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rallamajoop · 2 years

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On the Backgrounds and Ages of the Four Lords

So, as previously mentioned, I've gotten a bit fixated on puzzling out all the (admittedly limited) clues we get about the backstories of the four lords. Who joined the family when? How old were they? Were they all from noble families? There isn't a lot of hard info, but the tidbits we get provide some interesting clues.

This is all likely to get a bit tl;dr, so have the short version up front:

Dimitrescu and her daughters all joined Miranda's family sometime between 1920 and 1958 (though probably not at the same time). Dimitrescu was 44 years old.

Heisenberg joined the family sometime after Dimitrescu ‒ probably much later (he may even be younger than her daughters).

Donna joined the family sometime after 1996, probably in her late teens/early twenties (and is definitely younger than Dimitrescu's daughters).

Moreau could have joined any time from 1920 onwards; there's not much to go on.

And there's a surprisingly good case to be made that none of them may be really descended from village's legendary 'four founders'. (But believe me, I've found so much more to talk about than just that.)

On the lords' ages

So, there’s this widespread idea that Heisenberg (and presumably the other lords) were only children when Miranda began her experiments on them. Personally, I don’t think this adds up. I’d assume it comes from Heisenberg’s statements to the effect of ‘she took us to be her children’ etc, (and maybe Dimitrescu’s dismissal of him as ‘but a child’) – though he never does say, ‘we were only children’, just that Miranda had treated them that way.

What little information we do have about the lords pre-experimentation all points towards their being taken as adults – Dimitrescu and Donna being the two we know the most about. Miranda’s notes on ‘experiment 181’ gives ‘Alcina D’s age at the time of cadou implantation as a thoroughly mature 44 (notably, other test subjects mentioned in the same document are also 20+).

We don’t have as exact an age for when Donna was adopted by Miranda, but in discussing the event, the gardener’s diary at the Beneviento’s household does say she’s been an outsider ‘ever since childhood’ – ergo, childhood is in her past. Granted, childhood may not be all that far behind her, if being adopted by someone like Miranda isn’t too weird, but late teens/early twenties would fit – and tracks with how she looks too.

Also worth noting is that Dimitrescu’s three ‘daughters’ have remained ‘children’ since at least 1958. They don’t look all that much younger than Donna, but they do add some supporting evidence to suggest that cadou implantation functionally freezes you at that age indefinitely. Now, as amalgamations of monstrous flies masquerading in humanoid shape, it's quite possible the Dimitrescu daughters are outliers even in Miranda’s twisted family, but I think the point still stands: everything points to Dimitrescu and Heisenberg being their full-grown, middle-aged selves long before Miranda ever got her hands on them.

What year each of the four lords joined Miranda’s family is the more interesting question – the dates we’ve got may be more spread out than you'd think.

Miranda

Miranda’s own encounter with the megamycete is the one we have the most concrete info on: it occurred shortly after her daughter’s death in the Spanish Flu outbreak a hundred years ago, so presumably 1919 or 1920. Images during the game’s credits show a little of the village’s history as Miranda began experimenting on the villagers, presumably soon afterwards, given the epidemic still seems to be in action.

How soon she began her cadou experiments isn’t clear, but was certainly by the 1950s at the very latest.

Lady Dimitrescu (and family)

Lady Dimitrescu is one we have a loose date on: from the maid’s diary we know that both she and her daughters were well-established in the castle by 1958. She may well be the oldest of the four lords. Miranda lists "Alcina D" as her 181st subject – experimentation had clearly been going for a good while by that point. As noted above, she was 44 years old.

Considering how effortlessly she inhabits her role, and considering what we're told about the village's four noble families, it's no surprise that Miranda records "Alcina D" as being of "noble descent." That she carries a 'hereditary blood disease' (presumably hemophilia: famously common in European nobility due to inbreeding) only adds to the picture.

So it is surprising that Miranda goes on to note that she's "not from the village," and Dimitrescu's own diary states that Miranda gave her the castle and her daughters (much as Moreau talks about being ‘given’ his mountain). Even the winemaking notes vaguely allude to the castle having previous occupants (implied: not the Dimitrescu family).

The original Japanese version of Miranda's experiment notes provides one interesting clue: here "Alcina D" isn't just 'of noble descent', but specifically descended from a fallen noble ‒ a detail which begins to paint an interesting picture. It's hard to imagine Miranda doing many experiments on outsiders from wealthy families, whose disappearance could raise difficult questions. But a former aristocrat fallen on hard times (and suffering from hemophilia to boot) might even be prepared to volunteer for Miranda's 'treatments', if given the hope of having her health and fortune restored. So Lady D certainly comes from privilege, but perhaps from somewhat further afield than you might think.

There’s a fan theory that Lady Dimitrescu was in fact the same jazz singer pictured on the cover of a CD you can find in Ethan and Mia’s home, by a band called ‘Lady D and the Pallboys’. And while I think people treating it as definitive canon are getting carried away by what’s more of an easter-egg at best, it's not impossible. A younger Alcina might well have had to work to support herself in the years before meeting Miranda.

The bit about being ‘given’ her daughters seems to hold water too. Though Lady Dimitrescu clearly took many cadou research subjects from her own servants, it may have been Miranda who performed the experiment that created her daughters: she's the one featured in the photo in the book detailing their creation, and the text sounds far more like her voice than Dimitrescu’s.

There's some conflicting info about how much control Lady D has over her transformation into her mutated form. In game, she transforms only after being stabbed with a poisoned dagger, and it doesn't seem that voluntary ‒ in one voice line, she declares that only Miranda has ever seen that form before. So it's odd that Miranda describes her as having 'arbitrary control' over body transformation in her notes on Subject 181 ‒ only to later speculate that "if the subject's regeneration is not properly balanced then she may mutate uncontrollably" in the report from her lab at the end of the game, which suggests no control at all.

This is another detail that does add up a little better in the original Japanese, which may be closer to, "There is also concern that cell division will not be controlled if the metabolic balance is disrupted by poisonous substances" ‒ the speculation there is specifically about poison making her vulnerable, or making her lose control (which it certainly does in game).

Whatever her history, the name 'Dimitrescu' is apparently the one genuine Romanian surname among the lords. Etymologies suggest it may be related to the Greek Demeter, the goddess of spring, whose grief at the loss of her own daughter plunged the whole world into an endless winter ‒ so definitely some interesting thematic parallels there.

Donna Beneviento

Up the far opposite end of the scale, we have Donna Beneviento – almost certainly the youngest of the four lords. We don’t have a hard date for Donna either, but it was clearly after 1996 (and incredibly, there’s a case to be made that it may have been as recent as 2017). But see my other post for (much) more on the mysterious Beneviento family.

Still, even if "the four lords" have been around for much longer than 25 years, how do we know it was always the same four? Maybe Heisenberg wasn't the first to rebel.

The name ‘Beneviento’ sounds Italian (as does 'Donna'), but doesn’t seem to be a genuine Italian name. Possibly ‘Benevento’ is what they were aping.

Karl Heisenberg

Heisenberg gives us much less to go on. He alludes to having spent ‘decades’ as Miranda’s ‘son’ (so, let’s assume he can't have joined the family more recently than the 90’s at the very latest). Dimitrescu dismisses him as ‘but a child’, which does suggest he’s a lot younger than her. Given that Dimitrescu’s daughters joined the family before 1958, and that Miranda was still completing her little family as recently as 1996, this makes it entirely possible that Heisenberg is actually younger than little Bela, Cassandra and Daniela. Which certainly puts a different spin on that ‘but a child’ line – never mind that that man is over 40 if he’s a day old.

The dog tag Heisenberg wears is potentially significant, but not very specific. The shape and design matches German dog tags which came in during WWI, and were still in use through WWII and presumably beyond. Modern designs differ, but it's hard to find good info on when that shape fell out of use. Mind you, I've seen Romanian dog tags of the same shape too ‒ it seems to have been widely used. So this may well hint that Heisenberg served in the military somewhere, somewhen, but it could also have belonged to a friend or family member. The other objects he wears are a compass and a scale, FWIW.

Interestingly, a couple of tidbits from the Japanese game text strongly suggest Heisenberg’s ‘lordly’ status is little more than fiction. It’s not just that Dimitrescu dismisses him as ‘riffraff’ in her diary (though this, too, is stronger in Japanese, where he’s more specifically ‘of low blood’). What's more interesting is that Heisenberg’s own diary echoes the same idea.

Where in English it reads "I was just lucky I had more affinity to the stuff than the other poor shmucks in the village" there’s a preceding clause in the Japanese version (貴族なんて身分も) that seems to mock the idea of his ‘aristocratic’ status. This one being a little beyond my own fangirl Japanese, I threw it to my sister (the one who actually spent a year in Japan), and she suggested something more like, ‘Aristocrats? Status? Hah! We just happened to have better compatibility than regular villagers, that's it.’ Neither of us are super-fluent speakers, but the implication Heisenberg’s called a ‘lord’ only because he happened to survive Miranda’s experiments still comes through.

Heisenberg is, of course, a German name – obviously taken from the theoretical physicist Werner Karl Heisenberg, of uncertainty principle fame, which also ties in with the character’s mad science theme.

Salvatore Moreau

Which brings us to Moreau, at which point I can only really give up. He could be as young as Donna or as old as Dimitrescu ‒ there’s next to nothing to hint at how long he’s been around. We know he’s responsible for creating the first varcolac, and that he had at least one assistant at some point, but the latter did not survive the creation of the former.

That ‘Moreau’s clinic’ sign (complete with picture of a syringe) may hint that he had some past career as a doctor – or it may just be pointing to wherever he ran his experiments on unwitting villagers. Still, the fact it’s so much nicer that the roughly-written sign pointing to his new mountain laboratory does suggest it might be a relic from an earlier life.

In addition to the big 'Mother' tattoo with the jellyfish, anyone paying really close attention might also spot a faint anchor tattoo on his forearm, and a rather cute fish tattoo on the underside. This may all hint at a nautical background, or they could just be your basic fish man = sailor tattoos association.

Speaking of Moreau, given the general hostility that characterises Miranda’s family, it’s surprising the one and only positive interaction between any of them comes from Moreau’s diary. According to Moreau, Heisenberg comforted him about his place in the family, telling him they were each given a flask because they were all needed at the ceremony. Maybe this came out more sneering in person, but given how Heisenberg later dismisses Moreau as ‘that moronic freak’, it’s surprisingly nice of him to bother – even with what he presumably knew was no more than a comforting lie.

Although Miranda's notes describe him as being unable to control his transformation into his giant fish form, it's notable that Moreau is the only character we do see shift back into human form after he first appears transformed. That said, the rest of his behaviour does suggest his control is somewhat limited (and even that Miranda may be manipulating him remotely).

The name ‘Moreau’ comes of course from The Island of Doctor Moreau, famed for creating animal-human hybrids (who likewise had difficulty controlling their animal sides). But it’s also a real French name ‒ apparently one that originated as a nickname for someone with dark skin (from 'more').

A bit more on those lordships

How legit the nobility of the ‘four lords’ is supposed to be is an interesting question. By fairy tale video game logic, it’s only natural that Miranda’s four most successful experiments should represent the four noble families of the region: the ceremony site features four giant statues, you can collect relics that mention the village’s four founders, etc.

But in practice, only Dimitrescu is really referred to as ‘Lady Dimitrescu’, or any other title (if you're paying really close attention, you might catch the Duke referring to 'Lord Heisenberg' and 'Lord Moreau' when you sell him their remains, but in his introductory spiel, it's only Dimitrescu who gets any honours). Donna at least comes from a family rich enough to have a gardener, but Heisenberg and Moreau live in a factory and a dam: not especially 'noble'.

Stranger still, the names on those relics belonging to the 'four founders' aren’t Dimitrescu, Beneviento, Heisenberg and Moreau, they’re Berengario, Cesare, Guglielmo and Father Nichola. Now, these could be first names rather than family names (all seem to exist as both), but they're also all Italian, which makes for an odd combination the French, German and Romanian surnames of the 'lords' we meet in the game. You can find the current lords' names carved in stone in the wall of one of the caves (pictured above) ‒ but just because it's carved in stone doesn't have to mean it's been there forever.

Throw in the fact that Dimitrescu is apparently not from the village, and how Heisenberg mocks the idea of himself as any kind of lord, comparing himself to the 'other poor schmucks in the village', and the whole idea that any of these four are legitimately descended from those founders starts to look pretty suss.

It seems to be a popular theory that Heisenberg at least (and potentially Moreau too) was simply random experimental subjects that Miranda renamed in honour of region’s one-time noble families, raising them to lordly status to support her own legitimacy. But if those old relics are to be believed (to say nothing of the experiment report for 'Alcina D'), I'd actually go a step further and suggest maybe she didn’t even bother renaming anyone. After all, if Mother Miranda declares that the four great houses of the village are (and always were) Dimitrescu, Heisenberg, Beneviento and Moreau, who'd dare contradict her?

On Miranda's filing system

Near the very end of the game, when Chris explores Miranda’s laboratory, we find four books containing her research notes on the four lords. Now, I am absolutely reaching with at this point, but I can’t help wonder if the order of these four books might just be significant – the order in which those four experiments took place, perhaps?

True, the books are lying on the table, rather than filed neatly in order in the bookshelf – but they’re not in the order you fight the four lords (the sequence those symbols appear in elsewhere). Donna’s is the last of the four, which would be consistent with her being the youngest. And Heisenberg’s is to the right of Dimitrescu’s, which tracks with him being younger than her.

So it’s interesting that the first in the set isn’t Dimitrescu’s (as I’ve already speculated above), but Moreau’s. Lady D is second, Heisenberg third, and Donna last. So could Moreau be the eldest sibling? He doesn’t carry anything like Dimitrescu's authority, but there is a certain twisted logic to the idea the hideously deformed Moreau may have been one of Miranda’s earliest experiments. And there's a compelling tragedy to the idea of him as Miranda’s first son, supplanted and outdone by each new sibling to follow him as the years went on.

(Or, you know, Miranda might just have left those four books lying around at random, the order meaning nothing at all. It’s all speculation down here.)

The Duke

No discussion of the four lords would be entirely complete without touching on the fact the Duke was at one point intended to be the fifth lord of the village. Between his name, the fact he's got some sort of weird powers, and has obviously been involved in all the weirdness around the village for a long time, this is hardly surprising.

So it's a little disappointing that the fact that he "was going to be the fifth lord" is pretty much all the notes that come with his artwork will tell us on the subject.

His villainous role in the Shadows of Rose DLC logically should have been a big clue here, but if anything, the Masked Duke only muddies the waters. Miranda's notes on the subject tell us he's merely a twisted copy of "a man I once knew." Which doesn't exactly suggest he was ever one of her experiments, let alone one of her 'lords'.

Either way, the owl crest that can be glimpsed in the background of Duke's shop (above left) and in his carriage (above right) is exactly the kind of throwaway detail that could fuel years of fan speculation. The carriage version bears the text "L'argent defend le droit" (apparently French for 'Money defends the right/the law'), which is certainly fitting.

But the text on the shop background (as near as anyone can make out) reads "The Right Honourable Lady Carolyn Margaret Divine" ‒ a reference to nothing and no-one any RE fan has been able to identify. It could be a reference to material that got cut. It could be a vital clue to a future RE title. Or they could just be fucking with us at this point.

Aaand that about wraps it up for the four lords.

As I said back on my original Donna post, I really don't think there are any definitive answers to the RE: Village timeline. If you'd prefer to headcanon that the Moreaus were once the village's most respected founding family or that the Dimitrescus have lived in that castle for generations, knock yourselves out ‒ there's nothing in the game to say they couldn't have been. Half the stuff that seems to add up one way or the other may be just a happy accident. But the clues still we get fascinate me, and coming up with theories that could fit all the little details hidden in documents and optional dialogue is exactly the kind of challenge I'm here for.

#Resident Evil Village #Karl Heisenberg #Alcina Dimitrescu #Mother Miranda #Salvatore Moreau #The Duke #Donna Beneviento #meta #Resident Evil timeline

201 notes · View notes

bokettochild · 1 year

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According to my sister, rabbits feel safer when they can’t see.

Just something I thought I’d share :3

Well I WAS just going to coo and give some sort of answer, but this is a rabbit thing and I have a weakness and had some free time sooo......

How about a very barely relevant fic based around a story I heard as a kid and barely remember + this particular idea?

Full fic under the cut

The Selkie King

There are many times it's easy to forget how young his fellow heroes are.

As a soldier, the Hero of Warriors has seen boys and men alike on the field, fighting, dying. He's held many a hand in final moments, his own still stained with blood more than not as final words and regrets are spilled to him by grizzled veterans and terrified teens.

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that one of his brothers qualifies under both of those titles.

He tries not to see the other heroes like he does his soldiers. Tries to remember them as people and not pawns. It’s hard, after so many years tipping back whiskey to forget the humanity of those he’s had to slay, trying to retrain his mind to seeing others coldly, to remove emotion from his dealings with those who fight beside or against him on the field.

It hurts, getting attached.

He’d made the mistake countless times. Some, he regrets, others, like Mask and Tune, he’d never think twice about.

Still, even with his brothers, even with no regrets given for having let himself care about them; cry for them and treasure them, it’s easy to forget certain realities. It’s easy to forget, when he sees them with weapons in hand and blood dripping from crown to toes, that half of them are merely children themselves, and those who aren’t were hardly even adults when fate stole their lives from them and burdened them instead with the lives of all of Hyrule.

It’s easy to forget that Sky is hardly old enough to be served in a bar, that Twilight is still stumbling through the early years of his twenties. It’s easy to forget that Four and Hyrule are innocent to many of the greatest evils of the adult world, or that Wind- pirate or no- is still only just starting to go through the joys of puberty. It’s easy to forget that even for all of his scarring, Wild is still just barely learning how the world even works, in many ways still a child in his mind even if his memories, what few there are, are those of a man and a soldier.

Time, it’s harder. Time, he still remembers holding in his arms, rocking the kid to sleep because the motion helped, because the promise that he was still small enough to be held to begin with was a precious assurance the poor boy needed to feel secure enough to close his eyes. He’s wiped tears and wrapped injuries and tucked the now older hero in so many times that the child in his mind in many cases has blocked his vision of the man his son has now become.

And then there’s the vet.

Legend isn’t like the other heroes. He’s distant, reserved. There’s almost nothing they know about him save that he carries an arsenal fit for a whole battalion and knows more magic than the lot of them could ever hope to see performed.

He knows the veteran hero as a powerhouse and a threat.

He holds the vet at a distance, just as Legend does with them. Out of all of their group, the pink haired hero is the one with the least to share and the most to say. He's quick to redirect, to refocus, to tease and quip and jest, and despite all, he’s still capable of holding them away from himself with a wariness that makes the captain wary in return.

He’d like to claim that that is why it takes so long for him to realise. He’d like to claim that he'd been distracted by all the red flags, too much to see the similarities. No one would blame him if he’d claimed that his concerns were what prevented him from seeing the truth, but Warriors won’t lie to himself; he just didn’t look close enough.

It’s a night at an inn that opens his eyes. Twilight, Time and Wild usually room together. In a group of nine, it makes sense to get more than one room, and to keep it fair, they have three in each when they can. More often than not, he pays. Unlike his brothers, the captain has a steady salary, and the princess is personally financing his investigation into this increase in monster attacks, so while Legend may claim he’s broke, he does have a hand in the royal purse to use at his discretion. Providing beds for his brothers when they can find them is no issue. Tonight, that means that the wolf trio has their own room. Wind had insisted on having Four and Hyrule room with him, claiming they rarely got a chance to be alone and “without adults” and honestly, Warriors gets it. He trusts the sailor, and he understands the need for space. Granted, rooming with Legend of all people isn’t his first choice, but at least Sky will be there as well, and at least the Chosen Hero is someone they both can get along with, even if neither of them truly have much fondness for each other.

Honestly though, he’s not all too picky about where he lays his head. It’s been a long day, and he’s soaked to the bone, as are they all by the heavy rainfall currently going on. Time says it’s normal for spring in his world. Warriors doesn’t care. There’s mud all up and down his boots, his clothes are clinging to him and Nayru knows the combination of chain mail and rain isn’t pleasant for any of them.

