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dahlia stop using pierce the veil songs as one shot inspiration challenge
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Emergency Contact
Frankie Morales x f!reader
Summary: Frankie gets in trouble and this is the last time you're helping him. At least that's what you tell yourself.
Warnings: angst, smut, post break up, mentions of drug/alchol use/abuse, military ptsd, frankie on a downward spiral and needs to get his shit together, emotional smut because I had to, fingering, oral (f receiving), creampie, frankie is literally this emoji -> 🥺 the whole time
w/c: 6.8K
a/n: part of @iamasaddie writing challenge 2.0!!! I picked puppy eyes brown and my genre was angst with the prompt: "Tell me how to fix this." And guys listen. I literally never write angst I’m such a softy but I tried my best with this okay! and I obviously had to include some smut I just couldn't resist hehehe. Also thank u to my baby love @undrthelights for finding theses pics and for everything else you do :) enjoy!
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You should scream at him, yell at him. Tell him to get the fuck out, fight him tooth and nail to prevent him from worming his way back into your heart, to avoid anymore pain. But then he’s against you, his chest flush against your back, legs tangling together under the blankets. He slips an arm around your waist, the other underneath you, pulling you against him tighter as he nuzzles into your neck, burying his face into your hair and takes a deep breath. “Just one more night" he whispers. "Please. Just let me have one more night."
The vibrations of your phone buzzing on your nightstand pulls you from a deep slumber, your heart is already pounding at the sudden noise, the rest of your body slow and sluggish as you try to gain your bearings.
You paw for your phone, squinting at the brightness of the screen when you find it. A call from a number you don't recognize. You debate letting it go to voicemail but the area code is local and that makes you pick up, a raspy Hello? leaving your mouth as you roll over in bed, glancing at the clock.
2:13 am.
The sound of your name crackles down the line, the immediately recognizable voice causing your heart to plummet to your ass.
"Frankie?" You ask, sleep quickly leaving you as tension takes its place.
"...Yeah, sorry, I…I didn't know who else to call." His voice is frail and pinched.
You don't have to ask him what's wrong, your brain already piecing the puzzle together You've been in this exact position before. The anger is already starting to creep in, your brow furrowed and stomach twisting as a familiar rage blooms in your chest.
"You couldn't have called anyone else?"
You know the answer is no. The rest of the boys are on a mission, leaving him behind after he failed on his promise to stay clean for long enough to get cleared to go. And now, you’ve fallen victim to that decision too,being the only person left to call whenever he finds himself without a leg to stand on. Frankie in trouble, you bailing him out. Just like normal.
"I'm sorry I didn't want to bother you I just..." he takes a deep breath and sighs. "I'm at the station on Oak street. Can you maybe... pick me up?"
You close your eyes and take a moment to compose yourself and reign in the anger at the way he's gotten under your skin already.
"What did you do this time, Frankie?"
He's quiet for a second before he finally says, "DUI. And um, slightly resisting arrest? It’s uh, it’s my first one and I didn’t blow too high so they’re letting me go as long as I show up for court in a few days."
His voice is soft but you can hear him fighting back emotion, his voice cracking and straining under the pressure. the sound eliciting sympathy you desperately wish you didn't feel.
"Jesus, Frankie," you sigh, defeated already.
It shouldn't even faze you at this point. It should be expected given the path he's fallen down since his return home from their last mission 3 months ago. The Frankie you knew before he left had been a steady force. Protective, headstrong but soft in his demeanor, so sweet and full of love. The man now standing in his shoes still holds some traits of that Frankie, but they've all been scarred and tainted with his fall from grace.
Memories of the nights spent tucked in his bed, his arms around you, his hands buried in your hair come flooding back like they usually do. The sound of his laugh, the feel of the downy hairs on his forearm pressed against your skin and the steady thrum of his pulse under his jaw as you placed kisses against his neck. The words you would speak softly to one another in the early hours of the morning, secrets only shared with each other under the protection of black velvet night sky.
All of it traded for bitter resentment and anger towards a version of the man that was ripped away from you.
When he was gone, you’d sleep in his shirts and on his pillow, clinging to the faded scent of his cologne as your brain conjured up ghost touches from his fingertips. Dreaming of the day that he'd come home, how he might touch you, and kiss you, the taste of his lips and the feel of his skin on yours. A reunion so deeply desired that the day after he returned was a sharp double edged sword - a blessing, and a curse. The Frankie that walked back in your life was broken, smothered with the weight of the innocent lives on his hands.
Warmth and tenderness traded for stony silence. Nights now spent at the bar, warming himself up with vodka instead of your embrace. Fights ending in harsh words and raised voices as he stubbornly dug his heels in deep, too ashamed to admit he needed help. Staying out late with no warning and coming back at dawn smelling of smoke, weed, and liquor. You are always wondering where he went, who he was with, if he was safe, or if he’d found someone else to soothe the pain.
Then the coke. An old habit that was kicked to the curb in his earlier years now back with a vengeance. Your ultimatum quickly following.
This or you.
A choice you prayed he'd be strong enough to make, but was clearly not.
And now here you are. Two months since you walked away, trying to convince yourself it was for the best. The majority of the last two months of his life is a mystery to you, which you've accepted is probably for the better.
"I know," he finally replies. "I'm so sorry baby, you know I..."
You can almost hear the way his jaw snaps shut, three words catching on his tongue. You don't need to ask to know what the next words are. Tonight was not the first time he's tried to use them in a vain attempt to patch up a crack in the foundation of your crumbling relationship.
There’s nothing but silence on the line as a war wages within you. Part of you wants to believe that he’s the selfish, careless man that he’s recently proven himself to be. But your heart whispers in your ear a softer notion. He's scared. Fragile. Battered. Embarrassed. Alone.
With a heavy sigh, you run your hand down your face in a feeble attempt to wipe away some of the grogginess clinging to you.
"I'll be there in 20," you say.
There's a pause before he speaks, "Really?"
Always an air of disbelief.
"Yes. But this is the last time I'm doing this Frankie, I mean it,"
"I know, I... thank you."
You don't bother to reply, simply hanging up the phone as the heaviness of this final gesture sets in. The gravity of the situation, of the line you're about to cross, already threatening to consume you.
This will, without a shadow of a doubt, be the last time you show up to save Frankie’s ass.
At least that’s what you tell yourself. Just like you told yourself the last time this happened and the time before that. But this time will be different. You'll set new boundaries. That's it, just ride this storm one final time and be done.
You know it’s a lie, one you desperately want to believe it.
___
He’s standing outside the doors of the small station, a cigarette dangling between his fingers, wisps of smoke rising and dissipating in the still night air. He looks up as he hears the engine of your car approaching, the red glow of his cigarette temporarily highlighting the deep frown on his lips as he takes one last drag before he flicks the butt aside and heads your way.
The anxiety radiating off of him is tangible as he drops into the passenger's seat, gently shutting the door and peering at you with wide puppy dog eyes full of shame. You don't look at him, focusing on backing out of the parking spot before pulling onto the road.
He picks at the skin around his thumb and bounces his leg, his jaw tight. You wonder how long he’s been at the station. How long he’s been sober. You’re still not sure if he entirely is right now.
Most of the ride is silent save for the hum of your engine and the clicks of your turn signal. His eyes never leave you, he can feel him boring a hole in your profile, trying to catch your eye as you watch the road.
"What?" you finally snap.
"Nothing, just...I was wondering if I could stay with you tonight. I can sleep on the couch, I…I don’t really want to be alone right now" he speaks so softly it makes your stomach lurch.
"Absolutely not."
"Please? I'll leave early in the morning, by the time you wake up I'll be long gone."
The rage is back, glowing red hot in your chest, fingernails digging into the leather of the steering wheel, your knuckles white and tense. How fucking dare he ask.
"Absolutely. Fucking. Not," your grit your teeth with each word, biting off the end of the sentence with a sharp finality.
"Right. Okay."
Silence takes over once again, your heart slamming against your chest, heat crawling up your neck as your cheeks grow red and damp. No. No. Absolutely fucking not. Absolutely not.
Frankie leans his head back against the headrest and rolls it to the side to watch you again. You can feel the disappointment radiating off him, hear him sniffling, his eyes, big and glassy, pleading when you glance over at him.
It would be a lie to tell yourself that your “plan” isn't already halfway out the window as your jaw clenches and your gaze ping pongs between the road ahead and the man beside you. Deep in the darkness of your soul you know that with Frankie is where your comfort lies. It’s tucked in the space between his ribs, squished alongside his heart and lungs, running the length of his spine and settling between each vertebrae. You worry you may never be able to completely dislodge it, unsure if it would ever fit anywhere else in any other person.
Maybe it would be easier if Frankie didn't fill up the cracks in your heart with the fractured parts of his. If he didn't take up room in your brain that's not his to own, if he didn’t crawl under your skin and take root into your DNA. Now every cell in your body knows what it feels like to be next to him, now programmed to cry out for his presence when he isn’t near.
And it’s no different now. He’s here, looking so pathetic it’s almost laughable, staring at you with tears sliding down his cheeks that glisten in the glow of the headlights passing you by. Crying over something that’s entirely his fault. You should be the one crying right now. Not him.
So you do.
Hot angry tears spilling over your lash line. Though you can’t decide who you’re more upset with. The man who drank himself out of your life, or yourself for falling for him once again in spite of it all. Either way, it’s not enough to convince yourself to stay firm in your decision.
Fucking pathetic. Both of you.
“You’re out first thing in the morning and then I’m done Frankie. I fucking mean it this time, we can't keep doing this to each other."
“Okay. I promise baby, I will. First thing, I promise." He replies quietly.
Your hand flinches with the urge to reach over and slap him for calling you baby. But instead, you clench your jaw and you shake your head at him.
"Don’t call me that, Frankie."
He quickly nods his head in understanding, his eyes again facing forward as he wipes away the wetness from his cheeks, watching the road the rest of the way to your house.
—
Neither of you move once the car is parked in your driveway. The silence is heavy, cut only by the tick of the engine slowly cooling once you remove the keys from the ignition. You chance a look at him and find him picking at his thumb once more, his face red, his eyes soft and timid when they meet yours.
“Tell me what happened, Frankie?”
You ask even though you don’t really want to know.
Frankie sucks in a breath and scrubs a hand down his face.
"I got into a fight at the bar, got kicked out, made the dumb fucking decision to try and drive home and...now I'm here," he laughs mirthlessly as he waves his hands as a vague gesture to you, your house, his current situation. You can't tell if he's telling you the whole story, his answer simple and devoid of context. The context you’re sure wouldn't be good for you to know.
“You could’ve killed someone, Frankie. yourself included,” you say after a few beats, your voice comes out sharp, frustration bleeding in each syllable.
He slowly nods as huffs out a breath.
"I know... it was stupid, and I was an idiot I...shit I was really careless and not thinking straight I’m sorry. I'm really sorry I-"
"I mean seriously Frankie,” you snap, cutting him off. “Do you ever, I mean ever, think about anyone but yourself? Or has it genuinely never crossed your mind that your shit might possibly affect the people around you?"
Frankie opens his mouth, eyebrows furrowed as he's about to respond. You don’t give him a chance to.
"How many more times are you going to take advantage of me, make me look like a fucking dumbass always showing up to rescue you? Why am I always the one covering for you, taking your crap, cleaning up your messes, only to have you throw it right back in my fucking face, every single time!"
Your voice cracks at the end of your sentence, chest heaving with each word that flies from your mouth. Two months worth of bitterness bubbling up from deep down, spilling over and cascading down your face in the form of frustrated tears.
"When did you become so fucking selfish, Francisco?!"
Hearing his full name fall from your lips spurs Frankie on, the last of his shards of resolve flying away as his walls come down.
"I don't fucking know okay?! I don't fucking know!" You flinch at the rise in his voice and his tone stings. But it's how quickly he follows up with a softer, feeble excuse that adds fuel to the fire, "I'm doing the best I can."
That does it for you. Hot searing molten rage pulses under the skin of your face, the tips of your ears hot with blood.
"Doing the best you can? The best you fucking can, Frankie? Fucking bullshit! Getting into bar fights, spending all your money on booze and blow, losing your fucking pilot license because you were too coked up to see straight? Was losing your driver's license just putting your best foot forward? Throwing your whole life away just because you refuse to get clean? Is that really the best you can do?"
You pause and swallow, giving Frankie a second to take it all in, letting him process the onslaught of scalding truths you've thrown at him, before you quietly continue,
"I can't keep doing this, Frankie. I just can't."
He sniffs and shakes his head in what appears to be defeat, his gaze fixed on his hands folded in his lap.
“I know...fuck. I know I’ve fucked up alright? I know that. I just don't know how to fix this," he admits quietly, his wide eyes watching you helplessly. “Tell me how. Tell me how I can fix this. Please."
You bark out a laugh, sarcastic and cynical.
"Are you serious right now? What do you mean you don’t know what to do? How many times did I help you try to find a therapist, try to get you into a program? How many times did I suggest AA? Don't fucking tell me you don't know what to do because you do."
He nods, shifting around in the seat, sniffling yet again as he looks back at you. "Okay, okay. I get it, okay? But what can I do right now? To fix this at least for tonight?"
You sigh, deep and heavy, your entire body now just exhausted. You half wish he would put up more of a fight, call you a bitch, snap back at you for going off on him. Maybe it’d make it easier for you to let him go. But instead, he looks at you with desperate eyes and you can feel your resolve crumbling once again.
"Just forget it, Frankie.”
But he won’t give up that easily. The man is persistent, you’ll give him that.
"I'm serious. Tell me what I need to do right now to fix this. What can I do to show you how sorry I am?"
You stare back at him, jaw clenched, biting back the next words you were about to speak. They die on the edge of your tongue. You know the answer is.
Not a single damn thing.
"Look, I'll try harder, I fucking promise alright?” His tone becomes more frantic as your silence stretches on. “I’ll fucking try harder, please just...please," Frankie pleads, more tears welling in his eyes.
Your throat is tight, your head spinning and aching as your blood roars in your ears. He's already taken enough, stealing more would simply be the end of you. Giving in now would mean you've swallowed the bait, falling hook line and sinker into his trap, stepping back onto the slippery slope you've fought so hard to escape. And for what? More heartache, more bullshit excuses, more fighting, more pain?
But one glance into his wide-eyed, watery gaze and you know he's got you. Again. Faster than you can tell your mind no, your heart, foolish and hopeful, speaks for you instead.
"Lets just get some sleep, okay? It's late. We can...we can figure it out tomorrow."
"Thank you," he whispers immediately, relief coming off of him in waves. "I really mean it, I-thank you, I promise I’ll—“
“Can we not talk anymore Frankie? I just wanna go to sleep."
"Yeah. I'm sorry, let’s go."
There's nothing left to say, washing over the two of you as you make your way inside. You give him a towel and dig up some of his old clothes that live in the back of your closet from when he was here almost every night. You're back in bed before he’s done with his shower, tucked underneath the covers with your face pressed against your pillow, the silk fabric soaking up your tears of sadness and frustration.
The water shuts off and you can hear him getting settled in the living room. A pillow being fluffed, the creak of the couch when he sits.
And then soft footsteps on the hardwood 5 minutes later, padding their way into your room.
He doesn’t knock. He doesn’t bother speaking either. He just simply creaks open the door and walks over to the other side of the bed, peeling back the covers before slipping into bed beside you.
You should scream at him, yell at him. Tell him to get the fuck out, fight him tooth and nail to prevent him from worming his way back into your heart, to avoid anymore pain.
But then he’s against you, his chest flush against your back, legs tangling together under the blankets. He slips an arm around your waist, the other underneath you, pulling you against him tighter as he nuzzles into your neck, burying his face into your hair and takes a deep breath.
“Just one more night" he whispers. "Please. Just let me have one more night."
You don’t have any fight left in you. Because at the end of the day, a night spent wrapped up in his arms, inhaling his scent, touching his skin and his beating heart is worth a thousand fights. And a million shattered dreams.
You don’t answer him, but you don’t tell him to leave either. Instead, you block out any looming thoughts, the impending worry of where this could go, or how bad the damage will be. For now, you chose to focus on the rise and fall of Frankie's breath against your skin, the way you fit so perfectly into his arms.
One more night.
Frankie presses a kiss into the back of your neck, repeating his previous sentiment in a rough scratchy whisper, "Just one more."
And you listen to it resonate, bouncing around the walls in your head and tickling the space behind your eardrums.
Inhale
Exhale.
You should want to fight.
But instead, your body melts his, molding your bones and flesh against his, fitting into all the creases and gaps that have been carved out and reserved just for you.Trying to forget, to bury this pain as deep as possible,. Just for tonight.
He waits a few more minutes, waiting until your breathing levels out with his before he makes his next move. His fingers trace mindless patterns on the skin of your stomach, goosebumps erupting under his fingertips, rippling outwards like a rock being tossed in a pond. He leans in once more, slowly dragging his nose up the length of your neck and curling his lip to press another kiss behind your ear. Then another.
And then another, this time lingering as he sucks softly on your skin.
Inhale.
You close your eyes, hoping for anything but this, yet feeling the sting of arousal spark below your skin.
And exhale.
You’re better than this. You won’t stoop down to his level, you won’t let him chew you up and spit you out again.
But fuck, his lips are soft and warm, so is the breath as he exhales against your neck, lightly swiping his tongue and soothing the faint red mark he left behind with a small little hum.
“Frankie..." You warn, albeit much more breathless and weak than you would have liked.
“Tell me to stop and I will," he murmurs, his beard gently grazing your sensitive skin, causing your toes to curl.
You take another deep breath, but this one is shaky, as you can't help but tighten your grip around his hand, squeezing his fingers as you lean your neck to the side, exposing more of your soft skin to him.
Dead in his trap. Caught so fucking easily. Pathetic.
But if his teeth and lips and tongue and soft, gentle touches are how you go down, then so fucking be it.
He hums his appreciation against your skin, scraping his teeth down to your shoulder, latching his mouth on a spot and sucking harder. Strong, callused fingers continue exploring, fiddling with the hem of your shirt, waiting for you to give him permission.
He rolls his hips forward against your ass and you bite your lip to stifle the whimper at how hard he is against you, his soft grunts in your ear traveling straight between your legs and fanning the flames building.
Then suddenly, he's sliding his hand up your shirt, squeezing your waist and traipsing over your chest until he’s cradling the weight of your breast in his palm, his thumb slowly brushing over your peaked nipple, and it takes every ounce of willpower not to moan out loud.
A small gasp escapes you instead, your fingernails digging into the back of his hand.
"Frankie."
This time not a warning. It’s a plea. A desperate, burning want that you should be ashamed of.
He murmurs into the shell of your ear then, his tone is deep and scratchy.
“I miss you...I need you, baby. Just tell me to stop if you want. But I... fuck I miss you so much."
You don't tell him to stop.
You roll your hips back instinctively, a warm wave of arousal washing over you at the feeling Frankie's hardened length pressed firmly against your ass. He grunts in satisfaction as his palm slides from your chest and up your throat to your jaw. His grip is gentle as he turns your head to face him, his lips against yours without missing a beat.
It’s too easy to fall right back into him, back into the practiced, very well rehearsed routine. To let him glide his tongue along the seam of your lips and coax them open so he can lick into your mouth, getting the taste of his tongue stuck behind your teeth. Too easy to let him remind you just how easily you fit in the palm of his hand, how tightly you’re wound around his finger.
He kisses you fervently, desperately almost, lips and tongue moving against yours as though he’s trying to devour you whole, just like he used to. He’s been starving for too long.But right now, he's finally found nourishment, the feeling of your body under his hands and the taste of you on his tongue feeding his soul. Wanting more. Always more, entirely unable to help himself.
“Wanna make you feel good,” he murmurs, his mouth half a centimeter away from yours. “Let me make you feel good baby, please.”
As if you could say no.
As if you even wanted to.
He pushes his leg between yours, thick, firm muscle under warm skin pressing against your clothed core and you answer him with a roll of your hips, seeking out any sort of friction you can.
It takes less than half a second for him to have you flipped over on your back. When Frankie truly wants something, he does it quickly and efficiently.
He moves above you, licking and kissing a trail down your neck. He makes his way down your body, greedily nipping at the skin stretched over your collarbones. He swirls his tongue over each nipple, only moving on when he’s satisfied. He presses wet, open mouthed kisses to your ribs and your tummy just above your navel, his beard tickling skin, making it twitch under his mouth.
Your body is cooperating far more than it should, your hips lifting up instinctually when he hooks his fingers into the elastic of your panties, your thighs automatically parting further, and your hands migrating to his head. Your fingers tangle in his soft curl, your nails softly scratching his scalp just like you know he likes.
And when his tongue drags up your thigh you have to sink your teeth into your bottom lip to stop the reactive moan. But your back arches with pleasure anyway, the last bit of your resolve evaporating into thin air as you give into him freely.
His hands burn hot where they smooth over your skin, a comforting weight and a familiar drag of calloused palms fueling the fire and tightening the coil in your stomach.
“Missed you so much,” he whispers, his breath fanning over your pussy before you feel the first stroke of his flat tongue up through your center.
This time, you're not strong enough to hold back the breathless mewl that leaves your mouth. You immediately push down on his head while simultaneously canting your hips upward, needing more friction, dying for more of everything he's willing to offer. He slides his arms underneath you and hooks his hand over your hip bones, holding you down and keeping you in place as he tries to find salvation between your thighs.
Heavy breaths through his nose as he uses his mouth, lips and tongue working in tandem to take you apart. Lapping and sucking at your clit while his fingertips nudge at your entrance, dipping just enough to tease, waiting until he hears the high pitched whimpers that he's after.
And when you've reached that level of desperation he wants from you, whimpering and panting, he slowly dips a finger in.
He moans along with you as though he's the one experiencing the pleasure. He's always gotten off on this almost just as much as you. The warm, slick slide of his fingers in and out of you, how you gush on his tongue, your thighs trembling on either side of his head, the tingle of his scalp when you tug on his hair.
More addictive than any substance he's ever found solace in.
And against your better knowledge, you're more than happy to indulge him, let him chase the high you give him and let yourself drown in it as well.
Your back arches off the bed as he adds another finger, grunting into you and thrusting faster as you tighten and flutter around them. He finds the spot he's looking for with practiced ease, whimpering into you and groaning along with you as he drags his fingers back and forth along the spot that has you bucking your hips into his hand.
He knows how to get you there. Knows how to do it fast. And right now, that's what he wants. He's craved it too long, spent far too many nights with his hand wrapped around his leaking cock your name on the tip of his tongue as he fucked up into his own hand. He wants to hear you fall apart again, feel you coming on his tongue, your walls clenching as they try to suck his fingers in deeper. Wantsto know that he hasn't ruined absolutely everything between the two of you.
"Come on baby, lemme feel you,” he urges, voice deep and rough as he brings you to the edge. His mouth, licking and sucking at your clit, works in perfect rhythm with his fingers, sliding in and out, crooking them at the exact angle and speed he knows will get you there.
"Please, Frankie...need to– fuck, I'm..." Coherent words evade you as he works you towards your peak, your breath stuttering as you struggle to keep air in your lungs. Your grip tightens in his hair, tugging roughly in an effort to ground yourself as the wave of euphoria starts to crest, the undercurrent pulling you down.
Frankie growls in approval as you tighten around his fingers, all your muscles tensing as the sensation crashes into you. Your mind and body shut off and float into that sweet state of oblivion as Frankie's name falls from your lips, mixed in with a litany of profanity and slurs and choked back moans. He doesn't stop, doesn't even slow down until you're yanking on his hair hard enough for it to hurt, trying to wiggle away from his touch.
Frankie raises his head up and locks eyes with you, the tip of his nose, beard, and cheeks shiny with your arousal as he looks up at you through his dark, heavy lidded lashes.
