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athenasbloodyspear · 3 years

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Don’t Make Me Beg Now Baby

CHAPTER ONE: EDGE OF DARKNESS

Hello fellow Greta Van Freaks. This is my very first Greta fic! I hope you enjoy.

MASTERLIST

Note: This fic contains mature themes, discussions of past non-con (no members of GVF involved) and drug use. Minors DNI. 18+ only and please take care of yourselves. (See Ao3 for full tag list)

You can also read this fic on Ao3 if you prefer!

Jake Kiszka x Original Female Character

Picture this: The boys are in Northern Michigan to write the new album and they meet a wild young woman who works at a local record store who has a rough history with rock bands.

She doesn’t want to fall into the same traps she fell into before. He doesn’t want to hurt her.

The rest of them just want them to figure their shit out.

Note: While this fic is based on the members of Greta Van Fleet, I obviously do not know them personally (lol) and nearly 99% of this is a fever dream I decided to write down. Some tid bits are based on things said in interviews/photos/songs but please do not come for my neck if you dislike my portrayals as this is a STORY that I have entirely made up.

This will be a slow burn, overly dramatic, cliché fest of me missing my Mitten State and wishing more than anything I could move back home. Their music makes me homesick and for that I’ll never forgive them. ;)

Chapter Under the Cut

CHAPTER ONE: EDGE OF DARKNESS

The tiny bell on the door to “The Edge” clanked as Jake pushed his way in, followed by Josh, Sam and Danny. The afternoon sun streamed through the slats in the windows at a harsh angle, illuminating the swirling dust. The boys all immediately took a deep breath. They all loved the smell of this place. A mix of dusty old vinyl's, incense and weed.

The Edge was the shop owned by an old friend, Levi, who had been a longtime family friend of the Kiszka’s. The boys had made the near three hour drive to the shop whenever they had a spare weekend in their younger years. They bought Levi out of his guitar strings and drumsticks and always looked through the boxes of vinyl's hoping to find treasures. Levi sold an eclectic mix of music equipment, records, books, home goods and comically horrific coffee.

The Edge is where they had each bought their very first instruments, had their first beers and even smoked their first joint. It was a special place for them.

The old wood floors creaked with every step, the wood walls were covered with old articles from Rolling Stone, photos Levi had taken and autographs from the artists who had cycled through the place over the years. There were stacks upon stacks of vinyl's. Shelves of old autobiographies and music theory books. There were speakers stacked from floor to ceiling, and the whole right side of the store was jam packed with basses and guitars. The back corner had a few keyboards and a drum set, but plenty of catalogues to pick even more instruments from. There were cases of drumsticks and guitar picks and strings. The middle of the store had tables full of incense, candles and interesting home goods. There were tables where local artists sold jewelry, art pieces and furniture. It was full to the brim, most shelves rising way up to the ceiling. Most needed a ladder to reach the top. The basement had a sound studio with even more equipment set up to be used to record, or to test out.

Levi had inherited the place from his father, who had built up quite a legendary roster of friends over his years. The shop was just off Front Street on the main drag of Traverse City. Levi’s father had made a name for himself as a great host to bands looking to escape to northern Michigan to hole up in cabins and write albums. Levi continued the tradition and took it a step further by buying the space next door and turning it into a club with live music on the weekends.

If you were lucky, you could catch some super huge bands playing for only about 100 people in the dark side room of The Edge.

“You bastards finally made it!” Levi called out as he came sauntering out of the back room. Levi looked the exact same as the last time the boys had seen him. Tanned skin from his days paddle boarding and hiking along the Lake Michigan shore, sandy blonde hair that was brighter in the summer, perpetual 5-o-clock shadow because he just couldn’t be bothered to shave, shell necklace around his neck, light wash jeans low on his hips with the same old cowboy boots he’d been wearing since the boys were 12.

“Is that grey hair I see Levi?” Josh leaned forward with an exaggerated squint. Levi laughed, snagging Josh’s head to give him a noogie.

“I may be older than you punks by a few years, but I’m not greying yet.” Levi released Josh from his headlock and gave him a shove.

“I’d say 37 is more than a few years older than us, grandpa.” Sam snarked.

“You’re makin me regret extending my hospitality, kid.”

Jake felt himself relax fully for the first time in a really long time. It was just like old times. Exactly what the boys needed.

“Welcome back dudes. I’m surprised I’m still cool enough for you Rockstar types.” Levi crossed his legs and leaned back against the front counter.

“We’ll never be too cool for The Edge. This place will always be way cooler than we could ever be.” Danny piped up, walking forward to wrap Levi in a hug.

“It’s been too long man.” Levi commented as he smacked Danny on the back.

“We know.” Sam said “Way too fuckin long.” He hugged Levi next. Josh and Jake followed up with hugs next. The room was heavy with a tinge of melancholy. Old friends who had missed each other finally reunited.

“Well, have you guys been to the house yet?” Levi stepped around the counter and started pouring four cups of the famous nasty coffee.

“Yeah we dropped our bags off before we headed into town.” Danny spoke up.

“Isn’t it sweet?” Levi asked enthusiastically.

“It’s wicked man. Thanks so much for getting that set up for us.” Josh grinned as he snagged a cup off the counter.

The house was a mid century modern cabin right on the east bay shore. It came equipped with a huge garage studio, front deck and a dock out into the bay. Levi had bought the house in foreclosure and along with help from a bunch of locals (in exchange for beer of course) they turned the house into a perfect getaway for any artists looking to come take a break up north. The place had five bedrooms and three bathrooms with a giant living room with overstuffed couches and velvet chairs. The walls were covered in art and the shelves were full to bursting with plants. It was a kaleidoscope of colors and textures, with mix matched rugs and lamps. It was Levi’s pride and joy.

“I’m so glad you guys like it.” Levi smiled even bigger as he passed coffees to the rest of the boys. “Once you’re a little more settled, feel free to send me a list of equipment you want me to set up downstairs and you can start coming in whenever to work. But also, I think you should probably take a week or two off first. You all look about two seconds away from collapsing.”

“Yeah we’re pretty fuckin beat dude. But we’ll send you a list ASAP.” Jake said, taking a burning sip of the coffee. It singed his nerve endings and he couldn’t have been happier about it.

Levi opened his mouth to speak again, when a voice filtered through the window to the loft above the store.

“Yo Levi!” the person shouted “Can you please get off your fuckin ass and pick music to play? I know Wednesdays are your day to pick but if you take forever I’m just gonna put on whatever I want and you can suck it.”

All four boys' heads snapped up to the window to the loft, but whoever was up there couldn’t be seen. All they could see was that the loft had clearly gotten a makeover. What used to be an upper level where Levi stored surplus supplies now looked like it had a plush velvet couch, lava lamps and plants in it.

“Alright alright! I’ll get on it.” Levi called back up, shaking his head and chuckling to himself as he walked toward the central sound system behind the counter to scroll through Spotify playlists.

“Who the fuck is that and what have you done to the loft?” Josh asked, hopping up to sit on the counter.

“That would be the very best thing that’s ever fallen into my lap. A.k.a my new store and venue manager Maven. She moved back to the area after living in Hollywood for a few years managing bands and she completely changed my life. We finally have consistent stock, a longstanding line up at the club and I have had the time to start photography again. Truly a godsend, if not occasionally a pain in my ass. She turned the loft into a breakroom of sorts. There’s a couch and table up there now. She practically lives up there sometimes.”

“Damn she must be some woman if she finally got you to get your shit together with that club.” Sammy piped up.

“She’s hellfire, I’ll tell yah that.” Levi chuckled, finally hitting play on a playlist. The first bars of Surfin USA by the Beach Boys came on the surround system and matching groans came out of Jake downstairs and Maven upstairs.

“Not this shit again!” Maven yells. Jake chuckled to himself. Hellfire indeed.

“It’s my day to pick so suck it!” Levi called back before faux stage whispering to the boys “I mostly just play this to piss her off.”

Levi clapped his hands together once “Well boys, It’s close enough to five o'clock and I owe you a beer. Let’s head over to Little Fleet for some grub and beers and we can catch up.”

Josh grimaced as he sucked down the last bit of his coffee before lobbing the empty cup into the trash at the end of the counter. “You still make shit coffee Levi.”

“It’s the one thing I wouldn’t let Maven fix.” Levi said with a grin as all five men exited out the back door.

~0~

The boys took a week to relax, as per Levi’s request. They spent the days hiking the shore, kayaking and drinking beer around the fire. It had been way too long since they’d done this. The release of The Battle at Garden’s Gate had been exhilarating and the fans' response had been everything they’d hoped for. People seemed to love the album and they were all so proud. But with press interviews and touring, they hadn’t gotten more than a day or two to relax at a time. And they certainly hadn’t gotten a chance to get back to their favorite old haunts in years.

They stopped by the store almost every morning for a cup of coffee strong enough to jumpstart their hearts. Sometimes Levi joined them on their escapades, and sometimes he stayed behind to help out at the store. The boys spent a few afternoons sifting through albums and strumming on some of Levi’s vintage guitars.

Mostly they caught up on each other's lives. The boys recounted their more personal lives that happened outside the coverage of the album and Levi talked about the past few years of his life in Traverse City. Levi told them all about Maven and how she was practically his little sister. They laughed. They drank. They had a blast.

The boys noticed Levi was a little on edge occasionally, typically when they heard someone shuffling upstairs or equipment moving around in the backroom of the shop. They assumed it was Maven but weren’t sure, since they had yet to see her in the flesh. A week from their arrival they were all sitting in lawn chairs in the alley behind the store, smoking cigs and drinking their coffee when Sam finally asked.

“So, why haven’t we met your precious Maven yet? Hiding her from us or something?”

Levi shifted a bit in his chair. “Um..” he coughed out a laugh. “I am actually. Yes. But it’s the other way around, I’m hiding you from her.”

“Afraid she’ll fan-girl or something?” Josh commented as he ashed his cigarette.

“In… a sense.” Levi coughed. “But in quite the opposite way you’re imagining.”

“She’s a fan then?” Sammy piped up.

“She loves your music. A lot.” Levi sniffed and coughed again. “It’s a real safe haven for her. When she’s having a bad day I catch her upstairs laying on the floor smoking a J with sound cancelling headphones blasting your albums as loud as she can.”

“Exactly how it’s meant to be enjoyed. With a joint in hand.” Jake chimes in.

“Yeah..” Levi toes the asphalt a bit with his boots, but doesn’t continue.

“Soooo” Sammy drawls “Why can’t we meet her? We’re no stranger to super fans. I’m sure she’s cool.”

“Um, well. It’s a bit complicated.” Levi heaves a sigh before flicking his cigarette butt into the coffee canister at the center of their little circle. “I suppose I can trust you guys. You’re friends. Do you remember the huge lawsuit that the band Undercover Heart went through last year? The one about the um” He coughs again, “Rape of one of their staff members by the lead singer Ryan?”

“Yes. That shit was horrific man.” Danny spoke up. “I read all the details I could. They kept the poor girl's identity private but goddamn I felt so bad for her. She was a badass for filing that suit though.”

“Yeah. She was.” Levi breathed. “So, this is strictly off record and if you repeat this to anyone I will skin you all alive, famous rock stars be damned.”

“Jesus Levi.” Jake said.

“It was her.” Levi choked out. “Maven. That’s why she ran back from Hollywood and ended up here. That dude messed her up and she just… she struggles with meeting famous bands now. You know how many people cycle through this joint writing stuff. She just… has a really fuckin hard time with it sometimes. Particularly bands she likes. I think it’s because once you meet someone, and in her case, discover how much of a monster they can be, their music isn’t… safe anymore.”

“Fuck.” Jake said, flicking his cigarette into the canister.

“Well I feel terrible for joking about her being a fangirl.” Josh mutters.

“She just genuinely loves you guys a lot. I never really told her I was an old friend because I didn’t want her to be worried about y’all stopping by. I just know that if she knows you’re here she’ll take off and avoid coming by the shop as much as she can and not only do I need her here, but I think she needs the safety of the shop too. I didn’t want to wreck it.” Levi sighs again. “I know she’ll find out you’re here eventually, it’s inevitable. I just was a coward and didn’t want to break the news to her.”

“She was a pretty well known band manager wasn’t she?” Danny asks. “She like… completely made Undercover Heart what it was. Before they hired her they were slated to be a one hit wonder but she hauled them into relevancy basically by her will alone.”

“Yeah. She basically built that man's career for him. She gave him everything, and he took everything from her. If I ever see the man I’m liable to get my ass thrown in prison.” Levi mutters.

“I’ll help.” Danny says immediately.

All five sit in silence for a few minutes, smoking the last of their cigarettes. When they’d all finished, they stood and stretched to head back inside the shop.

“So yeah. Anyway, If you see her that’s fine, just… well now you have context for… her.” Levi says as he yanks open the door.

A few steps into the back hallway, Levi suddenly halts, causing all four boys to nearly bash into each other. The front door to the shop had crashed open and there were footsteps stomping across the store toward the front desk.

“Listen Levi,” Maven’s tense voice carried down the back hall. “I know Wednesdays are usually your day for music but I’m having an absolute shit fucking day so I’m playing Greta all day and there’s absolutely nothing you can fucking do about it, kapeesh?”

The very opening chords of Edge of Darkness scratch through the speakers after she finishes her sentence and the boys all exchange a slightly amused look, grins spread on all of their faces.

“Kapeesh.” Levi calls out to her. He spins and silently nods to the boys to head toward the back door. The boys attempt to be as quiet as they can as they creep toward the door.

“Also, Levi?” Maven calls again. Everyone halts in their tracks. “You said there was a band coming in soon. Are they here yet? Do you need me to set up the backroom?”

“Uh, yeah they’re here.” Levi squeaks. All five men share nervous looks. “They’re uh… up at the house.” He cringes at his lie. “I’m getting an equipment list from them today and then you can get started.

“Cool cool.” Maven calls back. “Do you think I’ll like their stuff?”

“Uh. Yeah.” Levi grins then. “I think you will.”

“Wicked.” Maven calls back.

All five men repress giggles as they skedaddle out the back door and into the alley.

~0~

The next morning the boys wake up to a group text from Levi.

COME BY THE SHOP ASAP. COME IN BACK DOOR. HEAD DOWN THE STAIRS TO THE BOOTH. BE AS QUIET AS YOU CAN.

A weird request, but they did as they were told. They all piled into the SUV they had rented and headed to the shop. Danny peeled open the back door as quietly as he could, and Sammy opened the door to the stairs. They tiptoed down and through the door at the end of the stairs that opened into the booth of a sound studio. Levi sat in front of all the mixing boards with a cup of coffee to his lips. He glanced over at them and softly said “coffees on the table.”

“Why the weird text?” Jake asked.

“Because of that.” Levi responded softly, pointing through the dark glass into the soundstage.

The sound stage was littered with mismatched rugs, and a few milk crates that doubled as tables. There was a gorgeous seafoam green drum set toward the back wall and stands full of various guitars and basses. Along the left wall was a piano and a Mellotron set up exactly to the specifications Sam sent over. However, with all these beautiful instruments to look at that would normally catch their eye, it was the woman sitting on stool in the center, cradling a dark purple Fender guitar that made Jake stop in his tracks.

Maven, Jake had to guess that’s who it was, was wearing checkered distressed pants, with a ripped up old band t-shirt cropped at her ribs, revealing a sliver of the rounded part of her stomach. Over top she was wearing an orange leopard print cardigan that ran down to her thighs. Around her neck was a series of long necklaces, and her wrists were adorned with interlacing leather bands.

She was plucking out a melody with her eyes closed, rocking back and forth on the stool. Jake had seen countless numbers of people playing the guitar before. On the road, in the studio, studying old masters on YouTube. There was nothing overly special about the way she was sitting or playing, but he felt a little bit like he couldn’t breathe.

“She never fuckin plays anymore man.” Levi whispered. “It felt like magic hearing music coming out of the basement this morning. I just felt like you should see it.”

The melody she was playing was sad. Haunting is a better way to put it, and Jake couldn’t look away. Not even when Sammy placed a cup of burning hot coffee into his hands. She was moving her head along with her playing, the strands of her dark messy hair shaking back and forth. The group watched in silence as she played out the riff a few times, Levi cranked the volume of the mics in the space and they could hear her humming softly.

“She has a strong presence.” Josh murmured.

Maven suddenly stopped. Everyone froze as she heaved a sigh and stood from the stool to put the guitar back on it’s rack.

“You in there Levi?” Maven said then. The boys still didn’t move a muscle. Jake’s head was spinning, having finally seen the face that went with the voice he’d heard in the loft for a week. She was beautiful. He couldn’t even really put his finger on why, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Even seeing her through the thick dark glass of the studio.

Levi hit the button to the mic in the booth and responded “Yah.” He paused before adding. “Sounded good.”

Maven snorted in a self-deprecating way and said “Thanks.”

Levi hit the mic button again and said “You should play more.”

“Don’t push it Levi.” Maven snapped back. Levi released the button to his mic and let out a heavy sigh. “Can you check some levels on the lines for me? I think I have everything pretty good but I want to make sure before they get here today.”

“Sure.” Levi replied.

Maven pulled the amp cord out of the Fender she had been playing on and plugged it into another guitar, one more similar to the guitars that Jake regularly used while they wrote.

“Are we looking for a punk or a rock-y sound?” Maven asked.

“Um.” Levi hesitated. “Rock. Their sound is like…” He tossed a small smile over his shoulder at the boys. “Like Greta’s actually.”

“Dope. I hope they’re not just copying the boys. They’ve got a mellotron in here and everything.” The boys smiled. She pounded out a few chords on the guitar. “Good?”

Levi looked over at Jake for confirmation. Jake, who still had not taken his eyes off Maven, nodded.

“Yeah, that should be good for raw sound. They can play with stuff too. They’re a pretty well educated bunch.” Levi called back.

“Thank god.” Maven snorted. “Not like that indie punk bunch you booked last month who needed me to do fucking all their sound mixing for them.”

“Maven, I don’t think they kept asking you down here because they need help with their sound.”

Maven just rolled her eyes at that.

They repeated the process with each instrument, Levi silently asking for confirmation from the respective Greta member until they were sure the sound lines were all functioning properly.

“Great work kid.” Levi called into the studio.

“Ew don’t call me kid. I’m a 27 year old woman.” Maven called back.

Levi chuckled. “You’re a kid to me.”

“Whatever.” Maven muttered. “I’m gonna go take a walk along the beach. Smoke a little. Text me if they need me.”

“Will do.” Levi called back. The boys all tensed, looking for places to hide, or to run up the stairs and back into the alley. Luckily, Maven took the back door out of the studio and up another hallway instead.

“Well boys, it’s all you.” Levi said. “Text if you need anything.”

Sam piped up and said “Yeah actually, can you pick my brother’s jaw up off the floor?”

“Jake see pretty lady play guitar and Jake brain break.” Josh teased.

“You guys suck.” Jake grumbled.

Levi cackled. “I thought you’d like her.”

~0~

Maven walked along the coast of the bay and absentmindedly smoked a joint. It was an overcast and drizzly day which meant there was no one around, which she preferred anyway. She was feeling on edge. The drizzle was very slowly building a small sheen of water on her arms and hair, but she didn’t mind. The cool water and gentle breeze combination was perfect.

Maven sat her butt down in the sand and stared out at the waves. She normally wore headphones on her walks, her world was a near constant stream of music, but she had opted for silence today.

Levi was being weird. He was edgy around her all week, sending her out every morning for tasks and disappearing without saying where he was going around 4:30 every day. She had come to the conclusion that whatever band was in town this week was a pretty big name. Or big enough that he was nervous about her being around them. She sighed. She hated when he tiptoed around her. Maven didn’t blame him. When she first started working at the shop she had had a couple pretty bad PTSD episodes that had scared the shit out of him. She owed him everything for staying with her, talking her down and making sure she was fed and had water when she got into one of her states.

Levi was her best friend, to put it mildly. He cared for her, kept her safe and in return she busted her ass at his store making sure they had the best products, the best shows and that their artist getaway was something that people would go back and tell their friends about. She loved Levi like an older brother, and he cared for her like his little sister. She would forever be grateful to whatever power in the universe made her stumble into The Edge two years ago.

She had been high out of her mind, as she had been most days after she came running back to Michigan with her tail between her legs, and Levi had been struggling with an amp in the shop. She had walked in, spotted his struggle and didn’t even say a word to him, just walked over and fixed the wiring so that it was functional again. Levi had looked up from where he sat on the floor and said “You don’t happen to need a job do you?”

The rest was essentially history. It only took two months of seeing him every single day, and him not letting her sour moods go by unnoticed, for her to spill her guts over some bourbon one night. About Ryan and Undercover Heart and how badly the whole situation fucked her up. How after she’d recorded her testimony she’d boarded the next flight to Grand Rapids and hightailed it up north. She came crash landing into Traverse City because she’d always loved it as a kid, and figured it would be a great place to start over. The small town she’d grown up in had too many people who knew her.

He was extra careful with bands for a while. Never letting her be alone in a room with too many male band members, and carefully vetting everyone who came through. Eventually she told him off about treating her like a porcelain doll and he backed down a bit, giving her free reign over lots of the equipment set ups and giving her plenty of hours in the shop by herself. She was happy to do so, so Levi could focus on fixing up the artist house and starting his photography again.

But he was still very gentle with her sometimes, and she’d always love him for it even when it pissed her the fuck off.

Once she’d smoked the joint down to the roach, she tucked the end into her pocket. It was sacrilegious to litter near the lake. It was too precious to be fucked with. She meandered back toward the shop. Her plan was to grab her bag and head back to let her Pitbull, Stacy, out for a walk and pee. The girl had been cooped up all morning and Maven felt bad.

She threw her whole body against the front door, as the latch often stuck, and the loud sound of the chimes clanged in the empty space. She rolled her eyes. Of course Levi left the shop unattended and unlocked. It was Traverse City, no one was gonna rob them, but what if someone wanted to buy something?

She was humming softly to herself as she made her way around the edge of the counter and plopped down on the stool by the register. She whipped out her phone to ask Levi where he was. She had the message halfway typed when the door behind her, the one that led to the staff restroom, popped open.

“You know, crime is especially low in this town but that doesn’t mean someone wouldn’t come in here and try to steal your precious coffee maker.” She tossed over her shoulder.

“Oh.” Was all that came back. It was decidedly not Levi’s voice. Maven spun back quickly.

“Sorry I…” But that’s as far as she got. She was suddenly face to face with Jake Kizska and all thoughts quickly left her brain.

They both stared at each other for a long moment. Maven couldn’t quite figure out why he looked just as shocked to see her as she was to see him. He also almost looked afraid for some reason that Maven couldn’t figure out.

He was dressed in an outfit she’d seen him wear plenty of times. A black button up, half unbuttoned, loose fitting light wash jeans and a pair of well worn boots. His wrists were full of bracelets and his hair was longer than the last time she’d seen footage of their concerts, well past his collarbones at this point.

“Hi.” Jake finally broke the silence. “I’m Jake.” He reached out his hand for a handshake.

“I know.” Maven replied, and then coughed. Why did you say that you freak?

Suddenly the front door bell chimed again, and Maven whipped her head to see Levi coming in the front door. She stood abruptly from her stool, skirted around Jake’s outstretched hand, and out from behind the counter. She scooped up her leather satchel on her way.

She headed straight at Levi. He glanced over his shoulder and saw an apologetic Jake looking forlorn and lowering his hand back to his side.

“Oh hey Maven-”

“Hey dumbass, don’t leave the store unattended again. I’m going home to check on Stacy. Probably won’t be back for the rest of the day.” Maven spit as she stormed past him toward the front door.

“Maven wait-”

But she was already outside, the hinges bringing the heavy wood crashing back into the frame. The chime of the bells rang through the space.

“Sorry.” Jake muttered.

“Not your fault. I knew she’d find out eventually. Right now she’s probably just pissed I didn’t tell her. Which she has every right to be.” Levi sighed.

After a few more beats of silence Jake spoke again. “Who’s Stacy?”

Levi huffed a laugh. “That would be her Pitbull.”

“Oh.” Jake said again. He felt crazy because his brain couldn’t come up with anything else to say. She was prettier up close. She smelled like the Lake and weed and sandalwood. He really wished she’d taken his hand. He shook his head trying to find his brain in it somewhere.

The other three boys came clambering up the stairs and into the store. They all looked between Levi, who was still standing in the middle of the shop, and Jake behind the counter.

“Are you two playing freeze tag or something?” Sam quipped.

“Jake met Maven.” Levi responded. The boys' heads whipped toward Jake.

“And… I’m guessing it… went well?” Danny questioned.

Levi finally walked back toward the counter. “She left for the day. This is on me. I should have told her y’all were here.” He snagged his keys from below the counter and walked toward the front door to lock up. “I’m closing early, boys. Let’s go get a beer.”

“Kowabunga baby.” Josh said with a grin.

~0~

Maven sat curled up on her velvet couch, Stacy was her little spoon. There was incense burning, a bottle of wine open on the side table and a lit joint in the ashtray. She had changed into a giant t-shirt and boxer shorts. The soft sounds of John Denver playing off her record player.

However, none of these things were easing her mind.

She was pissed, mostly. At herself. At Levi. She was pissed he didn’t tell her they were coming. She was pissed that he felt he couldn’t tell her. She was pissed that she had acted like a freak in front of Jake.

The anxiety was an endless pit in her stomach. She couldn’t go back there tomorrow. She couldn’t see any of those people. Not when she felt like this.

She whipped out her phone and quickly shot a message to Levi, before chugging her whole glass of red wine and snagging the joint out of the ashtray.

~0~

Levi’s phone dinged on the table where all of the guys sat drinking beers and chatting. Levi glanced at it and quickly picked it up when he saw her name.

“It’s Maven.” He said.

“What did she say?” Jake asked, sitting up a bit in his chair.

“Fuck.” Levi said, tossing his phone on the table, still unlocked.

All four boys leaned in to read the screen.

CASHING IN ALL MY VACATION DAYS. I’LL BE OUT FOR TWO WEEKS.

“Fuck indeed.” Josh said, pounding back the rest of his beer.

#jake gvf #jake kiszka #greta van fleet #greta fic #jake fic #gvf #greta van fleet fan fiction #greta fan fleet fic #peaceful army

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kickassclefable · 2 years

Text

REQUIEM FOR CPR

I never really played club penguin when I was younger. I played other kids multiplayer online games, a lot of Moshi monsters, although I have no nostalgic regard for that website. I also played a lot of barbie girl, there were quite a few fun games I thought a the time, but I don’t know if they would hold up if I played them again. I played club penguin a little however, I remember playing card jitsu, but not much else. That’s why I was not too upset when it shut down, and was for a brief time replaced by club penguin island. A lot of older kids games websites update or close down, and the older games are not available anymore. Those types of games are never too amazing, but our fond memories of them make us a little bit sad when they are gone.

When I first heard of club penguin rewritten, I was mildly interested, since it was free, and I played for a day and then left it. Years later, post flash end, I watched YouTube video by izzzyizzz, I was inspired to give the website another shot. Heck, it was free, after all.

I like precious stones, so I decided to name my penguin morganite303, it has no particular deep meaning, the 303 is a reference to error 404. This was in early January, and the pirate party was in full swing. The parties were fun, in the few months I experienced, there was a party going on. At the time, it didn’t mean much, I only later discovered all the “secret rooms” and I never found shellbeard. I had fun re-discovering the mini games in order to earn money to customize my igloo and penguin, although I was a little disappointed by the lack of puffles. A long time ago I had one pink puffle.

