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kurowrites · 4 years

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The Live-In Boyfriend - Chapter 10: Lullaby for Wei Ying

Wei Ying knew Lan Zhan well enough by now that he also knew about certain peculiarities that he had. Not that these peculiarities detracted anything from Lan Zhan’s general… everything. On the contrary, these little peculiarities added something to him that made him irresistible.

One thing Wei Ying found interesting, for example, was that it was quite difficult to get Lan Zhan into a relaxed mood. He was generally a calm and controlled person, and even when they had sex and Lan Zhan showed a rather wild side of himself, Wei Ying would never be able to describe that as uncontrolled. Whatever Lan Zhan did, he did it with a certain intent and gravity. However, once he reached a certain state of relaxation, Lan Zhan turned out to not only be remarkably agreeable, but also playful. He would even indulge any of Wei Ying’s stupid questions.

The only difficulty was, of course, to get him there.

So when they were in the living room one day, with Wei Ying lazily lounging on the sofa while Lan Zhan was reading something, Wei Ying felt that his chance had come. Lan Zhan was sitting with Wei Ying’s head in his lap, and he was absentmindedly petting Wei Ying’s hair, a sense of ease around him that could only come from the fact that he was completely on break right now, physically as well as mentally. Wei Ying figured that Lan Zhan was just in the right mood to bear a little teasing from him.

“Say, Lan Zhan,” he said aloud.

Lan Zhan made a soft noise to signal that he was listening, and kept stroking Wei Ying’s hair.

“What’s your favourite animal?”

Lan Zhan stopped his movements for a moment and looked down at Wei Ying, probably trying to gauge the meaning of this sudden question. After a moment, he turned back to his book and put his hand back into Wei Ying’s hair. (Wei Ying wasn’t going to lie: he loved being petted by Lan Zhan, so that was a definite plus.)

“Rabbits,” he eventually replied.

That… that was a surprisingly cute choice, Wei Ying thought a little stunned. He didn’t quite know what he had expected Lan Zhan to answer, but rabbits definitely hadn’t been on the top of his list.

The thought of Lan Zhan and rabbits was a little incongruous, but after a moment of consideration… it was also very cute. Lan Zhan and a fluffy bunny. He was always such a careful person, so he would probably gently take the bunny, put it on his lap, and then stroke him with controlled, slow movements until the rabbit would fall asleep from all that careful petting. He could see it in his imagination. Well, that was something he definitely wanted to see in real life. Lan Zhan and bunnies.

“Wise choice,” he said aloud. “They are rather delicious.”

Lan Zhan sent him a stern look, one that clearly threatened the withholding of any more pettings unless Wei Ying took those words back.

“I’m joking, I’m joking!” Wei Ying exclaimed, quick to reassure Lan Zhan even as he was laughing. “I’m obviously joking. No eating the rabbits that Lan Zhan likes so much, I promise.”

That seemed to mollify Lan Zhan somewhat, and he thankfully didn’t remove his wonderful hand from Wei Ying’s hair.

“Wei Ying?”

“Huh?”

“What is Wei Ying’s favourite?” Lan Zhan repeated the question.

“Oh.” Wei Ying considered the question for a moment. “I don’t really think I have one that I prefer over all the others. I mean, rabbits are very cute, but so are cats and some birds and alpacas, and red pandas, and… well, I can tell you what I definitely don’t like: I hate dogs. I hope you will understand that this apartment is and forever will be a dog-free zone as long as I live here.”

“Why?”

Wei Ying looked up at Lan Zhan and found him looking back.

“What do you mean, why?”

“Many people like dogs. Many people own dogs. So, why.”

Wei Ying sighed heavily. “So you want me to confess my uncoolness? Fine. I got maimed by a dog once, and I don’t trust them not to try that a second time. Ergo, no dogs.”

Lan Zhan made a noise that might have been agreement or consideration, Wei Ying wasn’t entirely sure. But he didn’t ask about how Wei Ying had ended up in between the jaws of a dog, and Wei Ying was honestly glad that he didn’t. He hated even thinking about it, much less talking about it.

Instead, Lan Zhan declared, “No dogs. We can have rabbits instead. They are much better.”

“Haha, are you planning on getting a pet now?” Wei Ying teased. “You already have me! You should pay attention to me!”

He playfully pouted at Lan Zhan. It wasn’t entirely inaccurate, too. After all, he kind of was Lan Zhan’s pet. At least, Lan Zhan took care of him, and gave him food and everything else he needed to live. So really, Lan Zhan was kind of keeping him. Not that Wei Ying minded that. After all, Lan Zhan had saved him from homelessness. And without knowing it, too.

He wriggled around until he could sit up and placed himself in Lan Zhan’s lap, wrapping his arms around Lan Zhan’s wonderful, strong shoulders.

“You’re not planning to replace me with a few fluffy rabbits, are you?” he asked, still fake-pouting.

“No,” Lan Zhan replied gravely. “Not replacing Wei Ying. I have always wanted to keep rabbits.”

That was, again, unexpectedly cute. But then again, a lot of things about Lan Zhan were unexpectedly cute. Like the way he frowned when he tuned his guqin and one of the strings wasn’t quite right. Or how hopeful and expectant he looked whenever he came through the door of the apartment and Wei Ying ran to the door to welcome him back with a kiss. The way he always made sure that Wei Ying was eating properly, and pushed food onto his plate when he thought he wasn’t.

“Hmmm, okay,” Wei Ying decided. “Lan Zhan should have all the bunnies he wants. And if they are too many, I can make rabbit stew.”

He laughed at Lan Zhan’s frowny face, and climbed off of Lan Zhan’s lap to go to the kitchen and prepare some conciliatory tea.

That was another thing that made Lan Zhan unbearably cute. Give frowny him some good, fresh tea, and all seemed to be forgiven. It made Wei Ying want to tease him even more.

---

A little while after Wei Ying’s first official family appearance as Lan Zhan’s boyfriend, Lan Zhan announced that he was required to attend an event at university and hoped that Wei Ying would be able to accompany him. Wei Ying was quick to say yes, not just because it was his job, but also because he was kind of curious to see Lan Zhan in a professional setting.

He felt that Lan Zhan must be well-respected among his peers, but then, it was difficult to imagine that anyone wouldn’t respect Lan Zhan. He was very respectable. The respectable-est. So, Wei Ying was curious to see how his colleagues actually acted around him.

Which was how Wei Ying found himself in another suit made by Bai Jun, and took the metro to Gusu University to meet up with Lan Zhan after Lan Zhan had finished work at 5 pm. Since Lan Zhan always walked around in an impeccable suit when he was at work, he didn’t really need to change clothes, but Wei Ying brought him a different tie to wear, anyway.

He thought it would be a nice gesture.

I he was honest, he would have to admit that he felt a little nervous about meeting Lan Zhan’s colleagues. He felt the need to make a good impression, not for his own sake, but for Lan Zhan’s. If Lan Zhan was as respected as Wei Ying guessed he was, Wei Ying didn’t want to be the reason for criticism.

Lan Zhan himself seemed entirely unconcerned about such a thing, though. He simply took the offered tie with a word of thanks, changed it with his work tie, and then steered Wei Ying towards one of the central buildings on campus where the event was supposed to take place.

When they arrived, quite a few people were there already, milling about in a tastefully decorated hall Wei Ying had never been in when he had studied here. Dispersed among the crowd were servers carrying around large trays filled with drinks and small appetizers.

While Lan Zhan went for his usual water, he made sure to get Wei Ying a very good glass of red wine, and then navigated him through the crowd towards where Lan Huan was already talking to several elderly gentlemen.

Lan Huan smiled at them as he caught sight of their approaching forms.

“It is good to see you again, Wei Ying,” he told Wei Ying in welcome before he introduced him to the men he had been talking to (and whose names and function Wei Ying forgot as soon as he had been told).

That was more or less how the evening progressed. All kinds of people came up to Lan Zhan and talked to him for a few minutes, and Lan Zhan introduced Wei Ying to those he apparently deemed worthy of such an introduction. He made sure that Wei Ying was well-supplied with snack and drinks, and occasionally kept him entertained during (usually very boring) speeches that were apparently thought necessary.

“Is it always like this?” Wei Ying asked quietly after an hour or so. “I’m starting to see why you don’t want to go alone to these events.”

“Hn,” Lan Zhan agreed. “Occasionally there are guests that are worth the conversation.”

“Aiyoo,” Wei Ying cried and laughed. “What a harsh assessment, Lan Zhan! Now I hope I am considered to be worth the conversation.”

“Wei Ying is always worth the conversation,” Lan Zhan declared, and well.

That was that, apparently.

And Wei Ying definitely wasn’t blushing at that comment.

---

Wei Ying had to use the restroom once after indulging in the good wine that was served here, so he got separated from Lan Zhan for a little while. As he was making his way back to Lan Zhan, he happened to come across several people who were gossiping loudly – gossiping loudly, that was, about no one other than him.

“I can’t understand how someone from the Lan family can find it acceptable to date someone like that. Just look at the hair! And the way he keeps sticking to Lan Zhan. So unrefined! Completely unfitting for someone like Lan Zhan.”

“Well, there’s probably an easy explanation for that – he probably has certain abilities that Lan Zhan approves of.”

Several people in the group laughed.

“I think what you’re trying to say it that he’s a slut and good at spreading his legs.”

That opinion was followed with more laughter.

Wei Ying was trying hard not to pay the talk any mind, since he knew very well that it was ridiculous to be bothered by things like that. There was bound to be gossip. Lan Zhan had been open about his homosexuality for years now, that much Wei Ying new from the newspaper articles he had read, but he had never openly dated anyone. The sudden appearance of a boyfriend was certainly going to catch the attention of idle gossips like these.

What hurt him a little was that he couldn’t exactly deny what they had said. Compared to Lan Zhan, he was uneducated, and honestly, he was pretty good when it came to spreading his legs. At least where Lan Zhan was concerned. Not that this was a problem. Almost anyone so inclined would be ready to enthusiastically spread their legs when it came to Lan Zhan, really. The thing was, he wasn’t Lan Zhan’s real boyfriend, and therefore certainly wasn’t together with him just for the sake of being together with him. They had an agreement that involved money. And that didn’t really make him look like the morally superior person here.

All in all, it wasn’t worth to get upset over it, he decided. What was between them was between them, Wei Ying and Lan Zhan, and no one else.

He passed the group of gossipers with his head held high, and delighted in the way Lan Zhan turned around as soon as Wei Ying was in his vicinity, offering him his arm with practiced ease.

Sure, the gossips might think him a slut and a boor. They would probably call him a whore too if they knew about his arrangement with Lan Zhan. But it was still him that Lan Zhan had chosen, and not any of them. And it was him that Lan Zhan would go home with tonight. So really, who was the winner here?

He smiled up at Lan Zhan and carefully didn’t tell him what he’d just heard.

He tried to forget about the gossips, but the gossips were unable to forget about him, it seemed. It didn’t take very long until one of the gossipers that Wei Ying had seen earlier approached them.

He didn’t make a particularly mean impression, purely judging from his appearance. He was good-looking in a rather bland way, his most striking feature being that nothing about him was particularly striking, and that there was a certain roundness about him that softened his expressions. The man started to talk to Lan Zhan, but Wei Ying wasn’t particularly intent on making his acquaintance, so he mostly nodded politely as they were introduced, and then tuned the conversation out as soon as he wasn’t spoken to directly.

He returned to actually listening when the topic of conversation once again turned to him.

“We were all rather surprised, Professor Lan, when you brought someone with you tonight. We didn’t know you were taken.”

Wei Ying tried hard not to read anything malicious into that comment, but the urge to make a sharp comeback was strong.

Lan Zhan, on the other hand, was slow in this reply. He looked at the other man for several long moments and made him squirm in discomfort, before he finally deigned to reply.

“I wanted to make sure that this relationship is steady, and that Wei Ying is comfortable, before I introduce him,” he said.

Wei Ying tried to suppress a grin. He didn’t know if Lan Zhan had somehow managed to divine the bad intent behind the speaker’s words, but leave it to him to say just as much, if not more, in one single sentence. He hadn’t just suggested that this relationship had been going on for a while now, he had also asserted that they were both serious about it and that Lan Zhan was a doting boyfriend who took care of his lover properly.

That had to sting, particularly after everything the gossips had been saying. Not that it mattered. But it still felt very satisfying, as it always did when Lan Zhan demonstrated that he cared about Wei Ying’s wellbeing.

“I-” the other man stuttered, apparently a little disconcerted by Lan Zhan’s straightforward answer. “I see, that is very lovely. You make a good couple.”

Liar, Wei Ying thought.

He suddenly saw it with perfect clarity. This man wanted to stand next to Lan Zhan exactly the way Wei Ying was doing it right now.

Honestly, the sentiment wasn’t particularly surprising. He’d thought about it before. After all, Lan Zhan was an eligible bachelor, with an excellent pedigree, and a powerful family backing him. His brother was the director of the university. His uncle was the major. Merely on that account, many would consider Lan Zhan a desirable match. But he was also beautiful, intelligent, disciplined, and skilled in many things. He was quiet, but willing to listen and help if needed. If he weren’t openly gay, women probably wouldn’t leave him alone. As it was, there were enough men who hoped for a chance with the incomparable Lan Zhan. And this one was certainly one of them.

What a pity for him that Lan Zhan had absolutely no interest in him, and that Wei Ying was already in that place he coveted so much. It was too bad, really, but Wei Ying couldn’t really feel any compassion after he had been described as a slut who only knew how to spread his legs for Lan Zhan.

“Lan Zhan is a very caring partner,” he said out loud, smiling up at Lan Zhan innocently. “I was very lucky to meet and fall in love with him.”

The man looked like he was ready to bite off his own tongue, but he eventually just nodded and smiled politely.

Good riddance, Wei Ying thought uncharitably once he finally left. And don’t you come back.

Despite that little incident, the evening turned out pleasant, with most guests being much better behaved than the troupe of gossips. Still, once Lan Zhan finally called it a night and drove them back to the apartment, Wei Ying felt tired. He had never been much of a schmoozer, and these few hours had been more than enough. He was looking forward to returning home and having Lan Zhan all for himself, now.

Still, though. He couldn’t quite forget the label that the gossip circle had christened him with.

Slut.

The word didn’t hurt him so much as that it made him wonder what exactly they were doing here. When did Lan Zhan plan to break up with him? And was it okay to continue like that until then? He knew that they had started this relationship with a simple deal that would benefit them both, but the longer they had been together, the more Wei Ying had started to believe that Lan Zhan deserved actual happiness. Of course, Lan Zhan had told him in the beginning that he wasn’t looking for anything serious, but Wei Ying still thought that Lan Zhan deserved everything. More than the fake relationship he was acting out with Wei Ying. More than pretending to be in love. An actual boyfriend, who would always love him. Not Wei Ying, and whatever Wei Ying was.

“Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan asked as he parked the car in the parking garage of their apartment. “Is everything alright?”

Wei Ying smiled at him, careful to make it a little tired. “Yes, sorry, I’m just tired. I haven’t been around this many people for a while now. Will you play me something before we sleep? I want to wind down a little before I go to sleep.”

The request for music seemed to allay Lan Zhan’s worries.

“Hn,” he readily agreed, and put his arm around Wei Ying to guide him to the elevator. “Lullaby for Wei Ying.”

There was a tiny uptick at the corner of his mouth, and Wei Ying realised that he was being teased.

With his surprised laughter resonating in the parking garage, the doors of the elevator closed quietly, and carried them up to their home.

#kuro writes #the untamed #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #mdzs #live-in boyfriend AU

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melosjournal · 3 years

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Full Circle

Happy 1 year anniversary to the Timewalker campaign’s finale! <3 back in 2019 I wrote a piece with Melos as she prepares to go on her Timewalkers mission. To celebrate this anniversary, I wanted to circle allll the way back to Melos’ original Dragonsworn mentor and her Stormwind apartment. :’)

“Miss Brassbell.”

“Priestess Starstalker.”

Melostra dips her head low. It looks entirely out of place - this long-limbed, strange creature bowing in reverence to such a small and stout gnomish woman. It spoke to Pippi Brassbell’s experience and seniority within the Bronze Dragonflight. The kaldorei respected a select few people - nearly all of them female kaldorei above her in station - but she would never question Pippi. She was an older gnome, weathered from the sun, her auburn hair streaked with silver. Her disposition was warm, welcoming and open, which made it all the more strange that she had been the one to recommend Melostra Starstalker to the Bronzes. Opposites attract, she supposed.

But Melos had neglected Pippi. She dare not lift her head for what she might see, be it disappointment or anger. She inhales deeply and straightens her back and, with her pink eyes still locked onto the worn wooden floor, she clasps her hands in front of herself. “Miss Brassbell, I’m-” “Melostra. Shame doesn’t suit you. Oh, come now -- raise your chin up.” A knot gathers between the kaldorei’s furrowed brows. Tentatively, hesitantly, she raises her gaze - not by a lot, admittedly - to look Pippi in the eyes for the first time. Large, green, brilliant. It was strange to hear her name spoken by anyone else that wasn’t Demitri or her auntie Lilenya. Priestess, yes. Sister, sometimes. But Melostra was a name that was seldomly spoken aloud. Even more rare was it for the kaldorei to not mind, as much.

“I heard all about your adventure. You did well, you did your job - completed the mission. But…” Pippi pauses, and so does Melos. She inhales deeply, casting her gaze aside again. The window is coated in a thin sheet of dust. Nobody has been in this room in months, and the more she looks around, the more she realizes that some corners are locked in time. An unfinished draft, an open book. Signs that at some point, Melos had lived here. Melos had called this her home. Even during her temporary stay, auntie Lilenya hadn’t dared disturb the traces her niece left behind.

“You left. Your first and your last mission.” Pippi has tilted her head as if trying to maintain eye contact with the much too tall kaldorei, and Melos grants it, meeting her gaze once more. “.... there’s no shame in that, Melostra. To see the things you’ve seen. To lose yourself in time… not everyone is going to be fine with that. Not everyone is going to survive that.”

Completely involuntarily, Melos starts breathing again, from surprise more than anything else. Was that it? Was that the reason for the knot in her chest, the way her lungs seemed to tighten whenever she looked into her mentors green eyes? The Priestess may be cold and distant, but she recognized Pippi’s attempt at comforting her. To heal a hurt she shouldn’t feel obliged to heal.

It felt like a lifetime ago that Melos had received the summons. Dragonsworn and Watcher Melostra Starstalker was to join her first official mission as a Timewalker, to go back in time. Thirteen years, to be exact. She had fought in Ashenvale, seen the rise and fall of C’thun, loved Darnassus, and now she was to do it all, all over again. She didn’t know that, then. Melos had been excited to finally prove herself - to who, she wasn’t certain. Maybe Pippi, maybe her auntie, maybe Elune. She had been gifted with a purpose.

Melos’ responsibility as a Dragonsworn had been to fact check, double check, triple check. She would pour over historical events to compare them to anomalies in the true timeline, so that other Timewalkers may set things right. How ironic, then, that she now spent her days pouring over her diaries and notes, trying to find which of her memories were truly her own.

She had been good at what she did. Years of paperwork had led up to this mission. She wanted to prepare and then over-prepare, make sure she knew the ins and out. All of that knowledge went straight out the window when she and all of her companions were knocked off course and ended up stranded in time. Indeed, it felt like a lifetime ago. Someone else’s lifetime.

“No,” she finally speaks, shaking her head. Her voice is hoarse even when she’s barely spoken a word. “No. Miss…. Pippi, I am not ashamed that I left my duties as a Dragonsworn. I am ashamed that… that I left you. Without saying goodbye.” It’s painful, it’s uncomfortable, and clearly it’s not what Pippi had anticipated, because she jerks her head back and presses her lips into a thin line. Now, it’s awkward as well. Before the gnome has a chance to protest, Melos exhales a wheeze, leaning against her silver staff. It thuds against the woodwork floor as she steps towards the windows, her frame blocking out the sunlight and casting Pippi’s face in darkness. The rays stretch out the priestess’ shadows into something even more monstrous.

Under any other circumstance, it might have made a tense situation even worse - but whatever it was that made Melos appear so foreboding and uncomfortable, Pippi had grown used to - and moreover, the kaldorei seemed so very, painfully mortal, now. “It was needlessly cruel, and it was thoughtless of me. What drives a person to cast someone aside, when they know what it is like to be discarded?” She had forgiven Demitri a thousand times over, so why could she not do the same for herself? Melos knows the answer. She’s known it for a while.

Because if push came to shove, she would do it all over again. For herself. For her love. For happiness. Her gentle features are fixed into a severe expression, and she is about to continue, but this time, Pippi is the quicker one. “You’re being dramatic.” “I don’t feel as if I am.” Finally, a smile. Lopsided and cheeky, the older gnomish woman puts her hands to her hips and shakes her head. “But you are. And you know? I think that’s okay, too. You…. thought you hurt me.” Melos’ gnarled claws tighten around the shaft of her silver staff, brows furrowed in confusion. “Well…. yes. Did I not?” Her eyes search the gnome’s sunny features for any sign that the woman might be holding back, but Pippi is an open book. “Melostra,” she answers, her voice surprisingly gentle now. “You’re not the first to ditch me, and you won’t be the last.”

Melos blinks and then blinks again, as if the gnome had brought sand all the way from Tanaris and into the small apartment. Her former mentor was neither hurt nor mad, not even disappointed. Her words sound as if they should hurt, as if Pippi should be worn out by this stage. But she’s not. What Melos had been toiling over, Pippi had already left in the past, and although she doesn’t smile, the Priestess does stand straighter. “Oh,” is all she can say for a few seconds. And then, more daring than she ought to be, she continues; “I think I would do it again.”

“I don’t doubt that you would.”

“Oh,” Melos repeats.

Pippi shakes her head with a smile so wide it seems to take up half her face. It doesn’t look disproportionate - in fact, Melos thinks it rather suits her. “The Bronzes live forever, and not at all. They’ve seen Dragonsworn come and go again and again. Melostra, you’re a star amongst a million. We’re inconsequential. By the time our light reaches them, they’ve long since moved on.” And then the truth that Melos had not considered, throughout all her careful watching and writing; “From the moment you met me, they already knew you would only last for one mission.”

The relief is so tangible that it exits the kaldorei’s lungs in a sharp huff of air. She leans back against the windowsill, head tilted back. The sunlight crowns her silver hair in a halo. “But hey,” the gnome continues, watching her much taller companion with wide, green eyes. “Just because your starlight didn’t reach the Bronzes… that doesn’t mean it won’t shine brightly somewhere else.” To this, Melos hums, and then smiles. She caresses the silver staff with both hands, feeling the weight of it. Throughout every timeline she knew, this simple instrument was consistent. It was hers, it was the Moth of the Moon’s, it was the weapon of Melostra Starstalker. But this Melos, this timeline’s Melos, had something most of them did not. Somewhere to shine her light. Someone to share her rays with.

“I know,” the Priestess says, using her staff as leverage to push herself off the windowsill. “I have found such a place.”

“Why, Melostra,” Pippi muses, arms outstretched to the sides. “Then what on Azeroth are you doing here?”

To part on a hug would be ingenuine, but the deep bow that Melos offers is not enough to express her feelings. Pippi seems to agree, because she offers her hand, and the Priestess shakes it without hesitation. “Thank you, miss Brassbell,” she says with a tentative smile. “And good luck with your future Dragonsworn.” Pippi waves away both the thanks and the good luck with a smile. “If we ever meet again, call me Pippi.”

—

Stormwind is warming up, it’s trees turning green with springtime. The city is bustling with life, children laughing in the streets and vendors pushing their ware. The smell of saltwater and seaweed hangs in the air of Stormwind port, where merchant ships line up side by side with war galleys. It never suited Melos. She sets her sights on Winterspring, where Demitri sleeps in a warm lodge and starlight sparkles and dances across the freshly fallen snow.

#melostra #timew #ragewang

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lineffability · 5 years

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for whatever we lose

[In-Canon ‘Human’!A/C] based on this post words: 3.3k setting: post tv show ending summary: With the Apocalypse averted and their respective sides tricked, Aziraphale and Crowley can finally be left to their own (de)vices--only, you can’t trick God, and she always has the last word. So they forget who they were. And they forget each other. It’s all ineffable from here on out.

; For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea - e.e. cummings

PROLOGUE

Aziraphale was dreaming. This was odd, as he was not asleep.

Aziraphale. What have you done?

Had he possessed a body, in this dream, Aziraphale would have licked his lips and cleared his dry throat. Instead A Million Eyes were wide open, and he couldn’t tell if they were his or Hers, and he couldn’t Think either, because it was all drowned out. It had been a long, long time since She had spoken to him. Six thousand years to be exact, that day in Eden when she had inquired about his Sword and he had lied to Her face. Which, in retrospect, she had known. And forgiven.

But he had betrayed Her again. And this time, oh, he wasn’t sure--

You have to make it up to me, Aziraphale. You have to pay a price.

“Oh I-- I will! I will! I promise, I--”

Remember.

Then he woke up.

__________________________________________________

PART I // for whatever we lose

He woke up in his bed. It was half past eight, and he had to open the bookstore at nine (well, technically, anyways) which gave him just under half an hour to get up and ready and have breakfast. That did not leave him enough time for scrambled eggs and fresh orange juice, a realization that very much displeased him. Aziraphale whined and rolled out of bed.

Fading memories of a rather odd dream haunted him, but as he slipped out from under the covers they slid off him as water slides off ducks.

Barefoot, he trod into his kitchen, put on the kettle and got dressed as he waited for the water to boil. As he always did. He made scrambled eggs anyways, and fixed his bow tie and brushed his teeth and took the flight of stairs down into his shop half an hour late, opened the store half an hour later still, and sat and hoped no one would enter through the doors. He read a book, and started another one, made himself a cup of cocoa in the afternoon and glowered at the rare occasional customers until, unnerved, they left.

As he always did.

Until one day, an hour before (official) closing time, a tall, dark man entered his store.

“Oh, I am afraid that we will be closing in half an hour,” Aziraphale started, but did not continue as the man came towards him in big strides. He had a slightly odd way of walking, Aziraphale decided, as if he might slide off the face of the earth sideways if he wasn’t careful. Sashaying, one might call it.

“Mr. Fell?”

Aziraphale did not immediately respond, as he was deep in thought, staring at the stranger’s face. His eyes were concealed behind sunglasses despite the cloudy weather, but the rest of his features were sharp: a thin nose, a pointy chin, pronounced cheekbones and spiky ginger hair. He was sure the man was a stranger, was sure he’d never seen him before in his life (because he would have remembered him, if he had), but there was something about his face and posture that reminded him of someone, nonetheless.

Who? He could not remember. It must have been a long time ago.

“Mr. A. Z. Fell?”

“Oh! Yes, that would be me.” Aziraphale smiled a welcoming smile, which even surprised himself. Of course, he was warm and welcoming to everybody in general, but in the bookshop, somehow, he more closely resembled a dragon guarding his hoard.

The stranger slightly cocked his hand to one side. “What’s the A. Z. stand for?”

“Pardon? Oh, the sign, right. That’s my name. I mean, of course, the sign has been there for generations. It just happens to also fit my initials. Er.”

The man raised a brow, behind dark sunglasses that he still had not taken off, until he continued.

“Aziraphale Zachariah Fell. That’s my name.”

Right. That was his name. For a moment there, he had confused even himself. He wondered if he was getting old. Because for just a second, it truly had felt as if he had not known. Not known about the sign that his ancestors had fixed to the outside of the store, not known what the initials of his own name stood for. This weird feeling, the feeling he had not been able to shake off all week, took a hold of him yet again. He touched the bridge of his nose, but remembered he was not wearing his reading glasses. He must have misplaced them.

For a moment Aziraphale feared that the stranger would burst into laughter. But he contained himself, asking instead, not without mirth: “Aziraphale?”

“Oh, my parents were…very religious.” He gave him a crooked, apologetic grin.

A look spread across the lanky man’s face that Aziraphale could only describe as surprised delight; wrinkles appeared around his eyes and it almost made Aziraphale blush, though he wondered what had prompted this reaction--surely not his old-fashioned name. (It had been that, but much more so it had been the look on his face, a helpless sort of amusement that Crowley couldn’t help but find endearing.)

“I mostly go by Raphael, though. To friends, I mean,” he added after a moment, feeling awfully stupid. (Aziraphale, he’d decided a long time ago, didn’t quite suit him.)

“I see,” Crowley replied, a smile still playing around his lips. “Mr. Fell.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth as if to reply, but for the life of him could not think of any adequate reply. Who was this man, anyways? He had sauntered right into his shop and right up to him and somehow Aziraphale had told him about his parents’ religious beliefs without even knowing his name. Or anything else, really.

“So, you are…?”

“Ah.” As if he had been waiting for this moment, the man straightened and made a sweeping gesture with his arm. He might as well have been presenting to an entire audience. “Anthony J. Crowley, merchant of various goods, at your service.”

So this was what was going on, was it? Merchant. Aziraphale squinted imperceptibly. A book buyer. Nasty lot. Always after his pristine first editions, his life’s work--well, really, not just his. Most were inherited, though he had acquired the one or other treasure, in his lifetime… Feeling rather emboldened, Aziraphale decided to pay back what had been dealt to him. “So, what does the J stand for?”

“I’d rather hoped you’d ask about the ‘merchant of various goods’ part, honestly.” The man paused, but received no reaction. “No? Oh, alright. It’s really just ‘J’. Anthony Jay Crowley.”

“Well, now we’ve got that sorted out,” Aziraphale said with an amount of delight that seemed just a little too angelic to be entirely nice, “I am very afraid to inform you, my dear Mr. Crowley, that I don’t sell any books. If that is why you are here.”

Crowley stared at him behind his sunglasses, perplexed. “You own a bookstore.”

“Well. Yes. I mean--” He paused. I don’t like selling my books, he wanted to say. I love them too much. It feels like selling a part of myself. I’d much prefer to keep them all, if that were possible. Instead he said, “I prefer to sell them to individual buyers.” Because they only buy individual books. Singular.

“Why?”

“I just do.” He clasped his hands in front of his belly and sealed his lips tightly shut. Determined, he stood there, like a mother bear ready to protect her children.

Crowley, apparently, sensed that he was about to jog headfirst into a stone wall. His shoulders slumped. But he was not yet a man defeated. Aziraphale stayed on his toes. “Alright, alright. Cool stuff. No worries. But then, I assume...you buy them?”

Aziraphale’s face brightened. “Indeed!”

“You collect them?”

“You could say that.” Aziraphale’s chest grew various sizes, his aura positively shining. “I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert. My interest particularly lies with books of prophecy and, uh, Bibles with printing errors…oh, and Oscar Wilde!”

“Oscar Wilde,” Crowley repeated, pensively, before cocking his head. “Printing errors?”

“Oh, yes! For instance, there is the Adultery Bible, in which--”

Suddenly Crowley moved in closer, cutting him short. He lowered his voice as he spoke again, his face close enough that Aziraphale could make out the contours of his eyes through the shades. (Really, there was no need for that, they were alone in the store.)

“I might happen to be… in possession of one of those books you take such an interest in.”

“What? But, how-- Might I ask, who do you work for?”

“Oh, I work for myself.” Crowley straightened. “And if you want to ask where I get my goods from, you’d do better not to. Let’s call them Of Unknown Origin. Capiche?”

A moment of silence.

“So… are you interested?”

Another beat, during which Aziraphale tried to convince himself that he was not actually considering his offer. Of course he wasn’t. He gasped.

“Absolutely not! How-- Why-- I’m, I’m shocked!”

Crowley sighed, and Aziraphale was sure that, behind his sunglasses, he was rolling his eyes. “Fine, fine. I get it. You’re boring. Should’ve known the moment I walked in here. One of the Good Ones.” His tone turned mocking at the last words, upper lip curling.

“Now that’s just awfully rude; there is no need for such behaviour.”

“Whatever.” The man called Crowley lifted a hand, already turning. Then he stopped in his tracks, shoulders slumping, and a groan escaped his lips. For a second Aziraphale was confused, but then he registered the source of his newest discontentment: It was raining.

It had started to rain heavily, and water was splashing off the streets and running into the gutters. One step outside and you’d be soaking wet. Crowley cursed under his breath even as he began walking towards the door.

“Ciao.” He gave a little wave.