"Want you so bad," he sighs, breathless and needy, crawling up your body and resting his weight on his elbows on either side of your head. He kisses you again, soft and sweet as if he has the right, tasting yourself on his tongue.
You whimper into the kiss and hook a leg over his hip to pull his hips towards you. His cock strains almost painfully in his boxers when he grinds it against you, your warm arousal dampening the front of the fabric.
"Gonna let me baby?" He rasps when he moves to your neck, his teeth scraping sensitive flesh.
You both already know he's won. You're not even putting up a fight at this point, any dignity you thought you had left totally abandoned the moment you picked up the phone. But he asks anyway, needing the verbal affirmation, needing the confirmation that you want him as badly as he needs you.
And you can't lie.You're both equally weak and vulnerable. Two pathetic, heartbroken creatures chasing a temporary relief. A small glimmer of something to make the pain more bearable, something to fill the hole for the briefest amount of time.
You both know. And neither of you care.
No response to his question. Instead, you push up the hem of his shirt up and he does the rest, pulling it over his head and tossing it to the floor before he hooks a thumb underneath the waistband of his boxers and tugs them down his hips and off his legs.
Your hand finds his cock and he hisses at the contact, his hips shuddering as he pushes forward into your grip. You swear he's thicker and longer than before, heavier and hotter where you hold him. Your thumb brushes over the tip, spreading the pearls of pre cum around, coating the rest of his length to ease your glide. Frankie's mouth finds your neck again, tongue and lips tasting and teasing, his shaky breath in your ear.
You try to push up onto your elbows in an effort to roll him over, wanting to take over. But a palm finds your chest, gently pushing you back down until your flat against the bed again.
"Wanna look at you," he says simply, as he pushes his length into the palm of your hand once more before sliding out.
He lets his length rest against your sensitive clit and gently rocks his hips, slicking himself with the mess between your legs, sighing whenever you gasp each time his tip nudges at your clit.
"Please..." you whisper, feeling pathetic and needy, but at this point too desperate to care.
And he’s equally impatient, not waiting another moment before lining himself up and slowly pushing in.
You tense at the initial intrusion, not having been with anyone in far too long and the feeling is almost overwhelming. You're trying to remember how to breathe again as you let your head fall to the side, trying to hide from his intense stare. But Frankie's there, using a gentle finger to tilt your face back up towards him as his hips moving at an agonizingly slow pace to let you adjust.
"That's it baby. Look at me."
And you do, the heat in your belly burning brighter with his eyes boring into yours as he witnesses your surrender to him. Your heart aches, still raw and tender and in pain from all the hurt that's transpired. But you ignore it and tell yourself the tears in your eyes aren't a result of a broken heart, but rather of how full you feel as Frankie's length finally bottoms out in you.
"Fuck..." You both curse under your breath as he stills for a moment, letting you adjust before he starts to move his hips. You cling to his broad shoulders as he pulls out of you, his eyes glued to where you’re joined, his thick cock slick and shiny with your arousal before he slides back in again with a quiet groan. He repeats the motions over and over watching as he pulls out almost completely before pushing back in, stuffing you to the hilt.
"Shit,” he hisses under his breath, his eyelashes fluttering when you clench in response. “You feel so good baby, fuck."
He buries his face into your neck, panting and pressing soft kisses as his pace starts to speed up. The soft grunts in your ear turn into more desperate moans when you lock your legs around his waist, pulling him, trying to get him even deeper than he already is.
Your fingernails dig into the skin of his shoulders, holding on for dear life, hoping that you’ll leave half crescent moon shapes embedded into his flesh. A painful reminder for the morning that you were here and this was real, despite the circumstances.
His hands slide under your ass, angling it upwards to let him hit just that little bit deeper inside, pushing the air from your lungs with each thrust. The muscles in his forearms flex and strain as he tries to hold back, always making sure you finish before he does.
And he doesn't have to wait much longer. Your orgasm is creeping up and taking over your body and Frankie can sense it. He knows exactly what to look for, knows all the signs.
One hand moves to reach between the two of you two fingertips pressed against your pulsing clit, drawing fast, tight circles just like you like it. Your grip on his shoulder tightens, your nails digging into the skin and dragging down his back as his thrusts become more erratic.
"Keep lookin' at me," he grunts and you struggle to keep your eyes open. They sting, the image of him above you starting to blur around the edges as he drives you closer and closer to your release.
"That's it, baby. Lemme see it, lemme see you come on my cock."
He doesn't have to tell you twice.
You come undone again just like that, dizziness spreading and heart hammering in your chest as you sob out, pleasure consuming you from within. He fucks you through it, not giving you a chance to catch your breath, as he curses and rambles in your ear about how he's missed this, how he's missed you.
You've barely started to come down when he grabs one of your legs behind your knee and pushes it into your chest, letting himself sink even deeper into you. The new angle has your head spinning, drowning in an unparalleled amount of pleasure. Your eyes flutter and roll back in your head as you whimper his name, fingers curling into the pillow above your head.
He doesn't last much longer, breathless moans and strangled whimpers into your neck as he gives you the last few sloppy thrusts. He's almost there, and when he tries to pull out, it's the way your leg tightens around his waste and your needy whine that sends him over the edge, groaning and cursing with his face in the crook of your neck as he spills himself into you.
His cock pulses inside you with every wave, his hips chasing his release, tiny jerks as he empties into you. He stills, his heavy breathing in your ear, his weight resting on you, heavy but grounding, his thumb rubbing soothing circles into your skin.
Once the room stops spinning and the stars clear from behind your eyes, you drop your legs. With a shaky sigh, Frankie starts to pull out, both of you groaning in protest as he slips out.
His cum leaks out of you, quickly pooling between your thighs no matter how hard you squeeze your legs together. And when he catches sight of it, it makes your face burn. At the mere sight of his sticky, warm release spilling out of you, mixing with your own, Frankie swears he could go another round right then. Something about knowing he marked his territory, his claim on you established once again. He looks up at you, your eyes closed, forehead creased, and he has to dig his nails into his palm to keep from dragging his fingers through the cum leaking out of you and pushing it back in, keeping it where it should be.
But the weight of reality is starting to press on him once again, the fear and shame from earlier taking root again and tugging at his stomach and pulling him out of the euphoria.
He kisses your hip bone once before making his way to the bathroom for a wet washcloth. The room is silent as he cleans you up, wiping gently between your legs, both of you keeping your eyes on anything except each other's.
When he's done, he stands and moves to gather his clothes off the floor, tugging his boxers back on before heading towards the door. But your shaky, watery voice breaks the silence and freezes him where he stands.
"You're leaving?" You ask, voice squeaking at the end as you pull the sheet up to cover yourself, as if it would protect your heart when he ultimately breaks it again.
He turns to look at you, his heart aching in his chest from the innocent way you're looking at him. The way your eyebrows draw together, and your lips pull into a frown, the way your lower lip trembles as your eyes fill with tears.
"Can I stay?"
His voice is quiet, fragile, as if speaking any louder would scare you off, would cause you to start yelling at him again until you ultimately kick him to the curb for good.
He stares at you through the darkness of the room as you chew on your lip and try to grapple with the split decision you’re facing.
The logical part of your brain is screaming at you to say no and end this right here and now. But that part of your brain is buried and silenced underneath the heaviness in your heart. That desperate need to hang onto whatever's left. You swallow the lump in your throat and give in.
"Please," you plead softly. "Don't...don't want to be alone anymore."
A rush of air leaves his lungs as the pressure is released from his chest as he climbs back into bed beside you. Your head finds his chest, curled into his side and letting his arms wrap around you. His embrace is familiar, comforting, your safe space.
You count the steady beats of his heart in your ear as his blunt fingernail scrape lightly up and down your back, knowing it always soothes you. No words are spoken but the air between the two of you is thick, full of the things you both want to say, but neither of you speak.
Sleep wraps its tendrils around you once again, exhaustion settling in your bones. You welcome it fully, even though you know when you wake up, you'll have to face the reality of the situation once again.
You can only hope that he'll still be here in the morning to face it with you.
For now, you let yourself drown in the warmth of his embrace, pushing away all the other things that are gnawing at you and letting yourself relax in the arms of the man who broke your heart.
Just one more night.
Thank you for reading!! :))
#writing challenge 2.0#frankie morales smut#frankie morales x you#frankie morales x reader#frankie morales#triple frontier#triple frontier smut#triple frontier fic#pedro pascal characters
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Trespassing is Prohibited!
Pairing: Baekhyun x Fem!Reader ft. Chanyeol
Genre: Fluff! Fluff! Fluff! Crack. Friends to Lovers AU, University AU (ish)
Description: Byun Baekhyun has had enough. He finally wants to ‘man up’ and make you his. But things continue to spiral out of control all thanks to his friend, philosopher, and guide (a.k.a. The Worst Wingman Ever) Park Chanyeol.
Warnings: A very rambly Baekhyun and a longwinding confession
Word Count: + 3k
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“You want me to talk about the weather?” Baekhyun squeaked into the phone after having breathed in helium from the blown up balloon in his hand.
“The weather, politics...the economy even.” Heaving slightly, Chanyeol spoke after a moment, his usual gruff and masculine voice reduced to a wafer thin high pitched squeal, sending Baekhyun into a fit of helium suffused giggles.
Taking another drag off of the balloon, Baekhyun warbled and piped, “Say...say that again. Say economy again!”
“Eco...econo-” Chanyeol’s extreme outburst of laughter at the sound of his own voice, rendered him unable to pronounce the final syllable.
All along, you stood at the door, comfortably leaning against its frame and eavesdropping on their conversation or the blatant lack thereof. Chanyeol suddenly wanted Baekhyun to talk about the weather, politics, and the economy? You thought you’d grown immune to your best friends’ antics but they continued to up the ante and left you baffled, amused, or both every single time.
You cleared your throat to catch Baekhyun’s attention but it fell on deaf ears. He rolled around in bed, breathing in helium, laughing hysterically, chanting the words ‘economy, weather, and politics’.
“BAEKHYUN!” You screamed at last. He scrambled to face you, wearing an expression of a deer caught in the headlights. You finally had the entirety of Baekhyun’s eight second attention span all to yourself.
“YAH! YAH! YAH! What are you doing here?” Baekhyun retaliated and then whispered something into his phone, stuffed it inside his pocket, straightened his shirt and sat primly on the edge of the bed like a child who’d been caught eating forbidden candy. He threw you an accusatory glance but there was an unmistakable hint of embarrassment and panic in his eyes.
Peering over your glasses, you snapped at him, “I’ve come to pick up my phone charger because you obviously lacked the courtesy to return it!”
“Oh!” His lips protruded into a pout and he tilted his head to the side as if in deep thought, “I’ll bring it over in the evening.”
“Why are you acting so….dazed and confused?” Slouching, you took careful, deliberate steps towards the bed and sat down next to him. Leaning into his frame, you sniffed his neck and whispered, “Are you...Baekhyun don’t tell me you’re on something!”
Levelling his face with yours, he searched your eyes before flicking your forehead in response to your wild allegation. “Shut up! The audacity! You’re the one barging into my house in the middle of the day. Trespassing is prohibited!”
Confused, you pulled away from him and asked, “What are you saying?”
The corners of his lips drooped. Brows knit together, he replied, “You should’ve called first!”
His extremely out of character standoffishness made you uncomfortable. You were clearly not interrupting anything other than a helium infused gala which, truth be told, you were greatly annoyed at not being invited to. Neither were you inconveniencing him in any way. You were to simply fetch the electronic device and head home. And this wasn’t anything out of character for you either. You’d always felt free to walk into his goshiwon as you did your own. Yet, here he was, dark hair unkempt, dressed in his usual baggy clothes, accusing you - his best friend, his emergency contact, the one he moved cities with for University, the only one who had the passcode to his goshiwon - of breaking and entering. You knew Baekhyun since the day you’d learnt to walk and in all these years he’d made you feel a lot of emotions - happiness, sadness, mostly anger but not once had he made you feel unwelcome.
Your heart sank to your stomach at this abrupt coldness.
“Baekhyun, you took my charger, remember? My phone died.” Fighting the lump in your throat, you explained politely and proceeded to rummage his desk drawers for the said item.
“Wait!” He came trotting after you barefooted as you dashed out of his room. He grabbed your wrist to hold you firmly in place.
While you were no stranger to physical contact with Baekhyun, these past three months since your break up had started to get increasingly excruciating for you. A slight brush of his hand with yours sent tingles through your skin, made your cheeks flame, your legs turned to jelly, and alarms blared inside your head. At first you thought it was just your hormones messing with you - he was an attractive man and you’d only recently been deprived of love and attention but you’d slowly begun to realize it was something far beyond that. Something you had an inherent knowledge of but were not quite ready to confront yet.
“I’m leaving.” You replied matter-of-factly. Yanking your hand free from his grasp, you didn’t bother to look at him. “Helium makes you stupid!” You yelled instead, and banged the main door shut behind you.
.
.
.
After a week of radio silence (though he was still clearly avoiding you at campus) Byun Baekhyun had finally started texting you again and you realized that he was now a changed man.
He'd gotten...boring.
Every morning he'd send you a no effort good morning text along with, lo and behold, weather updates! Bland messages ending with the same emoji. Mostly alternating between 'Good morning! Don't forget to wear a mask today, the fine dust level is scary! ☺️' and 'Good morning! Don't forget to carry an umbrella today, it might rain! ☺️'
You'd almost always reply with a disinterested 👍 but he remained undeterred.
Now it was as if Baekhyun and Chanyeol came as a package. The duo seemed to be joined at the hip and they walked in the opposite direction every time they caught you approaching them. Movements frantic, whispering in each other’s ears as if they were plotting to start a rebellion to overthrow the Government. But the Morning Daily from Baekhyun remained unchanged. Until one day, you snapped and replied with an emoji depicting another special digit used to indicate an entirely different sentiment from the sweet old 👍.
.
.
.
Later that evening you were dressed up for a double date set up by your classmate Jiwoo, your only “friend” other than Baekhyun and Chanyeol. She was to introduce you to her boyfriend’s friend who she thought was your type. Not looking for anything more than just a stress free and light evening, you decided to dress to the nines, let your hair down, and forget all about Baekhyun’s pigheadedness.
Dabbing on just a hint of blush along your cheekbones, you gave yourself a quick once over in the mirror. It was then that a familiar beeping reached your ears and you rushed out of your bedroom to greet the unexpected visitor with a snarky comment.
“Trespassing is prohibited!” Crossing your arms over your chest, you glared at Baekhyun through your glasses. Dressed in a black hoodie, head covered in the Nike cap you’d gifted him for his birthday, twirling a pen between his fingers he just stood there, smiling sheepishly with a bag from your favourite desserts cafe in his other hand. It seemed like he’d come straight to yours after his lectures.
His gaze hesitantly roved over you and he questioned softly, “Going somewhere?”
Slinging a shoulder bag on, you averted your eyes and remarked, “It’s none of your business.”
“Yah! Don’t be like that”, he said with a soft chuckle yet his voice bore a hint of dejection and apology.
“That’s rich coming from you. Allow me to remind you how strange you and Chanyeol have been acting since the last two weeks!”
“I’m - I’m ready to..talk about it.” He quipped, awkwardly proceeding to put the box of desserts in the refrigerator. He then very comfortably took a seat at the kitchen table.
Hands on hips, you sauntered to the main door and shook your head, gesturing for him to leave. “Not today, Baek. I’m running late.”
He pulled back the chair next to his, and drummed his fingers on the table nervously. “Come sit. I won’t take too long. I promise.”
Letting out a deep sigh, you dragged your feet to the table and slumped into the chair.
“You look nice.” Lips stretched into a thin line, he stole a glance at you and said to his cuticles instead.
“BAEKHYUN!”
“Okay..okay sorry… so the day you came home?”
“Please stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Drawing out sentences in a question.”
Inhaling deeply, a slightly irate Baekhyun replied, “I’m trying okay.”
“Listen, first of all I am really annoyed at not being invited to that helium balloon call? So I’d advise you to think twice before saying anything stupid. Tell me...why did you two think it was a good idea -”
Embarrassed, he interrupted to get that part of the discussion out of the way. “Chanyeol and I just wanted to know what we sounded like… over the phone, you know? We sounded..err...squeakier.”
“Okay...I hate to say this but ...makes sense, I guess? Why wasn’t I invited?”
“Because - ”
You leaned in closer, questioning eyes locked with his.
“Because -”
“Baek, I’m running late!”
“It’s because we were talking about you!”
“No? You were talking about politics -”
“Politics, weather and -”
‘The economy’ The two of you said in unison, face averted from each other to keep from laughing at the recent memory of Chanyeol’s oddly peculiar way of saying it.
“Yes..so Chanyeol and I were discussing how you probably don’t see me as a man? Like … a man man?”
Face scrunched into an expression of pure confusion, your mouth fell open to answer Baekhyun but no words came out. His lower lip had begun to wobble slightly and he rubbed his palms on his thighs before continuing. “He was of the opinion -”
“You’re literally the only one to ever pay heed to Loey’s opinions!”
“Yah! Don’t shit talk my Loey!”
“Yah! He’s my Loey too! Moving on”, pinching the bridge of your nose, you urged him to continue with a curt nod.
Baekhyun straightened his spine, threw his shoulders back and explained, “We had a thought.”
“Both of you? The same one?”
“Ye-yes?”
“This is not going to end well. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Can you stop acting like you’re better than us? Just for a moment?”
“Fine! Go ahead.”
“We thought that it was about time you started to see me that way.”
“That way?”
“The way you used to look at your greasy vermin of an ex?”
“With sheer contempt and disgust?”
“That was after. I mean like before.” Hands balled into fists, Baekhyun looked at your expectantly.
“I don’t get it.”
He gave you an exaggerated smile as if to centre himself before throwing more vague questions your way. “What is the one thing - the only thing - I can actually cook?”
“Haejangguk?”
“Exactly! Do you get it now?”
“I have a thousand of reasons ...or ideas as to how you and Chanyeol would manage to relate Haejangguk with politics, weather, and the economy but I’d rather not dive into that cesspool. Instead I’ll allow you to explain.”
Baekhyun’s eyebrows shot up in concern as he explained softly, “Haejangguk helps with your hangovers. It took me fourteen tries to master! And it was Loey who ate every single spoilt batch. Without any complaints!”
“I wouldn’t say you’re any good at it even now but...sure whatever.” Rolling your eyes, you murmured.
Your phone chimed with a text from Jiwoo but before you could answer, Baekhyun snatched it from your hands and shoved it in the pocket of his hoodie.
“Pay attention. This is more important than that loser you’re going to meet.”
“Baekhyun!”
“No, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t watch you go from one idiot to another.”
“I’ve literally only dated two guys! Why are you suddenly getting territorial?”
“I am not getting territorial! What I’m saying is… I spent these two weeks rehearsing the right thing to say to you but - screw that! And listen. You cannot do this anymore!”
“Do what?”
“You cannot waltz into my thoughts anytime you like! For instance I’m eating a tangerine, I think of how it would magically taste sweeter if I could only share it with you. Your face suddenly flashes before my eyes and I lose my mind while I’m doing the most mundane things like riding the subway or having a meal or talking to someone. I go grocery shopping and the first thing I pick up is strawberry milk and it’s not even my favourite! But I bought a whole damn carton because you love strawberry milk! I have cucumbers! Cucumbers! In my fridge because what if you crave oi muchim with your ramen some day and woe betide me if I DO NOT HAVE CUCUMBERS! I waste 4,050 Won every week on cucumbers but it DOES NOT MATTER because it would be nothing short of a tragedy if you want something and I can’t give it to you. Like, have you looked at yourself when you get upset? When your lips stretch into a thin line and your eyes ever so slightly lose their sparkle. It makes me want to pluck the bloody stars from the sky and lay them at your feet if it means that I can make you smile again. Do you know how warm you are? I mean, like, physically warm. Especially when you’ve woken up from a nap. So, so warm. I feel like wrapping you in my arms, putting your head on my chest and just...staying like that. Freezing the moment in time. Freezing the moment in time! Look at what you’ve done to me! I'm saying these cheesy things and I'm doing boring things like studying politics and understanding the state of affairs and keeping up with fine dust levels just so that you see me differently! So that I can somehow make you believe that you can rely on me. Think of me as more than just a friend who used to pull your pigtails back in the day.”
The beat of your heart boomed in your ears. You hugged your coat tighter around yourself as if to conceal its conspicuous sound. Your throat felt dry and your spine liquified in the face of his overwhelming confession. You had a million things to say to him. And there was one specific thing you were dying to do the moment your eyes landed on his soft, strawberry pink lips.
Eyebrow cocked, you said in a low whisper. “Why not buy a jar of oi muchim instead? It’ll surely last longer than a week.”
He buried his face in his hands and let out a shallow, pained wail and continued. “I'm done.” He looked up at you. Eyes droopy, lips pouty. “Put me out of my misery. Look, if you don't like me back the way I like you just ...forget that I said any of this. We can go back to being what we were at 7 o’clock. It's 7:30 now, we can rewind, 30 minutes. But don't...don't...what the hell how can you just sit there and act like you're watching a freaking movie. React! Say something! Actually...don't! Oh my god this is a trainwreck! I had rehearsed the right thing to say...but I got distracted by the indentations on the corners of your lips..I think I'm having a full blown breakdown… I just want to - ugh!"
"You just want to what, Baekhyunnie?"
You took his fists in your hands, eased them open and laced your fingers with his.
He clamped his eyes shut, slouched to make himself small, and muttered. "Don't call me that!"
Giggling softly, you repeated, "Baekhyunnie?"
Baekhyun flicked his eyes open. Unabashedly studying the curve of your lips, he whispered ‘Stop.’ His hand gently rested on your cheek, eyes seeking approval. You nodded in response, feeling your face flame. His honeyed gaze darkened as he leaned in closer, a sweet scent of bubblegum wafting in the space between you. His hand found the back of your neck, lips ever so slightly parted. Finding his movements excruciatingly slow you gravitated towards him while your breath hitched in your throat. He took your hand and placed it on his chest as his silken lips melted into yours. He held you like you were fragile, like he was experiencing the sensation of your skin on his for the very first time, committing every slight brush, every single touch to memory. You felt the wild hammering of his heart against your fingers despite the thickness of his cozy hoodie, your own reacting in likeliness.
Baekhyun held you by your shoulders and gently pulled away, breaking the most delectable first kiss you’d ever had. Tilting his head to the side he looked at you briefly before making vague hand gestures and shaking his head. He opened his mouth to say something but found himself at a loss for words. Face flushed, he opened his mouth again after a while only to clamp it shut.
Byun Baekhyun was processing.
After having had your fun with his perplexity, you smiled at him and raised an eyebrow questioningly, prodding him to speak.
“So...does this mean we’re?” He asked, voice faintly tremulous.
Pursing your lips to stifle a giggle you teased, “Yeah?”
“Am I your...I mean...are you my….girl-girlfriend?” Averting his eyes from yours, he inquired, while shyly rubbing the back of his neck.
Half shrugging, you answered, “Depends.”
Baekhyun’s face fell. “Depends?!” He exclaimed, almost in falsetto.
"Depends on whether you want to continue sending me daily weather updates.” You deadpanned.
“This feels like a trick question.”
“Yes or no?”
“N-no?”
“Then, yes. Byun Baekhyun, congratulations, you’ve earned the unequivocal and irrevocable right to call me your girlfriend.”
“Does it mean that you didn’t like the new and improved version of me?” He asked hesitantly, face clouded over with caution.
“That wasn’t the Baekhyunnie I fell for.”
“Yah!” Surprised at your sudden blurry confession, his eyes grew into large brown circles but the moment his gaze met with yours, his expression softened again. He smiled sheepishly and spoke tenderly, “Okay...noted. You too can call me your”, he cleared his throat, took your hand in his, placed a soft kiss on it and used his most dulcet voice to say, “boyfriend.”
