protection against the flames, you hid your face in your elbow, coughing against the smoke and trying to breathe lightly so as not to suck too much of it into your lungs.

“Follow me, keep up, okay? Don’t fall behind.”

There were worry and concern in his voice, friendly and desperate as he pleased with you, and you nodded your head. He turned, moving as quickly as he could as he left the bathrooms again, backing or of the door and back into the hallway. If you’d thought the bathroom had been bad, this was far worse, your eyes watering and lungs burning as soon as you stepped out. You kept one arm raised, simply to protect your face, your bag clenched under the other arm.

Winston was moving faster than you were, the lack of oxygen making you fall behind, but you could still seem him ahead, and you could see the large and fresh imprints of his bots in the ash before they were fading in the swirling storm of burning debris, following them once the smoke was too much for you to keep your eyes raised for too long. They were stinging, watering continuously to blink free dust that got in them, and your tears were almost absorbed right off of your face.

When you looked back up, daring to stare into the hallway, it was void of movement, all the firemen having cleared out as the smoke got thicker, burning through the insulation in the walls now. The corridors forked, and you paused, trying to remember which way you’d come. There was no daylight to guide you, no windows you could see through, just thick smoke lit up by orange flames, and you swallowed down on a sore throat coughing again as you grew more and more scared.

You had to move, you knew you did, and so you chose one option, knowing that moving in either way was better than simply standing still. Following it along, the further you went, the more and more unfamiliar it became, the minutes melting away as you stumbling along all the while knowing you’d chosen the wrong way. You found the wall, hand sitting on it lightly to help guide your way, and your fingers bumped against a raised section.

Pausing, you brushed the dust away, squinting to read what it said. There were several classroom guidances, and then something that made you want to cry with relief, even if it was the wrong direction. The gardens. You hadn't seen any gardens upon coming into the school grounds, and so you assumed you were on the other side of the building now, having stumbled along for so long you’d moved all that way, but as long as you got out, you’d be fine.

Following that guidance, you paused each time you found a sign, before finally, doors that had burned right off their hinges and had fallen off allowed a little sunlight to poke through the smoke.

Your feet scraped on the ground as you finally made it out, soft ash falling away to be replaced with concrete, and you wanted to fall to the ground, knees weak with bliss at escaping the building, but you forced yourself to keep going. You were gasping, throat raw as you took deep breaths, finally able to do so once again and you felt a little dizzy as your head spun at the sudden rush of fresh air.

You grabbed at the front of your jacket, sweltering in the thick material as you tugged on it until it came loose, flapping at the front and letting in cold air and you felt a little less restrained.

You stayed away from the building as you tried to walk around it, following the flashing lights on the ambulances until the place where you’d been stationed started to come into sight once again. It was clearer, only a few kids left milling around, the fire teams having retreated back to their vans, equipment being stripped off and water bottles handed out, and you searched for your own team.

You found them, all gathered around and starting at the entrance, even Winston and Newt, and you noticed that one of the ambulances was gone, presumably having rushed your reduced child to the hospital. They were waiting for you to emerge from the entrance you’d entered, all looking nervous, and Newt was the first to notice you coming around the other side.

As soon as he had, the group were turning to you, your body slumping a little more under your weight, and you staggered towards them. Newt found you first, taking your bag from your hands as you held it out to him, and offering him a tired smile as he shook his head fondly.

“You gave me a fucking heart attack.”

“I’m perfectly fine, Newt, I swear.” He frowned for only a second longer, before his lips were breaking in a smile, and Brenda was up next. She took you into a tight hug, arms underneath the edge of your jacket, which Minho was peeling down your arms for you and taking away the added weight, and you thanked him silently with a nod as you wrapped your arms back around her. “Bren, I’m okay.”

“You think you’re a damn firefighter, I swear it!”

You laughed at that, throat a little raspy as it trailed off into a caught, and Newt chuckled. “Let’s get you some water, okay?”

“That sounds awesome.” You followed them over to the trucks, Newt jogging ahead to get you a bottle, and as soon as you arrived, you took it. You cracked the lid open taking a large gulp, and looking around for a second, before the person you were unintentionally searching for was found. He looked angry, a face like thunder as he stormed over, shoulders squared and tense with furrowed brows.

His steps had purpose, and the closer he got, the more you could take him in. Slightly dirty skin, sweaty and stained with soot and ash had tracks under his eyes cut into them from tears, the edges of his scowl wobbling as he looked still on the edges of jagged emotions, and you were filled with guilt. You met him halfway, mouth dropping to talk to him but he beat you to it, a sharp inhale before he is grabbing your arm, and dragging you between the two parked fire trucks as the rest of the firemen all seemed to clear away in fear of his anger.

“Are you fucking insane?” There was a crack to his voice that you didn’t comment on, giving away that his anger was actually fear, no rage at all but simply worry that you had caused, and you hated that you’d done it, but you wouldn't take your action back, not when you’d saved a life once again. You wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you’d let that boy die in there. “Do you have any idea how fucking worried I was? I come out after hours in that burning building to find you and check you’re okay just to find out you’ve gone into the fucking wreckage? To find out you took off your goddamn mask and got lost?”

His frown melted away, fresh tears filling his eyes, and he sniffed lightly, his face crumpling again as his tears came free. Two large droplets leaked along his cheeks, leaving wet marks, and your stomach twisted with guilt. You took off your gloves, dropping them down to the floor without a care to be able to cup his cheeks and wipe them away from his flushed skin as he stared at you. “I got stuck, Tommy. That’s it, I’m sorry, okay? I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I knew that kid was in there and I let him die to save my own life.”

You sank down, every muscle in your body aching as you sat on the edge of the van, finally giving in to your exhaustion, and he let out a shaky and weak sob again. He followed, sinking to his knees in front of you, his entire body collapsing under the weight of his worry, but his eyes never left your own.

He lifted a bare hand, cupping your cheek the way you had for him a second ago, and his eyes moved as he swept his sights over your face, trying to take a more deep and calming breath. The simple skin to skin touch grounded him.

“Don’t make me lose you, too.” He whispered, a silent beg in his words not to leave him, and your heart cracked a little in your chest. “I know you’re mad at me right now, okay? You say you’re not but I know you are because I spent enough time with you mad when we first met to know what that looks like on you.”

You chuckled, his lips flicking up at the edges as you did.

“I can handle you being mad, though, okay? I can handle that, because I love you, but I can’t handle you dying. I can’t take that. Don’t do that to me, I need y-” Your hands smoothed over his chest, finding the edges of the jacket he had yet to shed and pulling him forwards. You bowed your head down to his level, cutting off his words by placing your lips on his, and he shuddered under your touch, groaning into your mouth as his mind caught up with what was happening.

He panted slightly, twisting his head to the side to get a better angle, and this was nothing like last night. He wasn’t shy or worried, he just poured out everything he felt, his lips working slowly but surely with your own, a desperation and need hidden underneath in the kiss that made you tremble, because it was nothing like you’d ever felt before. You didn’t feel the metal you were sitting on or the truck behind you, the voices of everyone still around seemed to face away, your entire focus shifting to only him.

He pressed up, kissing you just as firmly and gripping your jaw with a little more force. After a moment longer, lungs demanding air, he pulled back, long enough for a gasping breath and to lick over his lips. He forced himself to stand up on shaky legs, one hand on your waist pulling you with him, before he was pressing you back into the edge of the truck for support. The cold metal against your back was nothing with the way his chest pressed to you, drawing in his head as he held you so close, that hand sliding around your waist to pull you flush up against him.

“I’m sorry,” You whispered, your nose bumping his as he stole several more pecks from your lips as the two of you caught your breath, and you puckered your lips for him each time, stuttering as his fingertips pressed into your skin through your shirt. “I know this isn’t how you wanted our real first kiss to go.”

“I so don’t care anymore. Just shut up and kiss me again, sweetheart.” He closed the gap himself, and you hummed happily as his tongue dragged over your lower lip, tempting you to part them, and you moaned weakly when his tongue dared to dip out and brush with your own. It was a connection you both needed, long overdue and frantic.

A messy kiss, clashes of teeth with need and raspy breaths between kisses, bumping foreheads when you moved but you'd have time to perfect it, but right now, you just needed to make the promises to each other that you were okay, and you were still here. When he finally pulled back, it was reluctantly, dragging slightly kiss swollen lips away from your own to stare at you, darkened eyes going soft the longer he looked, and he pulled away long enough to run the back of a finger over your cheek, a look that could only be described as adoration taking over. “I love you, and you don’t have to say it back, not until you really mean it, but I mean it and I want you to know. I want everyone to know, you’re always gonna’ be my first and only choice, angel.”

You grinned, a giggle that you muted by pressing your lips to his own in a chaste kiss, and when you pulled back, he followed your lips for a second, only furthering your intimate amusement.

“I’m never going to get tired of being able to kiss you now.”

“I should hope not.” He beamed, brushing the tip of his nose with your own, before stepping back fully, and bringing his hand to yours, weaving your fingers together. “Go sort out your team, lieutenant, they’ll be needing you to help pack away.”

“I’m sure they can wait a few more minutes, I’ve waited months to get here with you.”

“Yeah, well, you can have me all to yourself later. You still owe me pizza.” His joy only brightened more at the offer, his brows raising, and he was nodding enthusiastically. “I’ll stay over, and you can kiss me as much as you want.”

“I’d love that.” He pecked your lips one more time, a pink blush taking over his features as he realised he could now, before he was stepping back. “I’ll meet you back at the firehouse?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” You whispered, and he turned away, giving you a second of privacy, lifting your fingers to brush over your lips, your mind still reeling as you attempted to process what had happened. A throat cleared a second later, and Newt was standing with his hands on his hips, head tilted toward the ambulance.

“I’m not putting all that shit away myself so you can daydream about kissing Tommy.” He scoffed, teasing you a little as he made his way over, and you couldn't help the smirk your lips were forming. “So, did he finally man up and kiss you? He's only been talking about it for months.”

“I kissed him, actually.” Newt’s jaw dropped, his hands shooting up in the air with a loud cheer to follow.

“I fucking knew it! I fucking knew it! Gally owes me twenty damn bucks, and I will collect.” He slung an arm over your shoulders, guiding you towards the ambulance that he needed help with beginning to pack away, and you shrugged, reaching up your hand to hold onto Newt’s as it hung over your shoulder.

“I can’t believe you were betting on us.”

“I was betting on you, I knew he would psych himself out, all my money was on you, love.” He offered a cheesy grin, pinching at your cheek, and you raised your brows.

“Well then, shouldn't I get half of the winnings? Since I helped you to victory, and all..” Newt let you go when you reached the van, the tables being folded away by the staff, but there were medical supplies piled high in the entrance to the ambulance, and you had to pack them all away correctly, and double-check over the doses of medicines, in such a high-risk area for theft.

“Tell you what, I’ll buy you a cocktail with half the winnings, if you come on a double date with me and Derek?” You chuckled, unsure whether or not he was serious, and an odd look passed over newt’s face, the blond scratching at his jaw and avoiding your eye.

“A double date, really?”

“Look, you already know Derek, you and he are friends. Good friends. Tommy has been my best mate since I was just a lad and always will be, and you’re my best friend too. I really like Derek, okay? I really like him, and I want him and Tommy to get along too, because they’re both so important to me, and I figure a double date makes it casual.” He shrugged, looking back up to you, curious for your opinion as his cheeks grew warm. “Is it stupid? I just felt like going out to dinner or something made for less tension than a baseball game and a pizza.”

“It’s not stupid, Newt. I’m totally down for it, sounds fun, but you’re gonna’ have to convince Thomas.” You teased, and your partner rolled his eyes.

“Oh, please, I don’t gotta’ do shit if you’re on board. You have him wrapped around your little finger. You don’t even have to pucker up or bat your eyelashes, he’s already all soft on you.” Newt pouted, mocking you playfully with the words, and your guts twisted in a nervous excitement.

“I’ll talk to him about it, tomorrow morning.”

“Breakfast date?” He climbed up into the back of the van, beginning to scoop up the materials like bandages and plasters to put them away, and you started sorting through the bottles of medicine and pills that would need counting.

“Dinner date, actually.” Newt gasped falsely, holding a hand over his heart.

“Scandalous, staying over already.”

“You’re just jealous.” You shot back, his face dropping in a mock glare.

“Low blow.” He threw a roll of bandages at you, ones that bounced off of your head as you laughed at him, and rolled away to the concrete, and he pointed at them. “Go get them, and leave your attitude out there when you come back.”

You flipped him off, standing up to follow after the sealed bandages packet, and you scooped them up, glancing around the scene as two ambulances had already left, their house firetrucks following, and the third house was finishing their packing up. Brenda was packing away the coats into the van, hanging them up on the hooks inside the compartment to be washed and cleaned for later, and Minho was rolling the fire hoses back up with Jeff and Clint.

Thomas was rubbing a hand over his forehead, staring up at the building for a second, before turning, glancing around, and his eyes found yours. He paused for a second, one eye dropping in a lazy wink a moment later when he let Thomas crack through his lieutenant persona for a second, and he licked over his lips, stretching to a wide smile. He nodded his head for a second, a simple gesture but it felt like more than just that, and your lips pressed together to hold your smile, nodding your head in return, and letting your stare linger for a second longer, before going back to work.

Newt was waiting, still packing away and whistling a tune to himself as he worked, taking the bandages from you when you approached, and you hummed along in time with the tune once you recognised it enough, his eyes glinting when you did. It was an unspoken thing, a delicate symbol of friendship as the two of you worked in quiet harmony, humming along to the same song as you worked, settling in to a well worn and familiar routine that you hoped would never break.

#thomas #thomas x reader #thomas/reader #thomas the maze runner #ff!tommy #firefighter!tommy #dylan o'brien #dylan obrien #dylan obrien x reader #dylan obrien/reader #smoke and fire #SAF #dylan obrien thomas #dylan obrien the maze runner

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misslilli · 3 years

Text

Felix Felicis

MSR. AU. PG-13. | tagging @today-in-fic | AO3

Chapter 14 - Last Chance For Spotting A Rainbow

If you know you know ;)

[ FM ]

The second Friday in school marks the end of the grace period for the first-grade parents where they can accompany their kids all the way to the classroom. From now on, we wait for them in front of the school with the other parents.

It also ends the grace period where I can “casually” bump into Miss Scully in front of her classroom and I’m a little disappointed, to say the least.

This morning though, I get lucky because when we enter the school, we run into her on the way from the teacher’s lounge to the classroom, a stack of books in her arms and a cup of coffee perched perilously on top of them.

Felix is ecstatic. “Good morning, Miss Scully!,” he yells from across the front hall and tugs me towards her.

She stops and waits for us, her coffee cup wobbling. “Good morning, Felix! Mr. Mulder!”

“Good morning! Do you need help with that?” I gesture towards her books but the shakes her head no.

“No, no, I’m fine, thanks. So Felix, you got any big plans for this weekend?” They’re walking in front of me and I’m proud of myself that I steal a glance at her ass only once. Okay and one at her legs. ‘Those heels, oh boy. Another pair to add to my inappropriate fantasies, in most of which she always wears heels. And nothing else.’

“Yeah, we’re going to the farmer’s market tomorrow! Have you ever been there Miss Scully?” Felix swigs his schoolbag along, his gaze never leaving her.

“Actually, me and my friends go there every Saturday, so maybe we’ll run into you guys there!” I somehow get the feeling that if Felix gets any say in this, we’ll be spending the whole day there until we run into her.

When we reach the classrooms, she finally lets me help her out. “Could you get my keys please? They’re in my back pocket. Just pull on the lanyard.” ‘Oh Lord. They’re in the freaking back pocket of her jeans. Of course they are. I just can’t seem to catch a break.’

Biting back a dirty joke – which I’m 100% positive she wouldn’t appreciate – I do as told and tug on the lanyard, unlocking her classroom door and opening the door for her. I briefly wonder if I should just put the keys back where they were, but the thought alone almost gives me a heart attack, so instead, I loop the lanyard with her keys around her neck and she smiles thankfully.

“Thanks. Have a good weekend, Mulder boys!”

After school, I don’t see her again because they’re, as Felix informs me, in the gym already. But I’m treated to a story about her in recess in the car.

“So I was sitting on the teacher’s bench again today and Miss Scully was talking to Miss Anderson and you know how they’re kind of weird and only ever use the first letters of their names? Miss Anderson always calls her “D” and I’ve been wondering forever what it stands for.” Yes I do know, I had to get him the book of first names from our library’s top shelf. Also, a kid’s definition of forever will never cease to amaze me. It’s been a few days, tops. I wait for him to continue.

“… and then, Miss Anderson said it, dad! She said: ‘Dana, I’m not sure this is gonna work!’ Now I finally know! …Dana.”

I nod, but on the inside, I sincerely hope that he hasn’t made the obvious connection, that her name is almost eerily similar to his mother’s first name. Just one letter.

---------

[ DS ]

That night, we order Chinese takeout, none of us particularly interested in cooking and we gather around the kitchen table. Sarah passes out the chopsticks while Holly opens a bottle of Shiraz, our classes clinking together for a toast. “Two weeks down! So girls, how was your week? Any juicy stories?,” Sarah asks, looking around at us expectantly.

“Well… I could tell you about that really awful date I had this week with Mark the banker, on which he made a move 10 minutes into the conversation buuuut I get the feeling someone else might have more interesting stories.” Holly points her chopsticks at me and grins, waggling her eyebrows. My own chopsticks pause halfway to my mouth.

“Me? Why?” I ask innocently, stuffing a piece of spring roll into my mouth.

“Very funny! You wanna tell me why I saw a very handsome dad leave your classroom all smiley faced on Tuesday?” ‘Busted.’

“What?! Mr. Mulder? How did I miss this?” Sarah looks at the both of us incredulously.

“Because your classroom isn’t across from D’s and you didn’t happen to look out through the window to see Dopey McSmileypants leave! So D, spill it, and don’t leave anything out!” I shrug nonchalantly.

“I asked a mom to help with read-alouds but her kid was sick, so since Mr. Mulder happened to stand there, I asked him if he could do it. Of course, the kids were all over him with questions, who are you, what are you doing here, you know how curious they are. He was a big hit with them, though, they absolutely loved him.” ‘They’re not the only ones though’

“Bet they weren’t the only ones who loved him, huh?” Damn Sarah for reading my mind! I laugh uncomfortably, shifting in my seat, but I nod. It was really nice to have him in my classroom. To cover for the fact that I’m not telling them the whole story, I help myself to some Kung-Pao Chicken. Sarah catches on anyway, of course she does.

“Wow, that’s mighty nice of him, to take an hour out of his workday to help you out! But I get the feeling that there’s more to the story, what aren’t you telling us, D?”

“Well… after he left, the kids had even more questions, they practically fell over each other, why are your cheeks so red Miss Scully, is he my boyfriend, or is he my husband? And… I caught myself thinking ‘Ya, I wish!’ …” I trail off, a little embarrassed at my admission.

“Man this is some serious Romeo and Juliet shit that’s going on here, D. So we’ve established that you like him, we suspect that he likes you too, judging by the glazed over look on his face when you walk by and he thinks no-one is watching. What’s the hold-up then?”

“Please don’t tell me we’re still hung up on the people talk – good reputation bs!” If I had hoped that the conversation would not take this turn, Holly quickly extinguishes it.

“I don’t know, guys… it’s not complete bs though, you know how I hate when people gossip about me behind my back, and dating the new guy in town puts me in a spotlight that I’m not particularly comfortable being in. I guess what’s worse however is that I’m scared. Like, terrified, of putting my heart out there again after that 2 year on-again-off-again shitshow with Steve last year.”

“That narcissistic asshole…,” Holly mutters under her breath and the others nod, remembering when I had finally hit emotional rock-bottom last year, after I realized that he’d gaslighted me over and over again, resulting in me having a mental breakdown curled up on the cold bathroom floor.

“My anxiety has been badever since, it’s getting better with therapy, but still… I just know I’ll screw it up. I’m damaged goods.” Alex, who hasn’t said anything yet, listening intently, finally speaks up.

“That’s not true, D. You’re getting help and you know we’re always there for you.” – “Yeah, we’ll kick anybody’s ass who dares to hurt you!” – “Don’t interrupt me, S. If he’d ask you out on a date, do you think you’ll say yes?” I consider this for a moment.

“I’m not sure. I don’t really know anything about him except that he seems to be a great dad and that he believes in aliens…” Holly bursts out laughing at the last part.

“What? Aliens?” I tell them the story that took place with the PTA parents in front of the school and the others join Holly’s laughter and I’m grateful that the conversation has taken a lighter turn.

“That’s too funny... You know, he could really learn a thing or two from his son, he asked us to his and his dad’s birthday party today at recess! It was so sweet, guys, I can’t even… We’re all invited, by the way – I think it’s going to be quite the event!” Felix had come up to Sarah and me today, holding out an official invitation and one that he had made himself, just for us.

“Yay, a party, I love me a good party! So, are we going to go?” Holly looks at us questioningly. Sarah only scoffs, rolling her eyes.

“Are you kidding? Of course we’re going to go!”

#xf #the x files #xf fanfic #msr #felix felicis

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thebisexualdogdad · 4 years

Text

Sidekicks and sex pollens chapter 5

Co-written with @inhumanshadows

It had been a month since Bruce found out you were Mistletoe and he wasn't happy that Dick and Jason were still seeing you.

"He's a good person Bruce, he's not Ivy, he's not penguin and he's certainly not Joker," Jason stated.

"You don't truly know someone until you've seen them at their worst," Bruce responded.

"I don't need to see him at his worst to know he would never hurt us," Jason went on.

On the other side of town, Ivy was giving you an eerily similar conversation.

“Ivy? I love ya boss. But I can not quantify how much I do not care. I trust them. And if they screw over I can handle it.”

“Just be careful numb skull. I actually enjoy having you around. Tell anyone that and you’re dead.”

"You like me over Harley?" You tease.

"I don't like anyone over Harley dear," she winks, "speaking of i should get going, we have a very hot date planned tonight."

"Night boss... Have fun with your girl," you call out.

"Harley Quinn is no one's girl," Ivy laughs as she leaves.

She has as point. Harley is all her own

You lock the doors and shed your pants and shirt for one of Dicks sweatshirts. And nothing else.

Maybe I’ll text one of the boys

You: 'You up?'

Jaybird: 'did you just you up me?'

You: 'can't handle your own playbook Todd?'

Jaybird: 'touche'

You: 'I’m bored and wanna cuddle.'

Jaybird: 'why not text Dick?'

You: 'He didn’t answer so you coming or not? Oh and I’m not wearing pants.'

Jaybird: 'I'm on my way'

Twenty minutes later and Jason was at your front door.

"I see you were telling the truth about the no pants thing," he laughs taking in the way Dick's large shirt barely covers you.

"Would i ever lie to you babe?"

"Never"

Jason jumps into your arms and you carry him to your bed.

You put on the last episode of a show while Jason strips and puts on your shirt. You lay on his chest and watch the show on screen.

“So how was your day?” You ask

"Bruce is being a prick again," he sighs.

"About what?" You ask.

He hesitates to tell you the truth, not wanting to hurt your feelings.

"He doesn't trust you," Jason says nervously.

"I don't need Bruce to trust me Jay, as long as you and Dick trust me that's all that matters"

“Oh... that’s good.”

“And besides Ivy doesn’t trust you two as far as she could throw you. I told her that if you two fuck up, I’ll handle it.”

“How?” Jason asks.

“You don’t wanna know.”

"Do you ever think about leaving Gotham behind? You, me and Dick just... Running away and starting over somewhere new?" Jason questions.

"I have and as nice as it would be, none of us could ever leave Gotham behind, it's part of who we are," you say rubbing you thumb over his ribs comforting him.

“But isn’t Gotham like a toxic family member? Sometimes you gotta leave it behind to be better and happy?” Jason points out, uncharacteristically.

“Someone’s been raiding my bookshelf. But you have a point... enough of that for now. I just wanna lay with one of the best things in my life.”

"Alright," Jason says pulling you closer to him.

Suddenly your phone begins to buzz, you groan not wanting to move but lean over to grab your phone off your bedside table.

"It's Dick," you smile sliding to accept the call, "hello?"

"Hey sorry i just got your texts," he says out of breath.

"Patrolling alone again?" You ask.

"Yeah but it turned out to be a bust."

"Well Jason is over at my place you want to come join the half naked cuddle session to make you feel better?" You chuckle.

"I'll be over soon."

Dick must’ve sprinted with how fast he gets to your door. That and how out of breath and sweaty his is.

“Hi. Dick, normally love you all sweaty. But uh- you gotta shower.” You say, pulling him inside.

Dick chuckles and pecks your cheek before he strips naked and walks to your bathroom.

“Feel free to join me you two.”

“My shower isn’t that big. Just shower and get your soon to be clean ass over here!!” You shout.