“Wait!”

“Oh?” Crowley turned, but was unprepared for what awaited him. There he stood, the round little man with hair as white as a cloud, and was extending his arm towards him--holding an umbrella. Crowley gaped at the thing.

“Take it. It’s raining.”

“I-- Yes, I can see that, it’s raining, yeah, wet stuff, seen it before,” he brambled, still incredulous. Haltingly, he took it. Wedged it under his arm. Opened his mouth as if to say something, but thought better of it. Closed it. Opened it again. “Well, thanks, see you around,” he mumbled, just above a whisper, and then he was out the door, under the umbrella, making for his car as if the devil was on his heels.

He drove through the pouring rain as Queen blasted from his speakers. Really, he wasn’t in the mood. Should’ve checked the CD beforehand. This strange encounter did not quite leave him alone, and he replayed it in his head countless times. The white umbrella lay discarded on the front seat. He took it with him, up into his flat, where he immediately turned on the TV and failed to pay even a minute of attention to the things happening on the screen.

Books weren’t even his usual trade. It had been a spontaneous thing, a thought he’d had ever since he’d found that book in his flat a few days ago. The Nice And Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter. He could for the life of him not remember how he had come into its possession. It must have happened ages ago, some collateral damage from one job or the other, and he’d misplaced it, and only now stumbled upon it again. Either way, it looked like it was worth a good sum of money, so asking questions about its provenance seemed unwise, as long as he could sell it.

Just his luck that the bookshop he’d happened upon and decided to enter on a whim--it had looked promising, all antique and, well, booky--had turned out to be bad luck. And yet…

And yet, he couldn’t get that stupid face out of his mind. Those piercing blue eyes that had went from Soft to Fierce in a heartbeat, the hand that had offered up protection against the rain when he had done nothing to deserve it, nothing at all. Well--he’d have to return the umbrella, at least.

After all, the shop was promising. It was stuffed to the top with books that smelled of Age and Money, the kind of books without cover but with gold lettering. Sometimes a little temptation was all Good People needed to turn into Not Quite As Good People, after all.

With this thought in mind Crowley fell asleep, on his couch, with the TV still blaring in the background.

He woke up where he had fallen asleep. Grimacing, he straightened his neck and stretched out his limbs. A glance at his phone told him he had fifteen minutes to get ready, which was all he needed. He got up, turned on his stereo (one clap), changed into fresh clothes while somehow simultaneously brushing his teeth, and was out the door--but not without mindfully turning off the music (two claps). As he always did.

Crowley had dreamt again, and he was sure it was a dream that he’d had before, just recently, but the only thing he could remember from it was the word Demon, and now that gave him no clue whatsoever.

By the time he got into his Bentley he was holding a steaming cup of coffee, which he managed to drink without spilling a drop while speeding through busy London streets. He’d forgotten the umbrella, so he could not go back to the bookshop. That’s what he told himself, anyways. He also ‘forgot’ it the day after. And on Friday. On Saturday, after having thoroughly watered and terrorized his plants, he finally grabbed the white umbrella and stormed out the door.

He almost kicked a lamp post when he arrived at the shop and saw the Closed sign on the door. He drew his head back and glared at the sky. Then he looked at the door again, at the handwritten sign with the office hours, and the sound that escaped him almost sounded like a hiss.

“You’re supposed to be open, bastard,” he growled to himself, wondering why he was so upset, and then the door suddenly opened and he found himself face to face with the enigmatic Mr. Fell.

“Mr. Crowley?” Surprise was written all over his face. He pointed to the sign on the door. “We’re closed.”

Crowley glowered. “You’re supposed to be open. Look.” Frantically, he pointed at the door, as if it was not the man’s very own shop door, with his very own sign in his very own handwriting.

“I do take my liberties,” Aziraphale simply said, lifting his chin. “I was just on my way to get scones.”

“Scones?”

“I was feeling awfully peckish. So I thought, what is one more hour of opening the shop against the promise of fresh scones?” He beamed, and his eyes dropped to the umbrella that Crowley was clenching so hard his knuckles were turning red. “Oh! My umbrella!”

“Came here to return it,” Crowley pressed out between his teeth.

“That is awfully kind of you, Mr. Crowley. Thank you.”

“It is yours, so…” Crowley shrugged. “You’re really closing the shop for scones? I’ve never gotten their appeal.”

“You must not have tried the scones of the nice little bakery down the street, then! They just opened, but I must say they really make the most lovely, buttery-- why, let me tempt you to one, then!”

Crowley almost fell backwards into the pavement. This man had to be the most trusting, naive and genuinely nice person he had ever met, and it was almost driving him insane. He stared at him, and couldn’t help the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I mean, well, not tempt, exactly.” Aziraphale gave a nervous laugh. “Invite?”

So they had scones, and coffee, and a glass of Chardonnay. It came so natural that they both wondered why they felt as if they had known each other for a long time, when in fact it had only been a few days since their first meeting.

Only when he was back home in his empty flat, feeding his pet snake, did he remember that his objective had been to tempt the shop owner with his shady book selling deal. Instead, he had somehow ended up being the tempted one. Crowley huffed. Well--he guessed he’d have to go back.

There was no bell above Aziraphale’s door. This was because a bell alerted you to entering customers, and Aziraphale did not want to be alerted. In his best case scenario, the would-be-customers had already left the shop by the time he came round to the front. So as he rounded the corner to the front of his shop with a cup of tea in his hand he was not prepared for the person lounging (really, there was no better word for it) on his desk.

“Hi, A.Z. Fell.” Crowley grinned, hopping off the desk and circling round to him. “Fine morning to acquire some books, isn’t it?”

“Mr. Crowley, I’ve told you before, I am not--”

“Not even…” He produced a book, nicely bound in protective cloth. “The Nice And Accurate-- oi!”

Aziraphale had taken the book right out of Crowley’s hand, staring at it as if he’d discovered the Holy Grail. “I’ve seen this before,” he whispered to himself as he retrieved the book and lay a shaking hand on its cover. Then, “No, no, I haven’t. I can’t have. I must have…” His head shot up. “Where did you get this?!”

“I told you, I don’t disclose--”

“Crowley!” Surprised, Crowley lifted his hands. Aziraphale looked exasperated, and then, as he realized how he’d addressed him, scandalized. “Oh, I’m sorry! It’s just, this book, it’s... It’s rare.”

“I imagined.”

“No. You really don’t. When I say it’s rare, I mean it is… unique, possibly.”

“Shouldn’t tell me that, if I’m the one selling it, should you?”

Aziraphale froze. His eyes grew wide, and he was on the verge of swearing.

“Tell you what.” Crowley leaned in, voice soft. “The price stays the same--if I can interest you in acquiring more interesting books in the future. And in not asking too many questions. Trust me, don’t. That’s never worked out well for anyone.”

“I…” Aziraphale hesitated. “No, I can’t. You’re.. you’re a criminal! Aren’t you?”

“Ehhh, definitions. It’s just a hobby, let’s say. Besides, what are you, an angel?” Crowley lifted his hands to his sides, waving them through the air as if mimicking a wing beat.

Aziraphale felt very torn, because, yes, a part of him did feel--well not like an angel, certainly, but still like a Good Person. On the other hand, this was not hurting anyone, was it? And this book--as well as any other rare books--they would be in good hands, with him. If he thought about it like that...

“Yes,” said Aziraphale.

“What, yes? You are an angel?”

Aziraphale sighed. “Yes, I will buy the book. I will agree to your condition.”

“What.” It sounded more like a squeezy little wot, the sound he made. Then Crowley smiled, widely, incredulously, almost thrilled. “I knew there was a spark in you, angel!” He took off his sunglasses, revealing startlingly bright eyes. (Like honey, Aziraphale briefly thought, averting his thoughts from the morally ambiguous deal he was about to strike. I like honey.) Crowley offered up a hand, and Aziraphale took it. They shook on their unspoken arrangement with a firm grip--lingering just a moment too long, averting their gaze just a second too late.

The wheels of fate, expertly jammed, began to grind down on the crow bar holding them in place.

[to be continued]

#good omens #ineffable husbands #a/c #aziraphale x crowley #my writing #inefficable #my omens #i cannot belive i wrote this all in one go #god i hope it's not too messy #didnt have much time for editing bc i have to SLEEP #but wanted to give you this now #FWWL #for whatever we lose

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artificialqueens · 4 years

Text

Unlimited, Chapter 3 (Scyvie Wicked AU) - EmoWithOddSocks

A/N: Haha remember this? No, me neither until about 3 days ago. Welp i’m determined to finish it, unlike half the stuff i post.

Please be kind it’s been a while

News of the night’s upcoming events sent the students of Shiz into a state of madness as everyone rushed to find themselves an outfit and date for the evening . Yvie didn’t understand the need for such effort, finding the whole party nothing more than an excuse for the wealthy students to show off their parents’ money. Instead of adding herself to the growing madness Yvie began the short walk to return to her dorm room, only to be stopped by one of Scarlet’s followers.

“Oi Oddly.” Raj’ah spat from across the hallway, “Do everyone a favour and don’t bother showing up tonight, no one wants you there.”

“Wasn’t even considering going anyway.” Yvie yelled back, angrily stomping back to the dorm, glad to find Scarlet was nowhere to be found. She breathed heavily. Truth be told Professor West’s words haunted her in a way which sent her mind spiraling into overdrive. She continued to read quietly, scanning the pages for any more information about magic, why did she of all people possessed it and how it could be used for the good of Oz. Yvie’s research continued until the unwanted interruption of the door slamming open.

“Yvie! Yvie! Yvie!” The intruder bellowed, pouncing herself onto Yvie’s bed and knocking off a few pillows in the process.

“Hello Nessa.” Yvie deadpanned, her eyes didn’t even leave the book page.

“Did you hear?” Vanessa asked excitedly, continuing the conversation before Yvie even had a chance to reply. “Everyone’s going to the Oz Dust Ballroom tonight! Have you seen Scarlet? Do you know what she’s wearing? I bet she’ll look stunning, I mean she always does but tonight is all about full glam mode.” Vanessa’s enthusiasm exhausted Yvie to the point where she reckoned only seeing the Wizard themself in the flesh would be enough to shut her up.

“I have no interest in the party Vanessa.” Yvie marked her page before slamming the book shut. “Nor do I care about what little miss perfect is doing tonight. Raj’ah, her little admirer made herself very clear that i was not to go anywhere near the place.”

Vanessa huffed in annoyance at Yvie’s words.

“Well I care, I’ve already bagged myself a date as well.” She smiled and twirled a finger absentmindedly around her finger. “Miss Brooke Lynn sure is fine.” Nessa gave a dreamy smile, only reminding Yvie of how alone she felt at Shiz. At home she and Nessa did everything together, just because they had too. Here Yvie had up to now only been able to make enemies.

“Well have fun and be careful, I don’t think father could take a repeat of last year.”

“Sweet Oz Yvie, lighten up a little.” Vanessa complained, a scowl forming on her face “No wonder everyone hates you Yvie, why can’t you be more like Scarlet?” Her sister’s words stung, anger quickly began to bubble up inside causing Yvie to drop the book from her hands as they shook and clenched.

“You’ve really got to stop anger getting the best of you.”

All her strength became dedicated to pushing down the power which had begun to build up inside of her. Yvie was determined to control her emotions as well as her powers.

“Go away Nessa.” Her voice shook.

“Father was right about you.”

“GO AWAY.” A jolt of power shot through Yvie’s body and released, sending Vanessa falling to the ground Yvie panicked as Nessa rose from the floor clearly in pain from the unexpected encounter. “Ness i’m so sorry.”

Vanessa didn’t look back at her, walking to the doorway and stopping only to let Scarlet in.

“I wish you’d never become my sister.” Nessa half whispered under her breath but loud enough for both Yvie and Scarlet to hear it.

“What happened?” Scarlet perched herself on the edge of her bed, removing the straps of her black heels so she could change for the party. Her hair fell into perfect brown curls as the pins were removed from her updo.

“It doesn’t matter.” Yvie picked up the book she had dropped from the floor and straightened out the bed covers to their original neatness. “I’ll be out your way in a minute.”

Scarlet’s face softened slightly at her roommate’s response. She’d only heard around half of whatever had previously happened with Yvie and Vanessa, including the sudden use of the latter’s powers but could see that Yvie was holding something back.

“You don’t need to leave, after all this is your room as well.” Scarlet slipped off her day dress, making Yvie immediately look away in fear that her roommate would notice the slight blush dusting her cheeks. “I actually have something for you.”

A hat box was retrieved from the top of Scarlet’s closet and placed in front of Yvie.

“Well are you going to open it?” Scarlet asked, still only in her undergarments. Yvie carefully lifted the lid to reveal a pointy black hat that had been twisted out of shape, supposedly from being sat in the box for so long.

“Oh no it’s ruined.”

Yvie brought the hat over to her roommates mirror and placed it on her head, instantly liking how one side covered her right blank eye.

“I like it.” She turned to show Scarlet. “Thank you.”

“I knew it would suit you, Black is definitely not my colour.” She laughed pulling on a deep red dress with a sweetheart neckline, small crystals scattered across the skirt. “I thought you could wear it at the dance tonight.”

“But i’m not going.” Yvie sat on her bed and fiddled with a loose thread on the worn skirt of her dress.

“Nonsense, I Scarlet Envy officially invite you.”

“But Raj’ah said-” Yvie was cut off by her roommate.

“Let me deal with Raj’ah, at least consider it.” Scarlet smiled in the mirror, knowing Yvie would be able to see.

At exactly eight o’clock the party begun, students flooding into the Oz dust ballroom ready to let loose for the night.

A thousand lights sprinkled across the room, illuminating the many dancing couples that littered the ballroom dance floor. A sweet melody drifted from the band playing from a small stage at one end of the large room.

“Isn’t it just wonderful Raj’ah.” Scarlet spun around, the skirt of her dress fanning out around her hips.

“It’s perfect Scarlet, just like you.” Raj’ah complimented “May have this dance?”

Scarlet nodded and took the girl’s hand, leading her over to the center of the dance floor where they began to lazily waltz alongside the others. Nearby she caught a glimpse of Brooke and Vanessa together, completely infatuated with one another as they swayed long to the music. She’d may not always show it but Scarlet craved that type of love. Having loads of friends was great and all but really she wanted that one special person who would always be there to hold onto her forever. Scarlet was fully aware of the rumours going around about how Raj’ah felt about her. According to the grapevine Raj’ah was planning on confessing such feeling’s that very night. However Scarlet was still unsure about how she felt. Something else clouded her mind, a certain white haired roommate of her’s.

She thought back to the conversation with Yvie a few hours earlier. In fact it had been the first understanding of why Yvie acted how she did. Years of being treated like a monster and a mistake left her no choice but to build up emotional walls, convincing herself she was the insults being thrown at her.

Scarlet suddenly felt lost in the sea of colourful outfits she found herself in. The feeling of Raj’ah’s hand in hers started to feel extremely uncomfortable as her skin became clammy from the room’s heat.

“Are you okay?” Raj’ah asked, leading her dance partner over to the refreshment table.

“Just a little hot, nothing to worry about.” She forced a smile.

Yvie had argued with herself for over 3 hours on weather or not Scarlet’s invitation had been legitimate or not. But here she was, stood at the ballroom’s main entrance, ready to face whatever was thrown her way.

The odd girl’s arrival caused many of the dancing students to stop and stare as she entered the ballroom, twisted hat sat proudly on her head.

“What’s she doing here.” Raj’ah complained.

“I invited her.” Scarlet watched as Yvie stood awkwardly to the side clearly feeling out of place in the crowd. “Come on let’s sit on the balcony for a little while, i need some air.” She pulled Raj’ah away to avoid conflict.

Once outside Scarlet took deep breaths, happy to be out of the suffocating heat inside.

“Why did you invite Oddly?” Raj’ah looked at Scarlet annoyed.

“Because i wanted to, i am able to make my own decisions.” Scarlet crossed her arms, “ I don’t understand why you’re getting mad, it’s suppose to be a party.”

“I just don’t like the way she looks at you.” Raj’ah let go of the brunette’s hand. “She looks like she has some kind of creepy crush on you, like such a freak could have feelings like that.”

“I don’t appreciate your tone right now.”

“Don’t tell me you feel the same way, go then, go goin her freak squad.” Raj’ah screamed and ran back into the ballroom.

“That didn’t sound good.” Scarlet jumped at Yvie’s voice behind her. “Wait you’re crying? Here.” The white haired girl held out a handkerchief out to Scarlet who took it to dab away her tears she didn’t even realise were falling from her eyes.

“I haven’t been the kindest to you Yvie and I apologise. I try so hard to be good in front of everyone but I’ve only ever treated you how the others do. It’s as if they expect it from me.” Scarlet turned away from Yvie to lean on the balcony’s ledge and look out into the night sky. “I’m so sorry Yvie, my actions can surely not be forgiven.”

“I do forgive you Scarlet.” Yvie placed her hand over Scarlet’s. “You’re the only one who’s ever truly apologize for anything.”

“Yvie,can we be friends?”

“Of course.” For the first time since arriving at Shiz Yvie had a genuine smile on her face.

#rpdr fanfiction #scyvie #scarlet envy #yvie oddly #vanessa vanjie mateo #lesbian au #wicked au #musical theatre au #scarlet is glinda #yvie is elphaba #unlimited #emowithoddsocks #ra'jah o'hara

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magicmanias · 5 years

Text

Sparks

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

Summary: You were found in the ruins of the city of Sokovia when Ultron attacked—a helpless, thrown out HYDRA experiment that was left to die. The Avengers take you in and love you as if they were your own. And though you love your family, a certain sophomore at Midtown High lit the real sparks within you.

Warnings: Minor Angst in the beginning, Fluff!, so. much. fluff.

Word Count: 6.5k (this was way longer than I intended it to be)

A/N: Sorry for the long exposition, but I feel like it makes it all worth it when Peter and Y/N meet. And I didn’t heavily edit it, so I’m sorry for that.

AU where Tony discovers Peter earlier, Civil War happens but all is forgiven, and Homecoming has not happened.

There were loud booms and crashes in the distance. Flurries of terrified strangers ran past you. You didn’t know anything. Any of this. You placed your hands over your ears and closed your eyes shut. The screams. You couldn’t take the screams. You ignored the blood on your bare feet that began to run onto the dirt ground. Where were you? Where was your commander? You needed orders. Tears started to stream down your face.

“Hey Cap?” Tony flew down from the sky and landed on the once floating city of Sokovia. In the chaos amongst the terrified civilians, there was a girl. She couldn’t be more than fourteen. She looked normal—except for the red and yellow sparks that flew around her. Surrounding bits of debris floated around the girl, who appeared to be in agony as she sobbed on the ground. “I think I found something.”

—

“Hey, could I… ask you your name?” A tall, blond man in a blue suit sat down calmly in front of you. You backed away from him and cowered in the corner of your containment cell.

“Well, my name is Steve.” He reached his hand out. You refused to touch it. “We're here to help you.”

“Where's Mr. Strucker?” you whimpered. “He's my commander.”

“I-I um…” The man named Steve crunched down to your height. “Do you have a name?”

“I'm Soldier #82467. Experiment XIV,” you repeat what you were always referred to as. You were a number, not a name.

“How long has Mr. Strucker been your commander?” Steve asked you calmly.

Maybe this man could help you find your commander. Or was he the plague of the earth, as your commander always told you about? “My whole life. 14 years.”

“Do you know your birthday?” Steve continued.

You shook your head. You didn't know why that was important.

“I think we can give you a name. If you want one,” Steve said, with a small smile. You couldn't tell if it was genuine or not. “Would you like a name?”

You slowly nodded your head. A name would be better than a number.

“Let's see what we can do.”

—

“Miss, could you sit here, please?” Bruce asked you. That's what Steve said his name was. It was strange to be on a first name basis with these men.

They were very odd. They weren't… intense like the men back home. They smiled a lot more too.

Bruce placed many strange items on you, similar to the doctors back at the base. The tools he used were cold, but you were used to being cold.

“Breath in, and out,” he said. Another man came into the room. He seemed older than the man who questioned you, Steve.

“Tony,” Steve approached Tony. “Did you get the results?”

“Yeah, Capsicle. She's definitely enhanced.”

“So what did Wanda say?” Bruce asked.

“She didn't know about her. They must have placed her away from the twins,” Tony answered. “And Nat is seeing if she can pull up anything on a Soldier—”

“Don't call her that,” Steve interrupted. He looked back at you. “We don't know her name yet, but she's a kid, Tony. Not a soldier.”

“Well, Nat is seeing if she can pull anything up on her in the old files that were recovered from SHIELD.” Tony cleared his voice and muttered a small, but sincere ‘sorry.’

The three men directed their attention to you. “Um, do you know what your powers are exactly?”

You hesitated before whispering softly, “That's classified.”

“You can tell us, kid. We're the good guys. The people you used to know, weren't very nice people. And we're trying to fix that,” Tony said, placing a hand on his shoulder in uncertainty. “If you tell us, we can help you control them.”

“They already tried,” you mumbled. “And they couldn't… I killed everyone who tried. I-I didn't mean t-to.”

“Hey, hey. Doll, it's ok,” Steve put a hand on your shoulder. You flinched at his touch. Sparks began to fly around you. Steve quickly moved his hand away and backed up. The sparks faded out.

“I don't w-want to hurt you…”

—

“Nat, what do you have on her?” Steve asked. Nat walked into the living room with a file in her hand.

She placed the file down and opened it up. Inside, there was very little, but enough to give them something.

“She never… had a name,” Natasha explained. “But they did label her. Project Y/N. Maybe we could call her that?”

“It's better than Soldier #82467,” Sam said from the couch.

“I agree,” Steve said. “How come Wanda never knew her?”

“Y/N said she killed everyone who tried to stop her?” Natasha pointed to a paragraph in the file. “They put her in solitary confinement for the past few months.”

“Do you think we can help her?” Clint asked. He always had a place in his heart for kids.

“We already have,” Tony said. He entered the room with Bruce. You trailed behind Bruce meekly.

“Hi, Y/N,” the redhead said. She gave you a tight-lipped smile.

“Is that my name?” you asked her. She nodded. You liked it.

“It's not perfect, but we gave her a cuff that can stop her powers from emerging when she gets stressed.”

“Can she use them otherwise?” Wanda asked. The rest of the Avengers had walked into the room to meet you

“Yeah, with practice I think,” Bruce said.

“What can she do, exactly?” Rhodey asked.

“It appears she gained her abilities from the mind stone as well,” Vision thought aloud. “I believe her powers were given to her recently. Definitely later than Wanda.”

“I've had them for about five months,” you told everyone. “I shoot sparks and I can create heat and fires. And I can move things—without touching them.”

“I know a man who is well versed in the Mystical Arts. His name is Stephen Strange. Perhaps he could help Y/N harness her abilities,” Thor suggested.

“Thor, that's a good—” The alarm blared throughout the tower. It startled you and sparks began to fly around the room. Part of Thor's cape almost set on fire.

“Like I said, it's a work in progress,” Tony yelled over the alarm.

“Suit up, Avengers!” Rhodey called out.

“Hey hey! We should call this chick Sparky!” Sam laughed at his own joke. Everyone glared at him.

You laughed quietly. Yeah, you liked the Avengers.

—

[One Year Later]

A lot had happened in a year: Steve found Bucky, the Avengers met Ant-Man, Wakanda had opened itself to the world, and you were succeeding in your training with Dr. Strange.

Steve and Tony were very protective of you and kind of acted like your dads—you even took Tony’s last name and he and Steve signed on to be your official guardians. Nat and Wanda were like big sisters to you and you told them everything. Bucky, Clint, and Sam were the “cool” uncles that you hung out with to get away with stuff and pull pranks. Rhodey taught you how to drive and told you funny stories about Tony. Scott taught you magic tricks and you were friends with his daughter, Cassie. You often helped Bruce in the lab with his research and he definitely taught you some sciency things. And you always helped Thor out because you were the only one who could help keep Loki under control; he had a soft spot for you. You also liked to help Vision in the kitchen. You made some mean cookies.

“Friday, where's Tony?” you asked, getting up from bed.

“Mr. Stark is on the bottom floor.”

You threw on a pair of loose shorts and a tank top and went downstairs to the foyer.

You walked to the main door to see Tony with a boy. He looked around your age. He had short, brown hair and a matching set of eyes.

“Sparky!” Tony called you over. You rolled your eyes at the nickname. You cannot believe that stuck. Sam sucks so much, you thought.

“Hi, Tony.” The boy looked at you and you returned his gaze with yours. He swallowed deeply. Your eyes widened.

SPARKS.

Your eyes widened.

“Peter, this is my daughter. Well, technically she’s Steve’s too, but she has my last name, so she’s like 60% my daughter. And drop the staring, Parker. She's off limits.” Tony gripped Peter's shoulder playfully. He blushed, still looking at you.

“Hi, Peter. I'm Y/N,” you squeaked. You smiled nervously at him. You didn't have much contact with people outside of the Avengers and Cassie was really the only person you knew who was close to your age.

“I-I'm Pe— I'm P-Peter. Oh wait, you knew that…” he stuttered. He closed his mouth and bit his lip. You thought it was cute and you lightly giggled.

“I said she's off limits, Parker,” Tony almost growled. You felt the embarrassment rise to your cheeks and suddenly you felt panic. There was something about that kid that threw you off.

“I have to go,” you mumbled quickly before scurrying away.

Peter frowned at your early leave. He gulped. Stupid, Peter thought. God, why can’t you just talk like a normal person?

“She's just a little shy…” Tony sighed. “Y/N doesn’t really know any people around her age. She’s fifteen, like you.”

“I-I didn't know you-you had a daughter,” Peter inquired. He thought you were really pretty and you didn't really look like Tony.

“She's not my actual daughter. I took her in,” Tony paused. “Do you remember Sokovia?”

—

It had been a couple of days since you saw Peter. Even though you ran away from him, you couldn’t stop thinking about him. You didn’t really understand why and when you went to talk to Nat about it, she just smiled and said that you had a “crush on him.” You didn’t know what that meant though. She said it meant you liked him.

You did like Peter, you didn’t like him the same way you did the Avengers. The Avengers were your family, but he wasn’t like that to you. It was a different kind of like. You regretted running away from Peter before you could really soak up his features. His brown eyes that had looked straight into yours. It made your stomach feel weird but in a good way. His lips were… nice, too.

You decided not to talk to your “dads” about it. It didn’t seem like something a person would ask their father figures about.

Summer was ending. Tony knew it was about time you’d be around people your age. Sure, the Avengers were good company and they were your family, but you needed to make connections on your own. You had lived with them for a year now, and Tony knew you were adjusting to your new life well.

You needed to go to school.

Of course, he knew you’d be just fine education-wise. Before they gave you powers, you were training to be a spy for HYDRA, so you were given a rich education. Tony and Bruce would often teach you about science and math as well, so you were definitely well off there. Making friends was the challenge—but Tony knew a certain high schooler with spider-powers and a large knowledge on pop culture who could help her out.

“School? Tony, are you sure? She’s barely been here a year. And she doesn’t even have her powers fully under control,” Steve argued. He walked around the kitchen counter to get a mug from the cabinet.

“Yes, I think she’s ready. She’s gotta make some friends, Rogers. And what could go wrong? It’s high school,” Tony shot back. “I just want her to have some friends her age. I mean, we may have to leave her behind one day. This isn’t safe work.” Tony frowned at the thought of leaving Y/N if something were to happen to him. She was his daughter.

“You know she’s just as much mine as she is yours. I get a say in this,” Steve countered. “I mean, I’m just worried for her.”

There was a long moment of silence. Steve looked down at his coffee in contemplation. Tony came closer to him before finally saying, “Do you remember when we found Y/N?” he asked.

“Of course I do,” he answered. He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

“And do you remember what you said to me when I called her ‘Soldier?’” Tony continued.

Steve realized where Tony was coming from. “I said, ‘She’s just a kid, not a soldier,’” he recited, like lines from a play. Steve sighed. “You’re right.”

“I know I am. We have to give her a chance to have some sort of childhood. Let her go to school,” Tony pleaded. His eyes grew with hope. Steve knew he couldn’t say no.

“Fine, but I want someone to look over her. She doesn’t know how to interact with people her age and I don’t want her to burn the school down,” Steve urged.

“I already have someone. You know the kid that stole your shield?” Tony laughed at the memory. Steve groaned.

“So we’re going to Queens?”

—

Peter had finished making his way around patrolling the streets of Queens as Spider-Man. He didn’t have much action today—just a couple of petty thefts. But for once, he was actually glad about the lack of opportunity. It meant he could swing around, daydreaming about her. Y/N Stark. Damn, she was pretty, he thought. Granted, his turned focus almost caused him to crash into a pole, but it was worth it. He hoped he would be able to see her again. Maybe next time Mr. Stark needed him, she would be there.

Turns out, Mr. Stark needed him right now.

“May?” Peter opened the door and walked into his apartment.

His aunt was on the couch. She turned to face him, “Hey baby. How’s Ned?”

Peter tossed his keys into the bowl next to the door. “Ned? Oh, uh. Ned—Ned is good. He’s fine. Hey, did you see that crazy car outside…?”

Tony Stark and Captain America were here. In his apartment. Two Avengers. At the same time. I mean, Mr. Stark had come by once, but he was here again—with Steve Rogers.

“M-Mr. Stark? Wh-What are you doing here? Uh, Ca-Captain,” Peter stuttered.

“Relax, alright? You should be used to this by now,” Tony said as he sat up from the couch.

“Tony Stark was talking to me about his daughter, Y/N,” May smiled at Peter and walked over to him. She gave him a hug, before quickly retreating. “Honey, you need a shower.”

Peter nodded silently and continued to stare at Steve freaking Rogers.

Steve, who was standing in the corner of the room, also walked over to Peter. He swallowed hard. “Hello, Mr. Parker.”

“Uh, hi-hi, sir.”

“Peter, I’m gonna hand it to you straight. We want Y/N to go to Midtown High,” Tony started. Peter zoned out every word after that. Y/N was going to school with him. He would be able to see her every day.

“Pete? Peter, are you even listening to me?” Tony asked, annoyed. Peter snapped out of his thoughts.

“What? Oh, yes, sir. I-I was listening.”

“Great, I thought you were drooling over my-our daughter,” Tony smirked. Steve glared at Peter.

“So, your Aunt has so graciously allowed Y/N to stay here for the school year,” Steve said, dropping the glare to thank his aunt.

Peter glanced at May, giving her a look of surprise. May smiled overly sweetly at him. Like she knew something he didn’t.

“Yeah, what, with the Avengers moving upstate and all, we wouldn’t be able to drive her down her every day and Midtown is a great school,” Tony added innocently.

Steve’s face darkened as he came closer to Peter. He went full-on dad mode, “Son, we want you to help her out. Now, she’s new to all this, like Stark told you, and we don’t want her to freak out. We’re giving you this responsibility. Do you think you can handle it?”

Peter nodded vigorously, “Yes. Yes, sir, Captain America. Yeah.”

“See? What’d I tell you, Rogers? He’s a good kid. He’ll watch after her,” Tony cheerfully patted a frowning Steve.

Tony turned back to Peter and his face too, darkened for a moment. Peter almost didn’t catch it. “No funny business, okay? We don’t want grandkids just yet.”

Peter blushed bright red. “Nope, no funny business. Got it.”

And with that, the two men exited the small apartment after thanking his aunt one last time.

May closed the door behind them and faced Peter. She smiled wickedly, “So, is she cute?”

“Wh-What?” Peter half-laughed to cover up his blush. “N-No, no. Well, I mean she’s not—not pretty, well I mean she’s beautiful, but not in a weird way! I-I mean. Wait, like she-she—”

“Okay, okay, baby. I get it. You love her.” May left him to process and walked into the kitchen.

“What? Wait—May!”

—

You looked out of the window of the car. You’d never been this far out into New York before. “Happy, are we there yet?”

“No, not yet,” he answered bluntly.

“Mr. Stark and Mr. Rogers are calling you, Miss,” Friday announced. You answered the call and your dads came onto the holo-screen.

“Hi, doll,” Steve waved at you. “How’s it going?”

“Well, the traffic is pretty bad, but we’re almost there,” Happy answered for you.

“Happy, what did I tell you about answering someone else’s questions?” Tony snapped at him.