At first I played the disco and pizza games. I wanted to stock up on coins for the next month catalogues, so I played them over and over, with YouTube on in the background. I was decent at these games but not great, I could never get a full score on either mode of the pizza game, or do any good on hard mode in the dancing game. I’m an adult, but I can’t even beat little kids games. Later I found puffle roundup, I did not know that game existed at first, but after that my coin total skyrocketed, I reached almost 500,000. An arbitrary total of fake money to by fake items in a kids game. But I played cpr every day for two months, collecting my daily treasure, and checking the club penguin mountains website for news. So it was pretty fun.

In February I climbed the giant cake and saw the concert. I tipped the iceberg and got a pink hard hat. Then I went on YouTube and listened to those songs over again, and they are still on my playlists today. I waited all month for puffles to arrive, I met 2 out of 4 visitors. I picked out one puffle of each colour, then a few extra white ones. At first I fed them every day, then once a day, I went weeks without feeding them but they didn’t run away, their health bars did not even go all the way down. I wonder if that was done intentionally or if it was a glitch. But soon after that I lost interest and only checked on the site once in a while, buying new things and struggling to update my igloo when the site was slow and glitchy.

I tried to roleplay a few times, but it was only fun really occasionally. For big events like puffles returning, I mostly hung out on emptier servers so it would load and not crash. I didn’t care too much about getting every visitor stamp, but even with trackers it was hard to be in the right place at the right time, and servers filled up very quickly. A lot of people did care about getting every stamp. Good for them. I only played card-jitsu again once. On the day they returned the severs were either too busy or too empty and after that I never felt like it.

It was unexpected when the site shut down. I thought it was safe and I’m sorry for all those kids who lost their penguins. It was so nice to have a free club penguin, especially with money grabbing sites like animal jam still around to tempt kids. There are a lot of better things to waste your money on. There were other club penguin sites, and more may come after, but I don’t think I would want to start from scratch again. Those screenshots from Tumblr I took on a whim, but now they stand as the only proof I played cpr, that and all the lost time, of course.

For anyone’s information the club penguin minigames are all on flashpoint. Go download flashpoint.

#club penguin #goodbye club penguin rewritten #club penguin rewritten #club penguino #requiem for club penguin rewritten #my memories of club penguin rewritten #not all children's massive multiplayer online roleplaying websites were created equal #don't play animal jam

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angryschnauzer · 4 years

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Last Night on the Plain

Summary; As an archeology student at the end of your first year of University, you spend the summer on a dig in the South of England. Throughout the whole dig you’ve lusted after the site-lead; a fresh out of his doctorate Dr Cavill, assigned to the dig to get some leadership experience. Will the last night you spend on Salisbury Plain be one to remember?

(This fic is a prequel to my multichapter story Superior Specimen it can be read alone but contains spoilers for that story) Links for Superior Specimen: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9

Pairing: Grad Student Henry Cavill x 19 year old Female Reader

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, Mutual Pining, Professor/Student Relationship, Oral Sex, Blow Job, Fingering, Unprotected Sex. SPOILERS FOR Superior Specimen.

I do not operate a tag list, but if you follow @angryschnauzerwrites and put that blog onto notifications, you will get an alert every time i post a new fic.

Please check out my AO3 for masterlist.

Last Night on the Plain

Sitting on the kerb outside Iceland, the little town of Warminster was quiet on a Saturday afternoon. The Land Rover would soon be coming through to pick you and your friends up, the dig site lead having driven a few of you into town to collect supplies for the last night of the six week long dig.

Six weeks of living in tents, running to the nearby stream to dive into the Watercress filled waters and wash, rinsing your underwear in a bucket and hanging over guy ropes of the tents and hoping the cows in the next field over don’t lean over the fence and eat them, six weeks of celebrating the end of your first year of University.

You loved Archaeology, having studied hard for your A-Levels at college, you got the grades to go to Southampton University to study it. The dig would contribute towards your yearly grade, teaming up with other uni’s from around England, the excavations on the far west of Salisbury Plain in the south of England, and the project was to uncover settlements from when the giant pillars of Stonehenge were moved from their starting point in Wales and anything from the trade routes over the following millennia.

Your friend nudged you in the ribs, nodding to the vehicle heading towards the three of you;

“Hey hey, here comes Cav”

“Dibs on shotgun” you blurted out, your friends groaning at your speed at calling the front seat.

Standing, the three of you watched as the site lead pulled up to the kerb, his big smile at seeing you misfits waiting for him made your stomach do a little flip. He brought the Land Rover to a bumpy halt at the kerb, leaving the engine running as he got out and helped load the supplies into the back, reaching the front passenger door just in time to hold it open for you. You missed the way he looked at your ass as you climbed in, shutting the door after you.

The ride back to the dig site was bumpy; 30-year-old Land Rovers weren’t known for their comfort, the lack of seatbelts in the vintage vehicle not helping as the country roads and tracks were littered with potholes. You were painfully aware of the way your breasts were bouncing around, having foregone bras within the first week of the dig. They pinched and prodded you as you bent over excavating for hours on end and became an unnecessary addition to have to bother keep washing by hand.

On one particularly vicious bump you were bounced across the narrow bench seat, grabbing at Cav’s leg before you ended up headbutting the steering wheel. He apologetically smiled at you;

“Sorry…”

“S’ok”

You rode in silence for a while, the pair in the back deep in discussion about the merits of getting an upgrade from their Sony Ericsson’s to Blackberries. Finally your seatmate spoke;

“So, pink, huh Punk?”

You pulled at a strand of hair, holding it out from your head and grinned;

“The Sun-In turned it orange. Orange isn’t my colour”

“I left you in town for forty five minutes… how did you have time to dye your hair?” he said with a grin.

“It’s Cherry flavour Panda Pop. We stood in the alley behind Ladbrokes and poured a bottle over my hair”

He laughed, his toothy grin wide and genuine;

“That explains the smell”

“Hope you’re referring to the cherry and not the alley”

His face paled and he stuttered, before you grinned and gave his thigh a squeeze;

“I’m teasing”

He smiled and turned his attention back to the road, concentrating on the journey now that the paved roads had finished and it was now dusty tracks across the farmland. You watched as he steered the vehicle, and you knew he was going to be your only regret of the summer. Dr Cavill, or Cav as everyone called him on site, fresh having finished his doctorate in Palaeontology, but desperately in need of some leadership skills and experience on how to run a site dig. He was cute. Tall and fit, gorgeous blue eyes and high cheekbones, both of which were regularly hidden by his mop of soft chestnut brown hair. When he was deep in concentration he would nibble at his lip and it only made them plumper.

You were so in your little dream world that when he made the sharp right hand turn into the field the dig was in you lost your grip, your hand sliding from its spot on his thigh to in between his legs, your head low on his stomach;

“Oh!”

He slowed the Land Rover as you scrambled back to your seat, his cheeks flushed and pink.

“Sorry…”

The campfire was down to its last embers, the sun almost fully set. It was the last night of the dig and you were all celebrating. The finds had been fantastic, everything catalogued and recorded, friendships hatched and grown, sunburn peeling away to reveal soft skin, leave-in bleach hair sprays and nights of passing around a three litre bottle of White Lightning - the cheapest by volume cider you could find. Cav had excused himself to his tent, not often joining the students for the latter parts of drinking, and the nights argument was whether or not it was too late to walk the three miles to the Red Lion pub in Heytesbury.

“You guys go. I’m gonna take one last look at the north end trench, see if i can find my amethyst necklace I lost last week”

“Punk, you’re drunk, it’s getting dark too!”

“I’m not drunk, I’ve had a few sips of Cider, and I’ve got a head torch”

“Fine, suit yourself”

Brushing through the sandy soil you were yet to find your necklace, but as the friction under the brush suddenly changed you looked closer, smiling when you saw what was revealed.

Minutes later you stood at his tent, calling out;

“Cav? I’ve found something…”

He appeared in the doorway, the camping lantern illuminating his tent as it sat on the table where he would write his notes and inspect finds;

“Hey! What have you…” he saw the shards of pottery you were holding in your hands, his eyes going wide; “You found the last parts?”

Nodding you smiled. Throughout the dig the team had discovered finds from multiple era’s, and one he’d found was the majority of shards from a Roman Pot, an urn that would have been used to carry Olive Oil all the way from the southernmost parts of the Roman Empire. You knew that it had been frustrating him that all his attempts to reassemble the urn had failed, the missing pieces seemingly integral to the structure.

He pulled the tent flap to the side for you to enter, setting the pieces down onto the table before straddling the bench that sat beside it. Cav came over and grabbed the tray that held the other parts, a ball of blu-tack nestled in the corner;

“This is amazing! It looks like all the missing pieces are here!” he turned to you, his eyes shining bright in the glow of the lamp; “I thought you all were going to the pub?”

“I stayed… I wanted to have one last search for my necklace I lost last week”

“Oh… did you find it?”

“No. But this is so much better! C’mon, I wanna see if we can get this to fit together now!”

His long legs meant he could step over the bench with ease, sitting down next to you and you watched as he started to push the pieces together, cradling them in his large handspan. Softening the blu-tack he pulled a little off and applied it to the edge of a piece, angling his arm at an awkward angle, cursing under his breath;

“Could you…”

“Sure” taking the piece from him he held the fragile urn in both hands as you bent over his arms and stuck it into place, moving onto the next piece, this time near his hand furthest from you.

Due to the angles you were struggling to see, before you spoke quietly;

“Lean back a little”

He did as you asked, extending his arms to full stretch as he held the artefact, letting out a squeak of surprise as you tucked yourself under one arm, shuffling to straddling his lap and sit;

“Okay, now I can see what I’m doing…” you muttered as you pushed your ass back against him, the whole thing completely innocent, but you were unaware of the look of panic on his face, how he was afraid he was going to crack a tooth from gritting his jaw, willing his dick not to get hard.

He was now rendered to simply holding the urn in place, he was unable to concentrate, however you had taken over the placement of the new pieces, slotting them into their gaps, the blu-tack holding them secure. As you slid the final piece in you sat back, resting your back against his chest, smoothing your hands over his as you both took in the piece of pottery that dated back two millennia;

“It's stunning…” you muttered.

He softly brushed his thumbs over the sides of your hands, and you felt the warm puff of breath on your neck as he spoke;

“So are you…”

You let out a breathy sigh, your back arching and you could feel he was hard, the bulge against your ass pressing incessantly against you. Resting your head against his shoulder you turned your head and his lips caught your own. The world stopped and you saw stars as those soft pink pillows caressed your lips, moaning into his mouth and he took the chance to slip his tongue against yours.

Somehow the two of you managed to gently rest the delicate artefact back onto the tray in the midst of your fledgling passion, his hands intertwining with yours, fingers laced together as his tongue worked magic with your own.

When you broke the kiss you were gasping for air, his mouth finding your neck as he kissed along your exposed shoulder and neck, his sharp teeth dragging against your skin and making you moan;

“Oh… oh fuck… yes…”

He stopped for a moment, his hands still entwined with yours but he wrapped his arms around your body;

“Tell me to stop… tell me this is wrong, I’m your supervisor…”

“It’s the last night… let’s give ourselves this night… Just promise not to fall in love with me…”

“It may be too late for that already” he murmured against your skin, but you were lost in the haze of lust to comprehend his words.

Your hands finally parted, his slipping beneath your strappy t-shirt, yours reaching back to curl into his hair as his tongue danced patterns over your neck again. You were writhing on his lap, lost in the moment when suddenly the bench tipped, the two of you falling back and landing on the ground.

You moved first, rolling off before turning and straddling him, leaning over to catch his lips with your own as you ground your clothed core against the bulge in his tented shorts;

“I’ve wanted to feel you between my thighs for the last six weeks” you muttered against his earlobe, pressing kisses to his jawline as his hands found your ass and pulled you firmly down onto his body; “The amount of times I’ve gotten myself off in silence as I thought about sneaking into your tent…”

He could only let out a guttural moan, and as your hands found the edge of his t-shirt you parted so you could strip him of it.

You sat back, pressing yourself down harder against his growing erection as you admired his smooth and pale chest, the tiniest crop of hairs right in the centre, delicate muscle definition but still slim and athletic. You watched his face as you trailed your fingers down the length of his long body, finally brushing against the thin trail of hairs that led from his navel into his shorts. You shifted back a little, unfastening the button on his Khaki shorts and unzipping him, reaching into his underwear and grasping his hot length before pulling him free of the cotton confinements.

Bending you took him into your mouth, sliding your tongue over his hot flesh as you swallowed around him, bobbing your head up and down. His hands found your head, pressing gently to tell you the speed he liked, a string of curses falling from his lips as you rapidly drove him to the brink of pleasure. It didn’t take long until he let out an ‘uh-oh’ and you slid a hand up his stomach, his own grasping at it as he started to cum in your mouth. You swallowed all that he gave you, his back arching as he thrust up into the warm comfort between your lips, before his body went limp.

Pulling off him his hands gripped at your arms, pulling you up his chest until you were laying on top of him;

“You’ll need to give me a moment… then I’ll be right with you…”

You grinned and pressed a kiss to his bite swollen lips before standing, and he pushing himself up to rest on his elbows, a look of panic on his face before you grinned at him;

“Chill… just getting more comfy…”

You pulled your top off and dropped it to the ground, unfastening your combat shorts and let them fall too, kicking off your flipflops before you were standing there in just your knickers, your thumbs hooked over the sides before he finally spoke;

“I want to be the one to take those off…”

He quickly stood and pulled you over to the double air mattress he had in his tent, watching you lay back against his sleeping bag as he stripped himself of the rest of this clothing. As he climbed on he crawled up your body, and it was then that you saw the tiniest patch of brown in the sea of his blue eyes. You were mesmerized by it as he lay over you, your legs parting as he rutted against you, already growing hard again. He moved to your side and slid a hand down the length of your sternum, over your soft stomach and into your underwear, feeling how the thin cotton was soaked through with your arousal. Sitting up he pulled the ruined scrap of fabric down your legs, looking at your soaked petals as he parted them with his long fingers, finding your sensitive nub and rubbing delicate circles against it, before sliding his hand down and pushing two fingers into your soaked hole;

“Fuck… you feel so tight…”

“I need you… I need you inside me…”

“I don’t… I don’t have any protection…” he looked pained to admit what could be the stopping point of the night.

“I’m on the pill… been taking it continually so I didn’t get a period whilst on the dig…you can go bare…”

His eyes went wide, he’d had a number of lovers over his years at University, and he was well into his mid 20’s, but he had always used condoms, never wanting the girl to have to take the responsibility for their tryst… he had never gone bare but just at the mere thought of sliding into your heat, to feel your hot wetness against his skin, it made him as hard as a rock.

He scissored his fingers inside you before shifting, pulling them from you as he positioned himself between your thighs, the light from the lantern casting long shadows over your bodies. He rested his tip against your folds, taking a moment to lick your juices from his fingers, then with a smirk he started to press into you.

With each passing inch your eyes fluttered shut, not realising you were missing the look on his face as he found heaven between your legs. The feel of your pussy around him was almost suffocating, hugging him so tight as he slid in with ease from your arousal;

“Oh my god… you feel so fucking good… you’re gonna have to tell me how you like it, cos’ I don’t think I’m going to last long…” he muttered.

Wrapping your hand around the back of his neck, you pulled him down for a fierce kiss, all teeth and tongues whilst your body grew accustomed to his impressive length inside you, the biggest you had ever taken;

“Hard and fast, I was made to be broken… break me…”

At your words something changed in him, pushing his body onto his arms as he started to rut into you, watching your juices shine on his dick as he pulled out, only to slam back in as your body took every inch of him, your silken channel hugging him tight. The tent was filled with the wet slap of skin on skin, and knowing you were the only ones on site your voices rose, your moans filling the night sky.

Your body was bucking beneath him, shaking from pleasure and he could tell he wasn’t going to last much longer. He desperately wanted to feel you come around him, pushing a hand between your bodies he rubbed furiously at your clit, feeling your body tighten and your back arch, and as you came your body trembled around him.

The feeling was indescribable, he was so deep in pleasure that when his back arched and he came deep inside you he let out a roar, his eyes screwed shut as he filled you with his come, finally going limp, his arms shaking from the exertion of holding himself above you. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders and pulled him on top of you, burying your face in his neck as you breathed in his scent.

Finally finding his voice he whispered quietly;

“Stay with me tonight”

Wrapped in the sleeping bag and blankets you did just that, curled up in his arms and the warmth of his embrace.

Henry was woken by the sounds of the camp being broken down, the crews from the various universities packing up their things as the minibuses arrived to take them back to the halls of residences or shared houses. He was alone in his bed, and as he sat up he could hear your voice yelling out to your tent-mates to ‘pick up your fucking stuff’.

In the hours that followed various vehicles turned up on site, his own supervisors, benefactors and sponsors of the dig, all very excited by the finds and reports, and especially of the assembled Roman Urn. At every moment he tried to get away, tried to find a moment to talk to you, but as the minutes and hours ticked by the window was closing.

You were all packed up, everything in the old minibus. Every time you had looked across the site he was talking to someone important looking, never getting a moment where he was alone. The driver of your minibus honked the horn and you panicked;

“Hang on, I’ve just got one more thing to do…”

You ran across the site and he saw you, excusing himself from the people he was talking to and managed to intercept you behind the old Ford Transit van that was taking the equipment away. He wrapped his arms around you and pressed a kiss to your lips;

“I didn’t want you to leave before I got to say goodbye”

Your bottom lip trembled, your voice shaking;

“I’ve left my number on a piece of paper on your table, its tucked under the tray with the urn on”

He let out a sigh of relief, nodding before kissing you again, the sound of your minibus driver honking the horn impatiently.

You reluctantly pulled out of his arms, giving him a final wave before running to the bus, and he watched from the side of the van as you climbed in, the vehicle driving off into the distance as a cloud of dust trailed behind it.

“Henry!” an older male voice called out cheerfully.

Rubbing his palms over his face he took a deep breath, before turning and smiling at his supervising professor;

“Hey, good to see you Sir”

The older man clapped a hand over Henry’s shoulder;

“You’ve done an amazing job on this dig… the reports that came in have been exemplary. You had all the same students at the end of the dig as at the start which I’ll have you know is a particular skill… some site leads drive students away in droves!”

Leading Henry back towards the dig site he waxed lyrical about Henry’s skill and how he showed true leadership skills, turning to another gentleman that was leaning against Henry’s Land Rover;

“Have you met Piers?”

Henry shook his head, he knew who he was being introduced to, the CEO of the most prestigious museum in the UK and some would say the world with regards to Archaeology and Palaeontology. Shaking the man’s hand he was speechless;

“We’ve been following the dig reports, your talent is something I haven’t seen for many years… we’d like to discuss a position on our expedition board with you…”

“Y-yes… that would be fantastic! Thank you”

“Now, let’s see that Roman urn I’ve been hearing all about…”

Leading the men to his tent he lifted the tray, pulling it out into the sunshine as they took in the beauty of it, no-one noticing the small scrap of paper catch on the wind and slipping out of the tent, Henry too distracted by the reality of being hired for his dream job.

Many Years Later.

Henry grinned as his team crowed around him, the heat of the Siberian Summer seeping into their pores. In broken Russian the students were laughing and shouting, before three of them carried the massive femur bone they’d excavated a few days previously over to Henry, heaving it into his massive arms.

“Smile!” someone shouted out and he heard the clicks of phone camera shutters, before he gently rested it onto the soft ground, chatting to the team as he did so.

That night they hit the bars of the nearest town, Henry smiling when he saw one had wifi, connecting his phone and uploading a few updates to the dig account and also his own. An hour later he checked his phone and saw his Instagram notifications, one account name in particular catching his attention; @thepunkwiththepinkhair

It couldn't be, could it?

It was. It was you. The pink may be gone, but he had finally found you again.

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

Thank you for reading!

Some explanations of British shops/brands;

Iceland = a budget supermarket chain

White Lightning = cheap, harsh apple cider, sold in bottles that are 3000ml/a gallon for around £5.00 (USD7/EURO6)

Panda Pop = very cheap fizzy drink, full of additives, artificial colours, sugar.

Ladbrokes - a chain of gambling shops.

Sun-in - spray in hair bleach that you would spritz on your hair and go out in the sunshine, and it would bleach your hair. Apparently it was meant to give you ‘sun kissed highlights’, but when i was 18 i turned my hair bright orange with it.

In the UK University starts when you are 18, and a degree lasts 3 or 4 years. You can then do a ‘post graduate course’ which is another year of studying, and if you want to work towards your doctorate, it can be another 4-7 years on top of that, which is why Henry in this story is literally fresh out of studying even though he is approximately 25 years old.

#henry cavill #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill x you #henry cavill smut

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mollymauk-teafleak · 4 years

Text

Partners in Crime

Please consider reblogging and leaving a comment over on Ao3!

Just a silly little scenario I had rattling around in my head! Huge thanks to @spiky-lesbian and @minky-for-short for always being amazing betas!

tw: mentions of drinking, hangovers

Juno Steel opened his eye and immediately wanted to strangle the person who had designed this hotel room. Any interior decorator who knew they were putting together a hotel room in Nueva Vegas, the prime place on Neptune where people went to get blackout drunk and collect the finest hangover symptoms in the galaxy, yet still insisted on neon wallpaper deserved death.

He inhaled, feeling an ache in his ribs that came from too much raucous laughter and tasting stale alcohol, taking a mental catalogue of his body as his nerves came back online. His eyelashes felt heavy with mascara that had curdled overnight, his throat felt rough with overuse, his stomach only had a slight roil to it, a sea on a choppy day rather than in the middle of a storm. He was wearing the pyjama bottoms he’d actually packed but he couldn’t speak for the shirt- his top half was still wearing last night’s spangled bralet.

And he had Nureyev’s arm thrown bonelessly over his chest, his sharp chin digging a little painfully into his shoulder, his soft snores in one ear and his dark flyaways ticking his nose. His breath smelled pretty strongly of gin but Juno could put up with that, he wasn’t one to throw stones.

Overall, Juno Steel had suffered far worse mornings. In fact, this one would probably still make it into the top twenty.

Smiling, he gently nudged Nureyev to one side, making sure he fell back against the lavish pillows and settled again before sliding out from under the silky sheets. The hotel room’s crisp air conditioning raised goosebumps across his skin as he padded across the room, stockinged feet sinking considerably into the thick, bright pink carpets. They really had made an ungodly mess of one of the most expensive hotel rooms on Neptune, he was pretty impressed with just how many empty plastic glasses, dregs of champagne clinging to their sides, were scattered around the hot tub, just how much glitter had shed from their clothes onto the floor, the probably very incriminating blueprints and files and notes that were scattered like confetti. Not incriminating for the job they’d just pulled off, of course, just several they were considering in the future.

There was no sign of the rest of their family, no Rita singing almost incomprehensible karaoke into a can of chips, no Jet sitting in a chair by the window with his arms folded and head nodding as he slept like an old dad though a whisper of any threat would snap him up and ready. No Buddy and Vespa slow dancing to music only they seemed able to hear while the neon flashes from the signs outside the window bathed them in candy coloured light.

They must have staggered back to their own rooms, just before the celebrations of a job well done would have wound down into a sleepover. Juno frowned as he scratched tiredly at where his hair was matted down, trying to remember. Buddy’s usual habit of making them all drink as much water before bed as she could had saved him from vomiting and a splitting head but memories were still fuzzy. Very fuzzy actually, now he tried to grab hold of them. No wonder his tongue tasted of about half the bottles behind the bar and his bladder felt fit to burst.

By the time he’d gone into the bathroom, wincing at the colour of lime green it had all been done up in, and dealt with that problem he could hear Nureyev stirring.

Coming back into the room, now dressed a little more appropriately in a soft bathrobe, he saw him stretching like a cat, his own wince playing across his sleepy face.

“Good morning,” he rasped, “Feeling rough too, huh?”

“Fairly,” Nureyev croaked, not making it very far before slumping back against the pillows, “What time did Buddy say we had to be back on board?”

“Not till three. It’s only eleven right now.”

“Ugh...I might not make it.”

Juno snorted, rolling his eye, “God, you’re such a lightweight, you whine so much when you’re hungover. Look, I’ll pack the bags, you focus on getting your shoes on. I think one of them’s in the hot tub.”

Nureyev groaned, bringing his hands up to bury his face in them as Juno pulled the curtains wide and flooded the room with pale sunlight. So little actual sunlight could reach this distant gas giant, what fell across Nureyev’s face was actually simulated from a massive rig of translucent spotlights that covered the city much like Mars’ domes. Rita had told him all about it around their third glasses of champagne, before her speech started collapsing into inhuman giggles and nonesene and his memories got cloudy.

He certainly couldn’t remember quite how they’d gotten the room into such a state. It hadn’t even really been that big of a job, a fairly run of the mill casino heist to fund some bigger projects that Buddy had percolating in her brain. But, from the lingering carnage of their celebration, you’d think they’d stolen a goddamn planet rather than a few measly hundred thousands of creds.

And there was a lot of confetti. All over the damn place, where had that all come from?

“Babe?” Juno frowned as he started pulling their papers together, “Do you remember much about last night?”

Nureyev gave a sleep mumble and Juno heard the sound of the silken sheets running over each other as he turned, “I remember us pulling off a job so seamless it deserves to be in some kind of textbook on thieving. I remember everyone coming into our room. I remember Buddy ordering champagne...and that’s it.”

Juno suppressed a snort of amusement. He was sure if it was his husband’s small frame or his lack of experience with the stuff but about two swallows of anything alcoholic had him absolutely useless. Adorable but useless.

“Just seems like we really tore it up for some reason,” Juno shrugged as he moved further along, now gathering up scraps of their disguises- the velour blazer he’d been wearing over that bralet, the other one of Nureyev’s stiletto heels, a diamond ring he couldn’t remember which one of them had worn.

He paused, something about that ring making him stop. It was lying in the midst of some other jewels he’d been wearing yesterday in his role as a ridiculously wealthy outer rim socialite. So it must have been his, he didn’t exactly need his years of experience as a detective to realise that. So why didn’t he remember it? Why did it look so brand new, so out of place with everything else lying in that modest dragon’s horde of luxury?

“My love?”

Juno turned, taking the ring with him, “Yeah?”

Nureyev was still lying in bed, though he was holding his left hand a little ways from his face, frowning curiously up at it as he turned it this way and that. As he watched the fake morning sun catch in the gem on a ring that sat there, a ring identical to the one Juno held.

“Did...did we get married?” Nureyev said slowly, an expression on his face not dissimilar to the one he wore when he was doing one of the many puzzle boxes Juno got him as gifts, after he’d realised a year ago that he loved them.

“Yes, about a year and a half ago. You were there, remember?”

Nureyev shot him a look across the room, “I mean last night, my love.”

Juno sucked in a long, slow breath before answering, throwing the ring up in the air and catching it, “Yeah, that would really explain a lot, huh?”

They caught each other’s eye then and after that there was nothing they could do but laugh, hard and helpless until Juno was having to brace himself on his knees to stay upright and Nureyev was curled on one side and trembling.

Once he could see and breathe clearly again, Juno found it, lying amongst a sheaf of floor plans for the casino they’d robbed yesterday. A wedding certificate, one corner of it crinkled and soaked where some spilled champagne had caught it, a little rumbled from being shoved into the pocket of a velour blazer on the car ride back to the hotel but fairly unmistakeable. The signatures were certainly theirs, even if the names weren’t.

“Yep,” Juno’s face still ached from grinning as he climbed back into bed next to his husband-twice-over, “Apparently once Rigel Fortescue and Jack Antares were done being complete strangers while the Orion’s Palace Casino had half it’s funds drained, they went off and got married.”

“Congratulations to us, I suppose,” Nureyev wiped his streaming eyes, giggles still pressing up against his words, “Oh god help us, is there any way we can keep this from the rest of the crew?”