Shortly after a freshly showered Dick is stepping out of the bathroom and climbing into bed next to you.

"I don't know a better feeling than being between my two favorite people," you say snuggling into them both.

"I love you guys," Dick says.

"I love you both," you say in return.

You expected Jason to say it back but instead you were met with the sound of him loudly snoring.

"Guess it's time to go to sleep," you laugh.

"Good night," Dick says kissing you softly.

"Night."

You wake up around 5AM to two very obvious things poking you. Normally, you'd do something but you just lay on Dick's chest and try to sleep more, praying for an uneventful day.

You seem to get your wish when you wake a few hours later to Jason's ass peeking out from the blanket, still asleep and Dick reading a book that obviously came from your bookshelf. His free hand slowly moving through your hair.

"Morning. I made breakfast and put your plate aside."

"How should we wake the sleeping bird."

"Let him sleep, he has no issue eating cold food," Dick says.

You take a bite and stuff it in your mouth, "can I ask you something?"

"Anything," he says taking a sip of his coffee.

"How do you feel about Bruce not trusting me?" You ask him.

"It doesn't bother me as much as Jason, he hasn't quite learned yet how to ignore Bruce's intrusive opinions," he says casually, "does it bother you?"

"I don't want it to but I know how important Bruce is to you guys."

“Thanks. But honestly to me at this point... I couldn’t give less of a shit what Bruce thinks.” Dick says.

“That’s okay... I guess.”

“What about you? With Ivy. I know you think pretty highly of her.”

"Ivy showed me that i could do more for the world than being stuck in a lab all day, she's my mentor but we don't agree on everything," you explain.

Once again your phone buzzes taking you out of the moment with your boys, this time however it's Harley calling.

"That's weird, Harley never calls me," you say out loud before picking up, "uh hello?"

"Y/N? Y/N get your ass to the old oil refinery downtown," Harley tells you.

"What? Why?" You say confused.

"It's Ivy she's in trouble," she responds and the line goes dead.

"What's going on?" Jason asks in a haze of waking up.

"I- I don't know- I gotta go," you say stumbling out of bed looking for any clothes you could find.

“Be careful...” Dick says, but you’re already gone.

You get to the Oil refinery, skin changed and the persona of Mistletoes assumed.

Harley is outside, pacing.

“Harley! What’s going on?”

You take in Harley's appearance, she's got cuts all over and covered in sut, the smell of a fire is now filling the air.

"We went in there to destroy some new fracking machine they are building but there was an explosion and I can't find her anywhere," she says clearly scared.

A shadow passes over you two, both looking up to see a sliver a cape fly into the building.

"Shit it's the bat! Y/N you gotta go find her!" Harley shouts.

"I'll find her I promise," you say running into the building.

The smoke is thick, dark and burns your eyes. You toss some air filtering seeds down to do what they can.

“Ivy!! Ivy!! Where are you!!”

The only answer you have is an explosion from above you. You jump forward, narrowly avoiding a painful potential death.

Damn it! I gotta find her and get out fast... and before Bruce finds her...”

You scower the refinery, ending up in dead end after dead end..

"Help"

That was Ivy's voice.

"Ivy!" You shout.

"Y/N"

You follow the voice and that's when you see her.

She's trapped underneath a fallen beam.

"Ivy!" You yell again as you run to her.

“Hey kid...” Her voice is weak.

“Don’t talk. Let’s get this off of you and get you back to Harley.

You toss a semicircle of the air filter plants and then summon many vines to lift the beam off of Ivy.

A few more booms ring in the facility. As soon as she’s free you drag her from under, throwing her arm around your shoulder.

“Let’s go. If we die... Harley would bring me back just to kill me.” You joke.

"Ivy what did you do," a bold voice from above yells.

"Not now Batman," you say dragging Ivy along desperate for an exit.

Bruce jumps down from a riser landing in front of you.

"I said not now!" You say angrily, sending vines towards him to throw him away from you.

You hear his body crash against a wall and to be honest- you gave zero fucks.

You have a few more vines tear open a metal door, Harley in the distance. You can tell by her body language she’d been crying.

“Hold on Ivy, almost there.” You tell her. There’s another chain of explosions as you approach Harley.

“Oh thank god!!” Harley cries.

She takes Ivy from you and you pull two vials from your bag, the liquid a slight green glow.

“Here, these will help Ivy get her strengths back. Use one now and the next tomorrow morning. I’ll try and buy some time with the Bat.”

Harley takes the vials and gives you a knowing nod and takes off, carrying Ivy in her arms.

You knew your emotions had gotten the best of you in that moment so you ran back inside to make sure Bruce wasn't hurt.

"How could you let her get away after doing this," Bruce scolds dodging another falling beam as it hits the ground.

"Do you know what they were going to do with that machine? It would kill the environment!" You shout.

"This refinery is what keeps Gotham out of poverty and now it's destroyed," Bruce retorts.

"Oh like you care about the people breaking their backs in this place for minimum wage while the rich get richer from their hard work, Wayne industries can keep this entire city out of poverty alone but instead you sit in your high castle only adding to the problem."

"I do everything i can to help this city," Bruce says.

"But it's not enough, it will never be enough, not for Gotham, not for the world," you stammer, "all Ivy and i want is to save the environment from those who are killing it like this refinery."

"There's gotta be a better way-"

Before Bruce could finish his sentence a loud crack came from the ceiling, another beam engulfed in flames heading straight for Bruce.

You stretch your arms and have vines pull you and Bruce towards the door, an explosion rocketing you both outside.

You hit the ground and roll with a thud, ears ringing. You clutch your head and look for Bruce amidst the debris.

You find him a good ten feet to your left, slowly rising.

“You-you saved me...” He says.

“Don’t be surprised... I may not like that you don’t trust me. But I know how important you are to this city and to Jason and Dick. Plus, I’m not a monster.”

You toss a pollen pod at him and use the cloud to escape.

It's a few days later, you haven't talked to Dick or Jason about what happened, you don't know how.

You're sitting in your lab, studying samples from a crime scene when there's a knock at your door.

"Come in," you shout across the room.

When the door opens you turn around and it's Bruce.

"What are you doing here?" You say surprised.

"I've been thinking about what you said and i have an offer for you," he says walking towards you.

"What kind of offer?"

"I want you to come work for Wayne Industries."

You sit there speechless.

"You were right, Wayne Industries can do a lot more not only for Gotham but for the world than what we are currently doing so I want to create a new initiative within the company to fight the damages done to our environment and I want you to lead the department," he explains.

You fully turn to face Bruce, eyebrow raised.

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch. I promise. You’d be in control of the department. I’d also like to offer you a room in the Manor and apologize for not trusting you. You saved my life yesterday.”

“I can’t just up and leave my job here.”

“Actually you can. I’ve had Alfred prep recruitment papers. All you need to do is sign.”

"Have you told Dick and Jason?" You ask.

"No i didn't want to get their hopes up in case you decline," he tells you.

"And how am I supposed to tell Ivy?"

"As long as you don't tell Ivy who I really am she won't know you're working for the enemy just the richest man in Gotham," he chuckled.

"And she would be pretty happy to see me lead my own initiative," you say considering your options, "I'm in."

“Glad to hear it. What about the room at the Manor? I’d be more than happy to pay for any and all moving expenses.” Bruce supplies.

“I’ll take it. And would it be alright if I told Dick and Jason? And we could start packing my place

"I'm sure they would rather hear from you than me," he smiles, "well I'll let you get back to work."

"I gotta call the boys," you tell yourself when he leaves.

#titans imagine #jason todd imagine #jason todd x reader #jason todd x male reader #dick grayson imagine #dick grayson x reader #dick grayson x male reader #dick grayson x jason todd x reader #dick grayson x jason todd x male reader #fic #co write #co written #sidekicks and sex pollen

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where-all-the-time-went · 3 years

Text

gah, screw it

[ID: A tumblr post from me, reading, “now is probably the time to write my 500-word essay on the politics of revolution of the daleks that gets 30 notes and is never seen again, which i return to in a month to find a lot of typos, otherwise no one will see it, isn’t it,,, “but i haven’t seen jack robertson’s first episode,,,”. End ID.] answer: yes, it is. but im gonna take a while to write this and look up a summary of arachnids in the uk (which i dont wanna watch because i heard its Not Good and you dont have to watch every episode of doctor who to be a fan, ok?) i sometimes talk about politics on tumblr, but rarely do i make political posts--mainly because, as my sidebar bio says, i’m a teenager. i don’t really have a degree in politics, and as much as i have been trying to read up on political stuff, its kinda hard when i dont have access to a college professor to guide me along. still, some things about this episode stood out to me, especially because it’s stuff i’ve noticed in a lot of media. i’m not even sure where i stand politically, but i absolutely love media commentary, and i have so many thoughts i feel like i never get to put out there when im watching movies and tv. obviously, spoilers under the cut (and it probably won’t actually be 500 words. probably.) i’m also gonna assume you’ve seen this episode, because i don’t wanna recap it. if you haven’t, go watch it! tbh, it’s well worth it (my favorite chibs era episode, just ahead of the haunting of villa diodati and demons of the punjab)

Now, um, obviously this episode is political. It’s the in-your-face without down-your-throat type of political we know and love. Still, media can be a direct allegory that wouldn’t bother the average viewer while still having politics that are good, bad, or somewhere in the middle (I mean this extremely subjectively). First, I’d like to address the elephant in the room:

While a Doctor Who festive special would normally film in the summer, this time the episode was filmed well ahead in winter 2019, over a year before it was due to be broadcast in a bid to include it within filming for series 12 (which aired from January to March) and give cast a longer break.

- The Radio Times

I’ve noticed some people pointing out that the episode references the protests that happened this summer. Honestly, I’d love it if that was the intention behind the episode, because then maybe Chris Chibnall’s team really does have a TARDIS, and we can all just time travel out of this mess.

[ID: An image from “Revolution of the Daleks.” A very sleek Dalek stands in front of police who have riot shields. The air is foggy, possibly gaseous. End ID.] However, the protests from this summer and the episode itself do not exist inside a bubble. Police brutality did not come into existence this summer, and it did not end with the autumn equinox. The episode, while featuring a small-scale protest that was eerily reminiscent of the large BLM protests this year, chooses to focus instead on one of the roots of the issue: somehow, capitalism.

I can’t say how purposeful the anti-capitalist messaging in the episode was. Obviously, Jack Robertson is meant to be an American capitalist caricature. Not to mention, Doctor Who is a family-friendly show: you can’t get too overt with what can be considered “radical” coding. Nonetheless, the episode tackles the connection between policing and money, and thus inherently comments on capitalism.

The Dalek itself only exists to support the police force because Prime Minister Patterson knows that the idea of security will appeal to her constituency. Simultaneously, it could not exist if Robertson didn’t know just how profitable it would be. As they preach security, they create chaos. More importantly, the security they preach is one that bases itself on profit--similar to the weapons of the policeforce, and the prison industrial complex. As a result, the “security” inevitably fails.

[ID: Prime Minister Patterson, in a red coat, listens to Jack Robertson and Leo, in dark neutral-toned clothes both. They stand in front of a brick wall as they discuss the new Dalek plans. End ID.] Unfortunately, while the show presents a clear stance against money in policing, there is never any direct call to action. The political allegory may be straightforward and obvious, but the solution at the end is just to end the Daleks, and watch as Robertson announces his run for President (which, by the way, is very reminiscent of Trump, who does exist in-universe, so that’s weird). Regardless of all that, why am I even talking about this? Well, on the one hand, I love talking about these sorts of things. On the other hand, this post has started to sound like nothing but a rant with some pictures. Earlier, I said that this was something I noticed in a lot of media. For instance, I think of “The Boys,” with its obvious anti-capitalist and anti-military industrial complex messaging. At the same time, the show offers no solutions. Both are afraid of the obvious solution to capitalism: replacing it. To be clear, I say this as a person who is unsure about capitalism. I don’t know where I stand. Like I said, I’m a teenager. However, these shows can’t seem to make a decision either, when they're made by big companies with big budgets and professional adults. Politics in popular media tends to fit perfectly with the popular politics of the time, given that media must do so in order to make profit. Hence, similar to the media we consume, so many individuals seem to recognize that there’s something off with the hand money has in politics, and war, and security, yet no one seems to look for solutions. Personally, I love talking about politics in the media, and analyzing media in general, because it’s the best way for me to communicate my internal thoughts. Meanwhile, I don’t even know my own internal thoughts. This post’s very existence is ironic. I had said in a very awful post that I wanted to write this when the tag was still trending, because I, in part, want someone else to do the thinking for me. I want people to see this and go, “well, okay, here’s where you’re wrong,” or, “here’s what we do about it.” Do I then have a responsibility to know what I’m talking about? Is the discourse all that matters? Does the media as a whole have to propel revolutionary ideas to get them into the social conscience, or can it just open up discussion? There is, of course, irony in shows that could only exist in a capitalist world degrading aspects of that system. But no one, not even me, is exempt from the fact that these ideas do not exist in a bubble. The show’s protests look eerily familiar because, as this summer has proven, those protests are profitable (see literally every ad from companies that own sweatshops talking about how much they care about races they don’t represent in their board of directors). At the same time, I exist in that capitalist world, and my opinions have been formed via the capitalist media I was raised with. tl;dr: i know literally nothing. im sure of literally nothing. help, someone tell me about the politics of doctor who. wow, this was a really sad tl;dr, i normally make a shitty joke here. um, uh, EXTERMINATE

#doctor who #revolution of the daleks #thirteenth doctor #13th doctor #politics #i put so much effort into this yet im not super proud of it #im probably gonna edit it later #which means im probably not gonna edit it and will just have to live with whatever comes of it #goddamn tho i can't believe i got here from talking about a businessman in a cheesy kids show #no one get mad at me for calling who a kids show #i know its not #ok i need to stop with the tags now #i'm adding everyone's names i want people to see this post i worked so HARD #yasmin khan #yaz khan #ryan sinclair #graham o'brien

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onlyhereforangst · 4 years

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WWR

Ok so maybe I shouldn’t call this Weekly Wednesday Reflections anymore since I’m terrible at writing it in time 🤷🏻‍♀️ granted it is Wednesday...just a week late 😅

I’m pretty sure this is my new favorite Ellick episode. After rewatching it, I’m just so- happy with it. From exploring Ellie’s range of emotions and character depth to the progress we saw in their relationship just 🥰

The opening scene already gives us SO MUCH. First, they jog as the cutest freaking married couple I’ve ever seen and this certainly is a routine because they knew to target him here. But Nick teasing her by sprinting, her struggling to keep up but giggling with each other because clearly it’s not the first time he does that little speed up thing & she’s working on getting faster because she used to hate training for marathons like- can you NOT. My heart can’t take the implications, ALSO Gibbs & McGee didn’t bat an eye that they just so happened to be jogging together in the early morning (everyone was only just leaving their house on their morning commute) so they know it’s their routine too and don’t even question it. GAH.

Flashforward to hospital scene with Ellie breaking my heart slowly. She’s clearly been crying by the red rimmed eyes, and yet also trying to hold it together to be strong for Nick & so she does the only thing she knows how to do since feelings scare her and the love of her life Nick just got hit. Ellie’s logical brain takes over as she does best (see 16x18 for reference) - when she’s dealing with emotions, all she can do is her job, it’s all that makes sense in the monsoon of feelings. She’s going to analyze every last bit of the hit & run and immediately parrot it back so that *something* can be done right away and she can find justice for Nick. She doesn’t care about her own health- just justice for Nick. And in that same vein, she doesn’t want to eat, she doesn’t want to rest, she doesn’t want to sit down until she knows Nick is okay (I’m sorry but to have a CODE NAME from the nurses because they feel the need to run from you- can you say “Crazy Worried Wife™️”??)

Kasie is our new captain, it has been decided. (I think this was already decided but I’m making an official decree) Her probing McGee to see his reaction because girl knows why Bishop is taking it harder, please. Then laughing it off for McGee, “we all gon need therapy if those two ever hook up” while thinking *boy you better stop denying because you KNOW they hooking up after this shit* is just 🙌🏼 the outright addressing of Ellick by the show- thank youuuuu.

Ok and now begins the Ellie show. Excuse me, the BADASS BISHOP SHOW. (Also why I’m partial to this being my fave ep). First- girl does not know how to holster her gun. Ellie: “you say there’s a tiny lead” *cocks gun* “let’s go” I’m herrrrrre for it. She’s blunt with everyone, she doesn’t care when Gibbs gives her the look, she don’t take no SHIT in interrogation. “You’d have to be [creative]” had me cry-ing 😭😭😭 AND THEN her equivalent of cursing out Vance over Nick, followed up by freaking out in the bullpen had me breaking on my couch. YES ELLIE GET IT is what I believe I chanted. The stare off, oh lordy. Y’all I was sweating I was pissed for her. Just the raw emotion in her eyes, the constant holding back tears and tears I just- 😭💔 and emojis don’t do it justice. I wanted soooo bad for her to land a sweet, sweet punch like she did with Victor, but knowing a second offense unprovoked wouldn’t go over too well, she held back. But aaaahh that scene was SO heartbreaking. And then, and THEN Ellie standing there gazing at his desk- oof. Her body language was key- her crossed arms, holding herself literally together so she doesn’t break?? She wants to break, y’all. She wants to break. Staying strong for Nick is the only thing getting her through.

When Gibbs sends her to be at the hospital because THE WHOLE DAMN TEAM KNOWS, I did a happy dance. McGee encouraging her but almost pulse-checking Gibbs after was very very intriguing. Gibbs’ “He’s a fighter” followed by McGee’s pulse-check, “so is Bishop...” and Gibbs’ exasperated look off towards the elevator and admission of agreement says SO MUCH. First- McGee is worried about not only Nick, but his sister, Ellie. He knows how much Qasim’s death hurt her, knows what she went through after- WHICH TIME OUT. For anyone saying this episode was OOC for Ellie? Sit the hell down and go watch 14x16. Then come back. Then continue reading. Ok resume WWR- McGee also knows how much more Torres means to her, he may try to deny it, but he knows. Implying Bishop is a fighter, obviously not about her health because *she’s fine* but more about what she’d do out of revenge. (And the man doesn’t even know Bishop is about to say she’s gonna kill him) Gibbs’ already sees himself a little in her, recognizing the same feeling he experienced with Shannon many years ago- hence the completive look on his face & heavy sigh. He knows he’ll have to revisit Rule 12 soon (but also in his mind he’s basically already burned it like Rule 10).

Speaking of Ellie saying she’s going to kill him, please see this excerpt from my notes during the ep: “FUCK YES BISHOP - the emotions!!!!!!!” That basically sums up how I felt the entire scene & commercial break afterward 🤷🏻‍♀️😂😂 My reaction when it came back? KILL HIM. But like in all seriousness, her face- holy shit going from on the verge of tears when they rolled Nick away to calculating her next move as McGee’s talking to her to making up her mind that she will be committing murder (please, girl already planned it & is just deciding which lipstick to wear during it at this point). Emily Wickersham is an amazing actress and I don’t care what you have to say. And yes, McGee trying to calm her down in a big brother way is adorable, but Ellie not having it is great. “Torres doesn’t get a say” is such a Nick thing to do of her 😭 Remember Luis going off on his own, yeah- this is Ellie’s version because she wants to & her husband is rubbing off on her. Oh also, the office she refers to? Totally means Ziva’s office at Odette’s - “if we missed something, I’ll find it there.” Hmmmm sounds eerily similar to *why* Ziva had that office in the first place, doesn’t it 🤔 also explains the lack of her on HQ’s logs and her “going home” excuse— which by the way, her shrugging them all off? Suspect Bishop, suspect. Her trying to play it all off with a wry laugh, not gonna lie, I love it. Her “too late” to Gibbs is quite interesting though- she sees herself going down that path any way, because she killed him? Or because she triggered a chain of events that will lead to it? Or because she may not have killed him, but lord knows she wanted to & planned it down to every last detail? Like I said, interesting.

Ok side note: Jack suggesting taking her off duty kinda pisses me off - with the spiraling comment too. She got to spiral when that guy from her past came & it screwed with her psyche, why the f can’t Bishop? It just rubbed me the wrong way, but I don’t hate Jack (don’t @ me, people.)

Back to Badass Bishop Show. She literally always has her gun out now. Just walking to the penthouse again where they didn’t try anything last time, *cocks gun.* When Gibbs comes up and tells her Nick is away 😩 Her relief though in the fact that he’s asking about her and he’s hungry (Ellie rubbing off on him, you can’t tell me I’m wrong) to go to the kicking down the door because that’s what her baby does so therefore she kicks down doors now- the parallels & the influence 😭😭

THE BATHROOM SCENE. McGee like seriously? You actually killed him?? And Gibbs like “oh fuck here we go again.” And then Jimmy had me dyinggggg. Theory alert: I really think Ellie (maybe Gibbs went with her & they’re helping each other with alibis/cover up??) went to kill him but got there after it had happened, that’s why she’s a little cagey about it- not that she *actually* killed the guy. BUT reference 14x16 again, I wouldn’t put it past her.

The final hospital bed scene has my heart. Ellie is so relieved and just so happy and open (but also a little nervous about what happens next so she hides a touch of her emotions, can’t let him see alllll of her heart now can we)- going back to their teasing ways, “worst pretend sleeper”, “next time jump out of the way” - UGH so cute. Side note, they use last names here almost similarly to the submarine episode. When shit gets scary real for them, it’s their way of grounding themselves almost, trying to hide just how much that incident actually affected them. They both do it & yes, it frustrates the hell out of me, but at the same time shows me just how much they care for the other 😭 BUT this time!! Nick made it take a serious turn, and I think Ziva finally got through to him- that sentence “cause you know I risked my life to save yours” is more him openly saying like oh shit I really did that 1. to himself and 2. to finally take that next baby step in their relationship. The emotion behind it showing her it wasn’t just because they’re partners- he wanted her to know that for sure, to make sure he didn’t just make light of it & glaze over it. He needed it out there in the universe that he Nicholas Torres, of sixteen different identities & no family, nothing to live for anymore, would rather DIE- than see Ellie in harms way. He needed it to be tangible for himself AND for her. Because this is growth, this is not what most people think of when they think of him.

And Ellie’s response: the look, hesitation building up courage, and making that first move of physical touch speaks VOLUMES about Ellie at this point. Not only does she take hold of his hand, but she rubs it in a soothing gesture. As if she needs to confirm for herself he’s really there, he’s really alive. The struggle she went through, the turmoil- wasn’t all for not. It’s her saying “I know” not just to the fact that she was joking earlier, she knows he risked his life & she’s grateful for that, but she knows it was more than because they’re just partners, more than just best friends even. That first move is her saying “I know” and “I might be ready to open up & let you in to the walls that surround my heart because the last time I was in a hospital staring at someone I loved, it didn’t turn out the same. Except this time, it took the hospital trip to really bring that into focus, and I know I can’t let that happen again.” Aaaaaaand catch me sobbing in the corner, it’s fine. I’m fine.

Nick’s reaction speaks volumes from him too, his slight shock to Ellie reciprocating & making that first move with his soft smile that is hinted at across his face to show he knows she’s letting him peak in, just a little, and that’s a start. A start people!!!

Last notes: Gibbs being such a dad and defending Nick liking his fireplace is the cutest. Vance was eager to get out of there at the end- his contacts are very very suspicious... And on that note, I really do not think it was Gibbs. I think Gibbs and Bishop may have gotten there after it happened with the purpose of doing something, so now they’re covering for each other, but I do not think it was either of them.

Pretty sure this is officially my longest review to date, WHOOPS. If you made it this far, congrats & thanks for staying with my inner ramblings 🙃 Like I said- my favorite episode so farrrrrr (now let’s see if we get anything AFTER this episode......lol I got jokes 😅).

#WWR #ncis #ellick #torres x bishop #s17 #17x14

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dammit-stark · 4 years

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oooh not that many people write natmaria! will you write 94 and natmaria

“Reasoning is not gonna work with them” - natmaria, 2k words (I got a little carried away with this one but can you blame me I love natmaria okay) - also available on ao3 here

There was something weird about bringing Maria to the Avengers facility that felt oddly similar to… introducing her to her parents. Which is ridiculous on multiple levels, just absolutely neurotic really. Such as the fact that Nat has never had real parents, as well as the fact that Maria is probably closer to being real family to her than the Avengers actually are. But Nat can’t explain it, she’s nervous.

At the very least, she’s about to introduce her girlfriend to her very capable group of overprotective, emotionally intense roommates. Nat feels secure in this anxiety. But Maria insists that being introduced to the rest of Nat’s team as her girlfriend- not just the chick who does all the research, and moves all the money around, and occasionally kicks some hydra ass- is an eventuality they should face sooner rather than later. Nat argues that no, who’s to say they can’t just never tell any of the Avengers and never have to deal with everybody else? Maria shuts that idea down almost immediately with the proposition of sleeping alone on the couch. Nat begrudgingly agrees to an introduction.