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A/N: hello, hello @you-did-well-moon hope you enjoyed this very cheesy confession from Baekhyun!
@exolssecretsanta
#exolssecretsanta20#exosnet#exowritersnet#bbh-net#exo fanfic#baekhyun fanfic#exo fluff#baekhyun fluff#exo oneshot#baekhyun oneshot#baekhyun#baekhyun oneshots#baekhyun x you#baekhyun x reader#baekhyun romance#exo romance#baekhyun imagines#exo imagines#baekhyun fanfiction
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The Buy In
Chapter 3: Puzzle Wrapped in an Enigma
by @dracusfyre
On the way back home after the brothel closed, Bucky logged into Discord and dropped into a channel labeled only with random numbers and letters. First day of work was :thumbs up: but there were two dudebros who tried to jam up my shit. Wish they would back off, he wrote. The channel was monitored 24/7 in case of emergency or actionable intel.
He waited as the dots danced, then his police handler wrote, that sucks. who are they?
Bucky typed the last four of Rumlow and Rollins’ badge numbers and put his phone back in his pocket. This operation was way more important than those two swinging dicks; between the video from tonight, which was going to be a PR nightmare for the department, and his request, Rumlow and Rollins better be manning a desk for the foreseeable future.
He was pulling out his keys to his apartment building when he heard a car door opening nearby. His head whipped around and his other hand was already on the pistol in the holster at the small of his back when he heard, “Whoa there Blue Eyes,” in a familiar voice. The figure that stepped out of the car held his hands up and stepped into the light. “Hard day at the office?”
“I’ve had worse,” Bucky said warily.
“How’d everything go today?” Stark shoved his hands in his pocket and leaned against his car, the streetlight casting harsh shadows on his face.
“Fine. Didn’t KT give you a debrief?”
“Yeah, I heard his side. I wanna hear your side.”
Bucky thought about it, wondering if he should put a shine on it or be honest. “KT and Hawkeye’s play tonight was clever and would have worked perfectly against a different set of cops. But I think those two won’t give up until they get back at the person who embarrassed them. Might have made more problems than they solved.”
“Yeah?” Stark tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. “You sure about that? KT's been on the job for a few years now and thought it was a good call. It's your first day and you saw the cops for all of fifteen minutes.”
Bucky shrugged. “I’ve met guys like them before. Don't strike me as the type to know when they're beat. Best thing would be for them to be encouraged to take a long walk off a short pier.”
Stark made a thoughtful noise. “But KT explained office policy on that?”
“Yeah. Only as a last resort.” Bucky tried to sound neutral, but something of his skepticism must have bled through.
“You don’t agree?”
The note in Stark’s voice put Bucky on high alert. Higher alert, since his heart was still racing from before. “I get the logic, it’s just…different,” Bucky said. “Makes sense though. Bodies attract attention.”
“Is that the only reason you think it's a good policy?” Stark asked neutrally.
Bucky hesitated. He got the feeling there was a right and wrong answer to this and wished this conversation had happened six hours ago when he was less tired. “Killing people changes things,” he said finally - honestly - hoping he wasn’t about to touchy-feely himself out of this operation. Between the military, the police, and then undercover work with organized crime, he had been so steeped in machismo that it had become second nature – to those guys, life was one big dick measuring contest - but Stark didn’t seem to work like that. Or at least, he didn't want people to think he worked like that. “Not just changes people, but like…it sends a message to everyone else. ‘This is what a life is worth.’” Bucky took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing himself to maintain eye contact with Stark. “People respond to that. Makes them…mean. Hard. So if you can avoid that...” He ran a hand over the back of his neck, feeling like an idiot. He probably sounded ridiculous. “So, yeah. Anyway. Guess if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right? Seems to be working for you.”
“We do alright,” Stark said slowly, and Bucky figured he must have said the right thing because he straightened and held out a hand for Bucky to shake. Bucky looked at it with surprise and took it, feeling acutely aware of the strength of Stark’s grip and the callouses on his palms. “Welcome aboard.”
***
Tony got back in his car as Blue Eyes continued into his building, cranking it and pulling away from the curb on autopilot. If Blue Eyes hadn’t been a cop, Tony would have told himself that he was too good to be true; as it was, Tony wondered if it was possible that the police or feds or whoever had profiled him well enough to give “Brooks” a gold plated script to work from. But it hadn’t felt like the new guy was playing him tonight; his comments had been too rambling and inarticulate to have been prepared in advance. Rhodey was going to think he was an idiot, but he really though Brooks was being honest with him tonight, which had the potential to change things.
At the first stoplight, he pulled out his phone and texted Rhodey.
I like him.
Rhodey sent a rolling eyes emoji almost immediately. Blue Eyes?
Yeah I want to keep him. he’s wasted as a cop.
The three dots must have started and stopped a dozen times; Tony was almost back to his own place when he finally got a response. You’re playing with fire.
Tony smirked. I know, he wrote back. It’s what I do.
Yeah, but this time, if you get burnt, we all do. Tony pulled into his private garage and turned off the car, listening to the engine tick as it cooled. Rhodey was right. As much as he was intrigued by Blue Eyes, he couldn’t put his people at risk by tugging on that thread. “Dammit,” he said out loud, scowling as he got out of the car. “Ten years ago I wouldn't have thought twice.”
***
A few weeks into the operation Bucky and KT were making the rounds, checking in with the businesses and people on their beat, and Bucky was suddenly struck by two things: one, just how much this gig felt like being a street cop, walking the sidewalks just observing the neighborhood; and two, how no one was ever this happy to see him when he was a street cop. People saw KT and more often than not, they were smiling, chatty about business and local gossip. Most of them greeted Bucky (“Oh, this must be Blue Eyes,” which had yet to stop making Bucky’s ears burn) and were happy to introduce themselves. The ones that weren’t smiling were the ones that had something to complain about: permit not going through, shipment delayed, broken equipment that insurance wasn’t paying out for. KT took notes, nodded and commiserated, and when they left almost everyone looked at least mollified, if not cheered.
“You know, for us playing the bag men today, we sure aren’t picking up any money,” Bucky commented. A couple of times KT had taken a store owner to the side and Bucky, straining his ears, heard something about loans; these people always had the look of someone explaining why they couldn’t pay but it wasn’t their fault, honest. Like everything else, KT made notes and listened politely.
“That’s not what we’re doing,” KT said. “This is check in. We do it every two weeks or so. Money stuff is all handled online.”
“Yeah?” Bucky knew for a fact that the FBI had been working with the Treasury to trace Stark’s money, and, failing to find any signs of dirty money or money laundering, had concluded he must be operating with cash only.
“Yeah. Boss didn’t want to tempt anyone or make them a target.” That was smart, Bucky reflected. Ripping off other gangs was an art form in organized crime. Still, he had to wonder how Stark kept the money transfers so well hidden from the best financial analysts in the US government.
“No targets except his accountant,” Bucky joked, fishing for info. “Like with Al Capone.”
KT just shrugged at that, like he didn’t know and didn’t care, so Bucky left it alone. “So what do we do with that stuff?” Bucky said, gesturing at the notebook KT had been writing in all morning.
“We take care of it.” He took the notebook out and flipped through it. “Not too much stuff this time.”
Bucky turned that over in his head. “So under the Mechanic, fixers actually…fix things,” he said. “You’re really going to call a shipping company and an insurance office and everything?”
“Yep. Well, we are.”
Made sense; if businesses were paying Stark for protection, he could also throw in other services to sweeten the pot and keep people from rolling on him. Bucky shoved his hands in his pockets and was lost in thought while he mostly followed KT around the neighborhood. Granted he’d only been here for less than a week, but so far nothing was adding up to what he’d read in the case files on Stark and his organization. It was making him uneasy. He’d come here with a picture in his head, and a goal of filling in the holes so they could make a case against an organized crime boss; but now he was increasingly realizing that something was wrong with the picture. So when KT told him one night that they had the next two days off, Bucky sent another message on the Discord channel and when he got a confirmation, he went to the New York Library, the big one with the stone lions and millions of tourists. He went to the adult services desk and asked for a laptop. The librarian studied his ID, went to a safe, and handed him a laptop from inside. Bucky found a study carrell in a quiet spot and logged on with an 8 character name and 16 character password, established and memorized before he’d started this operation, and opened up the case files on Stark.
Scrolling through, Bucky felt some of his disquiet ease as he re-read the laundry list of crimes Stark was reportedly involved in: racketeering, tax fraud, illegal gambling, high-end car theft. Armed obberies; he opened up the file on robberies and realized with morbid amusement that even while Stark protected his own people from being targeted, he had no problem targeting bagmen from other gangs, making off with hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. Tax fraud, obviously; if Tony was hiding all of his income from the FBI, he was definitely hiding it from the IRS. Though as he opened up Stark’s tax statements, gotten from a subpoena to the IRS, and noticed that the document for just one year was hundreds of pages long, Bucky reflected that a good accountant could hide a lot of money in his legitimate businesses and all the assets that Stark had inherited from his parents.
At the back of the file was sex trafficking, which was based on a handful of reports that said that prostitutes were disappearing from other parts of the city and showing up working for Stark. Bucky put a note next to that one recommending the line of investigation be dropped. After spending hours and hours at the brothel chatting to the Widow and the ladies there, waiting to see if Rumlow returned, he knew none of the men or women there were being forced to stay, not even for lack of other work. Widow recruited from all around the city, helping people get out of the business if they wanted to and offering others a chance to work for her. Turns out, most of that building was devoted to the people who worked in the brothel: everyone got their own apartment, which was separate from the suites they entertained clients, and there was an in-house doctor and even childcare in the basement. All the money went straight back to the sex workers, except for this mysterious buy-in that no one had explained yet, and they were using it for a bewildering array of side projects that the women were more than happy to talk about during their down time.
After a few hours, which included writing up his reports from the past few weeks of working for Stark, Bucky sat back and closed the laptop. It was his first month, he reminded himself. No one was going to let him close to the real work of the organization after just a few weeks. He sent another message to his handler on Discord, and when he got a confirmation back, he stood up and walked away from the carrell; when he was about twenty feet away, he saw his police contact, dressed like a soccer mom, come by and spirit the laptop away.
His next stop was the gym; by the time he was done, shirt soaked wet with sweat and muscles aching, his head felt clearer. He didn’t know why Stark was trying so hard to seem like a good guy, but if Bucky was patient enough he’d scrape past all the pseudo-philanthropy and get to the real man underneath. Stark wasn’t the first guy to be handsome and charming and charismatic while hiding a dark side.
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Signed, Sealed, Delivered | (5/?)
Title: Signed, Sealed, Delivered Summary: Jan is in love with her French pen pal, Nicky. Her roommate, Crystal, is in love with her best friend, Gigi. A (perhaps ill-thought out) plan emerges: give Nicky a reason to visit by inviting her to Crystal and Gigi’s wedding. With a month to pull the scheme together, no one knows how this will end up. Word Count: ~3k (this chapter) / ~14.5k (total) Relationship(s): Sportsdoll (Jan Sport/Nicky Doll), Crygi (Crystal Methyd/Gigi Goode Rating: E
Read on AO3 | Ko-Fi
Gigi’s back arched, her eyes squeezed shut. One hand gripped her comforter while the other fisted into the other girl’s hair. “Fuck, Crystal…”
The girl suddenly stopped her steady ministrations and looked up. “Excuse me?”
“What?” Gigi opened her eyes, only to look confused and disappointed at the sudden lack of contact.
“You just called me Crystal,” she replied, only to receive a blank expression in return. “My name is Emily.” She didn’t sound as angry as perhaps she could have. In fact, there was a hint of amusement in her voice.
On the other hand, Gigi wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Her face had already been red, but it was burning hotter than ever. Even in the poorly-lit room, it was very clear that the girl between her legs didn’t even resemble Crystal, which to her, made it even worse. “I’m so sorry, I-”
“Whatever, it’s none of my business,” Emily shrugged it off. She sat there quietly for a moment before looking back up at her. “Do you want me to continue or…”
Gigi sat up and shook her head. “I’d love to, but, um, I’ll take a raincheck,” she mumbled sheepishly as she got up to search for her clothes. She just wanted to get the hell out of there, and fast.
“So, who is Crystal?” she asked, lighting up a cigarette, “must be a real beauty, huh?”
“Crystal is my best friend,” Gigi answered with a humorless laugh as she got dressed. “And… yeah, she is. I know, what a fucking cliche, right?” she sighed. “Doesn’t help that we’re pretending to be engaged,” she added, only to quickly follow up with “don’t ask.”
She chuckled, taking a long drag. “Don’t worry, I won’t,” she assured flatly. “But if you ask me, you should probably talk to her about this before it happens again with someone who’s gonna actually get pissed at you.”
Gigi rolled her eyes and pulled her bag over her shoulder. “Good thing I didn’t ask.”
------
Jan had been pacing around her room nervously for the past ten minutes. While she had considered what Heidi suggested, she wasn’t ready to just dive in and confess her feelings to Nicky. Instead, she decided to ease into it with the song she’d been so diligently practicing. When she sang she wasn’t scared. She didn’t have to think, she didn’t have to fear. And with the song not being in English, she didn’t have to worry about getting hung up on words and inflictions, she could just feel the music. And if nothing else, focusing on giving this her all would take her mind off of the wedding chaos.
‘Hey, are you ready to call?’ The text from Nicky popped up on her phone and finally got her to stand still. She took a breath, collecting herself. ‘Yeah, one sec :)’ she sent back, then looked at herself in the mirror once more before sitting in front of her laptop and calling Nicky.
“Bonne après-midi, my dear,” Nicky greeted cheerily. “Now, tell me what is so important. You used even more exclamation marks and emojis than usually. I was a bit concerned,” she teased.
Jan rolled her eyes playfully. “Oh stop, I’m just excited. I have a surprise for you, I’ve been working really hard on it,” she paused, waiting for Nicky to signal for her to continue. “I learned a French song and I wanna sing it for you.”
Nicky perked up in pleasant surprise and curiosity. “You did? But you don’t even speak French,” she furrowed her brows, “wait, do you?”
She giggled and shook her head. “No, no. But this song… I dunno, I listened to it and it made me think of you. Like, I could just feel it in my soul that it was the perfect fit,” she explained. “So, without further ado…” After clearing her throat, she started the music and began to sing. She lost herself in the music, the words she didn’t understand flowed with such ease. It wasn’t until the song ended that she was able to gauge Nicky’s reaction, and it caused her to frown a bit. “Are you okay?”
Nicky sniffled, wiping her eyes. “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she quickly assured. She pushed her hair out of her face, blinking rapidly. “You have such a beautiful voice. It’s not even fair that you can just sing in another language so easily,” she feigned a soft laugh.
Jan took it as nothing more than high praise, which of course, she appreciated. “Aw, thank you. And before you know it, I’ll be able to sing to you in person,” she beamed.
“Yeah,” Nicky agreed, voice barely above a whisper. “Thank you, Jan, that was a nice surprise.”
“I’m glad you liked it! Listen, I hate to cut this short, but I promised Heidi and Jackie I’d meet them for lunch. I’ll call you later though, okay?”
Nicky nodded, and the call ended shortly after. She sat back in her chair, putting her hand over her pounding heart. Sure, she had been aware of the budding feelings she had towards her American penpal, but it had been so easy to not focus on. They talked a few times a day for the most part, but it was otherwise up to her to distract herself, and she could do so fairly easily. But something about Jan singing that song, it brought everything she had felt forward, and it hit her like a ton of bricks.
Oh.
“Mon dieu,” she muttered under her breath and stared up at the ceiling. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was better or worse to become aware of how strong her feelings were knowing she was going to see Jan in person in less than a month. On one hand, she worried she would be going in hoping for too much and would end up disappointed. On the other, she couldn’t help but think that maybe it was a sign. And you can’t just ignore a sign, right?
She squeezed her eyes shut and reopened them, hoping it would somehow give her a moment of clarity. Or better yet, she would suddenly be in New York and she would see Jan and everything would be all right. But nothing came of it, and she was left to sort out her feelings on her own.
Nicky groaned and lurched forward, then rested her head on the desk. “Vingt jours de plus…”
------
“Don’t you think doing an engagement photoshoot in Central Park is a little… cliché?” Gigi asked as she watched Crystal help Lemon fiddle with the lights.
Crystal shrugged. “It’s supposed to be cliché. It’ll make it more believable. Besides, it’ll be fun.”
“Then why are you all pouty?”
“Your dress is a lot bigger than mine and I feel outshined at my own wedding,” she replied, watching the way Gigi’s dress flowed with every move. It was truly a testament to Gigi’s designing abilities – with her dainty features and defined silhouette, she looked like a Disney princess. The more Crystal looked at her, the more she was convinced Gigi had stepped out of a cartoon and simply never told her.
Gigi giggled, covering her mouth as she did. “You’re not gonna be outshined,” she assured. “Look at your hair, whose eyes wouldn’t go right to that?” And to be fair, Crystal’s normal mess of curls was styled with a braid going across the crown of her head, and the rest was done into a teased-out ponytail. Normally, the two of them were the same height, but with the hairdo, it appeared that Crystal had a couple of inches on her.
Crystal tilted her head in thought. “Okay, you got me there,” she conceded.
“You guys ready?” Lemon asked when she had everything set up to her liking. “We have like, an hour and a half, two hours in this lighting, let’s make the most of it.”
Crystal and Gigi nodded, letting the shorter girl position them as she best saw fit. “Okay, look in love,” Lemon directed before she began snapping away.
As it turned out, Lemon didn’t need to give them a whole lot of further instruction. The fondness in their expressions, the tenderness in their touches, it flowed with a natural ease. Some passerbys would stop and look for a moment, some even snapping a picture of their own with their phone, but the faux-couple never lost focus. It was only one instruction that caught them off guard.
“Now kiss.”
The two of them froze, both understanding it was a perfectly logical request, but neither sure of how to approach it. What followed was a moment of awkward silence, then hesitant leaning in, and finally, their lips met in a gentle kiss.
“Good, now hold it,” Lemon continued, unphased by their odd behavior. She snapped a few more photos before looking up from her camera. “Alright, ladies. I think we got it,” she announced.
Crystal and Gigi lingered in the kiss for another moment before pulling back, leaving a new tension mounting between them. Neither of them could look the other in the eye, both knowing if they did, they’d start kissing again without the ability to stop.
But Lemon didn’t feel particularly inclined to facilitate whatever the hell was going on between them. “Anyway, I’ll email you guys the pics once they’re done. I’m gonna go now, some of us have actual girlfriends to spend time with,” she said, packing up her things. “Good luck with… this,” she said, gesturing between the two of them before leaving.
“So,” Crystal cleared her throat, “I think that went well.”
Gigi had opened her mouth to reply when – perhaps mercifully – they were interrupted when a woman came up to them.
The woman seemed friendly, maybe a bit tired. She was well-dressed, likely in her early thirties. “Hi, I’m so sorry to bother you,” she started, “but my daughter here wanted to meet the ‘princesses’,” she explained with a soft laugh.
Crystal and Gigi’s gazes drifted downward to the little girl, no more than four years old, shyly holding onto her mother’s leg. Their expressions softened and just like that, all of the tension melted away. They carefully crouched down to be eye-level with the child as her mother nudged her over. “Do you want your mommy to take a picture?” Crystal suggested to the girl.
The girl nodded eagerly, turning to look at her mom, who was already fishing through her purse for her phone. “Okay, Ayla,” her mom directed, “smile big!”
All three girls smiled brightly and Crystal and Gigi slowly got up as Ayla ran back to her mom. “Could you send that to me, actually?” Crystal asked, then gave the woman her number when she obliged.
When the two of them were alone again, there was a brief moment of worry that the tension would build back up, but the whole incident was still providing a successful distraction. “Oh my god, this is so cute,” Crystal cooed.
Gigi rested her chin on Crystal’s shoulder to look. “Aw, yeah, that’s adorable,” she agreed, her arms absentmindedly looping around Crystal’s waist. “I didn’t know you were so good with kids,” she added.
Crystal shrugged, having never really thought about it before. “I guess so, I was always around my cousins growing up and being one of the older girls puts you on default babysitting duty,” she explained, becoming aware of Gigi’s hold on her as she spoke and realizing there was nowhere else she’d rather be, even if it came with the stipulation of standing in the middle of Central Park in a wedding dress.
“We should get changed,” Gigi said, though she didn’t make any immediate attempts to move from Crystal. But eventually she did let go and stand upright. “I’ll order an uber.”
------
Back in Crystal’s bedroom, she and Gigi had long since changed out of their dresses, taken off their makeup, and let their hair flow loose and free. They lay sprawled out on Crystal’s bed, barely watching whatever was on TV. This was their normal, when they were able to turn off their brains and just enjoy each other’s company.
At least, until Gigi broke the silence, clearing her throat first. “I think we need to work on acting like a couple.”
Crystal furrowed her brows and sat up. “What do you mean? I thought we’ve been pulling it off pretty well so far.”
“Come on, you have to admit that kiss was pretty awkward,” she retorted.
“Okay, yeah, that’s fair,” she conceded. “So what, you think we should practice kissing? I haven’t used that line on a girl since tenth grade,” she teased.
Gigi turned a bright red at that, though she insisted, “it’s not a line!” in a voice that was a little too strained to be convincing. “But the time until Nicky’s visit is dwindling, and this all hinges on how convincing we are as a couple. So, you know, no pressure, but…”
“But Jan’s fate lies in our ability to tongue wrestle. Got it,” Crystal finished with a firm nod. This was what she did best – make a dumb joke to deflect from the fact that she was dying to kiss her and get it right this time. “C’mon baby, kiss me like you mean it,” she said in a comically ‘sexy’ manner.
And Gigi did, taking it as a chance at redemption. She cupped Crystal’s face and pressed a deep kiss against her lips and suddenly, all bets were off. As soon as she felt Crystal kiss back, she poured everything into the embrace.
Crystal was fairly certain Gigi had stolen her breath in the kiss, as she found herself forgetting how to do anything but kiss back like her life depended on it. She grabbed onto Gigi’s shirt, eagerly pulling her closer until she fell back on the bed with Gigi on top of her, their legs intertwining.
Gigi couldn’t have held back if she tried. She yanked Crystal’s hair to expose her neck, then bit down and left a hickey in the dead center of one side. It just made it more convincing if she left proof that they were in a committed, intimate relationship, of course. In fact, she left one on the other side for good measure. “God, you’re so fucking beautiful,” she muttered, sitting back and straddling Crystal’s waist and gazing down at her.
Crystal was fairly certain her heart had never beaten so fast in her life. Being with Gigi was nothing like her hookup with Jan. Things were fun and slow and light with Jan, compared to how hard, fast, and passionate Gigi was. She supposed that was where the difference between a friend and lover lies – Jan was warm and comfortable, but Gigi lit a fire in her, they weren’t even undressed and she was already aching for her to fan the flames. “Please don’t stop.”
The quiet plea was music to Gigi’s ears and nothing in the world could’ve stopped her from obliging. She tugged off her own t-shirt, now significantly less dressed than Crystal, having forgone a bra. But she made quick work of remedying that, stripping Crystal from the waist-up and placing a trail of kisses from right above her navel, all the way back up to her collarbone. “Couldn’t if I tried,” she cooed.
“Mm…” Crystal exhaled softly, reacting to every touch with a silent cry for more. She loved the way Gigi’s lips felt against her – on her neck, on her breasts, the way her tongue swirled around her nipples and flicked against the metal of her piercing. “Fuck…”
Gigi moved back down Crystal’s body, tugging off her shorts and panties in one swift motion, then made herself comfortable between Crystal’s thighs. She had only just started when Crystal stopped her.
“Wait, wait, I wanna get you too.”
