#to think the CPS once passed this piece of paper around on their desk in their green Drama Room

[mickeymouse-moshpit]

street lights, people

A/N: WOO I got it done on time! I’m so excited to share the second installment in my biker!Fennec x pediatrician!reader story. I appreciate how kind everyone has been and I hope you all enjoy this chapter. Thanks again to maybege for letting me tell my story in this universe. I promise that we’ll get more into Fennec’s past and why she does what she does, it just isn’t time yet. 

Rating: T

Warnings: References to child abuse with NO descriptions except that the child was admitted and seen by the trauma surgery service, I don’t think there’s anything else except for some tooth rotting fluff/flirting/smooching. 

Word count: 2.5k

Chapter Two: January 11th

“Would you just text her already? You have her number; I don’t see what the holdup is.” Boba tossed the socket wrench back into the open drawer and closed it. He wiped at the grease on his hands with a blue paper towel. “Besides, you need to take her to a BACA meeting anyway. She hasn’t partnered with us officially and needs to know more if this judge is sticking around.”

“You don’t mean—” Fennec looked up from the email she was writing.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Get your ass up, get your phone, and tell her she should come tonight.”

“But she’s probably going to be too tired.”

“Just. Ask. Her.” He picked her phone up from where she had left it when she set up her work area for the day and held it in front of her face to unlock it. “Or do I need to call her office and pretend to be you?”

She snatched the phone away from him and opened up the conversation with you.  

Got home safe, thank you

Good. Sweet dreams, Doc -fs

Those two messages had haunted her since she sent hers. She wondered if she should have said less, or said hi in the meantime? Either way, she typed out the message.

What are you doing tonight? -fs

She set the phone down, went back to her work.

***

You picked at the sad chicken in your bowl. You really needed to do a better job of anticipating what you would want to eat through the week when you cooked on Sundays. Rolling your eyes at it, you scraped it into the trash can. You were washing the dish and its lid when you felt your phone vibrate for what seemed like the 80th time that day. Sighing, you dried it off and put it in your lunchbox and sat back down at the communal table in the breakroom. It was empty for now, the students and residents off getting work done in the hopes of not staying past sign out. You pulled your phone out and opened up the message without looking at the sender.

What are you doing tonight? -fs

It took you by surprise to be sure. You felt badly about not replying to her since Friday, but if you were honest with yourself, you knew that you hadn’t been ignoring her intentionally. The days had been long as you transitioned to your week covering this service and you barely had time to feed and bathe yourself.

Same thing I always do, try and take over the world.

And by take over the world I mean go to bed

Do you have time to come to a BACA meeting? It starts at 5:30 -fs

You considered for a moment. You had a few more patients to round on, but otherwise your job was done for the day. You looked at the time, 12:30. You could make it.

I can make that happen. Where do you meet?

The reply was almost immediate.

Boba’s Garage. There’s a makeshift conference room. -fs

Sounds good. I’ll see you there.

You walked back into the kitchen area and started a fresh pot of coffee. You wondered what they could possibly want with you; you weren’t a biker. Sure, you were stern when you were advocating for your kids, but you weren’t even close to being on their level. Well, you thought to yourself, at least you can see her in her element this time, learn what they did in more detail.

***

You hurried up the expanse of concrete to the open garage, trying not to fall but also trying not to be late. A last-minute admission had turned your plenty-of-time-to-maybe-shower-and-then-get-there afternoon into a oh-no-I’m-going-to-be-late-and-they’re-going-to-be-mad evening. You saw the open door, heard voices coming from it and hurried to it. You took a deep breath and tried to slink in unnoticed. But of course, it was a conference room. There were people seated all around it, all talking amongst themselves still. Whew.

You saw an empty chair along the wall and sat down, trying to blend in with the wall as best you could. The scrubs you wore were wrinkled and your baby hairs were sticking straight up from the day you had had. You tried to smooth them down as best you could, swearing you would have a wash day tomorrow when you had the afternoon to work from home on things for CPS. You had no idea why Fennec wanted you here, but you hoped your appearance wouldn’t take away from whatever it was.

You sat in silence as you heard her call the meeting to order. Silence fell. She controlled the room. You crossed your legs as you listened to her.

You listened to them discuss financial matters, an upcoming meeting with another chapter. Then the attention turned to the reason the club existed: the kids.

“As you all know, we’ve heard some rumors about certain kids around town. Today I got confirmation that one of them was hospitalized this afternoon.” Fennec went on to describe what the story was without naming names and your eyes went wide as you realized she was talking about the toddler you had admitted this afternoon for the trauma service. How did she know? Your team was diligent about patient privacy and none of them would ever violate that, so how did she know? “…I worked with Peli all afternoon coming up with a plan and we decided that BACA needed to get involved once this little one gets out of the hospital.”

Peli? Social work? You started putting the pieces together. That was how she knew. You listened as they discussed plans for various outcomes: if they went home, if they went to temporary placement, if there would be a hearing before they were discharged. You listened, still not sure what you were doing here but appreciating that you got to hear what they were discussing, got to know what you offered when you gave the contact card disguised as a business card for a medical supply company.

They wrapped up their discussions, started gathering their things and dispersing. You would go to Fennec, but you had no desire to interrupt her in her space. So, you sat and waited as the room started emptying and engines started kicking to life outside.  As the last person left, you stood up carefully.

“You came.”

“Of course I came, I said I would. Sorry I was late.”

“What are you talking about? You weren’t late. And I figured you would be cutting it close when Peli told me you were the one admitting the little one. I know these things take time.” You walked closer to her, perching on the conference room table to her right.

“Uh, thanks. Do you mind if I ask how you know Peli?” She had worked with you since you had started your contract.

“I don’t mind. I’m a social worker there too, I just usually work on the adult side of things. I only started getting introduced to the peds side when I got this gig.” You nodded as she spoke.

“Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate everything you all do, and I can’t tell you what it means to me that I got to learn a little more about what’s behind those cards behind the desk at the office.”

“It was Boba’s idea.” She readjusted the already perfectly stacked papers in front of her. “He threatened to call your office and pretend to be me if I didn’t invite you myself.”

You huffed out a laugh as you bumped your knee against hers.

“Then I’m grateful to the both of you. Thank him for me, would you? I—” Your eyes went wide as your stomach growled and interrupted your thought.”

“Damn, Doc don’t they teach you all to take care of yourselves? Did you eat today?”

“You know, they claim to, but it’s more ‘here’s how you can be more efficient about selfcare so that you can work more and not actually do anything about your quality of life’ and less ‘we genuinely care about you not passing out in a patient’s room or dropping dead of exhaustion.’ I hated what I brought today and had coffee and swore I was going to go to the café to get a snack but that didn’t happen, got too busy.”

She grabbed your hand and gave it a tug to get you to stand up.

“Come on, I’m buying you dinner from this little diner we all go to. You can thank Boba yourself and I can make sure you get a decent meal.”

You nodded, gave her hand a squeeze in thanks.

“Do you want me to drive?”

“Nah, it’s only a couple blocks away and besides, you’re not fit to drive right now.”

You rolled your eyes at that.

“I’m fine, I promise.”

“I know you think you are but come with me anyway.”

You nodded and she led you out of the conference room and then the garage out into the cold night air.

“I need to get my coat since we’re walking.” She just nodded and kept your hand in hers until you reached your car. You unlocked in, pulled the door open and grabbed the same wool coat you had been wearing when she rescued you, pulled it on. As you locked up and turned back to her, she took your hand again.

You walked in silence, which gave you plenty of time to sneak glances at her face, illuminated in the orange streetlights as you walked. The glow and the crunch of salt under your feet was hypnotic. As you got to the diner, light snow started again, making you grateful you were at your destination. She opened the door for you and dropped your hand again so you could pull the coat off and hang it up by the door.

“Hey, Fennec! You guys sit wherever you like,” the waitress called from behind the counter. “I’ll be over in just a sec.”

“Come on, you can thank him then we’ll sit as far away from him as we can.” She laughed. You thought you were going to swoon from her laugh.

“Sounds good, lead the way.”

“Boba, this is her.”

You held out your hand and introduced yourself.

“Ah, the famous Doc. We’ve all heard so much about you from Shand here.” He chuckled and gave Fennec a knowing grin as she groaned quietly.

“All good things, I hope? I just wanted to thank you for having Fennec invite me to the meeting tonight.”

“It’s no problem. And if that judge is going to keep handling abuse cases, we’re going to need you to know what we do, how we operate. I heard from a buddy from the last district they worked that they want all depositions given on the stand in front of them.”

You groaned internally at that. Your scheduling was going to get a lot more complicated.

“Thanks again,” you said as Fennec led you, true to her word, to a booth as far away from Boba and his line of sight as she could get you the two of you. You slid into the seat and she sat down across from you. You folded your hands on the table, then in your lap. “So, um, hi. I just want to say I’m really sorry for not replying the last few days. It’s been hectic and I haven’t had a lot of time to do anything for pleasure or leisure.”

“It’s okay. You’re a busy person, your job demands a lot of you and contrary to what a lot of people think, I know you’re not some all-powerful hero. You’re a person, doing what you need to do.”

You could have kissed her.

“You have no idea what it means to hear you say that. But enough about work and my inability to take care of myself some days. How have you been?”

***

You used the last bit of ketchup on your last fry as you listened to her tell you her story, about where she grew up, where she went to school, how she landed in this town and met Boba. How the two of them started the MC and that it had started as the two of them plus Din and Paz who you had yet to meet. When you were finished, you kept listening, you could listen to her all night. But it wasn’t long before you had to stifle a yawn.

“Come on, you need to go to sleep.” She slid the bill over to her, pulling out her wallet and wrapping a few bills up in it before you could get a word in of protest. “Boba will make sure no one takes it, let’s get out of here.” She stood and held out a hand to you, which you took. The two of you made your way over to where your coat hung and walked out as you shimmied into it. You tucked your hands into your pockets and squeezed the pocket warmers before you let her take your hand again, threading her fingers through yours.

The two of you walked in comfortable silence. The snow was still coming down, just flurries now, but with the promise of more to come. When you could see your car again, you both slowed your steps, neither of you quite ready to say goodnight, but you knew you had to, or you would be just that much more tired tomorrow, more on edge. She squeezed your hand once, twice as you got to it, now dusted with the white powder. You turned to face her.

“Thank you, for dinner, for talking, for inviting me, for everything.”

“No problem, Doc, really.”

You glanced back and forth between her eyes and her lips. You took a half-step toward her, tilted your head just to the right.

She brought her other hand up, cupped your cheek before brushing your hair out of your face. Her smirk made a brief appearance before she pressed her lips to yours. You kissed her back, letting yourself get lost as she brought her arms around your waist under your coat. Yours wrapped around her shoulders in response. She deepened the kiss, slipping her tongue along your lips briefly before you let your own brush against it. She tightened her grip on you, one hand sliding down into the back pocket of your scrubs.

When the two of you came up for air, you rested your forehead against hers, letting your breathing stay in sync. She made a small noise of displeasure as she leaned back, untangling from you and your coat.

“Fuck, I don’t want you to leave. But you need to. Go get some sleep, Doc. Let me know when you get home.”

“Fine, but I want you to do the same or I might just have to worry about you.”

“I can do that. Night,” she whispered in your ear before kissing your cheek and stepping back to let you drive away in the orange glow.

Tags: @maybege @phoenixhalliwell 

[miraclealignersv]

“Can I Kiss you?”(Dick Winters x Reader)

Ask:May I request “can I kiss you” with Dick Winters please please thank you

A/n: yes you mayyy, hope you enjoy!

Tag list: @gottapenny @wexhappyxfew @bandofmarvels @medievalfangirl

There was a sort of beauty to what y/n felt whenever she saw him. She knew it was wrong for her to develop a school crush on him, but to her Dick Winters was perfect. She tried to shake it off, but it never went away. That feeling always there within her, whenever he would talk to the rest of Easy Company.

She convinced herself that it was a school crush, that it would pass as time went on. As they ventured deeper into the war, once she would make the jump and got into action that it would go away. It would be something she would look at and laugh about. But that was not at all what happened whatsoever.

Somehow the feelings she felt got worse, it seemed as if every time he would look at her the world would stop. Time would freeze and it was just them. His gaze on her as she leaned on one of the trucks, he was supposed to be listening to Sink but instead his gaze was captured by y/n. Y/n who took the inside of her bottom lip in between her lip, he watched attentively before Sink asked him a question. Dick stammering to respond only making y/n smile to herself and walk away.

There were more of those instances, where they would stare into each others gazes and get lost for what seemed hours. Neither of them making a move, both always looking forward to their staring sessions that had become both the favorite part of their day.

Lewis Nixon caught them once, he watched as y/n stood across from where Buck and Dick stood. They were supposed to converse about the next assault and how to prep, Lewis watched attentively as Dick adoringly stared into the eyes of the Sargent who’s lips tugged into sly smirk. And by god, Lewis could not believe what he had just witnessed.

“She hypnotized you! She’s a witch!” Lewis claimed as him and Dick made their way to Battalion CP. “shes going to make you go insane Dick.” Dick only wanted him to shut up and drop the subject, although Lew was right about one thing. Y/n Y/l/n was indeed driving him insane.

“Next assault, I want Buck on one of the gu-“ before Dick could even try to change the subject, he Lewis smack his chest with the back of his hand. Lewis’ mouth forming into a teasingly grin as he pointed to the woman standing outside battalion CP, a smile on her face as she handed a handful of papers over to another person.

“It’s your girlfriend!” Lewis teased, Dick only sighed in defeats and shook his head. A blush crept onto his face, Lewis laughed to himself and urged him to continue walking to where she was standing.

“She’s not my girlfriend” Dick mumbled as he tried to pry his gaze away from her. But he just couldn’t, she was too perfect. He admired every little thing, from the way she would bite her lip nervously to how she would flash her million dollar smile before throwing her head back and laughing.

