#she runs to the closest neighbor (Ben) to ask if he knows anything

[keldabe-kiss]

If I felt more confident in writing SW characters, I would prob write a novel worth fic of the Bounty Hunter Leia AU that lives in my head.

Leia Skywaker was raised on Tatooine by her aunt and uncle, who tried their hardest to sway Leia into NOT being a Bounty Hunter. Unfortunately for them, she cannot be stopped, especially considering she met got saved by a mandalorian at age 9 and thought they were the coolest person ever. Most of the money she makes from bounties, she sends to her aunt and uncle, she never uses her last name in travels (doesn’t want it to possibly get back to her family) and she never takes bounties for the Empire although she has been tempted, but only to beat Boba Fett.

Meanwhile Ben Kenobi is trying his hardest to get this 16 year old to stay on Tatooine for more than an hour to talk to her about the Force.

[timeaftertime-chriscornellfanfic]

Chapter 37 - A Strange Girl Who Is Everything I’ve Ever Dreamed

Seattle Washington, September 21 1990

(Andi is 20, Chris is 26)

ANDI: "Ok, I can do this right? I mean... right?" I say as I stand in front of the full length mirror in our bedroom, My dark curls styled in loose ringlets that cascaded down passed my shoulders, looking at the simple white strapless dress that hugged my bust perfectly and flowed down to just above my knee. It pretty much looks just like a sun dress with a lace overlay starting from just under the bust. It's pretty '60's inspired and it was all I could afford - and it was the only dress that I found suited me the best without it being too elaborate, that also went perfectly with these solid white heels on my feet that feel too tall. I just hope I don't trip at any point.

"Yes, baby girl... you can do this,"

I turn around and see my father John, standing in the doorway leaning against the frame in a white dress shirt, black jeans and a black jacket. His hair just to his shoulders and a full beard and I suddenly felt like a little girl again.

"Daddy," I say and my bottom lip trembles as he walks over to me and embraces me in a hug.

"How's my girl?" He says and I practically cry feeling his arms around me. I hadn't seen him since December last year and I knew I missed him, I just didn't think it was this much. He smells exactly the same, reverting me back to when I was a little girl and I would hang on his every word and snuggle into him as he held me.

"Uh, well I'm getting married," I giggle through my tears as I pull away from him.

"I see that," He chuckles as he glances over me.

"Oh my god, I'm a mess," I say as I turn back to the mirror and grab a tissue wiping my eye trying carefully not to mess up my make up.

"No sweetie you are beautiful... you look just like your mother when we got married," He says and I turn back to him. "I wish she could see... " he trails off for a moment and looks down at himself.

"It's ok daddy... she's here," I say and he gives me a half smile.

"You know... I always loved your mother. No matter what. I made mistakes and I regret the day that I left more than anything -

"Daddy - "

"No you need to hear this. I miss her more than anything. I know we probably were never meant for each other but she was a really good woman, and I loved her very much and I was just too damn stubborn and hardheaded in my ways to realize just how much she wanted me to be there... How much she really meant to me," John looks at me with his dark eyes filled with so much love for me and so much regret.

"Daddy it's ok... she knows,"

He gives me a small smile, then takes me in his arms again embracing me in a hug and I knew for sure the tears were going to start again.

"I love you my baby girl," He says, his voice deep and comforting.

"I love you too daddy," I sigh and he holds me for a few more moments and then pulls away giving me a kiss on my forehead.

"Ok, I'm gonna let you finish getting ready and I'll meet you at the back sliding door... that is where we planned it right?"

"Yes," I giggle. I can tell he's a little nervous about giving me away. He gives me a wink and squeezes my hand then turns and heads out of the bedroom. I then turn back to the mirror and try to fix up the rest of my make up, making sure nothing smudged with all the emotions I'm feeling. Suddenly I somehow couldn't shake this weird dizzy feeling, thinking maybe it was just cause I haven't eaten anything. I've been way too nervous to even think about food all morning.

I take in a few deep breaths and close my eyes for a moment to try and focus but it's almost like it made it worse.

Ok, Andi, you're ok... just relax

I flick open my eyes and make my way to the bathroom that was just beside our bedroom, and lean against the sink. I haven't felt like this in a long time and usually this happens when I'm about to have a time slip. I've been taking those pills so I have no idea where this is coming from. I steady myself for a moment and glance at myself in the bathroom mirror when everything really started to get blurry. I open up the medicine cabinet and take out the bottle of Lorazepam, then just as I popped open the bottle cap, everything went completely dark.

*****

CHRIS: Standing outside in our backyard, I feel like I have been waiting forever for this moment. I'm finally making Andi my wife and all I could think about was how incredibly nervous I am in front of all these people. I know it's just friends and family but still, I can't help but feel that way, especially when they are watching. I glance down at myself in my black button up shirt, that I left untucked and black pants and adjust my suede wrist bands, fidgeting with them because I'm so damn nervous.

Everyone had taken their place. My sister Katy standing next to Demri, My brother Peter standing next to me, My mom sitting in the middle row with my older brother Patrick, Kim matt and Ben all sitting in the back row along with Layne, Jerry, Stone, Jeff and Eddie. Eddie Vedder - now one of my closest best friends - sitting in the back with his date that he brought - I think she said her name is Beth? - Anyways, When Jeff and Stone and I started working on some music back in August, they introduced me to Ed and said that they were wanting to continue on in a band with him, and hit it off so incredibly well. He's such a great guy... he just has this soulfulness about him that reminds me of Andy. I know Andi was so shy around him at first and it was funny to see two incredibly shy people try to get to know each other. I think Andi was the one who said something first though... and we all know how hard it is for her to be the one to spark up a conversation.

Speaking of Andi, where the hell is she?

"So are we almost ready to get started? Where's the bride - Andrea, it's Andrea right?" The officiant says to me.

"Yea, um... I think we are almost... ready?" I turn and give Peter a look of confusion and he looks down at his watch.

"Um, yea... let me go and see if she's ready," Peter says and pats me on the shoulder and heads down the small isle. I see Peter walk up to Susan who had just come out of the house and say something to her, Susan nods, then disappears back into the house.

"Susan's going to check on her," Peter says as he comes back down the isle and takes his place beside me again.

"Ok," I say and start to fidget again.

"You alright brother?" Peter asks.

"Yea, yea... I'm just nervous," I say. After a few moments, Susan comes back, walking down the isle and smiling to everyone as they greet her, then finally reaches me.

"She's gone," She lifts herself up and whispers in my ear.

"What?" I say flatly.

"She's not in the bedroom," She says again. Feeling my heart begin to pound a million times a minute, I gently move her out of the way and walk hurriedly down the isle while our guests begin to stir, wondering what's going on. I make my way inside the house and run as fast as I can up the stairs to our bedroom and she is nowhere to be found.

"No.. No, no, no, baby not now,"

I check the opposite bedroom, and nope not in there either. I then quickly run into the bathroom and see her dress laying in a clump on the floor with her white shoes and white lacy garter belt.

*****

(Andi is 28)

ANDI: "I'm sorry!" I yell back to the neighbor screaming at me as I fumble putting on one of the shoes I had taken from the back yard from one of the houses a few streets over from our house. It's my freaking wedding day, and I can't believe I had somehow forgot to tell myself that this would happen. At least I was able to make it back to the same neighborhood.

I couldn't have slipped at a worse time either. Right in the middle of Chris and I... well... god his lips felt so fucking good, hitting that perfect spot. I was so fucking goddamn close too. Fucking Christ!

I quickly make my way down a few blocks, pretty much running so that I wouldn't make the ceremony too late and finally come up to our old house. There were tons of cars parked outside, but it looks like everyone is in the backyard. Pushing my curls behind my ear, I quietly make my way up to the front door, head inside and immediately up the stairs, hearing everyone's voices out in the backyard. I step into the bedroom, walk over to the window and see everyone conversing while it looks like Chris and Peter are talking to my dad and preventing people from coming inside the house.

"Shit, ok gotta hurry," I say to myself and run into the bathroom, tearing off my stolen clothes and jumping in the shower to quickly clean myself.

Fuck, I'm so hungry

In no time I finish, dry myself off and try to style my curls as best I could. I remember my hair was so perfect in soft loose ringlets, now it's damp as I try to scrunch it with some hair product knowing I don't have time to whip out the curling iron to make it the way it was that day - I mean this day. I quickly change into my wedding dress, finding it a little tighter than I remember but still able to get it on, only now the top of my cleavage is visibly showing.

I guess my boobs did get bigger.

I then grab the white garter belt and slide it up to my thigh, then slip on my white shoes. I then head back into the bedroom to check myself in the full length mirror, try and fluff my curls a bit as they fall down around my shoulders in tight curls and see if I can quickly throw on some make-up. As I move over to my dresser I hear a few voices coming up the stairs again and I start to panic a little.

"I'm just gonna check the bedroom again, you never know she might have - "

The door opens and I quickly close up my powder compact and see Chris in his black button up dress shirt, untucked with the top 2 buttons undone, his necklaces laying against his bare chest, those black suede wrist bands and black dress pants, his curls - oh my god those gorgeous curls I miss - down passed his shoulders with his silver hoop earrings poking through, his beard perfectly trimmed, neat and subtle when he first started to grow it, and those beautiful blue eyes that light up my soul each time he lays them on me.

"Hi baby," I smile at him and he immediately rushes over to me and wraps his arms around me, holding me tightly and whispers "Hi"

"Um, could you just give us a few minutes?" Chris says after a few moments of him holding me and turns to whoever was with him and they nod and head back downstairs. Chris then closes the bedroom door and turns back to me.

"Ok, tell me that I'm not crazy here, but I could have sworn you... you looked different this morning... or..." He says as he walks over to me. His eyes wander over my body, landing at my chest lingering for a moment, and then flicking back to my eyes.

"No, I'm the same... I just, decided to change my make-up," I say and bite my bottom lip.

Holy shit he looks so fucking gorgeous.

He keeps his eyes on mine for a few moments and once again looks over my body, then catches my left hand noticing the tattoo on my ring finger had been completed. He takes my hand and then flicks his eyes back to mine.

"We're already married aren't we?" He asks.

"Yea," I say after a few moments.

"When are you coming from?" He asks glancing over my chest again.

"Uh, 1998" I breathe as his cologne fills my nostrils the closer he moves to me.

"So... are you here to marry me?"

" I am,"

"So when you come back, we aren't actually married then?" He asks and I can see the look of confusion take over him.

"Technically no, but you take me to city hall and we make it official then" I tell him.

"Do you at least come back in time for... tonight?" He raises his eyebrow at me.

"I do," I say remembering our wedding night. It was the best night of my life. "But just go easy on me ok? I'm probably not going to be exactly my happy self when I come back,"

He gives me a concerned look for a moment and moves closer to me. I didn't really want to get into specifics but I remember feeling incredibly heartbroken when I slipped. He then touches his forehead to mine and I close my eyes relishing in the scent of him. He then places his lips on mine starting gentle at first then swiping his tongue across my bottom lip and deepening the kiss. Without realizing it, my fingers make their way to his hair, lacing them through his curls, relishing in them as he draws me into him.

Dear fucking god, his lips feel so good.

He then pulls away from me and glances down at my chest again.

"See something you like?" I raise my eyebrow at him.

"Uh..." He trails off and I catch him biting his bottom lip. "You uh, you're fucking gorgeous in that dress," He adds flicking his eyes back to mine.

"We better get downstairs before people start to wonder what's going on up here," I sigh when he touches his forehead to mine wanting him to just make love to me right here, right now.

"Yea, you're right. Ok, I'll head down first," He says, places another kiss on my lips, then reluctantly pulls away from me and turns, adjusting himself and I giggle.

"You shush," He says flashing me a smirk before he disappears downstairs.

*****

Seattle Washington, April 2 1980

(Andi is 20, Chris is 15)

ANDI: "Shit! Jeezus What the Fuck?!" Chris yelps as I suddenly appear on the bathroom floor completely naked while he is in the clawfoot bathtub taking a shower. He covers himself but looks completely terrified at me while the water continues running over him.

"Andi, oh my God, um... shit," He says and turns the shower off while I try to gather myself together. I still feel incredibly dizzy. He quickly jumps out of the bathtub and grabs a towel from the rack to cover himself with and an extra one for me. He moves back over to me and nervously helps wrap me in a towel, giving me the shyest smile.

"Hi," He says sweetly. My god he's so young and his hair is so short.

"Um, hi," I say a little disoriented.

"Are you ok?" He asks.

"Yea, I think so," I say as he helps me sit up on the toilet. Suddenly he starts to giggle and which in turn made me start because I seriously did not mean to scare him, but I have to admit, that scream he let out was hilarious.

"Here, let me get you something um, I'll be right back," He says laughing and hurries out of the bathroom while I continue to giggle and situate myself a little better. A few minutes later he comes back wearing only a pair of grey sweatpants and one of his T-Shirts for me.

"I'm sorry I didn't mean to scare you," I giggle.

"It's ok, I figured you wanted me to scream like a girl at some point," He laughs as he crouches down so that he is pretty much eye level with me. He hands me over the T-Shirt and I quickly pull it on, flipping my curls out from underneath. It was pretty much a night shirt on me as it was long enough to come down to my mid-thigh.

"It's um... it's good to see you," He says with a small smile.

"You, too," I say as I look into his incredibly young features.

"I was um, just gonna hang out at home today so... wanna hang out with me?" He asks so cutely.

"Yea sure," I smile back at him. He then holds out his hand for me and I take it, and he leads me out into the living room part of the basement of his old house he lived in with his mom.

*****

ANDI: "So... what should I put on now?" Chris asks me as he crawls on his knees over to the stereo and stops the turntable.

"I don't know... I'm cool with whatever," I say as I lay down on the shaggy carpeted floor of his living room with my eyes closed my legs crossed at the ankle with my one arm supporting behind my head.

"Ok, um... do you wanna pick something?" He says as he looks back at me with those blue eyes.

"Mmmm... how about the Ramones?" I ask.

"Road to Ruin?" He smiles at me.

"Sure," I say and he immediately flips though his records, finds it and puts it on. He then moves back over to the coffee table, sitting in front of it and just beside me, grabs the joint that was burning in the ashtray and takes a few drags from it.

"You know, you never said when you're coming from," He says as he exhales a cloud of smoke.

"1990," I say quietly with my eyes still closed.

"Oh, so you're like what... how old?"

"20," I say quietly again.

"Huh..." He trails off and takes another drag.

"What?" I ask opening one eye at him.

"Nothing," He says and I close my eyes again. I can feel him studying me for a few moments and then he takes another drag.

"Andi, are you ok?" He asks. I guess he could tell that I really wasn't in the mood to be time travelling.

"Yea... yea I'm ok," I sigh wishing that I could tell him it's our wedding day and that all I want to do is just marry him and be with him but instead I ended up being here with him when he's only 15 and we can't do anything at all because that would be completely wrong, not to mention illegal if anything else. I always forget we're just friends in this time and as much as I love that he's my best friend, I just want to go back to my time.

But I love him so much. Fuck this fucking sucks. I hate myself so fucking much.

"Andi?" He asks again and I find myself trying to hold back my crying but I just couldn't help it. I cover my face with my hands and start to sob, feeling like an absolute idiot.

"Hey, no... no don't cry. Did I say something wrong?" He asks as he butts out the joint.

"No," I say quietly as I wipe my eyes and sit up. He moves even closer to me while I continue to wipe my tears away. He pushes my curls behind my ear, and cups my face in his palms looking at me with those blue eyes that are so young and have no idea of the life ahead of him.

"Andi, you can tell me anything you know that right?" He says and I'm suddenly reminded of his birthday in the park when he said the exact same thing, the exact same way only I really can't tell him everything right now. I then wrap my arms around him wanting him to hold me and feeling his arms slowly embrace me. Without him saying one more word, he hugs me tighter as I softly cry into his shoulder.

*****

Seattle Washington, September 21 1990

(Andi is 28, Chris is 26)

CHRIS: "... and Chris, do you take Andrea Marie O'Riden to be your lawfully wedded wife, in good times and in bad times, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others as long as you both shall live?"

"I do," I say without any hesitation as I slip the white gold wedding band on her finger, knowing it is the only time she will ever wear it.

"Alright, with the power bestowed upon me and by the state of Washington, I now pronounce you... Husband and Wife,"

I smile looking into those beautiful dark eyes of hers and knowing that she is an older version of herself, she is still so incredibly beautiful and everything that I ever dreamed about.

"...you can kiss your bride," the officiant says to me with a chuckle and I immediately lean down to her, pressing my lips to hers as she giggles against my lips for a moment, then cups my face in her palm. At that moment, everything stood completely still as I hear all of our friends and family laugh and cheer for us, applauding as I pretty much refuse to take my lips away from hers.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I now introduce to you, Mr. and Mrs. Christopher John Cornell," The officiant says proudly though I still remain placing a few quick kisses on her lips while she giggles so sweetly as everyone continues to applaud us.

*****

Hours later, I sit in one of the large reading chairs in our living room as the last of our guests leave. Susan walks over to me while my hand grips my roots as I play with Andi's wedding band between my fingers.

"You need anything?" She says as she places her hand on my shoulder.

"No... just my wife back," I exhale and lay my head back on the chair, closing my eyes.

"I know... she'll come back. She always does," Susan gives me a small smile and I return it, glancing up at her. She then turns and makes her way to the front door giving me a soft wave as she says goodbye, and I am left alone to wait for my love to come back to me.

[eddiesasspbrak]

When I’m With You Ch. 20

Eddie can’t stand the barista at his favorite coffee shop. Richie has fallen in love with the man he sees twice a week. Stan is dating someone but won’t let his friends meet them. Ben is in love with Beverly, but is so afraid of scaring her away he’s not moving forward. Chaotic friends navigating college together. \

NSFW content to follow. minors don’t interact

Ch. 1

read on AO3

5k+ words

Richie had been anxious the rest of the day. He’d stayed to help out until the rush died down and then gone into the back to bake. He wasn’t on the schedule, he probably wouldn’t even get paid for it, but he didn’t want to head back to the building. Sonia Kaspbrak hadn’t been what he was expecting. She was much, much worse. He’d heard all of Eddie’s stories about what a menace she was growing up and how afraid of her he was but seeing it in the flesh was so different. Eddie seemed so…small when in her presence. Afraid to speak. It made Richie sick, made his chest hurt and he just knew that if he was face to face with her again he wouldn’t be able to keep it inside.

He loved Eddie and the last thing he wanted to do was make things more difficult for him. It took every bit of self restraint not to go after them when they left the café. It also helped that Mike knew him all too well and held on tight to his wrist until they were out of sight. That last look Eddie set on him was very nearly heartbreaking. Who knows what he would have done had Mike not been holding him.

Baking helped him clear his head and think things through. It was part of the reason he’d started baking in the first place. Having something to focus on pushed all other worries from his mind. Wasn’t there a musical about that? Baking all your troubles away. He was into stage acting but knew little about musicals. Still, he was sure he’d heard someone listening to a song like that. Either way, it definitely described the way he felt about baking.

Even so, Eddie was on his mind while he measured, poured, mixed, folded, cut and iced. He knew that once his mom went home the following day, things would go back to normal. Eddie would smile again, and they wouldn’t have to hide. After pining for him for so long, not being able to interact with him normally for even one day was torture. Especially after the night before when they’d been so carefree, wrapped up in each other only seeing the other for a blissful moment. Also, it was hot as fuck and way better than the fantasies he’d been jerking off to for the past several months.

Richie had always pictured the morning after being filled with naked kisses and cuddling and maybe a blow job or two. Definitely not being woken up by a panicked Eddie who he couldn’t even take the proper time to comfort.

It was Bill, coming in to check on him after a few hours of letting him be, that broke him from his cycle of baking and worrying. “Richie, what the f-fuck? We’re never going to sell all of this before it goes stale.” Bill was exasperated, looking at the tables and cooling racks full of trays holding various baked goods.

“Run a two for one sale?” Richie shrugged, taking a look at the pile of dirty dishes he had to run through the washer.

“Alright, I’m c-calling it. Go home. I’ll deal with all of this.”

“No, I can’t go home yet. I’ll stay till closing.

“Absolutely not. You weren’t even supposed to be h-h-here today. We appreciate the help, really. But if you b-bake anymore the owner is going to k-kill you and maybe m-me. Leave.”

Richie sighed and untied the apron, lifting it over his head and handing it to Bill as he walked to the door. “Fine. But if I get drunk and text pictures of my dick to Eddie and his mom sees it, I’m blaming you.”

“Or you could just not get drunk!” Bill called after him, to which Richie only shrugged.

He said goodbye to Mike and headed out into the rapidly darkening evening. There was nowhere to go but home. He was sure Bev and Ben were together doing who knows what. Ladies and the Tramps would be closed, and he hated showing up at their place unannounced. So, he dragged his feet heading home, hoping that Sonia was in for the night and he wouldn’t have any unpleasant run ins with her in the hallway. Still, as he exited the elevator and made his way to his apartment, he slowed down in front of Eddie’s door, listening for any voices. All he heard was the TV and he couldn’t even be sure it was coming from Eddie’s apartment without pressing his ear to the door.