It took Gigi a moment to understand what Crystal meant. “Oh! Okay, yeah,” she got up and repositioned herself on top, her head between Crystal’s thighs and her legs resting on either side of her head, letting Crystal shift underneath her until she was straddling her face. They both started off slow, but neither could keep the teasing pace up for long, picking up in speed and fervor.
Gigi balanced herself with one hand, using both her tongue and the fingers of her opposite hand to fuck Crystal with a pace that bordered on erratic. Her mind was both frantic and clouded with lust and emotions she was in no position to decipher. She was only loosely aware that Crystal was struggling to keep up with her, and she didn’t care. It was her so it felt good.
And Crystal actually liked the challenge of trying to keep up with Gigi. Her senses were in overdrive with how incredible she made her feel, and it spurred her on all the more. It did become more difficult as she neared her peak – her vision started to get hazy, her breathing more labored, and she couldn’t focus on anything else when she came with a loud groan. She took a moment to catch her breath, then readily and eagerly got Gigi off as well.
When they were both done, Gigi pushed herself off of Crystal and lay beside her. She wrapped her arms around her, pulling her close with her arms securely around her waist. “I think we can pull off being a couple now,” she mumbled, face buried in Crystal’s hair.
“Yeah,” Crystal breathed out with a hint of a laugh, “we’re such good actresses.” And she was just glad Gigi wasn’t able to see the grin on her face, because now she couldn’t even convince herself that she wasn’t in love with Gigi.
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— INTRODUCING RAPHAEL BROOKS
full app. pinterest.
( tldr ; pretty boy artist falls in love with anything that maintains eye contact with him for more than two consecutive seconds. will kill you with kindness, but only so he can rope you into going to chelsea garden center for the third time that week. )
full name: raphael brooks
gender & pronouns: cismale & he/him
age & dob: twenty-six & august 22nd (big leo energy!)
hometown: long beach, california
occupation: multimedia artist
sexuality: pansexual
favorite girl scout cookie: thin mints
&& background —
born and raised in long beach, ca, which means he says things like “groovy” and “good vibez” and “can you sprinkle some goji berries on that?” unironically. his parents work in colorful careers thirty mins away in LA, so he’s surrounded by art and creatives for most of his childhood and it rlly shapes how he sees the world
starts drawing at a young age, and hey, he’s actually p good. definitely the kid designated to put the illustrations on every group project in school. he enters and wins a lot of art contests, and though his parents are fairly supportive, his brother is his number one fan distributing “raphael brooks rox my sox” tees on the sidelines
his brother dies in a car accident when raphael is twelve and he’s devastated. it rlly fucks with him for a year after because his brother was essentially his best friend, but he slowly but surely starts to confront it and heal and come out better. his parents don’t deal with it as well, and to this day the death is never mentioned in the brooks household. raphael wants to be sympathetic towards them and what they had to go through, but deep down he’s resentful that he had to deal with it all by himself
he emerges from his grief with a newfound attitude towards the world. this kid is all smiles, all laughter, all good vibez (i warned you, disgusting). he befriends people to fill the gap that his brother left, which eventually manifests into his bad habit of falling in love WAY too easily and WAY too hard. he’s probably more in love with the idea of love than his actual lovers, but we don’t talk about that
goes to art school! draws some things! gets a degree! he works for a big animating company in los angeles right out of college, but realizes that he can’t stay in california. he finds a new job in nyc as a video game animator, gets a loose lease on an apartment, and leaves behind the life he knew before
&& fast facts —
hates coffee so much and quite frankly doesn’t understand people who drink espressos as like, a hobby of theirs? if he drinks coffee he’ll dump oat milk and honey in it, but he’ll usually opt for a chai latte or hot chocolate during coffee shop runs
vegan, non-gmo, eco-friendly, green, and every other adjective that equates to “bleeding heart liberal who’s ready to die for the turtles”
really big on board games, and hosts board game nights at the apartment frequently. is a nice kid until it’s time to fucking annihilate you at settlers of catan
loves to listen to indie and folks music with a good beat. a slut for the lumineers, sufjan stevens, maggie rogers, etc etc
he has twenty-two plants and counting. has names and backstories for each of them, which takes him roughly an hour to recite on a good day. everyone begs strangers not to ask about the plants when they enter his apartment
big fan of tattoos! he has six right now (one on his ankle, one on his side, and two on each arm), all of which he drew the design for himself before handing it off to a tattoo artist
volunteers on some weekends to lead tours around local art museums for the elderly. really vibes with judit, an eighty year-old who’s one of his regulars
his most used emojis are 🥺 and 🥰 with a sprinkle of ✨
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Witness : 6
The Day After
moodboard created by @chuuulip
Character(s): dark!Bucky, later dark!Steve, too
Warnings: this is a dark!fic, it contains non/dubious-consent elements. Some violence as well at the beginning. It goes without (and with) that this is 18+.
Summary: The reader finds it hard to adjust after her first night with Bucky.
Notes: I am reposting this fic here. It was originally on ao3 but now it’s on tumblr too! If you read, I love feedback and would love any comments you have. And if you can, please share! Anyhow, enjoy :)
You weren’t sure of the time when Bucky left you. You didn’t move as his weight left the bed for the last time. Didn’t look to see the time. You couldn’t even recall what he had said when he left. Had he said anything? You were too shattered to listen. You just lay on the bed, sprawled in the position he had last broken you in, breathing but nothing more. You lingered on the other option. Maybe death was better than this. Feeling so violated, languishing in your debasement. You couldn’t see that the void beyond could offer any such self-loathing. If you told him you had changed your mind, would he kill you now?After the hours he had spent relishing in your torment, you knew it was too late for that. He would use you until you outlived your usefulness. He had said as much upon your first real meeting.
Slowly, you moved one leg, then the other, and crawled across the bed and onto the floor. Your knees shook as you stood but you kept yourself upright. Your ass was sore, thighs too, your core thrumming from the abuse. You stared at the blankets, tangled across the mattress, your stomach recoiled. You turned and stumbled, reaching out desperately for balance as you lumbered into the washroom. Your guts spilled into the sink, mostly bile. You turned on the faucet and washed it away. You let yourself slump to the tile, leaning against the side of clawfoot tub. Your breath picked up but you couldn’t cry. Not anymore. It was a peculiar sensation. You felt numb yet agonized. It was a pain you couldn’t quite grasp. You hung your head and sat until the frosted glass lightened, signalling that day was close.
You sat in the shower, scrubbing at your skin, slowly at first but then your need to cleanse yourself grew frantic. You emerged with raw flesh and dressed in a pair off baggy sweatpants and an aged sweater with holes in the cuffs. You dumped the clothing from your hamper and ripped the sheets and blankets from atop your bed, shoving them deep within the tall basket. You sat on the machine in the common laundry room as it shook with swirl of your bed clothing. Your fingers bent over the edge of the white metal, the subtle tumbling almost calming. You changed the load over and repeated your vigil.
You tossed the bedding down the garbage chute when they were done.
The sun was fully risen when you returned to your apartment, refusing to enter the bedroom and acknowledge your barren mattress. Your phone vibrated, drawing your attention as you carefully set up a pot of coffee to brew. You waited to fill your mug before you dug the phone from your purse, the screen lighting up as another message arrived. ‘You up for a sleepover?’ Allie followed the invitation with a winky emoji. You didn’t know how to answer. You definitely didn’t want to sleep in your own bed but you were afraid that Bucky would return that night and think you fled.
Your phone shook again, this time an unknown number. You opened the window and read, the fear creeping up your neck like spider legs. ‘In case you think of trying to run again’. It was easy to guess who had sent the text, easier with the photos that followed. Images more chilling than the scene in the parking garage. Pictures of your mother in front of her house, watering her flowers, accompanied by a wall of text including her name, birth date, social security number...everything about her.
‘Sorry, I can’t,’ You replied to Allie. You were pitiful. Too afraid to have a life so that you can sit and await your bane. A call came through, unknown number. You pressed answer as your heart raced. “Y/N,” Bucky’s voice greeted but you couldn’t speak. “Come on, what did I say about answering me.”
“What do you want?” You rasped, walking over to your window, looking out along the skyline. Could he see you then?
“You can go to the sleepover. I won’t be over tonight.” You could hear the smirk in his voice.
“W-what?” You sputtered, trying to search him out. “You can see my texts?”
“I see everything. I told you. Now, go ahead and have some fun. You deserve it after last night.” You were sickened by his tone. You reached up and drew the curtains shut. “I’m out of town right now but I’ll be back on Tuesday. This time I expect you to be on time.”
“I have to work,” You lied.
“Not that late. 10-6. Not a bad shift. Enough time after to have some fun.” Your hand was trembling uncontrollably. “I expect you’ll be home before seven.”
“Y-yes,” You stuttered, your throat constricting.
“Well, I should let you go. I’m a bit tied up at the moment,” He was signing off as if this was a perfectly casual conversation. “Oh, and one thing before I go, Y/N. Don’t try to lie to me again. When I return, you will be punished for breaking the rules. No passes this time. Understood?”
You choked, “Yes,” You whispered into the speaker, “Yes, I understand.”
“Good.” He was smirking, you could hear it. “Have fun at your sleepover.” The line went dead and you pulled your phone away from your ear. You scrolled through your contacts, returning to your conversation with Allie. ‘Actually, a sleepover sounds great.’
You crossed your arms as you waited for Allie to answer her damn buzzer. The speaker crackled and you heard her rustling in the background. “Y/N?” This always happened. She was always in the middle of something else when you turned up. You would have laughed if your body would have allowed it.
“Yeah, it’s me,” You called back, “Come on. Let me in. I’m soaked.” It had rained again but you hadn’t really noticed until you entered the lobby. The door rang and you pulled on it as it unlocked. You stood in front of the elevator, waiting for it to descend. You were jealous of Allie’s building; it was new enough that its amenities worked. At your building, you couldn’t trust the elevator. The old cage door and the several residents who reported hours spent waiting to be freed from its grips by maintenance. With your luck, you didn’t tempt fate.
It was a smooth ride up and you waited once more before Allie’s door. She slid free the chain free and let you in. Her hair was wrapped in a towel and her face green with an herbal smelling mask. “Just in time,” She chimed as she welcomed you in. “Shit, Y/N, you look fucking ragged. Good thing I have an extra mask.”
I don’t think a mask will do the trick, you thought as your eyebrows twitched. “Ha, yeah,” You laughed halfheartedly, “I brought wine.”
“You look like you need it,” She smiled but her eyes caught yours and she stopped. Usually she was hard to shut up. She’d keep going enough for the both of you so you never needed to worry about lively conversation. “Are you okay?”
You shook your head, trying to free yourself from the chains which only grew tighter around your limbs. “Fine,” You lied, forcing a bigger smile. She hesitated but backed off, allowing you the fib. She was always understanding. Whatever you needed, she would give. If that meant space, she’d give you a mile, but when the time came she was right by your side.
“Let me uncork that wine,” She took the large bottle from you, weighing it as the golden nectar swished against the glass, “Wow, you went all out.”
“Last time you drank it all,” You kidded. Still the smile was not real. You were relieved to be away from your apartment, to have Allie nearby, but you just couldn’t feel...normal. You hung your jacket and slipped out of your boots, following her down the hallway. Her apartment always amused you as it looked like Barbie herself could live here. Allie was a great host. She filled the largest wine glasses and set them on the low coffee table.
“Go rinse your face and I’ll put the mask on.” You did as she said, splashing your face and returning to her, closing your eyes as she smoothed the thick mask over your skin. “Ha, let me get my phone.” She stood as she finished, washing her hand in the kitchen sink and retrieving her phone as she sat back down. “I’m going to send this to everyone. You look so funny.”
“You’re one to talk,” You rolled your eyes. Her own mask was dried and starting to flake. She looked like a swamp monster.
“Shit, I gotta get this off!” She jumped up again and raced to the bathroom. When she came back she was giggling and touching her rosy cheeks, the rest of her face just as red.
“How long is this suppose to be on?” You asked anxiously.
“Ten minutes. But I may have left mine on a little longer,” She grinned, baring her teeth awkwardly.
“Right, I’m just going to take mine off now.” You passed her and swiftly cleaned your face as you felt tingling along your forehead. You were thankfully soft and without shine, your skin much brighter than before.
“So,” Allie handed you your wine as you say, “What are we going to watch tonight? Or do you wanna play a game? I got the new Mario.”
“Hmm? So many options,” You leaned back, sipping deep from your wine. “You choose. I’ll do whatever.” Whatever could distract you from the impending doom which stood over you so constantly. You drank again from you wine, setting down the glass with only a mouthful left.
“Take it easy, Y/N,” Allie looked up as she switched on her console, “We have all night and only one bottle.”
“Won’t be that long a night if I drink enough,” You muffled a belch into your palm and she laughed.
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” She sat beside you on the couch and handed you a controller, “But I think you’ll need your wits for this game. I might just kick your ass.”
#dark!bucky#dark!bucky barnes#dark bucky#dark bucky barnes#dark!fic#au#mcu#marvel#witness#series#bucky barnes#bucky barnes fic#bucky x reader#bucky barnes x reader
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Life As We Know It
Clarke and Bellamy have nothing in common except mutual hatred for each other and a shared love of their Goddaughter Madi. When the loss of their best friends forces them to move in together and raise Madi as their own, they'll have to come to terms with their relationship and the fallout of Lincoln and Octavia's death.
It may just take a few exploded diapers, pounds of applesauce and 5000 re-watches of Little Orphan Annie for them to figure out they don't hate each other so much after all.
Based loosely off the romantic comedy of the same name
Completed!
*Ch. 1 posted below + AO3 Link*
Prologue
February 2nd, 2019
“What you want to do is capture the essence of his expression. It’s all in the eyes!” Clarke instructed, gesturing to the model in the middle of the room. She took in her favorite view, Friday afternoon charcoal sketch class. The class was aimed at high schoolers, most of whom had dreams of going to art school. They were an enthusiastic bunch, she loved affirming their talent and watching them follow their dreams.
Lost in her musings of high school talent, Clarke didn’t notice Harper standing in the doorway. She took a step into the room and held up Clarke’s phone. Clarke usually didn’t keep it on her while she taught but Harper looked panicked as she pointed to it wildly.
“You guys are doing great! I just have to check up on something real quick” Clarke assured as she took off her smock and followed Harper into the hallway.
“Sorry I normally wouldn’t interrupt you but your phone has been going off like crazy, it’s an unknown number.”
Clarke nodded and quickly took the phone from Harper, just as the phone began ringing again. Confused, Clarke answered and a tinny voice replied, “Arkadia Memorial Hospital, is this Clarke Griffin?”
A pit of dread immediately formed in Clarke’s stomach as she made her way to her office. Her hands were shaking now as her mind ran through all the possibilities of why they could be calling her. The operator paused and redirected her to another line. The dread continued to grow for Clarke until the phone reconnected and she confirmed her identity to a doctor.
“You are listed as one of the emergency contacts for Lincoln and Octavia Blake, I’m sorry to inform you that there’s been an accident. Is it possible for you to come to the hospital?” A nasal voice asked.
At the word accident, Clarke’s mind whited out and her ears began ringing. Moving on autopilot she grabbed her keys and ran out of the school, forgetting her class entirely.
She had met Lincoln on her first week of art school. As the two oldest people in their freshman lecture, they became fast friends. Neither of them had any family to speak of, so they kind of formed one together. They supported each other during their starving artist years, their first ugly pieces and celebrated their small victories in a cramped apartment that Clarke’s dad had left her in his will. Clarke had never had siblings, but Lincoln was the closest thing to a brother she had ever known.
He was gruff but kind and the best sculptor she had ever met. His sculpting is what had brought Octavia into their lives. Back when they were fresh out of school and doing shitty gallery shows in the bad part of town, a girl with long brown hair who wore funky sweaters would come to every exhibition to stare intently at Lincoln’s art. She came every week without fail, to every gallery that Lincoln’s sculptures were shown at. Lincoln used to watch her from afar and light up whenever he saw her looking at his work. Eventually, the week before Lincoln’s sculptures hit it big, Clarke convinced him to go and talk to her. The rest is history.
Clarke had never seen two people who complimented one another as well as Lincoln and Octavia, they were truly soulmates. Octavia with her bright smile and long limbs quickly became a staple in their lives. Much like Lincoln, she was a little rough around the edges but she loved fiercely with her whole heart. She never really questioned Clarke, just accepted her as Lincoln’s sister and loved her as such. It seemed logical of course when their daughter Madi was born that Clarke would be her Godmother.
She reached Arkadia Memorial in record time and ran as fast as she could to the emergency department. When she reached the waiting room she skid to a halt, in front of her was none other than Octavia’s brother Bellamy Blake folded over in a chair wearing a worn Arkadia Fire Department sweatshirt and sporting red rimmed eyes.
April 11, 2015
“Maybe I should just cancel…” Clarke held the phone between her shoulder and ear as she washed her paintbrushes in the sink.
“You’ve been single for 3 years and he just moved here, it's the perfect time for you both to start over.”
“I’m going to give you a code word…if I text you a fireball emoji he’s trying to murder me and you need to come save me,” she said seriously, drying the brushes and carefully placing them back into a chipped mug.
She readjusted the phone and grabbed a rag to wipe down the paint splattered tables.
“You won’t need a code word...you’re being ridiculous, I've met Bellamy. He's exactly the opposite of that oily soft boy who must not be named, it'll be a nice change.” laughter cutting into Lincoln’s fake exasperation.
“You can never be too careful…he might be a psycho murderer.” Clark continued, "But you're right about Finn, he was a greaseball."
“Clarke. Bellamy’s a little rough around the edges but he’s great. Plus it'll be nice for you guys to get to know each other before the wedding."
“The maid of honor and the best man, tale as old as time."
"True as it can be." Lincoln continued, the smile evident in his voice, "I think you guys are really well suited."
"I'll take your word on this but if he kills me I'll haunt you from beyond the grave.”
“I’m hanging up. Try to be positive about this.”
Logically, Clarke knew that Lincoln was right and that she needed to start putting herself back out there. Her life had been pretty boring since her best friend had met the love of his life and moved out of their apartment. Her cat shockingly doesn’t make for a sparkling conversationalist.
Since Lincoln moved out and Finn had turned out to be a dick, she had thrown herself into work.
And she was now the proud owner of a small art studio and school. Initially, it had been difficult and sad but after a small feature from a popular art blogger, it seemed that she was finally getting her footing. The small studio had grown immensely in the past year and she was able to bring in her childhood friend Harper as a co-teacher.
Clarke finished wiping the tables and examined herself in the mirror by the door. She would need a shower before she met this tall dark and handsome mystery man. She looked like she had been hit with an acrylic paint tornado.
On her drive home she listened to her favorite motivational podcast, hoping the affirmation would bring her some confidence for the rest of the night.
As time crawled closer to the date, her excitement grew. It had been a long time since she had gotten dressed up for someone else. After a lot of trial and error she finally decided on her favorite red bodycon, a nice pair of black heels and hoop earrings. She curled her hair into loose waves and perched on her couch to wait out her date.
An hour later, Clarke's optimism was quickly dying down. He was already late. Over an hour late. Fidgeting and checking the clock again, she shifted her dress down her legs and tapped her foot. She was starting to get annoyed, restless and hungry. She considered the Babybell cheeses in her fridge and wondered whether eating one would really matter in the long run. Right as she was about to head to the fridge, there was a loud revving outside and her phone pinged with a text from an unknown number,
“Hey it’s Bellamy, I’m here.”
Rolling her eyes at the fact that he didn’t even bother to come to the door. Clarke gathered her purse, took a deep breath and headed out.
She was met by two things, a very hot man and a very large motorcycle.
“I’m not really dressed for a that,” Clarke mumbled as she took in the sleek black bike and the messy haired man in ripped black jeans and frayed olive-green shirt. Dammit, Lincoln was right...he looked nothing like Finn. He was tall, dark, handsome and his arms were deliciously large.
“Hold on tight, promise I won’t read too far into it if you cop a feel” he winked at her, arms flexing as he fished a helmet out of the seat
“I said I’m not really dressed for this, I don’t know if my leg will get over it," she replied, irritably crossing her arms over her chest.
His eyes flitted down to her boobs before he snorted, “Don’t be scared babe I gotcha.”
“I can drive us," she insisted, moving her hands to her hips.
“C'mon baby, live a little," he groaned, pulling the helmet off his head fully.
“Either I drive, or I go back inside,” she tapped her foot.
“We can just go back inside and get to it, if that’s what you really want Princess…” Bellamy winked and dismounted the motorcycle, turning to gesture toward the cars lined down the street.
“I’m not a princess,” Clarke argued while fishing through her purse for her keys.
“If the shoe fits,” Bellamy was about to smirk until Clarke clicked the lock on her car and the lights went up on the smallest car he had ever seen. “There’s no way I can’t fit in it that,” he mumbled gesturing at the mini cooper.
Bellamy looked between Clarke and the car in exasperation, “Like I said…I can drive or you can leave” she said with her hands on her hips. He sighed, looked at the car and then back at her before climbing in the passenger seat and slamming the door.
“Where do you want to go?” He asked, adjusting his messy hair in the rearview mirror.
“Well where did you make a reservation?” Clarke arched an eyebrow, she could feel her temples beginning to throb.
“I figured we would just go with the flow,” he said irritably, adjusting the collar of his jacket.
“I know a place, it’s owned by a friend of mine and Lincoln’s from art sch-“ right as Clarke was about to finish, Bellamy’s phone began to blare a cheesy Pitbull song.
“Why don’t you get that, I’ll just wait,” she rolled her eyes and looked pointedly at his phone. The song paused and then began ringing again.
“No it’s okay give it a sec and it’ll go to voicemail”
“I insist go ahead”
With a pained expression on his face, Bellamy answered the phone, "Heyyyyyy what’s up?” he glanced at Clarke while making affirmative noises, “Yeah how about I stop by around 10-“ he looked at Clarke again, “actually make that 9:30”
“SERIOUSLY” she yelled as he hung up
“What?! It was a sick friend!” he answered defensively, throwing his hands in the air.
"Right, a 'sick friend'," she mocked, rolling her eyes for what felt like the thousandth time.
"Yes. They umm very ill and need assistance,"
"I would LOVE to know what illness can only be cured by your PENIS," she yelled, she could feel her face beginning to heat up.
"Oh my god chill the fuck out!" he yelled back, turning his body fully to face her.
“We don’t have to do this…I know it means a lot to Lincoln and Octavia but you don’t seem to care since you answered a booty call in front of me,”
“I can't believe Octavia said you were cool, suburbia has gotten to her. You’re literally the most uptight person I've ever met,” He smirked
“GET OUT OF MY SMART CAR” Clarke yelled, jumping out of the car and slammed the door behind her. Bellamy followed and hopped on his motorcycle without saying goodbye.
***
After a hot shower to wash away the terrible night, she put on her comfiest PJs and curled up onto the couch with a glass of wine. Sinking into the pillows, she grabbed her phone to call Lincoln. He answered on the first ring.
“I take it your date didn’t go well.” Lincoln sighed, the disappointment evident in his voice.
“Linc…we didn’t leave my street.”
“Did you even give him a chance? Behind the motorcycle he really is a good dude,”
“HE ANSWERED A BOOTY CALL IN FRONT OF ME!!"
“Ugh damn it...Octavia said he had changed. I swear I didn't know."
“I’m sorry Linc, I know you wanted it to work out but it’s not really salvageable,” Clarke sighed, knowing how much it meant to Lincoln for her to get along with Octavia’s family. Especially since the wedding was coming up soon.
“You guys didn’t click. It’s fine. Are you going to be fine for the wedding?"
“We can share breathing space for the wedding but I’d prefer to never speak to him directly ever again,”
“Sorry about your night…can’t help but feel a little responsible”.
“It’s not your fault Bellamy thinks his penis is the best thing since sliced bread. I love you bud. You meant well and that's what matters. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, there's a glass of wine with my name on it,” Clarke hung up the phone and sighed deeply. It stung to know that she had let Lincoln down even if Bellamy was a total asshat.