“But you want her to be” Nix scoffed as they neared her, y/n turning slowly before bringing her hand up to salute them. “Y/n! How are you doing?” Lewis asked, y/n was taken aback by Lewis’ sudden use of her first name.

“I’m doing alright, Sir” she smiled, Lewis clapped his hands and looked over to Dick who froze. Y/n looking up to him and licking her lips. Before she could say anything else, a Jeep pulled up near them. Sink calling all of them to attention before he went over a certain assault. Y/n stood next to Dick and watched the plans attentively before reaching over and brushing her fingers against his. The sudden touch making his breathing hitch, y/n licked her lips and smiled to herself before shaking her head and looking over to Nix who saw the whole thing unfold.

Dick, with his attention still on Sink, brushed his fingers against hers. Y/n smiled to herself before being called to attention by Sink, asking her to gather around a group of five men. Before she walked away, she saluted the officers. Her eyes wandering to meet with Dick’s, sending him a quick wink before walking away.

“You guys almost got to third base there” Lewis teased as they watched her walk away, Dick felt a blush creep onto his face.

“Shut up Nix”

*

Y/n walked into the building carrying a box with the things the officers had all asked for, Lewis watched as she struggled to set the box on the tall counter. Rushing over to help he chuckled as he helped.

“Thank you, Sir” she smiled as she reached in for the list, Nix only rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Can I ask you something y/n?” He asked as he leaned on the counter, y/n raised her eyes from the list and tilted her head. “What in God’s name are you doing with Dick?” He asked, y/n tried to hold back a smile at the mention of his name.

“Are you asking as an officer or his friend?” She asked as she reached into the box and pointed to the items counting them under her breath. Her gaze drifting to look at Nix who just wanted an answer.

“His friend.” He answered as she reached for the pencil in her pocket, a soft laugh coming from her as she marked down a certain number of items on the piece of paper.

“I like him,” she stated as she looked back over to the box and counted again and shook her head. “And I think he likes me too, he’s just super... I don’t know... shy?” She asked as she looked over at Nix who scoffed.

“You’re waiting for him to make a move?” He asked in disbelief, Lewis knew Dick very well. Well enough to know that the man was good at many things, but he was also very inexperienced when it came to women. “He’s new at the whole...” Nix gestured, y/n chuckled and looked back into the box and sighed.

“Help him out, help him make a move on me” she shrugged before writing again, “I’ll even try to get you some of that Vat 69. Just please, help the poor boy out.” She jokingly pleaded, and so he did.

For two days, he tried to help Dick sum up the courage to do something other than stare at y/n. Dick thought it was silly, would use the excuse that they were in the middle of a war. But Nixon didn’t care, this was the most interesting thing to happen during the goddamn war. At this point, he didn’t even care about the Vat 69.

“Could you go do something else?” Dick was annoyed at this point, he just wanted Lew to drop the subject. He wanted nothing more than to focus on the patrols to capture the POWs and how they were going to do it— and not how he had a crush on y/n. Lewis only chuckled and shook his head as they stepped foot into the empty building. “Why are you so invested in this?” He asked as they walked further into the building.

“Because it’s adorable, you drool a little whenever you stare at her” Lewis teased, before they could say anything else they heard a hum coming from one of the other rooms. As they neared it they found y/n signing paperwork while leaning on a counter. Lewis nudged him, Dick turning his head to face his annoying friend. Lewis only raised his eyes brows up and down in a suggestive manner. “I gotta go I... have a thing” he lied before walking away from Dick who closed his eyes and sighed.

He slowly made his way into the room, causing y/n to lift her head up from her paperwork. A smile spread onto her lips at the sight of him. Dick swallowed hard as he set his helmet on the table near him.

“Sir,” she greeted with a smirk on her face, Dick only smiled to himself at the way she looked at him. With adoration in her eyes.

“Y/n” he smiled, she set the papers on the desk near her and took a step closer to him. He stayed in place, as she stood across from him. A smirk on her face as she noticed the nervousness that radiated from him “May I ask you something?”

Y/n crossed her arms over her chest “sure,” she answered, her full attention on him and what he was about to ask.

“Can I kiss you?” The softness in his voice made y/n’s heart flutter. She took her lip in between her teeth and smiled. Dicks gaze focused on something other than her, she stepped closer to him and waited for him to look at her.

When he didn’t she grabbed his chin and softly turned his face towards her and smiled “do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that?” She asked, Dick only swallowed hard and waited for her to speak again. “ it’s been three years Dick, I’m debating on letting you or not since you left me wait-“ before she could even finish speaking she felt a pair of lips on hers. The kiss soft and slow before he brought his hands and cupped her face. Y/n only melted more and more into the kiss as he held her.

After a minute they pulled away, y/n shocked she opened her mouth to talk. But only a giggle came from her before reaching for his hand and lacing her fingers in his.

“Looks like I owe Nix some Vat 69”

[mpmwrites]

Maybe, Maybe

Here’s my fic for Day 3 of Hankvin week (A Day late...) It’s Secret Admirer Au, also At Work! Enjoy some awkward fluff!

Gavin's never called himself happy. He's content, he figures, and that's plenty good enough. He shows up to work, does his job, goes home. He pays his bills on time and watches TV in the evenings and eats decently. He, at 32 years old, is doing everything correctly at least, and that was more than he probably deserves. Maybe he was lucky. He got to hang out with his best friend every day, he and Tina working beat and getting shit done, proving their worth one arrest at a time.

About eight months after he's earned his uniform, he brings in some asshole that was mugging a teenager on Griffin Street, and it turns out to be the lead suspect in one of the precinct's major cases, albeit one he's not involved in. It earns him more than a few claps on the shoulder, and the following day there's a small folded paper taped to his locker.

Nice job bringing Ivers in. You're an asset to the precinct. Keep it up.

There's a little smile at the bottom of it in way of a signature, and that's it. He stuffs it into his pocket and changes without thinking on it too hard. A few days later, there's another note.

Look up.

Gavin does so, and sees a cup from the donut shop down the street with a paper bag next to it perched atop his locker. He has to stand on the bench to reach it. He muses over that same little smiley as he eats the sprinkled donut in four bites.

A month later he gets the bug that’s going around and leaves early with the constant vomiting and all. He wasn't getting any work done anyway. The next day sees another note. He's exhausted and dehydrated as hell, but at least he isn't sick anymore.

They taste like ass, but will kick the rest of the nausea to hell.

Taped next to the smiley are five yellow-wrapped chewy candies with some kind of non-phonetic writing on them, and in English said the word 'Ginger' with little lemons depicted. Gavin pocketed the gift and tossed the note on the shelf in his locker with the others.

He tells Tina about the notes when she asks what he's eating and why he looks like he wants to cry about it. She probes him on who he thinks it is, and he really has no idea. She starts calling them his secret admirer, and the term annoys him more than it should. It does pose the question though, as to why they'd stay anonymous even though they left him a note at least once weekly.

Secret admirer is it then. He tries not to let it take his focus away. He's good at his job, and is proud of that, and doesn't need a distraction. He tries not to lean to heavily on Thursday mornings, and, when, the week after his birthday, there's nothing taped to his locker, he pretends not to be disappointed.

Tina notices anyway, pokes at him for moping around and barely even faking interest in pulling over some asshole that cuts them off on the highway. He tells her what happened and she rolls her eyes. He didn't even know who it was, she says, so there's no use feeling a loss over someone that practically didn't exist.

Still, he holds out hope for the following week, and when the radio silence stretches over months he barely offers the scraps in his locker a passing thought. It was fin while it lasted; made his days a little bit better, but it was done. In April, he's told he's going to be moving to detective, something he's wanted since before he even started at the DPD. Since Anderson's been unreliable (at best), they need more officers to step up, and Tina's already turned down the offer.

So he steps right into missing persons. When he's not on cases he helps out with the CPS stuff he always made time for, his degree in social work padding his capability. Tina always said it one of his few redeeming traits, that he likes kids, and he always played it off as a dream deferred. He pours himself headlong into work and putters away through cases as the world moves on around him and scrawled notes turn yellow in his locker.

As his birthday passes again, he pulls them out and tosses them in the recycling bin on his way home for the night. It was nice, to have been wanted, but whoever it was had clearly lost interest, and the knowledge had soured him. He was too old to be pining over some handwriting that occasionally accompanied donuts.

By the time another note appears, it's close to Christmas. The sight takes him by surprise, and the contents are nothing even similar to their predecessors.

It's hardest at Christmas, I think. You seem to like Christmas plenty enough though.

There's no smiley this time, but there is an arrow pointing above his locker, where there's a cup of coffee steaming away. Upon inspection, it's a peppermint mocha. Someone's noticed that that's what he'd been drinking for the past month or so. The cryptic words gave him pause, but had him leaving the note in his locker and moving on for the day. Tina probes him as to why he didn't bring her coffee, and he doesn't have the balls to tell her how he really got it.

It just seems silly. Something for highschoolers and romantic comedies. He fights the smile that each correspondence brings. They're more personal, more intimate, as time passes, more fitting into the true concept of a Secret Admirer. Gavin isn't about to admit just how much he likes it.

Do you have a resolution for the new year? You should try to smile more, I like seeing you smile.

 It's supposed to snow this weekend, please be safe. It would suck not seeing you around.

 New Jacket? It suits you.

 Looks like your case is struggling. It's nice seeing you around the bullpen more, but I hope you get a lead soon.

Valentine's Day is coming up. Big plans?

It's the first time the note as really invited a response. A single red rose is laid atop his locker and he picks at the thorns that hadn't been removed, like it had been cut from a rosebush rather than pulled from a bouquet. It's the first time Gavin really needs to know who's been leaving the notes. Because, he wanted to say No, in hopes of them finally revealing themselves, but the urge to say Yes was just as strong. He was afraid of the possibility. What if he hated them? What if he like them too much? What if he had it all wrong, and they were just being friendly?

No plans.

He tapes the piece of paper back to his locker and makes a quick escape. He doesn't sleep much that night, counting the hours until he can get up and head back to work. He's exhausted enough the next day that he dozes off on the rhythmic rock of the bus and nearly misses his stop. Thankfully, one of the other usual passengers jostles him awake and he stumbles onto the sidewalk, rubbing his eyes as he enters the building.

He tries to muster energy from the few fits of sleep he'd gotten so he doesn't look so beat. He almost misses the note in his focus to remember his locker code and doesn't think to take it down until he's sitting and changing his shoes.

Will you let me change that? I get it if not, this whole thing is

I don't know.

He takes the note back to his desk to muse over as he fills out paper work and drowns himself in the mediocre break room coffee. It's distracting, but he leaves the paper on his desk, there for anyone to see, for someone to see. He never figures out what he wants to answer, and when he's on his way out there's a new note.

Yeah. Sorry. Too forward, I guess. I guess maybe you're not sure who I am. Maybe that's better. Save myself the embarrassment and our coworkers from having to deal with the awkward stuff.

He leaves both notes from the day in his locker again, rubbing over his eyes and not even trying to process. Was he disappointed? Guilty, maybe.

Self sabotage, probably. He settles on that as he heads in the next day, and isn't expecting anything more. Having slept on it, he figures he should have at least said something. But, they were probably right, it was better this way, even if it felt exponentially shitty for the moment.

Thank you, for indulging me for a while, I guess. I'm glad you liked the coffees; I would have liked to take you out for one, maybe.

There wasn't supposed to be a note there. The one from the previous night had felt final, should have been final. Maybe this one was posed as a second chance. Maybe it was one last plea.

I usually like to go to Starbucks on lunch. The one on 17th St has the best baristas.

He hesitates, staring at his own handwriting before taping it back on his locker. Now or never, Gavin. He glances back at it again before heading to his desk.

He taps his fingers on the back of his portable from his place  on the bench seat at a small table. He tries to focus on getting a little more work done. Tries to check his damn email, or do anything other than watch the door. It's not working. During a lull in business, Reagan calls to him from behind the counter and jokes about him just coming for the company, he laughs, timidly offers that he's waiting for someone. He hopes he actually is.

Nearly twenty minutes of sitting there has him ready to leave, but he has an hour for lunch and really should eat at least. He makes his way to the counter, knowing that if he gets his lunch, then he's resigning himself to the knowledge of nobody showing up. He orders an egg white wrap and his usual mocha. She gives the total and he pulls out his wallet, dropping a dollar bill into her tip jar to a cheery 'Thank you'. He glances at the door one more time before extracting his bank card to wave over the credit card machine; it beeps. She promises it'll be ready in just a minute and she'll brig it over to him, no she doesn't mind.

He doesn’t want to be upset. Doesn't want to feel rejected. He focuses on eating, dripping sriracha from the packet over the wrap as he eats in large bites, relishing in the way it fills him up. He texts Tina and tells her what's been going on, and why he didn't invite her to lunch.

"When I said I wanted to take you for coffee, I figured I'd buy it for you." comes an almost familiar voice.  Gavin snaps away from his phone.

"Anderson?" Gavin's astonished, thumbs held mid-text

"Yeah." Hank shrugs from across the table.

"It was fucking you, all this time?" Hank winces frowns,

"Sorry to disappoint." He looks away, hands in his pockets. There's a long beat of quiet.

"What took you so long?" Gavin pushes the chair out for Hank to sit down, all aggression gone.

Hank sits, and offers a small smile across the table.