“Well, looks like they all signed as our witnesses so I don’t think that’s an option, babe,” Juno snorted, showing him the band of signatures clustered along the bottom of the certificate, each one a ridiculous pseudonym but the handwriting was all familiar, even with how drunk their friends had clearly been.

Nureyev gave a groan of dismay that he didn’t really seem to feel, cuddling up against Juno, “Does this make us a little trashy?”

“Yeah well, you knew who I was when you married me,” Juno nudged him teasingly, “Both times.”

“Hush!” Nureyev kissed his shoulder, moving slightly so he could hitch one leg over Juno’s hip. He was still wearing his suit trousers from last night, Juno noticed, if last night really had been their wedding night then they’d neglected a pretty significant part of it.

So he turned to meet Nureyev’s body with his own, wrapping an arm around his slim waist to close what little gap there still was between them, “Maybe this could be our thing? We wear a new name pretty much every week anyhow, why don’t we get married as many times as we feel like? I know personally I’d be willing to go...well, at least another three times. Maybe four, for the money.”

He felt a light nip through the shoulder of the robe as Nureyev admonished him with his teeth. Though his hands were saying something different as they slid down Juno’s back, squeezing lightly.

“I suppose it could be quite a fun tradition…” he murmured softly, “But I would like to remember the next one. Perhaps a beach wedding on Saturn…”

Juno grinned and kissed the top of his head, “Whatever you want, babe. I’ll make sure the next one is perfect.”

“Our first one already was. But there were parts of my moodboards I didn’t get to use…”

Juno nudged him lightly until he was on his back, starting to kiss his way down his neck, tasting his perfume on his lips, “And?”

“And I love you,” Nureyev amended, smiling as innocently as someone very obviously moving his wife’s legs apart with his own could, “And marrying you a thousand times wouldn’t be enough to show you how much.”

“I love you too,” Juno murmured against his collarbone, “Happy honeymoon, baby.”

And, as much of a surprise as it had been, as much as their heads still ached and they could still taste cocktails on each other’s tongues, as much as they had a ship to catch in a few hours, it was. It really, really was.

#jupeter #tpp #juno steel #peter nureyev #post canon #just some daft fluffiness #them being loved up idiots #please reblog and comment!

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janekfan · 4 years

Note

What about Jon, crying frustrated tears back either pre Canon or in S1 and Tim comforting him and helping out until the breakdown has passed, contrasted with Jon, crying frustrated tears either from being so overwhelmed or from something Tim did in seasons 2/3????

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27581069

Finally! Sorry it took so long!! <3

It was cold. Of course it was, it had to be to protect the documents packed in boxes floor to ceiling all around and everywhere he looked there were more and there was no way he could do this!

Inhale, exhale. Calm down.

He’d have to remember to bring a spare jumper so he could work because as it was now his fingers were too numb to work properly and when he tucked them under his arms it only made him feel worse. Made him feel small and alone. Reminded him of a lonely childhood.

Stop it.

But Jon didn’t know where to begin. He could pretend. He could keep his assistants busy with real work, that wasn’t a problem but what was he to do? What did an Archivist do, really? Archive? Organize? How? When everything was a giant, muddled mess filed, a generous term, in no real order or catalogue he’d been able to understand. It was all just.

Overwhelming.

A splash of wet warmth collided with his wrist and embarrassed, Jon scrubbed hastily at the tears streaming down his cheeks. This was, he was stupid. Stupid. He should be able to handle this. At the end of the day, wasn’t it just shuffling papers around? Putting them in some semblance of order that only had to make sense to him? It had certainly worked for Gertrude. The sorrow and frustration came anyway, falling from his eyes and heating his skin and he was so caught up in his own discomfort that by the time he processed someone entering his office, it was too late to hide.

He tried anyway.

“Oh, Tim. Yes. Wh’what can I do for you?” It was a useless misdirection; Tim was sharp eyed and protective and honestly, it was a relief to see him because if Jon was going to continue crying (and it didn’t seem like he would be stopping anytime soon) there was no one better.

“Jon? What’s wrong? What’s happened?” And the tears which he’d managed to slow, came back full force and Jon tucked his chin to his chest and shook. “Ah, hey now, can’t be as bad as all that.” Gentle, Tim tugged him close, holding him around his shoulders and allowing him to bury his hot face in his stomach. “You’re alright. Whatever it is, we’ll help, okay, Boss?” A palm swept up and down the seam of his spine. “We’re a team! We can do anything if we’re together.” Jon pulled in a hitched and shuddery breath, nodding resolutely. Tim allowed him a few more quiet moments before ushering him out of his office where Martin and Sasha were certainly not waiting for them. Martin approached first, compassion shining clear in his expression, and took up his hands.

“You're freezing! Here, come with me. I’ll make you some tea and get you warmed up straight away.” Martin would hear nothing of his protests, pulling him gently away to the breakroom, warm fingers curled around his own. Just this once, Jon would let it happen, the reassuring glow of being surrounded by friends soothing the remnants of panic that had overwhelmed him so thoroughly before Tim found him. They were speaking easily around him about nothing important and Jon let himself drift in the current of their familiar voices.

It was cold down here. And dark, though Jon could See just fine, like he couldn’t hear them but Knew they were searching and feared the worst, that he’d gone hunting in the streets for first-hand accounts of terror. He welcomed the chill seeping its way beneath his skin, numbing his fingers and toes. It meant some part of him was at least close to human.

He reveled in the weird, sharp hunger that gnawed on tender nerves, appreciated the gravity of it and let himself sink into the deep, syrupy ache. He's on the brink. Can feel it in the heavy throbbing in his chest, behind his heart, taking up every empty space and making it difficult to breathe. The weight of his mistakes he supposed, a breadcrumb path he could follow all the way back, beginning with accepting the Head Archivist position instead of walking away. Then again, he’d never known when to stop and that didn’t seem like it was going to change anytime soon; that need for answers, to understand, to connect every dot, to soothe the sting of losing all his friends in favor of embracing a monster.

But Lord he missed them and they were right there. They just weren’t there for him anymore and he had only himself to blame.

Jon doesn’t ask for comfort, he’d be the first to admit he didn’t deserve any and is...content he thinks is the word, to wait until Tim and Martin and Melanie and Daisy and Basira decide he’s suffered enough to prove his worth and let him back in. It was cold down here. It was colder alone and the temptation to give in was so strong if only because he’d be warm again and he’s so, so tired of being lonely.

But he could get something nearly as good. Recognition that something happened to him, that he was still here, still Jon even if he was unwanted, there was enough of him left to hate. He knew how to be that. He'd always been that. Static, now always a low, persistent hum in the back of his mind, shoved forward suddenly with the Knowledge that Tim had decided to look in the tunnels.

Tim wanted to hurt him and he wanted to be hurt. To let it assuage the guilt even for a moment.

Jon already Knows he's spoiling for a fight.

Of course he was the one who would find Jon. Arse is mere meters down the tunnel and leaning with his back against the wall, arms hanging loose over knobby knees and looking for all the world like someone had kicked his puppy.

And what right did he have when he was the cause of all this fear and paranoia and death.

“Tim.” Bland recognition and it sent a shiver racing up his spine because it wasn’t like he had to turn and check, not with his spooky powers. No. He just knew everything now, didn’t he? How convenient. Tim could barely reconcile the figure in front of him with the friend who used to work with him in Research. This Jon was a slip of a man. An intruder he didn’t know and didn’t want to know. This Jon was lies and secrets and silvery scars mapping out the tragedy he’d led them all into willingly in his search for more and more and more. Damn the consequences, never content to let things be. No. This Jon was disorder and disarray, wild curls and no tie and the buttons leading up to his rust stained collar undone. There was dirt caked under the nails of his unbandaged hand and cobweb mingling with the premature grey in his hair and the nervous, twitching energy, the inability to stay still, conspicuously absent.

This Jon was a stranger who didn’t care who he harmed.

This Jon threw them all away like they were less than rubbish and the only way Tim could stomach interacting with him was behind a mask of contempt and hostility.

“Thought you’d be out looking for victims.” Involuntarily his lips curled up in a sneer.

“Sorry to disappoint.” Meticulously enunciated and condescending, strange eyes fixed to the wall in front of him. It angered him that Jon wouldn’t look at him. He could at least have the decency to look him in the face when he lied to him.

“Why are you down here anyway? Hiding? Plotting?” Jon snarled in response, low and dark, brows knitted in scorn.

“And what business is that of yours?” Bare more than a keen hiss and all Tim heard was an invitation to the party because it was so much easier on his conscience to paint Jon as deserving rather than admit he might be as much a victim here as the rest of them. Such a convenient target to aim at, to focus the knife edged anger and rage and agony at and Jon is so good at pushing every button. It was like he wanted this. Wanted to fight.

“Someone has to keep track of you and your secrets! Your lies!” Tim closed his eyes and tugged on his hair. “They’re killing us and you don’t even care!”

“You don’t know that.” Well now he had his attention and the flash of unnatural viridian had to be a trick, a reflection.

“I don’t need supernatural powers to know you!” He saw the hit land in the way Jon’s expression slipped and Tim felt good, the rush of adrenaline flooding his veins was heady and strong. “You’re running. From everything. And it all started when you began running from us.”

“I’m not.” At this point, Tim wasn’t sure Jon was capable of standing because surely he wouldn’t take this sitting in the dust and he didn’t care. This was the most he’d felt since this all began. He didn’t want to give it up. Not yet. Not before he’d made Jon understand.

“You're not even trying!” He spat, watching his shaking hands curl into fists, watching shadows soak into the bandages. “You just let things happen to you--”

“Oh yes, Tim!” Hurling his name like a curse, Jon stared up at him, narrow chest heaving fast. “I just let the Circus have me. I just let Daisy beat me unconscious and threaten to put me down.” For a moment, Tim thought he saw tears glittering on his face. “What do you know about how hard I'm trying?” The whole of him was shaking now, trembling as he sucked down noisy breaths. “Always sulking about this place! Maybe if you’d been paying better attention you’d have noticed Sasha was gone!” He collapsed against the wall, lazy grin carving up his face. Like he’d won the game. Landed the finished blow. “You may claim to know me. But clearly, you never knew her.” Lunging with a hoarse cry, Tim snatched him up by his collar, so close to the healing slash crusted with old blood bisecting his throat.

He only smiled wider. Manic. Frantic. Fingers grasping automatically at his wrists and Tim could feel sticky warmth marking his arm.

"Go on then! I know you want to.” Jon was whispering, words tripping over themselves in his haste to spit them out. “You can't stand me. Just like Daisy can't stand me. You want this. I Know yo--"

An echoing crack followed after the back of Tim’s hand collided with Jon’s mouth.

Replaced soon after by blessed quiet broken only by Jon’s harsh and strangled panting.

Tim dropped him back to the floor. Shaken. Disgusted. He didn’t know with whom. Maybe both of them.

"You never shut up."

Jon tongued the cut on his lip while Tim watched a bead of ruby so dark it was almost black roll down his chin and drip down onto the white fabric of his rumpled dress shirt where it would dry and age and match the rest that was there before whatever this was. He didn’t bother wiping it away.

“Feel better?”

“You know I don’t.”

Shaking out his hand, Tim collapsed beside him in silence, staring resolutely ahead, lips pressed thin until Jon’s head tipped slowly forward, chin coming to rest on his collarbone and smudging more red. Even in his peripheral vision Tim recognized it for what it was and knew if he looked properly he’d see tears steadily falling from his damned eyes despite how hushed he remained. He peeked anyway, witnessed him cave in and bring arms up to hug himself in a desperate bid to hold his pieces together. But he doesn't look at Tim. Doesn't reach for him like he used to.

"I am trying." He whispered, voice immeasurably limned with exhaustion.

Like a switch had been flipped, he was Jon again. Tired and drawn. Overwhelmed and lost and isolated. Tipped so far over the edge he goaded Tim into striking him because it was the best he could expect. Because at least he had Tim's full attention for a moment. And Tim walked right into it, led easily like a moth to a flame.

What a pair they made here at what might be the end of all things.

Troubled, Tim pulled him roughly into his side, hardening his heart against the whimper of pain and the stiffening of his entire body. Jon was skin and bone. Had dropped at least two stone he couldn't afford to lose. Tim had watched it happen and done nothing.

There were no apologies exchanged and when Tim dragged him stumbling into the light of the Archives, no one commented on the split lip or the new bruise or the blood dried and flaking that traced his jaw.

Jon was just a stranger.

No one cared if he'd been harmed.

#TMA #the magnus archives #jon sims #tim stoker #depression #anxiety #bad mental health #self harm #in the way of asking for it #tim slaps him #angst #Emotional Hurt/Comfort #jon is in a bad way #he doesn't know what to do about it

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rye-views · 3 years

Text

A Promised Land by Barack Obama. 8/10

I would recommend this book to my friends. I would reread this book.

There are certain things that Barack articulates that I’m thankful for. His over-optimism and feelings of eccentricity. I completely related to its isolating feelings even though it wasn’t the same situation and experience as mine. It’s nice to see something similar from someone different. I also liked his description of feeling everything in its entirety and how it was like a movie splice. I have felt this many times and it’s a beautiful way to describe it. I like how so much of what Barack says, thinks, and feels are so genuine and relatable. It's nice to see someone articulate and empathize this well, esp. from a man and a man in power.

I love learning that Michelle was disappointed by the situation caused by his choices at times. Other things were more important at the time and nice to see it be relevant.

It’s interesting to see the difference between this book and “Becoming.” They have different aims, but it still shows me a difference between a man and woman. I also notice that when men are described, it’s always physical. When it’s women, it’s more character and personality.

Crazy how intelligent and emotionally aware Barack is. When he stated how he couldn't just pick and choose the good things of Reverend Wright's church, I was like true and wow.

The things that Toot taught Barack is what someone should've taught me as I grew up.

Barack comparing the rides to Noah's Ark is amusing.

When he mentions translations of what the Big 4 are saying, I think about how we can't be straightforward in politics. Why not?

It took me forever to read this because I really wanted to absorb the knowledge. There's a lot of events that are covered and things I had no idea about. I love how this catalogues so much of history that were relevant to my lifetime.

Memorable Quotes: “gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness” “I needed to focus on only those things to come.” “Much of what I read I only dimly understood” “a bond between those who had once seemed far apart.” “Whatever it was, I knew I wasn’t ready.” “An America that could explain me.” “I suffered rejections and insults often enough to stop fearing them.” “Enthusiasm makes up for a host of deficiencies.” “Failure and want were all around you.” “It should have been enough.” “but my mother was never one to see hard work as anything but good.” “On top of my sorrow, I felt a great shame.” “There’s a physical feeling, a current of emotion that passes back and forth between you and the crowd, as if your lives and theirs are suddenly spliced together, like a movie reel, projecting backward and forward in time, and your voice creeps right up to the edge of cracking, because for an instant, you feel them deeply; you can see them whole. You’ve tapped into some collective spirit, a thing we all know and wish for – a sense of connection that overrides our differences and replaces them with a giant swell of possibility – and like all things that matter most, you know the moment is fleeting and that soon the spell will be broken.” “To be a workhorse not a show horse – that was my goal.” “I had become a mere conduit through which people might recognize the value of their own stories, their own worth, and share them with one another.” "Yes we can." “the personal really was political” “I had to listen to, and not just theorize about, what mattered to people.” “it wasn’t so much what he did as how he made you feel. Like anything was possible. Like the world was yours to remake.” “It’s hard, in retrospect, to understand why you did something stupid.” “In fact, you shouldn’t even count on my vote.” “What do you consider your place in history?” “I could take a punch. And I didn’t give up.” “I knew I could afford to be patient.” “but the only way for Daddy to disguise himself is if he has an operation to pin back his ears.” “Forgotten people and forgotten voices remained everywhere.” “the more troops would become targets of an enemy they often could not see and did not understand.” “The power to inspire is rare. Moments like this are rare. You think you may not be ready, that you’ll do it at more convenient time. But you don’t choose the time. The time chooses you.” “people were moved by emotion, not facts.” “Beneath the low-key person and deep convictions, he just plain liked the combat.” "defined not by what they are but what they can never be." "To the relief of his keepers, the bear became accustomed to captivity." "he understood better than most the complications of race, religion, and family, and how good and bad, love and hate, might be hopelessly tangled in the same heart" "She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America." "But I worry that my memories of that night, like so much else that's happened these past twelve years, are shaded by the images that I've seen, the footage of our family walking across the stage, the photographs of the crowds and lights and magnificent backdrops." "a keeper of values we'd once thought ordinary but had learned were more rare than we had ever imagined." ""It's going to be hard to get the public excited about food stamps and repaving roads," Axe said. "Not real sexy."" "This time I said nothing, admiring his occasional, almost endearing ability to state the obvious." "You must be under the mistaken impression that I care." "all of them unified only in their common desire to be somewhere else." "ready to die for eternal joy--or maybe just a taste of something better." "But make no mistake, it was weird." "the unspoken regrets." "my supporters lacked all conviction, while my opponents were full of passionate intensity." "Michelle was someone who started from the heart and not the head, from experience rather than abstractions." "I wanted to believe that the ability to connect was still there. My wife wasn't so sure." “The

audacity of hope.” "Sometimes your most important work involved the stuff nobody noticed." "forgotten under the accumulation of the new joys and paints that make up a life." "you learn to improvise to meet your objectives--or at least to cut your losses." "They would take for granted that their aunt was on the U.S. Supreme Court, shaping the life of a nation--as would kids across the country. Which was fine. That's what progress was like." "Did they miss the rhythms of ordinary life? Were they lonely? Did they sometimes feel a jolt in their heart and wonder how it was that they had ended up where they were?" "I reminded myself that every president felt saddled with the previous administration's choices and mistakes, that 90 percent of the job was navigating inherited problems and unanticipated crises. Only if you did that well enough, with discipline and purpose, did you get a real shot at shaping the future." "Was it possible that abstract principles and high-minded ideals were and always would be nothing more than a pretense, a palliative, a way to beat back despair, but no match for the more primal urges that really moved us, so that no matter what we said or did, history was sure to run along its predetermined course, an endless cycle of fear, hunger and conflict, dominance and weakness?" "meant to be a reminder--in a place premised on hate and intolerance--of the common humanity we share." "A man making up for things." "For war was contradiction, as was the history of America." "To be known. To be heard. To have one's unique identity recognized and seen as worthy. It was a universal human desire" "pleasures that cost nothing, belonged to no one, and were accessible to all." "I suppose, when the world slows down, your strivings get pushed to the back of your mind." "whether in my seeming calm as crises piled up, my insistence that everything would work out in the end, I was really just protecting my self--and contributing to her loneliness." "It was a lonely thought at a lonely time." "You never looked as smart as the ex-president did on the sidelines." "Get exposed to other people's truths, I thought, and attitudes change." "It wasn't often, I thought, that a true act of conscience is recognized that way." "their struggles and resentments troubling but remote." "are mere conduits for the deep, relentless currents of the times or whether we're at least partly the authors of what's to come." "contemplating the knife's edge between perceived success and potential catastrophe" "daily, unheralded acts of people who weren't seeking attention but simply knew what they were doing and did it with pride." "She makes me better as a person and better on the page."

#a promised land #promised land #barack obama #book #review #commentary #rye-views #8

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mysterykidscasefiles · 4 years

Text

Mystery Kids and the Case of the Whispering Rock

Summary: Norman, Neil, Coraline, Wybie, Raz and Lili arrive at Grunkle Stan’s Summer Camp with the hope of having a summer of fun, or in the case of the two Psychonauts, with the intent of investigating a psychic disturbance. When they meet two twins that seem to be experts on the secrets of Gravity Falls, they find themselves reluctantly teaming up. But how much can they actually trust each other? There are secrets in this town, but more surprising are the secrets being kept from each other.

Table of Contents

Chapter 22: To the East

Mabel hovered over Dipper’s shoulder as he stood in front of the cabin looking at the symbols on the door frame and then back at the symbols in the book they found called Wards, Runes and Protection Magic. Mabel knew Dipper was itching to get out journal number 3 and compare the symbols in the new book to the ones in the journal, but she also knew he wouldn’t bring out the journal in front of the other kids.

Normally, when Dipper was doing boring nerd stuff, Mabel would explore. Coraline was still exploring the rest of the cabin with Wybie, Neil, and Norman, and a part of her wanted to be with them. However, Mabel found that she couldn’t tear herself away from what Dipper was doing. More accurately, she couldn’t stop thinking about those symbols.

They gave her a strange, happy feeling that made her feel safe and protected. She liked them and she wanted to put them on everything she owned. When she asked Dipper if he felt the same way about the symbols, he just gave her a confused look. None of the other kids seemed interested in them like she was.

Mabel wondered why her artistic muse was screaming at her so loudly to draw these symbols.

“Mabel, I think I’ve figured out what these symbols on the door mean.”

Mabel leaned closer to her brother to get a better look at the book.

“The one that looks like a sideways hourglass… I think that means day or rebirth. And the other one, I think it’s a rune of protection.”

“Told you they weren’t bad things,” Mabel said happily. “Can I see the book?”

Dipper closed the book slightly and held it away from her. “As long as you promise not to draw any of the symbols until we know more about them,” he said sternly.

Mabel huffed, but nodded. “Fine, fine! Just let me see it!” She grabbed the book from her twin. The open page was littered with pictures of wards and ruins, each one incredibly distinct in it’s design.

“They’re all really similar,” her Dipper said. “Some of them I can hardly tell apart.”

Mabel glanced up at her twin in confusion. “You’re crazy, Dip. None of them are the same, can’t you tell?” she asked. How could he not see, or feel, how different they all were?

“Hey nerds!” Coraline said as she exited the cabin door, her hands on her hips. “It’s getting late and I’m getting hungry. I think it’s time we head back.”

Carefully, they all climbed down the ladder without incident. Mabel had taken the book about wards and ruins along with her. She promised her brother she wouldn’t use them until she learned more about the runes, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t look at them.

When she landed back on the ground, Mabel realized she never took a good look around the clearing. It was strange that the clearing was nearly empty of most plant life, despite the abundant sunlight. It was almost as if the vegetation was giving the giant tree a respectful distance.

There was only one plant that dared to grow by the base of the tree. Mabel approached it to get a better look and was delighted to discover it was a flower she had never seen before. The flower had not yet bloomed; it’s long, white petals were tightly shut together in a spiral-pattern.

“Hey, look at this,” Mabel called moving closer to get a better look. “I’ve never seen flowers like these before.”

“That’s Datura,” Lili said with sudden interest. “I wouldn’t touch them, the petals and seeds are poisonous.”

Mabel stopped in her tracks, recoiling her wandering hand.

“It’s strange for them to be in this forest,” Lili mused thoughtfully.

“Oh, I’ve heard of those,” Coraline said, moving to get a closer look. “They’re called moonflowers, right? They only bloom at night. But, wait, aren’t they supposed to be tropical? What are they doing here?”

Lili gave her a surprised look. “Yeah, they are. How did you know that?”

“My parents write and edit for a gardening catalogue,” Coraline explained. “How do you know about them?”

“I uh… just like flowers,” Lili said, awkwardly glancing away from Coraline to look back at the white flowers.

“Fitting,” Coraline said. “You know, with your name and everything.”

Mabel thought the flowers smelt amazing, and she hoped that she would be able to come back at night to see them bloom, even though traveling through the forest at night was probably a dangerous idea.

“Umm, does anyone know how to get home from here?” Neil asked, looking around at the forest. He cast an earnest glance at Dipper. “Please tell me you know where we are?”

Dipper looked around the forest nervously. “No. I already told you, we’ve never been this way before.”

“Can’t we just retrace our steps?” Coraline suggested.

“We can try,” Dipper said while biting his lip. “But in this forest that’s more likely to get us even more lost. If you get too deep in the forest it’s hard to get back out again. It’s like the forest changes to purposely confuse you. You have to know exactly where you’re going or it’s easy to be misled.”

“The forest is trying to confuse us?” Coraline asked with a raised eyebrow. “Lili basically ran in a straight line to the tree, so we just have to walk back in the opposite direction. Wybie has a compass so we can make sure we're going the right way.”

Wybie pulled a bulky compass out of his pocket. It looked like he not only built it himself, but added extra gadgets onto it as well. The device was also boring and black. Mabel thought that was a shame. If you went through the trouble to build something yourself you might as well add some color to it.

“That direction is to the east,” Wybie said. “Coraline’s right, we just have to keep going east and we should make it back to the town.”

Lili frowned. “Wait.” She walked forward and placed a hand on the bark of a redwood tree. “That’s not right,” she said after a brief second. “The town is back the other way.”

“But that’s the opposite way that we came from,” Coraline argued. “Look, we approached the cabin from the front. We know for sure that we came from this direction.”

Lili shook her head in confusion. “I know we did, but that’s not where the town is. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I’m sure the town is that way,” she said, pointing in the opposite direction.

“Wait guys, this can be solved easily,” Wybie said. “Dipper, Mabel, you two have lived here for a while, right? Which direction is the forest from the town?”

Dipper sighed. “The forest surrounds the town. Even though we walked in one direction, we could be anywhere by now. I already told you guys the forest can do this.” He bit his thumb nail worriedly. “This is why we shouldn’t have come so deep into the forest.”

“What do you mean by that?” Norman asked. “Have you guys gotten lost like this before?”

Dipper glanced at his sister. “It can happen if you walk in the forest without knowing where you’re going. If you follow a path you know, you’re fine, but the moment you stray it can be hard to find your way back. It’s happened to us a few times. When this happens the only way to get out is to wait until night and to use the stars, but trust me when I say, you don’t want to be in this forest at night.”

“Guys, we’re not lost,” Coraline insisted. “We just have to head in this direction. You all can use your eyes. This is the direction we came from.”

“That is the direction our eyes told us we came from,” Mabel agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it’s the right way to go.”

“Well, we have a choice,” Coraline said. “We can either take Lili’s hunch and go in a direction that doesn’t make any sense, or we can go back the way we came.” Coraline started walking forward towards the east. “Besides, we have a compass. If it’s the wrong way, we can just turn around.”

Dipper shrugged. “Fine, we’ll go your way. Maybe it will be fine?” He didn’t sound convinced.

Mabel glanced back at Lili. She and her brother knew how useless it was to rely on your eyes and sense of direction in this forest, but it would be best for everyone if they all stuck together. Whether they were headed in the right direction or not, it was more important that no one got separated.

“Lili, I know you know where you’re going, but we can’t let them get lost,” Raz said to his girlfriend. “We have to go with them.”

“You make it sound like losing them in the forest would be a bad thing,” Lili snarked under her breath, but she relented and the two of them followed the rest of the group.

Hi everyone! Yes, I am still writing this story, and I’m so sorry I’m awful at updating. But the good news the next chapter will be the last chapter of Act 1. And then I will start act 2 and then act 3... geez, I've been writing this story for so long and I still haven't lost inspiration. It may be slow going but I’m still really interested in telling this story, which is a first for me. Something about this fandom will never leave my brain.

Anyway I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!

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#Mystery Kids #Mystery Kids Case Files #coraline #gravity falls #Paranorman #Whispering Rock fic

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lyssismagical · 5 years

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what is and what should never be

Whumptober Day 18 & 20. Muffled Scream/Trembling

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{Based on Supernatural Episode: What is and What Should Never Be (2x20)}

Peter jolts awake, heart already racing. The last thing he remembers is a flash of blue and then everything had gone dark.

The room around him is dimly lit, the beginnings of a sunrise peeking out from behind half-closed curtains. He’s lying in a comfortable bed, thick blankets tucked loosely around his body with just enough slack to not feel like he’s suffocating.

He pushes himself up, carefully cataloguing the room.

