#reach across that gulf and say i love you even before i knew you were a possibility to me is just. I am CHEWING GLASS | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kuroopaisen · 4 years

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tiny love || i

➵ as tooru’s younger sister, falling in love with iwaizumi hajime is easy. your feelings aren’t ignored, either.

warnings: f!reader

wc: 3.8k

m.list ↠ ch. 2

“Can’t you let me win once?” Tooru whined, turning to Iwaizumi with his best puppy dog eyes.

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Iwa-chan—”

“Call me that again and we bring this fight into the real world.”

“You’re so mean.”

“You should’ve thought of that before challenging me to a one-v-one.”

“You know, most people have fun while playing games.”

“There’s no space for fun here,” Iwaizumi grunted. “Only winning.”

“This isn’t the court!”

“Doesn’t matter.”

You watched the two of them battle it out on Smash. You knew well enough that challenging Iwaizumi to a battle on there was a death wish. But Tooru had an insatiable need to win all the time – even if he liked to act otherwise.

You knew that hunger would take him far. And you weren’t the only one. Everyone always knew that Tooru was going to leave an impact, no matter what he chose to do.

“Hey,” Iwaizumi called out to you, giving you a small smile. “Would you like to have a go?”

“Not against you,” you laughed, shaking your head. “I’m not mad.”

“Fight Oikawa then,” Iwaizumi smirked, nodding at him. “You’ll crush him easily.”

“Hey!” Tooru whined, waving his arms dramatically. Sometimes, you thought that Tooru should’ve pursued a career in the dramatic arts alongside volleyball. There was certainly some wasted potential there.

“You might do better if you didn’t scream every time I punched you,” Iwiazumi smirked. You could feel the fondness in his voice, even if it was buried under a layer or two of mock contempt.

“I can’t help it!” Tooru wailed. “It always takes me by surprise!”

“Alright,” you grinned, getting to your feet.

“I’ll lend you a hand,” Iwaizumi said, patting the space between him and Tooru on the couch.

“That’s not fair!” Tooru whined, pouting at the two of you. “There’s no way I’ll win if you work together.”

“Oh, definitely not.” Iwaizumi flashed him a wicked grin.

Tooru turned to you with pleading eyes. “Please don’t. I can’t handle this.”

Your brother knew exactly how to pull on your heartstrings – even though he was the older one.

“He’s bullshitting,” Iwaizumi cut in, quelling your guilt before it even had time to build.

“I’m not,” Tooru huffed. “I’m terrified.”

“That’s no excuse,” Iwaizumi shook his head, flicking through the menu.

Tooru watched him, hawk-like. “What are you doing?”

“I’m giving her Meta Knight.”

“That’s not fair!”

You grinned, patting your brother on the back. “I am new to this game. I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

Tooru glared at you for a long moment. It almost felt like you were having a proper fight.

“Don’t let him get to you,” Iwaizumi chuckled, handing the controller back to you. “He’s just a sore loser.”

You couldn’t have thought of a better way to describe your brother.

But you were just glad to make an attempt to reach across the gulf between you, that impassable abyss you felt you had no hopes of leaping across. For once, it felt like you belonged in your brother’s life.

✧ ✧ ✧

“Shit,” you grumbled, patting your pockets.

“Don’t let Oikawa hear you speaking like that,” Hajime chuckled, looking at you from the corner of his eye.

The two of you were standing in line at the local boba shop, a frequent after-school haunt for the two of you. It’s usually a little busy, swallowed up by the after-school rush of students who either didn’t do their extracurriculars at school or simply didn’t care.

“What my brother doesn’t know can’t hurt him,” you mumbled half-heartedly, looking up at Hajime with your best puppy eyes. “I forgot my wallet.”

“Again?” He grinned. “I’m starting to think you’re doing it on purpose.”

“It’s not my fault Tooru won’t lend me any cash,” you shrugged.

Not that long ago, your brother was responsible for financing your after-school snacks.

But since entering high school, Tooru had discovered girls. And girls had discovered Tooru.

You hadn’t expected your brother to be so highly-sought after – seeing as he was such a brat – but you weren’t about to complain about it. If he wasn’t volunteering, he usually had a date on Tuesday afternoon, which left Hajime free to walk you home.

And he never failed to do so. Every single Tuesday, Hajime would wait for you at the school gates, ready to do his duty and escort you safely back to the Oikawa household.

Of course, these trips were rarely ever linear.

You suspected Iwaizumi abhorred studying. Sitting in one spot and reading page after page of academic jargon didn’t suit him. He never complained – and he reminded you time and time again that it’s important to stay on top of your studies – but he wasn’t above finding excuses to avoid it.

The two of you always found ways to waste time, doing absolutely anything but studying or heading home.

His favourite of these little escapades seemed to be sitting and watching the mountains. There was always something wistful in his gaze, a sense of serenity that you’d never experienced yourself. He was only one year older than you, but he always seemed a little older than everyone around him – even if he loved monster movies.

Regardless, you never cared much about what the two of you did. You were just willing to do whatever made him smile.

“Did you get a haircut?” He asked, shocking you out of your thoughts. He was walking over to the waiting area. You scurried after him, cheeks slightly flushed.

“No,” you shook your head. “Why?”

Hajime peered at you for a second, his brow furrowed. “It looks nice.”

You scoffed. “What, are you saying it doesn’t look nice normally?”

“No,” he sighed, rolling his eyes. “It just looks… different.” He paused, eyes flicking away from you. “But your normal hair looks nice too.”

You stood there like a marble statue, praying to every conceivable deity that your face wasn’t glowing.

He always said things like that. Things that felt like they were meant to be compliments, but so laden with awkwardness that you could never tell.

And he always got so flustered. Not that you were any better. No, in some ways, you were worse.

You just couldn’t stop yourself from hoping. You loved moments like these, stolen away with Hajime in a small pocket of your week. You weren’t even sure if Tooru knew about them; were they perhaps a secret you shared?

Of course, Tooru knew that Hajime walked you home, but not what time you got home.

You always wondered if he tried to make these little trips last longer. You certainly did.

But if he ever noticed you ambling, he never reprimanded you for it. He always slowed down to accommodate you, his arm occasionally brushing against yours. It was always enough to make your heart beat just a bit faster.

Today was no different.

“You know,” Hajime said, taking a sip of his boba. “Oikawa’s still upset that you didn’t pick up volleyball.”

You scoffed, rolling your eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Hajime smiled. “Something about how he can’t believe how his ‘precious little sister’ should’ve followed in his footsteps.”

“He just wants to brag,” you huffed, sipping up a pearl with vengeance. Hajime chuckled and your heart fluttered. You couldn’t help but be proud whenever you were the reason he laughed.

“Is that why you don’t want to play?” He asked.

You frowned. “Sort of?”

“You don’t sound certain.”

“I don’t know…” You chewed on your lip, turning the question over in your mind. You knew that some people expected you to follow in your older brother’s footsteps. They assumed that his skill was due to overwhelming talent. For some, the natural assumption was that it must run in the family.

You, of course, knew otherwise. If anything, the ignorance towards Tooru’s hard work was the most insulting thing about this particular assumption.

“I guess… I just…” You weren’t quite sure what you wanted to say. If you had any intention to ‘follow in your brother’s footsteps,’ it would be to emulate his passion and dedication. That’s what you wanted — not to be an incredible volleyball player in your own right.

“I want to find something I excel at, you know?” You admitted. “If I even try and get into volleyball, I feel like I’ll always just be Tooru’s younger sister. Like… it’d be hard to feel like I was getting opportunities on my own merits.”

That much was true. Just as much as you abhorred how people ignored Tooru’s hard work, you feared the thought that if you did follow him into volleyball, your own efforts would be ignored. Or, worse yet, played down.

Besides, it would be hard not to get overshadowed by Tooru. Not when he shone so brightly.

“If volleyball is what you want to do, you shouldn’t let that hold you back,” Hajime sighed.

You shook your head. “I don’t think I want to play volleyball though.”

Hajime paused for a moment, lips pursed around his straw. The two of you had never really spoken about the future, about what either of you wanted to do with your lives. Tooru didn’t even need to say that he wanted to pursue volleyball; that much was a given.

“Do you know what you want to do?” He asked.

You bit the inside of your cheek. “I don’t know.”

Part of you felt silly for that. It had been so easy for Tooru — once he’d found his passion, he’d dug his heels in. Never once had he wavered, not even when he was at his most insecure. He knew what he wanted to do. He had a hunger for it.

You could only wonder what that felt like.

“And that’s okay.” Hajime’s voice was soft. Softer than it usually was. It’s like he knew what you were thinking, even though you hadn’t given voice to those deeper insecurities.

“I just… I don’t know. I know that nobody else knows what they’re doing either but, like…” You almost regret starting this thought, but you’ve never had this opportunity before. It would be foolish to let it pass by. “Tooru’s always known. It’s kind of difficult to not feel like I should know what I want to do.”

Even your parents seemed to pay you less mind. You’d never really felt like you were less loved; but Tooru burned so brightly it was inevitable that you were cast in shadow. You’d worked tirelessly to root out any bitterness, but…

“You’re allowed to be unsure,” Hajime said, interrupting your train of thought. “I know that’s redundant, but it’s true. You’ve got time.”

It was cliché. But there’s something about the way he said it that made you feel like you were floating. Maybe because it almost sounded like “It’ll be okay. I’ve got you.”

A hand was suddenly ruffling your hair. You flinched, looking up at the boy standing next to you.

He was smiling gently, a warmth in his eyes that made your heart beat a little faster.

“You’ll find your strengths. I know you will.”

You held your breath for a moment, heat blossoming across your cheeks. Perhaps this boy would be the death of you.

“Thanks, Hajime.”

✧ ✧ ✧

There was never any damn food in your house. It was the curse that’d plagued you since you were young – many a late night expedition to your fridge turned up fruitless.

Tonight was no different.

It was past midnight, but you couldn’t sleep. No matter how hard you tried, you’d just laid there, staring at your ceiling while the hours crawled on.

So you’d scampered down stairs, phone in hand and hunger brewing in your stomach.

You squinted into the grim white light of your fridge, that familiar disappointment settling over you.

You hated nights like this. You couldn’t just lie in your bed for hours on end, thinking of nothing and everything. But you couldn’t even eat to escape your boredom.

You let the fridge door swing close with a muted thud, sighing heavily.

You turned around with a deep frown.

A figure stood in the corner of your kitchen.

A hand flew to your hand to contain your surprised yelp. ‘I have early morning training, you know,’ Tooru would say whenever you accidentally woke him up late at night – though you contended that he was just a very light sleeper, and it wasn’t your fault that the sound of the toilet flushing was enough to rouse him from his slumber.

But it wasn’t Tooru who was standing in the kitchen with you.

“Hajime,” you gasped, placing a solid hand on your chest. “Shit, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

He chuckled quietly, shaking his head. “Sorry.”

“You should be,” you mumbled, gripping your phone.

You felt stupid, but standing alone in your kitchen with Hajime was enough to make your heart race.

You glanced down at your phone quickly for a distraction. By what might be divine providence, Amaya’s name lit up the screen. You weren’t quite sure why she was rambling about the stars at 12:41 AM, but you weren’t going to judge her for it.

“What’s so interesting?” Hajime teased, his head suddenly hovering over your shoulder and much too close to your face.

You flinched, almost dropping your phone. “I—Uh—Amaya,” you managed to splutter out, quite grateful for just how dark your kitchen was.

“She’s the tall one, right?” Hajime asked, making no effort to move out of your space. You could usually deal with the fact that he was often around at your place late in the evenings – and honestly, trying to ensure that you were more presentable than usual was more exhausting than you’d given it credit for – but you weren’t used to him being this close.

Most of the time, you just stayed in your room while Tooru and Hajime spent time together. Wonderful as he was, Hajime was stressful to be around. It was hard enough keeping your feelings a secret from him. You didn’t want to think about what Tooru’s obnoxiously observant eyes would be able to notice.

“You alright?” He frowned, moving to stand directly in front of you.

You realised what was happening a moment too late, mortification digging its heels into your stomach. “Oh, uh… yeah. Yeah.”

Hajime flicked your forehead gently, chuckling.

You pouted at him, completely unsure of where to take the conversation. Usually, you could hold yourself together enough without embarrassing yourself too much. But at 12:45 at night? Impossible. Humiliation was inevitable.

“What’re you doing up?” He asked, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“What are you doing up?” You shot back, somewhere between defensive and playful.

He grinned. God, he was aggravatingly handsome, even for a teenage boy.

“I can’t sleep,” he shrugged. “I thought I’d just watch a film or something until I got tired.”

“And then you decided to give me the fright of my life instead.”

“You could’ve been a burglar.”

“And if I was?”

“I would’ve thought of something.”

You took a moment to scan him up and down. “I feel safer already.” That was only half a joke. You were well-aware of just how buff he was.

He chuckled, standing up to full height. “Anyway, I’m going to go and set up the TV. Feel free to join me.” He started walking off, pausing to look over his shoulder at you. “It’ll be more fun if you’re there.”

Your heart stuttered in your chest.

Well, how were you supposed to say no to something like that?

✧ ✧ ✧

For someone who’d been so adamant that they couldn’t fall asleep, you were pretty quick to doze off once bundled up on the couch in the entertainment room.

Hajime had set up the original Godzilla quite efficiently, despite his technological ineptitude. He may have been bad with machines, but there was little that could separate him from his beloved monster movies.

You’d settled yourself down on the couch, waiting patiently for Hajime to join you. You were already overthinking it. How close would you be to him? Would he be comfortable with you resting your head on his shoulder? Would it be weird for the two of you to share a blanket?

He switched the light off and you flinched.

“Here,” Hajime said, handing you one of the blankets as he sat himself down on the couch. He was just a hair’s breadth away from you, your shoulders barely touching.

You always seemed to be one step away from overt affection; bodies pressed together close enough to be suspicious, furtive glances when you thought the other wasn’t looking, ‘secret’ afternoons spent revelling in each other’s company.

God, this was so frustrating. And so adolescent. But even if you wanted to, you couldn’t work up the courage to actually say something.

The fear of rejection was too strong.

“You ready?” He asked, turning to look at you.

“Hm?”

“To start the movie.”

“Oh.” Your brain was far too addled for this. “Yeah.”

Hajime nodded, pressing the play button. The screen went black for just a moment before fuzzy black and white images flickered into motion.

You tried your best to pay attention to the movie. You really, truly did.

But you were finally getting tired. You were vaguely aware of the fact a couple ships were destroyed, and a big dinosaur-shaped monster, and something about the government. But you couldn’t keep up – not when Hajime was so close to you.

Perhaps you should’ve gone to bed. But you didn’t want to stop spending time with him.

But even that wasn’t enough to help you keep your eyes open. Against your sheer determination, your eyes kept fluttering closed. You were sure he’d tell you off for not just going to bed, but you still weren’t ready to leave just yet.

But he was so warm pressed against you, the dim light of the room so soothing, the din of an old movie a quiet lull…

“Hey.”

A gentle voice came from above you.

You opened your bleary eyes, only to immediately squint. Wait, what was going on? Where were you?

“Wake up.”

Oh, that was Hajime’s voice. Why was… That’s right. You were watching a movie with him.

And now, you were....

Oh, shit. You were leaning on his shoulder. If you were a little more lucid, then maybe you would’ve repositioned yourself.

But you were tired, and he was comfortable. And, he hadn’t pushed you off yet.

“What time is it?” You mumbled, stifling a yawn.

“It’s two.”

“Oh.” You blushed. “Whoops.”

Hajime chuckled. “I thought you said you couldn’t sleep.”

“Yeah,” you groaned. “But then I got sleepy.”

“Then you should’ve gone to bed,” he chided. But there was a playful tone to his voice.

You huffed, shifting yourself off his shoulder to get a better look at his face.

Even in the monochrome half-light of the TV, he was still obnoxiously handsome. Maybe not in the most classic of ways – there was something rougher about him, something unpolished, unrefined. But you’d always liked the honesty in his face; you felt it matched his personality perfectly. Some of your friends thought he looked kind of intimidating, but you’d always disagreed. To you, he looked kind. Maybe not in the most traditional sense, but in a way that was truly his.

Oh man, you were drowsy. If you were more lucid, you’d have known better than to just sit and stare at his face.

But he was staring right back, a certain tenderness in his eyes. You’d seen it before, on your walks home and in the quiet moments you shared. But he’s never been this open about it before. If you caught him, he usually looked away, cheeks turning a slight shade of pink.

But tonight, he seemed to be fearless.

You wondered – no, you hoped – that maybe, just maybe, your suspicions were correct. That he did indeed feel the same as you.

A hand came up to cup your cheek. You leant into it instinctively, letting the weight of your head rest against his palm.

Hajime smiled, stroking a gentle thumb over your cheek. His hands were a little rough, just as you’d expected, but they’re so gentle.

You were about to go into cardiac arrest. You could feel it in every inch of your body. There’s no way he couldn’t hear your heartbeat – not when it was thrumming so loudly in your ears.

“You’re so cute.”

It took you a moment to process what he’d just said.

Wait, he called you cute? While looking at you like that? There was no way you were making it out of this room alive–

He leant in, pressing his lips against yours softly. You froze, every nerve in your body now on high alert.

Iwaizumi Hajime? Kissing you? No way. No. Better yet, your first kiss? You had to be dreaming. There was no way this was happening.

And yet the burning of your cheeks, the swelling of your heart, the feeling of his lips pressed against yours all said otherwise. This was happening.

It was a little clumsy, a little stiff. But you didn’t care. What mattered was that it was happening. That your heart was hammering in your chest at an inhuman speed. That finally, finally, you could express this affection you had for him.

You wanted to move, to touch him, to hold him close. But you were too dumbstruck to move, content to just stay like this for as long as he’d let you.

He pulled away after a long moment, eyes half-lidded as he gazed at you. He was smiling widely – a rare, full-bodied smile.

Oh. He was smiling like that because of you. Against all odds, your heart found a way to beat even faster.

“We should go to bed,” he said, voice a few shades deeper than usual.

The red of your cheeks deepened.

“Different beds,” he added quickly, clearing his throat. You’d thought that much was obvious, but you weren’t about to tell him that. God, you hate being seventeen.

Somehow, you managed to get yourself out of that little room and up the stairs. He was right behind you, close enough to keep your mind muddled and your heart thrumming. There was no way you were going to be able to sleep. You’d be thinking about this all night.

You said nothing to each other as you bid farewell, simply giving each other a small nod. You weren’t sure if it’s because he wanted to be polite, or if he was left just as speechless as you were.

But as he walked away, he turned to give you one last smile for the night, letting it say everything he couldn’t.

You took a deep breath as he walked away, the ghost of his kiss on your lips and your head whirling.

You were excited for what the morning would bring.

a/n: !!!!! big thank you to ren, as always, for beta’ing this :( we’re in for a ride, fellas

#iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi hajime x reader #iwaizumi x you #iwaizumi hajime x you #iwaizumi hajime imagines #tiny love #oh man let's go lads

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freaoscanlin · 3 years

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In the Arms of an Aila

Fandom: High Rollers Aerois Campaign

Notes: Rated PG, 4438 words, trigger warnings for minor blood mentions. This is a Uni AU wherein the Storm Chasers are a group of students sharing a house on Stormchaser Avenue after their dormitory burns down. Shout out to @obishenshenobi for being amazing and co-writing this series with me!

Summary: Four times Aila carries the party, and one time they return the favor.

Read it on AO3

“Hey, Aila?” Nova said.

“What?”

“Just...thanks.”

“Very welcome. Just do your part and hold on. Sentry will get mad if I drop you.”

Nova

The blister set in somewhere between mile two and mile four. Since it was supposed to be a five mile hike, and a torrential downpour hit at the end of mile two, soaking them to the bone within minutes, a blister was the last thing Nova needed.

Of course, who really needed a blister? Rubbing an actual sore onto the skin as the first step on the way to a callus was an absolute stupid function of humanity, and human feet should not be designed this way. In fact, all humans were composed of stupid engineering. Her thighs burned, her lower back ached, she was muddy and cross and cold, and the pain rubbing along the back of her heel made her actually want to cry.

“We’ll get to the end soon.” Sentry kept a cheerful look in place. This whole hike had been her idea in the first place, and she’d led the pack all the way out to the waterfall. Which, admittedly, had been very pretty. On a sunny day it might have even been gorgeous. But Nova could feel her teeth chattering, and she must have looked miserable because Sentry had been making remarks like that for the past twenty minutes. “And then we’ll be in a nice warm car. And we’ll get some hot chocolate.”

“Coffee,” Nova managed to say through her chattering teeth.

“Or coffee. Sure. Coffee’s fine.”

Lucius, following behind Sentry without too much trouble, should have looked bedraggled and miserable. But he’d packed a fancy purple camping jacket for the adventure. Quill, trudging behind him, kept flicking a hand through his sopping hair and sending water droplets everywhere.

Aila, after the first time Nova had landed on her ass, had taken the rear. Every so often, she reached out to grab Nova and keep her from careening off the edge of the path.

“Let’s take a hike,” Nova muttered under her breath as she limped along. “It’s beautiful, Nova. You’ll love it, Nova. Just think of the pretty views, Nova. This is great. Just great.”

She stepped down and hissed in pain as her boot moved against the blister. Instantly, the three people ahead of her turned to look. “Are you okay?” Sentry asked, her brow furrowed.

“Fi—I’m fine. It’s just a blister. I’ll be fine.”

It took a great deal of reassurance that she would be fine in order for the others to believe her. They had less than a mile to go, soon they’d be in the car, she could grit her teeth through it. After a day of holding the group back to her pace—it wasn’t her fault she lived with a bunch of jocks who preferred the gym to the library—the idea of stopping just because her foot hurt made her burn with shame. So she waved away their protests and gamely set off.

For a couple hundred meters, at least. At that point she began to whimper.

Something rustled behind her, followed by a sigh. Aila grabbed her arm to stop her. “What? Was I about to fall?” Nova asked, looking down at the steep incline beside the little trail.

“Hop on.” Aila turned to face away from her, bending her knees just a little.

“What?”

“I’ll give you a piggy-back ride.”

“But it’s so far still.”

“You weigh less than a sack of potatoes. I’ll be fine. Hop on.”

The others, having missed all of this, continued on their way up the path. Nova glanced back toward them, wondering if she should just suck it up and run to catch up. The thought alone made her want to cry.

Red-faced and embarrassed, she climbed onto Aila’s back and wrapped her arms around Aila’s neck. The relief of being off her feet came instantly.

“Comfortable?” Aila asked.

“If I get too heavy—”

Aila snorted at that. “Please. This isn’t even a workout. Hey, Sentry, wait up!”

In no time at all, she caught up to the group, trotting along as though she wasn’t even burdened by Nova’s weight. Nova decided she’d feel embarrassed later, when she wasn’t so wrecked. Aila was big and sturdy and warm, and it was the first reprieve from misery she’d had in over an hour. Quill gave her a small smile of commiseration, letting out a “hey” when she tiredly reached out to muss his hair.

“Hey, Aila?” Nova said.

“What?”

“Just...thanks.”

“Very welcome. Just do your part and hold on. Sentry will get mad if I drop you.”

Nova rested her cheek against the back of Aila’s shoulder, watching the landscape go by around them, and obeyed.

Sentry

“And just what do you think you’re doing?”

Sentry, about to reach for the pantry door in the darkness, froze. A split-second after Aila’s voice rang out through the kitchen, the lights flooded on. Sentry didn’t need a highly active imagination to fully see the picture it painted: Aila by the switch in an ancient pair of joggers and one of the hundreds of tacky free T-shirts they handed out during orientation week. A massive gulf of space between the pantry and Sentry’s bedroom. And Sentry herself in her Tom Servo sleep tank and shorts, balanced on one foot to stay off of her bad knee, right by the pantry—with her crutches nowhere nearby.

“Ah, um, ah,” Sentry said, looking about for an excuse. Her shoulders sagged. “I just wanted a snack?”

“And you decided, ‘oh, I’ll just hop to it, then, will I?’”

Sentry spread her hands wide, sheepishly. “Yes?”

Aila’s expression could melt steel. “Even though you’ve got a perfectly good pair of crutches by your bed.”

She hated the crutches, yes, but in that moment Sentry decided she hated disappointing Aila more. Still, she pushed her shoulders back. “I’m allowed to put a little weight on it—”

“In two weeks! You’re supposed to stay off it for now, or you’ll make it worse.”

“I’m only getting a snack. That’s not that strenuous.”

“For somebody who mothers the rest of us when we’ve so much as got the sniffles, you’re a bad patient yourself.” Aila strode across the kitchen and before Sentry quite knew what was happening, scooped her up. Just as quickly—though a little more gently—Sentry was deposited into one of the kitchen chairs. “You could have called one of us to get you a snack if you hate the crutches so much.”

“You were all asleep, and you need your rest.”

“We need our Sentry in one piece more than we need rest.”

Aila stomped into the pantry. A bag of crisps sailed through the air, landing in front of Sentry on the table. Grumbling under her breath the whole time, Aila emerged and stormed about the kitchen, collecting a midnight snack for herself. Sentry angled a chair over to prop her recovering leg up, trusting that Aila would work through this head of steam eventually. At long last, Aila sat down across from her with a glass of water for each of them. She dug viciously into a yogurt.

“Feel better now that you’ve bitched me out?” Sentry asked, digging into the chips.

Aila considered. “A little, actually. Now I see why Nova does it all the time.”

Sentry saluted her with a crisp. “Glad to help. Thanks for getting these for me.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You don’t need to keep me company if all you were coming down for was a glass of water or something, though. I don’t want to keep you up.”

“Sentry,” Aila said in a measured voice. “If I leave you there, you’ll just hop right back to bed. So I’m going to stay here until you’re finished and I’m going to eat my yogurt and then I’ll carry you back to bed, and we’ll not tell the others any of this ever happened because they’ll scold you.”

“That might be the most I’ve ever heard you speak,” Sentry said.

“Yeah, I’m a real chatty Cathy at this hour, apparently.” Aila nudged one of the glasses toward her. “Drink your water. It’s good for recovery.”

“Yes, Mom,” Sentry teased, and Aila rolled her eyes at her.

Lucius

Lucius saw the blood, had a brief eternity to think whoopsy, there I go, and when time returned to its normal course of business, fainted. Well, he went woozy, at any rate. He felt his knees buckle, but from afar like they weren’t his knees anymore, and his vision squeezed into one narrow point of blankness, and he staggered.

He slammed into something very solid, but warm like a person. “Oh, no, you don’t,” said a familiar voice in his ear.

“S-so much blood,” Lucius said, his voice sounding as far away as his knees.

The entire world seemed to tilt and a feeling of warmth suffused him, reminding him of the earliest days with Nanny Nophir. That changed abruptly, though, when he realized that instead of being cradled like a small child, somebody had slung him over a shoulder like a bag of cement. Not just anybody, he realized in a muddled storm of thought. Aila had him over one shoulder, bracing him with an arm behind his knees.

Muzzily, he twisted his head to see Sentry hurrying out of the kitchen and into the shared living room. “What’s happened?” she asked.

“Nova’s got a nosebleed,” Aila said. “His majesty still faints at the sight of blood, apparently.”

“Hey,” Lucius said feebly, as the dig felt a little unfair. He let his body hang limp, too wrung out to really protest beyond that. There had been so much blood...

“I’m so sorry,” Nova said, her voice muffled by either a towel or her hand. “Lucius, I’m so sorry, I forgot you don’t like blood. It’s just so dry—”

“Let’s just get you cleaned up,” Sentry said kindly, resting a hand on Lucius’s back as she passed. “Maybe put him on the couch?”