At the least though, Legend’s been quiet today, so maybe there won’t be any hang ups. Hopefully. All Warriors really wants right now is a bed and a change of clothes. Well, he’d like more, but realistically speaking, he’d settle for just a bed and something dry to wear, neither of which are much of a hassle. Getting out of his wet things is a bit of a struggle, and chain mail wasn’t exactly designed for one to be taking off and putting on alone, but Sky is a blessing to Hyrule in general, and the man lends him a hand that Warriors willingly returns while Legend does whatever he does in the background.

He’s just tugging on a new shirt, dry, clean, and only minimally stained with blood, when the first flash of thunder rolls over the inn.

Sky flinches. “I hoped that wouldn’t happen.”

“Unavoidable I’m afraid,” he consoles, clapping his brother’s shoulder firmly. “No worries though. It’s distant.”

Another roll sounds over them.

“It’s moving though,” he muses, the first bolt of lightning flashing across the window and sending strange shadows dancing over the dimly lit room that has only a simple fireplace for both warmth and light. And Hylia knows it gives precious little of either. Ah well, the beds are soft. “Travelling towards us, I think.”

“Wonderful,” Sky drawls, shucking his tunic and then going about peeling off the first of his undershirts. “Just what I wanted.”

He chuckles, meeting Sky’s rueful smile before moving to settle on his bed. He’s not tired yet. Well, bone tired actually, but his mind isn’t ready for sleep and he’s rather inclined to fill out his daily report and maybe enjoy some poetry before actually getting some sleep.

He has the chance for neither. Another clap of thunder sounds and only seconds later there's a bolt of lightning that paints everything, from the bed to the walls to the floor to the ceiling, to their crumpled clothes on the floor, in cold white light.

Legend starts.

The vet’s been a wreck all day, predicting the storm by the ache in his joints alone and watching everything like a hawk. He's been tight lipped too, more so than usual, and not even his characteristic quips and barbs made an appearance as they wandered down soaked paths and sloshed through mud and mire in order to make it to the closest town before nightfall. Warriors hadn’t thought much of it besides that maybe the vet might just be in a lot of pain, but now he’s given a chance to think differently.

Now, Legend starts like a cat whose tail has just been pulled, and, in a motion that honestly surprises the war captain, the vet’s first action is to cover his eyes.

“Vet?” It’s Sky who asks it, but they’re both staring. Trained warriors watch every sudden motion, but that one had been... strangely out of character. “You okay?”

There isn’t an answer, but when the next rumble sounds, he knows he sees the vet tremble.

It’s.... startling.

Not the storm, Hylia knows he’s seen his share of those over the years. A storm like this isn’t even the worst he’s seen, but the vet... cowering- honestly there’s no other word to be used- it's... it’s odd.

“Legend?”

A shuddering breath is his answer, the soles of gnarled hands being pressed ever closer to tightly shut eyes, and suddenly the captain is stuck by the fact that Legend looks very, very young.

The vet is small, they all know this. He's the third shortest in the group, with only a literal child and someone with confirmed stunted growth ranking below him. They don’t have an age, but he’s always assumed, based off of skill and sarcasm, that Legend must be at least in his twenties, if not a bit older. When standing beside Sky, he seems older, beside Time, he’s just as seasoned and strong. Here on a bed in an inn, with lightning and thunder joining the cacophony of rain outside though, he looks like a kid, eyes hidden in his hands and breathing ragged. Warriors can’t name what it is, but he looks like Mask.

“Ledge, hey, you alright?” Sky stares at him for the softened voice, well used to an exchange of heated barbs and insults, but the captain hardly takes note as he crosses from the bed that he’d fully intended to stretch out on to the one the vet sits on, curled up tight and trembling. “Vet, hey,” he’s gentle when he brushes fingertips over slight shoulders, and it’s shaking to realise how small the vet feels when he’s actually touching him.

The title says it all, paints an image of an adult with years under his belt, but the Hero of Warriors tends to forget that many of their number start young, and experience may be one thing, but it’s no promise of age.

“Hey there,” his voice is dropping soft and low without his consent, but he can’t help it when Legend flinches back at the mere brush of his fingers, and when he settles himself on the bed beside and the vet shifts away, he knows the change of tone is for the best.

Sometimes, people who distance themselves aren’t plotting and scheming. Sometimes, people who shy away from transparency are hiding, protecting themselves in the only way they know how. That's how Mask had been, hiding behind masks both physical and metaphorical, sharp tongue and acerbic wit defences against loss and heartbreak.

He’s struck, sitting there, that perhaps the same could be said for others in their number.

“Legend,” he tries again, and then there’s another flash and roll, right overhead this time, and the vet freezes.

“Oh,” Sky breathes, his own lightning scars still on full display as he pauses midway through changing, his own eyes wide as he watches the hero who’s gone from distant and inscrutable to small and childlike in what seems to be the blink of the eye- or, if one wanted to be more direct; a single clap of thunder.

It’s instinct that has his body moving before his mind has quite caught up to what he’s doing with the brother who he knows the least, hands catching slight wrists and dragging away, holding even as breath hitches and shoulders tremble. They cease though when he settles his own hand, so much bigger in comparison, over tightly shut eyes. He can feel the flutter of lashes against his palm, surprise evident as the other pauses, seems to miss entirely the next clap in favour of registering the new situation. Warriors takes the stillness as an invitation, settling closer, hand holding its place, pressed gently but close against freckled skin, blocking out light to the best of his ability.

“Okay, that helps, yeah? Okay, I’m moving closer now, alright?” And he does. Legend says and does nothing but sit there, but he feels the twitching under his hand and watches ears swivel towards him as he moves closer, leg brushing thigh as he moves as close as he considers safe, hand still held still and solid as his own ears track ragged breaths.

He's acting on impulse alone. Mentally, he’s questioning what the dickens has gotten into himself.

Legend stiffens further at the close proximity, but pressing a bit firmer, hand held closer, seems, somehow, to make that stop.

“There we go. You good, mate?”

A light shudder.

“Legend?” Sky murmurs, tugging his shirt on the rest of the way and starting closer towards them. The vet’s response is immediate, ears flicking towards him and head turning to face him, but Warriors, for some reason he can’t even begin to name- but which he thinks might be affiliated with Mask- prevents it. His hand tightens its hold again, the second settling on the other hero’s arm, just above the wrist but not confining, firm but not tight.

“Breathe.”

The order is obeyed.

“Sky is coming towards you right now,” because he’s now beginning to recognize the panic for what it is, and while apparently having his eyes covered helps, Legend still seems keen on being aware of those around him at all times. He’s still tightly wound though, so Warriors turns his attention on Sky as he continues to speak. “He’s going to sit across from us on the other bed, okay? He’s right here.”

Assure where people are, assuage uncertainties about actions, positions and behaviours, and provide some source of grounding. Or at least he’s pretty sure that’s what that therapist Zelda hired had recommended, before he’d stormed out and refused to come back anyway.

“I’m right over here,” Sky reaffirms, and it’s amazing to watch how the vet’s posture eases at the sound of the other man’s voice as Sky settles close, but not close enough to touch.

Legend’s breath rattles through the room again.

“Do you not like the storm?” It’s the size, he thinks, it must be the size. He knows that Legend’s a capable fighter and warrior, but the size and the shaking and the sheer childishness of the vet’s motion; covering his eyes against the storm, has a part of him that he’d tried locking away peeking back out and gentling his voice and hands.

A shudder is his answer.

“I’m lifting my hand now,” he says, just a moment before the motion is done. Legend’s breathing hitches, but when it’s the hand on his wrist that lifts, it starts again, although still shallow.

Huh.

“Now,” he continues, reaching blindly towards Sky, who watches him with confusion until he continues speaking “I’m going to have Sky hand me my scarf.”

It’s out of reach, on the bed he was planning on lying down on before, but Sky hands it over readily. It's still wet, but it’s honestly his trump card to help younger, shaken up heroes and while he’s never tried it with Legend, it’s worth a shot. The vet’s got to be younger than he assumed, and if the scarf works on Wild, there’s a chance that however old the other is, it could still work on him too.

“Can I bring it over here?” He asks.

Twisted fingers twitch, raising a bit, reaching out blindly. Legend makes no move to shake off his hand however, so Warriors doesn’t lift it. For some reason, he gets the impression that the lack of sight is somehow actually comforting.

“Okay,” he shifts a bit, hand holding over twitching lids but moving just enough for him to shift position, “I’m pulling it towards us, and I’m going to set it over your shoulders, okay?”

It’s telling that Legend doesn’t complain about him breaking down every motion and explaining it as he does it. Telling in a way he really doesn’t like. Just as telling though is the way the weight of the fabric, damp as it still might be, has the younger hero relaxing some, and on impulse the captain adds to the weight by settling an arm around thinner shoulders.

Legend all but sinks into him.

Oh crap. Yeah. It’s happening.

He feels like shit honestly. He totally missed a kid in his group, and he’s been treating them like an adult this whole time. It was a mistake with Mask, trying to respect his insistence that he was an adult and should be treated like one, but it’s more of one with Legend.

He can only imagine, based off of listening to the kids, what it’s like being a hero at a young age. His first adventure saw him nearly a teenager, and despite a demon at the end of the tracks, there had been fun and games and a trusted companion by his side the whole while. Not everyone has that. Legend is purported to have completed- at the least- six adventures, and he can only imagine what the laundry list of traumas associated must look like. Settling such a weight on young shoulders is a sure recipe for distrust and distancing.

Suddenly, the vet’s reservation around them makes a whole lot more sense.

And hurts more, because he should have noticed.

Thunder makes itself heard again, and while Legend doesn’t shift much, he still feels the other press just the slightest bit closer, head ducking and hand raising to pull his hand along after. There’s no need though, he’s already following along, arm wrapping just a bit tighter around slight shoulders even as he hums lowly. “Hey, shhh, I gotcha.”

“We’re here for you, Ledge,” Sky murmurs, voice rich and smooth and heavy, like caramel or honey. “Wars has you and I’m right here in front of you.”

Another shudder is followed by the slightest of nods; small, so as not to displace his hand.

“It’s a big storm,” the captain muses, shifting and finding himself strangely pleased when the teen beside him lets himself be shifted with him. “My sisters hated this sort of thing when we were small.”

He can feel Sky’s eyes, and Legend’s too in a more literal way; long lashes tickling the pads of his palm as dark eyes must flicker open. There’s no attempt made though to displace his hand, and until there is, he elects to leave it. Still, he can feel the unspoken question from them both, and he answers it without much undo delay.

“I have six sisters. Five younger and then my twin. You’ve seen her actually, but we didn’t get the chance to talk.”

“Six?” Sky repeats, blinking slowly.

The captain shrugs. “What can I say? My parents had quite the torrid love affair.”

The desired result of that statement (although true) is achieved, and while Sky only levels him with a look, Legend, like Mask and Tune before him, shudders, squeaking out some semblance of nervous and flustered laughter at the words.

Oh yeah, if stuff like that had the vet flushing red hot under his hand, it’s only further proof that the younger is, in fact, a baby.

“Yeah,” he continues, settling into the bed as best he can and rather wishing his back was to the wall or a headboard or something, “all of us have ‘L’ names too. Link and Linkle, Leah, Laura, Lyrica and Lillian- they're also twins- and lastly little Lila.”

“Your dad and mum have ‘L’ names too?” There’s not the usual bite to the jest, voice shaken and almost timid, but it’s a relief all the same, and proof he’s doing some good here.

He chuckles, looking down to the face settled almost against his chest, his hand covering dark eyes and blocking any sight of expression or thought that may have slipped through the cracks. “Yes, actually. Luke and Lynn Taylor.”

Any answer or reaction is lost as thunder rumbles through once more, and the vet under his hands cowers back at the sound.

Impulse once more takes the reigns. “Sound like the Selkie King really isn’t having it tonight.”

“The what?” It’s Sky that asks, but long ears twitch beside him and the face that was almost buried in his chest now raises again, his hand still over dark eyes even as lashes flutter open a second time, soft and whispering across his nerves like fairy wings, but in no ways hiding the clear curiosity of the younger.

It works every time.

“The Selkie King,” he says again, and then, “I’ll tell you the tale, but only if you let me actually settle here, I’m too old for hunching over like this, it’ll give me a widow’s hump.”

Sky scoffs. “You’re like twenty-two.”

He’s off by a few years but the captain doesn’t correct him.

Legend’s surprisingly pliable and let’s himself be tugged into the corner of the bed, walls on either side and blankets pulled up, both for warmth and for weight, although the captain says nothing of either, and with the younger pulled against his side, much as he’s done for sisters and sons countess times before, he explains.

“The Selkie King,” and goddesses, he’s got to fight at his accent at those words, half tempted to let it on through to add further to the sound of the story, which always sounds so much better in the tongue of the fae or those whose voices carry the remnants of their kind, “was a great powerful creature who lived in the seas to the East. The Selkie are a people who are neither man nor beast, or so they say, but both. A man who, with the donning of a coat of fur, will change into a seal to roam the seas at their deepest, most happy by the water and with eyes darker than night skies.” In retrospect, if he believed in selkies anymore, he thinks they’d have eyes like the vet’s; endless, dark, and always touched with some sort of emptiness or sorrow.

“Woah.”

He smiles as Sky’s awe, but more so at the settling of a smaller body against his own as long ears prick up but soft cheeks settle against his chest. His fingers slip just the slightest to accommodate, but he leaves his hand pressed where it blocks the next flash of lightning, and though the vet shivers at the next roll of thunder, he doesn’t start away.

Something inside wonders whether this clinginess is born of fear or loneliness, and he wonders, for only as long as he dares be silent, when’s the last time someone offered the veteran any form of friendly contact.

“Storms-” he continues, once he’s certain he can’t be silent any longer “-they say are caused because the sea and the wind stole from the Selkie King.” he drops his voice, low and almost whispered, like when he’d told the same story to wide-eyed little sisters before tucking them in with kisses and laughter and warm smiles that are long since forgotten. “The Selkie King is the most powerful of the Selkies. He’s said to be strong enough to fight the wind itself, and the seas must bow under his command. With a power like that however, it’s hard. Being strong is a lonely life,” and one his brothers will know well, and the heavy sigh that sounds from beside him is proof of that. “As such, he lived solitary for many years, watching man and his kind and walking among them, but finding none to be his queen and companion, until-” and here his sisters would squirm under the covers, big blue eyes sparkling up at him as they begged ‘till what, Link?’ but his brothers don’t do so. Sky cocks his head, a manner he’s certain is learned from Twilight, and Legend’s face turns up to him again, eyes still hidden, but neither speaks.

It makes sense, he supposes. They are Links after all

“Until” he continues “one day he came to an island he’d never seen, and met there a maiden with a voice to make any selkie rejoice, and eyes like the seas themselves, the sort the king could only find himself lost in. She had a soul like a bird, and a wish for the beyond, and unlike others who stared and saw the uncanny way of the selkie, she saw to the soul of the Selkie King, and it was in her heart that he found solace from the loneliness of the world.”

Sky’s eyes are misty, that distant smile in them that means he’s thinking of his own Zelda, and Warriors almost, like so many times before, lets himself change to story.

He doesn’t. The point is to give an answer to the roar of the sky and the fury of the lightning. It’s all fairy stories made to make the remnants of Demise’s fury less a terror to small minds, but there’s no age limit for fairy stories, as he well knows. Still, few end in a truly happy manner.

“Life is cruel though,” and how cruel. He’s not told this story in some time but it’s now beginning to make his own heart twist up in memory of how deeply he’d felt similar things to what the Selkie King would as he continued. “As time passed and their love grew, the seas and the storms began to brew. They wished to rebel against the Selkie King who had tamed them, to make war with him, and though he had no wish to leave his maiden, he was called from the island beaches and her side to fight the sea once more, and the storms with it.

“The oceans rose in those days, the sky dark, much like tonight. All that could be heard or seen was the fury of the sea and the wind as the Selkie King sought to bridle them. He fought them, I know not how long, but when at last they were calmed, the Selkie King turned to return to his island and his maiden, only to find both sunk beneath the waves that had risen in his fight.”

There’s a shudder beneath his hands, and dampness touches his palm as long lashes once more stir against skin. It’s sad, he’ll grant. He’s not sure if Legend’s young enough to be crying at fairy stories, but he won’t judge. Heroes grow up too fast, and by his knowledge, they haven’t the time to let their minds and hearts age as they ought. He’s not about to judge a few tears at a sad story.

“The Selkie King searched and searched,” he continues, “but the sea had already taken away, in final vengeance, what he loved. They say,” and thunder rolls right as he speaks, “that the thunder is his shouts to the sky and sea for their cruelty, and the lightning is his magic, light surging across land and sea to light his search to find what was lost to him.”

“What about the girl?” Sky asks, looking startled himself at the turn of the tale, “what happened to her?”

His only answer is a wry smile. His sisters would ask the same thing the first time he’d shared the story his grandfather had told him growing up, but the answer is always the same: “she was lost to the sea, as though never there.”

He’s not expecting the sob, or the hand that clutches in his shirt as shoulders tremble and tears dampen the hand still held over eyes not unlike those of a selkie. At first, he thinks it’s just the panic catching up and hysterics taking over, but after the first few sobs are over and they just get stronger, the captain realises there might be more to it than that.

“Legend?”

There's no answer, only inconsolable tears that seem to flow without end, even as he lifts his hand for the first time in a while to try and wipe them away. The younger hero’s face finds its way to the front of his shirt near immediately after, and he’s left trying to hold his brother, clueless as to what he’s said or done to incite the new rainfall that drenches the one clean shirt he’d had.

“Vet?” Sky is starting up from the bed, but he doesn’t touch, likely aware that doing so unprompted and without warning isn’t a good idea right now. Warriors though, closer, is free to wrap his arms around trembling shoulders and meet sapphire eyes, questions unspoken flying between them as confusion clouds the air where agonised sobs and tears do not.

In the end, he elects to leave it be, soothing gently and running one hand up and down a spine he can count every bone of, hushing softly all the while until the tears finally run out and Legend is limp against him.

“I'm sorry,” he says at last, not sure what exactly he’d done wrong. “That one usually helps my sisters feel better about-”

“He wasn’t a selkie.”

The captain pauses. “What?”

“He wasn’t a selkie,” comes the soft words again. “He was mer.”

“It’s just a story, vet, he wasn’t-”

“They were real.” And it’s so desperately spoken that it stops all other assurance in his throat as a hand tightens in the front of his shirt. “Her name was Marin. She wanted to fly, she wanted to see the world. I promised I’d take her, I wanted to show her everything.” There’s something so broken about the vet’s voice, and when he looks down the eyes of the younger are still closed, but there’s clear agony on the face of his brother. “I didn’t want to destroy her; I never wanted it to fade.”

He has no context, no clue, but some part of himself, the part that remembers holding another young hero like this and listening to agonies and losses, knows that something said in the story, some part, has brought a memory or loss back afresh, and his attempts to sooth have only reopened wounds.

Warriors wraps his brother tightly in his arms, draping blue fabric over tighter shut eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t know it wasn’t real until it was over,” the younger hiccups, “I- I wanted to live there forever. It was so... it was so peaceful!”

Somehow, that single word, and the agony behind it, stabs through a heart blocked behind stone walls and chain mail.

Why should a wish for peace sound so desperate from the lips of a child? What right have gods to burden someone so small with sufferings that would lead their greatest desire to be for something so devastatingly evasive?

It’s cruel. It’s familiar in its cruelty, and all that the captain hero can do is hold tighter still and murmur soft comforts that are as empty as the praises lauded on shoulders such as their own. “I know, Link, I know. It’s not fair.”

“I fought him three times,” and it’s naught but a whisper, “is it so wrong to want to be allowed to stop?”

He’s going to find Hylia and murder her.

Once is enough. Once is too much for a kid. Thrice? And twice as many adventures? Oh, no, no-no-no, he’s going to be having words with the Golden Gals when he gets to see them, even if that means fighting his way to the Goddess’ Realm himself. He’s sure he could convince the deity to help him under the right circumstances.

Aloud though, his answer is softer. “No. It’s not wrong. They’re wrong to ask so much of you,” words he’s whispered countless times to the hero who is now their leader. Looking at Time, he knows that peace has been achieved. The ranch, the wife, the beautiful home and satisfied smile, the longing look in his eyes after the days have been long since last they’ve visited; it all points to a life now granted chances to be lived and lived well. He only wishes the same could be meted out to all who’ve suffered as they have. “You deserve better,” he assures. “And for what it’s worth, I understand. Not everything of course,” and he’d never meant to tell, “but I get it. Losing someone, it’s hard.”