“If someone calls me honey, sweetheart, or doll, it’s not for me,” Happy repeated.

“Anyways, we want you to know that Peter is a good kid, okay? He’ll help you around school. You have all the same classes as him, except one. So, he can show you around the school and help you make friends.”

“Yeah, I know,” you tried you sound annoyed, but you were teeming with excitement.

“If he tries anything, you tell us so I can—”

You interrupted Steve, “Hey hey hey, I get it. I get it. You know, you should warm up to him, dad.”

“I know, I just—” Steve sighed. “I just want you to be safe, baby.”

“I love you, dad. I love you, other dad,” you said, waving goodbye to them.

“Wait, am I ‘other dad?’ Y/N—” You hung up before Tony could finish.

Finally, you arrived at Peter’s apartment. Happy walked you up and left your bags with you, before leaving.

You hesitated to knock. Your hands shook with anxiety. You took a deep breath and slowly knocked.

A woman opened the door.

“Hey, you must be Y/N. I’m Peter’s aunt. You can call me May,” she told you. She shook your hand gently. “Let me help with your bags, honey.”

“Oh ok. Thanks, May.” You walked into the apartment and looked around. It was small, but it felt homey.

May placed your bags down near the couch and walked into the kitchen. “Oh sorry. Peter’s not here right now. He’ll be back tonight.” You nodded and sat at the dinner table. You were slightly disappointed, but still, you would see him tonight.

“I just ordered some pizza, so if you’re hungry, you can eat that,” May reminded.

Later, May had to run out for work but promised that Peter would be there soon. She already set up a small mattress for you next to the couch and taught you how to use the shower. So, you sat and waited for Peter to come while you ate a piece of pizza.

After two slices, you already felt pretty full, so you threw the plate into the sink, and got ready to take a shower.

—

Peter swung from the building across his apartment. He landed quietly on the fire escape in front of his room. Crime fighting took a little longer than expected today.

He felt pretty beat up on his side. Luckily, May wouldn't be able to see the damage there. It was definitely going to bruise.

He peeked inside the apartment to check if May was there. He heard the water running and assumed she was in the shower.

He crept into his room and slowly closed the door. He took his suit off and let it fall to the floor. Before he changed, he checked out his side. Yep, it was definitely going to bruise. It looked like someone colored his entire right side with a purple magic marker.

He slowly picked up his suit and winced at the pain of bending down. He had to stand still for a moment to bear the pain.

The door suddenly opened. In a panic, Peter threw his suit into his closet. It was Y/N, with nothing but a flimsy towel covering herself. And he was in nothing but his boxers.

“Oh, sorry!” you squeaked out. Were you supposed to leave? Did you want to leave? “I-I just heard noise s-so I thought I wouldn't make s-sure N-no one broke in or-or some-something.”

You blushed at the sight of his half-naked body. There went that feeling again. The one that felt weird but amazing all at the same time.

“I-It's Okay. I thought you were May. God, I'm so stupid. I thought you weren't coming u-until later! And I-I just got home so I figured I'd change and…” If Peter was panicking before, he didn't know what this was. His cheeks burned. You looked really hot. Even though your hair was wet and you were wrapped in a towel, you were still really pretty. He once again realized he was in his boxers and tried to shift certain parts.

Suddenly, you realized you were staring at his body and quickly retreated, “I should go.” You turned on your heel and headed for the door.

When he heard the door close, Peter quietly groaned and collapsed onto his bed.

“Why can't anything go right? It's only day one and you're already messing up,” he mumbled into his pillow.

Slowly, he sat back up and ran a hand through his hair and over his face. “Mr. Stark said, ‘No funny business, Peter.’ So no funny business, ok? She's… just your roommate/friend… Your super pretty roommate.”

—

School didn't start for another week, so it gave you a chance to get to know Peter.

At first, he avoided you like the plague. You tried to get to know the boy, but he always made an excuse to leave. It upset you. You had started to think he didn’t like you the way you liked him.

But eventually, he warmed up and started to speak to you, and… smile. He had a nice smile. It made your cheeks hot and the fluttery feeling would come back.

He made you laugh, more than Clint or even Sam. He showed you a bunch of new things too: memes, vines, old movies (you liked Star Wars a lot), and The Office.

You met his friends, Ned and MJ. They were really nice to you. MJ even drew a picture of you. You were “hanging out,” as Peter called it, with them and at one point you had stepped out to go to the bathroom. When you came back, you overheard them telling Peter something that he strongly denied.

“No! I don’t. She… doesn’t like me like that,” Peter argued.

“Yes! She totally does. And you do too,” Ned pushed.

“Dude, you’re a bad liar,” MJ scoffed.

School started the next day and Peter suggested a good distraction for your anxious nerves. Tonight, you were watching Alien. And though you used to live in a place full of nothing of fear, you were still scared. Come on! The alien ate people!! It was freaky.

After a long stretch of silence, the alien popped out of nowhere and started to chase the people in the movie.

“Ah!” you yelped. You jumped and dug your face into Peter’s chest. He was just glad you couldn’t see his face. He was so flustered, he forgot how to breathe.

Finally, he managed to croak out, “A-Are you scared?”

“A little,” you whimpered. “I thought this was supposed to be a comedy.”

“I told you it was scary, Y/N,” he laughed. You continued to hide your face in his chest. Carefully, he placed his hand on your hair and began to pet it to calm you down.

A couple of sparks flew around you and Peter noticed it. “Hey, hey. It’s ok, Y/N. We can watch something else if you want. I don’t mind.”

Slowly, you lifted your head to meet your eyes with his. Your face was really close to his. Peter stared back at you in uncertainty. His eyes dilated and his mouth was tight-lipped. Your heart thumped in your chest and you felt the urge to close the small space in between you. You knew what a crush was now.

Suddenly, the door flew open. Peter jumped away from you and you sat back in your spot. It was May.

“What’re you two doing?” she asked.

“We were watching a movie,” Peter explained quickly.

“Really? It seemed like something else,” she chuckled.

“No! It wasn’t anything!” Peter yelled and retreated into the kitchen.

“What does she mean?” you asked, puzzled.

“Well—”

“No! Nothing, it’s nothing, Y/N,” Peter interrupted his aunt from the fridge.

“Ok, well I guess I’ll just let you two finish,” May said nonchalantly. She turned to Peter, “Don’t have too much fun, baby. You know what Mr. Rogers said.”

“I know! I know, May,” Peter sighed. Oh, that’s what she meant, you thought.

“I’m going to go to bed,” you blurted. Peter looked up at you from the fridge.

He frowned. “Oh ok, that’s fine. Um, I’ll turn the TV off.”

He switched the TV off and turned to his room. Before he went in, he turned to you and softly said, “Night, Y/N.”

“Night, Petey.” He gave you a small smile and entered his room.

—

You took a shower and changed into a thin white t-shirt and sweatpants. You tried to sleep, but your nerves got the better of you. You were really nervous.

After several hours, you gave up and crept into Peter’s room. “Peter?” you whispered softly. No answer.

“Peter,” you tried again as you closed the door and approached his bed. He looked really peaceful asleep. You hated to wake him up, but you needed to see his big, brown eyes again.

You slightly shook him until he woke up.

“Huh? What? Y/N?” Peter rubbed his tired eyes and sat up. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know. Like two. I couldn’t sleep,” you told him. You played with the hem of your shirt nervously. “I-I’m nervous about school.”

“Hey, it’s ok. School isn’t so bad. Kids’ll like you,” he assured. You placed your head on his shoulder and pouted.

“I-I don’t know. I’ve never gone to school before. I don’t know what to do,” you fretted.

“It’s easy,” he said. “I’ll help you out. You know, with finding your classes, homework, checking out books, all that.”

“Thanks,” you mumbled. You hesitated before saying, “Can I sleep here?” Peter could barely hear you.

“What?”

“Can I sleep here? Just tonight?”

“Um, yeah. Sure,” he breathed. Peter knew it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but he wanted to be near you just as much as you wanted to be near him. Mr. Stark’s gonna kill me, but it’s worth it, he thought.

You climbed into bed with him and nuzzled into his body. He was warm.

“Night, Petey,” you yawned. You closed your eyes and you were out like a light. Peter, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep anymore. You were so close to him. You were sleeping right next to him. You were touching him.

Peter thought about you for the rest of the night. Not only were you beautiful, but you were smart, nice, funny, and dorky. He loved every bit of you. He knew there were sparks the first time he met you and with each minute, his affections only grew.

He dreaded the morning to come when you would both have to get up.

—

School wasn’t so bad. You had all your periods with Peter, except fourth period. So, you had some time to cope with that.

First period AP European History was fun. You liked learning about the history of Europe. You would often glance over at Peter and sometimes he would glance at you. You don’t even remember what the teacher said the homework was because you were too busy focusing on the piece of hair that stuck out on Peter’s head.

Second period Honors Humanities was too easy. You already read most of the literature the teacher said you were going to read. Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, The Odyssey, The Great Gatsby, Great Expectations. Done and done.

Third period Honors Pre-calc was incredibly boring. You already knew stuff like that up to the math of radioactive gamma rays and neutron stars. So, you spent the whole period messing with Peter using your powers. You rolled his pencil across his desk and untied his shoelace. He rolled his eyes playfully at you and made an ‘I’m going to get you back’ face at you.

Fourth period was when you had to leave Peter. He was in Spanish 5 while you were in AP French. Your fear subsided, however. You had grown used to other kids and French was easy. After all, you already knew that amongst seven other languages fluently. So it was a breeze.

Trying to find Peter at lunch was difficult and you tried to focus on controlling your stress so sparks wouldn’t fly everywhere. After about ten minutes of wandering around the school trying to find the cafeteria, you finally bumped into Ned and MJ, who led you to Peter. You opened your lunch to find a note that Tony had slipped into it somehow.

We love you, baby. -TS and SR

You smiled at the small note. You looked over at Peter to see him chewing on a PB&J sandwich. He was so cute.

“Subtle,” MJ whispered to you.

“What do you mean?” you asked nervously.

“Don’t worry. He likes you too. Trust me,” she winked at you. He liked you too?

After lunch, you departed from Ned and MJ and walked to PE. You were in deep thought the entire time. Peter liked you?

Finally, you made it to the gym. The teacher just let you do whatever you wanted for the first day, so Peter asked if you wanted to walk around with him, which you quickly agreed to.

“So, how was French?” he started.

“Facile,” you answered, smiling.

“Easy?” he asked. You nodded. A gust of wind flew towards you and you shivered.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“Um, a little. But I’ll be fine,” you said. You brought your arms up to hug yourself for warmth.

“Here,” Peter slid his sweatshirt off. “Take this.”

You blushed. “No, it’s fine. Then you’ll be cold.”

“Nah, I’m fine. Take it,” he assured. Hesitantly, you took the sweatshirt and slipped it over your body. It smelled like him.

“Thanks,” you mumbled. There was Peter’s smile again.

After gym, you had AP Chem. Once again, easy A. For you and Peter. You guys even got to be lab partners. You messed around with each other while the teacher talked out how H2O and O2 yielded H2O2.

Finally, the day was over and you sat next to Peter on the bus. Ned allowed it. He sat with MJ. You were still wearing Peter’s sweatshirt and embraced the warmth it gave you.

—

Later, you were finishing up chem homework, when you heard a crash in Peter’s room. You ran in to see Peter in a red suit. He slid his mask off to reveal cuts and bruises all over his face.

“Oh my God, Peter what happened? What are you doing?” you sat him on the bed and examined his wounds.

“I-I was um…”

“Are you that Spider-Man guy?” you questioned him, shocked. “Is that why you were at Avengers Tower the other day with my dad?”

“Yeah,” he winced when you touched one of his cuts. You muttered a small ‘sorry.’

“Oh my god. My dad never told me,” you gasped.

“Yeah, he didn’t want you to know. I’m so screwed,” Peter said through gritted teeth.

“Let me help you, Pete. Should I—Should I get May?” you asked.

“No, May doesn’t know.”

“She doesn’t? Oh ok, well um… Do you have a first aid kit?” you asked in a panic. He was pretty beat up.

“Yeah, under the sink in the bathroom.” He lied on the bed and groaned.

You got the kit from the bathroom and proceeded to clean the cuts on his face.

“Ok, we’re done with your face,” you said, placing the cotton ball down. “Now take off your suit.”

“No, it’s ok. I got it, Y/N.”

“Peter, it’s fine. I got it,” you urged. You gave him your best puppy dog face and he couldn’t resist.

“Fine.” He slipped his suit off and looked away from you. You tried to ignore his toned chest and stomach and placed bandage wrap on his torso.

“Got beat up pretty bad, huh? Tough bad guys?” you asked to distract him.

“Uh not really. I got kind of distracted,” he laughed. Your hand slipped and he hissed in pain.

“Sorry, uh go on.”

“I um…” If you’re going to tell her, I guess now would be the time, he thought. “I was thinking about you,” he continued.

You dropped the wrap and opened your mouth slightly in shock. “What do you mean?”

“Well—”

“Kids, I’m home!” May opened the door. Yours and Peter’s eyes widened. He threw his suit out of sight and quickly slipped on some clothes.

May entered the room. “Pete, what happened to your face?”

“He fell!” you blurted out. “We were running during gym and he slid face-first onto the floor.”

You and Peter laughed nervously. “Yeah, I uh, fell.”

“Ok, be more careful baby,” May closed the door.

—

You ate dinner in awkward silence with May and Peter. You stared at your food the entire time. Peter glanced every now and again at you, but you refused to make eye contact with him. Did you not like him back? Great, he thought.

Peter laid in his bed wide awake. He couldn’t stop thinking about you and how he had completely screwed up your friendship. He needed to fix this. He got up from bed and walked into the living room.

He saw you, still in his sweatshirt, sleeping. He tripped over the couch and fell onto it.

“Oof!” You quickly sat up at the noise and sent sparks through your hands.

“It’s me! It’s just me!” Peter whispered loudly. You lowered your hand and sighed.

“Peter you scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“What are you doing here?”

“I-I um…”

“Peter… do you… like me?” you closed your eyes shut in embarrassment.

“I-I uh…” Peter blushed for probably the hundredth time this week.

You frowned. “I get it if you don’t.”

“What? No, Y/N I do like you! I like you a lot. Ever since I first met you actually. Even though you ran away and all but—”

“I like you too,” you smiled widely.

“I didn’t tell you because your dads said I couldn’t be with you,” Peter pouted at your fathers’s warnings.

“I don’t care what they say. I want you,” you whispered.

“I want you too.”

Your faces were really close. You were unsure of what to do next, but before you could decide, Peter closed the distance between the two of you.

Wanda had told you what kissing was but you never expected it to be this great.

His lips were soft and moved carefully as if he was scared of rejection. You pushed back a little and placed your hands on his face. He wrapped his arms around your waist and deepened the kiss.

Peter never wanted it to stop. He quickly ended it for a breath of air but crashed his lips back onto yours. His hands moved up your waist and into your hair. You wrapped your arms around his neck in reply.

“Go out with me,” he said, releasing you from his grasp.

“Like-Like on a date?”

“Yeah, we could go out and eat dinner and take a walk around Central Park or Coney Island and ride the Ferris Wheel or—”

“Yes,” you breathed.

“R-Really?” Peter was surprised you agreed.

You nodded in reply and kissed him again.

—

On Saturday, Happy drove you and Peter to the Avengers complex to visit. The Avengers greeted the both of you.

“Man of Spiders! Lady Y/N. It is wonderful to see you both,” Thor greeted.

“Sparky, eh how’s it going?” Sam asked.

“Hello, guys!” Wanda waved at you both.

You greeted all of the Avengers and lastly your dads.

“Hi, peanut. How was school?” Tony asked, giving you a hug.

“It was great. Peter really helped and he introduced me to his friends.

“Oh, that’s awesome, sweetheart.” Tony let go and turned to Peter.

“Peter, did you go a good job?”

Peter swallowed. “Uh, yeah. I-I think so,” he sputtered nervously. You hadn’t told them you were dating yet. Only MJ, Ned, and May knew.

“You think so?” Steve questioned.

“I mean, yeah—yes, sir. I think so…”

“Dad, lay off, will you?” You pushed against his chest to get him to back away from Peter.

Nat came up to you to give you a hug, but before she did, she stared at you for a long moment before yelling out, “You kissed Peter, didn’t you?”

“Wh-What? No, I didn’t,” You were bright red. Shit, shit, shit.

“What?!” Tony and Steve yelled simultaneously. They stared at Peter.

“Parker, what was the one thing I told you not to do?!” Tony yelled.

“Uh, n-not to-to—”

“Not to hook up with our daughter!” Steve finished.

“But I—”

“You what!?” Tony screamed. “You did it anyway. I trusted you, Peter”

“I called you son…” Steve growled.

“Hey!” you yelled over the chaos. “I like him, ok? And he’s a nice guy. Come on, guys. Let him be.”

“But-But he—” Tony tried to defend.

“But nothing! He likes me and he’s nice and smart and he makes me laugh, ok? He’s good. You like him, don’t you?” You gave them your puppy dog sad face.

Steve and Tony softened. “Ok, fine,” Steve raised his arms in defeat. “But I’m watching you son.”

“Yes-Yes, sir,” Peter stuttered.

“But don’t kiss each other in front of me please,” Bucky added.

In spite, you smirked and pulled Peter to you by his shirt and gave him a quick peck.

Everyone groaned.

“My eyes!” Clint yelled.

“Oh boy,” Bruce turned to the face the other direction.

“Aw,” Wanda clasped her hands to her chest.

“Just—Just fucking… kill me,” Tony said.

You leaned over to Peter, who was sweating nervously at Steve, who glared at him angrily. “I think they like you.”

—

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fluffy-marshmallow-heart · 5 years

Text

A Twist of Fate ch.33 -With This Ring

The Elementalists au

Beckett x MC (Oriana)

Words: 1965

Series Master List

Complete Master List

There's only going to be a couple more chapters after this :)

This AU is set after everyone graduates Penderghast, and Beckett and Oriana were never friends. Fate, however, may have a different plan for them.

Beckett and Oriana arrived at the Town Hall, where Oriana quickly slipped inside a restroom.

“Beckett…there’s no café here.” Tom strode in the hall’s doors, looking around confused.

“Yeah…why are we here? Dave chimed in. “Melissa called me on the way over to make sure this was the right place.”

Beckett grinned as he pulled on his suit coat and buttoned it. “It’s a surprise. Will your wives be here soon?”

“Already here.” The women came in and kissed their respective husbands. “Where’s Oriana? I thought she was coming.”

“I swear Beckett, if she up and left you again I’m going to find her just so I can strangle her. It’s not okay what she did, and it’s not okay that you made my husband worried sick all weekend long!”

Melissa’s voice was raised, and Beckett had to admit she was a bit terrifying when she’s mad.

“She’s just freshening up. Come on, your seats are reserved, and this won’t take long.” Beckett walked into an atrium with a few lights strung about and fake potted trees. Overall, it was a quaint area. A kind-looking man approached the group.

“Mr. Harrington?”

“Yes, that’s me, we spoke earlier.” Beckett reached out and grasped his hand, giving it a firm shake.

“Ms. Miller was such a ray of light this morning. She’s clearly excited for this. Normally we do not provide the wedding license and perform the wedding on the same day, but I’m glad we were able to make an exception. And where is the young bride?”

“Wait, wait, wait. Bride?? Wedding license?? What are you talking about?” Melissa cried.

“He’s talking about our wedding.”

Everyone looked back at the doors, where Oriana was calmly walking in with an exuberant smile. “We’re getting married today.”

Beckett’s jaw dropped as he took her in. He hadn’t known what she grabbed that morning to wear, but seeing her now took his breath away. She was wearing a white, flowing dress that flared mid-thigh, with a halter tie instead of sleeves, a plunging neckline, and low cut in the back. It was identical to the dress she’d worn on their first date, except this one was a shimmering white, while the other was yellow as the sun. Her white heels showed her shapely legs, and her smile would warm any heart that came near her. Her fiery red hair had a blue hair clasp in it, and she was completely radiant.

“Wow.” He murmured. I can’t believe she’s mine. She’s all mine. How did we get here? How did I get her to agree to this? I’m the luckiest man on the planet right now.

Oriana reached the group, planting a kiss on Beckett’s lips before turning to their friends. “I’m sorry I caused so much worry and pain for everyone. I thought I knew what was best for everyone. It ended up being the worst thing for everyone, though.”

Beckett clasped her hand in his, and the two of them together faced the four people standing in front of them. “Please forgive me.” Oriana whispered.

Dave and Melissa hung back a bit while Tom let out a whoop and grabbed the two lovers into a hug. “God, I’m so happy for you!! Of course, you’re forgiven Oriana. If Beckett forgives you then so do I.”

“It’s so good to have you back.” Jessie chimed in, joining in the hug. “To be honest, when Tom called about lunch, I had a feeling you two were eloping. I’m thrilled I was right.”

The judge cleared his throat. “I’m glad to see this is a happy time, however, we do need to get started.”

“We don’t have the room for long.” Beckett explained. “Since everything is so last minute, we’re lucky this is happening at all.”

“Yes, it’s not like you to rush into things.” Dave said quietly. “But if you think this is right…then I support you.”

“As do I.” Melissa agreed.

“Thank you.” Beckett and Oriana said together, grinning at each other when they realized they spoke at the same time.

“Ugh, you two are so freaking cute.” Melissa muttered, stepping forward and embracing Beckett, then Oriana. “I want to stay mad but just…you’re so disgustingly cute and I adore you.”

“Places, please.” The Justice announced at the podium.

Dave hugged Beckett tightly. “I’m happy for you.” He murmured. “I’m so glad she’s back and you’re doing this.”

“Not rushing?” Beckett asked.

Dave shrugged. “I’m a bit surprised you wouldn’t have a big wedding…but I get not wanting to wait to marry your beautiful bride.”

“Thank you.” Beckett told him. “Your support means everything to me, really.”

Dave, Melissa, Tom, and Jessie sat in the front, all had mile wide smiles on their faces. Beckett and Oriana stood in front of the podium, fingers intertwined. Beckett’s heart was thumping wildly; he thought it might even jump out of his chest.

The judge began the ceremony. “Marriage is a special place, the sheltered environment in which we can endlessly explore ourselves in the presence of another and in which we can offer the possibility of true reflection of another. As the writer Richard Bach has so beautifully stated, “A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we are safe and at home. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction… Our soul mate is the one who makes life come to life.”

Beckett felt Oriana squeeze his hand, and he looked over to catch her glistening golden eyes. She smiled at him, and his heart grew larger than he ever thought it could. He had a couple more surprises for her, he just needed to wait until the official got to those parts.

“May your love create a safe haven for you both on the journey that lies ahead of you. Deeply listen to each other-to your dreams and to your frustrations. Help each other. Let your love be an inspiration to those around you, to reach for what is good in all of us. May your love be so abundance that you have plenty to share with the rest of us as well. It is your love that has brought us together here today. May it grow deeper and sweeter with each passing year.”

Beckett drew a deep breath. This is it. The moment I’ve been waiting for since the day I laid eyes on her. This is the day that proves dreams really do come true.

“Do you, Oriana, take Beckett to be your partner for life? Do you promise to take time to talk to him, listen to him, and care for him? Will you share his laughter, and his tears, as his partner, lover, and best friend? Do you take him as your lawfully wedded husband for now and ever more?”

“I do.” She said with a watery grin.

“Do you, Beckett, take Oriana to be your partner for life? Do you promise to take time to talk to her, listen to her, and care for her? Will you share her laughter, and her tears, as her partner, lover, and best friend? Do you take her as your lawfully wedded wife for now and ever more?”

“I do.” He murmured, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“Do you have rings to exchange?”

Oriana’s eyes widened in panic. Beckett smirked at her as he reached into his pocket…and took out two simple white gold bands, handing them to the judge. Her mouth fell open as she looked at him confused.

The judge took them both before giving the larger one to Oriana. “Repeat after me. Beckett, I take you to be my lawfully wedded husband. I vow to love you and care for you as long as we both shall live. With this ring, I thee wed.”

Oriana repeated the phrase line by line as the officiant spoke, slipping the ring onto Beckett’s left ring finger.

“Now Beckett. Repeat after me. Oriana, I take you to be my lawfully wedded wife. I vow to love you and care for you as long as we both shall live. With this ring, I thee wed.”

Beckett repeated the lines as given, slipping the smaller silver band onto Oriana’s delicate finger.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss.”

The two newlyweds joined lips instantly, their passion igniting the fire between them, as their friends cheered. They walked down the aisle, faces beaming, eyes sparkling.

“Now I get why you needed the half day” Dave joked, as he signed the marriage license as witness. “This was incredible, and such a great surprise. God, Melissa’s right, you’re fucking adorable together.”

“You guuuyssss!!! Oh my god!!!!! You’re married!!!!!” A shrill voice sounded, and Oriana noticed it came from Beckett’s phone, which Jessie was holding. Her jaw dropped as she saw the faces of Zeph and Shreya on the screen, their smiles so wide she thought their faces might crack.

“You…you….” Oriana’s hand flew to her mouth as she looked at Beckett. He smiled softly.

“Can’t get married without your best friends. I know my friends are pretty great, but…so our yours. Since they couldn’t physically be here, I dialed the number and slipped my phone to Jessie.”

“At first I had no idea what he was doing. You should have seen their faces when I appeared on the screen instead of you two.” Jessie laughed. “Lucky they were too surprised to talk right away, so I just quickly turned the phone to you guys so they could see.”

Oriana threw her arms around her husband’s neck, kissing him fiercely. “God, I love you.”

“I love you too…my dear wife.”

“How did you get the rings?” Oriana asked incredulously. “We decided to get married this morning, and you haven’t left my sight until now.”

“You went to the bathroom at one point, right after you called to book the wedding.” He told her.

“So? That was like. Three minutes.”

“It was enough time to make another call to city hall. I hired our officiant to purchase a couple rings. He slipped them to me as we shook hands when we arrived and you were changing.”

“How…do people just do whatever your ask?” Oriana exclaimed. “How is that even possible? Isn’t he a government employee?”

Beckett nodded. “A government employee I paid to take an early lunch break and go to the jeweler. I know the rings are nothing fancy, but…”

“They’re perfect.” She blurted out. “It’s even the right size!”

“I know.” He shrugged. “I gave him the sizes.”

“You knew your ring size?”

“Of course. When I bought your engagement ring, I had myself sized at the same time.”

Oriana just looked at him in awe. “You’re amazing, Beck. I’m so glad I married you.”

He pulled her close to him. “I’m so glad you said yes.”

“Oriana, what do we call you now?” Melissa asked. “Are you staying Oriana Miller, or will you be Oriana Harrington?”

“Harrington.” Oriana answered right away, not even a slight pause, never taking her eyes off of Beckett. “Definitely Harrington.”

She’s taking my name?? We never discussed this! This is the best day of my life!! It already was but…nothing will ever beat this day!!

“Mrs. Harrington, should we get out of here?” He whispered in her ear.

“Yes. Let’s go.” She whispered back.

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***I had help from the internet with the ceremony itself, I cannot take credit

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sole-cuore-amore-e-droga · 5 years

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Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Germany to Eurovision with two total strangers turned friends overnight

youtube

First, S!sters, let me tell you how it works, hey!

I am never too sure why but German national finals just almost NEVER work in my exact favour. Granted, I have forgiven them for Roman Lob because I have had literally no other reason to hate him other than “eww he’s winning every single Unser Star für Baku show bar one he’s such an easy winner”; and maybe Michael too because my only vitriol towards him was that he’s such a great soul... but only on his non-ESC stuff? If I had anyone else at the time, it would have obviously been the energy of Xavier Darcy and his song too! But at the same time Xavier would have placed worse than Michael so I’ll assume that Michael was actually the best possible choice for Germany at the time? Sorry, voXXclub, Ryk and Ivy Quainoo fans.

But god damn Germany, you could have given us just at least SOME ounce of competitiveness this year, couldn’t you??? And you'll know exactly why do I feel this certain way about this next target of my reviewing. Meet Carlotta Truman and Laurita Spinelli that were assembled specially for the German national final (which hopefully gives you a bit of a heads-up of where are the things going) and have a song written especially for them to pretend to be something they are actually not looking like to be, without their involvement... this songwriting camp experience has turned them into S!sters. Got that? Even the exclamation point part? Good, because you'll probably never hear of neither them, nor their song "Sister", ever again. Just like it is accepted for a German entry as of lately, I suppose.

It starts off innocently enough, with the music-box-y sound, and then quickly escalates into the singing on top of a different set of instruments. If there’s one thing I can’t fault this song for, it’s the instant relatability levels this song hits you with: “I’m tired”, “I’m tired of competing”, “I’m sorry for the drama”, “I tried to steal your thunder”... if these aren’t moods. Now what does this message tie into? Of course one of the songwriters (Laurell Barker) talked about the message of it being somewhat related to women who get aggressive with one another for things and I think I remember that the choruses represent their unity or so. However, I’d like to interpret it a little differently. If I consult myself of the meaning of this song for myself, it is somewhat indeed about two sisters that find it hard to get along a LOT (e.g.: me and my sister irl), but the chorus represents that in the end of the day, they’re still sisters, therefore, they’re each other’s family parts and the “fire” burning in between of them is the sign of the by-default sisterly bond and that it can be strong. If I listen to Laurell, however (and I should because it’s HER song and HER interpretations should be official), it’s two women who probably compete for a man’s attention and get angry at each other when they either receive something from that man (”how dare you get more flowers from him than me!”) or they don’t (”it’s your fault he didn’t look at either of us today!”). At the end they’re just “tired of competing” and “tired of always losing” and secretly accept the fact that they should just get the man notice them both equally so he can hang out with two chick of one’s price, all at once. ^^

But what about how the song sounds? Well, that’s the problem. It’s just your standard average pop tune that doesn’t offer anything fun nor exciting. It uses simple instruments (guitars, music box), simple melodies (the main leitmotif progression on this song is C - E - lower B - C), even the simple stage presentation (the girls were dressed in black for this song on the NF). Simplicity is key, but for a country like Germany, they often tend to wander off into a painfully average or just plain ‘misunderstood-idea’ category. Cascada had a good tune but in a rapidly evolving Eurovision their act just looked completely uninspired - just some chick with a mediocre dress dancing on stairs with random camera shots to the backings. While the others were even more fun and intriguing (or diaspora overvoted them). Elaiza for some reason was uninteresting for most songwise, to say the least. Ann Sophie wasn't so bad but the German staging director did not get the gist that turning your ass against Europe is a no way points magnetiser, not even from the thirsty guys looking for attractive Eurowomen. Jamie-Lee was so-so but she refused to let her otaku look go away for her Eurovision performance, therefore everything looked so confusing and there was no absolute point in anything, not even in those laser trees. And Levina was... ehhhhh... and like someone said on Twitter few days ago, this was a song with no staging. It's sad to see Germany sending something cookie-cutter but it's even more awful when they send something remotely decent but their staging sucks at the end. Even the one for "Sister" is not gonna feature the spinning platform they had in the NF originally for Tel Aviv, that's a shame.

Well if there’s something I can admire the song for is that the girls kind of sound good when they do the song live? Unlike San Marino 2018 (which is also two girls only paired for a national final that never knew each other in their lives but having to pretend to be besties after winning the NF they sang on), they truly sell the thing nicely without making it out to be a mess. The spinning platform might have helped a bit more and with it being gone so is the magic I guess, but I guess the ladies might make it work some more at SOME point (at least with their singing)... Also the structuring of the song is pretty smeared out but interesting. I'd expect them to go "oOoOo SISTER! WahOoO SISTE-ER!" after the whole chorus but Carlotta and Laurita are rebels - they use it after half a full chorus, omitting the second chorus line. And they manage to somehow bring that chorus back, so they can end it with proclaiming once more that something "[shines] like city lights, torches in the skYYY". Then they go all like "don't you try to hiiiiide iiiit, dON'T YOU TRY TO HIIIIIDE IIIIIT... SISTER!" and the music box closes everything. Bookends. And its simplicity is nice enough to not bother me, and the instrument touches (again, guitar, and they even tried to make the chorus slightly majestic, with strings I suppose, and thise backings that repeat the song's leitmotif melody) are quite delightful in itself, so that it wouldn't be boring, melred out vanilla with maple syrup - instead it's a bit more 'orchestral' vanilla. It's vanilla that's at least accompanied with some vocal strenght. I do imagine playing just that "oOoOo SISTER" part alone in a background of a fancy ball, with red carpet, punch bowl, silver sparkly dresses and chandelier lights. Everything of there filmed from top view until camera pabs to someone that looks like Anne Hathaway.

In the end I actually kinda like this, and I even liked Levina to some degree 2 years ago (but wasn’t fond of Jamie Lee and Ann Sophie, the better of the average German entries). It stands its ground out more than them - it has more going on for itself without needing to sound like a ripoff of another song or an anime fangirl staging. It has some nicer things going on for itself that I could care about (like the ‘orchestrale’). I have a feeling I might not like the girls' chemistry on stage and that it won't transmit to the viewing audience’s TV screens though, but more on that on the below résumée:

Approval factor: It’s... approvable, nothing much of complete approvable, but the feeling of liking this is there, so go ahead with it Germany...

Follow-up factor: Do I need to say more on this? You know what, these last two years for Germany proved that they decided to not improve on their result, Michael Schulte was just a fluke and if the Germans were more cloudcuckoolanding on last year’s German NF, they would’ve sent that only vanilla NF song they had in there...

Big 5 factor: If (emphasis on “if”) S!sters are staged nicely - decent vocals (no voicecracks like Levina), a bit better staging, “believable” chemistry - they maaaay escape bottom 2 at best, maybe even explore some more beyond the bottom 5... if anything else fails, bottom 5 is locked. I mean, they have plenty of places to fuck up in, like, making the girls look way too fake happy at each other at the end, or just let them scream “SISTEEEER” at each other with no mutual emotions exchanged at each other. Just like Italy was feared to look like last year - two men yelling angrily/passively-aggresively at each other. So can be S!sters, but the catch is that they’re’nt the fan faves. And they’re singing in English. And barely anyone of the “locals” would care about them anyway, just like the Eurofans don’t. (Also can S!sters get better stage clothes for Eurovision? Please? That’s just my flop suggestion, idk if it will give them better points but I would dress Laurita in a white suit (white crop top, white coat, white pants, even the stilettos white). Just because... they could play ying-yang with each other. Laurita can still have red lipstick on if she wants btw)

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

Soooooo, Unser Lied für Israel. To be honest with y’all, this wasn’t a very favourable edition for me because, for one, I have never heard of any of those final NF acts. Wish they admitted Kasalla to the lineup, so then I could’ve had another clear favourite next to the first one down below that I’ll be talking about in this bonus. Second of all that... like I said, I wasn’t very hyped about this NF much unlike last year, where even some “who is she where did you find her” people tried their asses off to be appealing, and hey, a mediocre German NF filler-declared-winner did not win for once! (instead she went for judging talents in her actual home country and even danced a bit to that country NF’s winner song while it was performed as a competitor) This year, not only don’t I have an act that I would actively mourn of its NF loss, but also aside from my apparent favourite, the songs weren’t even that likeable by me. Yes, a lot of them were nice and Germany certainly upped their game, but I feel the same way I felt with Dora - only one good song, then another decent favourite that I have I guess, but that’s it. Let’s find out who won this NF for me and some other things:

• Look Germany, I found you your saviour you seemingly rejected! Well yeah fine, she didn’t do well with the international jury and S!sters did (only because the biased German juror pushed them into 1st), but let’s all agree her song would be a-bangin’. Meet Aly Ryan and her stylish synthpop tune “Wear Your Love”, complimented with a cool stage show, with projected stripes and everything! The expert jury rewarded it with 12 points rightfully, I’d say. Germany should’ve followed suit :) (also the trumpets remind me of a British NF fan flop from last year, “Legends” by Asanda. Is it just me???)

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(this might as well just not matter anymore now that Aly’s management thought that it’s the best idea to block the fans that go to her DMs... granted that some artists could really use some privacy Instagram-wise, but that’s what disabling DMs is for. At least Aly still has fans though, unlike most other ULfI candidates. She should have enjoyed her attention, no? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) UPDATE: despite this people still would’ve wanted to see Aly win, and I agree. Some minor things are forgotten anyway and the artists are loved still if anything.)

• Not necessarily my favourite now but there was this cool chick going by the moniker Lilly Among Clouds. Nothing particular in her song “Surprise” sounds like there’s a happy sky with few clouds - it’s very much so a cloudy sky with a slightly dramatic storm coming out of them, complemented with Lilly’s bold vocals and the tone in her voice, and those orchestrals were something (and this song has an orchestral-based music video if anything). The song dragged in between a lot of the parts (verses felt like a passenger in a vast desert and the choruses were like a big oasis) but maybe those in-between song parts were to signify the calm before the storm, the warning before the “surpriiiiiiise”. Would have been a bold choice for Germany, this chick. Oh and I didn’t put a video down below (instead it’s linked somewhere) because I still have this screenshot on my phone. I love it.

• Besides those two, there also were two other remarkable ladies, and they they have a lot of things in common, besides their dark skin and that they’re ladies - BB Thomaz and Makeda. Two powerful ballads and two powerful vocals! Granted they were not my faves (I like 1,5 of both those songs combined though) but I admire their singingwork. It was magical. Not to mention are their songs themselves - BB Thomaz sang “Demons”, a quite personal song about overcoming one’s fears, bullying, naysayers, depression and everything like that, and also spawned this iconic line I am probably going to use on my T-shirt someday: “my demons can go and *dramatic thump* themselves!”. But I would’ve liked it more if the whole song sounded just like the verses - granted, it makes sense for her to go all showtune-y happy when she declares that her demons can go and *you know* themselves as she’s no longer dependent on them, but I found the choruses cheesy either way. Whereas Makeda, the sweet lil lovely gal, decided to go for a romantic ballad about not hating a guy after he breaks her heart. Her song “The Day I Loved You Most” is one big role model of mine now when it will come to my future relationships: I will never have to worry about the days when my non-existent future BF is a dick to me - instead I will rather cherish the good ole’ days in my heart without whining big time about our broken-off relationship! Yeah that’ll do I suppose. It was a nice ballad to me. Makeda also nailed one damn big great highnote live and that’s how I understood why International Jury and Eurovision Expert Jury loved it so much. Televote dares sink Makeda and uproot S!sters? For shame. Inb4 y’all ask me “but what about the other two?!?” - lol they’re not worth your attention. They’re just twink songs. I like one of them enough to be my 2nd of ULfI, but lbr, no one and absolutely no one, cared about them. That’s all.

• This NF started off with the hosts collectively attempting to make “You Let Me Walk Alone” sound somewhat funny? idk? and then Michael came back to save his own goddamn song out of the entrance door from the audience and right onto the stage <3 amazing.

• Yet again, I commend the hosting of this show that has, and how much does it try to make a knock-off Eurovision, ever since last year ❤ Starting with the logo, continuing off with live commentary during the ending and the beginning of performances, including interval acts, and a sequenced voting ❤ One of the few complaints I have is that the postcards seemed waaaaay longer than each individual competing entries? I know I tl;dr with my reviews a lot here but some NF shows just get out the stories of singers' lives rather quickly and painlessly...

• ULfI decided that it'd be a good idea to outrival Festivali i Këngës in terms of ridiculously unnecessary interval acts. Yeah. There was this cowboy guy with glasses doing his own tunes, then him again on another interval act (I forgot but wasn’t his name Udo?), then Lena at some point (one of the better interval acts actually), then Michael Schulte, then this one dude from a band Revolverhed (who later voted as part of the International Jury as the German juror and... 12′d S!sters out of his The Voice mentor bias for one of his ladies. Yeah yeah, rigging...)... there were just a little too many, that’s what I’m saying.

• Now how exactly did we all know of the victory of the S!sters? Why, with voting sequences, of course! At first we have had this international jury made up of random specific people, usually giving 12s to S!sters, Makeda or some other twink. S!sters won it, then came the Eurovision panel whose votes were co-read by ... GASP! WILLIAM FROM WIWIBLOGGS!!! ;O don’t worry though he did not dun goof anything this time - the 12 from the Eurovision panel went to Aly Ryan. Sounds hopeful enough, right?? Well, hell no, as then came the televoting results, announced by Mr. Jon Ola Sand and he announced the 12 to S!sters! Oh German televoting, why did you allow yourselves to be THIS brainwashed and decline the good progress since Michael???? I will never forgive Germany for pushing S!sters this far. Putting them up together last minute and also last-minute adding them to the lineup, giving them the pimpslot, making a person who knows one of the S!sters more personally a German 'representative' of the International Jury... unacceptable.

• IDK where to find this but there was this part of the winner reprise where the blonde S!ster (that’s Carlotta) was so overwhelmed with joy that she struggled to open her song straightforwardly and instead let all the tears and laughs(???) take over her. It’s obvious this happens during all those winner reprises that the winner cannot really contain their emotions for what joyballs the victories have rendered them to, but that moment still sticks out to me. The other S!ster (Laurita) was much more collected and later on both of them carried on the right track and sang the rest of this whole thing decently!

For now I’d just wish them viel Glück in Tel Aviv and I hope that their friendship last longer than Jessika’s and Jenifer’s from last year! (probably not because like these two, S!sters are bound to flop, and separate as immediately as the unfortunately-formed class group project participants, just like Jenifer from Jessika)

#eurovision 2019 #tel aviv 2019 reviews #germany 2019 #s!sters #sister #germany

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aliciameade · 7 years

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“Earned It”

This is for my anon who was having a really crappy week and it was only Tuesday. They asked very nicely for me to write them some sinful smut.

“Beca gets roped into giving Chloe a lapdance. Chloe's brain gets broken (like wtf) because surprisingly Beca is really good at the lapdance and not awkward. Not being able to stop thinking about it all evening, she later goes to Beca. The rest is up to you. “

So here we go!

"Guys, no. No, no, no," Beca says as her hands, one of them holding a beer, amplify her dissent. "We are too fucking old for Truth or Dare."

"Legacy's dumb butt is only 21; she brings down the average." This was all Amy's idea to begin with and Chloe agrees with her rationale.

"But Chloe and Aubrey are 28 so they cancel out her 21," Beca counters.

"Hey!" she and Aubrey protest in unison, and then they're all laughing because they're all a little bit tipsy on beer and cocktails lounging in pajamas in Chloe's hotel room.

While they all have their own rooms this tour stop in France, it seemed as though her ongoing flirtation with a certain military escort had earned her a bit of favoritism - thus far in the way of a suite in a fancy hotel in the South of France and a note on her guest account at check-in about all room and bottle service being gratis.

Which has led her and all her favorite people in the whole wide world (sans Stacie who was too pregnant to fly) to being piled onto couches, chairs, and the floor with open bottles of beer, liquor, and mixers littering every surface with a massive room service order, consisting mostly of appetizers and desserts, on the way.

"Too bad, Shawshank," Amy says with a tiny glass pilfered from the bathroom water glass collection filled with a clear liquid Chloe knew not to be water, and that settles it.

They're all old hands at Bellas Truth or Dare now, and Chloe knows how the evening will progress.

They're not drunk yet, just enough to have looser lips than usual and it starts off with truths which are prompts of what are intended to be deep or philosophical questions about their lives, like does Amy regret anything she's done and how does Emily feel about graduating in a couple months and how did Beca manage to put up with her boss at BFD for so long before quitting?

Dares start getting mixed in once everyone's answered a question or two, and they start innocently enough, or as innocent as dares designed to get each other more drunk could be considered. Amy dares her to drink a cocktail of whatever she decides to pour, and Chloe swallows it with little more than a shudder at the bitter burn; she's grown all but immune to Amy's best/worst concoctions over the years. Chloe decides Beca's been far too quiet through all this and dares her to do the same - drink an Amy Cocktail.

She does, and she's less graceful about it than Chloe was but she still handles it well for what it is.

It hits Beca about 20 minutes later, and they all know that when Beca's officially drunk, the party officially begins. They know it hits her because she's belly-laughing at Flo, who just tripped over a discarded shoe and while Chloe saw it happen and it wasn't really that funny, Beca's all but in tears over it and hanging half off the couch, saved from falling only by Chloe managing to catch her around the waist and pull her back.

Chloe's laughing, too, but her joy is really directed at Beca and the joy on her face that has been a bit elusive as of late. Work was really getting to Beca, and while she used to come home every day keyed up about whatever awesome hook she came up with, the last few weeks she'd come home emotionally and creatively drained, doing little more than flopping into bed and doing anything but talk about work and music.

She gives a yank and pulls Beca upright again and then smiles as Beca lets the momentum carry her right into leaning against Chloe.

Beca's personal boundaries have broken down a lot over the years. Her walls used to be visible from outer space, but with time, brick by brick, after meaningful conversations and mutual stress crying and victories and losses and break-ups and life just happening to them, the Beca who Chloe met seven years ago was a distant memory in certain ways.

New Beca - this adult, grown-up, mature Beca who'd been there for Chloe through thick and thin, and Chloe for her in return - was a person who made it really hard for Chloe not to fall in love with her.

(That's a lie. She fell in love with her seven years ago and all time has done for Chloe is make her fall even deeper.)

Chloe pretends not to think about that as she moves her arm so Beca can lean against her more comfortably while they both sip their drinks - now toned-down versions of Amy's craziness.

They watch the dares go down together, laughing at the absurd and often immature things they're all daring one another to do. Beca's laughter only makes her laugh harder, and more than once she's wiping tears from her cheeks while Beca does the same.

"Chloe!"

"Yeah, boss!" she responds automatically, a permanent grin now in place.

"Truth or dare?" Aubrey asks.

"Ooh, dare!" she says with a shimmy of her shoulders that jiggles Beca a little, too, and she waits while Aubrey - an amusingly drunk Aubrey - works on thinking up a dare for her.

There are many recommendations thrown her way from the other girls but Aubrey repeatedly brushes them aside until she holds up her index finger in decision. "I dare you to call Chicago and make him think you want to have phone sex."

There's a collective gasp and a chorus of approvals and when there's no audible response from Beca, she glances at her and then suddenly Beca's ooh'ing as well. She doesn't let her drunk mind think too long about that as she retrieves her cell phone from her pocket to pull up Chicago's number. "That's it?" she asks as though she's bored by the dare because she kind of is. Aside from Beca's delayed reaction. "These are supposed to be hard, Bree."

"On speaker," Aubrey adds as Chloe taps to connect the call.

She rolls her eyes as though it's all the more boring because that's her game. Sex is No Big Deal for Chloe. She has it. Often. She likes it. Everyone knows she likes it. No one judges her for it. No one would be surprised that she is unbothered by starting phone sex on speaker with a room full of other people.

Except Chloe is bothered by one person observing this, and that person is still leaning against her as the phone crackles a little before the signal clears and it rings.

"Hello?"

She pushes that little thought out of her mind and pitches up her voice, her best flirtation tone that always lands her the free drinks at the bar or the forgiven speeding ticket. "Hey, you! It's Chloe!"

"Chloe, hi! How are you? Everything okay at the hotel?"

She twirls a lock of hair around her finger to help her get more into character. "Oh, the hotel is super nice. You got this big room just for me?"

There's a masculine chuckle from the other end of the line. "Thought you might like it. Top shelf digs for a top shelf lady."

The tacky comment garners a quick reaction from her audience and she rushes to mute the call before he knows they aren't alone. She shushes them all and once they're silent, opens the line again. "Oh, I love it," she says, dragging out one word a little longer than necessary. "But the girls are tired from the flight and I'm all alone and I...well, I…" she trails off, pretending to be embarrassed.

"You what?" His voice sounds a little lower than before, and Chloe knows she already has him on the hook.

"Well, I'm just so lonely and…" she trails off again, this time finishing with a quiet sigh.

"And?" He sounds eager and she has to mute the call for a second to let the girls laugh and comment.

She clears her throat and twirls her hair again. "And I just...mmm...honestly, I can't stop thinking about how broad your shoulders are and how strong your hands seem and…"

"And?" He repeats, and there's a distinct rustling sound that accompanies it.

"And I…" she moans again, this time a little more obvious with her intent, "...I keep imagining how they'd feel on my skin."

There's silence on the end of the line and she bites her lip, muting the call just in case there's a reaction but everyone else in the room is silent, too, on pins and needles. And then -

"Are you...Chloe, are you -"

"Uh huh," she answers quickly with a pitiful sounding moan.

"Shit." It's spoken as an exhale. "You are so fuck-"

That was her cue. "Oh, oh my gosh! Chicago, I'm so sorry, someone's at my door. I have to go. Thank you again for the room; I'll see you tomorrow at 8:00!" She disconnects the call before he can respond and the room falls apart.

There's laughter and imitations of her squeaky bimbo moaning and she's shrugging like it's nothing.

Like she can't feel the way Beca's hand is clawing into her thigh and how Beca's eyes are burning a hole through her right now.

Chloe dares Amy to go streaking because Amy loves a good streaking. Amy dares Ashley to go down to the lobby with Jessica and get into an argument with a stranger by claiming the world is flat. Ashley dares Flo to let them prank call someone in her phone contacts. Flo dares Emily to kiss the room service waiter whenever he finally arrives, so that dare is suspended until the time comes.

"Beca!"

"Hm, what?" Beca sits up from where she's been leaning more and more heavily against Chloe, still laughing and egging on her friends despite sinking further into Chloe.

"Truth or dare?" Emily asks and she's grinning so hard Chloe knows she already has her question or dare chosen.

"I don't know what you bitches could possibly not already know about me. But If you don't know it, I don't want you to. So, dare," she says resolutely with a nod.

"I dare you to give a lap dance -"

"What?" Beca interrupts.

Emily's gaze lands on Chloe and Chloe feels her heart stop.

"- to Chloe."

There's a moment where every single person in the room is silent.

And then there are seven girls who are shouting and laughing and pounding fists on tables and chairs, and Emily, who Chloe suspects might have been given that idea by someone else, is happily accepting everyone's praise for her dare, and she and Beca are sitting stone-still.

"Well? Let's get on with the show!" Amy says with an excited and conspiratorial clap of her hands. "This night needs some sexing up."

"You're all bitches, you know that, right?" Beca says as though she's not at all bothered by the dare. "I get to pick the music."

Then Beca's up and off the couch to click around in Spotify on Cynthia-Rose's laptop which is connected to the surround sound system of the room and Chloe's being pulled by both hands off the couch and guided to a chair someone's placed in the middle of the room in front of all the other seating, her back to everyone else.

Chloe's acutely aware that she hasn't actually responded to this situation yet, but everyone else is so busy doing so that no one seems to notice.

She's not quite sure how she would respond if she had to.

She sits down hard and tries her best to join in with everyone's laughter about hilarious the concept of "Beca giving someone a lap dance" is because, despite the rush of adrenaline and alcohol coursing through her veins, she can't actually envision Beca doing it. Or doing it well.

She's seen Beca dance. That's definitely an understatement. She's seen her dance, danced with her, taught her dance moves, even sexy ones. Beca can dance, and dance well. And sexily, when she wants to, or when she's not really trying to.

But the concept of Beca, in a room full of observers, giving anyone, let alone a fellow Bella, let alone Chloe, a lap dance that is anything other than something designed to be a huge joke is not one she considers.

This is going to be dumb and hilarious and Beca's probably going to do the robot to the tune of "Who Let the Dogs Out?"

Her first warning should have been the hard, slow beat of the strings and snare drum that echo through the room when Beca finds her song.

Her second warning should have been the way, when Beca turns back from the computer (now playing "Earned It" by The Weeknd) wearing an overconfident smirk, everyone in the room wolf-whistles.

You make it look like it's magic 'Cause I see nobody, nobody but you, you, you

Her third warning should have been the way Beca walks toward her, not really doing anything other than matching the pace of the song with her steps, though her hips seem to swing a little more than normal, her posture seems more relaxed, until she stops a few inches in front of Chloe.

I'm never confused Hey, hey I'm so used to being used So I love when you call unexpected

She just stands there smirking down at Chloe who swallows hard and tries not to look like she's internally freaking out about all this. It feels a lot like she's being lulled into a false sense of security, but that's just ridiculous because Beca's about to do something dumb to make everyone laugh -

'Cause I hate when the moment's expected

Beca's hands move to the back of her own neck and her back arches and she flips her hair while her hips swivel in a slow circle like she's done this a thousand times.

It makes everyone in the room break out once again in catcalls and whistles.

So I'ma care for you, you, you I'ma care for you, you, you, you, yeah

Everyone, that is, but Chloe.

It just makes Chloe's blood run cold and her face turn hot.

She tries to play it off, but she knows Beca can see right through her. They've known each other long enough to see past bullshit and she knows Beca can see the effect the simple move had on her.

'Cause girl you're perfect You're always worth it And you deserve it The way you work it

The circle Beca's hips traveled to kick off this little routine, Chloe learns right away, is an endless one. They move with the slow, rocking beat of the song and Beca's hands start drifting down from her neck, over her collar bones, over her chest and Chloe has to squint to not follow their journey so obviously, and she's really quite glad that everyone else is seated behind her.

Beca's the only one seeing her reaction to this.

'Cause girl you earned it, yeah Girl you earned it, yeah

And the look on Beca's face, some mix of amusement and intrigue with dark eyes makes Chloe swallow hard.

You know our love would be tragic So you don't pay it, don't pay it no mind

Beca's hands make it to her hips and they seem to guide them through another circle and then they're moving north again, over her stomach and Chloe notices that a couple of Beca's fingers seem to catch (purposefully?) on the hem of her hoodie and it lifts a few inches before dropping back into place.

Chloe thinks she hears more whistling, but her ears are starting to sort of have a constant hum going so it's hard to be sure.

Beca's knees bump hers and Chloe wonders when she got close enough for that to happen. Her hands are still backtracking and Chloe starts to give up on trying not to stare at the way Beca's fingers trace the zipper of the hoodie, and then -

We live with no lies Hey, hey And you're my favorite kind of night

Those fingers tug the zipper down an inch.

There's definitely whistles this time; they're loud enough to break through the sound of blood rushing in her brain, but she seems to have lost the ability to respond or react beyond blinking.

So she just blinks at Beca and has to sit there and take the way Beca's staring at her while she pulls it down another two inches.

And then another two.

So I love when you call unexpected 'Cause I hate when the moment's expected

After that, Chloe can see not only the strip of smooth skin that runs from Beca's throat to her sternum but also the navy blue of the bra she's wearing. But she only sees it for a second because Beca spins to turn her back to Chloe and plants her feet wide, hips still following that circle, but now she's bending forward, just the slightest bit, and arching her back hard, and she's definitely putting her ass right in Chloe's face.

So I'ma care for you, you, you I'ma care for you, you, you, you, yeah

Now no one can see her reaction and she doesn't know how long she has so she stares. She stares hard at the shape of it hugged in Beca's yoga pants, how it's so nicely heart-shaped and it's hard not to think that the triangle of empty space formed by Beca's stance wasn't made with Chloe's hand fitting into it in mind.

So she stares at it and imagines what's beneath the few millimeters of fabric.

'Cause girl you're perfect You're always worth it

She has to jerk her eyes up quickly when Beca turns around again, and Chloe knows Beca knows because she knows it's written all over her face. She's turned on and Beca smirks at her again like she's proud of it.

In what Chloe feels is a particularly unfair and vindictive action, Beca pulls a move right out of Chloe's own playbook; she taught her Beca's sophomore year.

She grinds it low.

And you deserve it The way you work it

She doesn't drop it low.

She grinds it low - a slow, gyrating move that takes Beca lower and lower until she's crouched in front of Chloe.

'Cause girl you earned it Girl you earned it

She grabs Chloe's knees, and maybe it's for balance, but Chloe's pretty sure it's not, because Beca snaps them open.

Beca literally parts Chloe's legs.

On that lonely night You said it wouldn't be love

She spares a thought toward wondering if she could become dehydrated from how much her palms are sweating right now but then she's distracted by the way Beca's looking up at her -

But we felt the rush It made us believe it there was only us

- and by the way Beca body rolls her way back upright, moving through the space she made between Chloe's legs.

Convinced we were broken inside, yeah Inside, yeah

Her hips never stop and Chloe feels hypnotized by them and the way Beca keeps touching herself, especially how her hands are traveling up her torso again and Chloe's pretty sure they're going to get to her breasts in a second and with Beca's hoodie open how it is she can already see a hint of cleavage. She's not quite sure how she's going to survive it if Beca does something like push her breasts together to amplify it.

She learns she can survive it because Beca does just that, but it doesn't last long, as though her unexpected confidence faltered for a second. Chloe wonders if it has to do with the way she knows she's staring hungrily at her, if it's maybe too much or too intense because this is all meant to be a big joke and she's creeping out Beca.

But the confidence is back after the momentary lapse and Beca glances down at Chloe's lap like she's really and truly considering sitting on it.

Chloe feels lightheaded and she sees Beca's foot come off the ground to -

"Legacy!" Amy's voice barrels through the fog in her brain like a train. "Room service is here! Time to come kiss this bloke!"

Beca's foot's back on the ground but she hasn't moved other than that. She's staring down at Chloe, and the confidence is gone. Now she's blushing and seems to notice on a delay that her hands are tangled up in her hair where she'd been tousling it and rips them out of it to cross her arms across her chest.

It amplifies her cleavage better than her hands did a second ago and Chloe's still recovering and she looks right at it, something she shouldn't have done with the spell broken but she is broken.

Beca broke her.

Beca notices Chloe's stare and grabs the zipper to tug it all the way to her throat and then she's shuffling away, a stiff march with her head down straight into the bathroom where Chloe hears the door lock.

She's still in her chair staring straight ahead at nothing, and for everything that just happened, no one in the room seems to care. She hears them like they're a movie playing in the background, and she can tell they're encouraging Emily to kiss the room service delivery guy who's apparently brought their desserts and appetizers.

"Damn, who knew Beca had moves like that?" Cynthia-Rose says with a clap to Chloe's back and she's finally snapped out of it. "I don't think I've ever been more jealous of you than I was just now."

She manages a laugh and peels herself out of the chair. She's painfully aware that she's flushed and sweating in several areas of her body, and she could really use a dry pair of underwear. "Right?" She clears her throat because it's embarrassingly rough. "I mean, I taught her everything she knows, so I'm not totally surprised."

Beca calls it a night when she returns from the bathroom to the protest of everyone. Chloe thinks she was in there for awhile, and she hopes she's okay. It's rarely a good sign when one of them is drunk, spends 10 minutes in the bathroom, and then says they have to go to bed.

Beca doesn't look sick, though, but she doesn't look normal, either, so Chloe doesn't worry about her being sick.

She does worry about how she feels about the way Chloe watched her dancing and if that's why Beca rather obviously hugged everyone goodnight except her.

She tries to re-engage herself in the party. She tries, she really tries. But she is more than a little distracted and more than a little confused and aroused, and while she really loves her friends, she needs them to leave so she can find some relief.

They finally haul themselves back to their rooms around 2:00 am and when she locks her hotel room door behind them, she lets her forehead fall against it and releases the groan of painful agony she's been holding back for hours.

"Jesus," she mutters to herself, just standing there for a minute before mustering the motivation to wash up for bed.

She strips out of her clothes and brushes her teeth and washes her face and falls into bed with a sigh. She just stares at the ceiling for awhile; there's a lot going on in her brain to unpack, and all of it has to do with Beca and how Beca looked at her while giving her that lap dance from hell (heaven?) and how Beca looked while giving her that lap dance.

It's been awhile since she touched herself while thinking of Beca. She'd managed, more or less, to stifle that urge once they'd moved in together with Amy. It was hard enough sharing a studio apartment with two other people and having zero privacy. She had to break the habit of moaning Beca's name if she was going to ensure that she'd never be moaning it where Beca might hear her.

She won't hear her tonight, though, because Chloe blissfully has the room to herself and she lets her left hand trace idle circles around her breast, teasing it to attention while she remembers how Beca slowly unzipped her sweatshirt so Chloe could see her cleavage.

She lets her right hand wander over her bare abdomen and then slides it straight down; she doesn't need the foreplay - she had plenty of that earlier.

The relief is sweet and she keeps replaying the way Beca smirked at her when she was between Chloe's knees.

Her fantasy spins quickly and she feels drunk on lust and still feels broken by what Beca did earlier and a vision interrupts her fantasy.

An idea.

A terrible, horrible, sinful idea that has her on her feet driven by pure lust and desperation. She pulls on the shorts and tank top she hadn't yet got around to wearing for bed, grabs the key card to her room, and strides down the hall to the room three doors down from her own.

It's the middle of the night and Beca left the party hours ago, but Chloe's not thinking straight. Literally, nothing about her feels straight right now, and there's no light visible beneath Beca's door, and she knows she might wake her up, but she doesn't really care. She wants Beca awake.

She wants Beca.

She knocks loud enough to be heard but hopefully not so loud the other girls decide to investigate.

The hallway remains silent and she waits a painfully long time, long enough that she starts wondering what she's doing and calling herself an idiot, and as soon as she turns to leave she hears the chain on the door slide and the deadbolt pop.

"Everything okay?" Beca asks and Chloe notices she doesn't look like she just woke up. It is always obvious when Beca's just woken up, and while Beca definitely looks sleepy, and is still wearing the yoga pants and hoodie, she wasn't asleep.

Chloe thinks that's a very loaded question and she's not quite sure how to answer it. So she goes with a safe, "Can I come in?"

Beca hesitates but then opens the door fully and steps aside to let her pass. "Uh, yeah. Sure."

Chloe hears her lock it behind her and she can't stop the shiver that runs down her back. Beca's room isn't the suite hers is, but it's still really nice and the only things Beca has unpacked are her laptop and her performance outfit for tomorrow, and Chloe thinks there's nothing more Beca than that.

The room is also dark save for the lights of the city coming in through the window, curtains not yet drawn.

She takes a seat on the foot of Beca's half-made bed. It's clear Beca had been in it, the covers on one side turned back but not completely disheveled, and Beca's phone is laying on the quilt open to a text message conversation that Chloe can't read.

"What's up?" Beca asks, having followed her but stopping several feet away. The distance feels weird. "Anyone pass out or puke?"

"No, thankfully." She shakes her head and folds her hands in her lap to keep from fidgeting.

"It's almost 3:00 am, Chlo. Why aren't you asleep?"

"Why aren't you?" she fires back; it's not aggressive, but she knows it came across more pointedly than she intended.

Beca sighs and pushes a hand through her hair before deciding to grab it and tie it up into the sloppy bun she always wears to bed. "I can't shut my brain off."

"Yeah, same." Chloe's nervous, but it's still just Beca, and she's still horny, and before she second guesses herself, she adds, "I keep replaying it."

She doesn't specify what, exactly, she's referring to, but she doesn't need to because Beca's arms drop heavily to her sides as soon as they finish with the hair elastic. "What?"

She presses her fingernails of her right hand into the palm of her left to keep her brain occupied with something other than what it's trying to recall. "Your - the lap dance."

"No, I figured. I mean…" Beca huffs and makes to run her hand through her hair again but remembers it's already tied up and presses a hand to her forehead instead and closes her eyes. "Why do you keep replaying it?" she asks in a tight voice.

Beca not looking at her makes it easier to answer, "It was so, so sexy, Beca." She sees Beca swallow and it doesn't look like she's ready to respond, so she dares to add, "You...I...you really turned me on."

Beca seems to let out a breath Chloe didn't notice her holding and she opens her eyes. "It was just a stupid dare."

"You really put a lot into it for being a stupid dare."

Beca closes her eyes again and her head tilts like she's fighting the urge to cough. "Why'd you come here?"

"I told you." Chloe swallows because she's about to kick down the last shred of platonicity between them. "You turned me on and I can't sleep."

Beca presses the heel of her hand to the bridge of her nose, eyes still closed tightly. "So you came here?"

She licks her lips and untwists her hands to put them behind her on the bed and leans back a little. "I thought you could do something about it."

She sees Beca's eyes snap open and slide to look at her though her hand stays pressed to her forehead. "What?"

Chloe shrugs. "Figured you should finish what you started."

Beca's arm falls limply to her side again and she stares at Chloe. "What are you…are you drunk?"

"No. Here." She leans back further until her hand finds Beca's phone and she tosses it to her, which she catches with a flurry of motion as she wasn't ready to catch it. "You can pick the song again."

She can almost hear Beca's mind at work sifting through Chloe's words and intentions and possibilities and consequences. She knows because her brain just did the same thing. Beca's thinking through things while she looks at her phone, and Chloe can't see what's on her phone from her seat on the bed and while it could be anything, she really hopes Beca's looking for a song.

It's silent for a long time and still is when Beca finally takes a step. And another. And another until she's actually a normal distance from Chloe rather than the several feet of the last several minutes. She's only a couple feet away now, chewing on her lip while she keeps looking at her phone and while Chloe takes and holds her breath.

She has to; Beca looks up and meets her eyes and she can see that a decision has been made.

Her thumb taps the screen and a piano chord fills the silence through a speaker somewhere in the room, and -

Take off those heels, lay on my bed Whisper dirty secrets while I'm pulling on your hair

Chloe feels her chest tighten because SoMo's "Ride" is one of the sexiest songs she knows. She watches Beca set her phone on the dresser and then move closer. Close enough until their knees are almost touching. She tilts her chin up to look at Beca, who's looking down at her. It's not the same cocky smirk from earlier; it's something different. Something darker. Deeper.

Poison in our veins, but we don't even care Candles dripping on your body, baby this ain't truth or dare

It's almost imperceptible, but Chloe can see it; her body's rocking, the tiniest bit, to the beat of the song and Chloe takes another deep breath and nods.

Everybody wonders where we run off to My body on your body, baby sticking like some glue

Beca doesn't acknowledge it, not really. Not in any explicit way. But she does reach up and let down the hair she just tied up two minutes ago and runs her fingers through it a few times in a way that feels a little more intentional than usual.

Naughty, let's get naughty, girl it's only one or two The fevers fucking running, feel the heat between us two

She flips it back on beat and with the motion, it becomes obvious that her hips are also on beat with the song and Chloe starts to feel drunk because it's apparent Beca's going to give her an encore performance - this time, a private dance.

What Chloe expects, if it can even be considered expectation and not fantasy, is to watch Beca tease her again, dancing just out of reach, to play along with the 'look but don't touch' lap dance scenario.

What she does not expect is for Beca, in one smooth rush of movement, to straddle her lap on her knees and drape her arms over Chloe's shoulders for the heavy and sexy chorus.

I'm gon' ride, I'm gon' ride I'm gon' ride, I'm, I'm gon' ride on you baby On you lady, all night, all night

"Oh my God," she whispers to herself but she knows Beca heard it because the confident smirk makes a quick appearance before it's gone and Beca's eyes close as her hips move.

I'm gonna take care of your body I'll be gentle, don't you scream Getting hotter, make it softer Feel your chest on top of me

The motion brings her in contact with Chloe's body repeatedly, specifically, her barely-clothed breasts and the teasing contact is torturous. It's not even Beca's body, really - it's her loose-fitting hoodie that Chloe knows has only a bra under it. A navy blue one.

She presses her hands harder into the mattress to hold herself up. Beca's position has her throat at the level of Chloe's mouth and it takes every ounce of self-control to fight the urge to lean forward and press her lips to her skin.

Her self-control is running on fumes, though; she burned most of it back in her own hotel room, and she fails. She leans forward, little more than a tilting of her chin, and presses a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the hollow of Beca's throat.

I'm gon' make you feel that loving Getting weak all in your knees Kiss your body from the tip-top All the way down to your feet

She hears Beca's reaction, a gasp and a falter of her rhythm, and then she feels a hand snake through her hair and grip lightly. It makes Chloe want to groan and she almost does, but manages to stop it; she doesn't want to miss the sound Beca makes as she draws a thin line with the tip of her tongue along the neckline of the hoodie she so desperately wants gone.

The sound Beca makes is a breathy whimper and it makes Chloe's thighs press together in immediate desperation. Somehow Beca keeps her rhythm this time and that's sexier for Chloe.

It's made even sexier when Beca shifts her stance to actually sit astride Chloe's lap rather than hovering above it.

And her rhythm doesn't falter.

She grinds forward into Chloe and Chloe can't stop the moan that escapes her lips. She knows this is happening now; there's no more dare pretense, no more potential trickery. Beca's hand is clutching her hair and keeping her close as she tilts her head to the side to offer up the expanse of neck Chloe's wanted to lick, mark, and bite for the better part of a decade.

So she does. And she does it with another moan as she flattens her tongue against Beca's skin before sucking on it. She's not overzealous with it; they aren't teenagers and Beca has a revealing Bellas costume to wear tomorrow night, but she can't resist leaving the faintest purple mark.

She feels Beca's reaction, a vibration in her throat of a choked-back moan, and Chloe pulls back. She pulls back enough for her absence to be noticeable and she looks up at Beca to wait.

"Why'd you stop?" Beca asks as she opens her eyes and looks down at Chloe.

The look in her eyes makes Chloe's heart pound harder if that was even possible at this point. She's never seen Beca turned on, but this is definitely what she looks like turned on. "I didn't," she says with a hot exhale as she sits forward and wraps her arms around Beca's waist as she captures Beca's lips with her own.

She feels Beca sigh into the kiss and she can't help but do the same. Kissing Beca is better than what it was in her endless fantasies. Beca kisses her back with an enthusiasm she didn't quite expect, though she thinks maybe she should have given her affinity for grinding herself on Chloe's lap.

Their kiss grows hot and needy and Chloe feels Beca shiver when Chloe's tongue slides over hers. Beca's still moving, still grinding and it's making Chloe's toes curl. Her rhythm is almost flawless but it slips a few times when Chloe gets a little more aggressive with her kissing and nips her lower lip or catches her tongue between her lips.

The cold metal zipper of Beca's hoodie keeps scratching at Chloe's bare upper chest and in a flurry of thoughtless annoyance, Chloe grabs it and whips the zipper down in one go.

Beca makes a sound of surprise but doesn't stop kissing Chloe, so her relief is two-fold: no more scratching, and now Beca's hoodie is open.

She doesn't look; her eyes are closed and she's far more interested in keeping them closed while they do filthy things to one another's mouths. But she wants to touch, so she reaches blindly and easily finds the warm bare skin of Beca's stomach. She glides her hand up, excited to feel and find out if that navy blue bra is lace or satin or cotton.

What she doesn't expect is for her hand to run straight into a completely bare breast.

They both gasp and it breaks their kiss and while they both freeze, she doesn't remove her hand. Beca's naked breast is in her hand and she can feel its soft peak pressing into her palm. "I thought you were wearing a bra," she manages to say, feeling like she should apologize for the ambush.

"I took it off."

"Yeah, I...I can tell." She decides to test the waters, to see if they're even still in the waters, and lets her hand squeeze lightly.

Beca's response is to drop her mouth back onto Chloe's and thrust her hips forward, hard enough that Chloe has to let the momentum carry her all the way down until she's on her back, Beca still upright on her knees above her.

"Why'd you stop?" Chloe echoes, this time being the one to smirk because there's no more mystery where they're going tonight. Now she can be confident that they both want this. She lets her eyes drop to Beca's chest, still covered by her hoodie though Chloe can see the hint of inner curves. She sees Beca track her line of sight and then Beca's hands move, and then stop as though considering, and then move again.

They move to strip herself of her hoodie and toss it aside, leaving herself completely topless on her knees straddling Chloe. "I didn't," Beca breathes before falling forward and right into another kiss.

Chloe catches her and wraps her arms around her; she's hugged Beca hundreds of times but never like this, never with her tongue in her mouth, never with her topless, never with Chloe's fingernails dragging down her bare back to make it arch and break out into goosebumps.

She feels Beca shift to support herself on one elbow and she steels herself for something new to get mixed into this equation. She doesn't have much time to do that, though, before Beca's hand shows up on her waist and immediately starts sliding north, confidently up and over until it's Chloe's bare breast being squeezed.

"I knew you weren't wearing a bra," Beca whispers between kisses and all Chloe can do is moan into it.

She lets her hands travel further down Beca's back until they're on her ass and pulls, bringing Beca's pelvis right down and into her own and she groans, trying to convey how badly she needs Beca right now.

It might have worked because Beca's wandering hand reverts its path, retreating from under her tank top to rotate and move down until her fingertips slip under the waistband of her shorts.

They stop there and Beca slows down their kiss. "Are you -"

"Please, Beca," she answers before Beca can finish asking if she's sure. She's never been more sure about anything in her life than this moment. She pulls Beca back down to kiss her and revels in the way her silky smooth hair feels between her fingers, but she doesn't get to revel in it very long.

She has other feelings to think about, most notably how it feels to have Beca's hand slip down the front of her shorts.

"Fuck," Beca whispers against her lips when feels her fingertips brush the soft curls of the strip she got waxed right before this trip.

Chloe sinks further into the bed beneath her; she's helpless but to wait for it. And Beca does make her wait for it. She spends an agonizing amount of time tracing the edges of that wax job, never following it down far enough to stop tormenting her.

She finally gives in and whimpers a "Beca," while lifting her hips and Beca kisses her again just as her fingers move lower and slip over the wetness begging for attention for hours. Or, more accurately, begging for Beca's attention for seven years.

Chloe tries to moan but all she hears is Beca moaning; she's not sure she made any sound at all. She can barely manage to breathe let alone anything else. Beca's fingers are on her, exploring her, tracing her, and Beca's tongue is deep in her mouth.

She doesn't have the ability or desire to do anything but lay there and let Beca take her.

"God," Beca says with a gasp as she breaks away so they can both breathe for a second. "You're so wet."

Chloe nods and pitches her hips up. She wants a rhythm again. She wants hard and fast and Beca's being soft and slow. "I want you," she finally manages.

Beca's answering moan feels almost predatory and Chloe wonders if Beca likes being told she's desired.

"I want you so fucking much," she says experimentally.

"Fuck, I want you, too." Beca sounds breathless and it only turns Chloe on more.

She tries to part her legs further but can't with Beca straddling her how she is. Beca notices right away, moving off Chloe to lay on her side next to her instead of over her, and with almost no preamble, as soon as she's settled and as soon as Chloe opens her legs, Beca is inside of her.

The "Oh my God," that she means to say instead comes out as a moan. She has to open her eyes and glance to her left to make sure this is all real, that it's really Beca doing this and not a really, really good fantasy.

But Beca's there, face flushed and eyes cast down where her hand has disappeared into Chloe's shorts, watching it. Chloe reaches for her, the angle awkward with the proximity and using her left hand, but she needs to touch Beca, has to feel her now, and she fumbles for a second getting her fingers under the snug waistband of Beca's pants.

Beca's halfway to a "You don't have to" protest when Chloe has warm wetness beneath her fingertips.

"God, Beca," she moans. She doesn't tease like Beca did and still is. She presses down and works her fingers in circles and almost drools when Beca actually parts her knees and shifts so she can keep them open easily.

Beca's groan is throaty, a mix of almost-words, and she finally follows suit, pulling her fingers back to mirror Chloe's movements.

"Just like that," Chloe nods and she lets her eyes fall closed.

She feels Beca kissing her, not quite on her lips because Beca would have to move too much to accomplish that and the fact that Beca doesn't want to take herself out of reach of Chloe's fingers does wonders for how close she is.

She lets her hips rock, setting their own rhythm for Beca to follow, and then Chloe's fingers follow that rhythm on Beca, and they're moving as one, grinding against fingers and sharing breaths and exchanging moans.

Chloe feels it, she feels it twisting up low in her stomach. "I'm so close," she breathes between moans and she feels Beca double-down in her efforts, shifting so that she's almost over Chloe again. It pins her hand between them but it's still between Beca's thighs and Beca's still grinding herself against it.

"Me, too," Beca says before kissing her.

That's what sets her off. Beca telling her she's going to come. The pleasure rocks her hard and for a few seconds, all she can see is darkness until she manages to open her eyes, still coming as she watches Beca fall apart above her and against her hand.

Chloe loves music and harmony and perfect pitch, but the sound of Beca in ecstasy blows all other sounds out of the water for her.

"Oh my God," Beca groans as it subsides for her and she collapses, half onto Chloe, half onto the bed. She lifts her knee just enough for Chloe to reclaim her hand and she's grateful, not because she wants to remove it, but because her arm was going to fall asleep if she didn't.

"Mhmm," is all Chloe can manage and she tilts her head to the side to kiss whatever her mouth runs into, which is some part of Beca's face but not her lips.

Beca snuggles into her, actually snuggles into her and briefly Chloe wonders if perhaps she died in a freak accident earlier in the night because surely she's in heaven. She slips her arm under Beca to hold her and lazily trails her fingertips in random patterns across Beca's back. She feels Beca heave a deep sigh and it manages to make her giggle, it's so dramatic-seeming.

"Good?"

Beca rumbles with quiet laughter. "Dude. You were there. That was fucking amazing."

She smiles and lifts her head to kiss Beca's hair. "I'm so glad that happened."

Beca is quiet and for a minute she wonders if she said something wrong, but then she feels Beca's hand pushing up the hem of her tank top, higher and higher until she has it up and over Chloe's breasts, exposing them to her mouth, which has apparently decided it’s supposed to be on them. Her tongue flicks over Chloe's left nipple and it makes her bite down on a moan.

Beca sits up at the sound and flashes a grin. "Remind me to thank Legacy later."

Part 2 - “Worth It”

#bechloe #bechloe fanfic #long post #fanfic #earned it

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sambergscott · 6 years

Text

that’s what brothers are for

read on ao3

Jake hears his seven new brothers before he sees them.

(He’d met them all pretty soon after he started dating Amy, a week or two after Amy had first told her family she was seeing him. Her brothers had apparently been desperate to meet “the famous Jake Peralta” and Amy couldn’t hold them off for long. He was super nervous because he’d assumed they were going to play the intimidating big brother act and they did try, but they realised quickly that Jake was awesome and perfect for their sister and the eight of them became friends immediately. Ever since, they’d all met up once a week to drink beer and eat pizza and play video games and tease Jake about his relationship with Amy. Obviously their budding bromance had been put on pause when Jake was in Florida, and again when Jake was falsely imprisoned, but when he was released and admitted his plans to propose to their sister on Halloween, his relationship with all seven Santiago brothers grew stronger than ever.

After his cancelled wedding, and then the makeshift Precinct wedding which their families all missed, the Santiagos decided to arrange a celebration at Shaw’s bar with their sister’s new husband.

Jake had asked if Amy could come - because he kind of hated being separated from her - but her brothers had insisted that no girls were allowed.

“Sorry, Ames,” he’d said, showing her the messages in the WhatsApp group chat. “I can’t get them to change their minds.”

He kissed away her disappointed pout and promised he’d make it up to her when he got back from the bar.

“I’m holding you to that,” she’d replied, biting her lip. “I’ll be waiting in that lingerie I ordered last night.”

Jake almost cancelled on her brothers then and there but she’d shooed him out the apartment, giggling as he kept asking for “just one last kiss” before he left.

After nine goodbye kisses, he finally relented and left for his favourite bar in Brooklyn.

As he was the first to arrive, he ordered himself a beer and texted Amy several times about how much he missed her already and how much her brothers sucked for not letting her join them. Before he could send the next text ( “babe, you’re the best wife I’ve ever had” ), he heard a loud group of men approaching the bar and slid his phone back into his pocket. The Santiagos had arrived.)

“Jake!” Tony exclaims, the first to stride over to the bar and hug Jake tightly. “Congrats, man.”

“You finally made an honest woman out of our Amy, huh?” Luis teases, next to hug their favourite detective.

Tomas, Mateo and Carlos follow, with Bruno and Alex the last to mob the newest addition to the Santiago clan.

Jake grins broadly as Mateo orders a round of beers and they find a table big enough for all of them, thrilled to be a part of the close bond between the brothers.

“To Jake!” They all toast, ignoring Jake’s reminders that their sister just got married, too.

“Forget her, Peralta. You’re our favourite person in the NYPD.”

“I’m telling her that,” Jake quips, laughing as Tomas’ eyes bulge. They all know Amy can be super scary when she wants to be. “Oh, and it’s, Santiago- Peralta, thank you very much. We’re both taking each other’s names.”

“You’re officially one of us then, man,” Alex replies, toasting to Jake again. He downs his beer and gestures to Hank behind the bar to bring them all another round. “How was the Honeymoon?”

“Incredible.” A dreamy expression passes over Jake’s face and everyone rolls their eyes.

“Here we go. He’s got that dopey look he gets whenever he talks about Ames. Why would you encourage him, Al?”

Alex shrugs as Jake protests loudly that he does not get a dopey look on his face.

“You definitely do. Amy’s so beautiful. I love Amy so much. I’m so lucky to be with Amy,” Carlos says in a spot-on impression of Jake, his brothers howling with laughter.

“I do not sound like that,” Jake insists.

“I do not sound like that,” Carlos mimics and even Jake laughs this time.

“But seriously, Paris was awesome. I think Amy looks even more beautiful in France than she does in America.”

“Oh to be a newlywed again,” Bruno, the eldest, says, patting Jake on the back. “I bet you can’t keep your hands off each other, right?”

Jake colours, thinking about Amy joining him in the shower before he left the apartment and the new lingerie Amy promised to wear when he returned.

“Ew! Gross! That’s our sister, Jake!”

“Bruno asked!”

“Make the most of it now, man. You won’t get two minutes of peace when you have kids. Mason almost walked in on us last week and we had to stop. I still haven’t forgiven him.”

“Kids?” Jake balks. “I got married three weeks ago and we’re having kids already?”

“Amy must have talked to you about kids,” Luis says, amused. “She only wants about a hundred.”

“Luis is kidding,” Tony quickly interjects at Jake’s terrified expression. “She wants two or three. But she does want them before she becomes captain, so you better hurry up and give us more nieces and nephews.”

“How do you know all this and I don’t? Kids aren’t on her life calendar…”

“Maybe she didn’t want to scare you off.”

“She’s been talking our ears off about being a mom since she was, like, seven. She used to pretend Tom was her baby and put diapers on him and everything.”

The tips of Tomas’ ears turn red. “Will you ever shut up about that?”

“You were an eleven year old boy wearing Winnie the Pooh diapers over your pants and it was fucking hilarious, so, no - unlikely.”

Jake chuckles, storing that information in the back of his mind in order to ask Camila if she has any pictures of it the next time he visits Amy’s childhood home. Knowing Camila, who has documented every moment of her children’s lives and organised everything from baby photographs and tiny baby shoes to high school report cards and medals from soccer competitions into binders and boxes for each one of her eight children, she definitely will.

“You do want kids though, don’t you?” Alex asks, suddenly serious.

Jake takes a large gulp of his beer. “Uh, I mean… yeah, of course. Yeah, I want kids. Just not right away,” he adds quickly. “I want to enjoy spending time just the two of us first.”

“Gross,” Mateo repeats.

“Grow up, man. We’re happy.”

“Mateo’s just jealous that he’s the only one here who’s still single.”

“ Hey!” Mateo cries. “I’ll have you know that I’ve been seeing this one lady for the past few weeks and she really likes me.”

“And do you like her back?”

“The Jury’s still out.”

“Mom’s going to start setting you up with her friends’ daughters soon,” Tony warns.

“She already has,” Mateo murmurs under his breath, embarrassed.

“It’s OK, man. Your mom was trying to set Amy up with random dudes even after Amy told her she was dating me.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Apparently Amy would have been better suited to somebody with a better credit score who was obsessed with organisation and crosswords,” Jake says, shaking his head. “Camila even told her we wouldn’t last and that Ames should ‘keep her options open’. I don’t think she ever imagined Amy marrying me.”

“Well, we’re all really glad she did.”

“Mom and dad, too.”

“Yeah, we’re so happy for you, man.”

“Thanks,” Jake grins. “I still can’t believe I actually have a wife. Is that weird?”

“Nah, it takes a while to feel real,” Bruno replies, spotting a familiar face entering Shaw’s bar from over Jake’s shoulder. “Speaking of your wife…” He nods his head in Amy’s direction and, as Jake turns around and sees her, Jake’s grin grows impossibly wide.

All seven Santiago brothers boo and jeer as he gets up and kisses her, eventually guiding her to the table when Carlos yells for them to “get your asses over here”.

“We were pretty clear when we said you weren’t invited,” Alex says as Amy sits down on Jake’s lap, one arm curled around his shoulders, her fingers idly playing with the hair at the nape of his neck as her brothers tease her relentlessly.

“Yeah, sis, we thought you were the smart one in the family.”

“I missed Jake too much to stay away and I am the smart one in the family. Ask dad.”

“Yeah, yeah, we all know you’re dad’s favourite.”

“Daddy’s little girl,” Mateo cajoles from next to Jake and Amy, earning himself a playful slap from his younger sister.

“Well, Jake is our favourite out of the two of you.”

“ What?”

“Sorry, babe,” Jake says with false sincerity, high-fiving Tony behind her back.

“I heard that, Jacob. And I can’t believe all of you prefer him to me, your own sister.”

Luis shrugs. “He’s more fun than you.”

“And he likes the Nets,” Tomas chimes in.

“And Diehard.”

(Jake high-fives Tony again for that one).

“Unbelievable,” she says, glaring at all of them. “I’m going to get a beer and I’m not getting one for any of you. Not even you, Jake.”

She climbs off his lap and storms over to the bar, Jake staring helplessly after her.

“If I miss out on sexy-timez tonight because of this I am never hanging out with any of you again.”

(Jake decides to call it a night after Amy downs her fourth drink, knowing sober-Amy would not want to be around her brothers in her super horny four-drink state. Amy crashes her lips against Jake’s the moment they’re through their apartment door, because of course she does, and he unbuttons her floral shirt and tugs down her jeans to reveal a half-naked Amy, wearing only a black thong that reads “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good”. Jake has to stop what they’re doing to laugh solidly for five minutes because that’s what his wife meant by the sexy new underwear she’d ordered and that’s freaking hilarious, Ames).

(The Harry Potter underwear quickly becomes Jake’s favourite to pull off his wife).

(His decisions clouded by God knows how many beers, Jake puts a message in the “Magnificent Seven + Jake” group chat, bragging about Amy’s awesome new lingerie and how many different places in their apartment he’d boinked his wife. They all complain because gross, that’s our sister, Peralta!!!!! and threaten to remove Jake from the band of brothers).

(Nevertheless, he ends up playing basketball with them the next weekend because they do love him. But none of them ever watch Harry Potter again).

#b99 fics #Jake x Amy #jake peralta #amy santiago #my writing

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original-twin-blog · 6 years

Text

Episode 4 - The Reluctant Birth Story

The perfectionist in me really can’t help but approach these ramblings chronologically, which leads me once again, to a topic I don’t really enjoy talking about. I can’t discuss pregnancy in my last episode without detailing the ‘birth story’ next.

I used to revel in the retelling of the twins’ arrival. I would go into great detail about the awkward intricacies of each examination and each stage of labour. Now I can barely recall the name of the hospital without my scarlet cheeks swelling with the memories. On reflection, I can only assume my ongoing conversations with two unresponsive newborns wasn’t quite stimulating enough and so I bored the pants off anyone who would listen. Or, the zeal with which I threw myself into the retelling was some kind of survival strategy. Telling the tale somehow made sense of things. It validated that what happened, actually happened. I was naked, walking around a room moaning. I did tell the midwife that we should exchange numbers because we were best friends for life. Things happened that will only happen in that environment and circumstance; I had to confirm it did, in fact, happen to me. I digress, the point is it is not without a few toe curls that I share with you the details of Original Twin-babies’ arrival.

60% of twin births are carried out via cesarean section. There are a number of factors which make a section more likely; a low lying or shared placenta can cause problems during delivery. A quick delivery might be important due to one baby getting most of the nutrients and so the other baby’s growth is slowed or, twin-mums can request a section if they wish for it. The most common reason is that one of the babies is transverse (lying horizontal across bump) or breech (bum/legs pointing down). When twins are born, everything takes twice as long for baby#2 (this is what the professionals call the baby that's furthest away from the exit, I irrationally felt bad for our #2 as it really felt like she was being labelled second best from the start). So if there are any complications the situation can turn very dangerous very quickly.

Our opinions in all of our consultations was that we would just sheep-follow the advice of the hospital staff shepherds. Their years of experience definitely outweighed our total lack of knowledge on the subject. I’m pretty active, so I prefered to avoid the recovery of a section but as long as we had two healthy babies, we really didn’t care. In our last scan before their arrival, the twins were head down and in a good position. We planned therefore for a vaginal birth and that’s what we got.

Note the really ugly use of the word ‘vaginal’. There’s a reason for this. The alternative is to use the phrase ‘natural birth’. Many women believe this implies that a section is in someway unnatural - a belief I can totally understand. My experience (and there will be some that disagree) was that having babies torn out of my body didn’t feel very ‘natural’. I’m not sure a section would have been much different.

As it turned out, actually going in to labour was a bit of an anticlimax. Being so uncomfortable towards the end of my pregnancy; I was in early labour for a day or two without knowing it. I’d been very uncomfortable; the aches and pains had worsened. I scowled at anyone who could get out of a chair unaided. I just thought the haulage had taken its toll - my body preparing for the ordeal it was to undergo in 6 weeks time. In fact my waters had ‘ruptured’ (there’s something so gross about the pronoun use here. I feel like an ardent feminist declaring ownership of ‘my’ amniotic fluid - eugh). A quick call to Triage and a journey to Hospital told us that I’d stay the night on the ward for observation, scheduled to return home the following day. The aim was to keep Original Twin-twin babies in for another couple of weeks. So, I settled down to an evening of piling my swollen elephant-legs into compression socks and re-positioning my bed approximately every 30 seconds. At around 01.00, I heard a massive pop, had a gargantuan wee all over the floor and then experienced the most powerful, consuming, much-worse-than-I-had-ever-imagined contractions. Breathtaking, scary, overwhelming labour officially arrived. My trembling mass was escorted to the delivery ward, leaving a trail of leaking fluid behind me. The midwife started to ask “Have you thought about what type of pain relief”... “epidural” was my definitive response. I have never been so certain of anything in my life.

Although I successfully forgot some of the early trauma of labour, I will never ever forget the part played by my doting Husband, Original Twin-Dad. Let me set the scene. He had left me in the ward for home; he had work the next day and we both expected my hospital stay to be brief. No doubt he enjoyed some mindless television to ease his lonely evening away from the bloated, whinging thing which had recently replaced his wife. He went to bed early; it had been a long day.

Switch to original twin, waiting for epidural - unable to stop apologising and exclaiming “I’m one of those women!” “I can’t do it!”. There was also some mooing and swearing at this point. I tried to call my husband. Straight away in fact I was repeat dialling his number. I tried countless times with no reply.

He was asleep.

I was under siege and the Husband was AWOL. The hospital took over the responsibility of establishing contact. Facial expressions completely wild now, a midwife trying to dress me in my fancy ‘boyfriend shirt’ brought along so I looked good whilst labouring (pah!). We accepted defeat and I donned the backless gown. A severe lady entered with the drugs and ordered me on the bed. I hadn’t been able to bend down to put my shoes on for at least 3 weeks but this absolute chief of a woman got me sat with my head between my legs width ways on a narrow hospital bed. What a boss.

The epidural was delivered and chaos was replaced with calm, and yet there was still no break in the husband radio silence. I’d relaxed and felt like a human being again so I had the foresight to alert a good friend and neighbour of mine. She ended up knocking on my front door until original Twin-Dad chose to return from the land of nod. So an hour after things kicked off and 89 missed calls later, my husband entered the delivery suite ready to provide deeply emotional and spiritual support to the now sedated, sleepy, really pissed off wife.

Labour from then on was pretty boring. I could feel each contraction but I wasn’t in pain so I was drifting in and out of sleep for the whole time. I have two lasting images: my husband on his phone and the midwives making notes. Nobody seemed very interested in me really. Then it all kicked off. Stage two of labour began - this is where you push. Things were now very uncomfortable regardless of the pain relief. For an hour it went on until they decided I should push no longer and they would intervene. So off we all went to theatre for some forcep action.

Having twins in theatre is really hilarious. You’re shimmied through quite quickly, signing forms as you go through. Thank goodness Original Twin-Dad was there ( I had forgiven him his tardy arrival) I was emotional and confused and giving them permission to cut my body open. When you get there, you realise there are lots of other people in the room. All focused on your lady-cabbage. It’s absurd. Paediatricians, Midwives, Anaesthetists, Assistant Anaesthetists, Trainee Midwives and a gaggle of other trainees just in for the experience. At one point there was a loud beeping in the room which made us panic… turns out it was all of the pagers in the room going off simultaneously.

So quite quickly after arriving, baby #1 was freed. The baby that had grown inside me all of that time, was now a squidgy little snuglet in my arms, eyes open, tasting its first breaths of outside air. The feeling at that point, for both of us was astonishment to the point of shut down. If we were a drawing in a comic, there would simply be a massive exclamation mark over our heads.

Then we had to go again. Whilst #1 was being checked out, #2 was on its way. Hilariously, someone has to actually hold the baby in place from the outside, during the time between the two babies being born to stop it from changing position. I couldn’t help thinking there must be a more whizzy way of doing that. That lady would have been glad of a job though; the rest of us just looked at one another, smiling occasionally, for 13 minutes - like a very messy fag break. They asked me to let them know when there was a contraction and then #2 was ready to join her sister. Two little girls, all cherub-like and covered in yuck.

And that was that. Two beautiful girls successfully birthed into the world and we were entirely responsible for their happiness, safety and well being for the rest of our lives. Equal parts ecstasy and terror.

More importantly though, my reluctant birth story is now told and I never have to use the word ‘Vaginal’ again. Win.

#twins #reluctantbirthstory #twinmum #twinning #twinlife #twinsofig #twinstagram

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solarbird · 7 years

Text

And just like that, she was down, Chapter 6: the blind eye

[AO3 link]

[Incheon, Republic of Korea]

"Cor blimey," Lena said. "I wish she'd picked a more touristy part of town. We're too bloody conspicuous down here."

"You think you're conspicuous," her wife replied, "try being tall. At least I can check the layout."

The two of them - in carefully-chosen "hello, I am a confused European tourist" civilian clothes, with only Lena's bulky, accelerator-concealing jacket standing out in the July heat - made their way towards the front of a small restaurant in a busy commercial district not far from the industrial port.

Emily moved forward first, and looked sideways through the glass front window, spotting a small woman in very familiar colours and facepaint out of the corner of her eye, sitting in a booth near the back, facing away from the street. "I see her. She's... in her kit? Weird. But she's alone."

As Lena caught up to her, she heard a familiar voice quietly pipe up from behind. "N00bs," said the MEKA pilot, behind her, in perfectly ordinary business clothes. "That's my decoy. You gotta get good or you're in trouble. C'mon. This way. Right now, or it's off."

"Hana?" said the teleporter. "No. What's going on?"

"Come on," she repeated. "We're just going up the street. Things have changed. Follow me, or leave town, it's up to you."

Emily looked to Lena, uncertain, and her wife gave her a small shrug. "Like working for bloody MI6..." she whispered, following the woman they hoped was still their friend.

They followed her three blocks mostly east and two more blocks mostly north, settling into a booth in a nearly-identical business-worker restaurant, with nearly-identical booths. This one had a karaoke section, in back, but neither woman felt much like singing.

"What was that about, then?" asked Emily, as she and Lena slid into their side of the booth. Hana ordered a big pot of barley tea and naeng myun for everyone, and the waitress scooted off.

"Okay," said Hana, looking carefully at both of them. "We've got half an hour before the old school show up at the other restaurant. They don't want to grab you, but they want you to hand over the spider if you still have her. Do that, all's forgiven, you can come home."

"...you told them?" Lena said in a hiss, leaning forward.

"Bloody hell," breathed Emily. "It was a trap."

"You're here, not there, aren't you? And it's not a trap, they just wanna make an offer. I'm on your side, I want you to know what's coming."

"An 'offer,'" said Emily, "while unarmed, surrounded, and outnumbered. That's not how you have friends over for chat." She covered her face with her hands, looking down. "They're making all the same bloody mistakes they made last time, aren't they? Of course they are. What next, bringing back Blackwatch?"

"Well, then," said Lena, as the tea arrived. "An offer. What's the sweetener supposed to be?"

"They'll hand la blue girl over to MI6, DGSE, or CIA as-is. Nooooooo hacks required."

Lena glared at the gamer. "That a joke, luv? MI6 and the French will shoot her on sight. CIA... probably the same. Why not the Hague? Why not the ICC?"

"We tried. The Hague and the ICC won't even touch her. You picked a really unpopular spider to save."

"...yeh," conceded the teleporter, sipping at the unfamiliar tea. "I can see that."

"And the stick?" asked Emily, dreading the answer.

"No stick."

"No stick?"

"No stick. I don't like what they're doing, I really don't like what Ziegler was doing... none of the younger crowd do, we won't stand for it. We've put our... foots? down? Feets down? Whatever."

"Right," said Lena. "Thanks, for that. You've worked out some kind of entente, then - that include what Ziegler's doing?"

"We're still working on it. It's a fight and I don't know who's winning, but everybody will be in the game."

Tracer shuddered. "Well... I hope you win."

The gamer sipped at her tea. "So if you won't hand spiderbitch over..."

"Not happening."

"Then the fallback is, we can still be friends, but there's rules."

"Go on," said the teleporter, as the waitress returned with their bowls of noodles.

"Noooooooo working for her old bosses. None. You work with them, at all, you're all with them. We shoot on sight."

Emily snorted a laugh, but Lena frowned, angry. "I'm... gobsmacked. I can't believe they'd... after all we've done, they think we'd do that? The whole point of this was getting her away from..."

"C'mon! You and your wife ripped the walls off medbay to free Talon's deadliest assassin. They don't think they can make assumptions anymore."

"Bloody wonderful," Tracer snapped, not wanting to admit they kind of had a point. "They know why we..." She stopped, and shook her head - rearguing wouldn't change anything. "Fine. What else?"

"You're not Overwatch. No Overwatch logos, no Overwatch gear, don't raid Overwatch supply points, don't use Overwatch safehouses."

"Whatevs," Lena shrugged, dismissively.

"Not so whatevs," Emily said, overriding her wife. "Most of it, fair enough. But Overwatch is using my antigrav tech, free of charge. We can let that go on - if we can use empty safehouses when we need to."

"I can ask."

"It's one or the other. I don't want to get shot at by Overwatch agents in an Overwatch safehouse. If that's on the menu, I'm not eating."

"I can ask."

"Fine," interjected Tracer. "What else?"

"No team-ups with the spider when we're around. You're both out of Overwatch, but nbd, rite? Officially, you dropped out, nobody has to say why, you're fine, we're fine. We'll team up with you, we might even hire you - but not with her. Work with her where we can see it, that makes you accomplices to a world-number-one terrorist, bang. We treat you like her."

Tracer grimaced. "Oh, that's funny coming from Morrison - sorry, 'Soldier: 76.' How's that supposed to be any different? He's a wanted criminal himself, and labelled a terrorist."

"That's not fair," Song replied. "She actually is one."

"Was," interjected Kestrel.

"Is," insisted the gamer, "'til we know better."

"This is... PETRAS hasn't been repealed. Overwatch is just as illegal as everything else."

"Yeah," acknowledged the gamer, "but we get a pass. To a point. You don't. It's not fair, but that's the game."

"Unlike Overwatch, I am a security contractor, operating legally on six continents..."

"Not if they know you've got the spider," Hana said in a little sing-song.

Lena sighed, frustrated. And that, she thought, is the stick. "Fine," she said, tiredly. "What else?"

"That's it."

"You lot gonna be spyin' on us? Lookin' for a chance?"

"Nope. Blind eye. If we don't have to know, we won't know."

Lena nodded, and poked at the noodles. They didn't taste like much, but she couldn't tell whether that was the food, or the reality of the situation setting in. Even an amicable divorce was still a divorce, with all that implied - and this wasn't even all that amicable.

"There really wasn't a trap, was there?" Emily said, suddenly. "Or... was there? Is this the trap?" Kestrel looked around the restaurant. "Where's Ziegler?"

Tracer looked up at her wife. "Sweet?"

"Listen," said the flying agent.

Lena listened, and heard a soft, familiar ringing hum. "...oh. Fuck. I hear it too."

"What?" asked the gamer, already knowing the jig was up.

"Dammit, Hana - stop!"

Song put down her chopsticks. "I had to make sure you weren't under anybody's control!"

"When the bloody hell did we go missing for months?!" Kestrel demanded.

"You didn't, but I didn't know! Not for sure! I told Lena in chat - I had to know! For sure!"

"We gonna get darts in the neck now?" Tracer's gaze darted around, looking for Ana Amari, not finding her.

"What's in this tea?" asked the ginger, glaring at her cup.

"Nothing! It's just barley tea! It's good! And no! It's... I brought Mercy in. She brought a big scanner. That's it."

"You trust Dr. Ziegler to tell you the truth here?"

"I... I think she's wrong. But she's not a liar and I couldn't get anyone else qualified. Not who'd keep a secret."

"Hana's telling the truth," said Angela, closing a padded door behind her, and walking up to their booth. "I was going to appear at the other restaurant, if you chose to negotiate, but - this saves the walk. Here I am."

"Doctor," said Emily, stiffly. "Who else is with us today?"

Hana scooted over, making room, and the medic sat next to the young MEKA pilot, ignoring the question. "Hana brought me in on this meeting yesterday. So that you know, I came here early to scan you for the sorts of things I... missed... with Amélie. I did not find them."

"Why the double-bluff?" asked Lena. "Why move us down here?"

"Karaoke booths," said the doctor.

"...soundproofing," Kestrel realised.

"Apparently, inadequate."

"I have very good hearing," said the hawk.

"Amari and Morrison?" asked the teleporter.

"Ana and Jack are in Prague, at the moment, responding to rumours of a Talon action. They send their regards."

Emily let out a little heh at that. "No 'thanks' for removing Talon's best sniper from their arsenal?"

"Is she removed?"

"Yes."

"But alive."

"'Course." She did not say, "luv."

"I will relay both of those."

Lena Oxton gave the doctor a sharply pointed look. "What if you'd decided we had been... compromised?"

"Plug suit fits under regular clothes juuuuuuust fine." Hana pulled at her collar. "Hot, tho'."

The doctor smiled. "And you'll note - I haven't said anything about Fareeha's location."

"That's not what I meant, mate," said the teleporter, grimly.

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "It would... depend."

"Would it, now?" asked Emily.

"Can you honestly say you would not want me to undo the effects of Talon brainwashing upon you? Truly? "

"Not if it meant just applying another round of brainwashing," Lena snapped. "It's one thing to get somebody detoxed, sure, that's fine. Therapy, that's great - I know from PTSD. But throwing your own stamp on their brain - that's not 'undoing' a bloody thing, that's just changing the hands on the leash."

The doctor rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Lena, Emily, please, all of this has been ... far too much cloak and dagger. I apologise for that, but we did have to know. Can we stop this? Please? I am here to negotiate with you, not fight you."

"Sure, doc," said the flying agent. "Stop trying to turn people into other people, stop delivering ultimatums, stop repeating Overwatch's old mistakes, and we can all be besties again. Just tell me one thing."

"What?"

"Why'd you lie to us about your 'sedatives?'"

"I most certainly didn't!"

"'Sedative' doesn't imply 'made suggestible.' You'd already started your work, and you hid that from us."

"Oh," said the doctor, surprised, "you figured that out? I am... honestly, I am impressed. But I did not lie," she said emphatically. "I had not started my work."

"Then why that drug?" demanded the flying agent.

"Because you are both fools and I was giving you the best chance I could!" The field medic stood in the booth, hands on the tabletop, jarring the dishes. "Do you know how many of her bullets I have pulled out of our people? How many I have declared dead by her hand? I did not want you cut down, these... mistakes... or not, and if you did something truly reckless, I wanted to make sure you had a chance of surviving the night." She looked back and forth between the two former Overwatch agents. "She is not a person, she is a mechanism. A complex one, but a mechanism nonetheless. Give the correct set of orders, she kills, and you are on her kill list. But..." she said, slower, more thoughtfully, gesturing with her left hand, "I thought if she could be impressed upon you..."

"Dammit, doc," Lena interrupted, quietly, "You were wrong."

"I am not wrong, I..."

"She'd broken it herself. That's why she's never really tried to kill me, or Em. That's why Talon tried to kill her," Lena interrupted, again, rubbing her face with her hands. "That's how we know you're wrong."

The doctor blinked. "...what?"

"She wasn't supposed to get captured in Egypt," said Kestrel, picking up where Tracer left off, "she was supposed to die there. She was subverting her own reconditioning, and they'd figured it out."

"That is impossible. I have recreated some of what they did, in simulators, to learn how to undo it. It cannot just be..."

"Oh for the love of... it was. She'd done it, and Talon's termination order proves it. We were right. I was right. You were wrong," said Emily. "None of this would've had to happen if you'd just listened to me." She waved her hands around in the air by her head, wanting something to throw. "When you captured her, she was set to defect in a week. To us. In Prague, in fact. Today."

"Then the suggestibility ... did it...?"

"Make everything much harder? Yes. Thanks for that. Naught for two on those calls, Angie. Try not to go naught for three?"

Angela Ziegler sat back down, slowly. She looked at the tabletop, and at the teapot, and the noodles, and poured herself a little bit of the barley, sipping at it tentatively, in silence, for several moments. She bit her lip, put the small cup back down, and, eventually, said, "If it means anything to you... my 'three' is that neither of you show any sign of foreign neurochemical or neuromechanical influence on your brains. And I will report that back to Overwatch."

"Kinda figured that," replied Emily, slowly, "from the lack of shooting. That's one for three, then. Well done there."

"Hana," asked Lena, "how much of the rest was a lie?"

"None of it! 76 is pretty mad, Ana is real mad, we're all kinda fruck out, but some of us are more sympathetic than others. Particularly Lúcio. Particularly me."

"So," Tracer said, sadly, "a velvet divorce. That's the real offer, then?"

"The rest of us want to stay friends, but from a team standpoint... pretty much."

"Balls," said Emily.

"What?"

"Balls! I'll take the deal, but it's shite, Hana, and you have the sense to know that. Angie, I don't think you do, you were this close to wiping away a person to replace her with your version of somebody else and it's pretty clear you haven't even budged on the ethics of that..."

"'Widowmaker' was dead, either way," Zigler interjected, angrily. "She almost certainly still will be soon, you might well join her, and you have just as certainly taken my only chance of returning Amélie to her own mind. If you want to argue ethics, soldier, I am more than ready to defend my position."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, then a longer one, and then, "I can't believe Winston is going along with this..." said Lena, shaking her head.

"He's... still of the opinion that Widowmaker should be convinced to go along with it," Angela disclaimed, acknowledging the difference.

"Good. It's not... it's not good enough. It's just not." said Lena. "But... good. And... we'll take your terms - it's not much different than we'd do anyway."

"I do not imagine the safehouse usage will be difficult to sell to the rest of the team. Particularly," said the doctor, sipping at her tea, "if you continue to forward useful information."

"Did you raid those caches?"

"No. But we will, now."

"Probably too late, we'd hoped you'd cover our tracks, but - thanks anyway, I guess. Hana, will you tell Winston - please, please, please, just talk to me? "

"I will." She leaned forward, regret plain in her face. "I'm sorry. I had to know."

"Thanks, luv. I ... yeh. I guess I can see why." She took a deep breath, and let it out. "But if we're all done now," she said, standing, Emily just a moment behind, "we're going. Don't follow."

"We won't." Dr. Ziegler reached into her bag, and pulled out her commset. "Pharah, Mercy - Kestrel and Tracer are about to leave. We have an agreement. When they're out of range, come inside and... join us, for lunch. It's quite good. I'll give you the details in here."

As the two women walked by the table, Hana stood, saying, "Lena, please - talk to me on my chat again. Please! Okay? Please!" Then she watched as the two women left the restaurant without answering, her stomach now uninterested in the previously-delicious noodles.

«We did this wrong», she thought, sitting back down in the booth. «This wasn't how this should've gone.» She stole a glance as Fareeha walked up to Angela, helmet off, exchanging a brief kiss, and frowned. «Now I just gotta figure out how to fix it.»

-----

Widowmaker watched Tracer and Kestrel depart the restaurant, and, seeing Pharah take no offensive action, lowered her rifle away from the kill shot. She moved to discreetly track her partners along street level, to their rented vehicle.

Her comm unit clicked on. "Widowmaker, Tracer here. We're out, and en route to rendezvous."

"Tracer, Widowmaker, acknowledged. I sighted Pharah, tracking you across the venue change. I told you we should've kept in full contact."

"You didn't engage, did you?"

"Of course not. But I was ready, if needed."

"Widowmaker, Kestrel here. Thanks, love. Glad you weren't needed out there. You heard everything?"

The sniper felt a little cold, thinking of the doctor's words. "I did. I... regret it did not go better."

"No one is happy, so it's probably as fair as we were gonna get. See you back at the ship."

"Acknowledged. Widowmaker out." She hummed, thoughtfully, as she engaged her chain, heading towards the meeting point. It probably will not last, she thought, but it is good enough, for now. If I can just convince our... friends... to join us, then we will have a real chance. She smiled, for herself, and there was much more than just a breath of truth in it. I will save us, she swore. I will save us all.

[This concludes the first movement]

#widowtracer #widowtracerly #tremily #gingerspider #tracermaker #tracemaker #widowmaker #emily kestrel oxton #tracer #overwatch #overwatch au #d.va #pharah #ethically questionable mercy #what the hell happened to my nice little short story #it was all nice and contained and lovely and now this #actions have consequences #even when they shouldn't #also on ao3

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clansayeed · 4 years

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Bound by Circumstance ― Chapter 11: Old Laws and New Enemies

PAIRING: Nik Ryder x trans*M!MC (Taylor Hunter) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Circumstance ⥽

Taylor Hunter (MC) has made it good for himself in New Orleans; turns out moving to a new city fresh out of college to reinvent yourself isn’t as hard as people make it out to be. Things only start to get confusing when he finds himself the target of a malevolent wraith. Good thing someone’s looking out for him though — because without Nighthunter Nik Ryder as his bodyguard he definitely won’t survive long in the twisting darkness of the supernatural underworld he’s tripped into.

Bound by Circumstance and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the book Nightbound and the rest of the Bloodbound series. Find out more [HERE].

Note: Circumstance only loosely follows the events and plotline of Nightbound, and features a separate antagonist, different character motivations, and further worldbuilding.

*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Circumstance/series tag list!

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

Lady Smoke calls a council of the city’s strongest leaders and puts a target on everyone’s backs.

[READ IT ON AO3]

It hadn’t even occurred to Vera that someone else was the bloodwraith’s intended target. Which probably said a lot about how dangerous it was for her to be back in the city she grew up in. Not that a supremely terrifying and hard-to-kill otherworldly assassin couldn’t have tracked her down amid the dense New York population, of course.

But it was an awfully big coincidence. Too big for even Taylor; on whom coincidences just seemed to land lately.

So on the Vera-Taylor front all is forgiven. And when this is over — this being tonight’s gathering, since neither of them know when they’ll know enough or have a weapon strong enough to take down their pursuant — they will visit Kristin in the hospital.

He even made Nik shake on it. His version of a contract written in blood.

Actually now that he thinks about it, he’s starting a new, silent resolution to not be so fucking dramatic over everything. Because at this rate a blood contract would be relatively normal.

It’s unnerving how at ease Tonya Reimonenq is about everything that’s going on. Even others raised in this life — Cal, Vera, Cadence for sure — are dealing with varying degrees of worry and distrust.

Cal’s the worst of the lot. From the moment Lady Smoke decided to give them what little information they needed (along with a demand for their presence; not a request — a freaking demand) he’s been bouncing knees and fingers tugging through his hair and if he bites at the peeling skin of his bottom lip anymore he’s going to start bleeding.

Cadence; he’s not so worried about. But the other vampires that are apparently going to be joining them are another matter.

The collective sigh of relief when the werewolf finally sits is short-lived; the same two bounces of the left knee before he’s up and pacing the length of the large parlor like the hounds of hell are at his heels.

There he goes with the dramatics again. Are hell-hounds real? Holy shit — is Hell real? No, no he’s not going there. Nope. No way.

At least everyone is polite enough not to verbalize how frustrating Cal’s dogged pacing is. Well — almost everyone.

“I suggest you find a place to sit still, Lowell,” Lady Smoke doesn’t look up from her leather binder of files; doesn’t have to — her tone carries her intent just fine, “lest you shoulder off some of that restlessness onto the house.”

“I don’t need to be here.”

“You’re involved, boy. Accept it.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing. Or—fuck—maybe you do and you just want me to get my head torn off for defending Donny.”

The scratch of Smoke’s pen on expensive paper is all the answer he needs.

Surprisingly it’s Nik to the rescue with words of reassurance and some of that rare sincerity. “Kristof’s got more important things to think about now, if it’s any consolation. So just… relax?”

“You heard his threat. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just goes straight for the throat.”

It’s not relaxing exactly but he does eventually settle against the wall on Taylor’s opposite side. The tension rolls off of him in waves and Taylor wants to be sympathetic; he does — is. Only he can’t get what Mother Reimonenq said out of his head.

Still he tries — touches the gooseflesh on Cal’s bare arm and feels him simmer down almost instantaneously.

“Don’t get me wrong — I’m terrified of the guy. But Nik’s right; the bloodwraith is more of a threat to the Pack than you are. Kristof’ll see that — he’ll have to.”

It’s the flinch felt around the room; the word bloodwraith spoken out loud. Even Vera’s refused to repeat herself; keeps calling it “that thing” and everyone else just follows suit.

If they get to vote on an official codename he’s throwing in Lord Voldemort. Because duh.

The universe makes sure he doesn’t even get the chance to think about probing more into the elusive and undiscussed creature, though. Not at the sound of expensive heels on the marble tile in the entryway.

Cal lets out the breath he was holding when their first guests arrive; the tall woman’s figure cut in the same head-to-toe black as her ensemble at Persephone. The women flanking Isadora de la Rosa look practically bored, but their leader, mother, whatever the new head of whatever empire Carlo left behind is anything but.

Lady Smoke stands and the figureheads exchange curt nods as their only form of greeting — instead she focuses on Cadence with a wary eye.

“Smoke’s ruthlessness is legendary — should we begin singing praises of her forgiveness as well, Smith?”

It takes Taylor a moment to realize what de la Rosa is doing; how her gesture of respect is just that, a gesture, and whatever power there is left to grab in the thick night air around them has been clawed and claimed with ease.

Smoke’s face darkens. She watches the exchange like just another of the shadows cast along the windows by the moonlight.

“An accord was reached.” Cadence answers simply.

It’s not exactly true — Taylor’s still reeling, trying to figure out how they all went from threats and offers of deathly touches to bringing together the supernatural figureheads of New Orleans, but when a secret is out it’s out apparently — but it’s the only way to let the conflict die without more of a showdown than they’ve all encountered already.

“That much is obvious.” She purses plum lips. “And I suspect it will not be the only one reached this night if what your daughter claims is true, Tonya. Are you sure you can stomach all that unfinished business?”

Luckily — lucky for who isn’t exactly clear — the bang of a door forced open echoes so loud the vampires wince in discomfort. Cal doesn’t even have to scent the air — tenses back up immediately.

“This better be good, Reimonenq!”

Kristof is heard before he’s seen — not for long. Especially in the way he huffs and puffs and stops so abruptly in the eastern doorway that Octavia behind him stumbles straight into his back like a wall.

Think he’s seen Cal much?

The Alpha’s nostrils flare. “What in the hell is this?! You best not be gettin’ involved in Pack business —” he rounds on Lady Smoke, practically pushing himself over the edge in rage, “— if y’are I swear —”

“Will you calm the fuck down, Kristof?!”

It’s definitely not the Cal who begged for Kristof’s mercy on behalf of his brother; who spent the whole day following busting his ass with as much manual labor as Garrus could find in order to not deal with his exile.

But hoo boy, Taylor likes this version of their wolf — whoever he is and wherever he’s been hiding. The way he steps up and takes charge. Looks his former Alpha dead in the eyes. He doesn’t have anything to lose; not anymore. Nothing to prove but apparently everything to gain.

And in the moment of stunned silence that follows Kristof leaves himself open — tries to come to grips with his Alpha sensibilities and how his own flesh and blood is speaking to him.

“You’re a mile over the line, Cal,” Octavia tries to warn him — to separate them both with her body. And she definitely could if Taylor wasn’t already holding Cal back.

“If you listened before losin’ your lid things would be a helluva lot easier — for you and the Pack.”

“Tell me this ain’t to do with Donny.” Kristof may be the Alpha but it’s obvious who keeps a level head when it’s needed. Octavia’s eyes flare a bright, feral yellow.

The sudden velvet of Isadora’s laugh behind them is enough to break the tension… for now.

“You agreed to a Beau-Keyes Council without pressing the matter? I expected better from you, Jensen.”

Though the bad blood between Kristof and his nephew may be fresh, whatever horror flick monster-versus-monster feud rests between the most important werewolf and the most important vampire takes precedent.

Gets Kristof’s full attention. Thank god.

“I ain’t gonna waste time gettin’ told what’s what when that’s what a Beau-Keyes is for, la Rosa.”

“Given what happened to my father I would have pegged you to err on the side of caution.”

“Who needs caution? The less bloodsuckers around the better, I say.”

Octavia’s finally head enough then — curls her fist tight and all laws of physics should dictate that she can’t do much damage to a man the sheer size of Kristof. But the bruise that blossoms — lives and dies in reds and purples to settle on a speckled sickly green that reminds Taylor of Meerl back at Smoke’s Den — on his arm says otherwise.

“Our condolences on ya loss, Lady de la Rosa.” Octavia grits out; and there’s no doubt she’s used to apologizing on behalf of them both — not even a glance spared at her Alpha; she knows he won’t say it.

Their argument ends there with a curt nod from Isadora. At least someone is taking the gravity of the situation into account. The fighters go back to their corners.

A warm breeze settles over those gathered — is enough to rustle the hems of skirts and the trailing ends of Lady Smoke’s cape. Taylor swears he catches the faintest whisper of wooden wind chimes.

It catches his notice in how strange the feeling is. Strange only because all the windows around them are closed, latched, and locked tight.

“Lamrian’s here.” comments Ryder almost offhandedly after a deep inhale through parted lips.

Confused, Taylor follows suit. Tastes honeysuckle and something like the aftermath of a bite of strawberries on his tongue.

And there they are. Coming from the same direction as the vampires but so starkly different it’s almost violent. Encased in a soft brightness; so white it fades blue at the edges of his eyes. Bathed in moonlight — which he could have sworn was over at the other edge of the room just a moment ago.

The long, snowy-haired man and the three armored fae at his back aren’t his first of the faerie folk — Garrus has that honor and seems very happy that’s so. But Garrus is new-world. He’s waistcoats and tight jeans and obviously-enjoys-the-mortal-concept-of-hair-gel. He’s nothing like their new guests.

Who look like they’d be more at home at a Renaissance Faire than among the motley gang gathered. Unearthly beauty but in a way that haunts him when he closes his eyes. Like they’re burned into the backs of his eyelids because he never has and never will see something so breathtaking for the rest of his life.

Pale blue eyes sweep the room; land on Taylor and there’s a startled intake of breath no one else notices but them. So small, so reserved; yet strangely important.

No one else notices because it isn’t for anyone else. It’s for them. He’d stake his life on it.

And when the fae leader speaks that, too, is important. Because he’s definitely not talking to Taylor but that doesn’t mean he looks away.

“Are we the only ones summoned tonight, Tonya?”

Lady Smoke nods. “Time was of the essence in this particular matter, Elric. I sent out messages to those I could — those who I knew would come.”

Whatever she says is important enough to drag Elric’s focus away — to break whatever unseen tether was keeping them together.

Taylor makes a note to ask Garrus what fae magic feels like; if it feels like being consumed, body and soul, by drowning moonlight.

“But isn’t it the point of a Beau-Keyes to give every community a seat at the table, so to speak?” Isadora interrupts. “You didn’t even bother summoning the Garden Coven, or the Mayor for that matter.”

‘The Mayor?’ mouths Taylor silently to Nik; but he’s focused on everyone around them.

A long silence follows; bated breaths waiting for Smoke’s answer. Judging by her reply — slow and measured, each syllable carefully chosen and accounted for — it’s more thought than she would normally give to those in her presence.

“I would rather not incite the chaos and panic before its time. As it is such an outcome has already proven itself inevitable.”

Chaos and panic. Two words that really shouldn’t go together but always seem to. And during Mardi Gras of all times.

Kristof is the first to move; gives a grunt under his breath and passes Cal just shy of slamming them together shoulder-to-shoulder to open the double doors leading out to the famous back gardens of the Beauregard-Keyes House.

“Why can’t we stay here?” Taylor had asked before they left the Den — all messages sent and car being called up top. “Why can’t they just come to us? Not like this place is very secret.”

Not that he wanted to stay in the secret underground casino, but if this was there Lady Smoke conducted her infamous business then it was probably protected out her ass, right?

“Because there’s certain neutral territories in place for gatherings of importance,” Cadence had taken on the duty of explaining, “places of historical importance where ceremonies, councils, or conflicts are held.”

“So which one are we going to?”

“Ever heard of P. G. T. Beauregard?”

The Beauregard-Keyes House was everything they needed. It was big, important, and tied to half a dozen (or more, admittedly he zoned out when Cade started to sound like just another tour guide) important supernatural events or figures.

The museum was run by mortals — whether they were ‘in the know’ or not didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that every figurehead in the city contributed to its maintenance.

Turns out there’s more to maintain than just a fresh coat of paint and a trimmed lawn.

They pour out into the garden in their tightly-knit groups and factions. Lady Smoke subtly tries to keep Vera at her side and Vera not-so-subtly stays away — keeps by Cal and Taylor without regret.

Unbidden the guards behind Elric reach up and out. Stretch their fingers skyward as if to take the very stars in their hands. They very well could; Taylor believes.

The stars stay in their celestial homes but what cloud cover there is parts in a way that definitely isn’t natural. Shines the light of the heavens down upon them all and casts their shadows in a dozen different directions at their feet.

What Taylor first mistakes for a too-bright glare in his eyes soon begins to move; reveals itself as threads glowing, thrumming. The fae arc their hands and throw along the path of invisible shooting stars; they toss the threads from where they stand, to one another, to where modern civilization meets the horizon.

In the end they’re left under a dome of magic so powerful it rings in Taylor’s skull. Makes him work his jaw to pop his ears caught in the pressure.

Not just any maintenance — magical maintenance.

And though the glimmering shield fades to lowered arms everyone knows it’s still there; hovering invisible over their heads, guarding them.

He offers a silent prayer out to the universe, just in case. Please, please let it be enough.

All eyes fall expectantly to Lady Smoke.

The silence that follows isn’t just awkward, it’s downright goosebump ridden secondhand embarrassment nightmares worthy. How it always is when people who are supposed to have all the answers, who are never without something to say, find themselves at a loss.

“I’m sure I am not the first to say this — and with our legacies intact I know I will not be the last — but those who stand here tonight know by experience or reputation that this is not your ordinary community. We are a community of survivors.”

Something about her words earns a reverent bow of nearly every head. Only Katherine looks around with the same curiosity as Taylor — and when their eyes meet the unspoken answer is obvious.

They’re the only two outsiders. Vampire, fae, werewolf, witch; all of them locals — the city built on the bodies of their ancestors. A will to live not even Mother Nature could wash away.

“Come Hell and high waters.”

“Come Hell and high waters.” Ryder whispers beside him; voices echoing the sentiment around the garden.

“Come Hell and high waters.”

It’s an invocation that wraps their different beliefs under one sky — just like they are now. The weight of it staggering and important.

Lady Smoke continues; “Mardi Gras may not be sacred to the rest of the world any more but we of New Orleans know a different celebration. It is a prosperous time; our version of a bountiful harvest. And as such there were laws put into place upon the founding of both the supernatural and mortal communities — laws that ensured, even in times of conflict and strife, that there would always be a ceasefire.”

The looks chanced at Isadora and Elric aren’t very subtle; nor do the immortals seem bothered by it. Maybe it’s nice to have confirmation that it actually happened — that whatever rules were penned down were done so with the future in mind.

“I know I didn’t leave a good barbecue fer a history lesson,” mutters Kristof.

“No,” she answers, “you didn’t. You were called here because you swore an oath in blood to the Accords; to uphold them yourself and ensure they are passed down through the generations.”

Probably against his will, Taylor thinks.

“You sayin’ I haven’t?”

“What she is saying, Jensen, is that the Accords have been broken in some form or another.” Isadora’s careful, grandiose personality gives way to the pressure of insistence. “Aren’t you, Smoke?”

Tonya nods.

Elric speaks next. “This is to do with the mysterious deaths surrounding the festivities, then.”

Isadora’s teeth grind audibly. “The death of my father.”

“And the Shifter, Denna.”

Octavia’s eyebrows shoot up. “I thought those were coincidences.”

“This town wasn’t founded on coincidences.”

“Nevertheless,” Elric’s monotone keeps passions from running on sharp tongues, “their passing lies outside of celebration’s given time. There are no rights given to us to act.”

“On the contrary; my daughter was attacked the night following the late Señor de la Rosa. I’m a mother first —” — Vera very nearly interrupts with a red rage in her face, nearly — “— and a businesswoman second; and would expect any here to offer me the same chance at justice for mine own.”

Judging by the look on Isadora’s face the fine line that turns justice into vengeance has already been crossed. “How very generous of you, Reimonenq.”

Now that the discussion has taken a turn for the violent Kristof seems all too eager to get in on the action. The way he practically bristles with anticipation. Taylor thinks back to the trophy room in his cabin — wonders where the hell he’s going to find the space for another mounted victory.

But something just isn’t right. All of the leaders gathered have motive to go on the offensive.

All but one.

And that might just work out in their favor; might just keep them alive. Because Elric doesn’t look like the type to lead the battalion — soldiers in armor aside.

“I doubt not your passion nor its intent, Tonya,” the fae lord finally speaks to the mother with his focus on the daughter, “not just as a leader but as a father. But it would be unwise not to ask the child what exactly happened.”

It’s not a question.

Unlike her mother Vera very obviously isn’t a fan of being heard, of giving orders and watching atop an empire of her own making. She wilts under the scrutiny; must be truly desperate when she takes the risk of hoping her mother will step in on her behalf.

Yeah, like he’s gonna let that happen.

“I was there —” not that he’s entirely happy to be looked at and through again but if it helps Vera then he’ll suffer it, “— so was our friend.”

Octavia crosses her arms over her chest with a snort. “Why ain’t I surprised this has somethin’ t’do with you?”

Ryder steps up — something cocksure like “you got a problem with that?” on the tip of his curled upper lip — but doesn’t get the chance to say shit. Not when Elric holds a hand up. Is it magic that makes everyone fall quiet, or just the impermeable presence of him?

“‘Tis doubtful I am the only one curious as to where in this story you belong. Perhaps it is something we may all piece together in the here and now.”

Taylor’s laugh is short; pushed through his nostrils. “You and me both.”

Of course Ryder looks reluctant to let him keep talking — he can see the little vein in his temple throbbing as the Nighthunter scrambles for something to say before whatever Taylor says is somehow wrong and inevitably gets them into trouble.

So in a very un-Taylor-like fashion he thinks before he speaks; says only what seems relevant to the attack in what has to be the most professional retelling of the night’s events he’s given so far. Doesn’t mention his headaches and the whole seeing-through-glamours thing.

By the end of it everyone has a series of very distinct impressions; Smoke now knows what happened after Vera left, Kristof couldn’t give a damn, Elric — well he looks like he’s just seen a new original performance by Shakespeare himself.

The odd one out is Isadora; how her anger doesn’t seem to have a seat at the table. Not the same kind of anger Cadence used to mutilate a Minotaur, thankfully. But it’s old, and it’s not human anger, and there he is yet again knees knocking.

“Something to say, Izzy?” asks Cadence who had, up until then, been content in his silence. Maybe it’s a vampire thing — the way he notices. Would certainly explain the women shifting on their heels at their leader’s back.

“Merely entertaining the ways to pull out what the little mortal isn’t telling us while staying under Elric’s wards, Smith. Why — something to suggest?”

“Pull what now?” Thankfully dignity isn’t something he’s all that attached to.

Wouldn’t now be a great time to have a bodyguard? Oh, wait.

There he is half-stepping in front of Taylor like always. How many times does it take to turn an action into a habit, again? Surely they’ve passed it by now.

“Can’t say I’m a fan of what you’re implyin’, Isadora.” Ryder’s voice a low warning growl.

“Nor am I.” Not that it stops the barest flicker of doubt from finding home on Elric’s pale brow. “Why would you assume the young man lies?”

“Hi — still here?”

“Taylor wouldn’t lie about something like this,” comes Vera to his defense, “and I was there for most of it. It came out of nowhere. None of us could have anticipated — or even imagined…”

Isadora scoffs. “Where shall I begin to dispute; his claims at being nothing but an innocent who keeps tripping into the messes of a secret world? Or that the creature he describes — no doubt fiction exacerbated by terror — is one even I have not come across in my many lifetimes?

“Or—should that not be enough—that I struggle to tie together my father, one of the great and powerful men who built this city from the swamp beneath your feet, a half-witch in self-imposed exile, and two ignorant mortals; if we’re to take that farce as truth.”

You know an argument is a convincing one when even you believe it, maybe just a little, despite obviously knowing otherwise. Not that he’ll shoot his credibility in the foot and give her a hand for being smart.

Smart — and cautious. Still grieving. Taylor and his mom aren’t the best example of tight-knit familial bonds but he still loves her; would do anything for her. He can’t even fathom how it would feel to live more than an average lifetime with her, maybe even more than two, and then suddenly… suddenly lose her.

“There’s no doubt in my mind the target was my daughter,” Smoke corrects her — doesn’t leave room for grief-ridden argument, “and when it sensed easier prey, diverted its hunt to the mortals.”

“Where is the other?” asks Octavia.

“In the hospital,” Ryder raises a hand before anyone even chances interrupting him, “and before anyone gets their rich panties in a bunch I took all the precautions. Only the docs in the know are takin’ care of her condition.”

Well that would’ve been good to know earlier.

Elric quickly steers the group back on course — the first time his hollowing voice sounds anything more than stagnant; with a barely-there waver of concern, fear.

“Imagination may stretch the truth, but we would be remiss as speakers for our communities not to consider that what was seen was indeed real. That in this case truth has stretched the imagination.”

Kristof growls, shakes his head firmly. “No fuckin’ way; it’s impossible.”

“Judging by the account — I would say otherwise.”

“Then yer head’s finally full of fairy dust.” A remark obviously meant to incite some kind of irritation in the fae; but the only one left irritated is the Alpha whose baits go unbitten.

“I know what I saw.” Vera looks around; incredulous that no one seems to be the proper amount of scared.

“How could you? There’s never been a true massacre like that of a bloodwraith summoned in your lifetime.” Isadora counters. But even in her doubt a shared look passes between her and Cadence; a memory they can both tell tales of — even if they wish they couldn’t.

Cadence inclines his head. “Some things you just can’t forget. You of all people should know that, Iz’.”

“And, hey — hey over here!” Taylor keeps snapping his fingers until both of their ancient gazes are on him. Probably not the smartest idea to be sure but he’s learning from the Nik Ryder School of Bad Choices. “Yeah, hi, you’re kind of missing the point here.

“Even if we are wrong, even if we don’t know what’s out there —” he gestures out beyond the garden gates, “— whatever it is, is still fucking scary as hell. It still hunted me and my friend down, still killed your father and Denna. So what difference does it make?”

Elric gives a soft nod of approval. “He speaks sense. Best we prepare for that which we can defeat rather than an enemy of which we are unsure.”

Apparently his backing is the one to have. It gets Isadora off the confrontation train even if only for the moment. Gives Ryder a chance to join back in.

“Care to share, Lord Elric? Because I punched an awful lotta holes in that thing — I might as well have been usin’ foam darts.”

“Most things die when ya rip off their heads.” Kristof growls.

“Should you find yourself that close to a true bloodwraith, it is not the creature who will perish.” warns Elric, and he chooses to ignore Kristof’s mumbled argument to continue; “The power of the creature comes from two places: the black artist which summoned it and the malevolent soul summoned. The price to call such a being unto the living realm is steep… the bargainer and holder of its leash already surpasses the power even a renowned Nighthunter might possess.

“Yet even when their wellspring — the life force tying together spirit and master — dries up, the creature will remain. Mindless, purposeless, with only its nature to slaughter to fuel it. And more oft than not that is more than enough.”

Tonya’s biting tone stings with impatience. “Since you have so much knowledge, Lord Elric, perhaps you have some on how to rid our city of the thing before it gets that far.”

“Find the reason for which it was birthed into this world — that which it hunts for — and, ideally, destroy it.”

“Do the damn thing’s job for it?”

“Confront the lesser of the evils at work.” He corrects.

“How do we know it isn’t done — that it hasn’t already killed who it needs to before the spell ends?”

They couldn’t possibly be that lucky, could they? No, of course not.

Because Taylor’s been so fixated on the play of moonlight on Elric’s ethereal features that he notices right away — before anyone else — when a cloud passes over and obscures the glow.

Only there aren’t any clouds above — there haven’t been since Elric’s guards wove their warding magic.

“It’s not done.” He croaks out; might have even gone unheard were he not in the presence of some very keen ears.

Ryder’s frown is worried. “How d’you know, Rook?”

He points to the rapidly descending figure in the sky.

“Because it’s, uh, right there.”

With a swipe of its skeletal hand the bloodwraith tears through the wards of light; a cobweb — a mere nuisance.

It’s upon them.

The air on his tongue tastes burnt — but there is no fire.

It smells like the sheet metal factory his school took a field trip to in the eighth grade. Who lets a bunch of prepubescent dumbasses visit a sheet metal factory, he’d wondered. How that hadn’t been the first thing the administration asked themselves he still didn’t understand.

But it didn’t take long for one such dumbass — Steve-something, maybe — to catch sight of some in-law relative and convince them to let him and his friends try out the band-saw.

The trip was supposed to be a lesson in ‘shop and the trade jobs. Instead it turned into a fun biology lesson. They all learned a lot about reattaching severed fingers that day.

Strange the things you think of moments away from death. His life isn’t flashing before his eyes; in fact he’s not even thinking about experiences that are his own.

No, he’s thinking about dumb Steven and the Sheet Metal Incident.

What the literal fuck?

On tonight’s special episode Taylor has two options: get clawed in two by the bloodwraith’s talons, or have garden gravel for dinner. Only this particular game show doesn’t let him choose — oh no, no — hasn’t anyone been paying attention? That would be simple; logical.

There’s no place for that here.

Not anymore.

The stale sweat stitched into the inner lining of Nik’s coat makes him want to wretch. Or maybe that’s his stomach finally joining in on the action.

He tries to look up; out. To see what’s going on despite the throbbing where they collided with the earth. “Don’t, Taylor,” whispered into his ear and his face buried into that supple leather collar instead.

Their hearts are beat together erratically, one trying to out-pace the other. That won’t matter if they actually end up on the outsides of their ribcages. But the fact that it’s beating — it’s a short-lived relief.

“Katherine!”

Oh god, that sounded like — “Cade —”

“Head down, dammit!”

“But what if —”

“Now ain’t the time to fuckin’ question me!”

Taylor squeezes his eyes shut. Makes the blood pound through his veins faster, faster. Every ounce flooded with adrenaline and very late for wherever it wants to be.

But nothing, not even Ryder’s authority, can stop him from almost seizing in panic at the screams that fill the air.

Echoing cries — something ripping, hot and wet and the crunch of bones so loud and visceral they may as well be his own — that shift like the moon into feral howls.

Wrenching his cheek away from the path — little crumbs, pebbles of gravel digging into his cheek like blunted fingernails. It’s enough for him to see just over the crook of Ryder’s shoulder. To witness the mass of silverlight fur and muscle that steps a long and large hind paw just inches away.

There’s no mistaking the enormity of muscle that is Kristof — though there’s nothing in what he can see of the wolf within that even resembles the Alpha in his human form. Maybe a scar here and there that bled through the change — maybe the almost cocky snap of its teeth towards the bloodwraith beyond.

He can’t see them, Cal and Octavia, but he knows they’re there. Feels the tickle of tail fur just shy of the shell of his ear; musk of the primal hunt thick and dense in their coats.

Not that he wants to but Taylor can imagine their enemy now — that same cast-from-Hell grin on rotting skeleton teeth. When it shrieks and waves its arms like it means to tear away the very veil of reality with every stroke the wolves waste no time nor chance.

They lunge as beasts; as one.

Above him Ryder sees something he can’t. Digs the balls of his boots into the ground and scrambles to haul them both up together.

“Move—move—move dammit!”

The Beauregard-Keyes Garden is in chaos.

One creature — more than just the ability but the drive — to uproot vines, spread decay through hedges and let fungi spiderweb up the trunks of trees. It’s everything that happened in the cemetery but on a grander scale.

The bloodwraith is stronger than it was before. And it doesn’t look like it’s done gaining power just yet. As though it wants to live up to Elric’s foreboding.

“Taylor!”

Just as Vera calls out she’s yanked back; painfully so by the looks of it. Turns around to look at her mother with indignant argument but now is not the fucking time for their fucking family problems, Vera.

Just as soon as she lets her daughter go Lady Smoke peels off her gloves; no ceremony about it, letting the expensive fabric fall to the ground with the rest of the trampled things.

One of Elric’s guards. The younger-looking of Isadora’s ladies. He hadn’t even noticed them before. And the bloodwraith had had time to kill them both before Nik could get him to stand?

They were fighting a losing battle. Holy fuck.

The remaining two armor-clad fae stand in front of Elric with no doubt the same determination as their fallen comrade. They, too, are ready to stand until they have stood their last.

“Iz’ stop this madness!”

Nik forces Taylor behind the blackened, withered remains of what he could recall was a neatly-trimmed hedge. The heavy breathing beside him makes him jump — but it’s only Katherine; daggers long and sharp in her white-knuckled clutches.

But when she glares it’s only at Ryder. “Where the hell is that crossbow of yours?”

“Gimme a sec to pull it outta my ass, Kathy!”

“Seriously?! You’re snarking me now?!”

Taylor’s ready to tell them both to shut up or fuck off when Isadora’s voice rasps almost as loud as their enemy.

“Let me go you insolent…!” It’s all he gets before she dissolves into tongue-twisting Spanish. But that’s more than enough to see Cadence holding the woman back with arms around her torso.

No, not just a woman — a creature of vengeance; a fury in black ready to spill whatever blood the malevolent conjuring has as payment for her fallen.

For the other vampiress weeping huddled at their feet.

“That abomination killed my father, now my daughter! I will see it ground to dust before it takes the rest of my family from me!”

“You won’t live long enough to get the chance!”

And like it seeks to prove Cadence right the wraith draws the chaos back in; cranes its spinal column as a neck and drops its jaw so low what little decayed muscle holds it together snaps — threatens to send it comically falling to the ground to be trampled on.

There’s no way something so thin should be able to take on even one of the werewolves surrounding it. But it does. In the same way it shouldn’t be able to send the large black wolf flying through the air like it was nothing more than a stuffed toy and not enough packed muscle and power to snap the tree it collides with in half near the roots.

Taylor fixates, horrified, as the wolf struggles — twitches and convulses, trying to stand, to haul up, to do anything more than lay there exposed and injured. When its eyes roll up and back with one last involuntary twitch, he knows which one of them it is.

“CAL!”

“Shit—Ryder—don’t let him go!”

But there’s no fucking way he’s going to be held back now. Not when another high-pitched yelp echoes along the brick garden walls as the brown wolf—Octavia—tries to catch herself on her front paw; feels it twist and snap as no more than a twig.

Taylor’s fast — darts out while trying to keep low with dread filling the cold emptiness in his gut because fuck Cal isn’t moving he’s not moving oh god oh godohgod —

And sure, Nik is faster. Nik will always be faster. Every time he’s had the reflexes and the forethought to be smart, to keep Taylor out of as much harm as he can. Does the same, now, when he locks a rugged hand around his charge’s slender wrist.

But his mistake is expecting Taylor to yield — he doesn’t. Nik grabs harder. Taylor yanks his arm away. Feels something shift under his skin — an all-encompassing throbbing pain — then the numbing sting of pins and needles that make it easier for him to care more about Cal than himself.

“Get back here Taylor!” Ryder shouts; but it’s lost on the hallowed gust of wind that precedes the enormous shadow of Kristof the wolf skidding aside; disarmed, conquered, forgotten.

He’ll process ‘big, big wolf; large dog man’ later — if there is a later. Skids to his knees and tries to, uh, shit. He’s never even had a dog let alone figured this shit out. Just ends up following what comes naturally; cradling the large onyx head to keep it from rolling off to the side too harsh and giving light smacks to (what he hopes are) Cal’s wolf-cheeks.

“Cal — Cal c’mon wake up. Open your eyes Cal please. Please!”

Distantly yes; Nik is still yelling for him to find a place to hide — to come back to the safety he can provide for as long as he can provide it. But Taylor — Taylor got Cal involved in this mess; offered him a place to go and maybe Cal felt obligated to help keep him safe because of it?

First Kristin — now Cal. There shouldn’t even be a first, or a list to begin with. And it’s starting to crush him from the inside-out.

There’s a victorious screech into the night and Taylor chances a terrified look back — expects to see the thing advancing on him in the same way it had back in the cemetery.

Only it isn’t. Instead it advances on the prone Kristof’s scarred back with the hunger of the void in its empty eye sockets.

“Away from him, demon!”

Sweat and tears may sting in Taylor’s eyes but he swears he sees Lady Smoke advancing at the wraith’s back — cloak billowing behind her like some epic cinematic entrance.

It’s weird that no one’s trying to stop her or keep her under the safety of cover, right? He’s not the only one thinking that? Oh, he is? Well shit.

Not to mention the fact that without her gloves she looks like she’s somehow missing part of her villain’s ensemble. Definitely not as terrifying as three oversized werewolves.

But whatever Smoke has planned — it’s a good enough plan to keep her from being told to run and hide. To keep Vera at her back; her left arm equally bare, but no such confidence in her eyes as that of her mother.

You’d think she stares down near-mythical possessed-skeleton assassins every day or something.

Before the bloodwraith can descend on Kristof, a flash of light as bright as the sun behind snowclouds lands in the space left; distances them and makes it recoil with warbling hisses and claws up in a previously unseen attempt at protecting itself.

Elric doesn’t give it time to recover; hurtles another of the miniature suns up and over; this time lets it land so close the burning smell in the air grows hot and smoky — like Kristof’s beloved barbecue.

“Go,” he commands the soldiers at his back, “protect her!”

There’s a shudder in the furry mass beneath his touch — brings Taylor’s attention back to Cal who whimpers in pain. But being in pain means he’s alive. Alive is so much better than the alternative.

“Cal — c’mon Cal please — I can’t carry you alone.”

If he doubts for a second that the wolf may not be able to understand him that’s dashed when yellow eyes dimmed and glassy flick up to look at him. He feels the shudder of canine breath and the way his body trembles at his injuries. But Cal’s alive, and knows he’s there, and that’s something.

The hairs on the back of his neck stand up; a warning not to let his guard down. Instinctively he knows the thing at his back isn’t the bloodwraith — can hear it hiss and wail far back behind him — but doesn’t expect the face who rounds to join him, either.

Elric’s pale hands glow; the magic at his fingertips an undulating gradient of warm colors that make his skin look — if only for a moment — human.

“Your valiance is understood, but you must go.”

He gapes at the fae offended, angry. ”I’m not leaving him!”

“Go to your protector.”

“I said no!”

“You cannot hope to protect yourself, let alone your companion.”

“Cool — heard you the first time — still ain’t gonna happen!”

This close he can see the difference between Elric’s features and his. The almost catlike tilt of his eyes, the pressed-down bridge of his nose. Features that remind him of Garrus — obviously.

From a distance the fae are radiant, striking things. Up close their grace sharpens, though; makes them beautiful in the same way a poisoned needle is beautiful.

From the way they treat him it’s no secret that Elric has lived a long long time. So maybe its rare for him to be blatantly disobeyed. Taylor’s happy to show him what it looks like.

Maybe this will get the point across; “I’m not leaving him. So help me, or fuck off.”

Elric stares, unblinking, and wins the standoff only because his hands suddenly flare with colorless light; makes Taylor look to make sure Cal isn’t injured further.

The giant wolf shudders, then lies still. But before he can accuse Elric of anything wicked the coarse fur starts to recede under their palms. The twitching muzzle and whiskers drawing back as, inch by inch, Cal’s familiar human form is revealed.

“He will be easier to carry as a man than a beast.”

It makes Taylor almost sob in gratitude. “Thank you.”

But it’s still too much — too much weight for them to carry alone, too much blood revealed underneath the shrinking form.

Taylor looks up in panic, sees Nik helping Katherine drag Octavia away — not to shelter, but out of the line of fire.

Instead its Cadence who disengages from Isadora and appears at their sides in a blur. Not that he doesn’t appreciate the help but they’re running out of offensive players.

“Smoke — she’s —”

“She’ll be fine —” — and there’s an unspoken hopefully tacked on there somewhere but Cadence doesn’t let it come to light — “—is he bleeding? Where is he bleeding?”

“Just pick him up so we can go!”

“If I just grab him I could break him.”

“Momma don’t!”

Vera’s scream drags his attention away before he can help. Back to the fight where both of Elric’s guards struggle through bloodied lips to stand, to follow their orders and continue to fight —

— where Tonya reaches out with both hands as if to stop the advance of the bloodwraith and grabs it, instead.

He’s seen what touching that thing does to people. Sees Kristin’s fate in parallel with Tonya’s — or he expects to.

She’s right there in arms’ reach; supple flesh and hot red blood. Her hands around the bloodwraith’s throat should mean nothing; should do nothing. But a shadow passes over the pair holding one another in petrified stillness; agony on both of their twisted faces.

Whatever rolls through them both is all the way deep inside them. Deeper than bones or marrow. Leaves the wraith slack-jawed in a silent scream and Tonya shaking violently with all her rapidly-fading strength left in her hands.

Her hands — where, touching, the air shimmers with heat. The same illusion on a hot desert road at noon. Only the smoke isn’t an illusion. Pungent, black — so thick Taylor’s eyes burn and sting even from across the garden.

It doesn’t have to force Tonya back. She collapses all on her own. Holds her hands close and captive against her breast but smoke isn’t a tangible thing and diffuses out despite her.

Whatever she’s done — whether she meant to or not — the creature has changed. Pulls away from her in search of a better prey. Makes a choice not to take advantage of her vulnerability like it did the werewolf and pursues easier — better — prey.

It doesn’t need to have eyes to sweep a look across the garden. Greedy, hungry snarls on its fangs as it searches for what it seeks.

Everything sort of flips on its head when its sockets fall on Taylor then sweep him by like he’s just another bush or tree.

Whatever drives the thing, whatever it seeks, Taylor isn’t it anymore. No — judging by the way it stops and chokes out a wrathful howl at its new target in spite of its burning gored-out throat?

Taylor notices. Elric notices. Hell even Katherine notices and she’s on the other side. Makes her cup her hands over her mouth and shout so hard her voice breaks—

“CADE! RUN!”

The bloodwraith lurches forward. Taylor’s defenseless, weaponless, but doesn’t let that stop him from throwing himself over Cal’s body like a shield with eyes shut tight.

A shriek. Fingers wrapping around his wrist. Then a familiar and totally inappropriate warmth in his gut — given the situation, of course.

Home.

Without reason or warning he falls into slackened unconsciousness.

#nightbound #playchoices #choices nightbound #playchoices fanfiction #nik ryder x mc #nik ryder #vera reimonenq #cal lowell #katherine nightbound #oc: cadence smith #nightbound mc #mc: taylor hunter #oblv: bound by circumstance #oblv: new chapter #; my fics

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the-vorkosigan · 8 years

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Stony post-cw fix-its recs (MCU mainly)

Since I didn’t have the time to actually create anything for the 10th Anni of Stony, this rec list is my pseudo-contribution.

Since I don’t know how to make it a part of the event otherwise (sorry!), I’m just going to tag @cap-ironman

For more recs, check out this post by @civilwarbrokemyheart. I’m not going to repeat the recs that are already there.

This is in no particular order, and the fics are loosely grouped by absolutely arbitrary criteria :)

Mind the ratings, I guess.

Enjoy!

Romantic, Sweet and/or Funny

Can’t start a fire without a spark by @gottalovev

The Avengers might be reunited, but they are holding together with a Band-Aid and a severe case of Tony pretending nothing happened. The superficial truce is shattered the day Steve takes control of Tony's suit and forces him to go to medical in a tense situation. When Tony is ordered to take a vacation, Steve volunteers to go with him.

one-shot, 36k words

vorkosigan: It’s a roadtrip fic! Steve and Tony go shopping unexpectedly! Tony sings karaoke in a roadside motel! There is also a threesome with an OFC, but it just serves to bring T and S closer together, honestly. The sex scenes are brilliant and detailed, everything else is sweet and wonderful and there is pining :) Mainly Steve PoV as far as I remember.

You’ve Been Sleeping in the Wild by skyline

With a pint-sized sneaker dangling somewhere near his nose, and another jabbed into his collar bone, Tony takes out the phone Steve gave him.

Nearly punching the buttons, he types, Vision made my kitchen smell like Staten Island and Clint’s kid is nesting on my face. I need you to stop being a child and come home.

(Or, Tony abuses the bat phone.)

one-shot, 4k words,

vorkosigan: Fucking hilarious! Also v. sweet. Also, informative regarding the workings of the UN, but it doesn’t detract from the story. Just... too funny for words.

Evidence of Things Unsaid by @sheronm (whom I apparently can’t tag for some reason??)

The Avengers (and ex-Avengers) are forced to socialize at a PR event. Why is there never a monster around to attack New York when you need one?

one-shot, 4k words

vorkosigan: Tony cuts his hand and Steve fusses over him. Romantic and sweet, somewhat melancholic, very carefully written and mindful of all the tiny little details I like to see in fic. There’s handholding that melts my heart every time.

I Hope You Have Unlimited Text Messaging by Misscar

:For the first time in their entire acquaintance, Tony and Steve start having really honest conversations with each other via text message, of course.

Or Tony and Steve try to repair their relationship before the next apocalypse. This may take a while. Actually, battling blue and/or purple aliens would be preferable to working through their feelings.

WIP, 52 chapters, 65k words

vorkosigan: My fav texting fic. Occasionally really hilarious, occasionally a bit angsty, but mainly sweet. It’s updated all the time. Also works really well when read in installments. Taking into account politics and world events. I mean, it’s texting, but there’s outward plot too. Tony and Steve are acting really maturely here.

Plotsy

A World Apart by @dapperanachronism

The accords are in pieces, the team is scattered and divided, Steve is in hiding, Tony is trying to move on, and both are left trying to pick up the pieces of what little remains. But the threats that drew them all together in the first place are still out there, and picking up the pieces means finding themselves pulled back together whether they're ready for it or not.

chaptered, completed, 49k words

vorkosigan: Deals with law, politics and things. Then gets really REALLY feelsy towards the end. There’s action too. There’s EVERYTHING. Tony is really angry but at one point gets REALLY worried for Steve (his Steve, whom he loves! <3).

Time travel and interdimensional hopping (because they deserve a category!)

The Breach by Chaylay23

After the war, the remaining Avengers have to rebuild the team and their headquarters. A new armored superhero shows up to help.

chaptered, 76k words, finished

vorkosigan: A multitude of interdimensional Steves! Natasha Stark is a good bro to Tony! Dimension hopping! Plot! Pining! Really, really pining (MCU Steve, I’m looking at you). Hurt!Steve. It’s wonderful!

A New Way For Us by ann2who ( @stark-spangled-lovers )

They fight Thanos—and they’re losing. And before Tony knows what’s happening, he’s standing with Doctor Strange in front of the Eye of Agamotto and gets send back in time. Can he find a way to fix things this time around, or are they doomed to fall apart all over again?

chaptered, finished, 24k words

vorkosigan: Tones returns to the past, to his pre-Ultron body, but keeps his memories. Does things differently. Gets really close with Steve, for one. LOTS of very sweet Stony moments. Real focus on development of the relationship. Not too heavy on angst (as these things go).

Oh, the ANGST

No Amount of Guilt (can change the past) by kiminsocks

Tony's in town for an Accords conference. Steve is in town to make sure nothing happens at that conference. They meet in a bar, and it's a second chance for first impressions.

one-shot, 6k words

vorkosigan: Steve wears a different face, and it’s post-CW identity porn. I’ve read it only, oh, half a million times. It’s the saddest and the gentlest, and ends on a really hopeful note.

Last Train Home by @erdesque

Steve writes letters to Tony that he never sends. By the time he hands them to their rightful owner, Tony has had a brush with death, has retired as a superhero, and now has a small town workshop of his very own. But it's okay, Steve has gone into retirement too.

one-shot, 11k words

vorkosigan: It’s rolling-on-the-floor-clutching-stomach type of angst. Steve’s pining is palpable. The getting together is BEAUTIFUL and super-romantic. The ending is sweet as can be.

Bring Him Home by seventymilestobabylon

Tony misses Steve very badly after the Accords. Some days he deals with it better than other days. (a fic featuring the booty call flip phone, minor kidnappings, and time jumps between chapters because the election has been happening and my brain has been too mush to make a proper plot)

chaptered, finished, 14k words

vorkosigan: Tony PoV, for change, if I remember correctly. Tony decides to fix Bucky because he thinks Steve loves Bucky. And Tony loves Steve. And, needless to say, Steve loves Tony. (And Bucky kinda loves Sam). The piniiiing all around. Wonderfully written, deceptively easy to read. Unputdownable. One of the best sex scenes in all fic ever, if you ask me.

How to Fall in Love (in Four Easy Steps) by morphia

Tony and Pepper's relationship is open, with only one clear rule: they must never let the other catch them with a fling. Soon after the events of The Avengers, Tony finally uses his license to sleep with others--with Steve. And Steve knows that their sexual encounters are intended to be strictly casual, but that doesn't stop him from falling hopelessly, stupidly in love.

Or: What if they were actually banging behind the scenes?

chaptered, finished, 25k words

vorkosigan: Missing scenes (sex and feels), all the way to the aftermath of CW. Steve PoV (I think), and LOTS of pining. Very romantic and feelsy. Super-rewarding happy ending.

All Roads by lastdream AND Unweaving by Night by lastdream

All Roads, in which Steve is a terrible nomad and a terrible flâneur, but he might just be an alright Odysseus. (one-shot, 5k)

Unweaving by Night, in which Tony is a terrible traitor and a terrible jackal, but he just might be an alright Penelope. (one-shot, 5k)

vorkosigan: Parallel stories, character studies, super-angsty, full of pining. Very original writing style. I’d read All Roads first. Hopeful open ending.

Causality, Catastrophe and Consequences by @winterstar95

Atonement, forgiveness, guilt, and consequences. One year later and no one has come out of it unscathed.

chaptered, finifshed, 36k words

vorkosigan: Interchanging PoV’s. Steve is on the run. Goes to see Tony’s speech, prevents his assassination, ends up in coma. They haven’t quite forgiven each other. HURTS to read. One of the angstiest things I ever read. Super-original, writing-wise. Every small moment of tenderness is very rewarding because EVERYTHING IS ANGST. Hopeful open ending. Not very shippy.

WIP (will the fix-its fix anything?)

From the Ashes (series) by @erdesque

Out of the black

If he had known, he wouldn't have trusted Rogers so blindly. He wouldn't have begun to think he could understand his dad a little better just because he could finally see what a young Howard Stark had seen in Captain America. Tony doesn't want anything to do with Steve Rogers ever again, or so he tells himself. (chaptered, finished, 15k words, non-shippy)

From the ashes

I’m not quite myself if you’re not there to be my foil, and that has to count for something. Steve tries to mend his relationship with Tony. His intentions aren't well received, but at least Tony is speaking to him now, and that's a start. (one-shot, 3k words)

Unshattered

It's really a split of a second, but for a moment there both of them remain in silence staring at each other, and it's a throwback to that moment in Siberia where a truce seemed more likely than shit hitting the fan. Steve picks up the pieces from their relationship and tries to make them better. As the official tinker of things, Tony isn't happy with Steve's shoddy work. At first. (chaptered, WIP, 56k words)

vorkosigan: This is absolutely wonderful But, although it’s good from the start, it really came together for me in the second part, and the third part is AMAZING. Also, so steeped in angst you’ll barely be able to read (which is why everyone should read it, obvs)

Irreparable by @aslightstep

It's a mistake destroying Steve's gesture of goodwill, Tony thinks, even as he takes an unholy amount of glee smashing that stupid phone to bits down in his lab and DUM-E waits eagerly with a fire extinguisher for the last of the letter to burn down. But it's a mistake Tony is happy to make.

WIP, 100k words, chaptered

vorkosigan: You’ve read this one :) Also, even if it never gets finished, it’s absolutely and indisputably worth reading.

Porny, with a chance of feels (fix-its that solve things mainly through sex. or, as my 12 y.o. mind calls them, sex-its)

weigh the heart, tip the scales by carzla

It was the first time they’d seen each other since Siberia. It was probably one of the worst possible ways to have an unscheduled reunion. It was also about to get worse. A lot worse.

one-shot, 14k words

vorkosigan: Aliens made them do it, sort of. Super-angsty. Dom-sub undertones. With feels. Also, Steve is tied to a chair. And he’s got super-sensitive nipples. Somewhat-hopeful open ending.

Postscript by synteis

When Steve and Tony accidentally meet up in Vienna a month after the events of Civil War, things don't go quite as expected. There's a lot less yelling for one and their main problem is that no one thought to bring condoms.

one-shot, 4k words

vorkosigan: Tony PoV. Unexpected (and easily deniable) feels. Very good descriptions. Blowjobs in a storage room of a coffee house. Rather hopeful open ending.

Fixitish, Almost-fixits, Bordering on fix-its

Exposed by trollmela

The Avengers are back together, but nothing is okay. In public and with the team, Tony and Steve are coldly professional. The team at least knows that they still argue behind closed doors. Then the world finds out that Tony and Steve are having hate sex. Nothing is okay.

two-shot, finished, 3k words

vorkosigan: I ADORE this. I’ve read it so many times. Starts with hate sex. Ends rather tenderly. A good, honest to god punch in the gut, but with a happy-ish ending.

the calculation by tonystarxk (romanoff)

One year post-Civil War, and the team are back together.At least they're back living together. As in cohabiting the same space. 'Back together' is probably too optimistic.

one-shot, 7k words

vorkosigan: Another one that starts with hate sex and ends hopefully, but not as hopefully as Exposed. But still. I’ve reread that happy-ish, hopeful-ish ending SO many times, because asdfjkl; It’s so horrible, but it’s so good.

Put my Head Under My Pillow by lazywriter7

Tony uses the BARF tech to get over his nightmares of Siberia.

one-shot, 10k words,

vorkosigan: Tony tries over and over to fix his memories. Steve watches the recordings. It’s super angsty, but again, ends on a hopeful note, there is catharsis. Amazingly written.

Lines of Communication by @cptxrogers

And you think you could take me, do you, Stark?”

“I’d give it a good fucking try. I’d like to shove you into the nearest wall and wrap my hands around your damn neck.”

“Oh yeah? And then what?”

Post-CACW, a series of phone calls between Tony and Steve.

one-shot, 5k words

vorkosigan: Fighting and dirty talk and phone sex, oh my! It’s perfect, it really is, and it really, really works.

#10yearsofstevetony #stony #stevetony #fic recs #cw fix-its

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sparky7u · 6 years

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The Incredible, Rage-Inducing Inside Story of America’s Student Debt Machine

The Incredible, Rage-Inducing Inside Story of America’s Student Debt MachineWhy is the nation’s flagship loan forgiveness program failing the people it’s supposed to help?

By Ryann Liebenthal; Photographs by Zach GrossSeptember/October 2018 Issue

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When Leigh McIlvaine first learned that her student loan debt could be forgiven, she was thrilled. In 2008, at age 27, she’d earned a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Minnesota. She’d accrued just under $70,000 in debt, though she wasn’t too worried—that’s what it took to invest in her future. But graduating at the height of the recession, she found that the kind of decent-paying public-sector job she’d anticipated pursuing was suddenly closed off by budget and hiring freezes. She landed a gig at a nonprofit in Washington, DC, earning a $46,000 salary. Still, she was happy to live on that amount if it was the cost of doing the work she believed in.

At the time, she paid about $350 each month to stay in a decrepit house with several roommates, more than $100 for utilities, and $60 for her cellphone bill. On top of that, her loan bill averaged about $850 per month. “Rent was hard enough to come up with,” she recalled. Then one day while researching her options, she read about something called the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) plan. At the time, Congress had just come up with a couple of options for borrowers with federal loans. They could get on an income-based repayment plan and have their student loans expunged after 25 years. Or, for borrowers working public service jobs—as social workers, nurses, nonprofit employees—there was another possibility: They could have their debt forgiven after making 10 years’ worth of on-time payments.

The PSLF program, backed in the Senate by Ted Kennedy and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, was the first of its kind, and when people talk about “student loan forgiveness,” they’re usually talking about PSLF. It was implemented to address low salaries in public service jobs, where costly degrees are the price of entry but wages often aren’t high enough to pay down debts. A Congressional Budget Office report last year found that public-sector workers with a professional degree or doctorate earn 24 percent less than they would in the private sector. In Massachusetts, a public defender in 2014 made just $40,000, only about $1,000 more than the court’s janitor. Meanwhile, 85 percent of public-interest attorneys in 2015 owed at least $50,000 in federal student loans, according to one study. More than half owed at least $100,000. According to a 2012 study, 65 percent of newly hired nonprofit workers had student debt, and 30 percent owed more than $50,000. In order to keep people working as public defenders, or rural doctors or human rights activists, something had to be done. PSLF was an attempt at a fix.

LEIGH McILVAINE: University of New Mexico (bachelor’s, 2006); University of Minnesota (master’s, 2008); $70,000 owed at graduation; $50,000 paid back so far; $410 paid per month, on average; 12 months of delayed forgiveness because of FedLoan errors; $70,000 still owed today

The program was by no means a handout. Successful PSLF participants, according to one estimate, pay back as much as 91 percent of their original loan amount, so enrollees primarily save on interest. The program’s appeal was that it offered a clear path for people who struggled to pay back loans, or struggled to envision how they would ever pay them off without abandoning public service jobs for higher-paid positions elsewhere. For McIlvaine, who dreamed of working to make cities more livable, PSLF was the only way she could imagine paying off her debt. When she sent in her first payment in the fall of 2009, she felt like she’d put herself on track to get to “a place where the debt would eventually be lifted.”

Several companies, including one called FedLoan Servicing, contracted with the Education Department to handle loan repayment, and until 2012, when the government assigned all PSLF accounts to FedLoan, borrowers had to keep track of their progress toward forgiveness. At the time she began paying into the program, McIlvaine wasn’t too perturbed that there was no official way to confirm her enrollment, no email or letter that said she had been “accepted.” She trusted the Education Department to run the program effectively and followed its parameters, taking care to send in the yearly tax forms that proved her eligibility and always submitting her payments on time.

Everything seemed fine for the first few years—McIlvaine initially made payments through an Education Department website, and then, as the department increasingly outsourced its loans, hers were transferred to a company called MOHELA. But once FedLoan took over, things quickly started to go awry. While FedLoan was sorting out the transfer, her loans were put into forbearance, an option usually reserved for people having difficulty making payments; during a forbearance, any progress toward forgiveness stalls, and loans balloon with interest. Then the company failed to put several of her loans on an income-based plan—so her payments briefly shot up, she says. And when McIlvaine submitted her tax information, she says FedLoan took months to process the paperwork—while she waited, the company again put her into what it called “administrative forbearance,” so none of the payments she made during this period counted either. (McIlvaine requested a forbearance at least once, after turning in late renewal paperwork.)

McIlvaine initially hoped these problems were just “hiccups,” but they kept piling up. And when she tried to figure out what was going on, she says, FedLoan’s call center “loan counselors” brushed the whole thing off as an inconsequential administrative oversight. Astonishingly, the cycle would repeat over the next four years.

Despite these frustrations, McIlvaine kept diligently sending in her checks. In January 2016, she took advantage of a new program introduced by President Barack Obama that helped lower her monthly bill, and when she did, her loans were again inexplicably put into forbearance. On top of that, four months later, as she was trying to save for her wedding, FedLoan sent her a bill for $1,600, more than $1,300 above her monthly payment amount. When she phoned the company in a panic, they told her the bill was an administrative glitch and said not to worry about it; they’d sort it out. Warily, she accepted—after all, there wasn’t much else she could do.

In August 2016, McIlvaine was offered a job at Mercy Corps, a nonprofit in Portland, Oregon, which came with a $10,000 raise and great benefits—the extra security she believed would allow her to start a family. But Mercy Corps required a credit check, and McIlvaine discovered that FedLoan had never actually dealt with that $1,600 bill, instead reporting it as 90 days past due and plunging her previously excellent credit score to an abysmal 550. When she called FedLoan in tears, she recalls, she was treated dismissively and told to “pay more attention” to her loans—and again the only option offered to her was to take an administrative forbearance while the company sorted out the issue. Ultimately she got the job, but only after she lodged a formal complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency created during the Obama era, which prompted FedLoan to send her a letter in October 2016 claiming the company had fixed the issue and that her credit had been restored. “But in true FedLoan Servicing style,” she told me, “they only contacted two of the three credit bureaus.” It took several more months to fix her score with the third bureau, Equifax.

Listen to author Ryann Liebanthal talk about how debt forgiveness can go horribly wrong on this episode of the Mother Jones Podcast.

The Mother Jones Podcast America's Rage-Inducing Student Debt Machine

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If not for FedLoan’s errors and delays, McIlvaine estimates, her loans would be eligible for forgiveness as soon as 2020. But instead, in the nine years she’s been participating in PSLF, months of payments haven’t been counted toward her 10-year requirement, ultimately delaying the date of her forgiveness by at least a year. All the while, although she’s been making payments of between $300 and $450 a month, her total debt has not gone down. After nearly 100 payments, she still owes the entire amount she initially borrowed.

FedLoan declined to comment on McIlvaine’s tribulations. But as complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and lawsuits against the Education Department and FedLoan pile up, she’s hardly alone. In 2017, the bureau issued a report excoriating FedLoan for mismanaging PSLF, misleading borrowers, and losing track of payments. The previous year, the American Bar Association had filed suit against the Education Department for reneging on its own rules about how the program was supposed to work and who was eligible for forgiveness. Then, in August 2017, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey sued FedLoan on behalf of the state’s borrowers, alleging it had overcharged them and bilked them out of payments. And just this January, a set of borrowers filed a class-action suit against the company for repeatedly putting them into needless forbearances that delayed their forgiveness.

A decade after McIlvaine and scores of others began paying into the program, many are only barely closer to their goal of being debt-free. And some are even more in debt than when they started.

Now, the Trump administration has begun disassembling one of the only checks on companies like FedLoan, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, all while arguing that these companies are off-limits to state attorneys general like Healey—essentially trying to give them legal protection.

“We’ve seen an industry that’s really been given a pass by the DeVos administration,” Healey told me, referring to Trump’s education secretary. “That’s why you see Betsy DeVos clean house and bring into the Department of Ed lobbyists and executives from the for-profit schools industry, from the loan-servicing industry. They’re the ones who are attempting now to rewrite all the rules. And the rules and the policies of the department favor corporations and furthering the bottom line of executives at the expense of students.”

Meanwhile, in early June, Republican legislators were trying to find votes for a sweeping and massively unpopular higher-education bill called PROSPER that would get rid of many grant programs as well as loan subsidies and PSLF. Trump’s 2018 and 2019 budgets also proposed axing the PSLF program. Congress has so far rejected the idea, but if the efforts succeed they would remove what was a very small sliver of hope for a generation underwater.

October 2017 should have been a moment for celebration for those sunk by debt—it was the first time a cohort of PSLF participants, after 10 years of payments, could be forgiven. Yet of almost 900,000 people who have submitted at least one payment to the PSLF program and FedLoan since 2012, the Education Department expects fewer than 1,000 to be forgiven by the end of its fiscal year. The reasons for these astonishingly dismal statistics are myriad, but one fact is clear: A decade after McIlvaine and scores of others began paying into the program, many are only barely closer to their goal of being debt-free. And some are even more in debt than when they started.

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Today, FedLoan services about a third of all federal student debt, and last year the company took home $195 million from the Education Department. But for years, there were reasons to doubt the company’s competency to administer such a large portion of the government’s loan portfolio.

To understand how FedLoan grew so powerful, you have to go back to the 1960s. At the time, about a quarter of high school students dropped out, while half of those who did graduate went on to college. To boost those numbers, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Higher Education Act in 1965. The bill came along at a moment when states were creating their own institutions to promote higher-education access, including the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), which would eventually branch off and create FedLoan. It was a recipe that we still rely on today—the federal government provides loans to students across the country, and state governments and other agencies like PHEAA fill in the funding gaps. “When you look into the faces of your students and your children and your grandchildren,” Johnson said, “tell them that the leadership of your country believes it is the obligation of your nation to provide and permit and assist every child born in these borders to receive all the education that he can take.”

RELATED: The Trump Administration Has Yet to Approve a Single Student Debt Relief Claim

But Johnson’s student aid program immediately fell short of his lofty aims. Over the next four decades, it shifted from a model relying on tax dollars to provide a public good into a loan-centered system that viewed education as a “private responsibility and risk”—and student borrowers as sources of profit, says Deanne Loonin, an author and attorney at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School.

Johnson had wanted to create a national scholarship fund for students—like a universal GI Bill—but Congress told him it would be too expensive. So he struck a compromise with Republicans: He would supplement federal funds with loans doled out by private banks, which in turn would receive subsidies from the government, ensuring they would get their money back if a borrower skipped out on the debt. To shore up its insurance program, the feds partnered with dozens of nonprofits and state agencies, including PHEAA. The government would pay out 1 percent of each loan an agency managed. And if borrowers did stop paying, PHEAA and the other institutions would reimburse the lending bank and then act as collection agencies—pocketing collection fees to the tune of 16 cents on the dollar.

Meanwhile, as demand for higher education grew, so did college costs, while incomes didn’t keep pace. So in 1972, President Richard Nixon did two things: He expanded a federally funded grant program for low-income students, which became known as the Pell Grant, and he created an entity called Sallie Mae that used Treasury funds to buy up student loans from banks.

By the early 1990s, the issue of student debt was already notable enough for Bill Clinton to campaign on it. His vision was to allow students to pay back their loans by doing national service. But Republican pushback forced Clinton to settle for expanding a George H.W. Bush pilot program called Federal Direct Loan Demonstration, better known as Direct Loans, which allowed the government to make loans to students, cutting out the costly middlemen—the banks and guarantee agencies like PHEAA. Direct Loan borrowers were allowed to base their payments on their incomes, and to have their debts forgiven after 25 years. Eventually, Clinton planned, every new student loan would be a Direct Loan.

This proved to be a consequential moment for the American student debt crisis. Around this time, some guarantee agencies, perhaps panicked about their cash flow drying up if Clinton’s plan succeeded, took on what Bob Shireman, a major figure in the campaign for Direct Loans, calls “a business venture mentality.” The biggest player was Sallie Mae: By the time it became independent of the federal government in 2004, it was making profits of almost $2 billion a year, selling loans in bundles on Wall Street, and giving out private loans outside the federal system at rates of more than 20 percent in some cases. It was also gobbling up state loan agencies. In 2004, Sallie Mae even made an aggressive but unsuccessful bid to buy PHEAA.

More than a decade after their creation, Direct Loans still only made up 25 percent of all student loans. Meanwhile, the Pell Grant was losing value. And as states reduced investments in higher education, hitting a 25-year nadir in 2011, public colleges covered the difference by raising tuitions.

For the middleman organizations like PHEAA, this shift was poised to take a big chunk out of their revenue streams. To soften the blow, the Education Department offered an appeasement.

As a result, by the early years of the 21st century, many millions more young people were heading to college—the realization of LBJ’s dream—but they were taking on monumental yokes of debt. Outrage over student loan debt powered Sen. Bernie Sanders’ upstart campaign for president. And the reason the issue so motivated young people wasn’t hard to understand: For the 2017-18 school year, according to the College Board, students at public universities were charged an average of about $21,000 for tuition, room, and board—more than twice the cost, adjusted for inflation, that they had paid three decades earlier. At private schools, those fees totaled almost $47,000, versus about $22,500 in 1987. In 2015, more than two-thirds of college graduates had loan debt—$30,100 on average. Nearly a quarter of borrowers with postgraduate degrees owed more than $100,000. And according to Student Debt Crisis, a borrower advocacy organization, this year the total amount of outstanding student loan debt topped $1.5 trillion.

Add to the equation decades of widening income inequality and wage stagnation—for young college graduates, wages fell overall between 2000 and 2012—and you have a situation ripe for lenders to pull in enormous profits from students who, to compete, have had to saddle themselves with debt to get a decent-paying job.

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The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was intended to alleviate some of these pains. “Yes, we know the cost of education has gone up,” said Ted Kennedy on the Senate floor in 2007. “Help is on its way.”

Not everyone was for it, though. Republican detractors likened the bill to socialism and called it a move away from “personal responsibility.” In order to get them to sign on, Kennedy and his co-sponsors had to compromise. The solution they came up with? The bill would pay for itself by offsetting $42 billion over 10 years largely by repealing subsidies that went to banks such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Chase. The banks weren’t happy about this, but by 2007 they’d been raking it in for years, and even with reduced rations, they could still expect to turn a tidy profit.

For the middleman organizations like PHEAA, this shift was poised to take a big chunk out of their revenue streams. To soften the blow—and amid a ton of lobbying—the Education Department offered an appeasement. It would contract out the day-to-day work of collecting payments, managing accounts, and helping borrowers sort through their options—all the “service” that goes into loan collection—to four of the largest of these organizations.

Then came 2008, the crisis, and the bailout—but not the one you’ve heard about: the student loan bailout. Only a few months after the creation of PSLF, it became clear the banks were out of money. And with no money, there could be no new student loans. As David Bergeron, then a director of policy and budget development at the Education Department, told me, that would have meant that “every tuition-dependent college and university in the United States would close” that fall. So the Education Department, beginning in the waning days of the Bush administration, bought up more than $110 billion in loans from private banks, in some instances paying the loan balance plus $75 per loan. Obama picked up where Bush had left off, effectively nationalizing the student loan system. By July 1, 2010, Clinton’s old dream was finally realized: All new federal loans were made under the Direct Loan program.

BRANDON ISAACS: Gettysburg College (bachelor’s, 2005); University of Detroit Mercy (JD, 2009); $139,000 owed at graduation; $58,000 paid back so far; $640 paid per month, on average; 7-8 months of delayed forgiveness because of FedLoan errors; $161,000 still owed today

One of those winners was PHEAA. And this is where FedLoan enters the picture: FedLoan was created around the time PHEAA won the contract; it is part of the agency, or a rebranding of an aspect of the agency’s function—as the company sometimes claims, a way to broadcast its new role as a federal contractor. A PHEAA spokesman, Keith New, told me FedLoan was created to abide by federally mandated firewalls that keep guarantors and services separate. (After all, if you’re a servicer on a loan you guarantee, you might as well just let the loan default, and then you get to do the highly lucrative work of collecting it.) A 2008 state audit found that PHEAA’s “mixed identities” in other business dealings had enabled it to “blur its message and…depart from its core mission of serving Pennsylvania students.” And Bergeron of the Education Department suggested the company’s setup isn’t in line with the spirit of the rule. Either way, the functional distinctions are dubious: On the PHEAA website, FedLoan is described as part of PHEAA, and PHEAA’s executive team includes the senior vice president for FedLoan Servicing. Both are overseen by the same board of directors. Until recently, both had the same CEO, James Preston, a former investment banker who retired in July. And FedLoan’s revenue goes to PHEAA. (When asked to clarify the nature of PHEAA’S role, New said the agency has “been found to be consistently compliant with applicable rules and guidance.”)

In any case, FedLoan started receiving money from the government for every loan it serviced, no matter what it did with it. The Education Department paid FedLoan and the other large contractors along a sliding scale from $1.90 a month for each loan in repayment down to 50 cents for one that hadn’t been paid in almost a year. (In 2014, the contracts were updated to tweak the pricing scheme and the federal government increased payments for loans in good standing.)

As Eric Fink, a law professor who wrote about servicers in 2014, has asked, what incentive would FedLoan have to spend 30 minutes on the phone with a borrower about to slide off a cliff? That’s at least $5.75 lost (FedLoan customer service reps start at about $11.50 an hour), an amount the company wouldn’t recoup in more than four months, even if the call was successful in getting the borrower to pay. It was actually cheaper, at least in the short term, to put a struggling borrower into forbearance. Rohit Chopra, a former Education Department special adviser, put it to me this way: “The most important thing to remember” about the federal student loan program, he said, “is borrowers are not the customer. Borrowers are the product.”

RELATED: One Bold Way to Blow Up the College Debt Nightmare

Even before it created FedLoan, there was plenty of reason to believe that PHEAA’s priorities were askew. In 2007, investigations by news outlets, including the Patriot-News, based near PHEAA’s Harrisburg headquarters, revealed the agency had given out $2.5 million in bonuses to executives that year and had spent almost $1 million between 2000 and 2005 on board retreats that included $150 cigars and falconry lessons. Then-CEO Richard Willey made nearly $500,000 in 2007: His $181,000 bonus that year was more than the governor’s salary. Amid this criticism, Willey resigned.

That same year, PHEAA was sued by Jon Oberg, a former Education Department researcher who accused it and eight other state and nonprofit lenders and guarantee entities of intentionally overcharging the government. In PHEAA’s case, this allegedly amounted to $116.5 million between 2002 and 2006. All the agencies were caught up in the scandal, a former Education Department official who asked not to be named told me, but PHEAA was “particularly bad.” In December 2017, PHEAA was acquitted of defrauding the department; the verdict is on appeal. (The others named in the suit settled or had their cases dismissed.)

PHEAA’s actions also harm individual borrowers. In early 2013, Lee Pele, a 27-year-old man from Fairfax County, Virginia, called to ask why defaulted student loans he’d never taken out were showing up on his credit report. PHEAA had no answer. Soon he was being hounded by a collection agency for more than $137,000. He sued. PHEAA argued that, as an arm of the state, it had sovereign immunity. Oberg’s whistleblower suit, which fought similar immunity claims, wound its way up to the Supreme Court, which last year upheld a lower court’s ruling that PHEAA, financially independent and conducting business nationally, could be held responsible for its malfeasance. Shortly thereafter, the company settled with Pele.

Oberg’s lawsuit also shined a light on the pipeline between PHEAA and the federal government. For instance, the Education Department’s assistant secretary in charge of postsecondary education was Sally Stroup, who had previously spent more than a decade as PHEAA’s chief counsel. In January, Betsy DeVos named Kathleen Smith, another PHEAA executive, to be deputy chief operating officer at Federal Student Aid. Her predecessor in the Obama administration was Matthew Sessa, also from PHEAA, who led its bid to win the PSLF contract.

Everything about this system, Loonin told me, is due to the contradiction at the heart of the student aid program, which splits its mission between helping students and saving money. “Is it a public program that’s meant to be efficient but is focused mostly on public goals and public goods?” she asked me. “Or is it a private program that’s profit-based and supposed to be all about making sure the government makes some money, or at least doesn’t lose money?”

Johnson’s initial 1965 compromise has grown into what Eric Fink, the law professor, characterized as the worst of public-private partnerships: The government forces borrowers to deal with private companies they don’t get to pick and that regard them as a captive source of revenue. In this respect, the switch to Direct Loans had a curious consequence. Now, instead of producing profits for banks, the returns on student loans go straight to the government. “We didn’t design the student loan system to be a profit center for the government,” says Chopra, the former Education Department special adviser. But it’s become a “program that has been chowing down billions of dollars of profits.”

“If we believe in education as a public good, then we haven’t created a system that supports that,” says Loonin. At this point, “all the servicers are doing much more harm than good.”

I found Brandon Isaacs on a Facebook page called “FedLoan Servicing Complaints,” where more than 180 reviewers have collectively given the company a 1.2-star rating and narrate a mind-numbing array of customer service nightmares. “If I could give negative stars I would,” wrote one woman last September. “FedLoan Servicing is the worst company ever!” Isaacs wrote in May 2017. He complained it had failed to count several of his payments: “I work for the federal government. It should be easy.” His post netted dozens of responses.

If FedLoan could make a mistake like this, how could he trust anything the company told him? “Every single time I call them, they have a different answer.”

Isaacs lives in a Philadelphia suburb and works as a lawyer for a government agency, writing decisions for judges in response to requests for benefits. Before this, he worked for six years as a claims processor at the Labor Department. He graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy in 2009, when, on the slow upswing out of the recession, there were few private-sector options. He had federal loans, about $139,000 worth, consolidated into an income-based plan, and he knew he would want to take advantage of PSLF. I visited him, following the Schuylkill River via SEPTA train as it traveled north and west from Philly, city buildings becoming flat row houses and apartment complexes and then single-family homes sporting covered boats trackside. The streets in Conshohocken were quiet, clean. Although he lives, by his own account, a good life, and says his payments are reasonable (they’re now about $800 a month), Isaacs finds interacting with FedLoan to be almost unendurable. “There’s nothing that goes right,” he said.

Over the years, Isaacs has requested a few forbearances, including for a couple of months in late 2012 when he needed money for a down payment. But otherwise he has made on-time payments since 2010 and always stayed on top of sending his income information and tracking his progress. Yet FedLoan’s records claim that Isaacs was in forbearance over several other periods, so even though he made full payments during that time, the company took months to correct the error and only recently counted them toward his forgiveness.

“Every single time I call them, they have a different answer,” Isaacs told me. “No exception.”

Miscounting payments is a very common problem with FedLoan, according to Persis Yu, director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center. “Many people right now are having that conversation with PHEAA. I’ve had that conversation,” she says, explaining that she is herself in the PSLF program and has had disputes about forbearances. “Like, ‘No, let’s count.’”

For Isaacs, the general lack of transparency has caused constant uncertainty. His payment count seems to fluctuate illogically with every employment recertification, and representatives have occasionally delivered wildly disparate information about his account. During one phone call, Isaacs says a representative underreported the number of payments he’d made by nearly 50. Isaacs panicked: That would mean FedLoan was delaying his forgiveness by more than four years, and if it could make a mistake like this, even over the phone, how could he trust anything the company told him?

Others describe even worse experiences of confusion and betrayal. Not long after graduating from law school in Colorado, Michelle Quintero-Millan moved to South Texas, bought a car, and began working as a children’s staff attorney at the American Bar Association’s Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR). She would drive through the desert, visiting unaccompanied minors picked up by Border Patrol and held at federal migrant shelters, explaining what was going to happen to them and occasionally representing them in court.

Throughout her three years at ProBAR, Quintero-Millan had no reason to doubt her work there qualified for PSLF. “It’s pro bono work, representing individuals who are very vulnerable, in high need,” she told me. “It’s a pro bono salary. It’s a nonprofit organization.” Although the American Bar Association is in a different class of nonprofits than a regular 501(c)(3) and judged for PSLF on a case-by-case basis, many of Quintero-Millan’s colleagues had gotten letters from FedLoan that said their work qualified. After Quintero-Millan left ProBAR, she sent in records of all her post-law-school employment. Her later work as an immigration attorney at Catholic Charities USA and a refugee officer at US Citizenship and Immigration Services was quickly certified, but eventually she received a letter from FedLoan informing her that every month she’d worked at ProBAR had been disqualified: The Education Department had changed its mind about the organization, and borrowers were just out of luck. (FedLoan says her work at ProBAR never qualified.) Quintero-Millan couldn’t believe it. She’d just effectively lost three years of work—she loved the job, but she could have chosen any number of other immigration nonprofits that did virtually the same thing and did qualify. “It still to this day baffles me,” she said. “There’s no way that it doesn’t qualify. This is the type of work that was envisioned for this program.”

MICHELLE QUINTERO-MILLAN: University of Utah (bachelor’s, 2004); University of Denver (JD, 2012); $341,000 owed at graduation; $35,000 paid back so far; $530 paid per month, on average; 30 months of delayed forgiveness because of FedLoan errors; $410,000 still owed today

In December 2016, the American Bar Association sued the government, naming Quintero-Millan and another employee as plaintiffs, along with two staffers of other organizations that had been disqualified. In one of its letters to the plaintiffs, FedLoan offered an “apology for any inconvenience this may cause” and explained that in order to qualify as a public-interest legal service, the organization would need to be “funded in whole or in part by a government entity.”

One fellow plaintiff was Jamie Rudert, who’d taken a job advocating veterans’ benefits at a nonprofit called Vietnam Veterans of America in 2012. He’d found out about PSLF in law school. “I researched and read about the program, and I thought I understood it well,” he told me. He diligently sent in records of his employment and was approved by FedLoan. If he had been denied, he said, he would have found another job. “It was that important to me.” By the time he left that position, FedLoan had moved him 37 months closer toward forgiveness. But then, inexplicably, FedLoan reversed course in 2016, and the Education Department explained that while Vietnam Veterans of America “facilitate[s] the provision of disability-related services to Vietnam Veterans, they do not provide the services outright.” By that point, Rudert was working at Paralyzed Veterans of America, another nonprofit, and he couldn’t understand why one job qualified but the other didn’t. “The funny thing,” he says, “is I’m literally right next door to my old office and I do virtually the same thing.”

The Education Department, led by Betsy DeVos, argues that FedLoan, as a contractor, was never qualified to make those initial authorizations. Further, the department insists, the only way a borrower can confirm enrollment in PSLF is by being forgiven. However Kafkaesque, this last argument actually appears to represent the approach the Education Department has taken consistently.

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Until 2012, after Bob Shireman, the student loan expert in the Clinton and Obama administrations, “begged” the department “to create a process to tell people whether they’re in public service employment or not,” there wasn’t even a form you could fill out to find out if you were on the right track.

“There’s a number of borrowers in a constant state of anxiety,” Adam Minsky, a Boston-based lawyer who specializes in student loan issues, told me. And for borrowers, there’s no sense that anyone in charge of the program cares. An FAQ on the Education Department’s PSLF website offers little reassurance. “Can I be certain that the PSLF Program will exist by the time I have made my 120 qualifying payments?” it asks. “We can’t make any guarantees,” the site responds.

Rudert, the former Vietnam Veterans of America employee, has seen his debt increase. Now he wonders if PSLF is still worth it, or even something he can rely on, in spite of all the time he’s put in. “I would say my entire life was kind of influenced by these decisions,” he says.

In addition to servicer errors and poor customer service, PSLF borrowers face an incredibly arcane program full of false pathways and bad information. For instance, there’s a Standard Repayment Plan and a 10-Year Standard Repayment Plan and only one of them qualifies for PSLF. And many borrowers have reported being misled by servicers about the plan they’re on, making functionally worthless payments for years.

In its June 2017 report, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wrote that “servicing breakdowns” for PSLF borrowers “may cause delays or dead ends that can cost them thousands of dollars…trigger extra payments and interest charges, or render a borrower’s loans entirely ineligible for PSLF, even after a decade of qualifying public service.”

“I have been paying for 4 years and was misled by this company completely,” complained one borrower cited in the report, a public school employee who had been repeatedly assured by FedLoan representatives of enrollment in PSLF. “Recently, I called to check in around this, and was informed that I WAS NOT in the loan forgiveness program.”

“I feel like what I did was everything I was taught growing up. Go to school, get a degree, get a good job, and you’ll have a good life. I followed all the rules.”

Haylee Adamson, a probation officer in Fairfax, is another of the many borrowers led astray by servicers. In 2011, she says, she received assurances from FedLoan that she had done everything right to participate in PSLF, but after nearly three full years of paying into the program, the company told her several of her payments had not qualified. (FedLoan denies ever discussing PSLF requirements with Adamson in 2011.) As a result, at least $8,000 in Adamson’s payments weren’t counted toward forgiveness, and because her monthly income-based payment of just over $200 has never been high enough to cover more than the interest on her debt, her loans, initially about $65,000, have grown by $20,000. “I live a fine life and I can pay the $206 a month,” she said, “but that $206 payment is never going to end.”

Republican opponents of loan forgiveness programs say people deserve the debt they have incurred—if you took out the loans, now you have to repay them, and if your degree didn’t guarantee you a lucrative profession, you shouldn’t have gotten the degree. Jason Delisle, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the program’s most outspoken critics, maintains that PSLF acts as a kind of moral hazard, encouraging borrowers to incur excessive debt to finance an extended graduate school bonanza. Or, even worse than deadbeat grad students, it will reward doctors and lawyers who, after their 10 years of public-sector work, turn around and seek out six-figure salaries. But that’s not representative of the vast majority of PSLF borrowers: 86 percent make less than $75,000 a year. “I feel like what I did was everything I was taught growing up,” Adamson told me, starting to cry. “Go to school, get a degree, get a good job, and you’ll have a good life. And I did that. I followed all the rules. I didn’t set the pricing for universities. Could I have chosen a different degree that was less? Probably, but who was there to help me do that? And so I followed what I thought I should do. And I did everything that I thought was right. And I tried my hardest. And to have people say, ‘Oh, you made a horrible decision, and that’s your fault, and you don’t deserve this,’ is really hard. Because I know that I’m responsible for those decisions, I know that, and I want to pay them back.”

Last year, I visited Leigh McIlvaine in Portland, where, coincidentally, I had lived while going to Reed College. Full disclosure: I, too, was once a PSLF participant. I had more than $20,000 in debt from Reed and many tens of thousands more from grad school. After I submitted my first form from my nonprofit job to FedLoan, the company failed to tell me it had begun counting the extra loan payments I made each month against me. Instead of using the money to pay down my loans, it was using it to push forward my due date and consider all my intervening payments nonqualifying. That’s what first sent me searching for answers about why the program is such a mess. Eventually, I quit my nonprofit job, and I’ve basically given up on ever qualifying for forgiveness.

The day I visited McIlvaine, it was an unusually cold, clear morning that afforded a striking view of Mount Hood, the rare gem on Portland’s eastern horizon. McIlvaine showed me around her office and introduced me to colleagues, several of whom were also working toward loan forgiveness. Her time was limited—later that day she’d prepare to hand over her responsibilities for the next three months: Her first child was due on Christmas Day. In an ideal world, she told me, she would have delivered herself from debt before the baby came and she and her husband had to begin paying $1,300 a month in child care costs. But she was 37, so there wasn’t really time for that.

“You can’t just put off paying things forever—like, we’re not Congress.”

That night in Portland, I walked to McIlvaine’s modest, single-level home. Having recently finished decorating the baby’s nursery, lined with plants and freshly painted, McIlvaine and her husband were now turning their attention to the kitchen, in a mild state of midconstruction disarray. McIlvaine showed me the single-rack countertop dishwasher her mom had just gifted them to help with bottle washing.

“I have some friends who are blissfully student-debt-free,” she told me. “They don’t want to have kids, so they take up a new hobby every year.” If she didn’t have student loans, she said, she and her husband might be able to take out a home equity loan to pay for the renovations they’ve done bit by bit themselves. And perhaps she could invest more in her retirement account. She has trouble envisioning this alternate universe, though, even if she’s in theory only two years from reaching forgiveness. “I almost can’t imagine a life without it,” she said, referring to her debt. “It really becomes a part of who you are.”

McIlvaine is overjoyed at having a child and reaching a place where she feels ready to take on that responsibility. At the same time, her experience with student debt has deeply changed not just the way she thinks about her own life, but also the way she thinks of the lives of her son and any future kids. She told me dryly that she wasn’t sure she’d encourage them to go to college but would urge them instead to “become a carpenter—and they can rebuild American cities that have been devastated.” When I asked her if she felt any stigma about her debt, she said no. “The right choices were too expensive for the economy that I live in today.” By the time she reaches forgiveness, if she ever does, she estimates she’ll have paid about $60,000—nearly as much as she borrowed in the first place—and she feels okay about that.

Even without the promise of forgiveness, by getting her on an income-based plan, “this program,” she said, “has permitted me to do a lot that I just wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. And I think that’s the point.” But, she added, “there has to be an endgame to it. You can’t just put off paying things forever—like, we’re not Congress.”

Charts by Olivia Exstrum; interactive by Julia Smith, Adam Vieyra, and Rowan Walrath.

#Ryann Liebenthal Ryann Liebenthal is a writer and editor based in New York.

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