The last must have been directed at Aila, for she moved over and Lucius found himself being lowered onto the divan. They really should have gotten a proper fainting couch for the living room, even though it clashed with the rest of the furniture he’d hand-selected. Though the ultimate irony remained: if Aila hadn’t caught him, he wouldn’t have made it to said fainting couch anyway.

Lucius, feeling queasy, glanced over. He spotted the bloody towel that Nova had instinctively put over her face to staunch the blood, and his eyes rolled back into his head.

“Hey—hey!” Something snapped loudly in front of his face and Lucius opened his eyes. Aila snapped her fingers a few more times. “None of that now. Turn that way.”

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” Lucius said, automatically obeying. “Good heavens. I could have cracked my head open on the coffee table if you hadn’t caught me.”

“Doubt it.” Aila snorted. “Hard as your head is, you’d have cracked the coffee table in half.”

“Oh really, do you think?” Lucius couldn’t help but be a little pleased at the thought. Having somebody like Aila think any part of him was tough—she’d certainly made enough jokes about lacrosse in their first days together—was quite exhilarating. He studiously kept his gaze focused on the back of the couch, deliberately not looking as Aila took the bloody towel out of the room and returned with bleach wipes. “Oh, I do hope she didn’t stain the carpet.”

“Eh,” Aila said. “I’ve gotten blood out of worse. Though I’ll let Nova clean up her textbook on her own. I’m nice but not that nice. It should be safe for you to look now.”

Lucius swallowed hard and sat up, rubbing his head. He’d come in to inquire of Nova, seated at the coffee table with a textbook and a soap opera on in the background for noise, if she wanted to perhaps grab a quick dinner with him before their evening class. And she’d turned to him in horror, blood leaking and...

Well, he’d prefer not to remember beyond that point. Instead, he resolutely turned his thoughts to more pressing matters (after all, Sentry was taking care of Nova, which meant she would be just fine). He cleared his throat. “Aila, I do have a question for you.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Do you think we should get a fainting couch in here? For the aesthetic?”

Aila stared at him for a long time, then turned on a heel and left without saying a word or even making a face at him.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Lucius said, and began to set his mussed clothing to rights.

Quill

No matter how they jeered and teased, there was no getting Sentry into the water. Even the triple dog dare, which would have worked on Quill without fail, held no effect. She merely gazed at them serenely from her lakeside lounger, told them they were all very clever, and closed her eyes once more, returning to sunbathing.

“Boo,” Quill called, cupping his hand around his mouth. He tried to splash water in her direction, but Sentry had wisely set her chair out of range.

“Oh, quit bugging her,” Nova said from deeper in the lake where she was treading water in her cute old-fashioned swim suit. Even in the water, she hadn’t taken off the elbow-length glove she wore to cover the scars from her lab accident. “Let the woman get some sun away from our shenanigans.”

“I refuse to let my best friend be too much of a coward,” and Quill raised his voice over his shoulder as he swam toward Nova, “to swim in the lake!”

“Love you too, Quill,” Sentry called back without opening her eyes.

The sun did feel nice, admittedly. Their first day at the cabin—one of Lucius’s family’s many, many vacation properties—had been gray and cold and unpromising, but today the skies were clear and the air was warm. Donning a pair of swim trunks and cannon-balling off of the private dock was the only logical choice to be made, in Quill’s opinion. And the others had followed not far behind: Nova in her one-piece, Lucius in speedos that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, and Aila in what Quill suspected just to be her underwear, as she hadn’t gone shopping for their vacation, even at Sentry and Nova’s urging. Sentry herself had donned a tankini but was staying far, far away from the water, having made it clear just how much she found the thought of parasites and other lakely dangers distressing.

Swimming wasn’t as easy as it had been before his accident, but Quill made it out to Nova and began to tread water beside her. She closed her eyes and tipped her face to the sun. “This feels so nice. I didn’t realize how much I needed a break. I had more than four hours of sleep last night, Quill. It felt like a miracle.”

“I may never go back,” Quill agreed. “Do you think Lucius would mind if we, like, just moved in permanently? There’s a bidet. Have you ever stayed in a place that had a bidet?”

“Can’t say that I have.” Nova turned. “Aila! Have you ever stayed in a place with a bidet?”

“When would I have done that?” came the reply. Aila didn’t even lift her head up from where she was floating on her back, eyes closed.

Lucius swam up, popped underwater, and emerged so that his hair flowed back in perfect waves. The sunlight caught very faint freckles on his shoulders. “I’ve been meaning to bring that up. It’s rather a travesty that we don’t have one at home. We could have one installed quite easily.”

“Eh,” Aila said, eyes still closed. “Feels bougie.”

“How dare you,” Lucius said.

Aila merely opened one eye a slit and smirked at him. Lucius, after a moment of grumpiness, smiled back.

“Did we bring a football or anything?” Nova twirled herself around in the water like a spinning top. “Or some kind of water game we could play? Not that I don’t love swimming.”

“We could play Chicken,” Quill said. When the other three merely gave him varying glances of confusion or interest (or disinterest on Aila’s part), he tilted his head. “Did none of you ever play Chicken as kids?”

“The thing where you dart out in front of cars and stay there until they almost hit you?” Nova asked.

“No, the bit where one person gets up on somebody’s shoulders and tries to knock another person—on somebody else’s shoulders—over into the water. Here, here, I’ll show you. It’s fun.” Quill glanced between the three of them and did some quick calculus that he would never, ever tell anybody else about. “Here, Aila, let me up on your shoulders.”

Aila kept floating for a few seconds more before she seemed to shrug to herself. “Eh. I’ve got nothing better to do.”

Left to his own devices, Quill was positive that he would have made it awkward to clamber up on Aila’s shoulders. But he’d forgotten just how strong rugby made Aila, and how often she went swimming. As they approached the shallower depths, she disappeared under the water. Quill felt something almost hit him from behind, and then he was launched toward the sky. He yelped and clung on for dear life as Aila straightened to her full height, the water coming up to her shoulders.

“Ooh! Ooh! I want to try. Lucius, let me up.” Nova scrambled over to Lucius and climbed up on his shoulders, kicking her feet excitedly (Lucius winced a little). She held her arms up like an old timey boxer. “You’re going into the water, bird-boy.”

“Hey, now,” Aila said. “Let’s make this fair. One hand behind your back.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, Quill.”

“I don’t need two hands to beat you,” Quill said, though he nearly disproved his entire point by overbalancing and almost falling off of Aila’s shoulders.

She merely locked her hands around his knees. Nova put her scarred hand behind her and waggled the fingers of her remaining hand at Quill.

“Oi!” A voice from the shore made all of them turn to look at Sentry, who’d sat up and set her book aside. “What are you doing? That looks dangerous!”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Lucius called back. “Aila and I have it all in hand.”

Sentry hovered on the edge of the lounger like she wasn’t entirely sure she believed that. “Well, just—just be careful.”

Quill used the distraction to lean over, scoop up a handful of water, and fling it in Nova’s direction.

“Hey!”

And just like that, the battle commenced. Aila charged forward with Quill holding on, Lucius did the same with Nova, and a wrestling match for the ages followed. Nobody would ever come up with a consensus on who actually hit the water first, though. Lucius swore it was Quill, Nova agreed, Quill argued vehemently that it was of course Nova, and Aila remained the neutral party, content to be the base for many, many games of Chicken afterward.

And Sentry remained on the shore, pretending she wasn’t keeping a close eye on them for injury and doing a horrible job at hiding it.

All in all, a pretty perfect summer morning, if you asked Quill.

+ 1 Time They Carried Her

“Sign up for survivalist camp, she says. It’ll be fun, she says. We’ll learn cool new techniques to surviving in the wild. Great bonding time!”

“To be fair,” Nova said from behind Aila’s head, where Aila couldn’t really see her without craning her neck, “we were having a great time bonding until, you know, all of this.”

Because Aila couldn’t see her, and moving to do so would only get her scolded, she had to imagine Nova waving her free hand in aggravation.

“I for one am having a perfectly lovely time,” Lucius said.

Aila could never tell when he was being sarcastic, and she didn’t see that changing any time soon. She suspected in this case he might be genuine, though. The course instructor had complimented him on his very fancy camping vest (“It has so many pockets,” Lucius had said) and nobody had yet found the heart to tell Lucius that had been sarcasm. So all through this hike he’d been in a particularly good mood. That made him the only one, probably.

Things had been going rather well during the whole course, up until this morning: the morning of their final day in the course, when they would be tested “randomly” and, using little but their wits, a compass, and a map, navigate themselves back to the parking lot. Camping with her friends had been fun, even if it meant being squished into a two-person tent with Sentry and Nova (the latter of whom had very bony elbows) at night. Aila liked the outdoors. She liked the feeling of self-sufficiency that this course had brought with it. She imagined herself as something of a pioneer. In the olden times, she would’ve kicked ass at all of this.

Unfortunately, it was nigh on impossible to kick ass with a “broken leg.”

And she wasn’t hiking out of the woods. She was being carried. On a stretcher. This sucked. The instructor had folded his arms over his chest in a rather smug fashion as he gave them their final assignment. His eyes had lingered between Sentry and Aila, easily the tallest members of the group. And he’d narrowed in on her, which was why she was being lifted by her friends on a tarp stretcher that they’d improvised.

“This sucks.”

“Yes,” Quill said, grimacing. “So you’ve said multiple times. We’re not having the best go of it either right now.”

Aila closed her eyes and leaned her head back. She’d already had to fold her arms close into her chest like a sleeping vampire to avoid being bumped and jostled about. The tarp they’d fashioned into a stretcher smelled bad. She felt like she’d been stuffed into a tiny little space, not great when she suspected she was a little claustrophobic anyway. “I’m bored.”

“I’ve got several books you could read,” Nova said, completely earnest.

That would only make this day worse, having to read. Fortunately Sentry, who was planted on the right side above Aila’s head and therefore easy to see, laughed. “I don’t think a book will help.”

“I was up late reading all about the local fauna in case there was a pop quiz,” Nova said. “I could tell you about some of them?”

“I’d rather read the book,” Aila said.

Nova tilted her head, considering. “You know what? Fair.”

“It’s not long to the parking lot,” Lucius said in a cheerful voice, though he was a bit out of breath.

“Feels like miles,” Quill grumbled.

“That’s probably because it is. I was lying,” Lucius said, tittering nervously.

Aila had pointed out that the course instructors couldn’t see them, so she could just get up and walk for a bit until they were nearing the end and all of her friends could be spared, but Nova had looked so abjectly horrified at the thought of cheating on a test that Aila had backpedaled and felt a little actual shame. Just a tiny bit, though. Not enough to fully penetrate the thick barrier of indifference she liked to carry about.

“Fine,” she said now, with a sigh. “Tell me all about these fascinating plants of yours, Nova. Not like I can do much else right now.”

Nova squeaked in excitement, reaching down to grab Aila’s leg.

“Ow,” Aila deadpanned. “That one’s broken.”

“I thought it was the other one?”

“It’s not real,” Quill said. “She’s messing with you.”

“Right. Right! Okay, so to start with, these are deciduous trees—”

Aila tuned her out in record time. Since there wasn’t anything to do but lay stiffly with her arms in a stupid position and the stretcher swaying nauseatingly below her, Aila let the patter of Nova’s excited overexplaining wash over her. She closed her eyes to stave off the nausea of watching the canopy overhead.

Sleep didn’t come right away, though it drifted near enough that she dozed a few times. Finally, she heard Nova whisper, “Did I do it? Is she out?”

“Think so, yeah,” Sentry replied.

“Oh, thank H’esper.”

“Quill!”

“We’re the ones marching miles carrying her and she’s whining?” Quill whispered back. “Have a care for my legs. I can’t feel them anymore.”

“Me either,” Lucius said.

“Meanwhile, all she has to do is lay there and be carried!”

“Which for Aila is torture and you know it,” Nova hissed.

“I do suppose she’d whine less with an actual broken leg,” Lucius said, thoughtfully, and Aila nearly gave up the game by grinning. “She does have that stoicism thing going for her. I rather admire it at times. Daddy always said that I should be stron—ow, splinter!”

“You okay? We can take a break if need be,” Sentry said.

“I’ll endeavor to carry on,” Lucius said, but he sounded tearful.

Aila almost opened her eyes again, but joining this conversation would require more mental energy than she was willing to expend. Maybe if she did actually fall asleep, this nightmare of a hike would be over sooner.

“She does look kind of peaceful,” Nova said. “In a very Angry Aila way. Nobody tell her I said that. Either of those things.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Sentry promised.

There was a long silence. The stretcher continued to sway, though not in a soothing or repeatable pattern that promoted sleep, and her friends were quiet apart from the sound of heavy breathing as they tromped through the woods. Not a bad day for a hike, overall. She really wished she could just get up and walk alongside them, but if she had to be carried, so be it. At least she had them around her.

Aila nearly opened her mouth to tell them so (and ruin the illusion that she’d been napping this entire time) when Quill cleared his throat. “We are agreed, yes, that she’ll be driving the whole way home since she’s been napping this entire time anyway?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Duh.”

“Why, obviously. I’ll be completely knackered by that point.”

Aila’s smile probably betrayed her, but she elected not to care about that. She merely let the group travel on, carrying her to their final destination in their survival course. There were worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon, even if it meant being the one to drive them home afterward.

#rollonsunday #high rollers #aerois #fanfiction #my fic #aila #nova v'ger #lucius virion elluin elenasto #qillek ad khollar #sentinel prime

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haloud · 3 years

Text

things we could burn in one go (eminence) - chapter 6

also on ao3

Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Isabel Evans & Max Evans & Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Forrest Long/Alex Manes Additional Tags: post-s2, Canon Compliant, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, starts forlex ends malex, other characters may appear - Freeform, tags subject to update

Chapter Summary: Alex comes home to find his world turned upside down; Max and Isobel struggle to save Michael’s life.

Excerpt:

How close did they come to that chest being stilled forever? The answer was clear, splashed rust-red across Michael’s clothes, and Alex couldn’t stand it, couldn’t reconcile it, couldn’t balance the equation made by Michael this morning and Michael here, now, this.

Alex stood sharp, with a purpose, stood over Michael whose eyes moved rapid behind his lids, Michael who flushed with life but hadn’t lived since being healed, Michael who could so easily be an illusion of hope, snatched away in a second, snuffed out. Jerkily, Alex shot out a hand, then yanked it back, checked over his shoulder for Max or Isobel or—anyone—like a kid with a hand in the cookie jar. A touch so innocuous, necessary, even; Michael shouldn’t be forced to rest with dirty clothes; but. Was he allowed? Was the universe watching?

His hands were heavy; purpose and gravity worked on them, yet with a weightless almost-faith they remembered the hill and valley of Michael’s chest, the texture and temperature of his skin, the cartography, topography of loving him and being loved.

Rain pounded the windshield, and pain pounded Alex’s head, from the back of his neck to behind his eyes. He huffed out short relief when he finally turned down his quiet street and settled back against his seat, no longer needing to squint through the panicked flutter of the windshield wipers at the too-bright lights of other cars as he coasted into his driveway. Parked, he rolled his shoulders back and stretched, heavy eyelids opening and shutting, brain ticking over slowly as it tried to marshal signals to his body to get him out of the car and to the door.

Exhaustion didn’t cover the way everything wore on him. Work, other people, the Project hanging over him like Damocles—how much longer could he hold Fields off without an answer before she took drastic action or moved on, maybe even called Flint in? He had a calendar in the drawer by his bed counting down the days to the end of his contract, hidden away so he didn’t have to explain himself when Forrest stayed over. Not that he relished everything about a return to civilian life, a life he’d never lived as an adult…

Even his loved ones wore on him sometimes. Guilt was another chain around his shoulders, from the way he’d ghosted Kyle for weeks, to shooting down offers from Maria to hang out, to letting his morning call with Liz this week slip from a real conversation to a perfunctory text confirmation that Arturo and Rosa were fine. On top of that, he still hadn’t texted Forrest since he landed, and now Alex was avoiding his phone, the tension of expectation he imagined on the other side of the line too much to bear.

And then there was Michael. Brilliant, stubborn Michael, who reminded him without meaning to how wide a gulf he still had to cross to regain his trust, the trust that Alex would always protect him, no matter what.

But—one day at a time. Hour by hour if he had to. Old advice from the counselor he saw after his injury, but no matter how high the papers piled up in his mental inbox (call your therapist), he hadn’t been able to get himself to book a new appointment with a new one, so he’d do what he could, and fall back on the somewhat insufficient tools he had in his outdated toolbox.

And one day at a time meant getting out of his car, carrying his groceries through the rain, and getting in the front door. Okay.

As he turned to leave the car, something moved in his peripheral vision, and he whipped his head around to chase it. Squinting through sheets of rain and twilight-gray haze, he could just make out a dark shape huddled beneath the overhang, but whether it was human, animal, or object, it was impossible to tell. Through the thundering static downpour, Buffy howled behind the door.

Moving slowly, he retrieved his combat knife from the glove box and cracked the door open. The rain rushed up from a rattle to a roar, loud enough to cover the scrape of his boots against concrete and brick as he crept toward the porch. He was soaked cold within moments, blinking water out of his eyes, still and smooth as a cat after decades of conditioning, every muscle locked to avoid tremor. The closer he got, the louder Buffy grew, barking and slamming herself against the door. A few feet closer, and the shape took form—human, definitely human, adult male by size, but whoever it was, they were slumped beside the door, not crouched, not lying in wait, so Alex lowered his knife.

Still creeping closer, he spoke up, “Hey! Do you need help—”

But before he could get out a single word more, the person lifted their head, and—

“Michael?”

Alex bounded forward the last few feet, dropping his knife with a splash, flinging himself to one knee beside Michael’s huddled form, grasping at his sopping clothes, seeking injury, something, anything.

“Michael, what’s wrong? What—”

He tipped his face up and his head lolled back; his breath rattled in his chest. The only color between his ashen face and rain-black hair was an ugly streak of red from the corner of his mouth across his cheek and chin, and a gust of wind blew the storm against them, washing his blood pink, and then it was gone.

“Michael!” Alex repeated, more urgently, frantically. How did this happen? Who could have done this? Alex’s mind shot straight to his own earlier question—how long would Fields let him go without answering. Was this his answer? Tripp’s dog tags hung leaden around his neck. He could choke on them, on the cold tin symbol of his own inaction, even now.

“Max is already on his way,” Michael said, voice breathy and labored, then laughed, a bizarre and throaty caricature of his normal laugh, and his elbow bent robotically to let him tap his temple. “Called him.”

“Why didn’t you go straight to him so he could heal you? Michael? Michael!”

But he was gone; his eyes rolled back to whites, and he slumped strings-cut so Alex almost dove to catch him in his arms; his hand fell from his head to the brick patio and struck the ground with the force of gravity, skinning his knuckles.

It took seconds for Alex to process his shock—seconds Michael might not have to waste, but nonetheless--the rain had his hands slipping on his skin, so Alex held on tighter, clutching Michael’s head to his chest, curling his body around him on the most animal instinct to shield, shelter, protect.

Despite the cold downpour, Michael’s skin was feverish, his breathing bad and worsening, his pulse fast and weak. Bracing his weight on his good leg, Alex pulled Michael over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and stood and unlocked the door.

Buffy’s barking stopped as it swung open; she scrambled around Alex’s feet, pawing at his legs, herding him inside, sniffing at Michael’s fingertips that dangled inches from the ground. Panting, Alex hauled him to the couch and set him down.

Inside, out of the rain, Michael somehow looked worse. His entire front was soaked with blood along with rain; he stank of it, all copper and salt, and bile rose in Alex’s throat. He held his breath and grabbed a towel.

“Gonna ruin your stuff,” Michael rasped. “Gonna ruin…”

Milliseconds before pressing call to figure out how far away Max was, Alex dropped his phone from numb fingers as Michael—there was no word for it, for a second, a heartbeat, Alex lost all faith in his own eyes—as Michael blurred and disappeared and blurred and reappeared a few feet away, whining like a shot doe.

“What the f—Michael!”

“Alex!” Max’s voice bellowed. A fist pounded on the door, shaking the entire frame.

“It’s open!” Alex called back, dropping to the ground beside Michael again and lifting his head into his lap. “Michael,” his voice broke as Max threw the door open. “Michael, what happened? What’s happening?”

His only answer was a babble, words Alex couldn’t understand, words that doubled, tripled in on themselves, moved backwards to forwards and slid out of Alex’s mind the second he heard them, alien, unknowable.

“Michael!” The word wrenched out of Max’s mouth. Buffy paced behind him, whining, letting out a single loud, anxious bark that went unanswered as all the energy in the room funneled toward Michael.

“Hey—[][][][][][][],” Michael said, a horrible, gasping laugh rattling out of his chest.

As the words left his mouth, he groaned and curled in on himself, choking, splattering himself with more blood as it bubbled up between his teeth; then Alex had to strain to hold him still as his back snapped into an arch. Light flashed, then flashed again, and Alex’s logical mind wanted to call it lightning but—but it wasn’t. It came from inside Michael, as all the strength left his muscles and he collapsed, again, limp against Alex. He was so feverishly hot, even for him.

“What the fuck,” Alex whispered. His mind came up blank for anything else to say; his hands tightened, one hand’s nails digging into his bicep, a fistful of bloody shirt in his other. Michael tipped his head to the side, nodding against Alex’s chest.

“Alex,” he croaked.

“I’m here.” To Max, he repeated, “What the fuck? I saw him just a few hours ago, what the hell happened?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Max said, reaching out to grab him.

Alex’s hands tightened more, on pure instinct, clutching Michael to his body, but then he forced himself to let him go, to let Max lay hands on him.

Max continued, “I heard him in my head, like he screamed in my ear, and I just—knew he’d be here, somehow. It’s not normal, it’s not—we never hear Michael, he’s always closed off. I don’t know what happened.”

As he spoke, his hands wandered over Michael, across the bloodstains on his chest and neck. His brow furrowed; he moved as if on autopilot, until his hands found purchase on Michael’s temples, and he closed his eyes. Softly, his hands began to glow, and Alex held his breath.

If Max couldn’t fix him…

No. He wouldn’t even entertain the thought for a second, not when his body still tingled with the sense memory of Michael’s living heat. He couldn’t die; it went against nature.

Max grunted, and his exertion pulled Alex back down to earth. He couldn’t do anything for Michael that Max couldn’t right now, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be helpful. Levering himself to his feet, he headed for the bathroom, Buffy following, barking anxiously. Wrenching open the medicine cabinet, he downed two Tylenol dry to head off the pain in his leg and hip he knew was coming, then from under the sink he snatched a fresh bottle of acetone and marched back to the den.

There, it was something out of a horror movie, rain lashing the windows, lit only by the artificial twilight of an afternoon storm, Michael spread out, skin grey, blood red, Max hunched over him looking half as sick, and Alex thrust the bottle at him.

“Drink,” he ordered, and as Max obeyed, guzzling the acetone, gasping between gulps, Alex returned to where he belonged—at Michael’s other side, holding on to him as if their bodies touching would be enough to keep his spirit tethered to this world—the only world—that is, the world they shared together, rendering all others that may exist utterly meaningless.

As nightmarish a scene as they made, Alex let out a sigh of relief when he clutched Michael’s wrist and felt his pulse strengthen. His eyes moved rapidly under his lids; his breathing was regular.

“It’s working,” Alex said, voice croaking out through a thickened throat.

“I hope,” Max groaned. “His mind is like—it’s like an animal fighting back. I need Isobel, I called her, but I’m afraid if she went in we’d lose her too. I can’t think—” his eyes met Alex’s, terrified. “It has to be Jones. Jones did something, I can’t think of anything else that might have done this.”

Alex could. But he seized on the opportunity to have an enemy he could exact answers from, one that didn’t lie at his own front door.

Absentmindedly, searching for soothing and knowing on a base level where it lived, Alex ran his fingers through Michael’s rain-soaked, sweat-soaked hair, stroking it away from his forehead. Blood was drying in rivulets now on Michael’s face and neck, and Alex followed the path of one with the tip of his finger, from the corner of his eye down his cheek.

How close had he come to losing him? If he’d been stuck in traffic, if he’d stopped for coffee on the way home, would it have been too late?

No. No thinking like that now. Stay in the moment.

“What do you need?” he asked Max, who finished off the acetone and tossed the bottle aside, reaching for Michael again.

“I think I won’t know until Michael wakes up again. If he does. If not…Isobel will be here soon.”

“When you heal, can you feel what it is you’re healing? Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

“Sort of?” Max’s hands began to glow again. “I’m healing burst blood vessels—all over his body. Internal scarring, almost like burns, it’s—bizarre.” He shuddered. “What I can feel from his head is separate, and I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

Michael shivered in Alex’s arms as Max placed his hands on his head again and filled his body with light, and Alex kept his eyes on Max, watching for any sign he was hitting his limit.

“How’s your heart?” He asked, though the concern flowed bitter and false over his tongue. Even at his coldest, most calculating, he wouldn’t bring himself to sacrifice Max outright, but if Max had to give his life to save Michael’s, would Alex truly stop him?

“I’ll live,” Max replied through gritted teeth.

Over by the door, Buffy rattled off a series of barks, getting louder and louder until the door slammed open. Alex flinched at the sound, hand flying to where his gun would be if he was wearing it, even though he knew with near-certainty who it would be.

“Where is he?” Isobel shouted, red-faced and panting as she rounded the corner into the living room, Buffy jumping and barking at her heels. “Michael!”

“Iz!”

The glow from Max’s hands faded, and he struggled almost to his feet, but Isobel was there before he stood fully, folding him into the hug he was trying to give her. Then Isobel reached for Michael, shoving Alex aside so she could cling to her brother, and Alex went.

She made a strangled noise when he was in her arms, limp and lifeless even after all Max’s effort.

“I’ll get more acetone. Maybe he’ll drink some,” Alex said, using the couch to pull himself to his feet.

Isobel continued to ignore him, but Max grabbed Alex’s wrist and said a quiet thank you as Alex left the siblings alone.

The bathroom door snicked closed behind Alex before he turned the light on, and in the dark he breathed in deep and deliberate until his lungs no longer caught on every inhale against his aching ribs, his galloping heart. He white-knuckled the sides of the sink to keep himself upright until the shaking stopped.

And when he checked all his welds and seams and found himself still watertight, he turned the light on, met his own eyes in the mirror, just once, and got back to business, grabbing the rest of the eight-pack of acetone.

Before he opened the door, his phone buzzed, and he flicked it open. It was a text from Forrest.

Hey! Just got back to the hotel after dinner. Having a great time so far…but I keep thinking I’d have more fun with you here. How’s my girl doing? And how’s my man?

Alex’s thumb hovered over the keyboard for a few seconds, lips pressed together, head blank of anything to say. Then, a lump in his throat, he shut it down without replying, and headed back to Michael and the Evanses.

He breathed a little easier when he re-entered the room and was met with a different scene than before. Max and Isobel had Michael laid out on the couch—and Alex’s mind flashed back to the way Michael had disappeared and reappeared and what the fuck was that?—and he rested more peacefully than he had before. Color was coming back to his skin.

Isobel sat on the arm of the couch, stroking Michael’s hair off his forehead, while Max sat on the floor at the other end, back against the couch.

“Thank you, Alex,” Isobel said, acknowledging him for the first time.

Alex acknowledged her back with a nod, as Buffy paced from the couch to the door and back again a few times, finally settling with a whuff against Max, resting her head on his thigh, looking up at him with huge, soft eyes.

“Hey girl,” he said softly, petting her ears.

“How is he?” Alex asked.