The ride up to the Avengers compound is pleasant enough. Nat drives the old red convertible and Maria controls the radio, their hands happily intertwined over the central console. It’s something they’ve done a million times before.

But then Nat turns left at a fork in the road and that ostentatious fucking A comes into view and Nat pulls her hand away from Maria, both hands tightening anxiously around the wheel.

“You sure you want to do this? There’s still time, Cap won’t have even noticed that I’m here yet, and Tony owes me one. I can turn around right now and it won’t matter.”

“Keep driving, Nat,” Maria tells her, watching her girlfriend out of the corner of her eye, “We’re doing this.”

Here’s the thing with Nat: she’s saved the world multiple times, she’s lost count of how many people she’s killed (though she remembers every name, every last face, she makes sure of it), she’s been a career assassin since before she reached puberty. But she’s never really done the ‘going steady’ thing, and so now that she has a girlfriend who loves her even with the assassin/killing stuff, she has to do some things she’s never done before (a list that in and of itself is incredibly short). Nat’s at a point in her

Nat pulls up to the big glass building and turns the car off, looks over at Maria with a dramatic sigh, “We have to do this?”

Maria laughs and gets out of the car, “Yes, Nat. Absolutely have to. Come on. We’re doing this.”

Maria reaches for Nat’s hand as Nat scans her ID and enters the facility. Friday’s familiar voice comes over the invisible intercoms, “Natasha Romanoff. Code name: black widow. ID number alpha-beta-three. What is the name and reason for your visitor?”

“Maria Hill,” Nat says, looking over at her girlfriend nervously. Maria squeezes her hand just a little tighter, “I have something to talk to the team about. Can you tell them all to meet me in the conference room or, no can we do the kitchen?”

There’s an infinitesimal pause before Friday answers, and if Friday wasn’t an AI, Nat would almost call it smug. Friday responds positively, “Welcome, Ms. Hill. I’ll let the rest of the team know that you would like to speak with them in the kitchen, m’am.”

“Thanks, Friday,” Nat pulls Maria down a long glass hallway to a modern kitchen area lined with extra-large appliances fit for super humans with extra-large metabolisms and a sturdy-looking wooden table with a dozen available seats for an entire team to sit at any given time.

Maria’s been to the Avengers facility before. Hell, Tony offered her her own space when he was building it. But most of what Maria does for the team is less super-heroing and more super-managing; it felt wrong to accept, like she was fooling herself. So she comes and makes camp in one of the conference rooms when she has to and spends the night at a hotel a mile down the road. But this is different. Here like this, it’s Nat’s home now. She spends her nights at this place and makes breakfast in this very kitchen, she pads around in socks and bare feet and does dishes and laundry. To Maria, the compound feels like an entirely different place today.

Tony and Steve, in true ‘team leaders’ fashion enter the kitchen first. Tony nurses a novelty Captain America ceramic coffee mug and Steve smiles down at something Tony had just said, their elbows bumping, and Maria is reminded once again of being thrown into an alternate universe en media res, that this is a home as well as an office, an intimate space.

Steve takes a seat at the opposite end of the table, smiling at Nat and Maria and nodding a silent hello while Tony makes a show of topping off his coffee and pouring a fresh cup for Steve.

“Good morning, ladies,” Tony practically sings as he delivers Steve a coffee cup of his own- this one branded with the lines of Iron Man’s helmet sketched onto it.

“Stark.” Nat snipes back, sounding uncannily to Maria’s ear like a sibling, somehow making a single word sound like a slit throat, “And what have you been up to?”

Steve blushes terribly, hides his face in his steaming mug while Tony just looks like the cat who ate the canary.

“Oh you know,” Tony replies cheekily, “Just working.”

Nat is obviously far from convinced, but then Wanda and Vision enter the room, ecstatic to see Nat, and Tony is cut off. Wanda presses a kiss to Nat’s cheek before sitting down next to Steve, Vision next to her. Then Sam enters, and Rhodey. Clint gets all theatrical about giving Maria an exaggerated hug, looking meaningfully in Nat’s direction before he takes his own seat. And suddenly everybody’s there and Nat’s faced with the terrifying realization that this is happening right now.

Despite the anxieties they both know she garners, Maria watches as Nat molds herself into this confident posture of hers, seemingly at ease with her legs crossed primly, shoulders pushing back into the back support of her chair.

“I gathered you all here today because Cap over there is always going on about team solidarity, or bonding or whatever. And so I thought it was important that you guys, as my team members, knew that Maria and I are engaged.”

Tony stands straight up, his chair pushed violently backward by his knees, immediately demands, “Engaged? Since when have you not been single, Romanoff? What the hell?”

Steve’s hand quickly raises to wrap softly around Tony’s forearm, a gentle, silent reminder to Tony not to be overly dramatic as Steve himself smiles at Nat and Maria, “What Tony means is congratulations. We’re very happy for you guys.”

“When’s the wedding, ladies?” Sam says, folding his hands together and looking equivocally smug.

Maria glances at Nat and answers, “We haven't set a date. We’re not really in that much of a rush.”

Clint leans back in his chair and adopts an expression eerily similar to Sam’s. He very poorly hides a snicker, and Maria gets the distinct impression that both he and Sam were up to something.

Neither Nat not Maria have the chance to prod the resident birdmen about their peculiar reactions because Steve sudden releases his grip on Tony’s forearm, face screwing up meaningfully and says, “Why not?”

At the same time, Tony demands, “Well who’s planning the wedding?”

Nat and Maria both shrug, seemingly at ease against the adjunct wedding-planning-related horror of two infamous heroes.

As highly skilled spies, it shouldn’t be as easy as it is for the two team leaders to con them into wedding planning after that. It’s like they went into shock and blacked out at the phrase who’s planning the wedding and they woke up two weeks later to Tony pressing four nearly identical bouquets of periwinkles at the two brides.

Steve’s on the phone behind Tony, pacing back and forth with a pencil behind his ear, talking in rapid Italian to some celebrity baker that neither of the actual brides involved in this wedding had ever so much as heard of.

Tony pushes the bouquets closer to Nat, “Come on just pick one.”

Maria points at the second one from the left, and Tony looks mildly disgusted, but nods anyway and leaves the brides to go steal Steve’s pencil from behind his ear and record Maria’s choice.

“You could tell the difference between those?”

Maria shakes her head, “Not even a little bit, but I figured it’d get rid of him faster if I just picked one.”

Nat smiles gratefully, “Good thinking.”

Maria sighs, leaning towards Nat with her voice low, “How in the world did we get here?”

“I believe started with somebody insisting that we tell the team about our relationship.”

“How could I have known they were insane?”

“Eight superheroes live in a remote training facility together. Of course we’re all insane.”

“I see you’re lumping yourself in with that group. Anything you want to tell me?”

“Oh sorry, I thought agreeing to marry you counted as insane.”

Maria elbows her in the side, arm moving to wrap around her waist, “It’s okay, I guess. I can be sane enough for the both of us.”

Nat feigns incredulity, “Oh, I never said you were sane,” She leans in to press a kiss to her fiancé’s lips,their breath mingling intimately, “You’re as crazy as the rest of us, Hill.”

The soft moment is broken by Tony cooing at them from the other side of the kitchen counter “Aw, now isn’t that just sweet.”

Steve smiles warmly at the pair of them from over Tony’s shoulder. Maria blushes minutely, but Nat just glares at them.

“I need you ladies to stay right there while I go and run the napkin samples,” Tony demands, and he sweeps dramatically out of the room, “I’ll be right back.”

Steve is distracted by the handwritten guest list when Maria leans back in toward Nat, “How in the world did Stark end up planning our wedding?”

“I honestly have no clue.”

“Do we even want any of this stuff? I don’t care about bouquets or any of this bullcrap.”

Nat shrugs, “There’s no reasoning with them. They’ve decided they’re gonna plan our wedding and now there’s nothing we can do to stop them. It’s how they work.”

“You know what would drive Stark absolutely insane beyond anything else?” Maria grins malevolently, whispers her plan in Nat’s ear.

Nat’s eyes glimmer, and she leans in to press a kiss to Maria’s lips, “I knew I agreed to marry you for a reason.”

Tony comes running back in the room then, going mad over the difference between eggshell and cream. Steve puts his hand over the speaker of his cell to ask if they’d prefer chocolate or vanilla. Nat gives a random answer. It doesn’t matter. What matters to her is that she and Maria love each other. That’s it. Nothing else matters. Maria nods along. They’re on the same page.

When Nat and Maria stride onto the compound Monday morning, Tony’s already in mad wedding planner mode. Steve hurriedly tells them that they have an appointment with the tailor in an hour. Tony’s saying about twenty different things at once.

“And then we have to meet with the florist. After the florist, we’re gonna visit the venue to approve the chairs. Then I’ll take you to this great place Pepper showed me and you can pick-“

“Hey, Tony?” Nat cuts him off. She’s got a shit-eating grin and one arm looped with Maria’s, “Wanna ses something cool?”

“I don’t have time to- what the fuck, Nat!”

Both brides show off their brand spanking new matching wedding rings, “Got married over the weekend, Stark.”

Steve nearly drops his phone, “Hey, uh, I’m gonna have to call you back.”

Maria smiles too, “Had a courthouse wedding. It was great. Clint and Sam were our witnesses. A federal judge signed the papers. We didn’t have to wear white.”

Tony’s face turns an alarming shade of red. It’s so bad that Steve has to grab his arm and ask him if he’s going to be okay. He can’t form coherent sentences, “I hate you both!” He manages as Steve drags him to his office to cool off.

Steve looks sheepishly back at them just before he closes the door, Tony already cursing violently from inside the room, “Hey, Maria?” Steve calls, one hand wrapped around the door, “Welcome to the family.”

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corpse--diem · 4 years

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Only If For A Night | Nic & Erin

@bountybossier

Two glasses sat on the empty metal body slab, the dark auburn of the whiskey beside it bouncing off the bad overhead lighting. Ready and waiting. Nic had made good on his word when he’d told their boss a heads up would be needed. Dale informed her there’d be a body on it’s way to the funeral home and their hunter-for-here would be delivering. The basement was eerily quiet now without the sounds of her father bellowing and growling in the background. Erin’s eyes moved to the large blood stain in the middle of the room where she hadn’t been able to completely remove the last trace of the night that had absolved her of that particular problem. Maybe it was time to get a rug down here. Realized how she looked just now, literally standing around, waiting for Nic to drop in with the delivery. Yikes. This was weird, wasn’t it? Hints of desperation were abundant in the air, here. The sharp knock on the door abruptly broke her from those thoughts. She pulled the basement door open, a knowing smirk on her lips. “I’m sorry. Can I help you?” Couldn’t help when her grin stretched wider, arms aptly crossing as she leaned against the door entrance.

Nicodemus had no earthly reason to feel nervous. He didn’t feel right in the slightest but the further he got away from Traveler, the further he got away from the ocean, he felt more like himself. Whatever that was. Heading to the funeral home, heading to see her, wasn’t the place to start having an existential crisis. Blame the night. That had been the mantra for the last handful of weeks or however long he had been fucked up as he was. He didn’t want to think about that and he chose not too as he checked himself in the rearview. The bruising from his nose was fading but still, dark fell under his eyes like spread bat wings. He frowned. Oh well. Like Erin said, bloody and battered was his thing. The hunter tried not to linger on it too much as he lugged another werewolf over his shoulder. Somewhere in the familiarity of the situation, his nerves settled. As the door open and he looked at her, a crooked smirk appeared. “Yeah, you might be able to, ma’am. Got somethin’ of a bountiful harvest an’ all.” The smell of old blood hit his nose and he couldn’t help but look away from Erin for a second, to the unmistakable stain of blood. “That’s new, huh?”

Erin didn’t miss bruised patches beneath his eyes. She’d seen him the night it had happened but it still threw her how healed up it looked already. Was that a hunter thing? Still made her inwardly flinch and not because she was squeamish. Lord knew she wasn’t. But she also couldn’t help the way her chest lurched when he smirked at her like that. “Bountiful harvest,” she nodded, a soft chuckle on her lips. “That’s good. There’s that quick wit I know and miss,” she said, pointing at him as she stepped back to finally let him in. Just because it was dark didn’t mean it was a good idea to have him hover outside with a body bag on his shoulder any longer than necessary. She locked the door, glancing back to where his eyes fell. “Uh, yeah,” she scoffed, shaking her head. “It took three witches, a moose, and a fuck ton of magic, but dear old dad is no longer with us.” That summed it up enough, right? She crossed the room, patting the metal table she had reserved just for this delivery. “You can toss this big guy right over here.”

His gaze lingered on her, lips loose in a thin smile. The scenario was so damn similar. Nightfall, corpse of a stranger on his shoulder, and Erin Nichols welcoming him into the underground. Nicodemus stepped past her and chuckled. “Yeah, you sure it ain’t just weirdo talk?” He eyed the bloody spot as he set the werewolf down on the table, the ring of metal sounding for just a moment. “I’ve been tryin’ to sleep. Maybe that’s helpin’. Can’t run off nothin’ like some people.” Namely but without being said, Alain. He couldn’t stop himself. “A fuckin’ what? A moose?” The magic and witches glanced off of him, but he had to huff a raspy laugh at how an animal like that got involved. “Really startin’ to build a rapport with moose, y’know? Kinda startin’ to make it seem like an art. Maybe that’s your, uh, gift.” He paused and wrung his hands. He had started so confidently. Surely, he could find it again. A small and ugly bud in him started to bloom. Tracking things was one of his specialities. It couldn’t possibly be the case, his logical brain thought, but then that less than logical bit crept out. Maybe his presence was cursed somehow. He shook his head and stepped off to the side. “One of ‘em.” He coughed into his shoulder and shook it out. “Anyhow. Better he’s gone now, yeah? Rest easy an’ all.”

“Weirdo talk works too,” Erin chuckled. Watched him set the body down, that easy smile she wore faltering a few hairs. Bottom line, there was still a job to do here. “Moose are my gift? I hope you know this moose surgence didn’t start being a thing until I met you, ” she latched onto his words, trying not to think too deeply about the body in front of her. Another werewolf. She didn’t know how that worked in real life compared to movies. Had this been a person before? Or just a supernatural wolf-like creature? Wasn’t quite sure she wanted an answer to that, actually. Not when she was about to do what she was about to do. Her eyes flickered up to Nic’s briefly, like she’d find some sort of answer there. All she could see was the exhaustion still lingering in his features. “All gone, yeah,. Nothing to worry about there anymore,” she said quickly, trying to refocus back on the task at hand. Scalpel and Playmate ready, she got to work. Quiet for a few moments as metal sliced into skin, brows furrowed in concentration. “How are you?” Her eyes searched for his again. Paused a beat. “Really?”

“You ain’t made me leave yet, so looks like weirdo is workin’ for me,” Nicodemus smiled. Better than monster or whatever other fucking word a bleeding heart would spit at him. “Hey now, I said one of ‘em. Maybe the moose were just waitin’ to hear from you. You’re welcome for that.” Because that’s what Moose Caboose had been about. Fuck, he needed to stop talking about the moose. It was easier to talk about that than seeing eyeballs, sleepwalking, and killing strangers. Fuck. Why was he so hung up on that? Would he have let Jeff just die if he hadn’t suddenly felt compelled…? No. It wasn’t the time or the place. He looked at Erin as she looked at him and took a breath to ground himself. Too much thinking like that wouldn’t do him any good. It would paralyze him. “That’s good. Glad you got it figured out,” he said with a nod, eyes on the body as she started to cut into it. When she posed her question, he looked up. Fixed his eyes on her. He was quiet, the humor from before pulled out of him with death-grip hands. In bruised yet healing eye sockets, his eyes felt darker. “I don’t know,” he rumbled out. “Feel like I’ve been fucked up since I got here. Nothin’ goes the way I think it will and that shouldn’t be a huge fuckin’ surprise, but…” In White Crest, he saved people. He hated that word but he knew what it was. Why did that bother him so goddamn much? “It, uh, it does. Every time. Like I can’t get...right..” He realized how much he said, which in the grand scheme wasn’t much, but it was more than anything to him. A dry, humorless laugh broke the quiet as he leaned back against the counter and started to fiddle with a metal handle “...I guess I ain’t great.”

“It works. Don’t worry about that,” Erin returned the smile. God, the fucking moose. It was as funny as it was depressing. And after the night she’d spent and what she’d seen done to that moose, she was alright without ever seeing another one again in her life. She ignored it with a soft roll of her eyes, eager to get past that and any further discussion of her father. Moose and zombies. Two things she never would have pictured so prominently in her life. She could practically feel the tone shift when the room fell silent. Then he spoke, no cursed coins urging those reluctant truths from him. So she stopped, pulled her hands from the still-warm corpse, and listened. Suddenly more nervous than she could recall being in front of him. “I get that. In a way, I mean,” she shrugged, returning his wry smile with one of her own. Gestured towards the body directly in front of her. Case in point. She started back to work when her hands grew antsy, though her focus remained as much as possible on him. “I learned a little late but this town has a way of screwing with you in ways I never could have dreamed about,” she scoffed. Eyes darted towards the empty glasses and the liquor bottle. “Whiskey helps though.” She tried to smile again, but the way he was looking bothered her more than she could properly grasp. “It’s not you,” she insisted, words firm and sure. “It’s this town and everything in it fucking with you. But it’s not you. You know that, right?”

When she pulled her hands out of the werewolf’s chest cavity, Nicodemus slowed his fiddling with the cabinet handle. Trigger finger tapping against the metal quietly as he listened to her speak. When she pointed at the very obvious body smack dab in the middle of an illicit organ harvesting between a mortician and a hunter, he couldn’t fight the wry smile that eased to life. “Yeah…” He sighed as he readjusted himself, looked at the whiskey and empty glasses. Whether he was sober or whether he wasn’t, the shit he dealt with didn’t have the mind to pack things up and leave him alone. It wouldn’t be life if it up and did that, did him a kindness. He looked at her as she worked. Just as tired as him. He didn’t know what happened, but considering the blood and the reluctance, he could only assume it wasn’t pretty. Assumed it would be the kind of thing to haunt the mind. She could do without being haunted. He crossed over to the whiskey and poured himself a glass, much less than what he usually would. He did the same for her but was forced to pause at her words. Wasn’t him? A low hum of uncertainty rose. He didn’t flinch when he saw that eye staring at him again when he blinked. “Ain’t sure about that, Erin,” he said, finger tapping against the bottle of whiskey as he set it down. “Peace of mind don’t come to people like me. Makes sense in a shitty way. All, uh, this.” He wasn’t hunting for pity. It was a statement of fact. That was the deal. They hunted, they died, and peace came in the form of a 2x6 foot coffin. Or just a hole in the dirt. He didn’t lament that. Of all things to make peace with, he had with that. He was certain of it. That part of the Bossier legacy he couldn’t outrun. “The town, yeah, I can buy that. But it's gotta react to somethin’.” He grabbed the glass of whiskey and threw it back. Didn’t go to refill it. He grabbed the glass he poured for her and handed it to her. “Givin’ it plenty to work with, I suppose.” He looked at the werewolf corpse as he found it hard to look at her. “How’s it lookin’ in there?”

Something in his voice could only lend to what he wasn’t saying. Erin hadn’t known him long, but Nic was a man of few words. When he spoke, you listened. Somewhere along the way she’d started reading between the lines. Had to, if she wanted to understand him better, or at all. This felt different, though. She felt different. And so did Nic. “You deserve better than feeling that way,” she reiterated, watching him knock back the whiskey, cup barely full. That was different too. She set the creature’s liver into the cooler, his words settling weirdly on her mind. All of this—the unsavory exchanges in the night. The secrets. The lies. Erin has only tasted this side of life for a fraction of the time Nic had. But it was part of her now. Always had been, even if she didn’t know it before a few months ago. “You’ve gotta keep believing that.” She had to keep believing that too. Lifted the glass to her lips, the blood on her gloves marring the clean surface. Like a reminder. Subtle. She paused, watching it for a second, before tossing it back just as quickly as he had. “You’re biased, you know.” She started, trying to find the words as warmth crept into her chest. “You've only got your point of view, making you think that any of this is your fault. And I know I haven’t known you long, but from what I’ve seen?” She tried to find his eyes as his avoided her own. “You deserve that. Peace. You’re a good guy. I know that. And I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t think so.” Fuck. Right. The corpse was growing colder by the second and she set her glass down. Found it harder and harder to concentrate on what she was doing. “It’s fine,” she nodded, getting back to it. Thought hard about how it had ended up on her table, and who’d brought them here. “Can you—you could stop, right?” She asked, genuinely unsure. “Step away from all of this, if you really wanted.”

The hunter forced himself to not respond when she called him a good guy. The same way his grandfather trained him to not give when wolf teeth sunk down. Nicodemus’s jaw started to tighten, the muscle there taut as teeth pressed tight together. Erin. Margot. Skylar. Blanche. Orion. All these people saying thank you, feeling grateful for the shit he did on a whim and couldn’t find an explanation for no matter how much he dug. Anger wearing the skin of self-loathing crawled up his ribs and sat heavy in his throat. He didn’t believe in much of anything. Was this Samson’s revenge? He hadn’t seen the old man in years but he kept tabs. Knew the fucker was still alive during all of this. As the thoughts pushed, collided, and broke apart against one another, he stared at the blood that clung to her clear glass. Whiskey and blood. That’s all he should have stayed as. His eyes traveled across her face. “Erin, you’re….You’re sayin’ all this shit elbow deep in a fuckin’ corpse that I brought for you,” he said after staying silent, his brows furrowed as he looked at her with dark eyes. “Same as before. It ain’t good and it ain’t evil. It’s just fucked. That’s all it is. It’s what I do and…” He pulled back, pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek. His breath felt heavier yet light. Felt like it came quicker, but he wasn’t in a fight. He breathed in long and deep through his nose, shut his eyes for a moment. Her question prompted him to pour himself another glass, just as shallow as the one before it, and open his eyes again. She asked him a question that he had no obligation to answer. He had no obligation to any of them. And yet… “No,” he said, still not taking that drink. Whether it was his own conviction or the one beaten into him, he didn’t falter. Much. “I wouldn’t…” The empty fist at his side clenched. It was the town. The town pried open his iron mouth, his caged up chest, and forced him to speak. His voice rasped along the basement walls. “This is what I do. It’s what I know and I’m good at it. That’s the real shit part, y’know? I’m good at somethin’ and it’s this.” He couldn’t give that up and that realization, that slam against his head, finally had him drinking.

Every part of him was resisting. Erin could see it before he even spoke. Something fired up in her, somewhere deep in her gut and she pushed back. “Yeah, a corpse you brought to me. Because this is what I do too. But I can—I’m trying to remember this isn’t who I am,” she argued, frustration seeping through weary cracks. “What other choice do we have?” That muddy stain on the floor felt like it was screaming at her. Fucked. God, that description felt more appropriate the longer it simmered. She set the scalpel down and moved from around the table, abandoning any thoughts of finishing the extraction right now. “Okay, okay, fine. I get that,” she nodded. It wasn’t her place to dig or judge how he lived when there was a refrigerator of human organs just behind them. That wasn’t the point though—she didn’t care what he did. Jesus, wasn’t that obvious by now? “Good, bad, fucked—whatever.” She pointed a bloody glove at the stain, a surge of certainty taking over where precaution should have prevailed. “But that mess is what happens when you give up and give into it. I don’t want that and you sure as hell shouldn’t accept that either.”

Nicodemus started some where he stood. He didn't open his mouth to argue against her because she was right. The hand he clenched into a fist pulsed, slowly. He was the source of his own stress and yet he could try to will it away all the same. It felt wrong to find her beautiful in that moment and he hated himself for it, as confused and silently bewildered as he was looking at her. "I can get rid of your boss." His voice strained as he said it, trying to find that humor from before. They were in too deep for that and beneath it all, it was muffled. She came around close to him and he rooted himself to the floor, fighting every piece of him that had him wanting to go for the same door he had walked in. He had been so damn rootless before. Now he had too many. He swallowed his thoughts down as he looked at Erin, ferocious and refusing to accept the hand she had been dealt. And where he was resolute, she refused to accept that too. Whether to laugh or run, he didn't know. Both nervous responses. He did neither, rather braved the smallest step forward, spoke to her with a low, quiet voice. "What the hell happened, Erin?" His gaze moved from the blood spot to her eyes. "What are we doin'?"