Clarke closed her eyes and savored her sip of wine, dating sucked and she would honestly prefer to just die alone in peace.
Her phone pinged and much to her surprise it was from Bellamy, “Look…I don’t like you (and you obviously don't like me) but I love Lincoln and my sister so I think we should just ignore each other from now on,” Unfortunately, he was right…they were basically family and she was going to have to see his stupid handsome face at all the time. “Deal” Clarke replied.
February 2nd, 2019
Clarke approached Bellamy, his head was in his hands and he looked like he had been crying. He had balled up the sleeves of his sweatshirt and used them to wipe his eyes.
"They won't tell me anything and I've been here for an hour," he murmured, his voice was ragged and cracked at the end of the sentence.
"I'm sorry, I was teaching I didn't check my phone," she answered quietly, not really sure why she was apologizing. She couldn't bring herself to meet his gaze.
"You didn't miss much, I think I scared off a few nurses," he admitted and something about his expression made Clarke want to reach out and touch his hair. She refrained, shoving her hand in her pocket instead.
"The waiting is somehow the worst part," she mumbled, not quite meeting his gaze.
Just as Bellamy was about to answer, a solemn faced doctor approached them both, “Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake?”
They both nodded, and Bellamy stood to stand behind Clarke, sure to maintain a healthy level of distance. She wrung her hands together and shifted from side to side. The doctor's expression was unreadable and it was making her stomach turn. Bellamy was nervously tapping his fingers against his leg and the sound of his skin hitting the denim was starting to grate on her.
“Lincoln and Octavia were rear ended on the highway by an 18 wheeler. It was a very serious accident.” The doctor grimaced, gesturing for them both to take a seat. The pit in Bellamy's stomach grew as we took a seat on the bench next to Clarke. Their legs were squished together and she reached out, carefully placing her hand on his knee. His skin tingled, this was the first time Clarke had touched him non-violently in years and it felt strange but he placed his hand over hers. Whether he liked it or not, she was the only person who understood how he felt right now.
"So when can we see them?" Clarke asked, voice shaking.
The doctor, set his clipboard down on the bench beside him and leaned forward. "Their injuries were very severe, they were both in surgery for several hours and had the best possible care. We truly did the best that we could. But unfortunately, with accidents like this, it's a lot of pain and stress on the body. In the case of Lincoln and Octavia, their bodies just couldn’t handle the damage. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but we lost them."
Clarke crumpled, chest heaving and ears ringing. Bellamy wrapped an arm around her uncertainly, he felt like he was frozen. It didn't feel real. It wasn't possible. Bile rose in his throat and a wave of nausea washed over him. Octavia was dead.
“Their daughter…they have a daughter, she’s one. Is she okay?” Clarke said suddenly, whipping out of Bellamy's grip. Tears filled his eyes as panic set in, he hadn't considered that Madi could have been in the car with them.
It was only then that they noticed a police officer standing to the right of the doctor. He was equally solemn faced and took a seat beside the doctor.
The police officer spoke quietly, “Madi is fine. She was in the care of a minor at the time of the accident and has been released to DCFS. We will look into you both being able to see her tomorrow.”
Bellamy let out a sigh of relief as a complex set of emotions washed over him. Grief for his young, vibrant sister and her strong, caring husband, relief that Madi was alive and overwhelming sadness for the parents that she would never know. Shocked that somehow he was the last Blake standing. He placed his hand over Clarke’s on his shoulder, he might not like her but she’s all he had in this mess.
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What about Michael’s s/o getting him a cellphone? Would he actually use it or not?
Why is this such a hilarious idea ??? I feel like Michael trying to use technology would be amazing, like he can’t be very familiar with it.
He’s seen you using your own phone often enough, it’s not hard to show him how to work one. Whether he’s listening to anything you’re saying is another subject.
He actually does use it, which you didn’t really expect. You were pretty sure it was going to be a waste of money, so you’re glad at least that the investment was worth it. It’s something simple, not an expensive smartphone, because you’re pretty sure he wouldn’t use most of the other features.
You’re not so pleased with how he uses it. Yeah, you’ll get quiet phone calls with nothing but heavy breathing, but that’s not really unusual considering who’s on the other line. It’s the texting that really gets on your nerves.
You were curious to see if he’d text at all, since he doesn’t speak. It’s not exactly talking, but it would be a much easier and clearer way to communicate. Nope. Mostly you just get zoomed in pictures of yourself, taken from a distance. You’ve built up a collection of those, as well as blurry pictures of the sidewalk that you’re not completely sure he meant to send you.
You’ve got to tone down the shorthand and emojis when you text him, just to make sure he knows what you’re trying to say. You still throw in the occasional heart or smiley face, though.
He did use an emoji once - a little knife in response to your text asking where he was. You weren’t sure if he was serious or not, but you nearly had a heart attack.
For the love of god, do not let him discover dick pics unless you want your messages flooded. You’re going to have to keep your phone turned off in public to avoid someone catching a glance at your screen when it lights up every three seconds.
You had gone over the instructions for the little device, which were simple enough. It was nothing compared to your phone, just capable of calls and texts, with a crappy camera and no apps, but you figured he’d appreciate something straightforward and easy to use. If he would use it at all, that is, but you supposed it wasn’t too expensive if he never picked it up.
“Alright, that’s it. Just keep it charged, you know, and don’t drop it at any murder scenes, my fingerprints are all over that thing.”
You hold out the little phone, fully charged and ready to go, your number typed in as the only contact. He looks at it, then at you, but doesn’t reach for it.
“Aw, come on, just take it. Even if you don’t use it, it’s good for emergencies. What if you’re gone and I need a jar opened, huh?” You make a face, pouting. “You gonna leave me here to open my own jars, Mikey?”
You see his eyes narrow at you, most likely annoyed at the nickname you’ve started using, but he makes no move to take the offered phone. You keep his gaze for a while, but you know there’s no way to win that game, so you sigh. With an eye roll you step forward, holding open the pocket on his jumpsuit with one finger and dropping the phone inside. Michael turns his head to watch, but doesn’t stop you.
“There you go,” you state, whipping out your own device from your pocket. “And here, I’ll send you your first text! Just reply to that when you need to, so it’s already set up for you.”
You find his number, saved under the name ‘Audrey’ because you knew he’d be annoyed if he found out, and fill the little message box with hearts and kissy faces. You press send and wait a few seconds before the little ding from his pocket lets you know the message was received. He looks surprised, hand twitching at his side, and you have to hold back from giggling, because he’d only break the thing out of spite otherwise.
“Maybe turn it to silent when you’re outside. Go on and look at it!” You urge, a little surprised when he does just that, taking it out and pressing the little button on the side to turn the screen on. You watch him for a moment, waiting in vain for a reaction.
“Well? Text me back, Mikey.”
He looks up, a real glare on his face now, and turns away, heading towards the back door and grabbing a dirty knife off the counter.
“Hey!”
You’re not surprised to see him leave with no warning, but you notice the phone being slipped back into his pocket with a grin.
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Rainy Days and Tea
Noir Seunghoon x Reader AU
1.8K, Fluff, Drabble, Coffee Shop AU
Naturally, it would be the one day you didn’t bring any sort of hood or umbrella that the skies opened and released sheets of water on you as you walked home from work. It came out of nowhere, giving you no chance to even duck under an awning or into a store before you were getting drenched in the rain. Two minutes and more running than you cared to do ever again and you made it to a store that was still open and ducked inside.
The chimes above the door rang cheerfully as you stepped in out of the downpour, and the white noise of water beating down on the windows and roof was complemented by smooth jazz playing inside. Warmth was the next thing you noticed, a comforting feeling of being surrounded and safe as you stood just inside the door, water dripping from your hair and clothes. The store was empty and you took a moment to look around to see what it actually was. A café, of some sort at least.
There were tables and booths here and there and a counter area that looked inviting. The fairy lights and lamps dotted around the store added to the feeling of warmth and comfort that you felt as soon as you walked inside. Another beat passed before someone emerged from behind a curtain at the back of the store. When he stepped out into the room you felt your breath hitch in your throat. He was beautiful.
“Oh my god are you alright? That rain really came out of nowhere.”
His voice was deep and rich and made the hairs on your arms stand up. You shivered slightly as he came closer and you saw how his shirt clung to his arms. He took it to be that you were cold from getting soaked in the rain luckily, and offered you to come further into the store and sit down at one of the tables next to the counter. He disappeared behind the curtain again and returned with a towel, which he offered you with a soft smile. You took it, thanking him, before starting to try dry yourself off.
“Let me get you something warm to drink. What would you like?”
“Tea would be lovely.”
“We have a lot of teas to choose from! Fruit, herbal, fermented - any preference?”
“As long as it warms me up I’m not fussy.”
He smiled wider this time and you hid your surprised gasp with a cough, playing up on the cold you were probably going to catch from this. As he went to choose a drink for you, you diligently returned to drying yourself off. You checked your bag and fortunately it didn’t seem like anything inside had water damage, and it wasn’t long before the handsome man came back with two cups of steaming tea.
“It’s chamomile with a little bit of honey, good for when you’re cold.”
“Thank you.”
You took the offered cup and hummed happily as the warmth spread across your skin. The steam fanned over your face as you took a small sip. It was too hot to drink straight away, but the tingling of warmth on your lips began to dispell the cold from your bones that the rain had left you with. Across from you, he had sat down as well, cupping his own tea in his hands as he watched you.
“Is it alright?”
“It’s perfect, thank you.”
“Seunghoon.”
You took his offered hand and shook it, giving him your name too. His hands were warm and strong, and you felt a little blush coming on when he smiled at you again and called your name pretty. When you left work today you certainly hadn’t expected something like this to break your usual routine.
The both of you began talking as you sipped on your tea and let it heat you up from the inside while Seunghoon’s smiles warmed up your skin. He was a wonderful conversationalist, telling you all sorts of stories about his college years, setting up this store and the crazy kids who worked here. His little brothers he called them, and they sounded like a wild bunch.
Soon enough your cup was empty and the rain had stopped outside. It probably had stopped a while ago but you and Seunghoon had been so caught up in talking that neither of you noticed. It had gotten late, the little light of the evening fading to darkness. On seeing the time your stomach decided to rumble, reminding you that you hadn’t eaten since lunch six hours ago. Seunghoon looked concerned when you explained as much, and apologised for keeping you here so late.
“No no, it’s fine! I enjoyed spending time with you.”
As soon as the words had left your mouth you felt yourself flush with embarrassment. Before you could amend it though Seunghoon had smiled widely and agreed. That just made you blush even more. He gathered up your cups and brought them back behind the counter, and you figured you should dig out your purse to pay. When you reached him though he refused, saying it was on the house. Despite your insistence, he wouldn’t let you pay for the tea.
“If you want to pay so badly why don’t you come back again another day?”
He seemed shy to say it, turning his back to you and pretended to be busy cleaning the coffee machine. You squeaked a little, not used to having someone this sweet and handsome flirting with you so openly. But you agreed, and when he whipped his head back around his eyes were wide and a smile broke across his face. It was cute. He was cute.
You waited around the café as he closed up. The rain had started to pick up again and Seunghoon offered to give you a lift home. You were going to decline when a flash of lightning lit up the store and you decided to take him up on that instead. He held an umbrella over your heads as you walked out of the store towards his car. Like a gentleman, he held your door open first before running around and getting into the driver seat. He smiled at you and gently reminded you to put on your safety belt before taking off.
The drive was comfortable. His music taste matched yours very well as you both suggested songs to listen to back and forth. The rain outside got even heavier and you were very glad you accepted his offer. It was slow going through the downpour but eventually Seunghoon pulled up outside your apartment block. You were just going to thank him and run up the stairs to your door but he beat you to it, hopping out with his umbrella and offering to walk you up. Your face was surely bright pink at this stage, but you couldn’t decline.
Outside your door, he stopped and smiled at you. It didn’t make you feel uneasy or on edge, he didn’t ask to come inside or make any move to step closer to you. Your heart fluttered as you said your goodbyes and thank yous, but before you could go inside he called out to you.
“Um, would you like to exchange phone numbers? Just so you can let me know when you’re coming to the café next and I’ll make sure I’m there. Only if you want to that is!”
He rubbed the back of his neck and bit his lip, looking shy. You giggled a little and wondered if you should tease him a bit but decided against it. So you agreed, the smile he gave you brighter than the lightning as you exchanged contact details. Seunghoon had put a little coffee cup emoji next to his name in your phone and it made you smile. This time you said goodbye for real.
“Thank you Seunghoon, I really appreciate everything.”
“You’re welcome, I was happy to help. See you soon?”
“Absolutely. Drive safe!”
A little wave and he turned and walked back down to his car, the rain running off his umbrella in sheets. You opened the door and stepped inside, but waited to see him drive off before closing it. Running up the stairs to your apartment you threw yourself onto your bed and screamed into a pillow. Your heart was beating so fast and your stomach was full of butterflies. Seunghoon was so sweet and handsome, you couldn’t wait to meet him again.
***
You and Seunghoon had been an official couple for a while now, after many dates in the café and walks in the park he eventually asked you out with a bouquet of roses and a hot chocolate. It was cute, just like him. Today when you were on your way to the shop after work the skies opened again and began thundering down on top of you. You had an umbrella this time, but as you ran down the street you felt this was oddly reminiscent of the first time you met.
The café was empty again, the new selections of healthy drinks and snacks that Seunghoon had asked for your opinion on were lined up against the wall. He was proud of expanding his stock, and a lot of people seemed to like the new choices. You called out for your boyfriend as you walked in the door, dropping your umbrella into the bucket beside it. His voice echoed from the back of the store and you sat at the counter and waited for him to appear.
“The rain is really coming down isn’t it?”
“Mmm, I feel bad for anyone caught out there without an umbrella.”
You shared a smile and he leaned down to capture your lips in a chaste kiss. He tasted like peppermint, probably leftover from his last drink. He turned and started putting leaves into a teapot and preparing two cups. It had become a routine for you both, you dropping in when the shop was closing and Seunghoon making you tea. You hadn’t realised just how many kinds of tea there were until meeting him. You watched him as he worked, fluid movements showing just how much time he had poured into his shop. When he finally turned back around there were two cups of steaming tea in hand, one which he offered to you before coming around the counter to sit next to you.
“Chamomile with honey?”
He smiled as you tasted it, reminded once more of your first meeting. You laughed as he ducked his head shyly, and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek as you took a small sip. There was something comfortable in his presence, making you feel safe and cared for. Seunghoon never failed to cheer you up when you were down and always was there to listen to your worries. He was perfect for you, warming you up from the inside and out.
“I love you.”
You felt your heart flutter hearing those words, looking over to find him watching you softly. There was no pressure in his eyes, he wasn’t expecting you to say it back, but you felt the same.
“I love you too.”
A kiss, tender and filled with love. Seunghoon was your safe place, and you were glad that you had found him.
#noir#noir seunghoon#seunghoon#noir imagines#kpop imagines#idol imagines#soft#seunghoon x reader#coffee shop au#fluffy drabble
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I got more Banana Bachelor AU done! ^-^ Tagging @lycheemilkart, Serahlin of course belongs to @scurvgirl
When Magister Danarius turns up dead the day before Vena’s date with Ana, he honestly doesn’t think much about it.
It’s kind of surprising, in that weird way that always seems to happen when a person you saw alive quite recently is suddenly no longer breathing. But Danarius seemed like the kind of guy who a lot of people would wish death on, and the news feed all reports his cause of death as a heart attack. The cumulative result of too much excess and decadence in life, or a little too much questionable blood magic, maybe.
Vena spares a moment to muse that a lot of people’s wishes probably came true, and then moves on. Danarius wasn’t even a client, just a business associate of some of Sylaise’s family. There’s a little gossip about it. Mostly people speculating on who will replace him in the Magisterium or inherit his fortune, since he had no heirs to speak of.
Vena knows the legalities and the social elements well enough to make an educated guess, which is that one of the other houses will claim Danarius’ seat - probably House Carius, they’ve been up-and-coming for a while and their matriarch has good PR - and his wealth will go to his Helvadus cousins. Not because they have the best claim, but because they have the best lawyers.
It’s not really a big deal, though. And most of the gossip around the water coolers is actually focused on the bachelor auction, and the results of everyone’s dates. Who tried to bid on who, and who’s already gone on their dates, and who hasn’t. Tasallir makes some apologies to Serahlin and Vena but they both just counter by thanking him, and waving off his concern. He and Serahling reschedule their intended outing. Vena’s not completely sure, because she tends to play that kind of stuff close to the chest. But when the subject of her smitten jeweler comes up, Serahlin’s cheeks seem to get a little pinker.
Vena just hopes he’s nice. Her last boyfriend was a real piece of work.
Thenvunin goes on his date and regales everyone about it like it was the plot of some kind of romance novel. But not in the ‘oh it was so magical’ kind of a way, more in the ‘ah we’re at the stage where the prospective couple hates one another but can’t shut up about it’ way. A lot of people wonder about the mystery woman who out-bid one of the boss’ brothers for the other. That makes Vena popular because, of course, she bid on him too, and he sat at their table for a significant portion of the evening.
But he doesn’t really have a lot of answers. And most people seem more taken with making pointedly-not-pointed speculations about Falon’Din. Mainly, whether or not they’re going to have to deal with him as a client again soon, because the man is notorious for pitching fits whenever things don’t go his way.
And that usually means property damage. Or assault.
Vena just hopes that whoever ends up having to deal with him remembers to wear a knife-proof vest. He still gets twinges in his left shoulder sometimes.
His own date seems to just inch closer, taking longer than he might have guessed it would. He finds his thoughts drifting towards Ana, ‘Dalish Ana’, and her freckles and red hair. He googles her, because of course he does. But he doesn’t get a lot of results. There’s an etsy shop that sells foraged crafts and bath products and stuff, but he’s not even sure if it’s the same person. There aren’t any photos of her. No instagram or twitter that he can find, either, but then it’s not like he has comprehensive information or anything.
He tries her friend, Selene, but there’s even less stuff to be found there.
In the days leading up their date, Vena considers texting her or calling her. Wondering about the protocols on that. Everything’s set up and they seem to have exchanged all the info they need. But, he’s never really been one for the ‘wait to call’ rule.
He needs an opener, though.
Two days after their first meeting, he just goes for it.
What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft? He texts.
There’s a brief delay.
A flat minor? she sends back, to his absolute delight.
Yes!!! Excellent!
A happy face follows.
I have been trying to think of a better name for your in my contacts, he admits.
Oh? she replies. Are you fishing for my last name?
No, he assures her. I never use last names. I like nicknames.
Some people call me Red, she tells him.
Do you like it?
She sends him a shrug. Hmm. Not a solid positive, then.
Clearly you need something more fun and breezy, he decides. Ana-panda? Mana-fana? Ana-fana-bo-bana?
He peppers his suggestions with a few thoughtful-face emojis. Ana sends him back a skeptical one, but it feels like it has good energy. Fun skeptical, somehow.
Banana? she tosses in.
Vena’s grin widens.
Well if you insist!
He means it as a joke, reflexively. But it’s… kind of cute. As they carry on exchanging quips and texts, it sticks in his head. By the time they manage to say goodbye, he’s successfully found a very cute-looking banana picture. It even has freckles. He changes Ana’s contact details in his phone from ‘Dalish Ana’ to ‘Ana-Banana’, and tosses on the image.
Perfect.
Vena looks up from his phone just in time to walk smack into his own office door.
…Alright, maybe he shouldn’t text her while he’s walking. Thenvunin from Reception lets out a snort of surprised amusement. Through the glass window of his office, Tasallir gives Vena is very best, patented ‘how did this moron graduate from law school’ look. Vena clears his throat, and tries to play it off as he opens his door.
“Are you alright, Vena?” Serahlin asks, as she passes through the hall.
“Fine!” he assures her. “Just distracted. Who closed my door?”
She blinks at him.
“You did.”
Vena fires off a finger gun at her.
“Right,” he replies. “Yup. That was… I remember now. Great, thanks Serahlin. Are you still handling the Howe case?”
“Oh, yes. My client is going to get full custody and one hell of a settlement from her husband. I hope Rendon Howe enjoys sleeping on park benches,” she says, and the deflection works pretty well. Vena had heard as much, and Serahlin always takes a special satisfaction in stringing up adulterers and draining them for every last penny. With another finger gun Vena backs into his office, dignity somewhat salvaged.
“Brilliant, I’m glad to hear hit,” he says.
His phone chimes again, and he lifts it up, grinning. But it’s just his work e-mail alert going off. With a sigh, he pockets his phone again, and gets his head back in the work game.
…Banana, though.
That’s so cute.
~
When the date finally rolls around, Vena is entirely ready for it.
He wears his favourite tasteful blue swim shorts, underneath a pair of his nicer cargo shorts. A light jacket, just in case the sea winds get cold, and a loose, faded t-shirt with ‘100% Boyfriend Material’ written on it in faded lettering. Tasallir sees him on his way out, and gives him an unimpressed once-over.
“You are an idiot,” he says.
Vena winks.
“Don’t stay up worrying, honey,” he counters, with a pat to his roommate slash coworker slash arch enemy’s arm.
“Take your rape whistle,” Tasallir instructs, sniffing disdainfully at that remark. He reaches up to straighten out his sleeve. Which isn’t even really wrinkled at all, but it probably is by Tasallir Standards.
Vena snorts, and backs his way down the hall.
“Taz, she’s like two feet tall and sweet as a button, I think I’ll be fine.”
“That is the kind of stereotyping that ends with people being murdered on beaches,” Tasallir informs him. “She could have cohorts. Or a weapon. Make sure you keep emergency services on speed dial, it is first date protocol.”
“This is worrying, by the way, this is exactly what I’m telling you not to do,” Vena points out, jogging backwards to the elevator.
“Look where you are going, you idiot,” Tasallir counters.
“Love you bunches!” Vena jokes, before blowing a kiss, and then finally turning around to hit the call button. The elevator doors open straight away, and he happily makes his way down to the lobby. Carefully balancing a bag full of beach supplies, and double-checking his phone and wallet in his pockets. He fishes his favourite pair of sunglasses out of the bag’s pocket, and slides them on as he nods to the doorman and makes his way out to the street and down towards the parking garage.
He’d offered to pick up Ana, but she assured him she had a ride. Probably smart, Vena will concede - joking aside it really is their first date, and if she came with him then she’d have to go back with him, even if she didn’t want to.
Of course, Vena has zero intention of making her not want to. He’s almost forgotten that this date is a result of a weird bachelor auction bidding type situation. They’ve texted one another a few times now. Mainly just corny jokes and puns, but he’s not complaining. Even so, it’s not like Ana knows a lot about him. What if he was a mass murderer or something? That would suck.
So he gets his car alone, and turns up the radio. Listening to one of the local stations as he devotes the first thirty minutes of his commute to just getting out of the city traffic, before finally hitting less cluttered roads, and driving his way out of Arlathan.
It always feels so good to do that.
The beach isn’t exactly quiet, but it’s not being mobbed either. Vena finds a parking spot and then has to walk a fair bit to reach the meeting point. He runs a bit behind, luck of the commute, but when he gets to the little beach side grill he immediately spots his date waiting for him at the front.
Ana’s wearing a red bikini top with a sunflower pin on it, and a loose green jacket that makes her eyes pop. There’s a dark lipstick on her mouth, and a leaf-shaped charm necklace held by soft cord around her neck. Her freckles are all on full display - well, as much as they could be without that nude beach situation they’d tossed around - and her hair nearly looks blonde in the bright sunlight.
At least until she turns her head, and the red hits him when she moves. She beams when she sees him.
“Hey, Bachelor Number Nine,” she quips, bouncing a bit on the balls of her feet.