“I loved her.”

“I know.”

What sort of love, it doesn’t matter now. Be it puppy love or that of a far more intense sort, love is still love and when lost it can shatter. No wonder dark eyes hold longing deeper than the sea and desolation like the coldest of desert nights.

Sky stares but doesn’t speak or move.

Legend though, shifts, and dark eyes lift to him for a moment before being shut again as another flash disturbs the room. Without thinking, he raises a hand to cover the younger’s face, tears still fresh against calloused skin. Despite all this, the question in desolate eyes is still spoken aloud. “Who was yours?”

And his heart nearly stops, lodged in his throat, but he breathes and guides a pink haired head to settle against his collar, cheek resting in downy soft hair to hide further his face from both. “My wife and son.”

One trembling hand settles over his own, awkward in placement but intent clear. “I’m sorry.”

His smile is real, although pained, as he wraps his brother tighter, pressing, without thought, a kiss to a crown. “It wasn't your fault.” It was his own, his pride and his folly and his failure that had left him with his son ripped away and his wife turning her back. There’s none to blame but himself and fate’s cruel hand.

Despite this, there seems to be a word on the tongue of the younger, indeed, on Sky’s own too, but he cuts both off. “How about a lighter story?” he’s deflecting, he knows, but tonight is not about his losses and mistakes, and suddenly he’s gone from wanting nothing more than dry clothes and a warm bed to being content to hold one smaller and offer what meagre comforts and distractions he can while covering sorrow-ridden eyes and avoiding sapphire stares that bore with sadness for both himself and their little brother.

Legend hiccups. “Seriously?”

“I’m an excellent storyteller,” he returns, smile real but pained despite himself as he looks down at a face blocked by his own hand, “I’m a father and an older brother after all, I have no business being anything less than skillful with bedtime stories.”

“I’m too old for bedtime stories.”

He’d beg to differ. Someone still small enough to be held as he holds his brother is still of an age for bedtime stories, and he resolves to find the best he can to share. Not one about heroes though, or about lost love or Selkie Kings. Instead, he tells the story of the Goddess’ Rabbit and the stars it set in the sky. Instead, he holds a brother who he only now knows to see as anything more than another of Hylia’s soldiers, and he treasures the whisper of a chance to redeem some of what was stolen by fate.

Maybe it feels like redemption for himself too. Just a little bit.

#lu warriors #lu legend #lu sky #linkeduniverse #linked universe #linked universe fanfic #ketto writes #silvercaptain my beloved #based on bunny facts #dad wars is my weakness #as is hurting legend #i neer intended to write a koholint fic but here we are #hopefully it isn't cringe #inspiration hit me like a truck while cooking dinner last night and i was up until 2 writing this #despite having work today #hopefully y'all enjoy

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atlasdoe · 2 months

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found out today that there are two other "cannon" McKinnons, who were both kidnapped and killed during the first war so I took this as an opportunity to be mean to Marlene. Enjoy :)

“Marlene.”

It was the loudest she had heard her mother speak since her father died. The only way Marlene knew for sure that it was her mothers voice speaking to her was the sad tone that she spoke in. Her mother was the only person Marlene knew who could be that numb.

Imogen McKinnon sat at the kitchen table, bent over herself and staring at the tiled floor. On the table was a letter and a half drank bottle of wine.

Marlene’s heart began to sink as she carefully stepped towards her mother. “Is something the matter?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

Imogen looked up at her and sniffled before quickly whipping her nose with her sleeve and motioning to the letter. “Angus and Elspeth were found this morning,” she replied. “They’re both dead.”

Marlene’s lips curled as she tried to keep her face straight. Angus and Elspeth were now the fifth and sixth members of the McKinnon family to have been killed and they were only seven years older than her. They had both become Aurors after graduating Hogwarts and aside from Marlene’s own father became the most successful members of the family. When they disappeared it was reported that a likely reason was because The Dark Lord wanted them in their ranks. Clearly, if that had been true they had refused, and Marlene couldn’t tell if she was relieved at the news or not.

Still, no matter the reason, six of her family members had now been killed during the war, and it was too much for Marlene to ever consider it a coincidence. Looking into her mothers eyes, Marlene knew she felt the same. Which made her plea harder to deny.

“You have to stop this,” Imogen said plainly. “I know that you think you’re doing what's right but you’re only putting our family in more danger.”

“We’re all being killed off and you want me to quit the Order?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I want you to stop this nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense!” Marlene almost yelled. “It's a resistance started by Albus Dumbledore! We’re helping!”

“You are helping nobody!” Her mother bellowed, standing up as Marlene crossed her arms. “I know that you think you’re saving the world but you are not. You are not an Auror. You are a twenty year old unemployed girl who thinks she's invincible but you're not.”

“I'm an adult Ma,” Marlene said, trying her hardest to keep her tears in. “People my age are getting married – Two of my friends are pregnant!”

“And they’re stupid for doing so but I did not raise you stupid!”

“You didn’t raise me at all!”

Imogen deflated and shook her head. “We’re not doing this now,” she said softly. “This isn’t the time for grudges–”

“Grudges?”

“This is the time for you to be responsible and put your family before your silly little fantasies of being like your father.”

“This isn't about Dad. This is about – Protecting people – Protecting my family; my siblings.”

“You're going to get them killed!”

Marlene paused and stared at her mother as if she would take it back. She knew she wouldn't. Her mother had never believed in Marlene's ability to keep her younger siblings safe but it wasn't as if she was doing any better.

“I've been keeping them safe for twelve years,” Marlene said in a hushed tone. “I've been doing a good job so far.”

“You have no idea what it's like –”

“I'VE GIVEN UP EVERYTHING FOR THEM!” she yelled, refusing to feel guilty at the way her mother flinched. “And I will continue to do so. I know that you don't understand but I am doing this to keep them safe!”

“All four of them are at Hogwarts right now while you're here. How is that keeping them safe?”

“They're safe at Hogwarts. In the meantime I'm preventing this war from continuing once they're back.”

Imogen sighed and dropped back down into her chair. “They are after us,” she whispered so quietly Marlene didn't know if she was supposed to hear it. “It's only a matter of time before they come to us.”

“I won't let that happen,” she promised, kneeling down to her mothers level. “Trust me the way Dad did. Please Ma.”

Her eyes lifted from the floor and Marlene could tell by the look in them that it was only a matter of seconds before her mother turned back into the shell she knew. Marlene took her mothers hands and decided that if there really was a bounty on all of their heads, she might as well pretend to like her mother.

“I'm not going to let anything happen to us,” she promised, squeezing her hands with as much confidence as she could. “I know what I'm doing.”

#i wrote this in ten minuets and have not read it back #sorry if it makes no sense it is currently midnight #i've had a long hard day of doing nothing #ace is writing #my writing #the marauders #harry potter #the marauders era #marauders #marlene mckinnon #dorlene #marylene

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thatonepersoninthebackoftheroom · 1 year

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DC Podcast Idea

I made like two posts about this a little while ago but I have so many ideas. So the main character of this podcast is a twenty something year-old child of divorce. When they were like 10 or something their parents got a divorce and then a couple years later remarried separate people. They’ve got 3 step-siblings from their dads new wife now, and they took a lot of his attention. The MC isn’t mad at them about it, their kids like themselves and all four of them really get along.

Anyway, their father hardly spent time with them growing up and for their latest birthday their dad got them this podcasting kit that they wanted when they were like 15 and their all like, “...thanks dad, but I wanted this when I was like 15.” and then their dad gets all angry and like i guess im just a bad father than and their like, yeah you are. and drives away from wherever they are because their an adult and can do that.

While their driving away something happens, lets just put magic down as the reason, and they find theirself in a different city not in their car in the middle of a villain attack. They have no idea where they are, where their car is, or why the podcast kit is malfunctioning and seems to have a mind of its own when it come to turning on or off.

plot twist: mc knows nothing except the general knowledge of the DC Universe

The city they end up in is Central city btw, i think they should be freaked out there first.

and then basically the whole thing is about them travelling around podcasting about their journey to find a way home. Unknowingly at first, but they find out eventually. All their listeners are like, “Wow! This is really good satire!”

also one of my friends said that the car should come back at some point sentient and also a villain, personally i think that's hilarious.

me about this idea

#podcasting #dc universe #the flash #this would be really funny

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trkstrnd · 21 days

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tw: mental health issues, loss, sewer slidal ideation

the world is so funny because like,,, i’m literally just chilling about to turn 22 and it goes “happy birthday! we’re murdering the lifeline you’ve had for the past four years that you have built everything from! Your socials? Your friendships? Your escape? yeah girl u get like a very minimal amount of that going forward before it disappears forever into the void of symbolism and nostalgia that you’ll look back on in forty years. and you’ll sit there,,, wondering why and how it became so important, how it became so integral to who you are as a person that you permanently scarred yourself (tattoos) to show how much you loved it, how important it was to you.

come this time next year, all you’ll have is a replay button on an agonizing capitalist cesspool of streaming services, and the hard drive you have, full of every single thing that got you to where you were at this point, and you’ll have to sit there and debate whether or not it should come with you, wherever you go, wherever your adult life takes you, and you’re gonna have to sit there’s staring at the stickers, hands shaking as you pick at them, debating if whether or not peeling off something that was once so important is a symbol of growth or failure. failure to stay faithful, to do the things you love, to continue to know who you are through the next interest that seeps into your brain, and brings you a similar comfort.

it’s not the same. it’ll never be the same, because your lifeline got you from 17-22. your lifeline stopped you from being stupid and ending your life before it even started. it showed you who you were and the things you loved and what you want to do for the rest of your life. it got you connections in your industry and showed you that you were so much stronger than you thought you were, because if you could just make it one more week, to know what happened, then maybe everything would be okay.

but you’re an adult now. it made you into one, served its purpose and now it’s time for it to fall into the barren wasteland of old interests who you still love so dearly, but don’t cross your mind every day. those that got you through different sections of your life the band that got you through being bullied in middle school, the show that provided escapism from the agony that you felt when you had so much to do and just not enough time. the musical that showed you who you were, made you understand yourself, taught you how to cultivate relationships through a screen.

and now the show that taught you to edit, taught you that creativity knew no bounds, taught you that you could make your own stories, formulate them and treat them like your own babies because they are, that show, is taking it’s final bow, and exiting stage left, ready for the next act that only showed up twenty minutes ago, in the grand scheme of things.

this is the most adult lesson, yet, that you can deal with loss, you don’t have to lose interest before you lose the fixation. sometimes, you just have to move on, even if it feels like your lungs are on fire and your fingernails are blades and your body is filled with rocks at the very idea of such a thing happening.

be thankful that you know. that it isn’t just sprung on you, that it isn’t just… here one day, gone the next. be grateful that it’s in hospice, on it’s death bed, because at least, this way, you’re able to say goodbye, and thank you, from the bottom of your heart.

happy birthday, kid.”

#i’m not okay #i have had this feeling since june #when that article was released #but i don’t know who im gonna be come the end of s5 #i managed to find an interest #but my love for lone star burns so deep it’s agony #it hurts so bad #saying goodbye to a special interest #but it’s served its purpose #it got me into college #it’s gutting me to graduate college #it is my safety #911 lone star #i’ll be okay #trick talks lone star #trick.txt #cw vent

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dolly-on-the-dotted-line · 2 years

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Laredo, Summer, Age 24: High School Reunion

'Is there going to be a reunion at this reunion?'

Rating: 18+

Warnings: Smut, Public Sex, Dirty Talk, Javier Peña being a Cocky, Beautiful, Bastard.

A/N: Finally getting back to the main chapters 🥳 Even if this one was an unexpected addition. Enjoying how many times Bug reiterates YES I AM AN ADULT NOW. We've all been there. We're all secretly 6-year-olds in a big trench coat.

Laredo, Summer, Age 24: High School Reunion

Standing at the entrance to your former high school, you redact every positive thing you’ve said about Laredo in the past two years.

Since getting away, the distance between you and your hometown had allowed for a surprising amount of positive reflection on the place you grew up.

You’d had a bad time, you reviewed empathetically; it was understandable that you’d felt the way you did, for as long as you did. Add puberty, parental abandonment, and teenage heartbreak to the mix, and it’s almost a fully evidenced argument for flying the nest and not looking back.

All it had taken was some breathing space and a bit of room to develop into your own person to be able to look back fondly and realise this place really isn’t so bad. You’d been dramatic, overwhelmed, and too quick to judge. That was childhood: one big adolescent misunderstanding.

You were an adult now, after all.

But as you loiter in the parking lot finishing the cheeky cigarette that you knew you were going to need in order to get through this evening, you realise, to her credit, that your nineteen-year-old self had got it right.

Leaving had been a good idea. This place was the worst.

High school reunions were always something you had relegated to the realms of TV dramas and old people - genuinely old people like your Pa and his graduating class of god knows what forgotten era, that would actually appreciate the chance to catch up and find out who was still about and kicking.

Plus, for your generation, you knew the reunions that really mattered were those that happened in another fifteen or twenty years when people had kids and houses and divorce settlements.

That’s when your cynical side could really come out to play; the opportune moment to take quiet revenge on all the people that had mattered so much when you were sixteen, but had since slipped into the quiet obscurity of the glue trap, unable to make it any further than city limits.

Receding hairlines and pot bellies: that would be your curtain call.

You resolve to be hot and rich by the next time you stand in that school gym. Hotter than the majority, at least.

In spite of your successful escape, you struggle to remember exactly how you’d ended up back here again.

It was summer break, yes, the start and end of all the best and worst decisions you’d made in your short lifetime. But why you were here specifically, the parking lot of the proverbial hellhole that had held you captive for the best part of five years, you were still struggling with.

Mel and Petra are the real answer, you know, but even then you’re questioning your better judgement in spite of your closest friends' persistent arm-twisting. Had you really gone so soft that you were here just because they asked?

You’re well aware you sound like a cynical bastard as you play through your depressing monologue in your head, but you can’t deny that your younger, perhaps more obstinate, self would be distinctly unimpressed to find out that you’d made a break for it, only to find yourself back here by choice at the big age of twenty-four.

“It will be fun!” they’d implored in unison as they dried the dishes you were washing up, passing them down the production line lovingly to Chucho, who put them back in the cabinet.

He was a sucker for your girlfriends, loved to make a fuss and cook for them and feel his heart soar when they insisted they wash up since he had made dinner.

“It will be fun, niña,” he had echoed, trying not to laugh at the absolutely mortal look you’d sent his way when he adamantly took their side.

“Don't you start,” you chided at him, silently loving the way the three of them had continued to work together over the years to force your best interests.

“Has anyone ever had a good time at a high school reunion?”

“Us!” implored Petra, gathering you into her arms to give you an overzealous squeeze, accidentally slapping you with the damp dish towel in the process.

“We will! We’ll make it fun, I promise.”

“Plus, you know Javi will be there. Which means he’ll want you there,” chimed in Mel with an evasive look on her face.

You could hardly call the sentiment a low blow when it had been your calling card for mandatory attendance at almost any event since you were six years old.

‘Javi will be there’ had forced you to weddings, funerals, Sunday services, anniversary celebrations, and any number of other indiscriminately dreadful occasions that otherwise would have had you running for the hills.

The bait of having your best friend in tow to get through whatever social occasion was calling for you was used flagrantly and in excess. And the worst part is, it worked every damn time.

He was the rest of you, and everyone knew it. Javi, the one thing that always turned your head, especially as of late.

You’d had a blissful year of it at twenty-three. After Fairfax, everything really had fallen into place.

Once the parameters were set, there had been nothing holding either of you back. In the wake of the promise to avoid the tawdry specifications of commitment, the two of you had accidentally found yourselves permanently involved for the best part of a year, and then some.

‘Together until you said otherwise’ had been the unspoken rule as you left his dorm room, and the two of you had picked up the ball and ran with it.

In spite of the absence of a verbal commitment to fidelity, you were both entirely aware of what had happened between the two of you; the slip, the gentle transition into something that could easily have been labelled if it had ever seen the light of day or the public eye.

Despite the fact you’d never admitted it, you had been together, in some strange, unconventional way. Whatever ‘together’ really meant.

It would be difficult to deny that this year had been a shock by comparison.

As soon as Javi had graduated, things got a little more complex. Since the BNDD had been reincorporated in ‘73, DEA had always been his goal. Funding was way up, recruitment was heavily incentivised, and once he had found his route to the direct training programme, he well and truly had his sights set.

A year of making it work and the blissful summer that followed had bled into an unusually tearful goodbye in the new year and six degrees of separation ever since.

You went back to college for your post-grad, and Javi moved on-site to Quantico the first week in January. Heaven knows the man’s a trier.

It had been around six months since you’d been in the same place, perhaps the longest you’d ever gone without seeing his face. While the physical distance between you hadn’t changed since you started college, the separation had become more meaningful.

It was hard. Harder than before. There was even more of him to miss in the intermediary.

Your usual summer reprieve had been well and truly eliminated by his new work schedule, too. No six-week break, no unadulterated stretch of time together like last year and every year before it. No opportunity to play pretend over the long, hot, summer.

The way you’d flitted in and out of one another’s lives throughout college had been more ideal than you’d let on, and the loss of it seemed to stir a strange premonition in your mind.

You always knew it was going to be hard if you gave into it like this, even at twenty-one you had known that. But what you hadn’t foreseen then was the romantic chaos that followed, the reality of just how much you enjoyed sharing his life as well as his bed.

‘You were an adult now, after all,’ you repeat in your mind. And with adulthood came a whole new plethora of adult problems. You tried not to dwell on it too much. Kicking the can has worked just fine for you so far.

Despite his busy lifestyle, Chucho was adamant the prodigal son would be making an appearance for the event, even if he apparently hadn’t taken the time to RSVP Lorraine’s multiple committee invitations.

And you’re sure your father is right - Javier Peña was never one to miss a get-together, especially not one that involved all of his ex-girlfriends being in the same place at the same time. It would be his sadistic idea of heaven; getting to be sweet as anything to all those girls, now that the amnesty of time had softened the blow of their residual heartbreaks.

New and exciting, fresh off the press of his first year in training, he’d be a walking babe-magnet, leaving every twenty-something-year-old within a mile radius of his orbit yearning for a glance.

So here you are, a week on from your kitchen inquisition, ready and waiting, as always, for the golden boy.

And there he is, you drawl to yourself, as you watch him stride across the parking lot, Mel and Petra in tow, not a minute later.

He must have offered them a lift in your absence, reluctantly accepting your explanation of coming straight to the event after seeing a friend. In reality, you’d just needed some space before this whole thing kicked off. The $10 in cab fare was worth the opportunity to stick your head out of the window for a few moments and take some deep breaths before putting your big girl pants on.

You stub the cigarette under your sandal, quelling the small voice at the back of your mind that begs you to let it simmer and burn the whole place to the ground.

This will be good for you, you resolve, throwing your head back and strutting towards the gym. You haven’t worked on yourself for all these years not to show it off to anyone that will pay attention. And they will pay attention. It worked just fine in Ann Arbour, so why not here?

Those bastards wouldn’t know what had hit them.

Inside, everything is the same: the tiles, the walls, the smells. And just through those double doors, the people, too.

You often wonder why stagnation has made you so uncomfortable your entire life. It’s not as if you longed for chaos, if anything having had far too much of it in your life to date. But the idea of staying stationary for too long had always made you feel uneasy.

There were select home comforts that you held very close to your chest, but everything else in between just seemed to make you feel like you had a target on your back that said ‘things going too well: aim here’.

While it didn’t seem to make too much of a difference day to day (you were clearly capable of forming long-term attachments, even proving your ability to commit to things that didn’t even make sense) you generally wrote it off as a utilitarian ability to not expect too much of a good thing. Or any thing for that matter. Another heartfelt gift from your parents.

Plus, the way you feel walking down the familiar hallways reminds you that that survival instinct might not necessarily be a bad one. It’s good to want to move forward, to want to leave behind the places that hurt you, and to recognise a threat when you see one, especially when it's wrapped up in sage green linoleum.