It’s obviously a bedroom. Probably meant for a teenage boy with the generic décor.

A messy desk, covered in homework and stacked with textbooks and novels. A few mason jars stuffed with pencils and pens. A dresser, a few drawers open with clothes folded inside. The nightstand has a lamp that he flicks on, casting shadows around the room.

It looks like someone’s lived here recently, but Peter’s never seen the room in his life.

And then he sees the framed photo on the desk.

He nearly falls in his rush to get to his desk, collapsing in the chair and picking up the photo.

It’s a picture of him. He looks twelve, maybe thirteen in the picture. He’s grinning from ear to ear, looking happier than ever.

But the weird part is who he’s standing with. His parents, Mary and Richard, stand on either side of him, looking older than when he ever knew them, but they’re their in the photo, arms wrapped around his shoulders.

Mary’s pressing a kiss to his temple and Richard’s looks like he’s laughing. Younger Peter in the middle looks happy, cheeks still chubby and reddened, smile stretching wide over his features, eyes sparkling in the flash of the camera.

The breath is torn from his lungs.

The photo falls from his grip and hits the edge of the desk, shattering on impact.

“Peter?” A woman’s voice calls out gently. She doesn’t sound like May. “You okay in there?”

He stumbles up from the chair, looking around the room for any other signs of something wrong.

Out his window there’s the Golden Gate Bridge. The pages on his desk are all signed with his name. There’s a Tony Stark poster on his wall.

“Peter?” There’s a soft knock on his door and it opens a little bit. “Are you okay?”

He turns quickly, heart racing faster than he thinks is healthy, and his breath hitches.

Mary Parker.

She’s just as beautiful as she was in the pictures Peter saw of her. Her hair’s down to her shoulders, a soft auburn color that brings out some color in her pale face. She’s got a caring smile on her face, worry clouding her brown eyes.

She’s beautiful and alive and standing right across from Peter.

“Mom?” he breathes, taking a slow step towards her. He doesn’t know if this is real. If this is a dream. If this is a trick.

She tips her head to the side, confusion clouding her expression, but her smile doesn’t drop. “Yeah, honey? You alright? You’re looking really pale.”

“Mom,” he says again. The word is almost foreign to his mouth. He hasn’t seen her in over a decade. It’s been years since he lost her and now she’s here and alive and he doesn’t care if this is a trick.

He falls into her arms, hands clutching at her back as he tucks his head against her shoulder, wanting to cry. She’s here. His mom is here. He missed her so much.

She wraps her arms around his back, cradling him gently against her, and she lets out a sigh.

“I’m here, baby. You’re okay. Did you have a nightmare?” she asks against his hair.

He wants to say that the last ten years have been a nightmare and he’s finally waking up. But he pushes it down. He won’t tell her or else it might crumble.

“I’m okay,” he says instead. He closes his eyes, hugging her tighter, breathing in the smell of home. “I just… I just got scared for a second. I’m okay.”

She pulls away a little bit, enough to cradle his face in her calloused palms. She’s smiling at him, expression open and loving, and it takes all of Peter’s willpower to refrain from hugging her for the rest of eternity.

“C’mon, your dad’s making pancakes,” she says, nodding her head towards the door. “If we hurry, we can sneak some chocolate chips into the batter!”

He sits at the kitchen table, trying to act casual and nonchalant, like he’s meant to be there.

There’s a giant glass door leading out to a patio facing the ocean. The Golden Gate Bridge is practically right outside their backdoor.

He’s living with his parents in California.

Holy fuck, he’s living with his parents in California.

“You sure you’re alright?” his dad asks, carrying the stack of pancakes to the table. He looks a little rougher around the edges than Peter can remember from his blurry childhood memories and the stories he was told.

He’s got curly brown hair like Peter’s, messy and unkempt, a pair of glasses askew on his nose, an almost wild look behind his eyes like he’s ready for the next Big Idea. The kind of look he’s seen in Tony’s eyes thousandth of times-

Holy shit, Tony.

“I’ve gotta- Could I call someone? I’ll be quick,” he says, barely catching himself from knocking over his chair in his haste to stand.

His mom (his actual fucking mom-) nods with a pointed look. “Don’t be long or your breakfast will get cold.”

He nods quickly and races back towards where he remembers his bedroom to be. It only takes a few moments of tearing his room apart to find his phone underneath his pillow. It’s not the phone he had before, but it turns on when he opens it and he has Tony’s number memorized.

“This is Stark. You shouldn’t have this number. Don’t call back,” the message tone says, making Peter’s face fall.

How much is different?

He calls again, but to no avail, so he tries the next best thing.

“Hello?”

“Hi, this is going to sound crazy, but-”

“Who is this?” Pepper asks, a little bit too unkindly to sound like her. “I don’t have the time for prank calls or-”

His hands are shaking. “This is Peter. Peter Parker, ma’am. And I need to talk to Tony. ASAP. Please, I-”

She sighs softly. “Listen, kid, as much as I’d love to hand you over to the him, neither of us have the time to answer every single phone call from fans. So, please don’t call this number again. You shouldn’t have it in the first place.”

He opens his mouth to argue, but is met with the telltale beeping of an ended phone call. He only has one more option he can think of.

“What do you want?”

“Happy, please-”

The call ends.

Breakfast is too long and his leg won’t stop bouncing under the table and his hands shake where they clench the utensils.

He excuses himself to his room as soon as he can manage without sounding suspicious and he immediately hops into researching.

There’s plenty of search results when he types in Tony Stark, but one thing that’s missing entirely is Iron Man.

There’s all of the articles about Tony getting kidnapped, taken to Afghanistan, but apparently, Rhodey was the one who rescued him. No arc reactor, no super suit, no Iron Man.

Obadiah was still found out, but it went down in a humane way. A court case, a trial, and Obadiah went to the prison.

Tony handed the company over to Pepper who transformed it into the reusable energy and environmentally friendly company it is now, with Tony working in the background as the engineer. Apparently, Tony pretty much went MIA after that. No more press conferences, a few paparazzi pictures here and there, but nothing that stands out.

Until last year, when Pepper and Tony got married.

It was all over the press after Pepper flashed an engagement ring at a press conference and then she shared pictures online of their small wedding.

So, Tony and Pepper are married.

A little more digging and he finds out Steve Rogers died in the plane crash, Bucky died when he fell from the train.

Which means, no Iron Man, no Captain America, no Avengers…

There’s nothing on the internet about any of the other Avengers, meaning none of it ever happened. Loki never came to Earth, The Winter Soldier was never created which means Tony’s parents were never killed, they just retired, Ultron was never invented. Nothing.

That’s great and all, Peter’s beyond happy for Tony and how great his life went, but… if there’s no Avengers…

And then, the worst.

He tries to stick to the pencil and it falls from his grip. He tries to bend the chair leg, but it doesn’t give like it would’ve before. He tries to hear anything outside his room, but he can’t strain his ears hard enough.

He’s not Spider-Man.

He tries a few more times to call Tony’s phone number, and after a second time calling Happy, Peter’s number is blocked, but, surprisingly, Pepper picks up again.

“Kid, I told you the first time, I’m running a multibillion-dollar company, unfortunately, I don’t have the time-”

“You’re allergic to strawberries,” he blurts. “And you hate the color green, your favourite is purple, like a lavender color. You got the nickname Pepper after you pepper-sprayed someone in the face right before your job interview for Tony, and he thought it was the funniest thing in the world.”

Pepper stays quiet, so Peter forges ahead, “When you were a kid, you were in the foster system and when you turned sixteen, you started living in an apartment with a bunch of girls you hated.

“You went to University to become a school teacher. You wanted to teach second graders, but your prof told you to go into high school teaching, but when you tried to apply for jobs as a high school teacher, you couldn’t get any because you had a criminal record, so you started working as a secretary nearby Tony’s place in Malibu. He saw you at a coffee shop and he knew he needed you to work for him, so you got your job as Tony’s PA.”

“How do you know that?” Pepper asks quietly. “Who are you?”

“I’m Peter Parker,” he repeats, pacing his room anxiously. “I’m seventeen. And I know it sounds really fucking crazy, but I know you and I know Tony, but not here. Not now. I don’t know what’s going on, but everything’s wrong.”

She sighs. “Obviously, you’ve done your research, kid, and I get Tony’s famous and all that, but-”

“You don’t believe me,” he says. He grits his teeth and pushes down the urge to punch something. “Fine, whatever. You know what, it’s fine. Thanks for your time.”

He hangs up the phone and chucks it at his bed, watching it bounce harmlessly onto the pillows. He doesn’t know what to do.

He tries his best to act nonchalant throughout the day, playing along with the questions he’s asked and the conversations his parents hold.

It’s nice. He’s happy. He enjoys that they’re here and that they’re alive and he loves all of it. Whatever that magician had done to him earlier, it had granted a wonderful wish. That his parents had never died.

And he sees pictures of May and Ben and a set of twins who he finds out are his cousins. In his real life, he never had cousins. After his parents died, May and Ben wanted to support Peter financially and emotionally, and never really felt they could have other kids. And then Ben had died…

Which means, wherever he is, May and Ben are still alive, they’re happy and they have children and they live nearby in LA where Ben works for the LAPD and May works as a maternity nurse. Their kids are eight-years-old, a girl and boy.

It’s apparently Summer Break, Peter finds out when he snoops through his desk. He’s going to a high-class school and he skipped grade seven. He’s on the Debate Team and he has a bunch of photos with strangers above his desk.

It’s… It’s a dream life.

Even Tony seems happy according to the internet. He never had to go through the sudden loss of both his parents in that car accident. His father died that year, but it was of a stroke. Peacefully. And his mom was able to put him on a decent track by the age of twenty.

The whole Obadiah thing happened and Afghanistan, but Tony doesn’t have nearly as much trauma as he had in the Other Life. No wormholes or open heart surgery or near death experiences or almost losing his loved ones on numerous occasions.

It took him half as many years to marry the love of his life. If he’s right, Morgan might even already be alive, but not to the knowledge of the public. Tony’s happy, just doesn’t know Peter.

It’s a huge price to pay, but Peter’s always been paying prices for other people’s happiness.

To Tony, Peter’s sacrifice will mean nothing.

Peter could just move on. Live here with his family, adjust to life in California. Without Tony, and Tony would never know.

Unless…

Unless this is really all just a trick.

If it is, would he care? Would he give all of this up?

He curls up against his Mom’s side, legs over hers and feet tucked underneath his dad’s legs to keep them warm. They’re sharing a quilt across their legs as Star Wars plays on the TV. A bowl of leftover popcorn is on the coffee table along with their empty mugs for hot chocolate.

“Can May and Ben come over?” he asks out of the blue. He wants to meet his cousins. He wants to see Ben, alive and well. He wants to see May without the weight of the world on her shoulders. “We could have a barbecue.”

He doesn’t understand the perplexed look on his dad’s face.

“Why?” he asks slowly. “You know me and Ben don’t talk anymore.”

“You don’t-” He cuts himself off quickly. “Of course, I know. I would know that… Don’t you want to, I don’t know, reconcile? I mean, it’s summer break. Barbecues and swimming and hanging out. It would be fun.”

His mom, gently smoothing his hair out of his face, shakes her head. “Sorry, kiddo, it’s not going to happen. It can’t. We can see about babysitting your cousins for a weekend or something, but it’s not really up to us.”

He drops the subject quickly. He wants that, but he doesn’t know how much leeway he has with rocking the boat. He doesn’t know how stable this hallucination or alternate reality or whatever it may be, is.

As much as he wants to see them, he knows they’re safe and it’s just another price to pay on his part for their happiness.

He tries to sleep that night, but he tosses and turns endlessly, until eventually, he gives up.

He pulls on a t-shirt and heads out into the warm night.

San Francisco is bright and loud even in the dead of night, at least the area they live in. Lights are on, cars are driving, people are chattering, music is booming out of someone’s backyard.

It’s homey, even. He’s used to this kind of thing, only maybe a little dirtier out in Queens. He used to walk people home from parties all night back home as Spider-Man.

He wonders, in this life, if any of those people didn’t get home safe because there was never a Spider-Man. He wonders if those muggers, rapists, murderers, criminals, are all still walking the streets because he was never handed the opportunity to stop them.

Just because there were no big threats like Loki or Chitauri or Thanos, doesn’t mean the world was safe.

He tries Pepper’s cell again, despite knowing she lives in the safe timezone and would definitely be asleep long past now, and unsurprisingly, nobody picks up. He hangs up before he can hear her voicemail.

He tries Tony too, again, just in case.

And it rings and rings and rings, and Peter’s ready to give up, when,

“Hello?”

Tony’s voice is crackly and rough like he just woke up, but it’s warm and familiar and it’s all Peter’s been wishing for.

“Mister Stark?” he asks like he hasn’t memorized his voice. “I- I need-”

“Who is this?” Tony asks. He hasn’t hung up which is a good sign, but fuck, the words hit hard.

Peter sits down on a bench at a deserted bus stop, a few blocks from his house. His hands are shaking and he bunches up his sweatpants in his fist to stop the trembling.

“I- I’m Peter, sir, Peter Parker. And I know you don’t know me, but I- I know you. From another life, I guess, and I know I sound crazy, but I-”

Tony cuts him off, “I don’t understand. What? Another life? Listen, it’s one in the morning, you shouldn’t even have this number-”

“Mister Stark, please, I-” He pauses to clear his throat, rubbing his eyes in frustration at the tears that threaten to spill. “I need help. I don’t know what to do and I- I know you don’t understand, but something’s really wrong. And I- I just don’t know what to do. I-”

“Okay, kid, take a deep breath,” Tony says, just as soft as Peter can remember from his Real Life. “I need you to start from scratch, alright? Can you do that for me? If you can go through all the impossible trouble of finding my number, I can try my best to lend you a hand.”

It’s weird how little paranoia Tony has in this place. Without all of the shit that happened to him in the Real Life, Tony’s just a normal person.

“I was fighting a wizard, right? Back in Queens. You were on your way as backup. I called you for once in my life because I couldn’t do it on my own,” Peter explains. “And then I woke up here. In San Francisco, without powers, without you. With my parents who died over a decade ago.”

Tony takes a deep breath.

“Alright,” he says. “Right, okay, I’m not going to pretend I understand what you’re talking about, but how about this, kid, I’ll come visit you in the morning and we can work this out, alright? Whether that means paying for a psychiatrist visit or something bigger.”

“I’m not crazy,” Peter says quickly, sniffling. He hates how childish he sounds, but he’s scared. What if Real Tony is in the Real Life looking for Peter? What if Peter’s dead? What if this is meant to be Peter’s heaven? He doesn’t know.

“No, of course not, kid.”

They meet at Starbucks the next morning, Peter telling his parents he’s meeting a friend.

Tony’s wearing the same go to disguise he always wore in the Real Life, baseball cap and sunglasses along with an average outfit.

“Start from scratch,” Tony starts, passing a hot chocolate to Peter. “You know me but I know you, which isn’t that crazy for a famous person.”

“No, like I actually knew you,” Peter says, yawning. He barely slept last night, tossing and turning endlessly.

“Right…” Tony says. “Tell me something only you would know then.”

Peter takes a sip of his drink. “It’s more complicated than that. This, whatever this is, is different than my life. Where I lived, you were a superhero. We both were, that’s why I knew you. But here, that never happened. That’s why I’m- I’m confused.”

“Okay, but find something. There must be something that still happened through both lives. You told my wife a shit ton of stuff nobody’s supposed to be able to access.”

“Alright, um, at MIT with Mister Rhodey, you used to go to his family’s house in Pennsylvania for holidays because you didn’t want to go home. You and your parents were never that close. And Mister Rhodey’s mom may as well have adopted you. She just started expecting you to go,” Peter says.

He pauses, trying to remember the story to the exact. “One Christmas, there was a really shitty snowstorm in Massachusetts and Mister Rhodey had left a few days ahead of you because you had an overdo assignment to submit. You made it halfway there before realizing how bad the roads had gotten so you stopped at a hotel and waited for it to blow over. Mister Rhodey’s mom felt so bad when she found out you couldn’t make it because of the weather, she postponed the entire holiday by three days so you could celebrate it with them.”

Peter looks up from where his eyes had been trained to the table to find Tony watching him with a half-frightened, half-excited expression.

“What do you think, then?” Tony asks, quickly elaborating. “What do you think this place is? Some sort of utopia? Multiverse? What?”

Peter frowns. “I don’t know… It seems too good to be true, you know. You’re happy. My parents and uncle are still alive. I’m happy. That’s about as utopian as you can get.”

Taking a long sip from his drink, it’s hard for Peter to imagine how he could go back. Even if he knew how.

How could he possibly leave this life behind?

His family is here. He has Tony back. There’s no way they could bounce back to strangers after this.

If Peter had to go back… He’d have to say goodbye to his parents, Uncle Ben, blissful peace, and Tony’s happiness.

How he could do that?

Isn’t he allowed to be selfish for once in his life?

“So, I was a superhero?” Tony asks, pulling off his sunglasses. His eyes are practically sparkling with his excitement. “A real-life superhero?”

Peter flinches. He swallows hard, not knowing how to explain it.

“You were… But it wasn’t good,” he says slowly. He doesn’t want to tell this Tony everything that Peter’s Tony went through. “Anyway, what am I supposed to do?”

“And there’s the million dollar question!” Tony exclaims, clapping his hands.

(Tony’s drinking hot chocolate something that seems so small but a huge distinction to the Tony Peter knows. Not this Tony. Peter doesn’t know the man sitting across from him, without a coffee in his hand, wrists watchless, legs unbouncing, fingers still. Not the Tony Peter knows. A happy, carefree version, unriddled with anxiety or PTSD or depression. A stranger but a happy stranger.)

“And the answer?”

Tony grins. “That’s the fun of it. There is no answer.”

Peter can’t stay for very much longer, but Tony promises to keep in touch. His advice is just live your life, kid. If you’re happy, you’re happy, right?

Peter hates that advice.

He can’t just live his life in whatever place this is because he doesn’t even know if it’s real.

On his way home, he passes a store where the news is playing on the TV.

“In other news,” the man says, voice crackling over the speakers. “It’s been exactly three years since the deaths of over a dozen elementary students after a major bus crash on their way to school one morning.”

“No,” Peter breathes, shoving his way into the store to get closer to the TV. He stopped that bus crash. He saved every single one of those students. They even made it to school on time. He saved them all.

“As well as those fifteen students, Midtown is commemorating the lives of the eighteen people lost after the building collapse last year,” the news anchor continues.

Peter remembers that one too. He’d almost been too late, but he got everyone out of the building. He ended up trapped under the burning building and he’d called Tony in a panic, begging to be saved. All he could think about was Toomes and getting trapped under the warehouse. Tony had arrived and gotten him out in less than half an hour and Peter only had a mild concussion and a dislocated shoulder.

But if Spider-Man wasn’t there to save any of them…

Everyone’s gone.

Every person that Spider-Man saved, that he saved, they’re all gone.

Peter runs home.

He shoves past people and ignores his aching lungs and the tears that start rushing down his cheeks like a waterfall.

He sprints until he makes it to the safety of his home, shutting the door loudly behind him before collapsing to his knees, sobs and coughs wracking his body.

Cinnamon and Roses indicate the arrival of his mom, hands soothing and warm over his face and shoulders, and gently nudging a rescue inhaler into his mouth, counting breaths for him. The spider bite had cured his asthma.

“What’s wrong, baby?” she asks quietly once he’s stopped coughing and has settled into wheezy sobs. “What happened?”

He shakes his head, collapsing into her awaiting arms. He can’t tell her.

“Oh, honey,” she murmurs, kissing his head. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk. I’ve got you.”

And so they sit, in the front entrance, rescue inhaler abandoned on the floor next to them, teenager’s body wracking with sobs, mother unknowing and in the dark struggling to comfort him.

There’s nothing she can do to soothe his grief.

“Why me?” he shouts, voice hoarse after spending the night crying against his mom’s shoulder. He’s standing out on the beach, glaring out at the open sea.

“Why me?” he chucks a rock at the water, angry and grieving. “Why does it have to me? Why do I have to be the one to save everyone? Don’t I deserve to just be a kid?”

“I’m sorry.”

Peter spins around, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste. Doctor Strange stands there, portal glowing orange behind him.

“What- Why-”

“I don’t have much time,” he says. “And at the end, it is your decision, but this isn’t what you believe it to be. You are dying. It will feel like an eternity in your utopia, but in your life, you’ll die in a few days’ time.”

Peter wipes at his tears, wishing he felt strong and brave like a superhero, but the tears keep pouring.

“I don’t understand,” he says, voice breaking.

Strange’s face falls just a fraction. “I don’t have much time, but the wizard did this to you. You are trapped outside of your body. Your body is dying.”

“I’m dying?” he repeats. He feels muddled and dazed. “I don’t-”

“Child, this is the wizard’s doing. You can choose to stay and live forever here, or you can wake yourself up and rejoin your body in your real life,” Strange explains. The portal’s flickering behind him. “I’m running out of time. It’s up to you. I can’t help you.”

“How do I wake up?” He stumbles forward, but even Strange is flickering. “How do I-”

He reaches out to him, but then it’s only air and he falls forward into the sand.

Covering his face with his hands, sprawled in the sand in the middle of the night, feeling more alone than he ever has, he screams.

His scream, agonized and angry and grieving the losses he could’ve prevented, is muffled by his hands and covered up by the loud music playing from a house a little ways down the streets.

He screams and when his breath runs out, he cries, wishing he had more options.

Stay here and live out eternity, leaving behind everyone in his Real Life, or to go home.

There’s no in between, no third choices, no time to make a decision. A few days’ time and he can’t risk spending too long and have the decision made for him. And he doesn’t even know how to get back.

He turns onto his back, waves crashing a few feet away from him and moon smiling down at him mockingly.

“Why me?” he demands, tears running into his hair. “Why does it have to be me? Why can’t I make the selfish decision to stay here? Why am I not allowed to be happy?”

The moon doesn’t reply. Not like he thought it would.

“What? Mom and Dad aren’t allowed to live their life? Uncle Ben isn’t? May and Ben aren’t allowed to have kids and be happy? Tony isn’t allowed to be happy? Why do I have to sacrifice everything? Why do I have to be some kind of hero?!”

“I have to go,” Peter says. He’s standing at the front door, hand on the knob. Tony’s waiting out front for him.

“Where are you going, honey?” his mom asks, gently cupping his cheek. “Is everything okay? You know we love you.”

His dad stands beside her, features soft. “We really do love you, kiddo. You can talk to us about anything, okay? Just stay safe out there.”

He pulls them into a hug, holding them as close as he can.

There’s so much he wants to say.

He’s never going to see them again. Ever.

“I love you too.”

His mom kisses his hair and his dad squeezes his shoulder, and they both hold him close, and Peter wishes more than anything that he could stay here for just one more night.

But if he doesn’t leave now, he never will.

So he pulls away, scrubbing at the tears on his face and smiles at them.

“Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad,” he says, trying his best to throw on a brave face.

He doesn’t wait for a response, yanking the door open and refusing to turn back as he walks down the driveway to Tony’s awaiting car.

If he looked back, he’s scared he would’ve ran right back to them and let himself have this. He can’t.

He slides into passenger seat, barely looking at Tony. “LA, please.”

Tony doesn’t force much conversation on the drive to LA. It’s meant to take about five hours, but Tony makes it in about three and a half.

If there’s one thing that’s carried through, it’s the ACDC and Led Zeppelin he plays on the drive, turning it up nice and loud in his fancy car. He occasionally asks questions that Peter gives half-assed answers to or tells stories about his life now.

But otherwise, the only noise, is the air conditioner and the engine.

Tony stays in the car while Peter knocks on the door.

He needs to say one more goodbye.

The door opens and he’s met with the squinty-eyed stare of a man he hasn’t seen in so long.

“Ben,” he breathes.

“Peter?” his uncle ben says, confusion creasing his face. “It’s six in the morning, what are you doing all the way out here?”

His twin cousins are just inside the house sitting on the couch playing a videogame. They’re both giggling and shoving and teasing. They’re cute and they look more like May than Peter ever did.

“I, uh, I just wanted to see you. I can’t stay long, just wanted to check in while I was around, you know?” he says, trying his best not to cry.

The last time he saw Ben…

(Blood and tears. The gunshot like an explosion. His shaking hands desperately pushing against the room, begging for help but nobody would. The police officers pulling him away, taking him home to May, covered in blood and with the worst news.)

He can hear May in the background, humming along to an old song in the kitchen.

It’s the picture perfect life they always dreamed off.

“In the area?” Ben repeats in confusion. “What-”

“I should really get going. I just- I love you, okay? And I know my dad’s a stubborn man, but he loves you too, and so does my mom. You’re family, you know?” he says quickly, chin wobbling.

Ben’s face falls. “Yeah, of course, Peter. I love you too. You know we all do. And you’re always welcome.”

Peter can’t help himself from pulling Ben into a hug, pushing all of his energy into keeping the tears at bay.

“Goodbye,” he whispers against Ben’s shirt. He pulls away quickly, offering a smile, before turning and heading back to the car.

He tells Tony to pull off the road at a beach.

“Stay here,” he says, “Please.”

Tony looks uncertain but he nods and he doesn’t follow Peter when he gets out of the car and heads towards the ocean.

It’s an old wives tale. But Peter’s banking on it working.

He took a knife from his house in San Francisco, he’s going back to his Real Life. Back to his body as Strange put it.

Stopping right at the edge of the water, he slips the knife out of his backpack and faces away from the car.

He needs to do this. As much as he wishes he could live out the rest of his life in this utopia, he can’t. He has to go back home to Tony and May, and the shitty life he leads back there. He needs to be a hero. A selfless hero. He doesn’t have a choice.

He can hear Tony getting out of the car. He can hear the voices of the people he’s leaving filling his head.

(“You could live here forever, my child,” his mother says. “Me, you, and your dad. The life you always wanted. The family you need. All of us together.”

“You’re all alone out there, Peter,” his dad continues. “You don’t have anyone waiting for you. Everyone leaves you, have you noticed? But we won’t. We’ll be here forever. We won’t leave you.”

“Stay with us here, Peter,” Ben says, a chorus of yeses from the twins. “I’ve got everything I dreamed of having. You killed me in the real world, you made a different choice here. You don’t have to live with that guilt.”

“I’m no longer burdened with you. I’ve got Ben and the twins. I’m happy here, Peter. Isn’t that what you always wanted?” May continues. “Out there, I could finally be happy.”

“Come on, Peter. Stay with us here,” Tony says. He’s right there. Right in front of him. Smiling and offering a hand. “Stay here with us. You don’t need to go home. A lifetime in your utopia. Isn’t that all you could dream of?” )

Peter smiles at his family, the family he always dreamed of, the life he wished to have, and stabs himself in the stomach.

He jolts awake, gasping for air, scrambling at his stomach for the stab wound, but his hands are dry. No blood. No wound.

Immediately, there are hands on his face, on his shoulders, May in front of him and Tony at his side, and Peter breaks.

He falls into May’s embrace, grabbing at Tony’s arm like it’s a lifeline, hands tremblingly grasping the fabric of his hoodie, and tears staining May’s shirt.

“I’m sorry- I’m sorry- I-” he tries to say, but he’s crying and his chest feels like it’s splitting open and all he can think is that he almost made the wrong choice.

They’re both trying to reassure him, gently and softly just like they always do, but he misses his mom and his dad and uncle ben.

They soothe him through his tears until he’s too tired to cry anymore, sitting in a hospital bed with the last of his family.

“It was… It was everything,” he tells them. “My parents never died. You weren’t Iron Man. I wasn’t Spider-Man. Ben never died, you had twins. It was- Everyone was so happy. Everything was what it should’ve been, but it- it wasn’t-”

“It wasn’t real,” Tony murmurs, smoothing Peter’s hair back.