Vena grins and does a mock stroll down an invisible runway, turning at the end when he gets to her. He feels light and playful, even if his heart is beating decidedly faster. He loves this feeling, he thinks. The cusp of something good and new, maybe even amazing. But still tentative, too. It’s a lot like the feeling he gets when he drives out of the city.
“Hey Ana-bo-bana,” he replies. The pockets of her jacket look full, he notes. Something like a leafy twig seems to be poking out of one of the bottom ones, and she’s got a flower in her hands that she’s fiddling with. As he draws level with her, she grins and reaches up to slip it over one of his ears.
“This grill smells good, and the beach is pretty,” she tells him. “What’s first on the itinerary?”
Vena moves the flower a little more securely behind his ear, and offers her his arm.
“Lunch, if you like?” he suggests.
Ana takes his elbow.
“Oh, good. I was hoping you’d say that,” she agrees. “Work was absolutely killer this morning, and I’m famished.”
She grins. Vena’s not entirely sure he’s caught the joke, but after a moment, he decides it’s not the end of the world.
He grins back.
#banana#bachelor auction au#selene at some point probably: ana pls stop making murder puns it's a security risk#ana: but that was a golden opportunity
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Emergency Contact
Prompt: Solangelo Week 2018 | Day 2 | Aged Up/Ten Years Later
This is a WIP, not much editing here (At all!) A more complete version may show its face on ao3.
Will Solace was one of those surgeons who needed silence while closing. His OR was just the quiet mechanical sounds of the medical machinery. His staff quietly counting the tools and gauzes, accounting for everything, making sure he didn't leave anything behind. Though he never did. He had a track record to keep, no mistakes, no unnecessary death, no stupid deaths. Accidents did not happen in his OR. Sure, during surgery he liked to listen to music, many of his colleagues did. Just not when closing. He needed silence. This was his church
“Dr. Solace. Your phone has a lot of texts.” One of the nurses said, looking at his phone in the pile where the other staff’s phones rested.
“I'm in the middle of closing, Susan.”
“I know, it's just your boyfriend was brought in by ambulance.”
“I don't have a boyfriend.” Will glanced up from his suture, trying to rack his brain for the last time he had a boyfriend.
“You were his emergency contact. They need you in admitting. He's in bad shape.”
Will twisted the needle driver as he finished closing.
“Is there a name for this person?”
“No ID, just his phone. And you popped up as his emergency contact.”
Will sighed. He set the tools down on the tray for final counting. “Okay. I'll go.” He looked at his resident. He felt secure after closing the patient. He could trust his resident to complete. “Finish up, please.”
Will disrobed and took off his gloves, throwing them in the biohazard waste. He scrubbed off and a nurse handed his phone.Susan wasn't lying, his phone was littered with texts and missed calls. He listened to the voicemail, they sounded surprised.
“Dr. Solace we didn't realize this was your phone. A young male was brought into the ER. You're his emergency contact and he's not doing well. He was in a crash. No ID-.”
He stopped listening and took off towards the ER. A intern looked up from the desk. Her eyes popped when she saw Will huffing over her. “Where is the patient?”
“He was taken to OR 4. He needed immediate attention…” Will took off back towards the ORs.
He barged in and looked through the pane of glass from the scrub station. The surgeon stood over the body, tubes and machines obscured his vision. He grabbed a surgical mask and walked into the OR, holding the mask over his face.
“Solace, get out. You know I can’t have you in here.” The surgeon said.
“I just need to confirm who it is.” Will glanced at the patient, his fears, and suspicions proved correct. Nico di Angelo was laying on the surgeon’s table, unconscious and lifeless as the surgeon operated.
“He had a CT, no brain injury just concussed. But both legs are broken and he punctured his lung. I’m repairing it right now. Now, I need you to leave.”
Will backed away, his mind racing. Of all the hospitals to be brought to, it had to be the one he worked at. The gods must be enjoying this on their Hephaestus TV, probably the love drama channel. He could see his dad even doing commentary over the video. He sighed and went back to the nurses' station.
“Hey, the car crash John Doe, I can ID him...also, do you have his phone?” The nurse looked at him unsteadily before handing the bag over. Will stood at the desk and gave her all the information he had on Nico, he paused at birthdate. He couldn’t exactly say ‘oh well see he was born in the 30’s but then was frozen in time while at a magical hotel’ so he just gave a year that best fit Nico’s age-1996. The nurse also hesitated when Will said blood type.
He went to the staff break room and melted onto the couch. He fiddled with Nico’s phone.
After the revelation of New Rome, the Greeks decided to up their stuff- creating a New Athens, expanding education and living areas. And with all the expansion, more inventions spurted from the Hephaestus and Athena kids. One of the inventions was monster proof phones. Nico’s phone was one of those phones. Which would explain why nothing was wrong with said phone.
Will thumbed to the emergency contact button. It pulled up Will’s contact card. His heart sank at why his co-workers assumed they were boyfriends. Nico still had hearts and suns on either side of Will’s name.
He sighed and locked the phone. Wondering if he should call Hazel to let her know about her brother. He decided against it, it would cause unnecessary panic and he didn’t know their relationship anymore, and how odd it would be for Will to be the one to call.
***
“Ugh.” Nico's head throbbed. His eyelids were heavy, he had to fight to open them. He instantly regretted it. It was clinically bright. Even with the lights off, everything was stark. He screwed his eyes shut.
He listened to the gentle beeps of machines and the quiet bustle outside the door.
A hospital? But how?
Flashes of the accident came. And he shuddered. It was a nasty car wreck, he was lucky to be alive.
“Good to see you awake.” A tired voice croaked from beside the bed.
His eyes flew open to the familiar sound. “Will?” He turned to face Will Solace, who grinned and moved closer.
“But...how?”
“You still have me as your emergency contact.”
“Oh. Shit...”
“You had me worried.” Will confessed. He pressed the nurse call button as he stood up. He towered over the bed and Nico felt his body freeze and his heart quicken.
And then he heard his heartbeat on the machine. Will tilted his head as he glanced at the monitor and gave a smile.
“Relax, Deathboy.” He hit a button on the monitor and the volume of the beeps lowered to something more manageable.
Nico took in the way Will held himself, and the navy blue scrubs. A white lab coat was draped over the chair Will had occupied before coming to Nico's side.
“You work here?” What luck.
Will nodded. He peeled his gaze away from Nico and looked towards the door.
“Hey, Jones. He's awake.” The nurse that came to the door nodded. Will looked back at Nico who at this point wanted to sink into the mattress, phase through the bed and lay on the floor. “Jones is going to take your vitals. I'm going to the cafeteria. Are you hungry?”
Nico weakly nodded.
***
“Do you want me to call Hazel? Or send an Iris message?” Will asked as Nico spooned pudding into his mouth
“No. I'll let her know later.”
“She'd want to know, Nico.”
“She's a little busy with the baby right now. I don't want to worry her.”
“She had a kid?”
“Yeah. Some art guy she met in college.”
Will leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on Nico's bed. He looked so relaxed, Nico wished he could be as relaxed.
“Soooo are you going to tell me why I'm your emergency contact?”
“I forgot I had it as you. It's not like I get hurt often.” Will threw a dark look. Nico quickly amended. “I don't get hurt enough to go to the hospital.”
“You also never changed the emojis on my contact card.”
Nico folded his arms. “And how would you know that?”
Will sheepishly handed Nico back his phone. Nico’s cheeks turned red.
“I haven’t really used my phone.”
“In ten years?”
“Has it been that long? Time moves weird in the Underworld.”
Will moved from his chair to the foot of Nico’s bed. He took off his shoes and sat crisscrossed at the end of the hospital bed. He observed Nico. Looking him over as he would for one of his patients, trying to not let his knowledge of Nico get in the way of observation.
Nico looked like shit, most car crash victims did. His legs propped on a pillow, set in metal frames. He had some nasty bruises all over his chest, which Will saw in surgery, but spread up and over his collarbone and peeked over his hospital gown. Nico seemed a husk of himself (again). But really, Will shouldn’t be observing him so soon after surgery. Will pushed away the guilt he was feeling.
Nico was aware he was being looked over. He glared over his pudding and Will went back to eat his vanilla pudding.
“I can bring you some ambrosia tomorrow.” Will said in between spoonfuls.”It’s probably best to make sure everything is set before magic heals you.”
“Thanks.” Nico looked at his phone’s screen, seeing how late it was. “Shouldn’t you be home? Sleeping?”
“This is my home.” Will laughed, running a hand through his hair. “I’m here all the time, I was just going to sleep in the On-Call room tonight. I have a surgery in the morning. So there’s no point in going home.”
“Hmm. No one to go home to?”
Will laughed again. “No. I mean I have a roommate, but no.”
It looked like a spark ignited behind Nico’s eyes. Will ignored it. He couldn’t deal with decade old feelings. The break up was not a good break up and he never really got over it as his relationships following it would show.
“I think I am going to head out though.” Will said, hopping off the bed. “You need rest. And I guess I do too.”
He pulled his shoes back on and grabbed his lab coat. He tossed his pudding cup into the garbage. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
Will had a hard time falling asleep. Not knowing what to do, seeing Nico again dredged up old feelings. He was ready to propose to him, he had plans. He had a ring. And Nico had freaked out before he got the chance to propose. Nico didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He already felt like he didn’t belong, being a child of Hades did that but even as he got used to that aspect of his life, he never truly adjusted to the time. Years of self-hate haunted his every step. The world was so different from what he knew. Holing himself up in the Underworld for the past decade or however long probably didn’t help.
Will needed sleep. He pushed all the feelings away and forced himself to focus on his breathing until he lulled himself to sleep.
#solangeloweek#solangeloweek2018#sorry#meant to upload this a couple days ago.#I'm hoping to shuck out a shit ton tomorrow after work#here have some sad boys#my writing
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I Think - Crenny
Kenny is just starting to tiptoe into the realm of boyfriend terminology with Craig when he gives him a gift he could never repay him for. The way to Kenny's heart is his family, after all, and with the way he's gotten to see all their smiles so brightly this Christmas Eve, he's about ready to pop the question. He thinks, though, he thinks.
Hello everyone! I was given the opportunity to post the Secret Santa gift fic that I wrote for @kotaii-san! It’s some Christmas Eve fluff, just in time for Christmas Eve. It’s a bit long to be posting on Tumblr, but I guess that’s what cuts are for, haha. I hope you enjoy. :) Read it on AO3 here!
“I don’t mean to be a bratty teenager, but this sucks.”
The words hurt Kenny more than he wants to let on. At thirteen, Karen has had her fair share of pubescent girl meltdowns, and Kenny’s cleaned up the aftermath more times than he can count. In Kevin’s defense, he’s helped too, but the older he’s gotten, the more detached he’s become. His mother tries, sometimes, but more often than not she gets so overwhelmed so quickly that before Karen’s even done screaming, she’s reaching for the nearest illicit drug. It’s frustrating, but it’s life, he supposes, and Kenny sometimes wonders if in a different world he could have been dealt a better hand. It’s not worth the trouble to dwell on it now though, because the three of them are busy sitting huddled in the center of the living room, touching shoulders for warmth because the heat is at a bare minimum, and finding patterns in the stains on the carpet with their mouths shut and their fingers curled around small hands of cards.
“It’s not your fault,” she adds on, because apparently he hadn’t hid his disappointment well enough to keep it a secret and she reads him like a book anyway. “You do your best. It just kinda sucks.”
Kevin shivers while he nods, and the guilt in the pit of Kenny’s stomach weighs him to the floor so that he sinks further into the circle they’ve made, nearly touches noses with the discard pile. Sometimes in December he dreams of Stan’s house, or even Cartman’s, where it’s warm and there are soft lights and candles everywhere and pine needles wrapped around the banisters and fallen on the tree skirt that adorns the very bottom of their Christmas trees.
The McCormicks have never had a Christmas tree. He isn’t sure if it’s because his parents never thought it was important, couldn’t afford it, or both. He’d been planning on surprising them all with one this year with a meager savings he’d accumulated from the jobs he’s been working to help pay the bills, but it had to go to an emergency window fix, the glass punched out in a fit of rage. Kevin’s hand is still scabbed over and bruised on the knuckles.
“Do you think mom will be home in time? For midnight? Uno,” Karen asks as she drops a card onto the pile, because for some reason they still care that their family is together while the calendar turns to the twenty-fifth. Their father walked out ages ago, which was probably for the best. Now their mother works late into the night and early in the morning, and they don’t see her very much anymore. Kenny understands, but they all miss her, regardless of how horrible she can still be. It’s not a perfect place, and maybe when they move out they’ll each have their own revelations about just how toxic and abusive the household they came from was, but for now it’s all they’ve got.
“Dunno, Kare,” Kevin mutters, and Kenny puts his cards facedown on the ground to pat the top of her head instead. She protests with a whine and ducks away, but he still messes up the top layer of her thin hair. When she straightens up, she’s smiling, and Kenny smiles too.
“Love ya, kiddo,” Kenny says, because they don’t say ‘Merry Christmas,’ because it doesn’t really mean anything. They never were taught the story of Santa Claus. There isn’t much merry about their seance for warmth in a cold, dark house.
“Love you too, Kenny,” she replies, her voice small and fragile, and she adds, “love you too, Kevin.” Kevin grunts.
They finish their game and fall back into silence, and Kenny reaches for his phone, practically a burner several years out of circulation. He has a new text message, and he feels a flutter in his chest, because the name of the sender is a short string of emojis and there’s only one person in his contacts without a regular name.
His phone buzzes in his hand as another text comes in, from the same tiny spaceship between two stars.
You home
Answer if youre up for a good time :P
Kenny licks his lips, glances up at his siblings while he contemplates the offer. They’re each using one earbud to listen to music. The screen from the old iPod they still use is lighting up their faces, because night is setting in and the last drops of sunlight are fading from their profiles so that they turn to silhouettes. Ordinarily he would say yes, of course, in a heartbeat, because his spaceship crush is a deadly combination of addicting and rare. Tonight he hesitates though, because it is Christmas Eve, and as he realizes this, he thinks to ask him why he’s looking for a quick visit today of all days.
tf u doin xmas eve that u wanna fuck around instead @_@?
The response is almost immediate. His spaceship is always lightning-fast, the same way it traverses the galaxies like ponds and hops stars like lily pads.
Nothing important
Before Kenny can reply, he sends another.
Thats not true. Im doing important stuff. Which is why I need to know if you are part of the important stuff.
Kenny sighs. Though it’s tempting, and he feels like maybe it’s selfish, his family needs him more. Maybe they’re fine, he doesn’t know. It just doesn’t feel right.
i gotta spedn it w the fam dude. xmas sux but u kno. its family
*spend
There is a long pause in which Kenny does nothing but stare at his phone. There isn’t much to do on it like the newer models, so it feels like more of a brick than anything else. He switches between watching the clock tick by and watching his brother and sister share music together. It’s approaching eleven, and he isn’t sure his mother will make it home in time after all. The pile of cards they’ve abandoned sits neatly at their feet. The brick vibrates.
Well. Dont go anywhere.
Kenny’s curiosity is piqued, but he’s not sure if it’s too forward to ask what he’s talking about. His spaceship likes to keep secrets sometimes, within its indestructible metal walls. That’s not quite true, Kenny corrects, because he knows how to destruct it, and it’s one of his favorite things to do. The faint high of excitement and nerves makes his stomach flip, and he tucks his phone away in his pocket, reaching out to hold Kev and Karen’s hands again per tradition.
Karen drops her head on Kenny’s shoulder and starts to doze off then, and he starts blinking away sleepiness himself as the ambient noise of his house lulls him to sleep. He doesn’t want to fall asleep though, so he keeps snapping back up to attention, jolting his head up and blinking his eyes rapidly awake. Kevin seems to be doing the same thing, and eventually, Karen starts gently snoring against him. He adjusts his arm so she can rest her head on his lap and in her sleepy stupor she obeys- something she hasn’t done since she was nine years old. He pets her head with his now free hand and tries not to think about how much she deserves better.
A knock on the front door startles all three of them so that they sit up straight, and Karen gasps as she returns to the waking world. “Mom?” Kevin asks, and Kenny shakes his head.
“Nah, she don’t knock. Lemme check by the window.” Kenny stands, walks across the room carefully to avoid the squeakiest floorboards, and peeks out the window to check out the scene.
He’s met with a view of a mass of dark green.
He is even more confused than before. He looks back at his family and nods his head roughly to the left, silently telling them to hide behind the hallway, and they obey quickly. Kenny takes the metal bat he keeps by the door in his hands, shifting it in his grip carefully and weighing its potential fatality, and in a streamlined motion he’s practiced before, he yanks the door open and pulls his bat up behind his head, ready to swing.
“What the-” a familiar voice rasps, and its owner leans backwards, his eyes wide with surprise. “Kenny what the fuck,” he exclaims, and it takes Kenny a moment to take in what he’s seeing.
Craig, his spaceship between two stars, is standing on his doorstep, and in his arms is a big pine tree as tall as he is. Kenny drops his bat down against the wall, and takes a deep breath in through his nose. “You answer first. What’s goin’ on?”
Craig blinks, then shakes the tree a bit to his right. “I said important stuff.” He shrugs, a motion made awkward by his bulky cargo, and Kenny points at it.
“What is that?” he asks, not wanting to get ahead of himself, but he thinks he knows. He has a pretty good idea that he knows.
“The fuck does it look like?” Craig shivers and Kenny realizes he’s left him standing outside inappropriately, and he jumps to the side so Craig has room to enter his humble abode- emphasis on humble. “I got you a tree,” he says as he lugs it in, and with a small grunt of effort, he leans it against the wall beside the door.
Kenny is silent for a moment. “You sure fuckin’ did,” he replies, weakly, because he’s not really sure what else to say. “Where the fuck d’you find a tree on Christmas Eve?”
“Farms sell them till the last minute. I knew you didn’t have one this year. I got a stand and shit too, because, you know.” It’s unspoken that Craig most likely knows that it isn’t just a this-year thing that they don’t have a Christmas tree.
He can’t really help himself; Kenny wastes no time in planting a sloppy kiss on Craig’s lips, not caring that maybe their relationship status isn’t the most defined or that his sister might see. He doesn’t care at all about anyone except the angel gone rigid in front of him who then wraps his arms around his back like he’s hugging him for dear life, like he always does. He feels tears prick at his eyes and tries to blink them away, but he’s not entirely successful. He wants Craig to know how much he loves this moment so he doesn’t try too hard.
Kenny doesn’t say anything at first because there’s not much that he can say to make it better. The silence between them is their usual comfortable normal, the adoration in Kenny’s heart beating so rapidly he’s sure Craig can feel it against his chest. “Thank you,” he finally decides on, whispering it, and Craig hums, the vibration of his Adam’s apple tickling Kenny’s cheek. “Is this real?” he breathes against his collarbone.
“I think so?” Craig replies, but the way it sounds genuinely like a question makes Kenny laugh.
“Craig, I don’t,” he begins, but he truly doesn’t know what to say, and so he says, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t say anything,” Craig murmurs, and he kisses the shell of his ear, and suddenly Kenny is floating miles above his own body. His soul dances in his chest like a ballerina, jumping and spinning in joyous circles that make him laugh. He must look crazy, doing that, laughing for no outward reason, but he doesn’t care.
“Kenny..?” a timid voice calls, and he remembers he banished the other two-thirds of his family behind the corner of his house for their protection. He leaves Craig’s arms as he turns around and Karen is peeking around the corner, her tiny hands gripping the wall and hair spilling straight down towards the floor.
“You can come out,” he says softly, his smile warm and glowing, “it’s just Craig.”
He can see the sigh of relief in her shoulders before she hops out from the hallway. She catches sight of the tree and gasps. A big smile is slowly growing on her face until it becomes too strong to hide behind her lips and her teeth poke out with glee. Kevin saunters out behind her, but rests his back against the wall, crossing his arms and keeping watchful distance.
Before she can crash into them, Karen screeches to a halt in front of him and Craig. She looks back and forth between the two of them, her eyes crinkled slightly closed from the pure intensity of the blissful grin on her face. “Um,” she begins, suddenly growing shy and clasping her hands in front of her sheepishly, “is that for us?” She looks over at the tree then back at Craig, waiting patiently.
Kenny looks to Craig too, whose expression is essentially unreadable at first but melts into a gentle smile, the kind that makes Kenny melt too. “I had an extra, so.” Karen giggles and Kenny sees Kevin chuckle a bit too before he kicks away from the wall to join the rest of them. “We gonna put this shit in the window or what?”
The rest of their evening is punctuated by happy chattering and giggling while they put together the small string of lights and miscellaneous baubles that Craig has likely stolen off his own Christmas tree for them, and Kenny wishes he could have recorded it. He wishes he could have committed every single second to memory, to savor the glow and genuine joy that pulsed from each of their chests so that every moment felt sweet, soft, and safe. He can, however, memorize the little flashes of things: the way Craig’s eyes get so dark they look black when the room is lit only by Christmas tree lights. The way Kevin smiles when he’s truly, really, happy, with one side of his mouth higher than the other and his tongue stuck between his canines in a smile. How Karen looks at him when no one else is looking, with so much innocent hope in the rosiness of her cheeks that he’s forgotten his worries entirely.
The way his mother looks shocked, confused, then overjoyed when she walks through the door at twelve fifty-three in the morning, officially Christmas Day.
They hold their breath as she steps quietly across the room and looks up at Craig, who struggles to keep eye contact and has to look away after only a few seconds. “Um,” he starts, but she pulls him down into a tight hug, and she starts to cry.
“Thank you,” she says, “oh, thank you for doin’ this for my babies. Thank you so much, Craig. Yer a good kid, you know. Your momma must be proud.” Craig’s cheeks are flushed with embarrassment after that, and Kenny can’t help but giggle at him, his heart in the clouds. “Well come on in now, kids. It’s Christmas, come on!” she insists quietly, her arms opened wide on either side of her, and Kevin, Karen and Kenny pile into them with Craig squished between them all.
She sighs, but it’s happy, and she holds them for a moment longer than usual. “Look, look,” she murmurs, twisting each of her children around by their shoulders- Craig too. “Look at all them pretty lights. You ever seen somethin’ so beautiful in this room?”
Kenny looks up, studies the way the white lights glow against the window and the wall, and he thinks to himself that he has. He’s seen four things so beautiful in this room in fact, and he sees them all around him, and it’s the most beautiful this room’s ever felt for as long as he can remember. Craig’s shoulder is bony against his own, and, remembering his proximity, he twists his hand around his forearm to search for his fingers. They find his and wrap together, warm and clammy, and Kenny breathes out deeply. For a moment, as his lungs empty, so do his troubles.
“Craig,” Kenny mumbles, his eyes struggling to stay open, the streetlight outside the only thing telling him that Craig’s eyes are open too across from him on his mattress.
“Hmm?” he hums, the way he does where his lips buzz and resonate with the vibrations of his heart. Their hands are clasped between them, meeting in the middle between their pillows and bathing in the white light that paints crescents in Craig’s dramatic knuckles.
“I think I love you,” he whispers, letting the smile in his heart overtake his lips, and Craig’s eyes widen before they return to half-lidded. Kenny watches his lips stretch into the widest closed grin he’s ever seen on Craig’s face. He looks so silly, like a caricature of a smitten cartoon.
“Oh yeah?” he questions, and Kenny laughs a bit.
“Yeah,” he says, “I think so.”
“Well,” Craig murmurs, in the deep, raspy voice that he adores that precedes his sleep and preludes his mornings, “I think I love you too.”
He squeezes his fingers in time with his racing pulse and closes his eyes, resting his forehead against the soft, flat back of Craig’s hand. “Thank you,” he whispers, and Craig hums again, and he falls asleep dreaming of the day he isn’t afraid to leave out ‘I think.’
Not yet, but maybe next year.