He was starkly silent again. It was suffocating this time. Erin’s heart pounded while she waited for him to bolt, or yell. Demolish a glass with his bare hands again if she’d pushed down too hard on a nerve. Something. Those things she was prepared for. The way he was looking at her right now? Not that. Wasn’t at all prepared for the way it disarmed her so quickly either. “Don’t be an idiot,” she shook her head at his offer, letting out a long breath she hadn’t realized she’d been keeping in. What had happened? They’d gone from their usual banter to arguing to this in the blink of an eye. But she didn’t move. Didn't flinch or break eye contact, feeling like she was finally allowed to look at something she’d been wanting to for a long time now. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly, much of her previous gusto gone. But fuck, was she ever tired of thinking about it. Tired of holding back. Wasn’t in her nature to do so anyway, and it felt like that part of herself was fighting to tooth and nail to be released. And she did. Fuck it. She wanted this. She peeled the gloves off, dropping them to the ground, eyes falling to his lips. It was the only real sign she gave him before she took that last step forward. Hands brushing against prickly skin as they cupped his jaw, pulling his lips down to hers. Slowly at first, testing the waters, but sure. More sure than she’d been about anything a long time.

“Idiot, yeah. Dumbass sounds right too.” Nicodemus huffed. A capable dumbass. Or at least, he thought he was. Much rather talk about being a dumbass than any possible moral responsibility or self-respect he should have. But then she was looking at him and he wasn’t thinking about himself at all. His thoughts stayed confined to the space between them that grew smaller with each breath. Watching her take her gloves off probably shouldn’t have stirred something in him, but it did and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He froze as her hands touched his face and he waited for the bait and switch. He didn’t wait long. He didn’t need to. It never came. For all the death she touched, her hands felt warm against his skin. Her lips against his did too. Fuck, he was tired of being frigid. Maybe Erin was too. Maybe, for a minute or an hour, that could be enough. With a crash, the glass in his hand fell to the basement floor as one hand pressed lightly against the side of her neck, his thumb against her jawline. The other came to tentatively hover over the small of her back as he leaned into her. The hunter moved with no expectation, matched the pace she set. A small, quiet groan hovered in his chest as he pulled away for a breath to look at her. “Is this...Fuck, is this okay?”

Erin heard the glass shatter beside them but hardly flinched. Didn’t think about much of anything outside of how gentle his hands and his lips felt as he kissed her back, pulled her closer. Surprised her only a little with that, considering how hard he projected that rough outer shell of his. She was already breathing harder when he pulled away. Was this okay? It felt more than okay, she wanted to say, slipping one hand down his chest. Felt good. Really good. She pulled nervously at the fabric of his shirt while she nodded. “Yeah,” was the only word she could manage. Her other hand found the back of his neck to pull him forward again. Couldn’t stop herself when she kissed him again, this time with more confidence. Didn’t want to stop, if she was being honest. That was an overwhelming new feeling sitting tightly on her chest. Fuck. She reared her head back suddenly, biting her lip. “This is okay with you too, right?” She asked in turn, realizing she hadn’t even bothered to give him a chance to speak. Her nails gently scratched the back of his head through the short hair there. “We can—we can definitely stop. If you want,” she nodded, though her eyes remained on his lips until she had the better sense to meet his again.

His breath came out as a quiet, shuddered mess as they separated. Nicodemus could feel his heart hammering under her hand. Felt surprisingly vulnerable. She was close enough to slip a knife into his belly. But he wasn’t in a fight, this wasn’t survival. Maybe, for a minute, it was living. Whatever the fuck that even meant. The hand on her neck slipped further back, the pads of his fingers absently circling the skin at her nape. She pulled him in again and that time, he braved pressing her in closer to him. He forgot about the blood underneath them or the blood on the table. It wouldn’t be going anywhere. The longer they kissed, the more he lost any stoicism. He became fluid, became like a slow fire. He pulled away for a second to look at her, at the same time she did, and made no effort to move. In answer to her question, he found her mouth again with his and gently, barely nipped at her bottom lip. Then, he pulled back again. He closed his eyes. Took in a long, slightly shaky breath. In spite of it all, a nervous smirk appeared. “I don’t--” The anxiety gathered in his throat and he swallowed it. He lifted his hand from her back and lifted her chin slightly with it, tried to find her eyes with his own. “I don’t got any expectations, Erin,” he said, voice a low thunder rumble. “I’ll follow your lead, alright? Tell me to go and I will. Tell me to stay and I will. I’d...I’d want to. If you did.”

The pause that lingered before his answer weighed heavily on her and for a moment, Erin was confident she’d fucked up. That some invisible line had been crossed and that he’d pack up and run out of there. Right out of town, if he wanted. There was nothing keeping him here, no obligation--not even their mutual employer. Said so himself. But that wasn’t what she saw in his eyes. Just a gentle fear, one that washed over her, dousing those thoughts. Softened her resolve--what little was left of it, anyway. Her hand moved from his chest to cover his own, holding it against her cheek. “Then stay,” she answered, a warmer smile tugging at the corner of her lips despite the way her voice shook just slightly. “I want you to stay.” Final answer. She started to move in closer to him again when the glass crunched under her boot. Blinked, glanced around to where they were. The body cut open on the table next to them, the others in the wall of coolers opposite them. A deep, nervous laugh shook her. Jesus. She turned her head to kiss the palm of his hand, holding it as she let their hands drop down. But she didn’t let his go, tugging him towards her as she moved backwards to the stairs. “Just--not here, specifically?” She quirked a brow, trying to inject some lightness back into the moment.

Nicodemus had been so ready for her to give him the word, tell him to go, that when she did anything but, he was momentarily stunned stupid. Reduced to mere blinking before he got his shit together. Her words and hands said the exact same thing. If he looked for deception, he would come up empty. A boyish smile, one that lifted a few years off him, came to life. And at the crack of glass, broke into a snorted laugh as he came to the same realization she did. The tension, the nervousness, broke into a laugh and he dipped his head to laugh into the skin of her. For a night, it’d feel good to just laugh. He could allow himself that, if only for a moment. “Yeah,” he said, lips against her neck before he stood up again and looked at her. It was hard to stop smiling, even with the heat that overwhelmed any cold he might have felt. The chill lingered in him but he ignored it. “Better not to have an audience, huh?” He followed close behind her, fingers trailing up her palm and around her slim wrist then back again. “I’m followin’. Sure as shit ain’t goin’ anywhere now.”

#wickedswriting #only if for a night #chatzy #chatzy: nic #//these two dumbasses finally did it you guys #also #there's a chatzy coming to explain where erin's dad went #and the blood puddle #dw it's fine #timelines don't exist

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spookyspaghettisundae · 4 years

Text

Emily's Awakening, Part Two

The memory of Julian tore Emily out of the here and now. Time stood still as their shared past flashed back to her.

Julian was the once in a lifetime kind of blend of genius, compassion, and peak physical perfection, all rolled into one incredible package.

Emily had known him from high school, though they were only loosely acquainted in those more innocent years. It wasn’t until much later, right when she had graduated from Berkeley, that she bumped into him again. Similar to how she remembered him from high school years—when he was basically the football jock who also happened to have his head screwed on right and was writing good grades as well—he was now a successful plastic surgeon in L.A. and had stayed in shape.

She was in the middle of getting her feet wet in the journalistic field, and drinking in a hotel bar to get over the rejection letter she had received from the Los Angeles Times. He exited from a doctor’s convention that he was attending there and instantly recognized her, even after all those years. They chatted, hit it off big time, and kicked off a turbulent phase of dating each other, filled with a lot of laughter and fiery passion.

Now he was dead. A ghost in her mind.

Julian was a generous guy, affluent due to both his work and his wealthy parents, well-connected—he had it all. His family didn’t like Emily, but it didn’t matter to either of them. He was a gentleman, vowed to have her back, and always lived up to his word.

Four months in, she decided that she wanted to surprise him by asking him to get engaged. But he didn’t show up for dinner. Or come home that night. Or arrive at work the next day. He had just vanished from the face of the earth. Nobody knew why, though worries grew amongst everybody close to Julian.

Even while she was worried sick, Emily was one of the prime suspects once enough time had passed and cops had gotten in on the case. She did her own part to find him, flexing her reporter muscles, but to no avail. Nothing added up and not a single clue pointed to his whereabouts.

Eventually, Julian’s body showed up. His parents and Emily identified his remains. Cops found the right culprit, too. A real whackjob D-list celebrity whom Julian had refused to operate any more on—she freaked out, murdered him, and kept him in her trunk for the whole week.

Even though the circumstances of his death were a major cogwheel in the chaos machine of what jaded Emily over the course of her life, she refused to let Julian’s horrible death ever overshadow the time they had shared together. She really loved Julian, because he was the only person who ever appreciated her—all edges and flaws and everything. He really got her—her strange sense of humor, how she only acted mean to keep people at an arm’s length—and they would laugh about inside jokes that nobody else in the world could ever even hope to understand.

She quit smoking for him. He always said that he didn’t like seeing her smoke because he thought the vice would make her leave this world sooner, and he couldn’t bear that thought. She started smoking again soon after he died, but she always refused to think about the why.

Julian was one of several people who shaped who she became—a driven woman, an unstoppable force of nature. One of the many undeserving, innocent victims mangled in the meat-grinder of a shitty, merciless world. But he was the one she cherished the most.

No partner before Julian was ever comparable, and she hadn’t been on the lookout ever since. Emily was convinced that it was the once in a lifetime thing. That she would never find such love ever again.

That bubble of time burst. Just popped back out of existence.

Here she was, still in front of that security guard whose frame reminded her of Julian.

Tall, broad-shouldered, probably worked out every day. Jawline that could cut glass. Definitely some eerily reminiscent facial features, too.

Part of it made her feel soft. It helped fuel that smile she flashed at the guard to the back entrance of the Estoria Pacific; helped conceal the things lurking underneath her facade—the darkness she harbored in her soul. Then she remembered what she was here to do.

The gears went off, grinding furiously behind her head, and she was grounded in reality once more. She pushed the memories back—both the pleasant and the unpleasant ones.

No more Julian. No more Vicky, Hal, Gloria. No more Tran—the hazy, drunken memory from the previous night returned to her in a flash. How many more times did she have to visit a morgue and ID a corpse? No more.

No more.

The guard gave no response to Emily’s query. He simply opened the door, stepped aside, and let her in. Another guard awaited her inside. Latino fellow; dressed similarly but shorter and much less handsome, equally silently—he nodded to her and motioned to follow him.

She caught a glimpse of a beautiful hall through kitchen corridors, being prepared for a party to come some time later. Exquisite meals were being prepared, crates loaded, waffles and cream made from scratch for cakes. Nobody here spat in the food, everyone wore a hair net and gloves. People paid well for the grub, and the patrons received quality service.

Who owned this place? That was one thing that eluded Emily’s investigation. Estoria Pacific never published any articles that would interview the club owners. It was common knowledge that there was a board of directors, a sort of a group of elite founders—likely wealthy investors. But they stayed out of newspapers and issued statements through the Club’s spokesman; some PR monkey who wasn’t in the savvy of anything.

Emily tensed up, and remembered one of her most valuable lessons: breathe. She let her eyes do the sweeping, not the head. The reporter found her steady rhythm in breathing, in a swaying stride filled with swagger.

She followed the second guard down corridor after corridor. She knew she was out of place. But she belonged here, now; more than anybody else.

She held her chin up high, burning inside—a cocktail of a hangover countered with pain medications and cheap booze, blending with excitement over the case finally going somewhere, anywhere—and the sweet, sweet cherry of impending victory sitting on top.

But something else, too. Something familiar, something she had to fight back. Something she hadn’t felt since the trafficking story. Something that made her think of Tran again. The pale corpse of Tran on the cold slab in the morgue.

That something she felt was fear.

The guard led Emily all the way down to storage warehouses, where she was handed off to yet another guard. This one took her under the mezzanine down into the freezers. Things looked less and less like a club and more and more like a cold and unforgiving facility. The doors started looking less polished, more metal, rustic, bulletproof—until eventually things became seedy enough to send a chill down her spine.

The guard was joined by another guard, deeper in the underbelly of the facility—a big bald giant of a man, this one without a club uniform suit, looking more like an actual gangster. His gun’s grip stood out from a chest holster in plain view. Just like the previous guys, he didn’t spare a single word for Emily, nor did he react to her in any way, merely doing his job of showing her to where she belonged.

They led her down another flight of stairs, and the gangster-looking fellow opened a double-lock and then removed a chain off of a steel cage door. This portal separated whatever this was where she was, from whatever lay hidden within. Likely an increased security facility.

A sinking suspicion filled Emily’s mind, giving her the impression that she had wound up somewhere completely different in the city—somewhere not even under the club anymore.

At one point, she registered a little sting of pain and found that she had dug her own fingernails deep enough into her palms to leave visible pink impressions.

She flashed a smile at the next guard as well. It was only honest—timid, clipped, and fading quickly from her lips—because she needed it more for herself. She needed it more to support her own confidence than she did to keep up any veneer of belonging.

Cages, cages, and cages of various sizes. Some were large enough to stand in, while others were obviously dog cages in which an adult human being could only be inside of them on all fours. Leashes with collars hung inside the cages. Dog bowls for food and water were set into every one of them. However, all cages were empty.

The whole place smelled of sweat and waste. A black man in a white wife beater was washing the floor, pushing murky mucky fluid down the many floor drains. There were hints of yellow and pink slop on the mop.

This was it.

The razor’s edge.

Just like when Emily walked into the trafficker dungeons. An icy cold gauntlet gripped her heart.

Like then, just like with the hit man in the Mancini mansion, she realized how she straddled the razor’s edge, balancing along that dangerously thin line between life and death.

Was the camera working? Would the government spooks be here in time to help her if and when anything went south? There was no telling and Emily felt more alone than ever before.

The lifeless body of Tran returned, creeping up on her in the back in her mind, haunting her through her inner eye. This time, however, it ignited something unfamiliar.

This was for her. This was for them. This was for all the victims, both the ones she knew and the ones she’d never know. This was bigger than herself. This was what she was meant to do; where she was meant to be.

Emily inhaled sharply but quietly and her nostrils flared.

A door on the other end of the room of cages was so thick that it could be rightfully called a vault door. It bore the makings of something made up to submarine standards. At least six inches thick, and looking heavy by the body language of another guard opening it with a grunt. He struggled to release the locks, and a familiar hiss of military grade machinery released the hydraulics.

The door was insulated, possibly pressurized. Small round window set into it, nautical in appearance. Through it, Emily perceived the silhouettes of people standing in near darkness. The door opened fully, and the big bald guard admitted her inside with a sweeping hand gesture.

She discovered a well decorated room, more in line with the poker rooms up in the club; centered around a wooden stage. Carpet floors, curtains, candles, tables. No foul smell here, which helped explain the unusual door.

This was an auction stage, clear as day. Around it, men in tuxedos and women in evening dresses were assembled in the dark. Everybody wore masks befitting a crowd at a Venetian carnival party or a certain movie by Stanley Kubrick.

A live classical band performed in the auction hall, humming away with their cello, bass, and two violins; orchestrating this odd event with quiet and non-intrusive live music. A few of the masked figures nearby looked back at Emily and the guards with her—more reactively, because the sound of the door’s hiss had distracted them from their subdued conversations.

The auctioneer, dressed in a red tux with a grinning devil’s mask on his face, addressed the crowd in a ceremonial festive voice.

Emily knew the type: this one sure mowed his lawn and had three kids, a dog, and a trophy wife. Probably donated often to charity.

“That certainly was an entertaining bid,” he almost sung. “Now, for our next prize. A beautiful exotic—I would say, extravagant item. Ladies and gentlemen, I guarantee it, whatever your taste, whatever your preference—this is not one to pass up. It will force you to fall in love. Coming to us from far away across the seas is—oh, welcome, we have newcomers. Welcome, welcome. Step right in, you’re right on time for the show.”

Regardless, Emily walked deeper inside. Her digits tingled; her nerves turned into iron strings so taut that you could play tense music on them, rising to a crescendo. Her mouth ran dry with a cottony feeling and she heard the blood rushing in her ears.

She hoped the camera was working. This was one of those things that nobody would believe if they only heard about it. You had to see it with your own eyes, and even then people would dispute the grainy recordings that accompany such scandalous discoveries.

She observed some of the masked guests, looking out for clues that might let her recognize familiar features and famous faces.

This was also the kind of crowd who had ways to silence you if you wanted to testify in court.

Accordingly, Emily knew she needed something concrete.

A waiter served her a mask on a platter with a glass of sparkling white wine. The mask depicted the stylized face of a gray rat, complete with long whiskers—Emily felt a pang of guilt when she got the sense that its mean expression and a crooked smile matched her common demeanor towards the world.

Slipping the mask on to shrug off that sinking feeling, she looked through the crowd some more and finally recognized a woman standing among the high society bidders, near the higher elevated seats, VIP row. This lady wore a black mask in the shape of a happy theatrical face, dressed the same way as Agent Laura Davidson, from the meeting on the bench in the plaza before.

Out of earshot of anybody, all the while glaring at “Agent Davidson,” Emily hissed under her breath, “Motherfucker.”

Every fiber in her body screamed at once—she knew things were about to end badly. But she had to see this through. She always had to.

She fought the urge to curse more and pretended to mingle, blending her way through the small crowd and raising her glass to her lips. But she didn’t take a sip, only tipping it lightly, feigning to drink from her glass.

The scent hit her nostrils with tantalizing sweetness, but she knew better. She was not drinking any of this shit.

The crowd parted around her and a spotlight transfixed itself on Emily.

“As I said gentlemen, a rat,” said the black-masked woman.

The crowd started chanting, “Rat, rat, rat, rat.”

“No matter your taste, no matter your preference, it is hard to pass up a good rat. Bring her up!”

The rat-masked Emily struggled against the plethora of strong hands and arms that suddenly seized her. She quickly found herself more easily shoved and carried onto the auction stage than she could kick and buck against them to stop this from happening.

The mountains of meat that were the guards holding her then bent her arms behind her back and forced her down onto her knees. With the flash of light bouncing off a knife, followed by the cutting sound of fabric, one of the goons harshly cut the front of her clothing open to expose her breasts.

Despite the chaos engulfing her, Emily spotted him in the crowd. He hadn’t been there all this time, but now he was. In the shadow, escaping the flood light. Invisible to the world around him.

The mysterious old homeless man from the night before.

His lips did not move but his words entered her mind, “When the world is a prison, there are those who are the prisoners, cursed with unknowing; and the jailers who hold the keys to their unseen cells. But what the jailers don’t know is that they themselves are also inmates. A prison built by inmates for inmates, happy to stay within the prison as they build it around themselves and cherish it. And they will do anything they can to maintain and stay on their thrones of shit within it.”

The old Wise Man watched Emily from the crowd. His presence and the voluminous words in her mind drowned out the auctioneer’s festive descriptions of her hair, face, body, and temper.

Bid flags flew up—almost everyone bid on Emily like she was some piece of meat.

From behind the two muscle-packed men forcing Emily into her kneeling position, a third one approached. He brought a glass of champagne to her lips and roughly forced it under the mask. He breathed into her left ear, “Drink.”

“The inmates and the wardens are the same—they know each other only by the rules they accept, out of fear of losing the prison and the illusion of power they hold within its confines,” the Wise Man’s words cut like knives through the void, reaching only Emily’s mind.

The blood rushing in her ears turned into the pounding of drums. It was the first time she had ever sensed what embers lay beneath, blistering with malicious heat. What slept there, crackling like a dying fire, hidden underneath the canvas of fear, was what lay deep at the heart of her deepest self.

A burning rage.

The fire roared into flames within, and it was not fear that paralyzed her, but the power of those forcing her down. Those who forced everybody down, making them small, treating them like objects.

Emily took a sip, then spat it right out; right into the face of the nearest goon who had forced her to drink. She thrashed and flailed and tried to wrestle free in the ensuing split seconds of confusion, but to no avail.

If she was to die here, what would become of her cats?

Is she was to die here, then everything here would burn with her. It was the oath she swore unspoken. Instead, through a string of profanities she spewed out, she sneered at her captors through gritted teeth, clenching her jaws until her gums bled, “You shit-heads are going to pay.”

A hard slap on the face made her ears and head ring—an indicator that her spitting the drink into someone’s face was successful and had gotten to that sack of shit. It was hard to see because the damned mask had slid up into a crooked position with the eye holes somewhere over her forehead. Who did she get?

Didn’t matter. Fuck him. Fuck ‘em all.

The rage inside of her drowned out whatever the announcer was saying and the crowd of this sick perverts murmured in response.

Then the crowd whistled and applauded, in what almost sounded like a polite and timid manner. Not like a football crowd—not a roar—but a calm, timid, amused applause. Bearing the gentlest “ooohs” and “aaahs,” as if her painful outburst was a nice touch of surprise to this whole deranged show.

“Ten thousand! Eleven! Eleven and a half! Twelve—thirteen thousand—fourteen anyone? Fourteen! I see fifteen, sixteen—really? Alright alright, let’s go straight to twenty? Twenty anyone? Twenty! Twenty one—twenty two,” the bids kept rising.

“Quell the rage. Its fire will consume you. Stay calm and you will not die,” Wise Man recited in her head, mirroring ancient mantras, blending them with her current situation.

With her nostrils flaring and her whole body trembling—with liquid fury pulsing through her veins—she listened to Wise Man. Emily focused. Wild thrashing wouldn’t cut it. It was all about the timing now. Finding the right opportunity and seizing it.

She refused to end up as the next pale lifeless body on the metal slab in some dark morgue. She owed it to everybody she had lost, and everybody who might be saved, no matter how little she may accomplish in this life.

Emily whispered to herself, finding an uncanny and almost foreign clarity deep within. It became a mantra as she repeated it, “Rat finds the way off the sinking ship.”

The men continued to strip her and then strap her hands together behind her back with cable ties. People came up on stage to enjoy her various aspects—in the way only psychopaths torturing animals would regard the creatures with a fascination detached from any semblance of empathy.

Focusing on Wise Man and her mantra, she tuned it all out. She detached from this reality. Her meditative mind—a mind steeled in cigarette smoke, drowned in bottomless whiskey glasses, subdued by numerous nightly joints—that jaded mind, that lack of innocence. This mental state protected her and kept her sane now.

She was okay with this. She was surviving.

Mirroring the immovable object that she had become, the Wise Man stood motionless, like a mirage in the crowd, the singular only figure standing still in the midst of a hurricane of animated beasts, in the middle of a pile of demented animals passing as humans.

He heard her whispers, her mantra. Only he.

Someone ripped her mask off. It tore her from the bubble, peeled away a layer of protection, but instead of the grim reality outside, Emily glimpsed something else.

She found herself entirely elsewhere: on a burning pentagram, in the depths of an ancient, evil cave. The audience and her captors—her tormentors—not human, but all devils of various shapes and sizes. Their tongues twisted and split as they drowned out each other’s cacophony of blasphemies in hideous laughter. They lashed each other and themselves with barbed whips, rent their own flesh with horrifically jagged blades. They ate human body parts from trays made of bleached bone.

In a bright flash of orange flame, Emily landed naked. And free from her captors, unbound.

In the middle of her own apartment? Had she done this somehow? Winked her way out of that impossible situation, just by willing it so?

The scope of things threw her off and made her stomach knot. Everything around her was far too big. The couch and coffee table were huge, like dark towers supporting a glass sky. Behind her loomed something the size of a building, of black shiny substance with a soothing green window up on top, ocean blue numbers projecting inside of it. They displayed time, but that clock was frozen solid. Time stood still.

The craziest part of it—Emily wasn’t freaking out.

This was not real in the common sense, but also not unreal. A more apt description would be to explain it as a different reality intersecting with the one she had grown accustomed to.

Everything made perfect sense, which also meant that the current situation caught back up to her in a bright white flash, of cold and unforgiving colors like that of fluorescent lamps in a hospital flickering on. Or the lights in a morgue.

The savagery of nearly being turned into a sex slave by some crazy rich assholes, and the gruesome images of the devils in the dark cave washed over Emily, and she wept. Tears of release, tears of despair, acting out their passion play to go with a whole chorus of emotions bubbling up. Every other little thing she had pushed deep down in her life to function, every last ounce of dust from the edges that had been sanded down by the darkness of this world—it all boiled over and spilled out, streaming forth through rivers of tears.

Through the blurry haze of it all, she took in her surroundings, hugging herself while remaining on her knees, just seconds of despair away from giving up and curling up into a fetal position. She wondered if this was just some elaborate fantasy to detach herself from the horrible reality of people doing things to her while she was helpless.

Maybe none of this freaked her out because nothing ever made any sense to begin with.

As she rose to her feet—wobbly, trembling, and wiping away the tears—the clarity returned.

No guilt. No regret.

No worries came from a world made of glass and shadows.

“Oh no, you don’t. Get back in here. You’ve always been a rat on the inside and now you’re one on the outside,” Jones spoke in his raspy voice. His words did not arrive through the tinny speakers of a phone. They droned like the deep bass of a colossus.

His titanic form towered above the monolith that was the suitcase, a man in a black business suit, garbed in a fancy white overcoat. A cruel grin marked his stubbled face while he attempted to step on Emily. Before he could bring that giant shoe crashing down, three gargantuan tigers leapt in front of her to shield her. With growls and snarls, they clawed at him and got in his way, causing him to recoil and topple backwards.

Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte—unmistakably, Emily knew it was them—now saber-toothed tigers, hailing from another era. From another world.

He kicked them away as they rent and ripped at the ends of his trousers. Giants fighting giants.

“Oh no—no! Don’t try to fight this with your compassion. With your little friends. You were warned. You’re all in now. Shoulda taken the deal, silly girl,” Jones droned on as he swung at the tigers to keep them at bay.

The black building—the doomed suitcase—exploded. Jones, the world, Emily herself—flames engulfed everything.

“What?” Jones cried out, his tone rising into the fever pitch of surprise. “No!”

The three tigers, with manes of fire, jumped to Emily. Miranda snatched her in her mouth and they took off. The beasts ran through a hellish landscape where fire consumed all; where everything solid flaked into the ashes of oblivion.

No—Emily knew better—the realities crossed again—these were the industrial underworld hidden underneath the Estoria Pacific. The tigers had crossed over as well and carried her off the auction stage.

The devilish audience stared in shock, stunned and incapable of reacting. Their masks had become their faces: pigs, lizards, devils, hounds. Those masks had turned flesh, gaining a full facial reality. Masks no more, the onlookers were these abominations now.

Emily looked around, struggling to regain her bearings. Just like none of it freaked her out before, finding that calm center in the eye of the storm, her eyes now darted back and forth, weighing every option within the window of a split-second.

What could she grab hold of? Where could she go?

How could she make these fuck-pigs pay?

As soon as she asked herself these things without uttering them loud, a deafening cacophony flooded into her head, drowning out all her own thoughts.

“I need to pay my mortgage today.”

“Should mow the lawn this Tuesday.”

“I hope Theresa is okay with this when she finds out. Maybe I can get her into it. Maybe get her a nice Vietnamese boy.”

“What if Mark knows? Jesus, what if Mark knows?”

“Okay, two hours tops, gonna cum real quick, fly over to Boston, change tickets, check the stock market, meet with the execs tomorrow morning, be ready for dinner with Ehnske, and still make my way back for the merger talks. Get a nice hooker in between.”

“Tonight—I’ll do it tonight. Everything’s written off. Gonna do it with my .38, the .22 might not do it and leave me crippled. Put tarp in the garage, put my head in the bucket, so the blood pools, I don’t want Ellie to have to clean up, to call the police.”

“Damn, she has nice tits. I love a redhead with nice tits. I wanna eat that ass.”

“They let us kill the last rat at the end of the session, I’m seriously going to outbid Lanston this time. That motherfucker got to drug the Chinese chick to death. My god, it was so hot—he kept fucking her as he kept the injection going until she passed out.”

“Man, what am I doing here? I’ll quit, next week, I promise. God, forgive me. I’ll turn in my VIP card this Sunday. Please, God forgive me.”

“God, if this is wrong, why don’t you strike me down? Strike us all down?”

“God, is this wrong?”

“I’m scared.”

“This is kind of scary.”

“What if someone finds out?”

“What if the kids find out?”

“What if this was my kid?”

Voices. The voices of the audience flowed into Emily’s consciousness, like searing red-hot lava.

The rage swelled again; a candlelight flickering and then flaring into a flame with a sinister roar. But this time, it was not all-consuming, devouring, or controlling. It was a ghostly blue fire. Burning with dark purpose, and cold as the iciest circles of hell that Emily could imagine.

Oblivious and uncaring about her torn attire, she looked down and cupped her hand in front of her breasts, as if to cradle something invisible. Something like that blue flame, encroaching from the edges of her thoughts, eating away at the fringe of the alien minds that hers was touching, keeping those foreign thoughts distinct.

She stared into her empty palm. That fury was something she could grasp.

Something she wanted to grasp.

She felt an aspect of her will manifest in her head. That icy gauntlet that gripped her earlier. The will itself became a gauntlet. But the ice cracked and melted in the flames. As it sloughed off, the gauntlet revealed itself to be forged of iron.

Her will was not made of ice, fickle and prone to hysteria when the flame of anger torches it. Her will was of iron—it could take the heat.

As soon as that aspect took shape in her mind, she comprehended it. And as soon as she comprehended it, her rat paws become human hands again.

Miranda threw her over herself somehow, allowing Emily to land on the mighty tiger’s back. Emily rode, a nude Valkyrie wreathed in furious fire, holding onto the giant beast’s fur, in control of her deadly mount.

She wanted to make the fuck-pigs pay. So much so that their heads burst into flames and exploded. Samantha and Charlotte ripped people’s bodies apart with claw and fang, but there wasn’t enough time. Miranda led the charge and wordlessly urged them to escape. Time was short and Emily felt it, too. All-engulfing flames raged behind them, consuming the stage.

The ancient cave retained the vault door. The tigers approached it.

Emily only blinked and they had teleported beyond it by merit of mere thought, then the tigers raced on. No question as to why, or how that made sense. It happened, therefore it became reality.

Cages, cages, cages—now filled with tormented victims, packed like sardines. Grasping hands that reached out from between the bars, desperate for rescue. The captives cried out. But it was not their cries that Emily heard.

“I want to go home.”

“My baby!”

“I want to die.”

“Save me.”

“My babies.”

“I want to go home.”

“What will happen to me?”

“This is the end.”

“I want to go home.”

“My poor boy.”

“I want to die.”

“Save me.”

“My baby.”

“I want to go back.”

“What will happen to us now?”

“This is the end.”

“I want to go home.”

“Where are my children?”

“I want to die.”

“Save me!”

“What did they do to my sisters?”

“I want to go back home.”

“What will happen to me?”

“This is the end.”

How oddly similar all these internal pleas were, though they coalesced and clashed through different minds, different voices. All different. All the same. All at the same time.

It was time to open those cages. To rip them open. The liberation would hurt. Ripping the band-aid off always did.

Emily blinked again to clear her vision, sensing how different realities intersected and clashed. The voices in her head echoed and screamed, to the point of becoming unbearable. The rage turned righteous. The gauntlet gripped those bars and wrenched them apart with that furious wrath.

The gauntlet transcended the existence of mere imagination and fantasy—it covered her hand. Bleeding into one reality from the next, she wore it like a second skin. Its iron thrummed with unspeakable might.

All the cages flew open at once and a firestorm swept through the world, swallowing everything in a cleansing heat. The whole damned place turned into an inferno.

The three monstrous tigers charged forth and Emily clung to Miranda’s back. All around them, the dimensions changed and twisted and distorted. They escaped through clusters of winding corridors tangled into a labyrinthine, hellish knot.

Furious shouts followed them from the inferno behind them—Jones’ voice overshadowing the bedlam, “No! Kill her! Kill her now! Don’t let it happen! Don’t let her go! Mine, she’s mine! This worthless sack of shit belongs to us!”

Emily raised her hand and splayed her fingers. The gauntlet forced the maze to unfold. She rode Miranda onto cages, jumped from one set of bars to another, inside and through two ends of cages, dashing down a tunnel of narrow cells, up a spiral of bars—these catacombs ever-changing around them whenever she blinked away the tears that the sheer velocity drove into her eyes.

She rode upward against gravity. Right became left, up turned into down. Then they fell, going backwards upon these iron bars, until the world consisted of nothing but iron and fire.

A tremendous invisible force knocked Miranda over, sending her and her dauntless rider into a spiraling fall.

“I can’t take you further. Only you can go there, mom,” said a voice in Emily’s head. Was it her cat? Or Tran’s daughter? Why did they sound the same now?

—Submitted by Wratts

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falloutmelody · 4 years

Text

Now Or Never- Platonic! Graham O’Brien x Reader

(GIF IS NOT MINE, FULL CREDIT TO THE PERSON WHO MADE IT!)

WARNINGS: Mild peril and threat?? Occasional reference to death and the reader being afraid they’re gonna die, but nothing serious. This is meant to be set early on in the fam’s adventures when they’re still bonding and aren’t super used to the danger, so I pictured it happening in-between Arachnids in the UK and The Tsuranga Conundrum, but there’s no specific spoilers or references, so don’t worry! Also, not gonna lie, this was very much inspired by Graham and Yaz’s conversation from The Timeless Children, because that scene resonated with me emotionally, but again, no spoilers for that!

REQUESTED BY: @anahiranz Thank you so much for requesting again! And thank you for requesting for Graham! He’s been my favourite of Thirteen’s companions since The Woman Who Fell To Earth aired (no shade meant to Ryan and Yaz, because I love them a lot, but I just feel a strong connection with Graham), so I absolutely loved writing this! Feel free to request again if you would like to, you always give me such great and fun prompts! Hope you enjoy this and that it brings your image to life!

WORD COUNT: 2515! Once again, we’ve got a long one on our hands! What can I say, I just get carried away?

Anyways, requests are still 100% open if you wanna request something! Especially if it’s for Doctor Who (although, casual reminder that I currently only write for Thirteen, Sacha’s Master, Graham, Ryan and Yaz atm!). Send all requests to my ask, which you can find here!

Also, for the people who followed me for MCU stuff, I got a request for another one-shot for Natasha that I’m hoping will be up sometime next week!

So, regarding codes, Y/N as always means your name, L/N is your surname and Y/J/H means your job here (e.g. librarian, shop worker, etc. Feel free to just shove in a random job there if you don’t have one or hate your actual job!) And again, this was written from a gender neutral perspective, so anyone is welcome to read it!

The sound of your shoes on the bare concrete floor let out infrequent thuds as you raced down the hall, forcing yourself to glance back for the first time since this chase had begun. Yes, there he was. The big angry blue alien man with the frighteningly large gun that really hadn’t taken too well to you and your fellow companions prying into his affairs and asking why he was here. Ducking your head to the side as his weapon shot out another amber blast that got dangerously close to you, you decided to force yourself to up your pace. Well, you tried to anyway. At this point, you were forcing yourself to go so quickly that you were pretty sure you were mere moments from vomiting. But you couldn’t stop. If you stopped, he would catch you. And you stopping would likely result in your fellow companions stopping to help you, and then you’d all be screwed.

And then you spotted it.

A few inches ahead of you, there was a small open doorway into a dark room. The metal framing of the doorway seemed eerily similar to ones that you’d encountered a few times whilst you, the Doctor and your fellow companions had been exploring this complex, looking for the source of the distress signal the TARDIS had received earlier that day. Those doors had seals, right? That had been what the Doctor had said, right? The blonde tended to speak at a mile a minute at times, so it was a little hard to keep up with her.

Deciding that your instinct was worth at least a shot, you proceeded to quickly skid into the darkened room, taking a moment to call out a simple ‘in here!’ to your fellow companions. Whether they would follow you, you had no idea. You didn’t waste time waiting to see, almost immediately turning your attention to the small metal keypad beside the door, using the brief light from the outside hallway to see what you were doing. Your hands were shaking, in a manner almost akin to being outside on a cold day, but you tried not to let that distract you. You were frightened, of course you were, but you didn’t want to let your fear result in the demise of your friends or yourself.

Taking the sound of thudding feet and panting that soon filled the room to mean that your fellow companions had made it inside, you forced your shaking hands to input random numbers. That worked in movies, right? Jamming in random number combinations seemed to somehow always result in the desired outcome for action heroes.

And in what you could only describe as a miracle, your scrambling paid off, as the metal door suddenly slammed shut, and gave a soft chime, informing you that it had been sealed. You were safe. For now.

A few seconds passed before a soft click sounded in the room, and the light above your head illuminated and filled the room with soft amber light. Stepping back from the keypad, the sound of your heartbeat thundering in your chest being the only thing that you could hear, you finally took a moment to scan your surroundings. And then you realised something that caused your body to tense in concern.

There was only one other person in the room with you. Graham, who seemed just as breathless and tired of running as you were.

Oh god. Oh god.

Had you lost Ryan and Yaz? You could have sworn they’d been there when you’d all started running. Had something happened? You’d only really met all these people a few days back, but the mere idea of that guy in the hallway catching up with your new friends caused your stomach to drop. As Graham met your terrified gaze, it seemed to only take him a few moments to catch onto what was happening and what was running through your mind as his own expression shifted to one of concern. However, before he got a chance to speak the inevitable question, a series of loud, violent thuds sounded at the metal door. The thought crossed your mind for a moment that maybe it could have been your missing friends, but surely, they’d be calling out to you if it was them? No, no, there was no doubt about it. The alien that had been chasing you was now outside the door.

A mumbled but frantic series of swear words escaped your lips at that realisation, as you tried to will yourself to move. Time was of the essence. That alien could burst through the sealed door at any minute.

But you couldn’t.

Your whole form was virtually paralyzed with fear, terrifying thoughts of what could have happened to your friends racing through your mind as you did the only thing you could do in that moment- let out ragged, shaking breaths and try to prevent yourself from just giving up and crying.

You weren’t entirely sure how long you just stood there. Perhaps it was minutes. Perhaps it was seconds. But, finally, you were snapped out of your thoughts by Graham’s voice. “The Doc’s gonna come back and find us, right?” He questioned, causing you to turn your attention in his direction. Weakly, you gave a small nod.

“I hope so,” you mumbled quietly. The eccentric blonde had gone her own way shortly after you’d all arrived here, claiming that it’d be easier to find the source of the distress call if you split up, so god knows where she was.

Apparently, time and space travel involved following the tropes of an episode of Scooby-Doo, but hey, you were new at this, so you hadn’t complained. Now you wish you had.

Realising that you needed to at least try and act, to at least buy some time for either the Doctor to come find you or for you and Graham to come up with a plan to save yourself, you forced your legs to move. In a somewhat uncertain manner, you made your way over towards the sole thing in this room, a small shelving unit with two metal boxes on it. Apparently, you’d somehow managed to end up in some form of storage cupboard.

An alien storage cupboard. Okay.

“What are you looking for?” Graham’s tired voice asked as you began to try and rummage through the box that was closest to the floor. Try being the operative word there, with how much your hands were shaking.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” you admitted, wishing that your words sounded way more confident than they did. “I just… I don’t know, there has to be something here right? Something that could help us get out or lock the door more or something?” However, your hands seemed to have other ideas, as you seemed unable to get a firm grasp on anything in the box. Not that you recognised anything in this one, so honestly, what was the point?

“Y/N?” Graham’s soft tone once again brought you out of your thoughts, although you didn’t stop nervously rummaging through the box. “Just… Just take a minute, alright? That door’s gotta be pretty tough, he’s not just gonna barge through!”

“But Ryan and Yaz are still out there! We have to at least try and do something, that’s what the Doctor would do. We can’t just sit-“ And with that, your voice finally broke, causing you to fall to silence. You tried to stay composed, to keep it together, causing you to soon duck your head down to give yourself a minute. However, the world clearly seemed against you today, as another, much louder thud sounded at the door, shortly followed by a creak that seemed to be indicating that the door was giving way. This caused a noise that you could only describe as a genuine squeak of fear to escape your lips as your eyes momentarily shut. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

“Y/N, Y/N, look at me,” Graham proceeded to quickly speak up once more. At least his tone indicated he was just as on edge as you. After taking a series of sharp inhales of breath, you slowly did as he asked, only realising as you looked at him that your vision was slightly blurred.

You felt as though you could be excused for tearing up at a moment like this. A few weeks ago, you’d been a simple Y/J/H in Sheffield, and now? Now you were in space, with a homicidal alien waiting outside to kill you and your new friend. How were you meant to react calmly to that? “Sorry,” you mumbled quietly, bringing your hands up to dry the water from the corner of your eyes. “Sorry, I… I just wanted to help.”

Graham gave a soft shake of his head, taking a quick moment to glance in the direction of the door as another loud thud echoed into the room, causing the shelving unit before you to physically shake. “Nah, don’t apologise. I get it. Never had this happen on the 3a bus on a Monday morning,” he responded in a light-hearted tone, his words causing a brief smile to momentarily pull at your lips. It was nice to just focus on something else besides your impending doom, even if it was only for a few seconds. “Yaz is a smart lass, I like to think she’s keeping Ryan safe. Just like you’re keeping me safe, huh?”

“Well, I’m trying. It’s easier said than done sometimes.” Graham softly chuckled at your response, lightly patting you on the shoulder as his gaze moved to look around the room. As his focus settled on something just behind the shelving unit, your expression scrunched up slightly in confusion, wondering what he’d spotted.

And then you spotted it.

There was a medium sized vent in the wall. That movie logic might just pay off once more.

Almost immediately, you and Graham got to work, pulling the shelving unit away from the wall. If you could somehow get through the vent, you could get away from here. Or at the very least, it could provide you a place to hide when the brute outside inevitably broke in.

Kneeling down to get a better look, you were surprised to realise that all you had to do was pull the vent cover off. The screws had already been pulled out. Had someone been here before you? The person who had sent out the distress call? Some poor person who had been here before this place had been abandoned? You weren’t quite sure, but you supposed the only way you would find out was by heading through. Wherever it led, it couldn’t be worse than here.

Discarding the metal cover to the ground, you brought your attention up to Graham. “You head through first, I wanna make sure you get out of here,” you quickly prompted him, soon moving out of the way so that the elder man could try and get inside the vent. He admittedly soon shot you a look of slight confusion, presumably being a little bit uncertain about the idea of just clambering through the vents to safety, but as another thud echoed into the room, he soon did as you prompted.

“You’d better follow me. Give me your word, Y/N,” Graham spoke as he tried to clamber inside as quickly as he could manage. You took a quick glance in the direction of the quickly caving in door, before looking back at him and nodding. Of course, you were going to follow. You just wanted to give him a few moments to make sure he was safely inside before following after him.

Graham seemed to accept this. “Right. God, my knees are gonna hate me for this,” the man remarked dryly, his voice slightly amplified by the metal vent. True to your word, you waited a few moments, before clambering inside, doing your best to replace the metal cover that you’d pulled off soon afterwards. Not that you reckoned it’d take the alien long to figure out where you’d gone. There were no other ways out of that room.

You crawled through the surprisingly spacious vents for only a few moments before you reached the end, ultimately ending up in what appeared to be an office room. Or at least you presumed that was what it used to be. The desks and chairs in this room were all upturned or broken. Graham helped you back onto your feet once you’d clambered out, with you both taking a quick moment to try and catch your breath.

“Guess now, the aim of the game is to try and find the others?” Graham asked, causing you to give a small nod. Hopefully, your friends had been just as lucky in getting away. As Graham went to lead the way out of the office, you proceeded to speak up once more.

“Graham?” Your words caused the man to turn back to face you, with you not wasting any time as you proceeded to lightly wrap your arms around him. “Thank you.”

You felt as though you didn’t need to elaborate any further on what you were thanking him for. Graham would understand. Yes, you knew that now probably wasn’t the right time for this, but you wanted to thank him for being there to reassure you when you needed it. Besides, after a near death experience, you felt as though you couldn’t really be judged for wanting a hug. You might not know this man super well yet, but he’d provided a source of comfort and reassurance for you several times over in the most dangerous of situations, something which you undeniably valued.

Hopefully, that friendship and the borderline surrogate parental role he’d started to provide in your life would only strengthen as you continued to travel together.

The former bus driver seemed a little bit taken aback at first by your sudden act of affection, having clearly not been expecting it, but after a few seconds, he returned the gesture, lightly holding onto you too. “No need to thank me, Y/N. Just trying to be helpful, you know?” Once again, a small smile formed on your expression at his words as you soon pulled away.

“Next time we stop off to get food, remind me that I owe you a cake or something,” you joked, before gesturing over to the door with a small head motion. “Now, you ready to run some more?” A soft somewhat tired exhale of breath escaped from Graham’s lips once more, with him clearly not being too thrilled at the idea of potentially having to run some more, before he gave a small nod.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

And with that, the two of you quickly made your way out of the room, having absolutely no idea where you were going.

But, after what had just happened and everything you’d been through on your travels with the Doctor, you liked to think that the team of Y/N L/N and Graham O’Brien could take on pretty much anything else this building might have in store.

AN: And I’m going to end it there! Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed! As mentioned above, my requests are still 100% open if you wanna send some stuff in! Hope you’re all having a good day, and I’ll see you all next time!

#doctor who imagine #doctor who x reader #graham o'brien x reader #graham o'brien imagine #graham o'brien #bradley walsh

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1dfangirls35 · 5 years

Text

Voir Dire- N.H.

A fake dating OU about contracts, soulmates, and risking it all for love.

Story Masterlist // Talk to me

nine

Niall's way of proving his innocence came in the form of a large white envelope with two tickets to his performance at The Late Late Show with James Corden and a handwritten note inside.

Kelsey didn't open it at first, instead letting the white parchment sit burning a hole on the kitchen counter for twenty-four hours. She was still angry, she was still hurt, and she doubted anything could make the pain she was feeling disappear.

Becca had told Kelsey about Niall's proclamation. And of course Kelsey wanted to believe it. Of course she wanted to think that this had all been a misunderstanding, and that maybe she hadn't been screwed over by a guy yet again. But the thing of it was, Niall's story seemed eerily similar to the plot of a poorly written romantic comedy. Even the weakest of skeptics would have a hard time believing Niall- and Kelsey was far from a weak skeptic.

But against all odds, something kept drawing Kelsey back to that piece of paper and its scribbled black script that was smeared slightly from Niall's left-handed strokes. She was once again holding it as Becca returned from work, chewing the nails of her free hand nervously.

"Have you made a decision yet?" Becca asked, sliding onto the loveseat across from Kelsey.

Kelsey shook her head, "It's probably not a good idea."

"Maybe not," Becca sighed, flicking her legs over the armrest of the couch. "But you have to admit you are curious. I mean you wouldn't be staring at that piece of paper if a part of you didn't want to hear his side of the story."

Kelsey let out a deep guttural sigh. "Why am I even considering it? We both know I have somewhat of a track record of getting screwed over."

"But in your track record of getting screwed over has a guy ever made the gestures Niall has to try and explain himself?" Becca argued. "Listen, Kels," she began again, sitting up and leaning forward so her eyes meet Kelsey's. "Staring at this piece of paper isn't going to make a decision for you, and quite honestly, the fact that you've been staring at that for two days straight goes to show me that you aren't quite ready to write Niall out of your life just yet. So what about this? You and I have been dying to go to a filming of The Late Late Show anyways. So we dress to the nines, we use those damn tickets, and then when we are there and you see him, you make the decision if you want to talk to him or not. If you do, that's great and if not, and you think he deserves a big old tomato on the stage instead, I'll be practicing my aim."

Kelsey let out a small chuckle at her friends comment. Becca was right though. Because as much as Kelsey tried to convince herself that this was just another man ripping apart her heart, a piece of her believed that Niall was telling the truth. She glanced down at Niall's scribbles again, running her fingers across the ink as if it would give her one final piece of information. Then, Kelsey set the envelope down on the coffee table in front of her and looked at Becca.

"Okay, we'll go."

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

The second Kelsey stepped into the studio for the filming of The Late Late Show with James Corden, she began to wonder if this had been a huge mistake. Becca seemingly read her mind, putting a hand on her shoulder and guiding her towards their seats.

"Just say the words and we are gone," Becca whispered into Kelsey's ear as they took their seats.

Niall's tickets came with very specific instructions. After the show they were to make their way to the backstage manager and say that they were guests of Krystal. The idea of using the very person that may have ruined her relationship with Niall gave Kelsey a vile taste in the back of her throat, but if she wanted to talk to Niall, that would have to be her way in.

When Niall first appeared on stage, the crowd went wild. Well, the crowd went wild except for two girls sitting in the middle, politely clapping with a scowl on their faces. Becca had wanted to let out a dramatic boo, just to shake things up, but Kelsey had urged her not to. Mostly because she didn't want to draw attention to themselves and not because she didn't think Niall deserved it.

Kelsey nearly forgot how captivating Niall could be at first glance. With tight navy pants and a white fitted T-shirt and navy blazer, her heart took a few more beats. Even from a distance she watched as his smile lit up the room. But then she'd think about the girl that was likely standing backstage, the girl that he never even mentioned, and the small fire inside of her would be reignited.

The show goes by quickly. Niall was his usually charming self, sending even more doubts through Kelsey's mind that maybe she simply had fallen under his spell. But, no matter how strong the urge to get out of her seats and make a run for it was, Kelsey somehow stays seated.

It's during his musical performance that she noticed that he was scanning the crowd. But with the bright lights for filming and the lack of lighting elsewhere, Kelsey doubted that Niall could even pick out her face.

Becca noticed too. "Well, someone's looking for you."

Kelsey doesn't stay anything, instead she watched as Niall's energy filled the room. The sound of his deep brooding voice entering her ears and sending shivers down her spine. She didn't want to move her body to the beat of his music, but she couldn't help it, the rhythm was hypnotic. When Niall finished his performance, the crowd cheered and Kelsey knew she had a decision to make; go backstage and find out what all this fake girlfriend business was all about or leave now and only see Niall on the TV screen from now on. Becca didn't say anything, instead staring at her best friend's face as if she was trying to read her mind. Kelsey brought her index finger up to her teeth, gnawing on the edges of her fingernails as if somehow that was going to help her come to a decision. But Kelsey knew what decision she wanted to make already. The decision had been made the second she laid eyes on Niall again tonight. The question really was did she want to go through with it?

