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nobody does it like you do - act 6
The final part!! I hope this is a satisfying conclusion! Thank you so much to everyone who has reblogged/commented/shared - it has meant so much. Special thank you again to @morganofthewildfire I'd still be working away at this fic if it wasn't for you, I don't know I ever would have finished it off. Your comments and analysis helped me so much and made this fic better than I could have alone, I'm so grateful.
13k - masterlist - ao3
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There are five weeks between the eventful wrap party and her first day shooting the Netflix miniseries in Antica. Five weeks for Aelin to sort her shit.
It’s ambitious, and probably unattainable, but she needs a goal.
She needs something to draw her mind away from Rifthold and the director she knows is no longer there.
She gives herself a week of self pity. A week of lying around her sparsely decorated and impersonal Orynth apartment dwelling and pointedly ignoring the headlines she knows have been released. Elide let her know only one picture was captured of her with tears in her eyes leaving the party. Only one and gods bless Elide she shut it down.
Aelin lies on her uncomfortable couch in well-worn pyjamas with unwashed hair and runs through the photos on her phone of her and Fenrys, her and Manon, and the group of them together on set doing whatever shit they used to do.
She spends more time than she should like that. She sits there until her coffee table is overflowing with takeaway wrappers and Aedion and Elide have stopped texting more than once a day. She’s awful for ignoring them but she’s still mortified.
She hasn’t been able to look Aedion in the eyes since he dropped her back at her apartment after their long flight home from Rifthold. He didn’t say much. After he managed to again get her out of the party with minimal press she had cried, curled up between Aedion and Lysandra in their bed, and he didn’t offer judgement or instruction.
He just held her, whispering words she can’t remember but appreciates anyway. Now she hasn’t replied to any of his texts.
She hasn’t texted Fenrys or Manon either. She doesn’t know what to say.
She knows Fenrys jumped immediately into another movie, an action movie she knows he’s been chomping at the bit to get training for, and Manon into the second series of her show that she’s probably too famous for now.
They’re busy. They’ll understand. At least that’s what she tells herself.
The worst thing she does in that week is pour over the photos she has of Rowan. She didn’t realise she had so many but her camera roll is full of silver and green.
There are photos of just him, looking like Rowan, tall and handsome and understatedly happy, smiling covert little smiles at Aelin behind the camera. He was used to her instructing him to pose by the end of filming, she loved snapping away as he did anything. Eating, sleeping, smiling, everything - if it was Rowan she wanted it captured.
Now every photo is a knife to the chest.
The ones of the two of them together are worse, they twist the knife, pain splicing through her until she can hardly breathe. There are pictures of their cheeks pressed together, eyes shining, some serious, some silly. In all of them Aelin can clearly see her own happiness.
She can’t stop looking at them even as tears swell in her eyes and her throat gets tight.
For one week.
Until it’s been seven days since her flight landed back in Orynth and she gets up off her couch and deletes them. She almost doesn’t, her thumb hovers over the button for a good minute before she presses down but then it’s done and they’re gone. She showers and changes her clothes, she throws away all the rubbish on her coffee table and makes a plan.
Filming the movie with all of them it was easy to feel better than she did before, surrounded by new and exciting things, new people who didn’t know her before or treat her differently because of it. It was easy to lose herself in who she was there and with them.
Now though, she’s back to real life and real life lasts for an uneventful three weeks.
She tries what she can, she reads, she runs, she bakes, she teaches herself how to knit. None of it is satisfying and it's hard to make it stick. It’s all boring and never quite captures her attention the way she hopes. Never captures her attention enough to tear it away from Rowan and Rifthold.
A week before she flies out to Antica it changes.
She stumbles upon the change, completely accidentally, and she doesn’t realise what she’s needed until it's right in front of her.
Her usual run route is obstructed by construction and so she takes a left where she usually takes a right, heading down into the west side of the city, the side she doesn’t often frequent.
She used to. She used to spend hours strolling the streets letting the warmth of the sun and Sam’s hand in hers settle into her skin as they observed the numerous bakeries and small boutiques. Thankfully the scenery appears to have changed since.
The chill breeze of the September Orynth air teases the loose strands of hair tickling her face as she comes to a stop outside the sleek shop front. The wooden panels are painted a dark, glossy black and the windows are polished so brightly they reflect what’s left of the sunlight.
Music of Mistward the sign reads in curved, white lettering.
She can see her reflection in the shop window, her cheeks flushed, hair unruly, her running gear nowhere near to what would be appropriate attire for the shop dripping in class but she can’t turn away.
A bell tinkles as she pushes through the door, her headphones gripped tight in her fist as the gentle jazz playing over the sound system greets her. She doesn’t like jazz, it’s not her thing, but along with the musk of wood in the air it’s soothing in welcoming her in.
She passes walls of guitars and violins until she reaches the instrument that caught her eye. It’s sleek, black lid propped open revealing the elegant strings, pulled tight in neat lines. The sharp contrast of the keys against each other, bright against the deep black of the case. Her fingers ghost over them, dying to press down.
She hasn’t played since those days in Rowan’s Doranelle home. She’s wanted to, longed to feel the cool keys under her fingertips and the flood of the music pouring out of her, but the cheap keyboard in her Orynth apartment wouldn’t do Rowan’s beautiful instrument justice.
Aelin would rather not play at all than attempt a cheap imitation of what she felt there.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” A voice sounds behind her, low and raspy but cheerful all the same.
She turns, taking in the older man, his grey hair cut short and his classic shirt and slacks pressed crisp. She glances back to the piano before facing him fully.
“Stunning,” she breathes.
The man steps forwards and offers her his hand. She slips her hand into his and he pumps firmly as he introduces himself.
“Emrys,” he says. “Welcome to Music of Mistward.”
“Aelin,” she says, surprised to hear her voice thick.
“Great to meet you, Aelin,” Emrys says with an ancient smile. He nods towards the piano. “Do you play?”
“No,” she says and Emrys’ smile flickers. “Yes, I mean I used to. I want to,” is what she settles on.
He nods, satisfied, before taking a step closer to the piano. He runs a hand over the top, almost reverently and smiles to himself.
“Antique,” he starts, “almost one hundred years old but well loved. I acquired it recently - here we deal mostly in antique instruments, it’s a passion for both myself and my husband. The previous owner only sold it to me when she inherited it and didn’t know how to play, she wanted it to find a good home.”
He shares a smile with her as if she’s in on the joke but her breathing still hasn’t settled.
“Satin Ebony finish,” Emrys continues, “eighty-eight keys, all original but preserved to the highest quality. Accompanying bench, cut with refreshed velvet. I don’t know in all my years I’ve seen such a fine instrument as old as this.”
Aelin glances back to the piano, it’s big, it won’t fit in her apartment in Orynth but she doesn’t care. She can… adjust. She hasn’t felt a pull like this in a while, she doesn’t want to deny it when she does.
“How much?” she almost demands from the man in front of her.
He appraises her and she knows what he sees. Her bedraggled state and the tension through her shoulders doesn’t give the impression of someone with this much cash to throw around. She abruptly ignores that the way she probably can afford this is because of Rowan’s movie.
When he doesn’t speak she repeats herself, more firmly. “How much?”
“Our price includes delivery and tuning on arrival.” He seems apprehensive of telling her the truth. Aelin waits.
When he finally reveals the figure Aelin blinks. And then she extends her hand. “I’ll take it.”
To his credit Emrys just nods, shaking her hand. “You don’t want to at least play it first?”
Aelin feels the smirk she hasn’t worn in a while creep onto her face. “Is there a risk you’re pulling a fast one on me?”
Emrys returns her smile, a playful glint in his eye. “Not a chance, Aelin. Please follow me to the register where I can take your details.”
Aelin almost stumbles. Almost, but then recovers.
“Any chance I can pay a deposit and then let you know where you’ll be delivering sometime soon?”
Emrys winks knowingly. “Absolutely.”
She follows him to the counter, signs away part of a disgustingly large total of money but leaves with a sense of satisfaction. It’s an accomplishment, a step for purely selfish reasons.
The first thing she does when she leaves the shop is call Elide.
Aelin meets her new therapist two days before she flies out to Antica.
She hasn’t called her old one in months and thinks that’s probably a sign. And she’s all about changes at the moment.
She isn’t shooting in Antica for too long, only a couple of months until she’s back in Orynth and then back to Rifthhold for press. Her stomach drops everytime the thought wanders into her head.
She’s excited to be back in Rifthold, but the company is daunting.
Fenrys and Manon will easily be pissed at her disappearance. She knows Manon will play aloof but she also knows she’ll be upset, Fenrys too. Aelin didn’t mean to hurt them, didn’t mean to drop off the face of the Earth, and she knows she’s let them down but Fenrys and Manon remind her of Rowan. She couldn’t trust the conversation not to eventually steer towards him and Aelin isn’t ready for that.
Their break-up feels weirdly anticlimactic. After everything they built to, Aelin just dipped.
She knows it seems that way to Rowan at least. She hasn’t texted him, or rang him or anything since the party. She’s wanted to, wanted more than anything to hear his voice as she cried, but it’s not fair to him to drag it out and she knows that. She knew when she drew the line she had to stay on her side of it, no matter how much it hurt.
She had cried until her head pounded and her throat was raw. She cried until her eyes itched with no tears left to fall, until all that came out of her was hoarse screeches as she ached to hear him call her Fireheart one last time.
But no one needs to know that, she had kept it as hidden as she could.
She definitely didn’t need any more paparazzi pictures of her with red-rimmed eyes looking downtrodden. She couldn’t bear the thought of Rowan, or worse her mother, seeing them.
She knows Fenrys and Manon; Aedion, Lysandra and Elide would see through her flimsy excuses and so it was easier to stay quiet.
She’s not thinking about facing them yet. She supposes that will be something that likely comes up with this new therapist, but so far on her own, she’s choosing avoidance.
She gets Maeve’s number from Dorian, and she comes highly recommended by a number of Dorian’s other high profile clients. She’s well-versed in non-disclosure agreements, secret sessions and back street exits; she feels like the perfect fit for Aelin.
Unofficially, Dorian lets her know Maeve takes no shit, and that’s also just what Aelin needs.
They agree to online sessions while she’s in Antica, but Maeve recommended an initial meeting and Aelin is open to all of her suggestions.
Their first hour is not directly her most life changing but it’s a start.
“Welcome, Aelin,” Maeve says, sweeping an arm out towards the firm-looking, orange couch in the centre of the room.
Aelin takes a seat, mutters her thanks and glances around the room.
The room should feel cold with the exposed brick and minimalistic decor, the only furniture being the couch Aelin perches on, the almost regal armchair Maeve reclines in and a lamp, but it doesn’t and she gets comfortable tucking her feet beneath her thighs and leaning against the arm.
“So,” Maeve begins, surveying her in the way only a true professional can. “Let’s get started.”
Aelin feels bare beneath her gaze, and like everything about Maeve and her practise it should be unnerving but she just blinks against the scrutiny.
“Why are you here today? You could start with sharing why you have made this appointment.”
And isn’t that the million gold-mark question?
Aelin takes a deep breath through her nose and raises her chin.
“I don’t want to move backwards,” she admits. “Or maybe I just want to know I’ve actually moved forwards.”
Maeve’s expression stays calm, but Aelin knows she’d be smirking if she could. She’s well aware of how therapy works but even so, speaking her thoughts aloud can help to verify them in her own mind.
Aelin hopes so at least.
Their hour is over quickly and Aelin is resolved that Maeve is a good fit, reassured in Dorian’s claim that the woman takes no shit. Her all-knowing assessment of Aelin should have been unsettling but the frank dissection is what she needs.
Online therapy, especially fitting it around shooting might be a challenge but it’s for the best. As much as she values her independence and standing on her own two feet, Aelin is big enough to admit that facing her mother again may require some professional guidance. Seeing Rowan too, but again, she’s not thinking about that yet.
Antica is hot and Aelin is sweaty within seconds of stepping out of the air-conditioned luxury of the airport. That feeling lasts the entire time she’s there, disrupting the otherwise enjoyable time she has shooting the series.
Her new co-stars are fine, they invite her out with them and make her smile but she can’t help as though a part of her is always comparing them to who and what she left in Rifthold. Aelin tries her best to enjoy her time there with them, she hosts dinner parties and invites them to a game of Aedion’s but nothing quite hits the same as her time spent on The Crescent City.
She rationalises it to Maeve, that The Crescent City was a big turning point in her life and that it has nothing to do with Rowan, Fenrys or Manon, but she’s not sure she even believes it herself.
She spends the rest of her time in Antica trying to convince herself, and Maeve, that she’s moving past it. That she’s moving forwards or else she’ll move backwards. She’s not sure how much of it is futile.
The Crescent City is done, whether she likes it or not, and she can’t deny it changed her in ways she didn’t expect. It’s a hard pill to swallow that maybe it changed her beyond return to how she was before. She also can’t quite figure out whether she thinks that’s a bad thing or not.
They have a dinner for the core cast and crew, including Rowan, once they’re all back in Rifthold for the beginning of the press cycle. They have one night to reacquaint before they’re shoved into the whirlwind that is interviews, photoshoots and promotion.
She’s seen the trailer already and it’s just as she expected but more. It’s dark and dreary with flashes of brightness from herself and Fenrys and she’d want to watch it if she chanced a viewing as a member of the public.
What is surreal, is to see herself in a polished version of the film they were creating. Or at least a part of it.
She said each of the lines, rehearsed them over and over until they fell off her tongue without thought, but she still doesn’t recognise the girl in the trailer. A droplet of pride slips down her chest at the realisation that it’s not Aelin in the trailer but Feyre. She knows she’s good, has known it all along, but the realisation and reaffirmation is ecstasy better than any drug.
She hovers outside the restaurant, watching through the window, needing a couple more seconds before she submits herself to the assault of them all again. She still hasn’t replied to either Fenrys or Manon and the thought presses on her like lead but it’s too late to change that now.
If she’s honest she’s concerning herself with Fenrys and Manon in the hopes of distracting herself from the fact that she’s seconds away from Rowan. Seconds away from him in the flesh, his solid body in front of her that she had learned almost as well as her own.
Her palms are clammy and she wipes them against the fabric of her trousers. The upcoming interviews and photoshoots will all be styled for her and so she’s relishing in her last moments for a while of truly dressing like Aelin.
She takes a step towards the restaurant door, the tip of her trainer bumping the wood when a voice sounds behind her.
“Well, hello there, Stranger.”
Aelin braces herself, hand paused outstretched where it had been reaching for the door.
She turns, biting her lip as she faces Fenrys. He looks the same as he did, skin still golden, eyes still dancing with mischief, but his golden curls are trimmed shorter than the last time she saw him. His expression is carefully blank.
“I- Hi… um,” she stumbles over the words. “I’ve missed you.”
Fenrys breaks almost immediately. “Oh thank the fucking gods.”
He surges forwards and wraps her into a tight hug. Aelin clings to him, fighting the tears in her eyes as she buries her face in his chest. She’s gone far too long without this, without him, and it’s all her own fault.
“Do you have any idea how much I missed you?” Fenrys asks. “Oh wait, no you don’t. I’m assuming your phone broke, or was stolen or something since you never replied to any of my texts letting you know.”
Aelin knows her cheeks are stained pink. “I’m sorry,” she admits.
“I know.” His voice softens, losing the teasing edge as he presses a gentle kiss to her cheek.
He pauses before he speaks again, his eyes running over her face. “You could have texted me anytime, you know. Manon too. I know you might forget or try to convince yourself otherwise, but we are your friends. You could have called us about literally anything.”
Aelin feels like she could cry. She’s not sure that she isn’t.
“It doesn’t have to be about anything serious, especially not related to the movie,” or Rowan he doesn’t say but Aelin hears it. “We just wanted to hear your stupid voice.”
Aelin pouts. “My voice isn’t stupid.”
She pokes her tongue out as he rolls his eyes, easily falling back into the dynamic they had shaped a few months ago.
“Not what I meant,” he says before pausing, taking her in as she stands in front of him. “You can’t lose us that easily, you know. We’re like rats or fleas or something. Hard to get rid of.”
“Nice,” she comments, but her chest is tight at his words.
He smiles at her before adding, “and you had fucking better text me back.”
Aelin laughs through the sniffles he’s kindly ignoring. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and finds his contact. Hi she sends and feels his phone buzz against her.
“Much better,” he says and releases her from his arms. “Now, are you ready for a night of the finest dining all on the studio credit card?”
Aelin laughs again. “Lead the way.”
He shoots her a wink and waltzes ahead to hold the door open for her.
Fenrys’ presence shouldn’t reassure her the way it does, especially after the way she has treated him but she clings to him anyway. He’s her buffer for now, a crutch for tonight and tonight only. Once tonight is over and tomorrow begins she and Rowan can be professional, they managed it for months during filming and this should be no different.
Rowan still looks the way he did the night she broke his heart.
His silver hair falls elegantly over his forehead as he bends his head to talk to Manon, the pair of them are engrossed in a conversation as she and Fenrys walk over, not spotting them yet. She loves his hair, loves the thick silver waves and the way they feel between her fingers. She loves the way any attempt he makes to arrange the thick strands is never quite able to tame the beast. She loves the shirt he has on, with the sleeves rolled up exposing inches of tanned skin and dark ink, the same worn green cotton she wore numerous times around his living room all those months ago. She can still remember the feel of it against her bare skin.
His smile is the same, his green eyes crinkling as his lips barely part as he does his best to hold it back.
His smile is the same until he spots her.
He catches sight of her when she reaches the table and his smile drops, the shutters closing over his expression so fast she wouldn’t know he knew how to smile had she not just seen it.
It tears her chest in two and any attempt at a smile on her part is futile. It’s all she can do to make it to her seat without stumbling and she’s sure she misses any other greetings she gets as she slumps onto the chair opposite Manon. She absently notes Fenrys dropping in at her side.
She can’t look away from Rowan, her eyes scanning to try and find anything that distinguishes him from the man she loved all those months ago. She finds nothing. He’s still Rowan and Aelin still… fuck.
He recovers before she does, ever the collected courtier, clearing his throat and nodding.
“Aelin,” he says and she adores the sound of her name on his tongue.
“Hi Rowan,” she manages and hears how weak she sounds. Rowan hears it too. She can tell from the purse of his lips and the tension in the hand he rests along the back of Manon’s chair.
Aelin allows her eyes to drift to Manon and she finally catches the thunderous expression the younger girl wears.
“Hi,” she whispers and Manon blinks.
“Hi?” Manon repeats incredulously.
Aelin is fucked.
“Five months and I get a hi?”
It’s loud and a few heads turn their way. It’s simultaneously mortifying and everything Aelin deserves.
“I’m sorry,” she says plainly.
She could lie, make up some useless excuses but in the end there’s nothing else but the truth and if Manon wants her to grovel she will, she’s just not sure this is the time or place.
Fenrys shares her thoughts. “Later, Manon,” he says, gently.
Rowan’s eyes stay firmly glued to the tablecloth as Manon frowns, seemingly unwilling to let it go.
After a few seconds, seconds Aelin spends waiting for the ground to open up and swallow her, Manon nods. She nods and turns to Fenrys, demanding to know what he’s ordering. And just like that Aelin has a moment to catch her breath.
She knew this dinner wouldn’t be easy, knew she’d be walking into the lion's den of her own making, but she hadn’t expected it to be as hard. Hadn’t expected seeing Rowan to feel like a slap, hadn’t expected Manon’s hurt to scrape across her skin leaving her raw.
She tries not to think she deserves it, Maeve would only raise a brow as if to say we’ve been over this. The thought is sobering, and she manages to lift her head.
It is what it is, what’s done is done and she can only apologise and move forwards.
As much as she tries to resist, Aelin finds herself watching Rowan throughout the night. It’s scary how familiar he feels, he should feel like a stranger, but he feels like she knows him too well. He laughs when she expects, rolls his eyes when she predicts. He orders what she thought he would and he sips away at an orange juice the way he did the first dinner they all had together.
Aelin already feels so different than she did the last time she was in Rifthold and he seems unchanged.
She observes for most of the night, feeling drained despite her minimal contributions to the conversations. She speaks when spoken to and actively avoids speaking when Rowan does, she definitely doesn’t respond to anything he says even though she wants to at least twice and wants to laugh a couple more.
She makes it through and clings to Fenrys again as they all leave, linking her arm through his as they leave the restaurant. He knows what she’s doing but graciously guides her out of the building. Once on the pavement outside the restaurant he pauses and turns to her.
“What hotel are you staying in while you’re here?”
The rest of the group are milling about, calling taxis and bidding their farewells. Aelin doesn’t know how she’s getting back yet, she’s assuming she’ll split a ride with someone.
“Um, the Glass Castle, I think,” she says, desperately trying to recall the name of the hotel she dumped her bags in a few hours earlier.
“Boo,” Fenrys laughs, pointing his thumb down. “They’ve got me in the Torre Cesme. Think I’m ages away from you.”
Aelin laughs, disappointed but ready to order her own taxi back when a voice she didn’t expect sounds.
“I’ve just ordered a cab to the Glass Castle, I’m staying there too. You can jump in if you want.”
Rowan.
She shoots Fenrys a panicked look but his expression is pure glee.
“That would be great thanks, Boss,” Fenrys says, shrugging his arm out of hers and nudging her towards Rowan.
“No problem, Boyo.” Rowan offers Fenrys a dark grin at the nickname and the sight of it stills her. It’s new, he used to roll his eyes whenever Fenrys would drop it into conversation, but now Rowan’s playing along. And the grin, the curl of the lips and the narrowing of the eyes, it’s sexy as fuck.
It’s only taken one night and she’s back in the danger zone. She doesn’t want to be, hell, she wants him to take her back to his hotel room and peel off her clothes but this is Rowan. She’s spent the last few months trying to get over him, falling into bed with him the first night she sees him again would not likely be defined as progress.
He’s also not likely to want that after what she did.
“You don’t have to,” she says. The first direct thing she’s said to him since their greeting.
“I know.” A slight shrug of his broad shoulders. “But we’re going to the same place, it wouldn’t seem logical to take different cars.”
Logic. That’s all it is.
“Right.” She doesn’t think she’s ever felt so awkward with him, not even at the start. “Thank you,” she says, following him to the car.
Fenrys shoots her a grin as he slips into his own taxi. Traitor.
Rowan holds the door open for her and slips in behind her. She tries not to think anything of the fact he could have easily taken the front seat.
The ride is silent apart from the easy chit chat he makes with the driver, another thing she’s not sure she noticed him do before, and she stares out the window as the city passes by. The streets of Rifthold are not her home but she feels a brightness as she glances down the curving roads, spotting groups of people milling about enjoying the night.
She knows the first call she made to Elide in weeks was the right call. Elide is the only person she’d trust with her bank account and access to real estate listings. The link to the flat her friend had sent over has stayed open in her browser since she got it.
It’s modern with classic twists, situated in a recently renovated old warehouse with miles of exposed brick and rustic wooden panelling. She loves the master bedroom the most, with its adjoining en suite with a huge bathtub she can picture herself soaking in. She has a viewing booked in two days but doubts she’ll even need it.
It’s not long before the taxi pulls up outside the hotel and she follows Rowan through the glass doors. He presses the button for the lifts and Aelin shifts in the awkward silence.
Awkward is not something she’s used to with Rowan. Or it wasn’t before.
The doors slide open and again she follows him inside.
He pauses with a hand hovering over the buttons for the floors. “Which floor?”
“Nine.”
Aelin hates these one word exchanges compared to the hours they used to share talking about everything and nothing. She can’t believe this is the man she was so vulnerable with.
His short huff of laughter drags her gaze to his face.
“What?”
“Makes sense,” is what he says, shaking his head and pressing only the button for the ninth floor.
The ride takes seconds, a minute at most, filled with the silence between them.
When the doors open to the ninth floor she steps out, determined not to follow him again, and she feels him follow her. Even now she’s so aware of his powerful body and the way he moves it. She shouldn’t be so attracted to the power emanating from him, from the breadth of his shoulders to the sureness of his steps. She wants him, doesn’t think she ever stopped, except now he’s the forbidden fruit. Forbidden only by her own actions.
She reaches her door, room 905, but pauses with her key tucked in her hand.
“Thanks for letting me share your cab,” she says, finding herself desperate not to say goodbye yet. “I can transfer you for half.”
That finally, finally, cracks a whisper of a smile but she’s not sure she enjoys his laughter if it’s at her. “Don’t worry about it.”
That should be the end of it, she should open her door and shut it behind her, they have a few weeks ahead of them that will be hard enough without any complications.
She left him and he seems gracious enough to have mostly moved past it.
“It was good to see you, Aelin,” he says, seemingly unwilling to let the night end as well. She doesn’t let the seed of hope sprout because what would be the point?
Nevertheless, Aelin smiles, leaning back against her door.
Rowan continues, “even if I wasn’t sure how the night was going to go.”
Her attention is spiked. “What do you mean?”
She can’t lie, a part of her expects him to back down at the edge to her voice. He doesn’t.
“I wasn’t sure if you were going to pretend nothing ever happened between us.”
She blinks, giving herself a second to process.
Maybe this isn’t the same Rowan from all those months ago. That night he let her walk away from him, gods know she needed it, but a dark little part of her had wanted him to fight her harder. Fight harder for her. When he hadn’t she’d taken it as her sign.
She knows the expectation was toxic, if he had fought her it would have only pissed her off, but she wishes she’d had someone to tell her it was the wrong choice. It would have helped to hear in the moment, rather than be faced with Rowan months down the line that she wants and can’t have.
The Rowan in front of her, the third Rowan she’s known, stares her down. His eyes peel away each of the layers she’s worked with Maeve for months to don in a second.
“I wouldn’t do that to you.”
It’s honest and maybe she’s not the same Aelin as a few months ago either.
That’s what she had asked for that night in the cool air, to move past them with as little commotion as possible, stirring up as little attention as they could. She hadn’t wanted to let them eclipse the movie and yet that ended up being exactly what she had accomplished.
Now though, Aelin knows better.
Rowan nods as his eyes dart across her face. He seems to step closer without realising. Aelin notes the motion, still so aware of him and his proximity to her.
His tongue darts out to wet his lower lip. “I was so angry at you for leaving.”
Aelin loses her breath at his confession.
Eventually she manages, “was?”
He looks away from her, glancing down the dark hallway, his jaw tight. When she’s with him she forgets about the world around them, there’s probably-definitely-CCTV in this hallway but he’s here and she can’t let him go yet.
His fists curl and uncurl as he takes a deep breath.
“Was,” he says shortly. “I was so angry at you, the way you did what you did was shit.”
Aelin swallows. He’s not wrong.
“I know.”
“But now I don’t know.” She lifts her eyes to his, swimming in the openness she doesn’t deserve. And fuck that. That is such bullshit. She meets his stare, returning all that he isn’t saying. “I spent a long time thinking about it, thinking about you, and it took me a while but now I get it.”
That hurts more than she expects. She didn’t expect him to be all over her the minute they reunited but his understanding was always a kicker.
“I know why you did it,” he continues. “And that took most of the wind out of my sails.”
Aelin frowns. He can’t possibly know why.
“I don’t think you do.” He tilts his head, an invitation for her to expand. “Or you’d know that nothing has changed.”
“Hasn’t it?”
His question throws her. Completely.
She tilts her head up to look at him, closer to her than he’s been all night, pushing her to keep being honest with him.
She’s dazed being this close to him again after so long, the green of his eyes stronger than she remembers. Or maybe her brain had assured her the memory of him couldn’t have been real.
“I don’t know,” she admits, unable to fight the way her body leans into him.
His teeth graze his lower lip and she follows the motion.
He’s silent for a beat too long and her skin is thrumming under his attention. She doesn’t know how she’s gone this long without him, she doesn’t know how she thought she’d survive never having him again.
“Let me know when you figure it out,” he says finally, drawing back and a rush of cool air fills the space he had taken. “Goodnight Aelin.”
He turns and she watches his back down the hallway. He slips easily into a room a few doors down and she’s left watching the path he’d taken, feeling the weight of his eyes on her lips.
Her head thuds against the door as she screws her eyes shut. She wants to scream, wants to chase him down the hall, wants to fly back to Orynth where she was safe.
She doesn’t do any of those things.
She tucks herself into her hotel room and readies herself for the whirlwind that’s about to hit. These next few weeks are going to be hard, not just dealing with the Rowan situation, but she can’t fight the excitement she feels.
Fuck. She’s back in Rifthold, back where she loves, doing what she was born to do.
This is big. She can feel it.
The Crescent City is not her first project, and so she’s been a part of press cycles before, she knows how they go. What she doesn’t know is how a press cycle for something like this works.
The only word she can find is insanity.
There are somehow earlier mornings than they had while shooting and often longer days. She gets poked and prodded in hair and make-up for hours before they spend all day sat in a hotel room filming repetitive interviews for various magazines.
She and Fenrys are genuinely friends and yet they still have to put on a show in front of the cameras. She plays up her laughter when he cracks a joke and he makes sure to never look away from her for longer than two seconds when she speaks or a producer behind the camera makes a comment.
She loves Fenrys but it’s exhausting. Her only blessing is that for most of her engagements she’s with Fenrys and Manon with Rowan conducting his own interviews separately as she had hoped.
Sometimes though, given their relatively similar ages and general level of chemistry, they get grouped together.
The four of them are filming a video for Buzzfeed, filling in a quiz to find out which character from The Crescent City they’re most like. She’s unsurprised to discover her result is Rhysand and it’s fun even if her heart does pound every time she has to act like she’s unfazed and friendly with Rowan.
There’s a moment, just a moment, where she almost breaks from her friendly and unbothered interview persona. It’s her turn to read the question, what item could you not survive without on a desert island?
It’s Rowan that speaks. “Her shampoo,” he says, “it’s jasmine.”
There’s a split second where she doesn’t speak, where all she can do is stare at Rowan, stunned that he remembered and thought to mention it now.
In that split second she’s transported back to memories of them together in the shower at her rented apartment, kissing lazily under the spray after spending hours between her sheets. She remembers dumping the shampoo into her hand and then onto his head, massaging his thick locks and surrounding them in the scent of jasmine.
She remembers how he kissed her neck as she did, trailing his hands over her silky curves, slick with the soap, with his kisses building in heat until her hands dropped to his shoulders. He’d lavished kisses down her chest until he’d jerked back, shampoo in his eyes and she’d laughed until he was safe and pressed his lips again to hers, continuing where he’d left off.
She’s shocked he’d bring this up when there’s a camera on the two of them and she can only imagine the comments it will spark. She’s not sure she cares if it keeps Rowan’s eyes on her.
“It’s luxurious for a reason,” she says when she recovers, tossing her thick locks over her shoulder. “Well worth it.”
She doesn’t miss the flicker in his own mask at her comment.
That kind of interaction will no doubt ignite the sparks she’d only ever wanted to avoid.
As the press cycle goes on and on, and they get closer and closer to the premiere it only becomes harder for her conviction to hold.
She tests her own argument, the clear line she drew in the sand, when she manages to keep it professional with Rowan and she’s not sure where that leaves her. She had thought they would overshadow everything about the project and now she’s not sure.
She said nothing had changed and he had challenged her.
She’s still not sure who’s in the right.
Everything is simultaneously completely new and exactly the same. Rowan is still gorgeous, still charming in his own reserved way, still almost reverent when he talks about his craft throughout interviews. He still talks with his hands and Aelin still can’t draw her eyes away from their motions, she still craves the touch of them on her skin. He’s still seven years older than her and the director of her big break.
Yet there are differences.
They’re still often on the same page, offering similar answers and backing each other up but now he never backs down from a challenge. Now he doesn’t hold back those comments she knows he was always dying to let slip. She should be annoyed, everytime he drops a line that pushes her to expand a little part of her wants to roll her eyes.
She doesn’t though. Her blood heats and her skin prickles. She loves this with him. Loves the dance they play, the teasing, verbal games that shouldn’t start her off but do. She loves the smirk he wears when they end up down that path, and she knows she wears it’s mirror image.
She always ends up squirming in her seat and it should be wrong but it isn’t. The cameras can’t see below their chests and the flush in her cheeks could easily be from the warmth of the day.
She’s beginning to wonder if she’s powerless against Rowan Whitethorn. If she’s powerless against the green of his eyes or the curl of his accent. The slant of his brows or the points of his teeth when he smiles.
She doesn’t know that it’s just one thing. It’s all of the things, it’s all of him, and more so than ever she’s completely fucked.
But they aren’t talking outside of the interviews and photoshoots, and the knowledge of which hotel room is his itches her toes every night. It would be so easy to sneak down the hall, to knock on the door and slot her lips to his when he opened.
It’s only a couple of nights before the premiere when the temptation becomes too much. She’s been around Rowan all day, surrounded by the smell of his aftershave, the notes of pine and freshness and Rowan and it’s too much. She strides down the hallway, resolved in her decision and closes her fingers over the button for the lift.
She needs to be elsewhere or she’ll make some bad decisions.
She’s come so far, survived months without him, she can’t cave due to proximity.
The hotel bar is deserted when she walks in and makes a beeline to the bartender. Yeah, maybe after her wobble at the wrap party a bar isn’t the best decision she could make but her options are limited. Trying to sleep with Rowan is, after all, probably the worst of both options.
“Just a sparkling water please,” she says to the barman who nods and returns a moment later.
“Put it on my tab.” A voice from the end of the bar.
A laugh bubbles out of her chest as she closes her fingers around her glass. Of course he’s here. She should have spotted Rowan the minute she walked in and it’s cruel that the reason she didn’t was that her thoughts were too wrapped up in him.
“Be careful what you sign up for,” she says as she walks over, her steps measured as she comes to a stop before him. Her hips swing of their own accord and his eyes dart up and down the length of her. “I can put a number of these away.”
The smile he gives her is surprisingly unguarded. It seems he’s done holding himself back too. Aelin loves it.
“I don’t doubt it,” he says, nodding at the stool next to him. She obliges as he speaks again. “It’s hard to switch off sometimes.”
He’s always on the same page as she is. Aelin shrugs, taking a sip of the drink he bought her.
They’re quiet for a moment, both unsure of how to break the silence between them when one of the last things they knew was the taste of each other’s lips.
“I keep thinking I’ll get used to it, that one day this will just be my job, but I never do,” Aelin says eventually, tracing a fingertip through the condensation gathered on her glass.
Rowan nods, smiling softly down at the bar and taking a sip of his own drink. An orange juice as usual.
“It’s hard to sleep at the end of days like today,” he says. “It’s why I’m in here.”
The bar is dark at the late hour, and quiet with no one else in there but them and the bartender. There’s something about the late hour, the darkness and the stillness surrounding them a break from the recent rush, that feels a little bit too close. She feels a little too exposed under the weight of his gaze but she rolls her shoulders back and leans an elbow on the bar as she turns towards him.
“I thought you’d be used to all of this by now,” she says and he cocks his head.
“Why?” His question is coy, begging her to expand.
“This is not your first rodeo and all of that,” she says with a smile.
Rowan laughs softly, the sound curving around her like an embrace.
“It can still be overwhelming after your first big movie,” he says gently, but with an edge to his voice that she needs to immediately get rid of.
“I don’t doubt that,” is what she whispers and his brow seems to soften, sensing her lack of malice.
She hates the way they’re in the position where he assumes the worst of her. She has to make that change.
“I don’t think if I get to do this for the rest of my life that it would ever feel normal.”
“No,” Rowan agrees, “I don’t think it could.”
“So then we need this film to do well.” Aelin shifts on the stool, finding herself leaning closer to him without conscious thought. He doesn’t retreat. He stands his ground until they’re only inches apart. “Lest we find ourselves fading into obscurity.”
“I doubt you ever could,” he says with a laugh and it’s the best thing she’s ever heard.
As he looks at her, his expression soft in the dim light, his smile holds something special for her and her chest lifts that she managed it. That he was willing to give that to her.
“My agent sent over the initial critic reviews earlier,” he says and her stomach plummets.
“And?” she demands, her voice wobbling slightly. Her confidence from a minute ago vanished.
This is the moment where she could sink, the moment this could all be over.
“And they’re good,” he almost whispers.
“Good,” she repeats and it’s not a question but he nods.