[imagine-hamilfluff]

If I Had My Choice: Part 11

Alexander x Female Reader

Part One

Previous Part | Next Part

Masterlist

Word Count: 5787

Tags:  @yehummno @robotic-space @isntthisenoughwhatwouldbeenough @unprofessional-inhumanbeing @sorryimacrapwriter @a-meme-you-cant-sweat-out@justanotherhamiltrash@marquiis-de-la-baguette @akarihamada @voldecrux @whowrotetheother51@bruuuhhhh-here-i-am

A/N: I have risen from the dead! And by dead, I mean engineering classes! I apologize in advance though that engineering classes does mean my brain is a little fried, and this may be one of the more poorly written chapters, but to offset that bad news, I have some good news! This is my project for NaNoWriMo this year! So I should get it most of the way done. If you want to monitor my progress and write with me, go be my buddy on NaNo! My handle’s @haleighza. And please enjoy this chapter! (Also, the song at the end of the chapter is Hymn for Her by Anchor and Braille, if anyone’s interested.)

Alexander stiffened beside you as you both took an unconscious step away from each other. Your stomach began turning as the figure at the end of the hallway remained unresponsive.

With a shaky breath, you began walking towards the man at the other end of the hallway, but to your dismay, his eyes didn’t follow you. They remained locked on Alexander.

Still staring with an unreadable expression down the hall when you reached him, you gently laid your hands on his arms, your eyes pleading for his to meet yours. Startled by the contact, his eyes shot down to yours, this time with an emotion flooding them: betrayal.

You forced yourself not to flinch from the expression. “I- I can explain,” you whispered, but the words came out more forced than as an offer.

Your father’s eyes barely considered yours as they flicked back to Alexander. Instinctively, you glanced back at him as well and swallowed thickly as you noticed his petrified expression. Taking a deep breath you closed your eyes and forced yourself to focus, fighting against your entire body’s instinct to panic. Anyone could walk down this hall right now and while they probably wouldn’t be able to draw any exact conclusions from the scene at hand, you couldn’t afford any rumors to fly. Because it only took so long for rumors to morph into the truth.

“Right, okay, we’re leaving,” you gritted, tightening your right hand on your father’s arm and pulling him down the hall away from Alexander, silently hoping Alexander would have the common sense not to follow you. Your father moved without comment, but then again he hardly ever had a comment. You dragged him through the manor until you reached his office, a recluse room as far away from your mother’s as it could be.

Once you were inside, you let go of his arm and quickly shut the door. Even though you had released him, he hadn’t moved from your side and you could still feel his presence as you stared at the door, hesitating to turn around. Biting your cheek to keep the tears building behind your eyes at bay, you tried to take a deep breath, waiting for your father to say something--anything. But when he remained silent, you decided to speak up.

“It’s not what you think,” you weakly reasoned, still facing your back towards him. But he still had nothing to say, so you turned around. He was staring at you, observing you, trying to piece together what was happening, and his eyes… his eyes looked as if they were trying to recognize the person standing in front of him. A tear fell onto your cheek.

You both stood there, staring at each other as the beats passed, but you refused to break the silence this time. And eventually, your father relented.

“I always thought you’d do better. But that boy is just your mother,” he confessed softly. There was no accusation in his voice, just disappointment as he turned from you and made his way towards his desk.

You stood stunned for a few seconds, trying to comprehend what your father just said. “He’s not Aremine,” you said simply, still in disbelief he would ever make the comparison. When your father refused to acknowledge your statement, you clenched your fist and gritted your teeth. “He’s not. He’s kind, and caring, and is actively working with us against her. If you read his papers, heard his ideas, you would like him, Father. I know you would.” You paused and waited for your father to respond, or even just look at you. But when he still ignored you, you became desperate. “I know what we’re doing is wrong, okay? I know how much it will hurt Bethany, and I don’t have an excuse. But we are not the mistakes of those who came before us. And I- I have it under control.” Your father’s eyes shot up to yours in an accusatory disbelief, so you doubled down on your statement. “I do. And when the time comes, I’ll end things between Alexander and I. Before anyone else finds out, and before Bethany is hurt. We both went into the relationship knowing there was an expiration date, so I promise… when the time comes, it’ll end.”

Your father stared at you, his expression softening ever so slightly, and you allowed yourself to let out a breath of relief. He still wasn’t happy with you, but his eyes conveyed that he would try to be understanding, and you supposed that’s all you could ask for.

Knowing you wouldn’t get any more conversation on the subject from your father, you turned dutifully to leave, but hesitated. Turning back to him slowly, you said in a steady voice, “Do I have your word you won’t speak of what you saw to anyone?” Your father met your eyes with a sort of regret in them, but relented a small nod. Satisfied, you left the room promptly, still shaking from the encounter.

When you had retreated all the way back to your hall, your skin became clammy noticing two people whispering seriously at the end of the hall. You stopped walking when Alexander’s eyes glanced over to yours and held them. The figure with him turned around, noticing his gaze, and you swallowed thickly when you recognized Bethany’s grim expression.

Briefly turning back and whispering something to Alexander, Bethany then turned and tried to confidently approach you in the hallway. Your feet felt cemented to the floor, at an utter loss as to why Bethany was looking at you so.

“Y/N,” Bethany greeted with a half attempted smile. “I was just looking for you, and Alexander was just telling me how you went to visit father this morning.”

“I’m back now,” you responded lamely, wishing Bethany didn’t have to always put up this pretense before she delivered bad news.

She grimaced at your response and clenched her eyes trying to compose herself. “Right, um…” she tried to begin, but she struggled to form the words. “I was looking for you because, well,” her sentence trailed off as she avoided your eyes.

“Bethany,” you leveled, needing to know what had your sister so worked up. “Whatever it is, you can just tell me,” you promised, holding your breath.

“Mother’s insisting I accompany her to the Summit this year instead of you,” she finally blurted out, and cringed waiting for your response.

Your face remained blank as you processed the words. Remaining unperturbed, your eyes met Bethany’s fearful ones. “Is that all?” you asked, relieved. Bethany furrowed her eyebrows at your response. “The Summit would be a good experience for you. Don’t let Lady Bryke pull the fountain prank on you, however. You only make that mistake once.” You flashed your dumbfounded sister a small smile and tousled her hair as you began to walk past her.

Seemingly catching up to your response in her head, Bethany ran to cut you off before entering your room. “You’re not mad?” she asked breathless. “Because this really is supposed to be a trip for the next in line, and I don’t know why mother would want me to go instead, and I won’t if you don’t want me to-”

“Whoa whoa, slow down, Bethie,” you stopped her with a gentle laugh. You noticed her expression flash to a brief state of nostalgia and pain upon hearing your childhood nickname for her, but you chose not to dwell on it. “I’ve already been to two Summits. It’s your turn.”

Bethany considered you for a brief instant before tackling you in a hug. “Thank you, Y/N!” she cried, and then she was gone, sprinting away surely to begin packing her things, leaving you once again in the hallway with Alexander. Sighing, you gestured for him to join you in your room.

Once the door was closed, he spoke. “How did things with your father go?” he asked, with a bit of shame in his voice.

You thought about the barely conversation you had with your father, and shook your head, not willing to go into details. “He’s not going to tell anyone,” you disclosed, figuring that was the only information of value to offer Alexander.

Alexander nodded, and moved on to the topic that was clearly bothering him. “How could you just… let her take your spot?” he inquired, obviously attempting to keep the judgement from his voice, and yet still failing.

You sighed, knowing Alexander would take issue with it. “It’s not Bethany’s fault. And I have to choose my battles. I led the last sector meeting, so it makes sense she would retaliate by taking Bethany to the Summit.”

“The Summit is not a sector meeting, Y/N,” Alexander tried to reason with you. “It’s a three month strategy meeting with all of your sector’s allies. It’s much bigger than some meeting at your estate.”

“Alexander, I’ll not here more on the subject. If I don’t go to the Summit, then I can still run CP here while Philip and Theodosia are still in Dmere. And if everything goes well with the Dmere meeting, the Summit will essentially be worthless to me anyways,” you explained, trying to calm Alexander down. Because something in his attitude was scaring you, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it.

You could see from the fire in his eyes he was still going to fight you on this, so you braced yourself for whatever he was about to say.

“But it’s like Aremine is trying to undermine your progress--replace you as her heir in the eyes of her allies.”

You opened your mouth to respond, but instead you closed your eyes and sighed at his words. Forcing a smile on your face, you placed a light kiss on his cheek.

“Thank you for always fighting for me, Alexander. But you just need to trust me on this one, okay?” you asked quietly. Noting your suddenly quiet reserve, he nodded slowly.

Both of you stood silently for a few more moment before Alexander finally broke the silence. “I- I have my walk with Bethany. I have to-”

“Go,” you commanded with a light smile. His face searched yours briefly for another second, and then gave a curt nod and dutifully left. You let out a loud sigh as you watched the door close behind him. The conversation playing and replaying over and over again in your mind.

Two substantial problems presented themselves in your most recent interaction with Alexander.

The first was he was beginning to choose you without reasoning in every situation over Bethany.

The second was he presented you with the solution to your promise to find your sector a new leader.

And unfortunately for you, those two problems created a third problem of itself: you could only solve one or the other.

A week passed and you were grateful Alexander had relented on the subject of allowing Bethany to attend the Summit… though part of you assumed he was only being so amicable about it because he realized Bethany and your mother leaving for three months left the two of you with three months to yourselves.

And you felt terrible to also be excited about that. You never wanted to be the sister who pushed her younger sister away. You never wanted to be the sister who began secretly dating her younger sister’s Choice. And you definitely never wanted to be the sister who looked forward to her younger sister’s departure so she could commit adultery easier.

Sighing, you buried your hands in your head at your desk, wondering who exactly you’d become when you met Alexander. Your mind flashed back to your father not recognizing you after catching you with Alexander and you bit your lip to keep the tears from building. In the moment, you hadn’t understood, but now. Sitting here in what felt like someone else’s life and bad decisions, a part of yourself didn’t recognize you either.

“Y/N?” A voice came softly from your doorway. Shooting up and taking a breath before forcing a smile on your face, you turned to face Alexander. “They’ll be departing soon,” he announced gently. You nodded, and quickly gathered the papers on your desk into a neat pile. With a deep breath, you smiled and made your way towards the door to say goodbye to Bethany together.

Bethany tackled you as soon as you turned the corner. When she released you, she went straight to Alexander. He held her tightly and whispered something softly to her. A prick of something hit your skin, but ignored it as you watched Bethany pull away from her fiance and turn towards you.

“Watch out for him while I’m gone?” she asked you, half playful, knowing Alexander had only lived in the palace for less than a year and was sure to still be rather uncomfortable by himself for three months.

You swallowed thickly as your eyes met Alexanders. “I think I can manage that,” you finally responded with a strained smile. You looked up at Alexander with a meaningful glance and cleared your throat. “Do you think I could get a moment alone with me sister?” you asked dutifully, and he glanced at Bethany and then back at you before nodding shortly and walking away.

Recognizing the expression on your face, Bethany’s face fell slightly. “Y/N? What is it?” she asked concerned, and you took a deep breath, gave her a pained smile and guided her to sit with you for a moment.

“I have something I should have told you a long time ago, I just… never could find it in me,” you began describing, avoiding Bethany’s concerned eyes and furrowed eyebrows. “I need you to understand--before I tell you--that I never told you to protect you.” Bethany began to protest, surely to state that she didn’t need you protecting her, but you held up a hand to silence her and wait for you to finish. “I know you think you don’t need protecting. And I’m going to start trying to not be so… overbearing. That’s why I’m telling you now.”

Bethany relaxed slightly at this and nodded that she was ready for you to continue.

You fidgeted with your hands for a second, but finally met Bethany’s eyes. “John died in the war,” you managed to breathe out.

Your sister stared at you dumbfounded, unconsciously shaking her head. “What- What are you talking about, Y/N?”

Gritting your teeth, you pushed yourself to continue. “I received word two years ago that he had been shot and killed in battle,” you explained, tears threatening to break loose from your eyes as you resumed avoiding eye contact.

From the corner of your eye, you noticed Bethany begin to shake her head. “No that’s- Oh Y/N, I’m so sorry,” she comforted at a loss for other words, and wrapped you in a tight hug. A few tears slipped from your eyes as Bethany whispered into your ear, “I’m sorry you felt like you needed to protect me from your grief. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

You let out a small laugh as she pulled away from you, and your hand gently grazed her cheek. “You never did anything wrong, Bethany. Old habits just die hard for me,” you explained through your tears, and you noticed at some point she had begun crying as well.

After a moment of silence, she spoke again. “Did Mother tell you?” she asked softly.

You stiffened. “No. And she doesn’t know I know,” you disclosed pointedly, become serious enough to get your point across. Bethany was taken aback by your statement.

“Then how-”

“I can’t tell you how Bethany. I just need you to trust me,” you cut her off with a rueful smile. Your sister opened her mouth to speak again, but eventually settled on just accepting your trust and nodding. “I’m telling you now because you’re going to a three month conference on the war that killed John. And you cannot speak any opinion on this war that is not our mother’s. Do you understand me?”

“But Y/N-”

You cut her off again. “I want you to form an opinion of your own. And I want you to cultivate it among those that are constructing the war at the Summit. But I need you to be safe, and I need you to promise me you will never speak your opinion at the Summit.”

So many questions ran through Bethany’s eyes that you couldn’t answer now without putting her in more danger. So instead you kissed her forehead and wrapped her in a tight hug. “We’ll speak after the Summit, okay? After you return from the Summit and we have the ball, we’ll talk,” you offered as a compromise.

Still staring at you unsure of what to make of your conversation, she finally nodded. “O-Okay. I trust you, Y/N,” she whispered shakily.

A presence came up on the two of you, and you both looked up teary eyed to Alexander. He had a questioning glint in his eyes, but respected it wasn’t his place to inquire about their conversation.

“They’re all waiting for you, Bethany,” he announced softly, and she nodded, and quickly threw her arms around you for one last hug before she got up and walked away with Alexander.