Once inside his own place, he kicked off his shoes and dropped his coat on the closest beanbag chair, tossing his keys on top. He was starving, having not eaten anything but a few pastries at work, and grabbed the takeout menus that were clipped together from his counter. He was content to flop down on one of the chairs and search through them while watching something dumb on TV but before he could commence the flopping, a knock sounded from his door. Tossing the takeout menus aside, he made his way to the door, unsure of who would be knocking at this hour.

Package delivery, Bev, nosy neighbor, all possibilities but he didn’t think Eddie was on that list. That is, until he opened the door to reveal his small boyfriend standing in the hallway, shoeless, tear streaks on his face and eyes red.

“Richie I…”

He didn’t have to say anything else before Richie was pulling him into his arms and closing the door behind them. He scooped him up and made his way to the beanbag chair, settling down with Eddie in his lap. He clung to Richie so fiercely he could hardly breathe but he didn’t care because Eddie needed him, and he’d sit there as long as it took for him to feel alright again.

*

“What am I going to do?” Eddie sat with his knees pulled to his chest, a cup of coffee sat on the floor beside him. His eyes were still wet though the tears had more or less stopped.

Richie was angry. He couldn’t recall a time in his life that he was this angry. How could someone treat their own child this way? Sure, he had his ups and downs with his parents, but they supported his choices for the most part. He’d found his own way, but had he been dependent on them, he couldn’t foresee them doing something like this. All Eddie wanted was to find where he belonged with a group of people he loved and who loved him. He’d found that and now she wanted to rip it away.

Even as the fire raged within him, Richie knew it wouldn’t do any good for him to be angry right now. Eddie needed help, calm rational help. Taking a sip of his own coffee to hopefully extinguish some of the flames, he finally spoke.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Eds. I wish I could have been there with you.” He was mentally kicking himself for hiding out at the café when Eddie needed him. Fearing the answer, he asked, “what is it you want to do?”

Eddie’s gaze dropped to the floor between them. “I don’t know.”

“If…if you want to break up so that nothing changes I completely-.”

“No!” Eddie’s eyes snapped back to Richie’s face as he fell forward on his knees, closing the small distance between them. “I don’t want that! That’s not an option and will never be an option!”

Richie placed a hand on his cheek, soothing his thumb over new tears that were beginning to fall. “Ok, it’s ok. I just wanted you to know that I wouldn’t stop you. I want what’s best for you.”

For the first time in his life, Eddie heard those words and actually believed them. He knew how much Richie cared for him. He could see it in his eyes whenever he looked at him. He’d pined for so long before Eddie gave him the time of day and began to find him charming rather than obnoxious, or at least a mixture of both. So, he knew that letting him go wouldn’t be an easy task but here he was, offering it up as a way to save Eddie trouble. It made his heart clench in a not entirely painful way.

“I won’t let her ruin what we have I just…I just meant that I may have to apply for some grants and financial aid, get a job, maybe go back to living in the dorms. Not…not give in to her ridiculous requests to give up the one person who makes me feel sane.” Eddie leaned forward, wrapping his arms around Richie’s shoulders and letting himself be pulled onto his lap with arms around his waist.

“Guess I kind of jumped to worst case scenario, huh?” He chuckled. “I can see if Rose and Jen will give you a job or maybe we could use more hands at the café?”

“Either would be nice, but I’ll put in applications anywhere I can. I have a little experience from summers back home when I’d work at the theater with Stan.” Eddie sighed. “I wonder if I can afford an apartment somewhere. I loath the idea of going back to the dorms. College students are disgusting.”

“Yes, we are.” Richie grinned, before adding, “Why don’t you just move in here with me?”

Eddie felt like the air had been swept from his lungs as Richie’s words tumbled down onto him. For a second, he’d wondered if he’d heard him correctly, but what else could he have possibly said?

Living together. It wasn’t a terrible idea; they’d spent many nights together since they started dating. That wasn’t quite the same though. They’d have to cram both of their belongings into Richie’s already cluttered apartment. Richie would have to get used to Eddie’s obsessive need for cleanliness all the time and he wasn’t sure he was ready for that. As Eddie leaned back and looked Richie in the eyes, he looked completely serious. Not a joke then.

“Richie I…it’s only been like a month.” He reminded him, still finding it hard to catch his breath.

“I know, but you need a place to stay and…I love you.”

Eddie’s eyes grew wide in surprise. Part of him kind of knew they were headed to this point, but actually hearing it had tears springing to his eyes once more. He loved his friends, he knew his friends loved him, but no one had ever loved him like this. Not familial or platonic, but romantic love. Years of denying who he was and unable to find anyone to date followed by one-night encounters with strangers lead him to wonder if he’d ever find this with anyone. Would he ever hear someone say those three words that would have the room spinning around him? He was at a loss of words. What does one even say in a situation like this?

“You…love…really?” was all that he managed to force past his lips.

Richie grinned. “Yes, really. I would do anything for you, Eds. If you need your own space then we can look for a bigger apartment with two rooms. You can throw out all of my furniture and replace it with your own if that will make you happy. I’ll even get rid of the beanbags.”

“No, they’re growing on me. I like them.” Eddie chuckled, wiping at the tears on his cheeks.

“So…?”

“So…I…want to. I definitely want to because I love you too, Richie.” Before he could say more, Richie was pulling him in, pressing his lips hard against Eddie’s, wasting no time pushing his tongue past his lips.

Eddie sighed blissfully into the kiss, winding his arms around Richie’s neck. He didn’t care where he lived. Richie was his home. They could manage staying here or upgrade to a bigger place, though two rooms wasn’t necessary. Eddie liked sharing a bed with Richie, waking up to his face in the morning and falling asleep in his arms. Though they would definitely be getting a new mattress when they were able to. Richie’s was lumpy and had a broken spring. Maybe they could steal the one from his place before she could stop them.

All thoughts of planning for their apartment left his mind as Richie stood, taking him with him. He always felt light as a feather when Richie picked him up. Eddie tore his mouth from Richie’s as he walked back toward the bedroom, instead focusing on marking his neck. Richie grunted, his hands tightening on Eddie’s thighs as he sucked and nipped at his skin. Neither flipped the light on as they crashed down on the bed, the only light from the hallway and the string lights hung up around the ceiling.

Richie’s hands were on him all at once, pushing his shirt up to his armpits and barely giving him time to lift his arms before he was pulling it up and over his head. Then his mouth was on him, marking a trail from his ear to his navel. Eddie let out a long, trembling breath as Richie sucked a bruise above the waist of his pants while his long fingers hooked beneath them and his briefs, dragging them down to discard on the floor. It was cold in the room, but Eddie only felt a slight chill as Richie’s hands and mouth left his body feeling hot.

He knew better than to try and go too far given that the night before was Eddie’s first time, and he was likely to be sore. But as he took the head of his cock into his mouth, he hooked his fingers on his cheeks, spreading them against the mattress. Eddie’s thighs clenched on either side of Richie’s head, a raspy “fuuuuuuck” drawing out of his mouth followed by a low moan as Richie hollowed his cheeks and pressed the flat of his tongue against the underside of his cock.

Richie loved hearing Eddie’s sweet moans spilling from his lips like he’d lost all control. His muscles went rigid beneath him, his hips bucking ever so slightly, held down by Richie’s strong hand. His hands fisted in the sheets, resisting reaching for Richie’s hair and tugging on the strands. His stomach turned to water, his mind going blank filled with only Richie, Richie, Richie until he felt like he was going to melt away into nothing. Richie let go long enough to suck a finger into his mouth before taking him back in and far as he could to the back of his throat and easing the wet digit into Eddie.

Flinching, Eddie gasped, trying his best to lift his head and look down at Richie. He was so focused on making Eddie feel good, making Eddie cum, and once again Eddie felt that rush of adoration surge up within him. If he weren’t about to bust he might have grabbed him by the ears and hauled him up for a kiss. Instead, he dropped back down to his back, his head pressed against the pillows and his back arching up off the mattress. A string of “oh god, Richie, Richie, fuck” came from his lips, all the warning he could provide from his muddled brain before he was spilling onto Richie’s tongue and down his throat. Richie sucked him through each spasm until he was overly sensitive and whining.

Richie wiped his mouth on his sleeve, sitting back on his heels and taking in the disheveled mess that was his lovely boyfriend. His cheeks had bloomed into a bright shade of red, his lips wet and open panting heavily. His body was covered in a layer of sweat despite the cold of the room, his eyes unfocused. Richie hovered over top of him, a hand on either side of his head.

“Don’t suppose you’ll kiss me now, huh?” He grinned.

Eddie rolled his eyes and lifted up on his elbows, a little shaky, and captured Richie’s lips with his own. He ignored the part of his brain that told him that it was gross and dirty because he didn’t care. Honestly, he barely even tasted anything when he opened his mouth for Richie. He felt a flutter in his stomach, a pleasant ache in his heart as Richie kissed him soft and slow.

Pulling back just enough to separate their mouths, Eddie cupped Richie’s face with one hand, stroking his thumb over his cheek. “I want to try…with you…I mean…”

“Come on Eds, can’t be too hard to ask for right? We’ve already fucked, what more is there to do?” Richie chuckled, rubbing his nose against Eddie’s.

Frustrated, Eddie closed his eyes. “I want to try…a bow job. I’ve never…wanted to before and…I don’t know if I’ll be any good, but I want to try.” When he opened his eyes again, Richie was smirking in a way that made a chill go down his spine but also made him kind of want to hit him.

“I’ll never say no to you giving me a blow job my sweet Spaghetti. Just try your best.”

Eddie nodded and Richie rolled off of him, quickly undressing himself. Sitting on his knees, Eddie came to realize just how nervous he actually was. It wasn’t so much having a dick in his mouth because it was Richie and he loved him. He was more afraid of being bad at it and accidentally hurting Richie. As he leaned forward, staring down at his stiff dick, he remembered how Richie wrapped his lips over his teeth and did the same after licking his lips thoroughly.

Richie was bigger than him, thicker in the shaft and longer. He wasn’t brave enough to attempt to take him too far in this time. He focused his attention on his head, swirling his tongue over his tip whenever he drew back. With one hand, he pumped the rest of his length in time with the bobbing of his head. He was still anxious but above him Richie was rambling, his hand on Eddie’s cheek.

“Fuuuck, Eddie baby you’re so fucking beautiful on your knees like that.” His voice was rough and low, his eyes focused on Eddie. “Just like that, keep going.”

He was clumsy, unsure of himself and repetitive, but Richie didn’t care, he was so enchanted by Eddie trying so hard. Months ago, he never even thought Eddie would look his way, now he was doing his best to suck Richie off and he loved him. He loved him! The angry little man he pined over loved him so much he was stepping out of his comfort zones to make Richie feel good. It wasn’t perfect, but Richie did feel good. He felt good because it was Eddie, desperately battering the head of his cock with his tongue while his hand smeared spit and cum down his shaft.

“Shit, fuck, baby I’m gonna cum.” Richie tensed, refusing to give into the urge to close his eyes and miss even a second.

Eddie didn’t stop, determined to do the same for Richie as he’d done for him. Moments later, Richie was coming across his tongue. It was thick and made Eddie gag a bit and as he pulled off his dick it drippled from his lips. Richie, mesmerized, reached out and wiped at his lips with is thumb. Eddie swallowed the bit that remained in his mouth and wondered how Richie managed to swallow so much without gagging.

Drunk from his orgasm, Richie wrapped his arms around Eddie and pulled him down on top of his chest. He planted kisses to the top of his head, stroking his hand down his back to the curve of his ass. Eddie sighed against him, feeling content for the first time since that morning waking beside Richie. He felt sleepy and wanted to sleep there in Richie’s arms, but he knew it wouldn’t end well if she woke in the morning and found an empty couch.

“I want to stay here.” He said quietly against Richie’s chest. “Forever. Don’t want to go back.”

“Then stay. Stay with me.”

After basking in the afterglow, repeating sweet words to each other, kissing until he lips felt swollen, Eddie finally tore himself away and dressed. Richie followed him to the door clad in only briefs, pressing one last breath stealing kiss to his lips before letting him return down the hall. After he disappeared behind the closed door, Richie close his own and leaned against the cold wood, typing out a text in their group chat.

*

Sonia woke Monday morning in her son’s bed. He’d been nice enough to change the sheets for her the night before. She wouldn’t have complained but then again, she didn’t know what had transpired on the previous sheets the night before. Had she known, she would have likely taken the entire mattress out back and burned it in the alleyway. Eddie had made up an excuse about her deserving fresh, clean sheets to sleep on. She didn’t fight him on it.

It was 9am. Eddie could be heard moving around somewhere down the hall. Muffled voices drifted through the door. The TV or maybe the radio. She remembered Eddie liked to listen to music when he did homework as a teenager. Though she tried to discourage it, telling him it was a distraction from his studies.

Normally when she came for a visit, she’d smell breakfast already cooking when she got up. As she slipped into her slippers and threw on her robe, there were so smells of eggs, bacon and toast in the room. Odd. Perhaps Eddie wanted to take her out for breakfast again.

When she opened the door, before she could step out into the hallway, someone rushed from the bathroom, a box in their hands. She watched them head into the living room and disappear when they turned. She didn’t see their face; wasn’t sure she knew who it was. Surely a burglar wouldn’t steal toiletries. However, if it was a thief, what of her son who slept on the couch?

She steeled herself, and stomped down the hall, letting whoever was in the apartment know that she was coming. The living room was full of the people Eddie called his friends. They were putting things into boxes, some carrying them out into the hall. Eddie wasn’t there. They each looked at her but didn’t greet her or acknowledge that they saw her.

A clink in the kitchen had her heading that way. Eddie was near the pantry, pulling out boxes and bags and putting them into a box on the floor. That obnoxious boy with the glasses was wrapping coffee mugs in kitchen towels and putting them in another small box. He looked up when he saw her, his eyes growing slightly wide.

“Uh…hey Eds.” He called.

Eddie poked his head out from behind the pantry door and when he saw his mother standing there he merely turned back to Richie and shrugged.

“Leave the plates and bowels. The drinking glasses are mine though.” He instructed, lifting the full box of food onto the counter and folding down the top.

“Eddie, what on Earth is going on?” Sonia demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I’m packing.” He didn’t even look at her.

“Packing? For what?”

“You told me to break up with Richie or you’d stop supporting me. So, I’m moving in with Richie.”

Sonia’s mouth fell open, then closed, then back open much like a fish out of water gasping for breath. Eddie ignored her. It was killing him not to look at her face to see how she was reacting. His heart was beating so fast and he was barely able to control the shaking of his hands. He couldn’t break. Wouldn’t let her know he was still afraid of her, of what she might do. He wasn’t the little boy who might be kept home “sick” from school for a week because he was playing tag on the playground and came home with a scraped knee. He was an adult. A fairly new adult, still figuring things out on his own and making mistakes, but old enough to not be under her control anymore.

Richie, on the other hand, was watching her every move. Daring her to do anything that might hurt Eddie. After another moment of staring with her mouth hanging open, she finally turned on her heel and marched back down the hallway. Eddie let out a little shaky breath, looking to Richie for silent support.

He wasn’t sure what she would do, but a few ideas had run through his head the night before. Taking everything from the boxes and breaking it, calling the police to say she was being robbed or he was being kidnapped, or going completely out of her mind and attacking Richie. Not saying anything and going back to the room was not one he’d planned for. He peeked into the living room at the others. The front door was open, Ben and Mike were out in the hall, boxes in their hands, waiting. Bill, Bev and Stan were in the living room. She was folding a blanket to carry down the hall, Stan was sat in front of the TV, loading DVDs and books into a box. Bill was at the hall closet, an arm full of coats and jackets. They were all looking at Eddie, waiting to see how he would react. Whether or not things were about to get bad. He shrugged and shook his head, indicating he didn’t know what was happening.

Distant thumps could be heard from behind his closed bedroom door. Maybe she was breaking things after all. He didn’t care. Everything he had could be replaced. He just wanted whatever was going to happen to happen so he could be free. Maybe she’d beg. He would say no though. Maybe not a no to seeing her again, but no to staying under her thumb. She might say she was wrong, and he can keep seeing Richie, but he knew better. She’d change her mind later; decide he couldn’t be with him and she would threaten it all over.

How many times in his life had she done the same thing? Giving him false hope just to snag what he wanted out of his reach again. Like the time in eighth grade when the entire grade went to an amusement park before middle school graduation. He’d begged her to let him go, promised to stay off the rides and just play games. She took the permission slip and said she’d think about it, discussed it with him at dinner every night the week leading up and then the day the permission slip was due, told him it was too dangerous and he couldn’t go. She’d known all along she was going to say no but let him believe he had a chance of having fun with the rest of his class anyway. He’d been so upset he’d spent lunch that day hiding in the dugout on the field with Stan and Ben, crying. They’d brought him a t-shirt and some fried food they’d smuggled on the bus. It just wasn’t the same though.

Eddie jumped when the door to his bedroom slammed open, smacking against the wall. Richie abandoned the box he’d been packing and stood in front of Eddie, just in case. Ben and Mike cleared the doorway, joining the others in the living room. A second later, out came Sonia with her bag, angrily putting on her jacket. She looked into the kitchen at Eddie, flames alight in her eyes.

“You think they care about you now, but just you wait. They’ll turn on you and cast you aside. They’ll take everything they can from you until you’re broken and alone and then who will you crawl back to? Me.” She was practically spitting, her hair a mess and getting worse with each jerky movement she made. “No one will ever love you as much as I do, Eddie. No one.”

With that, she turned and stomped to the front door, kicking a box out of her way and disappearing into the hallway. They all stood silent, waiting a heartbeat until they heard the elevator ding. The doors opened and then closed, followed by silence. Ben peeked out into the hall to be sure she was gone.

“Coast is clear.” He smiled.

Everyone visibly deflated and let out a collective sigh. Eddie was a bit in disbelief that it had been so easy. He knew she wouldn’t give up too easily and would most definitely call him every hour for the next few months, but she’d left without much of a fight. He brushed past Richie and headed toward his bedroom to assess any damage. Surprisingly, nothing was broken or missing. The bed was disheveled from sleep and her hastily putting her things together but that was all.

Richie appeared beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You ok?”

Eddie sighed. “Yea. I’m good. Just kind of…shocked. She didn’t even try to force me to go with her.”

“I mean…it was seven against one. She probably figured the odds of success were against her.”

“She’ll just wait until I’m alone then, throw a bag over my head and force me into the car.” Eddie was only half joking. She was more likely to use chloroform.

Richie’s face would have been comical if tension hadn’t been so high just moments before. “Alright, so what you’re saying is, we can’t leave you alone for even a second.”

“What are you going to do, surround me like the secret service?” Eddie grinned, then upon seeing Richie’s own smile, immediately followed with, “no, no. That was a joke. Do not do that.”

“Sorry Eds, but you know you shouldn’t put these ideas into my head. Whatever happens now is out of my hands.”

Eddie was ready to pummel him when Mike appeared at the end of the hall. “Hey, we’ve got everything you said from the living room, closet and bathroom packed up. Should we just run it down the hall?”

“Yea, thanks Mikey.” Richie said, handing him his apartment keys from his pocket. “Just start piling things up in the living room.”

“Got it.” Mike took the keys and a second later his voice was heard in the living room telling the others what to do.

Richie turned back to Eddie. “Wanna start on the bedroom now?”

Eddie looked back into his room. “Yea, but…are you sure there’s room for me? I don’t want to impose.”

“There is more than enough room for you. Besides, I’ve been meaning to go through and get rid of some things. They can complete their life cycle with me, back at the thrift shop for the next broke guy with no taste.” He grinned when Eddie laughed. “If it gets too cramped we can start looking for a bigger place, ok?”

“Ok.”

Eddie looked toward the living room, his smile falling away and his eyebrows furrowing together. “What are you thinking?” Richie asked, reaching out to smooth the line between his eyebrows with his thumb.

“I’m wondering if she’ll notice if we steal the couch.” Eddie said, looking back to Richie.

Richie put a hand to his chest, mouth falling open in mock offence. “Are you saying that you’re too good for my beanbags now? I thought you liked them.”

“I do, the beanbags stay, I’m saying I want something to sit on sometimes that doesn’t hold onto my ass and refuse to let go.”

“Now you’re too good for my lap too?”

Eddie rolled his eyes, but the smile was too obvious to hide. “Shut up and help me pack, asshole.”

*

Several hours later when everything was safely down the hall in Richie’s apartment, Eddie did one more walk through to make sure they didn’t forget anything. They treated their friends to pizza and beer before seeing them off for the night. Eddie flopped down on one of the beanbags feeling drained. It had taken longer than he’d expected to get everything together. Richie was insistent on getting rid of a bunch of his stuff, a plan for the following weekend when they’d both have free time again. They both had a week of classes, work and job hunting ahead of them.

Eddie dragged one of the beanbags over next to Eddie and sat, handing him a newly opened bottle of beer. He mumbled a thanks as he took it. It didn’t feel real yet. He’d spent nights at Richie’s before and that’s all this felt like. Another night at his boyfriend’s place…surrounded by boxes of his belongings. Belongings that would have to stay in boxes until they could find space for everything. Perishable foods were the only things to be put away before exhaustion took over.

“How are you feeling?” Richie asked, grateful for their friends but also glad to finally have a moment of peace with just Eddie.