"Okay," Kelsey said softly. The crowds from the show beginning to make their way to the exit. "Let's hear him out."

Kelsey and Becca are surprised at the ease of which they get backstage. They showed the backstage manager their passes, told them they are with Krystal and are quickly led back towards a dressing room.

It's her they see first. Kelsey can tell it's her even from a yard away. Her long blonde hair was stick straight behind her back. Her long legs accentuated by the tight black mini dress she wears. Kelsey wondered what she knows.

"Your guests," the man said, grabbing Krystal's attention. Kelsey watched as Krystal's eyes followed Kelsey from head to toe, no doubt examining her competition. She gives Kelsey a half-baked smile, the kind you give when you feel obligated to but don't really want to. The kind you can see right through.

Then he appeared, coming around the corner with his band. His conversation loud and rambunctious until he sees her. He instantly fell quiet.

Niall was surprised to see her. He didn't think she'd show. He'd hoped she would but he didn't think she would. He didn't deserve for her to show. Not when he had let her find out about Krystal from a tabloid.

The tickets were his Hail Mary. A last ditch effort in trying to mend a relationship that in just a short amount of time had come to mean a lot to him. He'd even begrudgingly involved Krystal in the whole scheme, trying to avoid any possible slip-ups of his secret.

He couldn't read her face as he approached. Her usual smile was gone, but it wasn't replaced with a face of anger. Instead, her lips formed a straight, emotionless line. He wasn't sure where he was going to start. He didn't know how he was going to explain this.

"You came," he said as she approached him, their eyes meeting for the first time in weeks. Niall's heart fluttered at the sight of her, and though he knew she likely wasn't happy with him the fact that she was even here in the first place gave him some glimmer of hope.

"I did," Kelsey replied, keeping her face neutral.

They stared at each other for a moment, locked in a stand off. Neither wanting to start the conversation or sure of what words to say.

Niall broke the silence first, his voice laced with a hint of nervousness. "Will you come with me? I have some explaining to do."

Kelsey nodded and followed Niall's lead. He brought her to his dressing room, his name printed boldly on the door. Inside, Niall took a seat on a long black leather couch. Kelsey awkwardly seated herself opposite of him, careful to leave a safe amount of distance between them lest she be tempted by his irresistible smell.

"I'm glad you came. To hear me out." Niall said slowly, wringing his hands in his lap. He was careful not to let his eyes linger on her face for too long, lest she might disappear in front of his eyes.

When Kelsey doesn't reply right away Niall continued. "I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision for you to make."

Kelsey sighed, her face breaking from its neutral mask for a moment. "No, it wasn't."

Niall saw the pain flash across Kelsey's face. He knew he hurt her, and he wasn't the first to do so. He couldn't undo the hurt, he couldn't take away that pain or that broken trust. But he could try to make it right. He took a deep breath. "I never wanted you to find out like that, from the paps. I should have told you the second we took things further than friends. And Kelsey, you've got to believe me I wanted to tell you, but things were so good and uncomplicated And well- my life is complicated."

"So the girl from the music video?" Kelsey asked, her mind picturing the girl standing just a few feet outside the dressing room door, the one that Becca is likely having to make painful small talk with right now.

"That's Krystal. And in the eyes of the public and the media, she's my..." Niall hesitated, because saying the words outloud to Kelsey somehow made him feel more ashamed of the plot he was part of. "She's my girlfriend."

"But she's not really your girlfriend?" Kelsey's voice grows slightly more interrogative. Niall can see the distaste in her mouth as she says the word girlfriend, as if the word is poison to her lips.

"No...she's an actress, hired by my management....it's..Do you want a drink?" Niall stood suddenly, running his now sweaty palms down the front of his trousers. He bounced around the room in an effort to combat the awkwardness that had befallen them. He needed something, anything to make this go down smoother.

"I think that'd be good," Kelsey replied, and for the first time since he's laid eyes on her tonight, Niall swore he can see the beginnings of a smile.

The only thing stocked in the dressing room mini fridge is a bottle of Jameson whiskey. Niall finds two glasses and sets them on the coffee table in front of them. Pouring out two large glasses, before bringing the stiff liquid to his lips and down his throat.

"The thing about the entertainment industry, is it's all about appearances. Who you are seen with, who you are wearing, who you are marketing yourself as. Before each album release, the record label sits down and tells me what kind of promo I will have to do, and what kind of image they want to sell. And so this year when I sat down they told me, 'Niall, this album is all about love, so this year you are going to be a man in love.' " Niall laughed to himself at the memory, at the pure irony that in assigning him someone to love he may have just ruined his chances with someone who he actually could love.

"I didn't want it. I've always prided myself on being honest and open with my fans, and everyone in my life. I'm a what you see is what you get kinda man. But then they sat my contract in front of me, and I didn't have a choice."

"But it's your music Niall, how can you not have a choice?" Kelsey interrupted. She sees where his going with this. That this was all some plot to promote his music. But was he really just a puppet to the record label?

Niall could tell Kelsey still didn't understand the gravity of the situation. The consequences it would have had on his career had he say no. He looked her straight in the eyes. "These are powerful people Kelsey. You can't just screw off one part of the music industry, they're all connected in someway or another. And I love my music, I love making music. And so I figured this one small sacrifice in my character wouldn't matter in the long run. And so they hired Krystal."

Kelsey didn't say anything, instead swirling the whiskey in her glass and watching it stick to the edges.

"What I didn't expect to do was meet you Kelsey." Niall's voice softened.

Kelsey sets down her glass on the table. "But why didn't you tell me Niall. If this is all for show why didn't you just warn me?" Her voice raised. Because this is really all what it came down to wasn't it. It wasn't that it mattered if Niall was in some PR relationship, it wasn't that he had not stood up to his label, it was the fact that he didn't even given her the smallest of warnings that there was something more complicated going on.

"I wanted to tell you. I just didn't know how." Niall trailed off. He thinks of all the times the words almost slipped off of his tongue, all the excuses that he'd given himself as to why it hadn't been the right time. And look where it had gotten him.

"And I guess a part of me was worried that when I told you you'd bolt. These people, my management, they aren't people to mess with. Make them angry and they can do some damage. I wanted to protect you from that. I didn't want to drag you into my lifestyle anymore than I already have."

"That wasn't for you to decide Niall."

"I see that now and I'm sorry." Niall's eyes pleaded with Kelsey, regret entwined within the blue irises. Niall looked at Kelsey, the girl who somehow captivated him in every way. The girl who he couldn't keep his mind off of. The girl who he may have slowly been falling for. He didn't want to lose her. He didn't want to give this up.

"Can we start this over maybe? This time without all the secrets?"

Kelsey bit her lip. She believed Niall she really did. And she liked him, oh man did she like him. But was it worth all the stress? All the sneaking around? All the possible consequences should someone find out?

"I know I've broken your trust. And I know you've been hurt in the past. So it doesn't have to be today, or tomorrow or even next week. But I'd like to start fresh," Niall continued.

Kelsey took a deep breath in. Maybe starting from the beginning wouldn't be such a bad thing. Maybe that's what they needed. No clubs and taxis and one night stands. A new beginning where everything was on the table. "Okay."

Kelsey watched as relief flooded Niall's face.

"I'm Niall," he said suddenly, holding out a hand for her to shake. She laughs at the formality of it, because even on that first night in the bar she wasn't sure they'd been formally introduced.

"Kelsey," her hand met Niall's and she felt that familiar spark from his touch.

"Nice to meet ya Kelsey. Can I treat ya to a drink?" Niall asked with a wink.

Tags: @awomanindeniall @ihearthemcallingforyou @niall-is-my-dream

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

A/N:Thank you so much for reading Voir Dire! I know its been a while since I've updated and I'm just going to warn you that from now on I'm not sure how regular my updates will be, as I'm about to start clinical rotations...eek. I appreciate your patience, and hope I can continue telling Niall and Kelsey's story soon!

#voir dire #nh #writingby1dfangirls35 #niall horan #1dff #niallff #fake dating #secret relationship #niall x ofc #ntmy

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cheshiresense · 6 years

Note

In Guard, how does the whole . . . *waves hand vaguely* THING with Sui-Feng and Ichigo and Kisuke and Yourichi go?

Pinglist: @yoshifics @bewarethemandragora @runeofluna @selenedreamwalker @hypnos28 @verticallychallengedintrovert @fandommaniac2401 @lovingempress @cynthia-of-the-wallflowers @shadowsofmoonracer @pairp @warriorofbooks @charlottedabookworm @lyra689 @sheyrenawyrsabane @sora-the-empress @xadriannax @yumeniai @arrysa @lirial89-fanfiction @skysong246 @caiahat @grimreaper19 @arosethornbyanyothername @oceanshimmerspirit-blog @naramyon @presumenothing @miralifox @mtkiseki

Well we had a whole discussion over on discord about Ichigo reaching the legal drinking age (whatever the heck that is for Shinigami) and Yoruichi getting him drunk to pry some embarrassing secrets out of him, except instead Ichigo spills about Sui-Feng to her instead and later wakes up remembering nothing but half the compound has been reduced to smoking ruin after Yoru went on a rampage while Kisuke totally egged her on.

…It was very cracky. Here’s something a little more serious.

(*Note: My original idea had Aizen + extended war as the reason Ichigo and Kisuke had to leave their original universe but it could just as easily have been the Quincy War gone wrong, so I think I’ll go with that instead.)

“Up and about again already. Kisuke-chan’s Bankai is really something.”

Ichigo looks up from where he’s just finishing folding the last of Kisuke’s laundry. Yoruichi is sprawled along the windowsill, gilded in the light of the afternoon sun. “Yoru-nee.” He pauses. “Bankai? What Bankai?”

Yoruichi rolls her eyes. “Save it. I’m not going to spread it around but we both know who finished off Aizen. I know his reiatsu well enough by now even if not many other people do.” She looks pointedly at his face. “And those scars didn’t come from nowhere. Unless you’re planning on never leaving this house again, there’s going to be questions.”

Ichigo waves a dismissive hand before picking up the folded shirts and stacking it into the closet along with the rest. “We’ll deal with it when it comes up. The Gotei better think again if they’re making plans to poach Kisuke from me though. Or the Onmitsukidou for that matter.”

Yoruichi pouts at him. Ichigo levels an unimpressed look back at her. Yoruichi huffs and rolls out of sight, only to pop back up a moment later, hanging sulkily over the sill this time.

“Can’t you let me borrow him?” She whines. “Have you noticed his Shunpo? It’s nearly as fast as mine, and he only started learning it less than two years ago! And have you seen his one-man guerrilla campaign against Suì-Fēng? I’m fairly certain she’s about to have a mental breakdown any day now.”

Ichigo shuts the closet with a snap and pins his sister with a blank look. “What.”

A slow smirk curls across Yoruichi’s face. “So he hasn’t told you.”

“Told me what?” But even as he asks, Ichigo thinks he can guess. That idiot.

Yoruichi’s smirk widens gleefully, but in direct contrast, something in her eyes go cold and flat, and Ichigo knows that’s his sister’s version of genuine anger.

Kisuke you moron, I told you I didn’t care.

“Oh nothing much,” Yoruichi assures with a terrifyingly bright sort of cheer. “Just how he’s been making Suì-Fēng‘s life absolutely miserable lately. I’ve lost track of the number of new types of gigai he’s made but he’s set at least five different kinds on her, and they almost always manage to sneak up on her, everything from ones that look like Hollows to the latest version that exploded into feathers when she stabbed it and drenched her in red paint. I’m not sure I actually want to know where he got that much paint or feathers from in the first place, but it took her almost three days to stop walking around looking like a sunburnt chicken, which was a riot. She still hasn’t traced the culprit back to him yet, and it’s been like a year. I applaud his dedication and subtlety.”

Ichigo closes his eyes and counts backwards from ten. He reminds himself that Urahara Kisuke is the love of his life and he’ll probably go a little bit - a lot - insane if he kills him over this.

He ignores the stupidly warm feeling in his chest and focuses on the more important fact that is Kisuke terrorizing Yoruichi’s protégé.

“I’ll tell him to stop,” He sighs.

He’s not expecting Yoruichi to cock her head in an eerily feline manner and ask, “Why? Should he not be doing it?”

Ichigo stares incredulously at her. “Do you want him to keep tor- pranking Suì-Fēng?”

Yoruichi shrugs a little, flipping up to perch on the windowsill. “I don’t know, you tell me. Does she deserve it?”

Ichigo stills. “I- what?”

Yoruichi doesn’t bother repeating herself, just stares him down in a way that isn’t so unlike the Yoruichi Ichigo knew from his original universe when she was serious. In general, the two versions of her are highly similar. This one’s younger of course, but mostly, she just looks less stressed, less cynical too despite still heading a covert ops organization, and laughs more– not just her madness-and-mayhem laugh when she’s screwing with somebody but one that’s reserved for family, gentler somehow and playful without being playfully malicious at the same time.

Ichigo scowls. “Nobody deserves Kisuke going after them.” He pauses before amending, “Except Aizen, and maybe Central 46, and our stuffy elders. I’ll let you borrow him for that if you ever get tired of dealing with them.”

Yoruichi snorts. “I’ll take you up on that offer if I ever want to do away with our elders by giving them collective heart attacks.”

They smirk at each other for a moment, and not for the first time, Ichigo marvels at how easily he’s come to consider Yoruichi family.

Possibly, that might be at least partly because they have the same tolerance for bullshit when they’re focused on something they want. Or want to find out, in this case. Which is to say, none at all.

“Useless elders aren’t what I’m here to talk about though,” Yoruichi continues, humour disappearing in the blink of an eye and replaced with a borderline glare that Ichigo recognizes to mean business. “Spit it out, Ichigo. We both know the only reason your bodyguard would go afterSuì-Fēng is because she did something to you.”

“She could’ve insulted him!” Ichigo protests. “She did insult him!”

“Yes, but if Kisuke-chan took offense, you would’ve gone after her,” Yoruichi counters in sardonic tones. “You two are predictable like that.” Her eyes narrow. “I’ll ask one more time, Ichigo, or my next step will be to go directly to the source and drag it out of her, and I won’t be kind about it. I’ve waited long enough. What did she do?”

“Like you’re going to be kind if I tell you?” Ichigo mutters before heaving a sigh of defeat. “She didn’t do anything. But you know how some people are, about me. It’s nothing to kick up a fuss about. I don’t know why Kisuke made such a big deal about it.”

“I know how some people are,” Yoruichi agrees in deceptively mild tones. “But I expect better from my people, or they don’t stay my people for long. What did she say to you then?”

“Nothing,” Ichigo insists. “I don’t- She didn’t say it to my face or anything. She never does. Just some… passing remarks to herself if she sees me. It’s nothing new. Just, you know, the usual stuff about how I’m a bastard. Which I am. It doesn’t bother me.”

He trails off, shifting uncomfortably at the way Yoruichi’s eyes flash, the burn of tightly reined-in rage there almost Hollow-like.

“You know how devoted she is to you,” Ichigo hurries on. “She can’t stand anything that could… ruin your reputation or-”

“That’s not up to her to decide,” Yoruichi cuts him off, and there’s something almost animalistic in the timbre of her voice this time, pitching it right down to a chilling snarl. “It is not her place.”

Ichigo huffs. “Just because she’s from a retainer family-”

“This isn’t about rank, Ichigo!” Yoruichi barks, and Ichigo’s mouth snaps shut with a click. “It wouldn’t matter to me one jot whether the person in question was the Soutaichou or a Rukon prostitute! This is about someone thinking they have the right to judge my family and find them wanting on my behalf. No one gets to do that, no matter how supposedly devoted they are to me or how much you don’t care about their opinion. I care. You’re my brother, and I killed the last batch of idiots who thought Father’s affair meant that you’re somehow lesser.”

She slides forward this time, rolling from window to bed to floor before dropping to her knees in front of Ichigo. Her hands come up to cup his face, gentle but firm in a way that doesn’t allow him to squirm away under Yoruichi’s unyielding gaze.

“Being my apprentice doesn’t giveSuì-Fēng a pass,” She presses on, quieter now but no less fierce. “If anything, I hold her to higher standards because I took her under my wing, because I would think I’ve taught her to be better in more things that just combat. I expected better of her, and I was clearly mistaken. You are not lesser. Anyone who thinks that way doesn’t deserve my respect, and people I don’t respect-” She bares her teeth in a way that’s more threat than grin. “-aren’t good enough to belong in my household.”

Ichigo… isn’t quite sure what to say in the face of all that. Yoruichi sighs and finally lets him go, only to scruff a hand through his hair. He ducks his head and scowls. Yoruichi rolls her eyes at him.

“You didn’t let anybody get away with trying to make Kisuke ‘learn his place’,” She remarks. “Why should it be any different when it’s you? The Soul King knows that kid looks at you like he thinks you hung the moon and lit the stars themselves for good measure.”

Ichigo’s cheeks flood with heat. “He does not, Yoru-nee.”

Yoruichi chortles and glances around knowingly. Ichigo flushes even more and has to suppress a grimace because she definitely caught him at a bad time, now that he thinks about it. The bed hasn’t been folded up so the extra large futon Kisuke just bought yesterday is still laid out, and Ichigo was in the process of splitting closet space with the man. He really should start locking his window. Not that a lock would stop a determined Yoruichi of course.

“It’s just words though,” Ichigo finally says. “It was different for Kisuke because Kisuke cared. Because he believed them.”

“So you’re saying you wouldn’t bite someone’s head off if they said something rude to him when he doesn’t believe them?” Yoruichi asks, eyebrow arching.

“Of course I would!” Ichigo scowls when her other eyebrow joins her first. “Just because he doesn’t believe them anymore doesn’t mean he should have to put up with it!”

Yoruichi snorts this time. Ichigo’s shoulders hunch. “That’s different.”

Yoruichi sighs, deep and resigned. “It’s really not. But we’ll agree to disagree.” She smiles, and even Ichigo almost flinches from it. “I have what I need.”

“Yoru-nee,” Ichigo says sharply. “She’s not worth doing something drastic over. She cares about you. She’s good at her job. She’s just… a little zealous about it.”

Yoruichi scoffs. “Why are you even defending her? You two barely interact.”

“Exactly! So none of this matters!”

“You matter,” Yoruichi says flatly. “And you said she insulted Kisuke too so you can’t possibly like her.”

“But you do!”

Ichigo winces even as Yoruichi stares at him, the last piece of the puzzle practically visibly slotting into place in her mind. A blink later, Ichigo is trapped in a headlock and wrangled into a half-hug, half punishing noogie.

“You’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met,” Yoruichi growls, ignoring Ichigo’s flailing limbs. “I’m never going to like someone who looks down on my family. Even when they’re bratty little brothers with no common sense.”

“Yoru-nee! Lemme go!”

Yoruichi very pointedly doesn’t let him go for a few more seconds before finally releasing him. Ichigo scrambles upright and glowers at her as he straightens his clothes and pats down his hair. “You’re a terrible sister.”

Yoruichi rolls her eyes and smacks a kiss to his forehead, much to his embarrassment. “Please, I’m an amazing sister and you love me. Now,” Her expression smooths out and hardens, and she looks exactly like the clan head some people even just ten years ago said was too young and too inexperienced to take over after their father died. “I’m going to handle this. You won’t have to worry about her ever again.”

Ichigo sighs. Well, it’s not like he can stop her once she’s made up her mind. They’re a lot alike that way too.

“I wasn’t worried about her to begin with,” He huffs. “…Are you gonna kill her?”

It’s strange, the very idea. In another life, Yoruichi valued almost no one more thanSuì-Fēng. Kisuke was the only exception.

“No,” Yoruichi says decisively. The razor-edged curve of her smirk is not reassuring. “Not this time. Sometimes, death is more a mercy than letting someone live.”

She ruffles his hair one more time and then flash-steps backwards onto the sill once more. “I’ll see you later, Ichi-bo. Say hello to Kisuke-chan for me!”

And then she’s gone, and Ichigo is left staring after her and wondering if the compound will be standing in the morning.

One thing’s for certain - this is definitely all Kisuke’s fault.

“I’m home!” Kisuke calls out, and then immediately has to dodge the slipper Ichigo chucks at him.

“You!”

Ichigo shunpos into the room, faster than even Kisuke can follow, materializing in a silent graceful swirl of muted blue sleeves and orange hair, and not for the first time since he regained his memories, he thinks Shihouin suits Ichigo very well. A far sight better than the bulkier and roudier stock the Shiba Clan tends to produce, in Kisuke’s opinion. Ichigo was never a classic Shiba, even when he was under Isshin’s influence.

“Yes?” He enquires mildly, mentally running through a list of everything he’s done recently. He hasn’t killed anyone (Aizen doesn’t count), set anything on fire (the stove had it coming), or broken… that many laws (can it really be considered theft if these poor books on Quincy that Yamamoto outlawed and stashed away in his private library were just gathering dust when Kisuke found them?).

Conclusion: there is absolutely no reason for Ichigo to be mad at him.

He smiles as he sweeps in, drops a kiss on Ichigo’s head (he’s so tiny like this!), and presents his loot with a flourish for Ichigo to appreciate. “Look! Kyouraku-soutaichou was right; Yamamoto-soutaichou apparently does have an entire series detailing the Quincy empire during the first war. I figured it would be better if we were as prepared as possible this time before confronting them again.”

He mind flashes back - briefly - to Yhwach and the sound his sword made when it left Ichigo’s gut and even the way he smiled as he watched Ichigo fall.

(Kisuke will die before he ever lets that happen again.)

A hand curls around his, and he blinks back into the present, relaxing when he finds Ichigo watching him. He nods to the silent question on Ichigo’s face and gets a nod back before the dangerous gleam from before reenters his eyes. Half a beat later, Kisuke’s flat on his back with Ichigo straddling him and glaring down at him.

“The books will be useful,” Ichigo admits before his eyes narrow. “But what the hell have you been doing toSuì-Fēng?”

…Ah. Yoruichi must have finally cornered Ichigo for an overdue chat.

“To be fair,” Kisuke reasons. “I didn’t have my memories back yet when I was… hm…”

“Turning her into a paranoid wreck via psychological warfare?” Ichigo offers dryly.

Kisuke beams. “It builds character!”

Ichigo rolls his eyes. “Which makes even less sense. You didn’t even remember me yet! Why would you go afterSuì-Fēng the way I hear you have?”

Kisuke stares up at him for a moment. “Why would I not? She is free to think what she wants, but when she acts on those thoughts, when she speaks them, of course I would retaliate. She had no right.”

Ichigo frowns down at him. “But you didn’t remember me.”

For all his genius, even Kisuke has to take a moment to figure out why the two of them seem to be having two different conversations. And then he does get it, and he has to bite back the first three things that immediately leap to the tip of his tongue.

“Do you think that just because I didn’t remember you, I didn’t care about you either?” Kisuke demands. He spares a moment to congratulate himself for not yelling because that’s exactly what he feels like doing. Some of Ichigo’s more… straightforward habits have clearly rubbed off on him.

Ichigo’s frown deepens. “Well, of course you did.” His gaze flickers to the side. “It was your job, and I also like to think that you grew to like me at least a little after a while. But-”

Kisuke makes an irritated noise before flipping the two of them so that Ichigo is trapped underneath him with a startled yelp.

“You weren’t just a job,” Kisuke says, because sometimes direct is the only way to get Ichigo to understand something. “At the beginning, yes,” He admits, as much as it pains him, but Ichigo’s always, always valued honesty from Kisuke more than anything else. “But you never took advantage of me, and you gave me everything I ever asked for and a lot more that I did not. You gave me a home.” He smirks a little, amused. “You even trained me.” He sobers. “I took offense to whatSuì-Fēng said– and she said other things to other people about you while you were away, it wasn’t just that one time– and I took offense because she had no right to judge you. No matter what she thought of you, she should at the very least have kept her mouth shut and her opinions to herself. I seem to recall someone once telling me that I have no betters. The same goes for you. Anyone who thinks you do,” Kisuke presses his lips together for a moment against the snarl threatening to surface. “Anyone who thinks you should bow because you are less than they are or somehow unworthy of respect because of who you were born to should consider themselves fortunate that I have not done worse to them.”

Ichigo gapes up at him. Kisuke says nothing more, content to give Ichigo the time to digest his words and accept them as truth, because this is the sort of thing that both of them have problems with understanding at times.

(There is a riddle that lingers at the back of his mind - a former assassin and not so former scientist with only a vague understanding of morals, who still looks at most people and only sees practical value and faceless numbers and exploitable weaknesses, and has so much blood on his hands that he thinks he could drown in it sometimes; and a boy born scapegoat turned martyr, taught to die before he could really live, and forged in death and blood and battle - which of them, he wonders, turned out worse?)