Standing up slowly, you worked your way through the household staff to the front of the entryway to see your mother and sister pile into the carriage. Alexander was down at the carriage speaking to Bethany softly. She lightly placed her hands on his cheeks and left him with a gentle kiss, before he pulled away and closed the carriage door.

Alexander stood outside the manor and watched as the carriage pulled away down the long lane. It seemed as if all the household staff, including yourself, were holding their breaths as they watched Aremine leave. By the time the carriage was just a speck in the distance, most of the tension in the crowd around you had relaxed and most were looking at you expectantly.

Right, you breathed. They would be looking to you for further instruction, and you knew exactly what you would tell them.

You turned around to face the entire household staff, feeling Alexander’s presence come up behind you. “Okay,” you began shakily as you felt fifty pairs of eyes stare at you. “Enjoy your three months, everyone. I’m sending you all home for paid leave. As it’s just Alexander, my father and I here, and the gardens won’t need tending as winter is almost upon us, I think the three of us can hold up without you all. Thank you for all your service over the years, but I want you all to see your families for once during the holidays.”

It seemed as if everyone were frozen by your words. You smiled triumphantly at their shock, knowing your mother had never given them more than a few days off in their years attending to the manor, and severely docked their pay when she had.

Finally, a maid in the front of the crowd spoke up. “But, ma’am. Won’t your mother find out?” she squeaked, terrified of returning to an angry Aremine, or worse: no job. But you simply gave a comforting smile.

“I won’t tell her if you don’t,” you promised with a small smile. “And I’ve grown up with you, Therese. All of you actually,” you reminded them, and Therese seemed shocked you knew her name at all. “I know you can have this manor looking like none of you ever left in three days. So I don’t want to see most of you until three days before the ball.” You saw a few tears shed throughout the crowd and you could feel the pride radiating off of Alexander from behind you.

“This is wonderful, my lady, but I’m afraid there’s another thing your mother is sure to catch on to,” Gertrude, the household cook spoke up. “She will notice if there’s a bunch of uneaten food that the staff normally eats.” She relayed the news sullenly, and most of the staff sobered up at the announcement.

This bit of news caught you off guard, but you considered it for a moment. “She doesn’t usually let you eat much, right?” you asked for a confirmation, and most of the crowd nodded. Turning to direct your next question specifically at Gertrude, you asked, “About how much food does the staff go through in a week?”

She was taken aback by the question, but then was at a loss. “It’s hard to say, my lady.”

“Would it be close to as much food as a feast for the entire staff and their families every week?” you asked generally.

Once again the crowd froze in shock as Gertrude sputtered for an answer. “I- I would guess, yes, my lady.”

You beamed. “Great! Then you’re all invited to return to the estate every Wednesday evening with your families for a feast. No one is, of course, required to come, but I really want to give back to you all after these years. So if the journey is manageable, and I know it may not be for some of you from further away, please know you’re always welcome,” you announced, and the reaction was immediate. All of the staff began chattering excitedly and you felt warm knowing you had made a direct impact in their lives. “Okay okay,” you called out, having a few more announcements before they departed. They all settled immediately, hanging on your every word. “The annual ball is the day my mother is to return from the Summit, so please plan to return three days before then. If you think you’ll need more than three days, you’re welcome to return early, just send me a notice. I will need to speak to Frederick for some ball plans, Raino for the stables, and Gertrude for the feasts before you leave, but as long as no one else has concerns, you are free to go. I’ll see some of you this Wednesday.”

The crowd quickly dispersed buzzing with thanks and gratitude. Several of your staff fought the crowd forward to shake your hand and thank you personally, to which you tried your best to thank them each by name. And each of them seemed so surprised that over the course of your lifetime you had learned what to call them. It warmed your heart.

The three who were asked to stay behind stood a little was away from you, discussing something with rapture. Before you could approach them, you heard a low whisper in your ear.

“That was incredible, Y/N,” Alexander told you, slightly in awe, and you turned to him with the brightest smile. You wanted to kiss him right there and then, but you knew you had to address the remainders of your staff first.

With a deep breath, you turned from Alexander and approached the trio, who all silenced in admiration upon noticing your presence.

Raino was the first to speak. “I’m willing to stay, ma’am,” he offered earnestly. “The stable are too big of a job for one person who’s never handled them before.”

You sighed, afraid this would be the case. “I wouldn’t ask you to stay if everyone else gets to leave. There must be some way to-”

“Ma’am, I insist. I won’t leave you with the stables,” he demanded. You considered him for a short time, then relented.

“Fine, but your sending for your family and they will spend the three months here with you in the guest house,” you compromised. His eyes went wide as he tried to protest, but you wouldn’t have it. “Raino, you have two sons and wife that want to see you for the holidays, and we have more than enough room for you at the estate. Go, send for them.”

Taking you by surprise, he forcibly wrapped you in a hug. “Thank you, miss. I had you pegged all wrong.” And then with a happy skip he ran to get message to his family.

With a smile you met Gertrude and Frederick’s teary expressions. “I really hate to ask you two this but-”

“We’ll be back promptly every Wednesday morning and leave that evening after the feast,” Gertrude cut you off, and you breathed a sigh of relief at their willingness. “I’ll be able to cook up all the food in that time.”

“And we can hash out details for the ball then too,” Frederick finished. You wrapped them gratefully in a hug and thanked them. “No thank you,” Frederick responded, as he pulled back. “You did some real good today, Lady Y/N.”

You weren’t sure if you would ever be able to wipe the smile off your face. Waving goodbye as you watched the two take their leave, you let out a happy sigh and spun suddenly on Alexander who was observing her with a unmanageable grin.

“You know, you really ought to-”

Cutting him off by throwing yourself at him and catching his mouth in a kiss, you felt his arms wrap tightly around you as you both thrived in your newfound freedom.

With a soft chuckle he broke away from you. “You know, if you wanted to get me alone, there are easier ways than dismissing your entire staff,” he teased you lightly, and you laughed.

“Yes,” you agreed, allowing a twinkle of a smirk to enter you eyes, “But if I did it any other way would I be able to do this?” you asked as you immediately interlaced your fingers with his, and began dragging him, racing through the halls. You both hollered as you ran, unafraid to make as much noise as you could that you were together and unashamedly so.

When you reached your room, you both breathlessly entered, and his lips trapped yours as soon as you were through the threshold. Drunkenly, you stumbled backwards as he gently guided you until the back of your legs hit your bed. You fell backwards and Alexander gently landed on top of you as your kiss persisted.

The two of you finally pulled back, trying to allow your mind to catch up to the position you were now both in. A light blush seeped into both of your cheeks, knowing this was the most forward either of you had ever been with each other.

You cleared your throat. “We just made out on my bed,” you commented, trying to keep your tone light.

Alexander hummed in agreement. “I think we’re ready,” he playfully announced.

Your cheeks immediately flushed bright red as you sputtered. “Ready?” you inquired nervously. Because you most certainly were not ready if he was implying what you thought he was implying. And yet his impish grin made you think that was just what he wanted you to think.

“Oh yeah, definitely,” he responded, allowing a clear tease into his voice this time, making you suspicious. You quirked your eyebrows in a question, and before you could registered he had moved, you felt a pillow being slammed in your face.

“Pillow fight!” he screamed, as he backed off you on the defensive. You burst out into a hefty laughter curling up on yourself on the bed.

“You’re unbelievable!” you cried out, specifically addressing his misdirection a moment earlier. You looked up at him beaming at you standing on the other end of the bed. Rolling onto your knees, you grabbed another one of your pillows and stood to face him.

He smirked, duly noting how serious you were about to take this. “Okay rules: Only contact is to be made with pillows. This bed is the turf. And it’s not over until one of us begs for mercy.”

“Neither of us are good at following rules, you know,” you taunted him, to which he shot you a playful smirk. Seeing he was seemingly not worried about this fact, however, you shrugged your shoulders. “You’re on,” you challenged, and then you lunged for him.

You aren’t sure how long the fight lasted, just at the end of it, both of you were begging for mercy due to the cramps in your abdomens from the endless laughter throughout the fight. Curled up on the bed together, still laughing, you ran your fingers softly through his hair as he looked up at you, sobering slightly. The sun had began to make its descent in the sky.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” he asked quietly. And the way he said it betrayed he was nervous. And you knew he had been working up the courage to ask you all day. And most of you wanted him to stay more than anything.

But there was a small part of you that fought it.

“I told you we’re terrible at following rules,” you jested lightly, but he saw right through your deflection. His eyes shadowed over at you not giving a direct answer, so you sighed. “Alexander…” you tried to begin explaining, but he sat up seriously and began addressing your hesitation.

“You don’t have to worry about me leaving, because you know I never will, Y/N,” he coaxed you softly, and you clenched your eyes shut. It had taken you months to get over Alexander the last time you slept with him, and you hadn’t even gotten over him, you’d started a relationship with him.

You were sure you would regret it in the future, but present you won out. “Yeah okay,” you finally relented, and he offered you a genuine smile that made your insides flutter.

Gently wrapping you in his arms, he whispered again, “I won’t leave, Y/N.”

And you fought desperately to choke back the tears that were suddenly upon you.

Because how could you tell him that that was exactly what you were afraid of.

The first month passed quicker than you expected. Much to your dismay, Alexander and you had slipped into a rather comfortable routine.

But of course, how could it be an uncomfortable routine when you got to wake up beside him each and every morning.

What the two of you did together depended on a day to day basis. Some days you would spend hours out in the garden that was turning for the winter. Other days the two of you would stay holed up in the library from dawn to dusk. Every Wednesday he made a trip to the market to visit some friends while you planned for the upcoming ball.

Some days the both of you worked on CP details relentlessly, and he begged to hear you plan for getting a new leader for the sector, but you remained adamant. You kept insisting it was better for only you to know the plan so your mother wouldn’t see it coming. But some days you almost felt like he could tell there was more to it.

Like he could tell you didn’t want anyone, especially him, to see it coming.

But surprisingly, he usually let it go on the days you dedicated to planning for it.

Your favorite days, however, were the days you both sat at the piano and didn’t move for hours. You played the small collection of pieces you knew; Alexander played whatever you requested. As you were learning, Alexander had nearly every song you could imagine memorized. He claims piano was his solace after his mother died, and you held him a little tighter that day.

This day, however, was a special one, because Frederick had insisted to give you this Wednesday off, as you were ahead of planning than you usually were at this time of year. He was instead spending his time milling about the kitchen, which, if it were anyone else, you were sure Gertrude would kick him out immediately.

But you weren’t blind to the way your assistent and cook had grown on each other these past weeks as the only two in the manor. That was possibly the only reason you had relented and allowed Frederick to give you the time off.

So with your newly freed day, both you and Alexander agreed on a piano day.

“Can I- Can I play you something new?” he asked suddenly, as he finished a piece. You looked up at him curiously, as he’d never been shy about playing you anything before. Your head lay in his lap as he played above you, and gently, you smiled.

“I want to hear everything you have to play for me,” you confided. He passed you a grateful smile, but still looked unsure of himself.

Bringing one of his hands to scratch the back of his neck, his shifted anxiously, and you sat up and scooted right beside him, placing a comforting hand on his arm. “I- um- I wrote this song a few years ago,” he admitted bashfully. You shot him an encouraging smile and he let out a shaky breath as he met your eyes. “I just didn’t know then that I was writing it for you.”

You froze at his words and your eyes asked a million questions, but instead of answering any of them, his fingers began to gently glide across the keys. He began singing, his voice a little shaky, but you held on to every word. You began to tremble as you listened to the lyrics and realized he wrote this song for the girl he would fall in love with: you.

And that was terrifying in so many ways, but mainly because you’re falling in love with him as well.

There are so many things that are bound to go wrong with your relationship. He was engaged to your sister; you already used your Choice; your mother was a tyrannical witch who would tear you apart and have fun doing it the moment she found out.

But in this moment, none of those things seemed to be important. Because as he finished the song, and met your eyes nervously, you couldn’t find anything to say to him besides forcefully pulling him in for a kiss.

He was you weakness, and you knew that. But for this moment, you allowed yourself to be weak. For this moment, your weakness made you feel invincible.

“Are we interrupting something?”

Both of you shot apart and stared dumbfoundedly at the doorway, where Philip and Theodosia stood with incredibly unimpressed expressions.

Groaning and letting your face fall into your hand, you decided you would no longer kiss Alexander anywhere there wasn’t a padlock on the door.

This was going to be hard to explain your way out of.

[avasharpe]

Sugar and Salt

Chapter: Seven of Ten

Summary: Zari and Behrad move back into their parents home, but Laurel drops with a lead on who called ICE, Zari picks up her computer to track him down.

Fandom: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

Relationship: Amaya Jiwe/Zari Tomaz, and Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe.

Characters: Amaya Jiwe, Zari Tomaz, Behrad Tarari, Kuasa, Sara Lance, Ava Sharpe, Sin Lance, and Kendra Saunders.

Chapter Rating: General Audiences.

Additional Tags: Bakery and Coffee Shop, Mutual Pining, Non-binary character, Trans Character, Fake Marriage, But Real Feelings, Food.

Read at AO3

Read at FFN

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“Okay that goes up to Zari’s bedroom and those boxes can go into the kitchen,” Sara instructed Mick, Ray, and Nate and pointed up the stairs for them to carry the parts of Zari’s bed frame. Sara stood in the entryway at the bottom of the stairs as she directed traffic for the move-in process.

“Remind me who put you in charge of this?” Zari asked as she set down the box she was carrying. 

“Well someone’s got to make sure you don’t set up your closet in the living room,” Sara said, pointing her toe at the box Zari had just sent down, which was clearly labeled ‘Zari’s clothing.’ “And Amaya said I could.”

Zari just rolled her eyes and picked up the box again. Making a note to go find Amaya as she walked upstairs. 