“But I wanted to stay,” he whispers. “I wanted to be selfish and stay. It’s just- It’s too much.”

May sighs softly. “You’ve been through a lot, honey, but it’s worth it, isn’t it? You wouldn’t be the person you are today if you hadn’t. And all those people? You’ve saved millions. It’s worth it. And one day, you’ll get your own happy ending.”

“I wanted to stay,” he repeats. “It’s not fair.”

“I don’t know what’s worth, Bambi, but I’m glad you chose this. I’m happy you’re alive. Most people wouldn’t have.”

Peter shrugs, rubbing his eyes. “Well, couldn’t have you two living a peaceful life, could I? What would you do without me giving you heart attacks every week?”

They both smile, smiles that show there will be a long recovery to this. That this can’t just be washed away with bad jokes and repression. That this isn’t something Peter can ignore or move on from immediately.

But that’s okay.

“I love you,” he says. Right now, that’s all that matters. He doesn’t have his mom or his dad or his Uncle Ben, but millions of other people got to go home to their families because of him. He has May and Tony, and right now, he has to hang onto that.

“We love you too.”

They all squish into the hospital bed together and Peter falls asleep feeling heavy with grief, but safe and less alone than he did the whole time he was in that other world.

The other Tony may have had a much more peaceful life and been happy, but this Tony is happy too. Peter can tell he’s happy, carding his fingers through the teenager’s messy curls and pressing a kiss to his temple.

And May’s smiling, tucking the blankets up around them, making sure Peter’s comfy. She might not have gotten the life she expected, but she’s happy.

The job, the superhero gig requires sacrifices.

And Peter made the biggest one he’s ever made. He gave up utopia for this shitty life.

But it’s worth it.

Tucked between Tony and May, he decides it’s worth it.

Ben, Mary, and Richard would be proud of him.

It’s worth it. He made the right choice.

#whumptober2019 #no.18 #no.20 #muffled scream #trembling #lyss writes #irondad #don't tag as starker

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aggresivelyfriendly · 5 years

Text

Writing has been slow going, but I have something. I edited it, so expect mistakes. Take this as a balm if you didn’t get tickets or a celebration if you did!

This one is canon, assume the crossover with APOL didn’t happen. This went somewhere I didn’t expect, but the muse does what it wants, like Harry.

Tryst- Chapter 9-Cancun

The air felt close and thick, like the vapor issued from a screaming kettle, and Helene was glad, not just because her skin laid tight across her bones from the flight, but also because she knew she'd had sweat on her hairline and her palms for much longer than the taxi ride over. Probably from when she got the call from Harry.

It had been ages since they had each other. Which was good? Helene kept reminding herself. It supported her self imposed finished to their trust. This trip was nerve racking because it was for weeks. She'd have to keep her feelings locked up and her pants buttoned for longer than long. It would be hard. They'd not been together for this amount of days, in over a year. They had them a long hot weekend thanks to Gucci, but really, since tour ended, they ended, it's been little sips of his image through a tiny straw. She can't take him up the thin vein, he's too much. And when she had buried herself in his image on drives and on computers to take giant gulps, it felt desperate, so she had stopped. She had no reason to be looking at those, there were new images to edit. New jobs she had taken on, and new clientS to focus on, Better clients. She had Harry to tank for her higher profile.

Her focus, through her lens, was on point. It was her mental focus that wandered. To the drives she had buried with memories.

She did not look at those.

Well, that one night, after the very unsatisfying date with the gentlemen who absolutely did not look like Harry. Especially after he took his clothes off. She looked then.

Even that moment of weakness seemed forever ago. Time past notwithstanding, she would be spending weeks with him. A week in Mexico and one in Scotland. Helene was nervous about her feelings but her stomach was in knots over Harry's. Would he mirror the weather in each place with his ever changing moods and signals? A sultry embrace in one before a bracing chill closer to his own home?

Doubtful, he was a welcoming happy soul. He'd be happy to see them all. He loved his team, his employees.

She was, above all, his employee, though he blurred the lines so effectively with all of them, even the ones he hadn't fucked to within an inch of sanity, that she also was a friend, at the least. They were all the best of friends, separated by distance, and time, and Worse full schedules. His especially.

She was pretty sure she was the only one on the fucking list. Though she wondered about Mitch, always. But he was happily ensconced with sarah, and Helene was trying to let go of jealousy in her life. So she only used Mitch and Harry as fodder. To get her there, What ever it takes.

But now she was here. In this resort place. It was a curious choice for Harry, very touristy so far.

Nonetheless, She loved the colors, the water was teal out of the rolled down window of the hire car that had been waiting for her. She hoped there would be time for sea bathing and a margarita on the beach. He was usually good about building in down time for the crew. She could see herself relaxing, far away from him. Right under a palm tree. Those were a gray brown at the base and green green at the tops. They'd provide just enough shade. She still tanned, though she knew she outheten not to. Liked the bronze on her skin against the bright of her hair. She'd give it up at 40, she promised herself.

But Harry had traced the lines up the middle of her ass cheek with his tongue once. So, she wouldn't stop. Not yet. Not when that tongue was nearby.

🌴 🌴 🌴

Helene stepped out of the cab and saluted the driver. It was on H's tab, so there would be no awkward pause to pay the cabbie. All expenses paid, that was a perk, she should embrace it. It smarted, like a poorly placed slap on the ass.

She decided to pretend she was a kept woman rather than an employee. That felt more fun, pretending she was here on a tropical rendezvous, not a business trip with a lovely boss.

Just slight shades of meaning, they were the same thing. She knew it. And a kept woman would probably not go so long without seeing her patron.

Harry was certainly her patron. She'd done well before him, but her career has exploded with the name association.

Her life had exploded. Her heart. She was still stitching it back together. This trip was going to test its elasticity.

She had moved on, dammit. And she was sure that Harry had too, in his way. After him and Camille and well, he was so sad when she really moved on. He must have thought after tour...... but good ones don't wait.

What did that say about her?

The lobby was aggressively air conditioned. Helene was pulling her sweater out and trying to get her arm in when suddenly, the fabric was pulled away and untangled for her to slip over her shoulders.

She could smell him over her shoulder, long before she saw his face. Her body always recognized him long before she lay eyes. Her skin hummed just under its petite surface, she felt it most in the bends of her elbows, knees, where her thighs became her hips. Where the blood rushed and you could track it. Her hairline always felt tighter too, Helene found her self tidying her hair when he was close enough to smell. And her breath, it came short, even before she smelt him.

And that's when it hadn't been ages, or a time more extended than she liked, lengthened by longing.

Helene drew in a breath and closed her lids. Time for her professional face. She'd need to gauge him today. What will she be working with these next few weeks? The flirt, the obsessed artist, boss man, lover.

"Hi Helene!" He's got his arms wide. Well, friend to start. Torture.

Jesus, did he always have to look like that? It's totally unfair to other humans on the planet, herself especially included. And any man after him. She'd learned that the hard way.

Helene felt her body overruling her mind and the smell, not any different than the one he'd always had in rotation, despite their last working endeavor, envelops her with his arms. It's like the smell of her apartment on her first bath back, redolent of home.

He smelt the same, but felt different. Harder, the notch where her nose always ended up isn't as cuddly as normal, the push of his skin back onto her more robust, less a bounce. She catalogued the physical changes when she looked up from her place, his height ordering a step back. He's in a tank and shorts with a button up, wildly patterned shirt over it. Same clothes, new body.

Ah, that's why he felt different. He looked different. She remembered when she realized his ass was growing on tour, probably in Spain when his bespoke pants split. The pants had not changed dimension, he had. Everyone was laughing about it, but Harry was smug. "That's work" and he's looked over his shoulder and nodded his chin at his own growing booty. She'd had a feel or two, it was all muscle. She started tracking progress, each time they fell into bed at irregular intervals.

She thought she was discreet, until the time he asked, "how's it growing?" And bounced his eyebrows like a naughty school boy. She bet he was one, he put it on so easily. Ass.

Now he'd apparently turned his attention to his chest. His torso, if the lines under his a shirt were anything to go by, had expanded and become more michealangelo's David to raphael's.

This week was either going to be paradise or hades. Both likely.

"Hey Tiny!" He didn't call her that. Not when they were alone. It made her feel decidedly like a kid sister, despite his being her junior.

Purgatory?

"Hey boss." She looked up and willed the smile to reach her eyes.

"Heeeeey!" He stuck out his still entirely too suckable bottom lip. "Since when do you call me boss?"

Since before she fucked him and again in her head when she decided to stop. Instead she just shrugged.

"Don't like it." He looked around quickly, and leaned in and whispered. "You've seen me naked."

Oh! The flirt was back. "Everyone's seen you naked." She giggled and held in her snort at her own weakness.

"Well, yeah, and that number is about to grow." She wasn't sure what that meant and didn't have time to contemplate it. He leaned in close again. And they were all alone in the hotel lobby full of green plants and big earred ferns. "But I've seen you naked too, and I know how you taste." He let his voice drop and stood up with his smug face. His dimple pressed in when he got a look at her face.

She must have looked suitably flushed to entertain him.

"Anyway," he continued like her pupils weren't blown and she didn't need new lingerie. "I think everybody is going to lunch, Jeffrey's the only one not here yet. We were just waiting on you! Tequila?"

He was really not playing fair. This was over, she was over him. She had the relationship, rebound, under her belt to prove it. He was a menace. But she was French, still, always, so she schooled her face and feigned amused disinterest, and nodded.

"I'll need to freshen up, long flight. I can meet everybody."

"We'll wait."

"Oh no, I can't allow that."

"Then I'll wait." She was already moving to the desk, Harry by her side moved along check in.

He also rode the elevator up with her, and she was fully amused when he'd insisted on carrying her bags. She knew she liked Anne.

Helene gave him a stare when he followed her in the room and through the suite to drop her bags in the bed chamber. And then he made himself comfortable.

Helene canted her head at him and rose her brow.

"What?"

"Do you not have a luncheon to host?"

"Well, I'm the boss, as you said, and I want you there. I'm afraid if I leave you will pass out, I'd like your company, and I'll miss looking at you."

"I need a shower Harry." She tried to excuse him without having to kick him out.

"So shower." He smiled. Waved his hand in front of his nose. "Please! And I'll just hang here and check email and try not to think of you naked so I won't barge in there and delay us."

He was too much. Very presumptuous. Indelibly sexy. The little tease. "Ya know, for the poster boy of nice, you are rude." She came to stand by him and find something fresh to wear and her toilette bag. Her hip was really close to him, and he shifted so his forearm pressed to her waist. It was not a big movement, but hard to miss the heat coming off his arm into her body. The air conditioning in her room was lackluster compared to the lobby.

She looked at him and screwed her finger to her temple before she headed for the shower, ignored his flirt. He chuckled, but stopped her intently. Harry placed his hands on hers, where they were full of clothes.

"I'm happy to see you. I've missed your tiny face." He calf blinked. Then grinned. "Now hurry up! I'm hungry."

She was starved, had just been reminded of all the meals she'd been missing. Her facade stayed false though, "then go, eat." She laughed and went to shower.

Harry had said he was going to think of her naked, and restrain himself, but him being in her room was just the same. The shower steamed up the mirrors, or maybe she was doing that job. She wasn't sure she had time for what she needed, to wash and relieve. Helene settled for a PTA and moved her hand between her legs. Used the quickest most efficient motions she knew, that 1-2-3 punch combo to orgasm, took one hand away to bite her thumb, at herself apparently, to staunch her moan.

He couldn't know.

She couldn't be sure he wouldn't barge in, she wouldn't receive him, or that she wouldn't be entirely embarrassed and have to act haughty before faking the flu and hiding out in her room, or hopping a flight back to Paris.

Were they never going to recover from this insincere intimacy? His mixed signals were crazy, made her crazy.

Maybe the intimacy wasn't insincere, just impermanent or situational?

Her shower routine had seen such little change in so long she completed her washing up with little thought. Her distraction was certainly situational, if she was anywhere near harry styles it seemed.

Her hair combed through easily, and she pulled on the panties and the light dress she'd planned for, with her sandals. She was a light packer from being on the road for years. Nearly everything was interchangeable and coordinated. She could just as easily wear her trainers, but she went with the sandals because of her pedicure. Nails, we always have nails, she had to keep up with the Styles, so she'd booked herself into the spa the day before the trips, despite the tight tight schedule.

She slipped the panties over her thighs and was glad she'd shaved her inner thigh creases the day before when she fixed the elastic. The lingerie was a good choice, there was a definite breeze in Cancun, she didn't want everyone to catch sight of her rounded ass, maybe just her boss.

She almost slipped them off.

Instead, she opened the door and he was reclined on the bed.

"You are so slow."

Helene didn't deign that with an audible response, just lowered her brow and screwed up her lips at him and gathered her things.

"Efforts worth it." He said as he passed her and headed for the door. Pfft, she filled her red cheeks and followed him out.

Company, other people, maybe that would kill his damn flirty nature.

But it did not, not really. He wasn't over the top. He sat on his side of the car, didn't pull her close or sit in the middle.

His knee knocked against hers and remained when he teased her about bringing her camera. Of course she brought her camera. She was his photographer, one of them, the primary.

Then, at the restaurant, he made her take a shot with him immediately, to catch up with everybody he claimed. They pulled up to the bar after a quick round of hello, then his arm around her wrist other about her shoulder, a salsa walk to the bar. He caught her hand again and licked where her pulse was already coming quick before she had recovered from his hips against hers. She had to grab the bar to stready herself, she'd blame it on him pulling her quickly if he asked. He didn't, just rose his eyebrows, and sprayed her arm with salt, then his own, which he licked while maintaining eye contact with her. Put a lime into the small gape she didn't notice her lips had, the longer caress on her fleshy bottom lip barely noticeable, then licked her wrist, shot his casamigos, and quickly, so quickly you couldn't call it a kiss, took the lime off her.

She didn't reciprocate in total, though like his salty skin, swallowed her shot to quell the burning in her throat and belly, replaced it with a more nameable burn, but she pulled his lime free with a pinch of her thumb and forefinger.

He grinned and winked, grabbed the bartenders attention along with her hand, "two grandes por favor." Least his French accent was a bit better than his Spanish. Though, She'd teased him after hearing the audio for Gucci's odeur and tried to work on his tongue in bed, it wasn't great either. English tongues were clagey. Had he not proven her wrong, she'd doubt their ability to move pleasurably.

He'd shown her after a bit that his tongue spoke perfect French in other attitudes. It was certainly her language, they'd agreed after seven lessons straight.

Maybe he felt nostalgic as she did for days spent in bed and nights spent awake. Helene watched him walk into the group, giving arm less hugs since his hands were full of drinks. His face in the curve of a neck, like they were having a reunion, not on a job.

The magic of Harry. She was ready for a personal reunion. She'd follow him to his room after this get together and remain there. There was no denying it, him.

🏝🏝🏝

By the third day of the shoot, Helene assumes nostalgia, shared or lonely, was the feeling she'd leave Mexico with. Like tequila or the lime soup she knew she'd crave when she left.

That lingering want that outlived the availability of something. She wondered what language had a word that captured that feeling exactly. None of the ones she knew.

Nostalgia. Mexico echoed with those things she had once, but not anymore.

They'd been in a downtown area, bars on all the once brightly painted houses' windows. Streets cleared and Harry being run down in his designer clothes or riding on the backs of motorcycles without any protective gear.

His skin, she worried about his skin. A friend had some horrible road rash once, and Helene felt it would be a pity if that happened on Harry's perfect chest, or arms, or god forbid, his face.

His damned untouchable, untouched face.

The flirting had slowed dramatically, and they'd resumed their usual dynamic. Meaning she watched him down her lens and captured moments, but not his attention. His attention was usually consumed by whatever they were doing. He was busy, he was the star. He was not all over her since the day she arrived.

She'd given herself a pep talk this morning when she'd woken up from a dream, or a memory, and needed to slide her hand down her own belly to quell the tension before the sun was even fully up. It went something like-"he is your boss, your patron, before anything else. Don't pay attention to his flirtations, or lack thereof." That's what was hurting now, after that first day if she was honest. "He can't help himself. Just remember that other aspect of your relationship fondly and move on." Her French sounded just like her mother's when she gave herself talkings to.

It was easier said in the mirror than done. Mostly because many times, the way she framed him, the camera was an extension of her eye, her hand, her want. She wondered if that's why her pictures resonated with his fans. They were in the same boat.

When she arrived at the beach for the night shoot, she knew immediately she was in for it. There was music playing, lights up around a square of sound, and a collection of beautiful, scantily clad people.

Harry like his secrets, so Helene usually found herself in moments unprepared, off guard. They just happened for her a bit before the people she made photos for. She had heard snippets of the song though, in the house sets. But, since this was being shot non sequentially, she hadn't a clue what this video was about. Even what the track was concerning was a mystery.

The mists cleared and turned into a knot beneath her navel and in her throat when Harry joined the throng.

He was also scantily clad. Which wasn't to uncommon a sight, not for the crew. In the bowels of the arena, he was likely to be in basketball shorts, and little else, sometimes just boxers. This was decidedly different. The other people here were also naked, they were dancing, and everybody was oiled, them misted.

Harry was off to the side being oiled up, and she was ready to spray the mist right into her own mouth. Did she have a mister? Could she join whatever the hell was about to happen here? It looked like a beach rave in the Greek isles she'd gone to at 20.

That was a good night. She barely remembered who she went home with. But it was more than one person. It was a one off, with the couple? She thought it was a couple. But it was a sweet filthy memory.

Helene knew this was clinical, were shoots like this, but as she watched Harry get rubbed down and misted as he casually chatted with the bespeckled lady working on him, them both laughing like every tattoo he had, almost, wasnt showing, Helene thought she may need a medic. And a job application, she was in the wrong part of the entourage.

It only got worse when Harry let himself be literally pulled into the throng. Then the next several hours was spent watching beautiful people, beautiful Harry, writhe. At first she'd been concerned he'd be uncomfortable, but he looked right at home, and happy between takes, with his silly finger gun dancing and half moon dimples pressed to mirror the shape in the sky.

She watched it, and tried to detach through her lens. Though that was not her strong suit as a artist. She never was truly remote to her subject. And she was all bound up with Harry.

When the delicious torture was all over Helene was disassociating off to the side pretending to scan through her pictures.

She should not be this turned on. Jesus, it was technical, stand here so we can only see sparrows up and such, feign a kiss, but no touching. Like a lap dance for the young woman at her own personal 9-5. It wasn't sensuous, it was work. But all that flesh. All Harry's flesh.

She loved his skin. And the lights and the beautiful people. The bald girl who's been near him a good deal was particularly compelling. They had palpable chemistry. Helene was surprised she was excited by it, not frustrated or jealous.

A little jealous, or was it envy?

Helene guessed she should be getting shots. Had she caught her breath enough? She figured the answer was yes, until she looked up and realized that Harry had a bottle, bottles, of tequila, the amazing Mexican tequila they'd shot the other day, out, and he was pouring.

And he was handing out shots and hugs. The fake rave was turning into a real party. A shot came across her hand. And she shook her head and kept shooting. She got some gems.

She loved the dancing in the video, but it was essentially choreographed writhing. This was something so much better.

Harry was still shirtless, but he had his personal space and he was doing stomp steps and his hands were flapping. And he was more adorable than the goofy smiles he'd given during the shoot to lighten the mood and the exhaustion everyone was feeling. She shot everybody, but, as always, most pictures were of Harry.

She resolved tonight would not be all about Harry. If she couldn't fuck Harry, then fuck Harry.

Helene was chatting with the tall black guy with the mustache who'd caught Harry's eye at one point, he was pouring drinks and Helene was thinking how height was intoxicating, when Harry turned up.

"Pour me one?" He grinned at Xavier. Helene was glad she hadn't had any yet. She had plans for Xavier, but two more shots and she'd toss them into the waves to spend time with Harry.

Helene coughed over the shot she took, and Harry helpfully brought a lime wedge to her mouth. Less helpfully, his finger tastes like coconut oil. He tasted like a party.

Xavier said something, but all Helene could hear was the break of the wave hitting the shore behind her and within her.

"Excuse-moi." She slid away to the side, behind Xavier. He was big and his body hid her, so she didn't have to make eye contact with Harry. She held the sides of his shirtless waist, and her nose smelled coconut oil on him as well. Strangely, it was sobering compared to the slick on her tongue, the tang, left by her boss. She heard Harry's laugh as she walked away and her legs moved faster, walking on beat towards the side to drop her camera, and dance.

She'd dance this off. Dance it out.

This had seemed like a great idea, with the tequila addling her brain and filling her fallow belly. She carefully put her equipment in its bag, and left it in an obvious location and repeated it to her self, so she'd be able to find it on her way out.

The second shot burned less, but warmed more. It loosened the knot below her belly button and her spine. The song on was a Latin beat, her favorite. She hoped to remember it, but she didn't know the singer. She'd Shazamed it for later, she needed this song in her ear, it was in her veins now. She'd hoop to it.

Her hips shimmied side to side and front to back. She was laughing and holding hands with a brunette beauty for a bit. The girl led her through a proficient salsa. "Pardon!" She giggled when her barefoot slid off the top of her partners big toe.

"Oof," came out next from somebody bumping into her. The makeshift dance floor, really patch of sand had become more crowded as the tequila took effect. Helene wasnt surprised, she and Gabi were taking up more room than necessary, mostly because they didn't have their pelvises pressed together.

This became much more obvious when the bump showed itself to be much more intentional. There was more than a pelvis, and it was pressed to her bum. The impression was familiar. The smell of the man dancing on her was not though.

"You smell funny." She slurred and looked over her shoulder and up the bare chest to his face. He was looking down at her and his red nose fairly glowed, like a cartoon reindeer on a misty night.

"Aloe Vera." He glanced the top of his pointer finger off his nose then his shoulder. "Jane got me before the oil, and then again when I was trying to get everybody in a party spirit."

"Ah!" Well, he was less lickable then, she took as a positive. Until he turned her toward him, away from Gabi, who had moved on to a more focused partner while Harry was distracting her.

He was still lickable.

Her hips fell into the rhythm he was creating, like they'd done this before. And they Had, she supposed, just in a more horizontal attitude. She loved to bat herself about to his beat. She shook her head, bad thoughts away. "How did you get so burnt? You wear sunscreen no?"

He scratched the back of his neck. Ah, this was a confession. "I was trying out a new face cream, for a friend. I just assumed it had sunscreen, ya know." He shrugged.

"All from one day?"

Oh no, it took a bit. The first two."

"So that explains your face, what about your shoulders."

"I got carried away in a scene, decided it would be better with less... coverage." he scanned her in her summer dress. "Like most things." He bit his lip.

Helene felt her eyes roll, she'd been around Americans a lot apparently.

"Do you feel overdressed?"

"What?"

"Well everybody else is in their pants!" His shrug was almost Gallic.

"Well, I have a little burn myself."

"Did you forget sun lotion too."

"No, the mexican sun is strong as the tequila." She laughed at his giggle. "But, my pants and bra, were lace, not good on a sunburn." She shrugged, watched his eyes narrow them widen while he checked her out, then turned, rolled her body over his semi and walked to get more tequila.

He predictably followed her. "M. Panbrum," he whispered in her hair above her ear, "are you implying you aren't wearing any undergarments."

Helene gave him a half smile and took a shot, without offering him one.

The movement of his Adam's apple up and down his throat in response was a better burn than shot number three. Perhaps she was getting immune? Or was tipsy already. "Qui!" She stepped toward the dance floor, and was surprised it was more empty than it had been before. The party seemed to be winding down. She'd missed the climax.

"Let's go back." He pressed close to her, she could feel his nipples through her dress on the top of her shoulders. She felt him rub over her hip, then slightly higher, then down the crack of her ass. She appreciated the thorough search, but the lace and elastic had been insufferable this morning, so she'd opted out.

Would she opt out now?

Helene looked at Harry. Shirtless, sweaty, oiled and veraed Harry. "Why?"

"Um..." he blinked, faster than she had ever seen him blink. "What'd ya mean why?"

"I mean, why would I go back with you?" It felt like an honest question, one she was maybe asking years to late.

"Well..." he stuttered, and scratched the back of his neck, his giggle trilled nervously. His cheeks pinked. She couldn't believe her audacity either. "I just, well, before, and well," he blinked, slower this time. "Do you not, did we not?" He looked up then, and his face cleared a little bit. "Did you not have good time." He looked vulnerable, sad, at the notion.

"That's not how I would put it." She sighed. She was tired suddenly, and maybe drunk.

"Did I?"he looked at her close, then down to the sound. She almost didn't hear the words. "Have I hurt you, Helene?"

Unexpectedly, her eyes welled up. She would have been embarrassed or managed the feelings that wanted to spill down her face, but she couldn't when she realized he was tearing up to. This was not a conversation for the beach. This was a conversation for windy wet Scotland, not Mexico.

"Let's talk at the hotel. I'll take another car, so I can." She fanned her face, gave him a look.

He agreed, and had somebody getting transport together within minutes.

Helene was astounded. She'd known, or should have known he would expect them to pick up where they left off, she'd not told him it was the last time, last time. They didn't talk about it, they'd never talked about it. Just their desire was spoken and then acted on.

Her car left first, as Harry had more goodbyes to make. Helene beat him back to the hotel and had time to worry, agonize, and worst of all, hope. He'd been moved.

Did it mean anything? Or was it just his kind heart.

She was just about to lock the chain, put out the lights, and open the mini bar when her phone dinged followed by a quiet knock.

That was faster than she expected. He'd skirted rudeness, she assumed, to get here so soon.

"Helene," he immediately started talking when she opened the door and he walked in like he was much taller than her remembered, the way he looked taller on stage, the inches added by purpose.

She couldn't. Her hand went up, all red and geometric. "Want a drink?" She interrupted.

The tension didn't leave his shoulders, but the shiver moved down his arms and he sat. "No, not really."

"I'd like to have one with you." She needed a bracer, they needed to brace.

"Ok." He watched her make it. She could feel his eyes and loaded tongue. She was amazed really.

She poured the wine. She wanted tequila, but they weren't getting naked immediately, so, it seemed the wrong spirit. Her spirit trembled. Sh handed him his goblet and tapped hers tO the rim of his and gulped hoping one intoxication was better than the other.

"So, I like the song. I can't wait to hear all of it, not snippets. And the video, well, it'll cause a stir." She smirked.

"Um, yeah. Like, that's the hope. I'm just at kinda tired, of like, covering up."

"Physically to metaphorically."

"Both."

"Yeah, I could see that. Good for you harry!" She tried for a smile.

The varnish on it faded when she looked up. His hand on hers was like sandpaper. "I'm tired of not, not saying things. Helene.—"

"Harry, I'm not sure I'm ready."

"You were nearly crying at the beach? Helene. I think I'm not ready." He sighed. "I thought. Well, we always.....were you not having a good time?"

She laughed, it wasn't nervous, more a burst of emotion. "Harry, I think it was clear that I had a good time. You could feel that, no?" She pouted her lips on no. God she wished she had kept it together. Then she could be sleeping or...

He smiled, though it didn't crinkle his eyes. He pushed out a breath that a liar would describe as a chuckle. "Yes, In the moment. But what about after."

"Well the moment tended to last all night, so" her thumb cascades over his knuckles, rubbing between.

"Stop trying to distract me!" He spoke swiftly. ""Helene, what about after? The next morning, or on the ride home."

"Damn, she forget occasionally that he is perceptive, when he chooses to look, or maybe sensitive was a better word. It usually hit on the plane home, when the sore thighs and raw lips weren't happy mementos but badges of abandonment.