She wants to throw herself at him at the news, a couple of months ago she wouldn’t have even hesitated, but now she sits clenching her fists and trying not to smile too wide. It feels like a waste. She’ll never get this feeling again.
She turns to him and he’s smiling so she does what she’s wanted to for months. Aelin leans forwards and wraps an arm over his shoulders, pressing her chest to his.
His arms slip up slowly over her shoulders at first, unsure but gaining confidence as he tightens his grip around her, drawing her further into his chest. Aelin laughs a little, throwing her other arm around him and resting her face against his shoulder.
It’s not enough, it never could be with him, but it will do. She’s just happy he didn’t push her away.
Eventually, after a length of time that feels far too short, she pulls back to see him gazing down at her with an expression she can’t name. His brows are drawn in with his lips gently parted. He’s happy but apprehensive, open but distant. Aelin will take what she can and the distance between them has always been too far.
She wants nothing more than to close it, to draw herself into him and he into her, but she can’t. They’re here for one thing and one thing only and she refuses after what they’ve been through to mess it up again.
She knows he can read her own expression but she doesn’t care. She’ll hide from everyone and anyone but she’s realising she could never hide from him.
She wants Rowan, will probably want him for the rest of her life, but she made the call and he’s wrong, things haven’t changed.
Apart from all of the things that have.
The day of the premiere Aelin feels sick.
Her stomach twists and she tosses and turns all night and the dark circles under her eyes are brutal as a result. Her make-up artist tuts but diligently packs concealer on until Aelin looks well rested. Or as close as she can.
She’s trying not to think of the stretch of carpet she’ll have to walk tonight, a smile plastered across her face as she poses for the hundreds of cameras. Their premiere is one of the biggest of the season and, along with Fenrys, she’s the star.
She’ll have nowhere to hide.
Aelin sits in front of her mirror, her hair and make-up are done but she’s yet to get dressed. She takes herself in, making sure to note every strand of hair to every line of her lips, feeling as though she needs to remember this moment. The moment before it all explodes.
They’ve been building to this for almost a year now and this is as close to a culmination as she’ll get.
Her dress is something fierce. Endless, flowing velvet in the darkest shade of black. Long sleeves and a fitted bodice with an almost indecent dip in the back. The dress would be modest without that cut out, she can’t wear any underwear it dips so low.
It would be a simple dress, some might even dare to say boring, if it weren’t for the back. The majority of the fabric that remains is covered in gold embroidery taking the form of a dragon, coiled to strike. Aelin adored the dress the moment her stylist revealed it to her. She didn’t consider any of the other dresses, didn’t even acknowledge them as options.
The dress is what she needs, something strong, something to help her hold her head up high. She can walk the red carpet and stare down every single person who doubted her and know that they were wrong.
Aelin doesn’t need their approval. She doesn’t need the reassurance of faceless commenters, she doesn’t need the support of the magazines and the newspapers. She doesn’t need her mother’s approval. On anything.
Aelin is confident and self-assured and she can walk the red carpet knowing that.
Her sessions with Maeve have helped to reassure her stance, but she’s realising day by day she’s known it all along. It’s just taken a little bit of digging to uncover it.
She slips into her dress and it slides on like a second skin. She takes in her appearance, the arch of her brow and the red smirk of her lips makes her look intriguing, like a confident young woman.
Aelin was born to be an actress but she’s proud to say the sight in the mirror is real.
She poses for a few photos before she’s led out of her room and into the car, waiting to take her to the theatre.
She spends the ride in silence, barely listening to the jabbering of the aide in the car with her, and she focuses her thoughts on the calm before the storm. She takes deep breaths and centres herself the way Maeve has taught, she knows this could so easily be overwhelming but she’s determined to enjoy it.
The car stills and she can hear the noise of the crowd outside. She takes a final deep breath and allows her lips to spread into a smile. This one is genuine, nothing forced about it, and she pauses for one last beat.
This is big and Aelin is ready.
The car door opens and the sound hits her like a wave, slamming down onto her and it's so loud she can hardly think.
This is it. This is the moment she has dreamed of.
The nights where this image was all she could cling to to make it through could never have compared to how it feels standing here now, screams of her own name wrapping around her and urging her on.
Her steps are slow and purposeful as she glides down the path forged for her, the red carpet beneath her stilettos is plush and bright. She pauses where she’s instructed, rolling her shoulders back and smirking at the cameras with a hand on her hip.
She knows she looks incredible and the shouts of the photographers do nothing to change her mind. They are here for her, they’re all here for what she has accomplished, along with Fenrys, Manon, Chaol and Rowan and everyone else involved.
There are so many forces upon her, the flashing of the lights, the screams and shouts calling her name or Fenrys’, the magnitude of what this is could knock down a lesser individual but all it does is raise Aelin up.
She’s been through worse than this and survived, she’ll stare down the lense of all of these cameras, of everyone who has ever spoken her name and she won’t cower, she won’t just survive. She’ll thrive.
A warm hand lands on her waist and somehow the flashes of the cameras explode.
“Hey, golden girl.” Fenrys’ words are almost hard to hear even though his lips brush her ear. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Aelin wraps her arm around his back and grins, “I thought I’d at least show my face.”
He returns her smile and together they pose for the cameras, their shoulders back and smiles confident. She’s not sure this could be better.
Until she turns slightly to her left and gets flashes of silver where she and Fenrys are gold.
Rowan and Manon, posing for their own pictures mere metres away. He looks spectacular, the deep black of his tuxedo doing nothing but bringing out the depth of his tan and the shine of his silver hair.
He’s smiling his public smile and it’s gorgeous even though it’s not her favourite of his smiles, she loves the private ones he used to save just for her, and her own smile falters at the sight.
She’s here with Fenrys and it’s not wrong but it doesn’t feel right. The arm around her waist shouldn’t belong to Fenrys.
She should be where Manon is, smiling up at Rowan while they marvel at what they’ve accomplished. She knows her smile has dropped and she fumbles for anything to plaster onto her expression other than the longing she feels for Rowan.
As if she’d called his name he turns to her, green colliding with blue, and she knows he feels the same.
And that hurts far more than all of the months they spent apart.
All the months she spent hurting, trying to deny what she always knew, trying to pretend that they were anything other than a force of nature. They had been an eclipse, threatening to over take all of this but she was wrong. Rowan was wrong too.
It doesn’t matter whether everything or nothing has changed because she wasn’t right in the first place.
She should have known better than to think that whatever flimsy decision she made could halt what they were, what they should be.
She can only hope he forgives her. She can only hope he feels the same.
But the thing about this new Rowan is that she can’t read him the way she used to read her Rowan, she can’t tell if the way he steels himself and turns away from her is a dismissal or if the look they shared had been just as painful for him as it had been for her.
“A masterpiece.” - Rifthold Reporter
“Fenrys Moonbeam shines alongside Aelin Ashryver in The Crescent City. See our full review here.” - Wyrd Stone
“Latest Rowan Whitethorn flick smashes Box Office records.” - Valg Weekly
“Unapologetic, daring and thought provoking. Award nominations expected to follow for The Crescent City.” - Terrasen Tribune
Her phone has not stopped buzzing for the past four days.
Dorian texts every waking hour with the updates he gets, the numbers coming in and all her latest offers. It’s surreal. She knew they were good but she’s not sure she ever really expected this. Aedion texts her a picture every time he sees or hears her name, it should be terrifying the frequency with which he texts her but she has to fight back her smile each time he does.
She managed to find an hour the night before to call Lysandra and the majority of their call had consisted of Aelin repeatedly asking what the fuck was happening while Lysandra cackled down the phone.
She’d even got a text from Lorcan. It was alright, he’d written. Followed by, I hope I die before ever having to watch you make out with someone like that again.
She’d sent three middle finger emojis and a kissy face in response.
Now is probably not the best time to move to a different country but she’d signed her name on the papers two days before the premiere and Rifthold is calling, irrespective of the fact she’s only been back in Orynth for two days.
Most of her stuff headed out yesterday with the moving company leaving Aelin with two suitcases to fly back to Rifthold with tomorrow.
There’s one last place she needs to go before she heads back to finally get a good night's sleep before her flight tomorrow. She’s never set foot in this graveyard before, she’s never had the courage to dare before, but she’s emboldened. By the success of the movie, by her progress in the past year, by her sessions with Maeve. This has felt like a natural step.
The shining, black headstone is understated and classy and completely to his taste.
Sam Cortland. Beloved son and brother, taken far too soon.
Aelin waits with her head bowed, allowing all of her emotions to rush through her veins. She doesn’t fight them, it would be pointless to try, and she embraces the tears that gather. Eventually she steps forwards, placing the smooth, small stone on the crest of the headstone.
She rests her hand on the cool stone for a moment before sinking down and crossing her legs beneath her as she leans against it.
“I’ve missed you,” she says aloud, “I can almost hear you telling me to stop being such a sappy shit. I can’t help it, it’s been too long since I’ve seen you.”
She pauses, letting the wind drift through the field sweeping her words away.
There’s no one else here but her and Sam, no one else she’d want to hear her confession.
“I wonder what you would have made of all this. I think you’d tell me to enjoy it all, to not miss a moment, and I’m not. I’m just choosing the ones I want to savour. And this is one of them, Sam. I wish you’d been there with me, you would have loved it, the cameras, the lights, everything.
“I have to keep pinching myself to know it’s real, I did it, and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come and see you.”
She sighs, letting her head tip back to rest against the stone. She didn’t prepare anything to say, didn’t realise she’d even want to speak to the open air but here she is.
“I’m not the same Aelin as the girl you knew anymore,” she says after a few moments of silence. “I didn’t think I would have the capacity to love again after you but I did, and I feel terribly guilty that I do. I have to remind myself that this is what you would have wanted, you would have wanted me to be happy.”
The silence in the field is more than an answer enough. So typically Sam to give her an answer without so much as speaking a word.
“I was happy,” she says, trailing a fingertip along the words etched into the stone. “I will be again.”
A faint haze of sunlight drifts through the Orynth autumn clouds, a whisper compared to the chorus of brightness she misses in Rifthold, and she stands, brushing off the dirt from her jeans. She touches the stone one last time before turning and heading out of the graveyard.
Her visit was years overdue but her chest didn’t crack open the way she had expected, the tears hadn’t been relentless the way she had expected. She’ll visit him again the next time she’s back in Orynth, probably visiting Elide and Lorcan for Yulemass, and she’ll visit again and again for as long as she lives.
But for now, she has a plane to catch.
Months later and two days before the Oscars, when they’re all back in town for the ceremony held in her new home city of Rifthold, Fenrys throws another party.
She’s managed, this time, to stay in touch with Fenrys and Manon, having made up with the younger girl before the press cycle had finished. Aelin knows her upset was real but partly suspects the animosity was a front. She even finds herself participating in the group chat with the three of them and Rowan. She’s only texted him one to one once to wish him a happy birthday and they had caught up briefly but not texted since.
She’s missed him in a different way to the last time she missed him. This time missing him doesn’t feel necessary, it feels wrong not to text him, wrong to be away from him and she’s itching to see him again.
It’s no one's birthday this time but they’re all together again to celebrate, no matter the results they’ll see in two days. Aelin is very carefully measuring her excitement about her own nomination for best actress. Fenrys is up for best actor, Rowan best director and the movie best picture.
She’d almost dropped her phone in the toilet when she found out from Dorian a few weeks ago.
The party is small but still in full swing by the time she arrives. Big names from the industry, all in town for the ceremony, are scattered all around Fenrys’ Rifthold apartment. He’d bought a place here not long after Aelin and she’s secretly relieved she’s not the only one so moved by their experience.
She waves to a few people she knows and tries to stay calm when she spots Sartaq Khagan in the corner chatting away to a small group of people. Holy shit Fenrys has some famous friends.
Aelin finds herself a glass, tops her orange juice off with a splash of lemonade and begins her rounds. So many more people want to talk to her after the movie dropped.
Her mother had been one of them, and Aelin’s thumb had hovered over the accept button for a moment before decidedly pressing decline. She had blocked her mother’s number a moment later, and then she had made some calls closing the bank account her mother kept topped up and arranging for every penny she’d ever received from Evalin Ashryver to be paid back.
It had hurt, emotionally and financially, especially in the month she’d moved to Rifthold, but it had been worth it. To never let Evalin pass any judgement over her life again was a relief worth any cost. Aelin’s hoping there’s a possibility she could end up with a reward.
She doesn’t know how long she spends talking to big name after big name and it’s a realisation that drops onto her that she fits in here. Aelin Ashryver is a big name. No matter the outcome of the ceremony she has prospects, already a number of projects lined up and she’s loving every minute of it.
She drains her cup for the third time tonight and heads back into the kitchen. She’s barely seen Fenrys all night, and she doesn’t even know if Manon is here.
She frowns into the fridge, there was definitely a full bottle of orange juice in here the last time she topped herself up. She shuts the fridge and spins around.
“Looking for this?”
She should have known.
Rowan looks predictably gorgeous in the dim kitchen lighting. All tanned skin and silver smiles. He’s dressed in her favourite look of his too, worn denim jeans and a soft cotton shirt.
It’s the softness in his gaze that really takes her though, it seems the animosity from the last time they saw each other has faded if not disappeared. Her chest squeezes at the thought. She has no idea what could have triggered it but she will take it.
“Nope,” she says, stepping over to where he stands with an arm braced against the counter at his side, the other holding out a bottle of orange juice. “I was hoping Fenrys would have some chocolate in there but I guess this will have to do.”
She takes the bottle from him, her fingertips brushing his and she feels her cheeks heat at the innocent brush.
His smile is genuine and she knows what he’s remembering because she’s thinking of it too. The first time she visited his house during filming and their moment in the kitchen. They’ve been through cycles, she supposes, but hopefully now for the better.
“I’m sure we can find you some somewhere in here,” he says as she fills her cup, pulling open the cupboard next to his head.
Aelin smirks. “I’m going to leave the rummaging through Fenrys’ cupboards to you. You could find anything in there.”
Rowan winces, closing the door before returning her smile. This is friendly and the hope that’s been planted in her chest begins to sprout.
“Yeah, maybe not,” he says with a conspiratorial smile. “We wouldn’t want to risk it.”
Aelin pauses for a moment, taking in the glory of him in front of her. He’s still Rowan, he’s still tall and deliciously broad. His silver hair is slightly more grown out and there are a couple more lines around his eyes but she doesn’t care, in fact it’s charming. He’s still and always will be stunning. She takes a sip of her drink before she takes one of her biggest risks so far.
“I’ve missed you,” she says, not daring to look away from his face.
He bites his lip, his tongue darting out to soothe the skin before he speaks. “I’ve missed you too.”
The smile that spreads across her face is all too telling but he’s smiling too so she doesn’t think it matters. He definitely feels the same and she’d be annoyed at the months she spent worrying but the relief is too sweet.
“Good,” is what she says, far too happy they’re here to bother with pretending she’s anything other than ecstatic. “Congrats on your nomination.”
His eyes dart to the floor and then back up at her, he’s too modest about his own skill and Aelin adores it. “Thank you,” he says softly, “you too.”
“Thanks,” she says. “I couldn’t have done it without you. All of you.”
“Me neither,” Rowan says.
He’s close to her now, closer than he has been to her for months and her skin cries out for contact. She almost can’t believe she’s here now, talking to Rowan without any animosity, days before the Oscars that she’s nominated in.
The smile that takes over her face is completely of its own accord. She’s floating and it seems Rowan is too if the beat they share, exchanging incredulous smiles, is anything to go by.
“It’s crazy, right?”
She’s been asking herself the question for so long it seems only natural it slips out to him.
He laughs softly, and the rough sound curls straight to her core.
“Definitely,” he agrees, his voice low. “I don’t think last time felt like this.”
Aelin slaps a gentle hand to his chest and ignores the thrill that shoots through her at the eventual contact. “I get it, this is not your first nomination.”
Rowan rolls his eyes and she didn’t know how much she missed this, playing with him. She adores his reaction every time, the begrudging amusement he only lets shine through to make her smile.
“Some of us have never been nominated before, this is all completely new.” Aelin takes a sip of her drink. “I had to give up my social media accounts to Elide, it got so crazy.”
Something flickers over Rowan’s face at her comment. “Really?”
“Yeah,” she says, her eyes darting across his face trying to decipher the expression. “She’s always had access and I still do so I can post if I want to but it just became a lot. It stopped being fun when I would see what people were saying, whether it was good or bad I don’t want to see it anymore.”
Rowan nods before his eyes lock onto hers, the intensity in his expression shreds her control.
“And you said nothing had changed?”
Aelin gets it now.
She shifts her weight, leaning as close to him as she can without sliding herself completely into the circle of his arms. “I was wrong. Lots of things have changed,” she says, her voice quiet but strong. “And lots of things are now right that weren’t before.”
She doesn’t mean to skirt around the truth, hiding in veiled words and double meanings, but as always, Rowan sees her. He sees her meaning and he smiles. It’s the most beautiful smile Aelin has ever seen him wear.
“I’ve been looking for you two.”
Fenrys bursts into the kitchen, startling Aelin back from Rowan. She hides her guilty smile in her drink and notices Rowan doing the same. Fenrys just grins, clearly enjoying whatever he thinks he’s seeing.
“You’re missing out, we’re playing kings in the living room if you want to join?”
Rowan glances at her before he turns back to Fenrys. “I think we’re good, thanks.”
Fenrys’ smile turns smug and Aelin resists the temptation to flip him off. She’s in too good of a mood to be annoyed at him.
“Okay, see you later, lovebirds,” Fenrys says, already on his way back out of the door.
Aelin pretends she isn’t blushing as she turns back to Rowan, his green eyes shining.
“This might sound crazy,” he says with an alluring tilt to his lips, “but do you want to get out of here?”
She’s reached a point she truly never thought she would.
She’s an Oscar-nominated lead actress in a box-office-record-breaking movie.
She’s happy, healthy and out from underneath the thumb of Evalin Ashryver.
The part that’s most uplifting, the part that has her unable to wipe the smile off her face as she strolls down the streets of Rifthold, is the arm she has tucked through Rowan’s.
They’ve been walking for a little while, enjoying the cool night air and the ease with which they managed to sneak out of Fenrys’ party. Her heels are killing her and Rowan very graciously offers her an arm to lean on and each time she takes a step in time with him she smiles.
“I never thought I’d like doing television,” he says.
She didn’t know he’d taken on a miniseries, similar to the one she’d done after filming, but she’s loving the recap she’s getting of the months they’ve been apart. The chill of the air is more than fought off by the warmth of Rowan by her side. The streets are mercifully empty and she can bask in the knowledge that it’s just the two of them out here, that they’re insignificant, that anyone who sees them will immediately dismiss them.
“I always thought I’d stick to movies, singular stories but I enjoyed it. I guess change can be good.”
Aelin laughs softly and squeezes his arm. He looks down to her, a question written in the slant of his brow.
“Change can definitely be good,” she says as she takes in the sights of the skyscrapers surrounding them. “I would know that I suppose.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I bought a flat recently.”
“You did?”
He’s so graciously giving her the floor to say what she needs to say and she holds his arm even tighter.
“It’s right here in Rifthold.” Aelin avoids his gaze, lest he think it’s a speedy invitation and that that’s all this is. “I bought it just after we were back here for press, I realised that I adore Rifthold and being here. I missed it when I wasn’t here and I don’t feel there’s anything holding me in Orynth anymore.”
Rowan laughs softly, his feet scuffing the floor.
“What?” she demands.
“I swear I’m not following you,” he says and she feels a smile creep onto her face. “I bought a loft here too.”
Aelin gasps. “But your house was gorgeous!”
Rowan’s smile twists as he looks away from her. “I didn’t say I sold the house.”
Aelin cackles as she squeezes his arm, the sound joyous and bright as it echoes around them. “I knew being Mr Big-Name-Director has its perks.”
“It does,” he agrees with a smirk.
Aelin wants to kiss that smirk. Wants to pull him down and twist her fingers through his hair as his own tangle along her skin.
Instead she says, “I copied you somewhat too.”
He only raises a brow.
“I bought a piano like the one in your house. It was too big for my old flat in Orynth and so I knew what I had to do.”
“That’s good,” he says as his arm drops out of hers. She almost pouts until he instead tangles their fingers together. Her smile says it all, reflected back in his own. “You play beautifully.”
“Thank you.” Her cheeks are glowing. “You’ll have to come over and I’ll play for you sometime, neighbour.”
“I’d love to.”
Aelin slows, using the hand tangled with his to pull him to a stop too. Her free hand trails a gentle path up his chest before coming to rest at his collar, her fingertips tracing the golden skin peeking out from his shirt. His free hand finds her waist.
They’re close, closer than they have been in such a long time when he speaks.
“I don’t know what you think has or hasn’t changed.” His hand leaves hers to cup her cheek. “But I still feel the way I used to about you.”
Her heart takes off, pounding within her chest.
“I do too, Rowan.” Some of the easiest words she’s ever said to him. There’s something about the way the streetlights shine through the silver tips of his hair and the way his calloused fingers feel between hers that she’s feeling brave. “I loved you then and I love you now.”
His eyes flicker across her face as his smile dawns, taking over his face as he smiles so brightly. This is all she’s ever wanted, to have a Rowan like this, with pure, unfiltered happiness in his eyes as he looks at her.
“You love me?”
“I do. To whatever end.”
His lips are barely a whisper from hers and she only acknowledges the thought that they’re in public for long enough to realise she doesn’t care.
“And I love you.”
His words are simple, but sweet. They wash over her and settle into her skin as his lips land on hers. He kisses her with what she can only describe as love. His lips pour devotion onto her and his hands light a fire inside her as he tastes her tongue.
They kiss for longer than she can keep a track of, wrapped up together illuminated only by the street lighting. She’s missed this, missed him, and she can’t help but feel right when his hands are on her. She can’t help but feel right as she stretches onto her toes to throw herself into his kiss.
This was never wrong, this was one of the first things she knew was right.
She loves him and he loves her and nothing and nobody else matters.
She doesn’t win the Oscar, and neither does Rowan. Fenrys does and she screams herself hoarse cheering him on as he makes his way to the stage.
The moment that takes the cake is when The Crescent City takes best picture. She takes to the stage with some of her best friends to recognise what they achieved together and maybe she is a soppy shit but she definitely cries. Fenrys laughs at her and Manon grins but Rowan just throws his arm around her shoulders and it's worth it.
Afterwards, she logs into her Instagram account for the first time in a long time. She posts a picture of Rowan looking absolutely delicious with his tux unbuttoned and his bow tie hanging untied around his neck with a greasy burger in one hand and hers in his other.
Posting him is a statement but she doesn’t care. In fact, she wants the world to know. She wants the world to know that nobody does it like he does. Nobody does it like they do.
#rowaelin#nobody does it like you do#aelin galathynius#rowan whitethorn#throne of glass#rowaelin au#ndilyd#i cant believe it's the last part of this fic#crazy#hope you all enjoyed
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🕯Anon said : Can I request headcanons with a Modern Au Teacher!Erwin and his s/o is a slightly famous artist like a painter that’s always in the basement. Maybe have a moment where the art teacher begs him to bring them to the school when they find out who Erwin is with. ? 🕯
Teacher!Erwin brings you, a famous painter, to work.
{ Erwin x Reader | tw:none | fluff, suggestive kiss | modern }
{ "Leisurely Sunday in the Villa Comunale in Naples" 1993 by Francesco Tammaro Born in 1939 }
Grassy fields surrounded the old big building as the trees undressing of their leaves onto the sidewalks, currently being swept away by the janitor.
Students were filling the halls, the sound of chatter and laughter following after. Outside in the yard, the whistle of the gym teacher could be heard following by heavy footsteps as the football team started their morning practice. Not long after the bell rang, the halls were empty again only for some crumbled papers and snack covers left behind.
"Pigs, all of them. There's a trashcan right there." Levi scrunched his nose at the smell of axe spray and deodorant near the trophy cases. "Tell Miche to spray his running monkeys with soap every once in a while."
"Now now, what got you so grumpy this early in the morning?" Adjusting the lab coat on their suit, Hange replied. "Oh cut the kids some slack, their big game is coming soon or something."
"And he's been implenting a more strick hygiene policy." Said Erwin, holding a plastic binder with a stack of exam papers, mostly marked red. "He's trying to convince the principal to ban deodorant during practice because it's making his nose burn."
Huffing in response, Levi crossed his arms. "Yeah because the principle will definitely listen to him after that whole sniffing people scandal- Hey! Brats, don't you have classes"
As Levi went to scold the two students currently hanging a handmade poster for the upcoming game on the wall, a couple of students came up to Hange, looking in a hurry as they explained the Science lab was locked and they're getting tired of sitting on their backpacks outside.
Soon after, Erwin too made his way to class.
Upon entering the room, the talking quieted down as the squeaking sound of people going back to their own desks followed. Walking upfront, Erwin dropped the binder on his desk beside the empty mug, a couple of groans filled the room as the students realised what it was.
"Mr.Smith, didn't we just take the test yesterday? Shouldn't you like...I don't know double check or something? Maybe you rushed grading them?" One student called from the back as some chuckles and agreement followed from the rest.
Taking the stacks of papers out, Erwin made his way between the students, giving each on their graded paper. "I don't know Connie, maybe you should've double checked your answers instead?"
The playful atmosphere of the classroom was cut short as the door slammed open, making everyone freeze in their seats, none other than the art teacher walked in.
Nile Dawk, current art teacher who fails at least a quarter of his class each year. Who has oh just the most swell relationship with Erwin and anyone can tell you that.
You see, Erwin adored art, both the classic and the modern. Nile admired history and knew just how each art era had its link to a historical event.
And the pair couldn't stand each other.
Crossing his arms, Nile said "Erwin, you have explaining to do." Before dropping a newly printed magazine onto his desk,
Its cover, showing a brand new art museum that just finished construction and is hosting a lot of different paintings from unrecognised underground talents.
"Nile, I think you misunderstand. I teach history, I'm not an architect." He said raising an eyebrow, before tilting his head as if he's deep in thought, "or do you want me to explain what a museum is?"
Sneering at his remark, Nile flipped through the pages till he reached a certain one. It depicted a one of the paintings that will be displayed in the museum, a portrait of a blond man with broad shoulders and sharp blue eyes seemingly distracted from reality by the book in his hand.
The soft glow of the fireplace next to the red armchair he sat in, adding a certain orange hue to his light complexion. His long fingers holding the leather book as a glass-stained maroon vase sat on the small table behind him, containing a single red rose.
It's clear from the details poured into his eyes and the shading for each strand of his hair that whoever made this painting, held a great affection for the man.
"Now Mr.history teacher, care to explain why your face is on this painting? By one of the few promising artists of this useless generation?."
Hushed murmurs filled the classroom as students took out their phones googling the name y/n, showing each other the said painting while staring with wide eyes at Erwin.
Rubbing his temple with his fingers, Erwin frowned at the scene the other was causing. Knowing very well it won't take long for this fire to spread, he decided to add more fuel to the flames.
He took a long breath, before telling the class to quiet down with a stern expression.
"Mr.Dawk, are you really asking me why y/n, my love, the person I'm married to, paint me?" He said facing the other, looking directly into his eyes. "Maybe you should ask y/n instead if you're so insisting on forcing yourself in my private life."
Narrowing his eyes, Nile snorted. "You know what Erwin? Maybe I should.
And that's the story Erwin told you while having dinner that day.
He looks at you with pleading eyes as if to silently apologise for dragging you into this mess, his plate still half full and drink untouched.
Please reassure him that it's alright, you don't mind taking a day off to visit his work
He'll reach out to gently squeeze your hand in his, whispering a small thank you as his thumb rubs against your skin.
He also says he'll do the dishes that day, you can go rest and he will join you in bed after a while, a relieved smile on his face.
The next day, as he wakes up early like usual. He makes sure to wake you up with a kiss, stroking your face before murmuring "good morning" against your lips.
He knows because of your work you don't wake up early, so he's really patient and understanding if you happen to get grumpy for a while.
Handing you a warm drink to help wake you up, he'll make sure you eat something before changing and heading out.
You're not surprised to find him already done and dressed himself.
Hair as perfect as usual.
On the drive to school, you'll feel the cool morning air against your skin while your head leans back into the seat, eyes fluttering shut.
You can have your mini nap, Erwin will make sure to wake you up when you arrive.
When arriving, he made sure to open the car door for you. The fresh air and green scenery surrounded you both.
When arriving at the teacher's lounge, you're almost surprised to see two people already there from how early it was.
The first was sitting on the old black couch near the window, his dirty blond bangs covering his eyes. The second you could see making tea on the other side of the room Where the kitchenware was.
Both of them glanced up when Erwin called their name, staring at the way he had an arm wrapped around your waist while introducing you.
It was Miche who came first, standing from the couch you noticed just how tall he was. Offering your hand for him to shake, only for him to pull you into a tight hug instead.
He pulled away, tapping his nose before a smile slowly formed on his face, nodding in approval
The second was Levi, who ignored your offered hand only to sip on his teacup, assessing you up and down.
Not too long after, a person with a messy ponytail and a colorful lab coat arrived.
They took one glance at you, then the matching wedding rings on yours and Erwins fingers before taking an immediate interest in you.
Hange asked questions faster than you can answer them, with sparkling eyes and a wide smile.
At the first sign of you being uncomfortable, it was Levi who stepped in to tell Hange to tone it down before apologizing to you.
And it was Miche who got you some snacks from the teacher's secret stash after.
You've heard stories and one sided phone calls about them from Erwin, yet it still didn't prepare you for actually meeting them.
While overwhelming at first, the more time you spent talking as Erwin reassuringly sat beside you, you noticed how genuinely interested they were.
Levi, while seemingly cold, was actually the most considerate and paid the most attention to you. He'd step in whenever things got too much and would be really polite despite having a colourful language. By the end of it he even made you some tea, something that seemed to surprise Erwin and the rest.
"It's just...he never trusted someone this quickly before."
Hange was genuinely interested in you, having researched you and your art beforehand. They really were eager to hear even the most boring details and were capable of understanding your way of thinking. They even gave you a small rubber frog they carried around in their pocket to hand out. It would've been cute wasn't for the fact immediately after they mentioned the real human skeleton they have pinned to the lab door.
"His name is bean! I've been actually investing into getting him a human heart for Valentine's day, but all the ones I've found so far were in jars."
The most quiet of them was actually Miche, although he'd smile at you whenever you looked his way. Despite his intimidating size you learned how harmless and easy going he is, the most chill out of the three. He did mention knowing Erwin for the longest time out of them, having been childhood friends even. He promised to tell you all the embarrassing secrets Erwin tried to erase from existence as he added his number on your phone.
"He ain't as proper as he looks, I got the dirt on him."
You saw Erwin's jaw tightening before he changed the subject quickly, giving the side eye to Miche who only smiled back.
The rest of the day went by smoothly, Erwin didn't leave your side for one minute and made sure to check on you constantly.
He introduced you to the rest of the teachers and seemed only amused at any teasing he got from students passing by.
By the end of the day, as the sun began to set and the students already done with their clubs, you and Erwin had one final place to go.
The art classroom.
"Just one more thing before that" he told you, guiding you into an empty classroom.
You saw his desk, the mug you gifted him on father's day as a joke sat on his desk, several paper sketches you made were framed next to it.
It was his classroom, with only you and him, the door open.
He closed it.
You stood against his desk as he moved closer, arms circling you, not breaking eye contact.
"May I?" He whispered, licking his own lips.
As he got your permission, he pressed his lips against yours, arm stroking your back before pulling away after some seconds.
He rubbed your swollen bottom lip with his thumb, a small smile on his face before pulling away.
Your heart was still fluttering against your chest as you left the classroom, while Erwin seemed to be smiling at nothing with a slight curl to his lips, steps more lighter than before.
Right after that he took you to the art classroom. The smell of oil paint and sound of brushes scratching against paper filling the air.
Stepping inside, the scratching sound stopped as a certain black haired man stared at you, eyes wide and lips parted.
Disbelief clear in his face, Nile was quick to mask his emotions as he noticed the smugness Erwin was in.
"Nile, I'd like to introduce you to my lovely darling, y/n." There was a chipper to Erwin's voice as he leaned in to kiss your cheek.
#Erwin🕯#modern aot🕯#suggestive🕯#erwin smith x reader#erwin x reader#erwin x y/n#erwin smith#erwin headcanons#aot#aot x reader#aot x y/n#snk#snk x you#snk x reader#fluff#fluff🕯#romantic?#suggestive#teacher!Erwin#painter!reader
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Note: In this chapter there will mention two of my oc ( original character) their physical appearance will be present in the future chapters.
When you see this sign -- it means a flashback started/ended
Previous chapter Masterlist
Chapter 2: Cafè and tea
In the morning the rain was strumming against the window of her room and she was preparing herself to go into the living room. She decided to wear a light pigiama suited for the weather and thought that it was unnecessary to wear the golden ring she usually uses because no one was going to see it anyway beside her parents. It has already been several days since she came back to Japan and she mostly spent her time with her parents: cooking with her mother, training with her father and beating him in a game of chess. Mundane actions that people usually do with their parents but she can't, due to the fact that she lives far from them.
She decided to join his father in the kitchen who was busy cooking breakfast.
Aizawa noticed the presence of his daughter when she entered the room,
"Goodmorning Y/n, your mom already left this early in the morning to work".
"Morning Dad, are those pancakes?," she asked, setting the table.
"Yes your favourite, you can already eat the one on the table while it's still hot ," he said, pointing at the table where there were several pancakes on a plate.
"Thanks Dad," she glanced outside the window and there was still a drizzling rain, " the weather forecasts show that around lunch time there will be sun for the rest of the day, so me and Yuga planned to meet each other in a cafè nearby,".
"That sounds great," he flipped the last pancakes on the pan and he put it on his plate and then he took a chair beside her daughter.
"Well dad thank you for the breakfast,".
While cutting his food, he asked her, "Y/n in a few days I have the final appointment at the tailor shop for my wedding suit. I wanted to ask you if you can come with me?,".
"Are you asking me that because you genuinely want me to be there or you just don't want to be alone with uncle Mic?," she said while spreading the Nutella on her pancake.
"A mix of both, so are you coming?,".
"Of course I will, it's not everyday to see you in such a formal outfit," he rolled his eyes at her daughter's comment, making her tease her father more, knowing his preference over more comfortable clothes rather than elaborate one's.
"But Dad, one week before I came here in Japan you told me that Nezu offered you the position of UA principal, have you already made a decision?,".
Once he heard the question, he wiped his mouth with a napkin and slowly he put the fork on the table. "Honestly no".
"Why?".
"I thought about it and Y/n I know it's a great honour to be the UA principal but," crossing his arm he continued, " I'm getting older and I don't if I can continue to be a hero for more years let alone be the UA principal," he said touching his left leg. She knew what exactly he meant with those words. "Beside," he added, " working as a principal, sure does take off your free time and I prefer spending my free time with your mom rather than working on paperworks,".
"You really love mom," she said.
"Well yeah, that's why I'm marrying her," he admitted with a smile on his face.
"That's it I'm going to tell mom when she comes back home,".
"Please don't, she will tease me about it for the whole week,".
Both of them almost finished eating their food when her father asked, "Y/n I know you told us you took this vacation for health reasons but it might also be because of those articles about you?".
She immediately stopped eating, her eyes were avoiding his father's gaze, almost ashamed to meet them,"So you saw it".
"Yes I saw them, I read those negative reviews about your latest book so does your mom but don't get down on yourself. I know how negative opinions of others can bring you down but don't forget that you will always have me and your mom support you for everything. Me and your mom just want you to communicate with us when something is wrong," and now it was his turn to avoid her gaze, not wanting her to see his eyes tearing up, "we just don't want to repeat what happened to you six years ago,".
She listened attentively at his words, she knows how both of her parents suffered for the events of that day and she promised to herself that it will never happen again, "I know dad I'm working on it and I promise you, you will never see me again in that situation".
"Your mom and I just what the best for you," he said, patting gently on your head.
"I know dad I know," she admitted, giving her father a reassuring smile.
"Oh wait, you said your meeting Aoyama right," he pulled out from his pocket his wallet and gave her 13,000 yen (99 in euro, 117 in dollars), "here take it,".
"Dad, I'm twenty-six years old, I can pay for my stuff,".