Pausing at the doors to the gym, you offer yourself a final get-out-of-jail-free card. Namely: the fact you actually are an adult now, or so you keep saying, and can come and go as you damn well please. Just because you had to do what you were told the last time you were here, doesn’t mean the rules still apply.

But at the very least, Javi is in there. Your Javi. The one thing that, ironically, in spite of innumerable material changes, stayed exactly the same in some indescribable way. And you wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to see him for anything. Wild horses couldn't keep you away.

Mind made up, you hold your breath and open the double doors.

The girls spot you immediately, giving you a comedic wolf whistle as you make your way across the cavernous space towards them, avoiding all extraneous eye contact as you hurry along.

You feel thankful as they gather you up, tucking you into their circle and stoking your confidence with affectionate pats to your backside and gentle fingers pushing your hair from your face. One of them presses a plastic cup filled with god-knows-what firmly into your palm, and you don’t look to say thank you before you quickly take a long sip and wait for the acrid feeling to hit your stomach. God bless Chucho’s leftovers, the ultimate first step to lining your stomach.

Mel, Petra, and Maya are surrounded by a number of extraneous people that you can just about recall from one class or another, but you admire the absolute sincerity with which you're unable to recognise maybe 60% of the people present.

The school was big, but did they even go here? It’s amazing how this place felt like the edge of the universe when you were living in it, and now you couldn’t even tell one person you supposedly sat next to in Chemistry from another you were apparently partners with in gym.

You nod and smile in earnest, laughing at the right moments when the conversation dips and nodding along when someone mentions your name, but you find it surprisingly liberating to essentially feel like a stranger passing through.

You recall your earlier observation; time heals all, if not most, wounds. As usual, the idea had been worse than the reality.

You see Javi following the next crowd in a few minutes later, presumably also having snuck off for a quiet smoke at some point before diving in, and clearly having found some friends in the process.

Even from afar, you can see he crosses the room in broad strides that exude authority, smiling boldly and waving confidently as people call his name to say hi.

This place was his bitch back in the day, and it was written all over his face. He may not have played soccer or performed exceptionally in his classes, but he was well-liked, and when it came down to being remembered, that was what really mattered. He'd been gone for less than a year and he was already as close as Laredo got to a local celebrity.

Once he’s finished saying his hellos, shaking hands, and kissing cheeks, you watch him turn to face the room. He’s searching you out, scanning the place for you the moment he’s got himself a drink, but can’t make you out through the crowd of women surrounding you.

It gives you free leave to stand a stare, just a little. You and everyone else, apparently.

“Javi looks good, you know,” sighs Maya, clearly spotting him from across the room.

“You shouldn’t say that. You’re engaged!” mumbles Petra, scolding her halfheartedly as he tries to cover her laughter with a cough. Five years later and Maya still said everything that was on her mind. You wished everyone was a bit more like her.

“If you’re going to be inappropriate at least be subtle about it.”

“Well, it’s true!” she quips back, unphased by the reprimand. “Look at him. He’s tasty. And if you disagree, you're lying. Even Bug would agree, and she’s like his sister.”

You baulk at the statement, feeling your eyes pop out of your head just a little.

The outward optics of your relationship with Javi had become a running joke between the two of you since things had kicked off last year, one that he was none too fond of when he spent most of the summer between your legs with his thumbs buried in your skin. It was a cheap jest that only earned you a pinch on the backside and usually another round of proving just how wrong that statement really was, but it made you laugh nonetheless.

Hearing it from Maya was different though. It made you feel a bit green, but she did have a point; the line probably did look blurry from the outside in. It was a burden of your unconventional situation, and one that often begged a question the two of you went through great lengths to avoid answering: what would people think if they found out?

Years of sneaking around had left you a practised hand but, as you’d surmised in Fairfax, it’s not like it had ever intentionally been a secret. It had just never crossed your mind to make it collective knowledge, either. Most of the time, it was too fleeting to even warrant putting it in a sentence.

At the very least, Maya’s abrupt suggestion reassured the fact that public opinion was, as usual, none the wiser. For a town that loved to gossip, most people really had no idea what was going on behind closed doors.

Except for Mel. Mel wasn’t like the others. She paid attention to everything, especially your soft spots. And he was your softest spot of all. You pretend not to notice her sideways glance from your left but, as usual, she lets it slide. If she wanted to comment, she would.

“It’s the training,” you add, trying to match the tone of the discussion. “He said it’s been intense. Lots of… heavy lifting.”

“Well if I wasn’t otherwise involved, he could lift me any time. Every woman in this room is going to be looking at him twice tonight.”

You school the furrow in your brow yet again. Mel smirks.

Finally spying the line of women essentially checking him out from across the room, Javi, at last, catches your eye. He frowns, points, and shrugs huskily at you, a combination of gestures that depict a frustrated ‘Where have you been?’ You can see from the way he paces across the room that If it was acceptable to run to you, he would.

“Thank god, there you are,” he husks, scooping you under his arm easily with his broad reach and yanking you aggressively to his side.

The movement is full of energy that he’s trying to dissipate. If the circumstances were different he’d probably be throwing you over his shoulder right now, but instead, you see the way he’s directing it elsewhere, funnelling it into a more socially acceptable greeting. Instead of lifting you from the ground, he tucks you protectively, against him, something resembling a human shield, and presses a soft kiss to your temple.

“Here I am,” you reply somewhat breathlessly, enjoying his immediate proximity for the first time in a long time. “Long time no see, Peña.”

“Peña? Am I in trouble?” He winks at you, his mood light and jovial, but the way he’s staring at you, into you, is mesmerising. You wish, crudely, that you were alone.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Do I need to get another drink?”

“From the looks of things, you’re going to need one. I think it’s going to be a long evening.”

“You’re telling me. Talk about leaving me to the dogs, I thought you’d bailed. I actually like most of the people here, but there are only so many times you can say you like the decorations. I had to go outside for a rest. Thankfully all the fun people still hang out by the back door.”

“I guess some things never change.”

“Ladies,” he nods at your friends, eventually acknowledging their presence after he’s given you a good look over to check that you’re generally still in one piece.

His smile is sickly sweet as he waves them hello. You resist the urge to pinch his backside from your concealed position at his side, but can’t hide the face of mock disgust as they all chime ‘Hi Javi’, their voices bordering an octave higher than normal. If they kept it up, you weren’t going to be able to hold your tongue all night. Meanwhile, Javi was beaming like a slick git.

Dipping in and out of the chatter with the others, the two of you string together a parallel conversation in hushed whispers and lowered tones.

“You look good,” he husks, pressing another small kiss to your head.

“So do you.”

“Missed your face. And your ass. Is there going to be a reunion at this reunion?”

You scoff at his blunt appraisal but revel in the openness of his intention. You’re glad six months hasn’t put him off, offered him up something else, something better.

“You tell me. I’ve always followed your lead.”

He turns to you more obviously now, blocking the others from your conversation entirely. He couldn’t care less for the optics.

“I hardly think that’s true, sweetheart.”

“Really? You think I’m in control here?”

“I think neither of us is. At this point, I’m relying on manifest destiny.”

“Interesting,” you whisper back lowly. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I think I’m making a conscious decision about my sex life.”

“All I’m saying is there are about a hundred different places I’d love to run you ragged about this place. And if you thought I wouldn’t notice exactly which sundress you’re wearing, you’re sorely mistaken.”

You chuckle at his observation. The dress you’d been wearing that night he took you home after your date, the night that changed everything.

“‘Sorely’,” you repeat back. “I think I like the idea of that.”

So what if you’re not alone, it still always feels like you are.

“So Javi, tell us. How are things?” pipes up Mel, drawing the two of you from the bubble you so often find yourselves in and offering you a line back to the real world.

“You’re the talk of the town, as usual.”

He blushes slightly, but in reality, that must be his favourite question right now: ‘How are things at your dream job?’

Hearing him gush outwardly is simultaneously too sweet for words and a tad grating. How many times in one conversation can a man say ‘all in a day's work’? He’s made for the small talk as much as the role itself. But you can’t begrudge him his happiness. This is everything he’s ever wanted. You think.

When the niceties are all used up the conversation drifts. Eyes are caught across the room and the girls dissipate to chat with other people, something you have no desire to take part in. F

inally left to your own devices, Javi ushers you over to the bleachers, and you take a seat next to him, as close as the circumstances allow. Thankfully, the two of you sitting side by side is nothing to warrant a second glance.

“I’ve missed you. So much,” he huffs, the relief to finally speak freely weighing on his words.

“Me too. It feels like it’s been forever, even for us,” you breach, choosing your words carefully.

“We were spoiled last year, I think,” he grumbles in agreement. “It almost felt like… I don’t know.”

“Like we were together,” you fill in easily, wanting to say it. Wanting to acknowledge it, because it’s true. Or it was.

You’re sure to keep your tone registered, non-committal, but you don’t think it has the desired effect. It’s loaded, and he knows it. The interaction was familiar but the circumstances were not. You hadn’t planned what this part was going to feel like; the first time after the last time.

He seems stumped, but not offensively, as if he knows this isn’t the time to talk about it.

“It was a very good run.” A non-commital reply.

“Calling it a run implies that it’s over,” you can’t help but add, unable to meet his eye as you say it.

“Let’s not be hasty, I don’t think that’s what we agreed in Michigan.”

“I have some news, though,” you pipe up, perhaps a tad obvious in your conversational retreat. “I think I’ve found a job I’d like to go for.”

“Oh? That’s great. What is it?”

“Well, I can’t really say.”

“What do you mean you can’t say?” he laughs, confused.

“It’s complicated,” you lilt, covering the small smile at the corner of your mouth. “We’ll call it a data protection issue.”

“What does that even mean? Are you going to be an agent or something?”

“Hah,” you breathe, again trying to remedy your tone. “More like PR, client work, that kind of thing. Just don’t get shirty if I start acting vaguely about it all. I think I’m going to go for it.”

“That’s different, for you, no?”

“Yes and no. Have you ever considered that maybe there are some things you don’t know about me?”

The question comes out harder than you mean it to, your tone a bit too harsh to be fair.

“No, actually,” he replies bluntly, and you hear that same restraint in his voice. “I don’t think I like the idea of it.”

“Well, a lot can change when you don’t see a person for six months.”

And there it was, slipping loose in a single sentence. The way it always did with him, whether you liked it or not, the person you chose to share nearly everything with.

He sighs quietly when he finally gets the gist of what he’s dealing with. Not only are you frustrated, but you’re talking about it, however unintentionally. Not a traditional combination for you.

“You know it’s not on purpose, sweetheart,” he begins, testing the water.

“I know it’s not. I never said that.”

His brows quirk, trying to hide his amusement. “Are you actually grumpy at me, or at the situation?”

You grouse at how directly he calls your bluff. “I’d like to say both, but it’s not true.”

“Well go on, out with it then. You’re sitting on the fence and you know it.”

Rearing at the challenge, you let it out.

“I think you’re right, about us being spoilt. I was just enjoying it. It was a nice summer. A nice year, or two. I won’t say that I took it for granted, but I will say I was… pleasantly surprised. Maybe I had just assumed it would keep working. More than anything I’m just annoyed at myself for expecting anything different. I thought I knew better, but then I see you and…”

You look across at him apologetically.

“Nothing is simple when I actually see you. All my plans…”

You hear him hum in some sort of reluctant approval when you can’t find the words, and when he doesn’t know how to respond either you decide to fill the gap with the question that’s been on your mind for months now.

“Are we still on the same page? I just need to know. I worry sometimes that I’m a few chapters ahead, or that you’ve backpedalled. If there’s someone else-,”

“There is no one else,” he interrupts calmly, offering no room for negotiation.

“It’s the same page. Just different books. In different places.”

You feel a non-committal tap to your shoulder and find yourself turning your head before you can answer.

“Lyle?” you blurt out, incapable of hiding the surprise in your tone. Lo and behold, towering over you is your old lab partner, beer in hand, staring down at you sheepishly.

He nods at you politely, smiles, and offers a hand to Javi at your side.

“Javier,” he states, his voice strong but perhaps a little nervous.

“Lyle,” he mutters back in response, shaking his hand in return, hard.

“How are you?” he asks, directing the question to your person but it’s Javi that interjects with the forced pleasantries.

“Great thanks Lyle. And I can see you’re doing just fine. Long time no see.”

“I was hoping to have a word, if you don’t mind?” he asks, trying again to direct his attention at you and you alone, this time stepping to your side to lean and catch your arm with his palm.

“Actually, we were just about to head out for a smoke,” Javi cuts in, yet again.

You flash your eyes at him widely, unable to hide the smirk that breaks your face. If he didn’t have that shit-eating grin plastered on his face, this interaction would be bordering offensive, but his overly-friendly persona is holding everything together by a comedic thread.

“Right,” replies Lyle, clearly working hard to hide the obvious rejection.

“Well I just wanted to say…” he turns to you entirely, doing whatever he can to cut Javi from the conversation with minimal success, “I wanted to apologise for the last time we saw each other. I think about more than you’d expect. I don’t really know why I acted that way if I’m being totally honest. It’s just what I thought boys were supposed to do, not really give a shit about anything. But I’m really sorry, I was an ass.”

Both you and Javi gawk from your position on the stadium seating, your eyes wide with sympathetic surprise, Javi's narrowing suspiciously at the scene unfolding before him. The way he’s looming at the edge of the surprisingly heartfelt interaction is bordering comical.

‘That’s… really kind of you, Lyle. I didn’t expect that from you, or anybody here tonight, actually.”

“Well, I was young, and stupid. Easy enough to say in retrospect but it’s true. I just wanted you to know... I wouldn’t make that same mistake again.”

You see Javi try his hardest to school his features. He’s holding on to his smirk by a thread. You’re fighting for your life to remain calm and indisposed.

“Thanks, Lyle. I really appreciate it.”

“Not that you seem to need to hear that. You look great, really great. And I think everyone knows it,” he offers jokingly, opening up his stance to gesture to the familiar crowd of boys who are observing the interaction menacingly from the other side of the room.

You try not to audibly gag as you watch them, watching you, but you suppose it was the effect you had been hoping for. They definitely had noticed.

“Well, that’s all," he sighs, clearly disappointed by the inopportune moment. "I’ll let you guys go now, you have a good night.”

“No seriously, Lyle,” calls Javi as the other man strides away. “Thank you.”

Lyle nods back, clearly perplexed, perhaps on the border of understanding. Javi beams back insincerely, lifting his hand to wave, and then turns quickly to exit the room, pulling you in tow.

“You just love to push your luck, don’t you?” you whisper when you catch him up, falling into step as you make your way toward the exit.

“It was funny. You know it was funny. Do you really think I’m not going to thank the guy? If not for him-,”

You turn quickly to catch him, stopping him cleanly in his path.

“If not for him then what? Hm?”

He steps into you just as swiftly, filling your space, matching your energy faster than you can describe.

“If not for him, then I’d never have had the opportunity to show you what a good time is supposed to look like.”

“Oh 'a good time', is that what that was?”

“Too fucking right it was, fancy another one?”

You beam up at him, and the way his face cracks into a smile when he stares down into you is enough to make your toes curl.

“You fucking bet I do.”

He opens the door of the old truck, offering you a hand to let you perch on the rear passenger seat while he braces his arm against the roof to close the space around you.

You watch the way he pulls the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, fobs the straight into his mouth, and lights it, all in one swift, practised movement. He couldn’t deny he’d picked up the dirty habit, but you’d struggle to say it didn’t make him look handsome.

Since he’d first walked into the room you could see that everything about him carried a new air of maturity, control. He’d always held space in a casual sense, commanding the room or arranging the conversation easily, but it was something more than that now.

His teenage confidence had transpired into effortless self-possession, and it fit him like a glove. If you were being unkind you’d compare it to when he’d received his hall monitor badge when he was nine, revelling in the recognition of being somebody important, someone to be listened to, however menial it may have been. But really, you couldn’t be happier for him.

The root of his need to pursue something he deemed as 'worthwhile' would be lost to you still for a while yet, something he kept so closely guarded even you barely got more than a glimpse of it.

You had your secrets, he was allowed his. But the fact that that need, that requirement, to prove himself was being satisfied one way or another was all that really mattered. And it was clearly paying off in other ways. He was thriving.

With his leg propped against the doorframe, humming absentmindedly to himself, he was unapologetically himself, just as he always had been. But, for the first time in a long time, you could see he wasn’t questioning it. The self-imposed weight of expectation was lifted ever so slightly by the knowledge that he was exceeding expectations.

He’d done exactly what everyone thought he would, and with that came a chance to bask in the glory of public approval.

You reprimand yourself for coveting it: you couldn't wait to know what that felt like.

As always, you just hoped that his idea of the ‘right thing’ was grounded somewhere secure; more a matter of proving something to himself than to everyone around him. Lamentably, you already knew that wasn’t true.

He gives you a long look as he puffs away, regarding you, you know, with as much affectionate scrutiny as you’re giving him. The thought of him being able to take you apart in the same detail as you can him makes you feel both nauseous and overwhelmed with fondness. You wish for the hundredth time in your life that you could read his mind.

“I knew I’d be here, but I didn’t expect you,” he eventually surmises, as if he’s only now thinking about it. “I thought you’d be well over this kind of stuff.”

“I am. There was a bit of arm twisting involved,” you laugh, thinking of the girls standing in the gym behind you.

“If I’m being totally honest, I was banking on the fact you would be here. I’m running out of ways to coincidentally run into you on the basis of things like ‘sharing a home address’ or ‘religious holidays’. You’re an increasingly hard man to reach.”

“I know,” he replies simply, “I’m sorry. I should have started with that when you brought it up. I knew it was going to be busy but I didn’t expect… It’s been longer than I wanted. If it's any consolation I’m not happy about it either. But I think it’s going to stay like this, at least for a while. But never say never.”

You absorb his upfront sincerity and swallow the urge to reply with something acidic and sarcastic.

“I think you’re probably right. I don’t love it, but it is what it is. It’s just… difficult, after having it so good for so long. But I think you’d be more worried if I was loving your perpetual absence.”

He nods thoughtfully, absorbs your stance, and chuckles at your inevitable quip.

“Is it still hard? Being here?” he presses on.

“Yes and no. For a while there I wasn’t really that affected. My parents are long gone. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. If anything, I’ve enjoyed the times that I have come home because I’m choosing to do it. But, yes, actual high school might be pushing the limit just a bit.”

You’re amazed at how easily the words leave your own mouth. Only for him.

“And you’re loving this, I assume?” you return.

He tries to hide the quiet smirk that's drawn from being exposed so directly, but fails quickly. In the late afternoon light you notice the shadow of his stubble has become a permanent feature. It only adds to this new idea of him.

“Yeah, a bit. I love it here, full stop. But since I’ve been gone I can’t shake the feeling that I’m taking a step away from the person I was here. There’s nothing worse than realising you peaked in high school.”

“Javi,” you scoff, “you’re the last person I’d pin as having peaked in high school. Have you seen yourself? No one in that room can take their eyes off you. You’re fucking golden balls, just like always.”

“Coming from you,” he returns earnestly. “You really have no idea, do you?”

“What do you mean?” you mumble, flustering a bit as he takes a step closer to you, invading your space even further in the open door.

“You’re beautiful, Bug. In spite of this place, you come in here and breeze through those doors like you own the place. And you’re not even trying. There’s nothing wrong with coming back here just to blow the doors off the place.”

“I like the person you are now,” you offer in response to his earlier remark, lost for words at his overwhelming accolades.

“I like the person you are now, too. A lot.”

“And if it’s any consolation, there’s one thing that will clearly never change. I’m pretty sure you’ve had those jeans since senior year.”

“Different jeans, same cut. Not my fault I got it right the first time. I've never heard you complain before.”

“I never said I was complaining,” you hum back warmly, smiling smugly as he closes the gap between you even further.

Taking the final step, he leans down, ducking his head under the doorway of the cab to kiss you firmly. You’re living your life strung together by a golden thread of those kisses. You’d give anything for those kisses.

“I’d like to see the look on Lyle’s face if he came out here right now,” he huffs teasingly. You feel the words against your skin as he pulls his mouth away just for a second to eek them out, unable to resist the opportunity.

But you’re just as petty.

“Kid sister?”

He sputters at your words as if he can taste them, pulling away quickly and frowning down at you thoughtfully in spite of your devilish grin.