She sighed. She may as well get this over with. She'd been afraid of his disinterest, or solely physical interest. She'd assumed it though, so there was that. The confirmation couldn't hurt worse than the rumination. "After," she moved her shoulders as effortlessly as she could push through. "After, I remembered a good time."

"And you felt?" He touched her jaw, so she couldn't slide her gaze away.

"I felt, like I should be more than a memory."

"But you are, Helene, we are friends." At that she dropped his hands.

"No, I'm your employee!" she said while she stood up, her wine upended and she excused herself to get a towel.

"My employee?" He followed her into the bathroom.

"Fine, then you're my patron, and the sex was part of my fealty." She stomped back out to sop up the wine.

"Helene, stop, what are you saying? That you felt like if you didn't sleep with me I'd fire you, because that's rubbish. You aren't my like, artist project, or my employee. You're more than that."

"I'm both those things. And your next door lover when you are lonely, or alone, or horny. But, in all cases, I serve you." She could feel the tears on her face. Kept it pointed down like a arrow tip.

Harry knelt down with her, her hands trapped by his knees over where she had been pressing the white towel hand onto the rug frantically trying to get the red hue to absorb into the towel, to clean up this mess she didn't mean to make.

This was all wrong. They were supposed to be easy. They could be flirting and fucking. She knew she had feelings years ago my now. Had nursed them, and then weaned herself. Feelings were unfortunate; they held you up. Here she was crying when she could be touching him, letting him touch her. Helene had come to the end of her fraying feelings. She'd snapped some time ago, she just hadn't told him.

Harry pulled her hands up, held them against her miniature struggle. "Please look at me Helene."

And then he waited, until she could. Helene pushed against the wine weakly while she willed her eyes to dry

When her eyes finally connected to his, she saw the gleam he got, when he was overtaken. He was the only man she knew who let that happen often without embarrassed words and trips to the bathroom. That may have been the first string she pulled, maybe even before their first sleep over, before Bologna. His wet eyes and softness before his hard body. Helene had liked him for his heart. She'd liked him all along.

It was why she waited as long as she did to say no more. One of the reasons. She should have said it out loud so they wouldn't be frantically cleaning wine out of a carpet on a Thursday night in Mexico before they got trapped in a tin can high in the sky.

She loved his vulnerability. And the way his eyes looked in photos when they glistened. She loved his face in photos almost more.

Like now. But, She'd never caught a tear on his cheek.

She didn't have a camera now. She'd have to actually be in this moment, not capture it. He let her bring her hand to his face to trace the tear back to its origin.

"Helene," he swallowed. "How long have you felt like this? Like I, um" definitely didn't needed a lens. "Like I used you, or whatever." He used her thumb to dash his other tear.

She shrugged. She didn't have a good answer to that question. Maybe always, maybe only right now.

"I'm not sure I knew I felt that way."

"But you do feel that?" He pressed his forehead to hers. "That and Um," he hiccuped, "you didn't have a choice because you work for me."

She shook her head there. "No, that I don't feel. I was just angry." She was a cornered animal, striking out. Not that she felt, less forced, she could absolve him a bit.

"Thank Christ." His eyes closed and she was thinking how altogether pleasant his symmetry was. No, she did it because she wanted him. Even now, with his heartbreakers face and broken heart.

"I like being with you, I chose to be. But I think it hurt me, that you." She swallowed, her own tears clogging her throat and pressing down the sides of her nose. "That you are fine with having me for a small time here and there, but not everyday."

"I never knew having you everyday was an option." He pulled back and looked at her, his focus shifting from one eyeball to the other. "Is it an option? Everyday?"

Helene filled her cheeks at that. How did she not have an answer? "Do you want it to be an option." Oh, yeah, the gaping fear of rejection inside her.

"Helene," he tsk'd. "I think we got started at a weird time, but, you never." He chuckled. "You never said. But neither did I. I really thought I'd gotten better at this." The wry grin brought a wet smile to her own. "It will be complicated." He tilted his head, and his lips gentled about his teeth.

"Will be?"

"For us to be together. With tour. And my traveling, and your other gigs. But, I wouldn't mind. Plus the rest, you know." He flipped his hand sideways, like the judgements of a million or more fangirls were nothing. "But I wouldn't mind." he shrugged and gave her a boyish smile. "Having you for more mornings."

"Wouldn't mind?" That wasn't enough.

"No." He held both hands. She'd dropped the towel and missed it. "I'd be lucky to have you to wake up to. And go to bed with. And to cook for. And pick hooping songs with. And watch those documentaries you like." They laughed. The last time when they'd been to fucked out to touch each other, he'd nodded off three times when she convinced him to watch one, she'd tried to keep him awake. He'd have liked it, she was sure. "But it'll be complicated. You know, they love you now..."

"It would be an honor, and a pleasure," she winked her eyebrows up and emphasized the word. "To see you at home. Yours and mine, and watch those old movies you like. And listen to whatever album you love over and over for two weeks exclusively. And eat the food you like." She was not committing to cooking, no matter if she was committed to him.

"So?"

"So." She nodded and kissed him with the salt on their lips. And their tongues, chins, and collarbones.

His neck tasted of aloe and coconut oil and after she'd discovered the scent and flavor went well below his collar, down to the nipple she was trying to play, it occurred to her that it probably went everywhere. Essentially.

"Does all of you have the spray on?" She didn't like it, it tasted wrong. Like her new first time with him was with somebody new. She didn't want anybody new.

"All but where the trunks covered." He slid his whole hand, fingers splayed, into her hair, and canted her head back to take her mouth. "Blah. That's gross."

"Merci!" She countered.

"Not you, that taste is from me." He wiped his tongue on his Hawaiian shirt tail.

"We should shower."

"Yeah." He pulled her behind him, and was messing with the knobs a moment later. Her fingers found the last few clinging buttons on his Hawaiian shirt from behind. He did love to dress to the occasion. She loved their height difference, the way the curve of his ass stopped at the tips of her hips bones. She cascaded her nose from one scapula point to the other.

"You're distracting me." He whined.

"Mmmhmmm." She confirmed. His pants, the joggers he'd slipped on over his briefs from the shoot, fell easily once she pulled the elastic side. His trunks she had to push down.

"This is backwards. Usually you're naked and I'm dressed." She liked the humor in his voice.

"This way is better." She wrapped a hand around him.

"Well," he turned around without upsetting her grip, looked between them to his rising pride and her clothed form and smirked. "It has its perks!" Then she was off her feet.

"You fucker!" She squealed. At least the water soaking into her clothes was warm. "Harry!" She squealed and laughed when he lifted her up to press her back to the side of the shower. Her clothes were already soaked to her and getting them off was a chore.

Wearing them drenched was worse. And the cling wasn't the only reason. She needed to be free, like she felt with him. And now, she imagined more so, without comfortably silent feelings.

Harry was adept at getting wet clothes off, or dresses off, she'd seen. The panties rolled up as they came off, but she felt even more weightless than any other interlude they'd had when he hoisted her up to get them to fall off her feet.

"Stop laughing!" He giggled. "I keep clacking my teeth against yours. I'm trying to kiss you."

"You have to stop laughing too. My teeth are hitting yours for a reason."

"I can think of something that's fun!" He raised his eyes brows and lowered his hand. "Yet quiets giggles."

"No!" She shook her head and squirmed, though a moan escaped despite her when his finger hooked along her anterior wall, found that spot. "Non! I hate shower sex!" She licked his neck. "And you still taste horrible."

"You hate shower sex?" He boggled and it gave him a double chin. The rub was he was still attractive, with three folds beneath his cleft and all.

"It takes all the wetness away."

He moved his fingers and raised an eyebrow at the squelch.

"That's water. It's not the same!" She pouted her lips a bit.

"Well, what do you suggest instead of sex?" He looked hard to impress.

Helene reached for a cloth and the bergamot orange body wash and Sudsed up. "I'll wash you."

He rolled his eyes, but certainly didn't stop her.

The flannel glanced over his smooth skin with Helene's hand pausing over the good bits, the ones that made him shiver. Her mouth chased the cleansing cloth, her teeth and tongue too.

She cleaned where he had been covered as well. Just for fun and so she could taste him.

He toweled her off. Then picked her up, like she loved, and carried her to the bed.

Her back hit the bed, and the comforter exhaled around her. She wasn't able to catch her breath when he coasted his long body over her. She'd always loved how they fit together, at all the essential points, despite their height difference.

Like their mouths. He was still the best kiss of her life. He gave himself over to it, like he did to the audience onstage. His mouth communicating what his voice often didn't express. His tongue was lithe, and flit around and caressed her tongue so well she always felt it everywhere. Between her lips, between her legs, and especially in her heart. She'd always tuned out, sure it was miscommunication. It spoke of of his feelings, enlivened hers. Today, she listened to him. To his investment, and abandon. The way he followed her lead and listened to her moans. That he used tongue only after deep lip locks, and licked into her mouth like closing an envelope. Sealed them together. It would take a rip to rend them apart.

Except it didn't. His cascade down her body, usually hurried and hungry, was smooth and sharp, like a letter opener gently applied. She was open, and full of words. Mostly Harry and please. He unlocked her further, she was pretty sure the word love passed her lips, at least lover, when he found her sensitive nipples, and impressions between her lips, and mouthed over her hip bones to the divots where her thighs connected to her pelvis.

"Harry!" She pushed up on her elbows.

"Shhhh!" He popped a dimple and she wanted to be annoyed. He was annoying, but so cute, and lovely, and maybe hers, that she lay back. He pulled her down the covers, the slide of her body audible, and set her feet as close to the ground as they reached, then cuddled into her thighs before easing them open. The bed was high, but he must have measured, or gotten very lucky, because he only had to pull her forward to get his Mouth on her from his knees, open his mouth, extend his tongue.

The first lap, from tail to top was wonderful, especially because Helene had to finally yank his hair almost from his head to get him to stop biting her thighs and kissing her honeymoon muscles, sucking them. The first taste, to where she swelled, was such a relief, she cried.

"Harry! Now." She'd sat up to give the command. He smirked, and before she might have been made to wait, but instead he nodded and danced his hand up her torso to lay her back. His finger lingered on the peak of her breast. That was lovely, remarkable even, but she nearly forgot, would have, with the sensation of his tongue licking into her hole and up until it flicked over the hood at the end top of her clit. The tiny suck to where her lips met was new. She tried to enjoy it rather than think about its origins. Several rounds of this, a swirl around her center, before gentle suction entwined with tongue strokes had her crazy.

He was so good at giving head. Was it just that mouth? Or the expectation of that mouth that he'd risen too.

Her temperature, heart rate, respiration rose too. Her voice filled the room. "Fuck, je jouis!" Her back came clean of the bed and her legs would have clamped Harry's head had he not caught them. He held them open through the "arret, please stop, arret!" Through the second orgasm and the lazy slide of his tongue through the creamy ooze. He slinked up her body where she had two hands in her hair.

"I'm gonna get a condom." He kissed her with all her flavors between his lips and she waited for the shakes to stop. She thought he was gone but a minute, it felt like hours. She missed him, so she hoisted herself up to get to him.

Helene's mouth around him got Harry back to full steam, and the heavy hang to his left, just like she liked it, wet her appetite anew. Her strokes over him and the play of his foreskin made him pull her off with a gentle tug of her hair.

"I'll come." He chided.

"Hmmmm." That was not a night ender, but the delay wasn't favorable to either of them. Helene watched him slide the skin over himself. She slid up the bed so the pillows pushed her shoulder and neck up. She wanted him close in on her, get all their relevant points touching. She wanted to feel his mouth and see his eyes, the whole way through.

For a moment, just a moment, she worried she would not get her way. The concern intensified when he stopped and stared.

"What?" She notched her nose next to his. Why'd you stop.

"Just trying to capture the moment." He slid up the bed between her thighs, wrapping one around his own leg, and sliding two fingers through her wetness and inside to spread her around.

"Should take a picture. I've heard they last longer."

"No, memories can't be destroyed. Pictures can. I'll just stop, take you in." She could feel him, blunt and insistent at her entrance. "Especially as you take me in." Their exhales met in the inches between their mouths, maybe the repelling force was why Helene's head pushed back into the pillow. She felt her chin hit his nose. Imagined he had to move his head out of the way, couldn't know for sure. Her eyes had closed at the feel of him in her. The heartbreaking pressure, pop, and easing burn. He was talking. "Have I ever told you I love your face when we fuck, especially the first stroke. You look overwhelmed and determined." He held said face, her eyes blinked open when his thumb caressed her fingers. "Alive. I'll remember this too, yeah?"

"Harry," Helene flexed her hips up to bring him closer. "Stop talking."

He nodded, clutched her chin for a deep kiss, one that left her speechless certainly, and gripped her hips.

The pace felt leisurely, and her body frantic. The mismatch was like those outfit that shouldn't work, but suit the wearer. She would wear him three days at a time if she could. The pressure was constant, except for the three times he teased her with the tip, and pulled either just out or to the brink, waited for her beg, and pressed back in.

If he didn't stop fucking around she might kill him.

When he trapped her right thigh under his to stroke slow, deep, and steady, she accidentally hit him in the head with her elbow while she grabbed the pillow behind her. She needed to fuck him in her bed, it had a proper head board, iron rods to grip. "Sorry."

He shook off her accidental blow and grinned up at her from above. "Good?"

He'd never asked that. He knew he was good, so good. "So good, oh oui." She lifted her other leg so he glanced off her end and went farther. "Ahhh!"

"That's it." He kissed her while she moaned through her second coming and only let the final wordless sound be unobstructed by his tongue.

His easing strokes had her kicking the sheets, she could hear her heels slide up and down. Damn flip flops on hot sand all day.

"You good?"

"Mmmhmm, so good." She gave him a dewy look and grabbed hold while he rolled them over. In this position, where her heels reached just below his knees, she knew her size, and her power.

He was throbbing within her, humping in tiny motions to get friction, though he'd just hampered his own ability to move.

Helene felt ready to help him out. But not before another lovers kiss. She'd loved the dirty kisses, over the bend of her back, with someone's essence in the others mouth, with teeth more than tongue, but nothing beat these sweet filthy latherings he was favoring her with.

"Ride me?" He begged when she slid her tongue away.

She liked this switch, her sated for the moment, him needy. She liked him needy and talking. The tears in his eyes in the living room where they cleaned the wine.

His eyes were wet again, but from desperation. She stayed stretched out on him, and circled his hips to keep him suspended and get his mouth. His fucking mouth. "I love your mouth."

"Would you like to kiss it everyday?" His words were rapid, a little labored.

"Oui."

"You're welcome to, but for the love of god, make me come, please Helene."

It was her turn to smirk, her hips stilled and he grabbed her to make her move, but she shook her head and kissed him like he wasn't standing before the finish line, like good morning not good night.

Then she sat up, and back, got her knees beneath her, griped his and slid his full length in and out at a bounce until his begging turned to praise.

"Holy fuck!" He sat up on his elbows, then fell back to the bed. But he kept his eyes open. Watched their connection, she knew they were both capturing the moment, the memory. "You look so good, on me, oh god!" And he couldn't keep looking. His head f ppback and his voice going hoarse over his note of completion. "Oh baby!" Was a beautiful lyric she'd not heard addressed to her.

He pulled her down to him, before she could collapse, and they cuddled, until she excused herself to have a post coital pee and rinse. They cuddled more after him joining her.

And the next morning, after an enthusiastic wake up call.

And throughout the week in Scotland. They made moments and captured them, and Helene never felt so insecure that it would be the last of them that she took a photo.

She didn't need to look at him through her lens to capture him, for now, he was hers.

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #tryst #cancun #a balm #or a celebration #chapter 9

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harold-smith-in-training · 4 years

Text

Introducing: Nepenthes

Nepenthes alata? Likely nepenthes x ventrata. More commonly known as the plant I would love to take over my life if I would stop killing it.

A coworker I played music with wanted to go to the local nursery and pick up some airplants, and I ended up falling in love with and picking up this 6″ nepenthes. The Giants were in the World Series at the time, which I’m guessing was 2016, so I jokingly named this thing Madison Bumgarner.

I knew nothing about its care and didn’t look it up (as was usual for me), but I figured it would love the indirect light and relatively high humidity of my shower. A previous resident had installed ceiling hooks on either corner, so I hung this plant on the end opposite of the shower head. Eventually it got a macrame hanger, and I used one of my junkstore metal flour jars as a chachepot.

The nursery I’ve bought it from, I’ve noticed since, doesn’t take good care of their nepenthes. The pitchers are always dried at the top and not long for this world, which was definitely the case with this one when I bought it. It put out a few pitchers early on, and then only sporadically. They would generally dry up or abort before full size.

Like my big dracaena, I have a distinct memory of a mushroom growing in this pot at one point in time... although I doubt this plant minded as much. I hope to find older photos to catalogue its growth and decline at a later point...

Here it is still in that original grow pot and chachepot, 3/29/2020:

Looks big and beautiful, no? That’s a partial truth. A few years back I had gone through a depressing winter and really neglected this plant. I saw signs of decay, but looking up how to fix it would acknowledge I was killing it, so my anxiety told me. The plant went into shock: a few vines turned black and died. These plants are slow, so a few other vines were black at the base but took years to wholly die. The above photo was taken after I finally pruned off the dead vines (yikes) and started cleaning off some of the scale that had more recently began damaging the leaves.

Like many of my other older plants, I’d never inspected the roots. Didn’t want to find a problem I didn’t know how to fix. But this was Spring of 2020, when I decided to start learning how to care for my plants.

Here’s what was going on beneath:

Hot cats!

I cut away the pot, washed the plant thoroughly, picked off every last scale...

And up-potted it to an 8″ plastic grow pot. I’d read about how moist they like to be, and despite the humidity of my bathroom, I do live in a very dry climate. So I used regular potting mix with an insulating layer of sphagnum moss:

It looked good for a while! But in May I noticed the leaves were puckering, despite the soil being very wet. Some research lead me to the conclusion that the plant wasn’t able to breathe because of how dense the soil was. I knew it was still recovering from the scale, re-potting, and pruning, but I didn’t want to loose this plant.

So my bathroom became a nepenthes triage zone for a while:

Re-potted back in a 6″ pot with a bit more orchid bark in the potting mix and no extra sphagnum. The roots didn’t appear to be rotting yet and it didn’t smell, which were good signs that I caught the problem early. I let it dry out completely (so hard!) to be sure and then resumed a thorough and frequent watering schedule.

Here it is looking pretty okay today on 6/14/2020:

Still no pitchers, but I do mist it frequently to encourage it.

When I did the original pruning and repotting, I cut the living sections of the dying vines into chunks to try and propagate them. I knew the vines weren’t very healthy, but I figured it was worth a shot. Here’s the carniverous plant nursery on 3/29/2020:

Leaves were clipped to reduce moisture loss, potted with a node down in moist sphagnum moss, as my instructions said.

None of the nodes activated except for the cutting from the tip of the healthiest vine. I put that one under a cloche I had and... rotted it within 24 hours.

So no baby nepenthes for me, but I’m excited to try propagation again someday knowing what I know now. This plant is gorgeous and I love it even without pitchers... but I’m keeping the new growth points misted and hoping!

Here’s new basal growth as of today:

#meet the crew #nepenthes #pitcher plant #houseplants #plant blog #madison bumgarner

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preux-chevalier · 7 years

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for saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch

After that episode, we all need some uncomplicated peace and quiet, so here’s a short and fluffy one-shot. If you like a soundtrack to your fics, here is what I was listening to while writing - it sets the scene pretty well!

There are actual paper files all over his desk. His tablet is displaying a map grid heavily dotted with confirmed and unconfirmed sightings, records of unusual activity, and CCTV camera locations. Even the giant holoscreen is up, projecting key selections from the intelligence and analysis reports he’s been combing through for the last two days.

Well - he glances at his watch and groans - technically three, now. Fuck, but he’s tired. It’s the job, though, and he isn’t going to send out his team with anything less than the maximum amount of information he can give them. If that means he has to keep working long after anyone sane would have gone to bed, so be it. Whatever it takes.

He can feel that single detail that’ll crack the whole thing open and give them the edge almost dancing out of his reach. It’s there somewhere, right in front of him, mocking him. The sharp fog of a headache is rapidly setting in; he rubs his temples in an effort to push it back and returns to his files.

“Phil?”

Melinda’s leaning against his office door, looking smaller than usual in a soft Pink Floyd t-shirt he knows for a fact she stole from him and pajama pants. It’s hard to breathe for a moment at the sight of her. Her eyes flick over him, cataloguing his no doubt rumpled appearance.

“It’s late,” she says quietly.

Phil can only nod. He knows.

Melinda watches him for a moment. Then she pads over on bare feet to stand between his knees, dark eyes tender as she gently pulls his glasses off and sets them on the desk behind her. Her thumb traces his cheekbone in a slow caress.

Suddenly it is too much to keep his head upright for even a second longer, and he finds himself tipping forward until his forehead is pressed against the comforting solidity of her stomach. Warm fingers curl gently through his hair. His eyes prickle a bit at the wave of relief and home that washes over him. He leans more of his weight against her, listening to her heartbeat and breathing in the soft, familiar scent of Melinda ready for bed.

“I’m missing something,” he whispers finally. It’s not what he means, not really - mostly he just wants this moment to last forever, where no one needs him and he never has to do anything but keep his eyes shut and let Melinda hold him close. But he can’t do that, because he needs to finish planning this op, and he can’t do that because he’s missing-

A hand trails down to the base of his neck. He sighs.

“Our bed is missing you,” she tells him.

He wonders if she can feel his smile through her shirt.

Melinda pulls back a little, tilting his chin up until he’s looking at her. “I know this is important,” she says, holding his gaze, “but you need to sleep. You’re no use to anyone if you’re too tired to think.”

“I’m sorry.”

She presses a lingering kiss to his forehead and Phil’s eyes drift shut with no conscious prompting from him. All around them everything is still - it feels like there is nothing in the world but the two of them, alone in his office late at night.

Eventually she pulls back. “Come to bed, Phil,” she murmurs, making to step away, but his hand shoots out to grab her wrist. He lets his fingers slide down over the sensitive inner skin where her pulse is beating strong and steady until her hand turns over under his and their palms are pressed together, fingers entwined.

Melinda smiles. It’s his favorite of her smiles, the one that’s small and reaches her eyes, the one that only comes out when he’s done something really dorky - or, more recently, sappy - and he’s not ashamed to admit he’s made a fool of himself many times over the years as an excuse to see that smile on her face when she looks at him. He kisses her knuckles just to watch it widen.

Neither of them say anything as she shuts down the holoscreen and he sorts the files into something vaguely approaching order; it’s quiet when he locks the office and they shuffle towards their bedroom with her arm around his waist and his over her shoulders. He does pause, though, after the door has shut behind them - the sign that he’s free to be just Phil again. Melinda turns to look at him, questioning.

“I love you,” he tells her simply.

She rises on her toes just a bit, just enough to kiss him softly, and he’s so tired that the feeling of her lips against his is the last thing he really registers even as his clothes disappear and they crawl into bed. Tomorrow he’ll go back to tearing his remaining hair out over the op, but for now, he’s safe and warm and next to Melinda. He sleeps.

#agents of shield #philinda #aos #also hi this is the first thing i've ever posted for this fandom [though not the first i've written] and i'm actually terrified right now #hopefully it's not 100% terrible #oh also the title is a line from romeo and juliet #it seemed apt #they're honestly kind of star-crossed lovers and they've both died lmao #but more than that the line is from a dialogue where they both want something more but circumstances prevent it #and don't for a second tell me phil doesn't worship melinda with all that he is #would it be too pretentious to say that she's his guardian angel and he's her patron saint?#answer: Y E S ABSOLUTELY #but w/e #ac dc ac #i would die for melinda may #preux fic

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britesparc · 4 years

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Weekend Top Ten #473

Top Ten Deleted or Restored Scenes

This week I watched Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which is obviously distinct from Joss Whedon’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which I saw in 2017. One of the ways it’s different is that it’s literally twice as long. Another is it’s been much more warmly received by fans and critics, rather than greeted with ferocious opprobrium like the earlier, allegedly studio-mandated version.

The road that led us to this moment, with this expensive re-edit of an earlier, unsuccessful film, is long and tumultuous, as well as tragic on a number of levels. Personally I was one of the few who actually had a good time with what I suppose we might as well call Whedon’s League; it weirdly felt cheap and inconsequential, but after two overwrought, self-important, and joyless exercises in grimness and misery, it was a breath of fresh air. It was like the feature-length pilot of a superhero TV series that, y’know, is starting off on slightly shaky ground, but there’s enough there to enjoy: the banter between the characters, the hints of future plot arcs, the general tone of daffy adventure. To quote Aquaman from that film (but not from the Snyder version): “I can dig it.” The new edit feels a lot more epic, more like a proper movie; the much-slowed pace allows all the characters room to breathe. We get some great moments, such as a heroic introduction to Barry Allen as he rescues his future girlfriend from a car crash, and a cute little scene of Alfred teasplaining to Diana. The plot is detailed a lot more thoroughly (albeit in a scene of incredibly clunky exposition), and we spend more time with Steppenwolf, learning more about his relationship with Darkseid and why Earth is so cosmically special. All told, it’s an improvement, even if the second half resolves into basically the same CG-heavy punch-fests as the theatrical cut; here the action is a little bit more coherent, but it’s a hell of a lot slower and as such (in my opinion) often a bit more boring. Plus I personally found the Cyborg story a bit of a drag; he’s a very dour character, moping over his lost life and bombarded by tragedy, and we get very little of the verve of his comic characterisation, and absolutely none of his animated counterpart’s sense of fun. In fact, the thing that I always butt up against is that for the most part these characters feel utterly divorced from their source inspiration; Superman looks and acts nothing like Superman, Batman is incredibly one-note. Flash and Aquaman are more successful in giving a new spin on those characters, even if Barry Allen is basically just Wally West. Only Wonder Woman looks and feels like what we collectively imagine Wonder Woman to be, and is by a country mile the best thing in the film.

I don’t really want to be too negative about it though, even if that was me just being negative for a very long paragraph. At the end of the day, I just do not get on at all with Zack Snyder’s interpretation of the DC Universe, to the point where I feel aggrieved at missed potential (treating the New Gods as just random conquering aliens!) and do not see anything of characters I love (Superman wearing black is not cool in any way shape or form). However. The existence of the “Snyder Cut” and the fact it ended up as a film that we can watch if fascinating, and it’s gotten me thinking of other films where we know additional material exists. Probably the earliest example of this I can remember is Biggs Darklighter in Star Wars; I remember seeing a grainy low-res version of that scene on the Making Magic behind-the-scenes CD-ROM that came out around the time of the Special Editions. Since then, as my knowledge and interest in film has grown, the existence of deleted or alternate scenes, or even entire cuts of movies, has grown and grown. Some of these have a kind of mythic status; others are curios. I remember reading the “removing the chip” scene in the Terminator 2 comic adaptation, so getting to watch that in the Special Edition DVD years later was fascinating. And, of course, you have The Lord of the Rings, which has spun deleted and alternate scenes into additional material for a whole other set of movies – the Extended Editions, which to my mind are the definitive versions of the films (even if Peter Jackson considers the theatrical cuts to be “official”).

And let’s not even get started on Anchorman: Wake Up, Ron Burgundy, which probably is a Top Ten all of its own.

So what we have here, then, are my ten favourite deleted scenes. Sometimes it’s just that I like the scene; sometimes it’s that I genuinely think it adds a great deal to the film overall. Some of these are now common knowledge, or part of a longer cut or special edition; some retain a sense of mystery. At least one I’d never seen before! But they are all very, very cool in their own right, and testament to the difficulty and organic nature of film production.