It had been a few weeks since she had agreed to move and they had spent the majority of the time going through old things, packing, and cleaning. They had agreed to keep some of their parents’ old furniture with a few touches of their new things.

It was hard for Zari to see the old furniture and everything reminded her of them, but once she started adding her things to the house it made things easier. They only had to move in a few pieces of big furniture, such as beds and desks, as the majority of what they had were in boxes. Zari was surprised that she didn’t want much of her furniture and was in the process of selling or giving it away to anyone who needed it. As she trudged her way up the stairs Behrad and Sin came running down the stairs almost barreling right into her. 

“Hey you two are supposed to stay in Behrad’s room and unpack,” Zari said, readjusted the box in her arms. “You two nearly knocked me over and we don’t want you guys getting trampled with the big furniture.”

“But we already unpacked all of my stuff,” Behrad said, with a shrug. “Can’t we help somewhere else?” 

“Okay, fine, but stay out of the way of the big furniture,” Zari said, moving to let them pass.

“Okay,” Sin said as they ran past her. 

“And no running,” Sara shouted at them before Zari could. 

Sara and Zari both exchanged a look with knowing smiles as Zari shook her head. Zara trudged up the stairs and heard Sara bark orders at Ava and Kendra as they brought in more boxes. When she reached the top of the stairs, Amaya came out of one of the rooms and met Zari with her winning smile.

“Do you want me to take that into your room?” Amaya asked, already taking the box from Zari’s arms. 

“Thank you,” Zari said, gratefully handing it over. “Hey, did you tell Sara she could direct traffic, instead of helping out?”

“Yeah, she said she wasn’t feeling that great, but she did bring Ava with her to help out. Besides, we do need someone to make sure everything goes where it’s supposed to, why?”

“Oh, I think the power is going to her head a little bit,” Zari smiled and rolled her eyes. 

“Well, I’m sure you can keep her in check,” Amaya smirked back. “How about you and I drop off this box together and you can help me put my clothes away?” 

Amaya smiled and her eyes had that beautiful sparkle and Zari took a moment to appreciate Amaya’s brilliant eyes. Ever since they had started the move in process and as they each committed to spending more time with the kids, there hadn’t been much time left for them to be alone and Zari missed being around just Amaya. 

“Zari?”

“Yeah, lead the way,” Zari said, ducking her head and blushing a deep red.

Amaya licked her lips and giggled as she turned around and led Zari down the hall. Zari knew that they would most likely just end up making out for a while and eagerly followed her. 

“Hey guys,” Lita said, coming out and walking up to them with her hands in her pockets, and the glow between them faded. “Can Kuasa and Hector set up a video game since we’re all done getting Behrad moved in?” 

“Yeah, but could you supervise Behrad and Sin? They want to help with the moving, but I don’t want them to get hurt by the big furniture pieces,” Zari said pointing down the hall to where they had run off.  

“Yeah no problem,” Lita said with a shrug and a smile.

“Thank you for babysitting Lita,” Amaya added with a nod as Lita popped back into the room, to let Kuasa and Hector know what was going on.

Once Lita had scampered down the stairs, Amaya sent Zari another sultry smile and swayed her hips as she walked down the hall. Zari followed her like a puppy and the second she set the box down, Zari put her hands on her hips and twirled Amaya towards her. They smiled at each other before leaning in and pressing their lips against one another. Zari sighed as she relaxed into the kiss and Amaya wrapped her arms around Zari’s neck. 

“Zari!” Sara yelled at her from down the stairs.

Zari sighed again, but this time in frustration and Amaya pulled away from her. “We should probably go see what she wants?”

“Whatever it is, it’s not important enough to drag me away from you,” Zari said as she chased Amaya’s lips and kissed her again. 

“Zari, your lawyer is here to speak with you!” 

That broke them apart. They hurried down the stairs to see Laurel waiting for them with a stack of papers in her arms. Laurel and Sara both had a somber look across their face and Amaya reached out to squeeze Zari’s hand as they walked the rest of the way down the stairs.

“What’s this about?” Zari asked as she stepped off the bottom step.

Laurel looked around at everyone as they were still moving things in and walking around the house. “Is there somewhere we can speak privately?” 

Zari nodded for Laurel to follow her and walked over to her father’s old library. As a child, her father would work in his study and Zari would play on the rug. He was quite the book collector and many of the books were in Arabic. Her father made sure she and Behrad knew how to speak and read in Arabic and carry on the cultural traditions. Zari hadn’t stepped foot in the room yet and didn’t have any plans to change it. It was exactly as she remembered it as she opened the door and led Laurel in.

Laurel looked around the room and Zari offered her one of the chairs next to the desk. Laurel put the papers down on the coffee table between them and pulled out a few documents getting right to it.

“When I took on your case I did a little digging and contacted someone I knew in ICE, in order to find the report made against you. The report was made anonymously, but they included your home address and your work address. I thought something was off about how they knew where you lived and where you worked. I got a copy of the phone call and I think, I should play it for you.” 

Laurel pulled out her phone and looked up at her, Zari just nodded and Laurel hit play.

“Hello, I have a concern about someone illegally living and working here in Star City. Their name is Zari Tomaz and they live at 108A Orange Street, Star City, and work at Jewi’s Bakery over on 140th Street.”

Zari’s jaw fell open, she was shocked to hear Damien Darhk’s voice on the call as he listed off her address. He began to say a few other unkind and down white racist things about her, but Laurel hurried to end the recording and put her phone away. 

“I’m sure you can guess as to who it was, but unfortunately I can’t legally be sure that it was Damien Darhk. By reporting you he violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act but without proof, he can’t be prosecuted. I had one of our private detectives trace the phone call, but it just led to a dead end burner phone. In the meantime, all I can do is suggest that you stay away from the school as much as possible. I would also suggest that you transfer Behrad to a different school as well. I have no reason to believe that another report to ICE won’t be made if you file a change of address with the school.” 

As Laurel spoke she looked over at Zari who just noted as she took everything in. She wasn’t sure what else she could do. Especially if, as Laurel said, they had no proof.

“But I can’t take Behrad out of that school. It’s the best one in the district and I can’t afford the private school fees,” Zari said standing up as she began to pace the room. 

“I’m so sorry Zari. I know how difficult this is for you and that you don’t want to sacrifice Behrad’s education,” Laurel said, shaking her head. “I’m going to keep our detective on it to see if we can try and prove Darhk broke the law. Though at this point there’s nothing I can do other than continue with your green card papers from your marriage. Until then you need to lay low and have no contact with Darhk or the school.”

“But what am I supposed to do about Behrad? Amaya and the others have been dropping him off and picking him up, but the school keeps harassing them for a change of address or questions about my whereabouts. They’ve even threatened to call CPS.”

“I’ll draft a statement for the school and assure them that you’re still providing for Behrad, without giving them your new address. That should at least get you through the end of the year. However, they’ll want an address for you and your confirmation that you’re still his guardian for next year, but then we’ll have things in order for your green card.”

Zari sat back down at the chair and looked around the room. It represented the kind of life that their parents had envisioned for them, with a nice house in the good school district. Yet, her parents were never able to finish the process of citizenship before they died and Zari let it slide like an idiot. This whole mess was her fault. 

“Thank you Laurel,” Zari said, finally looking over at her. 

“I’ll send you a document for the school that you can look over. If you get it back to me tonight, I can have it filed with the school tomorrow,” Laurel nodded as she got up. She put a hand on Zari’s shoulder and gave her a reassuring smile. “Just take it one step at a time. We’re on track for your visa and your I-130. I’m still setting up the interview, but you’re doing everything right to get your citizenship and everyone here is making sure that you’re protected.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” Laurel said before she left. 

Zari sat alone in the library for another minute before Amaya came in.

“Damien Darhk was the one who ratted me out to ICE,” Zari said, looking up at her.

“I’m sorry Zari,” Amaya said, as she tilted her head and walked over to sit next to her. Amaya put her arm around her and pulled her in.

“Don’t be,” Zari said, welcoming her embrace. “You’ve done everything you could to help me and I truly appreciate it.”

Amaya leaned in and kissed her and Zari let herself melt against her lips. They let themselves have a moment to each other before Zari stood up and held out her hand to Amaya. “Come on we should get back to work, before Sara barges in on us.”

Amaya let her pull her up and shook her head. “Sara’s actually being really helpful you know.”

“Doesn’t make her any less annoying,” Zari said as they walked out.

With Sara’s direction, they got everything moved in and both Zari and Behrad’s bedrooms put together before they finished for the day. Amaya and Zari agreed to have some alone time with the kids so they said good night and parted ways at least until tomorrow. Since Monday was their day off, they planned to meet for breakfast and send the kids off the school together. 

Zari enjoyed her time with Behrad but sent him to bed a little earlier than usual. She then pulled out a black duffel bag from under her bed. Quietly, she walked down the hall and checked on Behrad who was already fast asleep, exhausted after a day of moving, then crept downstairs and back into her father’s library. 

It was the one place in the house where she felt truly safe and Zari quickly set up her laptop and other equipment. In college, Zari used to be quite the hacker, but as the years went on, she slowly stepped away from it in favor of working legally for Amaya. Yet, she always kept the duffle bag of her old equipment ready to go in case they needed it. Once Zari had everything loaded and had completely shielded her computer, she began her search for everything and anything related to Damien Darhk.

……………………………………………………………………

Amaya was enjoying a lazy morning as she stretched and rolled back over in bed. It was a Monday and she would have to get Kuasa up for school and to meet Zari and Behrad for breakfast soon. She was glad that she didn’t have to be in at the bakery that morning, as it was their day off. 

Amaya reached out her arm only to feel the cold and empty space where Zari would have been. She understood and completely supported Zari’s move, but that didn’t mean she didn’t miss her. Letting out a sigh, Amaya grabbed the extra pillow, pulling it towards her and wrapping her arms around it. She closed her eyes again and wished for a few more minutes of sleep. 

Just as her mind had started to drift off in that place between thoughts and unconscious dreaming, the sound of her phone vibrating on her nightstand jerked her up. Amaya sighed and reached for her phone, smiling as she saw Zari’s name and quickly answered her call. 

“Hey you.”

“Amaya I need you to meet me at the house as soon as possible.” 

Zari’s urgent tone made her heart quicken as she got out of bed and went over to her dresser, pulling out a set of clothes. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I know who contacted ICE. I have proof that they did it along with the long list of other crimes, but it involves you and the kids,” Zari said and Amaya knew that she was rubbing her forehead. Amaya paused and gently set the clothes on her bed. “I don’t know what to do about all of it.”

“Just take a deep breath,” Amaya said and waited for Zari to mirror her on the other end of the line. “Have you called Laurel or Sara or Kendra?”

“No, I don’t want to go to Laurel until you know, but I probably should call Sara and Kendra as it involves them too.”

“Okay, why don’t you do that, and in the meantime I’ll get ready, get some food for breakfast, and bring it over for everyone?”

Amaya could hear Zari chuckle and knew she was smiling. “Do all of your solutions involve food?”

“A full belly makes everyone feel better, that’s what my Mama always told me.”

“Well, your Mama was probably right. She did a good job raising you.”

“She did,” Amaya said, remembering everything her mom taught her about baking and helping people.

“Alright, but how soon can you get here?” Zari asked, the worry back in her voice.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes if I can get to Kuasa up soon.”

“Better make it in half an hour, but thanks.” 

“Okay, I’ll be there soon.”

“I love you,” Zari said, and Amaya’s heart skipped a beat. No matter how many times Zari said it to her, it always felt like the first time.

“I love you too.”

Zari ended the call and Amaya quickly got dressed and ready. Kuasa put up a bit of a fight, but she could see the worry on her face and was soon ready as well.

……………………………………………………………………

Zari paced back and forth in her office as she waited for Sara to pick up the phone. 

“What the fuck Zari. It’s like 6 a.m. on our day off?” Sara said, clearly not in the mood for the early phone call.

“Does Ava like Damien Darhk?”

“What?”

“Does Ava like principal Damien Darhk?”

“Zari what is going on?” Sara insisted and Zari heard Ava in the background ask her the same question.

“Can you just answer the question Sara?” Zari insisted and stopped pacing. She knew that Sara would be on her side no matter what, but she didn’t want to cause any trouble with Sara’s relationship with Ava.

Sara sighed and Zari could hear her sit up in bed and move around. “No, they’re constantly clashing over curriculum and funding and stuff. He made her pay for a new curriculum change out of pocket. All because she wanted to include a more diverse historical curriculum. It was this whole thing, so no she doesn’t like him. Now, what is this about?”

“Okay, can you and Ava come over as soon as possible? Amaya and Kendra are coming and she said she’ll make breakfast for everyone, but I need to talk to both of you?” 

“Are you and Behrad okay?” Sara asked, sounding truly worried. “Has something happened with the school?” 

“I found some incriminating evidence about Darhk and you both should know about it.”

“Okay, but this is something we should call Laurel about?”

“No, she doesn’t need to be a part of this until we decide what to do. I don’t want her getting in any sort of trouble,” Zari said, finally sitting down and trying to speak as clearly and calmly as possible.

“Okay, we’ll be right over.”

“Thank you,”

“Of course,” Sara said, before hanging up. 

Sara was Zari’s last phone call as she had called Kendra already. They were the three people in the world that she knew she could always count on and they would want to be a part of what she found. Zari fell into the chair and closed her eyes. She had stayed up all night only falling asleep at the keyboard for an hour around 2 a.m. on accident. The anxiety of the night and the revelation of what she had found started to get to her. So she decided to close her eyes for a few minutes.

The next thing she knew someone was knocking at her door and she quickly got up to go see who it was. Smiling and dressed Amaya with a groggy and grumpy Kuasa who was still in her pajamas were standing on her porch as Zari opened up the door. 

“I promised her, she could go back to sleep on your couch,” Amaya said, putting her arms on Kuasa’s shoulder as she led the groggy girl into the house.

“Yeah, no problem. She can go up to my bedroom if she wants?” Zari said looking down at Kuasa.

“Yes please,” Kuasa mumbled, already walking towards the staircase. 

“Do you remember where it is?” Amaya gently asked her as Kuasa put one hand on the banister and seemed to lean on it as she walked up the stairs.

Kuasa just nodded and Amaya gave her a gentle smile as they both watched her until she got to the top of the stairs. Amaya stepped forward to give Zari a hug and she melted into her arms. She was relieved to have Amaya there again and she didn’t realize how much she had missed Amaya until they were together again.

Amaya pulled back but wrinkled her nose as she tugged at Zari’s shirt. “Is this what you were wearing yesterday?”

“Umm,” Zari looked down at the shirt she was in fact wearing yesterday and realized she had not showered or changed in the past 24 hours. Even after they got finished moving, she probably didn’t smell too well either. “Why don’t I go hop in the shower.”

“I’ll get breakfast started and let the others in when they get here,” Amaya said, already taking a step back from her. Her nose wrinkled up in a way that told Zari that she did in fact stink.

By the time she had showered and changed, Amaya had already made breakfast with Sara, Ava, and Kendra sitting at the table eating.

“Where are the other kids?” Zari asked, and she walked into the room seeing only the adults. 

“Carter’s with Hector,” Kendra said looking up from her eggs.

“And Laurel’s watching Gary and Sin,” Sara added, putting down her fork and going over to give Zari a hug. “We’d figured it’d be easier not to drag them out of bed and we weren’t sure if they should be involved in whatever this is.” 

Zari nodded and Sara pulled back, making room for Kendra to pull Zari in for another hug. Amaya put a plate of food in front of her and Zari quickly ate. There was a slight tension in the room, but everyone seemed to understand wanting to eat before getting into the heavy stuff. 

“So Laurel’s watching both Gary and Sin? You four must have had a fun sleepover last night,” Kendra’s said with a teasing smile. 

“Fun for the kids and for the adults,” Amaya said, sending Ava and Sara a wink. 

They all chuckled and Zari took another bite of her food in order to avoid saying something sarcastic to them. She knew Sara wouldn’t mind, but she didn’t want to offend Ava who was already turning a deep shade of red.

“Shut up,” Sara said with a playful smile. Ava hid her blush in Sara’s shoulder as they sat next to each other. “Ava and I are in a happy and committed relationship and both of our children are comfortable with each other.”

“Well, we are all very happy for you,” Amaya said, as she turned off the burner and put the dishes in the sink before throwing the towel over her shoulder. She walked over towards Zari who put an arm around her waist.

“Yeah, just don’t hurt her Ava,” Kendra said, looking pointedly over at her as Amaya and Zari nodded in agreement.

“Believe me, I have no intention of ever harming Sara,” Ava said, looking over at Sara with a kind of soft and loving look that Zari knew meant she was head over heels.

They may be overprotective, but with Sara’s history of doomed romances, they had a right to be. The three of them knew to let it happen, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t feel the need to protect her. If they ever got their hands on Oliver Queen, they would all need Laurel to represent them.

“Alright, enough of the lovey dovey stuff,” Kendra said looking pointedly over at the couples. “Zari you said that you had something important to tell us about what you found about Damien Darhk.”

The light hearted moment was gone and Zari pulled away from Amaya. She pulled out her laptop from where she had left it on the counter. There was so much information that it took her most of the night to go through and even longer to compile it into a damning folder of evidence. She pulled up the few documents that she compiled that would put him in prison and turned her laptop towards them, so they could read through the documents she had.

“Yesterday Laurel gave me a video recording of Darhk contacting ICE and giving them my address and the address of the bakery. He never identified himself so she couldn’t prove it was him, but she said she was going to try. I decided to do some digging of my own. I got into the school’s records and started looking through things. I wasn’t sure what I would find, but I figured if he was giving out my information, chances are he was giving out those of others as well. I couldn’t really find anything so I went into the school’s finances. It turns out that Darhk has been secretly taking money off the top of the budget and putting it into his own pockets. You can see the money here at the top of this document matches the deposits made in this account. It’s a secret account that he has in the Caymans, and it’s under an LLC, but I was able to trace it back to him. Some of it’s not in his name but in Nora Darhk’s name. I don’t know how much she is involved in this but.”

“No,” Ava said, shaking her head. “There’s no way Nora is involved in this. I mean yeah she has a trust fund from her father, but she doesn’t touch it. Unlike her father, Nora is a good person she can’t be involved in this.”

“That’s what I was thinking as well. I was able to trace withdrawals and deposits from this account to things that Darhk purchased and currently owns,” Zari said as she watched all of her friends process the information.

“He told me there wasn’t room in the budget for a new ramp into the school,” Kendra said she looked shocked as she covered her mouth with her hand and seemed to sink into her chair. “That money should have gone to building a ramp so that my child can access the school safely.” 

“And it’s not just a little bit of money,” Sara said, she put a hand on her belly as she skimmed through the documents with a look of worry across her features. “It’s at least a half of a million dollars and that’s just for one year.” 

“How could this have gone on for so long?” Amaya said, looking over at Zari in astonishment.

“Given what’s here, I’m guessing that it’s been going on for as long as he’s been the Principal,” Zari said sitting back. 

“It’s not just the ramp, it’s all of the little things he told us we couldn’t get. We had to clean our own classrooms, pay for our own supplies, our books, our curriculum. We just had a fundraiser to pay for a new sports field. He asked teachers to donate part of their paychecks and we did, and look, he took at least a quarter of that money. We are the ones who made that school number one in the city. It was because of our hard work and he just did it to get rich.” Ava’s voice was full of disgust as she turned away, rubbing her forehead. 

“What are we going to do about this?” Amaya asked, she had a look of fierce determination across her face that fueled Zari’s own need for justice. 

“I have carefully printed out everything that I found, but I don’t know who to send this to,” Zari said with a shrug and a shake of her head. “If I send it to the wrong person, they will just sweep it under the rug. I want to make sure they have to prosecute him.”

“He has to pay for what he’s taken from our kids,” Kendra said, staring at the documents as if she could burn a hole through them. 

“Yeah, we have to make sure he doesn’t get away with this,” Sara said as she looked up from where she had been going over everything on Zari’s computer.

“We?” Zari asked, she didn’t think her friends would want to be involved in this, given that it definitely involved a few crimes.

“Yes,” Amaya said, walking over to her and putting a hand around her waist and standing next to her. “We’re in this together and will help, however we can.”

“Even though you’ve already done all the hard work,” Sara said, giving her a smile. 

“I know exactly who we can give this to in the school district who won’t sweep this under the rug,” Ava said, turning back around and rejoining the conversation. “My adopted father Hank Heywood. He works in administration for the school district. He’ll make sure this gets investigated..”

“We should give it to some journalists as well just in case,” Amaya said, giving Zari’s waste a squeeze.

“One of my old friends from college, Iris West is a journalist over at the Star City Chronicles,” Kendra added, getting up and coming over to put her arm around Zari’s other side. “She’ll make sure this gets published.”

“I don’t think any news editor would turn away this kind of story,” Sara said, turning away from the computer and pulling Ava close. 

“Good, we have to make sure that this isn’t ignored.” Zari nodded, feeling more sure than she had this morning.

“Because of you, it won’t be,” Amaya said, leaning over and giving Zari a kiss. 

……………………………………………………………………

The women spent the rest of the morning sorting through the evidence and writing a statement to be placed on top of the stack of files. Kendra contacted Iris and agreed to meet up and hand over the documents under the condition that Iris wouldn’t release anything unless the school failed to properly investigate Darhk. Ava and Zari contacted Hank with the information and worked with him to find a time to anonymously drop off the files. By the time Kuasa and Behrad were both up and ready for school they had everything sorted. 

“Okay so I will drop off the kids at school and keep an eye on Darhk throughout the day,” Ava said as she gathered her things.

“Kendra and I will meet up with Iris,” Sara said standing in the doorway as she handed Ava her coat.

“And Amaya and I will have a courier drop off the documents for Hank and then we’ll all just come back and hang out here,” Zari finished, handing Amaya her keys.

“I’ll try and make it back for lunch, but if I don’t I’ll check in after school lets out,” Ava said, leaning in to give Sara a quick kiss as she hands brushed Sara’s her belly and waist.

Zari was so relieved to have Amaya go with her even if they were just handing the documents off to a courier. Despite her worry, having Amaya there put her at ease.

“After that, I guess we just have to wait,” Kendra said as they all just stood in the hall reluctant to go.

“Yeah, from what I know it shouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks before Darhk is fired. Although school lets out for the summer in a few weeks so who knows,” Ava said, as she lingered and held Sara’s hand.

“Here’s hoping that it all goes smoothly and Darhk is out before the end of the year,” Zari said, with a nod.

“Thank you Zari,” Ava said, pulling her in for a hug. “Without you, none of this would be happening.”

Kendra, Sara, and Amaya each piled in on the hug and whispered their thanks to her. They just stood there for a moment hugging each other until they had to part.

Ava left first and then Kendra and Sara. Zari looked over at Amaya as she pulled out of the driveway. If this worked, it wouldn’t mean that ICE would never be trying to deport her. But it would mean that other families at the school wouldn’t have to go through what she was and that alone was worth fighting for.

[schmerzerling]

made manifest / 6.9k / canonverse trans!dean (read it on AO3)

wherein castiel defied god for dean before dean even knew his name.  

warning: slurs, gender/body dysphoria, some dubious consent

Dean’s twelve and bored in another health class. He’s staring at a pyramid in the margins of a textbook labeled The Hierarchy of Needs, only half-listening to the dull, muted monotone of the teacher’s lesson in the background. He’s confident he’s got this dumb thing down. After all, he’s seen it about three times this year, because they keep moving schools in the middle of the unit, and every junior high in the country apparently offsets their curriculum by one or two weeks with the sole intention of keeping Dean from getting to the really juicy bits of health.

Lecture complete, the teacher falls into his desk chair and dispassionately assigns a perky student in the front row to hand out worksheets. The promised land of goofy genitalia illustrations and condoms on bananas that lies in chapter seven is a distant dream to the depressing reality of this, a dumb photocopied doodle where he’s expected to write in where he stands on the pyramid. What he aspires to achieve in his life next. His stomach appreciates the irony of the whole situation and growls loudly as his hand hovers indecisively between the bottom tier labeled physiological needs and the next up, safety.

Are you eating? and Are you afraid for your life? Teachers usually assume the answer to that is a given for the kids in a junior high school class, but most the time but it really—isn’t. For Dean.

Not that he can write he’s not getting fed on a school worksheet. He can’t. And he can’t write that he’s not safe, either. He’s not stupid, and he doesn’t want CPS on his tail. But it’s pretty obvious, every time this dumb unit gets drilled into his head, that he’s never gonna move past the “safety” tier, not in his chosen career path. He’s always gonna be afraid for his life, right up until he doesn’t have it anymore. He taps his pen once on love/belonging section, then draws a thick line between esteem and self-actualization, like he’s hovering between them. Like he even has the option of getting to the top of the pyramid when there’s always this invisible monster hovering just under the surface that he’s too busy chasing real monsters to pursue.

His hand hovers over the Self-Actualization Goals line of the worksheet. He starts the shaky outline of a “B,” then a “T,”  and crosses both of them out, and that’s when the perky student handing out worksheets passes by him again, rubbernecking his paper before she resettles at the front of the classroom. Her name is Tiffany or Brenda or something. People seem to like her. There’s a Tiffany or Brenda at every school.

“I’ll bet I know what Deanna’s self-actualization goal is,” she stage whispers, leaning toward her neighbor. The henchman is giggling before Briffany’s even delivered the punchline. “I’ll bet she wants to be an even bigger dyke than she already is. Why else would she wear that awful flannel every day?”

Dean looks down at the dirt wedged under his stubby fingernails and the Bic pen cradled in the smooth, delicate softness of his hands. At the paper on the desk, and at the name in the corner like a foreign language.

Deanna Winchester, fourth period.

Then, on the line about self-actualization, he writes Be a bigger dyke than I already am. They’ll be on to the next town before the stupid health teacher even grades it, anyway. On to the next monster.

It’s less of a lie than he’ll ever admit out loud.

When he’s thirteen, Dean starts bleeding, and Dad drops him off where someone else can deal with it. Pastor Jim does, in his own way, with a discreet packet of bulky pads and pamphlets about abstinence from his Sunday school classes that do nothing to smooth the growing waves of tumult that are always at the back of Dean’s brain, now. The itchy-skinned wrongness that’s grown and grown and grown the more he’s tried to ignore it.

It’s raining out, so they take shelter in the chapel with Pastor Jim for want of anything better to do. Usually he’s all for playing with Sammy, but today he sits alone and sleepy, arms wrapped low around his middle, questing fingers taking in the subtle new flare of his hips and seeking to soothe the aggressive ache inside him. Sammy drives his tiny matchbox cars along the tops of of the pews, rumbling out little vroom vroom noises every time he jumps them across a gap.

Pastor Jim lights candles at the head of the church for evening services, one by one by one, until they light up the chapel, replacing the faded multicolored sunlight filtering weakly through the stained-glass windows overhead.

Dean gets up, and no matter how he tries to muffle his unwieldy feet with soft steps, they echo loud and awkward in the vaulted room. He stops just short of a statue of the Virgin Mary off to the right of the green-draped pulpit, hand still resting gently above the bloated, painful curve of his lower belly. Mary smiles at him, benevolent and wise and empty-eyed, her arms outstretched.

“Do you think God makes mistakes?” he blurts, eyes still on the sweet, feminine features. The demure bow of her mouth. The soft chin to match his own.

He’s not sure where it comes from. He doesn’t believe in God. At first, he hadn’t known he was supposed to believe, and by the time he figured out he was supposed to, he found he didn’t quite know how.

Pastor Jim stops lighting candles and Dean can feel his eyes on the side of his head, can just barely see the thin tendrils of smoke wafting upward from the dowel the pastor had been using to light candles in his periphery. He also notes the absence of the little vroom vrooms behind him, can almost see Sammy peeking above the edge of a pew, watching the exchange with his mouth hanging open.

“What’s this about?”

Dean doesn’t answer, but the silence is leaden and dragging. He can feel Pastor Jim formulating his own assumptions across the room, the same way he had been ever since the first time Dad dropped him on the good pastor’s doorstep. He makes the only pitying assumptions one could possibly make about an ill-kempt, transient child who couldn’t stay in one school long enough to learn why he was even bleeding in the first place.

Pastor Jim sighs. “Oh, Deanna. There are so many things in your life that may seem like a curse. You have experienced so much at such a young age.”

Pastor Jim is at his side all of the sudden, and Dean starts at the feel of a hand on his shoulder. It’s a marvel how quietly the pastor moves. How comfortable he seems in his own skin. His smile feels real, and he wears it like he knows what it means. Like there’s no dissonance when he looks in his mirror, and the way that it looks on his face is the way it’s supposed to look.

“But I think you’ll find that everything has its own logic. Its own intent. Its own reason.” He inclines his head gently to Mary, a deference and an example. “God and his angels are executors of a plan beyond our understanding. So, no. I don’t believe He makes mistakes.”

Dean looks back and forth between Mary and Jim, Mary and Jim and thinks—well, easy for Pastor Jim to say. Pastor Jim has a dick.

Dean takes the medical shears from the first aid kit to his hair in the height of summer when he’s fourteen.

He doesn’t know why he wears it long anymore. It frames his face wrong, thick and wavy where it falls—softening edges that are already too soft. It has a nasty habit of going to a bright, brassy, gold, so rich it looks like someone dyed it, when he spends time in the sun. He doesn’t like brushing it. Hates styling it. Hates how impractical it is when it gets in his face. And he figures that it’s time to get rid of it while it’s hot and he still has an excuse, anyway.

He’s worn it long all his life, just near the same length it was when his mom burned. It’s tickled his shoulders since he was old enough to remember it tickling. All the same, he doesn’t really think twice when it falls in thick clumps to the emerald green tile of the hotel-bathroom-of-the-week. He looks down at his stubby toes and tucks them into the fine layer of it on the floor, curling them there while he shimmies and shivers to get off the stray hairs still making their way down the back of his collar. Sam perches at the edge of the tile with a book in his hand, discreetly watching Dean discreetly watching himself in the mirror. Dean’s halfway pleased with what he sees there for the first time he can recall in a long, long while, even though the cut itself is uneven and sloppy.

“What do you think?” he says, spreading his arms for Sammy, doing a hips-first strutting swirl and spreading the mess at his feet.

Sam quirks his mouth. Frames Dean between his thumbs and forefingers like a dweeb. “S’good.” he says finally, definitive. “But…”

Dean turns back to the mirror, detail work now. He imitates the hairdressers he’s seen working in movies, squeezing pieces of his hair flat between two fingers and then chopping the ends even.

“But?” he says, poking his tongue out as he works. “But what?”

“But Dad won’t think so.”

Dean looks at himself, finishing the cut in silence. Finally noticing the cracks that cut through his reflection in the crappy bathroom mirror.

Sam isn’t wrong.

John Winchester is a man of contradictions. Most of the time he’s a hardened hunter, a single-function machine with a gun permanently affixed to one palm and a machete affixed to the other. And when he’s that John Winchester, he doesn’t mind how Dean looks. How Dean acts. In fact, he likes it. Prefers it. It suits his needs, then, that Dean’s—well, low maintenance. Someone who’s sure of himself and his body and the things it can do. The Dean that Deanna usually is until he looks in the mirror.

But—

But the rest of the time, Dad is drunk. And the older Dean gets, the more Dad tells him he looks like Mom when he’s wasted. Dad breaks him down, feature by feature, until he’s a parade of disembodied organs, a series of puzzle parts that his dad could dissemble and and smash back together in the shape of Mary Winchester.

And to some extent, Dean likes it. Wants more of it. Hungers for the comparison to something his dad clearly finds so good and pure and happy. But it exhausts its welcome fairly quickly, because as much as he loves that he might have his mom’s sterling character or charming wit, he doesn’t—he doesn’t want—

Her nose. Her lips. Her eyelashes.

Or—her hair.

He doesn’t want to be growing into the woman his mom was.

All the same, he’s expecting a reprimand at most. A few harsh words, maybe some extra laps during his workout. He waits up that night to face his punishment like a man, reading under the buzzing light in the kitchenette while the humid heat drifts in the window and cicadas chirp outside. Dad comes in at nearly two, when Sam has long-since given up waiting with him.

And of all the things he psyched himself up for while he waited—he isn’t expecting his dad to cry.

“Jesus,” Dad says the moment he steps in the door, voice soft with the hour and the Jack he’d clearly pounded back behind the wheel on the way home. He drops his duffel in the entryway and reaches out for Dean’s face, palms cupped softly. Dean’s flinched back automatically before he realizes that’s silly, and he lets his dad draw his fingers through the new liberating shortness of his hair, same as Dean had that morning. They share the same quiet reverence, but he suspects there are different reasons behind it for the both of them. “Jesus, Deanna, what happened?”

Shaken, Dean feigns nonchalance, even as the first whiskey tear leaks its slow way down his father’s cheek.

“Got hot,” Dean says, voice trembling and high and thin. “Decided it’d be easier to take care of this way.” He clears his throat, pushing past the tremors, and adds, “Sir,” in a gravelly baritone.

John looks into Dean’s eyes for a long moment, big hand still cupping the curve of his scalp, until he backs off, resigned and heavy-limbed. He runs a hand over his face, over his mouth, trailing tears all the while, and maybe he thinks Dean can’t hear him when he mumbles, “What would she fuckin’ say if she saw you now?”

But he can. And even though Dad doesn’t seem to remember it in the morning and acts surprised to see his short hair for the first time all over again—Dean does. Dean does remember. He lets it haunt him and haunt him and haunt him, like a cursed object that’s made its way under his skin and stuck there.

What would his mom say if she could see him now? What would she think of what he’s become?

Or, perhaps more importantly, what he hasn’t?

There’s no way to answer any of that without a big helping of heartache, so he just lets his dad be grateful when, on a hunt a little over a month later, a kappa tries to drag him into a water trap on a golf course by his hair but can’t get a good enough grip.

He’s got to take the wins where he can get them.

When he’s sixteen, Sam catches him duct taping his tits to his chest. Dad trucked in a bunch of supplies the night before, emptying out the car before he took it out for another week-long bender, and he had a whole couple of rolls he hadn’t used on his last hunt. And the idea grabs hold of him while he’s nursing a cup of coffee and doesn’t let go. He cups the handful he’s got on his chest, pushes the sagging weight hard against his breastbone and thinks. Well Dad’s not gonna be home for a while anyway.

When the door to the bathroom swings open halfway through the process, though, Dean freezes, tits mostly covered, a piece of tape he’d been wrapping around his chest like a string of christmas lights still held out in front of him, still attached to the roll. He’s terrified for a moment that it’s Dad, back a week early and disgusted with him from the bathroom door. But it’s just Sam. And Sam—thinks. That face he gets sometimes, the stupid neanderthal brow where he’s visibly considering.

The bite of the duct tape is hard and unyielding as they consider each other. His skin isn’t breathing underneath, and he’s already started to sweat and chafe at every point where skin meets plastic. His tits are squished up in his armpits somewhere, and even though he’s uncomfortable as hell—he gets the same little glut of satisfaction he got when he lopped off that first tuft of long hair and looked at himself in the mirror years ago.

He likes the shape of himself. The silhouette.

Sam furrows his brow. He’s muddy from the knee down. He’s supposed to be at soccer practice.

“What are you doing?” he says slowly.

Dean brings the strip of duct tape up to rip with his teeth. He says, “What are you doing?” but it’s barely intelligible around the tape in his mouth. Sam gets it anyway. Dean sticks the dangling tail-end of the tape somewhere under his elbow.

“Coach called off practice early. It’s raining,” he says. He looks over Sam’s shoulder to the kitchenette window, and it’s definitely pitch black outside, murky with heavy rain. He hadn’t even noticed. Sam points at the tape.

“That can’t be comfortable. Is that comfortable?” Sam pulls back to grab his own flat chest, wincing in sympathy. Dean reaches for where he cast off his t-shirt on the top of the toilet tank and pulls it over his head. He shuffles around Sam to get out of the bathroom, but Sam seems to have forgotten why he burst in on Dean in the first place, and he follows him back out.

“Do you do that all the time? I don’t think that’s good for you.”

“Don’t you have to piss or something?” he grumbles.

“Plus...pulling it off…” Sam grimaces.

“It’s fine, okay? It’s—whatever.”

“So you do it often?”

“No!”

“Why are you doing it now?”

“Just—leave it alone, Sam.”

“Is it some training thing? Is Dad making you?”

“Leave it!” he shouts, a whole decibel higher than he generally tries to go. It’s a shrill screech and he hates everything about it. “Just leave it!” His chest struggles gamely against the new restriction, heaving strangely and forcing him to take panting, shallow breaths. To Sam’s credit, he’s quiet for almost a minute before he points it out.

“See. You can’t breathe properly.”

“Oh my God you fucking twerp,” he pants. “I’m taking it off. Fine. Get me my fucking leatherman.”

Sam narrows his eyes, but he goes to Dean’s duffel across the room and fishes for the knife while Dean tries to regulate his breathing and act like he’s not sweating like a pig. Sam hands over the knife and gives him one more up and down glance.

“You look weird,” he says. “It just...it looks weird, Deanna.”

Dean doesn’t say anything.

When he goes back into the bathroom to do the deed and sees his own reflection in the mirror, he can see why Sam thought it looked—weird. Why it looked stupid. It was. It did. He didn’t look like—like a dude or something. Didn’t look any more like the broad-shouldered, well-stubbled, macho-man Dean that lived in his brain. He looked like a flat-chested dyke in a baggy Goodwill t-shirt.

He cuts the tape off. Nicks himself twice with the sharp knife tip and nearly screams when he rips the goddamn tape off his nipples like a band-aid. And he comes out of the bathroom without even his sports bra on, because who the fuck cares.

Sam looks at him different from then on. Looks at him like he’s a puzzle that he can put together, if he only had the right pieces. And sometimes he looks to Dean like Dean has them, like he has the vocabulary to talk about shaving his head and duct taping his chest and talking like his throat is filled up with gravel all the time. But Dean never finished health class, and he doesn’t have the words. He just knows he’s still stuck down at the bottom of the pyramid.

A couple years later, Sam hits his full teenage growth spurt, sprouts up about a foot taller than Dean and gets the big attitude to go along with it, and he stops asking Dean about his feelings. Dean’s just another thing that makes his family not normal and another reason, ultimately, to get away from it. And that’s probably a good thing, because Dean doesn’t really know how he would express how much he covets Sam’s big arms and full chest and strong chin and body hair without sounding like a fucking creep, anyway.

When Sammy leaves for college, Dean, twenty-two and tipsy and touch-starved at a bar in Kentucky, figures that his virginity is a stupid thing to be clinging to anyhow. It’s been a long time since he dropped out of high school, a long time since someone called him a dyke to his face. It’s been a long time since he slipped a finger or two or three through his own sloppy wetness and admitted to himself that it’s easy to get off to the feeling of something inside of him—as long as he didn’t think too hard about it. Shit isn’t getting any more normal and Dean isn’t any closer to being able to hop meatsuits ala a demonic entity. So that’s that. He picks the most inoffensive of the drunk fuckers that had been ogling him since he walked in. They exchange pleasantries, though Dean honestly can’t be fucked to remember his name, and then Dean takes him to his car.

It’s fine while the asshole’s mouth is occupied. He can’t get any words out as he divests Dean of his jacket and one, two, three tops. And then, following that, two nondescript gray sports bras that were keeping his tits as close to controlled as they ever got. Dean’s perched in his lap, hands tentatively curled on his shoulders, trying to act like he’s done this before.

“Buried fuckin’ treasure under here, sweetheart,” the guy says, mouthing at his tits. Dean tries to tune him out, tries not to think about the way this guy’s big hands span the whole of his waist, because it actually feels alright. “Where were you hidin’ these sweet things?” He pushes one up, then the other. Cups the one he hasn’t got his mouth all over. Rubs rough on the nipples with the palms of his hands. Dean’s never paid that much attention to his boobs except to resent them when they get in his way, but this guy is getting a hard-on just planting his mouth on them. Dean can feel the hot line in his pants and he’s driven to that more than anything, so he takes the initiative and dives into the guy’s fly.

Dean gets the sense you’re supposed to feel more than jealous when you see a real-life dick for the first time, but that’s all he’s got. It’s an okay dick as far as he can tell. It’s not pornstar dick, but it’s a nice size and a nice weight and it’s—he pushes it up against the denim still between his thighs with both hands and gasps softly, too softly. A noise that he hates. Like the demure little kittens in pornos.

It gets harder in his hand and he bites his lip to stifle the sound.

“You like that, gorgeous?” the fuckwit says, looking at Dean on top of him with a dumb, dazed look. “You like my cock, huh, Miss Sweet Deeeee-anna?”

Dean does. He likes it a whole lot. He just doesn’t like the running mouth it’s attached to. Dean figures that his show of looking like not-a-virgin must’ve gone over well with his captive audience, because it’s been all of five minutes in the backseat of his Baby, and this guy’s primed to get his dick wet. And Dean thought he was okay with it, thought he could do it, but then the guy starts tossing pussy around like it’s a hundred-dollar word.

“Want this cock in your sweet pussy, baby?” he says, and Dean goes cold to his toes, feeling, suddenly, like he’s outside himself, watching this, and he doesn’t know who he is anymore. “Wanna feel it inside your pussy?” He pops the p against Dean’s tits. Puh-ussy, and goes for Dean’s fly. He must take Dean’s shivery withdrawal as excitement. He never once slows down.

Dean’s not sure how he figured this was gonna go, if not to—intercourse. Maybe he was hoping some drunk asshole would let him feel up his dick in the back of a car, get his mouth around it a little, and that would be that. Maybe that was fucking naive.

When he was eighteen years old, there was a whole group of shifters in Dallas that preyed on the hookers outside a bar downtown, and Dad gave him a pencil skirt and a tube top and a handful of silver jewelry and told him, in so many words, to suck it up and slut it up. They needed bait.

He’s back there now. Standing on that street corner in clothes he couldn’t stand, pretending to sell parts of himself that he didn’t even want to acknowledge existed. And he remembers thinking to himself, optimistically, that he wouldn’t ever feel that exposed again. But the truth was, so long as you had a pair of tits and a round ass, no matter what lengths and layers you went through to hide them, people stared and people ogled and people thought of you like this guy. As a puh-ussy. If anything, being made to dress like a girl and put everything on display just made him about a hundred times more aware of all the ways people could tear you apart with their eyes and decide what you were before they even said so much as a word to you.

When Dean’s back in his body, back in the back seat of his car and suddenly quite sober, he finds he’s somehow ended up underneath the guy with the nice dick and the bad attitude, and he’s still running his mouth about how wet and hot Dean’s gonna be down there. Dean grounds himself with the creak of his hand clasping on Baby’s leather. Baby barely even yields in firm support. He takes in the hand that’s massaging the fading wetness inside his underwear despite the fact that Dean’s pretty sure he’s been borderline comatose for the past minute and a half, and then he suckerpunches the slathering idiot right in his dumb face.

He looks stunned right before Dean manages to find the door handle above his head, knee the mouthy motherfuck in the exposed nads, and send him sprawling out the side of the car onto the pavement outside, dick flapping and deflating and not looking near as impressive now. He somehow manages to get the door closed and locked and feels solidly on the ground, wholly, completely, at last, sprawled across one leather seat and panting into the upholstery. The guy is still squawking all indignant, pounding on the window, and the front of Dean’s pants are somewhere halfway down his thighs, but Baby has a way of making things melt away. Like he’s just a part of her leather and he doesn’t have to be a body at all anymore.

Over the next few months, he shacks up with his fair share of women and learns to give great head. He finds he likes the equipment well enough when the junk’s not in his trunk. And the next time he nuts up enough to try it with a man, it’s some poor, self-hating sonofabitch outside a gay bar in Des Moines. Dean’s close enough to a man for the meek little bastard to get off, close enough to a woman for him to not feel bad about it. He doesn’t use the p-word once—they’re both chasing the same fantasy. They make a fine pair.

Dean’s twenty-six, and he corners Sam at an apartment in Palo Alto with nothing but dismay when he sees how big his brother’s gotten. How tall he’s gotten. How effortlessly large and imposing he manages to be, just standing across the room. He tosses Dean around like dirty laundry, cleans his clock despite the fact that he’s been training for months in preparation for seeing his baby brother again. And Sam should be rusty damnit. He should be soft. But no. He’s got Dean pinned on the floor like a stuck butterfly, struggling under one of his massive forearms, in five seconds flat.

It fucking stings.

Sam introduces him to his pretty girlfriend as his sister Deanna, and that stings even more. Because even though he’s still stuck down at survival, perpetually in self-actualization’s rearview mirror, he always figured. Well. Sam knows him better than anyone ever had. Probably better than anyone ever would. And if this is a part of him that even Sam can’t see, he figures there never ever will be anyone that does.

They never quite get around to talking about it either. There’s always something more important. College boy’s probably got the words Dean’s lacking now, if Dean ever bothered to pick his brain about it. Sammy could probably put a name to the gag reflex that wanna sends his birth control pills right back up with his breakfast, to the quiet that comes to him when he’s done a bit too much human interaction, but—

Jess dies, Dad dies, Sam dies. Killer clowns, stolen identities, heart attacks, demon possessions, vengeful spirits, ticking clocks, reapers, and it’s just as little Deanna figured it would be, twelve years old and sitting in health class with a sad roadmap of her whole life laying out in front of her on a Xeroxed piece of printer paper. There was never going to be a point where Dean mattered more than the rest of the world. Where this did. Never going to be a point where Dean got to care about more than living to see tomorrow. There was never going to be a point where Dean got to slow down and unpack why it made his blood boil when Sam printed the surname Scully on one of his fake FBI IDs, or why he felt the need to dismantle an entire hotel room with a tire iron while he waited for his dumb little brother to come back alive from a hunt in a men’s prison. A hunt where he couldn’t follow. There was never going to be self-actualization for Deanna Winchester. And there was never going to be a Dean.

There was never going to be, and there never was. Because then Dean dies.

At least all bodies, Dean figures later, innards strung in front of him on some kind of hellish clothesline, look pretty much the same when they’re inside-out.

They say your whole life flashes in front of your eyes when you die, but it turns out that happens when you come back to life, too. Like a deluge of your brain learning how to remember, drawing memories back into it like a prickling limb filling with blood again. And even in a shallow grave, even in the midst of a dark, waking nightmare of being buried alive, there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance to be had when you, past you, the you whose body you inhabited for twenty-nine years and whose sensory memories you’re currently reabsorbing, is different from the one that’s scraping long fingernail gashes into the top of a plywood coffin.

He has the presence of mind to navigate his way to the surface, because in the pyramid of the hierarchy of needs, breathing is pretty much the rocky foundation that forms the base. When he gets to the surface, dazed, it’s—an overload. Everything’s the wrong size. Everything is too bright. The dirt is too hard, too warm. There’s no pain for the first time in a long time, but at the same time, everything is painful. Everything. Down to the drag of the dusty air in his lungs, like shards of glass scraping up his windpipe.

That’s why it probably takes him almost ten full minutes of panting into the dirt by his own shoddy gravemarker to realize that he has a cock.

He flops over onto his back and pats down the front of his pants. He doesn’t remember which pants he died in, but these definitely weren’t made to accommodate the new addition to his anatomy, and it’s not hard to feel the solid lump of it pressed up against his zipper. Likewise, everything up top is too small, too—nothing’s torn up, so Sam must’ve redressed him before he planted him, but his arms are about ready to bust through the seams of his plaid when he bends them at the elbow to feel his chest. Solid, not soft. No tits to be found, in his armpits or otherwise.

He has to stagger almost a mile before he finds a reflective surface, and he spends almost the whole trip there looking at his hands, his feet, trying to fathom the new size of himself, the new shape of himself, his new wide-legged gait. And when he gets to a desolate, empty gas station, miles from any civilization, the only thing he can even think to do is look into the bent and unpolished side of a freezer, the barely reflective sheen of an unclean window to see—himself. He trails in frantic disbelief from reflective surface to reflective surface through the store until he finds the entrance to a dingy little bathroom and flicks on the light. A mirror.

There he is.

There’s not a lot of grand revelation in it, not for him, because this is the Dean that’s been living in the back of his brain since he was old enough to differentiate the things that made a male male and a female female. He still looks like—himself. The body he’s used to. Deanna. He still looks like his mom, more like his mom than his dad despite everything, and there’s still an edge of femininity to his features, but anyone who looked at him would be able to see, easy as anything, the Dean that he didn’t have the words to bring to life before he died.

He lifts his shirt, half to reassure himself that there’s nothing scarred or torn, half to see the flatness of his stomach and chest. He runs his hands over the stubble on his face, marvelling at the texture. At the bend of his arm in his too-small sleeve, he pops all the stitches in the seam along his bicep with an audible tearing noise, and he would almost say he was giddy if this strange turn of events weren’t tempered by the sporadic memories of forty-odd years of torture, and if that specific brand of tear didn’t remind him of the way skin sounded when you pulled it clean away from muscle.

So mostly he’s. Overwhelmed. He holds off on checking out his new junk, not sure he can stomach a look at his penis when just the sight of his Adam’s apple is a little bit more than he can process.

(Well. He takes one little peek, thumbing the waistband of his pants open. Just to be sure he wasn’t—mistaken.)

(He wasn’t.)

(He repeats the resulting, “Well I’ll be damned,” in his new voice six times, just to make sure that wasn’t a mistake either.)

When he can tear himself away from his own reflection, he steals all the money from the register and then he takes his time lavishly sorting through the pathetic clothing selection in the tiny gas station, looking at the men’s sizes with a practical purpose rather than a covetous one for the first time in his life. He leaves in a men’s size large Gone Fishin’ shirt that hangs perfectly on his shoulders and a pair of douchey cargo shorts that need a belt to stay on his hips.

Freshly changed and starting to settle in his skin, a new feeling starts dogging at him. The sort of hair-raising feeling you get when you know there’s something watching you, the prickling awareness you get on your skin when you’re being scrutinized. He pushes past the feeling, trying to formulate a plan, and he remembers that there’s a pay phone outside he could use. A couple cars he could probably jack if his new broad fingers are half as clever as the old dainty ones were. He concentrates hard, even gets as far as going back to the register to steal some pay phone change when he remembers that—that if he called Bobby, if he somehow got to Sam right now. Even if they miraculously believed that he’d been ganked from hell, they’d never believe he got ganked out with a dick.

A fine tremble starts in his hands. He rubs the back of his neck, trying distractedly to wipe off the pair of eyes he feels planted there. He grabs a water bottle out of the humming freezer by the register and tips his head back to take a long, hard pull—acutely aware, again, of that crazy fucking Adam’s apple and the strength in his hand when he squeezes.

When he tips his head back down and takes a long, calming breath, resolving to figure out how exactly he’s gonna make this whole dick thing work—

There’s a guy in a trenchcoat standing outside. Stock still, hands hanging awkwardly at his sides, hair all mussed up like someone’s been running their hands through it. There’s a simultaneous sense of calm and tumult around him, ancient like a lightning storm but unpredictable like one too. He almost crackles with energy, and the store around Dean feels charged. Amped up past what he’d felt a few minutes ago, far past the static crackle of waking up in a completely new form.

Dean’s seen and felt enough non-humans to know that this is one, just from the way he carries himself. Dean rubs his hands together. Up and down his thick forearms. Up to the sturdy new divot of his breast and collarbone. He reorders his jangled nerves, aligns his scattered thoughts, and tries to be in the headspace is Dad pounded into him—he was always emphasizing forethought and planning for Dean on hunts. Always made sure that Dean knew he wasn’t strong enough, like John and Sam were, to strong-arm his way out of a situation. He was just a woman and he had to think.

He’s pretty far from that headspace though. There’s something invincible about the feeling of a bicep that strains against your shirt. Shoulder blades that ripple with power without even trying. Big feet, long legs, muscley thighs. And a height that meant he looked at things from a different angle—down instead of up. Past his nose instead of through his bangs.

So maybe he should set a trap. And maybe he shouldn’t go outside to face whatever unknown is waiting for him in an oversized suit and a trenchcoat. That’s probably what Deanna would’ve done. But today, Dean scans the store for a weapon. Eventually, he finds a big canister of salt and an iron ice pick that someone was using to chip at permafrost in a Coca Cola freezer by the entrance. And somehow, he feels more prepared to face whatever’s out there than he had at his most prepared in another body. Like someone stripped off his armor and give him a lighter, better set.

He approaches the open door, ice pick in one hand, salt in the other. The creature’s eyes travel to where he is even before he should be visible to it. There’s not much point in hiding anyway, so he stands in the doorframe, visibly armed.

Once Dean’s walking down the stairs of the gas station and onto the hard, dusty earth outside, the guy—tilts his head. His pupils seem to grow like a cat’s, and he makes no secret of taking in every inch he can of Dean’s body, from the top of his uneven haircut down to the new, strange, hairy legs that poke out from the bottoms of his stupid goddamn shorts.

He stops about twenty feet short of the guy and watches him watch Dean, watches the unabashed way he takes he takes him in and, based on the surprisingly human uptick to the side of his mouth, the unabashed way he’s enjoying it. The longer he stands opposite him, the more electric the atmosphere becomes. By the time Dean’s decided to take the initiative and take a chance with the ice pick, storm clouds have gathered out of nowhere, and the wind is whipping his dumb coat every which way.

Despite the innocuous tax accountant getup and the pretty, blue-eyed meatsuit, he has a sneaking suspicion that whatever this thing is—he had something to do with dragging Dean’s ass out of hell. He thinks of Pastor Jim in that moment as he drums his fingers on the handle of the ice pick. He thinks of the kind of power whatever this is had to have not just to undo what had been done, but to restructure it. Reorder it. To take whatever preordained sort of destiny people like Pastor Jim thought there was and throw it out the fucking window without a thought.

He raises his makeshift weapon quick, a question hard on the edge of his tongue, brand-new testosterone blazing through his veins like a virgin shot of liquid heroin.

But the creature speaks first. His voice is low and crackly, a pitch Dean used to try and achieve when he had a woman’s vocal cords and all the determination in the world to defy their limits.

He says, “Hello, Dean.”

And his smirk breaks into a full-fledged smile, like he’s been waiting his whole life long just to say those two words.

The ice pick makes a solid thunk as it hits the earth and settles in the shadowed grass at the creature’s feet, dark on its own like something bigger than the both of them, something Dean can’t see, is casting a shadow longer than Dean is tall.

And in the husky, disbelieving depth of his new-old voice, Dean says, “What did you call me?”