“Alive. Sleeping.” Isobel ran her hand across his forehead again. “We’ll see where his mind is when he wakes up.”

Alex sat on the piano bench, folding his hands between his knees. “Max kept saying he’d never felt anything like this before. Can you describe it to me?”

She groaned and rubbed her temples, and Max nudged a bottle of acetone closer to her. “It’s almost like interference, but not. There’s nothing in there that isn’t Michael; he’s not possessed. But it’s like Michael’s been repeated. A thousand different Michaels all shouting at once. He’s quieter now. But…I don’t know.”

Watching Michael’s face, approaching peaceful in an unconsciousness Alex was too fearful to be fooled by, Alex spoke slowly, uncertainly.

“When you discovered you could use telekinesis alongside your other powers, what was that like? Was it spontaneous, or…?”

“Not really? Noah said that we all had the potential for much more than we imagined, and—after—I was so angry, I thought, if Michael can use his anger this way, why not me?” She shrugged an elegant shoulder. “So I wouldn’t call it spontaneous. I could always have done it, I just never thought to, until I did. Like knowing how to swim and learning a new stroke. I was clumsy at it at first, but I was just doing something I already knew how to do in a different way.”

“Hm.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Before you both got here, Michael was…”

“He called me. Like your psychic scream, Isobel, except he’s never done that before. And he kept emitting light. While I was healing him,” Max said, looking up at Isobel. “Flashes of light. Not electricity.”

“And before you got here, he—teleported. Only word for it. Something none of you have ever done.”

“What?”

Isobel grabbed Michael’s shoulder tightly, like he might disappear right in front of her, like she could stop him. Max just shook his head silently. He really did look awful, eyes red, dark bruises beneath them, a shakiness to him that hadn’t been there last time Alex saw him, some random Thursday when he brought marshmallows to Michael’s because he’d never actually had a smore that wasn’t made in the microwave. Maybe his condition came down to the rigors of saving someone’s life with your own, but considering how worried Michael had been for weeks, Alex thought not.

“I don’t know,” Alex said, dragging his hands over his face. “None of us know. We’re just talking in circles.”

“I guess we just have to wait for Michael to tell us,” Max said.

“Or we go beat it out of that bearded f—”

“No, Isobel.”

“You can’t keep defending him.” Her voice went high and loud, zero to a hundred. “Look what he’s done! He almost killed Michael, what is wrong with you?”

“I’m not defending him!” Max shot back, wounded. “I’m telling you not to go running off on some half-cocked vengeance scheme when Michael still needs you here! If he’s lost inside his own head somehow, there’s no one who can help him but you. We’ll deal with Jones later, when we know Michael is safe.”

Isobel growled but capitulated.

Not letting any ugly silence settle, Alex got up and said, “I’ll put some coffee on.”

They watched over Michael for all the rest of that evening and into the night, as the storm quieted and the sun set and Michael’s hair dried into a familiar halo of curls. At some point, Isobel brought Alex’s groceries in, half-ruined, and Max made dinner with whatever could be salvaged. While they worked, Alex sat with Michael in a chair pulled up to the couch where he lay, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest.

They started slowly. He eased up the hem of Michael’s ruined t-shirt with a pinch of fabric, without touching his body at all; he inched it up his back where it rested against the couch, until he ran out of room to work with cloth alone. The shirt bunched around his underarms.

Alex had no choice but to touch, so he did.

His hand still fit the circumference of Michael’s arm, and he lifted it. Michael moved without resistance, idle art in living warmth, velvet skin, liquid veins. Alex moved as if he was as delicate as glass. The second arm was no easier; Alex worked just as tenderly, every inch of his skin lit up with sensation. Leave no trace, like Michael’s body was some untouched scrap of woodland in Alex’s brief custody rather than the sweetly historied path toward home. But that was where Alex was right now, what time and choice made of them.

He pulled the shirt over Michael’s head, and it came away easy in his hands, and he went to his bedroom to get a new one.

The whole thing took less than a minute.

Michael slept on.

“Any change?” Max asked softly, handing Alex a plate of the dinner he’d already forgotten about. Buffy followed him from the kitchen, but she didn’t go after the food, opting for her bed beside the piano, where she continued to watch Max with adoring eyes. He didn’t comment on Michael’s shirt, for which Alex was pathetically grateful. In the kitchen, the water ran as Isobel did the dishes.

“No. Can…you sense any change? Through your bond, or through a handprint?”

“No. Maybe? When I first got here, he took up so much space, metaphorically, psychically, that it was almost hard to breathe. He feels more like himself now. Like he fits inside his body. So that’s probably good.”

“Probably,” Alex agreed.

The water shut off, and Isobel appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “I’m going in,” she said flatly.

“What?” Max asked.

“His head. I’m going in. I need to see what he’s seeing; to try and pull him out. This?” she waved a hand at Michael. “Isn’t normal. Liz died and she wasn’t out this long. I’m going in to get our brother back.”

Take me with you? Alex almost said it, almost begged, as much a violation of trust as it would be to walk Michael’s mind uninvited. But as Max healed his body, as Isobel healed his mind, Alex was helpless to do anything, and he never wore helplessness well. It clawed its way out of him. It destroyed things if he failed to catch it in time.

But he held its leash tight, for now, and gave Isobel an equally tight nod.

“What do you need?”

“Space. No interruptions. It seems like you’ve got enough acetone”—five bottles were still left at the foot of the couch—“so I just need time.”

“You can have the guest bedroom,” Alex agreed.

He and Max carried Michael between them, sharing his weight. Some rearing and needy part of Alex wanted to do the work himself, bundle Michael in his arms and hold him close, but he’d already carried him once today, and Tylenol only went so far. Once he was situated on the bed, Max went to get acetone and water for Isobel.

Weak in the legs, Alex sat beside Michael’s head, never taking his eyes off him. He couldn’t; he wouldn’t. And neither was it a possibility for him to reach out and touch his hair, his forehead, his cheek, so he only watched.

In the door, Isobel cleared her throat. She held both liquids—Max had put them in different-colored cups—and set them on the bedside table before sitting on Michael’s other side.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Alex said, but made no move to go.

After a few seconds, Isobel made a frustrated noise and tossed her hair. “Whatever. You can stay.”

“I—really?”

“It’ll be boring, and if it freaks you out, you can’t interrupt. But yeah.” Alex opened his mouth to respond, but Isobel just held up a hand. “I don’t pretend to understand your weird alien soulmate bullshit. Yours or Max and Liz’s. And I don’t really care what your deal is with Forrest Long, but if you mess my brother around, I’ll end you.”

“I’m not—”

“Again, don’t care. I just know…” she softened. “…I just know how much you mean to Michael. So you can stay.”

Alex swallowed, the lump in his throat too big for him to answer with words, so he nodded, and Isobel nodded back.

“Okay. Starting now.”

Her eyes slipped closed as she lifted Michael’s hand and pressed it between both her own.

The world didn’t change; no power within Alex’s senses rippled between the two of them. Isobel wasn’t wrong to call it boring, as even the uncertain anxiety of what was transpiring in Michael’s head couldn’t keep his attention from wandering. Half an hour in, Max came into the room to stand beside the bed as well, and he clapped a hand on Alex’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, an attempt that reassured neither of them. But it was a brother’s touch, and that meant something.

In that room, throughout that silent ordeal, they were family. Alex was part of that family. It was a feeling he had no room on the shelves for; it fit in none of his boxes. He could barely comprehend it, so it sat in the center of the floor, and for a few hours, everything rearranged itself neatly around the new centerpiece of his world, like it was meant to be there all along.

The night deepened on, pain and exhaustion graying Alex’s vision. Discretion and strategy overtaking his determination, he was close to calling it quits and attempting a few hours of sleep when Isobel surfaced, bone white and nose bleeding as Max scrambled to hand her the acetone.

“Did it—”

Max didn’t even finish the sentence before, with a drowning, sucking gasp, Michael followed her out. Alex shouted, elation, shock, fear, everything, as Michael coughed and coughed until a clot of blood dislodged from his throat, guzzling the water that Alex passed him. His bloodshot eyes met Alex’s over the rim of the glass, confused and shocked, and Alex just nodded, trying to say without words everything that…just everything.

Everything.

On Michael’s other side, Isobel was laughing, breathless and triumphant.

“I’m going to kill you! I’m going to fucking kill you,” she wheezed, throwing herself into Michael’s arms.

Michael’s eyes fell shut as he rested his head against hers. “I know,” he rasped in return, but his lips pulled into a smile anyway. “I know.”

“Michael,” Max said weakly.

And Michael replied, “I know.”

Max rounded the bed to fold the both of them into a hug. Alex might have even joined them, if he wasn’t—he realized only now—shaking too badly to move. But in the midst of all the sensory overload, the misfiring nerves electrifying his helpless flesh, one sensation rang true.

Alex’s hands rested on the bed, stiff and motionless, until one of Michael’s crossed that untouched skin, light at first then more firmly, finger atop finger, knuckle nestled into soft palm, and Michael held his hand and gave it a squeeze, and Alex squeezed him back.

#malex fic #alex manes #michael guerin #malex #roswell new mexico #rnm fic #max evans #isobel evans #my fic

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chrisevansszn · 4 years

Text

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE PT 3‼

Word count 1.6k

Chris holds his hand out. You look at it and finally takes his hand. He leads you over to the bed and you both lay down. The moonlight shining in the room is absolute perfection. You and Chris are laying and looking at each other. He reaches over and takes the right side of your face in his hand.

“Tell me everything about you. You have my attention”, he says as he plays with your hair.

This caught you completely off guard, but you can’t say no. You sit up with you hand under your head.

“Where do I start?”

“Your childhood.”, Chris says.

You and Chris talk well into the night….

*phone alarm rings*

You jump up!

“Oh shit! I am going to be late for work!” You begin to throw on your clothes quickly. Chris sits up in bed.

No, you did not just did not only fuck your new coworker but SPENT the night at his house.

Y/N you may have went a smidge too far.

“Do you want a coffee before you go?”, Chris asks.

“Oh no thank you.” You grab your purse and coat and run out the door.

You make it home and change into some work clothes, throw on some make up, and head out the door. As soon as you pull out of the driveway your phone rings, it’s Noah.

“Hello”

“I saw you coming home this morning on the Ring doorbell”

Your heart fucking stopped…..

“Where have you been Y/N”

“Oh, I went out with Carrie for some drinks, and went a little overboard. I….thought it was be wise to just sleep at her place to be safe.”

“You were at Carrie’s?”, Noah asked. He didn’t believe a word I was saying. I had to keep it going.

“Yeah, she called and asked to go to the bar and we just went out and had a great time.”

“Hmmm..ok.”

“How is it at the hospital?” You had to change the subject.

“Busy, it’s nice hearing your voice. Something different. I can’t wait to fly home tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait to see you.”, you lied. “I just pulled up at work Noah. I love you and I’ll talk to you later.”

“Already? Well ok, I love you too”. He hung up the phone.

You weren’t even close to work. You just didn’t want to talk to Noah. You sent Carrie a message letting her know she needs to lie for you. You guys are childhood friends. She doesn’t even ask why, she just does it.

The entire rest of the drive to work you thought about what happened last night. Did you open a door that you weren’t prepared for? Do you want to close this door? Or just continue walking in?

You make it to work and get into your office. You look across the hall and see Chris working. He looks up and makes eye contact you. He raised his eyebrows to you and a smirk.

Oh….you’re walking all the way through the door.

You and Chris’ affair last for months. No one has a clue. You’ve created a flawless system to meet up, and Chris can never come to your home, never. The Ring doorbell duh!

You begin to get a little too comfortable. You and Chris were sneaking off on weekend vacations when Noah was out of state working. You both begin telling each other “I love you and calling each other “baby.”

You knew this was a mess but couldn’t let it go.

You and Chris were facetiming one night before going to bed.

“Y/N….”

“Yeah, babe.”

“I want you to leave Noah….”

You look at your phone complete shocked and frozen.

“Leave Noah?”

“Yes. I love you. I can make you happier. I’m tired of being #2.”, he says so calmly. He just relaying his message. Calm, cool, and collected. You can hear the pain and confusion in his voice.

“Chris…I can’t do that. You knew what this was from the beginning.”

“You’re just going to stay in a marriage that no longer brings you anything?”, he is starting to raise his voice. You sit up.

“Chris! I cannot leave Noah. My family would disown me.”

“Y/N you just can’t fuck a man, tell him you love him all day, and think feelings won’t happen! What about me?”

“Chris, I am not about to argue with you or discuss this.”

You hang up the phone.

FUCK!! THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!

A few days goes by. You and Chris haven’t communicated at all. Noah is home for a couple weeks. He took a vacation because he had too many hours. Marriage life was still the same…extremely boring. You and Noah still had sex, but it was nothing like what you and Chris would do. While having sex with Noah you are basically a pillow princess.

One morning you rolled out of bed and ran immediately to the bathroom. You are being instantly throwing up. You really didn’t think too much about it. Food poising probably. You had taken out last night.

You and Noah go on a weekend vacation to Florida to get some sun. Destin is always the best getaway for you too. You take boat rides in the gulf, parasail, and spend all day on the beach. Defrost from the Boston weather.

While on vacation you get a text from Chris.

“I am so sorry for what I said. I just love you so much and know that I basically can never have you for myself hurts too much. You and I are done Y/N.”

Noah was sitting across from you on the other couch. You had to completely keep it together. The thought of losing Chris absolutely pains you. You get up and walk to the bathroom and cry your eyes out, but you don’t reply.

You and Noah make it back to Boston, and it’s back to regular life. The next morning Noah flies out to Georgia for his next Covid stint.

You and Chris have a case together so completely not communicating with him at all is not an option.

You walk into this office Monday morning.

“Good Morning Chris, we need to discuss the Allen trial, and go through these files.”

“You’re just going to ignore my text?”

FUCK! HERE HE GOES!

“Chris please….”

He stands up and closes the door behind you and closes the blinds.

“Y/N, you are so full of bullshit. You think you can just ignore me like I didn’t matter.”, he’s talking through his teeth. He is pissed.

“You text me and told me you were done with me!”, now you are talking through your teeth.

“You know I didn’t mean that shit. I wanted you to tell me you needed me.”

“You’re asking for too much for me. If you just stayed in your place…”

“Say in my fucking place Y/N…get the fuck out of my office now.”

You and Chris are nose to nose at his point. You take a step back and give him a death look and leave his office. Fuck Chris and this case!!

You get back to your office doing your best to keep from balling. You want to be with Chris, but you can’t. You sit at your desk and you can fill it coming….throw up. You grabbed your trash can just in time!

You sit and think. Could you be pregnant? This cannot be happening right now. You can’t be pregnant! You instantly get lightheaded.

If you ARE pregnant, it could be Noah’s….but Chris could be the father as well because you’ve been having unprotected sex with both.

Y/N what have you gotten yourself into???

On the way home you stop by a CVS and run in to pick up some pregnancy test. You make it home and throw all your work shit on the coffee table. You take the pregnancy test out of the bag and just stare at the box. You finally get the nerve to go to the bathroom to take the best.

You pee on the stick, and now a three-minute wait.

Those three minutes felt like a lifetime. You hear the test beep. You instantly get weak in the knees. You take a breath and pick up the pregnancy test off of the counter.

You’re pregnant.

You instantly begin crying. Do you keep it? Do you have an abortion? Do you call and tell Noah? Do you surprise Noah when he gets home?

What if Chris is the father? Wait…should you set up a doctor’s appointment just to be sure?

These things really are rarely wrong Y/N.

You decide to keep the pregnancy to yourself until you make a decision.

You can’t keep this to yourself, you call up Carrie and tell her, but you don’t go into the details about Chris. Carrie is so excited for you. At least someone is at the moment.

You ask Carrie to keep this to herself and she promises. Carrie tells you some people from work are going to the bar tonight. She knows you can’t join because now you can’t drink. You laugh and tell her to have a good time.

The next day you get up for work with zero energy to do so. “Another day at the office” you think at the elevator reaches the 15th floor. You say good morning to everyone you walk by and you head to your office. You notice that your blinds are already closed which is odd.

As soon as you walk in Chris is standing there waiting on you. He scared you half to death.

“Chris, what the hell are you doing?”

“Are you pregnant? And if so, is it my child?”

Let me know what you think!! 💖

#cevans #chris evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans x reader #chris jamal evans #marvel #captain america #defending jacob #andy barber

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mantrabay · 4 years

Text

Saturday an overarching day that's both conduit and shelter for souls in transition.

Thoughts of the more disturbing kind and their covert operations intrude even in our leisure time.

Little did I know what lay ahead.

All these scenarios flashed across my mind as the wheels of my car screeched to a halt.

Shafts of radiant sunlight revealed an embroidered placard.

A cryptic but apocryphal question -

Going somewhere?

Light green brush strokes and entwined leaves garnished the borders of this plaque.

A hitchhiker appeared with the most expressive eyes.

Like shining windows openly admitting the rush of a golden dawn.

A rippling nuanced voice spoke.

“Hello, I'm Lelia. Life is a series of stops

and strange encounters.

A journey of some kind.”

Thought-provoking stuff!

She extended her supple skin right hand.

“Hop in.

I'm Joshua King. Going anywhere in particular?"

I enquired archly after the ritual handshake.

"Besides going somewhere or nowhere in particular.”

I continued.

"In one sense I'm not sure. But there is this place we should all go to.

You'll know what I mean later.”

Lelia mysteriously.

"Not to worry.

Travel is therapy for me."

What made me, Joshua King , say that?

The mind can be overpopulated with figments.

Frustrated figments waiting for that freedom dash.

Some have the seeds of alternative visions.

A svelte lady wearing an azure blue padded jacket and sea blue denims glided gracefully into my car.

Hatha yoga asana entry.

My pinstripe attire seemed conventional.

It was at odds with this philosophical journey man.

"Love the aroma ....air freshener.

Orchard in a vehicle tantalising nostrils.

Symbol of attempted purge."

Her voice dropped a few keys to a lower register.

Redolent of metaphysics classes I had to abandon.

I was naive enough to believe that attending these courses would fix my “issues.”

They were more than just momentary bugs.

They couldn't be spray canned away.

I was, however, adept at avoiding their resolution.

Draft dodger or fugitive adept.

My “issues” were other "selves.”

I called them timid, anxious, fidgety,scrupulous withdrawn.

“What’s more I chat to them.

Under my breath. These chats I call the "whispers.”

Will Lelia notice?

Will she spot them?"

My twin brother Jonah, a twin in every sense could point out my tendency to flee.

We spot each other’s flaws with aplomb.

The twinning of tortured psyches.

Banter between mirror images of real selves!

Jonah was an integral part of these "whispers" too!

All these thoughts were doing hula hoops in my head as Lelia made herself comfortable.

In the process peculiarities surfaced which seemed more than the usual passing quirks.

"I'm Lelia, again. Don't forget. You probably won't.

This place I alluded to is but a distance from here.

Distance is a gulf whose magnitude is shaped by it's smoothness of passage.

Or the fate that awaits one at journey’s end.

My destination is another world altogether."

A lady who could structure her sentences with the adroitness of a cryptic crossword clue setter.

Tapping me on the shoulder at the most obscure angle she extended her hand again.

Her fingers and thumb spatially arranged with the tutored

stillness of a TM Guru.

Was that repetition a neurotic oddity or a symptom of a deeper malaise?

I nodded to the said hand gesture.

We both brushed this bizarre incident off as it had no instant moment.

It seemed as if I was talking to someone quite out of the ordinary.

The spot on asides and the strict avoidance of that verbal litter referred to as small talk suggested as much.

Pauses. They did surface periodically.

The silence was then punctuated by a sudden remark.

"All those conifers. Look at how they reach out to the sky.”

This was just the start of one of Lelia’s poetic observations.

“They seem so close yet isolated.

There is something almost within their grasp.

Almost.”

Lelia nonplussed.

“See the adjoining fields. The green is but a cover. They are as neighbours in a high rise flat.

One could say they are both connected and disconnected at the same time.

As for those dips in the valleys? Well, they could signify some sort of rise and fall."

Lelia resting her case momentarily.

“A resurrection. After the fall.

Oh the Lazarus within us all."

Joshua deadpanned.

“I'm a bit of a writer and maths researcher.”

I proffered.

"Recluses some say.

Oh, I didn't mean you

Necessarily.”

Ouch, said my shattered Id.

Lelia, archer of the scar inflicting verbal.

Bow and arrow baroness of stinging broadsides.

This offshoot to our conversation was infused with a wry allusion.

Insight on a whim. Fleeting.

We both laughed at the incongruity of a conversation that had become very elliptical in form.

Tangents cropped up as impetus to the other person's willingness to reveal themselves.

Lelia didn't exactly volunteer her vocation but left clues.

“You didn't say what you did?

Student ...essayist ...author."

Me sounding Lelia out.

“Oh no children….dashing right across the road in front of us.

Squealing with delight. Whoops of innocent joy? They are sticking out their tongues now!”

Hair-raising moment I hadn't anticipated.

I spied Lelia sticking her tongue out at those reckless varmints.

She stopped the minute I noticed.

“Children …….sometimes you have to act like a kid when dealing with kids."

Straight and to the point from this hitchhiker.

She now resumed the thread of an earlier topic.

“Work ….you asked about work.

I sort of work and play with the mind.

Play act too.”

A retort of sudoku like complexity.

As I digested lelia’s response it dawned on me how much like people my "selves”were.

Even when driving I "dialogued” those various aspects.

“You've an interesting face. The face is like a map, I say.

Heard you mutter about your "selves."

Leslie being cheeky..

Silence as challenge started to creep in.

Russian roulette within the rules.

“Watch your driving, there." Lelia in a more down to earth tone.

Her different voices now somersaulting..

“Very quite aren't we, Josh?"

Josh mark you!

Sounding me out like an interrogator trying to crack a stubborn suspect.

Without a word of warning Lelia raised her voice and got into a tantrum.

“What's the matter ….lost something ?”

Joshua said anxiously.

A curious search resembling a scrum ensued.

Then more silence..

I craned my neck and spotted an uncanny regression.

Lelia talking to herself in a child like manner and then changing tack..

“Don't worry. Found what I was looking for.”

Another void.

A tense lull. A little lockjaw appears when the juice runs out of discourse.

I squinted in the mirror once more.

This time Lelia was talking to her palm..

Staring vacantly at it she kept repeating the name Linda.

Lelia continued oblivious to what I saw or might be thinking.

She hummed this strange lullaby..

Suddenly my "selves" surfaced in an uncontrollable flurry.

I tried to suppress them but failed abysmally.

The "whispers and selves" started to have a life of their own.

This car is getting a bit crowded.

It's being converted into a train with fantasy passengers on board.

The sort one hears late at night hurtling through the countryside with dim lights flickering.

Both inside and outside this vehicle a tumult of events was taking place.

Out of the blue the rain poured heavily.

“The gods or the elements must be cross or something.” Lelia opined.

“Let’s get introduced to my playmate in a palm.

Linda, these are Joshua’s true other selves.”

Lelia chuckling.

A comic situation arose where I changed my voice for each of my "selves" by way of introduction.

My great powers of concentration helped while driving.

"Pleased to meet you, Linda.”

Lelia altered her voice when teasing all my "selves."

She had some experience as a ventriloquist.

But Lelia was having this hypnotic effect too.

I was being manipulated.

One by one my highly personalised complexes were being extracted and subject to a rigorous grilling.

This was some hitchhiker.

Was this car journey now becoming a high rent farce or a mock therapy session from an amateur shrink?

The rain continued to lash and my other "selves" felt like the last sting of a dying wasp.

A certain lightness ensued.

Almost as if my “aspects” were floating away.

For the first time my "other selves“ didn't seem to have this grip on me.

But deep down I knew I wanted to keep a little of them.

Although they were a burden they did have their positive aspects.

“Jonah … he still bugs doesn't he.

He’s almost like one of those "other selves!"

The "whispers" I heard earlier … I've a very delicate ear.

Those under the breath "whispers" gave the game away.

The names and complex relations between them."

Lelia now probing very deeply.

The wind howled and the rain splashed across the bonnet like seafront waves.

There was a warped synchronicity..

As my complexes receded so did the thunderous weather.

They were working in tandem.

“Wash it all away. Come on, come on

See me waving my wand.”

Lelia chanted.

The Exorcist film had nothing on this.

Before his very eyes Joshua's "reticence" and the other "selves" were disappearing virtually.

Against the backdrop of all this inner and outer ferment Lelia kept looking out the window.

Was that this home she mentioned earlier getting closer as Joshua was

"going home” to himself?

“Windows are amazing.

They show us the world but sometimes screen us from it.”

Lelia wiping

fog from the car window.

“Trees and branches swaying. Clouds darkening.

Thickening ominously.

Exodus of pedestrians seeking answers.”

Her voice penetrating Joshua.

“Am I being cleansed of what they call inner demons?"

Joshua panic stricken.

"This other worldly person has me spellbound.

There's a chessboard in this moving vehicle.

A total stranger has me in her palm.” .

Lelia assumed various postures.

As Joshua was the driver she didn't want to send him to sleep.

Lelia's voice was either a hypnotist's drone or excited sports commentator.

Joshua could never forget this encounter.

“Don't forget Jonah too. Joshua wherever he might be.”

Her sinister tone rising.

“The name on your credit card.

I found it earlier when searching for my script.

Joshua Jonah king.”

Joshua confessed he was an only child.

“Am I a prisoner?.

Must button my lip.

I'm being freed and incarcerated by this person, the likes of whom I've never met before.”

Joshua felt this final therapeutic process coursing through him.

Very little was left of his "selves", “whispers.”

Joshua drove through a stoically preserved area whose haunting nature was blurred by this encounter.

“Terrible to have all these half worlds revealed with such clinical accuracy.”

Joshua to himself.

Lelia's voice gradually lost its domineering tone.

At this point by accident or design the tense atmosphere eased.

“You are probably wondering where this is all going to end.

Maybe I have whispers, Jonah's and selves to face too.”

A casual Lelia random comment.

On this occasion a composite of adult confidence and infantile charm.

“Oh here we are, this place.

She stated.

Joshua had undergone a sea change catharsis due to the “selves” and “whispers” being evacuated.

“Should I thank this lady or what? I’ll never be the same again but is that for the right reason?

Jonah my make-believe twin. Don't really need him do I?”

Joshua pondered.

“Back to earth my dear.

This is where we shake hands and part.”

Lelia again.

“Better change the name on that credit card.

Keeping stuff like that from credit card companies could land you in trouble.’

A cackle from Lelia this time.

“See that building. That's what I meant early on.

It's called Another World School of Acting.”

Lelia alighted and pointed to this centre.

"Acting is therapy. That's their motto.

Therapy in every sense!

But you don't want to take every word I say literally do you?

Forgot to mention they are auditioning for a play.

It's called “Inside The Split Mind." She said.

"Wonder will I get the part?”

As she leant over to shake hands her eyes had a certain lost look about them.

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years

Text

But You Can Never Leave [Chapter 11: The Rush]

Chapter summary: Queen and Y/N attend a party and experiment with hallucinogens.

This series is a work of fiction, and is (very) loosely inspired by real people and events. Absolutely no offense is meant to actual Queen or their families.

Song inspiration: Hotel California by The Eagles.

Chapter warnings: Language, drugs, partying, injuries, sexual references, angst, some baby stuff.

Chapter list (and all my writing) available HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @loveandbeloved29 @killer-queen-xo @maggieroseevans @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @joemazzmatazz @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @namelesslosers @inthegardensofourminds @deacyblues @youngpastafanmug @sleepretreat @hardyshoe @bramblesforbreakfast @sevenseasofcats @tensecondvacation @queen-crue @jennyggggrrr @madeinheavxn @whatgoeson-itslate @brianssixpence @simonedk @herewegoagainniall @stardust-killer-queen

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! :)

“You’re trying to make us late, aren’t you?”