The Death of Saruman (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003): despite the theatrical King already heading well into three hours, it’s a shame Peter Jackson and co couldn’t find room for this scene, tying up Saruman’s story. It gives Christopher Lee one more moment to shine, spitting insults and attempting to divide the assembled heroes with his wizardly words, before he receives his comeuppance via beleaguered servant Wormtounge. It’s a great death, homaging one of his Hammer Horror deaths, and I genuinely feel the film is a poorer without it. It’s an excellent addition to the Extended Edition, and restores Lee’s visage to the beautiful end-credit portrait section where it belongs.

Removing the Chip (Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991): another scene now part of an extended Special Edition, this was mythical for a while; it seemed we knew about it even in ’91. In order to learn new things and adapt his programming, Arnie’s T-800 has his brain chip removed, basically; but once Linda Hamilton has taken it out of his head, she wants to destroy it and kill the Terminator while she has a chance. This is great characterisation, but the fact that the T-800’s ability to change and grow is referenced a couple of times in later scenes (“Are we learning yet?”) makes its absence feel all the greater.

Luke and Biggs (Star Wars, 1977): talking about “mythical”, this is one of the doozies. “Did you know there was a scene where Luke met his friend Biggs on Tatooine and they talked about joining the Rebellion?” – it was the stuff of legends. It foreshadows the later scene of Biggs at the Rebel base and gives his death more weight. However, I can understand its removal; it’s rather long and comes at a time when the film needs a lot of momentum to just get the droids to Luke and the adventure to really start. Plus Luke’s teenage friends ripping on him for claiming to have seen a space battle feels a bit atonal with the rest of the film at that point (funny as it is).

The Spider-Walk (The Exorcist, 1973): this one was another widely discussed with my friends (not in 1973, obviously), after its appearance in (I think) Mark Kermode’s documentary about The Exorcist. A supremely creepy scene where the possessed Regan walks on all fours, upside down, down the stairs. William Friedkin said the emotional intensity of it comes at the wrong moment in the film, and he’s probably right, but taken on its own terms it’s a really disturbing visual.

The World Trade Centre (Spider-Man, 2002): I guess this counts as a deleted scene, as it was supposed to form part of a montage in the middle of the film, but most people who saw it at the time will think of it as a banned trailer. Basically, Spider-Man traps a helicopter full of criminals in a giant spider web spun between the towers of the World Trade Centre. I remember watching it, and awing at it, when at university in 2001. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the trailer and scene were understandably shelved. I’m not sure if it’s available officially even twenty years later, which I think is a shame; it’s a fantastic scene (apparently one not directed by Sam Raimi, though) and the final image is actually both moving and powerful.

Pig Headed (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 1988): something that I’m not sure is quite as prevalent today is film fans discovering deleted scenes by reading officially-licensed adaptations, whether that’s books or comics. This scene I read in the Roger Rabbit comic adaptation. Bob Hoskins’ Eddie Valiant is assailed by the bad guys and dumped in the street with a bag over his head; when he removes the bag, this toon-hating ‘tec discovers to his horror they��ve given him an animated pig’s head. He promptly rushes home and attempts to wash it off in the shower. It’s both funny and a little disturbing, and leads nicely into the scene with Jessica Rabbit in his apartment, but I kinda understand why they cut it. For one thing, I think it raises some disturbing questions about what constitutes a “live” toon and ways to “kill” one other than the film’s Dip.

The Smart Guns (Aliens, 1986): that Jim Cameron really does like his Special Editions; I could have added something from The Abyss here, too. This scene is iconic, and to be honest it’s only recently I discovered it was part of the Special Edition; to me, Smart Guns and Aliens go hand-in-hand, so I must have watched the ol’ Spesh Dish quite early on. These are some awesome automatic gun emplacements, turrets that seek out and shoot anything that comes near. That’s cool in and of itself, but the tension as the crew watches the ammo count drop ever lower, and the Aliens keep coming, is masterful.

Finding the Crew (Alien, 1979): speaking of deleted scenes from an Alien movie, what about this doozy? Now included as part of an extended/director’s cut of the film (Ridley Scott’s another one of those who likes tinkering with his back catalogue), it’s a cool and incredibly creepy scene, but one that doesn’t make a lick of sense given the subsequent direction the franchise took. Ripley, near the end of the film, discovers the crew all gunked up in cocoons, and in the process of being turned into Alien eggs. Obviously this has been retconned, with Cameron concocting the Alien Queen in the sequel, but the scene on its own is very powerful. It’s also, incidentally, the first time we hear a strung-up human say “kill me” in an Alien film, aware that their fate is going to be so much worse than death.

Principal Ford (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 1982): I thought this was more-or-less mythical until I searched for it on YouTube this week. After Elliot frees the frogs in his science class, he’s brought before his principal, who believes the young boy is off his tits. He spouts some cringy commentary about drug use, peers out of his blinds, and is oblivious to E.T. psycho-kinetically raising Elliot’s chair off the ground. The twist is, despite never seeing his face, the principal is in fact played by Harrison Ford (presumably doing a favour not just to Spielberg but his then-wife, screenwriter Melissa Mathison). It’s a funny scene, and I think it could still be added without straining anything (unlike the bath scene that was briefly re-inserted), but as the film is practically perfect in every way, why mess with it? Steve knows what he’s doing.

Sergeant Candy (Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines, 2003): unlike the deleted scene from T2, this is neither useful character work or important plot-building. Rather, it’s one big gag, and in that sense I guess your mileage may vary on whether it’s worthwhile or not. A bunch of army and intelligence brass watch a video about the development of the cybernetics program, and we are introduced to Sergeant Candy, a soldier who will serve as the template for (essentially) the Terminators. He’s, obviously, Arnie, but the gag is he has an incredibly strong Southern accent, something that one of the assembled brass criticises, and then… well, I’ll save the punchline for if you wanna watch the link. I think it’s funny, and in-keeping with the slightly more frivolous tone of the first two-thirds of T3. It’s probably just as well they removed it, but on the other hand, there’s as much stuff in that film that doesn’t work as stuff that does, so maybe they should shove it back in just for the lols.

There we are; ten fun or important deleted scenes. Surprised/disappointed that I never had room for the famous “Octopus Scene” from The Goonies (which, like T2’s chip scene, is a cut moment that’s actually referenced later on!). maybe in a few years I’ll come back and do a Special Edition of this list, and include, like, fifteen items or something.

#top ten #movies #special edition #directors cut #justice league #zack snyder's justice league #aliens #lord of the rings #terminator

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ol-plots-blog · 7 years

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The dungeons were dark, damp, and silent, and Lysander’s skin was prickled with goosebumps from the moment they entered.

It was strange to walk through Hogwarts castle at night - the stone hallways were so devoid of life. Each footstep echoed, but not with the chattering or laughter of students going to or from class, as Lysander could remember; it was as though a blanket had been laid over everyone and everything, muting it beneath layers of heavy fabric. They’d all been nervous and put off by the nothingness of Hogwarts, instinctively on high alert and wands drawn, even though they knew the castle had been secured, save for one or two persons of question.

It didn’t ease the jumpiness of their demeanour when Corbin Elloway led them down into the sealed-off dungeons, the oppressive silence even more pronounced. Lysander had given the instruction for the dungeons to be evacuated, to make way for their party, as well as to dislodge the great blathering idiot that is Samwell Whitmore, but even still - they’re so quiet that Lysander can feel the back of his neck prickle. He isn’t a man that fears much; he prides himself on being unshakeable, persevering through the worst of it with a grin, and it would take more than an empty labyrinth of dungeons to spook him. And yet - it unsettles him, because Lysander, better than most, knows what’s possible down here.

The solid presence of Henry at his side calms Lysander. He senses him there, rather than sees him, though all of Lysander’s other senses ring with the familiarity of him, too: the smell of him, like wooden sawdust, crushed fall leaves, the salt of the ocean, clinging to him from home, or what’s become home since this whole thing began. The steady gait of his walk, heavy and measured, his long legs always keeping stride with Lysander’s own. And the feel of him, like Lysander’s body and his are in a constant orbit, push and pull, gravitating both toward and around one another. It comes from being life long friends; it comes from being bonded mates within a pack. Lysander needs no other.

But others, he has, filing in behind them in lines of two, their wands clutched at their sides. It’s been years since any of them had a chance to step inside the walls of Hogwarts again; not since their ill-fated attempt at guarding it before the riot in London had they set foot here. Back then, they’d been a group barely out of its infancy stage, still learning how to be together, fight together; they’ve had ten good years since, and Lysander knows all of them deeply, each of them earning their place within his pack and proving themselves over and over again.

And prove themselves they must.

They duck their heads as they enter a tunnel, Lysander in the lead behind Elloway, noticing the way the man seems a little more ragged than when they’d seen each other last. His letters had betrayed nothing of the weariness that hangs on Elloway’s shoulders, the grey at his temples; there had been trials at Hogwarts, but Lysander couldn’t have guessed the toll.

“Straight down, only a little further,” Elloway says, navigating a path through the rocky tunnel, dotted with the misshapen boulders of hard granite, protruding from the tunnel walls.

It’s not the most homely place that Lysander’s ever stayed, and speaking as someone who’s lived out in the open forest for months on end at one point, he knows uncomfortable when he sees it. And the deeper they go, tunneling further under the castle, the more Lysander feels trapped. He’s never been claustrophobic, but then again he’s never been so far from the grass and trees and sky; he’s never had to go without, not like this, and it already messes with his head to feel no wind, carrying the scent of wild prey and the last gasps of winter.

“It’s alright,” Henry says, voice a low rumble as his hand falls onto Lysander’s shoulder. “It’s not forever.”

“Feels like a fuckin’ tomb,” Lysander snaps, eyes darting around, seeing better in the dark than most of the others.

“But not ours,” says Henry, fingers tightening, grounding Lysander.

Lysander’s jaw is tight but he nods, a small jerk of his head to let Henry know he’s alright, that he’ll keep it together, and his eyes have to readjust when they step into a cavernous room.

It looks like its been hollowed out by a giant ice cream scoop, the sides smooth and the room feeling rather circular. Lysander’s eyes trace the walls up, up, to a pointed ceiling somewhere in the distance - but it never touches the ground nor the light beyond. The knowledge of that sits heavy in his gut as the rest of the Order spread out among the space.

“It used to be the Chamber of Secrets,” Elloway says casually, and all eyes turn to him sharply. He doesn’t seem to notice, busy inspecting one of the many tunnel mouths that lead away into the darkness. “Funny that, isn’t it?”

“Hilarious,” drawls Lexie, dumping her large bag down in the centre of the room, where several beds have been set up. “I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather sleep than the same place a giant serpent did.”

“Actually--”

“Not now, Knox,” June says gently, cutting Knox off before he can start.

Lysander doesn’t like it much more than the rest of them, but he keeps his mouth shut, eyeing the surrounds carefully. They’ve got a lot of exits, but each one is also a potential entrance.

“Where do these lead?” he says, pointing to the two in the back wall.

“We’ve yet to complete an exploration of each in full,” Elloway says, bashful, “but as far as we can tell, they lead into the castle. Some are caved in, while others remain functional.”

Lysander drops his things without care and walks toward one of the tunnels, its great, gaping black mouth yawning open, larger and larger as he walks closer. The myths and legends about the basilisk that had once roamed these tunnels doesn’t frighten Lysander, even though he’s not of pure blood. He figures his odds are better than the average.

“We’re going to need a full search of each tunnel as soon as can be arranged,” Lysander says, looking over his shoulder at Henry, who nods. “I want each of them mapped by distance and time taken to travel, as well as its condition and potential entrances or exits to the greater castle beyond.”

“Of course,” says Henry.

“Once we’ve established that, we’ll ward each of them so that students are not able to enter,” Lysander continues, feeling himself get back into the groove of it. “We might also be able to use one or two as a rigged trap.”

Henry nods, and starts taking notes by hand in a notepad, muggle pen scratching across the paper.

“We’ll also simultaneously establish our base down here, with a clear means of communication with the outside world. We’re expecting letters,” he says, adding the last bit to Elloway, who nods.

“If you need anything, we have the usual means of communication,” Elloway says.

Henry keeps writing, and Lysander wanders from tunnel to tunnel, looking at each of them. They’re intimidating, and he’d feel a lot better if he knew where each of them went.

“I should get back, I’m supposed to be patrolling the second floor,” says Elloway, rocking nervously, the dark circles under his eyes catching the shadows. “Georgette said she’d come in the morning, to see how things are.”

“Right,” Lysander says, preoccupied by the twists of one tunnel that make him crane his neck.

By the time he straightens, Elloway’s gone, and everyone is spread among the beds that have been erected for them. They look listless and dispassionate, and Lysander sort of knows the feeling - Skylar and Lexie undoubtedly missing the outside world as much as he.

“Come on, get off your ass,” he calls, and they perk up at the sound of his voice, but only slightly. “We’ve got a job to do.”

Lexie groans, but June makes a show of standing up, wand in hand, and brushing herself off. Always demure and spotless, June competes daily with Henry for most loyal, which makes Lysander smile.

Henry steps in.

“Alright, we’re going to assign each tunnel a number, and you will each be given a number and expected to explore, map, and catalogue it within the hour,” he says, voice authoritative, carrying around the cavernous space.

Lysander folds his arms and watches from the back.

“Lexie, tunnel one,” Henry calls, as though he’s raffling off prizes, pointing with the end of his pen to the tunnel on his right. “Tunnel two, Knox with Violet.”

Knox gives Violet a weak smile, but Lysander’s sure he can see sweat forming on his upper lip.

“Tunnel three, Skylar. Tunnel four, Demetria.”

They don’t look happy to be split up, and Skylar looks as though he’s about to protest when he catches Lysander’s eye. Lysander stares him down until Skylar’s mouth closes and his brow furrows.

“Tunnel five, June. And I’ll take tunnel six,” finishes Henry, looking up from his notepad while pushing up the frame of his glasses by the bridge. “Questions?”

Skylar looks to Lysander, who stares back coolly, and no one says anything.

“Great. Within the hour, people,” Henry says, and everyone jumps to action, wands in hand.

Lysander stays where he is, propped against the cold stone that bites into his shoulder, watching his pack split up, taking their assigned tunnels with quiet determination. Knox takes Violet’s hand, allowing her to help him into the tunnel mouth, while Lexie strides into the darkness of her tunnel without so much as lighting her wand. They’re an odd bunch, no denying, but they’re as close to family as Lysander has allowed himself to get.

Once they’re all gone, swallowed up by the darkness, Henry walks over. He’s taller than Lysander - shot up like a string bean in their third year and hasn’t slowed down since.

“You coming?” Henry asks, jerking his chin to the tunnel to Lysander’s left. “Might lead somewhere interesting.”

“Pass,” Lysander says. “Thought I’d stay and unpack the essentials.”

Henry snorts. “You mean that stash of whiskey you smuggled in? Not sure that counts as essential, Lys.”

Lysander just grins, pushing off the wall and closing the space between them. “That’s for me to decide.”

“And I don’t think it’s going to last you,” Henry adds, a thoughtful frown on his face. “You’ll have to get more from somewhere.”

“Hogsmeade is only a short walk away, and I’m positive I could get a crate or two brought over,” says Lysander, shrugging. “Where there’s a will.”

Henry doesn’t smile, even though Lysander knows he’s being downright charming.

“Stop worrying so much,” Lysander says, bringing his hands to Henry’s robe, smoothing out the lapels. “We’re going to be fine here.”

“I think you’re being a bit too nonchalant about things.” Henry keeps frowning this small little Lysander-specific frown, for when he can’t work something out about him. “Did you forget why we’re here in the first place?”

Now it’s Lysander’s turn to darken, pulling away from Henry. “Stop the bad guy, save the day. What other heroics would you ask of me, Hen?”

“I’m not asking you to do anything--”

“Aren’t you?” snaps Lysander, staring Henry down. To his credit, Henry stands his ground. “Isn’t the whole fucking reason why we’re here because of you?”

“No, we--”

“No,” Lysander says, cutting him off. “You. You wanted this, and I agreed. You wanted to do more. You were the one tired of waiting. You were the one who thought being more proactive is what we needed. Well, we’re here, aren’t we?”

Henry says nothing, watching Lysander, who shoves past Henry to kick open his trunk. From within, he pulls out one of the bottles he’s stashed within, and instead of reaching for a glass, takes a mouthful directly from the bottle.

“You happy now, Hen? Got what you wanted?” he says, taking another mouthful, eyes closed as he swallows, relishing the feeling of his throat burning and lungs screaming for air.

“Lys,” say Henry, coming closer. “Lys, stop.”

Lysander doesn’t.

“Lys--” and Henry snatches the bottle from Lysander’s hand, spilling some of it, and Lysander can’t help but watch the liquid fall to the floor, anger swelling up. “Christ, Lysander,” Henry murmurs, looking at him.

He feels the concern radiating off Henry, but doesn’t meet his gaze.

“Just go,” Lysander says, and when Henry doesn’t move, Lysander turns to look at him properly. “Go.”

It’s not an order - not an alpha order, anyway - but Henry nods, placing the bottle on the ground and walking away, over to his assigned tunnel. Lysander watches him go, slipping into the darkness, and when he turns to look at Lysander, their eyes meeting, it’s Lysander who looks away first.

The silence once Henry’s gone is absolute.

Exhaling loudly, running a hand through his long hair, pushing it back away from his face, Lysander sits heavily on one of the beds. He misses home - the sea air, the sound of the gulls in the morning, the crash of waves whenever there’s a pause in conversation. He misses the woods that butt their home, knowing an escape is always possible. He misses his room, his study, his bed - Henry beside him, the others around.

Lysander never wanted this war - he never wanted to have to do any of this. But the war came to him in the form of Lowell Tegus, a face that had become twisted with revenge and determination, and Lysander knew that he was the only one who could stop this world from imploding. Because Lowell was more than capable of doing everything he did - and didn’t - promise; he would make it happen, because that’s what he did. He got things done.

The weight of it all sits heavily on Lysander’s shoulders, and he reaches forward for the bottle, now lighter than when he’d last held it. Without thinking, he drinks - drinks until his throat burns in that beautiful way, and his lungs beg for air. He drunks until his head rings, and when he surfaces, eyes watering, the ex-Chamber doesn’t look half bad.

It’s just another place, it’s just another job. He’ll get through this, and they’ll be one step closer to finishing the whole thing.

Or Lysander tells himself, taking another swig from the bottle, anything to feel the burn, anything to feel something other than this - the gnawing ache for release, for this to be over. He drinks until it goes, and then he drinks a little more to make sure it stays that way.

He’s drunk by the time the others return, but it’s nothing they haven’t seen before. They’ve come to expect it from him, stumbling, propped up by Henry to make it to the bathroom. Lysander might be their leader, but it’s Henry that takes care of everyone, not him.

There’s a hand easing him into a bed, water pressed against his lips, and then he’s out, the sound of voices bubbling around him, none quite penetrating the fog in his brain.

And when Lysander dreams, it’s of the past, rather than the future - why dream of something and torture yourself with a promise you’ll never keep?

#tw: alcoholism #tno

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punishandenslavesuckers · 7 years

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She has no throne. Girls without thrones should not have knights, but hers won’t go. Princess Zelda – the girl who killed Calamity – would love to fade into legend, but Link’s bought a house, he’s fighting off monsters, and he’s selling giant horses to strangely familiar Gerudo men. She’ll never have any peace now. (ao3)

(chapter one) (chapter two) (chapter three) (chapter four) (chapter five)

(chapter six) (chapter seven) (chapter eight) (chapter nine)

When Zelda wakes up, the sun is coming through holes in the roof, illuminating the otherwise dark interior of what was once a cottage. The stone work has held up, but the wooden panels rotted out, leaving only the support beams choked with creeping plants and hanging vines. The floor is packed earth carpeted in moss. Wildflowers grow riotous in the corners. Perhaps, she thinks, the flowers weren’t there last night but this is just what happens when Link stays in one place for too long – an involuntary resurgence of the wild.

He’s asleep presently.

Lying on his side, facing her, his head resting on her arm – Zelda should be used to this. To seeing Link unaware in the mornings. She should be bored of how he pulls near to her, annoyed by the fact her arm is numb or that his hair is damp and he obviously didn’t dry it out properly before getting back in bed. (He woke early to bathe in the lake.) She should not care that his skin smells a little like mint bar soap. She should not catalogue the small involuntary way his lips part when he breathes. His features smoothed by sleep should be familiar (one hundred years familiar). It should not be so impossibly hard to resist touching him.

Zelda flexes her fingers experimentally, pins and needles roving down the limb. Link’s breathing evenly against her shoulder. Laying like this, her fingers can just barely reach the empty section of bedding where Draga laid last night. It’s empty now. Cool with the absence of its right occupant. She wiggles her fingers. Feels a stab of numbness.

She is loath to move, but does, slowly sliding her arm from under Link’s head and rolling onto her stomach.

When she does, she finds Link awake and looking up at her.

“Hello,” she says.

He mouths something that might be a ‘morning’ but it’s too early for speech.

She pushes his hair gently from his brow. “Where’s Draga?”

Link doesn’t raise his head, but he signs, one handed, ‘Scouting. Mountain.’

“Will that take a while?”

Link nods closes his eyes.

Zelda is struck – though not for the first time, nor the last – by the impression Link looks… not odd exactly. Rather, in moments, in passing, from certain angles between one breath and the next, he looks out of place. Like she’s seen his face in another context -- on ancient coins or the carvings of lost civilizations. He’s anachronistic. A fixed point.

Led by impulse, she traces his features with one finger.

Link, for his part, lets her do it. His eyelids twitch a little, like he’s very consciously keeping them closed. Zelda monitors this with a small corner of her brain, while the rest of her attention follows her fingers on his skin. Like a blind woman reads braille, Zelda runs her fingertips over Link’s mouth, resting there to catch the heat off his breath. Then she draws her thumb with some modicum of pressure – like touch-testing a tea mug – against his lower lip. He opens his eyes and looks up at her.

For a moment, neither of them move or say a word.

Link just studies the way Zelda looks at him.

Then – gently, with the ease of long practice, iterated in a history she still has no notion of – Link takes her thumb between his teeth and closes his mouth around it. She stops breathing. Her thumbprint is hot against his tongue, a coiled press of heat in his mouth. Then he licks an obscene path from her thumb to her forefinger and she just –

Zelda loses track of things then.

She’s aware in broken instances -- her fingers tangled in his hair. His weight on top of her. That she’s kissing him, mouth-to-mouth and clumsy, her lips prickling with pressure. She closes her fists at the back of his skull. When she does, Link makes this low animal sound in his throat. She pulls his hair and he moans , eyelids fluttering for a second. Intoxicated by this, Zelda pushes Link’s head down against her throat and he kisses her there. She guides him lower, guides his mouth against her body and he kisses her wherever she takes him – a slow path from her breast to her belly.

He only moves on his own when his mouth finds the waistband of her panties and he uses his teeth, then his right hand, to draw it down her leg.

The sight of him – her unreadable knight escort, bowed, eyes closed, his face between her legs – is manifest every sweat-sticky fantasy Zelda’s ever known. Formless teenage notions long before it was okay to think such a thing about him. Ignored and pushed down until now where it asserts itself as a compound rush of want and guilt. It’s so intense she almost stops him, but before she can speak, he looks up at her. In no fantasy of hers did she imagine that expression – arresting her where she lies.

He smiles just a little. It makes her entire heart hurt. Then he lowers his head and kisses her, gently, at the soft V of her legs. She very much forgets to feel guilty then. Link touches her, fingertips first, exploring, pushing gently but insistently in. When he has her writhing, he draws his tongue against her labia and circles her clit. Then he does it again.

Zelda moans.

When his tongue slides into her, she’s shaking. When he licks her open, she’s arching her hips to meet him. Rising and falling slowly. She cries out but the sound melts into a moan, her body pulsing in time to the rhythm Link laves into her. She’s breathless. The orgasm is in her toes and her fingertips, sparking blue behind her teeth. Zelda comes when Link is knuckle-deep inside her, two fingers coaxing her to obscenity. He closes his mouth over her clit and swirls his tongue over and over in agonizing little circles until she’s gasping, toes curling, spine bent, riding out her climax against Link’s mouth until the lightning recedes from her blood. Then she’s slack beneath him. Her heartbeat throbbing in every nerve.

Her fist aches where it’s closed against the back of Link’s head. Retroactively, she realizes she must have been yanking discourteously hard for the last ten seconds or so.

“Oh, my goodness!” She lets go. “I’m sorry . Did I hurt you?”

Link sits up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He still doesn’t say a word. He just shakes his head. His eyes search her face – looking for direction she thinks. So, Zelda sits up and pulls her shirt off entirely. He doesn’t move. Just… looks at her like he’d be fine just sitting there and getting to look. So, she slides her fingers into his hair with two hands and closes them tight. Tugs, gently, until he draws a shaky breath and she rolls sideways, pulling him down on top of her.

He’s still fully clothed.

He’s got one knee between her legs and his mouth pressed along her jaw. She draws one knee up, setting her heel into his lower back, making sure he feels her do it. She is fairly certain where things are supposed to go next. Link’s breathing fast and unsteady. He turns into her touch, time and again. She pushes his tunic up so she can hook her fingers into the waistband of his pants but when she does it, his breathing hitches too hard.

She stops and lies back, smoothing her hands against his hips beneath the tunic.

He looks at her. His hair’s in his eyes.

“We don’t have to,” she whispers.

Link keeps watching her.

“We have all the time in the world now, you know.”

When she says that, Link leans down and kisses along her jaw to her ear. His voice comes, finally, a little rough, a little hot against her skin when he says, “I feel crazy when I look at you.” And when she shivers, he buries his face against her neck and says, “I don’t know what to do.” She can hear his smile. “You make me nervous.”

She laughs. “You don’t seem like you’re nervous. You seem like you know exactly what you’re doing.”

“I’m shaking,” he whispers.

His eyes are closed against her neck. She can feel his heart racing where his chest is flush to hers. He’s not wrong, now that she’s paying attention. There’s a tremble in Link’s shoulders, in his hands. Like pre-battle nerves. She hadn’t noticed when he was moving and… being distracting but now – laying on top of her, his weight braced against his hands and knees – she can see the shiver in the lines of his body. So profound it’s almost in his breathing, on his tongue.

She slides one hand into his hair, holding the back of his head. “Why are you nervous?” she murmurs. “It’s just us.”

He mumbles something against her collarbone.

“What?”

“That’s why I’m nervous.”

She laughs. “Well, what do you like to do? If it wasn’t me?”

She can feel him blushing without even seeing it. He raises a hand to cover his eyes. “Not helping…”

“You’re embarrassed?”

He nods.

“You know you don’t have to be, right?”

He peeks at her through his fingers.

“I would be… curious to know what you like. I, ah, am not very, you know… experienced, but I’d like to…” She clears her throat. “Be warned, I might not know enough Sign for this kind of conversation.”

Link laughs and that’s the same moment that Draga – back from his scouting mission and having heard conversational voices from the cottage – steps through the open doorway with a pack over his shoulder. Zelda is too surprised to react. She just sits there totally naked with her former knight escort lying on top of her. Draga blinks at them, a little surprised. Not the appropriate amount of surprised. Just a little surprised. Like you’re surprised to find a stack of laundry not the way you left it. Then, he shoulders his pack, rolls his eyes, and walks right back out the door.

“Sorry,” he calls, waving over his shoulder.

Link, dumbfounded, looks to her.

“Wait. Draga!” Zelda flails, grabbing her tunic. She yanks it over her head and dashes out the door, tugging her hair out of the collar. It’s inside out. Wonderful. It’s long enough it covers… most of her thighs. Whatever. It will have to do. She scrambles down the overgrown garden path, chasing Draga toward the lake. “ Wait . Hold on.”