“Tired, anxious. I don’t want to go to class tomorrow. I’ve never skipped it but…I don’t know, maybe I need a day.” He sighed.

“So, take a day. The last two days have been stressful. If you need a day to sleep and recover mentally then take it. Unfortunately, I can’t blow off work, but I’ll skip my class too and come home. Maybe bring lunch and some coffee?”

“Well, I’ll feel bad if I’m the reason you skip but that does sound nice.” Eddie said, leaning over and resting his head against Richie’s shoulder. Richie’s arm came up around his back, landing softly on top of Eddie’s head and slowly stroking down to his neck. “Bring me some baked goods too?” He asked.

“Absolutely. We’ve got way more than we could ever sell right now so I’ll bring home a bucket full. We can sit on the beanbags, watch dumb movies and get fat all afternoon and evening.”

“Sounds perfect.” Eddie hummed.

After they finished off their drinks they cleaned up the remaining mess from dinner and collapsed into bed, shucking off jeans in the process. They’d ended up deciding the steal the mattress after all. Ben had helped Richie switch them out, carrying the old one down to the dumpster. Eddie didn’t even mind Richie’s mismatched sheets because it smelled of him, though having the real thing next to him was so much better. With the lights flipped off, the only noise from the busy street beyond the window and Penny moving about her home, things were peaceful. Richie wrapped Eddie up in his arms, pulling the blanket up over their shoulders to prevent the cold from seeping in and they slept.

[aquarius-johnny]

Father’s Day Surprise | Johnny Suh

Requested: no | Word Count: 1.2k | Warnings: -

Genre: fluff

Author’s Note: I haven’t written a one-shot in a long time so forgive me for my rustiness. Johnny x Fem!Reader

Summary: This particular Father’s Day is a lot more special because you decide to tell Johnny he’s going to be a father. 

The thought of having a child wasn’t a far fetched idea considering you and Johnny would talk about it more than you ever thought you could. Surprisingly, Johnny’s excitement surpassed yours in many ways. He found the idea of setting up a crib and an entire nursery with you quite thrilling. He shared his fear of holding a tiny and fragile human being in his arms because of his tall frame to which you assured him he would be just fine. Most importantly, he found the process of creating a baby the best part before the actual child arrives. But these thoughts were just that, thoughts. You didn’t expect to hold a positive pregnancy test in the restroom of Johnny’s favorite restaurant while on a date with him. Your mouth dropped in awe at the symbol clearly stating you were expecting. For a moment, your world came to a stop and a million thoughts ran through your mind until a stranger’s congratulatory statement pulled you out of your thoughts.

“Oh, thank you,” you smile, tucking away the test that’s wrapped in an abundance of paper towel into your clutch. You watch the stranger walk out of the restroom before staring at your slightly panicked state. Beads of sweat started from your hairline and slowly rolled down your temple before you wiped them away. It didn’t matter how many times you wiped the palm of your hands, the thought of pregnancy made you extremely nervous. You inhale sharply before recollecting your thoughts and rejoining your date.

Johnny smiles at you while stuffing his credit card into his designer wallet. “Ready to go?” He asks, standing from his seat and gulping the last ounce of his beverage. Nodding your head, you feel an overwhelming sense of comfort wash over you as you feel Johnny’s fingers slip between yours while leading you out of the restaurant and into his car. As you and Johnny walk to your front door, you’re greeted by your next door neighbor and his two children.

“Did you guys go on a date?” The 7-year-old girl teases in a sing-songy voice as her little brother giggles while clutching onto his sister's shoulders as she gives him a piggyback ride.

“Yes,” Johnny gasps. “We’re you watching us? Did you put cameras in our clothes?” His playful demeanor earns a laugh from the little girl especially when he began to speak into the collar of his dress shirt.

“No!” The girl defends as her father walks behind her and places a hand on his shoulder. “You look very fancy like you’re going to a party.”

You scan the child’s outfit and take note of the pretty dress she had on with the bow-tie her sibling had around his neck. “You look very fancy too, did you go on a date?” You smile to which she gives you a disgusted look before shaking her head.

“No, we went to a restaurant for Father’s Day! Mommy made us dress up because we were going to see our grandma and grandpa too.”

You and Johnny smile at the children and greet their father a happy father’s day before they’re ushered away to make it in time for their scheduled bedtime. The young boy turns around and waves his small hand at Johnny who waves back before mumbling “they’re so cute” under his breath.

“I’ll get the ice cream,” you let out, walking towards the kitchen while Johnny walks into the bedroom to strip from his formal wear upon entering your home. You hand him your clutch to ensure it’s within reach when you break the news to him. Grabbing two spoons and the mint chocolate ice cream tub from Ben & Jerry’s, you stop to curate a game plan. Do I tell him before, after, or during the movie he decides? How do I even bring it up? Hey John, I’m pregnant. You shake your head at the thought and mentally scold yourself. Hey, I have something important to tell you. Today at dinner, I took a pregnancy test in the restroom and it came out as positive. Is that too technical? You sigh at your rambling thoughts.

“You better not be eating the ice cream without me!” Johnny shouts from the bedroom, telling you to hurry. Scurrying off to where he is, you hand him the sweets and utensils and quickly strip from your clothes before joining him on the bed. You chew on your bottom lip as Johnny quickly calls his dad to greet him on this special day. It was then you realized how you should go about telling him you’re expecting. Once he gets off the phone, he pulls you into his side for a cuddle as he usually does when he lays in bed. Lifting the top of the ice cream tub, he begins to feed you the first bite and then himself.

“Happy Father’s Day, Johnny.” You smile shyly, enjoying the idea of greeting him on this day every year.

“Baby, I know you call me daddy sometimes, but I don’t think that’s what this day is for.” A cocky smirk dances on his lips, proud of the witty comment he made.

Shaking your head, you grab your clutch and pull out the bundle of paper towels. Johnny pauses, curious to know what you had in your hands. As you unravel its content, he slowly proceeds to lift the ice cream filled spoon into his mouth.

“Nice remark, but I was being serious.” You let out a small sigh, carefully showing him your pregnancy test. “You’re going to be a dad.”

You wish you could save Johnny’s reaction to your revelation. He swallowed the ice cream in one gulp and you were certain it left him with a horrible brain freeze. His eyes widened and mouth fell open at the sight of the test in front of him. For the first time, he was lost for words.

“I - we - we’re going to have a baby?” His eyes divert to your stomach, his mind quickly flashing forward to the next nine months.

You nod slowly. “Are you okay with that?” You wonder, unsure of how Johnny was feeling.

Johnny sits up, almost knocking over the tube of ice cream on your bed before you place it on the side table closest to you. “I’M GOING TO BE A DAD!” Johnny shouts at the top of his lungs excitingly, nearly making your heart jump out of your chest. Jumping on the bed like a little kid, he celebrates as you watch him in admiration. “WE’RE GOING TO BE PARENTS!”

“Shh, Johnny! The whole neighborhood can hear you,” you chuckle at him, bringing him back down from his excitement.

“It makes sense! You weren’t having your period for the last two months.” He gasps, pointing his finger at you.

“You noticed that?”

“Yeah, and I was hoping you wouldn’t because I wanted you to be pregnant.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” You laugh, running your fingers through his messy hair.

“I didn’t want to rush you, but you are pregnant and I’m going to be a dad!” Johnny places his hand on your cheek, gently stroking it before pulling you in for a kiss. “Are you ready for this?”

You happily nod. “I’m ready for anything when I’m with you.”

[thejollyroger-writer]

Historical Inaccuracies

a/n: Inspired by a chat in the discord, this story was born out of Killian’s love for history and America’s hatred for the British while on historical tours. Up until last night, this fic was lovingly referred to as “the history nerd fic,” and it is dedicated to @welllpthisishappening @profdanglaisstuff @kmomof4 and @shireness-saysIt is, of course, Fourth of July themed, like all of Mary Margaret’s outfits on this trip. 

Read it on AO3 if that’s more your jam

3k words // rated G

SUMMARY:  When David and Mary Margaret's son wants to go on the Freedom Walk guided tour in Boston for his birthday, Emma and Killian tag along, still hiding their relatively-new relationship from their friends. But when the tour guide starts to berate a certain group of people from across the pond, both Killian's anger and their relationship come out.

-----

Killian would do anything for his godson. Of course, he would do anything for his nephew, Charlie, too, but the hour-long car trip from Boston to Northbridge is far easier than the flight across the Atlantic to his brother and his wife in England. 

But this? This is a new level of Hell, right here in the middle of Boston. 

Not all of it is terrible. He gets to share an apartment with his girlfriend, their fairly-new relationship still a secret to their best friends. They both took off work for Leo’s birthday celebration, so they get to spend a few days together, without either of them having to worry about their jobs, since she could manage a few days without going after someone who skipped bail, and his university was off for the summer. And their best friends are back in town, their seven-year-old in tow. It really was a “stay-cation” that he was looking forward to, especially since the thing Leo wanted the most was to spend days on historical tours of Killian's favorite city, some of them led by Killian himself, and others led by costumed tour guides in celebration of the Fourth of July week in Boston.  

But it's one of these costumed tour guides that is putting Killian through hell. Ben. Ben, a twenty-something year old, probably a college student, with shaggy ginger hair and a freckle-covered face, wearing an American Revolutionary War uniform.

He got through the part of the tour where Ben referred to the British soldiers during the Revolutionary War as the “bloody Brits,” paired with a terrible fake accent. He got through the discussion of the Boston Tea Party where Ben instead referred to them only as the “Colonizers.” 

But now? 

“You know,” Ben says, turning around to look at their small group as he leads them down the last few blocks towards the Faneuil Market, the ending place for their tour. “We focus so much on the Brits of the past on this tour, but what about the Brits of the present?” 

There’s a small smattering of laughter from the group, but Killian squeezes his hands into fists, tight enough for them to quickly start shaking. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Emma turn to him, making sure he is okay, and though he is decidedly not, there’s nothing they can do without calling attention to him. 

This is one form of torture. Everyone around him learning he is one of these bloody Brits would be something more. Or, he fears it would. Hence why he hasn’t spoken since the tour started, simply happy to be spending time with the people closest to him. 

“It’s one thing to colonize countries when it was all the rage. Everyone was colonizing when the British ruled the Americas, and the Brits colonized everyone — but to still have colonies? In the twenty-first century?” 

There’s a mumble of approval through the group. 

Killian just rolls his eyes. 

“And who still has a queen, in this day and age?” he jokes, and this gets a few laughs in response. “Nowadays, the Royal Family seems more like the stars of a reality show then the people ruling a nation. I mean, why does it matter what the prince’s wife wears on a daily basis? That’s the status of a celebrity, not of a woman who might one day rule the whole country.” There are a few more laughs, the crowd now getting more into his new-found stand up comedy role. 

Killian disagrees, pressing his teeth lightly into his tongue. 

(Though he would never admit it, Killian kind of agrees with this point. The fame of the Royal Family has seemed a little irrelevant to him over the past few years — though it was never something that Killian would talk about in public.)

Emma hears Killian huff beside her, groaning under his breath. What she can’t see is the way his teeth are practically cutting into his tongue, the faint taste of blood taking over his mouth. 

He’s surprised to feel Emma’s hand wrap around his, and the warmth of it, even in the bright city sun, calms the boiling of his blood. 

She has been his best friend for years. Sure, they may not have gotten along that well when they first became neighbors her and David’s senior year of college, but that was almost twelve years ago. Since then, they have watched David and Mary Margaret fall in love, move out of the city, get married, and have Leo, with their second on the way. They have seen Killian go through two roomates: Jefferson and Robin, leaving him with Will currently. 

They have seen Emma go through more. Ruby, Belle, Zelena, Regina, and Tink, all of whom tended not to stay too long, though only Regina and Tink left because of Emma: Regina because they were too different, their schedules opposites, Regina much more meticulous than Emma could ever be. 

And Tink? Tink was insanely jealous of her friendship with Killian, even more jealous when their friendship became more. It was only a few weeks before that she heard Tink shouting Killian’s name through the thin bedroom walls in the middle of the night while she was staying in Killian’s apartment, which pushed Emma to ask her to move out. 

Because after everything, they fell in love. 

The only issue with that is they decided not to tell David and Mary Margaret yet. It’s not that they don’t think their friends would be happy for them — Mary Margaret would probably start screaming, and after David stopped leveling him with his gaze, he would crack a smile, as well. 

But it’s only been five months. They decided to wait longer until they told their friends, and holding hands in the middle of Boston is not the way to keep their relationship secret. 

It helps the angry pounding of his heart, though, which is almost enough for him to not care.

“Why is their flag so busy?” Ben asks, pulling an old-fashioned American flag out of his pocket, one with thirteen stars. “All those lines going every which way and all that — not to mention the colors. Red, white, and blue, so original.” 

At this, Leo turns around to Emma and Killian, standing at the back of the group. Just the night before, Killian had gone through the history of the British flag with the lad, who sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, his bright eyes wide with interest. 

But when he sees Killian and Emma standing behind him, old enough to know what their intertwined hands means, his eyes widen in a completely different way. Emma can swear that everything around her slows down as Leo opens his mouth to say something, and she presses her finger to her lips before he can make a sound. He looks worried for a moment, until Killian winks and smiles at him, and the smile returns to the seven year old’s face and he turns back to the tour guide. 

This time, when Killian turns to Emma, she lets out a sigh of relief. 

“And don’t even get me started on tea!” Ben says, pulling Killian’s attention back to him. “Why are they so high and mighty about their tea? We all know that coffee is the far superior hot beverage.” 

To none of his friend’s surprise, this is when Killian cracks: if Killian Jones has strong opinions about anything, it's coffee. “Oi, really, mate?” he yells, and he couldn’t have sounded more British if he tried. When every eye in the group turns towards him, his face reddens even more, and Emma’s not sure if it’s from embarrassment or anger. 

Probably both. 

Though when she sees David’s gaze fall to their hands, his eyes widening in surprise, her cheeks redden in her own embarrassment. 

“Not a single piece of information you just supplied is correct, do you know that? Or if it is, it’s completely biased.” He’s on a roll, not stopping now, and even as he runs his fingers through his hair, his grip on her hand tightens, as if it's the one thing stopping him from truly losing control. Emma fears it just might be. “Yes, okay, Great Britain still has colonies, but do you know who else does? America! Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, they all have colonies! It’s more than just us bloody Brits. And do you know that the queen doesn’t actually ‘rule the entire country’?" He definitely has not stopped to take a breath, which worries her. "There’s a whole system of people who work with her, who keep her in check, and it might be a system that’s a few hundred years old, but I’ll tell you this, our checks and balances work much better than whatever bullshit that happens here.” 

A few of the younger people in the group all go “Oooh!”, some of them laughing, others outraged, but it’s all nothing compared to the surprised outrage written across Ben’s freckled features. 

When he starts again, the words are tumbling madly from his lips, much angrier when he conveyed the same information to Leo the night before. “The British Flag is a culmination of the British, Scottish, and Irish from when King James I of Scotland inherited all three thrones, so it’s technically not just one flag, but three all out together. It represents the same kind of unity that your American flag is also supposed to represent, three countries coming together in unity, though of course that’s not the flag that we use anymore. It was redesigned when Great Britain and Ireland were united in 1801, and that is the flag that you all recognize as our Union Jack.” 

He stops for a moment, looking around the group, his blue eyes wide with anger, with madness — pausing for a moment on David, whose eyes are not on his face, but on his hand, which he realizes in this moment is still wrapped around Emma’s. 

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. 

His free hand raises to scratch at the spot behind his ear that always seems to itch when he finds himself embarrassed. “I’m not even going to start on the tea comment, because that’s just plain bullshit,” he says after a silent second, his voice even again, and he even laughs lightly, which makes the tension that has filled the group lighten a bit. 

Except for Ben. 

Ben looks like he’s never been more embarrassed in his life. It’s a definite possibility that he actually hasn’t. 

A beat passes. The group is silent. 

And then Ben, still red in the face, claps his hands together, standing on the steps in front of the market before them. 

“I would like to thank each of you for joining me on this Freedom Trail Walk during this year’s 38th annual Boston Harborfest. I hope you’ll all join us on Thursday for the Parade of Lights and Fireworks, which starts at 8:30. If anyone still needs to find a place to sit to enjoy them, let me know, I have a few suggestions. Enjoy the rest of the celebration!” 

The group begins to dissipate, David leading their whole crew a few steps away from where the bulk of the group still stands. Killian moves to let go of Emma’s hand, to try and make the conversation he knows is going to happen a little less awkward, but Emma refuses to let go. Killian turns to her, David and Mary Margaret still leading them with Leo between them. He catches her eye, and when she turns her head and smiles at him, he pulls their hands up to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. 

Her smile widens. 

He hears her unspoken words, a question she desperately wants to ask him: are you sure? He hopes that the smile that takes over his face is answer enough. 

Because he's sure. He may never have been so sure about anything in his life as he is about Emma — as he is about loving her, about wanting to be with her badly enough to have to incur the wrath of their best friends — of her brother — finding out like this. 

God, he loves her. It's not the first time he's had the thought, but it's the first time he's realized just how true it all is. He's not ready to tell her, to tell anyone, but he's ready enough to believe it in his own mind. To think it when he looks at her, when he wakes up curled around her in the morning, when he's buried deep inside her. 

Sure, they've only been together for a few months, but he's been in love with her for years. He tried to bury it beneath bottles of rum, tried to hide from it by using other women, but every time when he woke up beside one of them, he would dream it was her, wake up hoping it wasn't just a dream, and regret when that was not the truth.

Needless to say, the first morning he finally woke up beside her, golden locks strewn all over his face and his chest, his arm asleep from refusing to move away from her during the night, was the greatest morning of his life. 

"Alright," David says, turning back to the two of them to turn their group into a circle. But when his eyes go wide, they are not focused on Killian and Emma's joined hands, but instead just over Killian's shoulder. 

Not a moment later, he feels a tap on it, paired with a soft-spoken, "Excuse me, sir." 

He whips his head towards the sound, now releasing his grip on Emma's hand, and when he meets the eyes of the person standing behind him, he remembers why Emma reached over to grab his hand in the first place, which he's both happy and angry about. 

Ben. 

He still looks like he's never been more embarrassed in his life. 

Good. 

"I, uh, I just really wanted to apologise for what… happened," he says, his eyes falling to the pavement. "I really have no problems with the British, just to clear that up. I just — I never had anyone on my tour that's not American — not that you're not American, of course, that's not what — not what I'm saying, it's just — " 

Finally, Killian stops him, raising his hands up between them. "Listen, lad," he says, and Emma can't help but think that his accent is stronger than it usually is. Or maybe she's just focusing on it more. "I appreciate your apology. I just hope this is a lesson to really know who's in your group before you go poking fun at other countries, especially ones whose residents are such hard-headed gits, aye? Not everyone will be as forgiving as I am." 

It's not until he smiles at him that Ben realizes he's serious. "Th—thank you," he stutters, his voice soft, and after a moment passes (one Killian is pretty sure neither of them breathe through), he turns to walk away. 

When Killian turns back towards his friends, the sigh he lets out is both audible and visible, the rise and fall of his shoulders obvious. "Well, that was exciting," he says after yet another silent moment passes between them, and then turns to David. "What's the plan, boss?" 

But it's Mary Margaret who responds. "Oh, no, uh-uh, no way." She shakes her head, crossing her arms over the third different stars-and-stripes dress that has made an appearance this week. 

When David mirrors her appearance, Leo looks back and forth between them a few times before he does the same. If they weren't teaming up against her, Emma would think they're adorable. 

But since they are teaming up against her, that ruins it a bit. 

"Yeah," David says, his bright eyes narrowing into slits. "It seems the two of you have to explaining to do." 

"Yeah!" Leo adds, though his glare is not as piercing as his parents'.

"What's there to explain?" Killian asks, his voice much calmer than Emma's would have been, especially once he reaches out to wrap his arm around her shoulder, pulling himself closer to her. "We're dating. It's still relatively new to us, and we didn't want to get anyone's hopes up in case it doesn't work out." 

At his words, David's face softens, but when Emma turns to Mary Margaret, hers has not. "How long has this been going on?" 

Now it's Emma's turn to answer, the lump in her throat almost completely gone now, but her voice is still soft when she manages to speak. "Not very long. Just a few months, four? Maybe five?" 

This does not make Mary Margaret any calmer, either. "Five months! You've been dating for five months and you haven't told anyone?!" 

Emma feels her face growing hot. This is why they haven't told anyone. 

"And why do you think that is, hm?" Killian asks, gesturing towards Mary Margaret with his free hand. 

This silences the woman, enough for her to snap her mouth shut. 

"I guess, uh, it makes sense now," David says, realizing exactly what Killian and Emma hoped he had: that Mary Margaret's response was exactly what they had expected. 

But the best thing about David and Mary Margaret finding out happened two nights later, when Killian realized he didn't want to move back into his apartment when David asked if they could stay a few days longer than expected. 

They even invited the rest of their friends over to help move his things into her apartment, sitting out on the balconies to watch the fireworks over the bay. 

A year later, he stood in the exact same place to ask her to marry him, and was sure to tell everyone the very next day at the Nolan's first annual Fourth of July barbeque. 