#craig tucker#kenny mccormick#karen mccormick#kevin mccormick#carol mccormick#crenny#crenny sp#sp crenny#my fanfiction#my fanfic#south park#south park fanfiction#sp fanfiction#sp fanfic#south park fanfic#christmas eve#fluff#secret santa#secret santa gift#gift fic
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Smutember: Striptease
Masquerade on Ao3
25: Striptease
Yanking back on the yoyo, Chat opens his eyes and nearly trips over himself in relief at having trussed up the husband in the yoyo's string like a roasted Cornish hen, ready for service on a silver platter. Whooping with glee, he punches his fist to the sky and dances on his toes towards him, snickering at the man's crimson lips and cheeks, his mouth spewing curses and insults without any sound.
"Cat got your tongue?" he giggles and nearly doubles over in hysterics, powerless to stop himself from laughing at his own jokes with the rush of elation cursing through his veins. He plucks the possessed ring from the husband's violently thrashing hand and holds it up to the sunlight like an offering to the gods, smiling foolishly at the sky and watching as the wife stomps over to them, her eyes practically glowing in anticipation as she cracks her knuckles and readies her fists.
"Ready?" he invites her closer, spreading his arms in invitation. Grinning like an idiot, he scoots out of the way and stands on the sidelines as the wife hauls out and punches the husband straight in the jaw only to step back and nail him right in the groin.
"I hope I remember this later," she sneers, planting her hands on her hips as her husband writhes on the ground, crying and squirming like an eel out of water.
"I don't think that'll be a problem," Chat replies with a wince at her savagery, pointing over to where Alya stand at the forefront of the crows, phone in hand.
The wife uses the toe of her boot to lift the husband's cheek off the concrete, forcing him to make eye contact, "You low life, scum of the earth, rotten piece of shit. I'm filing for divorce and full custody of Samuel," she grinds her heel into his mouth and flicks her foot to knock his head back onto the ground, "I hope you're happy with your harpy wife, wherever the hell she is."
She turns to Chat and slips her ring from her finger, slamming it onto the ground herself, "Worthless piece of crap."
The wedding band breaks open and a black and neon purple butterfly emerges, stuttering briefly before fluttering back up into the sky. Chat gasps and recoils the yoyo from the husband, running back full force to where he'd left Marinette sitting on a bench. Subtlety be damned, he scoops her up and runs back to where the flapping akuma is starting to gain altitude, planting her on her feet and slipping the yoyo around her finger. He smashes the husband's ring on the ground as well and scoots in behind her, grabbing her hand and aiming it in the first akuma's general direction. Confused but catching on quickly, Marinette takes a deep breath and seems to get the hint.
"Je te délivre du mal !”
Chat throws the yoyo using Marinette's hand, concentrating on where he wants it to go with his thoughts as hard as he possibly can. The yoyo captures the first one and he reels it back into Marinette's palm, using the hand he has clamped around her waist to spin her and face the second akuma desperately trying to make a break for it. Like clockwork, she allows him to bend her arm back again and he chucks the yoyo at the second one, delighting when it captures that one too. Unable to keep his elation in check, he hops up and down a few times with joy and winds the yoyo back in, popping it back into her hand. It closes and he slides his claw along its lid, releasing the purified butterflies up and into the atmosphere to the sounds of cheers from all around them, the crowd babbling with excitement.
"We did it!" he hollers, leaving Marinette by herself for a moment to pick up the mirror left on the ground. He scurries back and sticks the handle within her fingers, taking her wrist and motioning for her to throw it skywards. He steps back as she readies her stance, cocking a hip and tossing it into the air.
"Miraculous Ladybug!"
A flurry of magical ladybugs bursts from the sky, splaying like fireworks and raining down on the people around them, scooping up the victims of the akuma attack and rendering them normal again. Marinette is wrapped up for a moment and blinks repeatedly against the blinding light when she emerges, her sight and hearing finally restored.
“We did it!” Chat shouts, nearly galloping back towards her, scooping her up into her arms and spinning her like a top, “We did it! We did it!”
She grabs onto the first thing she can reach, unbalanced and disoriented after being in the dark for so long; she can’t help but share in Chat’s effervescence, his enthusiasm so contagious that she begins to smile, holding onto his shoulders for dear life. He jumps up and down a few more times before setting her down, grabbing her hand and turning tail, running away from the hoards of spectators coming their way.
“Ahhhh!” he babbles as they make a break for it, unable to plug his energy from bubbling out from inside him, “I used your yoyo! We did it!”
All she can do is nod in bewilderment as he takes her hand and uses his baton to launch them into the air, leaning wildly so as to land on the edge of the highest fire escape. He lets her down first and leaps from the top of the baton, grabbing her hand again and leading her up the stairs towards the roof.
“It was so cool!” he gushes, taking each step three at a time, “Your yoyo is awesome!”
They make it to the top of the building and he skips towards the nearest chimney stack, rebounding against it with a backflip, “It was AWESOME! Best akuma fight EVER!”
Marinette shakes her head, loosening the cobwebs in her mind, “Easy for you to say.”
He turns back towards her and grabs her hands, dancing them around in a circle, “It’s like I got to be Ladybug for a day!” he raves, doing his best impression of a heart-eyed emoji, “Ahhhh!”
She lets go of his fingers and pauses for a moment to get her bearings, “Look Chat, I’ve got to get home.”
“Merde,” he pauses in his celebration, “So do I. I’ll talk to you later?”
“Sure,” she replies non-committedly, turning around and leaping off the building before he can say another word.
~
Marinette collapses face first into her bed and doesn’t move for a long time.
Her mum comes up to check on her twice, reassuring her that they’d put her dinner in the fridge in case she wanted to eat it later and Marinette appreciates the thoughtfulness, all things considered. Judging by the lack of harassment from Sabine after being over an hour late from her walk home from school, she already suspects she hasn’t been fooling anyone.
Least of all Chat.
She tries all the usual strategies: listening to calming music, tending to the boxes of spring flowers on her balcony, taking a stab at the chemise she’d been meaning to mend. Each time she ends up face first on her bed, the consequences of her inadvertent reveal hounding her thoughts like the plague.
She ends up drawing a long, hot bath and slipping into the water immediately eases some of that pent-up tension inside of her, the bubbles tucking in behind her knees and her ears like a security blanket, covering her almost completely. She sinks down until the water comes up passed her lips and sits there for a few minutes, far longer than she'd ever intended, watching the bubbles shine like spilled petrol on asphalt and pop in the ambient light. Like all things though, the tension in her spine creeps back up into her muscles and fogs her mind like a mirror, leaving her just as restless as she was before.
Giving up, she steps out and over the rim of the clawfoot tub and towels herself off before collapsing back into bed, her moans of frustration muffled by the mountain of pillows piled on her bed. There's no way on the planet she's even going to consider showing up to patrol later tonight but she needs something to relieve the pent-up pressure inside of her head, something beyond the proverbial mound of homework waiting for her on Google Classroom. If she doesn't do something and be smart about it, she knows she'll probably end up doing something reckless and stupid, something she's apt to do when she's in the weeds. She's stolen enough phones and stalked enough people out of misplaced desperation to attest to that.
Too lost in her own thoughts to be entirely aware of what she’s doing, it takes a minute or two to realise that her hand had snuck its way beneath the hem of the towel and continued its pilgrimage up to the crease of her thighs. Sighing into her pillow, she rolls over and closes her eyes, drooping her forearm over her head to block out the ambient light of her lamp and foregoes worrying about it anymore. She needs this, if she's going to be honest with herself. She might actually be able to hold a coherent conversation if she could just burn off a little frustration...
She lets her hand continue its creeping path up and across her abdomen, her fingers tangling in her hair before slipping down further along her folds. She’s not surprised to find that her body is already a few steps ahead of her brain, her lips slick and needy and she can't suppress the moan that bubbles passed her lips when she grazes her clit, bending her knees and bracing herself against her mattress. The little bundle of nerves sings with hypersensitivity and she's already half way there, imagining the way he smelled against her skin earlier that day, the sensation of his hair between her fingers, the vibration of his chest against her own. She takes her lip between her teeth and tries to stay quiet, her toes burrowing themselves in the sheets, her back arched and her muscles taut.
It’s only been a few short hours since they'd defeated the akuma, leaving her breathlessly confused and him bursting at the seams. Seeing him so happy nearly sent her reeling, the humbling realisation that she'd just been forced to detransform in front of his face and he hadn't really reacted, had just kissed her like he'd known all along, like his life depended on it. She thinks back to that moment and imagines those lips on her now, bringing her right to brink only to tease her, drawing back and kissing patterns against her inner thighs like he’d meant to all along, teasing her senslessly. Doubling down, she can't bear the thought of slowing down, jumping ahead in her fantasy to just give her some release and ah!
It's the lasting image of his face between her thighs that finally tips her over, her orgasm short and sweet and just enough to dull the razor's edge of her thoughts and worries, granting her the smallest modicum of relief. Curling up onto her side, she presses her face into the pillow and wallows in the afterglow, if only for a moment, and forces herself to try and relax in its wake, her ears still pounding in tandem with her heartbeat.
Crash!
The sound of the lock rattling against the trapdoor above her head jostles her back into awareness and she scrambles to her feet, grabbing the nearest object to her with a potential to maim. Wielding a table lamp in one hand and holding her towel up around her chest with the other, Marinette tiptoes over her mattress and hisses as loudly as she dares through the wood.
"Who is it?"
"It's me," comes the muffled reply, "Chat."
Shifting uncomfortably, she tightens her grip on the lamp, "Prove it."
There's a quick rustle of movement above her head, "Who else would be on your balcony at 22:00?"
Marinette purses her lips, "Humour me. What did we talk about last night when we left the courtyard?"
"You made fun of my Naruto socks."
Marinette smiles in relief and sets the lamp back down on the beside table, reaching up to unclip the lock, "You have to admit, they were ugly."
"You know, I came out to have a good time and I'm honestly feeling so attacked right now," he pounces down onto the mattress, leaping with all fours onto the neighboring chaise.
"First Naruto, now memes?" she locks the trapdoor behind him and spins around, heedless to the way the towel flutters around her thighs, "You're lucky I don't kick you to the curb."
"But I just got here," he eyes her approvingly, his voice having dropped a few registers at the sight of her. She hadn't bothered putting her hair back into ponytails after her bath, her loose tresses falling in soft waves against her shoulders and back. She tries to quell the blush that threatens to spread to her collarbones and chest, having been the subject of his gaze more times than she can count, but she feels so exposed, so unprotected and bare to him now, her dollar store mask long forgotten in the back pocket of her jeans.
Not that she needs it anymore.
Something must show on her face because Chat suddenly changes his stance, settling against the cushions, "Hey Marinette."
"Hey," she replies, sitting back down on her bed. She looks down at her bare legs, swinging them idly, "Welcome to my room."
"It's nice," he says, looking around, "A little too pink for my taste, but it suits you."
She shrugs, "It's my favourite colour."
"So I guessed," he crosses his legs in front of him and leans to the side, propping his head on the elbow leaning against the chaise, “Did you watch the footage Alya posted on the LadyBlog?”
Marinette glances over towards her computer, “I’ve been meaning to.”
“I thought that would be the first thing you’d do,” Chat says, his surprise obvious in his tone, “It’s not like you had a first-hand experience or anything.”
“I…” she trails off, “Did you know? Before?”
“Did I know what?” he says, his face the pinnacle of innocence. He’s used it on her enough times before to no longer be fooled.
“You know what.”
Chat looks away, scratching at the back of his head, “If I knew your identity? I…I had my suspicions but I didn’t…I didn’t know for sure until then.”
She sighs and continues kicking her legs, her heels bouncing off her bedspring. Was it really such a bad thing? After all this time, everything they’d been through, everything they’d done…if anyone had earned the right to know who she was, it was this man. He’d asked before, and she’d denied him every time. She did her best to not think of who he might be, though she knew he was leaving clues for her to ignore.
He wanted to know who she was. He’d earned that knowledge in a thousand different ways. He’d had the opportunity to find out before and had never capitalized on it, but this? This situation was a little different than a door that hadn’t fully closed, or stepping around the side of a chimney. She had literally detransformed in front of him, with no way to hide or escape.
Finally raising her head, she makes eye contact with him across the short distance that yawns between them. This is yanking off a bandaid that had been on too long; hold your breath and try not to think of the sting. Because even if it hurts, the bandage needs to come off.
“Well, now you know,” she says and her tone is a little more acidic than she’d intended. She looks away again, embarrassed and frustrated and a myriad of other emotions all rolled up into one. She feels like curling up into a ball under the heat of his gaze, uncomfortable and exposed like an insect fixed to a pinning block. She doesn’t know what to think of his inaction, of the way he continues to sit across from her, eyeing her curiously.
“Do you want a hug?”
She looks up at him from where she’s hung her head at the hopeful look in his eyes, watching it spread across his features. It’s moments like these that she stops forgetting why she ever thought this was a bad idea.
He’s at her side before she can even say a word.
“I thought you were going to sneeze or something,” he says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, “I’m so used to seeing you in a mask that it’s kind of hard to get a read on you without it.”
She smiles at his attempts at levity, “Want me to go get it?”
“No!” he exclaims and Marinette reacts quickly, shushing him with a finger to his lips.
“My parents will hear you!”
“Oh,” he replies, a little sheepish. He snuggles closer, “Can I make it up to you?”
She fiddles with the hem of her towel with a middle-distance stare, “You still…want that?”
“What?” he pulls back ever so slightly and she’s ignorant to the sudden hopeful look that spreads across his features. He leans in and presses his lips to her cheek, easing her head to turn towards him and face each other, leaning forwards to meet her lips in a kiss that’s somehow just as soft and yet so much more than its predecessors. They’ve never quite kissed beyond the throes of the itch, explosive and frenzied from so many years of built up tension between them, but it’s still enough to send frissons all the way down her spine, his toes curling in his boots in satisfaction.
She kisses him back carefully, the way their lips move against each other no less passionate and yet somehow, somehow it managed to convey a depth of feeling she had never truly felt in the wake of his body against hers, crushing and overwhelming all at once. The metaphor of fracturing into a million indelible pieces of herself is not lost on her now and she finds herself pulling away much sooner than she had wanted, putting some much needed distance between them.
“This changes everything.”
“It changes nothing,” he counters, getting up to follow her across the room, “You’re still Ladybug.”
“I’m Marinette. Ladybug is…an alter ego.”
“Doesn’t mean the two of you are separate entities,” he takes her hands, ignoring the way her towel seems to be unravelling, “I love both of you regardless.”
“You don’t know me as Marinette,” she replies and Chat feels like tugging his hair out at the irony of the situation.
“Then let me,” he insists, “Trust me. Trust me with this. Trust me with you. We’re a team, right?”
“Yes.”
“And we agreed long ago that we had to keep the lines of communication open, right?”
“Yes.”
“Trust is a two-way street,” he weaves their fingers together, his eyes never leaving her face, “I love you regardless of who you are and we can’t let this distract us from what’s important.”
She takes a deep breath, “Knowing my identity has put us both in danger.”
“Then we just have to be more careful.”
“Careful?” she snorts softly, “When have you ever been careful?”
“Our flaws don’t define us,” he says, smiling wryly, “You can be borderline neurotic sometimes and I still love you.”
She narrows her eyes, “You’re a dick.”
“A loveable dick though.”
“I hate you.”
“Mm,” she honestly expects him to devour her at this point, so it comes as a surprise when he simply kisses the corners of her mouth, her bottom lip, her cupid’s brow. Impatient, she deepens the kiss and slides her tongue against him, drawing his lips between her teeth and swallowing his gasp.
The heat that had been steadily waning with the onset of summer races down her spine, coiling low and hot in her abdomen. His hands are everywhere and hers are no better, roaming his torso as her fingers trace the outlines of his muscles through his suit. He gasps as her hand ghosts across the evidence of his arousal straining against the fabric and she grinds her stomach against him, grinning against his lips at his reaction.
She steps back and lets the towel drop.
A blur of movement and the sudden weight of his arm across the bottom of her shoulder blades is the only warning she has before his other arm hits the back of her knees, scooping her up into his arms. Marinette feels herself gasp even as her arms automatically wind around his neck; it never fails to give her a thrill when he picks her up, a casual show of strength made more impressive by the fact that he isn’t bragging about it. Unwilling to swoon against his chest like a helpless damsel, Marinette braces herself and squashes the urge to squeal.
They don’t go far, just a few strides, and he spins her around, dropping her back down onto her bed with a bounce. A soft laugh escapes before she can censor it and the hands pressed into the mattress next to her on either side of her face stills momentarily.
“I did say I’d like to do this on a bed some time,” Marinette shakes her head with a wry smirk, moving up the mattress to nip along his jawline, revelling in the power she holds over him as he arches his neck in offering. She reaches out to thread her fingers through his unruly hair and bites down at the juncture of his neck and he responds in kind, grinding down and growling low in his throat.
“Have I told you how much I love you today?” he mutters against her collarbones, his purr well and truly triggered by this point. He puts his weight on one hand and explores with the other, tracing along her ribs and brushing against the undersides of her breasts. He slides his palms up and over, cupping one and running his gloved thumbs over her nipple, straining despite the warm air of her bedroom. He presses one thigh between her legs and she can feel herself grow hot and slick and straining for friction, more of it, anything to take the edge off, heat pooling low in her abdomen.
“Plenty,” she groans, smiling into his skin when he indulges her and shifts his leg, allowing her to grind up against him. The texture of the suit feels widely different than his fingers and she trails her hands down his sides, reaching to stroke him through the fabric, spreading her legs further to accommodate him. He rolls his hips forwards with excruciating slowness, the pace in direct contrast to the way he devours her lips and digs his claws into the skin of her thighs, nearly sending her skyrocketing to the ceiling.
He replaces his leg with his fingers, cupping a broad palm against her clit and she grinds against the heel of his hand, slick and needy. He feels hot even through the fabric of his gloves and she presses harder, eager for the friction, eager for the way he draws ragged gasp after ragged gasp when he drags his claw along the seam of her lips, circling her clit just the way she likes.
“Do you still hate me?” he purrs, slipping away momentarily. He’s so familiar with her body and he takes ruthless advantage of it, playing her like a musical instrument, grace be damned.
“No,” she mewls and he rewards her, dipping between her folds and slipping a finger carefully inside her, pumping once, twice, three times before retreating to her clit. He repeats the pattern a few times before changing the rhythm.
“And we’re going to be honest with each other now?”
He slips a second finger inside of her and the pressure in tantalising, “Yes.”
“Good,” he nibbles the shell of her ear and picks up the pace, cautiously curling his fingers to hit the spot inside her he’d found only recently and would never forget, not with the way she screams and clenches around him, “Because I have a question for you.”
He doesn’t elaborate and dives down instead, lapping unexpectedly at her entrance and she cries out in pleasure, heedless to the noises she’s making. He plunges his tongue inside and she can feel him rumbling though her, her entire body shuddering with it, the vibrations nearly sending her past the brink. Her muscles clamp down on his tongue and he only ups the ante, purring louder and it’s suddenly much harder to breathe, her back arching off the back in ecstasy. She’s so close now, her thighs quaking and her head tossing side to side, making a delicious mess of her hair against the pillows.
“Ah!” she cries, babbling nonsense against the hand now shoved up against her lips and it’s the graze of his teeth against her clit, the moans, and the knowledge that he’s taking pleasure from it all that finally sends her over the edge yet again. Her hips rocket out towards him and he holds her as she shudders, his tongue still tracing the seam of her lips to draw out her pleasure and she sinks even further into the mattress, boneless and sated and unreservedly satisfied. It takes her a second to open her eyes again, watching as Chat sits back up, straddling her thighs and lewdly wiping his mouth with his forearm.
“Can I ask that question now?” he says, his eyes fiery in contract to the clever pull of his lips. She’s helpless against him and nods, her entire body still thrumming with post orgasmic bliss.
He cocks his head to the side and Marinette is already regretting it.
“So, do you want to tell me why the same man whose been stalking me home every night for the past two weeks is camped out across the street?”
#miraculust#miracusin#mlnsfw#ml fanfic#smutember#smutember2017#adrien agreste#marinette cheng#miraculous ladybug#brontewrites
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High Hopes
Ch. 3
Pairing: Holy Duality (GabeMike)
Word Count: 4327
Date Numero Uno
“Good morning, Michael,” the receptionist clacked loudly on her computer as Michael was greeted by the cool air conditioning in the rec center, humming a bright “hello” to the lady who could embarrassingly call him by name. He had made quite a few trips to the rec center now, and not just to drop Kristi off at school.
Gabriel should be off work in the next fifteen minutes or so, when Michael would ask him on a dinner date like a proper man and “firmly establish his thirst” as Zadkiel had so gracefully put it. But first, he thought, peeking around the corner and climbing the stairs to the upper workout area, There’s someone I haven’t seen in at least a month.
Michael always felt bad for the little kids who had to wander through rows of workout benches and strange equipment just to reach the ballet studio, but it had never been able to phase him. According to the schedule of activities that was posted for all to see at the entrance of the rec program, ballet classes didn’t start for at least a half an hour, which meant-
Michael rapped on the glass doors to the ballet studio cheerily, creaking the door open, and poking his head inside.
“Ms. McAllister~” he sang, announcing his entrance. The bright lights in the studio were on, and a young woman was crouched over the stereo system sniffling loudly. Michael’s smile froze as she turned to him, wiping her eyes quickly and sighing.
“What do you want, Michael?” Natalie’s voice was crackly and tired as he shut the door behind them, embarrassed about...whatever he had just walked in on.
“I just wanted to say hi to my favorite redheaded ballet dancer named Natalie Anabella McAllister!” he put his hands up, leaning on the wall and giving her a sympathetic pout. “What’s got you all hung up, Gingersnap?”
“It’s nothing, I don’t want to talk about it,” she crossed her arms and turned away from him. She’d look pretty ridiculous in her black leotard and tie dye tights with leg warmers if her hunched shoulders and drippy face didn’t melt Michael’s icy heart.
Michael sat on one of the steps that led to the door and patted a space beside him, “C’mon, kiddo, talk to me.”
Natalie glanced down at the spot and her indignant composure collapsed. Her lip trembled as fresh new tears breached her eyes and she half threw herself on the steps next to Michael, hugging her knees as she cried.
“Awww, Gingersnap,” Michael slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer, letting her lean on his shoulder. He tapped out a quick message on his phone and deposited it back in his pocket. “Now, what’s this all about?”
Natalie made an attempt to compose herself, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue she had been holding on to. After a couple deep breaths, she pulled out her phone, bringing up messages from an unfamiliar contact. The contact picture was of some slimy looking kid that looked about as trustworthy as a hungry vulture.
“It’s my boyfriend- well, ex-boyfriend? I don’t know, he’s sending so many mixed messages,” she whined.
“Uh oh,” Michael quipped. “So, tell me about this ex-boyfriend of yours.”
Gabriel put his planner in his black bag, glancing at his phone, shining bright in the dark classroom with a new message. He unlocked it and smiled when he saw that it was from Michael.
[4:27] Michael Alegal: Whenever you’re done, meet me in the ballet studio upstairs! We have a boy emergency!
Gabriel smiled at the slew of emojis that followed, ranging from sad faces to knives to hugs. It hadn’t taken him very long to realize that Michael was one of those people who wouldn’t feel complete texting words alone. From the implications of it, it seemed as though he was going to see Natalie upstairs, who Gabriel knew very well to have “boy emergencies.”
He closed his phone, and, after locking up the classroom and waving goodbye to Chelle, made his way upstairs to the dance studio. Michael had texted him early, announcing that he would be stopping in the rec center after Gabriel was done working, but had never specified why. Gabriel couldn’t quite shake the jittery feeling in his gut, or the spring in his step that even Chelle had noticed after he received the text. Perhaps it was worth admitting that Gabriel was excited to see Michael after texting him back and forth day in and out. Despite his strangely vain nature and wildly disproportionate emotions, Michael was a gem to be around, occasionally stopping through the rec center to go to gym and waving hello to Gabriel. It was that and the time that he came in with a cake just to apologize that had caused Gabriel to blush (feeling like a dumb 13 year old again) when his mother asked when he was going to take the man on an “actual, proper date.”