Draga’s halfway to the beach, down the path from what was once a fence now rotted to a series of posts stuck up from a choke of wildflowers. He, unlike Link, looks a little out of place in the untamed greenery. He turns to watch her race barefoot out of the cottage to stand in the grass in front of him, panting a little, her hair going every which direction. He waits. Which is unfortunate because she ran out the door in such a hurry, she hadn’t fully formulated what she was going to say to him and now she’s not wearing any underwear and standing in wet grass and it’s terribly undignified. Draga, sensing she might be at a loss, glances very particularly down at her toes sunk in the moss and then levels a look at her, eyebrows arched.

“Yes?” he says.

“Um,” she says, the picture of trained diplomacy and royal upbringing. “Sorry.”

He gives her an owlish look of genuine confusion. “For what?”

“For… that.”

He blinks at her. Birds chirp in the canopy.

“Well,” he says slowly, still looking a little puzzled, “you might warn me next time so I don’t walk in, but otherwise you have nothing to apologize for.” He tilts his head. “Unless you think you do?”

“Oh, um…” She should honestly be better at this. Except that’s not true because you don’t practice for a division of need in twin directions and how to articulate that. She blows air between her lips. “I don’t know. We never talked about this kind of thing so, given that I didn’t set any ground rules – which is entirely my fault – I’m asking if I have something to apologize for. I… I suppose. Yes. I’m asking.”

Draga sets on hand on his hip and gives her a lopsided look to match his smirk. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. Don’t make fun. I’m new at this.”

She feels Link walking down the path behind her, moving to stand near the gate to the garden, listening. Draga glances at him, then at her.

“I thought I made it clear I don’t have any expectations.” He slings his pack to the ground, leaving it there to face them properly, arms folded over his chest. “You don’t have to tell me everything. I’m not unclear on this; you two have been partners a long time. You deserve to have this – whatever it is – without complications.” He shrugs. “If you would like to complicate things, that’s your choice. I do not care either way.” He pauses when, in review, that sounds a little harsh in Hylian and swaps to Gerudo. “I mean that I value our relationship, I just mean you’re not obligated to include me in everything. You’re not committed to me. I don’t harbor resentments on that front.”

Zelda processes this.

“Well, just so you know, I think we feel fairly committed to you.” She glances at Link to confirm and gets a nod. “Yes. So, we are comfortable complicating things.”

Draga frowns. “Do not rush into this.”

“I’m one hundred years late to everything,” Zelda says blandly. “I physically cannot possibly rush anything I do.”

Draga looks a little appalled. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. I’m pointing out that I don’t feel that I’m rushing into anything.” And when he looks skeptical, she says, “Okay, admittedly if we’re talking strictly physical things—” Draga’s brows arch a bit— “then I will need to go slow because I do not know what I’m doing, but in all other matters I feel very confident.” She tries to not be aware of the fact she’s wearing an inside out tunic and has terrific bedhead. “I meant what I said back in Tabantha, you know. I still do.”

Draga shakes his head. “I know you do. I’m just saying that you’re under no obligation.”

“Have I ever told you… what it was like fighting Ganon for one-hundred years?”

The neutral green of his eyes disappears. “No,” he says. His eyes are very wide. He looks over her shoulder to Link then back at her. “You’ve never told me that. Why does that apply to what we’re talking about right now? Not that I do not want to hear about it, but…”

“Yes, it relates. I promise.”

She’s suddenly happy for her bare feet in the grass, the feeling of the morning air on her skin in new and intimate places. She feels Link move to stand at her side and after a moment he takes her hand in his, threading his fingers through hers. It’s unreal how such a simple thing makes her heart swell. She smiles at him. His eyes seem bluer than the sky in that moment.

“I haven’t really told him either,” she explains, looking back to Draga.

“You don’t have to tell either of us,” Draga says quietly.

“I think I need to tell you.”

He and Link exchange a look. “Then tell us. We’re listening.”

She begins.

“It wasn’t linear exactly. It’s not like I was aware for one-hundred years straight in that castle, in that… room. That’s not how it worked. There was magic. So much of it I was barely myself sometimes.” Zelda tightens her grip on Link’s hand. “I slept when I made Ganon sleep. I woke whenever he woke. I was not aware of the time between unless I…” She shivers. “There’s part of me that was aware of time you see, but I just keep that part separate. I couldn’t stand it if I remembered. What I remember is it was like waking from a nightmare over and over except it was the nightmare you were waking up to.”

Draga’s looking at her in a way she’s not sure she knows. Link’s hand in hers is tight.

“I fought for so long. So many times, I woke and I… it was like smothering someone.” She’s breathing too fast. “The binding magic I mean, it was like holding someone’s head underwater over and over. I would wake up and kill him again and it was so…” Violent. Intimate. Necessary. ( But , says part of her, didn’t it feel good to put the bastard down ?) She swallows. “I don’t know if I could do that again.”

There’s a quiet.

In the silence Draga says, “Him?”

She blinks.

His eyes seem iridescent. She’s not sure how. The color of someone’s eyes is not usually so notable. He inclines his head. “You said ‘him’. The Calamity… was a person? I don’t understand.”

Link’s looking at her too.

She wipes her eyes.

“Once. Maybe. Eons ago. Human and something else. You can’t seal a human soul for ten thousand years. A conscious being. It rots like a carcass. Goes insane. Becomes . That’s what happened to him and what I started to think it would happen to me.” She tries to smile, but her mouth won’t do as she asks. “I fought him so many times I’ve lost count. I woke, I fought. I woke, I fought. Over and over. I never remembered the sleep so it was like… like a hundred battles in an unbroken string. Like fighting a war but never sleeping. As a whole… it wasn’t that long really. But it was relentless. After a while, I stopped feeling anything.”

Draga is closer now, close enough to touch. “That’s a very human reaction to an impossible thing, Zelda.”

“I’m not always human though.”

His expression crinkles. “Don’t say that.”

“Sorry. I just… I didn’t feel human when I was fighting Calamity. I didn’t feel human again until Link woke up.” She laughs, but it’s a cracked sound. “You two make me feel human again and you should know that because I just don’t feel about things like I used to. I just don’t give a shit about too fast. Or proper or right. There is no ‘too fast’ for me and it scares me because I know other people don’t think like that. And you’re not obligated to think like that, but you should know it’s how I feel. I just love being awake, finally. Does that make sense?” She scrubs her face with her hand. “Am I making any sense? I can’t –”

Link catches her chin in his fingers. When she turns, he kisses her. Her tears wet his tongue, but he just keeps kissing her until her shaking recedes and her breathing slows, until she’s grounded. He pulls back then and Draga touches her cheek so she looks at him. He’s bent a little at the waist so he’s closer to eye-level with her, his face close enough that she feels the pull to kiss him too, but she holds still.

“You make sense,” he says. He lowers his hand. “Thank you for telling us.”

“I didn’t mean to start crying. Goodness. I’m always crying.”

“Zelda, of all people, you owe no apologies to anyone.” Draga holds her gaze. “You defy explanation. The fact you still think you owe anyone any explanations…” He shrugs. “The both of you are better people than me in that way.”

“You’re a good person,” she says, a little defensive on his behalf.

He gives her a lopsided smile. “I’m better when I’m around you two and I’m not fishing for reassurances. You deserve to be happy.”

Link looks at Draga.

“So do you,” he says, out loud, quietly.

Draga reaches for his travel pack. “I’ll try to remember that,” he says, grabbing the strap. “Are we going to hike out of here or –?”

Zelda catches the front of his tunic so she can kiss him. He holds still for her while she does it. When she pulls back, he gives her a carefully calm sort of look. Business-like. He picks up the pack like she hadn’t done anything.

“Okay. Are we getting a late start then?”

Link grabs him by the collar and pulls him down, mouth to mouth, grinning. Zelda yanks the pack from his hands and Draga laughs – muffled – when she grabs him at the waist and starts pulling him back up the path toward the cottage, but pulling with comic over-enthusiasm so he threatens to over balance. He fights to keep his feet, saying loudly, “We really need to get on the road,” and “I appreciate this, but if we leave any later we’re not going to reach the shrine until sun down,” and finally, “We really, really don’t have time for this.”

Which is when Link hooks a leg behind Draga’s heel and torques hard to the right, yanking the taller man over with a “ Goddammit , Link!” and all three of them end up sprawled in a patch of wild flowers. Zelda, who was not expecting that, spits her hair and a bit of heather out of her mouth and glares at her knight escort who doesn’t look even a little sorry. Draga’s laughing, lying on his back with one hand over his face. Link uses the opportunity to climb on top of Draga, swinging one leg over his hips to take a seat on top of him. Zelda uses the opportunity to grab his wrists and pin them in the moss over his head.

He rolls his eyes.

“You’ve got me,” Draga says sarcastically. “We’re on a timetable.”

“No, we’re not,” she says, bending down to press her nose against his, scrunching up her face.

He scowls for dramatic effect. She just kisses him a bunch, all over his face, until he makes a sound of disgust.

“We have –” she keeps kissing him – “all the time –” she does it some more – “in the world.” She threads her fingers into his, leaning her weight against his palms and bending down over him so her hair falls over her shoulders, framing his face. She leans down to kiss his mouth, feels him go a little slack under her. “But I’m always in a rush.”

She hears the sound, unmistakably, of Link pulling Draga’s belt open and the Gerudo draws a breath through his teeth.

“Are you serious?” he demands, annoyed.

Link shrugs. “I can make it quick,” he says in a tone that sends a zip of heat down Zelda’s spine.

Draga looks unimpressed. “That’s what you think.”

Zelda leans down to speak in Draga’s ear, “Do you want us to stop? For real?”

He thinks about it. Then, “No, but I’m serious about not wanting to hike in the dark.”

Link and Zelda exchange a look. Link shrugs.

“Fine,” Zelda says brightly. “Like I said: All the time in the world.”

“Great.”

There’s a beat.

“Are you going to let me up?”

Zelda leans back, tilting her head like she’s admiring the view. “In a moment.”

He glares. “You’re making us late.”

“Mmhmm.”

Draga mutters, “Fucking Hylians…”

Climbing a mountain is not the hardest thing Zelda’s ever done, but it certainly won’t be easy. The pale stone cliffs of the Gerudo Highlands stand as monstrous vertical walls jutting upwardly over the steep incline of the foothills and disappearing into the clouds. There is a narrow path, barely more than a mountain goat’s migration route, that is known to both Link and Draga. Leading from Lake Alumeni, along the cliffs at base of the highlands, to an ancient lava flow known now as Hamaar’s Descent. This is how they will reach the Statue of the Eighth Heroine.

“Properly this time,” Draga says, side-eyeing Link, as they prepare to go.

Link, who at this point is no longer sorry for paragliding into an ancient temple, shrugs.

“See,” Draga says, tugging his rucksack shut, “he’s not actually sorry he did it.”

Link signs, ‘I have climbed into hundreds of ancient shrines and temples. It was literally my job.’

Draga does not even bother trying to read his sign. “Whatever he just said, I’ll bet it wasn’t an apology.”

Link makes a face and they set off for the mountain.

They leave Epona and Arbiter to fend for themselves at Lake Alumeni, penning them under four large apple trees and shaking down said apple trees for fruit. Arbiter, it’s known, will do as he pleases but seems content to wait for Draga in whatever situation the Gerudo man leaves him. Link admits that the same horse would, in his own travels, often run off in the middle of the night then return days later.

“Arbiter comes from a wild lineage,” Draga says, navigating a windy switchback. “I told you before that my people came from the Deep Desert. Before there were sand seals, they bred giant horses specifically for traveling through the wastes. They were the best for the task, but wild in temperament. They would reject all riders except the largest and strongest in a tribe. So, take it as a compliment he let you ride him at all.”

“How do you… know all this?” Zelda pants a little, following close behind the larger man.

“I read about them when I was younger,” he says, turning to give her a hand up into a narrow chute of stone, pushing her gently up the steep incline. “It’s odd what survives in recorded history. I can read five volumes of ancient animal husbandry, but we’re still not entirely clear what the hierarchy of chieftains has been in the transition from the Deep Desert to Hyrule. There are gaps in the line of succession. There is much, in my opinion, that has been purposely omitted, particularly around the arrival of the Gerudo in this country and it frustrates me.”

Zelda laughs, pulling herself up over a bit of a ledge. “Draga, if you hadn’t told us your intention to be swordhand to your people, I would assume you wanted to be a historian.”

“Swordhand isn’t the right word,” he says, grunting as he pulls Link up onto the ledge with them. “It doesn’t quite translate in Hylian, my declaration.”

“What’s an approximation?”

Link and Draga dust themselves off while he thinks about it.

“I’m not sure. It’s like a knight and a witch I suppose. Urbosa was, technically, of this profession if she hadn’t been chieftain.”

She frowns. “What’s the word?”

“ Ko’tame .”

“I don’t know it.”

“It’s a very specific role,” Draga says, moving past her. “Not common either. Urbosa’s duty as Chief supersedes being ko’tame.” He surveys the wide ledge snaking along the foot of the cliff. “Hmm, there are coyotes up the way. Keep a look out. I expect they’ll run when they see us, but it’s hard to say.”

Link slings his bow from the strap on his back, stringing it deftly.

Zelda tilts her head. “Do the Gerudo keep much record of magic-use in their culture?”

Draga shrugs. “Some do. The tribes from the Highlands keep close record because ko’tame are more common among us. Like a fishing village keeps record of good and poor fishing seasons and practices, but would not keep close, say, methods of blacksmithing. Most Gerudo culture does without serious magic. The most common magicians are stone workers – those who can draw out the nature of certain gems. Link has a few such pieces. The craft is very specific to old Gerudo magic.”

“I didn’t know that,” Link says.

“Why would you?” he says, a little bluntly. “The Gerudo hardly recollect it: that stone speaks to the People. History is not a priority to them.” He shakes his head. “When the Yiga started to kill my clan in Karusa Valley, capitalizing on an opportunity as we weakened, they told us to abandon the Naboorian ruins. Our temples and archives. They said the ancient fortress was not worth fighting for even though those are the very walls from which we took all our recorded history.”

“You grew up there?”

“For a time. But we had to leave it to Kohga and his mad clan because the rest of the tribes didn’t care.”

Link shivers.

Draga glances at him. “What?”

“Link killed Kohga,” Zelda says. “Did you know that?”

Draga frowns. “I heard he was dead. I didn’t know it was Link who did it.” He studies the smaller man, picking his way along the trail behind them. “Who in Hyrule haven’t you killed?”

Link looks stricken.

Realizing that he misjudged the severity of that phrase in Hylian, he amends, “I apologize. That came out wrong. Kohga was a monster. I don’t care who killed the fanatic.”

“He killed himself anyway,” Link says under his breath.

“Then he got off easy,” Draga says. “If he were still alive and his clan occupying that fortress, I would have gone there myself.”

“To drive them off?” Zelda says.

“No. To wipe them out. Every single one of them.” And when that earns him a pair of surprised looks, he frowns. “You don’t have context here. They killed members of my tribe when they besieged the fortress and they put their filthy fucking banners in all our shrines. There is a temple to the Eight Heroines there where I studied as a child and they filled with their symbols for abomination. I have no pity for them. They’re just like the beasts the Calamity set upon the land.”

“They are people ,” Zelda points. “I don’t disagree that they forfeit their lives when they sided with the Calamity. But they aren’t beasts.”

“They are to me,” Draga says calmly. “They are worse than beasts. They chose a demon and abandoned their humanity. They tried to kill you. To kill Link. To kill my people and end this world. Someone like that?” He shakes his head. “I kill them. That’s it.”

Zelda studies the back of his head. “You would have really killed them all?”

“I didn’t learn how to fight to then hesitate in defending what I care about.” He glances over his shoulder at her. “If they appeared, right now, and tried to kill Link before your eyes, don’t tell me you wouldn’t incinerate them.”

“I probably would,” she admits evenly, “I’m just saying, they’re still people even if I’m deciding to kill them.”

“Being a monster and being a person are not mutually exclusive things,” Draga says under his breath.

“Very true,” she says. “Which is why I would not lose too much sleep over it.”

He looks at her again. “Surprisingly cold-blooded.”

“I say that, but I would probably cry,” she says. “I cry very easily. Not while things are happenings of course, but later when I think it over. So temporarily cold-blooded. Maybe. I’ve never needed to kill anyone with magic or otherwise and I would like to think that I never will have to do that, so for now I’ll simply say that I have no idea how I’d really behave in that situation.”

“I laughed when Kohga killed himself,” Link says.

She and Draga both stare. Link shrugs, readjusting his shoulder strap.

He says under his breath, “It was funny at the time…”

They take a break.

For twenty minutes, they lay on a warm flat of stone and stare at the sky. Link lies between them as Zelda argues with Draga about the historical non-value of the Hylian record archives as they stand while Draga vehemently argues the opposite. He’s chops his hands through the air, angrily framing his points while she flails her arms pointing out the holes in his neatly boxed up ideas. Link, bored, watches them wordlessly until they’re basically shouting at each other. They sit up to do it properly.

“In a land like Hyrule,” Draga snaps, “I just don’t understand how you can be this careless with history.”

Zelda tosses her hands. “I’m not being careless. I’m saying I read most of those records and they were twaddle. We lost everything important already.”

“So just give up? That’s better.”

Zelda tosses up her hands. “This kind of thing really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Doesn’t it bother you?” he says, looking sharply at her. “You of all people know about repeating history.”

“Yes,” she says a little quietly. “I do know about that. I just didn’t realize it upset you this much.”

For a time, he doesn’t answer. Then:

“The Gerudo come from an ancient line of thieves and bandits.” He shakes his head. “You need to understand: We weren’t always a refugee race and we certainly are not one now. But we don’t even remember what brought us here, what disaster broke us or why we even came back to Hyrule in the first place. It’s not clear – in some texts, we came back because we sought the ‘heart of the world’. In others… we were just starving. But no matter why we came, the fact is my people have lost all account of it and I think there’s something there. Something important.”

“What makes you think that?” Zelda says.

“I don’t know. A feeling I’ve always had. I trust my instincts.”

Zelda smiles. “As I said, you sound like a historian.”

Draga snorts. “Maybe in another life.”

“Still think you’re wrong.”

“You are infuriating –!”

Link signs , interrupting, ‘You’re both pretty attractive when you’re yelling.’

Zelda, who caught most of his comment, sputters.

“What?” Draga says. “What did he say?”

“I’m not translating,” Zelda huffs.

“You’re hot,” Link says, ditching Sign.

Zelda immediately blushes red. Not because of what he said exactly but rather the fact it is the first time Link’s said anything like that out loud. He yawns, stretching like sun-warm cat, and lies back again. Draga glares. Zelda gets the impression that, were they not on the road to a site of extreme cultural and historical import for his people, Draga would be a little more receptive to the multiple advances.

As it stands he stops looking disdainful and with the same lazy disinterest, he rolls over, swinging one leg over Link’s so his knee is between the other man’s thighs, not touching him but Draga levers himself up on one arm so he’s looking down at Link from a sudden and somewhat suggestive position on top of him. It’s suddenly very apparent how much bigger Draga is. Link stares. Draga’s expression is still bored. He leans down, puts his mouth by Link’s ear, still not touching him but close enough Zelda can see his breath disturb Link’s hair when he speaks.

In Gerudo he says, “ Every time you talk, I imagine what you’ll sound like screaming.”

In Gerudo, ‘screaming’ can conjugate to very specific meanings. He means a very particular kind of scream. And Zelda, who knows that, covers her mouth to stifle a noise somewhere between a gasp and a laugh.

Draga rolls over and lies back again. “Anyway, Zelda, you’re wrong.”

“I am not!”

Link, red in the face, doesn’t seem like he’s going to interrupt them again.

They reach the foot of Hamaar’s Descent by sunset. From here, looking up, Zelda cannot see the statue. Just a long climb to an unseen trailhead. The ancient lava flow is a ripple of stone descending like steps to the ridge where they stand, walled on either side by high vertical cliffs, like the flow cut a fissure into the mountains. The air is colder here. Nearer to the snowy climes at the top of the mountain. There is a peripheral hum – a pressure along the sides of her eyes. Her hands feel scratchy when she looks up. Her heart’s racing.

“There’s old magic here,” Draga warns her. “That’s what you’re feeling.”

She nods.

They make the climb in silence.

Draga doesn’t look back at them while he leads their climb. They follow him until the sun is gone and Draga has to strike a spark into a torch from Link’s pack, the flame throwing shadows against the canyon walls. Eventually, the ground levels out and Zelda finds herself at the literal foot of a massive stone figure, ten stories tall and ancient – a carved Gerudo woman in robes, her hands extended before her and resting on the missing pommel of some great sword.

Draga stops at the top of the incline, torch in hand, and Zelda feels him tense.

“What is it?”

Eventually, Draga says, “My sisters were the last ones to come here.”

Zelda and Link stay where they are while Draga moves toward the foot of the statue. There are massive oval disks carved on the top of the statue’s feet, smooth and blank when he approaches. Zelda smells the familiar metal scent of magic and Draga runs a hand over the first tablet, like he’s wiping sand from the surface, and when his fingers pass over the stone, lines begin to push up like veins in an arm, snaking words into the rock and in that way, line by line, he starts to read. He is quiet long enough that Zelda supposes he’s immediately lost himself in translating what’s there.

“Draga, can you read it?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Draga, can you read it?” she repeats.

He still doesn’t answer.

“ Draga .”

“My name is here,” he says softly.

Zelda stares. “What?”

“My name is written here.” He sounds baffled.

“I don’t understand. Your family put your name here…?”

“No. My tribe died before I took this name. This record is over ten-thousand years old. My chosen name was written here.”

Zelda feels a prickle down her spine. “I don’t understand.” Zelda’s heart is racing. She can’t say why, where this panic is coming from, real as the fear before a fight. “What does it say?”

Draga doesn’t respond.

Her nails are biting her palms. Link’s restless suddenly at her side. He keeps looking around, like he hears something, but she can’t care about that because her entire being is knotted up, the fine musculature in her heart and in her fingers clenching. She doesn’t know why though. She can’t figure out why. Like the panic in a premonition, this feels like deja vu, her soul recollecting some terrible pain and anticipating it again.

“I don’t understand this,” Draga is saying. “This isn’t a full historical account. It’s a single record of the Chief who led Nabooru and the First People out of the desert. These are Nabooru’s own words.” And then, after a while, he whispers, “This can’t be right…”

And Link draws the Master Sword.

When he does – the blade burns silver in his hand.

Holy light lies now across the clearing, across Draga’s back. In the sudden illumination, Zelda can see what it is that Link was reacting to. There is a shadow. There. On the wall opposite Draga. But this shadow, unlike every other shadow cast against the stone, does not move when the light flickers. It’s opaque. Fixed. The shade – vaguely human in shape, grotesquely bulked, and impossibly tall – is so dark eats the light and smokes like a fire pit around the edges. Like the darkness is toxic and burning. Then, as Zelda looks on, fixed there by her horror, something writhes in the shadow and two red slits roll open. Two eyes roll open, inflamed and burning, draconic and unblinking, and fix on Draga.

Then…

The shadow steps forward.

Out of the wall, through the door (because, after all, it was always open) and it grabs Draga’s arm.

The effect is immediate. The entire mountain heaves. A tectonic uproar screams through the core of the earth the air sours , rots, turns chemical on Zelda’s tongue and the canyon goes black around them. All the light in the entire world goes out except the blazing star-shine burning in Link’s sword. It’s the only source of light to show them the scene: Black flames, oily and toxic, are burning from the demon’s flesh. It’s a pillar of smoke and ember. The hand is so huge it circles Draga’s entire forearm and when he – too shocked, too paralyzed by the impossible totality of every nightmare coming true – fails to move, it uses its other hand to touch his face. This opens same wound along his cheek that it put there in the Rito Village and his blood runs down his jaw and drips in the sand. The air stinks like copper and corpses.

It says, “You know your nature now.”

And vanishes.

Draga wrenches back from the stone alter and falls, a ragged cry caught in his throat. His shadow is thin and empty again. The crushing darkness is gone and in the aftermath, Draga just lies there, panting, shaking so hard she can see it where she’s standing. Link’s faster than her, so he beats her to Draga’s side, grabbing his shoulder to steady him. The sword in his other hand has begun to dim, the light receding as the evil withdraws but Draga just keeps shaking, breathing too hard, too fast. Even when Zelda kneels beside him, a halo of golden light in her skin, and touches him – he just keeps shaking, body racked with adrenaline.

“Draga. You’re okay. It’s gone. We’re with you.”

He whispers, “Calamity started with us.”

Zelda shakes her head. “No, listen to me: demons lie. Right? You told me that. You can’t –”

“It started with us.” Draga’s face is blank. “The Demon King was born Gerudo. The People were dying in the desert as he tried to lead them from the wastes. The demons came to him. The abomination began in him. The lord of monsters came to him in the desert and offered him the heart of the world.” Draga’s voice is steady, like he’s reciting and Zelda realizes he’s reading back the text on the tablet. His expression is blank, but in the dim light Zelda can see his cheeks are wet. If he knows he’s crying, he gives no sign. “He took it.” His voice buckles then. “He traded us for the Tri-Force. Every generation down the line.”

He makes a sound, almost a sob, but like the kind you make when someone wrenches a dagger from a wound, like he’s bleeding out. Like he’s wounded.

“Gods… I picked this name.”

“Draga. Please, this is a trick.” She gathers his face in her hands, shaking her head. “It’s just trying to trick you.”

“No, it’s what’s written. This was his name.”

“What are you talking about?” Link says, afraid.

“The man that became Calamity. His name was Drag’mire. That’s… my name, just older.” He turns his head away, pulling from her hands, and there’s blood and salt on her fingers. “You don’t understand. You don’t see how it works. I see it. I can see it now – the structure of the curse, it’s so fucking obvious now.” He’s breathing so fast, so ragged. “Zelda, I can’t…”

“Calm down,” Zelda whispers, horrified by his helplessness, afraid to her core. “Please, just tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m next,” he says.

“What?”

“I’m the next Calamity,” he says.

He looks at her when she says nothing.

“That’s why we were drawn together. You’re supposed to kill me.”

And Zelda, too startled to stop herself, says, “He gave up on reincarnation… he… he gave up… I didn’t… This… can’t be what he meant.”

Link drops his sword. He shakes his head and stands up, backing away.

“No,” he says, totally calm. “That’s not it.”

Draga breathes out, shakily, and looks at him. “You know it is.”

“No,” Link says. His face is bedrock. “You’re wrong.”

“You can feel it.”

“Fuck this,” Link says, startling them. He starts to sign, “Fuck this. Fuck that thing. Fuck this endless bullshit.” He steps forward, puts his boot on the hilt of the sacred sword and kicks it away, spinning into the sand where it lies shining and perfect in the moonlight. He moves forward, kneeling close so he can fit his hands along Draga’s jaw and look him in the eyes. He fights to keep his voice, “It’s not happening. We’re done. Zelda and I, we’re done with all of that. It’s over. No incarnation has ever had to do it twice.”

“It killed my whole family,” Draga says, “just so I’d be alone when it came.”

Link pulls Draga forward, kisses him, a little frantically, a little too deeply. He swallows, afraid, and pulls back. He says, “You’re not alone. You’re with us.” Like that’s enough to protect them. “Do you believe me?”

He obviously does not.

But Draga says, “I believe you.”

And it’s that lie that sustains them until the sunrise.

go to chapter 11...

#botw #legend of zelda breath of the wild #legend of zelda #zelda #ganondorf #link #interim #interim update #lozfic #in which the cycles begins again #and it sucks #rae writes #raewrites

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