Roger looms in the doorway of the hotel bathroom, arms crossed, a baiting ghost of a smile on his lips. His eyes—blue like a summer sky, like blooming delphiniums, like veins beneath skin—trace you from your black heels to your dangling diamond earrings, feasting, craving.

You smile back at him as you rearrange your hair for the fourth time. “The later we are, the drunker everyone else will be and the less agonizing small talk I’ll be forced to make with random music industry people.”

“I can assure you, they’re already drunk.”

“I don’t want to get there before the boys.” Freddie and Brian had left the hotel earlier to pregame in the bars of the French Quarter, and John is...actually, you don’t know where John is at the moment, which is unusual.

Roger chuckles, lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag as he gazes at you. “Come on, baby. You’re not getting any more stunning. It’s not possible. And you don’t want Deaks to be the first one to get there, do you? Can you imagine? He’ll end up telling his life story to the golden retriever or locking himself in a closet or something. We can’t abandon him.”

“No, of course not.” You give your reflection one final appraising glance. It’s not bad: sleek black dress, black Prada bag with a thin diamond-studded shoulder strap, smokey eyes, spritzes of Chanel No. 5. It’s pretty freaking great, actually.

Roger nods to your purse. “You got your kit, Nurse Nightingale?”

“Naturally. You think I trust eccentric and impaired musicians not to do gymnastics down a staircase or punch out misbehaving fellow guests? Oh no. Not a chance. I come well prepared.”

“Good.” Reflexively, unconsciously, he shakes his right arm a few times, stretches the hand, winces. It hurts him all the time, and you know that even if he’ll never say it. He drinks more or less constantly when Queen is on tour, and pops pills on top of that. You can’t ask him to stop; he can’t play without the booze and pills, and he can’t live without the band. He wouldn’t even want to try.

“Roger, is it—”

“I’m fine.” His eyes are on you again, everywhere, soaking up every curve and crevice like rain seeping through parched earth. Dusty ashes trickle from his cigarette onto the white tile floor.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says, meditative in a way that is quiet and still and very unlike Roger. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

He shrugs nonchalantly. “How much I love you.”

~~~~~~~~~~

New Orleans is cool and humid and the streetlights shine beneath the constellations of the night sky: Auriga, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor, Orion, Perseus. The salt-tinged dampness in the air sticks to your bare forearms, your ankles, your collarbones, your cheeks; the chaotic ocean wind rolls in off the Gulf of Mexico. It’s February 14th of 1977, Valentine’s Day, a day you’ve always thought of as a sort of anniversary for you and Roger; not the day you told him yes, but the day you surrendered to the eventuality, the day you agreed to fall in love with the world he promised you.

Is surrender the right word? you wonder, because part of you doesn’t like it, part of you flinches like you’ve been hit. Yes, it is. Whether I like it or not.

You’ve never spoken of anniversaries to Roger. He’s never asked.

The mansion, a Southern-style manor with columns and fountains in the front yard, is raucous with music and trimmed with twinkling white lights; there are dozens of people—men in suits, women in gowns, strippers, drag queens, mistresses, wives, acrobats, magicians, drug dealers—mingling on the wrap-around porch, sipping drinks, shouting at each other over the music, snatching appetizers off platters that waiters balance on their shoulders as they weave from one end of the house to the other. You and Roger swim through the crowd towards Brian’s mass of dark curls and Freddie’s brash laughter that carries through the night air like smoke signals.

Some man in a lavender suit—a producer or manager or record company executive—is talking to Freddie and Brian with a cigar smoldering between his fingers. “...And it’s extraordinary, really, this new album, everyone’s talking about what a success the tour has been so far. What’s it called again?”

“A Day At The Races,” Brian offers matter-of-factly, as if he’s in a business meeting.

“Ah, that’s it!”

“What’s so interesting,” Bri continues, “is that this time around the audience has started really getting into it, singing along to almost every song, sometimes we can’t even hear ourselves! And at first we were a bit annoyed by it—”

Freddie adds: “We were thinking, ‘shut up, bitches, you paid to hear us sing!’”

“—But then we realized that we should be appreciating that enthusiasm, that maybe we could even figure out a way to harness that energy and write songs with the audience’s participation in mind.”

“Fascinating!” Lavender Suit Guy replies.

“Good evening, everyone!” Roger announces as he sails into the middle of the conversation. “Hey man, how are you? Enjoying yourself? Have you met Y/N? Yes, she’s a Yankee just like you, from Boston originally, and she can cure hangovers like nobody’s business so she’s incredibly handy to have around. Have you heard the new Eagles record yet? Jesus christ, it’s bloody brilliant...”

As they chatter, you scan the pulsing throng of strangers for John. After a moment—as Freddie is recounting the band’s escapades in Miami last week—he appears wearing a black leather jacket and hair that barely covers his ears.

“Deaky!” Fred gasps.

“John!” you squeal in delight, and he grins enormously as he wraps you in a hug. He smells like cigarettes and Manhattans and that verdant, ancient mystery of the American South.

“Hi,” he says sheepishly.

“Your hair...?!” You reach up to run your hands through it, to flip his bangs one way and then the other, to tug gently on the ends. “I’m in shock. Good shock, but definitely shock.”

“Yeah, some American girl told me once that I had good bone structure and should chop my hair off someday so people could appreciate it.”

“Hmm, who could that be?” Roger teases, turning to you.

“I believe I described the aforementioned bone structure as fantastic, not good, but close enough.” You can’t stop staring at John. You blink a few times, waiting for it to sink in. Instead, something feels unnerving in a way you can’t pin down: new, different, anomalous, inviting.

“You’ve all gone shorter, haven’t you?” Lavender Suit Guy remarks. “Well...except Brian, of course.”

“He had much shorter hair once, if you can believe it,” Freddie says. “Back in the very early days. Before John joined us. Bri would straighten it too, it was horrid, the poor man looked like a Lhasa Apso.”

“You have a new baby at home, don’t you?” Lavender Suit Guy asks John.

“I do, yes, my second. A wonderful little girl named Anna.”

“Congratulations! And Brian, you’ve got one on the way as well?”

Brian smiles proudly. “Two, actually.” Chrissie has curbed her comments concerning Veronica’s dreadfully banal, domestic, decidedly unposh existence now that Chris is bedridden with morning sickness and carrying twins. ‘I feel like the fucking Hindenburg,’ she’d told you over the phone. ‘If the Hindenburg had sore tits and smelled like vomit.’

“We’re drowning in babies,” Roger quips in a tone you can’t quite read. Annoyance? Curiosity? Disapproval? Envy?

“Well, since the wives are away and you’re free to play...” Lavender Suit Guy flags down a waiter holding a small tray of sugar cubes. “Ever dropped acid? There’s blow floating around somewhere too, if that’s more your scene.”

Brian smirks uneasily and stirs his Vesper. You look to John. John looks to Roger.

Freddie laughs and lifts a sugar cube daintily off the tray with his thumb and index finger. “Marvelous, darling! Will it make me hallucinate all my wildest dreams? Will an imaginary cheerleading squad of Farrah Fawcetts suck my cock all night?”

Lavender Suit Guy chuckles. “I make no guarantees.”

“Nothing in life ever does. Isn’t that tragic?” Freddie pops the sugar cube into his mouth and grins. “Beam me up, Scotty.”

Roger asks you: “You want to? It could be an adventure.”

LSD wasn’t exactly the adventure you’d had in mind when you agreed to follow Queen across the globe all those years ago in Boston; still, an adventure is an adventure. And if I don’t keep things interesting, he’ll find someone who will.

Oh, that’s not a thought you knew you had.

And I would like to return it to that repressed, dimly-lit, cobwebbed corner of my subconscious where I’d buried it, thank you very much.

“Is it safe?” John asks Lavender Suit Guy.

“Do you think I’d give you something that wasn’t safe? It’s perfectly safe. It can’t kill you. It’s not heroin. Worst case scenario you get a bad trip. And I’ve never gotten a bad trip from this stuff.”

You conjure up a smile for Roger. “Let’s do it.”

“Excellent,” he says, his face lighting up; and you realize that that’s what he’d wanted. He picks up a sugar cube, lays it on his tongue, and then slips it between your lips as he kisses you. Freddie whistles and claps. The cube dissolves with a pleasant, innocent, nostalgic sweetness. Then Roger turns to John. “You in, Deaks?”

John hesitates, then nods. “Alright.”

Roger passes John a sugar cube (with his hand this time), picks up one for himself, and toasts them like champagne glasses. “Cheers!” The sugar cubes disappear behind their teeth.

Freddie stares at Brian. Brian gnaws his lip and stares back. Freddie wiggles his eyebrows impishly. Finally, Bri sighs, exasperated. “Fine, okay, what the hell, I’ll do it.”

“I’m so proud!” Freddie cries, pressing his palm to his heart. “I am a proud mama.” Brian grimaces as Fred stuffs a sugar cube into his mouth.

“How long does it take to work?” you ask Lavender Suit Guy, feeling no different at all.

“It varies. Not too long, usually.” He whirls, spies someone else he recognizes, waves, and rushes off to greet whoever it is and presumably offer them illegal drugs.

After fifteen disappointingly uneventful minutes of trailing behind the band as they chat with various rich and famous party guests you don’t recognize, you depart to find a restroom.

“Don’t be gone long,” Rog calls after you. John watches with a Manhattan in his right hand. “I don’t want you to be alone if things get...you know...weird.”

“Sure thing.”

You find a small restroom just off the downstairs hallway of the mansion. The clock above the doorframe reads 9:47 p.m. You duck inside, muttering about your first acid experience being a total dud, about defective LSD and Valentine’s Days spent with strangers. As you scrub your hands with rose-scented soap, you glance up to check your makeup in the mirror. Your face isn’t there. Instead, Dominique Beyrand stares back at you.

You gasp, and Dom does too, in that delicate and prodigiously feminine way that she has. You peer penetratingly into the mirror as you gingerly tap your fingertips against your face, which is Dominique’s face now: her olive skin, her high pump cheeks, her large dark eyes like a doe’s, her pink lips. You experiment with a smile, and then a frown; you even emote the same way she does, with a charming candidness, with a rare sort of grace.

Why am I thinking about Dominique?

You’d seen her a few times since Queen’s Hyde Park concert, following Richard Branson around at industry parties and dodging mindless gossip and tedious networking, the same as you. She always greeted Freddie warmly and mostly ignored Roger. He always asked her a few questions anyway, questions you thought he already knew the answers to.

I guess the acid wasn’t a dud after all.

You titter uncertainly. You knot your fingers through your hair—Dominique’s hair—which is thick and glossy and onyx. Her eyes gaze unflinchingly back at you. They blink when you blink.

I have to find Roger, you think suddenly. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know who he’s with.

You spin, wrench open the restroom door, and stagger out into the hallway, your hands pressed against the floral wallpaper to steady yourself. The yellowed, antebellum walls breathe as you do, subtly, sighing as they exhale cool air into the soft clammy skin of your palms. The boards of the hardwood floor clang like piano keys when you step on them. You check the clock hanging above the bathroom door. It reads: 11:09 p.m.

“Uh oh.”

I have to find Roger.

You creep through the hallway as other guests pass you—some zooming by, others moving in slow motion as if they’re treading water, none apparently noticing the breathing walls or musical floor—peeking into each room to see if Roger is there. He’s not in the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, the parlor. Instead there are strangers in all of these places, laughing in each other’s arms, drinking, dancing, touching each other beneath suits and skirts and dresses, smoking cigarettes and blunts, rolling up hundred-dollar bills to snort white powder off silver trays like mirrors.

I have to find Roger. I have to find Roger. I have to find Roger.

In the backyard of the mansion is a cobblestone patio, a garden, a swimming pool which must be freezing but nevertheless has several naked guests thrashing around splashing each other in it, and a bubbling hot tub. You recognize one of the two people in the cloud of mist with their arms resting above the roiling water on the concrete rim. They’re giggling and pointing up at the stars, telling the stories of the constellations, their faces flushed and glistening with steam.

“Hi, Brian!” you cry, relieved.

He turns, sees you, summons a smile; but it’s not a true smile. It’s cagey, it’s dissatisfied, it’s nervous somehow. “Ah, there you are, love.” The girl sitting next to him in the sweltering water is very much his type and entirely unlike Chrissie: tall, slim, blonde, curly-haired. She has a tattoo of a lush, pristine peach on one tanned shoulder blade.

“Have you seen Roger?”

Brian’s brow furrows. “He didn’t find you?”

“Evidently, he did not.”

“Huh. Well, I’m sure he’s around.” Brian waits for you to leave. The blonde girl shoots you a polite but anxious smile. Peaches, you think hazily. Peaches from New Orleans. Just like the girl he told me about when I first arrived in London. Just like the girl in Now I’m Here.

“Bri, come inside with me.”

“I’m fine here,” he replies curtly.

“Bri, please. It’s late. It’s cold. We’re so far from home. There could be sharks.”

Peaches gawps at me, confounded. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Brian snorts. “Sharks can only live in cool water. Everybody knows that. We’re perfectly safe. Stay out of the pool though.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.”

“Good luck locating Roger.” That’s your cue to go.

“Come with me. I’m freaked out. The floor sounds like Somebody To Love.”

“That’s nothing. The bubbles in here play Beatles songs when they pop.”

“Brian...”

“Y/N,” he says harshly, darkly. “Go find Roger.” What he means is: Y/N, get lost.

What about your wife? you almost shriek at him. What about your children? What about those vows that you made three days before Christmas in 1975, the specter of global fame beckoning from the doorway of the Anglican church that Chrissie grew up attending, Roger’s arm tight around my waist and sprigs of holly in my hair?

But Brian already knows about all that, and he doesn’t care.

I have to find Roger.

You leave Brian and Peaches and slip back into the mansion. You search each room as the floorboards shift and chime beneath your feet; now they’re playing the intro to Seven Seas Of Rhye. You realize that you’ve lost your heels somewhere along the way. You aren’t terribly concerned; you have more pressing matters to attend to.

Behind the fourth door you open is a library with books and menacing portraits lining the walls. Everything inside is blue and wibbly and palpably sad. Freddie is slumped on the floor next to a grand piano, his hair in his face, each hand clutching a full champagne flute.

“Darling,” he slurs, thrusting a glass towards you. Fizzy champagne lurches over the edge and trickles down the side of the glass. “Come join me!”

“Is it the LSD or is the room actually that color? I feel like I’m trapped in Picasso’s Blue Period.”

“Do you? It’s all black and white to me. But blue fits. Welcome to my melancholy room.”

“Your melancholy blues,” you pitch with a grin.

Freddie chuckles. “Drink this champagne before I’m forced to pour it down your throat.”

You take the flute and sit on the floor beside him. “Have you seen Roger?”

“I have not.”

“Oh.”

“Darling,” Freddie asks drowsily. “Do you think one goes to hell for being gay?”

“I don’t think you’d go to hell for anything, Fred. You’re too good a person.”

“Ahhhh,” he sighs, dreamily, peacefully. “You are a delight, my dear. Truly. I adore having you around. I do hope you stay with us, even when Roger makes you want to kill yourself.”

“How would he do that, Fred?” you ask softly.

Freddie doesn’t answer. Instead, he lifts your hair away from your face, tucks it behind your ear, smiles patiently at you. “I tried to warn you, you know. We all did. I know you thought we were all being insufferable pricks. But we did it out of love.”

“John never tried to warn me.”

Freddie smirks. “Well. He’s got his own demons, doesn’t he?”

You aren’t sure what Freddie means. You down the champagne and climb unsteadily to your feet. “I have to go find Roger now.”

“Of course you do.” Freddie’s umber eyes flick to the ceiling. “Good god, there are birds up there. That is not sanitary. Leave the door open when you go so they can fly away, would you dear?”

“Okay. I’ll love you no matter who you are, Freddie. We all will. You don’t need to worry about that.”

“Thank you, darling.”

“Will you come with me? Will you help me? I’m worried about Roger.”

“You should be more worried about you.” Freddie waves goodbye. “I have to stay. I’m writing songs.”

“You don’t have a paper and pen, Fred. Do you need them?”

He grins and pokes his temple with a black fingernail. “It’s all up here.”

“Okay. See you around.”

“Au revoir,” Freddie replies, and closes his eyes as he leans back against a breathing wall.

You step out into the hallway and journey towards the main staircase. Someone has put on the new Eagles record; Hotel California rocks deafeningly through the mansion. The air quivers with slow, ghostly notes strummed on an acoustic guitar. The floorboards have abandoned their piano keys and now jolt with each drumbeat. The house has taken on a shadowy, violet hue.

“There she stood in the doorway

I heard the mission bell

And I was thinking to myself

This could be heaven or this could be hell...”

You clutch the banister as you ascend, studying each guest that passes you for a familiar face. There are none. They’re all blushing and glassy-eyed and cackling as they paw at each other, ignoring you, not seeing you at all. Emerald snakes dart between their rushing feet, forked tongues tasting the lust and impending amnesia in the air. What happens in the darkness tonight will be forgotten tomorrow. It has to be. All the world’s rules and obligations depend upon it.

“Her mind is Tiffany-twisted

She got the Mercedes Benz

She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys

That she calls friends

How they dance in the courtyard

Sweet summer sweat

Some dance to remember

Some dance to forget...”

You catch your reflection in the night-draped window halfway up the staircase. You’re you again, not Dominique. Part of you is comforted by that; part of you feels more alone than ever. You stare at yourself, beautiful, extravagant, dusted with jewels and luck. You have everything. You have nothing. You continue up the staircase.

“Mirrors on the ceiling

The pink champagne on ice

And she said, ‘We are all just prisoners here of our own device’

And in the master's chambers

They gathered for the feast

They stab it with their steely knives

But they just can't kill the beast...”

A woman in a shimmering scarlet dress is sitting on the top step and taking a drag off a cigarette excruciatingly slowly. She exhales, the smoke curling out of her red lips like tentacles, her pale eyes tracking you.

“Last thing I remember

I was running for the door

I had to find the passage back

To the place I was before

‘Relax,’ said the night man

‘We are programmed to receive

You can check out any time you like

But you can never leave.’”

You summit the staircase and peer down the hallway to your right. At the end of it is a vast, broken picture window. Cold night wind pours in through the jagged hole in the glass; you can see stars outside. A man is lying on the floor next to the window. You know him.

“John!” you shout, and sprint to his side.

“Hi.” He’s cradling his right arm to his chest. His knuckles are shredded and drenched in crimson blood. Incandescent shards of glass protrude from his hand and glint under the lights. There’s a heavy, coppery, sick-sweet scent in the air.

“John, honey, why would you attack an innocent window...?”

“It wasn’t so innocent. You should have heard what the bastard said to me.”

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up—”

“Stop,” he hisses when you try to touch him.

“John—”

“No!” he screams, pushing your hands away. “Stop it, just leave me, just fucking leave me!”

You step back, cross your arms over your chest, raise your eyebrows impatiently. “You want to tell me who you’re really so mad at?”

He frowns down at the rug, which is streaked with his blood. “Me, I guess.”

“Well you can be mad at yourself at the hospital.”

“No, no hospital,” he insists.

“Your hand is positively mangled. Your playing hand. You need to get it cleaned out.”

“You can fix it. No one else.”

“Since I’m tripping on acid, I probably shouldn’t be the one to fish glass shards out of your skin.”

“You can fix it,” he repeats, confidently now.

“Fine. Have it your way.” You help John to his feet, lead him downstairs, and sit him down at the kitchen table. You open your purse, unpack your supplies and position them in a neat row, shake out your hands to get them limber, give John a glass of water. “Are you going to have to write whoever owns this place a check for the window?”

“No one knows I’m the one who did it. No one even knows who I am.”

“I know who you are, John. Here comes the lidocaine.” You land a series of injections into the flesh surrounding his wrist, his knuckles, the back of his hand. You pause each time you get distracted by the murmurings of the table, which apparently speaks German. Okay table, this is important, kindly shut the hell up. Danke.

“Ow,” John says lethargically.

“And so what if these people don’t know who you are? Who the fuck needs them? You don’t need anyone who doesn’t know you’re the backbone of this band. Who made the Deaky Amp? Who wrote You’re My Best Friend? Who stays focused and calmly waits for the others to stop bludgeoning each other on a nearly daily basis? John fucking Deacon, that’s who.”

“Yeah. Alright,” John agrees, smiling. “Who needs them.”

“You’re gonna get your moment in the sun, don’t you worry.” You pick up your tweezers and begin plucking slivers of glass out of John’s bloody hand, plinking each into a white ceramic bowl. “Everyone is going to know you one day. You’re gonna spread your wings and write a ton of hits and unforgettable basslines and show the world what a genius you are.”

“Sounds thrilling. I’ll see what I can do.” He gazes down at his hand. “It doesn’t hurt at all now, that’s incredible.”

“That’s the magic of modern medicine.” You drop another shard of glass into the bowl. “How’s your first-ever LSD experience going so far?”

“Aside from the window business, quite well. Better now that you showed up.”

“Sorry. I spent an hour being confused by my own reflection and then tried to find Roger. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

“I have not.”

After a while you set your tweezers down on the table and inspect John’s hand closely. “Does this look glass-free to you? My eyes aren’t super trustworthy at the moment. I just saw a fish swim by outside.”

“It looks perfect, in my layperson’s opinion.”

“Okay. Let’s wash and sanitize, then we’ll wrap...”

John follows you placidly to the sink, lets you scrub and towel off his hand, returns to the table so you can bandage it with gauze. It’s quieter in the house now, the guests slowly dispersing, the music turned down and something mellow by the Stones; Gimme Shelter, you think.

“What made you so angry?” you ask him. “You know. Angry enough to assault a window.”

For a long time, John doesn’t answer. He looks up at the ceiling, his gentle greyish eyes chasing something you can’t see; birds, maybe, like Freddie. Maybe he’s looking for the sun. Maybe he’s looking for himself. Finally, he says, very quietly: “I’m just so fucking tired of lying all the time.”

“You never have to lie to me, John.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I do.”

Then you hear a laugh, an untamed one, a familiar one. You turn to John. “Was that just me or...?”

“I heard it too.”

You both leap from the table and hurry after the sound. You burst outside onto the cobblestone patio. Roger is doing backstroke laps in the pool, howling up at the moon. There’s no sign of Brian or Peaches.

“Roger!” you yell.

“Hey, baby! I’m winning! I’m in the Olympics! I made the team! Do you see me winning?”

“You’re totally winning. Please come out before you get pneumonia or attacked by a shark.”

“Shark...?” John inquires.

“I’ve discovered something amazing,” Roger declares, still swimming. He flails his right arm in the air for you to see; the serrated mark that mars the underside appears to be slithering, a snake made of scar tissue and interrupted plans. “When you’re on drugs, nothing hurts!”

“Baby, please come out now.”

Roger obliges, hauling himself up the ladder and out of the pool. He’s still in his black suit; it’s ruined and clings to him and is dripping buckets of chlorine-smelling water. John yanks a towel off a chair and tosses it to Roger, who drapes it over his shoulders like a cape.

“Jesus christ, where have you been?!” you demand. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

Roger grins toothily. “A sheer one?”

Despite yourself, you smile back. “Oh yeah. A sheer heart attack. Real cardiac.”

“I had the best idea. Baby, you gotta hear my great idea. It’s so great.”

“Okay, I’m listening.”

He lunges to wrap you in a cold, sopping hug. “Everyone’s having babies, right?”

“Uh, well, not everyone...”

“We should have a baby.”

John’s eyes go wide. You swallow noisily. “Roger, love, I don’t think right now is the ideal time to make a decision like that.”

“Why...? Oh. Right.”

��Yeah.”

“If I still feel this way in forty-eight hours, can we have a baby?”

“Roger, I...” You glance to John for help. He raises his hands in surrender, one bare, one clumsily bandaged. You’re on your own, kid, that look says. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. That’s a lot of responsibility. I’d have to stay home with them. I wouldn’t be the tour nurse anymore.” I would never know where you were, who you were with.

“I’ll fly you out to visit all the time. I’ll have to. I can’t do this without you.” His eyes—blue like frigid pool water, like bruises, like dreams—are euphoric, effervescent.

I can’t say no to him, you realize, and it sends a biting shudder up the rungs of your spine. I didn’t just fall in love. I took a fucking nosedive.

Oh, this SO did not go according to plan.

You remember when you first met Queen, how independent and fearless and guarded you had been, how forcefully you had resolved not to put your happiness in a pair of wild, reckless hands like Roger’s.

What happened to that girl? How do I get her back?

And there’s something else, too: a thought you barely recognize as your own. A child would make us permanent.

John is watching you, edgy, apprehensive; but he doesn’t say anything.

“Okay,” you tell Roger. “We can try. If you still feel this way in forty-eight hours.”

“And I will.” Roger’s teeth skate up your neck and he whispers, his breath hot against the goosebumps rising on your skin: “Let me know when you’re late.”

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ollieofthebeholder · 4 years

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leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

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Chapter 17: Jon

Jon knows he should probably feel bad about this, but he’s too shaken to feel anything else. Part of him feels guilty for bolting and leaving the others behind. God knows they must be upset by what they just heard too. It isn’t just his fate Martin Prime laid out in a series of framed pictures.

But he needs space, he needs air. He needs a chance to think about what he heard before he does or says something utterly stupid, even for him. He needs to regulate his breathing and he needs something to soothe his nerves.

He taps a cigarette out of the pack he keeps in his glove compartment and puts the rest in his pocket, then lights it up and leans against the corner of the garage. The first shaking drag nearly makes him choke, as always, but he holds it for a moment before slowly expelling it in a puff of air.

“Those things will kill you, you know,” a too-familiar voice says from behind him.

Jon doesn’t look up. “Obviously not, if you’re still here.”

Jon Prime comes over and leans against the wall next to Jon, arms folded across his chest. He doesn’t say anything, merely stands there and watches the smoke curl up in paisley spirals.

“Want one?” Jon finally asks, more as a way to break the silence than anything.

Jon Prime shakes his head. “No, I quit ages ago.”

“So did I,” Jon says dryly.

“Yes, but I stopped even keeping a pack on hand ‘just in case’ or ‘for emergencies’. Martin doesn’t like it. Never said anything, but…with everything else trying to kill me, the last thing I wanted was him worrying that I’d manage to do it to myself. I haven’t touched a cigarette since…before we lost Tim.”

Jon glances at his counterpart out of the corner of his eye. He sounds…haunted, for lack of a better term. Not that Jon can blame him. Bad enough to have to listen to all that as it was, but Jon Prime had to live through it, and then have it served up like an art gallery. And to hear it come out of Martin Prime’s mouth…

He thinks about that, thinks about the sinking panic in his stomach when he thought about his—their—Martin having to go through half of what Martin Prime must have endured, thinks about the way the Primes clung to each other when they were first reunited and the way they’ve maintained some degree of physical contact almost constantly since. It all combines to make him ask, “When did you figure out what he meant to you?”

“Almost too late,” Jon Prime murmurs. He gives Jon the same sideways glance Jon just gave him. “It sort of…crept up on me gradually? I wish I could tell you that it came to me in a grand realization, some big, theatrical, dramatic moment, but…no, it was—” He pauses and lets out a soft sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “It was really such a small, stupid thing, but…no. The moment I realized…”

He returns to staring across the backyard, but Jon isn’t sure that’s what he’s actually looking at. “I was…trying to retrace Gertrude’s footsteps. Trying to piece together what she’d learned, what she’d been working on. At one point, she was at the Pu Songling Research Center in Beijing—it’s something of a sister organization to the Institute—and went from there to Chicago. I had a bit of time before the next flight out, so I thought—I was dying for a cup of tea. Hadn’t had a decent one in ages. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d been able to finish one. And here I was in the middle of one of the most well-known places for tea in the world. I decided to go to a nice teahouse and get the full experience. So I did.” He snorts softly and shakes his head. “I couldn’t finish it.”

Jon makes an interrogative noise. He isn’t really sure what to say to that, or how it connects to anything they’ve been talking about, but he’s willing to wait it out.

“Silly, isn’t it?” Jon Prime muses. “I—I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. It wasn’t the quality of the tea, that was perfect. It was made exactly the way I like it. Hell, I even watched them make it, so it wasn’t fear of them accidentally poisoning it or whatever—so what could it be?” He sighs heavily. “And that’s when it hit me. I watched the woman make it. The woman. I realized, sitting in the middle of a crowded shop in one of the most populated cities in the world, that I could come up with as many excuses as I wanted, but the simple truth was that I hadn’t finished a cup of tea in two years that Martin hadn’t made for me.” He looks back at Jon, and his eyes are tight with self-reproach. “That was the moment I knew. And then, like a coward, I didn’t say anything for more than a year.”

Jon wants to say something, anything, but before he can, Jon Prime looks away from him again. “Oh, I told myself there were good reasons. I-I was away, I wasn’t going to say something like that over the phone, I had to wait until I saw him in person again. And then when I did get back to the Institute, we were in the middle of—we had work to do to save the world, we didn’t have a lot of down time, we had to—to plan, to prepare. A-and then, the, the night before we left for our mission…I told myself that wasn’t the time. I was going and Martin was staying behind—he had a plan of his own to carry out, and someone had to stay back, just in case the rest of us didn’t make it, and…I didn’t say anything, but I needed it to be him. I needed to know he was safe, even if the rest of us weren’t. But I convinced myself it wouldn’t be fair to burden him with that, to tell him how I felt and then just leave, because if God forbid I didn’t come back I didn’t want him to live the rest of his life knowing we never had the chance to—to explore what that meant.”

“And then?” Jon ventures.

Jon Prime closes his eyes. “The ninth picture.”

“You—we—” Damn, it’s hard to know how to say it. “A coma?”

“Six months. Nothing functioning except my brain. I—I had to make my choice. I chose to come back. But when I did…everything was different. Martin had—he’d taken another job in the Institute, to protect everyone in the Archives. To protect me. He had…he was working on a plan of his own, but…” Jon Prime sighs heavily. “I don’t know…”

“It’s not likely to happen now, is it?” Jon asks. “Whatever this is? You’re—we’re going to stop all this from happening, so what’s the harm in telling me?”

Jon Prime swallows. “Because it still hurts to think about. But…all right. Martin had managed to gather enough evidence to have Elias arrested—this was before we knew…the full extent of things, so we thought he was just a moderately clairvoyant, malicious ass—but Elias had anticipated…something of that nature, and laid plans ahead of time. He’d chosen Peter Lukas as a temporary successor. Actually there was a bet involved, but…I really don’t want to discuss that, and we didn’t find out until later anyway. But Peter Lukas was running the Institute. There were…attacks, and Martin finally made a deal with Lukas that he’d work directly for him if he would protect the others left behind in the Archives. Most of what he did was to protect us—to protect me, because he thought if he kept Lukas’ attention on him, it would keep the rest of us safe. And for the most part, he wasn’t wrong.”

“Lukas…as in, the Institute donors?” Jon thinks back to the statement of the young woman he’d rather brusquely dismissed. “The woman who—the funeral—wait a minute.” He compares the statement to the list of entities and ventures, “The Lonely?”

“It almost got him.” Jon Prime exhales shakily. “The Lukas family is…very wrapped up in the Lonely. Oddly, for such a large family, but…yes. He worked on Martin for months, and I—for a moment, I thought he was going to go over. But in the end, he didn’t. He stood up to him and chose not to. But as part of what he was doing to Martin—and what Martin was doing to protect me—we didn’t interact. Couldn’t.” He gives a small, humorless laugh. “The loneliness of distance.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s…the Keeper’s domain, actually. A mixture of the Lonely and the Spiral. That peculiar feeling when you’re separated from someone you love, and it—it should be so simple to cross that barrier, but you can’t. Maybe you’re physically separated, maybe an emotional gulf…maybe by necessity. But it’s coupled with the—the fear that if you do try to reach out…”

“They won’t reach back,” Jon says softly.

Jon Prime nods. “And it hurts. I-I mean, both of us wanted to close that gap, but…we were afraid to. Me because I was afraid I’d well and truly botched it and he didn’t want me to, him because it was the only way he could think of to keep me safe. Relatively, anyway.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “We got lucky. We got that second chance.”

“So how do you feel about him?” Jon asks. It’s probably a stupidly obvious question, but honestly, his own emotions are still so mixed up that he genuinely doesn’t know how he feels, and knowing how Jon Prime feels…

Jon Prime unfolds his arms, straightens up, and looks Jon square in the face. “I love him,” he says, quietly but firmly. “He’s my anchor, my compass, the one thing keeping me human. He is the one person I trusted when I was at my lowest and the one person I wanted there when I was at my highest. He was the first one I told when I found out how to quit the Institute and the one who found a way to bring me out of the Buried when my own stupidity nearly trapped me there. He’s the reason I’ve made it this far and the only reason I have to continue. He is the most important thing in my life and I will do whatever it takes to keep him there.” He pauses. “And before you ask, yes, he does know all this. Now.”

That was, in fact, Jon’s next question. “And he…?”

“He feels the same.”

For just a moment, Jon feels dizzy. Could Martin…? But he’s not even sure if love is what he feels for his—their—Martin, not yet anyway. Could it be love? Maybe. Someday. But all hearing about his future self’s feelings has done is make him more confused. Still, he keeps pushing. “You haven’t…said anything, o-or done anything, since…” Even the way they clung to each other when they first were reunited could be construed as two friends, two people who’ve lost everything else, finding something familiar once again.

“And believe me, it’s killing us both.” Jon Prime reaches up like he wants to run his hands through his hair, then checks, evidently remembering the braid, and rubs his face instead. “I didn’t realize how comfortable I’ve become with being able to show that affection—to take comfort from him—until we were here and I couldn’t. God, when he was done giving his statement, I—I wanted to—” He gives a ragged sigh. “And don’t think for a moment I couldn’t tell how much effort it took to restrain himself to what little he did when I overdid things. We’re just…we got accustomed to being allowed to do that, I suppose. It never occurred to either one of us we’d be somewhere we couldn’t.”

“Well, why can’t you?”

“I don’t know if you realize just how bad Martin’s self-esteem is at times,” Jon Prime says quietly. “God knows we haven’t done him any favors. We worried that if you saw us together, then got together yourselves, your Martin would always harbor that little bit of suspicion that you’re only with him because you think you have to be.”

Jon swallows, but he cant really refute that assessment of Martin, mostly because he doesn’t know him as well as he’d like. It still rings true. “I—you know I wouldn’t—”

“I know. And my Martin knows that, too. He’s…as horrible as the next two years were for us, they definitely helped him forge his sense of self-worth. But yours still thinks you hate him.”

“I don’t—I never hated him. I—”

“Was projecting, yes. He called me on that and I copped to it. But it doesn’t change the fact that that’s what he thinks now. My Martin and I don’t want to risk damaging what you two could have by making either of you think it’s forced.” Jon Prime returns to lounging against the side of the building.

They fall into another long silence, Jon Prime sliding his hands into his pockets and watching the sky cloud over and Jon returning to smoking. There’s always a small amount of guilt when he sneaks a cigarette—which he really does far too often to claim he’s actually quit—but it’s worse than usual today. Or maybe it’s just that what he’s just sat through is too intense to be soothed with nicotine and menthol. He watches the smoke curl on the wind and thinks about the paintings.

Finally, he asks, “They all happened, then?”

“Yes.” Jon Prime’s voice is barely audible. “All of them. Including, thank God, the last one.” He pauses, then adds, “I’m—I know it’s selfish to say it, but if he had to be blinded, I’m glad that’s the last thing he saw.”

Jon understands that. “Anything would be better than the gallery of horrors. And…the last painting, the one he didn’t turn around to see. Do you…?”

“It was probably the moment I ended the world.”

“You ended—” Jon’s cigarette slips from his fingers. Stupidly, he grabs at it as it falls and manages to sear his hand. He curses softly and shakes out his hand, inspecting the cigarette. Somehow, it’s still lit. Wonders will never cease.

“Graceful,” Jon Prime says dryly. He starts to fiddle with the cuffs of his sweater, then tucks his hands firmly into his armpits, evidently to stop himself. “And yes. It wasn’t…exactly my fault, I suppose, but I was more or less the catalyst, at least.” He seems to debate with himself for a moment, then sighs. “We’ll explain a bit more when we’re back with everyone else—I don’t want to have to relive this more than once—but, broadly, the entities all have rituals, designed to bring them fully into the world and recreate it in their image, so to speak. The ritual for the Eye is called the Watcher’s Crown, and the Archivist is the keystone. Jonah spent three years preparing me, and then—well, he disguised the incantation to finish the ritual as a statement, and I didn’t discover it until I’d already started reading it.”

“You didn’t stop?”

“I—I tried. God knows I tried. But I physically couldn’t. Even from the beginning, I found it hard to stop recording a statement once it was begun, unless I was interrupted. I convinced myself for far too long that it was just work ethic or some such nonsense.” Jon Prime sounds bitterly amused. “I don’t know that I could have stopped myself without intervention. If—if I hadn’t been alone, if I’d asked Martin to stay in the room…he might have been able to snatch it away from me before I got to the second page. I don’t know. I can’t Know hypotheticals or the future or anything like that, but I-I’m terribly afraid that if he’d tried to interfere, especially once I got to the actual ritual, that I might have hurt him.” He closes his eyes tightly. “I-I wouldn’t have survived that.”

Jon presses his lips together for a moment, then takes another drag on the cigarette. He tries not to think about the possibility of hurting any of his assistants, let alone Martin. Even now, the very idea makes him flinch away in horror. How much worse would it be if he’d sorted through the tangle of emotions inside him?

“You didn’t—Tim and Sasha. That wasn’t you, right?” he asks, and could swallow his tongue. He almost does swallow the cigarette and holds it well away from himself to keep from doing something even stupider. “I-I mean—”

“It’s all right. It’s a valid question,” Jon Prime says quietly. He opens his eyes. Somehow, Jon isn’t surprised to see that they’re wet with unshed tears. “No, I never laid a hand on either of them. Sasha was—she was killed by the thing from Amy Patel’s statement, the one that was not her friend Graham. Tim died trying to stop one of the rituals. He—I didn’t want him to go. I definitely didn’t want him to do what he did, but…God, he was so angry. I-I think he needed to do it, but it hurt when I woke up and found out he was gone.”

Jon notes that whatever killed Tim—likely an explosion, since Martin Prime mentioned a detonator—also put Jon Prime in his coma, but he decides not to bring that up. Not now. He doesn’t want to think about losing any of his assistants. He can’t. “Please tell me you’re going to help me keep that from happening.”

“That’s our goal,” Jon Prime promises. “Well, our secondary goal at least. Obviously our main goal is to stop—”

“The world from ending. I know. Your Martin told us that.”

Jon Prime smiles, just a little bit. It takes Jon a second to realize that it’s the words your Martin that made him soften like that—that even though Jon meant it to distinguish Martin Prime from the Martin who could have died last night if the CO2 system had been a hair slower to trigger, a thought that’s going to haunt him for a while, he heard it as a possessive statement. Your Martin in the same sense as your partner, your reason, your love. There’s another uncomfortable flutter in Jon’s chest that he tries his hardest to ignore.

“But our other goal is to protect everyone we care about,” Jon Prime continues. “I—I am sorry that your Martin got hurt so badly. I am. I know what he’s going through, physically at least. We really were hoping to avoid any of you having to go through that. But if we can at least stop him—stop all of you—from going through the hell we went through…we’ll run whatever risk we have to.”

“Short of letting…Elias win,” Jon says. It seems safer to call him that for now.

Jon Prime hesitates, which surprises Jon. “I…I’d like to say yes. That stopping Jonah is more important than keeping you all from getting hurt. And certainly you’ll all suffer a great deal if he does win, but…God, I don’t know. If the cost is anyone’s life…I don’t know that I can pay it. Not again.” He takes a deep breath. “We have a good chance, though. Jonah doesn’t know we’re here, and as long as we can keep him ignorant, we should be able to catch him off-guard. And I know what to prepare for better now.”

“Wait, you’re following through the same plan you had post-apocalypse?”

“More or less.”

“Even though it obviously didn’t work?” Jon wonders what happens to him that he would consider trying something he knows is doomed to failure.

“It would have worked,” Jon Prime says. “I didn’t know for sure before we tried—like I said, I can’t Know the future—but what Jonah did made it clear that what we were going to do would have worked, and that he found the only method possible of stopping it.”

Jon knows he shouldn’t ask, but he can’t help himself. He wonders if it’s the power of the Eye or just his own natural curiosity, or maybe both. “What—what did he do?”

“He hurt Martin.” Jon Prime’s voice is quiet but raw. “Badly. I—I knew I could save him, but I also knew that going to Martin first would give Jonah enough time to get away, and we’d never get another chance to catch him unaware. And I knew that if I took Jonah down, even in the relatively short amount of time it would take to do that…Martin would be beyond help by the time I was done. I only had seconds to decide.” He looks up, and the pain in his eyes is evident. “Not a thing in me said to do other than what I did.”

The memory of Martin being wheeled out of the Archives on a stretcher hits Jon almost like a physical force. The panic, the desperate need to get to him, the sense of guilt, return as if he’s feeling them fresh. And that was with trained medical professionals on the scene. What Jon Prime is describing is infinitely worse. Jon Prime had to watch Martin Prime hurt, by someone he once at least marginally trusted, and know that he was the only one who could save him…but at the cost of the rest of the world.

And, honestly, Jon can’t condemn him. He doesn’t know what he’d do if faced with that situation himself. Truthfully, there’s a part of him that’s afraid he would hesitate for too long and lose both opportunities. He knows, with utter certainty, that he’d never forgive himself if he did. At least Jon Prime made a decision. At least he saved the man he loved.

“I—I think you did the right thing,” he manages.

Jon Prime huffs a soft laugh and folds his arms over his chest again, banging his head lightly back against the wall of the garage. “Martin didn’t think so. At first, anyway. He fussed at me for not stopping Jonah when I could, but…when I told him how little time he had, and pointed out I wasn’t even sure I’d get anything out of taking down Jonah but revenge, he let it go. Still don’t think he agrees it was the right choice, but he does at least understand it was the only choice I could have made.”

Jon doesn’t answer. He’s thinking about what that must feel like—to be the only ones left standing at the end of the world, to make a pact together to turn it back, to go through what must have been literal hell together, to see your happy ending on the horizon, and then to nearly have everything destroyed in an instant. If the chasm that opened up before him at the idea of losing Martin had been deep and vast, how unfathomable must it have been to Jon Prime? Especially knowing how close he must have come to losing Martin before that?

“What would he have done?” he finally asks. “If your positions had been reversed. If you’d been the one hurt. Would Martin have saved you and let…” He trails off. He still can’t bring himself to call his boss Jonah. That’s honestly the only thing he’s having trouble believing. That Elias Bouchard is in the service of an eldritch fear god, that he might want to end the world as long as he can be in charge of it, that he’s using Jon as a cat’s-paw to do so? Certainly. But that he might actually be Jonah Magnus, or at least possessed by him? No, Jon can’t quite buy that one yet.

Jon Prime looks unhappy. “I don’t know. Our plan relied—relies—on an ability Martin simply doesn’t have. So the likelihood of him being able to do anything to Jonah…I don’t know if he would have tried or not. He might have. Martin’s got a lot more pent-up rage in him than you might expect, and most of it is directed at Jonah. He’s hurt us both over the years, repeatedly, and I know Martin wanted revenge. I did, too, but…the difference is that I knew how precious little time there was before the damage done to him was irreversible. Martin wouldn’t have known that. He—he might have thought he could at least get one good stab in and then save me. You’ll have to ask him, but honestly, I don’t think even he knows.”

Actually, the thought that Martin—stammering, unassuming, inoffensive Martin—would attack a being that’s essentially a demigod with a knife to pay it back for hurting them is strangely comforting. The idea that Jon might have died as a result, less so. “So—why attack Martin and not you? What if you’d chosen differently?”

“I think he knew damn well I wouldn’t. And I think he knew there was a good possibility Martin would, which also tells me it would have worked, too. That Martin could have killed him. Then, too, there’s a chance that he couldn’t have actually killed me. The Eye may have liked me better than it liked Jonah. Certainly it seemed keen to keep me alive and functioning.” Jon Prime pauses, then adds on a small sigh, “But mostly, I think he attacked Martin because when he started picking at my confidence, started me doubting myself—again—Martin stood between us and refused to move.”

Jon coughs. “Wait, what?”

Jon Prime nods without looking at him. He folds his arms tightly over his chest, rolling the fabric of the sweater between his thumbs and forefingers. It’s a nervous tic Jon himself isn’t familiar with, and in a distant way, he wonders when it started. “It wasn’t—I won’t pretend it was like you might imagine in the movies. He was scared, I could taste how scared he was, and I know he was trying not to cry. But he stood in front of me anyway. He looked Jonah square in the eye and told him to fuck off. Told him he wouldn’t let him hurt me anymore and—” He breaks off and closes his eyes, pressing his lips into a flat line for a moment. “He wouldn’t budge. He didn’t take his eyes off Jonah when he told me that he’d stand in front of me as long as I needed him to, as long as it took for me to remember who I was, and that it wasn’t what Jonah had tried to make me.”

Jon can’t fathom what kind of courage that must have taken. “And that…what, angered Jonah so much that he wanted to hurt Martin?”

“Oh, no, he didn’t sound angry at all,” Jon Prime says bitterly. “He was perfectly calm as he told me that I ‘might want to reconsider my course of action’ as ‘time can be a precious resource, after all’.”

“And then?”

“And then he shot Martin.” Jon Prime slowly turns his head to look Jon square in the eye. “Three times. In the chest.”

Jon freezes. Everything seems to still down to a molecular level—heart, lungs, even his brain. Nothing exists beyond the words Jon Prime has just spoken and what they imply. At first, it’s focusing on the thought that Elias Bouchard shot Martin—that his boss, the man theoretically responsible for them and their well-being, leveled a gun at one of his assistants and fired it. Then the details catch up to him, and Jon somehow manages to forget how to breathe, despite the fact that he isn’t breathing to begin with. Not only did he shoot Martin, he shot him the same way Gertrude Robinson was shot, if Tim is to be believed. Spots begin forming at the edges of his vision.

He feels pressure on his shoulders and hears a voice that seems to crackle with static. “Breathe, Jon.”

Jon complies without realizing it. He inhales—exhales. Again. Again. The creeping darkness recedes, and Jon sees his counterpart standing before him, his eyes wet and anxious behind his glasses, matching his breathing to Jon’s. He has his hands on Jon’s shoulders—that’s the pressure he felt—and he’s shaking faintly.

“My God,” Jon whispers. “He—dear God.”

Jon Prime nods, infinitesimally. “Yes. He was—making a point. As much as—” He breaks off and closes his eyes again, but Jon sees a tear trickle out of the corner of his eye.

Jon swallows hard. “He killed Gertrude Robinson.”

“Yes.” Jon Prime takes a deep breath and opens his eyes again, looking a bit calmer but still shaken. “That…was not how I wanted to tell you that. But yes.” He pauses, then adds, “If you want more on that, you’ll have to wait until we can talk to everyone. They probably deserve to know.”

Jon isn’t sure he does want to know more about that. Or if there’s really that much more to be known. Still, he understands not wanting to talk about that more right now.

He reaches over and wipes the tear off of Jon Prime’s cheek. “He’s all right, though. I-I mean, you saved him. He’s alive. He’s…alive.”

“He’s alive, yes.” Jon Prime slowly releases Jon’s shoulders and takes a step back, giving them both a bit of space. “I—I was able to stabilize him. The Keeper appeared and offered us a relatively safe place to rest, and we were able to stay until Martin was well again, but…he’ll always have those scars, I think. They’re a bit worse than they would have been had he been given real medical attention, but I-I did the best I could. And…at least he’s alive. At least I still have him.”

Jon exhales and leans back against the wall. In light of everything he’s just learned…he can’t imagine how difficult the last week has been for Jon Prime. Being separated from the last person you knew from your previous life is bad enough, but to be separated from the person you love…especially so soon after a near-death experience…and then to not have any way of contacting him, of knowing how he was…it must have been absolute hell.

After a moment, Jon Prime says with a small, humorless laugh, “You know, I came out here to make sure you were all right, and I think I successfully made things infinitely worse.”

Jon thinks about that for a moment, then says, somewhat surprised, “Actually, I think you may have helped.”

“Really,” Jon Prime says, sounding skeptical.

“I-I mean—it’s bad. It’s very bad, what happened, and I—yes, all right, I definitely panicked a bit there. But…” Jon tries to figure out how to phrase it, then gives up and decides to just talk and see what comes out. “I didn’t even know why I came out here. Why I needed space. But talking to you, I—I think I figured it out. Listening to what you said…it wasn’t what you—we—went through that upset me. It wasn’t even hearing it spoken about. It was hearing Martin—well, your Martin—talk about it. I was more upset that Martin Prime had to go through that than I was that you did. And…” He sighs. “I still don’t know exactly how I feel, but…at least things make a little more sense now.” He looks over at Jon Prime. “I’m all right. Or as all right as I can be.”

“That’s…going to define the rest of your life, I’m afraid. ‘As all right as you can be.’” Jon Prime sighs. “Go ahead and finish that cigarette and we’ll go back inside.”

Jon Prime stares at the half-smoked cigarette in his hand for a long moment. He started smoking in university, more as a way of avoiding conversation than anything, and found it helped his anxiety. All his rather messy break-up with Georgie had done was cause him to switch brands, and all his grandmother’s nagging and disapproval had done was cause him to stop smoking indoors. He’d tried to quit after her funeral, but even though he rarely smoked more than one or two out of the packs he bought before he had to throw them out because they went stale, he never managed to actually stop. Truthfully, there were no external factors more powerful than the soothing nature of the nicotine.

But now…

Slowly, he raises his foot to his knee and grinds out the end of the cigarette on his heel. He pulls out the pack, tucks the cigarette into it, turns around, and drops the whole pack into the bin at the corner. Judging by the state of the bin, it’s almost trash day, so he hopefully won’t be tempted to dig around and rescue the pack later.

He turns back to see Jon Prime watching him with a genuine smile on his face. He doesn’t say anything, merely reaches over and gives Jon a hug. Jon is momentarily surprised, then relaxes into the hug and returns it. It’s a bit—there’s no other word for it—weird to be hugging himself, but at the same time, he needs physical contact more than he lets on and he hasn’t really had all that much in the last few years. The stress doesn’t go away, but it does ease back, a hell of a lot better than the cigarette managed.

After a moment, they separate. Jon Prime claps him wordlessly on the shoulder, and they turn to head back inside. To face whatever is coming next.

#leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall)#ollie writes fanfic #tma #the magnus archives #jonmartin #smoking tw #gun violence tw (mentioned)#we have officially diverted from canon y'all #like this is compliant up to the last two minutes of today's episode #but after that we're forging our own path baby #elias bouchard is a rat bastard #like that's news

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kuroopaisen · 5 years

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hi!! may i request for a headcanon to how oikawa would react after reuniting with his childhood friend turned fake ex-girlfriend after how many years at a common friend's wedding and to his shock he still likes her? thank you!

okay so i know you asked for a headcanon but i got carried away so,,, if you’d like me to redo it, please let me know. and this got a little angstier than i expected slkjfd

- admin rowan

truth be told, oikawa hadn’t envisioned himself attending a wedding at the tail end of his uni years. why anyone would be getting married before graduating was beyond him. but sure enough, he and iwaizumi were standing a scant few feet away from the doorway of a church, about to seek out yahaba and give him their congratulations.

“how do i look, iwa? do i look dashing enough?”

“shut up.”

“but i need to make sure i look my best for my re-debut. some of these people haven’t seen me in a few years, you know.”

“this isn’t about you,” iwaizumi said, looking over his shoulder. “it’s too late, anyway. we’re already here.”

oikawa pursed his lips, trying to think of something to say in response. frankly, he was nervous.

“don’t chicken out.”

“i’m not going to!” oikawa whined, sticking his hands deep in his pockets.

why was he so nervous? sure, he hadn’t seen some of these guys since high school, and he certainly hadn’t spoken to a few of them since that final match with karasuno. but that was long since past. and yahaba surely wanted him there, despite everything.

was it because yahaba of all people was getting married, while he hadn’t been able to maintain a consistent relationship all throughout his uni years? was that why he felt so off?

“it’ll be fine.” iwaizumi was looking at him with the slightest of frowns. he spoke with such a gruff sense of surety that only he could pull off.

“i know that,” oikawa huffed, running a hand through his hair.

god, this was so unlike him.

“then stop acting like a damn coward.”

“iwa-”

“and behave yourself.”

“you don’t have to be so mean to me,” oikawa whined, his shoulders slumping. he took another step towards the door.

there were more people than he’d anticipated – and he didn’t recognise most of them. he still wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or not. he sighed, running a hand through his hair. how long did weddings go for again? was he expected to stick around and socialise? he might’ve, on any other day — but something was just off.

“ceremony’s about to start,” iwaizumi mumbled.

oikawa took a quick moment to scan the room, looking for the least conspicuous seats. the less people who spoke to him, the better.

a flash of teal caught his eye. he looked again, frowning. huh. who was that? they were too far away for him to get a better look at — and his contacts weren’t as strong as he would’ve liked them to be — and he could only catch the profile of their face. and yet…

“sit down.” iwaizumi pushed him towards one of the benches.

“you don’t need to push me,” oikawa pouted.

“then stop spacing out,” iwaizumi grunted, sitting himself down.

oikawa sighed, settling himself into his seat.

it really was a lovely ceremony. the bride looked stunning in her dress – pure white, and embellished with appliques –, and yahaba was positively glowing.

but try as he might, he couldn’t stop his gaze from flitting over to that person in teal. it wasn’t unreasonable to assume they’d attended aobajohsai; how else would he know someone invited to yahaba’s wedding? and yet, there was more to it than that. something more familiar.

this was going to drive him crazy.

“hey, iwa?”

“what do you want?”

“that person over there,” he said, trying to point as subtly as he could, “do you know who that is?”

“you don’t?”

“should i?” oikawa frowned. “they seem so familiar, but i just can’t put my finger on it.”

“you’re such an idiot.”

oikawa gaped at him. he was used to iwaizumi being blunt, but usually such abrasive assessments had cause. “i haven’t even done anything wrong!”

“you seriously don’t remember?” iwaizumi raised an eyebrow at him.

oikawa tilted his head at him.

“good grief,” iwaizumi sighed, rubbing his temple. “come here.”

“wh–”

iwaizumi grabbed him by the wrist and stormed off. oikawa opened his mouth to protest, but it was much too late. iwaizumi led them through the small throng of people, marching with such distinct purpose that oikawa couldn’t help but wonder if this was how he was going to die.

“hey.” iwaizumi had stopped abruptly, causing oikawa to stumble. standing in front of them was that person in teal. shit, did he know them? was he about to make a fool of himself by not remembering their name? was this about to get really, really awkward?

the person in teal looked between the two of them, eyes wide and round for just a moment.

“oh!” the stood up a little straighter, a smile starting to spread across their face. “hey guys.”

oh shit.

a childhood spent together, running around a backyard and chasing balls down the street. a constant cheerleader at his volleyball games, screaming from the stand with all their might. someone to temper iwaizumi’s rage at the best of times, and to make him smile at the worst. someone to tend to oikawa’s wounds, physical or otherwise, when he’d been overworking himself.

how could he forget you?

“hi,” oikawa did his best to smile, but he knew it would look vacuous. insincere as always, even though he knew you deserved better.

hell, you deserved better than what he’d given you.

he could barely remember his reasoning for making such a stupid request.

things had been fine until third year. great, even. he’d even had a girlfriend for the first few months, before he was mercilessly dumped for being ‘too obsessed with volleyball’. you were the person he’d turned to for support. you’d expected it, for the most part – he spent most of his day practicing, and the scant free time he did have was usually spent with you and iwaizumi. she’d spoken to you before it had happened; telling you that she wasn’t mad, she was just jealous.

it was around then that he asked you to ‘date’ him. you’d been bemused – and on reflection, rightfully so. you felt bad about his girlfriend, about lying to everyone, about not being convincing. oikawa had been adamant that it’d be fine. nothing would change, right?

“how’ve you been?” you asked, looking between the two of them. “still playing volleyball together?”

“unfortunately.”

“iwa!” oikawa whined, forgetting himself for a second. “but you said all those nice things to me in third year!”

“that was before i knew we were going to the same uni.”

it had been okay, for a while. holding hands felt normal enough. he’d gotten used to giving you a kiss on the cheek or the forehead. and he liked it a little more than he should. people believed it. even iwaizumi had been fooled, at first. he’d even grouched that oikawa should’ve done something sooner. oikawa had barely understood it at the time, dumb and eighteen. these days, he knew exactly what iwaizumi had been talking about.

“are you in your final year?” you asked, hands clasped behind your back.

“don’t remind me,” oikawa mumbled.

things took a turn for the worst a few months before graduation. the details were hazy, but one evening stood out with such startling clarity that he was sure he’d never forget it.

you’d been walking around town after school, just the two of you. he’d been getting antsy back then; he wanted to spend more time with you, and he didn’t understand why. he’d also taken to holding your hand, even when no-one was around to see it. he knew now that it was because he was in love with you, but he hadn’t comprehended that at the time.

you were just his scrappy childhood friend, not someone he could see himself in a genuine relationship with. things were too comfortable, too��easy with you for that; your presence in his life expected much more than it was cherished.

maybe that’s why it had happened.

that evening, he’d kissed you. he’d walked you home as the sun set, spewing some bullshit about his future. he spoke with a confidence only beget to teenagers, and he hadn’t let you get a word in edgeways. and once you’d stopped in front of your house, he leant in and kissed you.

he still didn’t know what compelled him to do that. it must’ve made sense to him at the time — maybe he was stupid enough to believe that the relationship was real. maybe it was his way of trying to tell you about that tangled mess of emotions that was rattling around inside of him. maybe he’d hoped you’d understand what he really felt, like you always did.

but you cried. you looked at him, eyes glassy, and called him an asshole.

you’d slammed the door before he’d had time to respond.

you ignored his texts, and you weren’t picking up his calls. he’d tried to ask iwaizumi, but he’d just told him he was stupid. no matter what he tried, you wouldn’t reach back over the gulf.

next thing he knew, you were all graduating. graduation day was the first time you’d interacted with him in ages; you’d obstinately taken a few photos with him and iwaizumi, seemingly for your parents’ sake. as hard as he tried, he couldn’t look back on those photos and pretend you were happy to be standing next to him. he could see it in your smile.

it wasn’t the one you were giving him now — full and joyful, adding a bit more shine to your eyes. you were happy to see him.

he bit the inside of his cheek. why did his head feel so hot? he hadn’t even had anything to drink yet.

you and iwaizumi were still talking. oikawa hadn’t even noticed that he’d zoned out of the conversation — what if you thought he was rude? what if you thought he hadn’t changed?

you laughed.

fuck.

his heart stirred like it had all those years ago. like when you told him you believed in him, no matter what, while looking up at you with eyes so full of determination and belief that he didn’t know how to respond. like when you’d bandaged his fingers so gently and tenderly after he’d overworked himself in solo practice. like when you’d held him and called him tooru after that last match with karasuno.

you’d think four years would be long enough to get over someone, he thought. but it seemed like life wasn’t ready to let him forget his mistakes.

maybe it was because he was lonely. maybe it was because he’d missed you more than he’d thought possible. maybe it was because he hadn’t had even a single successful relationship in uni.

he wanted nothing more than to take your hand and apologise. there was so much he wanted to say to you – so much he wanted to explain. but it had been four years.

this was too much.

“i, uh, i’m going to go and get something to drink,” he said, looking between the two of them. you and iwaizumi stared back at him, faint surprise laced in your expressions. why, he didn’t know. he turned on his heels, the faint buzzing in his chest getting harder and harder to bear.

a hand gripped the cuff of his sleeve.

“tooru?”

his breath hitched.

“i missed you.”

#haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu scenarios #oikawa x reader #oikawa tooru #admin rowan #this was fun but it's really bad hh #maybe i'll redo it later but i just wanted it out of the drafts

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the-one-eighteen · 4 years

Note

Prompt: On his birthday, Eddie wakes up to smell food cooking. Christopher asked Buck to come over an help him make breakfast for Eddie and he goes out to see Buck and Chris standing at the stove, laughing and he feels so happy and realizes he's in love.

I am. So sorry for the delay on this! Life…happened. As I’m sure it’s happening for everyone right now. But! I hope this is okay! Thank you so much for sending this in, I had a lot of fun with it!

(read on ao3)

Eddie doesn’t know what woke him up.

There’s nothing immediately there to clue him in either, and if it weren’t for the suddenness with which he’d snapped his bleary eyes open, he’d be willing to put it off as just. The natural process of the morning.

He frowns at the wall slightly, listening carefully into the silent house for any kind of clue.

No, wait, not silent.

He hears the clang of cutlery hitting a pan, then a quick ‘shh shh’ that he could pick out of a crowd because Chris was still working on fine tuning his subtlety, followed by a deeper rumble of a muffled laugh that he could also pick out of a damn crowd, because Buck had never tried for subtlety in his life.

So, just Buck and Chris in the kitchen. Nothing urgent then.

Eddie can feel his body sliding back into sleepy looseness, his eyes already drooping closed again - it’s his day off and his kid is cared for, he wants to sleep in dammit - when a couple things click into place.

Well, less things more questions.

Like, one - and this one was really the biggest - what the hell was Buck doing here?

And two - the one that was actually the biggest and one he was resolutely ignoring - why was his immediate reaction to Buck being here all clear?

(And three - wow was he really trying to convince himself he didn’t know the answer to two? His denial ran deeper than he’d thought.)

(Except it really, really didn’t, because Eddie knew his crush on his best friend was pathetic on the best of days, and all-consuming on the worst. God, that one moment of peace - of feeling like everything was right with the world and everyone was where they should be (where he wanted them to be) was going to haunt his best dreams for the next few months, and he couldn’t even work up the energy to pretend to be mad about it.)

Eddie groaned, burying his face in his pillow for a long moment. It was his day off. He didn’t need something this confusing (this perfect) so early.

There’s another clang and another muffled laugh - including one from Chris this time, which, no matter the situation, would always make Eddie grin - and Eddie decides to face the inevitable. He takes long enough to grab a shirt, hauling it over his head and following it with a weak attempt at taming what he was sure was some pretty spectacular bedhead before slipping quietly out of his room.

There’s a pretty good chance Buck and Chris wouldn’t have noticed if he’d bolted out there yelling.

Without the door to muffle it, he can now hear the two of them giggling and whisper-shouting to each other almost constantly, and when Eddie peaks around the corner into the kitchen, he finds Buck bent over the stove, Chris sitting on the counter next to him, both of them intent on whatever it is Buck is doing.

Eddie leans in the doorway for a long moment, no longer feeling the sense of need to know that had driven him from bed. Chris is still in his pjs, his hair an impressive nest of curls, and the smile on his face could light up Eddie’s whole damn world. There’s also an impressive spot of...flour? On the tip of his nose and smeared across his cheek.

He can only see Buck’s back, but Chris’ smile somehow gets bigger and brighter each time Buck looks over at him. From his vantage point, Eddie also sees Buck flip out a pancake onto a slowly growing stack on the other side of the stove that he hadn’t noticed at first.

“We’re just about done, buddy. You wanna go get your dad? And remember,” Buck turns enough to face Chris, pressing his finger to his lips and giving Eddie a good look at his profile and the truly impressive smear of flour across his eyebrow that looks suspiciously like a handprint, “This is a surprise right? So, ‘happy birthday,’ loud as you can, then get his grumpy butt out here, right?”

‘Happy birthday’?

...Oh. Eddie had completely forgotten about that. But from the look of giddy determination on Chris’ face, he hadn’t. And he’d probably been the one to plan this whole thing - whatever this whole thing was.

And from the sounds of things, Buck was, if not an accomplice, then a completely willing participant.

It was the ass-crack of dawn, on his and Buck’s one day off that week. And here he was in Eddie’s kitchen, with Eddie’s kid, looking as giddy as could be about making Eddie a birthday breakfast, when Eddie hadn’t even remembered what day it was, let alone made any kind of big deal about it in the last week.

Eddie didn’t really know what to do with the butterflies currently lighting up his chest.

Buck nods seriously before breaking out in a grin to rival Chris’ before reaching over to help him down from the counter. “Go get ‘im, tiger.”

Which is about the time both of them notice Eddie leaning in the doorway.

The synchronized freeze and matching wide eyes was something Eddie would’ve given almost anything for a picture of.

And, now that he could actually look at both of them, it looked like their faces weren’t the only casualties of what had to have been an epic flour battle. He’s more impressed there’s none on the counter or floor, really.

“Good morning.” Eddie says, unable to resist.

Chris just about whirls around on Buck, Buck’s hand on his shoulder keeping him steady, one hand pointed up at him, accusatory and matter of fact, “I told you it was too loud.”

And Buck takes a moment, blinking between Eddie, then down at Chris, then back at Eddie before just shaking his head with a laugh, holding his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay, you were right. I still don’t see why the plan won’t work. He’s just already dragged his grumpy butt out here.”

Chris ponders that for a moment before turning back to Eddie. A decision seems to be made a moment later, as he hurries over to Eddie in what could by all accounts be called a tackle-hug, yelling, “Happy birthday!”

And Eddie just melts, leaning down enough to scoop a now laughing Chris up and swinging him around with a kiss to his cheek, “Thank you, mijo,” he gets out through multiple more kisses that make Chris giggle and squirm in his arms.

Eddie feels like he’s damn near glowing by the time he looks over at Buck, who’s leaning against the counter, arms crossed loosely over his chest, just watching the two of them with this...this look that sparks the butterflies still taking up space where Eddie’s lungs are supposed to be. His smile is so damn soft, it’s mostly crinkling around his eyes, and he’s just...watching the two of them like he’s got nothing better to do at six in the morning on a Saturday. Like there’s nothing he wants to do, other than be right there.

“If it’s any consolation, this is still a pretty big surprise.” Eddie offers after a moment - throwing it into that awkward quiet between his laughter and Buck’s quiet smile that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“I asked Buck to help because Abuela said you’d probably forget again,” Chris pipes up, either oblivious to the way Eddie’s voice doesn’t fit in the suddenly full space between him and Buck, or all too aware and breaking it like the wonderful whirlwind he is.

“Oh, she did, did she?” Eddie asks, looking back to his son and feeling himself smile without much control from him. “Well...yeah, she was right.”

“Like she normally is.” Chris adds, the ever loyal grandson.

“Like she normally is,” Eddie agrees with a laugh as he presses another kiss into Chris’ curls. “Well, since it is my birthday, I’m voting breakfast and cartoons. Wanna go find some good ones for us?” The question’s barely out of his mouth before Chris is nodding eagerly, and Eddie can’t say no to that, so he sets him down and off Chris goes.

Eddie watches him go for a moment before looking back at Buck and...no, the smile’s still there, and Eddie can feel his heart skip. The butterflies are gone, leaving him instead with this want tugging somewhere just behind his heart. He’s pretty sure he couldn’t stop his feet if he wanted to, let’s the pull bring him up in front of Buck - watches Buck’s smile finally move, as his nose scrunches up and his head tilts to the side.

“You okay there Diaz?” Buck asks, and it could be teasing. Could be questioning, or curious, or insistent. But instead, it’s gentle. Coaxing Eddie back into his head, and encouraging the tugging at his core to ease up.

Eddie can’t really say what’s on his mind - he doesn’t have the words for the gulf he just stepped across in both the kitchen and in his own head.

‘Crush’ didn’t begin to cover what Eddie had for Buck. Couldn’t cover the sheer simplicity of it.

But Eddie...god, Eddie didn’t know if he could admit what he was slowly yet impossibly quickly realizing. So, instead? He reaches up a hand to brush away some of the flour still sticking to Buck’s temple.

And Buck pauses then, tilting his head into the touch without much thought it seems.

And there’s that small smile again - the one that crinkles his eyes and leaves an imprint in light and little else. “C’mon, birthday boy. Earth-shattering revelations are for after breakfast.” Eddie’s pretty sure Buck’s moving to get them to the living room, but he just can’t not, not after that confirmation - so he ducks in, stealing one sweet, butterfly laden kiss before pulling back again.

This time, Buck’s smile is in more than just his eyes.

It’s in his next kiss, too.

#blaineandsamevanderson #911 fox #Buddie #Eddie Diaz #Evan Buckley #Christopher Diaz #long post #ff #my writing

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renjinobankai · 4 years

Text

Another byaren fanfiction I found

Joy (joyinthedance)

2006-06-11 23:42:00

Title: “Captain Material”

Characters: Byakuya x Renji

Rating: NC-17, maybe.

Word Count: 2490

Warnings: Spoilers through end of Soul Society arc, and oh yeah, yaoi.

Disclaimer: If these guys were my property, I’d be happy for life. ^_^

Summary: This is just my take on how the definition of hotness (aka ByaRen) began.

Damn that Kurosaki Ichigo! Thanks to the boy’s interruption that day in the healing ward, Abarai Renji had never told his captain the really cool line that had been on the tip of his tongue. Afterwards, he had chickened out and made up some throwaway comment, because really, it didn’t sound that cool. It sounded pathetic. Pathetic to think that a street rat from Rugonkai could so much as lay a finger on the Kuchiki heir without throwing off the balance of the universe, much less confess the fact that his long obsession with surpassing his captain was more than mere rivalry. Renji was certainly competitive, but this passion went deeper than a drive to be the best, deeper even than the desire to show the frustratingly snobby noble that class did not determine ability. He had never realized what his feelings meant until Rukia’s rescue, but now it was impossible for him to deny them. However bitterly, however hopelessly, it was true: Renji was in love with Kuchiki Byakuya.

* * *

The Sixth Division captain was seated at his desk, facing a tidy but daunting stack of paperwork. Business had just begun to return to normal after the chaos surrounding the Aizen debacle, and the serious injuries both he and his lieutenant had suffered only compounded the problem. Being behind drove Byakuya crazy, but it wasn’t just his work that was bothering him. Somehow, something else felt unfinished, but what that was exactly was dangling just out of reach of his consciousness. He tried to concentrate, but his pen slipped and spattered ink across the page. With a silent curse he crumpled the paper and cast it into the empty wastebasket he seldom had the need for. He closed his eyes, trying to relax his furrowed brow and cleanse his mind of thoughts, but it was feelings, not thoughts, that were distracting him. He should have been able to suppress the beginnings of emotion before they even registered, but he found he could not. They bubbled up to mar the calm surface of the clear pool of his inner world, forming an image out of recent memory: Abarai Renji, his fiery hair pooling about his body like the blood he lay in, eyes fierce with a resolve unbroken by defeat. Again Byakuya felt the sensation grip him, a profound and conflicted intermingling of feelings, some of which he barely recognized as belonging to him…

“Taichou!” a familiar voice barked, and Byakuya’s eyes snapped wide open. Renji took a step back; it threw him off to see the usually imperturbable man appear so startled, almost embarrassed. Before the lieutenant could let out his breath, however, Byakuya had composed himself completely.

“Renji.” There was something unusual about the captain’s tone, but Renji couldn’t put his finger on it.

“I just thought I’d bring you some – ” Renji was struck suddenly by the way the moonlight illuminated the sleek black hair and the gleaming kenseikan that bound it. In that moment Byakuya seemed to be composed entirely of soft light and stark shadows…such ethereal beauty disarmed him.

“—uh, tea.” Renji finished, flustered. He quickly set the cup down on the desk, hoping the captain couldn’t detect the slight trembling of his hand that almost made the steaming liquid slosh over the rim and onto Byakuya’s meticulous work.

Byakuya’s face didn’t change, but he took the drink gingerly and immediately took a long sip. He was exhausted, Renji realized. Only with the recent chain of events had he begun to understand the burden that the older man carried and the strain he hid behind his aloof countenance.

“Thank you,” Byakuya said, setting the cup down and once again taking up his pen. It was a signal for his subordinate to leave, but Renji lingered.

“It’s late, Taichou. I was wonderin’ how long you were plannin’ to work tonight. I know you don’t wanna, but you need rest. You still haven’t completely recovered from your wounds.”

Byakuya raised one eyebrow as if to say that he had more than recovered, thank you, and that Renji should speak for himself.

Renji looked away. “Well I’m gonna head off to bed.”

Byakuya took another silent sip of his tea, but he didn’t take his eyes off the lieutenant. “Goodnight, Renji.”

Dammit! Renji thought as he closed the door behind him. Why does he always have to make things so damn awkward? They had never exactly been friends, but now that they had faced each other as enemies, a fog of unresolved tension had settled over their every interaction. Renji had grown accustomed long ago to the icy glares and disdainful words, but this was different. He couldn’t tell how Byakuya’s estimation of him had changed, or if it even had. Though Byakuya had ultimately come around to Renji’s point of view, the fact remained that the lieutenant had defied his captain and misjudged his character. Now that he understood Byakuya’s motivations better, Renji felt slightly ashamed of his rash actions. Not that he had done the wrong thing, he was sure of that, but he wondered whether he had done it the wrong way. Had he heard an extra helping of condescension in the noble’s voice as he pronounced his name? Or…could it possibly have been a trace of tenderness?

No, no, no! Renji thought. I can’t kid myself like that. Facing out from the balcony, he looked down at the lamplit streets of the Seireitei below him, and beyond that, Rugonkai…and above it all, the thin pale moon. He could not understand how two people could work together so closely and yet maintain such an insurmountable gulf between them, which he was not sure was growing or receding. Certainly it had widened as their ideological conflict had come to a head, and yet, in certain moments since then, the barrier had seemed to give way ever so slightly, like a veil fluttering in the wind. It was these fleeting glimpses that fed Renji’s desire. He wanted to have physically what he knew he could never have emotionally – that is, nothing between them. He sighed and turned around to leave, then stopped with a start as he found himself face to face with the very object of his thoughts. “K-kuchiki-taichou!” he stammered.

Byakuya looked only slightly surprised to see his lieutenant loitering outside his door. “Is there something you want, Renji?”

You bet there is, Renji thought, imagining himself pouncing on the unsuspecting Byakuya and pinning him against the door with a passionate kiss. How glorious it would be to cup that porcelain jawline in his hand, to weave his fingers thorough that night-black hair, to gleefully and spitefully and lovingly defile the captain’s untouchable dignity with his own raw and feral passion. Except, he realized suddenly, he was not imagining this at all. He was kissing Byakuya, and rather intensely at that.

Now you’ve done it, Renji you fool, he scolded himself as his tongue explored the warm recesses of his astonished captain’s mouth. You’re going to get yourself Senbonzakura’d to shreds again. But in that moment, it was worth it. Byakuya wasn’t exactly kissing back, but that didn’t matter. Just the sweetness of penetrating those perfect lips was enough. Renji kept his eyes closed, fearing that if he opened them he would wake from a dream – and also fearing to see the look on Byakuya’s face. At any rate, his other senses were giving him plenty to work with: the softness of that impeccable hair with its aroma of opulence, the flawless skin surprisingly warm under his fingers. Renji had his captain right where he wanted him, he realized with a thrill of delight. He had never felt so powerful in his life, and this heightened his growing arousal as his hand glided beneath edges of the noble’s robes.

Unfortunately for Renji, his newfound supremacy was short lived. Suddenly he was falling forward as Byakuya’s free hand grappled for the doorknob and the door swung back open into the room, taking the two shinigami with it. The impact broke Renji’s hold on Byakuya; he opened his eyes, and their mouths parted. If he kills me right now, Renji thought, at least I’ll go with no regrets. Finally daring to look, Renji saw the slight pink flush in the captain’s cheeks, and in those bottomless eyes, a glimmer of…what?

“I suppose I should not be surprised by your want of restraint, Renji,” Byakuya said as he pushed the door shut, “but if we are to proceed, it would be unwise to do so in such a conspicuous location.” Before Renji even had time to process the other man’s words, Byakuya was returning his lieutenant’s kiss with an intensity that betrayed real feeling. Even if his tongue hadn’t been otherwise occupied, Renji would have been dumbstruck by three simultaneous realizations: one, that he was still alive; two, that the notorious ice prince seemed capable of genuine passion; and three, that he enjoyed being kissed by Kuchiki Byakuya even more than he enjoyed kissing him.

As Renji recovered from his blissful shock and responded to Byakuya’s advance, they shared a moment of heated chaos: tongues fighting for dominance, ravenous hands moving of their own accord, robes loosening and falling open around sculpted shoulders. Then, before he realized it was happening, Renji was on his back, pinned to the floor and completely bereft of control. Renji’s eyes widened; Byakuya’s narrowed. “Really, Renji,” he said archly, “don’t tell me you expecting it the other way around.” He slipped a finger under the band that held back Renji’s hair and snapped it in two, letting the brilliant locks cascade over the floor as he moved in for another kiss with fierce, efficient grace.

Now Byakuya’s own hair was unbound and both shinigami were stripped to the waist. Byakuya’s tongue began tracing Renji’s tattoos with incredible lightness, lingering at a chiseled collarbone, a taut nipple, the contours of flexed abdominals. Though his tongue was warm, its electricity sent shivers over Renji’s body. It flickered along the edge of Renji’s waistband and paused there mischievously. Then Byakuya raised his head and just looked at the lieutenant for a minute, drinking in his body with his eyes. For a moment Renji appeared transfixed by the deep blue-gray gaze; then his arm shot out to untie the captain’s hakama in one swift pull. Byakuya’s eyes widened for an instant as the garment fell down around his ankles. So did Renji’s, but for a different reason.

“Caught ya off guard, eh Taichou?” Renji started to say, but he was silenced by aristocratic lips against his own. Byakuya undid Renji’s sash with one hand and buried the other in his scarlet hair as he deepened the kiss. Renji had given up hope of regaining dominance; it was enough to know that he of all people had reduced the aloof Kuchiki heir to this primal state. Byakuya’s tongue had recommenced its calligraphic dance down his lieutenant’s body, now unencumbered by clothing, continuing downward and taking Renji’s erection into his mouth. Renji moaned and arched into the motion that sent hot waves of pleasure coursing though him. You bastard, Kuchiki, he thought as Byakuya deftly teased his arousal to new heights, you’ve totally done this before. Once again the fear he might be dreaming seized him, but never in his most private fantasies had he dared imagine this sweet delirium. Just as he was up against the very brink of release, Byakuya pulled back.

“What the hell?!” Renji cried breathlessly. “What’dja stop for?! Don’t torture me like that, Bya – gaaah!” In his indignation he had sat up too quickly, allowing Byakuya to flip him in one quick maneuver. Renji suddenly found himself face down, still throbbing with need.

“It seems you have forgotten your place, Abarai-fukutaichou,” said Byakuya, as first one, then two slick and slender fingers prepared Renji for what was to come. Even now, Byakuya’s voice kept its collected, commanding tone, but its refined edge had given way to a lustful hunger. “Do you remember when I told you the difference between you and me?”

“Yeah,” Renji answered weakly, between gasps of painful pleasure. “Level.”

“You will find, Renji, that in some things, there are only two levels. Yours – ” Renji cried out as his captain entered him, “ – and mine.” Renji’s body burned with the delicious ache of Byakuya filling him, rocking him, pressing up against the deep core of his desire. He squeezed his tearing eyes shut and his breath came in ragged moans as Byakuya drove hard into him again and again. Somewhere, he felt hands, lips, teeth, nails, heaven, pain, more heaven…everything blurring in the blinding pleasure. Years of being disparaged, reprimanded, and even imprisoned now seemed to Renji like torturous foreplay leading up to this impossible yet inevitable moment. His whole body belonged to Kuchiki Byakuya, and Renji couldn’t have wanted anything more. Their rhythm quickened, and their glistening, quaking bodies seemed to fuse together, scarcely able to contain the rising energy between them. Renji braced himself as his captain’s thrusts intensified, feeling the heat within him breach its threshold. “Byakuya – !” he managed to cry, wracked by the throes of climax. For an instant they were equals as they both came at once and collapsed on the thin carpet of discarded clothing.

They lay there, damp and fatigued and silent, as their breathing gradually returned to normal. Finally, feeling confident that it was safe to move of his own volition, Renji looked up to meet his captain’s eyes. Byakuya looked spent, and absolutely radiant. Renji had never seen him look so beautifully human. For someone who had just been ravished, Renji was feeling exceedingly proud of himself. “Well, what did you think, Kuchiki-taichou?” he asked, flashing a roguish grin. “Was I captain material?”

“Don’t be cheeky, Renji,” replied Byakuya before kissing his forehead with a touch as soft as a single cherry blossom.

Renji closed his eyes. His life had just gotten amazingly better. And, he realized, much more complicated. How were they supposed to keep this under wraps? Could he make it back to his room unseen? Where were his clothes, anyway? Oh, yeah.“Um, am I supposed to go back to my room in…this?” Renji asked, lifting up one rather wrinkled and less-than-clean sleeve of the robes they had substituted for sheets.

Byakuya looked down at his own uniform and once-pristine white captain’s cloak, which had also seen better days. Trailing a smooth hand across his lieutenant’s shoulders, he replied, “That depends on whether you decide to go back to your room.”

Renji managed to mask his giddy delight with his well-honed sarcasm. “Somehow I get the feeling this isn’t really my decision.”

“Catching on, are we?” Byakuya smirked. “You always have been a fast learner, Renji.”

Renji just smiled. Sex and a compliment from Byakuya in one night.

He wasn’t sure which surprised him more.

#anime bleach #anime #fanfiction #byaren #abarai renji #kuchiki byakuya #byakuya x renji #yaoi

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collectsfallenstars · 4 years

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Couples in the Republic of Korea Spend Time Near the Water Like This

*Fanfiction inspired by this photo of Lee Minho and Kim Goeun and a 5-Word Interview of Lee Minho. He was asked if he was happy in that interview and he answered, "Very happy." He was wearing the same crimson sweater in a behind-the-scene picture uploaded by a staff member. In the picture, it looked as if they were interrupted in the middle of a serious conversation.

He watched her get up from the bench and walk over to the railing on the river’s edge and he forced himself to stay still. Six months of shooting this drama with her had made his whole body so attuned to her movements, her scent, the sound of her giggles, the soft way she would murmur her lines to herself, and even the blur of her ponytail as she would flit from one part of the set to another. Wherever she was, he could always find her. And any time his eyes landed on her, the rest of his body would soon follow and he often found himself walking towards her – like gravity.

Like now. Even though he had told himself to give her a little breathing room, that resolve only lasted about half a minute. They were about to shoot a tender couple’s moment by the riverside so he really should go to her and make sure she’s comfortable. He was older, the one with more experience in the business. It was his duty. He had plenty of other excuses in his pocket but he deemed those two to be enough to justify why he was now standing beside her.

“Do you miss the water?”

He made no secret that he had been lurking about on her Instagram and found all her posts of beaches and sunsets that nearly matched all of his.

She turned to him, her delicate face breaking into a tired but fond smile. “Yeah, I do,” she murmured as she turned back to gaze at the river glittering with the reflection of city lights. “I bet you miss it just as much.”

That gave him a start. So she had looked at his Instagram, too.

Then she continued, “Maybe when the shooting for The King ends and all the press work are done, I can go back to the beach and maybe go diving again…”

At the mention of their time together ending, his felt his heart clench a little. He couldn’t imagine a time when he would long for the sight of her face in the middle of a fit of giggles or the scent of her hair in the breeze, turn, and not find her. Like his character, he could feel time pressing down on him with this portal to a magical world with her about to close soon.

“Don’t go somewhere nice without me. Think of going together.”

Her lips quirked in a goofy smile and her eyes sparkled as she turned to him, recognizing that what he said was her own line from episode 9. And because she was a consummate actress, she knew his next line and threw it right back at him, “I think I’m going to miss you so much!”

Then she made a sad face, a parody of the sad one he had given her on that episode. She loved making fun of him whenever they had to do a serious scene. She often pulled him to the side just to show him her version of his serious Pyeha face. The entire staff had found it funny but it would be one of the rare moments when he could feel the heat of her small hand wrapping around his wrist so he endured the teasing and laughter just so her hand would stay just a little bit longer on his skin.

His heart ached. Then it told him to be brave and jump. “Will you?” he asked her softly. “Will you, really?”

She held his gaze even as her face stuttered for a few seconds. Her eyes searched his and he let her see it – his whole heart laid bare. Her mouth, always so soft, opened slightly as he heard her sharp intake of a breath.

She understood.

“It took me 33 years to find you,” he started.

“No, Lee Gon says 25 years,” she says automatically, cutting him off.

“No. It took me,” he said, his voice low and his pause, patient, long enough to let it sink in, “33 years to find you. You don’t know, or maybe you do, how being with you, even just near you, has made me so happy it’s almost as if I never knew what happiness was before you. I don’t know why it took so long but I think, maybe, it’s because I had to deserve you first. I’m not saying I deserve you right now, right this second but—”

Her eyes moved over his face slowly as he spoke, taking in his words as carefully as she would study her lines. She knew him, how he never wasted words, and how his face could never lie. She swallowed a lump in her throat as her eyes finally gave away that she understood the enormity of what he had just told her. Her cheeks had turned pink, from the wind and from his words, and she looked down at their bent elbows, both resting on the railing.

Space, she thought. There’s so little of it between them and yet she could feel the rising gulf of emotions that were threatening to drive a wedge between them. His fans. Her fans. The public. Social media. Just thinking about it all made it a little harder for her to breathe right then.

But then he moved and she knew without even looking that he had just bent his whole 6 foot 2 inch frame low enough so he was at her height and his face turned fully to the side that if she chose to look up at that moment, she would find herself face to face with him. She knew this. She knew when he would do this.

“Will you let me show you that I am worthy of you? Will you let me try to make you as happy as you make me?”

He often did it when he asked her a question and wanted an answer.

She bit her lip, afraid to meet his eyes. Their elbows fascinated her. The space wasn’t there anymore. Through the wool of his crimson sweater, she could feel his warmth spreading from their joint elbows, across her chest, and settling strangely around her wildly beating heart. She found herself releasing a breath she hadn’t know she had held in. She could breathe fine. Her heart slowed to a steady thud. But his warmth stayed and she found herself leaning more towards him, wanting more of it, for far longer than she realized.

“Minho-nim! Goeun-nim!” Their names being called out startled them and both turned back just in time to see one of their staff holding a camera. Years of media work took over and she immediately broke out one of her signature soft smiles. He, on the other hand, tried to muster up the energy to smile but he couldn’t. His question still hung in the air between them and he was still waiting for an answer. Unlike Lee Gon, he didn’t have the benefit 15 more episodes to wait for an answer to his proposal. Nor did he have the patience. Their staff quickly took their picture, probably for more promotional work on Instagram, and moved on to their next task.

They turned to face each other once more but before either of them could say anything, his manager called him from across the set, gesturing to a young man beside him. He had a MEDIA ID around his neck and he realized he still had to do that 5-Word Interview. It couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time. But he prided himself on his work ethic so he knew he had to attend to it right away.

Sighing heavily, he turned to her, ready to apologize and beg her to continue this later. He was surprised to see the same regret he felt staring back at him on her face.

“Do you have to go? Right now?” Her voice felt small, tentative. He had to fight the urge to wrap her in his arms and never let go until all the doubts and worries he could feel emanating from her moments ago disappeared.

“I don’t want to,” he said miserably, “but I have to.” His whole face had crumpled into a frown. Then he felt the smallest of nudges on his arm. He glanced down and saw that she had moved a little bit closer to him until their elbows and upper arms were pressed up against each other. Even bent over like that, she was still so small compared to him that her shoulder only reached half of his arm.

She looked up at him then. Her eyebrows were lightly scrunched together in worry but her eyes were bright and brave. She scrunched up her nose in that adorable manner as he had seen her do during their press conference. He had told her to hold on to his arm while the press took their picture, a poster of The King: Eternal Monarch looming large behind them. And then she gave him a small smile; held his gaze before dipping her head in a short, sweet, nod.

His eyes widened. His heart stopped as if it had just passed through the obelisks into a parallel world. “Do you? Is that a…”

Her head dipped once more. Her smile was just a little bigger this time. But her eyes stayed on him.

“Yes.”

Her voice was still as soft as the strands of her hair that escaped her ponytail. But it was clear and strong and it rang through his chest like a forest of a thousand bamboo flutes. His world righted itself and time began to tick by once more.

But his life wasn’t the same anymore.

“Minho-nim!” It was his manager again, much more insistent this time. He felt his body straightening up, slowly turning away from the railing. But he kept his gaze on her, a smile that started from his chest had climbed up to his cheeks and up to the corner of his eyes.

“Yes?”

He bent his head, as if to nuzzle it against the top of hers the way he had wanted to for episode 6. He remembered how she had found his suggestion so ridiculous at that time. She drew away from him now, laughter bursting from her. Her cheeks were still tinged pink; her hair, a little wild from the wind. Her eyes glittered with a river of city lights as she playfully gave him a little shove towards the direction of his manager and the reporter.

“Yes. Yes! Yes! Now go do your interview!”

He let her push him, still a little bit dazed. Kind of like Lee Gon when TaeEul finally told him that she loved him. They weren’t there yet, him and GoEun. But unlike Lee Gon whose world was about to close, his just opened up. And he was going to make damn sure that she would be there by his side to share all of his beaches and sunsets.

But first, he had to do that that 5-Word Interview.

#fanfiction #thekingeternalmonarch #lee minho #kim go eun #leeminho #kimgoeun #leegon #lee gon #jeongtaeeul #jeong tae eul #behindthescenes

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deathbyvalentine · 3 years

Text

Bad Memories

(TW for abuse, sexual violence and self-harm.)

One

The moment after she stepped from the concrete and before she hit the water was the longest of any of her lives. The air rushed along her goose-pimpled flesh, making her hair stream upwards. Instinctively she closed her eyes, blocking out the unreality of this world, focusing only on the blackness that enveloped her. And she felt... Relief.

Part of her knew this was not embracing her madness. It was not following her divinity. It was giving in to one of the only parts of ‘Violet’ that were left. The part of her that was small, in pain and scared. The frightened animal, the homeless girl, the statistic waiting to happen. It was her that pushed her forwards, that was hoping that when she inhaled the salt water, it would do nothing but kill her. End it all. Let silence take her. Everything was too loud here. Aggressively grey. The type of mundane that swallows you whole.

What had she looked like? Standing on the wall, arms wrapped around her bare skin, shivering. Nobody had seen her. Or rather - nobody had stopped. No coaxing good samaritan, no creepy dude, no concerned citizen. Did she want to be saved? Or did she just want to be noticed?

The water was freezing cold and when she hit it, it hurt. Water rushed into her ears, her nose and her throat from the irresistible inhale. It burnt with cold. She couldn’t tell which way lay the shore or which way was up. Some part of her wanted to keep breathing, sinking to the bottom and disappearing under the silt. But then, she didn’t get a say. Someone pushed her, forced her to start kicking, a survival instinct being wrenched from somewhere deep inside, hidden well by self-harm and suicide attempts. It never let her die.

Her head broke the surface and she gasped, the salt made her throat real raw, like she was breathing broken glass. She might have been crying, it was hard to tell when she was coughing, spitting up sea water.

And then, a moment later, the clawed hand, reaching for her. For a moment, she wished she could be pulled back under, the decision taken from her, her death somebody else’s fault, for a change, for the first time.

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Two

You’re not meant to form attachments in therapy. People come and go and you can’t stake your recovery on somebody else. Trauma bonds were not famed for their steady foundations. They were like sand and could slip away from under you at a moment’s notice. Violet reached across the gulf, until their fingers met in the middle. You could only touch if you worked for it. If you wanted it.

Steph was a puker. Violet would sit on the bathroom sinks, one eye on the door as Steph kneeled at the porcelain, uselessly dry heaving. Violet was thin but Steph was thinner, her elbows sharp and her jaw a razorblade. Violet had never seen a razor blade she didn’t love and Steph was no exception. It wasn’t her usual brand of love, obsessive and damaging, more a forest fire than a love. There was no desperate sex, no screaming arguments in the streets, no break ups. They were best friends. Nothing less.

It was Steph that came to talk Violet down when she didn’t know which way was up, that coaxed her out of bed when depression pinned her there, let her scream and rage or cry and cry and cry. Violet sat with Steph through three hour dinners, helped her eat carrot sticks, told her stories when the muscle aches kept her awake far into the night. Much to the chagrin of their doctors, they were inseparable. They ignored all warnings. How could this be anything but wonderful?

She should have known then really. Good things never lasted.

She woke up at three am and Steph’s bed was empty. The ward was quiet. No blaring tv, no laughter, no arguments. It was not peaceful. It was eerie. For a long moment, she wondered if this was one of those days she woke up in another world. It wasn’t always easy to tell. She swung her legs from the bed, feet meeting sticky linoleum and made her way to the corridor. The nurse’s station was silent and still and a sick feeling curled around the bottom of her stomach, weight like lead. The door to the girl’s bathroom was thrown open, spilling sickly yellow light into the blue of the corridor. She could hear something then, whispers like rustling leaves. She slowed her footsteps, turning her own presence into something ghostlike. In the doorframe, a barrier made of white scrubs met her, facing into the room. They didn’t notice quickly enough as she slipped through between them.

It took her a moment to realise what she was seeing. The screws pried from the bottom of the bathroom sinks, now scattered on the floor like confetti for a macabre wedding. The red that sat in thick pools, forming roads in the cracks between tiles. Then the body. And it was a body. It was not her friend. Because her friend was never so still, so unsmilling. Her friend didn’t have deep gauges along her arms. Her friend was not dead.

She didn’t feel it as someone gripped the top of her arms, steering her out of the room and into the corridor, back to the room that tonight would contain only her and nobody else. She went without a fight. She allowed herself to be tucked in as if she was a child. And she stared at the wall, unsleeping, until the room turned light from the rising sun.

Three

Violet’s mouth felt like an ashtray. The pulsing in her head, a pneumatic drill. Cautiously, she opened one eye. Immediately wanting to close it, she forced herself to face reality. A choice she regretted as soon as she saw exactly what the reality was. First of all, the reality was the dude laying next to her, still sleeping, still smelling of whiskey and whatever they were smoking last night. The room itself was not better. The wooden floor was devoid of polish. The walls only had the reminder of wallpaper on them, hanging in long strips that reminded her of flypaper. There was no door, not even the illusion of privacy. It had been kicked in and never replaced. After all, who was going to pay for it to be? Not the council, not the tenants and certainly not the cheeky fuckers that used it as a halfway house of meth den and squat. She leaned over Derek? Toby? whoever, to retrieve the joint from the top of a can, lighting it and taking a long drag. On the floor, more sleepers lay, in various stages of undress. Like she was. She stood up, her body suddenly aching in a hundred different places. The crook of her elbow from needles. Her knees from scaling the back wall and landing on them, scraping the skin. Her shoulder from someone’s teeth. Her brow from someone’s fist. She couldn’t even remember others, them cloaked in a chemical haze. One step forward and she flinched back - checking the underside of her foot she found a shard of glass, reluctant to be removed.

She found a shirt, hers or somebody else’s. She could not find her jeans, not upstairs, not in the bathroom that contained only a bath, not in the living room that had a TV with a smashed in screen and stained carpet. Nor could she find any milk for tea in the kitchen - not that she looked too closely when she opened the fridge and she realised it has been turned off some sometime long before it was emptied. She with more strength than skill managed to pull the bolt across the back door and step into the back garden. It was overgrown, which was exactly what she expected. She just needed to breathe something that wasn’t stagnant air or the deodorant of an unwashed man.

The air was fresh and cold. Her skin shivered into goosebumps and she wiggled her toes against the concrete of the step. The smoke curled upwards towards the sky in delicate ribbons. Inside her head, the Hotel was quiet. It didn’t matter if it was because it was morning or because she had finally managed to drug them into a stupor. For right now, it was just her.

Just her.

She exhaled in a shaking breath. It was only when it was quiet that you could take stock. She wasn’t quite sure how long this latest binge had went on. Her eyes were sore with smeared make up. Hair thick with smoke and unwashed oil. She had lost her ring, her necklace, apparently her jeans. Bruises felt painted all over her. Inside, those people would wake up and move on, like locusts directly after clearing an entire field of crops. They were careless people. Perhaps that was why she had chosen them.

As she finished the joint, she heard an odd noise. She stood, brushing grit from her and hunted inside, following the buzzing into the living room and underneath the couch. Wrinkling her nose at the dirt and dead insects, she managed, just about, to retrieve what was now recognisably her phone. She didn’t get up, crouching as she looked at the screen. An ex-boyfriend, probably calling to scream at her about a missing wallet or a fucked best friend. She pressed to decline without much consideration. But kept the phone in her palm, thumb posed questioningly over a contact. Before she could second-guess herself any further, she pressed it, moving her thumb straight to her mouth to chew on a nail anxiously. A receptionist, a waiting tone and then -

“Hi. Mal? Yeah, no, I’m okay.” She closed her eyes, listening to the voice on the other end. “Yeah. I think..Maybe could I come home now? I know what Zoey said but - oh. Thank you. Yeah, let me just go outside and look at the address.” The voice again and she barked out a laugh, almost surprised at the sound. “Yeah yeah, alright, always a comedian...” It was somehow easier to act okay now she was talking to him, the last reserve of normality able to be wrenched from a store she didn’t know she had. Sounding like your life wasn’t going to absolute shit on a phone was a learnt skill and not one she could always employ. But here it was now, arguably when she needed it least.

___________________________________________________________

Four

Landing in a hospital for a suicide attempt was fine. Landing in hospital because of self-harm, unintended to be a suicide attempt, was just humiliating. The factoring in that she didn’t actually remember if it was herself or someone else who lived in her head rent free and it was officially a clusterfuck. Her arns were stitched back together, cleaned out and bound up type by the sort of nurse she would have no doubt would later be calling her a drain on the national health service. It was very hard not to think that she had a point.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to rip the ivs out of her arms. She wanted to find a knife and gouge out her own bones, eyes, existence. Cross herself out until she was just a ball of viscera and dead matter. She realised a moment later that she was screaming, even though it hurt her throat, even though it made someone come into her room and whispering soothing words that made no sense, that jumbled up inside her head until it was another language entirely.

She wanted to be normal. Why couldn’t she just be normal?

_____________________________________________________________

Five

She felt her teeth clack together as she was slammed back against the wall, her head hitting it hard enough that for a moment, her vision swam. It had knocked the breath out of her and she couldn’t even think of anything to scream, say, do. It didn’t matter. His hands were tight around her arms, almost able to wrap his hand around them entirely. There was bruising force. She would have purple fingerprints on her arms to match the ones underneath her jaw from where he had gripped it. That was perhaps where she had made a vital error. He had forced her to look at him, to make eye contact and she had done all she could think of. And spat in his face.

She was regretting it now. His shoulder pressed against her chest as he fumbled with his trousers, muttering something about her being a bitch. She knew how this went. She screwed up her eyes tight, that old childhood belief coming back to her. If she couldn’t see it, it couldn’t hurt her.

It didn’t work. It never worked. She bit her own lip so hard her mouth filled with the hard tang of her own blood and she swore she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying. She managed to keep that promise to herself. It was something she could hold onto, something she could focus on to blank out what was happening to her. One day, she’d forget this promise. A person can only take so much before the idea of pride, of ‘winning’ mattered at all. Before you accepted you were just losing.

And would keep on losing.

_________________________________________________________

Six

She was surrounded in fog. Somewhere, she could hear rushing water, loud and until nothing else could be heard. The fog was not cold. It was not much of anything. It left no moisture on her skin, she did not feel it in her lungs. It simply covered her. She moved slowly within it, never getting anywhere.

She blinked and it was night time. The window in her room showed a sprinkling of streetlights, the softer lights switched on in the corridor. Her mouth felt dry and her fingers didn’t work properly when she reached out for the glass. She knocked it off the small table, sending it tumbling to the floor.

She blinked and it was morning. She was sitting up in bed and the the light was crisp and clear. Someone was checking her pulse, making small talk and marking something on the Chalice Foundation’s clipboard. She gently put her arm around Violet’s shoulders, tilting her forwards to help her drink. And placing a pill on her tongue, bitter and hard to swallow.

Another few moments and the fog rolled over her, dragging her under and under, everything faded out. She tried to claw her way out, to blink free the daze that was descending over her. It didn’t work and she stopped trying. Sometimes you just had to let the tide take you. She wasn’t sure how long she drowned for. But when she woke up, actually woke up, the leaves had turned a beautiful golden colour and had started tumbling to the ground in great waves, settling against any surface that would take it.

____________________________________________________________

Seven

They were talking about her. She had to walk down the corridor naturally. If they knew she had heard them, they would hurt her now, rather than later. Don’t look at them. Don’t think about them. They could hear her thoughts so she had to think of something else. Anything else. Or find a way to keep them out of her head. She got to her room and she closed the door and she blocked it with her desk chair but it wasn’t enough it was never enough they would find a way in so she had to hide.

Underneath the bed was dark and she couldn’t make herself small enough. There was something breathing in the dark, something waiting, something that wanted to gobble her up and break her bones and punish her for all the bad things she had done and thought and thought about doing. Maybe if she got the badness out of her it wouldn’t come so she raked her nails across her skin as much as she could to try and scratch it out but it wasn’t enough it would never be enough.

Someone knocked on her door and it took all she had not to scream but if they heard her scream they would know where she was so she held her breath. There were two people watching her and she didn’t recognise them, they were new and if they were new they were dangerous and they would hurt her and some part of her would always know this and it would spread in her bones and she never forgot not really and neither would Zoey or Wendy or any of the others.

She covered her ears. She closed her eyes. But there were things living in that darkness too. In every darkness.

__________________________________________________________

Eight

There were no words for how it smelt. How it felt. The slickness of decomposition. The dead reduced down to liquid and mush and blackness and oh god she was going to drown in bodies. This was how it was going to happen. She could fall in here forever. Zac couldn’t reach her. Victoria couldn’t reach her. This would be it forever.

She broke the surface a moment later, heavy limbs moving to the side, her blindly reaching out to try and find hands, a surface, anything to drag herself out of the warehouse sized coffin, the bodies of millenia, a fucking metaphysical plague pit. It was in her ears. Her mouth. Her nose. Everything was death and it clung to her and she would never be clean of it, how could she be? You couldn’t wash this off. It would stick. In her mind as well as her body. She could save the world and this still would still exist. This moment. The thing is about time is that it never really ended. And neither would this.

____________________________________________________________

????

The crackling of pain from an injection. The snapping of bone. A parent turning away. Mal not stopping any of it. A break up because she was broken. On and on. On and on. On and on.

#prose #violet #rape tw #abuse tw #self harm tw

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piprocrastinator · 4 years

Text

Cream Sauce of My Thoughts

MewGulf

Crack fic

Gulf has a bad day and goes to the grocery store

Warning - implied content and dirty words..

Length: 3703

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24746140

Gulf was having a bad day.

Like a really bad day.

Worse than a moderate inconvenience day which seems to be most days that he has to go to class and work. It was worse than that. Although in all reality his tolerance for bad days was low and he had been called dramatic for his renditions of a whining child on his other so-called bad days, so maybe his perception wasn't too great with them, to begin with. Most days he complained about having a bad day were just average days that didn’t include him playing his mobile game for eight hours straight. And today he wasn’t playing his mobile game all day so you know, a bad day ... that seemed to escalate very quickly, like a rock rolling down a hill.

But he still somehow managed to land… a date with his crush?

Hold on. Was it really a bad day then? Sure didn't feel like one up until that moment.

His day had started out fine, besides the waking up part and having to go to class part. Otherwise fine. But he realized as he was awoken to the loud shrill sound of his alarm that he was late. Which normal meant, hurrah for him, he can skip and sleep more but not today. Today that meant that he was late and had five minutes to run to the library to print off an essay that was due that day and he had stayed up late last night finishing it because he spends the whole week playing mobile games instead of his paper. So today's late was not good, at all. Not if he wanted to pass his class.

Scrambling out of bed, slamming into the ground, hard, as his feet tangled with his sheets because why not have his morning start out being late and having bruises. He manages to just barely miss the door as he skids out of his room but stubs his toe in his haste against the wall.

It really should have been a sign from the universe that something was wrong. But he persevered because he didn’t get two hours of sleep working on a paper for nothing. Thankfully the journey to the library was quicker than usual. Normally it took fifteen minutes while today took six and as he ignored his throbbing legs and his screaming lungs as he waited for his paper to print he wondered if maybe he had joined the football team in college he might be in better shape to have made it even quicker. His glares at the machine as it slowly hums to life printing one of the sheets before claiming a paper jam. He checked the drawer. Nothing. He tapped the screen and the machine continued, one more page and then the paper jam screen.

Fucks sakes.

Repeated the process. One more sheet. He needed two more to be done.

Inhaling before huffing out an exhale as he repeated the process until his pages were all printed before sprinting to class, tripping up the steps and almost losing two of the sheets before thankfully catching them with his face against the ground in a second trip straight after the first, because the universe was feeling slapstick comedy today it seemed.

For those keeping track at home that’s-

Universe: 3 Gulf: 0

Quickly checking his nose for blood, finding none before sprinting to the door to his class. Glancing inside, he waited until his teacher was facing the board before sneaking in the back and finding the closest empty chair.

When class ended he followed the stream of students to the teacher's desk where he casually wrote his name in attendance while the teacher looked away before through his now stapled essay onto the stack with all the others.

Universe: 3 Gulf: 1

Feeling accomplished and most of this bad mood having dispersed throughout class he heads back to his dorm for some much-needed gaming and cookies. He wasn’t normally one for sweets but he had recently found these cookies that seemed to disregard his non-sweet tooth and he’d honestly been bingeing them for the past week. It also didn’t help that he’d seen Mew –that one classmate from his elective art class that he had the biggest crush on - eating them. He knew Mew had a sweet tooth and had not so subtle watched him eat ice cream after class a few times from the ice cream truck that makes rounds on Tuesday and Thursday to the campus. He was pretty sure Mew had a magical tongue.

For ice cream, strictly ice cream. He never had a dream about Mew licking a certain something else. Never.

The joyful thoughts of cookies and games filling his mind he failed to see the person speeding walking around the corner, and their precariously held open cup of coffee.

Coffee meet pants. Oh, how nice to scold you.

Universe: 4 Gulf: 0

Wait no he’ll give himself .5 for actually getting his paper turned in so

Universe: 4 Gulf: 0.5

Gulf hiss as the hot liquid spills over his jeans, he can hear the apologetic voice of the person he ran into but he waves it off. The dark cloud was back with a vengeance it seemed. He cared about nothing else at that moment then getting his pants off and as soon as he stomped into his dorm his pants flung across the room narrowly missing Mild who was sitting on their couch, textbook pulled to his nose.

“Welcome home.” Mild chided sarcastically glancing over his book to watch Gulf rummage through the cabinets like a crazy maniac. Which he was. He was mad and he wanted cookies. Where were his cookies?

“If you’re looking for your cookies, they’re gone.” Gulf glares before following the finger Mild has pointed to the fridge. The whiteboards read Grocery list then underneath Cookies in giant lettering and multiple lines underneath.

Gulf groans slamming his head into the fridge, he could hear the wince Mild made but ignored in favor of yelling at last night him for finishing off the cookies without proper forethought to future today him who needed the cookies. How rude of himself to be so rude to him.

“You can just buy more.” Mild states like Gulf doesn’t already understand that he could but he wants them now not in the twenty minutes it’ll take to get to the store buy them and walk back.

“You can just buy more.” Gulf mocked back in a whiney tone as he stomped to his room. He’s going to go buy more because what other option does he have.

He stared at his overflowing laundry basket and then his drawers, realizing that his past self procrastinating laundry day in favor of video games has come back to haunt him and all of his pants were dirty and the only cleans on left were a pair of shorts that were both too short and too tight but he refused to throw them away because both Mild and his mother had told him he needed too. It had been a matter of pride at the time that he can’t say he regrets but really wishes he would have thrown them out and bought a new pair as he puts them on now.

They weren’t that bad, they would do well enough for him to get to the store and back because right now he wanted cookies or he was going to do something crazy. Like jerk off and go to sleep ignoring all responsibility. Which he shouldn’t do. Look at him making the responsible choice for once and all in the name of cookies.

He needed cookies to make his day better so he could do laundry and then he could be comfy in clean clothes while working on his final projects as the semester was coming to a close and all his teachers seemed to think that he wasn’t some who procrastinated all semester and they all assigned projects. Projects that he was now in a time crunch to finish. Thus he was taking the day back from the humorless universe and for that, cookies.

“Nice ass.” Mild yells after him complete with a wolf whistle. Gulf threw a finger back at him over his shoulder, "And get milk too.”

Stomping through the isles in search of the holy grail was harder than he thought mostly because he refused to look at signs and they apparently rearranged the store without telling him (hindsight a few days later would have him realize that they, in fact, were not changed his mood just created a mist of denial). So who knows where his precious cookies are at. It matches his day so he wasn’t surprised by his troubles to find his precious cookies.

“Young man.” Gulf skids to a halt in front of an older lady, who looked about the age of his grandmother, she smiles at him before pointing to the top shelf. “Mind helping an old lady out. I need that jar of cream sauce but I can’t reach it.”

All the manners his parents had instilled into his flared into action because of course, he could help her. Sure it slowed down the process of finding his long lost love, cookies, but it was worth it to help someone. He smiled and reached for the jar, his fingers touched the side when he noticed movement down the aisle. A person, was that Mew? Fuck it was. Mew was walking down the aisle staring at him. More importantly, staring at his shorts. He could feel the gaze. It was those damn shorts. Thank you shorts?

It was at that moment that he realized the universe had one last trick up its sleeve. He was so distracted with Mew's gaze that his fingers tipped the jar, it hit the shelf before the lid popped off and the white cream sauce dumped from the glass container pouring down his chest and thighs. Which really, really was the frosting to his cake at that moment. The universe was literally jizzing on him. Oh universe, why?

“Oh, dear.” The lady clicked her tongue before pulling out a handkerchief from her purse and handing it to him. “What a mess.”

“Let me help.” Gulf head swiveled around to face Mew, who had managed to make it all the way down the aisle to them and was right there. Right there in front of him, staring at the white sauce messy he had all over his front. It definitely brought up images of a different white substance that Gulf had dreamed about just last night, it too involved Mew in front of him but they were vastly different circumstances. Somehow this scene was still giving him the deja vu feel because of how similar they were.

He regrets deciding to go to this grocery store because he knows that Mews family owns it and that Mew works here. He purposely goes to this one store only when he looks good so he pretends that he wasn’t living a life fueled by fried basil pork and phone games -and now apparently cookies. He wanted to ogle Mew from a distance and in the off chance that Mew saw him, he looked good. He had set out that plan long ago to slowly attract Mew.

This was not part of the plan. And he defiantly didn’t look good now. He looked the opposite of good. He looked bad. Real Bad. He was wearing shorts that were too tight and too short, white cream sauce covering his front and he was pretty sure that there was a patch of hair sticking up somewhere on his head from the way he slept that he had purposely been ignoring all day. He looked a mess. He was a mess.

Universe: 5 Gulf: 0

Actually he takes that back at this moment he gives himself a negative point because he went to this grocery store and not a different one.

Universe: 5 Gulf: -1

Gulf wasn’t sure what happened but one second he was idly dabbing the front of his shirt with the borrowed handkerchief trying to not look up at Mew in the very vain hope that Mew wouldn’t recognize him (Blatantly ignoring the fact that they had previously made eye contact) and the next second Mew was ushering him to the back of the store and into some office. He kept his head down the whole time, maybe if he didn’t look at Mew then Mew would still think he was cute and not a mess. Maybe this embarrassing moment wouldn't ruin his non-existence chance with Mew.

Though to be fair he was pretty sure no matter what happened, he knew later that night he would one hundred percent be jerking off to thoughts about Mew licking cream sauce off his dick much like he’d seen him do the ice cream cones much time before. And yes he is aware that it makes him feel a tiny bit creepy thinking about someone else in that sense but Mew was too attractive and hot to not to.

He plopped into the chair as Mew turned and left the room. Now he was sitting in some uncomfortable old chair that looked older than he was, in a tiny office the was surprisingly organized for being so crowded with what Gulf assumed was paperwork. Now what. Sneak out before Mew gets back to save face? There wasn’t anything else besides the handkerchief to clean himself.

Maybe he should call Mild and ask for some shorts to change into so he doesn’t have to walk back to the dorm like this.

He smears the sauce over his thighs, making a lazy figure eight as he pouts. He didn’t even get his cookies. Now he’s going to have to go home and change then come back to get cookies. Before he gets any more time to try and think of a solution (ie, sulk) about his situation he hears the door open.

“Here,” Mew squats down in front of Gulf holding out a wet washcloth. Gulf flushes - because who wouldn’t when your crush is suddenly so close that only small movement could have him touching your knee or better yet falling into your lap.

“Thanks.” Gulf wipes himself off trying not to think of how close Mew is, or how close Mew's hand is as it hovers by his knee as if waiting for Gulf to ask for its help. And Gulf wants to ask. He is all for asking Mew to use his long veining hands to rub his thighs—

“It’s not cum.” Gulf sputters out then instantly tries to retract his words by sputtering before he finally stares, eyes wide at his legs. Why did he say that? Why? What was wrong with his brain to mouth filter?

Mew lets out a tiny awkward chuckle, “I’m very uh, aware of the difference between cream sauce and… cum. But uh, thank you for clarifying.”

“Yeah me too… uh, I mean, you’re welcome.” Gulf was pretty sure at that moment that his face had simply turned into flames and was burning off, melting into his lap. Or that is to say, his face was very very warm.

“Our shelves can be tall, maybe next time if you need help-”

“I’m tall,” Gulf shouts defiantly, then shrinks back. “I mean, I’m tall enough. I can reach them fine.”

“Are you sure?” Gulf could her the light tone that was meant to be a joke but the embarrassment must have fried his brain because he stood up out of his so quickly that Mew toppled over. There was a second where Gulf watch his flail before he reached forward to pull him into a stand in front of him. Mew hands on his arm for support, chest to chest (well almost because he was still sticky but they were definitely close). Mew's hands hoover over his hips for a moment before they fall back to his sides and Gulf can see Mew's eyes glance between them. It's definitely the shorts and he can't tell if he should wear them more or through them out but there's something in Mews eyes as he gives them a glance.

“See,” Gulf grumbles eyes looking over Mew's face. This was the first time he’d been this close and honestly, he wasn’t sure he could handle Mew being this close. All Mews very intense eye contact. What were they trying to say because they were dancing in a way the Gulf didn't understand but very much so wanted to. “Taller.” He whispers.

Mew snorts amused before reaching up to ruffle his hair -Gulf may or may not have felt his heart pouter to a stop momentarily at the action- before he said “You may be taller but I’m bigger.”

Gulf gulped at the smirk on Mew's face. His eyes trailing from Mew's face to his broad chest. Mew was one thousand percent correct about that fact. Gulf was a few centimeters taller but Mew was broader. He could blanket Gulf in a hug. Gulf wished Mew would blanket him in a hug. Maybe a naked hug. Maybe a naked sweaty hug. He stares at Mew’s chest for longer than can be considered decent and he knows this because Mew does a fake cough to get his attention and when they make eye contact again Mew raises a brow.

“I’m pretty strong too,” Mew says softly. Gulf nods absently trying not to think of how strong Mew might be. He doesn’t need any more fuel for his not safe for work dreams at night. “I can easily lift the sake of potatoes and throw it against the wall.”

Gulf opens his mouth in question but then laughs -a little louder than he meant to- because was that Mew trying to flirt? “What? I can’t tell if you're flirting or threatening me.”

“Wha-no, I was trying- you know.” Mew sputters and for the first time, Gulf sees Mew blush. “That was flirting.” He says in a low tone that borders a whine.

Oh, no Gulf’s heart, Mew’s not supposed to be both sexy and cute, he couldn’t handle it. “Throwing me against a wall is flirting?”

“Maybe not throwing…” Mew trails over and Gulf can see the muscles in his arms tense for a moment. “Lifting, holding maybe.”

“Like potatoes?” Gulf asks and then snickers when Mew rolls his eyes with a smirk.

“Not sure why you’d be flirting?” Gulf tugs at his own dirty shirt, “Is it because I’m covered in a white liquid substance?”

“You got me there. The white stuff is such a turn on.” Mew's tone was sarcastic yet amused, his eyes sparkling. Gulf was maybe just a little enamored. (ok super enamored.)

“Turns me on.” Gulf looks at him from under his lashes. He’s not really sure if it will work but he’s seen enough of those romantic comedy movies to know that it should. Gulf waits for a beat as Mew's eyes grow wide then says, “See that’s flirting.”

Gulf smiles widely at the belly laugh from Mew. Mew takes a step back as he settles down, his eyes still sparkling as he glances over Gulf. “Let me take you home?”

“I-” Gulf wants to say yes, of course, take him home, take him to bed. Take him anyway and anywhere, but, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Mew looks around the room, resignation written over his face. “oh, I thought… with the flirting that meant- ”

“Oh no, I mean yes, I was flirting. It’s just that today is a bad day.” He waves vaguely to his shirt then around the room as if it would explain. “Maybe instead, not today, something, you know a-another day…”

“Another day?” Mew questions, then nods. “Ok, another day. How about a date then?”

“D-Date?”

“Date.”

“Yeah… yeah, that would be great.” Gulf mirrors Mew's smile as his heart flutters in his chest.

Universe: 0 Gulf: 1

Bonus:

Their first date didn’t actually get to happen for a couple of weeks because of finals but they had exchanged numbers that day even if Gulf hadn’t gotten his cookies. Since then they messaged whenever they could. They also had one really good round of phone sex. Gulf had tried to get more phone sex but Mew convinced him to wait for when they could have sex in person. Which seemed reasonable enough to Gulf.

Mew smiles at Gulf from the doorway as he waits for Gulf to finish putting on his shoes. Both dressed smart yet casual. Gulf not so subtly glancing at the open buttons of Mews shirt that was one button too many not to be purposeful temptation. Mew, the little sneak trying to seduce Gulf. It's too late, he's been seduced for awhile now.

“So I was thinking for our first date-” Gulf looks up -from Mews delectable chest to his handsome face- Mews was smirking slyly down at him, hands in his pockets. “We could eat Italian, there’s this place up the road that has the best cream sauce.”

If Gulf was any less of a man he would have tackled Mew in embarrassment -or because Mew cocky smirk was hot- but instead he stands, calmly, stepping closer to Mew, looking up through his lashes. Let his finger trail over the button on Mews shirt, digging deep into his flirty mindset, and pulled out, “How about instead we stay here and I can eat your cream sauce instead.”

“You’re disgusting” Mild grumbles loudly from the couch a couple of feet away, adamantly not looking at them in the doorway. “But if that’s happening let me know so I can leave.”

Mew laughs, ruffling Gulfs hair before letting his hand caress Gulf cheek. “Don’t tempt me.” Then that hands slips down his neck and chest and tugs Gulf closer by his hip. “Although I wouldn’t mind a snack before dinner.”

“That’s it, I’m staying at Boats tonight.” Mild sighs exasperatedly.

“Kidding.” Mew chuckles before pulling Gulf out the door.

“He might be kidding but I wasn’t, stay at Boats. Thanks bye.”

Universe: 0 Gulf: 2

#MewGulf #Mewgulf fic #my writing #also found on ao3 #spills sauce #MewGulf au

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trashyeggroll · 5 years

Note

'storm' for ramvers:) also i loved your ramvers fic(s)! didn't know you wrote for then too. every ship ive soo much as looked at you've got it covered lol.

🤩 thanks anon!! so many good ships, not enough waking/not working hours in the day. ramvers is absolutely one of my favorites to write, the fluff potential is just as endless as the angst. also i am 90s kid so the references in the movie felt like a personal attack

#11 Storm: a too-long backstory sandbox 😅

For days, the meteorologists had watched and issued warnings about the tropical storm barreling across the southern Atlantic and along the Gulf of Mexico. On August 3, 1970, the upgraded Hurricane Celia it made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, wreaking havic on the coastal town, knocking down buildings like dominoes, washing away roads like sand, and roaring with winds that sounded like rocket shells to the families who had remained, huddled in shelters and basements and bathrooms.

One of them had been six-year-old Maria Rambeau, frozen with terror as she sat frozen with terror in her family’s dark basement. It sounded to her like the world was ending at the top of the stairs, and water had started leaking through the walls, puddling in the low spots in the floor. Maria clung to her older brother’s arm while they stared in silence at the rumbling ceiling, occasionally releasing a cloud of dust and dirt after a particularly loud bang. Maria felt like she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink for fear that her whole world would be ripped away.

When the storm passed, Maria emerged to find half of their house gone, smashed to splinters, and in the ensuing days, as the Rambeaus packed up to relocate with family in Louisiana, the death toll in Texas would top out at 15, and Celia would long hold the title of the costliest storm in the state’s history.

As the years passed, Maria learned to manage her fear of storms, of thunderclaps and dark skies at high noon. She might’ve enlisted in the Navy if not for the way trickling water still made her pulse tick faster, and the very thought of being surrounded on all sides in the belly of a metal ship for months on end… No, the skies were Maria’s home, and besides, nobody flew fighters in storms.

Much to her chagrin, Monica loved storms, a trait very likely learned from Carol, who after growing up in the land of tornadoes found hurricane season somewhat quaint… especially after gaining her powers. A bolt of natural lightning would be like an ant bite to Captain Marvel, and gale-force winds like a pleasant breeze.

That had been something of a problem in the years that Carol had been missing. Their daughter had lost her example of confidence and wonder, and too often, Maria had felt too nervous herself to properly comfort Monica through roaring storms that tore the limbs off trees and shingles from their roof. Monica was strong, though, and during storms or clear skies, she made Maria more and more proud of her with each passing day.

Still, Maria was tired of cowering before storms. She’d zipped through space in extraterrestrial crafts, held laser guns and battled movie monsters come to life. Storms seemed like a reasonable foe to conquer.

Carol had listened to her plan with widening eyes, and when those ran out of real estate, her eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline. “That is… dramatic.”

“Says twinkle fists,” Maria shot back, arms crossed over her chest.

“Are you sure?”

“Are you sure you can hold up your end?”

The mild challenge made Carol scoff, and Maria knew the conversation was over before the blonde added, “Pfft. Easy.”

And so, on July 18, 1997, almost three decades after the night in the family basement, Maria Rambeau instesd donned a lightweight spacesuit that Carol brought her from another world. Her wife still looked a bit worried as she fastened the last airtight cuff, her forehead adorably wrinkled when she stepped back.

“I want to do this,” Maria murmured into her helmet, which would transmit to Carol’s own suit. “And… I’ll have you there, with me.”

The blonde’s expression softened, and her lips quirked into a smile as Maria grasped her hand, giving it an extra squeeze for good measure. Usually, she could feel the heat from her supercharged wife’s skin, but the suit effectively blocked it, and she supposed that was good for what was about to happen.

“No pressure,” Carol stilled joked against her lips, and Maria gently thunked her helmet against the superhero’s forehead. It was a poor stand-in for a kiss, but Carol would probably make her refit the whole suit if she disengaged the face shield, and it got her signal of affection across.

The first drops of rain were starting to plink against the metal roof of Maria’s workshop, and she blinked reflexively at the drops spattering against the glass shielding her eyes when they stepped out from the shop’s refuge. Carol folded her arms around Maria’s chest, attaching a bungee cord between their suits for good measure, and after a quick 3-2-1 countdown, they jettisoned together into the darkening sky.

Hurricane Danny roared ahead, drenching the Louisiana delta, and Maria’s heart started thudding against her ribcage. It certainly looked different, from a few hundred feet in the air. Carol’s alien fire burned up the rain before it reached them, but Maria could feel the outer winds, and each flash of lightning turning the sky to daylight made her muscles tense. But Carol was right there, holding her firmly to her chest, giving her encouraging squeezes whenever she felt Maria go stiff.

The hurricane-force winds were at the eye of the beast, but Carol didn’t take her through them; the superhero turned and zoomed higher, until the rain broke over their heads, and it was just stars above. Maria would never tire of that view.

“Look,” Carol’s tinny voice chirped in her ear.

Maria tilted her chin down as they stopped to hover in place. She’d seen astronauts’ photos of hurricanes before, but they didn’t do an ounce of justice to the effect. The slow swirl of the clouds, the way lightning illuminated puffy sections in white-blue. The storm was still mostly over the ocean, tracking a strange, jagged path across the gulf states.

“It’s almost pretty,” Maria said, not entirely consciously. “From up here. But I’d hate to be on a boat down there, right now.”

Carol’s glow brightened. “I’ve seen better.”

Maria twisted a little in her arms, enough to see the cheesy grin her wife was flashing over her shoulder, nose wrinkled. “You stop.”

“What? I’m adjusting your associations with storms. And I meant it.” The blonde adjusted her hold as Maria turned back around, dropping one hand to grip Carol’s tightly. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.” Maria had no sooner sighed the words before Carol took off, hurtling them back down, towards the massive eye of the hurricane. This time, Maria closed her eyes against the rush of panic, fighting off flashing memories from her childhood—the helplessness, the way her imagination turned breaking beams into skyfall.

“It’s just heat and water, that’s all,” Carol was saying as they dove through the clouds, purposefully dipping ito the place where the winds blew hardest, and the rain became a sheet. The sound, even through her suit, drowned out nearly every thought, all sound completely overtaken by endless water… and she could still feel Carol holding her tight. Her arms were sure and her flight steady. Maria opened her eyes.

Behind her face shield, it almost looked as though they were moving through a choppy ocean, except for the bubble of safety in Carol’s glow, and Maria imagined this might be how it felt to be in one of those ocean cages, where you could get “up close and personal” with sharks. Except, Maria’s foe was on all sides, and her metal cage was the strongest in the universe. Heat and water. Life or death, depending on the form. That, the engineer in her understood well.

Maria’s nerves seem to peak along with the winds, like a wave breaking on a rocky shore, and a final burst of adrenaline had her shouting into her helmet, a crowing victory call that no one but Carol and the hurricane could hear, and her wife’s musical laughter filled her earpiece.

Veering sharply to the right, Carol took them through the wall of the storm, and as suddenly as they’d dove into danger, they were floating in cool, calm air, high over an churning ocean. Water fell off them in a miniature falls, and Carol gingerly turned Maria in her arms.

“Better?”

“Better,” agreed Maria, reaching up to open her helmet, now that they’d returned to human-friendly heights. “Just heat and water.”

Carol nodded, smiling as Maria looked around the surreal column over the ocean, illuminated by the moon and Captain Marvel herself. When she turned back, Maria couldn’t help but capture her wife’s lips in a kiss, taking another small victory in the way they dipped in the air and Carol’s small noise of surprise.

#not entirely happy with this #but regardless THANK YOU for the prompt #trashy writing #ramvers #danbeau #long post #the keep reading isn't working

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mantrabay · 4 years

Text

Hitchiker From Another World.

Saturday an overarching day that's both conduit and shelter for souls in transition.

Thoughts of the more disturbing kind may intrude.

Little did I know what lay ahead.

All these scenarios flashed across my mind as the wheels of my car screeched to a halt.

Shafts of radiant sunlight revealed a light green leaf entwined placard.

An obscure but apocryphal question -

Going somewhere?

A hitchhiker appeared with the most expressive eyes.

Like shining windows admitting the rush of a golden dawn.

Her rippling nuanced voice spoke.

“Hello, I'm Lelia. Life is a series of stops

and strange encounters.

A journey of some kind.”

Thought-provoking stuff!

She extended her supple silken right hand.

“Hop in.

I'm Joshua King. Going anywhere in particular?"

I enquired archly after the ritual handshake.

"Besides going somewhere or nowhere!”

I continued.

"In one sense I'm not sure.

But there is this place we should all go to.

You'll know what I mean later.”

Lelia mysteriously.

"Not to worry.

Travel is therapy for me."

What made me, Joshua King, say that?

The mind can be overpopulated with figments.

Frustrated figments waiting for that frenzied freedom dash.

This svelte lady wearing an azure padded jacket and sea blue denims glided gracefully into my car.

Hatha yoga asana entry.

My pinstripe attire seemed conventional

on a philosophical journey man.

"Love the aroma ....air freshener.

Orchard in a vehicle.

Symbol of attempted purge."

The hitchhiker's dulcet voice drooping.

Redolent of metaphysics classes I had to abandon.

I was naive enough to believe that attending these courses would fix my “issues.”

More than just momentary bugs.

They couldn't be spray canned away.

I was, however, adept at avoiding their resolution.

My “issues” were other "selves.”

I called them timid, anxious, fidgety ,scrupulous withdrawn.

“What’s more I chat to them.

These chats I call the "whispers.”

Will Lelia notice?”

My twin brother, Jonah, a twin in “every sense” could point to my tendency to flee.

We spotted each other’s flaws with aplomb.

Banter between mirror images of real selves!

Tortured twin psyches.

Jonah was an integral part of these "whispers" too!

All these thoughts were doing hula hoops in my head.

In the process peculiarities surfaced with Lelia..

"I'm Lelia again. Don't forget. You probably won't.

This place I alluded to is but a distance from here.

Distance is a gulf whose magnitude is shaped by its smoothness of passage.

Or the fate that awaits one.

My destination is another world altogether."

Lelia’s cryptic crossword setter.remark.

Tapping my shoulder she extended her hand again.

Her fingers and thumb spatially arranged with tutored

stillness.

Was that repetition a neurotic oddity or a symptom of a deeper malaise?

I nodded to the said hand gesture.

We both brushed this bizarre incident off.

The spot on asides and the strict avoidance of that verbal litter referred to as small talk suggested we should.

Pauses. They did surface periodically.

The silence was then punctuated by a sudden remark.

"All those conifers. Look at how they reach out to the sky.”

One of Lelia’s poetic observations.

“They seem so close yet isolated.

There is something almost within their grasp.

Almost.”

Lelia nonplussed.

“See the adjoining fields. The green is but a cover. They are as neighbours in a high rise flat.

One could say they are both connected and disconnected at the same time.”

Lelia resting her case.

“I'm a bit of a writer and maths researcher.”

I proffered.

"Recluses some say.

Oh, I didn't mean you

Necessarily.”

Ouch, said my shattered Id.

Lelia, archer of the scar inflicting jibe.

Bow and arrow baroness of stinging broadsides.

This offshoot to our conversation was infused with a wry allusion.

Insight on a whim.

We both laughed at the incongruity of a conversation that had become elliptical in form.

Tangents cropped up as impetus to the other person's willingness to reveal themselves.

Lelia didn't exactly volunteer her vocation but left clues.

“You didn't say what you did?

Student ...essayist ...author."

Me sounding Lelia out.

“Oh no children….dashing right across the road in front of us.

Squealing with delight. Whoops of innocent joy? They are sticking out their tongues now!”

Hair-raising moment I hadn't anticipated.

I spied Lelia sticking her tongue out at those reckless varmints.

She stopped the minute I noticed.

“Children …….sometimes you have to act like a kid when dealing with kids."

Straight and to the point from this hitchhiker.

She now resumed the thread of an earlier topic.

“Work ….you asked about work.

I sort of work and play with the mind.

Play act too.”

A retort of sudoku like complexity.

As I digested lelia’s response it dawned on me how much like people my "selves”were.

Even when driving I "dialogued” those various aspects.

“You've an interesting face. The face is like a map, I say.

Heard you mutter about your "selves."

Leslie being cheeky.

Silence as challenge started to creep in.

Russian roulette without rules.

“Watch your driving, there." Lelia being brash.

Her different voices now somersaulting.

“Very quite aren't we, Josh?"

Josh mark you!

Grilling me like an interrogator trying to crack a stubborn suspect.

Without a word of warning Lelia raised her voice and got into a tantrum.

“What's the matter ….lost something?”

Joshua said anxiously.

A curious search resembling a scrum ensued.

Then more silence.

I craned my neck and spotted an uncanny regression.

Lelia talking to herself in a child-like manner and then changing tack.

“Don't worry. Found what I was looking for.”

Another void.

A tense lull. A little lockjaw appears when the juice runs out of discourse.

I squinted in the mirror once more.

This time Lelia was talking to her palm.

Staring vacantly at it she kept repeating the name Linda.

Lelia continued oblivious to what I saw or might be thinking.

She hummed this strange lullaby.

Suddenly my "selves" surfaced in an uncontrollable flurry.

I tried to suppress them but failed abysmally.

The "whispers and selves" started to have a life of their own.

This car is getting a bit crowded.

It's being converted into a train with fantasy passengers on board.

The sort one hears late at night hurtling through the countryside as dim lights flicker.

Both inside and outside this vehicle a tumult of events was took place.

Out of the blue the rain poured heavily.

“The gods or the elements must be cross or something.” Lelia opined.

“Let’s get introduced to my playmate in a palm.

Linda, these are Joshua’s true other selves.”

Lelia chuckling.

A comic situation arose where I changed my voice for each of my "selves" by way of introduction.

My great powers of concentration helped while driving.

"Pleased to meet you, Linda.”

Lelia altered her voice when teasing all my "selves."

She had some experience as a ventriloquist.

But Lelia was having this hypnotic effect too.

I was being manipulated.

One by one my highly personalised complexes were being extracted and subject to a rigorous interrogation.

This was some hitchhiker.

Was this car journey now becoming a high rent farce or a mock therapy session from an amateur shrink?

The rain continued to lash and my other "selves" felt like the last sting of a dying wasp.

A certain lightness ensued.

Almost as if my “aspects” were floating away.

For the first time my "other selves“ didn't seem to have this grip on me.

But deep down I knew I wanted to keep a little of them.

Although they were a burden they did have their positive aspects.

“Jonah … he still bugs doesn't he.

He’s almost like one of those "other selves!"

The "whispers" I heard earlier … I've a very delicate ear.

Those under the breath "whispers" gave the game away.

The names and complex relations between them."

Lelia now probing very deeply.

The wind howled and seafront rain waves splashed across my bonnet

There was a warped synchronicity.

As my complexes receded so did the thunderous weather.

They were working in tandem.

“Wash it all away. Come on, come on

See me waving my wand.”

Lelia chanted.

The Exorcist film had nothing on this.

Before his very eyes Joshua's "reticence" and the other "selves" were disappearing virtually.

Against the backdrop of all this inner and outer cacophony Lelia kept looking out the window.

Was that this home she mentioned earlier getting closer as Joshua was

"going home” to himself?

“Windows are amazing.

They show us the world but sometimes screen us from it.”

Lelia notes.

fog from the car window.

“Trees and branches swaying. Clouds darkening.

Thickening ominously.

Exodus of pedestrians seeking answers.”

Her voice penetrating Joshua.

“Am I being cleansed of what they call inner demons?"

Joshua panic stricken.

"This other worldly person has me spellbound.

There's a chessboard in this moving vehicle.

A total stranger has me in her palm.” .

Lelia assumed various postures.

As Joshua was the driver she didn't want to send him to sleep.

Lelia's voice was either hypnotist's drone or excited sports commentator.

Joshua could never forget this encounter.

“Don't forget Jonah too. Joshua wherever he might be.”

Her sinister tone rising.

“The name on your credit card.

I found it earlier when searching for my script.

Joshua Jonah king.”

Joshua confessed he was an only child.

“Am I a prisoner?.

Must button my lip.

I'm being freed and incarcerated by this person, the likes of whom I've never met before.”

Joshua felt a final therapeutic process coursing through him.

Very little was left of his "selves,” whispers.”

Joshua drove through a stoically preserved area whose haunting nature was blurred by this encounter.

“Terrible to have all these half-worlds revealed with such clinical accuracy.”

Joshua to himself.

Lelia's voice gradually lost its domineering tone.

At this point by accident or design the tense atmosphere eased.

“You are probably wondering where this is all going to end.

Maybe I have whispers, Jonah's and selves to face too.”

A casual Lelia random comment.

On this occasion a composite of adult confidence and infantile charm.

“Oh here we are, this place.”

She stated.

Joshua had undergone some sea change catharsis.

“Should I thank Lelia or what?

Jonah my make-believe twin. Don't really need him do I?”

Joshua pondered.

“Back to earth my dear.

This is where we part.”

Lelia again.

“Better change the name on that credit card.

It could bug your company!”

Lelia cackles..

“See that building..

It's called “Another World School of Acting.”

Acting is therapy..

Therapy in every sense!

They are auditioning for a play

“Inside The Split Mind." She said.

"Wonder will I get the part?”

Lelia looked away sadly.

“Off I go. Enjoy yourself or yourselves or whatever is left of them.”

Lelia laughing through her tears.

“Better get out of here fast, Josh.” Joshua to himself.

“I'm beginning to sound like her.” Joshua now driving at top speed.

“It will be awhile before I offer someone a lift again.

I suppose I should be grateful to her.” Joshua’s face now a deep red.

"Well, Jonah, I guess I'm going to miss you and all those "issues" in a way.

But at least I can be myself …. sort of.”

Short story by mantrabay copyright protected.

Completion of earlier submission

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