The studio lights illuminated the corridor outside through the glass door, and Gabriel took that as his invitation to walk inside, slowly opening the door and searching for Natalie and Michael inside.
He found them right at his feet, surrounded by crumpled tissues and hunched around Natalie’s bright coral phone. The sound of him entering captured Michael’s attention as he craned his head backwards and smiled wide.
“Gabe!” he greeted cheerily, a stark contrast to Natalie’s puffy eyes and frown. “Come, join us, we were just cleaning up dear Natalie’s contacts.”
“What’s going on, Ms. McAllister?” Gabriel inquired, sitting on the other side of her. Gabriel had taken a secret pride in being The Shoulder to Cry On to the rec center staff. He had seen everything- breakups, pet deaths, or just someone spilling their lunch everywhere and bursting into tears because their day was already a mess. He did his job sparingly, but there was nothing better than a shaky smile as someone would say “thanks for listening, Mr. Fields.”
“Natalie’s former honey keeps asking her to take him back even though he was the one who broke it off in the first place,” Michael explained as Natalie continually stared at her phone, more focused than melancholy at that point.
“He’s a jerk,” she sniffed, dragging her eyes from the phone to Gabriel. “And I know, he doesn’t deserve me, but I can’t just-”
“Delete it,” Michael insisted, reaching for her phone, and Natalie jerked it out of his reach.
“Delete what?” Gabe asked.
“His contact. She needs to cut him out completely,” Michael crossed his arms pridefully. “Nothing says “It’s over for good” like “Who is this?? You aren’t in my contacts.””
“Gabriel, help me out here!” Natalie groaned.
“I hate to gang up on you, Ms. McAllister, but Michael might be right. You sure you don’t like him anymore?”
“I- I think so.”
“And leading you on isn’t very kind of him, yes?”
“Yeah…”
“Then I think deleting his contact information might be a good decision,” Gabe said, trying to sway his voice as gentle as he could. Natalie looked at her phone with a new confidence.
“He doesn’t deserve you!” Michael squeezed her shoulder. “If he doesn’t treat you right by now, you’re gone!”
“I’m gone,” Natalie nodded firmly.
“Good! Now go chop his di-”
“Michael,” Gabriel cut in. Michael gave him a sheepish smile over Natalie’s shoulder.
“Want me to do it for you, Nat Cat?” he asked. Nat thought for a moment and nodded, handing him the phone. Michael poked at the buttons for more than a few moments, looking up when he saw Gabriel and Natalie staring at him.
“Ah, sorry, I’m still trying to find the delete button...Aaaand done!” he exclaimed, handing the phone back to Natalie. She cracked a smile.
“I’m...glad. I feel like I just got a weight off my chest,” she admitted.
“Atta girl!” Michael encouraged, shaking her playfully. Natalie laughed and wiped away a few tears.
“We’re very proud of you, Natalie. You make sure you find someone who treats you well,” Gabriel commented. She just nodded appreciatively.
“Oh gosh, I’ve got a little more than ten before the girls start showing up,” Natalie stood, looking at her watch. “Thank you two again for the unplanned therapy session.”
“No problem, Gingersnap. Kristi will see you on Tuesday- either I’ll take her or my delightful brother will. Either way, see you around!” Michael waved at her, opening the door up for Gabriel to walk through, who nodded his head at her with a soft smile.
“Well, I must say, I’m impressed. She’s been having this internal battle over that guy for weeks, now,” Gabriel stuck his hands in pockets as they walked back down the stairs. “And you just solved her problem in what? 15 minutes?”
“What can I say? I’m a people person,” Michael’s eyes swung to the ceiling.
“You took a long time to delete one contact.”
Michael’s easy smile turned forced when he held the front door open for Gabriel.
“Michael…”
“I may have made an addition to her phone contacts in replacement of her awful ex-boyfriend,” he hummed as they strolled to one of the park benches.
“Who’s phone number?” Gabe rubbed his temples with new stress. Michael sat and tapped his knees.
“Well, you see. My brother Stanley sometimes drops Kristi off at dance for me.” “Oh my God.”
“As bewildered as I am by Natalie’s liking to my aloof and antisocial brother over me, the chemistry between them is undeniable as it is disgusting. I may have put in a couple of heart emojis after his name as well.”
“Michael, the poor girl’s messy breakup is no time to play matchmaker.”
“Just you wait, they’ll be all over each other in no time,” Michael hummed dismissively. They sat watching families walk out of the rec center, some of the kids still in their swimsuits from the pool in a moment of tranquil silence, before both men opened their mouths.
“Gabe, I was wondering-”
“I’ve been meaning to ask-”
They froze, looking at each other with wide eyes, and then laughed. Michael put up his hands in surrender.
“You first, you first,” he said, and he swore Gabe’s cheeks turned a little red.
“Well,” the teacher said, folding his hands. “I’ve been meaning to ask you if you’d like to get dinner sometime this week.”
Michael’s mouth opened and a small squeak came out. Well, he wasn’t expecting that. Gabriel’s face went from sheepish to mortified in a minute, putting up all his defenses.
“I mean! It’s okay if you don’t, I certainly don’t want to be too forward if you don’t...i-if you-” he sputtered, and Michael snatched one of his hands.
“Gabriel,” he laughed a little too loudly. “Gabe. I’d love to get dinner. I was just surprised, ‘cause I was about to ask you the same thing.”
Gabe looked confused for a moment, until a moment of clarity seemed to cross his mind his shoulders relaxed, and he giggled.
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah! And you ruined all my fun, thanks a lot,” Michael teased him, sniffing indignantly. In his mind, a crowd roared and champagne bottles were opened in celebration. Gabriel wanted to ask him to dinner.
“My sincerest apologies, then. Have you ever been to Richter’s out by the country club?” Gabe asked, waving to a young boy in one of his classes, walking into the rec center.
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s mediterranean food, if you like that. I haven’t actually… been there, but Google tells me it’s good!”
“Whatever you like is fine by me,” Michael smiled. The worry on Gabe’s face evaporated and he grinned.
“That’s great! I mean, that’s- that’s really great. It’s a date, then?” he beamed at Michael. It was contagious. He smiled back.
“It’s a date.”
“It’s a date! Not a visit to Guy Fieri’s house!” Michael whined, digging through his closet. Zadkiel pouted behind him, holding up a tacky Hawaiian shirt Michael had worn once, just once to a costume party.
“What? You wanted my help, didn’t you?” Zad rolled their eyes, shoving the shirt back on the rack.
“I like green, green’s an alright color, right?” Michael held up a forest green polo, trying to make himself believe that the color was remotely acceptable with his skin tone. Zadkiel took one look at it and raised an eyebrow. Michael put it back. “Fine! How nice is Richter’s, anyways?”
“Hmm. Google says “casual neat.””
“That’s specific.”
“Think like, you’re visiting Grandma’s house but her neighbor is cute,” Zadkiel said thoughtfully.
“That’s even more specific!” he cried, but dug through his closet nonetheless. After some digging, he pulled out a few shirts, piecing them together until his brain liked what it saw. “I think I’m onto something here,” he grinned. Shoving Zadkiel out of his room, he threw on the outfit and tossed open the door dramatically. Zad stood against the wall and blinked, mildly impressed.
“That’s the one,” they said, and Michael agreed. Admiring the ensemble in the mirror, Michael felt proud of himself. A simple pair of khakis, a short-sleeved, and blue button up shirt. Michael felt glowing.
“Blue’s my color,” he decided. “What time is it, Zad?”
“5:47.” “Time to roll out.”
“I’m surprised you might actually be on time,” they shrugged as Michael squeezed past them and kneeled down, pulling on his boots.
“Implying that punctuality is an issue with me?” Michael inquired, yanking his laces tight. Zadkiel scoffed, leaning against the wall.
“I can think of a number of dates where you got there an hour later than planned.”
“It was a mistake! I had misread! I-” Michael dug out his phone and very quickly read the text from Gabriel, just to be sure. He put it away and jabbed an accusatory finger at Zad. “Do not distract me. I have a date to catch.”
“Have fun, Romeo,” they waved as Michael threw on his jacket and rushed for the door.
“Don’t leave my door unlocked!” he called over his shoulder as he closed the front door behind him and fast-walked through the apartment halls and down the stairs.
Michael must’ve checked his hair ten times in the mirror while he drove to Richter’s, trying to make sure it had that perfect wave that his previous girl and boyfriends always seemed to like. Yeah, he knew about Richter’s. It was a place he recalled several of his coworkers at the health center getting dinner at while Michael went home on his own or to Kristi’s house. Fine by him. Sometimes he preferred the little girl’s company to the people he worked with. It was like work followed them everywhere, the way they talked and talked about the magic of exercise and kale. There were a million more interesting topics in the world to talk about, and Michael had been through a million and one with Kristi.
Okay, less than a million, she didn’t understand taxes at all.
Michael also knew that a part of his excitement was from just going out at all on the weekends. Sure, he had Zadkiel and Stan, but they were his siblings. They had seen him naked and when he had braces and they just knew way too much. Besides, Michael frowned, he could only talk to Stan for so long before both of them ended up angry. That was the catch with patching a relationship back together. There were some scabs from Stan’s later days of high school that threatened to come back open when they got to sensitive subjects.
He shook away the thought as his car pulled into the Richter’s parking lot, silently congratulating himself, as he was three minutes early. Parking his car by the front, Michael admired the lights strung up around the front of the restaurant as he walked to the door. Gabe had chosen a good place.
Speak of the devil, the man himself was standing by the door when Michael stepped inside, and had a good moment to admire him. Gabriel’s hair was combed back, with the same lock of hair dangling in his face. He had overdressed, as Michael had come to expect, with a striped button up shirt under a grey sweater and slacks. His distracted expression focused when Michael walked in, and he broke into a smile.
“You beat me here,” Michael said before Gabriel could open his mouth. “I hate being beat.”
“I always have to be extra early, it’s something that comes in handy when you’re a teacher,” Gabriel said, mild surprise in his voice as the waitress lead them to a table by huge windows.
“I’m joking,” Michael snorted. Well, phooey. He was gonna have to break his habits of being fashionably late if they went on another date.
“Can I start y’all off with something to drink?” the waitress asked, her southern accent betraying the restaurant's mediterranean theme.
“I’ll have a strawberry lemonade,” Michael answered.
“Coffee, please,” Gabriel smiled kindly at the waitress. When she left, Michael gave him a quizzical look.
“Coffee? At six in the evening?”
He flushed, huffing defensively, “I like coffee! I don’t give you grief for ordering strawberry lemonade.”
“If any place has it, I get it,” Michael insisted, pausing. “Wait- you’ve had it before, haven’t you?” Gabriel shook his head, and Michael balked. “That’s a sin, Gabriel.”
“Is not having strawberry lemonade a deal breaker for you, then?” Gabe joked.
“Yes!”
“Oh my goodness,” Gabriel stuck his face promptly in his hands as Michael stopped their waitress and requested a second strawberry lemonade, smiling victoriously back at Gabriel. He would convert a nonbeliever to the magic of insanely sugary drinks. This date was going well.
“Drink and believe, Gabriel,” Michael pushed the glass towards him, little yellow umbrella sticking out the edge. His date finally caved, and picking up the glass, took a sip while Michael waited with baited breath.
“It’s sickeningly sweet,” Gabe commented, his neutral expression unchanging.
“Well, no wonder! You drink too much coffee is all,” Michael concluded and Gabriel hummed speculatively. That was no problem. If Gabe stuck around, he’d be consuming a lot of sweet drinks.
“If you worked around twenty four year olds for hours, you would too,” Gabe snorted, taking another sip of his drink.
“One is quite enough for me,” Michael smiled. “Unless you count my sibling in college. They’re basically a four year old who carries a knife.”
“I can’t imagine having siblings, and especially not knife wielding ones.”
“Oh, so you’re an only child?”
“Yes, it was just my mother and I growing up,” Gabriel smiled. “I got all the toys to myself.”
“And all of the attention, too,” Michael mused.
“Yes, all of the attention,” Gabe said, a blush creeping back on his cheeks. “I’m my mother’s number one.” “She sounds like a sweet mother.” “She really is,” Gabriel’s smile turned sad. “She was there for me when I was widowed, and has been helping me raise Chamuel ever since.”
The gears in Michael’s brain clicked into place as he almost dropped his drink. Of all the possibilities he had exercised, the idea that Gabriel had been widowed-
“We all ready to order here?” the waitress’ voice sounded like jingle bells, and Michael snapped to attention, trying to form words as Gabriel ordered some kind of sandwich. Michael feebly gave her his order, distracted as she took the menus away, and cleared his throat.
“I uh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know-”
“Really, it’s okay,” Gabriel stopped him before he could start, smile sheepish. “She died about five years ago. Chamuel and I moved to be closer to my mother, and we’ve been a trio ever since.”
Michael breathed a sigh of relief as Gabriel, gracious Gabriel, recovered the conversation and went into details about his mother spoiling Chamuel “until her whole mouth is filled with cavities and she forgets her manners”.
“If only my little brother had been raised with those,” Michael smirked, and Gabriel laughed like he’d been raised beside Stan too. Michael couldn’t hold back an amused smile. The dinner was flavorful, and Richter’s was somewhere he’d certainly come back to, but Gabriel’s company made Michael never want to return the restaurant alone again. Strawberry lemonade, he had found, was much sweeter when there was someone to share it with.
“I think teaching old people yoga is a lot more entertaining than troubled teenagers, if I’m honest,” Michael explained, waving his fork around subconsciously. “Often, they fall asleep.”
“What do you do then? Do you wake them up yourself?” Gabriel pondered.
Michael shook his head, “I figured if they’re that relaxed, I’m doing something right. They typically wake themselves up after a few moments. What gets me is the positions they fall asleep in.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. We’re talking full pretzel-mode. And they’re out like a light!”
“They don’t hurt themselves, do they?”
“No,” Michael snickered. “You can count on the teenagers to get themselves hurt during yoga. Kristi is better than half of them.”
Gabriel smiled, “You teach her too then?”
Michael pulled out his phone and quickly went to his photos, finding the one with Kristi balanced in a handstand and showed it to Gabriel.
“I spend so much time at her house, I eventually run out of things to do,” Michael pushed his phone back in his pocket.
There’s one hobby that’s great for passing the time, you know,” Gabe hummed, trying to be subtle. What mattered was the poor man tried.
“I don’t own any yarn, Gabe. Or needles.”
“You can have mine.”
“You really are determined to get me to knit, aren’t you?” Michael laughed incredulously. Gabriel nodded, looking very sure of himself. There was no way Michael was getting out of that, that was for sure. He shook his head. “Alright, alright, I promise I’ll consider it.”
“Good enough for me.”
The two finished their dishes and sat for a while, chatting about the perks and downfalls of looking after kids all the time and the weather and what they did for fun in high school and how much a year’s worth of strawberry lemonade from Costco would cost. Gabriel loved the kindness in children, but the screaming drove him a bit nutty. Gabriel didn’t always live in the southwest but he loved the heat. Gabriel played trumpet in high school and was the valedictorian and thought the price for that much lemonade was far more than necessary.
Michael decided that he liked watching the sun from the window hit Gabriel’s eyes and the way his mouth twitched a smile whenever Michael told a corny joke- like he wanted to laugh but didn’t want to encourage him.
Michael paid for the bill before Gabriel could even see it (making a note to himself to check for more places with strawberry lemonade), and the pair left the restaurant with full stomachs and hearts.
Arizona in the evening was something Michael would never really get used to- except when it was smolderingly hot. Golden rays of sun ran over the mountains on the horizon and spilled down on their ever-growing suburban town. Not too bright to blind, but enough to give the illusion of an eternal summer. It was comfortably warm, perfect for Michael. He loved his little heaven, how the weather seemed to bend to his wishes and how the wind blew just enough to push people like Gabriel in his direction.
“Thank you for meeting me here. I would’ve never actually gone to a little place like this on my own,” Gabriel glanced back at the fairy lights in the window, a smile curling in his cheek as they made their way for the parking lot. “I probably would’ve kept visiting the same three restaurants I always do out of habit.”
“Well, I am more than happy to be your sense of adventure,” Michael, mindlessly swinging his arms. “Be sure to let me know if you’re ever feeling adventurous again, ‘kay?” He added a wink for good measure. Gabriel snorted.
“Sure thing, Michael. You have a good night,” he held eye contact with Michael for just a moment more before turning towards the park and walking off, Michael still waving with what was probably a big, stupid grin on his face.
He got in his car and turned the ignition, still grinning, and drove all the way back to his apartment complex before realizing that he hadn’t bothered with the air conditioning or radio, and was sweating in his nice shirt.
He fumbled with the keys and popped open the door to his apartment, making a note to himself to get into something that didn’t smell like Mediterranean and sweat, and found Zad waiting for him, on the phone.
“Yeah he just got home and- oh my god Raph he got laid. He’s covered in sweat.”
Michael’s eyes bugged out a bit. “Wh- I did not!”
“Raph is now lecturing you about sleeping with strangers and STD’s and- Raph, he can’t hear you! I’ll put you on speaker,” Zad rolled their eyes.
“No, don’t! I didn’t get laid. Raph I didn’t get laid!” Michael yelled at the phone, groaning as he made a beeline for his bedroom, ignoring Zadkiel’s cackling.
He put on a fresh T-shirt and rinsed his face at the sink with a happy sigh, when he heard his phone buzz on his bed. Perking up, Michael almost ran to the phone, chest filling with delight.
“Texting so soon, Gabriel?” he laughed to himself, before seeing the notification and pouting, almost disappointed.
[6:17] Mr. Lange: Called to a meeting tonight. Can u come over and watch her?
That was the Langes, Michael thought, tapping out a response. Always gone. He’d bring Mac n Cheese and drive over to their house in an hour.
Until then, he’d just lie with Zad and torture them with excruciatingly detailed accounts of Gabriel’s physical attributes. Michael smiled. Revenge was sweet.
#gabemike#satan and me#my fics#satan and me fanfiction#SaM archangel michael#SaM archangel gabriel#zadkiel#raphael#natalie mcallister#thisiskindagross#hello hello its been a few months oopsy#EDIT: FUCK FUCK I MEANT TO POST THIS TO MY WRITING BLOG#o whale
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12x16 Coda: Parent or Angelic Guardian
because, dang it, start talking about Cas. 1k
Dean’s hands are still shaking.
He takes a few breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth in the pattern that that Dad had taught him. It doesn’t calm him down very much, but he doesn’t think they’re shaking enough for someone else to notice, so he stops trying altogether.
“She’s asleep.”
Sam re-emerges from Dean’s hotel room, buttoning up his shirt to cover the rusty bloodstains from Claire clutching at his shirt as he’d carried her into the hotel. Dean looks for a telltale tremor in his brother’s hand and isn’t surprised to spot one.
“Good.”
God knows she needs it. Dean remembers what it’s like to have something foreign racing through your veins, trying to rip your humanity away. And, judging by the haunted look clinging to Sam’s eyes, he remembers, too.
“Have you called Cas?”
Dean really doesn’t want to do that. Cas still hasn’t texted him since he ran off looking for leads on Kelly yet again. He’s taken his phone out and stared at the last message (an emoji of a chick cracking out of an egg) more times than he would ever admit to Sam over the last few weeks. He does not want his opening line after a few weeks of radio silence to be ‘so, we almost killed Claire.’
“I—” He’s going to say that he wasn’t planning on it, that he was going to leave the heavy lifting for Claire, but at Sam’s arched eyebrow, he caves. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”
Besides, it’ll be good to hear his voice. Or at least, that’s what Dean tells himself as he picks up the phone and hesitantly dials Cas’s number. He resolutely ignores that he knows it by heart, despite the fact that he could have just searched for Cas’s name in his contacts list.
It rings three times. Then, “Hello?”
Had it been anyone else, Dean would have assumed that they’d just woken up; the static of the receiver makes Cas’s already gravelly voice a few shades deeper.
“Is everything all right?”
When Dean doesn’t answer immediately, something rustles on the other end of the line as Cas presumably gets up and starts making for the nearest exit.
“We’re fine. Everybody’s fine.”
Is it weird that he can practically hear Cas’s raised eyebrow from probably several hundred miles away?
“Everybody?”
It’s too late to backtrack and ask what the weather is like in wherever the hell Cas is now. “Um, yeah. There was an incident.”
The sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line tells him that Cas is about to launch into a speech. Dean winces. He sounds like Sam when he’s trying to write up a plausible sounding police report, so he quickly changes tack.
“Like I said, we’re fine. Nothing to worry about.”
“What kind of incident?” Cas demands.
“We ran into Claire on a hunt. Werewolves. Werewolf, actually. The Men of Letters apparently got the othe—”
“Where are you?”
Cas’s voice is loud enough coming through the receiver to catch Sam’s attention. He looks up questioningly, mouthing something that Dean is too distracted to properly make out.
“Listen, Cas, it’s all right.”
On the other side, a door slams. Whether it’s the door of a motel that Cas had hunkered down in for the night or the door of that awful pickup truck that Cas has been sporting lately, Dean can’t really tell.
“No, you listen,” Cas spits, like each of the words is fiery hot to the touch and blistering his tongue. “Claire is a child. She shouldn’t be hunting, and I can’t believe you would enable her!”
Dean is suddenly very glad that Cas can’t see him, because his eye roll would have earned him a glare of biblical proportions.
“She’s not a child, Cas. I was younger than her when I started.”
Not that he’d wish that on anyone, but Claire chose the hunting life. She’d gotten the opportunity to be normal and hadn’t taken it. That’s not their fault. All they can do now is help her where they can. Like she’d said; it’s her life, and she gets all the votes.
“And of course you’d be the first to say your childhood was first rate,” Cas deadpans.
He really doesn’t want to bring the John Winchester School of Hunting into this, so Dean steers the conversation in another direction.
“You don’t have to come down here. Really. Besides, you’ve got the whole Kelly thing to worry about.”
Silence. For a moment, Dean thinks that maybe their cell connection has died.
Cas’s voice is bitterly cold. “So I should just stay on the job, then. Let you take care of my—of Claire.”
“She’s not your daughter, Cas.”
It comes out a little sharper than he’d intended, because he’s thinking of a little boy in Indiana who’d thought that Dean was the king standing on top of the world, not Atlas sweating beneath it.
“She’s not yours, either.”
Dean opens his mouth to speak, but gets cut off by the click of being disconnected.
Claire’s eyes blink lazily open to the sight of someone standing at the foot of her bed. Energy surges through her limbs as she forces herself upright, tangling herself in her bedsheets.
“It’s all right.”
For one aching, hopeful moment, she thinks she hears her father. Then she notices the deeper pitch, the rougher tone.
“They called you?”
An emotion flutters across his face, too quickly for Claire’s sleep-addled brain to register. She thinks it might be anger, but for the life of her, she can’t figure out why he’d be angry.
“Of course they did. I’m your—”
And he stops.
Claire can’t blame him. She’s been searching for a word to fill in that blank for a long time.
“Guardian angel,” she supplies with a sleepy grin that she’ll deny later.
Castiel doesn’t smile, but his features soften. If she hadn’t been so familiar with the lines of his face, Claire doubts she would have noticed at all.
“Dean told me where you were staying. I got this.”
He pulls Grumpy Cat out of his trench coat and places him in the crook of Claire’s arm. Any other time she might have protested, but she’s still so tired.
“Go back to sleep.”
Hesitatingly, he reaches out and smooths back her sweaty hair. Claire drifts off to sleep clutching Grumpy Cat to her chest.
(ao3)
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