“You know I hate it,” he grovels, spanking your hip sharply with his fingertips before returning his face to your neck, brushing his stubble up and down the tender skin there.

“I know. Maya brought it up. It just makes me laugh just how little idea people have of it.”

“Of what?”

“Of the fact we’ve been having incredible sex, at least semi-frequently, since we were twenty-something.”

You swear he presses against you automatically at the open mention of your sex life. Acknowldgeing it out loud has always been a point of excitement for you both, driven by the lack of opporunuity to talk about it in any conventional sense. It was a flirtation with chance to speak about it frivolously.

“I’ve been significantly missing that ‘incredible sex’ since I’ve been on base, you know.”

“How ever have you been coping?” you drawl back, batting your lashes at him.

“Hand over fist. But it’s not the same without you whimpering in my ear,” he husks, pressing his cheek to yours to stream his words directly into you ear so that you can feel the full weight of them.

“I do not whimper.”

“Yes, you do, and it’s just about the best thing I’ve heard in my entire life. I love the way I get to see you turn to jelly, it’s kept me up at night for years.”

Pressing his lips to yours again, he takes advantage of your position below him and pushes you playfully onto the backseat until you come flush with the worn leather.

Without thought, you pull him with you, and he follows you down willingly, unhurried, adjusting himself gently to spread his board frame over the length of you. You love the size of him against you, the way he can pull you against him so easily with just the palm of his hand against the small of your waist.

If you’d known this was how the evening was going to go, you wouldn’t have hesitated. What would the people say, you jibe in your own head. Getting caught making out in Javier Peña’s car, with Javier Peña. Now that would give them something to talk about.

As if mirroring your thoughts, he ruts your body against him harder and brings his teeth down to catch your lower lip between his own.

The biting. You had forgotten about the biting.

“God I am unbelievably turned on right now, this is definitely some kind of reticent fantasy.”

You moan against him, resisting the urge to egg him on any further. You didn’t want to give them too much to talk about. The sun hadn’t even set yet.

“We can’t fuck in the school parking lot.”

“Why not? I haven’t been caught before.”

“I don’t even want to know what you’re implying there,” you scoff in partially genuine disgust. Let’s just go somewhere,” you implore, getting surprisingly impatient as you tug and pull at his large frame, encouraging him to cover you entirely, pin you down, hide you away.

“What? Home? At 9pm? Where Dad is?”

“Ngh,” you moan, stifling the truly libido-killing suggestion.

You weren’t going back to shagging with your face in a pillow. Not when you’d had him exactly how you wanted him. Shoving him off you reluctantly, you push off the bench seat and move to the front passenger side.

“Just get in and drive, I know a place.”

Your recollection of the shrouded dirt path is surprisingly accurate as you direct Javi down a secluded turning off one of the old back roads. Considering you’d never made the journey in daylight, you admire how easily you can recall its location, recognising the abandoned call box and the wonky sign reading ‘private: keep out', still redundant as ever.

“How do you even know about this place?” queries Javi as he parks the truck off the track and looks at you suspiciously.

“That’s for me to know,” you reply cooly, pretending not to look at him.

“Tut tut.”

Instead of rising to his teasing, you reach across the space for the buckle of his belt and tug unceremoniously. If you really were back here, sneaking away down a serupticious back road, you were throwing caution to the wind with absolute enthusiasm.

“No more questions. Stop talking and help me get your cock out, Peña,” you huff as you crash your lips into his, this time with none of the censored reservations from the parking lot.

You see his arousal flare immediately, unable to do anything but gape at your forward movements. When you continue to fumble hastily, he finally reads how intent you are on undressing him, and begins to help you with the zipper.

“Undo your shirt,” you breathe as you pull the length of him unabashedly from the tight confines of the taut denim, “I want to see you.”

“Jesus-,” he huffs, both at your words and your hands, unable to hide the shudder of his breath when you wrap your fingers around him.

He follows suit and begins to undo the buttons, revealing his broad chest inch by inch until you’re greeted with the full view of his tight bare stomach and his hard length pressing against it.

“Please tell me you’ve been this hard since you kissed me,” you moan, your tone glazed, unapologetic in how lovingly you’re staring down to admire the sight of him, tense and wanting in your small grip.

It never failed you to amaze you, how lewd the sight of him laid out for you like this would always seem. It was the small part of your brain harrowing back to that first night, when everything was new and absurd and above all else, obscene. The part that says, even now, seeing him like this is so wrong it’s right. You’d never get over the fact you got to have him like this, tender and ripe and yours for the taking. He wanted you badly, in whatever form you came.

“I’ve been this hard since I saw you,” he breathes back, bringing his own hand to join yours around him, and fucking his hips up hard into the hold of your combined grip.

You moan outright at the sight of it. He has one arm braced against the window, the other wrapped around your own as the two of you coax him intently.

Emboldened by the transparency of your mirrored enthusiasm, you bring your head down to join the fray, taking the ripe head of him in your mouth and feeling him continue to fuck up into you, through your hand and his, and against your tongue.

He groans headily, and you feel his thighs tense under your palm as you steady yourself against him.

You feel no fear with him like this. His arousal is so clear, so plain in the palm of your hand, that you have nothing to question about yourself or him. You were allied in your emotions, in the way your feelings overwhelmed you both so easily, stolen but not lost in the give and take that you'd learned to find in one another. Having someone want you, crave you so desperately that you can only be lured further into that lurid space where lust takes over and nowt else matters is something you could happily chase for the rest of your life.

You longed to always feel this way; to be so sure of yourself that, no matter which way you stepped, you were going to be met with a firm hand and gentle praise.

“That’s it,” you murmur, never letting your lips leave the smooth swell of him as the two of you work together. “That’s it, you good boy.”

“Fuck. Fuck- Get in the back, in the back,” he orders, flustered by your authority but unwilling to concede to it. When you try to continue with your movements, ignoring his instructions, he slaps your backside, grabs you by your waist, and pushes you through the gap in the central console.

You gasp as he manhandles you into the back of the vehicle, surprisingly aroused by how easily he manages to put you off your course and place you somewhere else. You turn to sit on the back seat, flustered by the upheaval, to come to face him as he looks towards you from the driver's side. “But I want to-,”

“I don’t care, you can take your time with me later. Would you just put your legs up so I can get between them, please?”

You eyeball him deeply, equal parts frustration and arousal. But he knows you love it when he talks. And he knows you can’t say no to him when he does.

“Don’t make me ask again,” he growls.

Using what little restraint you have left to call his bluff, you spread your legs from your position on the back seat, bringing one knee to your chest and the other so that your foot comes to rest on the headrest in front. You see his lips form a tight line, while yours upend into a smug smile.

“Bug,” he stutters, hands coming to grip the back of the seat as he swallows hard. “Where’s your underwear?”

“In my purse,” you reply coolly.

“How long have they been in your purse?”

“Since I saw you in the parking lot. Call it… what did you say? Manifesting.”

“Call it- fuck-,” he breathes, and throws himself over the centre control to the backseat to join you. Pressing you back down to where he had you earlier, your back flush against the bench seat, he brings his knuckles up between your legs to brush harshly against you, totally exposed and waiting for him.

“God, I love-,” he sighs, unable to finish his sentence when he feels the slick touch of you against him. “There’s no way you can tell me you don’t enjoy these run-ins being in weird places. You’re soaked.”

“I never said I didn’t like the weird places,” you groan, cupping him with just as much zeal as he arranges himself against you.

“No, you’re right. You didn’t have to, the answer’s all over my fingers.”

The benefit of this being a repeat affair is the familiarity of it all. But with the time apart, you can sense it’s like a game. He’s always loved to show off, loved that he’s the root cause of nearly everything you know about sex and what you like about it. He knows your best and worst spots, your favourite things, the ones that drive you wild. And now, given the chance, he wastes no time in stringing them all together.

As if on queue, he bites down on your throat, and presses his fingers, hard, up and into you.

And was right, before; you do whimper.

“'Some things never change',” he breathes smugly into your shoulder as he pushes his fingers into you at a dominating pace.

You retaliate, tucking your ankles around the back of his waist to draw him closer against you. You know he loves to feel you, loves to be so close against you that there’s not even an inch to spare.

“You want to play that game?” you raise.

“We already are,” he returns.

He pulls you apart with his fingers easily, taking advantage of your worked-up state to bypass your usual anxieities. You’re too far gone to care anyway, too engrossed by having his attentions focused on you in the confines of the tight space, knowing you’re meant to be somewhere else doing something altogether more appropriate.

Revelling in your spaced-out gaze, he sits up between your legs and shrugs the open shirt off his shoulders, his eyes never leaving yours as he does it. The sight of him towering over you, levis around his knees, torso bare and gleaming and golden with the heat of the small space, makes you draw your legs together with a sigh.

“Bend over,” he huffs, balling the shirt and throwing it to the floor.

“Make me.”

The attitude rises, and the two of you smile satisfyingly at one another.

“Suit yourself.”

A large palm grips at your thigh, the other at your hip, and Javi flips you onto your front in a surprisingly swift movement. You had joked about the training, but he was strong, noticeably so, and the feeling of him easily arranging you exactly where he wanted you made your head spin.

You could give in to it if you let yourself, let him have you and take you however you wanted. You could go limp and fragile under his touch and surrender, totally. That would be a big step, the final one, even.

Not yet, you resolve.

Instead, you work with him, and as he crowds over you, you bend your knees and manoeuvre yourself into place underneath him. He holds you tightly as you arch your back, steady yourself, and bring your backside up to rest against his hard length.

He pushes the straps of your dress from your shoulders and pulls the slick fabric down over your chest, and up over your ass, leaving you exposed, and him free to finally run himself against you, painstakingly slowly.

Running his stubble across your bare back to bring his face to your ear, he wraps his arms around you, and asks the final question. “Do you want it?” It’s sultry and tedious, a totally unnecessary mockery as he holds you at the end of a thread. “Tell me you want it, and I’ll give it to you.”

You shift against him, causing him to pull through your folds, and both of you to sigh frustratedly.

“If you don’t-,” you start to threaten, but before you can even finish the sentence he pushes into you and bottoms out in one easy movement. You feel him in your belly and somehow, despite the heat, still manage to blush.

“Oh fine, you’ve convinced me.”

He takes you hard and fast and with a devastating precision that can only be admired given the limited surroundings. Using his tight grip on your hips, he thrusts against you viciously, leaving no room to slack once he hears your enthusiastic murmurs. He loved to prove it to himself, even now; loved to know that you loved it.

"Fuck," you squeal as the skin begins to slap and you find yourself focusing on the sounds around you, wet and crude and immeasurably exciting given the absurd location.

"Fuck, yes," he corrects, forever intolerable, even at the height of passion.

His voice brings you back to him, back to the person you have holding you tightly, tenderly, even as he attempts to break you to pieces. There was nothing like this, nothing as visceral and beautiful as the way he held you close while he took you apart. It was different, he was different, yes, but exquisitely so.

Every time you wish things would stay the same, you eat your words. Every time he offers you something more. You'd be a fool not to take it.

As you start to retaliate, throwing your hips back to meet every one of his hard thrusts, you feel the telltale sign of him gripping the fold of your hips, trying to focus his mind as he gets close.

“You know,” you tease between your own shaking breaths, “if you come, it’s game over. But I can keep going.”

“Just because I come doesn’t mean I’m finished,” he replies through gritted teeth, deciding to slap his hips into you harder, faster. “It just gives you something to clean up.”

Caught out as always by the effortless filth that pours from his mouth, you wail, and curse yourself for it.

“That’s it,” he hisses, entirely too pleased by finally getting you exactly where he wants you, noisy and pliant.

“Take it. Take. It.” His words are punctuated by his thrusts, which in turn are met every time with your own.

“You looked so good, shame you’re going to go back in there all messy.”

His words are losing their punch as he gets closer and closer to his limit, but the breathy moans that replace his authoritarian tone just make the feeling that much sweeter.

“Maybe they’ll know. Maybe they’ll know exactly why,” you keen back, desperate to push him over the edge the same way he does with you.

“As they should,” he finally growls, and you feel him bend, break, and pull out sharply to spill over the sight of you. His hand never leaves your side, not even for a second. "As. They. Should.”

“Tonight. Wait until two, then come and see me. If you can walk that far.”

That’s what he’d said to you as you both sidled back to the gym as if nothing had happened.

You’d baulked at his audacious words, spoken so freely in the open space, but even then already felt the familiar pull in your belly only moments after getting what you’d wanted.

If you thought you craved him before, this new Javi, the adult one, was something else. The trip in the car was... sultry, grown up. You’d go anywhere he told you to. Not that he needed to know that.

He breezes past you, glancing calmly over his shoulder as re-enters the main hall. You take a moment, forever academic in your administration, to let him reintegrate into the crowd before you follow, smoothing your crumpled dress over your thighs as you wait.

Once a year, to twice a year, to whenever you could manage it; this arrangement had gone from seemingly neat and tidy to a logistical and emotional rollercoaster.

But when brush your fingers over the tender split in your bottom lip, the place where his teeth had been, you resolve that you had got it right after the storm: it was worth the hassle. Enough to get you out of bed at two in the morning, at least, and have you creeping down the hallway of your own house like a cat burglar.

Your feelings had never been simpler, plainer, your passion growing unashamedly year-on-year with ever-less to hold you back.

What was getting harder, though, were the choices. For you, at least, the stakes had never been higher.

In the back of your mind, you knew it was eventually going to be him, or you, or neither. A situation didn’t exist where you both got what you needed from yourselves, whilst still getting it from each other.

You’d made him promise not to compromise for that exact reason; you would never be the thing to keep him from what he needs by offering him something that he wants.

Six months was a long time. And he was right, it was only going to get longer. At the end of this year, you were going to have to choose for yourself what you wanted and where to go. And you already knew it couldn’t with be him, not in the way that meant you got both.

It was doomed from the start, one way or another. You always knew that. But you didn't care. Nothing worth having ever came without a fight. You knew that better than anyone.

For now, there was one more night where you didn’t need to think about it. Where, in quiet serendipity, you could just be exactly what the other needed, one day at a time.

A/N: The ‘agreement in Michigan’ that Javi refers to and the 'promise not to compromise' that Bug ends with will be explained in the interlude Solicitation.

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darklydeliciousdesires · 2 years

Text

Not One of Many - Chapter Twenty.

Previous chapters - Prologue One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen

Tag list - In the comments

Words - 4,114

Warnings - 18+ content, adult audience only. Minors DNI!

“Good morning, sunshine!”

While she might have been greeted with such a term, it was the person who used it whom Beth often equated to sunshine personified, opening her arms to give Mimi a big hug as she closed the door to Alfie’s Range Rover, arriving at the stables in good time. He’d told her it made sense to insure her on it too, should she ever want to head off anywhere without worrying about exuberant Uber fees or relying on public transport. The journey up had made Beth realise just how much she missed driving. Especially now she got to drive such a beautiful car, thanking the stars it was an automatic, as this was what she had learned in and driven back when she once owned a car herself.

“Hello, lovely girl. How are you?”

“Employed! I got the job at London Life and Style!”

Beth was thrilled for her. “Oh, well done, Mims!” she cried, another hug of congratulations following.

“It was just the boost I needed, since Sony, Nickleodeon, a vape juice company, a builder's merchants and a small organic farm all said no. I was so surprised, but apparently, I’m just what they’re looking for. And they said they’d had a good recommendation from a certain freelance journalist, so I have you to thank.”

She had put in a good word for Mimi, this much was true. Mostly because she knew she’d be perfect for the job, but a little facet of her good deed had been driven by guilt, that because of her, Mimi’s happy relationship with Alfie had ended. She was still bowled over by how well she was taking it, until she learned that the sadness of losing her love had been somewhat softened.

“So, I have more news!” Mimi divulged in teaser as they rode out over the fields, Beth turning to her with curiosity.

“Oh, Miss Downing-Hansen?” she began. “Do reveal!”

“I’ve met someone.” She could barely keep the smile from her face. Beth was glad, not for selfish reasons or easing of her own little slither of guilt, but because at twenty-one years old and six weeks out of her most recent relationship, Mimi was prime for a new romance. “His name is Josh; he actually works in the same building at the magazine offices are situated. We met in the lift as I was leaving from my interview! He’s twenty-six, he works at Miller Reed publishing as a copywriter and we’ve had three dates so far. I really like him, he’s so nice and easy going.”

“And when are you seeing him again?”

“Tonight, I’m so excited! I’ve no idea where he’s taking me, I just have to be ready for 7pm for him to come and pick me up in a black cab. It’s so nice, isn’t it, in the early days of a relationship. I mean, you’re there too right now, so we can be excited together!”

Mimi’s enthusiasm was contagious, but still, for Beth she felt a little awkward about it still.

“You know you can be, right? Beth, you don’t have to feel bad that you’re now with my ex. If I wasn’t fine with it, I would have been selfish and hung onto him. Or I’d be behaving like that nutcase Talia. He told me on the phone a few days ago about her antics. It’s absolutely fucking shocking!”

She nodded knowingly, widening her eyes. “Oh, there’s been progression.”

Mimi’s head virtually swivelled to view her. “Progression? What, worse than throwing a glass at you and trying to gate crash parties you’re at?”

“The night before last, I had someone bang on my front door and leg it afterwards. Then they came back and did it again. I didn’t put the pieces together at first, until I realised it really couldn’t have been anyone but her. It did raise the slightly worrying concern that being she doesn’t know where I live, she must’ve been watching Alfie’s house for considerable enough time to have tracked my movements and followed me home.”

Mimi looked stunned for a few moments, like she truly couldn’t just believe what she’d heard, going to speak, but her voice only coming out in chopped little noises. “Is she... I mean... what... the fuck?”

“I know.”

“She’s got ten years on me and she’s acting twenty younger!”

“I know!”

“I thought she was seriously beginning to lack some self-respect during the final days of her and Alfie being together, but bloody hell! That’s really taking the piss, though, acting like that. She’s so immature.” Her eyes were still wide as she processed it, shaking her head further, the whole fiasco unfathomable to her. Why couldn’t she just let Alfie move on? “What does she expect to prove by behaving like this? What, does she want him back? If so, surely she realises this isn’t the way to go about it. I mean, not that he’d be receptive to it even if she was behaving sanely. He’s in love with you and he’s happy.”

“No, I don’t think she wants him back, or at least, she does but she knows it’s over and thusly is raging about that fact,” Beth began, quietening Sunny when she spooked a little at a rabbit running out from the hedgerow, the mare having a puff and blow as she dived to the side. “I think she’s out to punish him, try and shame him with as many people there to witness it as possible by screaming her warped version of the truth. As for me, she’s trying to rattle me because she’s bitter that in her mind, I took her place. To be fair, that is what happened, just not quite in the way she’s claiming.”

Mimi snorted softly, looking empathetic. “Whatever her aim is, it’s the last thing you need, having to look over your shoulder, wondering what she’s going to do next.”

Beth hadn’t considered escalation, but Mimi’s words suddenly made that cold, spiny feeling return to swirl in her guts. Would Talia up the ante? “Sorry, did I say something wrong?”

Mimi’s concern was touching, Beth reaching to stroke her forearm. “No, you didn’t. I just hope she doesn’t do anything next, but I have to expect that she likely will. I wonder what her end game is, but at the same time, the thought of such is a little perturbing.”

“I’m sorry, I should have been more careful with my words.”

“No, no,” Beth began, wanting to reassure her. “What you said is only natural. Whatever she does choose, though, it’s only going to prompt Alfie into filing a restraining over against her.”

Mimi looked on with wide eyes. “You think she might do something that warrants it?”

“Well, if she’s watching our movements, she already is. What she’s doing is stalking, even though she’s only just begun, it doesn’t negate that fact.”

“I suppose not,” Mimi conceded. “Well, you get to have a nice time today with me and forget about her, so let’s change the subject.” She was only too happy to do so. “Oh! But if I can move back to an ex-girlfriend for a second, I finally heard from Amira again!”

Beth winced slightly, remembering Alfie detailing her tearful heartbreak to her. “How is she?”

“She’s doing really well, yeah. She’s gotten right back into her modelling, she apologised for ignoring me and not being in touch either, said she needed a bit of time just to get over it all and adjust to her life being so different suddenly. She revealed that while she isn’t completely over Alfie that she’s feeling stronger every day, and she wants to continue seeing me. I said I couldn’t as anything other than a friend, because of Josh, obviously, and she was really happy for me. She told me to say hello to you as well for her.”