[ehstarwar]

a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves (4/8)

If he was bothered by Rey’s incessant tapping of her foot and glancing around, he didn't say anything. She snuck a few glances at him, afraid to get caught staring at him for an improper amount of time.

Because staring is only the tip of the iceberg of what Rey wants to do.

-

Rey is about to go into heat and Ben knows just what she needs.

-

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 4.7K

Read on AO3

Notes:

Chapter 4: do paint the meadows with delight

-

The car was silent, save for the low rumble of the engine. Ben had his hands grasped firmly around the steering wheel, knuckles turning white. His eyes were trained firmly ahead, looking out at the road. If he was bothered by Rey’s incessant tapping of her foot and glancing around, he didn't say anything. She snuck a few glances at him, afraid to get caught staring at him for an improper amount of time. 

Because staring is only the tip of the iceberg of what Rey wants to do. 

She wants to look at him and lick him and taste him and feel him and love him and hold him and know what he looks like without a stitch of clothing and worship him and bite him and so many other things that would be frowned upon doing for two people who haven’t even kissed. 

Rey sees the tell-tale signs of heat approaching once Ben had pointed it out to her. The unsatisfying masturbatory sessions, territorial guarding, itchy glands; all things that should have made Rey well aware of what was upcoming before Ben did. But there is less time to think about why she didn’t notice right now. 

No, right now, all she can think about is the alpha next to her. The alpha that held her on the floor when she cried for no reason. The alpha that snuck her out of the house and into his car. The alpha that covered for her with all her friends without even batting an eye. The alpha that almost assuredly is causing her reactive heat that will take Rey out of commission for the next 4 - 5 days. 

She spares another glance at him, his profile illuminated by the streetlights, and tries to singe the view into her memory. Ben has always been beautiful. Strong features, intense yet kind, hair that would drive any person mad; it was like looking at a God. 

Rey felt her fingers itching to reach out and touch him again, but didn’t to make him uncomfortable. The desire lessened when he turned down an unfamiliar street.

“You’re taking me to my apartment?” She asks, trying to hide the hurt in her voice. 

“Well… yeah?” he says. Rey looks over at him, eyes wide and brimmed with tears. 

“Um… okay. I just- okay.” She turns her head and stares forward, willing her eyes not to spill over.  She just knows her pheromones are clogging up the car, but she’d rather ignore that then face rejection.

“I just figured you’d want to be in your own space. Your own nest, and stuff. I’ve… never been through a heat with an omega, so I’m kind of flying blind here.”

Her head snaps back to him, relief rolling off of her in waves. 

“You’re going to spend my heat with me?” Ben finally turns to look at her as soon as he pulls into the spot in front of her building. 

“Of course, Rey.”

A car probably isn’t the best place for a large display of affection, certainly not for someone quite as large as Ben, but Rey can’t help it. She surges off the seat, planting her lips on his with more force than she intends, hands instantly going to cup the back of his head. 

Rey has a fleeting though of worry that dissipates when she feel’s Ben’s strong arms wrap around her midsection, holding her as tightly as he can with the center console in the way. His lips move roughly against hers, and it’s not long before Rey feels his tongue sneak into her mouth. He tastes so good that Rey keens as their tongues tangle together. 

Rey hears a growl, emanating from somewhere deep within Ben, before he clearly gets fed up with the space between them, and pulls her onto his lap. 

It’s infinitely better this way. Her legs are on either side of his, chest flushed together, hands tangling in the others hair. His mouth works against hers before trailing lower, down her jaw as she gasps for air. 

“Good, alpha. So good.” She’s breathless as she chokes out the words, making Ben squeeze her impossibly tighter. When the heavy hardness she’d felt when he scented her makes an appearance between his legs again, Rey can’t help but rock against him. Ben moans before he bites down on her shoulder, narrowly avoiding her glands. Filled with confidence from his reaction, she goes to do it again, but Ben’s hands stop her. 

He shifts his legs so that she’s not directly in his lap, and his hands go to hold her torso away from him, back against the steering wheel. His head drops to her chest as she feels him catch his breath.

“If we go further in here, there’s a good chance we won’t make it out of the car for the next week.” 

It’s hard for Ben to say this; she can hear it in the way his voice sounds shredded. But Rey isn’t easily deterred. 

“I don’t care,” She says, mouthing at the side of his head, kissing down his ear.

“Omega,” He growls, making Rey still instantly. When his eyes look up at her, it’s the same black that she’d stared into when he scented her. “I want to spend your first heat together in a bed, at least.”

Rey doesn’t know whether its the command or the promise of potential future heats or the way he’s looking into her or her oncoming heat, but Rey melts. The prospect of a bed does sounds exponentially more comfortable than his cramped car (certainly for Ben), so she nods quickly. A thought crosses her mind when she envisions the two of them inside of her apartment, making her whine. 

“But, Rose will come home,” She pouts. 

“Then we’ll get whatever you need and take it back to my place. Does that work?” He asks. Rey nods again. The prospect of having to wait even longer for them to be able to enjoy each other is decidedly not pleasing, but much better than the prospect of subjecting Rose to days of what Rey hopes to be the best heat of her life. 

Ben is opening the door and pulling them out of the car before Rey has the ability to say anything else. 

Ben holds Rey close to him as they walk up to her apartment, practically carrying her the whole way there, and Rey loves it. He only really sets her down when she goes to fish her keys out of her pocket, and Ben leans his whole body along the length of hers. She feels his erection, still hard and thick, digging into the small of her back. Rey has to physically restrain herself from dropping to her knees right then and there. 

She bolts to her room as soon as the door is open, grabbing whatever bag was closest to her and literally shoving different blankets and pillows into it. In the midst of her rampage, she sees Ben wearily standing in her door way. She pauses, looking at him. His eyes are closed and she can see his jaw work.

“Ben?” She asks, stepping towards him. His arm extends out, warning her to stay away.

“We need to get out of her, fast. What can I do to help?”

“Grab blankets, no pillows; put them in here. I just have to grab some things from my bathroom.” She sets the duffle bag down before walking into the bathroom and gathering her face wash and toothbrush. She catches her reflection as she goes to exit, stopping her in her tracks.

Rey is flushed from her face and down her chest, making her freckles stand out even more than they usually do. She sees the beads of sweat forming at the top of her head, despite it dipping into the 40’s this evening. She looks a mess. A mess that is about to be thoroughly fucked. 

She can live with that. 

A loud thumping noise breaks Rey out of her head, and back to the task at hand. She rushes out, worry spiking in her for a moment, before being confused at the sight before her. 

Ben is on his knees beside her bed, face buried into the center of her mattress. His hands are clutching the sheets so tightly, they’ve come off her mattress and are curled up around the corners. 

“Ben?” She asks. His head pops up from where it was resting, looking dazed and just as flushed as Rey.

“Can we bring these?” He asks, already pulling them into a ball and stuffing them into the duffle bag.

“They’re dirty.”

“I know.”

Rey thinks of earlier and her vain attempts to get off before going to Luke’s. Her slick no doubt dripped onto the very spot where Ben had his face, and a thrill runs up her spine. 

Alpha likes your smell. Alpha wants to taste you.

“We have everything. Let’s go.” Rey grab the last of her items, and begins racing toward the door, Ben not far behind her. She realizes that to an outsider, it would seem like she and Ben are looting her apartment, which isn’t wholly unusual for this part of town, but still disturbing to neighbors. What would she say if someone sees her?

‘Hi, sorry, in a rush. The gigantic alpha you see behind me is about to rearrange my guts for the next few days. It is a travesty that he’s not balls deep in me right now, but we needed to keep some sense of decorum. See you at the next complex meeting!’

By the grace of whatever God is above, they make it to his car and on the road before anyone spares them a sideways glance. 

-

He’s on her the moment the door is shut. In fact, the only way she knows its shut is because Ben has her pressed against it as his mouth works on hers. His hands grab at her thighs, hoisting her up and keeping her steady with his chest. 

“Do you… have any idea… how difficult that was? To be so close to you… to smell you… and have to stop myself?” His words are punctuated with kisses on any body part he can reach with his mouth. Rey pants above him, searching for purchase against the plains of his chest through his shirt.

“Sorry… so sorry, alpha…” It’s the name that gets him. He hauls her up, and carries her onto the couch that’s only a few feet away.

“Rey…” his hands go to the hem of her shirt, and she helps him yank it off of her. Her chest is only covered by the ratty old cotton bralette that was the only thing that didn’t make her nipples hurt too much when she was still planning on having a normal night. It was gross and old and probably (definitely) needed to be washed, but Ben didn’t seem to care. His plush lips worked their way down her chest, licking and sucking every inch of freckled skin he came in contact with. His hands were holding her waist, nearly encompassing all of it, locking her in place.

Rey scrambled to get bralette off of her, and the moment she did, Ben took one of her nipples into her mouth. She cried out, hand immediately going to the back of his head, holding him there. His tongue circled the stiff bud, before his teeth lightly scraped it, making Rey whimper.

“You’re sensitive here,” He whispers against her skin. When he moved to the other one, Reys’ back arches, pushing her chest further into him. Ben sucks at her like a man possessed, covering her in a thick coat of cooling drool down her chest. 

“Ben, alpha, please… need you… in me…” Her voice is foreign to her own ears. Rey would think she sounded pathetic if her sane mind had heard her. But how can she mind how awful she sounds, when her words prompt Ben to quickly shuck off his shirt, leaving both of them bare chested. The warmth of his skin feels so, so good against hers. She can’t stop herself from rubbing her nipples against his skin, making her moan as he sucks on her neck. 

“Need… to get… pants off,” he growls. Both of them shoot their hands down to tug off their bottoms without loosing any contact. When the job seems impossible to do that, Ben pulls away, making Rey cry out. He yanks her legging off her, nearly pulling her off the couch with him, before ripping her ruined panties right off of her. 

Ben stands before her, sopping underwear clutched in one of his hands, bare chested, and pants that need to come off right. fucking. now. But she doesn’t move. She’s horizontal on his couch, propped up by her elbows, naked and flushed beneath him. Ben moves his gaze down her body, taking all of her naked form in. When his eye meet hers again, there is an intensity burning in them that makes Rey shudder.

“If you want to stop, you need to tell me now. Once I start…” His voice trails off, but he doesn’t have to finish what he’s saying for Rey to know. Once I start, I won’t be able to stop. 

Good. Rey doesn’t want him to. Ever. 

“I want you, Alpha.” It’s all Ben needs to hear before sucking off his pants and underwear, and going back on to of Rey. His lips meet hers in a fiery kiss as he throws pillows off the couch to accommodate their bodies. While this would probably be better in a bed, Rey knows they wouldn’t make it that far. 

Be slots himself between her legs, cock hard and curved upwards against his abdomen. She wants to stare at him, get her fill of looking at him like he did to her, but now is not the time. She feel’s his hand go between her legs, before tracing her cunt. Ben whimpers when he feels the slick pooling there. 

“I should be better… should prepare you more…” He grumbles. Rey leans into his touch, bucking her hips to catch more of his fingers. 

“Please…” She feels the hot sting of tears fall from the corners of her eyes. Ben kisses away the tears, as he traces his cock on the outside of her folds. When the thick head breaches her, Rey gives a noiseless shout. 

Ben’s lips still against her cheek as he focuses on being slow. Part of Rey wants him to just slam into her, steal her breath, and force her to bounce on his dick. But she knows he won’t. Ben will take his time, letting her adjust and getting her comfortable before he moves in earnest. She’ll have to talk to him about changing the pace a little bit when they’ve come. 

He moves slowly, stretching her as he seats himself within her, mumbling curse words the deeper he got. When their hips are flush together and Ben is as far in as possible, they both lay there, adjusting to the feeling. 

“Ben,” She whispers, hand coming up to brush some of the hair out of his eyes. 

“You feel… Fuck! You feels so good, Rey. So right, so perfect… I can’t… I want to live in your cunt. I just… I-” Whatever Ben goes to say gets choked off as he bites a pillow behind her head. Rey feels the slightest swelling of his knot at the base of his cock, and can’t stop herself from rocking a little bit. 

His hand immediately goes to her waist, gripping her so hard she feels the bruises already forming. She wishes it didn’t feel so good. That his body pressing her down and gripping her so tightly didn’t feel like everything was right in the world. Rey could die here, in this moment, and be forever content with how she went. But she doesn’t die.

Ben begins moving, not exactly thrusting, but shallow movement that make Rey see stars. He’s big inside of her, splitting her to her very core and she wonders if she could feel him just by pressing on her abdomen. 

Bens’ thrust get more sure and it’s not long before he’s moving in and out of her with a steady pace. His lips find her pulse point and suck there as his hips go faster. Rey babbles incoherently, things that make no sense. Bens’ vocabulary is reduced to grunts and mumbles said hotly in her skin. 

Rey doesn’t know if it’s by accident or not, but when she feel’s the lightly swipe of his tongue against her glands, she’s mercilessly thrust into an orgasm. It wasn’t the slow approach that she’d become used to giving herself, or even the rushing one she gets when she edges or just a little too long. It’s an explosion in her body that makes her transcend reality. She’s sobbing now, leaking out of her eyes as her arms wrap around his shoulders. She grips him, trying to press him closer, inside of herself, if possible. 

Ben is still moving within her, now setting a punishing pace as his body wrecks her. She feels his balls, heavy, slapping against her ass as his cock rushes in and out of her. His thighs beneath hers are strong and corded in muscles, keeping her legs spread open for him. 

He licks her with surer strokes, using his tongue to lave along her glands and leave them glistening with his saliva. Distantly, Rey hears herself begging Ben to bite her. To mate her. To make her his permanently. To hold her and fuck her for the rest of their lives. To fill her with his children. To cherish her. To be with her. 

His thrust become erratic as he nears his orgasm. His hand digs between them, finding her clit and rubbing it with the pad of his thumb. She’s oversensitive from her first orgasm, but Ben thrust her into another one as his knot inflates fully, catching inside of her cunt, and coming.

Coming, and coming, and coming. 

Ben howls into her neck when he does. Their hips, joined together, still twitching as he empties his come into her Reys’ waiting cunt. It’s hot, Rey can feel the warmth radiating from inside as he twitches. She pets his hair, bringing it out of his eyes as he comes down from his high. 

Ben rest his head in the side of her neck, nose tracing along the edge of her jaw. His hands rub along her sides, soothing her in a way Rey didn’t know she needed. 

Rey doesn’t dare move. They’re both too sensitive from their fucking, that any movement on either of their parts will result in bitten lips and perhaps some more spilled come. 

“Ben…” She whispers. She doesn’t have anything to say to him, mind blissfully clear, but she like the way his name feels on her tongue. 

“Rey…” His voice is a low growl that Rey has come to like way too much the last few days. She wonders now if he can ever say it without making her shiver. 

“Are you okay?” She ask. He gives a breathless laugh, nuzzling into her neck before planting wet, open-mouthed kisses. 

“I… there are no words to describe what I’m feeling.”

She holds him tighter.

“That was…”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll get to do that a lot for the next few days.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.” 

Rey can feel him smile in her skin. It prompts one of her own to blossom on her face.

-

When Bens’ knot finally deflates enough for him to slip out of her, the rush of fluid that escapes Reys’ pussy is obscene. When she cries out at the sensation, Ben immediately worries, and goes to press kisses to her jaw. 

“Are you hurt?” Ben can’t hide the panic in his voice.

“No,” She hears him breath a sigh of relief, “I just… didn’t want to ruin your couch.” She doesn’t say that the loss of him and his come makes the omega part of her brain rebel with a fierce cry. That she wants to keep his come right where it belongs; inside of her. It’s too early for that, she thinks. (Her omega strongly disagrees.)

When hearing that she’s not hurt, Ben pulls back and lowers his gaze to between her thighs. She’s sure he can see the way the white fluid falls from between her, and she goes to close her legs, but his hands keep them open.

“You’re… so perfect.” Ben says, eyes still firmly resting on her pussy. When he looks back up at Rey, she sees an emotion splay across his face that makes her ready for round two instantly. 

Instead of diving back in, like Rey wants, Ben scoops her up and walks purposefully into his large master suite. When he doesn’t deposit her on the bed and start ravishing her immediately, Rey gives him a confused glance. 

“We won’t be able to shower for a few days. We should get one in while we’re still.. sane.”

The disappointment of washing Ben’s scent off of her, even if he’ll put it right back on, makes her frown. But an instant worry replaces the disappointment.  

“Do I stink?” She lifts her elbows to smell her pits. Even though she showed earlier, she’s still a former street rat. Maybe she doesn’t clean as well as Ben would like her to.

“Rey…” He begins, setting her down in the bathtub. “I…” he looks lost for the words for a minute, before closing his eyes again. “You don’t stink, Rey… You’ve never stank, to me. I want to get the other scents off our skins. Our friends don’t smell bad, but… I need to smell only you. I want you to smell only me.”

His words are low and dangerous and Rey has the inexplicable desire to kiss him again. So she does. Because she can do that now; kiss Ben when she wants. 

“Thank you… alpha,” She mumbles against his lips. Ben recaptures them in an instant, deepening the kiss so much that he has to run an arm around her waist to hold Rey up. It’s slow and sweet and Rey doesn’t think she could love something more than the way Ben kisses her. 

When they finally break away, Ben starts washing them immediately. His fancy shower has more knobs and heads than Rey has ever seen, but Ben works with a quick efficiency to get the spray to the right temperature. Ben doesn’t use as loofa or washcloth, instead opting to soaping up his hands before setting to work on Rey’s body. His hands are careful; delicate touches down her body. 

If Ben spends more time than necessary washing her tits, she’ll never tell.

He runs his hands between her legs, not washing away the rest of the come that’s leaked out of her. She knows he’ll replace it, knows that he’ll do it soon, but she can’t help but frown when he washes it away.

Ben kisses every spot he cleans. Her chest, her stomach, her shoulder, her elbows, her calves, her hips, her neck. He leaves no spot untouched. It’s the most Rey has every been touched in her whole life and she’s drunk off of it.

When Rey goes to return the favor and wash Ben, her hands are much more unsteady. They tremble against his skin, doing little more than tracing with her finger tips. She wishes she knew how to take care of him like he takes care of her. She vows to learn, no matter what. 

Ben doesn’t say anything about her unsteady touch, just follows along with his own hands, washing spots she didn’t get thoroughly enough. Eventually, she gives up the charade of cleaning him, and just rest against him while he finishes the job. 

While Rey understands his thought process, she’s a little more than miffed that he’s washing all of his scent away. She thinks of a not-weird way to telling Ben that the musk she smelled when he raised his arms made her want to lick him all over without having washed for days. 

She decides that there is no not-weird way, so she’ll table that discussion for another time. 

When they finish rinsing off, Ben is half hard. She goes to wrap her hand around him, but is stopped when he catches her wrist.

“You’re heat hasn’t fully set in yet. You should take this opportunity to sleep while you can.”

Rey pouts. She feels for a moment like a spoiled brat, but can’t help it. She wants him. Badly.

“Rey…” he warns again, when she tries to continue her pursuit of him. When that doesn’t stop her either, Ben gives a command. “Omega.”

He doesn’t need to say anything else for Rey to know he’s not playing right now. Her pout deepens. 

“I want you,” She says, looking up at him with the most puppy-dog eyes she can muster. It breaks him slightly, but not enough.

“And I want you, so, so bad. But I need to take care of you first, okay?” Ben never patronizes her. Even if the words he says so badly want to be patronizing, it never comes out that way. It make it easier to accept what he’s saying.

“… fine,” She mumbles, earning a quick peck on her lips. 

Ben wraps her in the fluffiest, biggest towel she’s ever seen. It smells like him, so she unashamedly takes long sniffs into it as he dries her off. It occurs to her that she’s being unhelpful in his pursuit of getting them cleaned, and a pang of fear blooms inside of her.

“I’ve never been taken care of like this. I feel like I’m doing something wrong. Will you tell me if I’m doing something wrong?” She asks.

Ben stills, brushing her dripping wet hair back. 

“Your’e not doing anything wrong. You’ve never done anything wrong. I need this, Rey. I need to make sure you fell-” Ben thinks for a long moment, not breaking eye contact for one second. “I need you to feel safe,” He finish is. It’s not exactly what she wants to hear, but she’s content nonetheless. 

“I do. I feel safe, Ben. I feel safe with you.”

A smile tugs at the corners of his lips as he finishes drying her off. 

-

He tucks her into bed, following closely behind her. Ben lays her on top of him, and Rey nuzzles further into him. He’d given her a dirty t-shirt, one he wore only in the house so it smells deliciously like him, but she’d refused any underwear. When he’d realized she’d be panty-less in his bed, Rey is sure he considered foregoing sleeping, but ultimately swallowed it down.

Ben dried their hair, donned some loose boxers, and slid into bed with her with such a practiced ease, you’d think they’d done this a million times. Rey doesn’t tell him how much she hopes that it becomes a reality.

Her arms go around him as she settles into his chest, feeling more comfortable than she ever has before. Rey hears a clicking of a phone behind her and frowns into his chest.

“You’re texting someone?”

“Rose,” He says. Rey instantly relaxes. “Telling her that you’ll be with me for the next few days.”

“Oh… thank you.”

He hums against her and Rey presses a kiss to the center of his chest.

“Will you be okay? Taking time off like this?” She asks.

“Of course. I’ve never taken any time off, so I’ve accrued quite a bit.”

Rey shoots up, knocking the phone out of his hand.

“You’ve never taken time off? Haven’t you worked for First Order for like… 10 years?”

Ben shrugs. “I’ve never needed to.”

“I don’t want to make you take time off if you don’t want.”

Ben chuckles slightly, reaching out to cup Reys’ cheek. She leans into it on instinct. 

“I want to be with you, Rey. I always will.”

The stamens warms something in her heart that make Rey feel like she’s finally alive. Like she can finally take a full breath of air. Like everything that she’s gone through has led to this point. 

She was confused a little when he told her she’s smelled like home, because what was that? How could she smell like a place? But she realizes now what he meant. There really is no better word to describe it, what Ben smells like.

Because he smells like home, too.

-

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[hannahmcne]

Her Royal Highness - Chapter 2

Mal spent the rest of the day hiding far from home. The last few hours, in particular, were under the bridge she'd planned to vandalize that morning. In between the steel supports for the bridge was a small hole about twice the diameter of a car tire. It grew narrower the further back it receded and was about two and a half feet deep. The end of the hole was rounded so if she tucked her legs up she could fit snugly into the dirt. When passersby walked above her, their footsteps would shake the dust from above her. She could hear snippets of conversation float down. Mal had wondered vaguely at first if she'd hear Jay, Carlos, or Evie walk above her, but so far, she hadn't heard anything.

In the dark, Mal chewed on her hair, a nasty habit of hers she'd started a few years ago, and twiddled her fingers around each other as she fumed. She was so mad she couldn't even think. All her life she'd wanted two things: freedom, and her mom's support. Mal wasn't even allowed to use her mother's full name since she wasn't evil enough. And truth be told, Mal didn't know if she'd ever be evil enough. Ever since her failed plot to force Evie to sleep for 1000 years back when she was twelve and Evie was sixteen, she'd known there was something different in her that set her apart from everyone else on the Isle. Something she didn't particularly enjoy, that made her more attached to her gang members as more than just pawns and that kept her up at night listing all the things she could change if only she would be given the chance. She just wasn't sure what to call it.

At twilight, the dirty river started to smell different as the temperature outside began to drop a little. Pollution in the air underneath the barrier caused extreme temperature changes on ground level. She turned her head to watch the light levels change over time. There was dirt down the back of her jacket and in her hair and in her shoes. She wondered if her mother was right and if there might already be palace guards surrounding their house, ready to execute her to free the prince from any blood obligations. On that note, she had no idea how the palace would react. Did they still do the death row? That seemed awfully dark for a country full of heroes. Then again, they did imprison everyone who didn't fit into society onto an island for them to battle it out amongst themselves. They didn't seem overly concerned for any children on the Isle, even though she knew many of them were recorded with, recognized and noticed by the crown.

The shadows under the bridge grew sharper and Mal began to uncurl herself. She crawled through the small hole and grabbed the underside of the bridge to haul herself out the rest of the way and then swing her body up. She grabbed the rusty railing and pulled a numb leg up. She couldn't feel her entire lower back. Once she wasn't dangling up above the smelly water, she stretched her arms up above her head and arched her back.

Mal took her time going home. After all, the sooner she went home, the sooner she'd have to face the idea that her life was about to either change forever or end entirely. And that wasn't an easy pill to swallow. She took the back ways home and soon found herself raising a hand to twist the doorknob when a thought occurred to her.

Her mother was delusional, after all. There may be a likelihood that she had simply made up cursing the prince and whatever had actually happened in Ben's interview with the Fairy Godmother was a fluke completely unrelated to a curse. Maybe, despite what the palace had said, Prince Benjamin was sick? After all, how could Maleficent have cursed the crown when she was sent to the Isle months before Belle and Adam had ascended the throne?

Mal twisted the doorknob and entered. Everyone in the room looked up at her. She stopped momentarily at the attention, then did her best to draw a half-lidded, bored sort of blank stare. Evie, Jay, and Carlos all rose to their feet at once, and that's when Mal noticed all her things had been packed into a ragged purple suitcase and her one-strapped backpack. The sight chilled her more than she could admit. She wondered who'd done that.

"M?" Evie asked. Mal's eyes shot back to her and took in the concern in her blue-haired friend, who wore a blue t-shirt and a blue plaid skirt.

"Sup," Mal said. She looked away from Jay and Carlos and instead turned to examine her dirt-clogged nails.

"Stomp your feet off." The Evil Queen said softly. None of the villains were meeting her eyes. Mal felt a heavy weight fall on her shoulders. They thought Maleficent was serious. The back of her throat grew hot as Mal began to feel angry. This wasn't fair. Maleficent had no proof of what she'd done… yet.

Mal stomped her feet off and brown dirt fluttered out of her hair and jacket. She scowled and shook her head. "I'm going to go change." She snapped and stormed past Evie.

"Your clothes are down here," Jay called after her. Mal stopped mid-march, turned on her heel, unzipped her suitcase and pulled an outfit out before she began to march straight upstairs. No one called after her.

Upstairs, she shook all the dust out of her clothes and hair. She rinsed her hands off in cold water and then got re-dressed in a new, not dirty outfit.

She stalked down the stairs quietly and paused to listen outside the room everyone else was still in. There were whispers, but they were too low to make out. No one was stupid enough to let their voices carry in the room. She walked around the corner and observed the scene before her. Everyone was whispering amongst their parents in separate little groups of two. She walked over to the dining table and took a seat on it, whipping a chair around with her foot to use as a footrest.

"Where's my mom?" She asked Jafar, who was closest.

He wouldn't meet her eyes either.

"Napping," Cruella answered for him. Evie took a seat at the table.

"Mal," She started. "What's going on?"

Mal rolled her eyes. "I'm gonna be honest, I think it was a fluke. I mean, how could mom have cursed the crown when all the heroes were keeping an eye on her? And why didn't they find the curse twenty years ago when he was born?" She shrugged. "She may have just imagined cursing it. Mom's a little wonky anyway."

Carlos and Evie were nodding along to her words, but everyone else remained still. The muscles in Jay's arms were taut. Mal knew he was worried, but it wasn't as if he could tell her that with the villains so close by. Jay was the oldest partner of the four. He'd been with her since the beginning.

The thing was, this whole mess could really swing both ways. Maleficent could have dreamed it all up. Or, this could have been her backup plan all along. There was no way to tell until the palace themselves confirmed or denied it. But Mal didn't want to believe it.

She was her mom's daughter, a villainess. They wouldn't toss her out to the heroes, right?

"Besides," She started up again, her voice growing bolder and bolder. "Mom wouldn't sell me out like that. She needs me here to keep everyone in check. And she cares about me, in her own crazy way. Mom wouldn't just throw me out."

A loud and harsh knock echoed around the room. Everyone's eyes shot to the door. It was only a knock, but with such strength that it sounded like someone was trying to break in. Mal's throat went dry and doubts began to form in the back of her mind, but she quickly swept them away.

Maleficent appeared at the top of the creaky spiral staircase, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "Answer the door!" She hollered. Carlos jumped towards the entryway and undid the bolt before he turned the handle. The door knocked against the wall with a rattle and a clang. Outside was a tall man with a neat orange mustache who was dressed in royal blues and another man, equally tall, with dark sunglasses.

"Evening son." He directed this at Carlos. "May I please step inside?" Carlos wilted away from the tall man and his hard, angry eyes. Evil Queen, Jafar, and Cruella all stood to stare at the man. Mal felt her heart slow down and began to panic as the man ducked under the frame of the door and came to stand in front of the table. A gun rested on his hip and the floorboards shook when he stepped. His accomplice followed him into the room with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. Outside, more soldiers were standing. Mal stared at them with wide eyes as the edge of the table broke off under her vice-like grip. Maleficent cackled in excitement as she hurried across the floor. Thump, thump, thump, across the floorboards. Hopefully, the neighbors wouldn't mind.

"Glorious! I was expecting you here tomorrow, but tonight will do." She pushed through her villainous counterparts and spread her arms wide as if welcoming the strangers to their very small apartment. The man only glared.

"Maleficent," He spat. "I am here to collect your daughter by order of the crown." The man's eyes darted to eye up both Evie and Mal, as if to see which one she was. It was dreadfully obvious, as Evie had an apple charm in her hair and the back of her shirt was inscribed with 'The Fairest of Them All'. The man stared at Mal with contempt.

"Yes, of course, of course!" Maleficent sang as she walked around Mal and put her hands on her shoulders. She kicked Mal's footstool out from under her as she walked past and Mal almost fell forward in shock. "Here she is, right here, and her things are over there." Maleficent took a hand from Mal's shoulder momentarily to point towards Mal's still open suitcase before she went back to holding onto Mal's shoulders. Mal suspected her mom thought she would run. Instead, she felt like she was going to throw up.

The man in sunglasses frowned and examined her. Mal's lower lip quivered. He took the shades off. He had dark brown hair and an oblong face shape. Clean-shaven, but with neat sideburns. He seemed to be a second-in-command of some sort.

"Lovely." The red-head spat. He snapped his fingers and a man emerged from the hall in the same uniform, but with less insignia. He went and picked up Mal's backpack and suitcase, pausing only to zip her suitcase up. They obviously were not very heavy to him. Maleficent pushed Mal off of the table and spun her around. She kissed both of Mal's cheeks with sickening joy.

"Bye, sweetie!" She cheered and shoved Mal forward. Mal stumbled through Jafar and Evie and stared at the imposing man in front of her. He glared down his nose at her. Evie hugged Mal from behind, and Mal became aware that Evie's face was very wet as the taller girl buried her face in Mal's shoulder and sniffled once before leaning back. Jay hugged her too, but Mal was too numb to hug him back. She could scarcely remember to wrap her arms around Carlos before the white-haired kid stepped back.

The guards stood stone-still and looked around. "Any other goodbyes?" The second-in-command asked. No one moved. After a few seconds, the two men moved forward and planted their hands on Mal's arms. One on each elbow, one on each shoulder. They began to march her to the door.

Mal whipped her head around and called: "Mom." The guards didn't stop, and Maleficent only waved with a sickeningly sweet smile on her lips. "Bring home the gold!" She crooned, holding up two fingers to her eyes and making a motion like she was watching Mal. Soon, they'd walked out the door and out of sight of her mom. The man holding her things was last out the door. Soldiers fell into formation on every side. In front of her, behind her, everywhere. Many had narrowed eyes as they examined her ratty hair and the smudges on her face. For the first time in her life, Mal felt more like facing the ground than looking at the world around her. Her chin felt heavy as she internally begged herself to keep a stiff upper lip.

They marched her down to the area in front of her house, where two pristine white limos were waiting atop the broken street. People had gathered in the square and were shocked to see Maleficent's daughter, pale-white with fright, being led to the vehicle. Mal's head whipped around to stare up at her home, and she watched as the now seven residents looked back at her with stony expressions. Evie was trying to stay her tears without touching her face and ruining her makeup. Carlos was trying to not cry. Dark shadows covered Jay's face so much should couldn't read his expression. Her mother looked gleeful. Mal set her jaw so her teeth wouldn't clatter together.

One soldier with a large gun stepped inside the first one as everyone headed towards the second. It was clear they had all expected a little more of a fight. The two guards holding her shoved her into the limo and the door locked from the outside. A deep, closed-in feeling settled around her chest. At the same time, it felt like a knife had cut the skin above her ribs. Not enough to draw blood, but only to sting. That's when she realized that this must be what betrayal feels like.

The soldier sat on the opposite side of the limo with his gun held at the ready. His finger was braced over the safety switch. Mal swallowed, sank back into the seat, and did her best to ignore him as she heard the sounds of car doors closing. The car began to move. Mal imagined she could hear her mother's cackle and clenched her fists. If wishes came true in Auradon, Mal swore on her name that her one wish would be revenge on her mother for this horrid plot.

________________________________________________________________

They hauled her out of the car to stay in some ruddy hotel overnight. Apparently, Auradon city was much further away than it looked from the Isle. Mal didn't see the two commanders, but the soldier company escorted her in and out. Mal fiddled around in the back of the car and nibbled on some candies they had back there because she was sure she was going to starve to death before they let her actually meet the royal family. Finally, she figured out how to roll down the little screen that separated her and the guards in front who were driving. There were only two. The second car was in front of them.

"Hey." Mal drawled in an exhausted tone, leaning into the driver's compartment a tad. "How long does this trip last?"

For a moment, they both ignored her, and then the man in the passenger seat sighed and turned around to face her a little. It was the dark-haired man with the sunglasses. "It's only a two-hour trip from the Isle to Auradon. But the gates to the palace close at nine and open at seven. Safety reasons. We were sent out at six-thirty to get you. They were closed before we got off the Isle. That's why we stopped for the night. We'll be at Beast Castle's Gates in about 15 minutes."

"15 minutes?" Mal asked, alarmed.

The man nodded. He observed her panic with a curious look, so she quickly masked her expression. "That means less than thirty minutes before we meet the royal family at the palace doors." He told her as she curled her nails into her palms. They still had dirt underneath them from the day before.

Mal sat down so they couldn't see her face and took a few seconds to compose herself. Before she rolled the window back up, she leaned back up and said: "Hey, thanks."

"No problem." The man said, even though he didn't turn around to see her again.

She rolled up the window and moved around in the small space. She noticed another window leading to the outside and wandered over to inspect it. It was unlocked. Mal rolled it down and peered outside. Fresh air spilled into the car, and she gasped. She hadn't ever smelt air like this before. There were beautiful trees and plants outside and pretty houses with porch swings and decorated mailboxes. She examined her reflection in the car rear-view mirror. Her hair was messy, and there was dirt smudged on her cheek. Mal tried to rub it away, but it only smeared.

The window connecting her to the drivers rolled down and a hand appeared holding a handkerchief. She blinked at it for a few seconds and then moved over to grab it. She wiped at the area where the dirt was and then handed it back up. "Thanks again." She told the man in the passenger seat as he put on a pair of wire-rim shades.

"No problem." He repeated and tucked the handkerchief into his pocket. She returned to her spot by the window and let the wind tangle her hair even more.

So, they were going to let her meet the royal family after all. Surprising. She wondered what their plans were. It was still doubtful the king and queen would allow their only son to be openly married to a villainesses' daughter, even if it was required for him to ascend the throne. Doubtful even more so that they'd give her any sort of power to bring her mother over. And even if they did give her any sort of power, Mal wasn't sure she would ever bring her mother over. Why would she? It sounded like the perfect response to her mother burying her in this mess; leave her to rot and descend into madness even more. Mal examined her nails. A hole had formed in her heart, and she wanted, needed even, to move on. In her head, she labeled Maleficent as a thing of the past and went back to wondering about the future.

She wondered if they would marry her to him in absolute secrecy and then kill her directly after the ceremony. Entirely possible, though she still didn't know if Auradon had the backbone to kill people. She frowned and moved once more to the driving window. She rolled it down and drummed her fingers for a few seconds before she cleared her throat.

"Hey?" She asked the guy in the passenger seat. He moved his head, acknowledging he'd heard her. "Um," Mal began. "Does Auradon do death row?"

The confusion the two guards shared was palpable. The passenger seat guy turned around and pushed his sunglasses down his nose as he studied her while the driver adjusted the rear-view mirror to see her. It was the same tall, mustached guy from last night.

"Why do you ask?" The helpful one asked.

"I'm… just wondering." Mal trailed off. "Like, are they gonna execute me?"

The guy took off his shades and blinked at her. "You're sixteen." He said. Mal shifted uncomfortably. "They're not going to execute a sixteen-year-old, especially after having to remove her from an extremely dangerous island in a mission that took over ten hours in all. If they wanted you dead, they would have hired a sniper. Except Auradon doesn't do death row. Or assassins. They just send them to the Isle of the Lost."

Mal sighed. "They can't exactly do that to me." She twiddled her thumbs.

"Yeah." The guy said. He slid his shades back on. "To be honest I don't know what their plans are. If it helps quell your nerves at all, I'm pretty sure there's a line in your mom's spell that outlines your safety, briefly though."

"Really?" Mal asked. So, Mom had at least thought of Auradon possibly executing her. That was comforting. Sort of. Still, Mal wasn't going to do anything for her mother.

"There's a line in Auradon's wedding treaty about that too." The driver said in an extremely gruff tone.

Mal sighed and turned to face away from them. She slid down the wall of the diving screen. "I don't want to think about that." She moaned as she unwrapped a small chocolate from the limo stash.

Passenger seat guy slid his shades off again and began to fiddle with the arms of them. "How much of this do you know about exactly?" He asked Mal. "You seem as confused as everyone else."

Mal shrugged. "I sorta found out yesterday." She admitted.

"Yesterday?" The driver asked in disbelief, looking over his shoulder for a second incredulously. "Your mom's had this thing going for almost twenty-five years and she told you yesterday?"

"How much do you know?" Mal snapped back. "I didn't exactly get the full run-down before she threw me to you lot."

There was no answer. Mal sighed and put her head down in her hands.

"Wow." The driver said after several long moments of silence. "That seems a little too harsh."

"Yeah," the other guard agreed. He slid his sunglasses on and took a deep breath. "Don't worry about it anymore, kid." He told Mal. "Hopefully we can figure something out and you can go back home soon."

"If the palace doesn't kill me, Mom will for coming home empty-handed." Mal blurted out. Neither of the guards said anything. After a while, she moved to the outside window again for the last time. The driver rolled up the dividing window, which was fine with Mal since she didn't want to talk to them anyway.

The car interior was nice with grey seats that were squishy and firm. It smelled like soap and there were little cupholders beside each car. Underneath the window was the collection of candies in small glass dishes that Mal had been snitching from. If she'd been on the Isle still, she would have stolen them and pawned them off for something of real use. Mal filled one of her cupholders with hard, fruit-tasting candies and chocolates, which she snacked on as she watched the outside world pass by. One of the guards kept a careful eye on her from the side-view mirror. She ignored him.

All too soon, the scenery changed and there were no more little houses with pretty swings and mailboxes. Instead, the world became acres of well-maintained trees and flowerbeds. Mal knew instinctively they were coming up on the palace. The outside world lost its luster after that. She rolled up her window and ate her candy in silent misery, stuffing her pockets full of bits and pieces to horde.

The windows, while heavily tinted, were still see-though. When she felt the car begin to slow down, she glanced through the foggy glass and saw a number of figures outside. It looked like the royal family had brought an army. Or the other car had already unloaded and the company of soldiers was waiting for them. She groaned softly and wiped a finger on the outsides of her mouth to make sure it was clean.

The car stopped. She heard the two soldiers up front get out of the car and moved to stand in front of the still-locked door. The door opened and she was momentarily blinded by the sun shining in her face, but then the two guards reached in and pulled her to a standing position and the sunglasses one effectively shielded her from the sun.

In front of her was the crown prince, dressed in a long-sleeve, button-up blue shirt, and black slacks. Four guards stood at the ready in case she wanted to try anything. He looked very surprised to see her. His mouth was open a little and his eyes were flickering up and down her frame. He looked handsome enough. Sandy blonde hair and blue eyes, a nice tan. He gave her an awkward smile that held something in it she'd never seen on the Isle before. Behind Prince Benjamin was Queen Belle, dressed in a yellow air dress, and King Adam, in a suit. Around them were many, many loitering guards with big guns and lethal glares.

Mal steeled her back and crossed her arms as the prince came to his senses and shook himself back to reality.

"Um, hi," He began flatly. Many of the guards exchanged glances and chuckled. Mal raised her eyebrows and averted her gaze. The prince's cheeks took on a red tone. "It's nice to meet you..." He walked a few paces past his bodyguards and stuck out his hand as he tried to meet her icy gaze without freezing.

"Hm, Mal. Best of circumstances, of course," She gave a sarcastic little half-smirk as the nicer guard released her right arm, so she could shake his hand. She noticed when he held on for half a second longer and snatched her hand away to rip him from his daze. The hand on her arm was promptly replaced. She sighed inwardly.

Prince Benjamin cleared his throat awkwardly. "Yeah, I guess it could be better. I'm Ben." He shrugged.

"No Benjamin?" She asked. He shook his head. Mal tilted her head and continued her half-smirk. "I hope you don't have a speech planned, because I need to use the bathroom."

The Prince opened his mouth, but no words came out. Instead, his father piped up. "Did you have a nice trip?" He asked.

"Oh, splendid." The smirk vanished from Mal's face. She began to frown. "Ripped away from my home and my life gone down the drain in less than a day." The two guards shifted uncomfortably, almost simultaneously.

King Adam didn't appear sympathetic in the least bit. He was fixing her with the exact cold, heartless look she'd imagined him wearing as he locked the villains on the Isle of the Lost. She'd seen it once on TV as a kid and never again since. "Well, hopefully, you and your mother will think about that next time."

Belle swatted his arm and frowned without removing her eyes from Mal. The older queen looked confused, to say the least. She seemed to be trying to take everything about Mal in. "Wasn't she supposed to be a bit older?" She whispered to no one in particular.

The commanding officer who held Mal's left arm in a vice grip cleared his throat. "Your Majesty, with all due respect, she appears to know as much as we do, if not less."

This appeared to be news to the entire guard and royal family, who all wore varying degrees of shock on their faces. The officer continued: "She told us her mother informed her around the same time we arrived to take her away."

Belle finally spoke up, voice wavering slightly. "She had no knowledge of the curse?" She asked.

"It would appear that way." The guard replied.

King Adam still appeared skeptical. "What do you say to all this?" He boomed at Mal.

Mal was not to be intimidated by the former beast. "Is it going to be any different for you to hear it from me instead of him?" She asked.

The king looked extremely annoyed. "Goodness gracious-" He began, but Belle shushed him.

The second guard laughed. "She's quite spunky. Interesting personality." He patted Mal's arm, lessening his grip a great deal.

"I can tell." King Adam responded with a glare folding his fingers together and popping all the joints in them at the same time.

"Dear." Belle snapped at him. It appeared she was still conflicted, trying to pick the right side when she couldn't be sure if Mal was lying or not.

"One more thing before we leave." The nice guard continued. He moved his arm to slide his shades down his nose. As he peered over the rims, he said: "She was very concerned you were only bringing her to Auradon to execute her."

Mal wished he hadn't have said that. She immediately turned her gaze skyward and pretended to be bored. Bored is the hardest expression to see through. If all they wanted to see was a villain, that was all they would see. That was all she'd let them see.

"Execute her?" Belle repeated, sounding horrified.

"Oh, we don't do that." The prince said directly to her. She moved her gaze to his collarbone and watched his mouth move out of the corner of her eye. "That's something the villains do." He continued. Mal made a sound that was a cross between a snort and a scoff. The prince and guards looked at her curiously.

Belle pulled her arm out from her husband's elbow and drifted closer to Mal. "You don't have to worry about that, dear. We're just trying to reach a, um, compromise." She motioned for the guards to remove their hands from her. They did, and Mal rubbed her shoulders.

"We're going to break the curse and then you can go home." King Adam growled.

"My mother will kill me if I go home," Mal responded automatically. She suddenly felt very vulnerable, spitting that out in front of the royal family.

"Not… really? Would she?" Ben asked in disbelief.

Mal rolled her eyes. "Are those words going to mean anything other than what I said if I repeat them?" She asked. Ben looked too shocked to answer.

Belle tried to salvage the situation. "We'll figure something out." She said, even though she didn't sound very sure. She looped her arm through Adam's. "Gentlemen, you're dismissed. Honey, we need to show Mal to her room."

"Yes, of course," Adam grumbled. He made a motion for Mal to follow them as they began to walk back to the castle. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was following and then refused to look at her. Most of the crowd dispersed, and only seven guards remained to follow her as she trailed behind the King and Queen. Prince Ben hurried to walk beside her.

"Is there anything we can do for you, Mal?" He asked as he gained a comfortable stride to match her pace.

"Again, a bathroom would be lovely. Also, not being magically bound to you and still being without a death guarantee would be nice. No offense." She smirked at the tall blonde beside her.

"None taken." He replied with a small smile. "To be honest, I feel the same way. Unfortunately, it's not that simple." He jumped to open the door to the castle for her and his parents.

Mal glared at him and furrowed her brow as she slipped through. One of the guards rushed forward to hold the door so Ben could rejoin the group. "What do you mean?" She asked in a hard tone.

Belle cleared her throat awkwardly as she led the group up the stairs in the main entryway. Mal's eyes flitted left and right to briefly take in the elegant entryway, but she was too engrossed by the conversation to take it in much. "We've already been in contact with the Fairy Godmother," Belle said softly. "She has arranged a team of people trying to rip the curse apart, but they've already admitted they don't even know where to start. The curse has many layers and is very complicated. As of right now, it's a hopeless cause." At the top of the stairs where a large doorway was, a hallway ran parallel to the room. They turned right and soon the front doors were out of sight.

A deep feeling clouded Mal's head. She felt like she was going to be sick. "So, we're stuck?" She asked and started to bite her cheek. She felt very lightheaded.

"Unfortunately, yes," Belle responded. She didn't sound nearly as angry as King Adam about that fact. Mal looked up and met the queen's brown eyes as the older woman studied her. She swallowed.

"What's the plan, then?" She questioned her shoes.

"We, um, were hoping…" Queen Belle responded uncertainly. However, she was abruptly cut off by Ben.

"Here we are!" The prince announced in a high voice. He gestured to a large door, but Mal was not to be distracted.

"You were hoping… what?" She narrowed her eyes and examined each of them, digging in her heels and straightening her stance.

The entire royal family was looking distinctly uncomfortable, and Mal had the feeling it was entirely her fault. Belle cleared her throat again. "We admit, we weren't expecting someone your age who had been equally hurt by Maleficent's curse. Much less someone who wasn't bent on becoming queen. On the contrary, we thought we'd have to hold you off of him, hence the guards." Belle gestured to the few guards who'd followed them up and were busy pretending to not be listening in to their conversation. "We were hoping to marry you quietly and grant you impartial rights to the kingdom so you couldn't bring your mother over while we scrambled to undo the curse."

Mal felt genuinely betrayed. How unfair. "You're actually going to make us get married? Doesn't Auradon have things to protect against this?"

King Adam jumped to defend his country's integrity. "The curse is over 20 years old and is technically hereditary. That means-"

"It's 200 times harder to break." Mal sighed. She looked away from everyone and examined the end of the corridor. The rules of curses and enchantments had been recited to her one too many times.

"Yes." Adam agreed. "How much do you know about magic?"

Mal snorted. "I live on an Island with a Magical barrier around it. My mother is insane and unstable and recites magic laws in her sleep. The most she and I can do is light our eyes up. Believe me, we've tried." She crossed her arms and dug her toes into the carpet as she leaned against the wall.

Ben looked extremely awkward as he rubbed his shoe against the floor. "Technically, you don't have to marry me. Except then I wouldn't be able to be king and we'd have to make a public explanation of some sort." He coughed and retreated a little.

"This is barbaric!" Mal protested with a frown. She balled her fists up and bit her lower lip. "Doesn't Auradon have laws to protect against this?"

"They're not specific enough," Ben answered immediately. "But in the future, we should definitely enforce regular spell checks to ensure that things like this don't slip by unnoticed. I'm not sure why we didn't start out doing that-" Ben suddenly clamped his mouth shut and looked very embarrassed. "But Mom and Dad did do a great job helping Auradon startup. It sure wasn't easy to do everything they did."

"This is so unfair..." Mal sighed as she turned away from the family.

"Tell that to your mother," Adam muttered under his breath.

Mal glared at him. "Sure." She snapped. "I'll let her know as soon as this whole thing is over and I'm sent back to your orchestrated prison so you never have to think about how I'm costing you your throne again. Maybe I'll be able to get the words out before she slits my neck or bashes my brains across the sidewalk for not bringing her over because believe me when I say I'm leaving her to rot!"

Belle opened her mouth again as Adam swelled with rage. "We'll have to go back to the drawing board, as they say." She rested a hand on Adam's shoulder. "We truly weren't expecting someone who wasn't planning on riding this curse to its full effects." There was an apology in her tone, and this was what Mal latched onto.

Adam jumped in, however, and Mal felt a headache form. Did the king and queen have to be such polar opposites? "Do think about it though. We know it's not the best situation, but the kingdom is already rampant with rumors, and-"

"Don't trouble her with any of that." Queen Belle commanded quietly. "This isn't something that should concern the kingdom. This is her whole life we're talking about. She needs to make her own decision." With these words, Mal finally garnered the courage to look up and examine Belle.

Mal had never met a woman like the queen, who was willing to put aside differences and first meetings to help console a teenager whose life was being rearranged. Mal managed a smile at the queen, who seemed surprised, but smiled back anyway.

"We'll try and come up with new ideas of course." King Adam babbled on as Belle started to lead him away.

"Of course we will," Belle said. "And now Mal can be a part of the proceedings. But let's go now. Mal needs to use the restroom, and probably shower too."

"Thank you, Ma'am," Mal said softly. The queen smiled softly and turned to lead her husband away by his elbow. All of the guards followed without order or gesture.

Ben moved out of the doorframe as Mal moved closer to the door. Before she could turn the knob, he began to speak. "Y'know, I won't hold it against you if you choose to not marry me. I'll understand."

Mal blinked. The young prince refused to meet her eyes as pink filled his cheeks. "You know…" She began with a sarcastic smirk. "…in most places they would call that a guilt trip."

Ben's eyes flitted up and met hers. There was no magic in that proverbial contact. "No offense, I'm kind of surprised to meet a villain kid like you."

Mal furrowed her brow. "What do you mean?" She questioned.

He held up his hands in defense. "Not interested in taking over the world for starters. How did Maleficent raise a kid like you?"

Mal chuckled dryly, and it was about that time it occurred to her that her throat was unbelievably dry. That must be why she felt so light-headed. "Usually I'm interested." She admitted as she licked her lips. They were beginning to become chapped. "But forced marriage to the crown prince is slightly more important, you know?" She pinched her fingers together to exemplify exactly how minutely important this was.

Ben laughed, which startled Mal because so far, none of the royals had thought her sarcasm was funny. "Yeah, I guess I can see that." He chuckled.

Mal cocked her head at him and examined his stance. The way he clung to the wall and searched her hostile stance made her furrow her lips in thought. "You're not very confident in yourself, are you?" She asked.

Ben shrugged and looked overall uncomfortable with the question. "I dunno." He trailed off. "I'm still learning the rungs, you know."

Mal watched as he shifted his weight from foot to foot and let his gaze flicker between her eyes, her collarbone, and the floor. "Yeah. Whatever. Anyways, I need to take a shower now." Mal reached for the handle.

"Right!" Ben reached out and opened the door for her, narrowly avoiding hitting her in the nose. "Bye." He waved with a small, embarrassed smile as she ducked under his arm.

"Bye." She waved in return and stepped inside.

The door swung closed, and she fell against the heavy wooden entrance in exhaustion. On the other side of the door, she heard a soft whisper of: "Nice to meet you too." Before footsteps carried the speaker away. She laughed a little. The remark hadn't been mean, or angry, only intrigued. Mal turned and couldn't stop an odd smile that spread around her mouth as she pressed her ear to the door, wondering if she'd hear more muttering from the Prince. There was none, but Mal was still intrigued. What an interesting collection of people.

[paganvamp]

Saving Grace: Chapter 1

This is a long chapter, but it’s the setup for Episode 1 of TVD

Disclaimer: I do not own the vampire diaries or any affiliated content

                                            2009 AD: The First Signs

Grace Sinclair woke up with a single, urgent thought on her mind: Elena’s coming back to school today. I have to make sure she’s okay. It was a mantra she repeated to herself all throughout her morning routine, even sloppily hurrying through her signature braid, before tugging on her clothes and grabbing her bag.

“Morning, Gracie!” Her mother chirped as Grace hurtled into the kitchen. When she nearly knocked her youngest sister off the chair in her haste to grab a slice of bread, Aimee gripped the edge of the island counter tightly.

“Woah, Grace, where’s the fire?” At Aimee’s exclamation, both middle-child Chloe and Grace’s father looked up, seemingly equally amused and concerned. 

“Elena,” Grace muttered, far too concerned about her friend to form a complete sentence.

“Elena Gilbert?” While Grace herself was a year older than her three closest friends (Elena Gilbert, Caroline Forbes, and Bonnie Bennett), Chloe was in the same year, and shared several classes with the three girls. Grace nodded, popping her now toasted bread into her mouth and running out the door.

“Sorry, got to go,” she exclaimed around the toast, “I need to make sure she’s okay!”

The kitchen was silent for a few moments as the family listened to the car door slam and Grace pull out of the driveway. Aimee was the one to break it, with a valid concern:

“Did she leave us here?” 

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Grace was antsy, tapping the steering wheel and nervously bobbing her head as she somehow managed to hit every single red light on the way to the school. She was talking to herself, giving herself tips on how to handle the situation.

“Be calm, Grace. Don’t overwhelm her. She hasn’t seen anyone all summer. Just be cool, be reassuring. You’re her friend. She’s way more nervous than you are.” She kept a steady stream of murmured assurances the entire drive, only pausing when she pulled into her designated parking spot. “Okay. Deep breath,” she followed her own advice, breathing in deeply and out slowly, before nodding to herself. “Let’s fucking do this.”

It took her only a few minutes to locate the huddle of cheerleaders where she knew she could find Elena. Only Elena wasn’t there yet. That makes sense. Why would she want to get here early and have to deal with everyone’s shit? She decided to wait with Bonnie and Caroline. As a junior, she normally wouldn’t have been close with the three sophomore girls. Bonnie was actually her distant cousin somehow, but Grace’s parents weren’t the type to stress extended family connections, so the two had only a passion knowledge of each other. And, of course, she’d vaguely known all three of them since she moved in to town, as they were close friends with her neighbor, Matt, but cheerleading had forced them to get to know each other, and they couldn’t help becoming fast friends. Elena’s generosity and warmth had drawn Grace to her immediately, while Bonnie brought a steady, reassuring presence to her life. But it was, surprisingly, the perky yet neurotic Caroline who had become Grace’s closest friend. Caroline’s need for organization and her control-freak tendencies helped to keep Grace grounded and on track, while Grace’s easy-going personality and unconditional support had mediated Caroline’s neuroses. However, this particular morning, Grace was reminded that Caroline wasn’t exactly the most sensitive person – not that Grace was either, but at least she was aware of it – so Grace was sure she and Bonnie would need to be there to ensure she didn’t unintentionally say anything to set Elena off. As Grace came up behind the group, she caught Bonnie’s attention.

“Hey, good morning, Grace!” Bonnie waved, alerting Caroline to Grace’s presence. The other blonde narrowed her eyes at Grace.

“You’re late.” 

“It’s 7:20.”

“We agreed to meet outside the school at 7:15.” Knowing it was futile the argue the point, Grace just nodded and smiled her apology.

“Sorry. Won’t happen tomorrow.” Bonnie had just opened her mouth to say something when Grace spotted Elena approaching, hand in hand with her football-player boyfriend, Matt Donovan. “Elena!” Grace waved, jogging a few feet to meet in the middle. Forgetting all of her previous advice to herself, she placed a comforting hand on Elena’s arm. “Are you okay?” Elena simply blinked at her for a moment before giving that signature smile.

“Of course, I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?” What?

“Well, because-“ but now that she had to think about it, Grace realized she had no idea why she’d believed all morning that Elena was grieving, or that she’d just returned to school even though Grace had seen her in class yesterday. She’d simply woken up knowing that something terrible had happened to her friend and she needed to comfort her. “I… don’t know.” Shaking her head and trying to wave off the concerned looks her four friends were giving her, Grace smiled and shrugged. “I think I just had a super realistic dream and got confused. That ever happen to you?”

“Oh, yeah I’ve done that before!” Matt, the only one in the group she’d been close friends with since childhood, assured her in a tone that suggested he most certainly had not done that before but didn’t want her to feel bad about it.

“Okay, so if we’re going to ignore the fact that you’re being super weird, can we at least go over the plans for tonight?” Caroline cut in. Grace had completely forgotten. The bonfire was tonight. Though, how she had forgotten, she had no idea. It would be Grace’s first party of the year and Caroline was prepared to use violent physical force if she showed any hesitation about showing up.

“Care, I told you. It’s family night, I can’t go.” Elena explained again as patiently as she could. Even Elena had a limit when it came to Caroline. As the three girls began walking toward the school, Matt turned to Grace.

“Hey, are you sure you’re okay? I could drive you to the hos-“ Of course, his go to - ‘I’ll drive you to the hospital’. If Grace seemed anything less than 110% around Matt, he seemed to be transported back to last summer. 

“That’s really sweet Matt, but I promise I’m fine. It was just a weird dream that I couldn’t shake off.” He didn’t seem completely convinced, but he wasn’t the type to push, so he simply nodded towards their friends who, by now, were significantly ahead of them.

“We should catch up, huh?” Giving her shoulder one last reassuring squeeze, Matt led the way towards the school. It really is a shame, Grace thought, that Elena doesn’t love him. Matt was sweet and devoted and probably far too much like Elena, but he was too head over heels to notice she’d been pulling away recently. Grace was quite close with both of them, would probably count Matt among her best friends, so she hated to sit back and watch the obviously doomed relationship run its course, but she had no clue what to do about it, or even if she should. Caroline and Bonnie must have felt the same because none of them had made any mention of it. Whatever. It’s not my business.

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Unsurprisingly, the combined efforts of Caroline’s nagging and Matt and Bonnie’s pleading had convinced Elena to ditch family night (though it was probably mostly due to the nagging). While Matt refused to part with his beloved truck, even for a night, Grace offered to drive Elena, Caroline, and Bonnie to the party, partly to convince Caroline about her enthusiasm for the event and partly to convince herself. Matt wasn’t happy about her driving in the dark, not after her accident last summer, but he could suck it. 

“I don’t think I even knew this was out here.” Grace was awed at the natural clearing that had been turned into a perfect spot for a party, complete with a raging bonfire smack in the middle. Of course, she’d known there were parties out here, but knowing and knowing were two different things. She hadn’t attended any previous parties in the clearing thanks to her and her sisters’ previously packed schedules, not to mention her boyfriend Bryan’s preference for ‘quiet nights in’, as he put it. But Bryan isn’t here, Grace reminded herself harshly.

“You don’t remember having to come out here when the elementary school decided we were all tyrants and needed to ‘clean up the environment’ or whatever bullshit they fed our parents?” Tyler Lockwood inquired as he handed Grace a solo cup filled with surprisingly cheap beer. She blinked in surprise - not at the beer, or the fact Tyler was here, because of course he was. Rather, that he was speaking to her so casually. I don’t think Tyler and I have managed a casual conversation since… well. It didn’t matter. She would rather not think about the last time she and Tyler managed a conversation - or what that conversation had led to. Again, she had to force herself back to the present.

“I moved here when I was eleven, dumbass. I didn’t go to your elementary school.” Matt choked on his beer at the scandalized look on Tyler’s face when the word ‘dumbass’ left Grace’s lips. If he wants to pretend nothing happened, so can I, she told herself. 

“Shit, I totally forgot!” Ben McKittrick interjected, the Senior football player already a little drunk. “You’re, like, from the swamp or something right?”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘bayou’, Ben.” As the rest of the football team converged onto the girls, Bonnie rolled her eyes at the apparent stupidity of teenage boys.

“Yeah, I’m from New Orleans.” Grace shrugged, trying to play nonchalant. She always got uncomfortable when people asked about her beloved but rarely mentioned hometown. She still didn’t know how much to mention, how much of their past her parents wanted kept secret.

“How do you go from New Orleans to Mystic Falls, Virginia?” Tyler called as he continued filling cups from the keg for the steady stream of newcomers. Slightly unnerved by his chill demeanor, Grace directed her answer to Ben and the girl currently sitting on his lap - Jessica, maybe, or Janet?

“Uh, my dad transferred jobs. So, you know… we had to come with him.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, running her fingers up and down the contours of her braid. It wasn’t technically a lie. Joseph Sinclair had changed jobs; it was just after they’d already gotten to Mystic Falls. But Grace remembered her parents as completely different to the people they presented themselves as in this town. Joseph and Cecile had always cared for their children dearly, but they hadn’t always extended the same courtesy to others. They made enemies, or at least rivals, and kept secrets. They always kept the door at the end of the downstairs hall in their French Quarter home locked, even to Grace. Over the years, Grace had gathered that her parents must have been Wiccans, and someone in the Quarter – a dangerous someone, someone they mockingly called ‘The King’ – hadn’t liked that. Grace’s parents had gotten sloppy in hiding their doings, and the Nine Covens had chased them out, fearing The King’s wrath against them all. She could still remember the night they left as if it were yesterday. 

As they were packing up to leave in the middle of the night, Grace ran out into the courtyard, hoping to spend her last moments in the city in her beloved garden, filled with night-blooming flowers. But there was a man standing on the other side of the wrought iron fence. His mocha-colored skin seemed to glow in the moonlight and Grace could have sworn she saw dark veins under his eyes before she blinked and he was just a normal man, staring at her as if she wasn’t supposed to be there, even though it was her house.

“Hello there,” he said softly. His voice was gravelly, more comforting than she would have expected. “What’s your name?”

“Grace. Grace Sinclair.” Her mother would have had a fit if she knew Grace had told her name to a strange man standing outside their house, but he didn’t seem scary. Something told Grace he wasn’t going to hurt her. 

“What are you doing up so late, Grace Sinclair?” 

“My parents are making us move.” Grace was perfectly aware 11 was too old for the undignified sulking she was currently displaying, but she couldn’t help it. New Orleans was her lifeblood, the soul of the city thrumming in time with her heartbeat. She didn’t want to leave, even though her parents told her it wasn’t safe anymore. “It was my job to pack for my sisters and I, but…” she trailed her fingertips over the petals of the flowers nearest her, a mixed bed of moonflowers and night gladiolus. “It’s so beautiful here.” Her voice was quiet, more for herself than him, and Grace didn’t expect that he even heard her. But he had.

“I agree. This city is certainly… something else.” Grace smiled at him, glad to have found a kindred spirit, even if it this strange man’s opinion on the city wouldn’t change her parent’s minds. “You mentioned you have sisters?”

“Two of them,” she nodded, again giving him more information than probably advisable, “Chloe and Aimee. They’re younger than me.” Upon hearing this news, something seemed to shift in the man’s expression, though Grace couldn’t say what it was. “They won’t even tell us why we have to leave! And where are we supposed to go? They never see any of our other family!” Grace shook her head stubbornly. “I won’t go.” He stared at her for several long moments, his gaze flickering to the house behind her a few times before returning to her; he appeared to be indecisive about something. Finally, the man reached into the pocket of his suede coat and his hand reemerged, clasped around a small metal object.

“Come over here, Grace.” A part of her knew walking closer to this strange man was not a clever idea, but again that voice inside told her he wasn’t going to hurt her. When she was within an arm’s reach of him, just on the other side of the fence, he leaned down so they were eye level. His eyes were captivating. The deepest brown, like freshly churned soil, and deep set into a face she could now see was quite handsome. Grace found she couldn’t look away from those eyes, didn’t want to. “This is a ring made of a stone called jet. Have you heard of it?” She nodded vaguely, barely glancing at the ring he now held out to show her. It was quite pretty, seemingly naturally forming a rough teardrop shape. But his eyes demanded her attention. “Jet will protect anyone who wears it from anybody who tries to hurt them.” He looked at her even more intensely now, his eyes dilating slightly before returning to normal, despite there being no change in the light. “You’re going to take this ring, Grace. You’re going to wear it or keep it with you, and you’re going to tell your parents you’ve decided you do want to move.”

“I’m going to take the ring.” She assured him. She would do whatever he wanted her to, this captivating man who would never hurt her. “And I’m going to tell my parents I want to move.”

“You’re going to tell your parents that you want to go find family, have relationships with them that you couldn’t before.” Grace distantly remembered her parents mentioning a set of cousins, originating from some extended relative somewhere in Salem… maybe they could live with them? “Do you understand that Grace?”

“I’m going to tell my parents that I want to see my family.”

“And you’re not going to tell anyone that you saw me tonight, Grace.”

“I won’t tell anyone.” She swore. He finally broke their intense stare down, leaving Grace feeling a bit bereft. He reached through the rods of the fence, his much bigger hand wrapping around hers and plopping a silver and black ring into her palm - the jet was cased in the center in a rather masculine style, silver fleur-de-lis forming the shoulders off the center stone. It was clearly made for a man, but Grace found it beautiful.

“Gracie!” Aimee called out from somewhere in the house. “Gracie, come inside!” Grace knew the stress was getting to them all, that little Aimee was trying her hardest to keep her tone light and carefree. She turned her head to make sure Aimee wasn’t at the window, wouldn’t see her talking to the stranger. But when she turned her head back, he had vanished. 

“Earth to Sinclair! You still in there?” Matt was in front of her, waving his hand in her face.

“What?”

“You just totally spaced out.” Caroline explained. “We thought you were having a stroke.”

“No one thought you were having a stroke.” Bonnie rolled her eyes fondly. “But you were off in your head. Is something wrong?” Grace twirled the mysteriously gifted silver-set jet ring, just small enough to fit on her left thumb. Another jet ring she’d bought for herself, this one not natural but princess cut and set in a thin gold band, flared bright on her right hand in the light of the fire.

“Yeah. Just worrying about a history test.” Jessica-or-Janet, another Junior in Grace’s history class, groaned loudly from her perch in Ben’s lap.

“Please don’t mention that damned test. I just want to have fun tonight!”

“Amen to that!” Grace laughed, raising her beer in the air as if she were toasting the sentiment. Finally moving from her spot on the perimeter of the clearing, she led the way towards the fire with Caroline and Bonnie trailing behind. 

None of them noticed Matt pull Elena aside.

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Grace was the designated driver for the night - and had been every night since her accident - so she nursed her single, watery beer for the next several hours. Bonnie and Caroline did not have the same hesitations. As the keg got emptier, the clearing got louder, and soon Grace could hardly hear herself think over the music, laughter, and drunken, too-loud conversations of her peers. She watched, amused, as Caroline stumbled over to her on cute, but ill-advised heeled boots. 

“Have I tol’ you how much I love your hair?” She slurred with a smile.

“It’s exactly the same as yours, Care Bear.” Before Grace could even finish her protestation, Caroline was waggling her finger and scowling as if arguing a particularly important topic.

“No. No, i’z not! Tizz longer, and ‘s lighter, and i’z very, very thick!” Somehow managing to mispronounce a word three separate ways in one sentence was a new personal record for Caroline. But Grace knew from experience that, when drunk, Affectionate Caroline was very closely followed by Crying Caroline, so she set her own beer on a tree stump next to her and gently tried to pry the red plastic cup out of Caroline’s hand. “Get your own!” But Care’s reflexes were much slower, and by the time she tried to yank the cup away, Grace already had it in hand.

“I think you’ve had enough for tonight, Care.”

“But-“

“How about I undo my braid and you can style my hair?” Pleased with that trade off, Caroline clapped and giggled in excitement, nearly bouncing up and down while waiting for Grace to carefully separate the two braids running down the right side of her head.

“You look like a Viking when you do it like that.” Bonnie’s speech was significantly more stable than Caroline’s, but her gait was far from graceful.

“That’s the idea.” Grace muttered. Caroline was right, Grace’s hair was exceptionally long and thick, and to keep it manageable she wore it in some kind of braid nearly every day. She tried to change it up a bit, switching from a French braid to fishtail, twin braids to crowns to plaits, but her favorites were inspired by her mother’s Nordic heritage – half-head braids and the traditional ‘Viking braid’ especially. Having finally unwound the two thin, vertical snake braids that made up today’s look, Grace shook out her hair for a moment before moving her and Caroline’s discarded beers to the ground and sitting on the tree stump, a perfect height to be her friend’s Barbie doll for the night. 

“Where did you get your hair?” Bonnie asked, unprompted.

“I was born with it?” Grace’s confused response came out sounding more like a question.

“No, I know that”, Bonnie rolled her eyes. “I meant, like, genetically. We might be third cousins or whatever, but your dad still gets his hair from my side of the family.” That was true. Joseph Sinclair’s hair was thick and mahogany brown, very unlike Grace’s. “And your mom is blonde, but her hair is like…” Bonnie paused for a moment, alcohol dulling her ability to find the right word. “Thin. Her hair is thin, and her and Chloe’s hair is browner than yours.” That was also true. Grace’s younger sister could have been a carbon copy of Cecile 20 years ago, both of them with dark blonde hair and brown eyes. Aimee, two years younger than Grace, looked the most like their father, whose own mother had been the white bartender at the bar frequented by Edward Sinclair - Joseph had been raised by his mother and though that could not possibly have changed his physical appearance, he certainly looked more like her. His own children, had they been lined up in order, would have looked like a printer being re-filled with ink - Grace, pale, platinum haired, and as Swedish-looking as her mother’s ancestors; Chloe, dishwater blonde and American as apple pie; and Aimee, whose brown hair and broad features echoed their father’s. 

“Who knows?” Grace shrugged, not that concerned with the origins of her hair color. “Maybe some long-ago ancestor had white-blonde hair or something.” Caroline had managed to pull together one decent braid down the left side of Grace’s back and was moving to the right half when a bit of a commotion caught their attention.

“Seriously?” Matt cried from somewhere deeper into the woods. Elena stomped into the clearing, beelining directly for their tree stump.

“I’m going home.” She muttered, seeming more exhausted than angry.

“Okay, yeah, let me just-“

“No, stay, Grace. I’ll call my parents. Give us a chance to do family night, anyway.” She smiled wryly.

“Are you sure?” Grace was already starting to stand when Elena gently pushed her back down.

“Yes. Stay. Have fun. I’m not ruining three peoples’ night just because I fought with my boyfriend.” Grace started to speak again, to ask about the fight and make sure Elena was okay, when she barreled on. “Besides, you look like an idiot with only half your hair braided. I couldn’t risk being seen with you.” Laughing through her fake indignation, Grace and the girls waved goodbye to Elena and promised to talk more tomorrow, when Caroline would no doubt give her the third degree and analyze every second of whatever happened between her and Matt. Grace watched Elena walk towards the road and pull out her phone, putting it to her ear, before the distance and the lack of light became too much and she was lost to the night. Assured that Elena would soon be safely headed home, Grace turned back to her friends.

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Despite having little to no alcohol in her system, Grace had been convinced by both Caroline and Bonnie to stay until they were almost the last people in the clearing.

“Come on, you two.” Grace sighed, attempting to guide both Caroline and Bonnie towards her waiting BMW. She vaguely wondered if Matt had gotten home alright, since she had only glimpsed him once since Elena’s departure and it was at the keg. But then Caroline tripped over her own foot and Grace lurched forward to grab the usually graceful girl before she face-planted. Caroline thought the whole thing was hilarious, and Bonnie for some reason thought it would be a good idea to mock her friend, and Grace had to catch her as well - but somehow Grace finally managed to get them both in the car and buckled, though not completely cognizant or upright, before heading home. Thank fuck Caroline is staying the night with me. If the Sheriff caught her daughter acting completely sloshed and sneaking in way past curfew, she might very well ship Caroline off to live with her father. Or in a nunnery. Who knew with Liz Forbes? Wanting to avoid taking the nearer Wickery Bridge, as even before the Worst Night of her Life bridges had seemed shady in Grace’s opinion, she took the longer, more sensible route back into town. If only I had been driving that night… but with Caroline and Bonnie drunkenly arguing in the backseat, now was not the time to be thinking about the accident.

Both girls were asleep by the time Grace got home, but she was able to rouse Bonnie enough for them to half-carry Caroline inside and up to Grace’s bedroom, where they deposited her on the bed unceremoniously. 

“I’m getting water and Aspirin for tomorrow. Try to make sure she doesn’t die while I’m gone, yeah?” Bonnie drunkenly waved off Grace’s request but sat down next to Caroline’s prone form anyway.

When her two charges were taken care of, Grace took up Bonnie’s position next to Caroline while Bonnie curled up on the bench at the foot of the bed. Not wonderful sleeping conditions, but no one really cared.

“G’night Gracie.” Bonnie mumbled. Caroline snored in response, but Grace was asleep before any other comment was made.

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At 10:30 the next morning, all three girls stumbled into the kitchen to begin their attempt at pretending they hadn’t broken the law right under their parents’ noses last night. Cecile was making bacon and eggs and Joseph had coffee and Bonnie’s favorite creamer ready to go. The TV in the corner was on, beginning the 11:00 news as everyone dug into their food.

“…A fatal accident last night on Wickery Bridge has left two local teens grieving-“ Every head popped up and focused on the television with laser precision. Dread settled in Grace’s stomach as déjà vu began to creep over her. “…Grayson Gilbert was driving last night with his wife Miranda and daughter Elena, a sophomore at Mystic Falls High School, when he lost control of the car and drove off Wickery Bridge.” Horrified silence filled the room. Someone dropped their fork. The clatter of metal against ceramic seemed entirely too loud. “Miraculously, Elena Gilbert managed to escape the car and swim to the riverbank, where police say she fell unconscious. Grayson and Miranda were, unfortunately, trapped in the car as it sank. The two locals leave behind 16-year old Elena and a son, 15-year old Jeremy Gilbert.”

“Oh my God.” Bonnie whispered. Aimee and Chloe covered their mouths, shocked and speechless.

“My mom.” Caroline croaked. “I have to talk to my mom.” As the Sheriff, Liz Forbes likely would have seen Elena and Jeremy by now and would certainly have more information. Joseph seemed stunned but nodded vaguely. 

“I’ll drive you. Bonnie, is there…?” He trailed off, not quite knowing what he was asking. She nodded anyway.

“I’d like to come if that’s okay. I want to ask if we can see Elena.” The trio filed outside, unnaturally stiff and quiet. 

“I’m… I’m gonna see if anyone else knows anything.” Aimee murmured, her and Chloe walking out of the kitchen holding on to each other as if that would rewind the last 12 hours. The kitchen was silent again, the only sound the droning of the news, which had moved on to the weather. As they heard Grace’s father’s car drive away, Cecile spoke.

“You said something happened to Elena.” The words were almost too quiet to hear, would have been if anyone had been moving.

“What?” Grace now noticed that her cheeks were wet, throat tight with a million questions no one could answer. That goddamn bridge… why is it always that goddamn bridge?

“Yesterday morning.” Her mother repeated, a bit louder. “You said you needed to get to school because something bad had happened to Elena and you wanted to make sure she was okay.”

“Yeah, but nothing had happened. I just had a bad dream.” Grace’s mind was sluggish, not connecting the dots.

“Did you? Or did you know that something bad was going to happen to your friend?” Grace’s gaze slowly moved from the TV to her mother’s face, which was attempting to communicate a message Grace didn’t want to understand. Because her mother was right. Now that the dreadful thing had happened, Grace could clearly remember the dream she’d had that caused her to worry the previous morning. It was the first day of Grace’s senior year and hardly anyone had seen Elena or Jeremy all summer as they dealt with the fallout of their parents’ car driving over the Wickery Bridge. Grace had just wanted to make sure Elena was doing okay, or as well as could be expected. 

“Holy shit.”

[ecotone99]

[SF] GRANDMA BEE MODEL 3

​

My name is Henry Danville and for the last three years the Federal government has paid me thirty-five thousand dollars a year to work from home. That thirty-five thousand, zero hundred dollars and zero cents is a carefully measured amount. It keeps me doing my work, it keeps me fed, and it’s just enough to keep me happy. Thirty-five thousand is also a small enough figure to ensure that I don’t go too far from my work station for any significant amount of time.

The suits do not think I know this, but I do.

The government pays me this salary because on April 11th in the year 2016, I sent one of my cats (although as far as ownership of barn cats goes, I might as well claim to own the birds that fly overheard) five minutes into the future.

Time travel is something I have been obsessed with ever since my undergraduate physics professor showed a clip from an old episode of Star Trek where Kirk folds a piece of paper to demonstrate the folding of space time. He draws a line between the two points, skipping most of the paper by passing over the fold.

I saw that clip for the first time in 1986. It turns out time travel works something like that, or at least I’m pretty sure it does (even now I’m not certain), I just had to figure out how to fold the paper.

I became a professor myself, teaching subatomic particle physics to grad students. I was a good professor. I graded papers quickly, my class averages never dipped below 70%, and I never slept with any of my students (if I told you how often one of them tried it you would not believe me, I’m not an especially handsome man). The whole time I was teaching, I only really cared about time travel. I can’t say that the jump forward in time would have meant anything special to me, only that I had accomplished what no one else could. What other men could only dream of. My peers laughed at me openly, even some students chuckled when I broached the subject, but I never stopped trying to fold the paper.

Then I retired and converted my savings to electrical equipment. Thus began my real work. My first breakthrough was the alpha temporal producer, or ATP for short. In simple terms, the ATP is Kirk’s pen. ATPs provide a little bit of ink, and if you get enough of them going, you can draw the whole line.

I never had a family, maybe I had wanted one once but it never happened, and it certainly can’t happen now. I have been told in so many words by men in black suits and black sunglasses that any distractions to my work will not be tolerated.

The time machine, or Grandma Bee (my great great Grandma Bee lived to be one hundred and five and I always figured she had found some way to cheat the system) has three main parts. There is pad A which the subject is placed on, and pad B where they show up. The control panel houses a start switch, a display screen, and a few buttons. There is also about four hundred and twenty thousand dollars of electrical equipment stringing the whole contraption together. Another hefty sum of money is in the garbage in the form of wires and machines of my own design that didn’t work properly, or didn’t work at all.

Grandma Bee Model 2 (model 1 had blown a hole in the roof of my house, and after that I moved my work to the barn) was not even supposed to be turned on when it finally worked.

I was on my knees on the barn floor, tinkering with one of the three ATPs sitting between pad A and pad B, when the toe of my right boot brushed the second ATP, adjusting its position slightly and crossing a few bald wires that I was in the process of covering. At the same time, an orange kitten wandered onto pad A and another cat, who had inexplicably hopped onto the control panel, brushed against the on switch.

If these three things had not happened in the same instant then I might never have a story to tell, but they did and now I do. It may seem like an extraordinary coincidence, and for years I believed that too, but now I have reason to wonder.

Whether divined by a cosmic presence, something a little closer to the mainland, or just the work of two cats and my stray boot, Grandma Bee Model 2 turned on. There was no great explosion of light, no shriek of terror from the cat, and certainly no hurrah or eureka from me. There was a low beep, and I turned just in time to see the unfortunate cat disappear. All that was left behind was dark grey smoke rising in lazy spirals from the ATPs. The inside of the barn smelled like a Swanson Dinner microwaved for seven hours on the high-power setting.

The cat was gone. I could hardly believe my eyes. I ran to the control panel and inspected the settings. Grandma Bee was set for five minutes, as always. Everything was just as it had always been, except for this time I moved an ATP and crossed some wires, and this time it had worked. Maybe.

Try to imagine my situation. If you are young and unburdened by having committed the majority of your years to a single pursuit you may be unable to understand, but try. Picture me waiting there, my eyes exploding out of my head. Imagine the sweat dripping from my forehead, and my hands pressed so hard against the control panel that they turn white. Picture a sad old man waiting for the results of his entire life’s work, thrust into his anxiety by accident.

After two minutes of waiting, the control panel sparked and turned itself off before I could grab the fire extinguisher. After four minutes and thirty seconds, Grandma Bee Model 2 turned back on.

I had programmed the message myself, but when the green letters popped up on the control panel display it gave me such a shock I thought my heart was going to stop.

PREPARE TO RECOVER.

“Get ahold of yourself Henry,” I muttered.

A second low beep, and a fizzle from the three ATPs, and the cat appeared on pad B. It was missing its tail and one of its ears. In the time that it took for me to run over to it, half excited half scared out of my wits, the cat had given a single weak mewl and flopped onto its side, stone dead.

I carried the body to an empty worktable. After an autopsy, I discovered that the poor thing’s liver and one of its lungs were gone too, presumably to wherever its tail and ear were. I also discovered that bottom of all of the cat’s paws were burned as black as the bottom of a frying pan, and still hot.

I logged it all in my notebook, where until now I had only been able to chronicle failed adjustments to Grandma Bee Models 1 and 2. Instead of “some cat” I named him Armstrong in my report and vowed to give him a hero’s funeral before returning to my work.

When I turned to bring the body outside for burial, I saw Armstrong’s missing parts lying on pad B in a pool of scabbed blood. His liver, lung, and ear were charred black and unrecognizable, and his tail was on fire.

I buried Armstrong and his parts under the apple tree in the back garden. I’m pretty sure the black suits dug him up and whisked his bones away for testing. I woke up one day, perhaps a week after I had told the government about the cat and the suits had shown up, and the dirt where I had buried Armstrong was disturbed.

I could dig him up and see for myself, but I don’t really want to know. I also don’t think the suits would like it very much if I started doing some extracurricular investigating. They are still watching me. They have had some staff changes since the incident of course, and they don’t come and say hello anymore, but they’re still watching from a distance.

Anyways, after I made the mistake of reporting my work and the suits got involved, things really got moving. At the start the suits were polite. Maybe someone had warned them that I turned a cat inside out and set whatever fell off of the body on fire, I had heard as much whispered about me between two of them who thought I couldn’t hear them, but if they feared me they had no reason to. The guns on their hips would have snuffed me out quite effectively, cat killer or not.

They came in black SUVs. While most of their team secured the property, one of them explained my situation. He told me about the government grant of thirty-five large, and told me I was doing work that the president himself was proud of. I was told America was behind me in spirit, even if the operation was classified for the time being, and then I was offered a notepad and a blue pen.

“Write down the equipment or parts that you need,” one of the suits said. “We’ll have whatever you need for your work brought in ASAP.”

I didn’t like the way he said brought in like I was under quarantine.

“Will it come out of my thirty-five large?”

“Not a penny Mr. Danville.”

I took the notepad.

“Good enough.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what I needed given that Grandma Bee had gone off by accident, but I had a good idea that I needed to build a few more ATPs if I wanted to get a whole cat from A to B, so I scribbled down the component parts. After that I put some desserts and books, and just for gags I wrote porn. The suit accepted the note, scanned it, and pocketed it without a twitch. It was all there the next morning. The equipment was in the barn, the food in the kitchen, and one the agents had stacked five copies of Playboy on the back of my toilet.

“What if I think of something else later?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure you fellas don’t have a public phone line.”

“Make a note, put in your neighbor’s mailbox. Make sure you put it in an envelope. Sign it, and we’ll take care of it in 48 hours, tops.”

“Which neighbor?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

George and Marcy Klayson live about a quarter mile down the road one way and Ben and Carol, I forget their last name, live a half mile the other direction. They are my closest neighbors. Since that day, I have dropped notes for electronic parts, food, and whatever else I think of in both mailboxes tens of times, but I haven’t seen my neighbors once. I don’t think I will ever see them again.

After sending several hundred mice through Grandma Bee Model 2 (mice are cheaper than cats), I decided two things were required for me to send something as large as a person for more than five minutes.

I had an idea that the suits were thinking about jumping people through stretches of time best measured in years and not minutes, and for that I would need a lot more ATPs, bigger ones too if I could work it out.

By early 2018 I had come up with an ATP design that could get the job done. I called my new design the SATP (S for supermassive), and this time I did get a couple of the suits to help with construction and erecting the thing. It took a crane to stand it up when the SATP was built. I think the suits were worried that someone might see it, but the SATP fit neatly inside of my grain silo. There might be an issue if someone wandered too close and wanted to have a look at whatever was making the humming noise, but the suits weren’t letting anyone near me. In three years, not a single car or truck or bicycle has gone by my property without a suit climbing out of it.

The second thing I needed to do, which I completed very recently, was a reworked construction for pad B. The SATP allowed me to effectively send my squealing subjects through spacetime for up to ten minutes forward, but GBM3 was being put under extra strain when it was trying to figure out how to orient the subject’s physical being when it dropped it off.

The new design is simply a hole, or if you like (and the suits certainly seem to) Portal B. Portal B is a metal circle that hangs in midair, and the cats simply fall through it. I have theories as to why this helps, but they are no more than that. All I can say for sure is that the mice started coming through without their feet burned off, and that the rate of missing organs went down from 5 in every 6 mice to 1 in 2.

The addition of portal B allowed me to send subjects ahead for up to an hour without risk of cataclysmic system failure. It also persuaded me to rename my creation the Grandma Bee Model 3, or GBM3 for short. The old systems had concentrated on getting the job done however possible, now the goal was efficiency.

If you, dear reader, are been paying attention you may be wondering if I have tried, to send subjects backwards.

I have tried. Subjects sent back simply disappear, and that makes sense of course because I am ahead and am not able (or willing) to go back further to watch them appear, but nothing has showed up. If future me is sending mice back, I’m not getting them for one reason or another. I tried to send one back to the day before and it disappeared just as expected, but I have no memory of a mouse showing up without reason. I have decided to let it go. I suggest you do the same if you don’t want to tie your head in knots.

The suits became impatient after the jump in progress resulting from the SATP. Forward progress only serves to increase their appetite for greater progress, and I’ve done my best to keep up with their desires.

After the construction of three more SATPs, and this brings our story to the day before yesterday, we were able to successfully send a person forward. I do not know anything about the man, only that he was tattooed heavily, very pale, and nearly catatonic. The suits told him what to do and he obeyed, and in that way, I suppose we were very alike.

We sent him forward five minutes. By then I fully expected the experiment to be a success and I was not disappointed. His breathing was steady, his pupils dilated when I shone at them with my flashlight, and he was able to track the movements of my finger. The bottoms of his feet were a little warm, but they cooled off quickly enough and most importantly he remained alive. He didn’t speak, but he hadn’t said a word since they pulled him out of the black SUV parked in my driveway. After the test, they packed him into the SUV again and drove away.

The next day, the suits came back with the tattooed man and told me they wanted him sent forward by ten minutes. I complied.

He went ten minutes just fine, and then the suits demanded he be sent on a half hour jump. I refused, not because I didn’t think it would work, but because the machine needed some time to cool and I still did not know the full effects of multiple jumps forward. The suits threatened me, and I gave in.

He went an hour, the three, then five. In the time between each jump the suits stood politely silent. They were content to watch the experiments, and almost as if it were an accident, most of them were positioned in front of the barn’s exit points. I badly needed a coffee, and one of the suits came back with a full pot. He was smiling, but because of the sunglasses I couldn’t tell if the smile was reaching his eyes or not.

After the nameless man jumped five hours I called it off. His feet were suffering first degree burns (though he did not complain) and it was almost midnight by this point. The experiment was over, I said, but it was not to be.

They said I could go to bed, but I had to send him on a twenty-four hour jump first. I refused. We had not even sent a mouse that far, but they insisted. It was him or me. I’m sad to say that by this time the suits must have gotten a pretty good idea of how to recreate Grandma Bee Model 3 in the event of my passing, and I believed their threat.

I sent him. Gods help us I sent him, only I didn’t send him forward one day. In the instant before I pressed the big green button, one of the suits who had crept silently behind me grabbed under my arms. I let him and didn’t fight back, and why would I? I was ok with not dooming the tatoo’d stranger. The suits shouted at the guy who grabbed me, all but one. That one brought his gun up and before the others could react they were all dead. The barn smelled like smoke again.

I screamed. The tattooed man drooled a little, but otherwise did nothing at all.

At gun point, the one who had shot his peers told me I was going to send the guy forward a full year.

“He’ll die,” I said. “His feet won’t just burn up. He’ll catch fire and die. The STAPs will probably explode and we’ll die too.”

“They won’t,” the suit said. “They won’t explode, and Mr. LaFleur here won’t die. We’ve had the boys in the lab take a look at GMB3. We gassed your bedroom and had you out like a lightbulb for three days, plenty of time for them to get a good idea of what’s going on here.”

“If they’re so smart then what do you still need me for?”

“They’re not that smart,” the suit said. He made a face at me, his mouth twisted in half frustration half laughter, like he had an inside joke on me, but he had to step in dog shit to get it.

They already tried to recreate it back at the lab, I thought. But it didn’t work. It almost did though, or it had worked poorly, because this guy is about to tell me what they did right and what I’m doing wrong.

“Still,” the suit said, “The boys in white had some interesting ideas for modifications. I don’t understand a word of it, but I’ve got the binder in the car and I think you’ll understand just fine. You’re going to make those changes, then send him, or the two of us will send you right now.”

I won’t bother with the details of what happened before I made the tattooed guy, apparently named Mr. LaFleur, jump forward. I protested some more and lost the fight. The suits showed me the changes in a black binder marked CLASSIFIED and they made sense. They made a lot of sense actually.

I applied the changes after putting up another fight and getting the butt of a gun smacked across my face. I was exhausted. I don’t know what time I finished but the sun had come back up and started on its way down again. I asked for another coffee and the suit who had held me back from the control panel suggested I eat shit.

I told them when I was done. The suits led LaFleur forward onto pad A again, and even though they had scrambled his brains some part of him must have known what was up, because he seemed to dig in his heels just a bit on the way.

I pressed the green button when he was on pad A, I wanted to do it when the suits were setting him up but they were wise to me and were very careful not to step on the launch pad. That same low beep and Mr. LaFleur disappeared. The SATPs groaned and I thought we were done for, but then they fell silent.

“We’ll be back,” said one of the suits.

“One year,” said the other. “Don’t try and run.”

Before they could leave, the SATPs started groaning again, and Portal B made a strange snapping rumbling noise. Like someone taking a piss on a snare drum during an earthquake. A purple circle spread, covering the whole area of Portal B. The suits looked at each other, then me. I shrugged but looking back I think I had an idea of what was happening.

Something flew out of the purple. A black shadow, angry, it streaked through the air like a tear of paper spinning and twisting in the wind. It was giving off enormous amounts of heat, so much so that there are still black burn marks on my shirt from where it passed by me. The phantom flew up to the north wall of the barn, smashed through it, and went up into the sky. Then it was gone. It’s still out there somewhere.

One of the suits rounded on me.

“What the fuck was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I just… I don’t know.”

I had an idea, a couple of ideas actually, but before I could give voice to them something else came out of portal B. A long robotic tentacle. It snaked out slowly, with the speed that a fisherman reels in a lure, only this one was coming towards us. It had a translucent white skin, like liquid glass, and beneath the skin I could see wires of a hundred different colours, twisting metal, and what looked like thin blue veins crisscrossing throughout.

It had a golden disco ball on the tip and by the way the tentacle was moving, that ball might’ve been an eye. It crept towards us without a sound or smell, then stopped in front of the first suit. I stayed perfectly still, but the other suit, the one that had grabbed me and told me to eat shit, tried to run.

He got a few steps towards the nearest exit but he never had a chance. The golden disco noticed him somehow, and the golden ball opened up. A red beam shot at him and it sounded like the guns the Stormtroopers fire in Return of the Jedi. It zapped through the back of the suit’s head, and he went down like a sack of potatoes. His brains poured out in streamers in front of him.

The golden disco ball went for me next. It scanned me up and down and I closed my eyes. I bit my lip so hard it started to bleed, and then the tentacle just left me alone. It returned to the remaining suit and after a quick once over, used its laser to cut him in half lengthwise.

Then the tentacle went away, but not back into portal B. It pulled itself through one of the barn doorways into the outdoors. For a while all I could see was the unending length of wire and metal unfurling from Portal B. Then it stopped, and I heard the laser firing again. Then there was a titanic crash that made the earth shake, then the laser started up again.

It’s destroying the SATPs, I thought, and I was right.

It cut them diagonally at the base, like a lumberjack cuts an oak, and the SATPs were falling one by one, with no timber to signal their demise. If the tentacle had sent one of the massive machines falling into the barn I would’ve been a pancake, but even then, I did not run. I was too scared to move.

When the four SATPs were done with, the tentacle began to retreat back into portal B. I wanted to run and hide before the golden disco ball came back, in case it changed its mind about me, but I was still paralyzed with fear. It took one look at pad A before shredding it into flaming oblivion as I feared it would. The control panel got the same treatment.

When the control panel was destroyed, there was nothing to power portal B, and it shut down. The purple distortion that the tentacle was coming out of went with the power, and the machine was severed. Everything that had been sticking out of portal B smashed into the ground and didn’t get up. When I finally gathered the courage to investigate the thing, I saw that the cut was totally smooth. The rest of it, whatever the tentacle was attached to, was still in its own time, but the tentacle was stuck in 2019.

To this day – and I suspect for another year at least – I do not know for sure what that shadow creature was that came hurtling out of portal B. I have a theory though, I believe that creature is what was left of Mr. LaFleur after his jump forward. I think the trip burned him and flipped his organs inside and out a hundred thousand times and somehow it transformed him into something unrecognizable as a human.

My theory goes further.

I think someone on the other side of that year knew La Fleur was coming, received him, and then sent him back. Whether he was a warning or an attack I can’t say. Maybe both. I have a horrible feeling that someone was me. I think in that version of the future something terrible happened because of GBM3 and future me decided the only thing to do was go back and destroy it.

I don’t know what could cause me to want my life’s work destroyed, just like I don’t know why the men in suits wanted LaFleur to jump forwards a year. I can guess. I can guess that if LaFleur was ok when the two of them returned in a year, they would have taken turns jumping forward, maybe ten years at a time. Maybe they each stuck a chunk of cash in an investment account and wanted to skip the waiting period between a few thousand dollars and a few million. If that sounds stupid to you then good, it sounds ridiculous to me too, I can only guess.

I am going to rebuild the time machine. I have to. The suits will kill me if I don’t. I see a black SUV drive by sometimes, and I still haven’t seen my neighbors. Not a single soul.

Whatever my reason future me had – will have – for destroying my life’s ambitions, I hope I have avoided it, because it’s also possible that I had nothing to do with that tentacle. It’s possible that by the time a full year has come and gone, artificial intelligence is in full swing and it doesn’t like us. Maybe that happens in a hundred years, or two hundred, and they came back to break GMB3 because it was the only chance we, mankind, had. Or maybe all of that, or none of it. I expect I will know it a years’ time, or less.

submitted by /u/More_Pop [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2Ll82D6

[newstfionline]

Why A Man Declared Innocent Can’t Get Out Of Prison

Deborah Bradley Hagerty, NPR, December 6, 2017

Just past 10 p.m. on a summer night, attorney Cheryl Wattley is standing near a quiet street in West Dallas, reconstructing an old crime.

It’s a moonless night. One street light and one porch light from a nearby house illumine the scene, nearly identical conditions to the night 30 years ago, when a young man was left to die on the street not too far from here.

Wattley points toward a man standing under the street light, a private investigator named Daryl Parker, as he positions himself in the alley 40 feet away.

“Can you identify him?” she asks.

I squint. It’s nearly impossible to see anything.

“You see a silhouette of a man,” Wattley says. “You can’t even see his face.”

On the night of the killing, witnesses said they could see more than a silhouette. They identified Benjamine Spencer and another man running away from the scene. Their testimony helped send them to prison.

But was Spencer guilty? He maintains his innocence. A trial judge even declared Spencer innocent and concluded the evidence that put him behind bars was falling apart. That was 10 years ago. A higher court ruled that was not enough to warrant a new trial. And Spencer remains in a maximum security prison.

This is how he got there.

On March 22, 1987, 33-year-old Jeffrey Young, the acting president of a clothing manufacturing company called FWI, was robbed as he was leaving his office around 9:30 p.m. in a warehouse district of Dallas. Police say two attackers robbed and beat him. They stuffed him in his BMW, drove over the Trinity River to West Dallas, dumped his body on the street, abandoned his car in the alley and fled.

Police got lucky: Three witnesses said they knew the two men from the neighborhood. They identified Spencer and Robert Mitchell as the men who abandoned the car.

“These are not eyewitnesses who were strangers--strangers who all of the sudden had to pick somebody out of a lineup,” says Faith Johnson, the current district attorney in Dallas County. “These people knew Spencer.”

Four days after the crime, police arrested Spencer. He was 22 years old, newly married, and expecting his first child. He’d had brushes with the law. He’d spent a few days in jail for driving on a suspended license. He’d received six years of probation for driving a car stolen by a friend.

He thought his arrest was a simple mistake, soon to be rectified.

Spencer had an alibi. He and a young woman told police they hung out from around 7:30 p.m. to past midnight the night of the killing. There was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime--no fingerprints, no murder weapon, and no Seiko watch, wedding ring, briefcase or portable TV--items that were taken in the robbery.

He thought he’d be out in a few days. But in October 1987, Spencer was tried for murder. The jury convicted him and sentenced him to 35 years in prison, based on testimony of the three key witnesses and a jailhouse informant.

Then Spencer caught a break. The state’s star witness had lied on the stand about whether she received a reward for her information. Spencer was granted a new trial. The state offered him a plea deal: He’d be out in less than 5 years. Spencer’s attorney thought he should accept.

“He was saying, ‘If you take it to trial, they’re going to try to give you a life sentence, and they’re likely to get it,’” Spencer recalls. “And I’m like, ‘I’m not going to plead guilty to something I didn’t do.’”

In the second trial, the state prosecuted him for aggravated robbery and asked for life. The star witness was 42-year-old Gladys Oliver, whose house overlooked the alleyway.

“There’s no question that Gladys Oliver’s testimony convicted Ben Spencer,” said former prosecutor Andy Beach.

He recalls Oliver sitting in a wheelchair in court, eye level with the jury, as she described Spencer getting out of the car and speeding away.

A jury convicted Spencer a second time, with a sentence of life. Robert Mitchell was convicted a few days later in a separate trial. He, too, maintained his innocence. He died after he was paroled in 2001.

With his verdict, Spencer embarked on a 30-year journey to unearth proof of his innocence. His story illustrates how difficult that can be.

“There’s probably not a day that goes by that I don’t at least think of Ben,” says Jim McCloskey, founder of Centurion Ministries, a group that re-investigates cases of prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted.

Spencer wrote Centurion in 1989. They were unable to take his case for more than a decade. When they finally met, McCloskey says, “I walked away thinking: We can’t leave this man behind.”

That was 17 years ago. Centurion interviewed more than 100 people, built a case, and then they asked a trial judge for a hearing.

“We thought we had a good shot,” McCloskey recalls.

Texas is one of a handful of states that can grant a new trial based on “actual innocence,” not just constitutional problems in the original trial. The petition landed in the chambers of Rick Magnis, a newly elected criminal court judge in Dallas.

“I was wary at first,” Magnis says in an interview.

The vast majority of exonerations are based on DNA evidence, which was not presented here. But as he read, he became intrigued.

“It started to become persuasive as I looked more and more at the evidence,” Magnis says.

In July 2007, he opened an evidentiary hearing. The state’s star witness, Gladys Oliver, held firm. But others backtracked.

Spencer’s team also presented evidence that they claimed implicated another man, Michael Hubbard. Hubbard was called to testify, but took the fifth.

Finally, they called a forensic visual scientist, who testified it would be impossible for the witnesses to identify Spencer. Under those conditions, you would have to be no more than 25 feet away to discern a face; the closest eyewitness was 93 feet away.

At best, the expert said, the witnesses could have seen a silhouette. The state’s expert agreed.

“When you have two [experts] that say none of these three witnesses could have seen what they said they saw,” Magnis said, “I felt that was very, very compelling.”

So did Alan Ledbetter, the foreman of the second jury. Centurion investigators talked to him in the course of their search for new evidence. The more he listened and researched, the more his doubts grew about Spencer’s culpability.

“We worked with what we had, but we were very wrong,” he says, as he grows emotional. “So there’s an element of guilt, and grief, that I carry for whatever role I may have played in robbing so much of his life from him.”

Judge Magnis issued his recommendation that Spencer be granted a new trial to the Court of Criminal Appeals, on the grounds of “actual innocence.”

Spencer was elated. “I was very hopeful. I thought that this is it. I’m going home.”

But days turned into weeks, months into years, with no word from the Court of Criminal Appeals, the only court with the authority to grant a new trial.

In 2011, he received the grim news. The appellate court denied Spencer a new trial. Judge Lawrence Meyers wrote the unanimous opinion. If this evidence had been presented at the original trial, he explained, it might have created reasonable doubt. But the evidence did not outright clear Spencer.

In an interview with Meyers, he said, “The problem was, there just wasn’t newly discovered evidence. That’s what really hurt Mr. Spencer the most.”

To win a new trial, Spencer would have to find unassailable proof that he’s innocent--DNA that’s never been tested, for example, or security camera video that’s never been seen. It’s an incredibly high standard. In fact, Texas judges call it a Herculean burden.

Meyers acknowledges that the bar is so high that innocent people are surely in prison with no recourse. So where does that leave Benjamine Spencer?

Meyers sighs. “Oh, I don’t know. Mr. Spencer has been in jail for a long time. Mr. Spencer may be eligible for parole.”

Theoretically, Spencer could ask for another new hearing. But his attorney, Cheryl Wattley, says his team threw everything they had into the first hearing. They’d have to start from scratch.

“Ironically, that’s the catch-22,” she says. “We need new evidence. We need the proverbial breakthrough.”

Thirty years after the crime, it’s nearly impossible find new evidence.

Gladys Oliver, the one who testified confidently about what she saw, refused to talk about the case.

A second witness is dead. And a third has now back-peddled. That witness testified that he got a clear view of Spencer in the alley. In an interview, he now gives it a 30 percent chance it was Spencer. He says he felt pressured by police to name him.

Another neighbor who was never called at trial says the man ran right in front of her. She’s said in an interview that she’s “1,000 percent sure” the man was not Spencer.

Even the jailhouse informant, Danny Edwards, has recanted. Edwards had testified that in 1987, Spencer and he briefly shared a jail cell, and that Spencer had said he killed Jeffrey Young. Did Spencer actually say that?

“Naw, he didn’t say that,” Edwards said in an interview. “He said they was accusing him of doing it. He didn’t even know the guy. He ain’t even been over there. In fact, he had proof that he wasn’t over there that day.”

Edwards claimed in court that he did not receive a benefit for his testimony. But state records show he was facing up to 25 years in prison in a separate aggravated robbery case before he talked to lead detective Jesus “Jessie” Briseno. After he gave police his statement about Spencer, the records show his charges were reduced and he walked out of prison in 15 months.

So, if Spencer didn’t kill Young, as his some of his accusers now say, who did? Could it have been Michael Hubbard? One of his friends, Kelvin Johnson, recalls that, a few days after the crime, Hubbard mentioned Young’s attack and killing.

“These were his exact words: “The white man who they found dead over in West Dallas? I did that, man.” Johnson said. “Ben’s in prison for something he didn’t do.”

Johnson was torn because of his friendship with Hubbard, but gave a statement to police about his friend’s confession 30 years ago. But he never signed his affidavit, and police didn’t believe him.

Johnson eventually testified to all that before Judge Magnis, who found him to be credible.

Hubbard, who’s now serving life for a brutal robbery and assault, declined an interview.

Why would investigators believe a jailhouse informant, and disregard the alibi witnesses and others who said the perpetrator was not Benjamine Spencer?

Private investigator Daryl Parker believes it was a classic case of “tunnel vision.” That’s when police are so driven to solve the crime, they focus on the initial suspect, to the exclusion of other potential leads.

“And then they start making the evidence fit their theory,” Parker says, “instead of making their theory fit the evidence.”

Detective Jesus Briseno shrugs when he was told that two of his four witnesses have more or less recanted. “It’s their conscience, not mine,” he says.

And they had a solid suspect already: Benjamine Spencer.

At the maximum security prison, Spencer looks professorial in his wire-rimmed glasses, his hair flecked with gray. He is tall and lanky and still handsome. But he seems a little defeated.

“I’m just at a point where, I’m still hopeful, but at the same time, it’s like I’m stuck in a system.”

Spencer comes up for parole in February. He’s been denied every time in the past, despite a near perfect record.

Jeffrey Young’s family opposes his parole. They point out that not one, but two juries convicted him. A story like this re-opens old wounds, and they declined to talk about Spencer’s case.

Even without parole, Spencer may have one last hope. It turns out that the crime laboratory in Dallas may have kept fingernail clippings from Jeffrey Young’s right hand. There is a chance that Young scratched his killer and captured his DNA beneath his nails.

If the DNA hasn’t degraded, it may point to another person, or to Benjamine Spencer. We asked District Attorney Faith Johnson if she would agree to the testing.

“Absolutely,” she says, “because we don’t want any innocent person to be in prison.”