Ichigo blinks and blinks again. “…Oh, I-” He breaks off, and the tips of his ears go red, but he also smiles at Kisuke like he’s given him the world, and that’s worth more than any words can say.

Kisuke hums his agreement and finally sits back on his heels before taking a seat on the floor entirely, pulling Ichigo up with him. “Yoruichi-san finally cornered you?”

Ichigo makes a face. “Yeah, a few hours ago. She said she was going to… deal with theSuì-Fēng situation.”

Kisuke smirks. This world’s Yoruichi is not exactly the one he knew, but she’s close enough that he has a good idea of what she’s planning on doing.

Ichigo throws him a suspicious look. “That’s your evil smirk. You know what Yoru-nee is going to do.”

“I can take a good guess,” Kisuke agrees. “And no, I’m not going to tell you. It will ruin the surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” Ichigo grumbles.

“You’ll live,” Kisuke says cheerfully. “Now come on, help me get these books behind seals, and then you can start cooking us dinner.”

“Oh I can, can I?”

“Well I could always do it, but you’ll probably have to stand by with the fire extinguisher if you don’t want to be sleeping outside tonight.”

Ichigo sighs like it’s a terrible inconvenience but he doesn’t turn away fast enough to hide his grin, and Kisuke can’t help but lean forward to kiss it off him.

This is how he likes Ichigo best - when he’s happy over the simplest things, just because Kisuke is there.

It’s all over Seireitei the very next day - the Fēng family’s fall from grace. The details are kept internal, but everybody knows it was some kind of betrayal, and everyone knows it was the current head of the Fēngs who was responsible for falling out of Shihouin Yoruichi’s favour. Overnight, the entire noble house is booted off Shihouin clan grounds, and those who are already combat-trained are relegated to the lowest nameless ranks of the Onmitsukidou.

It’s the sort of thing most people would expect execution or at least exile as the end result from the Shihouin Clan. But-

“For a family like the Fēngs,” Kisuke explains later over dango. “Death would be preferable over the humiliation of living with the fact that they’ve made a big enough mistake that the Shihouins have cast them out entirely. They prided themselves on being the most loyal, most trusted, the house that enjoyed the most benefits under the Shihouin Clan’s patronage. Now everybody knows of their downfall, and they even know exactly whose fault it is, even if they don’t know what she did. It’s a fitting punishment, and not one they’re likely to be able to come back from. Disappointingly bloodless though.”

Ichigo rolls his eyes and finishes off his last dango. “Fantastic. Can we move on now? I really don’t want to waste anymore time onSuì-Fēng.”

Kisuke sweeps the garbage into the trashcan. “Alright. How about a spar today?”

Ichigo instantly brightens, taking two quick steps forward before half-turning on his heel, light on his feet in a way that even his previous incarnation at his most powerful couldn’t quite match.

“Race you to the training grounds!” Ichigo challenges, and then he’s gone, not even a blur left behind to hint at which training grounds he’s headed to.

Kisuke laughs under his breath, zeroes in on the bright sunlight signature he knows like the back of his hand, and races off after him.

#bleach #uraichi #urahara kisuke #kurosaki ichigo #shihouin ichigo #shihouin yoruichi #myscrap #guard verse #msg #selenedreamwalker

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stillthewordgirl · 6 years

Text

LOT/CC fic: Loose Ends

About a year after Sara and Len visit Len's Earth (see "Hearts of Steel"), the Waverider gets a call from STAR Labs. And it seems a few visitors might just clear up some loose ends for this pair.

Happy birthday to @larielromeniel! (And thanks for beta’ing your own birthday present!)

I know I said that "Hearts of Steel" was the last story in the Len Snart stories, but I apparently lied. :) (You might want to read those stories first, to see what's going on. You can find the series here on AO3.)

You can read this story here on AO3 or here on FF.net.

“Len?”

He’d finally fallen asleep what, three hours ago? Len Snart mutters something into the pillow, refusing to open his eyes, yanking the blanket up over his head.

Sara…whose room this technically is, although he’d pretty much moved in months ago…chuckles softly and not without sympathy. She knows, after all, because she’s the one who’d sent him and Ray and Mick on the particularly exhausting mission they’d only returned from three-hours-and 17-minutes ago. Or so.

“Umph,” he tells her indistinctly, speaking into the pillows.

Sara sighs. “Len,” she says quietly. “I know. But I need just a minute, OK?” She sits down on the edge of the bed. “Then you can go back to sleep for a while. But you should know this.”

That doesn’t sound good. Len cracks an eye open, then rolls over, eyeing Sara, who’s fully dressed and looking far too awake and put-together. (Well, she’d slept.)

She gives him a half-smile, registering that he’s listening. “We just got a distress beacon from STAR Labs, back in 2018 on our Earth. Not much info…but the message said you need to be there.” She pauses. “I don’t know why. They haven’t responded to any other queries, but then we’re not really set up for that.”

Len can’t say precisely that he’s fully awake now, but he’s a helluva lot more awake than he’d been a few minutes ago. He stares at Sara, who gives him a regretful smile as she reaches out to wrap her fingers around his as they curl around a blanket.

“Lisa?” he says finally.

He’d finally met this Earth’s version of his sister a few months back, and it’d proven…complicated. Lisa of Earth-1 was still a mix of enraged and heartbroken over her brother’s fate, and seeing his doppelganger had been a kick in the gut. But they’d worked it out, somehow, arriving at an understanding of sorts, and he’d made her promise to call if she needed anything, anything at all. (While giving Cisco a flat sort of big-brother look, which seemed to be expected of him.)

Sara’s eyes are sympathetic. “I don’t know. Best I can tell, there wasn’t anything majorly wrong. It was Barry, and you know him…he’s not great at concealing things. If anything, he sounded…” She pauses, considering. “…extremely excited.”

“That kid could get extremely excited over a new flavor of ice cream.” Len closes his eyes and sighs. “OK. How long?”

“You have a bit. We need to take our ‘guest’ back home first.” She smirks at him as he sighs again.

The guest in question is one Butch Cassidy, who’d been thrown ahead in time by a temporal anomaly and, less daunted than expected by the 1950s, promptly started putting together a new “Wild Bunch.” Len and Mick had arranged to get recruited, with Ray unable to resist tagging along, while the others had tried to figure out where to deposit Cassidy that wouldn’t mess up the man’s personal timeline. Len had been rather beleaguered, trying to keep Mick (who’d hit it off famously with Cassidy) from backsliding--and trying to restrain Ray, who was overjoyed to be in such famous company and kept happily quoting a movie that wouldn’t come out for another 10 years to a confused outlaw.

No wonder he’d been exhausted.

“OK,” Len mutters, closing his eyes again. “Well, the least that bastard owes me is another hour or two of sleep.” Then he opens one eye and starts to lever himself up on an elbow. “Or do you need me to…”

Sara’s smiling as she puts a hand on his chest, pushing him back down. “Rest, Len. We’ve got this.”

“Make Ray and Mick put their new BFF back where he belongs.” Damn, he’s tired.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” He feels Sara’s lips brush his forehead. “I’ll handle it.”

“Urm.”

He hears her leave the room then, as he wills sleep to return. Of course, despite the exhaustion, his brain picks now to start obsessing over this mysterious call from STAR Labs—the one he needs to be there for. Could this Lisa and Cisco…nah. But then what…

It’s been nearly a year since he and Sara returned from his Earth, and it’s been good. Very good. He’s continued to fit in with the Legends, working with them far better than he’d ever worked with the League. And he and Sara challenge each other and back each other up and flirt and drink and fight and sleep together. They’re head over heels in love, and they make no secret of the fact at this point, and the team is amused and supportive, and life is sweet.

Except…

He’s thought about having Cisco vibe him back to his Earth to check on Lisa, to make sure she’d really taken the cure, to make sure it really worked. To make sure she’s as happy as she can be, and safe.

But he’d left the ball in her court, and he’s screwed up so much when it comes to his little sister that he’s loath to blunder back into her life just when she may be mending it. Mick knows how to find him if they want to get in contact.

Which would lead them to Earth-1’s STAR Labs. Which has just called for him.

He doesn’t want to hope.

But he can’t help it, either.

Len does sleep again, almost against his will, and Sara only wakes him well after Cassidy is safely back in 1900. She knows him well enough to read how fidgety and irritated he is at the sigh of nerves and gives him some space, pushing back and giving him a verbal set-down when his crankiness goes too far. He showers and dresses when they land in 2018, then joins the others to figure out who’s going where.

“Well, it doesn’t seem like anyone’s attacking the city,” Jax notes, looking at the newspapers Gideon’s pulled up on a viewscreen. “And Barry probably would have told us if they needed all of us. And he didn’t.”

He looks at Len, then, and the rest of the team follows suit. They know, at this point, about his sister and Mick, know that’d he’d left behind loose ends on his Earth. Len, already nervy, shifts in place, annoyed at the discomfort he’s showing and a trifle uneasy at the attention. He’s been just one of the team for so long now; he rather hates it when someone takes note that he’s from…somewhere else.

“OK, then, just let me go,” he says, turning a snap into a mutter with great effort. “No one else needs to bother. For all I know, they just need my powers for something.”

No one mentions that Team Flash has its own ice meta. Sara regards him, then eyes the others.

“I’m going with him,” she tells them, not even looking at Len. Well, maybe he deserves that, for doubting she’d have his back here. “Someone needs to stay with the ship...”

“I will.” Mick shrugs as the eyes turn to him. “Eh, I’m a better pilot than the rest of you losers—uh, not you, Sara—just in case we have to move the ship, and it might be better if I stay away from STAR Labs. If...well...I don’t think I wanna meet another me. Too weird.”

It’s perceptive. Len and Sara had long since discussed (back when Len had been a little more optimistic that his Lisa and Mick would at least check in before now) that maybe it would be better if the Micks native to their respective Earths didn’t meet. Despite similarities, they’re two very different men, although Len has the uneasy feeling that they could egg each other on to greater heights—or depths. Mick has apparently decided the same.

Impossible not to notice, though, that the team has come to the same conclusion that Len's trying not to reach— the one that he’s still holding out hope for.

In the end, Len and Sara head for STAR Labs on their own, with the team reminding them multiple times to yell or call or whatever and they’ll be there ASAP. Stein and Jax even assert that they’re going to wait a little while to be sure that all’s well before they head out to visit their own families, and Len’s rather touched by that—so much so that he even tells them so. (Jax slaps his back and grins like he’s the older of the two, and Stein bestows one of those fond quasi-paternal smiles on him.)

They have keycards to the labs, but Len still refuses to use his—and today is no exception. He heads for the Cortex, trying not to let his steps lag, Sara’s even stride beside him helping, in a way. They can face anything together, right?

Over the past year, he’s been thinking that sort of thing a lot. Interesting. And enough to have him thinking other thoughts he’s never had before.

But first, he has to get through this…whatever it is. Len feels his lips twitch, even as the end of the corridor approaches. And wouldn’t it be hysterical in a depressing sort of way, after all this, if Team Flash just wants to enlist him for a team-up, or something?

But nearly the moment he sets foot in the Cortex, he knows it’s not just that.

It’s far more.

Lisa’s standing there, her back to him—this Earth’s Lisa. Her hair is long and brown, and she’s wearing the black leather jacket he’s always seen her in, here. His Lisa had always liked lighter colors; it’s one of their differences. And she’s talking to…she’s talking to…

He stops dead in his tracks and stares. Sara, beside him, stops too, and he can hear her intake of breath. It’s not just him, then, he thinks distantly. She sees it too.

“Snart!” Barry hustles up behind him. “Seriously, of all the times not to use the key and give us a warning…”

Len ignores him. The two women ahead have heard him and, eerily in unison, they turn around. Now the breath hisses out of Len’s mouth, like he’s been physically booted in the stomach, and he takes a step forward, eyes on them, at an utter loss for what to do or say…

“Snart!”

And then he’s hit from behind, so started that he doesn’t even manage to ice up or lash out, breath driven out of him even more as his assailant lifts him right off his feet in a…bear hug?

Mick…it’s his Earth’s Mick, he realizes once he can breathe again, who else would it be?...drops him after a moment, stepping back as Barry, the jerk, laughs out loud and Caitlin, joining them, covers her mouth with her hand, obviously trying not to smile. Mick smirks at him in a way that suggests he knows just how much he’d startled his former partner, then winks at Sara. “Hello again, Blondie. Been keeping this ass out of trouble?”

“Getting into trouble with that ass, more like,” Sara tells him, grinning as he barks out a laugh at the innuendo. “Hello, Mick. Still no fire?”

“Nah. Burned out a bit on it.”

Len, who’s not sure where to look right now, chokes. “Was that a pun? That was horrible.”

“Well, you’re not around, so…”

But someone’s clearing their throat in an obvious bid for attention, and Len realizes that it’s Cisco, who’d gone over to the two women Len had been staring at and apparently brought them over to the others. The room goes silent again as Len stares at them, and they regard him in return.

This world’s Lisa finally sighs, giving him a sad little smile, far more emotion (other than anger, anyway) than Len’s seen from her before. In a gesture that seems quite genuine, she rests a hand briefly on the other woman’s arm for a moment, then turns and walks swiftly away, down another corridor. Len notices that Cisco watches her go, his expression melancholy, but the other man seems to think he needs to stay here a moment.

Sara, however, makes her own decision. She squeezes Len’s arm and then heads off after the dark-haired woman, leaving Len looking at the remaining woman, who’s looking back at him.

His sister.

Barry and Cisco are saying something in the background, but Len’s not listening, not really. Lisa looks almost tentative, an expression he’s rarely seen on her, but she’s…she’s herself. No longer a woman made of living gold. Her eyes are blue, with whites and dark pupils; her forearms are bare and normal sun-tanned flesh. She’s wearing ordinary clothing, jeans and a white blouse, no more gloves that were the only thing allowed her to touch…anything. The only thing about her that’s gold now is the necklace she’s wearing—one he gave her years ago—and her hair. It’s shorter, not quite to her shoulders, and so golden a color that Len would think it was still metal if it didn’t appear to be moving just like normal hair.

He can’t find words.

Finally, Lisa herself speaks. “It worked,” she says, very quietly, looking at him. “It worked, Lenny.”

Len clears his throat. “I see,” he says, equally as quietly. “I…I’d wondered. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant…”

Lisa laughs a little, a disbelieving and breathless sound. “Are you kidding? I’m…I’m me again. And you came all the way from another world to do that. Thank you, Lenny. I…”

She stops then, with a little squeak of surprise, because her brother has stepped forward and done something he hasn’t done in years, not since they were both quite young. He wraps his arms around his little sister and hugs her, pulling her close and resting his chin against her golden hair, closing his eyes to try to stop the tears from welling up. (He fails.)

“I’m so sorry, Lis,” he tells her, feeling his voice thicken and trying to ignore the little “oooh” from Team Flash and the gruff murmur from Mick. “I’m so sorry. I thought I was going the right thing back then. I was wrong.”

But Lisa’s arms go around him too, and he knows, finally, that he’s forgiven.

Earth-1’s Lisa Snart had ducked into an empty office in the lab complex, and that’s where Sara finds her. The dark-haired woman is sitting on a desk and staring fixedly at her hands. She glances up as Sara moves into the room, then back down again.

“I’m glad for them,” she mutters, sounding more angry and lost than glad. “Really.”

“So am I. But…” Sara regards her, a bit at a loss. She’s only met this Lisa Snart a few times, and the first was when she’d gone with Mick to tell her that her brother had sacrificed himself. It hadn’t gone well. How could it? “But it’s hard. Sometimes. Knowing …that Len’s not him.”

Lisa’s gaze flicks back up to her, and, yeah, there’s anger there. “Oh? Kinda seems like you didn’t have much of a problem falling right into bed with this one. Didn’t remember my brother very long then.”

Now it’s Sara’s turn to blink, startled by the venom in the comment. She’d known Lisa regarded her with some suspicion, but she hadn’t quite realized that the woman felt this way. In fact, she hadn’t even told Lisa that she and the Earth-1 Leonard had been on the verge of…of something…when he’d died.

But maybe it’d been more obvious than she’d thought. Certainly, Lisa had been able to read her relationship with Len fairly accurately since the time she’d met him.

Lisa’s still watching Sara, eyes hard, but Sara thinks she sees a flicker of uncertainty in them. She’s suddenly forcibly reminded of how Earth-1 Leonard had been, back in the beginning, torn between his cold façade and his fragile connection with Sara, his growing ties to the team. He’d let go with a snide comment or nasty observation from time to time as if to prove that he didn’t care, but it hadn’t taken Sara all that long to figure out that it mostly just proved the opposite.

Damaged Snarts. She can’t seem to help trying to get through to them.

So Sara looks Lisa Snart of Earth-1 right in the eye, takes a deep breath, and tells her, “Falling in love with Len was one of the hardest things I’ve ever let myself do.”

Sara holds up a hand as the other woman starts to speak, continuing. “I’d been starting to fall for your brother, but it seems like you know that. When he…when he died, trust me, Lisa, you couldn’t possibly blame me more than I blamed myself.” She shakes her head. “I hadn’t cared for anyone since...well, in a long time, and his death hurt like hell, and I promptly went in the other direction, one-night stands throughout time, trying to make it go away, to hurt less.”

“And did it work?” Lisa’s tone is acerbic, but she won’t meet Sara’s eyes.

“You know it didn’t. And when I met Len...I shoved him away with both hands. There was no way I was going to let that happen again.” Sara smiles a little. “He was persistent. And managed to work his way in, through my walls. It wasn’t easy, Lisa. And I’ll...I’ll remember your brother until the end of my days. He made it possible for us to choose.” A deep breath. “And I chose to...to live. To move on.” She fixes the other woman with a direct look. “He’d want you to, too. And you know it.”

Lisa stares back at her, then looks away again, avoiding her eyes. It’s a very Leonard move and Sara sighs inwardly. But after another moment, Lisa looks back, and Sara’s startled to see a few tears in her eyes.

“I don’t know how,” she mutters, an angry, disconsolate comment. “I don’t know what to do. I keep trying to go good, to do what Lenny wanted, to travel or go back to school...but then I get bored, and I think about him, and I get angry, and I...” Her fists, sitting on her lap, tighten. “I don’t know how.”

Sara makes a snap decision. “Come with us?” she offers. “Be a Legend.”

Lisa stares at her another moment, then laughs a little. “Me? Time travel? Nah. It’d be really weird for...for Len to have his little sister’s doppelganger kicking around, and Mick...Mick’s turned over his new leaf. He’s found his place.” She twists her hands together, then, betraying an anxiety she doesn’t otherwise show. “I need my own.”

And to that, Sara’s not sure what to say.

“...my hair was the one thing the pill didn’t work on. I had to sort of shave it off—I looked ridiculous for a while.” Lisa shakes her head gently, setting her golden hair swaying. “And when it grew back in, it looked like this. I kind of like it.”

“An’ we sold the old hair,” Mick says cheerfully from where he’s roaming around the Cortex, inspecting everything. Team Flash had withdrawn to give them a few moments of privacy, and Mick’s rather obviously casing the place. “And the chair. Kept Scudder. No one would want something that ugly. S’ppose we could melt him down...”

Len and Lisa ignore that. “So, you’re OK?” Len asks tentatively, from his seat on a desk, while Lisa perches a few feet away. “No other ill effects?”

Lisa looks down. “Well. Yeah. Now. But it was...it was pretty tough to acclimate, really, physically. I...I hadn’t eaten in months, you know. Or seen, in a normal way. And I could be hurt again, and I wasn’t used to it.” She glances down at a few rows of small scars on her wrist, leading Len’s eyes to them too and flinching at his intake of breath. “And then I got a little addicted to the idea of feeling again. In any way.”

“Lis...” At the note in Len’s voice, Mick moves toward them again, looming protectively. Len would usually be glad to see that, but at the moment, he’s a little too preoccupied by his sister.

But Lisa’s shaking her head at him again, and there’s actually a hint of a smile on her face. “I’m fine, Lenny. Your friend found us. And she knew...she could tell I needed something different.”

“My friend?”

“The hottie,” Mick rumbles. “Um. Not Blondie. The dark-haired badass with the whip.”

Lisa rolls her eyes. “Lasso, Mick. Lasso.”

“Whatever.”

Lasso... “Diana,” Len breathes. “She checked in on you?” (“I give you my word...” a voice says in memory.)

“She did more than that.” Lisa glances around as Barry and Cisco move back into the room, then looks back at her brother. “She took me to her home. The island?”

Len’s jaw drops. “Themyscira?”

Mick sighs. “I asked her to take me too,” the big man mutters. “But nope.”

The idea of Mick loose on an island full of warrior women doesn’t bear thinking about. (He’d either be dead in minutes or so rapt he couldn’t speak.) Len shakes his head roughly, then stares at Lisa again. “I know of it. I mean, I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard...she took you there?”

“Took me, made sure I settled in, found me mentors.” Lisa beams at him, then at the others. “I’ve learned...well, I’ve learned so much. I’m going back, after we return. There’s a lot more I want to learn.”

Of all the things he’d thought his sister could be, a scholar isn’t particularly one of them.

“Study? What?” Cisco says then, his tone blank with surprise that Len considers a little insulting. (He’s allowed to be surprised at the notion of his sister being a scholar. No one else is.)

“Oh, history, medicine. Remember how I used to want to be a doctor?” Lisa grins at them, looking younger and happier than Len's seen her look in a long, long time. “And self-defense. I bet I could kick your ass now, big brother. And maybe even yours, Flash.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Barry tells her, grinning, as Cisco blinks.

Len shakes his head, then glances at Mick. “And you? What have you been up to?”

Mick draws himself up importantly as Lisa giggles. “Mick,” she says solemnly, “is a consultant.”

“A what?” Cisco can’t help himself. “On what? Arson and assault? Maybe a little robbery?”

“On being a crook,” Mick informs him. “Diana, she told those League people to call me if they needed advice on breaking and entering and all that crap. Some of those shiny heroes, they have no idea.” He looks thoughtful. “They pay well. And they almost always seem to call when I’m getting bored, too.”

Len flicks a glance at Lisa, who’s still smiling. “Oh?”

“Diana pays attention, too,” she informs him.

“I know you were always the brains of the operation, Snart,” Mick continues, “but that’s what I do, now. I ask myself, ‘What would Snart do?’ ” He smirks at his friend. “Then I usually do it. But sometimes I do the opposite.” He chuckles at the look at Len’s face. “Well, buddy, you got some blind spots. Like the Flash.”

“What? Why?” Barry asks quizzically, but Len hastens to change the subject.

“Not you,” he says to the kid, glaring at Mick, ignoring the fact that he knows his own counterpart here had had the same blind spot when it came to this Earth’s Barry Allen. “They really hire you?”

“Don’t act so damned surprised.” Mick folds his arms.

“Huh.” Len thinks about it a moment, feeling a smirk spread across his face. “Dealt with Br...the Dark Knight yet?”

“Nah. He’s a bit full of it, I hear. But I like the Big Guy. Good man.”

“Who...?”

Mick shrugs. “You know. The big guy, wears a cape, red ‘S’...”

Len’s getting a little tired of his jaw dropping. “You mean...”

“And his cousin’s hot.”

Barry can’t help it now. The speedster gets a good case of the giggles, sitting down and burying his face in his hands helplessly. Cisco looks like he can’t decide whether to be appalled or amused and settles for both. Len and Lisa trade looks that hold resignation at both their antics and Mick’s pithy way of stating things, which makes them both smile again.

“Well, at least someone thinks life’s amusing.” Earth-1 Lisa’s dry tone falls into the relative good cheer in the Cortex like a sponge into cold water, sobering Barry up immediately and bringing Len to his feet as he turns to look for the other two women. Sara, walking a few steps behind Lisa, gives him a look compounded of sorrow and something more nebulous. Regret? Frustration?

Lisa continues past her doppelganger, not even glancing at Len or the others, picking up a backpack sitting by the side of the room. “I just stopped by to see what was going on in Central, and happened to see her,” she says, turning and jerking her thumb at the other Lisa. “Distracted me.” She pauses, then, regarding them, eyes unreadable. Cisco takes a step toward her, but she doesn’t look at him, eyes on Len and his Lisa.

“I’m glad you got to see each other again,” she says quietly, after a moment, sincerity in her tone--then shrugs, back to studied insouciance. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ve got nowhere in particular to be, but I need to be there soon.”

“Don’t go already…” Cisco blurts out.

“You don’t have to…” Len says over the top of him.

“I meant the offer…” Sara adds at the same time.

But it’s Len’s sister who’s risen to her feet now, watching her doppelganger with an expression that combines, Len thinks, a sudden sympathy, and an understanding that’s beyond all the rest of them.

“No, come with me,” she says abruptly.

“What?” five of the other six people in the room say, nearly in unison. But Sara’s looking back and forth between them, Len notices, a sudden light in her eyes and a smile blossoming on her face.

“Come with me,” Lisa repeats, taking a step toward her double. “Back to our Earth.” She pauses. “And then to Themyscira. I told you about it, a little, before they got here.”

The Earth-1 Lisa stares at her, backpack still dangling from her hand. “You gotta be kidding me. Why would they…”

The other Lisa cuts her off. “I’ll tell them you’re my sister. I’ve always wanted one.” She gives Len a lurking smile, then looks back. “Sisters mean a lot, there. They’ll understand. And you’ll have a place to stay, time to think.”

She lowers her voice then, speaking directly to the other woman even though there are others who can hear. “Trust me. I understand.”

Earth-1 Lisa looks dumbfounded. Life’s never offered many favors to the Snart kids, Len thinks, and the ones here were offered even fewer than the ones on his Earth. She takes a step forward, then stops.

“I don’t think I can be...be what they are there,” the dark-haired woman in black tells the golden-haired one in white helplessly. “Some scholar or warrior of the light...I don’t think I have that in me...”

“You don’t have to be,” her doppelganger tells her firmly, then smiles. “But you just might surprise yourself. I did.”

Lisa blinks at her, then glances around the room, gaze flicking over Len, Mick, Sara and, particularly, Len thinks, Cisco. Then she takes a deep breath.

“OK.”

Len will admit that he wishes he could have a little more time with this new, happy, uncannily self-possessed version of his little sister, but he also recognizes that the longer she and Mick wait to return home, the more likely it is that Earth-1 Lisa loses her nerve and runs. For now, at least, the dark-haired woman seems a little rattled by her decision, but at peace with it.

Len, watching from his slouch against the wall, sees her gives Cisco a kiss on the cheek, a quiet word and a sad smile as they wait. His Lisa is talking, low and earnest, to Sara, who’s grinning, and wouldn’t he like to be a fly on the wall nearby for that conversation.

Or maybe not.

Mick, who’d been talking to Sara before that, ambles over to Len and the two men study each other. This man, Len knows, hasn’t come to grips with the existence of feelings in the way the Mick on the Waverider has—or, if he has, he sure as hell isn’t going to talk about them.

So Len doesn’t bring that up, doesn’t tell his oldest friend how overjoyed he is to see him well and whole and content. Maybe even happy? Certainly this Mick has seemed to smile more than Len’s ever seen before, and he hasn’t even pulled out his lighter once. And Len will admit freely, to himself, that that makes him happy, untying a knot in the vicinity of his heart that’d been there, to some extent, since the day their guns had gone critical.

But he can’t say that. Not to this Mick, not now. Maybe someday. And it’s enough to know, now, that that “someday” might exist.

“You OK?” he asks instead. “Enough cash? Decent place to crash? Not too bored?”

Mick snorts at him. “Don’t try to mother-hen me, Snart. I’m fine.” He thinks a moment. “An’ you know, I sorta like working for the League, sometimes. I think I finally get why you joined up with them, while back.”

“Really?” Len blinks at him. He can remember why he did—his desperation to save his city and the friends in it, for all that they wouldn’t given him the time of day at the moment; his surprise when enough League members thought that he, a lifelong crook, was worthy of the accolade of membership; the rush of fighting and planning with a group again...

“Yeah.” Mick smirks. “It’s even more fun giving all those heroes shit when you’re helping them out and they can’t do anything back to you.”

Len’s startled into a laugh. “Yeah,” he admits after a moment, “that was part of it.” He straightens from his slouch as he sees Cisco, across the room, wave them over, then pauses. “You take care, Mick.”

“Yeah. You too, Snart.”

To Len’s surprise, his sister approaches and drags him into another hug as he saunters over, but he's not too surprised or taken aback to wrap her in his arms one more time.

“You’re OK?” she whispers to him. “You’re happy? Because…because if you’re only staying here because of how things were with us there…”

“Lis...” Len considers his words. “Yes. More than. I’m…” He shrugs uncomfortably, trying not to look over at Sara. “Well. I’m in love. Got every intention of spending the rest of my life with her. Never thought I’d have that. Yeah. I’m happy.”

Lisa’s eyes sparkle more then than they did when they were gold. “That’s all I wanted to know,” she says, pulling away, then pauses. “I…we’ll…be back to visit,” she adds, then goes up on her toes to whisper in his ear. “In case you have any particular events you want us to be there for…”

Definitely tired of the jaw-dropping thing today. Len stares at her, but Lisa just winks at him, turning away, toward her doppelganger, who’s watching with an expression that can’t decide if it wants to be jaded or hopeful.

Lisa of Earth-1 doesn’t hug him. She doesn’t even say anything. But she gives him a nod, and there’s understanding in her expression. Len gives her a slow nod back.

And then Cisco opens a breach and the trio steps through as Len watches them, a weight lifting from his heart and mind. When it’s closed, he lets out a long breath, then turns to Sara with a sigh.

“OK. Now, really…let’s go home.”

“So, what was my sister talking to you about?”

Sara’s chuckle doesn’t really assuage his concern about that little conversation, and neither does the fact that she gives him a small smile and nothing more in answer. Len had convinced her to take the scenic route on the way back to the ship, to stroll along the Earth-1 Central City waterfront that’s really not like his city’s waterfront at all. It’s a lovely day, really, he decides, feeling a lightness of heart he’s not sure he’s felt in…well, his entire life.

And that’s why, in part, he’s decided to…to do what he’s decided to do. Today.

“She just wants me to…how’d she put it?” Sara muses when they’ve stopped a moment at the railing, looking out at the water. “Not keep you out of trouble, because she knows that’s impossible, but to continue to have your back.” She gives him a smile, an open, sparkling smile, as she leans against the rail—gorgeous, smart, and badass, a partner and a lover and a friend, everything he’d once never admitted he wanted. “I told her, always.”

Len puts his hands behind his back, concentrating, feeling one small, perfect crystal of ice form between the fingers of his left hand, and a smooth, round band of ice form in the other. He’s been practicing this trick, telling himself that it’s just for fine control, quietly thinking that it would be perfect for a…a gesture. Until they can get something more permanent.

And then he brings the two pieces together, fusing them with enough raw cold energy to keep the ring solid for quite some time, and takes a deep breath.

“Yes,” he says quietly, eyes on Sara’s as he pulls the ring out from behind his back and goes down to one knee, there on an Earth on which he wasn’t born, looking up at a woman who’d hated him in the beginning, whose eyes have widened in shock as she watches him, but whose lips have already started to form the word he wants, so badly, to hear right now. “That’s what I’m hoping for, Sara.

“Always.”

#len snart #captain canary #leonard snart #sara lance #legends of tomorrow

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theewrites-tf2 · 7 years

Text

Two Fathers, A Frenchman and a Baby

Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12622712

Word Count: 3740 (Uh, yeah, holy shit, this is a big one)

Chapters: 1/1

Publish Date: Nov. 3 2017

Plot: There are two fathers, one Frenchman, and a baby in one room, at about one in the morning.

Warnings: Cuteness, slight language warnings, Scout being a smartass, more cuteness, the author used Google Translate for the French, author doesn’t completely, know how you operate babies, there is barely an attempt at accents, a dash or two of angst, and Spy is still low-key a smartass. Also, Dad!Spy feels. Your welcome.

Also, LONG A.N. at end of chapter. Sorry, but not sorry.

Enjoy!

Two Fathers, A Frenchman and a Baby

Jeremy pretended to stay asleep for at least three minutes… three minutes, did that really make him a bad guy? He winced as he felt the body beside him shift, a exhausted grumble sounding. The Boston native sighed, “I got ‘em.” He muttered, sitting up and leaving a quick kiss on their cheek, before rolling out of bed and creeping out of the room, letting out a curse when he walked straight into the wall on his way out of the bedroom, towards the muffled sound of crying down the hall.

As he slowly made his way down the hall, Jeremy felt a chill as he moved down the hall, and no, it wasn’t just because of his white t-shirt and boxers being his only apparel. Instinct and years being employed as a mercenary made him pause beside an innocent looking vase, until he reached into the vase and silently pulled out a simple, but effective handgun, already loaded. He pressed his back to the wall, all exhaustion leaving his mind as he silently made his way to the final door at the end of the hall, where that feeling of uneasiness originated from. Putting his hand over the doorknob, he slowly opened the door, grey-blue eyes scanning the room.

Once he deemed it safe, he swiftly made his way through the nursery to his wailing son, quickly picking up the four month old from his cradle. “Hey, kiddo…” Jeremy murmured, smiling down at his infant son as he rearranged his grip securely, keeping the pistol in the hand not holding the little one. “Rough night too, eh? Pretty sure I was awake before ya started crying for us…” His eyes carefully scanned the dark nursery, before he slowly made his way to the window, smiling down softly at the small baby he held securely. “Ya know, you usually cry MUCH louder, when there’s no body around… ya seem to have the talent down, when you KNOW there’s someone just two good steps away, so you don’t have to yell as loud.” Jeremy raised his pistol, eyes snapping when the barrel came in contact with a invisible figures chin. “Someone like a no-good, creepin’ Spy.”

For a moment, there was dead silence, before a sigh as Spy dropped his cloak, glaring distastefully at the gun. “I see domestic lifestyle hasn’t dulled your… quirks.” Spy raised a glowing cigarette to his mouth, eyes watching Scout lazily. “Are you going to shoot me?”

“Thought I told you not to smoke with the kid around.”

“This is the first time you’ve caught me coming in here.”

“…Oh. Then I guess I forgot. Anyway, smoke out, now.”

Spy sighed dramatically, smoothly clicking open the window and flicking his prized cigarette away. Jeremy watched for a moment, before lowering the gun and stepping away from the Frenchman, carrying his son away.

Spy noticed he had not put down the pistol, but followed him anyway.

“So, you always break into kids bedrooms, Spook?” Scout asked, flicking on the lamp before sitting down in a rather cushy armchair, setting the pistol on one of the arm, just within reach. Spy glanced around the room, half-hoping there was a second chair. When there wasn’t, he have scout a glare, leaning against the wall. “I simply wanted to see what all the fuss was about that one.” Spy retorted, nodding to the raven-haired child the young father had began to rock in an attempt to calm the boy down.

“Spy. I know this isn’t your first time breaking in here.” Jeremy said, narrowing his eyes slightly. “This is the first time I’ve caught ya, sure, but this, what? Third, forth..?”

“Eighth, actually,” Spy said calmly, eyes roaming around the small nursery, a place he already memorized the first time he popped in. “I’ve been meaning to ask, who gave you the Yeti mobile?”

“Saxton Hale, said he wanted the kid to dream about beating the snot out of living things at an early age…” His partner didn’t like it, but their son had giggled at the ridiculous sight, so Scout somehow got it to stay. “Don’t change the subject, Spy. Why do you feel the need to sneak around, Instead of usin’ a door like a normal freakin’ person.” Jeremy paused after his miniature rant when he was interrupted by a small whine from his son, and he looked up at the older man. “Hey, mind grabbing his bottle from the fridge?”

“Hm. One door down, to the right?”

“Yep.”

“His red bottle or that horrid baseball themed you got him?”

“Just for that comment, the baseball one.”

“Lovely.”

After Spy walked away, the Boston looked down at the baby in his arms, frowning. “Seriously, how many times had this guy been here, and ya didn’t say anything?” He asked, dead serious, and his son merely blinked back up at him, identical grey-blue eyes wide and innocent. Jeremy sighed, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead. “You better not be giving him that cutesy, innocent look. Save it for the ladies, little man.” Spy returned to the room, handing off the bottle to Jeremy. “I took on the generous task of heating up its formula, your welcome.”

Jeremy looked down at the bottle, then back at Spy, looking suspicious. WIthout a word, he screwed off the lid and stuck his finger into the formula, quickly giving it a taste while Spy rolled his eyes. “Scout, it’s not poisoned.” Scout stuck out his tongue at the older man, “Hey, with you, everythin’ is a mystery.” He paused, then gave the Frenchman a sheepish grin, “Plus, some of guys left some of their, uh…supplies ‘round here. Don’t want Jackie here accidently drink some gunpowder or whateva.”

Scout leaned back, letting his kid latch onto the bottle to drink greedily. “It’s a bit… Small.” Spy said, walking around to look at assorted childs toys. Scout rolled his eyes, “It’s a he, first off. Second, he arrived earlier than expected.” The young father sounded a tad defensive on the last bit, going quiet before saying, determined, “Ma said I was a bit small too. Made me faster, easier to get into small places, an’ if this kid is anything like me, he’ll be the exact same.” Spy remained silent as the man ranted, looking distastefully at, what he assumed was, a stuffed bear… However, the crudely sown eyepatch and the (hopefully) deactivated sticky bomb in the bears hand, gave little doubt on which Scottish merc made this. Spy was content with ignoring the Bostonian behind him, until he asked a question that made him stop dead in his tracks.

“You ever held the kid? Or… A kid?”

“… No. And I do not plan t-”

Suddenly, a four month old was placed on one arm, its bottle in his other hand, and Scout was halfway out the door, calling over his shoulder nonchalantly, “You support the head, when he’s done drinkin’, you gotta pat him on the back for burpin’ and if you drop him or ditch him in his crib and try to escape, I will personally send you to respawn before you can say ‘oui-oui baguette.’ See ya in a minute, Frenchie.” With that, the Boston walked out of the nursery and taking his pistol away and out of the room with him, leaving Spy to frantically his name after him, clearly distressed. “Scout, SCOUT,” The Frenchman whisper/shouted after him, because he had no idea what to do. After no response, Spy swore violently in French, warily looked down at the baby in his arms, which was now staring up at him, equally wary of this new development, with…

…

“Mon dieu.”

Spy only just realized, as he stared down at those eerily familiar blue eyes, that all three of them had the exact same shade of blue-grey irises.

At this realization, Spy sighed, criticizing himself for not seeing the similarities sooner. He was a Spy, detecting the details was his job, how he missed this was beyond him. The first time he had snuck in to see the brats son, the child had still been in the hospital. Spy didn’t stick around long, but he stayed long enough to see that Scout… Jeremy, hadn’t left the room where his son was being cared for, and had taken up to sleeping in that cold hospital room on a chair beside the incubator. Spy had taken one look at the scene, before he strode right on out of the hospital room.

Spy would swear til his dying day, that the jacket Jeremy had found over his shoulders the next morning was NOT his own.

He didn’t return to see the newborn, until it had been released from the hospital, and the visits had been short, fleeting. Just a quick peek into the child’s nursery… Small visits, to satisfy his natural, overbearing curiosity over this babys existance.

After a moment, Spy sighed deeply through his nose, shifting his grip on the baby slightly, attempting to mimic the hold he had seen the chatterbox Bostonian use. The child’s bottom lip wavered for a terrifying minute, and Spy commanded, “Don’t,” Although it sounded more like desperation than an actual order for the infant to follow. The baby, miraculously, followed his command, and Spy went to work on feeding the little one, eyes glaring angrily as he looked out the room, waiting for the brat to return.

“Je vais tordre le cou de poulet maigre,” The Frenchman swore, unaware that little Jack had pulled away from his bottle, watching the older man curiously. “Avant que je pousser cette chauve-souris à droite dans son-” A small giggle broke his rant, and he quickly looked down at the child, suddenly worried he had broken it somehow. The baby was smiling up at him, toothless and completely unaware of the threats the masked man had been saying, but smiling all the same at the funny noises the man had been making. Spy sighed, but offered a small smile it return, placing the boys bottle down to hold him in both arms, offering him more support. “Ah, mon petit corbeau noir…” He murmured, running a gloved hand through the child’s black hair, one of the few qualities he didn’t inherit from his father’s side of the family. “Quand vous êtes un peu plus vieux, peut-être je peux vous enseigner le français … Vous semblez apprécier la langue,” He said thoughtfully, smiling as the child laughed again.

“Ya moron, he’s not laughing at your gibberish,” Scout said loudly, carrying in the child’s diaper bag over his shoulder. “He probably just made a mess in his diaper. Give ‘im here.” Spy grimaced in disgust and hurriedly handed the child back to his father, who smirked at his succession of the ruining the little moment. “Also, if you try to teach him French when i’m not lookin’, ‘m gonna teach him how to swear when he’s older, and make him to practice all his cuss words on you.” Spy snorted at the threat, walking away as Jeremy started working on the soiled diaper. “It will still be worth it, when his first word is not in any variation of English.” He said smugly, already picturing Scouts stunned and crestfallen face, should the child pick up Spy’s mother tongue prior to learning English. Scout tossed a glare over his shoulder, “I could toss this diaper at you, so don’t go thinkin’ up any ideas about turning my kid into your little French fry.” He warned, and Spy raised his hand in surrender, saving his plots for later.

“Out of curiosity, when do you plan on returning to the base?” Spy asked casually, keeping his distance as Jeremy cleaned up. The Scout shrugged, thinking it over for a second, “I think… Yeah, I think we move over there in ‘bout two weeks. Inks gotta dry on the papers before Ma and Jackie can move in.” Spy paused, not sure if he heard the boy correctly. “… Did you say…Your mother and…” Jeremy turned around, his child back in his arms with a raised brow. “Uh, yeah? Ma and Jack are gonna live in an apartment in Teufort, until the kiddo is going to kindergarten.” Scout walked past the stunned looking Frenchman, still talking about his plan. “After that, Ma will move back to Boston, i’ll move permanently off-base with Jackie, and we’ll live happily ever after, until my contract runs out…IF it ever does. Still got about six years on my current one, and It may be renewed when it runs out. Ya never know.” As Scout started rearranging the baby’s crib, Spy stared at him. “That… sounded very mature.” Spy said, stunned that the fast-talking, cowardly boy in front of him could already be thinking so far into the future, all for the sake of that child.

It was almost impressive, but something nagged at Spy about the plan…

“What about his mother?” Spy asked, and Jeremy froze instantly, his back to Spy. For a long moment, there was dead silence. Then the Scout, picking his words carefully, slowly said, “Jackie’s Ma… wants to stay here in the East… Get her degree. She’ll… probably come down to Teufort in a year or two.”

Months later, Spy would think back to this very conversation, when Jeremy received the legal papers from Jack’s mother… The papers that were to grant Scout full-custody and parental rights of their son. Scouts face was crestfallen, but amazingly, he confided and admitted to Spy that he had a feeling this would happen. Jeremy told Spy that, though they tried to keep the relationship going, it was never that serious to begin with… Spy also had the sneaking suspicion, that the woman herself did not want the child in the first place. Jeremy would never confirm or admit, that he had been the one to convince Jack’s mother to keep the baby. And after the legal papers were signed, Jack’s mother was practically impossible to contact to find out the truth, after she voluntarily terminated all her parental rights.

But, that would be months from now, and Spy only took Scouts words in carefully, before turning away from the subject.

“Well…I’m glad you have that situation all worked out,” Spy said, them smirked. “I’ll be sure to give your mother a personal welcome, upon her arrival at Teufort.” The younger man felt his lower eyelid twitch, but decided to ignore the meaning behind the Frenchmans words. Only a few more weeks, then Scout could send him through respawn as many times as he liked. Jeremy looked down at his kid, who was starting to doze off and smiled down at him warmly, checking to make sure his kid was tucked in, nice and warm. After running his hand over the baby’s soft black hair, Jeremey leaned down to press a kiss to his forehead. “Get some sleep kiddo, okay?” He said softly, waiting until he watched the baby close his eyes firmly. The Scout then turned, and pointed to Spy, then to the door of the nursery, eyes screaming at the Frenchman to keep quiet.

The Spy rolled his eyes, but followed the younger man out the door, pausing a second to look back at the baby within his crib. Spy allowed a small, honestly warm smile to appear on his face, before he silently shut the door behind them and the smile faded away. Spy and Scout both held their breaths for a moment, listening for any signs of a wailing infant, until they sighed in relief simultaneously. Then Jeremy looked up at Spy, eyes narrowed slightly, but not in hostility. “Okay, look. Tonight, you’re using the front door… And, please, just use the front door like a goddamn normal person when you wanna come over, alright?” Spy rolled his eyes, as they quietly walked down the hall towards the front foyer. “Very well, although it goes against many decades of training-” Oh, you actually trained?” Scout mocked, and Spy responded with glare as they reached the front door.

“So, you staying with the guys or something?”

“Or something. I will tell your mother you said Hi.”

“Ha ha…Are you serious?”

Spy smirked, opening the front door silently. “Well, Scout, I cannot say with honesty that I look forward to your return to Teufort, but I can say that it is… an anticipated welcome, both you and your son will recieve when you return.” Jeremy gave him a crooked grin, “Thanks Frenchie. Oh, and before I forget…”

Suddenly, a paper was thrust up into Spy’s face, and Scouts face was cool, a raised brow. “Care to explain what is on this paper?”

It was Spy’s greatest achievement. His best mission, the result of a successful break-in, and, in a way, his legacy. It was also, officially known as baby Jacks birth certificate.

“I don’t see a problem,” Spy said, smirking over ther paper at Jeremy, who pointed at the name that was scrawled carefully onto the document. “Spy. That ain’t my handwritin’.” He said bluntly, before pointing the accusatory finger at the smug Frenchman. “That’s YOURS, aint it?” Scout snapped, eyes irritated and Spy shrugged. “Again, I fail to see the problem with the name printed on the paper.” He say lightly, and Scout only glared back.

“Spy, you literally snuck in, foraged my handwritin’, and you LITERALLY named my kid ‘Jack Rabbit’! Like, seriously… what the fuck?”

“His name is pronounced ‘Jacques Lapin.’ Considering his first name was going to be ‘Jackson,’ there is not much difference.”

Jeremy crossed his arms, fuming silently. “Still! Why’s the name gotta be French?! Jackson was a perfectly fine name.” Spy only smirked, opening the front door, “Well, now little ‘Jacques’ has the perfect excuse to learn French, doesn’t he?” Spy chuckled at the look on Jeremy’s reddening face, before he quickly cloaked and slipped out the door and out of the building, disappearing into the early hours of morning in Boston.

Meanwhile, Jeremy grumbled as he carefully put Jacks birth certificate away in the nursery, before looking over at the sleeping infant in his crib. “Your grandpa is a face AND a name-stealing jerk.” The Scout grumble quietly, before creeping out of the room, for hopefully the last time of the night. He really wanted to catch a few extra hours of sleep, before the sun rose in about five hours.

Jeremy got about halfway to his bedroom, before his son suddenly let out a loud wail from his crib, almost as if he knew that this time, there was no Frenchman in his room who would come pick him up. Jeremy closed his eyes, sent a silent curse up to the Heavens, before he slowly turned and trudged back to his son’s room, about to go though the whole routine all over again.

Ah, the joys of young fatherhood.

A.N. This idea came to me about a month ago, and I fell in love with the plot, as well as lil’ Jackie, who may not be canon in the game or comics, but will always be canon in my heart. It was fun to write Spy and Scout, as just two guys in a room with a baby, but also keeping the undertones of fatherhood within the story. No, I don’t think that canonically, Spy was there to raise a baby Scout, like Scout had dreamed about in comic #3. But, still, it was interesting to write a not-to-angsty story about fatherhood, featuring Spy. He may not have been the best father, but as a grandfather? I personally think, that Lil’ Jack is going to be the most spoiled and protected grandkid in history…

(Also, yes. The other mercs totally spoil and dote on Scouts son. This kid has like, nine dads, and eight of them also double as grandpas… This kid has the best childhood ahead of him, I swear.)

Originally, Jack’s mom was going to have a bigger role, but I decided in the end not to. While I can imagine Scout one day settling down with someone, The character I wrote as Jackie’s mom was not a person I could easily see as his significant other, nor did I see her as a particularly motherly figure to Jack. This isn’t something I would judge her severely about, since I have met people before, bother mothers and fathers, who have willingly given up their parental rights, because they knew that they couldn’t be the parent their children needed. She’s not meant to be written as a bad person, just not meant to be a mother. I also wanted to leave her character, somewhat up to interpretation. Was she Scouts highschool sweetheart? A lengthy one-night stand? I’ll live it up to you, the audience.

Will I return to this little AU I have written? Most definitely, because Jackie has wormed his way into my heart, and I think there’s plenty of material open for me to use with him, in future one-shots or other. If you guys want to REQUEST something in this AU, go ahead! And, if one of you lovely people ever want to, I don’t know, DRAW or create fanart for this oneshot… Message me, so I can publicly declare my love and appreciation for you, because, if I had the drawing and artist talent in me, this one-shot would’ve been a comic, or had plenty of art to go along with the story.

Sadly, or not so sadly, my hands were made for writing and typing stories for my lovely, amazing audience, and not for artwork of any kind. (dammit.)

Thank you so much for your support so far, and here’s to many one-shots in the future! Thanks again, and I hope to see y’all at my future one-shots!

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