Well, that was certainly a nice surprise for Beth to hear. Now if only the third of his exes could find a little grace.

Their day with the horses was wonderful, Mimi even managing to encourage her into taking Sunny over a fallen log fence, Beth elated since she hadn’t jumped in years and wasn’t particularly confident with it back when she had before. Mimi took photos as well while guiding her, which she was elated to see after returning back to Alfie’s, Mimi sending them over on a Whatsapp, telling her she looked forward to seeing her the following Saturday, the new friends deciding to make it a regular thing.

“Look at you!” Alfie exclaimed, viewing the picture over her shoulder as he entered the kitchen, finding her mid-matzo snack.

“I’m so proud of myself, I didn’t think I could do it but Mimi was so encouraging, talked me through it the entire time. She’s fantastic.”

Alfie kissed her cheek, smiling. “She is, bloody lovely girl. Did she tell you about her new fella? I’m glad she’s found someone else, glad she told me about him an’ all. I like that we’ve remained good friends.”

“She did,” Beth confirmed. “We should ask them if they want to go out as a four sometime.” Her suggestion was met by enthusiasm from him, Alfie making himself a coffee before heading back to his office. He was so close now to the whole Dubai deal beginning that he was putting most of his free time into it, Beth of course more than understanding that she had to come second for another week, until they broke ground on it and he could relax a little more.

In the spirit of that, she gave him his space, heading home the following evening, spending the next few days at her flat, finishing her article highlighting the plight of women who had received botched plastic surgery in their quest to conform to societal-borne beauty standards and beginning the research for her new one, where she would look into women working in careers viewed as traditionally male dominated.

It was while she was emailing a woman who worked within the car industry as an engine technician for Audi, asking if she could perhaps interview her for the piece, that she heard a banging upon her front door. Not again. She ignored it, continuing to type. Five minutes later, she heard the same again. Feeling brave, she opened the curtain, of course finding not a soul around. However, what she did see out there was a box upon the doorstep.

Sometimes, her usual Amazon man did arrive quite late, her and the sweet Richard having a laugh about it, him knowing she was often up late so leaving her delivery until last on his way home to Wandsworth. She didn’t remember ordering anything, though, and Richard always waited until she answered the door.

Her mind didn’t want to go to the most logical conclusion, but she couldn’t help but concede that it more than likely was Talia messing with her, trying to goad her out of the house in order to spring something on her, some kind of warped revenge. After her talk about it with Mimi five days previously, she had been expecting her to up the ante somehow.

Heading into the hall, she hesitated, her nerves tingling, putting the chain on and opening the door while standing back and waiting. Nothing happened. She waited a little longer just to be certain, nothing but quiet outside, other than a faraway man’s voice shouting ‘oi, wait! I’ve dropped me bloody chips!’ to whomever he was with.

Taking the chain off the door, she reached out and slid the box inside, shutting it again quickly, picking the package up to carry it through to the kitchen. It was a plain cardboard box, innocuous enough looking, Beth giving it a little shake. Something thudded softly inside, and whatever it was, it smelled pretty bad. Like a butcher's shop.

“What on earth?” Taking a knife, she slit the tape, opening the flaps to reveal the contents. “Jesus fucking Christ!” Well, there was the butcher’s smell explained, the box containing what looked to be a cow’s heart, severed into two pieces. There was a note, too.

“Now your heart is broken as well!”

A message, perhaps? Alfie. She hadn’t...

Flying out of the room, she grabbed her phone, calling him.

“Hello, baby beast. How was your night?”

Thank god. He was fine. She knew it was a ridiculous, overly dramatic conclusion to allow into her head, especially since Alfie was more than capable of defending himself, but still, she couldn’t be blamed for wondering.

“Boo, can you come and pick me up? Something’s happened and I’m a bit scared, I don’t want to be here, I’m all freaked out!” she babbled in panic, her heart somersaulting.

“What’s gone on, love?”

“Talia, I think she dropped a package off here meant to rattle me, and well, mission accomplished.”

He felt a knot of anger form in his stomach at hearing his ex’s name, but remained calm for Beth’s sake. “A package?”

“Just come over and I’ll show you, please hurry.”

“I’m on me way, sweetheart. You locked the door and windows an’ all that, yeah?”

“I have, yes.”

“Alright. Don’t panic, I’ll be there soon. Love you.”

“Okay, I love you too.”

She paced around, chewing her thumb nervously until he arrived, Alfie knocking and calling that it was him through the door, which she found reassuring. Letting him in, she felt instantly better for seeing her boyfriend, even more so when he wrapped her in a hug, his scent comforting. Nothing bad happened in Alfie’s arms. “What’s happened then, precious?”

“I’m probably overreacting, but come with me.” Walking to the kitchen, she opened the door and pointed at where the box was sat upon the counter. “She sent that.”

He peered in, leaning back out again at speed. “What the actual fuck is wrong with the woman? I just... I’m so sorry, darlin’.”

“Why, it isn’t your fault. This is all on her.”

He hugged her, kissing her head. “Yeah, but I was the idiot who had a relationship with her and didn’t see how mental she was right until the end.”

She appreciated him saying it, but it honestly wasn’t his fault. “You finishing with her should have been the end, but apparently she has other ideas.”

“Not for much longer, she fuckin’ don’t.” Pulling his phone out, he rang the best legal mind for advice. “Alright, Steve. Sorry to call ya late, but I need a bit of advice.”

He detailed the situation, listening as Steve explained how the land lay legally, Alfie not looking particularly thrilled as he nodded. “Okay mate, yeah thanks for that. I’ll see ya Friday, bye.”

“What did he say?”

Alfie scratched his beard, raising his eyebrows. “Well, since she ain’t actually threatened no one, there’s nothing we can do as yet. As and when she begins to display such behaviour is when we can take it to the police and file a restraining order. Until then, he said keep any evidence such as this, obviously you can’t keep a piece of offal that’ll rot, but take a picture and keep the note. Unfortunately, she is, as Steve said, a menace we might have to endure for a while until we can gather substantial evidence in her harassing us.”

That didn’t particularly sit well with Beth, not able to feel safe in her own home. Alfie was quick to sense that, as well. “Pack up plenty of stuff and come stay with me for as long as you want to. I ain’t having you over here worrying yourself to death over it, darlin’.”

“Thank you.” She went through to her bedroom, Alfie wondering around her flat, the first time he’d ever been inside it. It was about the same size as his first place he’d been able to afford when moving out from his mother’s house in Camden, except not as nice as Beth’s quaint abode, full of charm and character that exuded her personality from every wall, every little piece of furniture or ornament as well.

Grabbing her cases and hold all bags, she packed a pile of stuff, more than she probably needed, Alfie ferrying it out to his Range Rover, which he’d had to park a little way down her road, parking being so atrocious. When he came back, she was in the fridge.

“Erm, I have food at mine, petal.”

“I’ll be damned if I’m leaving my mother’s leftover kugel and my salmon pate behind to go bad!” she exclaimed, putting the dish and tubs into one of her hessian shopping bags. It was lucky she needed to do the shopping as there wasn’t much else in there, save some butter and a pint of milk she poured away, so she didn’t return to it resembling cottage cheese. Once she had those things, as well as her fruit, she packed up her laptop, grabbed her denim jacket and slid her feet into her Ugg slippers, making sure everything was switched off before locking up, dumping the cow's heart into the communal bin for her flat and the other two within the three-storey townhouse.

“It’s alright, she ain’t gonna do nothing to you while I’m here,” he reassured her when she gripped his hand tightly, looking around everywhere.

“I know, I’m just jumpy that she was here in the first place, that she’s been following me enough to know where I live. She must be watching your house a lot, to have seen me leave two days ago to come back here.”

“Makes me wish she was a fella, because then if I caught her doing it, I’d be able to fuckin’ headbutt her for her fuckery. But I draw the line at striking a woman.” Reaching the car, she placed her food bag in the rear footwell, jumping in, so glad to be being whisked off back to Chelsea, to the home that had the kind of security which ensured Talia wouldn’t be getting anywhere near the front door. Even if she jumped the wall, she’d be all over the CCTV.

As soon as she was across the threshold of the former church, she breathed a sigh of relief, putting the food items into the fridge and turning to hug Alfie.

“Want me to take your mind off it?” he asked, stroking her back.

“What did you have in mind?”

He grinned, lifting her to perch her bum on the island, his mouth moving to leave soft kisses at the side of her neck as he pulled down her lounge suit trousers and undies, Beth letting her slippers fall from her feet. “I like where this is going.”

“I thought you might.” He pushed her back to lie flat against the island, elbows nudging her thighs apart, watching the beauty of her sex spread before him, introducing his tongue to her folds in the form of a long, flat, hard lick. Each lave was given in keener succession than the last, tasting her petal soft folds hungrily, driving glimmers through her as she warmed to him, a soft moan filling the air as he sought her clit and circled it with tight, firm sweeps.

“Better now?”

“Ahhhhh!” That was good enough an answer for him.

“Good.” Kissing her clit, he then continued to delight it with his tongue, gently sucking, playing with her piercing, fingertips stroking her thighs as he felt her starting to get wet for him, his tongue dewy with her slick before long.

Gratification swept through her strongly as she felt his powerful hands stroke her thighs, looking up to watch him eating her, the vibrations of his moans around the mouthful of her cunt adding to the pleasure of his quick moving tongue. Each beat of it against her hardened nub caused a greater pulse of pleasure than the last, her head softly thudding back against the cool marble beneath her as she sighed breathlessly.

He’d gotten her so sumptuously wet already that she craved the gratification of feeling him inside of her, that need somewhat sated when he licked at her glossy opening and pushed his tongue within a little, before going back to circling her aching clit. He knew she was more than ready for him, and with his erection painfully throbbing within his jeans, Alfie knew he wanted nothing more than to pull it out and arrow it straight into her velvety, wet plush. He was so ferociously aroused, he could barely stand it.

“Ohhhh, oh fuck!” She cried, her hands clinging onto his thick biceps as he sucked at her clit, her head spinning. God, he was so good. She panted and undulated, her body moving in a serpentine manner as it thudded audibly atop the island, reaching the point of frenzied climax so quickly it took even her by surprise. Then again, this was Alfie. He was a god with his mouth. She wailed incoherently as she came against his tongue, the burst of pleasure sending ebullient tingles throughout her body, swimming in ecstasy as she panted hard, the movements of his mouth lessening until he pulled away.

She grabbed his t shirt, yanking it over his head, Alfie stripping the rest of his attire off as she freed herself from the confines of her own remaining clothes, their kisses hungry and full of need as she wrapped her arms around his neck, his hands gripping as her thighs, pulling her further to the edge of the island, guiding his cock into her with a hard thrust.

Her heat yielded to him perfectly, his arms wrapping around her and hands stroking her back, keeping her steady as he began to arrow into her with sharp snaps of his hips. The lust he felt for her seeped over him like a mist, grasping her jaw, staring at her intently as he kissed her hotly, biting her lower lip, letting the soft flesh slide slowly from between the crush of his teeth, his other hand stroking tickled pitter patters up her spine, his mouth descending to sprinkle kisses across her chest.

Beth closed her eyes and exhaled a bliss filled sigh, rolling her hips against him as she slid up and down on his erection, immersed fully in the pleasure of him inside of her. He felt beyond exquisite. All thoughts of her visitor and subsequent creepy, unwanted package were far from her thoughts as the object of her burning desire and consuming love fucked her relentlessly upon the island.

“Fuck, oh god, ahhhh!” she panted, little exclamations still leaving her mouth thereafter until he silenced her with an explosively hot kiss, his hands pulling her against him and holding her tightly against his chest as he started to arrow her harder, his upward movements in perfect sync with each of her downward ones.

“Lean back, baby beast. Let me watch you, let me see how much you’re enjoying my cock.” Pushing her away. Beth arched her back and rested her hands behind her on the counter, giving him a full view of her, loving the view of her split wide around his hard, wet cock, His eyes shone brightly with desire, his mouth agape as he panted and groaned, lost in the pleasing view of how her body twitched and shuddered in response to him, rutting so deep inside her.

She really began to cry out when his movements became harder, ramming every last inch of himself up into her deep, burning wetness, watching her pant and exclaim without reserve as sweat began to bead their bodies. Her entire core felt alight with incredible pleasure, exacerbated further by the addition of his thumb at her clit, rubbing it in the kind of expert way she’d come to enjoy from him. He knew exactly how to touch a woman.

The fervid, rapid nature of their furiously paced fuck was geared more towards quick satisfaction than something to be savoured, both rushing towards their culmination, Beth shattering shortly before he did, her teeth bit onto the meat of his shoulder as her nails tore the skin from his back, rendering her a senseless, shaking mess.

“Fuck, you make me so damned cock drunk,” she panted, flopping back onto the island, her long, high pitched exclamation of ‘phewwwww!’ rousing his laughter, resting his head to her chest as he caught his breath.

“Want me to get you even more hammered on it?”

She sat up, grinning widely. “You’d bloody better.”

He did, too. Until three in the morning. Until they were tired and sore. He could survive on four hours of sleep for her.

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uomo-accattivante · 3 years

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Excellent article about bringing a re-make of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage to fruition, and the twenty-year friendship that Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain share:

There were days on the shoot for “Scenes From a Marriage,” a five-episode limited series that premieres Sept. 12 on HBO, when Oscar Isaac resented the crew.

The problem wasn’t the crew members themselves, he told me on a video call in March. But the work required of him and his co-star, Jessica Chastain, was so unsparingly intimate — “And difficult!” Chastain added from a neighboring Zoom window — that every time a camera operator or a makeup artist appeared, it felt like an intrusion.

On his other projects, Isaac had felt comfortably distant from the characters and their circumstances — interplanetary intrigue, rogue A.I. But “Scenes” surveys monogamy and parenthood, familiar territory. Sometimes Isaac would film a bedtime scene with his onscreen child (Lily Jane) and then go home and tuck his own child into the same model of bed as the one used onset, accessorized with the same bunny lamp, and not know exactly where art ended and life began.

“It was just a lot,” he said.

Chastain agreed, though she put it more strongly. “I mean, I cried every day for four months,” she said.

Isaac, 42, and Chastain, 44, have known each other since their days at the Juilliard School. And they have channeled two decades of friendship, admiration and a shared and obsessional devotion to craft into what Michael Ellenberg, one of the series’s executive producers, called “five hours of naked, raw performance.” (That nudity is metaphorical, mostly.)

“For me it definitely felt incredibly personal,” Chastain said on the call in the spring, about a month after filming had ended. “That’s why I don’t know if I have another one like this in me. Yeah, I can’t decide that. I can’t even talk about it without. …” She turned away from the screen. (It was one of several times during the call that I felt as if I were intruding, too.)

The original “Scenes From a Marriage,” created by Ingmar Bergman, debuted on Swedish television in 1973. Bergman’s first television series, its six episodes trace the dissolution of a middle-class marriage. Starring Liv Ullmann, Bergman’s ex, it drew on his own past relationships, though not always directly.

“When it comes to Bergman, the relationship between autobiography and fiction is extremely complicated,” said Jan Holmberg, the chief executive of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation.

A sensation in Sweden, it was seen by most of the adult population. And yes, sure, correlation does not imply causation, but after its debut, Swedish divorce were rumored to have doubled. Holmberg remembers watching a rerun as a 10-year-old.

“It was a rude awakening to adult life,” he said.

The writer and director Hagai Levi saw it as a teenager, on Israeli public television, during a stint on a kibbutz. “I was shocked,” he said. The series taught him that a television series could be radical, that it could be art. When he created “BeTipul,” the Israeli precursor to “In Treatment,” he used “Scenes” as proof of the concept “that two people can talk for an hour and it can work,” Levi said. (Strangely, “Scenes” also inspired the prime-time soap “Dallas.”)

So when Daniel Bergman, Ingmar Bergman’s youngest son, approached Levi about a remake, he was immediately interested.

But the project languished, in part because loving a show isn’t reason enough to adapt it. Divorce is common now — in Sweden, and elsewhere — and the relationship politics of the original series, in which the male character deserts his wife and young children for an academic post, haven’t aged particularly well.

Then about two years ago, Levi had a revelation. He would swap the gender roles. A woman who leaves her marriage and child in pursuit of freedom (with a very hot Israeli entrepreneur in place of a visiting professorship) might still provoke conversation and interest.

So the Marianne and Johan of the original became Mira and Jonathan, with a Boston suburb (re-created in a warehouse just north of New York City), stepping in for the Stockholm of the original. Jonathan remains an academic though Mira, a lawyer in the original, is now a businesswoman who out-earns him.

Casting began in early 2020. After Isaac met with Levi, he wrote to Chastain to tell her about the project. She wasn’t available. The producers cast Michelle Williams. But the pandemic reshuffled everyone’s schedules. When production was ready to resume, Williams was no longer free. Chastain was. “That was for me the most amazing miracle,” Levi said.

Isaac and Chastain met in the early 2000s at Juilliard. He was in his first year; she, in her third. He first saw her in a scene from a classical tragedy, slapping men in the face as Helen of Troy. He was friendly with her then-boyfriend, and they soon became friends themselves, bonding through the shared trauma of an acting curriculum designed to break its students down and then build them back up again. Isaac remembered her as “a real force of nature and solid, completely solid, with an incredible amount of integrity,” he said.

In the next window, Chastain blushed. “He was super talented,” she said. “But talented in a way that wasn’t expected, that’s challenging and pushing against constructs and ideas.” She introduced him to her manager, and they celebrated each other’s early successes and went to each other’s premieres. (A few of those photos are used in “Scenes From a Marriage” as set dressing.)

In 2013, Chastain was cast in J.C. Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year,”opposite Javier Bardem. When Bardem dropped out, Chastain campaigned for Isaac to have the role. Weeks before shooting, they began to meet, fleshing out the back story of their characters — a husband and wife trying to corner the heating oil market in 1981 New York — the details of the marriage, business, life.

It was their first time working together, and each felt a bond that went deeper than a parallel education and approach. “Something connects us that’s stronger than any ideas of character or story or any of that,” Isaac said. “There’s something else that’s more about like, a shared existence.”

Chandor noticed how they would support each other on set, and challenge each other, too, giving each other the freedom to take the characters’ relationship to dark and dangerous places. “They have this innate trust with each other,” Chandor said.

That trust eliminated the need for actorly tricks or shortcuts, in part because they know each other’s tricks too well. Their motto, Isaac said, was, “Let’s figure this [expletive] out together and see what’s the most honest thing we can do.”

Moni Yakim, Juilliard’s celebrated movement instructor, has followed their careers closely and he noted what he called the “magnetism and spiritual connection” that they suggested onscreen in the film.

“It’s a kind of chemistry,” Yakim said. “They can read each other’s mind and you as an audience, you can sense it.”

Telepathy takes work. When they knew that shooting “Scenes From a Marriage” could begin, Chastain bought a copy of “All About Us,” a guided journal for couples, and filled in her sections in character as Mira. Isaac brought it home and showed it to his wife, the filmmaker Elvira Lind.

“She was like, ‘You finally found your match,’” Isaac recalled. “’Someone that is as big of a nerd as you are.’”

The actors rehearsed, with Levi and on their own, talking their way through each long scene, helping each other through the anguished parts. When production had to halt for two weeks, they rehearsed then, too.

Watching these actors work reminded Amy Herzog, a writer and executive producer on the series, of race horses in full gallop. “These are two people who have so much training and skill,” she said. “Because it’s an athletic feat, what they were being asked to do.”

But training and skill and the “All About Us” book hadn’t really prepared them for the emotional impact of actually shooting “Scenes From a Marriage.” Both actors normally compartmentalize when they work, putting up psychic partitions between their roles and themselves. But this time, the partitions weren’t up to code.

“I knew I was in trouble the very first week,” Chastain said.

She couldn’t hide how the scripts affected her, especially from someone who knows her as well as Isaac does. “I just felt so exposed,” she said. “This to me, more than anything I’ve ever worked on, was definitely the most open I’ve ever been.”

“It felt so dangerous,” she said.

I visited the set in February (after multiple Covid-19 tests and health screenings) during a final day of filming. It was the quietest set I had ever seen: The atmosphere was subdued, reverent almost, a crew and a studio space stripped down to only what two actors would need to do the most passionate and demanding work of their careers.

Isaac didn’t know if he would watch the completed series. “It really is the first time ever, where I’ve done something where I’m totally fine never seeing this thing,” he said. “Because I’ve really lived through it. And in some ways I don’t want whatever they decide to put together to change my experience of it, which was just so intense.”

The cameras captured that intensity. Though Chastain isn’t Mira and Isaac isn’t Jonathan, each drew on personal experience — their parents’ marriages, past relationships — in ways they never had. Sometimes work on the show felt like acting, and sometimes the work wasn’t even conscious. There’s a scene in the harrowing fourth episode in which they both lie crumpled on the floor, an identical stress vein bulging in each forehead.

“It’s my go-to move, the throbbing forehead vein,” Isaac said on a follow-up video call last month. Chastain riffed on the joke: “That was our third year at Juilliard, the throb.”

By then, it had been five months since the shoot wrapped. Life had returned to something like normal. Jokes were possible again. Both of them seemed looser, more relaxed. (Isaac had already poured himself one tequila shot and was ready for another.) No one cried.

Chastain had watched the show with her husband. And Isaac, despite his initial reluctance, had watched it, too. It didn’t seem to have changed his experience.

“I’ve never done anything like it,” he said. “And I can’t imagine doing anything like it again.”

###

#oscar isaac #jessica chastain #scenes from a marriage #hagai levi #michelle williams #elvira lind #behind the scenes #article

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phoenixyfriend · 3 years

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As Easily as Breathing

Quinlan/Obi-Wan, one-shot, non-chronological

Warnings: PTSD, grief, child soldiers

-----------------

Obi-Wan falls in love as easily as breathing. Cerasi, and Siri, and Satine, just one after another. In the back of his mind, he thinks he might like boys. Then he’s eighteen, and it’s not quite so in the back, and he realizes he’s maybe had those same feelings to a lesser degree for years. He’s never developed those feelings, really, but sometimes he wonders, and…

He explains it to Bant, and she just blinks at him and says, “so you’re bi?”

Well. Yeah. When she puts it like that, it seems so simple.

She laughs at him, and cuffs him in the shoulder, because they’re almost twenty and it’s not like the Jedi experience enough heteronormativity for it to have slowed Obi-Wan down in realizing this. It’s just his own self-reflection that was lacking.

He tells Qui-Gon, later that night, that he thinks he’s bi.

“Oh, so you decided on a label?”

Obi-Wan has no idea how to respond to that. Does Qui-Gon disapprove that he’s labeling himself, picking a box to put his descriptions in? Had Qui-Gon somehow noticed that Obi-Wan liked boys and hadn’t said anything? Is he just trying to goad Obi-Wan as a test for emotional control?

“Maybe,” Obi-Wan says, before he can second-guess himself too hard.

“Alright then,” Qui-Gon says. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“…no?”

“Hm,” Qui-Gon hums, and goes back to his datapad, reading the news.

It’s very underwhelming, all told.

-------

Obi-Wan meets Quinlan Vos when he’s seven. Obi-Wan already has more than one best friend, because best friends are a category and not just one person, and Quinlan quickly joins the group. Quinlan is sad and jittery and doesn’t trust the adults very much, but he likes the other kids. He’s older than Obi-Wan, already ten, but he seems pretty happy to hang out with Obi-Wan and his crèchemates.

Quinlan wears gloves, always, but he likes hugs, and he likes stories, and whenever he’s sad, Obi-Wan plants a big kiss on his cheek and declares “The Booboo’s All Better!” like the crèchemasters do for the littlest younglings, like four-year-old Bant, and then Quinlan laughs and thanks him. They both know they’re too old for that to be the way they handle being sad, but someone said laughter was the best medicine, and Obi-Wan thinks it’s probably up there.

Quinlan isn’t officially a padawan, really, but everyone knows he’s going to go to Master Tholme. It’s obvious, and Obi-Wan’s happy for him, really, when it happens. Obi-Wan is nine and Quinlan is twelve, and he’s moving out to go be a real Jedi-in-training. Obi-Wan is happy for him, he is.

He’s surprised, in a good way, and cries a little the first time Quinlan stops by to hang out again.

“What, did you think I was just gonna stop hanging out with you guys?” Quinlan jibes, pulling Obi-Wan under his arm and rubbing knuckles into his hair. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy!”

“Quin, get off!”

(Continue on AO3)

#QuinObi #Quinlan Vos #Obi Wan Kenobi #star wars #the clone wars #sw legends #Phoenix Files #one shots

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rockingrobin69 · 3 years

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Spoonful of what, now?

CW: illness (nothing serious), a bit of angst, a somewhat sticky situation. Sappy boys being saps. 1k

It wasn’t a complaint, and Draco said this with all the love in his heart, but Harry was the worst patient. He was whiney, and impatient, and stubborn. He wouldn’t take the pain meds because he didn’t like the way they made him feel. He wouldn’t drink Fever-Be-Gone because it was too sour, for crying out loud. It didn’t help that he was a trainee Healer himself and could probably recite proper procedure in his sleep. He was the absolute worst patient, even if Draco did say so himself.

And he kept trying to convince Draco to leave. “Just go to work,” he sniffled weakly, all brave-like and the-boy-hero everyone still expected him to be, for whatever reason. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t be an arse,” was Draco’s tight-lipped response. “Drink your tea.”

“I don’t like it,” Harry whimpered, nose scrunched. It really was disgusting how much Draco loved him.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, don’t be such a baby. Drink the damn tea.”

“You calling it tea doesn’t make it less of a potion,” Harry grunted, but he did as told with all the contempt of a five year old. Draco knew the liquid wouldn’t go down smoothly; he brewed the damned thing himself when Harry point blank refused all other treatments. But it would help him, Draco felt certain. And if not, at least it’d shut him up for a bit.

“Wha-“ Harry tried to say, startled, but Draco shook his head.

“You need to rest your throat now. You won’t be able to speak for the next ten minutes, I’m afraid, while it’s working. And in the meantime, you’re going to listen to me.”

Harry gave him this look, wide-eyed and terrified, and Draco felt a sadistic laughter bubbling in his abdomen. Harry tried to speak again, but all that came out this time was a garbled sort of ‘wrah’.

“That’s right. Now, look. I won’t marry you.” Perhaps it wasn’t sadistic laughter, actually; it might have been purely masochistic, because the look Harry gave him now hurt. “Not yet, anyway. We’re too young, Harry. It’s only been four years since the war, and I’m afraid you’re trying to rush this because you…” gods, even having planned this, it was still the most difficult thing Draco ever did in his life. With some exceptions, perhaps.

“I know you love me, but this fear you have of losing me is – it’s not healthy. What we have is real. I’m not going to run away, I’m not going to leave you. I don’t want you to propose out of sheer panic; I want it to be something you actually – Harry. I do want to marry you, at some point. But not like this. I love you more than anything, you must know that. You do, right?”

Harry’s eyes were pools of green, wet and agonizing, but he held out a hand for Draco to take. It was a little evil, maybe, doing it like this. No, it definitely was. But ever since Harry’s proposal last week Draco was lost. He just didn’t know how to do it in a way that wouldn’t hurt him, in a way that would make Harry understand. This was his best idea. Some genius he was.

“I’m so happy with you, Harry. So happy I often can’t believe it. When we first started dating, I thought it was a dream. Or a hoax, maybe. I kept waiting for the moment you’d go, ha, you actually believed it? and laugh in my face. Or hex me. Or something, I don’t know. But then I got to actually know you and… you’re the most important thing in my life. I can’t imagine myself without you. But we’re twenty two, and broke, and living in your adopting-mum’s attic. We work eighty hours a week and basically only see each other in the hospital. You see why it’s not the best timing, right?”

Harry nodded, curt, blinking away the tears. Draco wanted to hold him, but he kept himself back. “Waiting isn’t necessarily bad. This isn’t the world your parents got married in, or… the war is over. We have the luxury of time now. We have the luxury of waiting. We get to be young, now. You know? Actually be young.”

Damn it, was he crying? Draco turned away quickly, but Harry’s hand caught his chin and turned his face back, very gently. He was nodding. Draco’s heart was busy performing some sort of trick, possibly involving explosives.

“You understand this isn’t rejection, right? I want to be with you. I always want to be with you. But the big, adult things – getting married, having children, all that – I’m not ready for that yet. Is that all right?”

Harry ran a thumb over Draco’s lip, very slowly. “I-“ he tested his voice, and seeing that it worked, he remained silent for another endless minute. “I love you, Draco.”

Gods. Gods. Draco closed his watery eyes and leaned against Harry’s hand. “I love you too,” he sniffled, trying hard to keep the words in but failing miserably. “Gods, Harry, so much.”

“Good,” Harry laughed, though it sounded heavy with sadness. “That’s good.”

“So – you understand?”

Another eternal minute. “I think so.” His voice was awfuly scratchy.

“How… how’s your throat feeling?”

“Yeah, better, I guess. My chest’s a little sore, but I doubt that’s related.” Draco’s eyes widened in alarm, but when he looked, Harry was smiling. “I’m kidding. I’m all right. Will you make me a proper tea, though? The potion leaves a bit of an aftertaste.”

“Of course, yes. Anything.” Draco was frightened by how much he meant it. He hurried to the door, but then stopped, turning back to him. “Harry… you’re not – you got what I meant, right? It’s not a no. Just… not right now.”

He took another godawful moment before responding. “I think I did, yeah. I’ll try again later. In a good few years, maybe.”

Draco’s smile was very tight in his chest. “If I don’t get you first, then.”

The relief in Harry’s eyes hurt more than anything else. “Yeah?”

“Yes. We’re – I’m still in this. Forever.” Gods, he was such a sap, it was horrible.

“Forever.” But it was all right, because Harry was a sap too.

He put extra honey in his tea, partly as an apology, and partly because his fingers were still shaking. Forever. It felt heavy, and uncomfortable, and impossibly right.

#drarry #fic #sick Harry #but it's okay Draco's taking care of him #angst?#fluff.#flangst!#sappy boys #healer draco #healer harry #proposal #not a yes #but not a no #RockingRobin69

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julesbarlowe · 2 years

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julien barlowe ( they/she ) is a nonbinary, twenty-eight year old tattoo artist @ squid ink / musician who has been living in moorbrooke for four months. they were born on october 31st and right now, they are currently residing in oakley court. it has been said that they look suspiciously like devery jacobs and if they had to choose a song to describe themselves, they would choose hang ‘em high by my chemical romance.

full name: julien talia barlowe known as: jules, julien dob / age: october 31 / 28 zodiac: scorpio gender / pronouns: nonbinary / she/they orientation: bisexual birthplace: syracuse, ny currently residing: moorbrooke, maine occupation: tattoo artist / musician ( + ) traits: charming, passionate, honest ( - ) traits: impulsive, selfish, jealous

bio ( tw: teen parenthood, alcoholism )

chaos was a constant in the household that julien grew up in. born to two young, unprepared parents who were musicians themselves, julien was always doted on and always felt loved, but the lifestyle was messy, and she would still say that she learned to take care of herself from a very young age due to being unable to rely on her parents all the time.

this wasn’t always a bad thing, and she does credit it as strengthening her relationship with her parents, as it allowed them to treat her more like an adult, with respect. julien never made a problem when her parents went on tour and left her with a handful of boring relatives for a while; in return, her parents didn’t fuss too much about her eventually dropping out of school to pursue music. music had always come to her much more easily than school, anyways — not to mention she liked it much more. all of this uncertainty, though, led her to develop an attitude that some might describe as standoffish. she doesn’t mean to be like this, but it does tend to be an aura that she projects without realizing.

most of the time, though, her aura is exactly the opposite. julien in her prime can be incredibly charming, funny, and talkative. you don’t make it far as a musician who dropped out of high school unless you know how to make friends, and julien has never found herself short of acquaintances. wherever she goes, she can strike up a conversation with someone suddenly and be totally absorbed.

despite her ability to make friends, love has never been her strong suit, and her first real heartbreak at the age of 21 left her mostly closed off to the idea of love — after a string of disappointing & lackluster failed relationships, julien met & fell head over heels for a female drummer she was working with at age twenty-one, and has never looked back since. the relationship ended up being doomed before it really could start, because a young girl figuring out her sexuality and her first relationship while falling head over heels for an older traveling musician isn’t exactly the stuff of fairy tales.

as it turns out, the loneliness and chaos of working and living as a touring musician starts to take its toll on you after a while. about five years back, after a particularly brutally long stint of touring with some musician friends, she decided to take a step back and pursue one of her other passions, art. she got a little experience under her belt working as a tattoo intern, and fell in love with the job, and has kept doing it consistently while playing music. it was part of what kept her sane when music ended up driving her off the walls.

after so many years of living the lifestyle of a musician, plus starting to split her time between that and tattooing, julien thought she could handle touring and making music full time again a few years ago. but the loneliness of living on the road plus some constant low-simmering tension had her alcohol consumption level increasing at an alarming rate, as much as she tried to hide it. it was low and slow, but eventually her drinking blew out of proportion. she went on a bender that resulted in a drunken blowout with one of her bandmates, and before she could even process it, she was off to rehab trying to pick up the pieces of everything her life had become.

after rehab came some time spent back at home with her family, a place she’d left at eighteen and hardly looked back to except for short visits. it was nice, and it was well-needed, but it also drove her a little fucking insane for all the chaos in her life to suddenly be replaced with quiet. after a few months steady on her feet, she decided a change was in order, and moorbrooke seemed just the place when she stumbled onto it. she’s working full time as a tattoo artist, and playing music on the side just to take the edge off of things — of course, though, in the back of her brain, there’s a voice worrying about it all getting to be too much again.

potential connections

neighbors

roommate

friends

weed dealer

musician friends / maybe even a band?

aa sponsor ( will probs submit a connect for this one )

friend with benefits / fling / idk she’s new in town lmao

art / music muse

#mbintro

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rosepetalmark · 3 years

Text

it was good until it wasn’t

↬ pairing: kim doyoung x reader ↬word count: 3k ↬ genre: angst, mentions of fluff ↬warnings: mentions of sex, it’s pretty sad (you may shed a tear or two i’m v sorry) ↬ synopsis: breakups suck, especially when you’re still in-love and don’t understand where you both went wrong.

he makes it look so easy.

ignoring your texts, coming home late, barely saying a word to you when you’re together. you can’t hate him for it though, you’re the exact same.

you wonder why he doesn’t break up with you already. your relationship was basically hopeless at this point and you both know it isn’t going anywhere- it hasn’t been going anywhere for months now.

it pains you seeing him not stare at you lovingly anymore. you grew so fond of the idea of spending hours on the phone talking about the dumbest things, staying up late watching reruns of your favourite shows, even making him do face masks with you when you wanted to do self care days. you knew he loved it of course, but he always played it off as something he detested because seeing you pout over his lack of interest in a sheet mask always made him love you ten times more.

you haven’t felt his touch in two months. it was like you were living with a ghost, the feeling of his presence ever so prominent, but the actual feeling and embracement of him completely diminished. every morning he’d wake you up by kissing both your cheeks, quiet laughter humming from his chest as he admired your sleepy presence in his quest to get you to start your day.

now you wake up to the sound of him sighing as he leaves your shared bed, his empty presence filling the quiet room, causing you to feel lonely.

never in the several years of knowing doyoung did you ever imagine that his presence would become something that no longer brought you happiness.

you’ve both drifted, but you’re still together- too stubborn to admit to yourselves and each other that this relationship has run its course, forming a cohabitation with one another rather than maintaining a loving, healthy relationship.

it’s complicated, you like to believe. trying to puzzle together when everything went wrong. but you can’t because all you remember is that one day you were both madly in love with one another and the next you acted as if you were strangers.

deep down you’re scared. you’ve spent so many years and time and effort in your relationship with doyoung that you don’t truly know what life outside of him is like.

you may not have long talks anymore or stay up late watching movies or even have sex- damn you missed the days where you both would divulge in sex multiple times a week, but gosh did you find solace in his presence.

when he’s not there in bed beside you when you wake up each morning you feel empty, like a piece of your heart has been ripped out of your body and hidden halfway across the world for you to find.

he’s all you’ve touched and laughed and connected with in years and to have that ripped away from you is beyond frightening.

he’s all you know.

you yearn for the days when you were fresh in love and could never keep your hands off each other, wanting to be in each other’s presence 24/7. sadly the days of two twenty years olds having quickies in the backseat of a car and drunkenly singing karaoke at three in the morning on friday nights at the local bar were long gone. you’re not two college kids in love anymore, just two completely different adults who fell out of it.

it hurts reminiscing about the way his hands would find your waist and how his chin dipped into your neck when he found you speaking with your friends at parties; the way he would sing to you when you had trouble falling asleep, bringing you to his piano to play you whatever melody he created earlier in the day just to bring you comfort, even if it meant he was losing sleep in the process.

you especially miss his attempts at making you iced coffee in the morning. it was such a mundane act, but no matter how hard he tried and how closely he followed the instructions you gave him (not as if making iced coffee was hard anyways), he’d always make it too bitter. but you still drank it anyway, because you loved doyoung with every fibre in your being, and anything he did for you made you appreciate and fall in love with him even more. everything he did for you showed how deeply he loved and cared for you.

now you don’t get any of it. no obnoxious flirting when out in public. no beautiful nights falling asleep to his soft, angelic voice, wrapped up warmly in his tender arms. and especially no bitter, watered down iced coffee.

you’re lucky enough if he holds your hand when out in public with friends, not wanting anyone to clue in on the lack of intimacy and love that ceases to exist between the two of you.

you used to be that annoying couple who couldn’t get enough of one another, always finding ways to be in each other’s presence whenever you went out together, wanting to show the world that you were his and he was yours. now you can barely look each other in the eyes for more than five minutes without an unnecessary argument beginning to brew.

you wish you could have that all back. the routine. the peace. the love you both shared. you’re just two adults who can’t even be mature enough to break off a six year relationship because you’re both too comfortable with the thought of one another; too scared to leave what you’ve built as a couple to realize that this once great love affair has turned into something so sad and toxic, pulling you back from what you both deserve in life.

your friends have been telling you to sit down and speak to him about your feelings, his urging you both to call it quits for months now, claiming you’re making your friendship dynamic awkward, and in the end only harming yourselves. but they don’t understand what it’s like to have something so beautiful ripped from your hands without a warning, because that’s what this all felt like. as if someone swooped in and stole your bond with doyoung, when in actuality it was just the two of you growing apart-one thing you never thought would ever occur.

those four dry months eventually turned into a fifth, and that’s when you knew you had to pull the plug. you couldn’t keep living like this- wasting your life and heart and energy on a relationship that ended so long ago. it was draining the life out of you both and it was painfully evident in your faces.

the days of crying over him have long passed, making it much easier to process that you won’t ever be with him again, mentally checking out after the first two months this distance became a regular occurrence. that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt ending a love that once was your everything.

you remember so clearly the day doyoung asked you out. it was a monday after a lecture you both shared, the both of you walking alongside campus, too invested in your conversations with one another to say goodbye. you both knew you had feelings for one another, every interaction between the two of you held an abundance of smiles and rosy red cheeks.

he bit the bullet and asked if you wanted to grab dinner some time, just the two of you and away from your chaotic friend group, wanting it to be an actual date and not a group outing.

that was six years ago, and the butterflies you felt in your stomach the moment he said he wanted to date you still linger when you think back to such heartfelt innocence.

when you finally decided enough was enough and the words eventually left your mouth, he wasn’t even upset. he showed no sign of emotion, a stoic expression stuck on his tender face, only a nod of agreement following your difficult confession.

he knew he didn’t have to say anything and you didn’t expect him to. there was no fighting for something that didn’t exist anymore. doyoung may have been your boyfriend by title, but these last few months he was just doyoung. not your lover. not your best friend. just doyoung.

a stranger you know who’s smile and laugh and kisses you’ll forever have ingrained in your brain, but have not come into pure contact with for an unreasonable amount of time.

and you can’t even hate him for this breakup because he hasn’t done anything wrong. you simply grew apart, and you hate how you drug it out for so long where it got to the point where you can’t even look him into the eyes without feeling some sort of pain and resentment. the only thing you wish you could go back and change was to talk about it, because who knows, the both of you could have either resolved whatever underlying issues you had, or you would’ve been broken up by now- not stranded and confused as to where your life and relationship is going.

you never pictured you’d end up like this, assuming by the time you were in your late twenties you’d be engaged, with a dog, constantly looking at homes online for you and doyoung to one day grow your future family in. you so desperately wanted to be his forever, the one he turned to for everything. the father of your children, the greatest love of your life the entire world had to offer.

that was all in the past now.

the entire “official” breakup didn’t even hit you until doyoung was moving his stuff out of your shared apartment, little pieces of him vanishing as each minute passed.

the picture of your two year anniversary is no longer on display in the living room, the frame facing the table to signal that the once happy couple in that old photograph are no longer together and madly in love.

the pastel flower magnets doyoung loved to collect and place on the fridge ceased to exist, leaving your kitchen slightly less colourful and fun as they were tossed away in one of the many random boxes he got from the hardware store earlier.

even the ugly rustic coffee table you hated but he adored- something that totally clashed with the aesthetic of the apartment but reminded doyoung of his childhood, all removed from your shared space and never to be seen in your presence again. you begged doyoung for a new one years ago but he always managed to convince you it had charm, always flashing you a wide grin in his process to win your heart over. you never thought the day would come where you’d miss seeing it in your living room.

everything was so clean and spacious. everything was gone.

it was weird seeing your once cluttered home look so different. yet despite all the space, every single memory and experience you shared with doyoung was ever present in your mind, overwhelming you all at once as no future memories between the two of you will be made.

it felt like just yesterday you both signed the lease, accidentally spilling red wine on the brand new white rug doyoung bought an hour after you got the keys, knowing you were eyeing it for months online, refusing to buy it until you officially had a place together. you were both so excited to start your lives here. to be young and to evolve and to explore your relationship in a manner more romantic and mature than you had the last few years.

all his instruments and songbooks that were once scattered in the corner of your living room are gone, packed in their cases and in doyoung’s car, awaiting their new home once he takes his remaining items and leaves.

it hurts the most when thinking about the bedroom. you haven’t slept there since he started packing his things four days ago, not wanting to get emotional over half the room and its belongings disappearing with what felt like a snap of the fingers.

but you had to make your way in there now, because all you could hear coming from the thin white wall down the hallway were soft, hiccupped sobs- such emotion you weren’t familiar with in months.

part of you wants to let him be and pretend like you hear nothing just so he can gather his thoughts and belongings and be on his way.

but you can’t. because despite how much you tell yourself that this is for the best and you’re past everything, you’re not. there’s a huge part of you that still cares so deeply for doyoung and you wouldn’t ever wish pain on him.

quietly walking into your bedroom towards your once shared bed, you sit beside him. grabbing his hand, you can feel the warmth radiating from his body, reminding you of the days you’d go on long walks, him never letting go of you because he never wanted to break physical contact.

“hi.” you whisper, not entirely sure how to spark a conversation with him. you haven’t been this vulnerable with him in what feels like forever, the last time you saw him cry was over two years ago when your relationship was seemingly at its best. he hasn’t been this upset was when he thought he lost taeyong’s dog, but it turned out that it was yuta’s day to watch him while he went to work.

“hey.” he says, his voice raspy and shaky due to the tears, his face red with anxiety.

“so we’re really doing this, huh?” you ask, your voice beginning to shake as well. seeing doyoung cry always breaks your heart, and the fact that he’s doing so after you both ended things makes you want to crawl in a hole and never leave.

this was hitting you too hard. so much harder than you could’ve ever imagined. you thought that because you both just fell apart and seemed unbothered by such a drastic change in your lives and relationship that he’d pack his things and you’d both be on with your lives. but now that you’re both separating from one another for good when all you’ve known was each other for years, it’s soul crushing.

doyoung is here in your once shared bedroom holding your hand and crying with you because you both failed to make your relationship work despite having such strong feelings for one another.

you love this man so much, yet you know there’s nothing you can do to bring you both back to the state you were once in. you’re different people now, and you can’t mold back into the two young, horny, and madly in love college sophomores anymore thinking you’re going to be together forever.

“god i hate this!” he yells in between sobs, his face getting more and more red as the tears stream down his face. and you hate this too, because you didn’t think this whole process would cause each of you to bawl your eyes out because you don’t want to leave a love and comfort you’ve both outgrown.

you wiped his tears with your fingers, caressing his cheeks to reassure him that none of this is his fault. you needed to be strong for him and yourself, because unfortunately this is life and even the shittiest things happen to good people.

falling out of love unfortunately falls into that category.

he places a kiss on your forehead and wraps his arms tightly around your frame as a final goodbye, embracing all of you within these last few moments as a reminder of how much love and respect he has for you.

“so this is it.” he whispers softly, slowly getting up from the bed and untangling himself from his previous hold on you, acting as if his emotional outburst didn’t even happen, composing himself to make this already hard process the slightest bit easier.

matching his actions, you get up as well and follow him out of the bedroom, glancing back at your half empty room and feeling your heart shatter.

no more stealing his sweaters when you’re cold and want to be comfy. no more late nights of talking or making love. no more doyoung.

“this is it.” you whisper back, not having much to say, the tightness in your chest growing further as you continue to relish in such heartbreak together. you were each other’s first serious loves, and not having that constant in your lives will be such a heart wrenching adjustment.

“i love you, doyoung.” you say, needing to remind him that there will always be a part of him in your heart and that you’re sorry things ended this way.

“i know, love. i’ll always love you. i’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“i’d like that.” you nod, the emotions filling up your chest, suddenly making it hard to breathe knowing this is all happening now. “be safe getting to your apartment.”

“always.” he winked, tears evident in his eyes as he began to turn his body away from yours and towards the final box beside the front door, turning the knob and leaving for good- gone from the love and home you’ve both invested so much time and warmth into.

you’ve spent so much of your life with this man, planned so much and anticipated such a beautiful future just for it to end and for you both not to know how to fix the broken pieces you left each other in.

maybe someday in the future you and doyoung will get back together and plan that beautiful wedding and have those three beautiful kids in a big house with a pool and a baby french bulldog.

but as for now you are letting go.

#nct scenarios #nct imagines #nct 127 scenarios #doyoung scenarios #doyoung imagines #nct 127 imagines #nct smut #kim doyung #nct #nct 127 #nct angst #kim doyoung scenarios

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queenshelby · 3 years

Text

A New Life

Part Ten: The Hunt

Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Words: 3,154

Warning: Smut

After about twenty minutes and you finally managed to get dressed, the doorbell rang and Cillian’s sister arrived to look after the children.

Cillian’s sister was in her early thirties and currently pregnant with her second child. She had kindly offered to look after Max and Cian’s children and, after you had met her already a few weeks ago, you thought that this was a good idea since Max wouldn’t be able to walk the whole 12 km you had planned.

Max was excited to see her and Cillian’s young nephew who, recently, had turned four was going to spend the day with him and the other children.

‘Good to see you again Y/N’ she said, greeting you with a hug and you recalled the last time you had met her at Cillian’s house when him and Cian were making dinner. It was obvious to you that she liked you and, even more so, it was obvious to her that you liked her brother and that this feeling was mutual.

‘Good to see you. How was the drive?’ you asked, knowing that she was travelling from Cork, which is where she lived.

‘Pretty good actually. I went to see mum and dad last night for dinner and stayed there’ she pointed out, looking at Cillian as she did. It was obvious to you that she was teasing him, but you didn’t know what about.

‘I got the message, thanks’ Cillian chuckled and, just as he did, his sister pulled him aside.

***

‘You know what I am about to say’ she said to Cillian in private so that no one else could hear them.

She had been trying to get Cillian to ask you out for two weeks now, but he outright refused.

‘And I told you that I am not interested in dating. Despite, she’s twenty years younger than me’ Cillian pointed out again after having made the age gap between you and him quite an issue.

Of course, his sister didn’t know that you were, in fact, sleeping with each other but, this didn’t change the fact that neither of you were wanting to be romantically involved with anyone right now.

What his sister did, however, know was how you both looked at each and how much Cillian enjoyed your and Max’s company. Unbeknownst to you, she had flagged with Cillian several times before and simply wanted him to be happy.

‘Think about it Cillian, she’s young which means that she probably still wants children. Despite, you wouldn’t be the first actor who dates a younger woman. Apparently, it is quite common’ his sister said, grinning cheekily.

‘You need to stop it’ Cillian chuckled. ‘Did Ma put you up to this?’ he then asked somewhat amused after she begged him during his last visit to Cork to find someone, settle down and give her some more grandchildren.

‘Maybe’ his sister grinned in response before carrying on. ‘She said that, perhaps, you just need a little a bit of help’ she then said, causing Cillian to chuckle again before sighing in disbelieve.

‘Ma thinks I need a little bit of help with finding a woman, eh?’ he asked somewhat amused and his sister nodded with a wide smile.

‘Yes, and I have something in mind to help you along’ she went on to say before dragging Cillian back into the kitchen.

Cillian’s sister was into boardgames and a little nerdy, just like her brother. She had recently started a business and was organising parties and fun activities for children and adults. This, amongst other things, included murder mystery parties and escape rooms and she he had a little surprise prepared for your hike as well with the help from your brother Cian who was about to bail on the adventure.

***

‘Listen up folks! I am trialling out a new little business idea and you will be my test objects. I am sending you all on a scavenger hunt’ she announced with excitement, causing Cillian to cock an eyebrow.

‘Seriously?’ he asked, unimpressed. He was tired enough as it was and didn’t want to spend the entire day looking for cues.

‘I suppose we better form teams then’ Laura said, looking over towards Cillian who was still preoccupied with his second cup of coffee and didn’t notice.

‘I have already set up three teams and each team will get an envelope with separate sets of instructions. At the end, you will all meet at the same place but you will get there via different ways. The first team to arrive will win’ she explained before handing out the envelopes.

‘Well Y/N, it looks like you are stuck with me for the day’ Cillian said as his sister handed him a green coloured envelope with both of your names on it and you couldn’t help but get a little excited about it all.

You would be spending the next five or six hours with Cillian and you were rather happy about that.

Laura, on the other hand, was disappointed that she was paired up with Evelyn while the other couple at the house was paired up with each other.

***

After addressing a few housekeeping matters and putting on your hiking shoes, each team made their way to the nearby reserve which is where you all had to split up.

Cillian and you were headed south and, after a twenty-minute journey, you questioned Cillian’s navigation skills.

‘Are you sure this is the right way?’ you asked, curious as to whether Cillian knew where he was going.

‘Yes, I am sure. Trust me, alright?’ he confirmed and you nodded and agreed to simply follow his lead. You were way too tired to argue with him and, ten minutes later, were glad that you didn’t as, sure enough, you arrived at the trail referenced inside the envelope you were given.

As you arrived at the trail, the crisp air was blissfully quiet and the area almost seemed deserted. You were surprised that it didn’t attract more tourists but Cillian told you that it was simply too early in the day.

The peace and quiet could almost be felt even as the cool morning breeze wafted through the trees and gently stirred the still morning air.

‘I am fairly sure I know where the first cue is’ Cillian then said as you began walking down the trail still rugged up in long pants and jackets and, when you were sure that really no one was around, you took hold of his hand.

You weren’t sure whether you should have done that or whether it was inappropriate since you weren’t dating, but Cillian quickly confirmed with a kiss that it was alright.

‘I actually like the fact that it is just us for the day walking through these woods’ Cillian then chuckled after your lips drifted apart and he didn’t really appear pressed for time.

‘And why is that?’ you asked cheekily and with a big grin on your face.

‘So, I can keep doing this’ he responded before kissing you again, this time more passionately.

By this point, you were less than an hour into your journey and already lost some time simply by stopping and kissing each other but a kiss wasn’t all you wanted.

‘Is kissing all you want to do while we have this time alone together in the woods?’ you asked while suggestively biting your lip and Cillian couldn’t help but laugh.

‘I suppose I am not very competitive and don’t care if we win or lose so, if we find a quiet and secluded area then, by all means, we can do whatever you want’ Cillian said with a wink and you eagerly nodded before pulling him close again.

‘Hmm how cheeky Mr Murphy’ you giggled and, sure enough, about twenty minutes later, you arrived at a rather secluded area which is also where the next cue was hidden.

You bent down to pick up the cue and you could immediately feel Cillian’s eyes on your ass when you did.

By this point, you had removed your jacked and stuffed it into your backpack which caused more of your beautiful skin to be exposed.

‘Are you staring at my ass?’ you asked cheekily before reminding Cillian that he was meant to read the next part of the instructions inside of the envelope.

‘Of course not’ he chuckled in response as he was still trying to catch his breath after having walked uphill for quite some time.

‘Out of breath, are we old man?’ you then teased but Cillian wasn’t amused.

‘Call me that again and you are in trouble’ he said before telling you that he was a little out of shape after having missed last weeks’ PT sessions and, just as he did, you pulled him close for a passionate and long kiss.

With a mischievous look, you leaned into him, took the envelope out of his hand and ran your hand over Cillian’s crotch.

‘It looks like this guy isn't out of shape. To the contrary, he seems to be perfectly healthy’ you smirked before pushing Cillian against the large tree in front of which he was standing.

‘He is very eager and active, that’s for sure’ Cillian laughed just before you began to unbutton and unzip his pants in order to free his hard member.

‘Jesus Y/N’ he then groaned as you began to stroke him gently while keeping an eye out to ensure that no one was watching you.

But your sense for your surroundings soon vanished when Cillian pulled you even closer for yet another passionate kiss.

As the kissing furiously escalated you became soaking wet and needed to feel Cillian’s cock inside you. Breaking contact, you quickly turned around and suggestively leaned forward against one of the large rock formations.

There were no words needed and Cillian quickly grabbed hold of your tights and pushed them down your legs along with your panties.

‘So fucking wet again’ Cillian observed with a husky voice as his fingers brushed against your wet folds, collecting some of your juices and spreading them before he lined himself up with your entrance from behind.

‘Well, I am always aching for you, you should know that by now’ you said, wiggling your ass to encourage him to slide inside you.

Then, all of a sudden, you let out a loud cry as, with one swift thrust, Cillian’s cock smoothly penetrated you and entered your waiting pussy.

‘Shh’ Cillian reminded you as each slow and agonising thrust elicited protests from you to speed up but he ignored them with a smirk and proceeded at a painfully slow pace, making sure your body and pussy felt each deep impact.

Coated by your slick juices, drops of your sweet nectar began to drip from Cillian’s cock with every thrust and you could hear him groan behind you, watching his cock impale on your pussy.

‘You are so fucking sexy in those hiking clothes’ Cillian observed and, hearing your soft but growing moans in response, caused him to increase the force and speed of his thrusts.

‘Oh god Cillian, fuck’ you moaned and, eventually, he leaned forward and gave your ears a playful nibble before taking your hands into his so that your entire body weight was balanced solely by his hands and cock.

As he began to speed up and thrusted into you earnestly with the full length of his cock your assets began shuddering from the forceful pounding.

You loved hearing Cillian’s soft growls and he loved hearing your heated moans as you were fucking like animals in heat and your rough but yet passionate love making had been quickly building up to a climax.

‘Oh god Cillian, cum inside me. I want to feel it, all of it’ you moaned as you became louder and more desperate.

‘Not yet’ Cillian said determined as your lustful moans echoed throughout the forest and no doubt spooked some animals. Instead of continuing his assault on your pussy, he pulled his dripping and erect cock out of your warm wetness, leaving you once again to pout and beg in desperation.

‘Please no…Cillian…fuck…’ you huffed out as you turned around to look at him in confusion.

Your plead for more was met with a grin and then a kiss which was passionate but not as heated as the last.

‘Common, let’s keep going and find another cue first’ he said, pulling up his pants and covering his erection as best as he could after your lips drifted apart.

‘Cillian, I am fucking soaking. I need to cum’ you said, disapproving of his teasing, but he enjoyed it way too much. It was his game.

***

An hour and two cues later, you found yet another perfect love making spot deep inside the forest.

‘This perfect, there is no one around and the area is covered with bushes’ you observed just before your lips met with his, demanding him to take you and make you cum without saying anything else.

Cillian nodded and, without words, you both somehow stumbled over to a flat rock not too far from the marker indicating the direction of the trail.

Covered by dense vegetation, this large, smooth rock seemed perfectly suited as a bench for groups of people. For the two of you, though, it was just the perfect place for other activities...

As you sat down on the rock Cillian bent down and proceeded to give you what you deserved.

‘These will need to come off’ Cillian said, kneeling before you and tugging on your tights.

You quickly undid your hiking shoes and then pushed them off before allowing Cillian to remove yourtights and panties.

‘Let’s hope no one comes down this way, eh?’ he then smirked but you no longer cared and pulled him close, desperate to feel him inside of you once again.

Spreading your legs apart, he leaned above you and took you in fully with his eyes. Your smiling and blushing face, cheeks and pussy reddened with arousal turned Cillian on immensely. Your hard nipples poking through your exercise top, heaving with each breath were a sight he knew he would remember forever. And your shy but warm hands, gripped Cillian’s hand with great trust as your shining eyes encouraged him to take you right then and there.

Cillian unbuttoned and unzipped his pants again, pushing them down together with his briefs before aligning himself with your entrance.

Without hesitation, he took a deep breath and plunged straight into your tight wetness as a whimper escaped your quivering lips. Cillian was pushing in firmly and pulling out in an agonisingly slow manner. This only increased the pleasure and soon your bodies were moving in tandem like a well-oiled fucking machine as grunts and moans filled the air.

Cillian was joyfully fucking you as his cock pounded against your pussy and relentlessly assaulted it as your dueling tongues enticed each other to hotter and deeper kisses.

His thrusts soon fastened but, just as you were about to approach a hastening climax, he slowed down again. Although fucking you senseless was what his body yearned to do as he saw your heaving body under him shining with sweat, his reserves of self-control still held.

Pushing in deeply so that you could feel his warm cock filling you up, he remained in you for a short while before pulling out completely.

As you gazed at him with pleading eyes, he smirked, then leaned in to kiss you before slamming his cock unexpectedly into your waiting pussy starving for more.

Again and again, he followed this process of pushing deep into you, holding it there so you could feel such fullness, before pulling out completely and leaving you yearning crazily for the next thrust.

Taking you to new heights of pleasure with each deep impact, he began to speed up unconsciously as your moans and hot pussy walls rapidly eroded his self-control.

All too soon, he felt the climax approaching inevitably. Even as your bodies were lost in pleasure, however, your ears picked up the murmur of early hikers at the summit not too far from where you were. And yet, Cillian’s cock began to pound you harder and faster with increasing urgency and desperation.

‘Don’t you dare fucking stop now’ you moaned quietly and Cillian certainly couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. Placing both hands on your shoulders, he forcefully pushed down as his hips returned from their swing and thrusted firmly upwards into you. Impaled on his thick and painfully erect shaft, your pussy lips widened, as did your eyes.

‘Oh god yes’ you moaned as your climax was approaching fast and hard and you began to quiver.

With a groan, Cillian reached his high at the same time as you. His cock was exploding deep inside you, filling your waiting pussy with sticky ropes of hot cum. Even as your pussy walls convulsed with pleasure, they were quickly painted white with his swirling cum while trying their best to milk him dry of every drop.

Wrapped in a deep kiss to muffle your moans of pleasure, you could hear the nearby crowd approaching and, at the sound of the cracking of some sticks, Cillian quickly pulled out of you and helped you up from where you were lying.

Seeing your sore and well-used pussy dripping your juices and his thick cum made Cillian inhale sharply before he pulled up his pants.

You were quick to get dressed yourself before anyone would see you and, sure enough, minutes later, the small group pf hikers found your little hiding spot and greeted you.

***

After another few hours following your small detour deeper into the woods in order to get some intimacy, you finally found the last cue which led you to a small local pub.

You weren’t surprised when you learned that you were, indeed, the last team to arrive at your destination.

‘Did you guys get lost or something?’ Cian asked when you both finally sat down at the table and ordered two pints of Guinness.

‘We just took our time. Those cues were tricky’ Cillian chuckled which is when Evelyn informed you that you arrived an entire hour after she did.

‘I had to stop and take some sightseeing photos as well’ you then told her, cheeks blushing red while you were already thinking about how you would be sneaking into Cillian’s bedroom that night.

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