"Just take it ok," He replied while sipping a cup of coffee pretending not to hear the protest coming from his daughter.
After the deep conversation she had with Aizawa this morning, she was now preparing to meet Aoyama. Once choosing her outfit, she decided to wear the golden ring on the fourth finger of her left hand to complete the look. Fortunately the weather forecast was right and it was a sunny day outside and her best friend informed her that they will meet in a cafe. He told her how excited he was to try their famous cheesecake and the way he described the pastry makes her want to try.
It took only twenty minutes by walking from her house to arrive at the cafè shop Aoyama told her. From the outside the wall of the shop was black and it was ornated with several climbing plants, there was also a big wooden door as the entrance and inside the place it was rather a cozy atmosphere.
She was searching for her best friend who was in disguise to avoid fans attention towards him and he told her to be able to recognise him, he was wearing a green merchandise t-shirt of Deku with a pair of dark sunglasses and a dark blue bucket hat. After searching for a couple of minutes she finally saw her friend in the most isolated part of the shop and near him there was a TV attached to the wall. He was sitting in a chair using his phone but she noticed something different from her best friend.
"I can't believe he really did that," she thought.
"Yuga I thought you were joking when you said to me you were going to dye your hair," admiringing his new hair color now similar to the shade of blonde of Lucius Malfoy.
After some years of not seeing her in person, he immediately gave her a warm hug, "Y/n!!! It's so nice to see you again".
"Yuga, you don't know how much I missed you," she said, returning back the hug, "it's been two years since we saw each other and the last time was when you visited me in New York".
"And what were you saying about my hair, for your information," flipping his hair with a hand in a too dramatic way, " these are amazing," he said, not caring too much about him blowing up his disguise.
"Whatever you say Lucius Malfoy. So how is my favourite hero?," she asked once they took their seats.
He confesses to her the struggle of being the number fifteen hero, how the paparazzi each day that pass are becoming more determined to invade his private life and his agency already gave five restriction orders to five paparazzi only this last three months. He can't imagine how difficult it is for higher ranking heroes to maintain their privacy, he admitted, but on a positive note he and his team are working hard to climb higher in the hero rankings this year and they are also trying to sign better sponsorships with other companies' brands.
"So yeah, this is basically what I've been doing in the last months," he picked the menu card, " and you, my favourite writer, keep me updated on what is happening in your life," he asked, flipping the menu card.
"Well first I'm sorry for what happened to you with the paparazzi, at least your agencies manage the whole situation well but don't worry I don't have any doubts that you will achieve the top ten hero podium. So you wanted to know my personal life or my work life?,".
"All of it," He admitted with a devilish smile painted on his face.
"You jerk, so where do I start," taking a deep breath, "let's talk first about work, even though I told my parents it was my own decision to be on holiday, actually, it is more like my agency imposed me to take this vacation, because of the critiques. Although my recent book was a success to the public, the critiques were, well, quite harsh.
I have been working in this industry for a long time to develop a thick skin towards harsh criticisms but my agency didn't take it well, they told me, I should take time off from working before publishing a new book. They don't want to see again what they read about me in those articles written by literary critics, phrases like 'The book is so predictable, 'Has Adrianne lost her spark of writing?', 'The book is not on the same level as the other that she wrote', 'I will not even read to meet pets'.
He put down the menu card in his hands, "Y/n, I'm sorry for what happened to you but don't let those critics let you down. I know your worth as an writer and looks like also my colleagues know it, the way they were down knowing you took half year off from writing, you should have seen their reaction when they red what those literary critics wrote about you they were furious to them and every time they talk about your stories and theories about it, their face are engulfed of joy" he said taking both of your hands in his and slightly squeeze it. "Y/n if you can only see the happiness of my co-workers imagines the joy you bring to others millions of people that read your stories around the globe," he expressed with a smile on his face, after all the years that you know him that smile always brings you comfort. "Y/n remember you are the one who brought that medium company to become one of the biggest and most important company in New York with your amazing works, you are their big fish. Even if those literary critics didn't like your books, what can your company do against you? Fire you? Please they are nothing without you," he added.
Trying to not laugh at his last statement, she dried the tears forming in her eyes for the words of support from her friend, she said, "Ohhh Yuga chan, you really know how to make a woman cry".
He winked at her, "What can I say, it's the charm of being a hero".
"Ok let's stop with these tear-jerking moments and let's order." Playfully slapping his arm and picking up the menu card to choose what to order. "I honestly don't know what to pick besides their cheesecake, there are so many to choose from".
"Well I also recommend you to check their drinks,".
Flipping through the pages of the menu card, she decided what to choose, " I know what to order and you?," He nodded indicating to her, he was also ready to order.
A waitress came towards them after she called her, "Hi, are you ready to take an order?".
Y/n spoke for both of them, " Yeah, we both chose the cheesecake and for the drinks a black tea and a bottle of water".
"I'm sorry to say this but there is only one cheesecake left," the waitress informed them both.
"It's ok Y/n you can take it-"
"You are more excited than me to try their cheesecake, so I will pick the tiramisù instead of the cheesecake," she said to the waitresses.
Once the waitress was gone Aoyama told her best friend, " I still can't believe it, our friendship basically started thanks to cheese".
She laughed at what he said because it was basically the truth, she remembered the day she met him.
--
Her mother gave birth to her in Musutafu, Japan, but at the age of five her mother decided to move to London. When the young girl asked the reason why they needed to reside in another country, her mother's eyebrow frowned at the question but there was an evident sadness in her eyes and a wounded look she tried to hide under a smile. Her mom lowered herself to approach the same height of her child and with her hand she gently patted the hair of her daughter and with hesitation she answered "It's for the best".
So the single mother and her daughter lived their life in tranquillity, trying to fit in a new community and culture with her mother working as a nurse in a big hospital in London and her going to school and living most of her childhood in England.
Y/n didn't make a lot of friends considering her timid nature until one day she discovered a blog that contains: information, fun facts and new discovery about cheeses. A lot of kids around her age didn't like the smell of it and they always say it because the smell of it reminds them of sticky feet. So when she met on this blog a person around her same age that also has the same passion as her they immediately became friends and this boy's name was Yuga Aoyama.
The young girl and her online friend almost spent their time together, talking about what they wanna be in the future.
"Y/n chan when I grow up I want to be a hero just like All Might," the young boy announced, showing to her the All Might plushie.
"I don't really know what I want to be when I grow up, maybe just like my mama?. I just want one day to meet you in person Yuga,".
Unbeknownst to the ten years old girl, her wish will become reality when her mother informs her that they will go back to live again in Musutafu ,Japan. Her mom receives an offer to work as an assistant for Recovery Girl and to her mother's surprise her daughter was more than happy to go back to Japan because this means that she will have the opportunity to meet her online friend in person.
After five years living in England they are finally back in Japan. Her mother was euphoric for the fact that both of them are finally back in their home country and after a few weeks of fixing their apartment Y/n didn't lose time to meet her online friend in person and they decided to meet near the UA school.
After meeting in person the two became closer to each other and their friendship solidified over the years until they both went to the UA high school with Aoyama achieving his dream to go to the hero course and her simply frequenting the general department.
The first year of UA recently started and Aoyama and her were walking in the hallway of the school to go to the cafeteria during lunch break, their peaceful conversation was interrupted when they heard loud noises coming from their back.
There was a boy with blond hair and a black lightning symbol on his hair that just passed them running from something or rather from someone, "You see that boy his name is Kaminari, one of my classmates but I don't know why he's running this fast".
She was going to tell her best friend something until she heard another loud sound of explosion coming from behind her. When she turned around to see what was the cause of the tumult the girl notice another blond boy running towards them with a furios remark on his face, the boy was clearly using his quirk in the school hallway, even if he wasn't allowed to, a blast of explosion appearing on his hands to be able to run faster and Y/n seeing all of this was already ready to ignore it until she heard.
"SHINE!".
After hearing those words coming from the blond boy, Y/n was astonished by what she realised and she didn't even register that she basically screamed to the boy, "What it's you".
Bakugo was searching for Kaminari trying to teach him a lesson for a stupid prank that him and Mineta played on him. After giving a lesson to Mineta it was Kaminari turns now, he was running to find him until he lost sight of him, the only evidence where to find him was hearing his scream of terror trying to escape from Bakugo. The angry blond male immediately knew where the noise was coming from and it was from the hallway near the cafeteria and of course Bakugo didn't lose time and he instantly used his quirk to run faster towards the hallway where the scream of Kaminari was coming from.
Out of frustration he let out a curse but he didn't know that screaming that word can change his life forever.
In the hallway he saw his classmate Aoyama and a girl near him, he was going to ignore them until the unknown girl screamed at him.
Bakugo was continuously running but eventually lose his balance and control of his quirk when the girl in front of him screamed at him, his pupil become more dilated and suddenly his breath grow shorter until he was a few steps from the unknown girl and at that moment he completely lose track of his footstep making him fell on the ground with the girl under him.
Y/n didn't understand what just happened, her body was lying on the ground and she felt a weight of another person on top of her, when she opened her eyes she was greeted with a pair of carmine eyes observing her movement attentively.
" Fuck it's you then ," Bakugo said.
--
"Y/n ," he called her, "you were zoning out," he added.
"I'm sorry I was thinking of something," she created an excuse, mentally scolding herself to stop reminiscing about the past with rose tinted glasses.
He was going to say something until both of their attention was now focused on the tv near them.
There was a lady in her thirties announcing that one month from now there will be an annual hero gala and the woman was presenting which heroes will be present that night. The lady was showing pictures of various superheroes which some of them were familiar to Y/n from Aoyama and old UA students but what caught her attention was the remark that the woman said when she presented the pictures of Bakugo and her girlfriend.
Look at those two our national sweet couple, we all can't wait to see them and in a few months by now there will be their six years anniversary together .
Y/n and Yuga looked at each other's eyes and they cringed at that nickname that the host gave them.
"National sweet couple? Seriously?," she asked, trying to hold her laugh.
A hand in front of his mouth to suppress his laugh, he said, "Believe me there are worse nicknames that I heard about those two. But you know what is more interesting," he suddenly lowered his voice and asked her to come near him, "there are some rumours in the hero circle that say that Bakugo cheated multiple times on Yua".
At his last statement, she looked with sadness at the golden ring present on her fourth finger and thought Well this isn't like the first time that happen.
" but you know, what is the most interesting part of the 'cheating rumors' about Bakugo is that none of it comes out from the public's eyes," he added.
"Well this is strange considering this is the type of news paparazzi and the media will fight to know ".
Suddenly the conversation she was having with her friends was interrupted when a waitress served them their food.
"Y/n let's stop talking about Bakugo love life, tell me about yours-".
"Not existent," she cut him short.
"Oh c'mon Y/n there will be someone who can make your heart beat again- ".
His complaints were interrupted with the ring of her phone.
"Who is it?," he asked.
She checked her phone and told him, " It's Aki".
"Speaking of the devil. You mean that Aki, the son of the president of the company you work for? The golden bachelor of your company and every female tried to seduce but failed eventually?," he said, drinking his tea.
"I'm sorry to interrupt your fantasies but he's only a good friend of mine, probably he only called just to talk about work knowing him," she admitted, answering the call.
"Hi Aki, ohh you're coming to Japan, when?,".
She heard her friend whispering to her, "Interesting," she rolled her eyes at her friend's comment.
"Ok bye Aki,".
"So what did you talk about,".
She told Aoyama what they talked about and it was mainly about work. Aki is the vice president of the company and in a few days he will come to Japan to take over an important project that was to build a new branch company located in Tokyo.
"And he also asked me if he can take me out to dinner when he will be here,".
"Well well well this sounds like a date to me. Do you ever think that he might have feelings for you?," he asked.
She defended herself, "We knew each other for a few years now, if he ever had feelings for me I should have noticed it by now".
" Y/n , I mean you didn't even notice when Bakugo had-".
She knew exactly where he was coming from and she didn't like it. She touched the ring in her finger with her other hand and with a firm voice she said to him, " Aoyama, stop, I might have not noticed in the past but now I will definitely know if someone has it".
Aoyama noticed her discomfort around that particular subject and he immediately tried to ask for forgiveness, "I'm sorry. I should've thought better before bringing it out that subject".
"It's ok Yuga. I shouldn't be angry with you about things that happened years ago," she comforted him, returning to her calm nature.
"No no no I'm on the wrong side this time and I want you to forgive me by going shopping and let me pay for your stuff," he informed her.
"Wait no you shouldn't do it-".
"I insist Y/n and I don't accept no for an answer," he announced, winking at her.
"I mean if you insist….".
#bakusquad#bakugou x reader#bakugou katsuki x reader#katsuki x reader#bakugo katsuki x you#bakugo angst#angst#my hero academia imagines#my hero academia angst#my hero academy oc#boku no hero x reader#boku no academia#boku no hero imagines#bnha eijiro kirishima#kirishima eijirou#aizawa fluff#dad aizawa#shoto aizawa#denki kaminari#bnha sero#bakugo katsuki#boku no hero headcanons#my hero academia#my hero fanfic#boku no hero fanfic#my hero x reader#my hero x y/n#my hero x you
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Little Border Town Pt. 3
Summary: It begins with a man and a woman, as it always seems to. One lives in France and the other lives in Italy, technically, but they’re also neighbors. Various issues arise between these two and they can’t ever seem to see eye to eye on anything. Will they ever move past their petty fighting or is the little town they live in doomed to only gossip about what Harry and Y/N are fighting about today?
Part 3: the one with the boat and the beginning of a storm
IT’S BEEN AGESSSS I AM SO SO SORRY I LOVE YALL SO MUCH AND EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER READ THIS THANK YOU FOR BEING PATIENT
also harry is wearing this fit in this part just no tie?? i think i cant remember
college has been incredibly crazy this year already and i just dont have time to write like i did before i went back. i honestly had this mostly finished and i havent reread so i have no idea what even happens so lmk what you think, i can’t imagine that it will get a lot of notes but if it did id be very happy about that - anyways lots of love and feedback appreciated as always...pls enjoy
Word Count: 6.6k | Warnings: ?? Swearing? idek, more yearning bc slow burn
Catch up here! part 1 | 2 |
-
“Isn’t the weather not ideal for boat sailing today,” she ponders as her face looks up at the sky. She’s walking into Harry’s store again after running back to her place to grab a jacket and lock up. She placed a notecard in the door’s window that says “closed today, see you tomorrow” with a smiling face as punctuation.
Harry grins, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He had sailing boots on his feet with a smart big-collared printed shirt and marigold trousers. Instead of a belt, he had suspenders that matched the color of his pants and a pearl necklace as his final accessory other than his rings. He must have repainted his nails this morning because they were a light lavender shade that hadn’t been noticeable last night.
“It’s just fine. We’re entering fall and the sun is out today!” He gestures to the sky above them and she nods in agreement that the sun is indeed out. However she wasn’t sure if she’d categorize it as a nice day to go out on the sea still. With the sun there were also many clouds, they were mostly white and fluffy, but she was sure they could turn sinister any moment.
“Ready?” He beams.
“As I’ll ever be.”
-
On the boat, Y/N felt her stomach churning. Was she giddy or unnerved? Likely, both.
Harry was tying the boat off the dock after helping her onto the deck. It wasn’t a huge boat, not a yacht or anything, but it also wasn’t a tiny sailboat. It had an upper deck where maybe four people - at most - could comfortably be. Then a lower deck, inside a hatch in the upper deck. She couldn’t discern how much space was down there, but she was sure Harry would show her. He was talking through everything he was doing on the boat. Ad nauseum for an extremely nontechnical girl, such as herself.
Still, she sat in the spot he had directed her to next to the closed hatch and watched him move gracefully around the boat. Maneuvering the sails and different parts of the boat was a dance for Harry. Each step, each twist and knot, moved by a song unknown to her. It was beautiful. He was completely in his element, surprisingly. Again, Harry surprised her. She knew he had a boat, but whenever she thought of a jerk with a boat she didn’t think of what she was seeing with her own eyes. It was beautiful - or at least, it would be, if he’d shut his big mouth that was now making her roll her eyes as he made a pun about boats.
“So,” Harry starts finally, finishing up whatever he needed to do to get the boat off the dock and on the path he wanted. They were moving out into open water, she could see the little town, but it was growing smaller by the minute. Her stomach churned again as she looked up at the man she had just trusted to take her out onto the ocean. She grimaced slightly at the thought.
“Do you want to see the inside?” he continued.
She nods eagerly, “Finally!”
He chuckles lightly before opening up the hatch and gesturing for her to go first. She looks at him hesitantly.
“This isn’t a trap right? It’s not going to be all...murder-y down there?” Her voice is pitched higher, she’s almost completely serious.
This time Harry’s laugh comes from his belly, almost doubling over at the word ‘murder-y’. Between laughs, he tries to reassure her. “God no...oh my god.” More laughter, then a deep breath. “The only evil entity on this boat is the diavola I invited on here,” he gestures to her standing in front of him and her eyes narrow. Displeasure washing over her features.
“You’re ridiculous,” her hand swats at his sternum before she turns from him and climbs down to the underdeck area.
When she’s down, she’s surprised with her surroundings and she doesn’t notice Harry follow quickly behind her. It’s neat and stylish. Well, she’s not completely surprised, Harry was very fashionable. But the neatness dissipated all thoughts of the improbable scenario where Harry had lured her on his boat to murder her. It was what she had been freaking out over when she had at first refused to enter.
There was a small daybed at the end of the hall that doubled as a couch, a door to a bathroom, a dining area, a kitchenette, and then the random area they were standing in. It wasn’t super spacious, it was a hallway with things around it, but it was clean and it smelled nice. Everything had a place and they were neatly put in their places. After a moment, she turned at the feeling of Harry’s presence behind her.
He grinned, scanning the areas her eyes had just taken in for the first time. His green eyes were filled with admiration. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah, smells like you.” She nods matter of factly.
“Huh?” His head whips to her, sure he hadn’t heard her right.
“The whole place is very you,” she looks away from him and walks down the hall to the daybed and takes a seat, “Styles-ish.”
He follows quickly behind, shaking his head out of his own thoughts.
He mumbles a thanks, not catching the play on words she’d used with his last name. She smiles to herself, pleased. He stands in the doorway, not really wanting to sit beside her. Maybe he didn’t trust himself with being in such close proximity with her anymore. No, not after last night.
Her eyes widen slightly when he leans against the doorway and crosses his arms. The sleeves of his button-up had been rolled up when he had been working with the sails. Her lips suddenly are dry and she wets them with her tongue, eyes moving to the fabric of the blanket she’s sat on top of.
“I meant to say,” Harry breaks the silence, obviously not a fan of the quiet. A hand leaves his pose and runs through his hair, rings classically tugging at his curls. He swallows before he speaks again, “Thanks, uh, for stopping me last night. That would’ve been weird…”
He trails off and her eyes go wide again, but now they’re trained on his face. His eyes are downcast now, watching the way light plays off his rings. She tries to make out the sound in his voice, the expression he’s trying to hide with indifference. Her teeth tug her bottom lip into her mouth as she thinks, silence once again taking hold of the small, small room. The air is tense, static, unmoving, the complete opposite of the water that rushes just outside the walls of the boat.
She clears her throat and Harry locks eyes with her, “No problem...alcohol and atmosphere, clouds the head. I get it.” She did, but she also hadn’t wanted the gratitude Harry had just placed on her.
“You booze, you lose,” he smiles, straightening up and she looks at him quizzically.
“That’s such an odd phrase.”
“No it’s not!”
“It’s a play on ‘you snooze, you lose’ right?” She leans forward, face looking smugly up at Harry’s offended face.
“Well, yeah,” Harry admits.
“I can’t believe you made that up and got it tattooed,” She states breezily and then stands. She brushes past him to look around the rest of the cabin.
Harry scoffs, not even noticing the way her fingers had brushed over his naked forearm as she passed, too focussed on his indignation. “How’d you know about the tattoo?”
“Naked neighbor? Never closing his shade? Do you seriously need a refresher course already? Seriously, boat boy, I really thought you were smarter than that,” She talks as she snoops around the different parts of the cabin. She pokes at figurines and looks at little photos and paintings. Her head looks over her shoulder and she laughs happily at Harry’s face of irritation. It was so easy to push his buttons.
“Don’t call me boat boy,” he seethes, but she knows he’s not really mad. More like he’s a child who got told no dessert before dinner. A laugh rocks through her body again and bubbles to the surface. It causes Harry to soften, this time there’s no alcohol in his system to account for the feeling he just felt. He mirrors the smile she has. That is until she reaches the kitchenette and finds a rack of CDs sitting beside the sink.
She turns from him and begins to leaf through them, most of them are artists she recognizes. But then she reaches some that are just titled “Demo” with various numbers beside the word. Her fingers nimbly pick out “Demo #1” and turn back to Harry with an inquisitive gaze. His green eyes are bigger than usual, the smile gone from his face.
“These from the boy band days?” She smiles wider as he turns a little red. She crosses closer to him, remembering the sight of a cd player in the main area where the entrance to the cabin was.
“Erm..no.” She flips around again, confused again, but then it dawns on her. “Demos for my solo work.”
“That you put on hold to take over for your Uncle.”
“Great Uncle.” He corrects.
“I know.” She waited a second, where she was about to be quick to play the CD, she now wanted to get Harry’s permission. It might be a little more personal than she had first thought. “Can we listen to this one? You’d technically be taking me up on the request to play for me sometime.”
“Yeah, they’re rough - obviously. So if you could try to not bruise my ego, at least not more than you usually do,” he grins and she looks at him with dead eyes. A smile cracks on her face quickly, still.
“I wouldn’t...this is different,” she struggles to find the right words. She would never make fun of something he cared a lot about, not now. She wasn’t that person, it was odd to think he maybe saw her like that. She shook away the thought and focused on placing the CD in its player correctly.
The first song begins to play, he’s right it is rough, it’s a demo. There’s no backing vocals or beat of any kind. Just a voice and a guitar. And it’s amazing. After the guitar intro, she lets out a breath she had been holding when she hears the voice. His voice. It’s beautiful. And she’s shocked, her eyes flash to Harry. He’s nibbling at his bottom lip, watching her hear it for the first time. His voice from all those years ago.
“Brooklyn saw me empty at the news, there’s no water inside this swimming pool.”
Her eyes light up again at the lyrics and she smiles, finding it melancholic yet slightly funny at the same time. It was interesting, the words, his voice, the meaning. Some bits of information eluded her, but she knew she enjoyed the song.
“And I’ve been praying, I never did before.”
Even as the song moved on from this one lyric, she felt it replaying in her head as she watched the singer in front of her. Years older than he had been when he had written this song. She was filled with questions and paused the CD as the guitar faded out.
“That’s it?” Harry laughs, “Just one song? It was really that horrible?”
“Oh my god, no!” She is emphatic, needing Harry to understand she’s serious. She takes a step closer to his figure. He had traveled closer to her while the song had played. They were almost chest to chest and her hand goes out to touch his forearm. “I really liked it, genuinely. I just needed a moment before the next one.”
“Bracing yourself?”
“Stop, I’m serious. It was beautiful. Your voice is wonderful, Harry.”
His eyes sparkle at the praise, finally believing she’s not taking the piss. Then his eyes dropped from her gaze, “I was a lot younger then, was 21 I think when I recorded this demo.”
“So? A voice like that doesn’t just disappear, dude.” She looks at him with a finality in her expression before dropping the hand that was firmly gripping his tattooed arm and turning back to the CD player.
Harry bites his lip as another one of his early songs plays over the shoddy speakers. His voice repeats “Meet me in the hallway” over the solo guitar. There’s no echo or bass, no count in like the final song was supposed to have. It’s just him and his guitar, before he chose to leave it all behind.
His voice is sadder here, she notices and she visibly winces at “just take the pain away” and “just let me know, I’ll be on the floor” and his repetition of “gotta get better.”
How did this man, who seemed fazed by practically nothing, have so much hurt in him to write both of these songs? Her eyes welled with water, but she blinked them back still staring at the singer before her. He was watching the CD spin in the player as his voice came through the speakers. He was lost in thought, in memory. Maybe she was lucky, these weren’t memories for her, she was only hearing his interpretation of his life. She hadn’t had to live that pain first hand. This time she doesn’t pause before the next song.
The next one seems more produced than the last two. This one starts with drums, a step up from the last two acoustic demos in respect to production. A big crash and then a wailing guitar and an accompanying voice. His voice is stronger here, more sure of himself. And then it changes again, melancholic once again and her heart strings are yanked at again.
“We’re not who we used to be, we’re just two ghosts standing in the place of you and me, trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat.”
The guitar continues that sad tone for a riff and then goes back to strumming beneath his voice. She shifts her eyes to him again and sighs softly, it weighs heavy on her soul that the man next to her has seemingly been through so much heartache. He looks up at “We don’t see what we used to see” and she holds his gaze, brows knit together in confusion and sadness. She pauses this time, finger reaching out without looking.
“This is depressing, please tell me they’re not all sad songs or I might as well have turned on a pet rescue commercial.”
His smile etches on his face, in a small knowing smirk and he crosses into her personal space. She’s about to step back, but he reaches out and softly bats her finger away from the pause/play button. She smiles back, shuffling to lean against the counter beside him. It was unusual for them to be on the same side of the counter, much like last night at the bar.
“There’s six songs on this demo. Three sad, three…” he trails off, looking at her expectantly. She nods. “You gotta learn to be a little less impatient, hmm?”
“Not impatient, just trying to brace myself for more sadness. I thought I had been promised a day of fun,” she grumbles.
“I wasn’t the one who suggested a demo listening party,” his brows raise and she twists her mouth to the side at his smug response.
“True,” she finally concedes with a murmur.
He presses play and a new song comes on that is more upbeat than any of the other’s that have played so far. It also seems to be a bit more produced than the first two. Her hand rests on the countertop and begins to tap, she quirks her brow at the first lyric “she’s got a family in carolina, so far away, but she says I remind her of home.” A girl who likened Harry Styles to the South of the United States, interesting. As she listens to the lyrics, she smirks at the massive crush he must have had to write this song. The “good girl” lyrics bounce around in her mind and her mind drifts back to last night. Would it have felt good? To kiss Harry?
Then, she’s brought out of her reverie with “I met her once and wrote a song about her”. Her eyes widen and look to Harry again inquisitively as his past self muses over how good this girl felt. He wrote about a one night stand? That woman must have been magic. That was all she had to say about that.
“Really?” She asks incredulously, folding her arms over her chest. His gaze flickers at the movement, human nature. He presses pause.
“What?”
“A one night stand earned that?”
He looked at her seriously, like the answer was obvious. She laughs before continuing.
“You’re a simp.”
“I’m sorry?” He sputters at her statement immediately.
She raises her brows as a response now. Nothing else to say.
“She wasn’t a one night stand,” he defends, “She was a blind date...and it had been after a dry spell.”
She starts to laugh, about to give another snarky response, but he adds, “And I was twenty-one.” The numbers specifically enunciated.
“You’re still a simp in my book...but I liked the song. It was catchy, rock vibes in there. I don’t know about her telling you remind her of Carolina - north or south, I don’t see it.”
He eyes her warily, still not happy with her titling him that gen z term that was super popular all over the internet. He took her in and he knew she was only three years younger than him, he was pretty sure, yet she used ‘simp’ and ‘vibes’ like they were lexicon words. He didn’t hate it, it was just different than what he usually heard in the little border town. Italian not having translations for things like that, English was so interesting, internet language was so interesting.
“I-” He starts and stops. “She said it. Was she right? That’s not my place to judge.”
“I don’t know,” Y/N pressed, words dragging out playfully, “Personally, I wouldn’t want to be a reminder of the U.S. South, but okay...simp.”
“I swear to god if you call me that one more time, I’m throwing you overboard and I won’t feel bad about it.”
Her eyes widen and then she smiles, he cracks a smile too. They huddle back around the CD player, ready for the next song. It starts with a strong guitar and drums, again well produced compared to the acoustic earlier ones.
His voice in this is far more shaky, unsure of himself again. “Let me take my medicine, take my medicine, treat you like a gentleman,” comes through the speakers. She shivers and looks at him, her fingers tapping along to the beat. The instruments are strong where his voice is soft, it doesn’t exactly fit, but she likes the lyrics still. When it gets to the pre-chorus, that’s when she knows she loves the song.
“I had a few got drunk on you and now I’m wasted, and when I sleep I’m gonna dream of how you (tasted)”
When his voice pitches high for ‘wasted’ she loses it. Her body moves with the instruments and her eyes close and her head wiggles. Harry smiles happily as she dances for the first time to one of his songs. The last word must have been shouted by his bandmates, because she doesn’t hear him say it.
Then the chorus hits and she wonders how it got even better. Her eyes shoot open and she just stares at Harry, her jaw slightly dropped.
“If you got out tonight, I’m going out tonight cause I know you’re persuasive! You got that something and I got me an appetite now I can taste it”
His past self sings of getting dizzy and his voice moans into the mic the demo was recorded on. She’s blown away. It sounds so hot, his voice gaining confidence during the pre-chorus and the chorus to have an all around rockstar sound.
The present Harry just taps his rings together as he watches her, studying her reaction with an even-tempered expression. Why isn’t he screaming like she is on the inside? When it gets to the second verse she’s bracing herself for what’s to come. This song has her pulse racing and blood flowing wildly around her body. She’s buzzing from it.
“The boys and the girls are in, I mess around with him and I’m okay with it”
The electric guitar follows the line up and she thinks she’s going to pass out on this boat right now. Flamboyant Harry. Was this what Marie had been talking about. The wild side of Harry she really had never seen, embodied in one song. She wanted more of it. Still all she got was the Harry on the demo rocking out to his song. She can hear him smiling through the recording, the sad boy from a few songs ago was now feeling euphoric. She just wanted to dance the night away with him.
Then another pre-chorus: “I’m coming down, I figured out I kinda like it, and when I sleep I’m gonna dream of how you (ride it)”
His voice goes high again for ‘like it’ this time and her question of what is to follow is quickly answered with the bandmates screaming ‘ride it’ into the mics they must have had. It’s punctuated with the drums and other instruments. A noise escapes the back of her throat and Harry looks at her both smugly and amused. She rolls her eyes in response, trying to convince Harry that she hadn’t just had images of him singing about how good someone rides him flash in her mind. Even more so with the images of someone, namely her, being the object of his dreams. Doing the things he said he’d dream of. That, that was definitely not what she was thinking about. Definitely not. Her throat was dry and she swallowed hard. Harry’s eyes never left her face. Watching every reaction, gauging it and storing the information elsewhere for the time being.
She sings along to the chorus, trying to focus on the song, it was easy to pick up, but then the damn moans. And then there’s a guitar solo that sounds like sex itself and she’s baffled that this was an unreleased demo, not a famous rock song. Harry in front of her can’t stop himself from tapping his feet at this part, a little dance forming on his body as his eyes finally leave her figure. They close as he feels the music, the memory of his friend playing the riff clear in his mind and how much he had loved it. It builds up again and then there’s a final chorus. She watches him now as he dances in the confined space. His mouth opens to sing along to the “la la la’s”
It ends and goes straight into another upbeat song. It seemed like a complimentary song to the one that had just played.
“I don’t want your sympathy, but you don’t know what you do to me, oh Anna!”
His voice sings strong again. Harry before her composed himself again, going back to his watching position. He took in her tapping and smiling to the song. He also mouths the words slightly as it plays, the lyrics clear as the day he finished writing them almost 4 years ago. One of the final ones for this demo.
“Hope you never hear this and know that it’s for you, don’t know what I’d tell you if you asked me for the truth”
She smirks at him, now, with the earnest lyrics, about to say something, but then notices the change in the guitar. It switches from the epic riff that was going to a more familiar tune, “Faith” by George Michael. She looks at him, a cheesy grin on her face as the voice begins to sing the chorus of that song. Her body begins to dance to it, like an old man doing the twist. She’s not ashamed and Harry loves it and joins her by mirroring the movements.
When the song comes to an end, they’re one large giggling mess. She falls into his arms and he holds her steady, their laughter coming out with freedom.
“Thanks for making me be patient,” She looks up at him, “it was worth it!”
He smiles, backing up slightly, “It’s like I knew what I was talking about.”
“Ok smart guy,” she teases with a silly voice. “I’m assuming whoever Anna is, isn’t actually named Anna then...?”
Harry hums and makes a twitch of his brows, but doesn’t respond. Instead he grabs her hand and she squeaks slightly, he pulls her to the ladder and prompts her to go up. She obliges silently and lands back on the top of the boat now. She looks out and sees the little town to be off in the distances now, shining blue water all around the creamy white boat.
Harry stands behind her now and shuts the hatch easily. She looks at him warily, confused by his silence. He extends his hand to her this time and she takes it. He leads her to the front of his boat. They’re moving, but so slowly you’d barely notice. There’s a loveseat of sorts right at the front and Harry sets her down in it. She smiles at him with caution, still bewildered. He leans against a part of the boat that stands in front of the seat.
“It’s beautiful, right?” He asks.
Her eyes have been looking around her, but they’ve mostly been trained on Harry. She was mesmerized by him now. His music, his boat, his clothes, his everything. She was seeing him in a new light. In a completely brand new way that had her unable to take her eyes off of him.
She nods finally when Harry looks at her expectantly. “It’s amazing,” she breathes.
His smile is the half-sided grin again. Beautiful big teeth on display with a little part of space between them. His dimple pops out and once again her eyes are on his face. She realized going on this boat with Harry might not have been such a good idea.
He folds his arms, her eyes flicker down. Every movement he makes, she doesn’t want to miss it. Even if she also is telling her mind to shake it off, she can’t. It’s like a spell.
“Obviously Anna is a pseudonym,” he says finally, eyes watching where the boat was taking him. She nods in approval. He pauses, watching the little waves, but she knows he has more to say.
“What did you think of the rest of it?” He asks quietly, gaze never going back to her. He knew she’d teased him a little and had danced along to some. She’d looked at him with wide eyes at some lyrics, but he wanted to know what she really thought.
She can tell he’s nervous, but she doesn’t understand why. They were all very good songs, his voice was beautiful, the lyrics were interesting. She didn’t understand his lack of confidence. His first time not exhibiting his usual self-assured - self-absorbed, even - personality. She bites her lip in confusion and his brows knit together, further showing his apprehension. The wrinkles in his forehead show up more prominently and she’s reminded that Harry is 26. He’s a different person now then he was back when he recorded that demo. Maybe there was a reason he kept them on the boat. She felt unsure in her response now.
“They were all great, Harry.” His face softens immediately. “Each one was beautifully written and sung. The ones that were acoustic sounded wonderful as did the ones with your whole band. I’m honored to be someone who got to hear those masterpieces.”
She wanted to tell them they should be famous songs, but she had a feeling that might not have the effect on him that she wanted. He had chosen a little quiet life in the little border town. She didn’t think he would want to hear how his music could have made it big time.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, just about the sounds of the sea. He lets a closed mouth smile twist onto his face, but it feels like he doesn’t fully believe her. She wants to kiss his worry away, but again, she knows it’s not possible. His words from earlier rang in her head. It would make things weird. Yeah, you’re right. Ugh, why had she agreed. She didn’t agree, not at all, not anymore.
“Did you have a favorite?” He stands up straighter with his question.
She laughs slightly, “I liked the second to last one a lot. It was hot.”
“Hot how?” He steps closer, smirking.
She jumps up from her reclined seat, in indignation, “Oh come on, you know it’s hot. Now you’re just looking for me to stroke your ego! It’s obviously about sex.”
“And? You’re the one who’s saying it’s your favorite and blushing.” He arches a brow at her, arms going to his hips and looking at her teasingly.
“Well, you’re the one who was singing about sucking dick and dreaming of how someone rode you.”
“Is that what it’s about?” His voice raises as he purses his lips and raises both of his brows.
She realizes just how worked up he’s gotten her in such a short amount of time. She huffs and turns away from him with a flick of her hand. “You’re infuriating.” Is all she can say. She looks out at the waves now, ignoring Harry even though he’s less than a foot away.
He’s laughing behind her for a little. Then when she doesn’t turn around, he quiets and she’s not quite sure where he’s gone. Then his breath fans over her neck and right shoulder, where her jacket hasn’t managed to cover her. It’s warm and a little minty as the scent travels over the salty sea air. She doesn’t turn or move a muscle for that matter.
A hand reaches out to her shoulder, but still she makes no move to turn. It rests there for a minute and she simply huffs again, letting her shoulders rise and fall dramatically. A single laugh slips from Harry’s mouth.
“C’mon diavola, don’t be like that. S’all in good fun.” His voice is low in her ear, sultry even. It reminds her of his voice in that song once he got into it. His voice sounds like sex in her ear and this time when she sighs it’s not because she’s irritated with him. No, she wants him. The sigh has an undercurrent of that desire and she hopes Harry doesn’t understand that. But otherwise she stays quiet, letting him murmur into her ear with his hand on her shoulder and his chest pressed to her back now. The only witness of this exchange is the ocean before them.
His head leans closer and if she didn’t know any better it felt like he was about to press a kiss to her neck. Instead all she feels is the brush of his mustache, it tickles the shell of her ear and she can’t keep in the giggle. She twists away from the sensation and Harry is grinning at her when she faces him.
His hand still on her shoulder and his body still pressed close to hers. He’s so warm and so close and so shiny new in her eyes, even if he still manages to irritate her. Her eyes flicker up to his as their laughter quiets down. She realizes her own hands have gone to his waist to steady herself and she follows his feet as he backs them up from the edge of the boat that she had brought them too.
It’s quiet again. They’re staring at each other intently. Her eyes are swirling with emotion because she just wants to know what’s going on in the brain of the man before her. She wants to know everything about him, but she knows that’s not how he feels about her. Sure, they’re friends now, but nothing else.
Why did she have to come on this stupid boat and find his stupid amazing music? Why did he have such a stupid amazing face?
These questions and other silly things were racing around her head as she gripped his waist. He didn’t mind her quietness, he found her gaze to be a little unnerving, but he was just glad he had made her laugh. He found that he didn’t enjoy her anger at him as much anymore.
Just as he was about to start another conversation, there was a cloud that drifted over the shining sun. It was her original fear come to life. Harry’s brows furrowed as he looked up at the clouds. They were turning grey. Fast.
“Shit, shit, shit,” He began mumbling and released his hand from her shoulder. He pulled away from her hold and began moving swiftly around the boat. He needed to get them off the water, there was a storm coming.
Her eyes went wide as she noticed the approaching storm as well. Her brows furrowed with worry as she watched Harry begin working on the boat, his only words being curses to himself at first.
Then he enlists her help, asking her to hold onto a specific part of the boat for him after he threw her a life vest and made her put it on. She wore it with great dissatisfaction. He only shrugged as he continued to move nimbly around the boat, turning them around, back to the dock.
The boat moved much swifter into the shore than it had on their way out. The waves were growing choppier by the minute and she would admit she was more than a little scared. Thankfully, Harry knew what he was doing and got them there quickly and safely. Once at the dock, he tied them there and then helped her off the boat. She stood on the dock uncomfortably as the rain started to come down.
“Give me your lifevest!” He gestures from the boat.
She quickly takes it off and flinches when the first bout of thunder sounds from far off. He takes it from her and throws it haphazardly down the hatch along with his own before jumping off the boat himself. He surveys the boat from the dock to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything. Then he looks at her. She’s wrapped her arms around herself and is ducking her head, looking like she’s attempting to ward off rain but failing miserably.
She looks up at him and he offers a soft smile of reassurance.
“Take my hand!” He shouts slightly over the growing sound of rain and thunder. He wants to get them out of the rain, but he’s also apprehensive to leave his boat to the mercy of the weather. Still, that’s all he can do.
She puts her hand in his and his fingers weave with hers. Then, they’re off racing back to their street in the little border town.
-
“I should go back to my place!”
“Don’t be silly! France is much too far for you to go in this weather!”
She laughs and grips his hand tighter as he fumbles for his key. His wet hand slipping as the rain droplets soak their clothes and skin. Even though her door is a mere few feet away she allows Harry to pull her into his shop. The warmth and dryness appreciated after running a few blocks in the now torrential downpour. There weren’t storms often in the little border town, but like the old adage said ‘when it rained, it poured’ quite literally. The less she had to travel in the rain the happier she was, even if it was three measly feet.
It also occurred to her that she’d be able to sit out her first storm with someone by her side. And she would admit that didn’t sound like the worst thing in the world. She wasn’t necessarily a fan of storms and being in a new place with a storm she’d never weathered before was daunting. Harry inviting her in was a blessing. She didn’t have to be asked twice.
Once inside the little shop, their wet frames begin to form puddles beneath themselves. Harry sighs and takes off up his rickety stairs. She looks after him in confusion but stays put when he calls a quick “Wait there!”
She shakes a bit of the rain from her and shivers as she listens for Harry’s movements barely audible above the crashing of the rain water. When he returns, her breath catches in her throat, like she just choked on something, yet there’s nothing.
As he walks down the steps, far slower now, his wet hair shakes out around his head forming some ethereal halo. The light from upstairs illuminates him and the darkness outside casts an ominous darkness as he descends.
“Un ange…” She whispers after finally catching her breath.
If he hears her, it doesn’t matter. He’s already beginning to smile widely just from seeing Y/N before him.
He skips the last step and crosses to her swiftly. “Let’s get you dried a little more,” he begins to dote. A matching smile spreads on Y/N’s face out of appreciation. She still can’t manage to fend off the shivering and Harry’s smile falters. His hands leave the towel and trace her exposed skin. Her cheek feels like ice, only slightly warming under his touch.
“You need dry clothes,” he mumbles.
Her eyes widen as she looks up at him. He’s so close and so attentive and she wants to ask him to kiss her because they’ve been going back and forth all day, but he’s right she’s freezing. His eyes are so intense though she can’t even maintain eye contact. Instead her gaze flits up to the droplet beginning to swell down one of his rogue strands of hair that flopped over his forehead moments ago.
She doesn’t respond as she watches and Harry begins to worry more. Her eyes seemingly unfocused, her shivering, and her silence. He thumbs over the apple of her cheekbone and finally breaks her reverie. The droplet splashing between them without her as its audience.
“C’mon,” he tugs her hand now to bring her upstairs.
#harry styles fanfiction#harry styles x reader#harry styles x you#harry styles fluff#harry styles smut#harry styles#harry styles x y/n#harry styles fan fic#harry styles series#little border town#harry styles one shot#harry styles af#ahghsgjfgkjdfkg#literal keyboard smash#its been so long#and no one is going to read#do y'all even remember me omg
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The Doctor Is In (Part Two of Till Forever Falls Apart, A Peter Maximoff/Reader Series)
Synopsis: Peter’s first few days in his new home are mostly uneventful, so he decides it’s the perfect time to dust off his running goggles and steal some shit. The building with the massive circular stained glass window seems like a great place to start! People with buildings that lavish are usually rich and weak, so what could possibly go wrong?
Tags: Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn, Falling in Love, Attempted Theft, Secrets, Suspicions,
Rating: T
Warnings: Mild Language, Slight Sexual Innuendo
Word Count: 2800~
This work, as well as the other completed parts of this series, have been crossposted to my AO3!
-----
To Peter’s credit, it had all started with good intentions… okay, semi-good intentions, but that was the best defense he had to offer.
One moment he’s speeding into a funky building with a cool glass window looking for a knick-knack to take home to Y/N and the next he’s falling through endless darkness, searching for anything he could possibly grab onto. It was hell. Worst of all, though, he couldn’t use his speed. The world was only emptiness and darkness for as far as he could reach. Well, it was until he hit the ground.
It was a sudden jolt after what felt like hours of captivity when Peter hit the cool tiles of the flooring below him. The bright light after total darkness burned his eyes. He winced against it, lifting his arms to shield his face. There was no time to acclimate to his new surroundings, though, which were definitely not part of the building he had been inside before he might add, because the second his vision came back into focus a booming voice rang out from behind him.
“Peter Maximoff, what purpose did you have for breaking into the Sanctum Sanctorum?”
Peter spun around quickly on the ground to find a man floating behind him. Wait, floating? He didn’t even have time to question how the stranger knew his name while he was questioning what the hell he was. Was he a mutant? The man looked furious, his red cape billowing out behind him in an almost menacing manner while he stroked his goatee, eyebrows pinched together with rage. Peter had no clue what his deal was or who the hell he was looking at but he did know he had to calm him down fast if he wanted to avert disaster.
Apparently, he was thinking too long though because he wasn’t fast enough.
“I’ll ask you one last time,” the man’s hands came down to chest level, whirring with some sort of orange power, “why did you break into the Sanctum Sanctorum? This is your last chance,”
Somewhere in the distance, a dull thud sounded against the tile, like someone dropping a purse or bag. Peter didn’t have time to think about that, though. He was too busy saving his own life. All he had to do was get to his feet so he could run off! Unfortunately, that was better said than done.
“Woah, Woah, Woah!” he scrambled backward trying to stand but found his feet bound with the same orange sparks that were growing by the second in his attacker’s hands, “I have no clue what the hell a Sanctum Sanctorum is! I think you’ve got the wrong guy, man,”
His assailant cocked his head to the side. “So you’re telling me some other inhumanly fast kleptomaniac mutant from another dimension broke through all of my wards and tried to steal priceless magical artifacts from the Sanctum?”
Peter shrugged nonchalantly. “Magical artifacts? Dude, magic isn’t real. You’ve got the wrong guy,”
Thankfully, the man sighed in exhaustion, letting the orange sparks in his palms disappear as he pinched the bridge of his nose leaving only the ones around Peter’s ankles remaining. For the first time in his life, Peter was glad to be annoying.
“Jesus, I should have had my coffee before dealing with you…”
“I know right?” Peter propped himself up on his hands, “it’s always tragic when you catch the wrong guy, but I’m sure you’ll find your thief eventually. In fact, I think I saw some super speedy dude running towards Central Park when I was walking past that fancy building with the big circle window. That’s so weird! Maybe you should let me go so you can go find your guy,”
The man only seemed to get more pissed off the further Peter dug himself into his own grave. “Oh, I’m not planning on letting you go any time soon. I’m just avoiding a reckoning by letting your keeper know I’m taking you into the Avenger’s custody before we go,”
He was so screwed. “That’s not a-”
Before Peter could even finish his sentence, a crash echoed from across the room.
“STEPHEN STRANGE,”
Now, Peter couldn’t decide if he was saved or even more screwed than before.
There, across the room of what he had now gathered to be a large exhibit at some sort of museum, was Y/N. To say she looked furious would be an understatement.
The art on the walls seemed to shake in her wake as she stormed into the open center of the room, eyes boring holes into Peter’s assailant as she rolled up the sleeves of her paint-stained denim button-up. He could only imagine that this was the reckoning the magic dude was trying to avoid.
The man, Stephen, didn’t waver despite Y/N’s entrance. “Would it kill you to just use my title? I got my doctorate for a reason, you know,” His tone was flat and almost bored as Y/N seethed.
“Fuck you,” she spat, “what the hell are you doing with Peter? And bringing him here of all places? I thought you were supposed to be the responsible Avenger,”
“And I thought you were supposed to keep this menace under control. It looks like we both have a few responsibilities we aren’t keeping up with, huh?”
Across the floor, Peter winced. He hadn’t intended on getting anyone in trouble, he was just looking for a little fun to pass the time and maybe a housewarming gift that would fit in with the rest of Y/N’s antique decor. How was he supposed to know that a crazy, magic, floating guy would take him to what he could only assume was magic prison for breaking into his wizard’s lair? Surprisingly, Y/N picked up his movement.
“Peter, are you okay?” Her eyes never left Strange, flaming with a ferocity that bordered on homicidal, but her voice softened considerably as she spoke to him. He was quick to respond.
“I’m all good! A little tied up at the moment, but it’s nothing I can’t handle!” He shouted back.
Y/N nodded. “Good, just stick tight while I deal with this asshole,”
As the last words left her lips all the softness she had mustered for Peter’s sake dissolved, leaving behind pure, unbridled anger once more.
“You had no right to take him, Strange. We made a deal,”
“You’re right, we did make a deal,” Stephen responded, floating to the ground and taking a step closer to Y/N, “but my duties as Sorcerer Supreme will always come first,”
“That has nothing to do with him! He poses no threat to this universe!”
“He was attempting to steal extremely powerful magical artifacts, Y/N! If a mutant from another dimension had gotten their hands on the Book of Vishanti or the Clock of the Ages who knows what might have happened?”
Y/N stilled. “Peter,” her voice wasn’t the same as it had been when she was shouting at Strange, but it also wasn’t half as gentle as it has been before, “did you steal anything from Stephen?”
Peter, still dazed from the entirety of the experience, was quick to defend himself.
“No! No, I didn’t steal anything!”
One sharp look from Stephen and Y/N sent him spiraling for an excuse.
“Okay, I went in with the intention of stealing, but I had no idea that stuff was magical! I didn’t even know wizards existed! Witches I understood but wizards too? In the middle of New York? Besides, all of this is a moot point! I didn’t actually take anything,”
Surprisingly, Y/N’s expression seemed to soften once again. “See, Stephen? Peter didn’t mean any harm. Now let him go, and this can all be a thing of the past,” As she spoke, he could have sworn that her eyes began to faintly glow.
“I still don’t think it’s a great idea to let him roam free,” Stephen ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair and the restraints around Peter’s ankles tightened slightly.
“Then you’ll have to take him from me,” Y/N brought her hands up, small rippling balls of light beginning to grow in her palms. Peter had never been so scared and aroused in his life. Was this the ‘small power’ she had mentioned to him when he moved in?
“I have remained civil with you and the mages of your order, Strange, but you have no power over me, especially on my own home turf. You lack the time stone now, so you know what will happen if you and I go toe to toe again. Besides, none of that matters. Peter is mine. Mine to protect and defend until he returns to his rightful place in his universe. So, will you let him go, or will we have to settle this the old-fashioned way?”
Y/N’s eyes were definitely glowing now, a brilliant green gleaming from within her as a rough breeze began flowing in from the door across the room. Stephen made no move to attack though. Instead, he heaved a sigh. “You can have your man child back Y/N, calm down,”
Slowly, the glow dissipated, the orbs of light shrinking into nothingness as she lowered her hands. “Thank you, Stephen,”
In an instant, it was as if the pair had gotten along the whole time.
He nodded. “Don’t thank me, just keep him away from ancient magical secrets next time,” Strange paused as if he was finished speaking, but then chuckled softly. It was the most human Peter had ever seen him. “You know how this ends, Y/N. We both do. Are you really sure you want to go through with this?”
It was Y/N’s turn to nod. “I appreciate that you’re looking out for me, but I made my choice a long time ago. There has never been another path for me. Please respect that,”
Peter was clueless as to what any of their exchange meant, too busy rubbing the ache out of his newly freed ankles to think too deeply about whatever deep exchange was happening in front of him, but a nagging feeling in his chest made him think that it must have something to do with him.
Then, in a burst of golden light, Stephen Strange was gone, leaving Y/N and Peter alone as they took in everything that had just happened. It was silent for a moment, the two of them caught between being stunned and glad to see each other, before Y/N’s angry facade melted away.
“What a fucking asshole,” she snickered, making her way over to Peter and offering him a hand, “I hate that guy,”
Peter took her hand and, with a soft pull, was finally upright again. “I know, right? He seems like a total douchebag,”
“Right? Like, yeah it’s terrible enough to kidnap you and try to take you into Avengers custody, but trying to get me to hand you over at my job? That’s just rude on a whole new level,”
“You work here?” Peter gestured at the art on the walls, making Y/N smile.
“Yeah, this is where I go every day. Welcome to the Brooklyn Museum!” She began to lead him out towards the door, linking her arm around his in a strangely intimate act. Peter was sure that she didn’t mean it like that but something about her closeness made his heart flutter.
He guffawed as they walked, passing happy couples and exhibits packed full. “It’s cool here, but I just assumed you worked somewhere… I dunno, more hero-y?”
Y/N laughed. “Everyone always does, but I’ve been attached to restoring paintings since before I ever took up the whole hero gig. I guess it’s the one stable thing I’ve had for my whole life.”
Watching Y/N’s face light up almost made Peter forget that less than an hour earlier he’d been shoved in an infinite dark dimension and threatened with imprisonment by a wizard. It was like she was the only thing worth seeing in a building full of priceless art.
“I’ve always felt strangely comfortable in museums,” she continued, hand brushing against Peter’s bicep in what he could only assume was an accident, “being surrounded by history just feels right to me. It’s like coming home,” Peter couldn’t help but grin, holding back a snicker.
“I’m guessing that’s the real reason you offered to take me in,” he teased, gently ribbing Y/N and making her giggle, “just couldn’t help but bring home a blast from the past who still has their youthful good looks,”
“You caught me! I just couldn’t resist your elderly charms,”
In a moment of poor judgment, Peter found himself leaning into her touch but was surprised to find her leaning right back into him. His heart began to pound faster. He could only hope she couldn’t tell. The feeling of being close to Y/N, listening to her laugh, being the shoulder she leaned on… it was like nothing Peter had ever felt before.
The short remainder of their walk to Y/N’s destination was mostly quiet, but neither of them tried to pull away from the other. Their moment only ended when they reached a large door labeled ‘Staff Only’. Y/N finally unlinked her arm from Peter’s before turning to face him. He was proud to note the flush on her face.
“I’m gonna go grab my bag,” she muttered, worrying the edge of her lip with her teeth, “do you mind taking me home? Traveling with you would probably be faster than hailing a taxi, and way less expensive,”
Between the thought of getting to be close to Y/N again and the excitement of getting to show off his powers, Peter was eager to please. “Sure thing! Do you want me to grab your bag for you? I’m sure I’d be quicker?” He emphasized his statement with a wink. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the desired effect.
Instead, Y/N looked almost nervous as she shook her head no. “I’ve got it, Peter,” she insisted.
He quirked up an eyebrow in surprise. “You sure? We could be home in a minute tops, just say the word,”
“There’s just a lot of important museum stuff back there! I trust you Peter, but this is priceless art we’re talking about, so I’d rather not take any chances. I’ll be back in a second!”
She slowly backed towards the door, offering him one last smile before disappearing into the darkness beyond. Something about her expression turned Peter’s stomach. It wasn’t unfamiliar, she had acted similarly in a few days Peter had known her at seemingly random times, but it just seemed… suspicious, like there was something he should definitely know that he was being kept in the dark about. Despite everything, he shook off the feeling, chalking it up to him not understanding all the intricacies of this new universe. If love made him blind, he was willing to take that chance.
It only took a few minutes for Y/N to emerge, a small messenger bag in hand, but when she did she was joyful once again, offering Peter an apologetic smile. “Sorry about that. Did I miss anything while I was gone?”
He shook his head, pulling down his goggles and offering her his hand. “Not much, just the end of the world,”
She giggled. “So do I just hop on your back or what?”
Peter’s heart skipped a beat. In a second he was down on his knee. “All aboard,” He did his best to keep still as Y/N settled herself on his back, then he was lifting her easily, arms hooked under her knees as she giggled into his hair. “What’s so funny?”
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders securely as he stood. “I just expected you to call yourself the Bohner express,”
It took all of Peter’s strength to keep his laughter under control. “You tell me that now? After the opportunity to use it has passed?”
Y/N squeezed him a little tighter. “I’m sure you’ll get to use it next time,”
The thought of a next time sent Peter’s heart rate through the roof. Oh, it was on.
“I’d hold on if I were you,” he said, smirking, “the Bohner express is leaving the station,”
Y/N was quick to snap back. “Let’s hope it doesn’t disappoint,”
“Oh Y/N, the Bohner express never disappoints,”
“Prove it,”
Peter had them back to the brownstone in record time.
#peter maximoff#peter maximoff x reader#evan peters#evan peters x reader#marvel#doctor strange#quicksilver#fanfic#wandavision
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At Home With Captain America
Fandom: MCU
Pairing: Sam Wilson/Bucky Barnes
Rating: G
Words: 7.7k
Also on AO3
“What can you tell me about how you got to know the Winter Soldier?”
Wilson chuckles. “The first time I met Buck—Sergeant Barnes—he ripped the steering wheel out of the car I was driving on the freeway. He got on the roof, punched through the windshield, pulled the steering wheel off. Just like that.” He mimes with his hands as he describes it.
This doesn’t sound like an auspicious beginning to me, but Wilson is laughing.
At Home with Captain America
By: Adrien Davis
Published: February 2, 2026, 3:35 PM
To say I’m intimidated by interviewing Captain America in his own home would be an understatement, and I would never have thought to ask if I could do that if he hadn’t personally invited me. Normally, I’d start one of these articles by describing the location, maybe even throw in an anecdote or two about how I got there, but that’s not going to be possible here.
Sam Wilson lives on [REDACTED] in [REDACTED]. It was a windy day.
Here’s what I can tell you: it’s an apartment. A nice one. Two bedroom, two bath.
“Am I allowed to describe the inside of your house?” is one of the first things I say to him, after getting his permission to turn on my recorder.
“Go right ahead,” he laughs, arms crossed over the worn USAF logo on his gray t-shirt. “Just don’t put the street name in there or anything.”
Wilson gives me a moment to poke around. Whoever decorated this place has good taste; it’s no haphazard bachelor pad. There’s an exposed brick wall in the otherwise slate blue living room, several plants (which I assume are fakes—albeit convincing ones—since Wilson is, by his own admission, not home as often as he’d like to be), a sturdy walnut coffee table, and a magnificently squishy-looking red couch.
It’s unmistakably lived in, though. I don’t get the sense that the place has been scrubbed spotless or particularly arranged for my visit. There are two abandoned mugs on coasters sitting on the coffee table, along with several different remote controls, and a stack of half-finished books with dog-eared corners. A pile of mail has been pushed to the side. Next to the door, a wall-mounted coat rack holds several leather jackets in shades of brown and black, and at least as many sweaters, mostly navy blue, charcoal and maroon. The shoe rack underneath houses multiple pairs of black combat boots, worn running shoes, house slippers. And next to that, on the floor, a large, gleaming silver case with red detail that could only contain Wilson’s Falcon wingpack. The legendary shield is propped up against it, ready to go at a moment’s notice.
I’m trying to imagine how it would be to leave the house for him. Got my keys, wings, phone, shield, wallet?
There are pictures on the walls and the mantle above the fireplace, under the television. People who I can only assume are Wilson’s relatives by their similarly gap-toothed smiles. Veterans. Wilson in full air force gear next to a blond man I don’t recognize. Then Captain Steve Rogers, in the 1940s with the Howling Commandos, and in the twenty-first century by himself. Wilson with Rogers, and Natasha Romanoff. One conspicuously empty nail where a large frame would clearly fit.
Scattered among these are several very old, dour black and white photographs of a dark-haired family. The first shows a mother, father and two small children, a boy and girl. The second is the mother and children only, taken some time after, judging by their apparent ages. The third is several years later still; the same children with light eyes and dark hair, but they’re teeangers now, and without parents. They look haunting and out-of-place among the glossy prints of Wilson’s big, happy family in matching 80s colorblocked tracksuits, or Wilson and his sisters in front of a Christmas tree, surrounded by wrapping paper and toys.
There’s also a wood-framed painting that stands out: an idyllic watercolor of a little farmhouse with a green roof and shuttered windows in a field. A small pile of lumber and a white mailbox make up the foreground. The most distinctive feature is the signature at the bottom: S.G.R. I know those initials.
“Captain Rogers painted this?”
“Uh huh,” Wilson nods fondly, hands now in his pockets. “Man of many talents. Maybe every talent. Having a hard time thinking of anything he wasn’t good at.”
I hear the unstated in that. A tough act to follow.
I think, for purposes of journalistic integrity, I should probably insert my bias before we go any further. We had never met before this interview, but I am and have always been enormously supportive of Captain Wilson and the work he’s done, and have written myriad articles and think pieces about him over the past several years. He’s shown himself time and again to be a man of unshakable integrity and endless emotional intelligence, and frankly, I’m more worried about the poor sucker who’s going to have to follow Wilson. Rogers did a lot of great things, but among the best of them was choosing a successor.
I tell him as much and he smiles, looking down at his shoes.
“Yeah, I know that’s how you feel,” he says. “I requested you for this piece, actually, because of that. People are going to accuse me of wanting a softball interview here, and maybe they’re right. For this one, I think that’s what I need.”
I’m not sure what he means by that, but he continues before I can ask.
“We should probably do this in the kitchen.” Wilson indicates behind us with his thumb, after I’ve stood silently in his living room for probably way too long. “That couch is too comfortable. I end up falling asleep every time I sit on it.”
The kitchen is, perhaps, a little cramped. There’s a large, dark marble-topped kitchen island that just fits in the center of the room with four bar stools tucked under it. The cabinets are tall, with glass doors showcasing a massive collection of healthy, but non-perishable food. The shelf nearest us holds several well-used bags of pantry supplies: chickpea flour, arrowroot starch, raw sugar. There’s a pasta shelf above it, but no Kraft Mac in sight; everything is lentil-based, chickpea-based, black bean-based.
“Have a seat,” Wilson says, inclining his head towards one of the barstools. “Can I get you something to drink?” He opens the refrigerator.
“We have…” he pauses. “Water. Sorry, just got back from Ecuador this morning. Sparkling or still?”
I accept a glass of still water from Captain America. He sits down on the stool next to mine.
His house, or what I’ve seen of it, is homey in a way I can’t imagine any of the late Tony Stark’s buildings ever were, and I mention this.
“I lived at the Avengers Tower briefly,” Wilson tells me. “Tony liked everything streamlined, really modern. Kinda sparse for my taste. I needed some real furniture when I got out of there, you know? Like, things that were made by human beings. Stuff with ‘character,’ that’s what Steve would call it.”
“So you decorated this place?”
“I think it’s about fifty-fifty,” Wilson says, indicated with vague hand motion.
This is my in.
This interview, as you may have read on the cover description, is actually intended to be an exposé about the working partnership between Wilson and Sergeant James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, but I didn’t want to be the one who brought him up first.
All I knew going in is that they’re a package deal in the field, a unit. We’ve all seen the footage.
Also, Barnes lives here too, but evidently, he’s not home.
“What can you tell me about how you got to know the Winter Soldier?”
Wilson chuckles. “The first time I met Buck—Sergeant Barnes—he ripped the steering wheel out of the car I was driving on the freeway. He got on the roof, punched through the windshield, pulled the steering wheel off. Just like that.” He mimes with his hands as he describes it.
This doesn’t sound like an auspicious beginning to me, but Wilson is laughing.
“I hope he apologized to you for that,” I tell him, because I’m not exactly sure how else to respond.
“Oh yeah, of course he did, even though he knows I don’t blame him for it. He doesn’t remember it at all,” says Wilson. “There are a lot of gaps, to be honest. Most of it is gaps.”
What Wilson is likely referring to here is the decades-long period in which Barnes was under the complete mental and physical influence of the Nazi splinter group known as HYDRA. If you’re unfamiliar with the history of Sergeant Barnes, I’ll list a couple of great articles for you to read at the end of this one. I assure you, it’s worth your time.
Wilson has without a doubt been Barnes’s most ardent supporter. He’s spoken out many times about not judging Barnes based on the actions he couldn’t control, and has masterfully refocused the national conversation towards Barnes’s invaluable contributions in World War II and in the recent war to bring half the universe’s population back into existence. Wilson has been quoted as saying, “The least extraordinary thing about Sergeant Barnes is his vibranium arm.”*
But perhaps Wilson’s most effective act towards building public confidence in Barnes was his decision to designate him as an almost exclusive mission partner. Even if the general populace has been reluctant to trust the Winter Soldier, it is abundantly clear that Captain America does, absolutely. Barnes is a constant in the footage of Wilson’s exploits. The moment he touches down on the ground after a successful arrest or negotiation, Barnes is right there. He’s been sighted treating Wilson’s minor injuries, tightening straps on the Falcon wingsuit before Wilson takes flight, and he stands quietly behind Wilson during almost all of his many public appearances.
Despite his ubiquitous presence in Wilson’s company, Barnes has remained elusive for comment. He has no social media, and the only public statement he’s made to date was in November of 2023, in support of Rogers’s decision to pass on the legacy of Captain America. Barnes expressed his categorical agreement that Wilson is “the best and only choice for this job,” describing him as both “worthy of the honor,” and “equipped for the burden.”**
“Is it fair to say that Sergeant Barnes almost comes with the shield?” I ask.
Wilson makes a face.
“No, it isn’t,” he shakes his head. “The shield is an accessory; my partner is not. I really don’t like it when people lump him in with the shield. It sort of minimizes how Bucky and I have made a series of conscious choices to be the way we are now. Especially because he’s experienced being fully stripped of his personal autonomy—as a veteran, I can say I’ve had a taste of that, but nothing like what he’s been through—and I think it cheapens his choice to do what he does if we imply that he, as a person, is a package deal with my title, you know?”
The therapist in Wilson is showing. In addition to his decorated military history and service as Captain America, he has a background in psychology, and a Masters degree in Social Work with a focus on Veterans’ mental health issues. He’s worked extensively with the VA as a leader in group therapy.
“So Sergeant Barnes is by your side day in and day out because he wants to be?”
This, Wilson has another unequivocal answer for. “Yes. He wants to be there, and I want him there. And here at home.”
“Tell me a little more about that,” I say. “After the...steering-wheel-stealing incident. Once he was more or less himself. Did you two hit it off right away?”
Wilson laughs again. “Not at all,” he says. “I think there was this resentment, kind of, in the beginning. Like I’m Steve’s best friend and no, I’m Steve’s best friend. Real elementary school stuff. He really got on my nerves; just everything about him annoyed me, and the feeling was mutual. Looking back…”
And here Wilson pauses for a moment. He chews on his bottom lip, and I notice all at once how nervous his body language has become. His fingers are drumming on the table, the line of his shoulders is taut, his leg is bouncing. He clears his throat though, and seems determined to continue.
“Looking back, I can see where it was coming from. It wasn’t clear to me at the time, but now I get it. There was this one time, it was during the fight over the Accords. We barely knew each other at this point. Buck and I, we’re fighting Spider-Man—who neither of us had ever even heard of before, like, that afternoon—and he pins us to the floor of this hangar with that goo he shoots out of his wrist. Really gross. I manage to get Redwing [Wilson’s drone] to fling Spider-Man out the window. So we’re just laying there, me and Bucky, stuck. And he goes ‘you couldn’t have done that before?’ And I just turn to him, and I’m like, ‘I hate you.’”
At this, Wilson really starts cracking up. He relaxes visibly, just a little.
“Did you mean it?”
“I sure thought I did,” he says, still chuckling. “Like, I wasn’t about to take it back.”
He continues: “Anyway, so after Steve, you know, passed on the shield to me, that’s when things really changed. Actually, back up a second. After the whole Accords incident, we ended up sending Bucky to Wakanda for like… to hear him describe it, it’s like we sent him for a two-year spa retreat. They unscrambled his brain as best they could—and really, I think it’s a good thing they couldn’t do any more because I wouldn’t wish some of his memories on my worst enemy—and he spent like months meditating in a hut and milking goats and going to therapy every day. When I met up with him again, I barely would’ve recognized him.”
“So that’s kind of when you guys reconciled? The arguing stopped?”
“Oh, it never stopped,” Wilson says with a grin. “We still argue all the time, about all kinds of things. Just ask Rhodey [Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, aka War Machine] or Scott [Lang, Ant-Man] or anybody. But the dynamic shifted a little, I think. Bucky’s got… Like I can’t imagine some of the stuff he’s been through, but he’s just kind of learned to roll with it. He is hands down the most resilient person I have ever met. Easily. It was real hard to keep hating him when he was so dead set on getting me to like him, too.”
“Can you walk me through the process by which you two decided to live together?”
“Yeah,” he says, and the nervousness is back. He smooths his hands on his thighs over his jeans. “So, basically, once I got the shield, we’d just barely come back. Like everyone else who got… I—I still don’t know if this is like an okay question to ask people. Do you mind me asking if you were dusted?”
I don’t mind. “Yeah, I was.”
“So you get it,” Wilson says. “Might be the most vulnerable I’d ever felt. I got nothing. Nowhere to go, just the clothes on my back. Then Steve hands me this shield and this enormous legacy—and I look back and there’s Bucky, standing a couple of yards behind me, nodding like, yeah, it should be you. He was the first person who knew, and he’s been right by my side ever since.”
“So you decided to stick together?”
“The original conversation about it was pretty logistical,” Wilson says, rubbing his beard. “There was so much going on, it’s hard to remember exactly what was said, but I think it was along the lines of him offering to fetch the shield for me while I learned how to throw it, and stuff like that. Just easier to do when we’re together 24/7.”
“So rooming together didn’t actually grow out of field partnerships?”
“It was definitely the other way around,” says Wilson. “Basically, I’d get a call from the powers that be that there was something I had to go check out, and it was easier to just walk across the hall than to pick someone else, try to wake them up, and then have to rendez-vous and strategize.”
“I’ll bet,” I say.
Wilson nods. “Easier and faster. Bucky can go from dead asleep to fully geared up in under three minutes. The first few times were like that, with me just knocking on his bedroom door like ‘hey, I need—’ and he comes barreling out covered in knives thirty seconds later like, ‘where are we going?’ We just… clicked. And I’ll be honest; I was really surprised. He’s got my six, I’ve got his, and I never question it. I started asking for him specifically on all my assignments after that, and Fury [Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.] and everyone caught on quick that that’s how it was gonna be. I don’t have to ask anymore.”
“Do you see this continuing long term?” I ask.
Wilson doesn’t hesitate. “Definitely.”
“How would you describe your relationship with Sergeant Barnes now?” I ask. “Clearly you’re partners in the field, and roommates, but…”
Wilson takes a deep breath. His hands are shaking, but he clasps them together in front of him and looks me straight in the eye.
“As of last month,” he says slowly, “Bucky and I are married.”
In the spirit of my interview with Captain America, who stands for honesty and justice and integrity, I think you deserve to know the truth. I want to say that I didn’t drop my recorder, but I did. It clatters to the floor, luckily undamaged.
That startles Wilson into a laugh. For the second it takes me to retrieve my recorder from under my seat, I wonder if he’s kidding.
“Come on,” he says. “Say something. I’m getting nervous.” He’s smiling, but not joking.
“Congratulations,” I blurt out. “I...really?”
“Yeah.” The tension leaves his body in a rush. “We, uh, it’s official.”
I’m struggling for questions at this point. The talking points I was planning on hitting in this interview are all suddenly moot, and I decide to throw out my mental to-do list entirely. I finally settle on, “How long have you two been together?”
“A little over two years,” Wilson answers. “About three months after I took up the shield.”
“How did it happen?”
Wilson grins. “Uh, well. I had sort of been…having feelings about him, you know, for awhile. Actually, it’s more like I had noticed that I was having more-than-friendly feelings in the few weeks leading up to that. I think the main reason we had so much trouble getting along in the beginning is that it took some time to process those feelings as attraction. So in a way, I was interested on some level right from the get go.”
“Even if that person wasn’t...behind the wheel of their own brain, so to speak—” I start, but Wilson interjects.
“I see what you did there.”
“—I think it would take a lot for me to be attracted to someone who had previously tried to kill me.”
“Less than I would’ve expected, that’s for sure,” Wilson says. “But it’s not like I was checking him out while he was busy tearing my wings off my back; I’m talking about once he was mentally present in his body. That was like...two years after the whole steering wheel incident, and I hadn’t seen him at all in the interim. I didn’t even know where he was during that time.”
“So it had at least been awhile since he had tried to kill you?”
“Oh yeah. And plenty of other people tried to kill me in those two years, and they weren’t even sorry about it. You gotta adjust your standards, you know?” he says with a laugh.
“Anyway, if you ask him, he says he’s been all in since the moment he saw me back in Wakanda after his little vacation. Now we’re talking about four years since the steering wheel thing. Me, Steve, Nat and everybody; we landed in Wakanda and Bucky’s there. He and I look at each other over Steve’s shoulder, and like, bam, that was it for him.
“And then there’s five years where neither of us exist. We get back, we fight the monsters, Steve gives me the shield, and while all this is happening, apparently Bucky has come to the conclusion that he’s in love with me. After that, he was just waiting for me to catch up.”
“And he just knew you’d get there? Did you give him any indication that you were interested, or…?”
“I definitely did, but not intentionally,” says Wilson. “He’s very perceptive—like way more than I was giving him credit for—but I think it’s a combination of that and me not being as subtle as I think I am.
“Because, see there’s this invisible line I’ve drawn here—at least that’s how he was thinking about it—and I keep dancing a little closer to that line every day, the line being the no homo line; the point where you can’t take it back. The flirting, I mean. I, of course, think he has no clue and that I’m being slick about it. Actually, lemme ask—how much detail are you looking for here? Like do you want to know the whole story or just—”
“Lay it on me,” I tell him. “Just however you want to tell it.”
“Alright. Where was I? So I’m just there going back and forth on whether or not it’s a good idea to risk this roommate-partner-buddy thing we’ve got going here by trying to make a move that, frankly, I have no clue if he’s gonna be receptive to. You have to remember we’re talking about a guy from the Great Depression here, like that’s the time period he grew up in. I’m no historian, but I think it’s common knowledge that if you were a man who was attracted to men back then, you mostly kept that to yourself. The chances of him bringing up his sexual orientation unprompted are very low. And like, I’m 90% sure I’ve caught him looking before, but that’s never a guarantee, you know?
“So, instead of sitting down and having a mature conversation about my feelings, I keep doing this thing where, for example, say he’s trying something new with his hair, and I’ll say something nice about it. And then I follow up immediately with, ‘Almost makes up for your ugly mug,’ or whatever, which—I mean, he’s such a good-looking guy, like what ugly mug, obviously I don’t mean that. And he’s not stupid, he knows what he looks like. So he picks up on what I’m doing, doesn’t say anything, and lets this go on for months.
“Eventually, there’s one night… We’re on the couch, watching like, I don’t know, Seinfeld or something. Whatever was on. He’s reading a book on my tablet, looking all relaxed and handsome. I can’t have that, so I start egging him on like I usually do, and I guess I got close enough to the line that he just puts the tablet down, turns to me and says, ‘Sam, you know there’s no line, right?’
“And I’m going, okay, what does that mean? Like, is this a conversation I was previously a part of and forgot or...? Where is this ‘line’ thing coming from? And so I ask him—I think I just said, ‘What?’ At that point he looks me right in the eye, and he goes, ‘You can kiss me if you want to.’” So I did, and he was ready for it, like no hesitation. Like I said: waiting for me to catch up.”
This, as you can imagine, is far beyond the level of detail I could have ever imagined I’d get about Captain America’s love life in my wildest dreams. I decide to ask a new question, because I feel like I’d be pushing my luck to delve further when he’s already been so open about this experience.
“Who proposed and when?”
“Ooh,” says Wilson, “I guess technically I did, but I’m gonna go on record saying that one was a group effort.”
“Well, now you’re gonna have to explain that,” I tell him. “What’s a ‘group effort’ proposal look like?”
“Hmm. I backed myself into that one, didn’t I?” he says. “First, I want the record to show that before I called you guys to set up this interview, I specifically asked Bucky if there were any us-related topics or whatever that were off-limits to discuss and he said ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Are you sure?’ and he said ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ and I said, “You better be sure, because whatever I say is gonna be public knowledge after that,” and he said “I know, I get it, Jesus.” Then I dropped it because he sounded like he was getting kinda irritated. If he didn’t want me to tell you any of this stuff, that would’ve been the time to speak up, so here we go:
“We were at… Well, I can’t tell you exactly where we were, but let’s just say we were working. There was nobody else in the room, but we were getting ready to go out in the field; seemed like it was gonna be a pretty...intense situation out there. I had my whole suit on, he was calibrating his arm, and the conversation ended up at living wills. As you can imagine, that’s an important thing to have when you’re in this line of work. So he proceeded to tell me that the last time he’d updated his was never and that his next-of-kin was nobody. And I was like, ‘So what, your grenade launchers are all gonna go to the state? I don’t even get the red one?’ and I’m just giving him a hard time, you know, and he’s like, ‘Sam.’
“And then, my god, he just goes all the way off about how much he loves me and trusts me and I—we don’t usually go there. I mean, we’d been on the same page for a long time as far as, we’ve established that we’re in love, this relationship is going well, but it’s not something that we’d verbalized in any real depth. That’s just a level of like, exposure, vulnerability, I think, that doesn’t come naturally to most people, myself included.
“So he just keeps talking—and I think it’s fair to say he’s not a very talkative guy most of the time—and I’m standing there with my jaw on the floor because he is not holding back, and this is all clearly unrehearsed. Like, this is just how he really feels about me, apparently. By the time he’s finished, I’m crying, he’s crying, it’s a mess. And so I open my mouth, and I have no idea what I’m gonna say to all that, but what comes out is, “Will you marry me?” I wasn’t planning on it, but suddenly I just knew. Best decision I ever made.”
“And you’ve made some very important decisions in your life.”
“That’s right. I know which ones I’m leaving out by saying this was the best, and I stand by it.”
At that moment, as if on cue, the lock clicks, and Sergeant Barnes walks through the front door carrying two very full bags of groceries on his vibranium arm. He tosses a set of car keys into a little dish and locks the door behind him.
“Hey, babe,” Wilson calls out, catching his eye.
“You did it?” Barnes asks.
“Yeah.” Wilson tilts his head up.
Barnes rounds the corner, pecks Wilson on the lips with all the comfort and familiarity of a couple who have done it a thousand times. I hear him murmur, “Proud of you,” under his breath.
Barnes sets the groceries on the counter in front of me as Wilson introduces us.
“Call me Bucky,” says Barnes, reaching out with his right hand to shake mine. There’s a silver band on the fourth finger, and when I look back over at Wilson, he’s slipping his wedding ring out of the pocket of his jeans and putting it back on his left hand.
“Wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go through with all this,” he says, gesturing to me and my notepad. “I took the wedding pictures down in the living room too, before you got here.”
“I knew he could do it,” Barnes tells me. His voice is low, soft, and so quiet, a hint of an old Brooklyn accent underlying his words even now, despite everything he’s been through and everywhere he’s been. He shrugs out of his nondescript hoodie and tosses it on one of the unused stools, grabbing a kettle and putting it on the stove.
“Hibiscus or chamomile?” he asks me, pulling two boxes of tea bags from one of the grocery bags and letting me choose before turning to Wilson. “Bad news, hon. They were out of your whole wheat pita.”
“Again?” says Wilson, with feeling. “Really?”
“They only had the gluten free. I guess I could check the other store tonight, but it’s supposed to rain later, and I kinda don’t feel like going out again,” Barnes says, head buried in the cupboard as he stacks cans. “I was thinking maybe I could just try making ‘em. How does that sound? How hard can it be, right?”
“‘How does homemade pita sound,’ he says,” Wilson repeats, jabbing a thumb towards Barnes. “Can you believe this guy?”
“I honestly can’t.” It’s the truth. My brain refuses to reconcile this man with the supposed playboy I read about in my 11th grade history textbook, nor the internationally feared assassin.
“Is that a yes or no on the experimental homemade pita?” Barnes asks Wilson, still deep in the cupboard. “No promises on quality.”
“That’s a yes, Buck,” says Wilson, then he turns to me. “Don’t listen to him; he’s a great cook.”
The Winter Soldier is a great cook, I write in my notes. And then I realize this is my moment to shine.
“I actually know a good recipe for homemade pita,” I tell them. “It’s whole wheat.” That gets Barnes’s attention.
“You do?” he says, pulling out his phone. “Can you send it to—hmm.” He frowns. “Sam, it’s not showing the thing.”
“What thing?” Wilson asks, taking Barnes’s phone from his hand. “Oh, yeah, that’s cause it’s set to Contacts Only, Buck, you have to switch it to Allow Everyone.”
Wilson looks at me, smiling. “Bucky here hates technology—”
“—I don’t hate technology—”
“Oh yes you do, you won’t even let me get you an iPad—”
“Yeah, for what? What do I need it for? I wouldn’t even use—”
“You wouldn’t use one, huh? How about I stop letting you borrow mine for a couple of weeks, then we’ll see how you feel.” Wilson turns to me, passing Barnes’s phone back to him. “He should be showing up on your AirDrop now.”
Sure enough, I’m able to send the recipe link to Bucky’s iPhone. He thanks me and starts scrolling right through it, argument apparently totally forgotten.
As Barnes continues to read, periodically checking on the kettle; Wilson excuses himself to help put away the rest of the groceries, which are mostly produce.
“I hope you have like, immediate plans for these,” Wilson says, inspecting the avocados as he pulls them out of the paper bag. “They are ripe, man. Tomorrow’s gonna be too late for them.”
“Yeah I do, I was gonna make grilled chicken and avocado sandwiches for dinner,” Barnes replies. “I got tomatoes, swiss cheese—”
“What’s all this about pita then if we’re having sandwiches?” Wilson asks.
“No, the pita is the bread here,” Barnes explains. “You stuff everything in the pocket. I’m gonna have to get started pretty soon; probably gonna double the rising time since it’s cold out.” Wilson hums in apparent approval of this course of action.
I lose Wilson to the refrigerator for several minutes. He stands back up after arranging things in the crisper to his liking.
“Any chance I could get a peek at those wedding pictures?” I ask.
“Oh,” says Wilson. “That okay with you?” He turns to Barnes, who nods, carefully steeping bags of tea in three steaming mugs, and then leads me back to the living room.
Wilson has stashed two silver-framed pictures in a drawer of the coffee table, apparently in anticipation of my visit, and he pulls them out to show to me. Both are taken in front of a familiar-looking farmhouse, which I struggle with for a moment before placing it as the exact one in Captain Rogers’s watercolor painting that’s hanging to my left. Wilson’s suit in the photo is a matte but brilliant shade of cobalt; Barnes wears black.
One is of just the two of them, arms around one another and foreheads together. It’s almost too intimate to look at; I feel as though I’m intruding on something intensely private, even though Wilson is standing right here offering me a glimpse of it.
He puts that one back up onto the mantle.
The next is them in the center of a large group that consists of some people I recognize and others I don’t. Familiar faces include Dr. Bruce Banner [The Hulk], Clint Barton [Hawkeye], and Maria Hill [Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.]. Also present: King T’Challa of Wakanda and his sister, Princess Shuri. There’s a young girl in a white dress, carrying a flower basket and missing a front tooth, standing in front of [C.E.O. of Stark Industries] Pepper Potts. Next to them is a teenager with floppy brown hair doing an indescribably awkward double thumbs up.
“Who’s that?” I ask, pointing at him.
Wilson snorts. “Some punk. Family friend.”
That picture gets hung on the empty nail next to Captain Rogers’s painting.
Barnes knocks quietly on the doorway behind us. “Tea’s ready.”
An awkward silence settles in with us once we sit back down in the kitchen, Wilson and Barnes next to one another, and me across from them. I flip through my notes, taking a sip from my mug.. My drink is sweeter than I was expecting, because apparently the Winter Soldier has added agave to the hibiscus tea he made me. It’s delicious.
Barnes eventually breaks. “So whatcha go over so far?”
“How we got together, how we got engaged,” Wilson answers him. “In detail too, so if you don’t want that published, you’re gonna have to grovel at the journalist yourself, because you said—”
“Oh my god,” says Barnes, old-school New York sarcasm dripping from every word. “How dare you tell people about the best thing I ever did, huh? Now they’re gonna think I’m like, a sensitive, good guy, and here I’ve been coasting along on this murder cyborg image. What have you done, you dick?”
Wilson rolls his eyes.
“So...you’re okay with it?” I ask them, absolutely ready to scrub the record if he hesitates.
“You kidding me?” says Barnes. “Every other week comes up some new atrocity I committed against my will in like...the 70s, and you think I’m gonna be upset with people knowing that once in a while I say nice shit to someone I love? Write it. Please. Knock yourself out.”
Okay then. Since Barnes seems willing to talk, I ask them if I can throw them a few questions I have for them as a couple. Barnes looks as though he wasn’t anticipating this.
Wilson turns to him. “You wanna be here for this?”
Barnes nods slowly, hesitantly, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
“You’re okay?” Wilson asks. “You decide you’re done at any point and I’ll end it. Or you can go hang out in the other room, your call.”
“I’m good for now,” Barnes decides. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”
“You can ask whatever you want,” Wilson says to me. “I can’t promise we’ll answer everything, but go ahead and shoot.”
“I guess the first question I have is: what’s the hardest thing about navigating your jobs as a couple? What bothers you the most about that?”
Wilson exhales loudly. “I mean, the obvious answer is the danger,” he says. “The nature of what we do is fundamentally unsafe. I think it goes without saying—I’ll still say it—that we’re always aware that one of us might not make it back from a mission, which is...” Wilson trails off for a moment, shaking his head. “You don’t get used to that feeling. The fear.”
“Mm hmm,” Barnes agrees, from behind his mug.
“And,” continues Wilson, “I’m also aware that by doing this interview, I’m putting Bucky in additional danger. I’m not naive enough to think that the people working against us won’t try to use my relationship with him as leverage against me.”
“That makes sense,” I say, because he’s absolutely right, and pretending that public knowledge of his marriage doesn’t put them both in a new kind of danger seems disingenuous. I face Barnes. “Your turn.”
“Racist assholes,” says Barnes immediately.
Wilson smirks and cocks his head in agreement. “Sometimes I think I’ve talked that subject to death, other times it’s like I could never hope to address it enough. Today feels like the first one.”
A diplomatic, but clear answer. Time to move on.
I’m about to ask the next question when he adds: “Another thing that gets under my skin is how it’s like Bucky’s image in the eyes of the general public is totally dependent on me hyping him up all the time. As far as I’m concerned, he’s proven himself a hundred times over, and yet if I’m not on T.V. reminding people of that every day, it’s suddenly like ‘oh, the Winter Soldier, can we ever really trust him?’
“I just… It bothers me. I want us to come to a collective understanding that everything that happened happened to Bucky, not because of him. It kinda circles back into another of the things I’m passionate about, which is mental health care and awareness. I think if we as a society were better about recognizing and addressing mental illness, and particularly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I wouldn’t have to keep having this conversation about my husband.”
Barnes’s face is getting pinker and he says nothing, but he’s smiling a little at Wilson, who puts an arm around his shoulders.
“Anyway, we can move on,” says Wilson, his expression going easy again. “Just had to get that out there one more time.”
“Hopefully this one’s a little more pleasant,” I say. “What inspired you to come forward about your relationship? I know you guys—” I gesture between them, ”—have been together for a couple years, so why now?”
“I want to go on a date in public,” says Bucky. “I haven’t been on a date since the 40s.”
“That’s right,” says Wilson. “We’re doing all this so I can take him Denny’s and hold his hand over a $6.99 Super Slam.”
When I finish laughing, Wilson continues. “Part of it’s because we realized it’s gonna get out there whether we like it or not. You already knew when you got here that we lived together, and that’s because that information got leaked to the public last week, so it was always just a matter of time before people found out anyway. I’d rather have some control over that narrative; better you hear it from me and Bucky, how we want to tell it, than in some tabloid.”
He’s right about that: they would undoubtedly have been outed one way or another. Their status as “roommates” was reported by TMZ a week and a half ago, and there was a Buzzfeed piece only yesterday, rife with gifs, entitled 15 Times Captain America and The Winter Soldier Made Us Wish We Were Their Third Roommate, that ended on the note of how Wilson and Barnes are “absolute BFF GOALS.” Wilson continues:
“But I think the biggest reason is that we decided, together, that we actually think it’s good for people to know. I’ve seen firsthand the impact that having a Black Captain America has had on the Black community and on the national topic of race, and we think—we hope—that a Captain America who is a member of the LGBT community will have a similar effect.
“The people who already hate me aren’t going to like me any better or worse for being bisexual, but some bisexual teenager out there is hopefully gonna read this article and feel a little bit better about themselves than they did before. That’s really the impact I want to have here. Got anything to add, Buck?”
“Actually, yeah,” says Barnes, staring at the counter in front of him and fiddling with his wedding ring. “I grew up gay in thirties. The idea of being able to just...tell people, that’s still amazing to me. The fact that I’m sitting here talking about it with a stranger and you’re not screamin’ in my face right now…”
“You do know I’m not straight either, right?” I ask him. I’m not exactly shy about that, it’s the kind of thing most people can tell just by looking at me.
“Even so,” says Barnes, finally looking me in the eye. “You fool around with a fella back in the day—or worse, you make a pass and he turns you down—then he knows about you, and then it’s like, what if he tells someone? Some of the worst shit I ever saw came from people who found out that way. So, other gay guys. Basically you never felt safe.”
“What about Captain Rogers?” I ask. “Did he know?”
“Oh yeah, Steve knew,” says Barnes with a dismissive wave of his hand, like that ought to be obvious. “He wasn’t gonna tell anyone; I got too much dirt on him.“
“Pfft. He’s messing with you,” Wilson interjects, directed at me. “There’s no dirt on Steve anywhere; believe me, I’d know by now if there was.”
“I want you to guess how many times I’ve had to clean up Steve’s puke,” says Barnes in a total deadpan, leaning forward. “Whatever number you think it is, the real answer is higher.
“This again,” says Wilson. “I keep telling you Buck, Steve throwing up on you at Coney Island isn’t the big scandalous story you seem to want it to be.”
“Sam wasn’t there, he didn’t see it,” Barnes insists. “We were with these girls and they just left us standing there by the Cyclone, covered in hot dog chunks. Actually, that part was kind of a relief ‘cause one of ‘em was definitely jonesing for me to kiss her before that, and I really didn’t want to.
“But seriously, after everything we went through together, I knew I could trust Steve with anything. And that made me luckier than most—at least I had one person. Lots of guys had no one.
“Anyway, my reasons for coming out with all this are probably more selfish than Sam’s. You know some of those Nazis—we’re callin’ ‘em something else these days, like ‘alt-right’ or whatever, but I know a Nazi when I see one—they have this crazy idea of what I was like back in the day. They’ve got this fantasy, like a golem of toxic masculinity with my face on it, and I just want to publicly shit on their dreams. Every date I ever went on with a girl was a total sham, and I was scared down to my bones that someone would figure that out. I fight because someone needs to and I’m good at it, but I hate hurting people and I’d much rather be sitting here cuddling on the couch with a man. This man.”
Barnes is grinning big and wide by the time he finishes—a real, genuine smile that brings out the sparkle in his eyes—and suddenly I feel like I’m catching a glimpse of what Wilson must be seeing in him. Wilson himself is laughing.
“I like how you snuck your little buzzword in there, baby,” he says. “Toxic masculinity. That’s one of Bucky’s things he learned about from his Wakandan therapist.
“Obviously super important,” Wilson adds, lest I think he’s making light of something serious.
“I think it’s great that we’re talking about it so openly now, especially with respect to the military.”
Barnes tilts his head in agreement, checking the time on his phone. We’re probably approaching the point at which he wants to get started on that pita bread, and I’m definitely in his way.
“So what’s next for you guys?” I ask.
“Isn’t that always the question?” Wilson asks, taking Barnes’s right hand in his left and resting them, intertwined, on the countertop. “Sometimes it’s aliens. Sometimes not. Who even knows anymore?”
“Hopefully, a whole lot more of this,” says Barnes, looking down at their hands.
Wilson smiles. “Well, that’s a given. That’s always.”
This is when Barnes gets up to pull a stand mixer out of one of the cupboards, and I read that as my cue to take my leave. I end my recording, Wilson thanks me for stopping by, I promise to give him an advance copy of my writing to make sure he’s comfortable with what I said, and I find myself standing back on the sidewalk of [REDACTED] moments later.
I’m not typically in the habit of including as many details about the dinner plans of my article subjects as I have here—and I’m certainly testing the limits of my editor’s patience with the word count—but in the spirit of Wilson’s wishes for what his coming out story will mean to the people of America, I wanted to emphasize how human his marriage is.
Barnes and Wilson have extraordinary jobs that they are undoubtedly uniquely suited for and that most of us will never fully understand, but they are also two people who have been through a lot of hardship and found happiness and peace in one another. And that’s something that most of us do understand: love, the human experience that transcends the divisions we give ourselves.
*From a press conference Wilson gave on May 7, 2025.
**From a statement written by Barnes and issued through a S.H.I.E.L.D. representative on November 1, 2023.
For further reading on Barnes, the author recommends:
1. Greatest Generation X: The Impossible Life of James Buchanan Barnes, by Ariel Guzman, published in 2025.
2. R.Y. Uhlencott’s column “The Wolf of Brooklyn” in the October 2024 issue of Time covers the basic timeline and trajectory of Barnes’s life.
#sambucky#sam wilson#bucky barnes#winterfalcon#mcu#marvel#tfatws#sam(antha) tag#my fanfic tag#fanfic
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Match up, No. 10
Anon said:
Hello! I would like the match up please I would like to have a Male character and here are stuff about me!
The thing I do mostly is like to care for others and help others, I mostly get tricked on very easily do to my kindness which will cause me to sometimes get very fiesty which not very but maybe like “ please just stop talking your being to loud.” In a annoyed tone, which is very rarely, I tend to like very many hobbies and I don’t judge people base on first glance I see what on the inside and not what on the outside, a weakness I have is my disability but I never allow it to stop me from my true goal in life! And I practically tend to like doing some boyish stuff like archery! I get a lot of compliments on my archery skill because a lot of people say I have the patients and the accuracy very good! My dislikes are I hate real cocky people who think there all good and don’t take stuff for granted I also hate people who look down on weak person as not a human but a animal. I hate peoples who take kindness for granted and use it for a selfish gain.
I stand at about 5’0 exact! I have long brown hair that gets a lot of attention because some people always say to me “ I die to have your hair:” I’m just a tiny bit chubby and have big blue ocean eye that gets a lot of compliments and a lot of people wanting it to. I very much get the attention for how smart I am and how kind I am! I also get some hate from boys when I prove them wrong that girls aren’t weak and I won’t back down from a fight if it means protecting myself, people or just anyone. I like to have some affection it doesn’t have to be a lot maybe just even a hand on the shoulder is fine! I also very do like to wear some baggy clothes and I do like wearing like summer dresses that are knee high. I also tend to get very excited from the smallest things. A lot of people think I’m a loner but when it comes to babies I’m all for them! My cousin even said “ she likes to be alone into babies comes in the picture and she all for them!” 💕I love children and my parents even told me “ your definitely going to be the house wife.” I don’t know if that a compliment or not but I’m taking it😂✌🏻 sorry if I shared so many!
a/n:
Hello there! How are you? I really enjoyed reading all those things about you. Believe it or not but the part in which you said that although you have a disability it is not holding you back to follow your dreams, was impressive. It truly made happy. I have two cousins that have a disability and get me sad every time I see them. But seeing them happy and keep doing whatever they want makes me always so damn happy. You seem to be such a sweet human. Someone bright and jolly. Please never ever change. You are such a strong and great human. Keep that attitude and make sure that even when you end up as a housewife don´t let anyone push you around or take you presence and work for granted. This world really needs more good humans like you. I am so happy you requested. When you mentioned housewife I instantly thought of Hinata (Narutos wife) and then thought about myself who is more of a mixture of Ino and Temari. That thought really made me laugh. LMAO!! Anyways I really hope you will like with what I came up with. If there is anything that bothers you or you don´t like, please tell me so I can change it. Other than that enjoy the little story I came up with. Happy reading!
Match up rules can be found HERE.
Warning(s): Maybe grammatical or spelling mistakes since English is my third language and I´m still improving in every aspect (Please have mercy on that.)
!!! Please do not steal my idea or work. Credit me if this is shared or published in any other platform or any other way. Please respect me as the writer and my work. Picture is not mine. Credits to: @/SK,Martins (Can be seen in the pic) (found on the internet) !!!
· Well my dear anon. Like I mentioned before I think that you are a sweet and lovely human being. On top of that also simply adorable, fun and pure! Therefore I´d like to match you up with the future pirate king Monkey D. Luffy
· I think that you two would get along so well. So, SO WELL! Now hear me out!
· The way you two got to know each other might sound a bit of cliché but that’s simply how you meet. There was no princess in danger or a knight in a shinny armor but a clueless guy who wondered why a woman in a dress would walk around with arrows and a bow when they weren´t cupid. A simple human?! HA! Definitely not!
· Anyways that’s how everything started….
· The strawhats were docked on the island you were living in. At first they were anxious and didn´t want to leave their ship alone but when a worker at the harbor told them that the civilians on the island had cero problems with pirates as long as they didn´t do anything stupid or harm them. The whole crew got happy and started roaming around the island.
· Luffy being Luffy, screamed for food the moment his feet were on the island. And Zoro…. That guy yelled after him saying that if he gets to have food he wanted Sake. So, Luffy, Zoro and Ussop searched for a restaurant. Why Ussop you wonder? Well Nami send him with the boys because they otherwise would end up on the other side of the island. And Ussop compared to the captain and the first mate knew he had an actual brain and also knew how to use it.
· While the pirates were walking around the island you were helping out as a waitress in your uncles restaurant
· Everything went smooth. You served the people and had little chats with some of them. Some gave you too much tip and some other had you sitting with them and eat with them
· The people of the island knew you well. They knew you and loved you. Your uncle once even said that the only reason why his business was doing so well was because of you. The people never came for the food but rather for you. But you always denied it and told him that it was him and his food that was liked so much.
· Bu today there was something a bit different. A group of men you hated from the bottom of your heart came again. They were simply rude and egoistic. They were people from the wealthier part of the city, that was called royal neighbor. The reason why that neighborhood was called royal had nothing to do with the people that lived there. The only reason it was called royal was because it had a lot of wellness centers, hotels, casinos and parks. While this neighborhood, you were living in was given the name of idyll because of the beautiful nature. Landscapes that could have been painted and not to forget the dreamy beaches. But these group of young men simply didn´t understand that and thought of it differently. In a way that even the mayor couldn´t do anything else than just shook his head in embarrassment. But what could that poor man do. They weren´t doing anything against the law. They simply were annoying, stupid and egoistic.
· The group of young man, not older than 25, would always come once a week and have lunch in your uncles restaurant
· They entered the restaurant followed by three men you never saw on the island. At first you thought of them as sailors until you saw the green haired man carry three swords.
· You were in a dilemma. You didn´t knew if you should take care of the men that could have been pirates or the annoying group of disgusting men that always came. You gave your coworker a look and made sure he understood what you wanted. You were about to walk up to him and tell him to take care of the annoying group of men when you heard a plate breaking. You stopped in your tracks and instantly turned around.
· “This is our table. We always sit here. Now move you pathetic poor human.”, said Dean, the head of the group. You were mad. You were extremely mad and it took you so much energy and patience to not walk up to him and cut of his throat. But you calmed down and thought rationally. You took a deep breath and took your little notebook you used for writing down the guests orders when you heard a glass shatter right after Dean grabbed the customer at his collar and made him stand up. And this was exactly the moment you slammed you notebook and pen on the floor and yelled from the top of your lungs.
· “Watch out what you’re doing, you spoiled brat!”
· You stomped towards him and took a knife from a table on your way to him. “If you do not put him down in a bit and apologize, I swear to god I will make you regret waking up today and leaving your fucking bed!”, Dean knew you were no one to joke around with but his pride as a man kept pushing him. He chuckled and looked at you up and down while his friends that followed him like dogs laughed at your words.
· “Don´t make me start counting you pathetic version of a human.”, with furious eyes you looked up at Dean who still held the customer at his collar. “Look at that tiny girl trying to threaten…”, one of his friends was giving a comment but couldn´t finish his sentence because of you throwing the knife in your hand at him and cutting a bit of his ear and hair. You threw the knife with such a precise and strong grip that it ended up hitting the wall that was three meters behind him. “Watch out what you say because I don´t hesitate to drop the sweet girl attitude.”
· Dean looked at you with pure anger and let go of the man he was holding. He looked at his shocked friend and then back at you. “Today’s point goes to you. But the next time we come and this table is not free you will regret hurting him.”, said the angry man. “Listen here you little dumb spoiled creature. This table won´t be free for you. This is our table. Our property. You have no right to come and throw such a tantrum. And guess what, come again and I will be paying your parents a little visit and make them pay for everything you did. And I am sure that they won´t be pleased by your behavior since they are good friends with my parents and the mayor. Right? Now if I ever see you come here again I will make you pay. After today we will not accept your unacceptable behavior anymore. Now get the FCK OUT!!”
· After they left everything was silent for a few seconds but that change after your uncle started to clap and every person in the restaurant joined him. Your eye widened and your started to blush with a huge grin on your face. But that little moment of clapping didn´t last long. One of the pirates that entered the restaurant spoke up. “You did a good job but I AM HUNGRY!!!! Please FEED ME!”, you were confused. You didn´t know how to react and stood there like a statue.
· “Alright Sir. No worries. We will take your order in a few.”, said your uncle and approached you with a huge smile your notebook and pen. He pats your head with a proud smile. “You are such a brave and strong woman. I am so glad to have you in my family and I think it´s enough for today. Please take care of these men and then go rest: You deserve it.”, you nodded and smiled back to him. You pulled yourself together and made your way to the table of the pirates while your uncle left to take care of the broken glasses and the customer who had to deal with those stupid men.
· “Hello gentlemen. I apologize for making you wait I ….”, “No worries I actually enjoyed the show. You’ve got a good and precise eye. BUT NOW MY ORDER! Get me everything on the second site please.”, you absolutely didn´t knew how to react. You were looking at the talking man with a straw hat and then to his friends with big shook eyes. “I know what you thinking but he always eats that much and manages to stay alive. No worries. And getting to my order I´d like to have number 17 and 22 on the menu.”, said the one with a unusual long nose. “I take the same as him but with three bottles of your best sake.”
· You nodded with a disbelieving look on the face wondering if the first one is really going to eat all of the stuff. But you gave yourself a light slap and made your way to the kitchen only to be confronted with overwhelmed and surprised faces of the cooks. You shrugged with your shoulder and went to get the pirates drinks.
· While you went to get their drinks you saw that more people sat down next to the three pirates what made sense since the table they were sitting on was a huge one that usually only families took. Taking the drinks you served the three and greeted the new costumers. At the table sat a beautiful woman with black hair that complimented you for your adorable and genuine smile. With a blush you gave the others a menu too and took their orders
· Slowly with time passing all of their meals were served and you said your farewells and left the restaurant earlier then thought because your uncle said that he will take care of the rest. Thanking him you left and made your way to your archery lesson although it would have been way too early.
· Every time you came your sensei’s face would glow with pride. But the malicious person he is he would then drag you inside and introduce you to another challenge he came up with.
Time skip because ya author is lazy for the first time in a while now. *apologizes in trilingual
· It was late in the evening. You were on your way back home and thought why not take the route that would lead you to walk across the beach. You were having a good time alone. The sound of the waves that crashed on the cliffs and rocks were beautifully calming. The feeling of the sand under you feet were relaxing. With a smile upon your lips you were lost in your thoughts when the same guy with the straw hat you saw in the restaurant looked at you while blinking a few times before he asked you if you were Cupid the god of love like Sanji told him.
· With confusion taking over your mind you stopped in your tracks. Who on earth was he and that Sanji guy and why did he call me cupid? You wondered.
· And there you were looking at him with pure confusion while he looked at you with huge impressed and curious eyes for good 2 minutes until you shook your head and asked him who he and that Sanji were. He smiled at you and let himself fall down to sit cross- legged in front of you on the soft, warm sand. Now how do you think he introduced himself? Exactly my dear.
· “I am Monkey D. Luffy the future pirate King.”, “Huh?”, “And Sanji is one of my crew mates and the cook on my ship. Now tell me are you Cupid or not.”
· “Why would I be cupid?”, “Well you are wearing a pink white dress and you have a bow and arrows. So I thought that you might be on your way to shoot some people with them to make them fall in love. So, are you Cupid?”,
· “Alright first of all Cupid is a mythological creature made up by humans. He or she doesn´t exists. Secondly you really don´t look like a pirate nor do the others in your crew beside that one green haired man with the swords if he is also part of your crew. Thirdly you want to become the pirate king? Why?”
· And this my dear was how you two started a conversation that was to 50 % about him telling you stories of his adventures, 25 % basically about nonsense. And the other 25 % were… well that was about you telling him that you weren´t cupid but a actual human with the name f/n l/n. But he actually never got it. Until now.
· Eight years after your first encounter with the weird men called Monkey D. Luffy you still were busy telling him that you weren´t Cupid. But by now you not only had to tell him that but also your son who rather called you Cupid instead of mama.
· Congratulations you have two idiots in your life you love to the moon and back and would actually fight Garp for.
Bonus:
· “Does he really think that your Cupid or is that supposed to be something like a cute name?”, asked Dragon, the leader of the revolutionary army
· “I stopped thinking about that long ago, Sir. I really don´t know how to answer that. But just to make it clear if that confused you too. My name is y/n not Cupid.”, you told you father in Law with a sweet smile.
· “Wait. Cupid is not your name?! That brat introduced you to me as Monkey D. Cupid!”, Garp looked at you and Dragon with disbelieve.
· “If you ever wonder why you husband is so stupid just please now that, that stupidity comes from Garp. Not me. I swear.”
#one piece#one piece imagine#one piece x reader#one piece x y/n#one piece x you#one piece matchup#one piece luffy#monkey d. luffy#monster trio#captain trio#straw hat crew#straw hat luffy#luffy x you#luffy x reader#monkey d. luffy x reader#straw hat pirates#one piece strawhats#anime matchup#match up requests#match up event
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deck the halls
Hi everyone, Merry Christmas if you’re celebrating! Here’s nothing but straight fluff for Petey, hope you all like it! Major props to @hockeyboysiguess for not only getting me to simp for him but also being so wonderful when I’ve needed someone to encourage me to finish, and for everyone else who’s let me bounce ideas off of them or yelled at me in my inbox to get it done. As always, please let me know what you think of it, I love hearing feedback - comments, reblogs (I always read the tags) and inboxes are so so welcomed!
word count: 3.9k+
You could tell something was wrong the minute that you walked through the door, into the living room of your boyfriend’s apartment. It was the first week of December, a time when most houses in the city — and the city itself, for that matter — decked the halls with tinsel, baubles, and cut-out paper snowflakes. You were no exception; really, your love for the season exceeded even the gaudy holiday displays in the windows of department stores, trying to entice passers-by to buy into their “annual-sale-that’s-not-even-a-sale-because-prices-are-so-inflated-anyways” sale. You lived and breathed Christmas as soon as it hit December 1st. Poorly but lovingly-decorated sugar cookies were delivered to your friends and neighbors, tinsel and ornaments hung from every surface imaginable in your apartment, Michael Bublé blasted 24/7. So, aside from those who didn’t celebrate, you expected everyone else to act accordingly. And if their version of Christmas didn’t include pounds of icing and a metric fuckton of ornaments, well then that just wouldn’t do.
So when you crossed the threshold into Elias’ living room, entirely bare and devoid of anything even remotely resembling Christmas cheer, you were more than a little shocked. You supposed you hadn’t quite been paying attention much last year, your first Christmas as a couple five or so months after you had gotten together. Probably still stuck in the honeymoon phase, you thought with a grin. Though, to be fair, you really still were in the honeymoon phase with Elias, after nearly a year and a half of dating. Which wasn’t to say you didn’t have your disagreements; you weren’t a perfect couple, of course you didn’t always see eye to eye on everything and got annoyed with each other on more than one occasion, but that same sense of wonder and unfeigned giddiness that came with a new relationship hadn’t left yet. And honestly, you weren’t sure it ever would. You certainly didn’t want it to. So when you looked in his living room and didn’t see any lights hanging, no tacky-but-heartwarming wreath of Christmas cards, no tree, you didn’t react with anything but sheer disbelief. You looked to the kitchen, but there was nothing. Dining room? Not a roll of wrapping paper to be found, no piney scent wafting through the air from some Glade plug-in you got on sale because the smell from the tree alone just wasn’t cutting it. How could someone live like this?
Elias walked into the room, his hair still damp from a post-practice shower, and flashed a smile at you, kissing you briefly before pulling back and looking at the dumbfounded expression still plastered on your face. “Everything okay?” he said, waving his hand in front of your eyes. “Did they mess up the order or something?” Oh, right, order. You had almost forgotten about the food in your hand, the entire reason you were coming over to his apartment in the first place. Lunch.
You quickly shook your head. “No, everything was fine. Your Pad Kee Mao, my green curry.”
He took the bag from you, placing it on the counter as he opened the cabinets and took out two plates. “You sure nothing’s up? You look like you saw a ghost.”
You gestured around the apartment. “There’s...nothing here?”
His brow furrowed. “What do you mean there’s nothing here?”
“No decorations,” you explained. “No lights, no ornaments, no tinsel, no tree? It’s like you didn’t even know it’s Christmas, Elias.”
Elias rolled his eyes. “I forgot about your Christmas obsession.”
“Obsession?” you asked, one eyebrow perched in question.
“Love for Christmas?” Elias tried.
“Better.”
He shrugged. “I have a couple things in the closet, I’ll probably pull them out soon. There’s a string of lights, a little stuffed Santa Brock gave me last year, a tree that’s about this tall,” he gestured at his waist. “Christmas is a thing back home, obviously, but it’s not as...hyped up? Emphasized? As it is here.”
“Such are the pitfalls of capitalism,” you mused.
Elias nodded, digging through the drawers for forks. “And plus, we’ve got Saint Lucia’s Day, so that’s definitely where the more Swedish-specific traditions come out.”
You let out a groan. “I can’t get over the fact that you have a fake tree. It physically pains me.”
“It’s much more practical,” Elias said, trying to justify himself. “You don’t have to water it, it’s not going to drop needles, saves you money in the long run.”
Your eyes almost rolled into the back of your head. “Seriously? You sound like a grandpa, Lias. And it’s not like you’re exactly hurting for money.” You suddenly looked at Elias, your eyes so laser-focused that it startled him for a moment. “I’m going to make you love Christmas.”
He sputtered. “It’s not that I don’t like Christmas, I just have never much been into all of the extra stuff that goes along with it.”
“I won’t allow it,” you said, shaking your head. “Eat your Thai, we’re going to a tree lot.”
The tree
Thirty minutes later, you pulled into a tree lot in South Vancouver. You put the car into park, looking over at Elias. “I take my tree shopping very seriously, as you’re about to see. They’ve usually got some kind of chart or whatever at the front to show you the different kinds of trees you can get—“
Elias cut you off. “I’m going to stop you there. Different kinds? There’s not just, I don’t know, the generic Christmas trees, what are they...firs or whatever?”
You huffed, blowing a piece of hair that had escaped from under your Canucks beanie, one of the first gifts Elias had given to you when you had started dating. “Well, of course there are. But there’s noble firs versus douglas firs, versus blue spruces, versus white firs, versus white spruces, so if you don’t know what you’re looking for it can actually be pretty overwhelming.”
“I can see that,” Elias said dryly. “So what’s the difference between them?”
“Size and color, mostly,” you replied, “but also things like the shape of the branches, how much weight they can hold, even what they smell like. This place has a ton of different ones, so we can walk around and you can figure out what you like.”
Elias lasted about ten minutes before turning to you with a blank expression that caused you to break out in raucous laughter. “I don’t know what I want. I thought I did, but there’s hundreds of trees here,” he gestured wildly, “and they’re all wrapped up, so you can’t even really see them, and all I know is that I want a Christmas tree that looks like a Christmas tree.”
You smiled at your boyfriend. “That’s not nothing, Lias. I think we’re actually getting somewhere. So you want a more classic look, big and fluffy?” He nodded. “Okay, then we’re probably going to want to go with a noble fir or grand fir.”
“How did you learn all this?” Elias asked.
“Trial and error,” you said. “And as for the netting, I think I can fix that.” You pulled your Swiss army knife out of your pocket, wiggling it at him. “It’s the way my dad always taught me. You find one that looks good, give it a good rip and make sure it’s the right shape and that there’s not a crazy amount of space between the branches.”
“Because we wouldn’t want that.”
“You’re learning!” You said, laughing. “No, we wouldn’t. Because even if you’ve got a lot of ornaments, it can still look weird and throw off the whole vibe you’re going for.”
Elias ran his hands against the branches of one of the trees. “I don’t have that many ornaments. Some, yeah, but not a lot.”
“Don’t worry,” you said, squeezing his hand. “Lord knows I’ve got enough, we can stop by my place on our way back and grab what I’ve got left over.”
He dipped his head in agreement. “Sounds good.”
---
Three hours later and you were standing on a chair in Elias’ living room, tongue sticking out of your mouth in concentration as you tried to fix the star to the top of the tree. Elias’ hands were wrapped gently around your waist, looking nervously up at you. “You sure you don’t want me to get it?” he asked.
You shook your head, pumping your fist when you finally got it balanced on top, hopping down to the floor. “I’m good!” Elias had a few ornaments from team parties and events — nearly all of them branded with some form of the Canucks logo — and a handful from back home, the same popsicle stick, glue, and tempera paint creations that dotted your own preschool memories. You had picked up lights from your apartment, plugged them into the wall, figured out half of the bulbs were dead, fixed them, and then finally draped them across the tree branches, hanging a box of your own ornaments alongside your boyfriend’s.
Elias slipped one arm around your hips, pulling you into his side as the two of you stood back and admired your handiwork. “I like this,” he murmured.
“The tree actually did turn out pretty great,” you agreed.
“You sound like you had so little faith in us,” Elias said, a smile on his face. “The tree does look great, but I was thinking about this. Us, being together, decorating a Christmas tree. Starting traditions. It feels right.”
You nodded, resting your head on his shoulder, turning to kiss his neck. “It does.”
The baking
Christmas didn’t stop at a tree for you. Oh no, not even close. Elias’ tree was decorated, his living room and entryway hung with tasteful amounts of tinsel and only slightly cheesy wall hangings — he particularly liked the ‘Eat, Drink, and Be Merry’ — that you had dragged him out to the nearest Canadian Tire for. It was all nice to admire, but for you, the real fun started when you fired up the oven and flipped on the stand mixer.
Elias had been gone for a few days on a brief road trip through California, and you had gladly taken up that time to stock up on any and all possible ingredients you’d need for your annual Christmas baking haul. Elias had a nicer mixer than you did, and his oven had an extra shelf, so with his blessing you had all but set up shop in his kitchen. A good chunk of your time outside of work had been spent running out to Sobey’s, driving back to Elias’ apartment, realizing you’d forgotten something, and having to do it all over again.
But you loved it, you really did, even when his counters were covered in bags of flour, tubes of icing, and three types of sugar, and his fridge had somewhere north of five pounds of butter. You heard Elias’ key in the front door; it swung open and you heard the familiar thump of his duffel against the hardwood floor. “I’m hoooome,” he called out.
You let out a quick giggle, walking around the kitchen to greet him in the entryway. “Welcome back, babe. How was the trip?”
He shrugged, raising an eyebrow at the outfit you had on; you had put on your trusted old apron, the floral print slightly faded over the years and with more than one stubborn vanilla stain that just didn’t want to come out, but you loved it all the same. “I mean, you saw it. Two wins, one loss. Could have done better, I really don’t think we should have dropped that game against the Kings, but it happens. You started yet?”
“Just about to,” you said, squeezing his hand. “I’d love an assistant if you’ve got the time.”
“For you?” Elias said, kissing the top of your head, “Always.”
Elias creamed the butters and sugar while you sifted the flour, turning around to grab the eggs. You handed two to him. “This seems like a lot of sugar,” Elias noted, peering into the mixing bowl.
You shrugged. “It’s a double recipe. There’s got to be enough for us, plus the team — I’ll cry if they don’t eat them, so I’m not against you threatening bodily harm if that’s what it comes to — plus some extra for me to take into work this week. So,” you picked up the bottle of vanilla extract, “lots of cookies.”
It wasn’t just cookies, though; you made somewhere north of 60 sugar cookies, but Elias was once again dumbfounded as you heaved a cardboard box out of one of the many bags you had picked up earlier in the week. “What’s that one?” You spun the box around so he could read the label. “Gingerbread house? Isn’t that mostly for little kids?”
You gasped in mock offense. “I can’t believe you would dare say such a thing, Elias. But yes, typically it is a kid thing. I love it, though. I’ve done one every year ever since I can remember, and they’re so much fun. Genuinely.” You tried, for one year and one year only, to make your own gingerbread; but, as much as you genuinely loved baking, it turned out to be nothing short of a spectacular mess. It wasn’t the Great British Bake Off, as you kept trying to remind yourself when the gingerbread puffed up too much and got too soft while simultaneously burning on the edges, but you had nonetheless been a little deflated as you ran to the grocery store to get a box kit. You tried to look on the bright side, though. One less thing to go wrong in the litany of the day’s bad possibilities. So, you no longer felt guilty about going out to the shop to get a build-your-own box. And besides, putting the house together and decorating it truly was 90% of the fun of the whole thing.
Elias held his hands up in surrender. “Didn’t mean to make you upset,” he said with a smile. “I do what the chef tells me.”
You pushed his hair back with one hand, the other handing him a tube of royal icing. “You, my love, have the honor of making sure this house doesn’t fall down.”
“I think I can do that,” he replied easily.
You really should have had more faith in your boyfriend, you thought as you looked at the completed gingerbread house. He had put just the right amount of icing on; not so little that the walls would simply fall down, but not so much that it would take forever to dry and still be too precarious to decorate. And decorate you did, mini M&Ms lining the roof to double as Christmas lights, a tree piped next to the front door, frosting and shredded coconut snow on the roof and floor. You stepped back to look at the finished product, curling into Elias’ side as he pressed a kiss to the crown of your head. “We did pretty good, didn’t we?” you asked.
“We did.”
The morning
There were many reasons you were grateful that the NHL didn’t operate like other major league sports, with games on Christmas day. It gave a much-needed break after the incredibly fast-paced nature of the first few months of the season. It also gave some time to gain a sense of normalcy for the players and their families; as normal as it could be, you supposed. They could do the same last-minute shopping as other families did, set out milk and cookies with their kids on Christmas Eve. They could attend a service on Christmas Day, invite family over to spend the holiday — as Elias had done the year prior, with his parents flying in from Sweden — or sleep in the morning of. The latter of which you and Elias chose, his bare chest pressed up against your back as you lay in his bed, a well-worn Tre Kronor jersey draped across your body. You twisted over to press a soft kiss to his lips. “Guess what today is?” you asked cheekily. You knew he knew, it wasn’t as if you hadn’t spent the entire month counting down the days and making damn sure he was as informed as you were.
Elias let out a light laugh. “Merry Christmas, baby.” He threw back the sheets. “I’m going to go and get the coffee started, take your time.”
It was Christmas, though, and you were you. You weren’t about to take your time when it was December 25th. You made the bed somewhat haphazardly, padding out to the kitchen to wrap your arms around Elias’ waist as he set the coffee maker to brew. It didn’t take long, and you had just enough time to turn on the Christmas music and carefully curate the morning’s playlist before he was walking out to the living room, holding two steaming mugs of coffee. “Thanks, ‘Lias,” you said, taking your cup as the two of you sat on the floor with your stockings. “Dig in,” you said, gesturing to his while blowing on your coffee to cool it down. “No use waiting.”
He shook his head at you, the edges of his mouth curled in a smile that let you know that no matter how much good-natured ribbing he gave you about your love for the morning and, honestly, for all things Christmas and wintery, he loved that you had let him into a part of your life that you were so excited to share. You had taken a trip to the Swedish candy shop that Elias loved so much, the place was a little out of the way but you’d do anything to give the man you loved a little taste of home for the holidays. Elias laughed when he turned his stocking upside town and tipped it out, the sweets mixed in with some new stick tape and wax he had been mentioning he was running low on. “The team’s got some spare stuff, but I like it a certain way,” he had said earlier in the month, and with a little digging and a call to Brock, you had figured exactly which hole-in-the-wall hockey supply store to drive out to for his favorite kind, the only brand that would do for Elias Pettersson.
He had filled your stocking with your favorite kind of candy and a few boxes of film for your Polaroid. You laughed when a box of chapstick fell on top of the candy. “You’re always losing them,” Elias said, a poorly concealed grin on his face, “or leaving them somewhere, so I figured more couldn’t hurt.”
You could barely stop laughing. “It’s perfect,” you said in between giggles. “Seriously, though. I can never have too many, and it’s sweet that you noticed that.”
Like any kid, you had always loved getting to open presents on Christmas, and as you had gotten older, you’d learned to enjoy the experience of shopping for other people. But you and Elias had agreed that you didn’t want to make Christmas an incredibly elaborate or expensive affair; the more you had to buy, the more you had to stress over what to choose, the less you would enjoy the holiday itself. So Elias gifted you a book you’d been eyeing, then you gave him a leatherbound journal and a pen. You unwrapped some nice lotion and candles, handing him a navy blue wool scarf. Elias had recently gotten into puzzles — you’re not sure who introduced him, but you had a sneaking suspicion it was Brock — so you got him a 1000 piece puzzle of the snow capped mountains of Banff. “Figured it’d keep you busy for a while,” you said. He squeezed your hand in appreciation. You opened up your last present, sliding out a pair of tickets from an envelope. Two concert tickets to someone you’d been dying to see for years, but you’d never been able to snatch up in time. “How’d you pull this one off?” you asked, delicately holding the tickets in your hand, the envelope they came in long forgotten on the floor.
“I tried to get them online when they went on sale last month like everyone else, I stayed on my laptop for something like an hour but nothing showed up. So then it was plan B. I called someone who called someone who knows someone at Rogers, told them the situation and that I wanted to surprise my girlfriend, and they made it work. I try not to name drop too often, but if it’s for you, I’ll do it,” he explained.
You leaned over and kissed him, your hand resting against his jaw. “Thank you, babe. You really didn’t have to, but...It’s going to be amazing. We’re going to have so much fun.”
“You better,” he replied, reaching around the tree to pull out a tiny box from between the branches, one so small you wouldn’t have noticed it if you didn’t know there was something to be looking for. Your heart nearly stopped, and you looked up towards Elias with an expression that was equal parts overwhelmed, panicked, and nervous. “I’m not proposing,” he said quickly. “It’s not a ring.”
You let out a breath of relief. “Oh my God, good.” Now it was your turn to backtrack. “I wouldn’t have been upset if you were proposing, we know we both want that in the future, but it would have caught me a little off-guard.”
Elias nodded. “And I get that. I definitely don’t want to be giving you a heart attack when I’m trying to ask you to marry me.”
“That wouldn’t be good.”
“It wouldn’t. I’d definitely rather have an alive fiancée than a dead one. But,” Elias said, turning over the box in his hands, “I’ve thought a lot about this too, and I’m as sure of this decision as I am that I’m going to propose to you one day.” He finally handed it over to you, gesturing for you to open it. “It’s been nearly a year and a half since we’ve been together, so I figured it’s about time — past time, really — that we make it official, have you bring over the two pairs of pants or whatever that aren’t already on your side of the drawer, stop having to drive the twenty minutes home at midnight after we fall asleep together during a movie marathon. About time we move in together.”
You let out a soft gasp, holding the silver key delicately in your hands, in between two fingers as if it might shatter into a million pieces if you dared grip it any tighter. “And you’re sure about this, ‘Lias? I’d love to, but only if you’re sure too. I don’t want you to feel backed into a corner about anything just because it’s what everyone else is doing, or seems like the ‘next step’ for us as a couple, or —”
Elias cut you off with a kiss, closing your hand over the key. “I’m positive. And I’m not doing this for anyone else other than us.”
Even though you were sitting on the living room floor, you spoke your next words as if you were breathless. “When can we start?”
“We can start whenever you want, baby. The sooner the better,” he answered.
Your eyes met his. “One more question,” you asked. He nodded. “Did I do it? Did I make you love Christmas?”
“Mission accomplished, baby.”
#elias pettersson#hockey fanfiction#hockey imagine#hockey fanfic#hockey imagines#nhl fanfiction#nhl imagine#hockey writing#nhl imagines#nhl writing#nhl fanfic
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Nobody Listens to Kix
Previous | Next | Masterlist
Case 00627: Scorch
Kix glanced up at the familiar sound of the medbay doors opening, frowning as he saw two commando troopers walking in. Their distinctively styled helmets gave an air of uniformity, but the designs painted on them spoke of very different personalities.
The commando wearing the helmet marked with red, jagged lines - almost suggesting a handprint - was half-supporting, half-dragging another commando with a simple, gray-green helmet painted with white and yellow details. Kix studied both new arrivals, but couldn't find any visible injuries on either.
"What happened here?" Kix asked, already starting toward the men.
"Scorch here blew himself up," the red-painted commando answered, with a motion of his helmet that clearly said he was rolling his eyes. "Di'kut."
"I did not!" the injured Scorch said defensively, turning to address Kix. "I had a minor disagreement with a wall."
"Yeah?" the red-painted commando asked, "What were the arguments?"
"Whether or not the blast from a thermal detonator plus my own fabulous aim would make the wall go 'boom'," Scorch replied, clearly grinning under his helmet.
"Congratulations on winning your argument, sir," Kix said dryly, already promising himself to blow up the Resolute and everyone inside before he would let Scorch and Hardcase meet. "Let's shed the armor and see how much damage that wall's rebuttal caused."
The two commandos completed their half-walk, half-drag journey to the first bunk in the medbay and Scorch leaned up against the mattress, stifling a pained groan. The red-painted one, obviously fed up with his brother's antics, unceremoniously lifted and deposited Scorch on the bed.
"Come on, Sev!" the commando complained loudly. "You know I'm injured and delicate."
"It doesn't count as an injury if you've always been stupid," Sev told him. "I'm going to report back to Boss."
"You're going to leave me here, alone and hurt?" Scorch asked dramatically. His only reply was the medbay door closing behind Sev. He shook his head and told the door, "Well, that was rude."
The door seemed unsympathetic.
Kix cleared his throat, wondering if he should crank the scanner high enough to scan for brain injuries, when Scorch turned back to him. He pulled off his gray and white commando helmet, grinned, and stuck out a hand. "Scorch."
"I gathered," Kix replied. "I'm Kix."
"Good, I'm in the right place," Scorch said, heaving an exaggerated sigh of relief as he began stripping off the rest of his armor. "But what is the best medic in the GAR doing attached to the 501st?"
"The best medic," Kix repeated skeptically, scanning the now de-armored commando.
"Oh, yeah. I've heard the stories," Scorch told him, eyes wide and sincere, though they sparkled with an edge of barely there mischief. "Granted, mostly from the pilot on the way here, but still."
"Troopers like to talk. And as for why the 501st…" Kix let some of his constant fond exasperation come through, "no one gets in more trouble or hurts themselves in stranger ways than them."
"And you like to treat them," Scorch summed up, the look on his face more intense than the situation called for. Kix was on-edge before the commando spoke again. "Makes you feel powerful, doesn't it? Makes you feel like you're better than them, more than just a regular trooper."
"Makes me feel like I've got one more living brother," Kix corrected sharply.
Scorch raised his hands in a gesture speaking of an innocence that his sparkling eyes belied. "Hey, I had to make sure you weren't one of those power-trip troopers."
Kix shook his head and silently went to gather the supplies he would need to treat his patient, unwilling to continue an insulting conversation. However, since the commando had started it… He turned to meet Scorch's eyes. "If we're asking uncomfortable questions, let me ask one."
Scorch made a beckoning gesture with his less-injured hand, as if he were inviting Kix to continue.
"Why do you sound different from every other trooper, but look exactly like the rest of us?" It was something he had been wondering since Scorch took off his helmet, but he had been too polite to ask. At least, until the commando had accused him of treating men for the ego boost. As if it did wonders for his ego to be vomited on, covered in blood, to need to help his brothers to the 'fresher, to hold their hands as they took their last breath-
"I'm an excellent mimic," Scorch answered, using Kix's own inflection. Kix stared at him steadily until he continued in his normal offbeat voice. "Sometimes, a situation calls for a voice to be different so we don't sound like normal clone troopers, no matter how much we look like them. Delta Squad is full of differences. Boss has a thicker accent than most native Mandalorians, Fixer has worked to speak the most pure Basic, and Sev's vocal cords are damaged. Me, I just talk this way because I want to."
"Yeah, you can never meet Hardcase," Kix muttered to himself, fighting a shudder at the ridiculous accent the 501st trooper would be sure to put on as a result.
"What was that?" Scorch asked.
"I said, oh excellent mimic, that you've bruised your ribs, pulled a hamstring, and most of the left side of your body will be covered in bruises for the next few weeks, maybe less if you can take a couple of days to rest up." Kix frowned down at the datapad showing the scanner's results. "You managed not to break anything, which is - frankly - a miracle."
"Commando armor," Scorch told him with a sharp rap on his chestplate, wincing as the movement strained his injuries.
"Bruised. Ribs." Kix repeated, biting the end off each word so that the commando would be sure to understand him. "I'll issue you some pain meds, but the most you can do to improve your recovery time is to sleep as much as possible and stay hydrated. Most importantly-"
Kix cut himself short as the medbay door opened and Scorch instinctively turned to see the new arrivals, hissing in pain at the twisting motion. "-don't twist or move your body in unusual ways," Kix finished, giving a perfunctory salute to the commando sergeant who stepped up to the bed.
"How is the patient?" the sergeant asked. Despite Scorch's overly casual manner, Kix had to admit that the commando had given an accurate description of his squadmates and their voices. This one with the thick Mando'a accent must be Boss.
With a shrug to answer the sergeant's question, Kix told him, "Not much I can do, actually."
"Told you those thermal dets would kill you some day," the rough-voiced Sev said to Scorch with no small amount of satisfaction.
"What? No," Kix told him, nettled by the idea that a patient of his could die from such minor injuries. "Scorch is covered in bruises and he pulled a few muscles. Nothing life-threatening, but they aren't injuries I can do much for. I'm issuing pain meds, but he could stand a few days of bed rest, sir."
Boss nodded while Scorch looked horrified. "I can't stay on bed rest!"
The last commando, the non-accented Fixer, sounded irritated by his squadmate. "Six-Two, you can't just choose which orders to follow. If Three-Eight says you're on bed rest, that's where you'll be unless you want a court-martial."
Scorch looked pleadingly at Kix. "I could die from my injuries, right, Kix? Even Fixer wouldn't try to boss around a dying brother."
"Er... " Kix trailed off, glancing around at the group of commandos. "Bruises have a notoriously low fatality rate, Scorch."
"I think his vocal cords may have been damaged," Sev observed. "Could you order a total lack of speaking for the foreseeable future? For medical reasons?"
"We'd make it worth your while," Fixer wheedled.
"Is it too late to say I don't want any visitors?" Scorch asked, though even that sounded like a joke.
"We probably should leave," Boss agreed, cutting through Sev and Fixer's gloating with a simple reminder of, "Lots of reports to write."
"Ugh. Really, sir? For a self-inflicted injury?"
"I was having a good day, Boss."
Before he left, Boss patted Scorch gently on the shoulder. "I'm glad you're okay, Scorch. Rest up or we'll leave you behind on our next mission."
"Kix?" Kix glanced over at the commando sergeant, one brow lifting in silent question. "Make sure he rests. Sedate him or strap him down if you need to."
With one last threatening look in Scorch's direction, Boss left the medbay. Kix silently held out the pain meds for Scorch, passing him a cup of water at the proper time.
"You're good to sleep now," Kix told the commando. "If the pain gets bad again, let me know and I'll increase your dosage."
Scorch nodded and had just settled back against the pillow when the medbay door opened and Kix's heart nearly stopped. He walked briskly to the front of the medbay, making small pushing motions at the new arrival. "Hardcase, get out of here. You're fine."
"You don't even know what's wrong yet," Hardcase pouted.
"Hardcase?" Scorch asked, sitting up with a manic interest gleaming in his eyes.
"Yeah?" Hardcase asked, leaning to peer around Kix's shoulder. "Whoa, a commando! I heard you guys get to deal with more explosives than anyone!"
"You ever juggled thermal detonators?" Scorch asked, giving Kix an innocent shrug when the medic glared.
"No!" Hardcase said, pushing past Kix to perch by Scorch's bedside, wearing a look of utter fascination.
In only moments, the two were swapping stories, each trying to outdo the other while both seemed impressed by the other's exploits. Kix groaned. Force willing, he wouldn't have much to do with Scorch after this, but he already expected a wild number of injuries in Hardcase's near future.
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A/N - First off, I want to apologize to... well, just everyone. For those who are not familiar with Republic Commando, you're probably a bit confused about who these guys are and why they're here. I read a fic featuring the characters in a minor role and proceeded to inhale everything I could find with them in it. For those who are familiar with Republic Commando, I would like to apologize for any errors in characterization, background, etc. Sidebar: if you know of a good fic featuring Delta Squad, please share the name of it with me!
Please reblog this work! It helps me grow my readership!
#Nobody Listens to Kix#star wars the clone wars#star wars#republic commando#clone trooper kix#republic commando scorch#republic commando sev#republic commando fixer#republic commando boss#sergeant boss#clone trooper hardcase#clone troopers deserve better#one-shot#but part of a series#more to come#please reblog
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The Truth
Fandom: Supernatural
Author’s note: I chose to begin the story with the scene in Billie's library. That part mostly aligns with canon, but I feel it provides important context for the confession. Most of the dialogue comes from this transcript: http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/15.18_Despair_(transcript)
Summary: The confession scene between Castiel and Dean ends a little differently.
Warnings: death, violence, injuries
Word count: 3764
Writing Masterpost!
...
“I'll let you in on something,” Billie says, her hand just barely keeping her own scythe away from her throat. She stands pressed against the wall of her library, where endless bookshelves stretch in either direction, each one containing hundreds of tomes, each one detailing someone’s death. She seems unconcerned by the blade’s closeness—and she has reason not to be. She focuses on Dean, ignoring the angel behind him. “When you cut me… that little nick? It was fatal.” She grimaces. “Something I can't survive. See for yourself.”
She reaches with her free hand and pulls aside her coat—or rather, peels it back from where it sticks to her flesh, which has turned a necrotic green, visibly rotting away. The ugly wound has spread from the cut on her shoulder across part of her chest, stretching down under her sleeve to an unknown extent. The infection seems to spread even in the moment before she allows the coat to fall back into place.
Dean falters slightly. Because Billie is right. That wound does not look survivable—that wound is death itself. Dealt by a blade that the previous Horseman had once said could reap God Himself. But he keeps the scythe at her throat—dying or not, Dean knows better than to lower it.
He may have made a mistake, coming here.
Billie places her other hand on the scythe, glaring.
“You killed me, Dean. So yeah, no. I don't care about your friends. I don't care about your family. But seeing you here has reminded me of something.” Her grimace of a smile widens, and she inhales sharply. “There is one thing I'd like… one wish, before I go. I'd like to see you dead.”
Dean’s expression hardens.
Billie suddenly shoves the scythe aside and surges forward, backhanding Dean with her right hand. Cas lunges forward to catch him. They both move towards Death—to do what, against her, neither knows—but Billie has already taken hold of her scythe and stands tall, powerful even as she grows closer to her end. She slices the scythe, Castiel and Dean barely lurching back in time to avoid it. Both men’s eyes are wide. This is not going to plan, not at all.
Billie smiles.
She thrusts out a hand and the angel and human are flung back, flying between two stark gray bookcases to land harshly on their backs. A single book on one shelf falls over, opening to blank pages.
Castiel and Dean struggle to their feet, Cas with one hand on Dean’s arm. He doesn’t seem to realize having done so, and keeps it there. Dean does notice, but he doesn’t mind. He reaches for Cas, as well.
Billie waits for them to get back up, standing there with her scythe. She is in no rush. She has a little time, for this. Maybe she’ll even kill the pet angel, first. Make Dean watch, before she claims him, too.
“I'm so glad you came.”
She stalks leisurely forward, amused as Dean and Cas dash down the row of bookcases, trying to get away. Yes, revenge is the perfect way to spend her final moments. Their fear alone is quite satisfying to watch. She follows her targets, smiling.
They manage to make it back to the door they’d so foolishly opened to reach her, and dash through the portal. It blends seamlessly back into the normal wall of the library as they close the portal.
No matter, Billie thinks. The chase is half the fun.
…
Dean and Cas run through the door, Cas slamming it shut behind them. The wall returns to regular brick. They are back in the bunker.
“Come on,” Dean says, reaching for Cas, already walking. Cas follows closely behind.
They know they are still not safe. Billie isn’t called Death, a Horseman, for nothing. Very few things can get in this bunker uninvited, but Dean is sure she is one of the ones that can.
Dean makes it to the map room, walking agitatedly. Because anything is better than just standing there, waiting for her to come. Dean spins around as he walks, searching for something, anything that can keep Death itself at bay. “Come on, Dean. Think, think!”
As Dean continues walking, searching, Cas speaks up, holding his hands out to the sides.
“Dean, where are you going?”
“I—I don’t know!”
“You know she can find us anywhere.”
Dean turns to him, desperate. “I know, I know that! I just....” He paces, then pauses opposite the angel. His voice quietens. “What do we do, Ca–“
Dean gasps, cut off by a shock of pain in his chest, like something has clawed its way inside and has sealed around his heart like a vice. There is a roaring in his ears, electricity in the air. The temperature drops several degrees.
Billie is here.
Dean groans, dropping to his knees, clutching his chest. Castiel stares in shock.
Billie stands behind him on the balcony above, one hand holding her scythe, the other held up, slowly clenching into a fist. She watches as Dean writhes. She is doused in shadow, but her satisfaction is palpable. Castiel knows she is smiling.
“Billie,” Cas says aloud. He looks at her, then drops to Dean’s side, taking him by the shoulders and trying to help him up.
“My heart—” Dean gasps, his voice gravelly with pain. “My heart. I can feel her.”
Billie, on the balcony, smiles wider. Her rotting, gnarled hand clenches further, trembling. The power it takes to do this, to kill even this one human slowly, is draining her—she is quite close to the end now—but it is worth it, worth edging to her grave that much faster. Oh, is it worth it.
“Come on, Dean, we’ve gotta go,” Cas says. He can’t stop Billie, not right now, not like this. He has to get Dean out of there, somewhere they have time to think, to come up with something. He will not let Dean die like this. “Come on.”
He gets Dean on his feet and bears most of his weight as he guides the man down the hall, away from Billie, moving as fast as they can. Dean continues to groan in pain, but he is just as determined.
Billie, meanwhile, steps lightly down the stairs, taking her time, her injured hand still outstretched. Bits of bone are visible now. She seems not to mind. She simply follows, relishing this moment.
“It's you, Dean,” Billie calls. “It's always been you. Death-defying. Rule-breaking. You are everything I lived to set right. To put down. To tame. You are human disorder incarnate.”
Cas and Dean hurry on, passing by the tables, the useless telescope, the books upon books of lore that probably wouldn’t have helped even if they had time to search for something, anything, that would help.
Billie clenches her hand again and Dean collapses against a wall. Cas touches his shoulders, worried, terrified. They are briefly hidden from Billie’s view by a row of bookshelves. But she continues forward, relentless. Castiel looks over his shoulder towards her voice and the sound of her all-too-calm footsteps.
Cas heaves Dean up and they disappear downstairs, Cas now practically carrying Dean through the halls of the basement level. Dean still clutches his heart. Neither of them knows how much longer he will last if nothing changes.
“I’ve got you,” Cas says, half to himself.
Billie follows them here, too. Her scythe taps on the floor with every other step, almost like a cane. Small cracks appear in the floor each place it touches. Even the concrete, infused with warding magic as it is, is not immune to its power.
“Come on, Dean,” Billie says, her voice echoing down the hall. “You can't escape me.”
She drags the blade of her scythe against the tile wall. Cracks and an ashen color spread from the tip of the blade, like a spreading infection. Sparks fly, flaring in the dimness.
Ahead of her but still far too close, Castiel and Dean hurry on, the grinding of the blade against the wall grating on their ears. Dean would cover his ears, but he can only manage another wince, one arm wrapped around Cas’s shoulder, the other clutching his chest.
Billie is having fun, toying with them. She strolls further forward, ignoring the infection clawing its way further up her chest, spreading like ink in water up her neck. “Don't you think it's finally time? Time for the sweet release of Death?”
Cas and Dean make it into the main storage room, and Cas slams the door shut behind them. Dean, released, stumbles to the side, only to be quickly steadied by his companion. Still, Dean doubles over, coughing, wheezing, holding his chest, leaning heavily on one of the shelving units. Billie’s vice grip continues to tighten. His vision is filled with black spots.
Cas finds a pocket knife in Dean’s back pocket—he knows his hunter well, and Dean would never be without one—and uses it to slice into his own palm. He then paints a bloody sigil on the door. It flares with light as Castiel finishes drawing. There is no such thing as warding for Death itself, but this is the closest and most powerful sigil he knows. He can only hope it will work. It has too.
As the glow of the sigil fades and its magic takes effect, Dean’s shoulders slump; and he takes in a deep breath, the pain fading. He straightens, leaning on the shelves.
“Thank you,” he gasps.
“It worked?” Cas asks, hardly believing it.
Dean swallows hard and nods once.
“It blocked her grip on you,” Cas observes, relieved, but not relaxing just yet.
Billie slams her fist into the door. It shudders, but does not yield.
Cas turns to look, and seeing that the warding is holding, looks back to Dean. He looks to one side, then the other, thinking. “Dean, she said that wound was killing her. Maybe we can wait her out.”
Dean drops his hand from his chest and levels a look at Cas. “Yeah, and if we can't?
Cas sets his jaw, his angel blade appearing in his hand. “Then we fight.”
Billie’s fist slams into the door again. The warding flares with light. Not quite so bright, this time.
Dean notices, and shakes his head. “We'll lose.” He looks around the storage room, at the solid walls, the single exit. He wanders over to the devil’s trap laid into the floor, and runs a hand along the back of the chair there. “I just led us into another trap,” he says, not needing to gesture at the literal prison they stand in.
Slam. The warding flares. Weaker.
“All because I couldn't hurt Chuck. Because I was angry, and because I just needed something to kill, and because that's all I know how to do.”
Cas takes a step forward, his heart breaking, because that’s not true at all. “Dean...”
Slam. Weaker.
Dean scoffs, his gaze darting to the door and back to Cas. “It was Chuck all along. We shouldn't have ever left Sam and Jack. We should be there with them right now.” His voice breaks, and his eyes are shining now, only making Castiel’s heart ache further. “Everybody's gonna die, Cas. Everybody. I never… I never even got to apologize to Jack. The kid probably still thinks I hate him. And Sam—I’ll never see Sam again.” He shakes his head. “I can't stop it. She's gonna get through that door.”
Slam. Weaker still.
Castiel’s angel blade disappears. He looks down. “I know,” he admits quietly.
“And she's gonna kill you, and she’ll make me watch. And then she's gonna kill me.” Slowly, he didn’t need to add. And everything, everything, is going to just… end.”
Slam. Weaker still. Cas looks over his shoulder, thinking. A part of him tells him that Dean is right, that this situation is hopeless. It might be different if he still had his wings, if he could take them somewhere, anywhere else, just for a little more time, enough to wait Billie out. It would be different if Jack was there, and if Jack still had his powers. There was a time when he was powerful enough—but their failed attempt to kill God has left Jack nearly powerless. His grace seemed barely strong enough to keep him alive.
Slam.
“I’m sorry,” Dean says, a desolate resignation in his eyes.
But a thought has occurred to Castiel: Jack.
He pauses, staring ahead, thinking. “Wait, there is.... There's one thing she's afraid of. There's one thing strong enough to stop her.” He looks up and sees Dean staring at him.
Dean Winchester. Beautiful as ever.
Cas takes a breath, steadies himself, and decides. He looks Dean in the eye, suddenly strangely calm.
Slam. Cas barely hears it.
Dean senses the change in tone and frowns, waiting for Cas to continue. Which he does.
“When Jack was dying, I… I made a deal, to save him.”
Dean is taken aback. Of all the things he might have expected Cas to say, this was not one of them. “You what?”
He looks at Dean, almost pleading. This is the moment, he knows. “The p—the price was my life. When I experienced a moment of true happiness, The Empty would be summoned, and… it would take me. Forever.
Dean stares for a moment, processing. A moment they do not have. Billie’s fist slams, again, into the door.
“Why are you telling me this now?” Dean asks. He has a bad feeling about where this might be going, and he does not like it.
Cas smiles, tears already collecting in his eyes. “You know, I always wondered… ever since I took that burden, that curse, I wondered… what it could be? What my true happiness could even look like. I never found an answer, because the one thing I want... It's something I know I can't have. I’ve always known, I think. But I think I know... I think I know, now.” He smiles, a tear rolling down his cheek. His voice breaks. “Happiness isn't in the having, it's in just being. It's in just saying it.”
Dean doesn’t know how to even begin to process this. “What are you talking about, man?”
Behind them, Billie continues her attack on the warding. But it holds, for now. And neither Cas nor Dean notices her anymore. Not really. This is their moment, not hers.
Castiel steps closer, looking at Dean earnestly. Willing him to understand, to believe him. “I know. I know how you see yourself, Dean. You see yourself the same way our enemies see you. You're destructive, and you're angry, and you're broken. You're “daddy's blunt instrument.” And you think that hate and anger, that's... That's what drives you, that's who you are. It's not. And everyone who knows you sees it. Everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love. You raised your little brother for love. You fought for this whole world for love. That is who you are. You're the most caring man on Earth. You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know.” Castiel smiles. He’s crying, and he doesn’t care. “You know… ever since we met, ever since I pulled you out of Hell... knowing you has changed me.”
Dean blinks hard and looks down at the floor.
“Because you cared, I cared. I cared about you. I cared about Sam, I cared about Jack... I cared about the whole world, because of you.” He takes another step forward. “You changed me, Dean.”
Dean clears his throat and speaks, quietly. Because he knows, he knows what is happening, and he knows what Cas plans have happen. But he asks, anyway. Because he doesn’t want to believe it. “Why does this sound like a goodbye?”
Cas just gives him a soft look. “Because it is.”
Dean takes in a breath, to say what, he doesn’t know, but Cas cuts him off. He’s practically radiant with joy, at finally saying it. At speaking his truth, after all these years. Because even if he can’t have Dean, Dean will know.
“I love you,” he says. “I’m in love with you.”
Dean’s mouth opens. Closes. He stares. His voice is choked. “Cas, I… Please, don’t do this.”
Time has run out. Behind Dean, the spine-chilling sound of the Empty grows, black goo squeezing through the bricks of the wall, tendrils branching out into this world. Dean’s mouth opens as he turns to stare at the rapidly opening portal, all too aware of what this means. There are tears in his eyes, now.
Castiel knows, too. He is still smiling. Still joyful. Radiant. Because he’s finally said it. After twelve years. He spoke his one, deepest truth. He is ready.
Dean’s mind is running a million miles a minute. “Cas….”
Billie has broken through the warding. The door swings open, and she steps through, grinning. The necrosis of what were once small wounds has spread, eating away at her arm, her chest, her neck. The hand that was cut by the scythe is practically skeletal, now. What is visible of her chest is little more than bone, gaps visible between them and ribbons of gray-green flesh. Yet her grip on her scythe remains steady.
She hasn’t seen the Empty, yet.
Cas ignores both entities, focused only on Dean. His eyes shimmering with tears, he steps forward, and puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder.
“Goodbye, Dean.”
But Dean isn’t quite ready for a goodbye, yet.
“No!” Dean says. He grabs Cas’s hand—the cut one—and shoves Cas aside. Cas is so surprised by the turn of events that it works, and he stumbles, not quite falling, staring at Dean, confused, now. There’s a bloody hand print on his shoulder, just where the now-faded mark was on Dean’s shoulder, from when Cas raised him from Perdition.
Billie steps further into the room. And then she sees the Empty. Her expression falters, her head tilting to the side. “Oh….”
She doesn’t finish. The black slime of the Empty slams into her, climbing and crawling and consuming until nothing is left but a ball of blackness; and then Death herself is sucked into the Empty.
Gone. Forever.
Cas smiles at Dean, a small, knowing smile. One of relief that Dean is safe, but also resignation. Because the Empty is still here to collect its prize. Because nothing has changed.
Except that it has.
Billie’s scythe remains. It falls, its owner gone, blade swinging down to the ground.
Dean catches it.
In one sweeping motion, before Cas or anyone else can react, he swings the weapon around and sinks the entire blade into the Empty, just as it begins to surge towards Cas.
This blade could kill Death itself with one little cut. Death, the old Death, had once said that this scythe could reap God Himself.
The Empty… stops. It freezes, still reaching out towards Cas, but goes no further.
It pulses.
Dean lets go of the scythe, steps back, towards a stunned Castiel, and grabs the angel’s trench coat in one hand without looking at him. His face is slack with shock as what he has just done. With fear that it won’t work.
The scythe turns black. A black so dark that it’s like a hole in the fabric of the world—just like the Empty.
The Empty pulses.
Cracks begin to spread, radiating from the sunken blade. The cracks seem to leak a faint, fragile light.
And then the Empty explodes.
…
Dean is alive.
He is pretty sure of this, at least. He doesn’t think his head would hurt so much, if he were dead. Unless Chuck thought it would be funny to send him back to Hell, or to Purgatory. Which is a distinct possibility.
So, perhaps pain doesn’t rule out death as much as it might for anyone else. But Dean really doesn’t think he is dead.
He hears a cough, from somewhere nearby. Dean opens his eyes.
He is lying on the floor of the bunker’s storage room, dust motes drifting in the air. His head pounds. His ears are ringing. He slowly sits up, feeling faintly punch-drunk.
The Empty is gone, as is Billie. The shelving units, lore, and supplies of the store room have all been blown back by the force of the explosion, and lie crumpled against the walls, bottles broken, precious artifacts crushed, pages strewn across the floor.
Dean is not alone in the room.
A body lies on its side beside him, clad in a trench coat, facing away from him.
“Cas?!” Dean asks loudly, his voice cracking.
Castiel groans. He shifts, and Dean feels relief—and anger, and so, so much more—wash over him. He rushes to Cas’s side and turns him onto his back, searching his face.
They’re alive. They’re both alive. Billie is gone, the Empty is gone, and they are both alive.
Cas blinks up at Dean from the floor, blue eyes wide. Dust and a bit of blood are streaked across his face. “Dean?”
“Cas,” Dean sighs. He looks around the demolished room.
“Are they… gone?” Cas asks. He seems oddly distant. Dean can relate.
“Yeah… yeah, I think so. Come on—get up.”
Dean and Cas both struggle to their feet and dust themselves off. Dean pats away a bit of dust from Cas’s lapel, and Cas watches the gesture, silent.
Then Dean jabs his finger into Cas’s chest, hard, and fixes him with a hard glare. Cas looks down at the finger, then stares back up at Dean, dumbfounded.
Dean’s voice shakes with anger. “Don’t you ever—ever—do something like that again! Do you hear me, damnit?”
Cas stares, his mouth slightly open.
“…Dean, I…”
“Did you really think I was going to let you do that? Just—just drop that on me, and—and die? How could you something like that to me? That is not okay, Cas!”
Cas continues to stare.
Dean stops, scoffs, and lowers his hand. He looks Cas over for a moment—living, breathing, Cas—thinking. And then he swallows, and nods. “We are not done talking about this,” he promises firmly.
And then, because today has gotten crazy enough, pulls the angel forward, and kisses him.
Dean releases the stunned angel a second later. “Now let’s go find Sam, and our kid.”
They still had a God to defeat.
...
Thank you for reading!
One additional tidbit I want to make clear: This alteration does, in my story, mean that Dean doesn't die on a piece of rebar. Cas goes with on the vampire hunt-the vampires do not, by the way, wear weird skull masks-and while Dean does get impaled, Cas is able to save him. And when Jack has time, he returns to visit his fathers. (Dean still has a dog, because Miracle was the best part of the episode.)
#spn#supernatural#castiel#dean winchester#spn fic#my writing#spn 15x18#spn 15x18 rewrite#destiel#destiel fic#deancas#deancas fic#billie the reaper#the empty#spn season 15#the truth fic#spn s15x18
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The Lovers Club (It AU ReaderxAll the Guys)
The Lovers Club (It AU ReaderxBill,Richie,Ben,Eddie,Stanley,Mike)
Warning: Non-con, a little bit of dominate & submissive stuff, erotica themes. They are not kids in this fic.
Summary: Reader has moved to Derry, Maine to care for her elderly grandmother. As an outsider all her life, y/n assumed Derry would be another place she wouldn’t fit in. However, she meet’s a group of young men (early/mid twenty’s) that secretly call themselves “The Lovers Club”. It’s not the type of club where they read books or make crafts, the “Lovers Club” is filled with pleasure & experiences that y/n never thought she’d have; the problem is, some of the men start getting possessive, they want her to be theirs, only theirs.
The library was nearly empty. And that was how y/n liked it. She has only been in Derry for a week but has already found her favorite spot to be. Other than the suspicious looks from the librarian, y/n felt like the library was one of the two places she belonged; the other being the corner house, painted pink and purple flowers, it was an oddity in Derry, the color pallet here was grays, browns and greens. Y/n was odd herself, mostly because she was new and in a small town like this, you know everybody but nobody knew her.
Y/n reminded herself that she only had a few hours before her she has to make dinner for her family, which was just her and her grandmother. Immediately, y/n went to the mystery section where the world of the unknown waited for her to get her hands on it. However, she wasn’t the only one with that idea. A young man was pulling out various books from the dusty shelves.
“Hello.” He looked at y/n and showed a shy smile. He was handsome with blondish, brunet hair and dark eyes.
A rush of heat filled y/n’s cheeks, and she looked at the ground, “Hey...”, the girl said as she began to observe the books.
While she wasn’t paying attention, the young man (Ben) scanned y/n from head to toe while her back was turned to him. Instantly, he thought she was cute; the shy way she pushed past him, the rose-red color her face turned. It reminded him of himself during his childhood, the way he’d stare longingly at a certain red-haired vixen that has since been long-gone.
Before Ben thought more, he blurted, “So what’s your name?” to the girl. She turned to him, her eyes wide. She fumbled with the few books she had in her hand, shaken by the sudden intrusion.
“Y/n..... L/n.” She said, smiling.
Ben took a few seconds. Her last name did sound familiar but he couldn’t add anything up until.....
“The pink house with the crazy purple flowers! That old woman who lives there....is she...” Ben trailed off, expecting y/n to fill in the obvious blanks.
“My grandmother? Yes, yes she is.” Y/N answered, slightly hoping that would be the end of the conversation but it wasn’t because Ben didn’t want it to be.
“Well I’m Ben Hanscom.” Ben wanted to shake her hand or something but they both had a stack of books in their arms.
They spoke for an hour, getting to know a little bit about each-other. Ben was more of an open-book with y/n, where-as she.....held back. Ben thought, when he’d asked about her family and all she talked about was her grandmother and avoided mentioning anyone else. Otherwise, they had much in common. She reminded him of some of the guys and he reminded her of the elderly woman that was waiting for her at home. His attention was fully on her and although, in the past, that usually made her uncomfortable, it was rather nice with Ben Hanscom.
“I have to get back home now but it was nice meeting you.” Y/n said, grateful but in a hurry.
Before she could go, Ben grabbed her hand. “Please meet me here tomorrow! Same time.” He asked, his big, pleading eyes, glossed with comfort & kindness.
“I..I-I don’t know. Maybe.” She curtly said, rushing away and tightly holding herself around her torso. Her heart thumped excitingly.
Ben watched her leave, eyes narrowed at the new girl who’s captured his attention in a very short time. He would have to be careful though, because if his friends found out he had a girl all to himself.....they’d take her too.
Y/n made a simple dinner for her and her grandmother. The elderly woman pressed intrusive questions at the table, asking why her grand-daughter had been smiling like a fool when she got home, why the young girl was too shaky to eat; why she had a dreamy, far off look in her eye during the majority of the meal. Y/n shook off the questions but couldn’t hide her buzz, physically. All she said was that maybe she’d made a friend, something y/n thought difficult to do as an adult. Sleep that night came later than sooner; it wasn’t just her nervous eating her up about the next day, it was the old couch that y/n had to sleep on that she was still getting use to. There wasn’t a second bedroom.
The next day after hours of restless tossing and turning, y/n got up and got ready to do some errands. Her first stop, was to pick up some prescription drugs for grandma and some other items too. Finding the corner drug store was easy, but when y/n arrived, two men were leaning by the front door; chatting amongst themselves as if they weren’t blocking the way.
“Excuse me....I-I need to get in, please.” Y/n asked, forcing herself to took the two men in the eyes.
The shorter of the two men backed away kindly but the other with dark, bushy hair and thick glasses stood there, observing the girl as if she’d interrupted something important.
“Richie, come on! Let’s go get something to eat.” The shorter guy said, tugging the jacket covered arm of his pal.
Richie just stared at y/n but not with contempt, annoyance yes but something else, curiosity. “She stutter’s just like Bill. Funny.” Richie stepped away from the door, put an arm around his friends’ shoulder as they walked away, uninterested after-all.
Okay, that was weird, y/n thought, stepping into the drug store.
After that, y/n headed back her to grandmother’s to deliver the medicine then it’d be time to meet up with Ben. The thought of him sent a bolt of shivers down her back, the way he looked at her as if he’d discovered buried treasure. Y/n had boyfriends and a girlfriend or two but she still wasn’t a pro at dating. Her shyness always got the better of her and who ever she was with, got bored. Y/n wanted to do more things in her love life but it was as if there was an invisible wall that kept her from really touching her lover.
In the pink house decorated with purple flowers, in a rocking chair sat Y/n’s grandmother who had a book in her hands, the tv on as background noise.
“Here’s your stuff, remember to take it before dinner. I’m going to the library for a few hours and then I’ll be back, is that alright?” Y/n asked, crouching down to meet her family member’s eyes.
The elderly woman shook her head, “You’re an adult, you don’t have to ask me permission to go out, y/n. I’ll be fine but I would like to ask who you’ll be meeting?”
The smirk on her grandmother’s face said everything about how quickly she catches on. But y/n did not want to tell the truth, because y/n was here to take care of her family, not date, not make friends; the young woman didn’t even know how long she’d be in Derry, anyway.
“Nobody, I promise. I just like the library a lot. Back home, ours closed down long ago so it’s nice to come to a place where you have one at all.” Y/n said. It wasn’t a total lie, the library she went to as a kid did close down about ten years ago which left a younger and smaller y/n disappointed.
Y/n walked, trying to keep a medium pace. She didn’t want to seem to excited or desperate to meet a man she just met yesterday. For all she knows, he could have lied as a cruel joke.
The library was an older building, not fancy, it was plain, with barely any decoration or posh detailing. It’s drab appearance fit in with the rest of the town, slightly run-down but rich in community and history. Y/n stood at the bottom of the steps, unable to move forward as if the invisible wall had planted itself between the building and her. Y/n forced a foot forward as the only way to get where she wanted to be, a surge of confidence ripping through her as she entered the library doors; but all confidence drained from her when she spotted Ben at one of the tables, a stack of books next to him. None of them were being read. Ben had been waiting, as he checked his wrist watch and glanced around.
Y/n wanted to walk out and forget this meet-up. Thinking it makes her crazy to think this handsome guy was waiting for her. He didn’t even know her. But it was too late because a second later, Ben saw Y/n standing by the door. A big smile crossing his face, as he waved in a short notion.
Y/n met the young man at the table where he gestured for her to sit down.
“Thanks for coming. I’ll be honest and say I don’t actually have a plan but I guess we can take it slow.” Ben admitted, his eyes darting to Y/n’s chest and them immediately back up to her face.
Y/n pretended not to notice, she was nervous too, she thought and didn’t want to judge but couldn’t help but think the deepness in his dark eyes held something more....sinister, something he was trying to tame and keep quiet like an animal inside his own mind.
“You’re just fine, what books did you-” She was unable to finish her question when a handful of men appeared out of no where, around the table.
“Ben! Remember our plan! What are you doing here?” The curly haired boy with thick glasses asked. Y/n couldn’t help but think about how she’s seen him before.
Unfamiliar faces surrounded the table as well, each of them darting their attention from Ben to Y/n.
Ben adjusted in his chair, his eyebrows narrowed and he sighed. “I’m sorry I forgot about our plans.” He said, his voiced edged with anger.
“I remember you from yesterday. You’re that girl. Eddie, its that girl from yesterday.’ Richie mocked, elbowing the shorter man near him who rolled his eyes.
“Yeah well come on. Bill and Mike are waiting at the house.” Riche said, grabbing Ben’s shoulder to make him stand.
Ben grabbed the table, he looked at Y/n with an apologetic expression. He didn’t want to leave and Y/n didn’t understand why he didn’t just say no.
“I don’t think he want’s to leave, guys.” Y/n said, her voice barely above a whisper but they heard her.
The air was thick is the seconds of silence that followed; whatever wasn’t being said made it seem like there was an invisible wall between all of them. But richie was the first to speak up.
“May I remind you Ben, what happens when you break our rules. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see your girlfriend here face the consequences of you actions for you. I think Bill would LOVE to have a girl in the group for the first time in years, don’t you think?” Richie said, putting a tight arm around Ben’s shoulders.
Ben thrashed out of his chair, pushing Richie away. He looked at Y/n with glassy eyes, his the corners of his lips turned down . Richie was smiling as Ben walked away with the group of boys except Richie himself and his best friend, Eddie. Richie turned his attention to Y/n, his eyes laced with malice.
“Don’t hang around here too much sweetheart.” Richie suggested, walking closer to y/n whose leg backs’ were stopped by a chair; she couldn’t go any further without tripping.
“Unless you’d like to find out what we’d do to you, then by all means follow along.” Richie turned away and grabbed Eddie’s hand as they walked out of the library, leaving Y/n alone and confused.
Later that night while her grandmother was her cat on the couch, Y/n forced herself to ask her grandmother about the strange young men she’d encountered earlier.
“Do you know who Ben Hanscom is grandma?” Y/n asked, taking a seat on the couch.
Her grandmother kept brushing the cat, “Oh that young man is actually pretty nice. I use to talk to his mother a lot; he was a chubby little thing but he’s grown quite handsome.”
Y/n smiled, knowing that if her grandmother liked him then maybe things weren’t as weird as they seemed. “That’s great but what about his friends? Are there gangs here?” Y/n asked.
Her grandmother stopped brushing the cat and looked at Y/n as if she just said something terrible while setting the brush on her side table. “Why are you asking about those boys? Did they harass you or something? Listen to me, Ben ain’t bad but those fellow men he hangs out with are trouble. They aren’t criminals, but they’re....dangerous I think. You don’t need to be around them, promise me you’ll stay away?”
“I can stay away.” Y/n said, not completely sure she meant that.
It took Y/n a few hours to decide if going into the deep end of this was worth it or not. I made her stomach bubble, flashes of heat touched her forehead and the invisible wall stayed still. All the signs were pointing to this being a bad idea, that Ben was one man in a town full of people just like him. However, maybe there wasn’t anyone like Ben. Others would look at Y/n and whisper to the next person or they’d just ignore her completely but Ben didn’t hesitate to let her in. Maybe it’d be wise to talk to Ben, away from those other men.
Tomorrow. She’ll find him tomorrow and they’ll talk.
The next day was bleak. Dark grey skies and heavy rain made Y/n grab her rain-coat, a yellow slicker that she got from the thrift store when she moved here. Nobody was on the streets, which was unusual for Derry, Saturday afternoon. Y/n made her way to the library but Ben wasn’t there and didn’t know where he would be; she really didn’t know anything about him so why was she wasting her own time trying to find this guy. But as she made her way out of the library, she ran into a familiar face; the smaller man that was always with Richie. Today he was by himself.
The two stared at each-other. Unlike Richie this guy didn’t look at her like he wanted fight her, he looked inconvenienced and.....sorry?
“I don’t know where Ben is. He’s probably at home but I’m not sure. You should probably listen to Richie and stay away from us.” He said, brushing past Y/n like she was nothing.
The woman got irate. She snapped as she gripped the arm of the stupid man and pulled him back in front of her. The rage diffused when she looked at his face and the general disdain in his narrowed eyes. His brows furrowed and he stepped back from Y/n but yet he couldn’t help but feel excited. Her touch did something to him and maybe that’s why Ben almost ditched the group yesterday for her. The group hadn’t had a newcomer in years and any candidates were liabilities. This woman however, Y/n, Ben had called her during the ‘meeting’ yesterday, could be the missing piece they needed.
It’s selfish, Eddie thought but he knew what he needed to do to test out his theory. “I’m Eddie, Ben’s friend. I don’t know where he is but we all usually meetup at our other friends house for some fun on Saturday night’s. Would you like to join us? There’ll be drinks and good-looking men.” Eddie finished with the childish smile that most people fall for.
Y/n hesitated. She’d have to call grandma and explain that she’d be late for dinner. Maybe, making some friends wouldn’t be terrible while she was here.
“Yeah, I’ll go.” Y/n stated. Eddie reached out his hand and Y/n took it. Eddie walked this girl to Bill Denbrough’s home. Bill was their leader. And Eddie was praying that Bill liked the new member he’d present to him. A young, naive woman who’d need to be taught some lessons; she’d need to be broken in. As to which person in the group would do that? They’ll know tonight.
They walked in without knocking, and Eddie told Y/n to sit on the couch. She noticed that it sounded more like a demand and not a question which made Y/n hesitate to sit but Eddie’s hard glare sent shivers down her spine and she sat.
“Bill, It’s Eddie! I’ve got something to show you!” Eddie yelled up the stairs.
Seconds later, footsteps came pounding down. A tall, handsome man came into the living room, clenching a ball of paper in one hand. “I’m busy doing work for the news paper.”
Eddie cleared his throat, “This is Y/n. I thought you’d want to meet her. maybe...” Eddie shrunk under Bill’s gaze. He couldn’t meet his leader’s eyes.
Bill looked at Y/n. The woman was cute but that wouldn’t be enough for her to fit in. She looked at her feet while swinging her legs like a child. Bill rolled his eyes ready to dismiss her but a second glance caught an interesting detail. The yellow coat she wore reminded him of a terrible time. A memory that makes his heart ache and burn; that makes his brain pound his skull from the inside.
“Where’d you get that - that coat you’re wearing?” Bill stuttered, something he hasn’t done in years.
“A thrift store, why?” Y/n asked, slightly scared by Bill’s anger. She wondered if he’s always like this but by Eddie’s raised eyebrows and the distance he put between him and Bill, makes her think not.
Bill rushed over to Y/n and gripped the color of the coat forcing Y/n forward. “Take it off, right fucking now!” Bill yelled.
Eddie stood in place, “Bill calm down. I thought she’d be interesting for you to meet because she’s the reason Ben almost didn’t show up yesterday.” Eddie confessed, his eyes darting between Bill and Y/n.
Bill looked her up and down, and smirked. He was still angry but something else now fueled him, determination. If she was the reason the usually loyal Ben lied to the group then he’d make and example of her then. Oh yeah she could be the new member of the group and in a few hours, Ben will see why he shouldn’t lie to his friends.
Y/n jerked back onto the couch then began to sit up, “I need to go. I’m sorry if I disturbed you...” She said stepping towards the front door.
“Sit back down. You’re not going anywhere.” Bill grabbed Y/n’s coat again and flung her onto the coach.
“Sit there and be good for a few hours alright? If you don’t we’ll have to punish you, harder.” Bill said with each arm placed on either side of the woman’s head.
Hours later, a few other men arrived; all of which y/n has seen before. There was Mike, Stanley Eddie, Bill and Richie. Richie glared at her awhile, making snide comments here or there at her while she desperately searched for Ben who had yet to show up.
Richie looked out the window “Guys he’s here!” He yelled.
Bill nodded at Richie who grabbed Y/n by the arm, “You’re coming with me sweetheart.” Richie said, leading Y/n upstairs.
Y/n tried to struggle out of Richie’s grasp but he held on to her tighter. “If you don’t stop, I swear it’ll just be worse for you.” He tugged her all the way to a master bedroom and threw her on the floor.
They had been followed by a group of footsteps and guys yelling at each other. Ben entered the room first and when he saw Y/n on the floor, he had Richie pinned against a wall.
“What the fuck are you thinking, bringing her into this! She did nothing wrong!” Ben was furious, his grip on Richie tightened as he pressed his friend further into the wall.
Bill cleared his throat, “You lied to us Ben and you know what happens when you lie to your friends. Show him Richie.”
Richie released himself from Ben’s grip and got on his knee’s next to Y/n. She knew she was in trouble. All the men were staring at her, some of the amused or hungry. Ben was held back by Mike and Stanley. Richie grabbed onto the girls’ clothes and started taking them off. Y/n slapped his hands away and backed into the wall but she was caught by Richie who pulled her legs back closer to him.
“Stop messing around or I’ll just fuck you harder.” Richie said, not taking his eyes off her body.
Tears brimmed Y/n’s eyes. She thrashed around, refusing to let this happen to her but it did no good. Richie and Bill seemed turned on by her resistance. And Richie finished peeling off the last bit of clothes she had on, revealing her soft flesh colored mounds that she covered with her arms.
“Grab her wrists, I want to see her body.” Bill demanded and Richie complied with a smile.
Richie hands firmly held Y/n’s wrists as he undid his pants. The rest of the group was in awe. They hadn’t had a girl in so long that Y/n was a miraculous sight. Her feminine curves, her lush hair and pouty lips made their knee’s weak but they all stood still, ready to watch the show.
Richie was mesmerized by Y/n too which made him angrier. Richie looked at Eddie whose eyes were only on Y/n. Richie dug his nails into the girls skin as he prepared to enter her; he placed a hand by her face and caressed her, long enough that he could enter her with a hard thrust. He closed his eyes as he felt the luxury she was. Y/n just cried out by the rough penetration. She was no virgin but she’d never been taken like this.
Richie opened his eyes to the pretty girl beneath him, in pain. He pouted, some part of him was guilty but he enjoyed this lifestyle and he enjoyed being dominate. He started to move in her, the wave of comfort he felt with this girl did not co-exist peacefully with the side of him that wanted to ravish her into tomorrow. He sped up his thrusting, hitting her harder while his hands travelled up and down her body. Some of her cries turned into low moans and Richie wanted to her more of her, so he went faster.
Richie’s mouth found one of her nipples and he began to suck the delicate area while she shuddered beneath him. Richie began to groan loudly while Y/n’s moans became more clear. She grabbed onto his back and held him while his hands gripped her hips in way that’ll leave a bruise. He continued to pound into Y/n until he felt the surge to end, if he went any longer, he wouldn’t have a choice; but he didn’t care and kept riding with her until he was done.
Both of them laid silently as Richie let every last drop of his cum dispose into Y/n. The guilt, still present didn’t top the satisfaction he felt from taking her however as he got up, the realization hit Y/n like a truck. What had just happened to her was unimaginable but here she was, naked with a man she barely knows on-top of her.
The tears fell without permission and Y/n tried to hide them with her hands. Everybody saw it but they put their pleasure before her being and turned the other way. Richie looked down at her and couldn’t exactly determine what he was feeling as she cried and he didn’t like it.
“Pathetic.” Richie called Y/n. He grabbed his clothes and rushed out of the room not ever looking back.
Bill strode to her, satisfied that the introduction of the newest member of the club turned out well. He’d have fun with this girl, they all would. Fuck her over and over again and she’d have to get use to it.
Bill leaned down to Y/n. Her eyes were pleading but he wasn’t going to help her. “Welcome to The Lover’s Club.” Bill said, smirking.
Y/n didn’t know what to think or what to say. She laid there hoping this was all a nightmare but it was real. And it would become her life.
#it chapter two#it#richie x reader#richie toizer x reader#bill x reader#ben hanscom#ben x reader#mike x reader#stranger things#smut#alternate universe#pennywise#it chapter 1 x reader#beverly marsh
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HB4-29/Whumptober day 7
This is a series. Start here, continued from here.
This is a sequel to Honor Bound, Honor Bound 2, Honor Bound 3.
AO3
Masterlist
~
Sam burrito with forehead kisses requested by @endless-whump and @butwhatifyouwrite
Content warning: permanent injury, nerve damage, past torture, mild dissoci@tion, flashbacks, pain medication mention, self-blame
~
Sam groaned and rolled onto their back. Finally – finally, after almost two weeks, how did Isaac cope with this? – they could lie on their back without pain shooting through them. The whip marks were healing. The wound in their arm was healing.
The nerve they were almost certain was severed, was not.
An afternoon breeze rustled the curtains in their room, making the room waver light-dark-light-dark as they billowed in and out. Their gaze moved slowly over the ceiling, the thirteen dark wood beams that stood out against the white. Thirteen, from one end of the room to the other. They’d counted them so many times in the time they’d spent holed up there.
It was… exhausting, sometimes, to be around the others. Not that the others were doing anything wrong; it was just so hard to look at each of them and seen pain tighten in their eyes every time they looked at Sam. Watching the guilt drag at them all, especially Isaac, with his own wounds healing to scars, was like trying to tear a bullet out of their chest with their bare hands. Never fully sure if they would tear something vital as they did. Wondering if maybe the guilt was something that would stay buried in this family forever. Something they should just get used to, learn to breathe past.
They couldn’t take the guilt. Couldn’t take the way everyone’s hands would jerk towards them when they went to stand, as if they needed something to help them balance every time. They couldn’t take how the others would trail off in the middle of a sentence, their gaze fixed on Sam, as if stunned into silence by the magnitude of Sam’s pain. It was more than frustrating, it was maddening.
Edrissa treated them the same as she always did.
Sam’s stomach growled. I wonder when dinner is?
Their stomach growled again, and louder, as if protesting the notion of waiting until dinner to eat. Sam groaned and pushed themself upright.
They were getting better at it, now, moving with only one hand. Their right arm was still slinged, and the surgical cut Finn had made was nearly closed. The infection was gone. Finn was encouraging them to do small, simple exercises, more just letting their arm hang and slowly using their left hand to move the arm in its socket. Finn said it would make healing progress better.
I don’t think it’s going to get much better than this.
Slowly, they stood, savoring the feeling of the rug beneath their feet. They’d slept on concrete for three weeks, the only respite being when Colleen had forced them to kneel on the soft plush rugs wherever she chose to chain them down. Chain them down and strangle them or beat them or drown them or whip them or—
They shuddered and shook their head. No. No. Can’t fall in. They adjusted their arm in its sling – made of very nice, light fabric, and blue, Edrissa made it for them herself – and walked to the door. They pulled it open and were greeted by the soft brrp? of the black cat sitting right outside.
Sam smiled and bent to pet him. “Hey, Nata,” they said softly. Nata pushed with fierce adoration into Sam’s hand. “Hey, sweet boy.” They straightened, and steadied themself against the wall as the hallway went black for a moment. They breathed slowly through their mouth as their vision returned.
They wandered down the hall towards the kitchen, shivering slightly in their thin shirt and shorts. The house stayed so cool during the day, even though summer was around the corner. They didn’t mind, though. It made it easier to sleep. The heat made Sam’s wounds itchy. They rounded the corner into the living room and stopped.
Isaac and Gavin sat on the couch, their heads together as they looked at the puzzle on the coffee table. A new one – Finn and Ellis had been finishing a puzzle about every three or four days since they’d arrived north, and Gray had an entire closet filled with more. This one was of a seascape, the sun glinting off the water in a thousand different colors if you looked closely at the brushstrokes of the painting that had been printed onto the pieces. It was the hardest one yet, mostly blues and greens, with only a single sailboat to break the design of the ocean waves.
“Ellis will kill you if you mess with that puzzle,” Sam said with a gentle smile.
Isaac’s head snapped up, and his look of shock and near-terror at being caught near the puzzle made Sam burst into a snort of laughter. The laughter drew out into a groan as their cracked ribs throbbed in pain.
Isaac shot to his feet and took a step towards Sam before they could even draw a breath.
“I’m okay,” they gasped, holding their hand out in front of them. Isaac hesitated and fell back a step. “Wh-what are you guys up to? Other than taking your lives into your hands breathing on Ellis’s puzzle?” Sam’s lips quirked into an unsteady smile.
Isaac rubbed the back of his neck. “Um… no, pretty much just that. Just finished up sparring practice with Vera and Edrissa, and I just… kinda zoned out looking at the puzzle. It’s nice. I don’t know if it looks like the actual ocean, but…” He shrugged. “What’re you up to?”
“Um… I was gonna get some food,” Sam said, glancing behind Isaac and meeting Gavin’s gaze for a moment. For once… for the first time since they reached the north again… Gavin didn’t look down and away. Warmth and relief spread faintly through Sam’s chest, like bracing for pain and receiving none.
“I was getting kinda hungry, too,” Isaac said, and glanced at Gavin behind him. “Gav, you want—” Isaac’s mouth snapped shut and he flushed a brilliant shade of red. Gavin’s cheeks flushed to match, and Sam could feel heat on their face, too.
Gav? How did we get here? They bit their lip as for a moment, a memory swept through them, Gavin grinning as he forced their head back where they sat in a chair, their hands tied behind them, holding a knife to their throat as they sobbed and pleaded…
Sam shook their head to clear it. It was a slippery day today, and Sam kept sliding back into their memories.
But I don’t hurt as much today. Please let me stay here…
Gavin got to his feet, his cheeks still pink, his hands buried deep in his pockets. “I could, um… V-Vera showed me how to make eggs benedict last weekend. I could… um…”
Sam’s stomach grumbled loudly in the quiet room. The three of them burst out laughing. Sam winced and bit down hard on their lip.
“Eggs benedict for lunch,” Sam said tightly, counting their heartbeats and waiting for the pain to fade. It was all they could do anymore, now that Finn was slowly weaning them off the morphine and Vicodin. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six… Slowly, the pain in their ribs eased. On the next breath, it would hurt again, but in this precise moment…
Appreciating precise moments free of pain was the only thing that had kept Sam going for almost two weeks.
They looked up at Gavin and Isaac. They were both looking at Sam with almost identical expressions: worry, grief… guilt. Both of them, blaming themselves for the pain Sam felt every day. Both of them, the reason Sam was alive.
Sam couldn’t push that little voice down forever, though: the voice that said that if Gavin had never hurt them in the first place… and if Isaac had killed Gavin in his warehouse, when he was unconscious and bloody…
They gritted their teeth. They hated those thoughts that had crept through their mind more and more, ever since they’d been shot. The pain was poisoning them, and twisted, bitter thoughts had crawled out of that festering place inside them that never felt any relief. Maybe if they had just a day without pain, an hour, a minute, they could push those thoughts away, sweep them out of their mind completely. But they hurt, they hurt, and the only thing that made them feel better were the pills that were slowly, slowly being taken away.
The pills, and Nata. And seeing everyone safe. Seeing Tori when she was herself, tucked under Vera’s arm with a fragile smile. And feeling the wind on their face after three weeks of chilly, stagnant air in their cell. And tasting real food again, Gray’s cookies and Vera’s spicy beef stew and Edrissa’s fresh-baked bread. And looking out over the lake, bigger even than the lake at their first foster home, where they’d chased frogs and swam after spring melted the thin crust of ice over the surface…
All those things made them feel better, too.
Sam blinked, and realized none of them had said a word. They smiled, and the expression felt… tight, but like something they’d been good at, a very long time ago, and were just now trying again. The smile felt comfortable.
“Eggs b-benedict for lunch,” they said again, their tone softer. “Sounds good.”
Gavin let out a gusty breath. “Good,” he huffed. “Because it’s one of the only things I know to make on my own.” He turned and headed for the kitchen. Isaac took a step towards the kitchen as well, then paused, as if realizing he’d moved.
“Gavin,” Isaac said. “Do you want… do you need help, or…?”
“No!” Gavin said, and nudged him back towards the living room. “I can do it. I can… I can do it, Isaac. Stay with Sam.” He blushed and turned away again, and disappeared into the kitchen. He was visible again a moment later over the counter that made a sort of window between the kitchen and the living room, lined with barstools looking in.
Isaac turned back to Sam, a hint of pink still on his cheeks. He flushed darker when he saw them staring at him. “What?” he said weakly, and sat down on the couch near the puzzle.
Sam raised an eyebrow at him. “‘Gav’?” they said with a grin as they made their way to the couch and slowly eased themself down.
Isaac rolled his eyes, smiling back. He sat down on the couch beside them. “It just slipped out, okay? I didn’t… I haven’t been—”
“What, you haven’t been calling him Gav-Gav when you’re alone?” Sam said with a laugh.
“Oh my god, Sam,” Isaac whispered, his face turning an almost painful-looking red. He buried his face in his hands. “No.”
“Thank god,” Sam said, and nudged Isaac with their left shoulder – their good shoulder. “Because I don’t think I could have tolerated that.”
Isaac snorted and looked up towards the kitchen. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Neither could I.”
Gavin was visible over the half-wall of the counter. He was bustling about the kitchen, wearing a look of intense concentration as he gathered the ingredients, wearing… an apron. Edrissa’s baking apron. Sam tried to suppress another snort of laughter.
Isaac nudged them back, gently. “What?” he said softly, his cheeks burning.
Sam grinned and shook their head. “Nothing,” they said, returning their gaze to Isaac. “He’s just…” Sam shrugged, gently, careful with their arm. “He’s… different.”
“He is,” Isaac said, and sat back against the cushions. Sam shivered slightly. Isaac’s eyebrows pulled together. “You cold?”
“A little,” Sam admitted. Something inside them bristled, just the slightest bit, at Isaac’s concern.
He was like this with me before I got hurt like this. He’s always been like this, with everyone. He can’t turn it off.
“Me, too,” Isaac said, and reached for the thinner blanket draped over the back of the couch. “It’s just been so hard to get… warm since…” He trailed off as he shook the blanket open and laid it over both their laps.
Sam pulled the blanket up around their shoulders and leaned against Isaac. Isaac automatically opened his arm to them and they cuddled against his side.
Just like before.
“S-so,” Isaac said softly, and Sam’s heart ached at the familiar sound of his guilt. “How’s the arm?”
“Um.” They squeezed their right hand into a fist – or tried to. Their thumb and first two fingers twitched, and their thumb shook as they forced it to bend. They bit their lip and grimaced, straining with all their might to just make a fist. Something they could do without even thinking with their left hand. But their right… Maybe there had been a little bit of improvement over the past few days. Or maybe there hadn’t. They couldn’t tell, not with the pain that drilled into their arm every minute…
But the pain was fading. Every day. Some days were worse than others, but every day there was a moment that hurt less than all the other moments. And every day, that moment was better than the day before.
They looked up and saw Isaac looking warily at them. They cleared their throat. “Oh. Um. Honestly, it’s… it’s better.”
Isaac’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? That’s… that’s great. What’s been different? Has the feeling come back yet? Have you—”
“N-no,” Sam said, and stared at the pattern of the blanket over them. “Not like that. It just… doesn’t hurt so much all the time.”
Isaac blinked and sat back. “That’s still great, Sam.”
Sam chewed their lip. Tears formed in their eyes. They didn’t know why, they were just there. They sniffed and wiped their eyes with the blanket.
“Hey,” Isaac said gently, and he… god, he really was starting to sound like himself more and more. More of the kind person Sam knew before… all this. Not that Isaac wasn’t kind now, but there was… a desperation to him. There was a sense of terror under his every movement, like he was one wrong touch or loud sound away from losing himself and hurting… anyone that got too close. That had been going away, too, though.
Sam glanced up at Isaac, just to catch him gesturing with his chin at Gavin. Sam hadn’t even realized the kitchen had gone silent until they looked over at Gavin, who was standing stock-still in the opening of the half-wall, his apron and the English muffin in his hand seemingly forgotten, looking at Sam with grief written plainly over his face. He jumped and hurried over to the stove, where Sam could hear the eggs poaching in water.
“I don’t know why I’m crying,” Sam said, swiping at their eyes.
Isaac snorted. “Whether I give you the list chronologically or from best to worst, it would take too long.” He wrapped his arm around their shoulders again, but didn’t squeeze. Sam was grateful. Although, out of everyone Isaac probably knew best how to avoid whip marks… except possibly Vera.
“No, it’s just… nothing’s going on now…” Embarrassed, Sam pressed their face into the blanket, the more they tried to hold back, the more their eyes seemed to leak tears.
“Doesn’t have to be,” Isaac said evenly, and Sam relaxed slightly with his even tone.
“It’s stupid,” Sam mumbled, and blushed with their voice broke.
“Sam. Hey.” They lifted their head and forced themself to meet Isaac’s eyes. He smiled and gently ruffled their hair. “You’re fine.”
Sam shrugged as they wiped their nose. They could smell the butter, could hear the ham sizzling in the pan as Gavin worked.
Isaac laughed weakly. “It’s… good to see you, Sam,” he said, sadness lacing the edges of his voice.
Sam grimaced. “I’ve been around.”
Isaac dipped his head. “You have. But… in your room a lot of the time. Which…” He held out his free hand in a supplicating gesture. “…if that’s where you need to be, you be there. Okay? It’s just…” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to their forehead. “It’s just good to see you out.”
Sam picked at the seam of their sling. “Yeah. I… I’ve been… hurting, and—”
“I know. And you aren’t obligated to see us. Ever.” Isaac leveled his gaze at them.
“I… I know. It’s just…” Sam bit their lip and pulled their knees in to their chest under the blanket, tucking their arm against their chest. “It’s just…” They shot a glance at Gavin, whisking something now, and back at Isaac. “So much of… I mean, you guys…” Sam huffed out a breath. “You all just look so… guilty. When you see me.”
Guilt crossed Isaac’s face. Sam braced for their own guilt, and disappointment, and… then Isaac’s face changed. He smiled ruefully. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Sam gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Which, you know… I… It’s hard. And… and I feel guilty, too.”
Isaac’s eyebrows pulled together. “For… what, Sam?”
Sam tilted their head back against the couch cushions, tears brimming in their eyes again. “Same old, I guess,” they murmured. “I just… so many of you have been, um, hurt. Because of me. And I… I know that… last bit, with C-Colleen, when she…” They winced as the healing whip marks on their back suddenly burned. “…when she, um, made you say those things. And when I, um, got shot. I…” Sam gulped, and they were helpless against the tears that rolled back into their hair. “If it weren’t for me, you… would never have gotten hurt in the first place. With, um, Gavin. And I… I wanted to come on that mission. I know you didn’t want me to, and I went. And I… when we got taken, all I could, um, think was…” Their eyes slid closed, sending a stream of tears down their cheeks. “Um… all I could think was… ‘please let it just be me this time.’”
Isaac blew out a forceful breath. Sam blinked their eyes open and looked at him. “Oh,” he croaked, his own eyes faraway. “That’s um… exactly what, what I thought, um… too.”
“Well, um…” Sam swallowed the ache in their throat. “Yeah. That’s… that’s why I’ve been, um, in my room a lot. Because, uh… I hate seeing your guilt. And it makes me a hypocrite because I, ah, hate feeling, um, guilty.” They shrugged. “When I see your scars.”
Isaac turned his free arm over, and his gaze moved over the scars there: flat, silver marks from the heated blade of Gavin’s knife, and dozens of thin, pink slashes from his shoulder to his wrist, where Gavin had cut him at Colleen’s house. Those were healed, now, along with the fading ring of pink scars around his wrists where he’d been handcuffed, and fought against the restraints, every single day. Fighting to get to Sam.
“There are a lot more, now,” Isaac said softly, his voice trembling.
“We all have a lot more, now,” Sam said.
Isaac looked at them. “Sam, I… I know, I’m, I’m sorry…”
Sam glared lightly at Isaac. “You’re doing it again.”
Isaac blinked. “Fuck,” he breathed. “I don’t… I swear to god I don’t even… notice…”
“I know, Isaac,” Sam said sadly. They reached out and gently took Isaac’s wrist in their hand, moving their thumb over the scars on his wrists. “It’s just… what you do.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Isaac whispered, his eyes unfocused, like he wasn’t aware he was saying it out loud.
Sam’s lips pulled into a smile. More tears rolled down their cheeks, but they didn’t try to force them down, now. They leaned forward and pulled Isaac into a one-armed embrace. He held them gently, his breath huffing warmly against their hair.
“Um…”
They both glanced up to see Gavin standing over them, his eyes shifted down, one plate in each hand. The smell of Hollandaise and English muffins and ham and eggs washed over them. Their stomach grumbled again, and louder than before. Sam grinned and sat forward.
“We should probably eat at the table so we don’t, um, disturb the puzzle,” Gavin said, eyeing it. “I guess I…” He wandered over to the table and set the plates down. “I guess I could have, um, set that there, and…” He hurried back into the kitchen to grab one more plate and a handful of silverware.
Sam pushed off the blanket and got to their feet. “Smells good,” they said quietly.
Gavin’s head shot up as he set the third plate on the table. “Thank you,” he breathed, wide-eyed.
Sam sat in their seat, watching the curls of steam rise from the plate. Their mouth watered. Almost without thinking, it seemed, Isaac reached for their plate to cut up the food.
“Isaac,” Sam protested weakly. “Yours will get cold. I can, um, I can wait.”
Isaac froze, Sam’s knife and fork already cutting into the eggs benedict. Bright yellow yolk oozed across the plate.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Isaac said. “I didn’t think about it. I’m sorry. I can…” He glanced up at Sam. His lips slowly pulled into a smile. “How ‘bout I alternate? Cut a bite for me, cut a bite for you?”
“That sounds okay,” Sam said quietly.
Isaac cut a bite, carefully spearing the English muffin, ham, and egg, and sauce. He pushed the plate and fork towards Sam and cut a bite for himself.
Gavin had a bite almost all the way to his mouth when he shot to his feet. “You guys eat this with hot sauce,” he gasped, and sprinted to the kitchen. He was back in seconds with the bottle of hot sauce Gray had bought from a woman who grew the best peppers in Crayton – she said so.
Sam took up the fork in their left hand. Even that had gotten easier in the past two weeks. They lifted the fork to their mouth and took a bite, their eyes sliding shut at the hot food. It was delicious.
Continued here
@untilthepainstarts, @womping-grounds, @free-2bmee, @quirkykayleetam, @walkingchemicalfire, @inpainandsuffering, @redwingedwhump, @burtlederp, @castielamigos-whump-side-blog, @whatwhumpcomments, @cursedscribbles, @whumpywhumper, @stxck-fxck, @omega-em-z-02, @whumps-the-word, @justwhumpitwhumpitgood, @justplainwhump, @moose-teeth, @slaintetowhump, @finder-of-rings, @inky-whump, @thatsthewhump, @orchidscript, @insanitywishes, @this-mightaswell-happen, @newandfiguringitout, @whumpkitty, @pretty-face-breaker, @cinnamonflavoredhugs, @inaridriscoll, @im-just-here-for-the-whump, @endless-whump, @grizzlie70, @oops-its-whump
#honor bound 4#whumptober2020#no. 7#comfort#altprompt#OC#fic#permanent injury tw#nerve damage tw#past torture#dissociation tw#flashbacks tw#pain medication tw#self-blaming tw#trauma recovery#Nata the cat#Isaac/Gavin#breakfast#for lunch#pain makes people change#sam is a cinnamon roll#sam is a smol bean#Isaac's scars
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No clue what to call this one...
It’s PunkRock!Michael and Emo!Alex AU that pretty much no one asked for. That being said, it’s for @litwitlady per our previous conversation about the subtle difference with punk and emo kids. As a warning, it fluff n smut.
The ground vibrated under Alex Manes bright red converse and he wondered if he’d be able to hear anything once this night was over. He’d found the furthest wall and decided to hold it up for the evening as he waited for Maria to get done with her one-woman-mission to fuck SOMEONE in this derelict house that operated as a “music venue”. All the rooms were lit with harsh yellow lighting, bereft of all but the most untrustworthy looking furniture, and there were dents and holes in walls all over the place. Alex was a little afraid the second floor would cave in at some point and he’d have to find out that people actually lived here.
Looking back up towards the corner of what was once considered the dining room of the house, he was happy to see that he couldn’t see Maria anymore. Maybe she’d gotten lucky faster than he’d figured she would and soon they’d be able to get out of here. But that might still take a while, so Alex slid down the wall and took out the book he’d been reading about the perks of being a wallflower. He noted someone coming to stand next to him in this periphery but didn’t look up. He didn’t want to engage anyone here and the bouncing of their leg by his shoulder made him sure they weren’t looking to engage him either since they seemed to be enjoying the band.
When the band finally wound down, the figure that had been standing next to him practically fell onto the floor in a heap of legs and elbows. He turned to look and saw it was Michael Guerin, probably the most serious, mysterious, hard core punk kid at his school. His blonde curly hair had been streaked with green and slicked back from his face. He didn’t wear any make-up like some of the punk kids did or Alex himself for that matter. He had on a D.A.R.E. shirt with the sides and sleeves ripped off which showed off his lithe, strong body when he slumped forward. The shirt was tucked into tight black jeans with safety pinned holes up and down the legs. He wore the rattiest shit-kicker boots Alex had ever seen which were covered with patches, pins, and spikes. He’d left his spiked bracelets and collar that he’d worn at school at home for the evening and Alex felt like he was almost seeing him naked. Which wasn’t unwelcome because for all Michael Guerin’s faults, being unattractive was not among them.
“Having fun?” Michael asked, looking over at him in between nodding and slapping hands with various people milling around in the crowd. The band was breaking down their gear and everyone was moving to other parts of the house or out into the yard between acts. Alex pursed his lips at him and went back to his book. He was sure he was just fucking with him. Michael Guerin didn’t make small talk. He mostly just stalked the halls and kept his head down in classes. Alex couldn’t look at him without rolling his eyes sometimes, he was such a cliché.
“I, uh, don’t think I’ve seen you at many of these. Thought you liked fuckin’ Panic! At the Disco and shit…” he continued, sneaking looks over at Alex. Alex sighed through his nose loudly. Apparently, they were going to do this tonight.
“I’m here with Maria,” Alex finally responded, still not looking up from the book he was frankly only pretending to read at this point.
“Oh? I saw her leave with one of the guitarists from the first band. Was she your ride?” Michael asked, sounding nervous. Alex did look at him then, trying to see if he was just fucking with him or if he was being sincere. When he decided he couldn’t tell, he dug his phone out of his back pocket and saw a missed call and a text from Maria.
>Found something strange and hopefully wonderful. Won’t be back tonight.
“God fucking damnit, Maria,” Alex exclaimed, almost throwing his phone in frustration.
“So I guess that’s a yes?” Michael asked a little sheepishly.
“This is why you never see me at these things. I don’t have a fucking car and my ride likes to fuck strangers and ends up deserting me. I fucking know better. Ugh, fucking Maria,” he raged. Michael watched him at it for a while. Meanwhile the other band had finished setting up and people were starting to filter back into the room. Alex looked around at the people and groaned, just wanting to leave and get out of here.
“Hey, come on. Let’s go outside. It’s about to get loud,” Michael suggested, standing up and offering Alex his hand. Alex absently noted that his fingernails were painted, though the polish was cheap and had already chipped off in several places. At the first screech of feedback from the amps, Alex grabbed his hand and let Michael pull him up. He shoved the paperback into his back pocket and looked Guerin in the eyes, feeling a fluttery feeling in his chest when their eyes met. He was a bit surprised when Michael didn’t immediately drop his hand, but instead held it while leading him through the dingy kitchen and out to the backyard area. A group of smokers hung around the door chatting and they called ‘Hey-o!’ in excitement when they saw Michael. He waved and grinned at them but kept tugging Alex with him until they were past the property line. Apparently, someone had found a couch on the side of the road and had moved it out into the undeveloped desert behind the house to stare out at the dark nothing beyond. When they reached the front of the couch Michael finally let go of his hand and flopped down on the cushions at one end with a sigh.
“Uh, what are we doing?” Alex asked, looking over his shoulder to see if anyone had followed them. He shuffled a little and stared down at the orange and white plaid couch dubiously.
“We’re hanging out. Chill, sit down, enjoy the night with me. We’ll still be able to hear the band from here,” he added, patting the spot next to him.
“Oh, goody,” Alex remarked sarcastically before sitting himself down on the cushion farthest from Michael’s. He still didn’t quite trust his intentions, but he was glad to be out of the house. They could, in fact, here the band still, but the lyrics were muffled and it almost sounded like the songs had a melody this far out.
“So, what’s up with the finger bruises on your arm?” Michael asked, pointing towards where Alex’s shirt sleeves had ridden up when he’d finally sat down. “Girlfriend like to get a little rough?”
“Uhh…. That would be pretty remarkable since I’m totally gay and you know it. Like, everyone knows it,” Alex accused, deflecting his question about the bruises. He didn’t want to talk about his problems with strangers. As hot as this guy was, he was still a stranger. Michael smiled widely at him.
“I didn’t know if that was a rumor or what, man,” he replied easily, seeming to take Alex’s correction in stride. For some reason that threw Alex off. He’d been waiting for an attack.
“Oh,” Alex said, feeling a little deflated, “Well, it’s not. I’m gay. Does that make you want to run back to the party? Afraid someone will see you out here with the emo faggot?”
Michael’s smile fell and he looked a little insulted. Alex almost apologized, but he didn’t owe this punk anything and he kind of wanted to see how he reacted to some pushing. His tone was less congenial when he finally answered.
“I don’t give a fuck who you’re into. Love is love. What I do want to know is who the fuck keeps bruising you up all the time? Those aren’t love taps I saw on your ribs the other day in the locker room and you don’t skate or play sports. Who’s fucking you up?”
He sounded mad, indignant on behalf of a stranger. On behalf of Alex, who was not used anyone giving a shit about him. It was a new feeling for Alex to have someone pay that much attention to him and care that he was being hurt. But he couldn’t just say ‘My dad knocks me around because I crave cock and hate the military’ so he kept his mouth shut and Michael watched him stay silent, watched him tense up with his shoulders closer to his ears and wrap his arms around his body. He obviously wasn’t going to say anything so Michael tried a different tactic.
“The foster family I’m with right now… they’re alright. But the family I was with before them? Fucking meth heads. And meth heads get mean when they’re coming down,” Michael said, turning and pulling his shirt over his head to show Alex his back. There were long thin grooves over the middle of his back and little round scars like burns. “Not all that is the meth heads. The long scars were from the religious zealots I got put with a couple years ago. Being exorcised isn’t fun, but the lead up was worse.”
Alex stared at the skin in horrified fascination, moving closer to see them better in the faint light of the moon. Before he knew what he was doing, he was reaching out to trace along one of the scars with his fingers, but at the last minute came to his senses and brought his hand back.
“That’s awful, Michael,” Alex whispered. Michael pulled his shirt back down and turned to him, a bittersweet smile on his face.
“Well, it’s all healed over now. Right now, no ones hurting me. So, who’s hurting you? Are you getting bullied? I know that Valenti kid is a fucking homophobic piece of shit jock bully, but if he’s literally beating you up I will get my boys and we’ll tear his ass in two,” Michael threatened with passion. Alex looked at him, feeling his face soften at how serious Michael was.
“You can’t defend me like that. Kyle’s a fucking jerk, but he’s not doing this. It’s..uh… It’s my dad. He’s the one hitting me,” Alex admitted quietly. Somewhere in the middle of his confession, he had started to find his own hands fascinating. So fascinating he couldn’t look up to see Michael’s expression over his confession, but instead just kept watching the way his skin pulled taut when he interlaced them and twisted one way or the other. One of Michael’s hands came into his view then and covered his own, stopping their anxious twisting. Alex froze and waited. He didn’t know what reaction he was hoping for but he felt himself bracing for it.
“Do you have somewhere to go to get away from him?” Michael asked, his voice now quiet next to Alex’s ear. The hand not on Alex’s came to rest between his shoulder blades, thumb rubbing soothing circles through the cotton of his shirt. Alex felt his body relax a fraction, slumping a little as he realized he wasn’t about to be attacked.
“Yeah, yeah. I have friends who will let me stay with them,” Alex managed to get out through the thickness in his throat.
“Add me to that list,” Michael said. Alex’s head jerked up to look at him and he realized he was only a couple breaths away from him. “I’m serious. Add me to the list of people you can call if you need an out. I’ve got a truck, I’ll come get you. No questions asked, nothing owed.”
“You don’t know me, Guerin,” Alex said in the stillness between them. He couldn’t stop his gaze from moving from his perfect hazel eyes down to his lips. He suddenly knew he wanted to kiss this guy. Whatever happened after was fine, but he wanted to do something reckless. Michael was pushing a long piece of hair back behind Alex’s ear and looking at him fondly and it made Alex’s gut clench with want.
“Sometimes people do nice things without an expectations. It’s been known to happen,” he replied. Alex nodded and swallowed, suddenly filled with nerves again, though for a very different reason than before.
He saw Michael watching him, watching the way his eyes kept darting down to look at his lips, watching the way he mirrored licking them with his own. Slowly Michael leaned forward, closing the distance between them and pressed his lips against Alex’s. Alex was cupping his jaw and keeping him close before Michael could back away and end the kiss. Alex opened his lips, his tongue lickeding over Michael’s in a request and a question. This wasn’t Alex’s first kiss, but it was the first one he was adamant about pursuing further. Michael hummed deep in his throat and opened to Alex’s advances, letting him explore his mouth with his tongue before doing the same with his own. Alex felt breathless and elated. He didn’t care that the music in the background was hardcore punk being played so badly Syd Vicious would be rolling over in his grave. He didn’t care that he was kissing Michael on a dirty, half rotten couch out in the desert where anyone could see them and tell his father what he’d been doing with another boy. He didn’t care that Maria had left him to fend for himself so she could chase boys. This half-crazed make out session with Michael Guerin was making it the best night of his life so far.
Maybe it was the lack of oxygen or the adrenaline of being seen by someone he’d never admitted to himself that he’d always been hyperaware of, but Alex couldn’t stop his hands from falling from Michael’s jaw and starting to grope at the skin exposed by the open sides of Michael’s shirt. In response, Michael turned his body and started to pull Alex until he was sitting straddled across his lap. Then it was Michael’s turn to slip his hands under the hem of Alex’s shirt and let his hands slide over the muscles of his back and waist. When it became too much, Alex finally broke their never-ending kiss to gasp air into his lungs. Michael didn’t miss a beat, his mouth attaching itself to Alex’s neck with sucking, stinging kisses that made Alex want to go crazy.
“Fuck,” Alex groaned when he felt Michael’s fingers start to slip past the waist band of his jeans. It was so hot to feel him against his skin. It was too much, though, just too much with someone he’d really just been introduced to. “Wait, wait, wait! We gotta slow down…”
Michael groaned and buried his head against Alex’s shoulder, hands immediately coming out from under his shirt and wrapping him up in a hug. Alex slowly withdrew his own hands, resting them on Michael’s shoulders while they both calmed down and regained their breath.
“Sorry,” Michael murmured against his shirt before lifting his head and giving him a quick, close-mouthed kiss. “Sorry.”
Alex smiled and laughed a little, rubbing his hands up and down Michael’s upper arms while he gathered himself. He was nervous about having stopped them, but he was still so fucking happy about what had happened.
“It’s okay. All of that was okay, I just… Where did this come from? You don’t even know me, you’ve never talked to me at school or even, like, acknowledged my presence…” Alex said, eyes flickering over Michael’s face. He saw the way his expression went soft and slightly incredulous.
“I may not know your favorite color, but I’ve wanted to kiss your emo eyeliner wearing ass since my first day at Roswell High. You’re always being so snarky and bratty to everyone and then when you’re with your friends? Your smile lights up the place and it’s so rare to see, but so fucking beautiful. It’s just… man, fuck school. Fuck those people. Fuck the kids, fuck the adults, fuck the institution. They’re answering just enough of the questions to keep us from asking more. It’s a fucking joke. I’m not in the right headspace at school. You’re about the only good thing about showing up every day. Just seeing you makes me hate humanity a little less.”
Alex felt the heat of a blush infusing his face, but he also couldn’t stop smiling. This guy. This fucking guy.
“Your,uh… your smile is pretty great too. I think tonight’s the first time I’ve even ever seen you smile,” Alex commented, his arms wrapping comfortably around Michael’s neck. Michael’s lips widened into a cheesy approximation of a smile that really just showed all his teeth with his lips pulled back while he crossed his eyes.
“Oh my God, staaahhhp,” Alex said laughing at the stupid face. When Michael let his features relax back to normal, Alex darted in and kissed him. He meant for it to be one kiss, but it quickly turned into more as the heat which had been banked earlier, now came back to life with more energy.
“Can we lay down? My legs are going to sleep,” Michael mumbled between kisses against Alex’s lips. Alex jumped and was about to scramble back and off his legs when he felt Michael’s hands under his butt and then he was being tilted backwards until his back rested against the cushions.
“I shudder to think what’s on these pillows,” Alex grumbled even as he widened his legs and let Michael sink between them to rest his body against Alex’s. The weight and friction felt amazing. He suddenly didn’t care about the scratchy upholstery where his shirt at ridden up his back. He just wanted Michael’s mouth back on his and to keep feeling his body writhing on top of him.
“You want to add to the mess?” Michael asked after breaking their kiss, raising an eyebrow and smiling mischievously. Alex looked at him confused for a moment and then his eyes followed Michael’s hand as it slid down to his own jeans, flicking the button open and leaving his hand on the zipper tongue. Alex’s eyes widened and he shot up to meet Michael in a kiss before glancing back down between them. It was so hot. He could tell Michael wasn’t wearing any underwear and his pants were almost painfully tight against his own body. “Alex?”
“Fuck, yes. So much yes. All the yes. Enthusiastic conset given,” Alex babbled between kisses, his hands sliding down to start undoing his own jeans. Michael’s hand followed his, pushing his away so he could cup Alex through the black cotton of his boxer briefs. Alex felt like he could come just from that. His body was vibrating, breath caught in his throat as he gasped at the feeling of someone else’s hand so close to his own dick. He wanted to reciprocate. He wanted to touch Michael back so with shaky hands, he slowly pulled down Michael’s zipper and pushed aside the fabric of his pants. He felt the velvety skin against the back of his hand and then he pulled it out. Michael was uncircumcised. Alex felt like he knew this somewhere in his hind brain from talk or the locker room showers or something, but it was different when it was something you glanced while trying to hide as much of your own body as possible. Now it was thick and heavy in his hand. The foreskin moved in such a hypnotic way as Alex pulled and then pushed gently until he could see the wet, spongey head of Michael’s cock. It was giving him all sorts of scary, wonderful ideas of things he wanted to do and try that was definitely way too fast for a random hook up on a murder couch.
“Does it freak you out?” Michael asked, voice a little breathy as he held still and let Alex play with him. Alex shook his head slowly, still watching his own hand as he jacked Michael’s cock, thumb swiping and spreading the precome over the head. Finally, Alex’s brain came back online and he looked up into Michael face. His eyes had closed and his mouth hung slightly slack. He looked like he was in pain, but he was enjoying every second of it. Alex didn’t stop his hand movements as he raised himself up enough to capture Michael’s bottom lip between his own. Immediately Michael responded, returning the kiss hungrily. His hand had stayed over Alex’s underwear, but now he pulled and tugged at the offending garment until he could get it far enough down to sit under Alex’s balls.
“OOhhhhh my God,” Alex cried out as Michael’s hand finally grasped flesh and he was overwhelmed by the heat of his hand and the roughness of his skin.
“You alright?” Michael asked, keeping his hand still to make sure Alex was still game. Alex nodded and sank back down against the sofa cushions. Michael was giving him a curious look from where he was holding himself up on one arm. Alex laughed a little and moved his hand to grip the back of Michael’s neck fondly.
“That feels so much better when someone else is doing it,” Alex admitted a little shyly. Alex was afraid this was going to become a Conversation, but thankfully Michael just smiled softly at him and moved back down onto his forearm so he could kiss Alex while still having enough room between their bodies for their hands. Michael’s hand was a little dry on him, but he didn’t care. It still felt amazing and everytime their knuckles bumped against each other a zing of pleasure rocketed up his spine. He was doing this to someone else. Someone else was touching him. It was a-fucking-mazing. He started to feel a familiar tightness beginning in his core, his body winding itself tighter before it let go. He broke away from Michael’s mouth, panting and making pained little “Ah” sounds against his cheek.
“Fuck, Michael, I’m about to—I’m going to—” he was trying to get out, even as his vision narrowed and his body became a singular being of exquisite pleasure. He felt Michael’s mouth cover his and then his own hand was wet as well. When it was over they laid there, panting against each other and then Michael tipped sideways to wall onto his side between Alex and the back of the couch.
“Shit,” Michael said succinctly, cheek against Alex’s shoulder and breath still short. Alex just nodded and looked down at himself. There was come all over his shirt. His come, Michael’s come, marring the black in white, viscous stripes.
“Shit,” he repeated after Michael, his voice less in awe now that it was time for clean up. Michael looked down at his shirt and honest to god giggled a little. He brought his come covered hand up and wiped it over a clean expanse of Alex’s tee.
“Hey! I gotta wear this home!” Alex exclaimed, battling Michael’s hand away.
“No you don’t. Follow me to my truck, I’ll let you borrow a shirt. This one is fucking toast,” Michael snickered. Alex looked down again and had to agree. Soon after, they tucked themselves back up into their jeans and got off the couch. Alex found himself a little wobbly after the high of an orgasm. Michael caught him with a hand on waist and kissed his cheek.
“You get a little come drunk. Noted for next time.”
“So there will be a next time?” Alex asked, suddenly finding he was nervous to hear the answer.
“If you want there to be a next time, then yeah,” Michael said, holding out his hand to take Alex’s. Alex looked at it for a second and then up at Michael’s guileless face. He smiled then and reached his hand out to hold onto Michael’s. They slowly made their way around the outside of the house where the music was still rattling the glass panes left in the windows and out to the street where Michael had parked his truck. Alex stripped off his shirt and handed it off to Michael as Michael pawed through a backpack of clothes he kept under the passenger’s seat. Finally, he passed over a black Misfits shirt. When Alex put it on he noticed it smelled like rain, dust, and sage brush. It wasn’t a bad smell and in fact made him want to bury his nose in the collar to train it to memory. It was how Michael smelled and that wasn’t a bad thing.
“Want a ride home?” Michael asked a little shyly as he tugged the bottom of his shirt on Alex’s body in some attempt to ‘straighten it’.
“Sure,” Alex agreed, climbing in the passenger’s seat and buckling in. Michael closed his door for him and ran over to the driver’s side, climbing in and starting up the car. As soon as they were on the road, Alex slid his hand over the seat between them in a silent request for Michael to hold his hand. With a quick smile, Michael did.
#malex#malex fic#malex au#roswell nm#barely edited#no name#punkrock!michael querin and emo!alex manes#michael guerin#alex manes#high school au
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Chapter 31 – Market
This time I think it’s more fitting to put the author’s note at the end.
Tag: @whumpfigure @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @green-eyed-whumpster @liliability @untilthepainstarts @unicornscotty @sideblogformindtrash (even though you have many eyes :3)
CW: death mention, murder mention, PTSD, panic attack, mention of past torture
***
Glorien clenched his jaw. It was hard to forget what had happened at the end of the ceremony, though he wished he could. Lately he found himself constantly at the verge of crying. It was guilt. He knew whenever he saw the carpenter’s face in his dreams. But it most certainly wasn’t guilt for Jeremi’s death. The more days passed, the more he loathed every memory of the man.
He was standing at a small market stall, pretending to admire “the finest cups and pottery of the Koian Empire” as the seller repeatedly announced them to any passer-by. Most of them were earthenware, and Glorien had seen better relief-work than what these pots and cups had going on. He remembered a particular cup at home, a silver cup his mother had gifted him on his fifteenth birthday. It had a beautiful relief that depicted a scene from his favourite piece of literature, where the hero Roi met the spirits in the mountains of Derreia. The relief had been so detailed, with tiny flowers scattered everywhere. The memory was melancholic and he picked up a cup to distract himself. Instead of a relief, this one was painted.
‘Ah, an excellent choice’, the seller commented. ‘And perfect for an imperial dancer!’
Uneasily Glorien pulled the cloak he had borrowed from Aurora tighter around him. ‘I’m not interested in buying.’
‘Are you sure? I doubt you will ever find such fine earthenware again! And look at that beautiful paint! That figure is one of your friends, how can you leave it?’
He recognised the tall white figure painted on the cup, dancing in the sun. Swiftly he put the cup back down. ‘He’s not a friend’, he said. Jespen appeared more and more on pottery and tapestry lately.
‘Really?’ The seller sounded surprised.
‘Hey Glo- uhhhh, friend! I found it!’
He turned to see Carla waving at him. He smiled. He appreciated her effort to not say his name in public. He walked up to her.
‘I found a stand where they sell papers!’, she said.
‘Nice, let’s go then.’
They made their way through the many stalls on the main square. Glorien kept his eyes on the ground. We’re only buying paper, then wait for Aurora to finish off her errand, and then we’ll go back. He’d rather stay at the palace, but Aurora had convinced him to come with them to the market to get him new paper to write on. Otherwise he’d just lie in bed all day with nothing to do, she said. She was worried about him. But that was what had been gnawing at him the entire time at the market.
‘Hello! Are you still there?’, Carla asked, waving her hand in front of his face.
‘Yes. Sorry, I was just… The vendor seemed to react to the fact that I’m a dancer for the palace.’
Carla shrugged. ‘Yeah, that’s why we don’t go out in our uniforms.’ She realised what she said and quickly added: ‘But it’s fine now! If you have to wear it if you want to go out, we’ll wear it too. It’s no big deal.’
They arrived at the stall. Carla pointed out the paper she saw fitting, and Glorien followed her advice. The paper he was used to was too expensive, so he had to try out other kinds. He was relieved when Carla finally could put one in the bag she brought with her.
‘So, that was that. Now you can continue with your poem or story or whatever, and Aurora can stop complaining you’re staying in bed too much when you’re finally allowed to go outside. Speaking of which, do you know what time it is?’ He was only allowed to leave the palace for maximum two hours.
He shook his head. ‘There’s an older tower that way that has a sundial on the wall. It’s from that building that belongs to the girls’ orphanage, I believe.’
‘Oh, you might be right! I never really noticed. Do you want to stay here while I go look for it?’
He had told her how he felt weird about going to this square. When the market was here, the sinister feeling it had had that day was gone, but still… No, don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t-
‘Actually, there’s something I want to tell you’, he said hastily. ‘I’ll come with you, I need a quieter place for this.’
So they searched their way to the tower. Glorien was shivering, despite being cold. He held the cloak tighter around him once again. He couldn’t help look over his shoulder every now and then. The further they got, the more frequently he found himself looking back. It’s just a market. Nothing else. Not that. Don’t think about it.
‘Hey, are you sure you’re alright?’
He jumped. ‘Yes! Yes, I’m fine…’ He turned his head again, he couldn’t help himself.
‘… Okay. What did you want to tell me?’, Carla asked when they turned a corner.
But he didn’t process her words. Instead, he was occupied with the small glance he had of the podium. He shouldn’t have looked back, he knew it would happen eventually. It’s nothing. Don’t think about the execution. No- He gasped for breath, covering his mouth to stop the sobs that were following.
‘Glorien?’
Carla gently placed a hand on his back, but the touch made him jerk away.
‘No! Don’t say my name!’, he cried, and ran off. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He did his best, he really tried, but he couldn’t forget the feeling of shackles around his wrists and a blade sliding down his back. He wanted it to get off of him, even though he knew there was nothing there.
While he ran, he was painfully aware of the stares people gave him. Emotionless. No, leave me alone. He hid behind a corner of some building, sliding down onto the ground with his back against the wall. He hugged his legs, wishing for the feeling to pass. ‘Just go. Leave me alone. I was doing so well, please. I don’t want to think about that.’
Carla found him crying and mumbling incoherently. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot’, she muttered. She stood there, awkwardly, shuffling on her feet.
‘Leave me alone’, Glorien said.
‘Oh! Okay.’
‘No! Not like that. I- I’m so scared I’ll hurt you and Aurora, when you’re nothing but kind to me.’ He leaned his forehead against his knees. ‘My old friends got hurt simply because they were my friends. Be- because of me, an innocent man got painfully tortured. What will happen to you?’ He gulped. He was so alone. Trying to get rid of his only friends was the right thing to do, but it felt so utterly lonely. But he’d rather feel lonely than hurting others.
‘Okay’, Carla responded. ‘That sucks.’
His crying got louder, he almost choked in his sobs. He pulled his hair to get some relief, his stupid dyed hair. Why couldn’t he just be himself again? