#sh: du mortain x detective

[solasan]

concept: Adam and June spending a night or two at an Agency safehouse somewhere far from Wayhaven (maybe June's apartment got attacked by Trappers or something, and the local Agency facility is obviously compromised, so Adam "I'm Definitely Not Overprotective" du Mortain takes June on a safehouse-hopping road trip? idk) except this latest safehouse is kinda shit so there's Only One Bed™ and oh no they're snowed in without central heating and now they must Snuggle For Warmth™ (...this is really specific lmao, i got a bit carried away)

ok maybe not quite what u ordered but..... certainly something ????

“No.”

“Adam—”

“No.”

“Don’t ‘no’ me, asshole, it’s a good idea—”

“No, I think you will find it is not.”

The detective grumbles, folding her arms across her chest. Like this, her shivering is somehow yet more pronounced, shoulders jumping almost comically around her ears.

They have been having this argument for almost ten minutes. In that time, her teeth have begun to chatter, and her breath continues to steam in front of her lips, caught by the low light of the candles Adam had procured from the bathroom.

“This is getting us nowhere. The simple fact is that you need the rest far more than I ever could.”

Detective Lovelace huffs out a laugh, narrowing her eyes and shifting from foot to foot. “Yeah, buddy, totally. Because you definitely didn’t get hit with DMB on our way out, did you? No, never. And you didn’t almost pass out in the car, either, nah, that’d be just silly.”

Despite himself, Adam scowls. He had been unaware of her noticing that.

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[leirsulien-archive]

Telling A they’re hot while bleeding out in their arms is, and always will be, the best choice you could possibly make.

[solasan]

on the touch prompts, 2 for june and adam uwu

2. with relief.

Before coming to Wayhaven, Adam du Mortain could count on one hand the number of times he had been seriously knocked down by one of their foes.

An impressive statement, certainly, given his nine centuries of service, but no less accurate for its weight. Indeed, he has ever been in his prime, striving to prove his capabilities since the first dusk he faced with immortality thrumming in his veins.

Farah would doubtless find it funny, how much his exemplary record has been muddied by their stay in Oregon. This is what he thinks on his way to the bruising ground, his lungs rattling around the wooden stake buried between his fourth and fifth ribs, three inches deep. She would— she would make some sort of joke about it, probably. And the detective might laugh.

Or perhaps it would be her jesting in the first place?

The Trappers are getting desperate to catch her, he muses as though from very far away, and then — for the second time in the last year, and also an entire millennium — he passes out.

He could not say how long he was unconscious for. It is not like sleeping; he does not dream, and that is almost a relief, given how frequently the detective has been haunting his nights as of late.

But it does leave him a little disoriented when he wakes, still collapsed across the concrete, a roaring pain in his chest that reaches a sudden crescendo when something in that area is ripped free. Cold floods in, filling his rib cage, his lungs, every breath hard-won and edged with ice.

He cannot— he cannot see properly, his eyes rolling uselessly in his skull, vision blurred and skittering sideways when he tries to focus. Nothing has form for long; he thinks he catches sight of Nate’s cheek or perhaps his chin, and a spray of something red beside him, but beyond that—

Beyond that, he cannot be sure.

He swallows thickly, mouth acrid and vile, coppery in a way he is ill-used to; his own blood, he thinks, not another’s. What happened? How— how did it get there?

“Adam, you have to stay still,” Nate rumbles from a great distance, and so it must be him at his side.

“Wha—” Adam begins to slur, concentrating on the mastery of his tongue, which feels thick, blunt and clumsy in his mouth. “Wha’ hap—”

“Adam!” comes a cry, and then shoes pounding on the asphalt, the sound of something stumbling or slamming to the floor beside him.

“June,” Nate is saying, “be careful, don’t overwhelm him—”

“Fuck! Shit, sorry, sorry, are— are you okay? Nate, is he okay?”

“June,” he manages, following the sound of her — breath, heartbeat, and voice — with his still-uncooperative eyes.

“Hey,” she breathes, and then something soft and cold is brushing his cheek, cradling his jaw.

He is too tired not to lean into her. He is too tired to pretend he does not follow her like a flower does the sun, blooming in her light. He knows only that she is safe, that she is home, that the world seems less terrible now with her hand on his skin and her scent filling his head.

He hears her swallow. Then, with a laugh just an octave off: “Wow, uh. You— you must be pretty fucked up, huh?”

Adam grumbles. 

“That’s— shit, that’s like, a metric fuckton of blood.” She makes a high-pitched, anxious sound. “Is he— Nate, is he gonna be okay? What do we do?”

“I—” Nate swallows. “I need to contact the Agency. They’ll have to send out a team to get him. He’ll— he’ll be fine, he’ll heal, he just… he needs to be seen.”

“Okay, okay, cool, cool, cool— um, what should I—”

“Stay here. Put pressure over the wound; yes, that, hold your hand there—” and the rest of his sentence is lost to Adam as pain fills his chest again and his vision goes white.

He comes back to himself under a litany of her words. Not that many of them make sense. He thinks— he thinks she is telling him something, but he can’t figure out what. His ears are working, but his mind isn’t; if he could just focus, if he could only concentrate—

“June,” he croaks, and the hand on his cheek trembles.

“Oh, thank God, I thought—” June laughs again in that wobbly, wet kind of way, and his heart — quite independently of whatever was done to his chest — throbs. “I thought you might’ve died on me you fucking— you fucking asshole, oh my God, I’m gonna kill you.”

“M’not—” He inhales, exhales. Gasps for one breath, two, three. “M’not dead. Swear.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re damn right you’re not. Jesus, if you die on me, I swear to God I’ll— I’ll bring you back to life and kick your ass.”

Laughing is painful, he soon learns, his chuckle becoming a hacking, bloody cough that leaves him panting. You fool. You absolute fool.

“Sorry, sorry.” 

June shifts with a low grunt, and then his head is pillowed on something firm but warm, her fingers combing through his hair. That’s nice, he thinks vaguely, pressing himself into her touch as much as he can. I like that.

“Yeah?” she asks.

Oh. Oh, did I say that aloud?

Adam blinks up at her blearily. It is perhaps not the most flattering angle — she has pulled him into her lap, he realises with distant surprise, his skull resting on her thighs — but that doesn’t matter. Her eyes are big and brown and a little bit wet, brimming with such concern that he can barely stand to meet them.

He swallows. Blinks once, twice. Wrestles control of his tongue from the dark edges of his vision with a clenched jaw and a shuddering breath.

“Are y’alright?” 

June laughs again; high, wild, half-mad. “Are— are you kidding?”

He makes a rough sound he hopes she will interpret as negatory.

“Okay, I— I really should be asking you that, don’t you think? I mean Jesus, I leave you alone for one fucking minute and you go and— and get yourself turned into a pin-cushion.”

She sounds so scared. He has scared her. This is unconscionable.

“S’not a pin,” he croaks. “Stake.”

“Is— was that a joke?”

He hmms. 

His chest hurts. By God, it hurts so much. He has not been staked in some time, and never so terribly — he had forgotten, quite. How could he have forgotten?

He reaches down to feel for the pain, but June catches his hand in hers, knotting their fingers together and squeezing.

“Okay, buddy. Don’t go doing that, okay? That’s— that’s a bad idea.”

Adam grumbles.

“Shut up, dipshit.” She squeezes his hand again. “Just— just stay there and wait with me, okay? They’re on their way. You’ll— you’ll be okay.”

Yes, he will. With her hand in his, how could he be anything but?

[solasan]

we cannot look upon love's face without dying

fandom: the wayhaven chronicles pairing: adam du mortain/female detective (june lovelace) rating: t for tYearning, baby word count: 2k summary: After her recovery, Sanja the fortune teller has a gift for her would-be rescuer. Adam has hidden from others for nine centuries. Perhaps it's about time he get used to being seen. (or: sanja gives adam The Photo)

The fortune-teller finds him three days before the Maa-alused are to be permanently located to their new territory.

Granted, she does not have to look particularly hard. Though strictly speaking resettlement is not the responsibility of a field unit like Bravo, the sensitive nature of the matter — combined of course with the involvement of Wayhaven and their very own detective — has ensured that this once, their duties have changed.

And so they are engaged in the Maa-alused’s service until the relocation is complete.

Adam and Agent Lovelace have been working out the finer details of the move for the last six hours. Their handler is not, as Adam knows from experience, a woman who tires easily, and yet there have been bruises under her eyes since first they began, and her usually-immaculate hair is beginning to fall out of its bun.

Perhaps her daughter’s habits are rubbing off on her, because certainly, she resembles the detective a great deal more now, with fatigue dogging her steps.

A pen clicks in her hand, her thumb jumping up and down on its end, and on occasion she slides it between index and middle finger as though she were considering bringing it to her mouth.

Did she smoke once? Adam wonders idly. Strange, how knowing the daughter has brought the mother into new light. Is Detective Lovelace’s nicotine habit inherited?

He shakes his head. Focus.

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[solasan]

my heart unloosed, dissolved between your hands

ship: adam du mortain/female detective words: 3.4k

It is perhaps possible that Adam has become too… comfortable, shall he say, with how things are.

‘Comfortable’, of course, has never been a word — nor a sentiment — that he is well-acquainted with. ‘Comfort’ implies a certainty in one’s circumstances, one’s world, that he has previously attributed only to the young or naive.

Nate, for example. Adam would never dream of naming him ‘naive’, not knowing what he does, not having been acquainted with the man for so long. Yet still, the near seven-hundred years between them is never so blatant as it is in times of peace, times between missions, wherein Nate seeks out distraction or pleasure in old books that peel open at his touch and fine tea served in ever-finer china, while Adam…

Well.

Nate is not young, perhaps, not by human standards. But he is not ancient, either, and the detective’s constant pokes at Adam’s seniority have assured that he never forgets that he is.

The detective. The unwitting and utterly impossible source of all this… all this… complacency.

The word tastes ugly and foul in his mouth. But it is, unfortunately, the fitting one. More fitting than any other he can think of in any of the languages he knows, though he tries not to think overmuch on it, tries to pretend he does not in passing run the taste of dēditiō over the inside of his teeth.

The point is this: he has become used to having a place — whatever that place may be — in Detective Lovelace’s life. And this evening proves just how foolish such a supposition, such an intrusion, truly is.

Because when he arrives at the detective’s apartment for a routine check-in, just a quick glance to ensure she’s alright, to ensure no one has snatched her away in the hours since last he saw her— he stops dead in his tracks.

Her door is the one at the end of the hall, and usually it’s shut tight, but today it’s half-open as she steps out, pausing to rifle through her bag with the kind of curse that would make a nun blush, and she—

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[solasan]

28 for june/adam úwù

#28: one person tracing the other’s lips with a fingertip until they can’t resist any longer, tilting their chin towards them for a kiss

2.7k, set in early book 3, ao3 link if you’d rather read it there

Over the years, Adam has often heard it said that history has a habit of repeating itself. Be that in small ways or larger ones, it would seem that some souls simply find themselves walking the same paths without forethought or awareness; that some events cling too strongly to the earth to be entirely washed away, no matter how hard the world around them might try.

Adam puts little stock in most belief systems. Perhaps the closest label he might ascribe to would be ‘atheist’, but even that is a mere afterthought; he is not Nate, and he has had plenty of time to grow bored with philosophy and religion.

And yet. Even he must admit that, in this one small analysis, the world is not wrong; history does repeat itself.

The Unit have not been so relegated to protection detail since their first arrival in Wayhaven. It has been only a matter of months since those days — barely a blink of an eye, compared to his lifespan — and yet the return to such a routine is… galling. Incongruent. Bizarre.

So much has changed. Murphy. The Maa-alused. The carnival itself.

June.

The detective, he means. She has — they have all — changed.

Still. Cycles. The world has only one way to turn. The enemy has come, as they always do, and once more he and his team are left to protect the thing their foe wants most.

The Trappers are not Murphy, perhaps, but in the end, the result is the same.

Farah and Nate have spent the most time guarding the detective as of late. Morgan’s senses are too invaluable to spare when she could be patrolling the town for threats, after all, and Adam—

Well. He has had his own work. His own patrols. And he has always been better suited to working from a distance, these past few months notwithstanding.

Still, Adam du Mortain has never been a man to shirk his duty. And, whatever efforts the others might make on her behalf, he knows that the detective will never be as well protected as she will be with him.

By which, of course, he means that he is the strongest of their team. He means that he is capable of feats that the others simply are not. He does not mean— It is not—

You understand.

It’s a brisk morning, for all that they’re cresting summer now, and the detective spends the entire walk to Haley’s Bakery with her hands in her pockets, huffing out misty breaths and dancing on her feet for warmth. 

She’s replaced her much-beloved denim jacket with something thicker, puffier, something that rustles every time she moves, and it makes her look somehow smaller than she already does. As though her usual oversized hoodies do not complete the job well enough.

They do not talk. They have not talked, not properly, not since—

Well. Since the carnival, perhaps. And to look at her, you would not know it; she still smiles at him, still jokes and laughs and shines like the sun made flesh, but there is something… wooden to it, now. As though she is waiting, every moment, for it to fall apart.

Her pulse still skips to look at him. Not as much as it had that night, their palms brushing, her radiating warmth at his side, but— but it happens.

And he is a fool for encouraging it.

They pass through the door to the bakery as Adam is still flagellating himself, the bell ringing somewhere above their heads and the scent of pastry and coffee filling the air. And under these fluorescent lights, the detective blooms.

“Honey, I’m home!”

The baker is behind the counter, fussing with a display of cakes, but she straightens up when she sees them, turning a grin on the detective that is almost as bright as June’s own. “June! How’re you doing today?”

“I’m good. How’s my absolute favourite baker-slash-coffee-dealer on this cruel cold morning?”

The baker snorts. “You don’t have to butter me up, y’know.”

Detective Lovelace drapes herself over the counter as though it were a pillar of fine marble and not merely a sickly-smelling construction of glass and pine, batting those big brown eyes at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her grin — in a feat Adam would previously have thought impossible had he not known her these past months — widens.

The baker rolls her eyes with a good-natured smile, darting a curious look Adam’s way that is soon redirected by his stony silence. “Right.”  

Then, wiping her hands off on the striped apron across her front, she says, “your usual?”

“Fuck yeah. You’re an angel, a light in the darkness. A goddess among women. A Titaness.”

Her nose wrinkles as she heads for the coffee machine. “Titan— are you calling me fat?”

“I’m calling you beautiful, Hales, don’t get it twisted.”

The baker snorts again, shaking her head.

And then there’s a pause. Adam does very well with pauses, generally; he learned remarkably quickly how easily they could be ignored, favouring silence above small-talk even in his youth.

But this is— this is different. He cannot quite pin down why.

The detective clears her throat, then nudges him with an elbow. “Want anything, big guy? I’m buying.”

Adam takes a moment to reply, because the proximity, brief as it was, has her scent catching in his nostrils, drowning out vanilla and cinnamon with strawberries and cotton. He is used to the smell of nicotine and smoke by now, after so long with Morgan, but perhaps the detective smokes a different brand, because for a moment he finds himself dizzy.

The moment passes. He clears his throat, shakes his head, then says stiffly, “I’m fine.”

The detective’s brows rise. “You sure? Nate loves the blueberry muffins here.”

“I am sure.”

“Hm. Is that a Nate thing, then? Or, like— no wait, Farah loves junk food. Is this an Adam thing, then?”

He blinks at her for one very long moment.

Eventually, she rolls her eyes and clarifies quietly, leaning close again: “Y’know. Human food. Not liking it, or whatever?”

They are the only people in the bakery this early in the morning, and the baker is still preoccupied with the coffee machine, which is whirring loudly. If it had been otherwise, perhaps Adam would reprimand the detective, but she is… careful, here, as she so rarely is with anything else.

And so he allows himself to respond, “Nate and Farah are… different. For the rest of us, it is— unappetising, shall I say.”

The detective hums thoughtfully, eyes narrowing. Then her nose wrinkles. “Shit, dude. Sucks to be you, I guess. The four-cheese from Giuseppe’s is to die for.”

Adam’s lips twitch. “I shall have to take your word on that.”

“Yeah, guess you will. So, wait, why is it so unappetising? Is it just, like, by comparison? Is a good ole’ cup of O-neg just totally orgasmic, or something?”

Did— she cannot have just said what he thinks she has just said. Can she?

Of course she can, he thinks, meeting her dancing eyes. She’s June.

Adam shakes his head, aiming for chiding and falling short. “That…  is not the word that I would use.”

The detective purses her lips. “You’re dodging the question, Agent du Mortain.”

“You ask poor questions, Detective Lovelace.” 

She laughs and it is a startled sound, like a bird pushed from the nest, but it’s— goodness, it’s lovely. He has not made another person laugh in so very long. He had… forgotten, quite, just how thrilling it could be.

“Answer it anyway?”

Sighing as though he were greatly put-upon, he acquiesces, “our senses are— too refined for most foods that you would consume. It can be overwhelming.”

She processes this for a moment or two, her brows furrowing. Then: “Wow. And here I thought nothing could overwhelm you.” 

June’s grin is cheeky, yes, but in a warm kind of way. A wonder. She is a wonder.

“Now, we both know that cannot be true.”

Her smile turns surprised, confused and just-slightly lopsided, and she blinks at him rapidly for a moment, her brow beginning to furrow. 

Why would you say such a thing, you imbecile?

June’s mouth opens as though she were about to reply, and Adam is both dreading and waiting with bated breath for it—

“Here ya go.” 

Adam flinches. The baker has set down a thickly-scented to-go cup of coffee, and she’s looking between them with the beginnings of a smile lurking at the corners of her lips, brow cocked.

His fists clench. He affixes his gaze to a spot over the baker’s shoulder, a part of the chalkboard where an old offer has been only-mostly scrubbed away, and very carefully thinks of nothing.

After a moment, the detective clears her throat. “Uh, yeah. Thanks, Hales. Purveyor of the precious bean juice.”

A huff masquerading as a laugh. “Anytime, June. You want anything else? Maybe something for your man here?”

Her man. What— what foolishness, what absolute madness. He is— Adam is no one’s man, and he is most certainly not the detective’s, whatever anyone else may think, however she might make him feel.

Not that she makes him feel anything in particular, of course, however much Nate might argue to the contrary. Not that his chest had jerked at the very idea of them being— of her and him— of the baker being correct in her utterly outlandish supposition.

The detective laughs, too loud and just an octave off-kilter. “You should do stand-up, Hales, you’d kill.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Adam won’t have anything. And I— just the coffee, you know me. I live off this shit. Like, uh— like zombies, only it’s caffeine instead of brains. The Walking Dead, Lovelace style.”

“Right.”

The baker rattles off a price and Detective Lovelace passes the cash over, and then they pause briefly at the condiments for her to spoon in one, two, three, four sugars.

“I can feel you judging me from here,” the detective comments on their way out the door, and Adam frowns.

“I am not judging you.”

“No, you totally are. You get this tiny little crease between your eyebrows when you’re judging something. And I should know, man, I’ve seen it, like, a gazillion times.”

His lips purse, and he makes a conscious effort to relax his forehead and smooth out his brow.

The detective snorts. Then, in sing-song: “I still saw it.”

He shakes his head. “I was merely thinking that things… make a great deal more sense now.”

“Hey, I am a grown-ass woman, du Mortain, and grown-ass women can have as many sugars in their coffees as they want.” And then, as if to prove her point, she takes a sip.

The urge to smile is one he only-barely manages to tamp down on. “So it would seem.”

“Glad we agree.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpses her smile. All teeth and pink lips and dancing eyes. The early-morning sunlight is slanting over her face, seizing her bronze hair and setting her aflame. She really is just—

His foot catches on a cobblestone. It takes only a matter of milliseconds to right himself, but still. Adam has not tripped in— in decades. Centuries, perhaps.

“Woah there, old man,” the detective teases, knocking her side into his. “Don’t go breaking a hip there.”

He grumbles something unintelligible, shoulders tensing when she laughs.

“I am not going to break a hip.”

“No? Could’ve been quite the fall, man. And you’ve gotta be careful, y’know, in your twilight years. Ooh, double joke. Those are rare.”

Adam scowls. “I am hardly as breakable as your kind.”

She whistles lowly. “Damn, the human jabs are coming out. Must’ve been a nasty fall. Gonna tell me to get off your lawn next?”

“I should never have told you my age.”

The detective grins. “But’cha did.” And then, elbowing him again, she adds: “It was kinda funny, admit it.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“Oh, c’mon.” She steps into his path, grinning up at him without a care in the world. “Just a tiny bit? A little? A smidge?”

Despite himself, he feels his lips beginning to jerk. And he can hardly have that, so his scowl darkens and he shakes his head. “Detective.”

“Adam?” She bats her lashes.

And in the face of those big brown eyes and that sunshine-smile, his resolve crumbles. “Fine.”

“Fiiiiiine— what?”

“Fine.” He gives her a stern look, because perhaps he is willing to unbend for her, but only so far.

June pouts just slightly, and it is then that he becomes aware of the smudge of coffee at the corner of her mouth. Tiny, barely noticeable in fact, just a stain of deep brown lapping over part of her lip and some of the pale skin around it, but suddenly the only thing that he can see.

He clears his throat. “Ah. You have—”

“What?”

He gestures vaguely to his own mouth, and June blinks at him, wide-eyed, for a moment, as though he has done something truly obscene, before realisation hits and she laughs.

“Ah, shit. Thanks.” She tugs the sleeve of her hoodie out from her jacket and uses it to rub her lips roughly. “Gone?”

“No.” He points to the approximate spot on his own face again, and again she misses.

And then, easy as breathing, his hand is reaching out to catch her chin and he is wiping it away.

Her lips are— they’re soft. Warm. He can feel her breath against the pad of his thumb, and that is warm too. And she is wonderfully yielding under his touch, her teeth faintly solid through the meat of her lip on his up-swipe, mouth all pink and plush and lovely.

She smells like coffee now. Would she taste like it? It would be so easy to just lean forward and find out. To learn just how abominably sweet those four sugars really are. They would be bearable, he thinks, on these lips. DMB would be bearable on these lips.

Of its own accord, his thumb begins to trace the rest of her. The pretty swell of her lower lip, right in the middle; the other corner, her teeth flashing white behind it when he peels it down slightly; the fine curve of her cupid’s bow, sturdier than any archer’s. She is so soft. Almost fragile. Like china, only— only warmer.

Her throat bobs when she swallows.

Would she let him kiss her? Would she welcome him? 

Would she kiss him back?

He cannot bear to meet her gaze just yet, but her breathing is a little uneven, and when he listens— yes, there it is. The stutter in her pulse that he has become so accustomed to, that he treasures so dearly. Her ears are pinking, too, a flush beginning to spread across the ripe apples of her cheeks.

Perhaps— perhaps she would?

When he has finally gathered his courage, he lets himself look her in the eye. And such splendid eyes they are too, darker than usual but so big, like a doe’s perhaps, her lashes all soft and wispy.

June blinks, pupils blacker than anything and so much bigger than he’s ever seen them. By God, they are so close now, she and he. Her breath just-barely brushes his chin with every exhale. He wants to feel that breath all over him, wants it against his lips, wants to taste it and commit it to memory so thoroughly that he will remember it a hundred years from now. A thousand. 

His thumb has stilled, index and middle finger cradling her chin, and oh, it really would be hardly anything at all to tilt her head up. Just a little bit. Just enough that he would not need to stoop in half to meet her.

She swallows again, blinking rapidly, and her tongue darts out to wet the side of her mouth that he is not touching. Adam finds himself following it with his eyes, his need sitting so heavily in his chest that he can scarcely breathe. 

And then she clears her throat; a creaky, hoarse sound, as though it were full of rocks. “Did, uh— did you get it?”

“Yes,” Adam croaks, snapping his hand back as though it had been burned. “I— yes.”

June nods as the world tidies itself into its proper perspective around her. “Right. Right. Cool. Uh— tha— yeah, thanks.”

“You are welcome,” he acknowledges roughly, not looking at her, rubbing his thumb over his fingers to make sure he does not forget her skin. 

He cannot forget her skin.

[solasan]

96 + june & adam 👀

angst/fluff prompt list

96 — “can’t you stay a little longer?”, late book 2

The Agency’s medical facilities have a lot going for them, obviously, being super-secret government-run places that cater almost exclusively to the equally-super-secret supernatural patrons of the world. The law of super-secret government agencies says that they have to be pretty well put-together, y’know? Captain America wasn’t made in, like, a garage. Iron Man doesn’t get treated in a public hospital. Batman never got himself stitched up in the parking lot of a Denny’s, or anything.

So, yeah, they’re top-notch. Grade A, or whatever. But they’re still indentured to the general rule of all hospitals and hospital-adjacent facilities worldwide, so— like, the food fucking sucks.

Which wouldn’t be a problem, normally. Except that Adam’s still laid-up from what the Trappers did to him — which June is still very carefully Not-Thinking about, because she’s very good at Not-Thinking about these kinds of things — and she’s obviously not about to, like, leave him, or whatever, even if he did have to be moved to the main Facility to be monitored. Which means, y’know. She’s stuck with shitty food.

Today’s fare had been a choice between soggy salad or soggy casserole, and June’s not a rabbit, thank you, so casserole it is.

Or— probably casserole it is. She’s not, like, actually sure? It’s kinda stodgy and stiff, and she’s pretty sure casseroles aren’t supposed to be like that, but then what would she know? She hasn’t had casserole since the week after Dad’s funeral, when it was all they ate, ‘cause Rebecca couldn’t get out of bed to cook.

She heaves a sigh, shakes her head, and knocks on Adam’s door. Only obviously, Adam isn’t the one to open it.

Elidor’s lips are twitching, but there’s a stern line to his brow when he looks at her that really isn’t encouraging. “He’s sleeping, June. Go back to the cafeteria.”

“Ugh, I can’t. It’s too quiet.”

“It’s quiet in here, too. He needs his rest.”

“I know.” June grins up at him, batting her big brown eyes that way she’d perfected by the time that she was twelve and Miss Lewis caught her carving binary translations of swear words into the underside of her desk. “Look, I’ll be real good, okay, I promise. And c’mon, who’s gonna know?”

“I’ll know.”

“Yeah, yeah, you will... But! We’re friends, Elidor. Right?”

He stares down at her for several very long moments, blinking slowly like she’s a special kind of idiot — which, ouch, she has an IQ of 163, thanks— before he sighs. Only after giving a careful look over his shoulder does he say, “you promise to be quiet, June?”

June mimes locking up her lips, then throwing away the key.

The corners of Elidor’s mouth jerk, and she grins triumphantly, her smile only growing when he sighs and opens the door wider. “I’m going to be making the rounds, but I’ll be back in an hour. Behave, alright? He’ll never get out of here if you and your team don’t let him heal.”

Which officially has her mood plummeting, but alright. She nods, face as solemn as can be, and with one last careful look, Elidor lets her through and leaves, shutting the door quietly behind him.

The room is pretty small, when she steps into it. Cold, too. Doesn’t Adam mind? Or do vampires not get cold? She’ll have to ask — probably not now, though. Nate usually answers her questions… he might not mind.

The floors are some kinda fake-wood linoleum, and they squeak under her sneakers as she crosses the space to settle in the plastic chair set up by the side of Adam’s bed. There’s a dog-eared copy of Wuthering Heights and a mostly-empty mug of tea on his bedside table, so Nate was probably the last one in here. Hopefully he also doesn’t mind her taking his space.

Bed doesn’t look comfortable, she thinks, wrinkling her nose at the thin-looking sheets by Adam’s feet. How’s he not going totally crazy?

Because he did go a little crazy when they told him they’d be moving him. To keep an eye on you, Elidor had said, and you’d have thought someone had shot Adam, the way he reacted.

Well, no. June has shot Adam, and he, like, barely reacted at the time, so...

Still. You get it.

She has to inhale carefully and clench her jaw before she can force herself to look at his face. He’s less fucked up than he was, at least; vampire healing’s nothing to sniff at. But one of his eyes is still a little swollen, his cheekbone the lurid yellow of a mostly-healed bruise, and her chest twinges at the sight.

Stupid. She’s really fucking stupid. Especially since this is, like, at least fifty percent her fault.

But that’s not a thought she likes to linger on, really, so June does what June always does: she pushes it away, swallows, and bottles it up somewhere it’ll never see the light of day.

The casserole is just as disappointing as it’d looked, and she pokes at it disinterestedly, nose wrinkled, daydreaming idly about the Chinese place around the corner from her apartment, chicken chow mein and dumplings steaming on the tongue. 

As soon as Adam’s healed up, she’s heading back to her place and absolutely splurging on as much takeout as she can carry. No one can say shit about it, either, because she’s going actually batshit as things are, and if they do, she might just hit them.

After a little while more of pushing about mushrooms and what might be beef with her fork, she gives it up as a lost cause and drops the bowl on Adam’s bedside table, swiping up Nate’s book with her other hand and rearranging herself on the rickety plastic chair so that her feet are on the seat, knees drawn up to her chest.

Only it turns out Wuthering Heights is, like, super fucking depressing. Like, seriously? This is the kinda stuff Nate reads? He’s so… not happy-go-lucky, but nice. Serious, for sure, but not depressed.

Probably.

Well.

Okay. She can’t actually pass judgement on that, since she’s been carefully-cultivating herself so that no one would guess at the bottles of zoloft in her medicine cabinet since she was, like, seventeen, but still. It’s a surprise, kinda.

Her cheeks puff out as she exhales, blowing a raspberry that’d shame any toddler, before resettling herself in the chair again. Maybe she’s just not comfortable enough?

“Bad book?” 

“Jesus!”

Her and the chair very nearly become intimately acquainted with the floor, and it’s only by mercy of her quick thinking that she manages to hook her hands onto the foot of the bed, steadying the seat before she can embarrass herself even more.

And— did Adam just laugh?

June blinks at him owlishly, taking in his sleep-mussed hair, his hazy green eyes, the ever-so-faint quirk of his lips. He— that might have been a laugh. A very, very quiet one, but—

She grins, positively fucking buoyant. If someone tossed her into a river right now, not only would she float, she’d fly. “How long have you been awake, asshole?”

He pulls a face that she’s never seen before, nose scrunching up beautifully, and Jesus Christ, what she’d give for a camera right now. “I do not know. Not long.”

“Not long,” she repeats. Then, leaning in conspiratorially, she whispers: “Were you spying on me?”

“No!” he half-yelps, his eyes green and wide and green. “I would— I would never do such a thing.”

June laughs, her heart doing something funny behind her ribs. “Alright, old man, chill. I was kidding.”

“Yes, well I was— not. Kidding.” He purses his lips, eyes narrowing as he seems to run over that sentence in his head, and then he sighs. “At any rate, you did not seem to be enjoying it.”

“Enjoying it?”

“The book.”

“Oh! Right. The book.” She clears her throat. Seriously, he is way too distracting. “Weeeeeell. I know it’s high-brow reading, but — and don’t tell Nate I said this — it’s a little boring.”

His face contorts into a vague approximation of his usual frown, and he goes a little cross-eyed as he squints at the cover. “Wuthering Heights is not boring.”

“Oh, so you’ve read it? Wait, that’s a dumb question, of course you have. You’re a trillion years old.”

He huffs through his nose in that maybe-laugh way again. “Not a trillion.”

“Basically a trillion.” She tilts her head at him, setting the book down where it was. “You doing okay?”

“Hm. I would be doing much better if they would let me out of this bed.”

“Well, no, you’d probably be doing much worse. Let the medical professionals do their jobs, idiot.”

Adam scowls properly then, but it didn’t exactly intimidate her when he was upright and unhurt, so it definitely doesn’t intimidate her now. He’s kinda like a pissy kitten, she thinks, eyeing his messy hair and trying not to laugh. A puffed up, super pissed, super adorable little six-foot-something kitty.

“Why are you smiling at me like that?” he grumbles, eyes locked on a spot somewhere over her left shoulder.

“Like what?”

“Like that,” he says expansively, jerking his hand in the rough direction of her face.

“‘Cause that explains everything. Man, how much DMB do they have you on?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

She laughs properly then, and his gaze snaps back to her all at once, the line between his eyebrows smoothing out as his whole face softens. “Aren’t people supposed to be less grumpy on painkillers? Like, I’ve seen the wisdom teeth videos. Aren’t you supposed to be all dopey and nice?”

Adam blinks at her for several very long moments. “I do not have wisdom teeth.”

“What, seriously?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Like, at all?”

“At all,” he agrees with sickening pride, jaw cracking around a yawn.

“Damn,” June sighs. “You’re so lucky. I had wisdom teeth, right, but I had to get them removed when I was nineteen. I think I’ve still got the video from after somewhere— God, okay, I have to delete that before Farah ever finds out.” Straightening in her seat, she points a finger at him, giggling when his eyes cross as he tries to focus on it. “Don’t. Tell her, okay?”

“Alright,” he says readily, narrowing his eyes at her finger. “I will not tell her. What am I not telling her?”

“Precisely.”

Adam frowns. “What?”

The door clicks open before she can respond, and she blinks innocently up at Elidor, who’s already sighing.

“June, you said you would let him sleep.”

“I did. I did say that. And I did also let him sleep— he woke up on his own, Scout’s honour.”

“You were a Scout?” Adam asks.

“Uh— technically? No.”

And— and at that, Adam laughs. It’s such a cute little laugh, too, a slightly-dazed little snorting giggle, and whatever she was about to say next literally does not matter, the whole world does not matter, because that is, officially, the best sound June has ever heard. Her heart tries to throw itself out through her sternum and into his hands, and she doesn’t even blame it, because holy shit. How has she been living her whole life not knowing he could laugh like that? Jesus fucking Christ.

Elidor snorts. “Okay, while this is all very sweet and everything, you,” and here he gestures to Adam, “need to rest, and you,” he points at June, “need to let him rest.”

“Uh—” June swallows, clears her throat. “Right. Yeah.”

So sue her, she’s still a little wrapped up in the way Adam had laughed. It’s very fucking understandable, in her opinion.

Adam frowns, hand reaching out clumsily to catch with hers, and this time her heart is trying to worm its way up through her esophagus, she swears to God. “Can you not stay a little longer?”

Her brain has… broken, a little bit, perhaps. Which is why it’s probably for the best that Elidor sweeps in, shaking his head. “I’m afraid she can’t, Agent du Mortain.”

He grumbles.

“Look, I’ll be back, okay?” June offers when her tongue decides to work again, swallowing thickly around the heart she can still feel beating in her throat. “Right, Elidor?”

Elidor sighs, eyeing the two of them and their hands, which are — somehow — still joined. “If I say yes, will you be good about leaving?”

“Absolutely.”

“Alright, then. She’ll be back, Agent du Mortain.”

She squeezes his palm with her fingers, and Adam finally relents with a sigh. “Alright, then. Goodbye, June.”

[solasan]

tu omnia. you are everything.

[leirsulien-archive]

pls ma’am just let me luv u

[leirsulien-archive]

A laughs:

[leirsulien-archive]

[leirsulien-archive]

WIP Wednesday

because my writers block managed to fuck off for now <3

“...do you even care?” Her words were merely a whisper, seeming louder in the heavy silence than she had intended.

“Of course I care!” Ava snapped, taking a sudden step closer, her face contorted in anger. “How could you ever think I wouldn’t?”

“I care - too much.” As sudden as her anger had surfaced, it had died down again, replaced by a tiredness that made her shoulders slump. “I care about you more than you coul-”

Her words stammered to a sudden halt, her brows creasing in a deep frown. “I mean, I care about you as-”

She paused as she saw the small glimmer of hope her words had sparked in Olivias eyes extinct again, her gaze falling to the floor.

“Say it.”

“I didn’t-”

“Don’t play dumb, you were obviously about to add something.” Before Ava could say anything more, she added: “You know what, let me guess ‘I care about you...as a member of this team, detective.’” She almost spit out the last word. “Am I right?”

Avas silence said more than enough and a sad smile spread on Olivia's lips, her voice breaking slightly. “Like I said, you’re so predictable.”

Ava could see her eyes shimmer in the moonlight as she turned on her heel, about to flee back into the hallway.

“Olivia-”

Before Ava could stop herself, her hand fast forward to catch her wrist, stopping the detective in her tracks. Her head flew back to meet Avas gaze with her own surprised one, a tear falling from her eye, just as clear as her iris, as if the color of her eyes bled onto her cheek, and on instinct Avas hand came to rest on it, her thumb wiping away the tear in a gentle caress.

For a moment her eyes fluttered at the tender touch, a shaky sigh falling from her lips before looking back up to her with a silent plea, making Avas heart constrict in the confines of her chest. Her lips fell open, desperately trying to form around the words screaming in her head.

Frustrated she shook her head, if she could not express them in this language she would have to find another one.

[leirsulien-archive]

WIP Wednesday

tank you for tagging me @hartfeld <3

“Don’t worry, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.” She sat up a little, leaning on her elbow to place a quick kiss on the corner of her mouth in return before leaning back with a teasing smile. “You are yet to pay me back for that desk you broke and I’m very adamant about getting what is owed to me.”

As always Olivia managed to wipe away any uncertainties she may have in mere seconds and Ava couldn’t help but return her smile. “I guess I’ll have to put off paying this dept for as long as possible then.”

“Oh you know, there’s still a broken plant and cabinet to replace as well.” Olivia layed back down, snuggling herself even further into Avas arms, she could feel the vibration of her chuckle against her neck where she rested her head. “...and not to forget the dent in my car.”

“I think that car needs more fixing than that one dent...Of course I could take a look at it, but I’m afraid that would take a while…” She made a dramatic pause as if she had to calculate it in her head, after a few moments Olivia looked up at her, raising a brow in question. “...at least...a couple centuries - give or take a couple decades.”

Olivia shook her head in amusement, wrapping her arms around Avas neck to pull her down into a kiss, stopping only an inch away from her lips to murmur, ‘Is that a promise?’, before pressing a kiss to her lips.

Tagging: @homeformyheart, @wayhavenots, @impossible-rat-babies, @gloynporslen, @amlovelies

[leirsulien-archive]

WIP Wednesday

It’s early but technically already wednesday here and I just managed to actually write a little for my reincarnation AU!

It was as if someone had taken the memories from her mind, the ones that haunted her dreams, the ones she clung to so desperately, and formed them out of flesh and blood. And she was just as beautiful as Ava had remembered, every line of her face like directly out of a renaissance painting. Relief washed over her, for centuries she had feared that she would slip from her mind, that she would lose what little she still had of her, the ghost of her that Ava was never able to let go off.

And now she was here, right in front of her, breathing and with a beating heart, not just a veil of memories from bygone days. She looked just as she did on the last day she saw her. Grey eyes, resembling the color of clear water, so clear and deep Ava always wanted to drown in them, framed by bright red curls, glowing like embers in the ash. Her fair skin sprinkled with freckles like stars in the night sky, 274 stars to be exact, Ava used to count them for hours. She would connect the constellations, drawings the gods had left on her skin, and her hand twiched at her side, her fingertips almost burning with the memory of the feeling of her skin and for a moment she almost reached out to soothe that ache.

“Is something wrong, agent?”

Tagging: @graysinblack, @tuomniia, @amlovelies, @quietsphere, @vintage-vamp, @lilas, @homeformyheart, @possumsunshine

[leirsulien-archive]

why am I hurting myself this early in the morning with scenarios in which liv doesn't turn

[solasan]

as though they had become entangled

fandom: the wayhaven chronicles pairing: adam du mortain/female detective (june lovelace) rating: T for june’s pottymouth alone word count: 2.4k summary:  With the threat of the Trappers looming, Adam suggests that Detective Lovelace once again try her hand at combat training.

It... would be a lie to say that it goes well.

“Again.”

Thwack.

“Again.”

Thwack.

“Again.”

Thwack.

“Aga—”

“Adam, I swear to god, if you say ‘again’ one more fucking time, I’m gonna rip this bag off its chain and cram it so far up your stupid vampire a—”

“Threats will not help you improve, Detective. Nor will anger.”

“Yeah, maybe not, but they sure help me feel better.”

Adam shoots her an unamused look from the other side of the punching bag.

“God,” June pants, sweeping hair off her sweaty forehead and out of her eyes. “Y’know, you could at least pretend like this is hard for you. Break a sweat, maybe? Look tired? Be encouraging in literally any way?”

“I am encouraging you.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Totally. You’re real good at it.”

“Thank you,” he says, in what’s probably supposed to be the nicest tone he can manage. Which, y’know, coming from Broody Mcbrooderson himself is about as nice as a hole in the goddamn head. “Now. Again.”

“Okay, seriously—”

“Detective.”

“Fine!”

June huffs, raises her fists, rolls her shoulders, and punches. Again.

read the rest on ao3!!!!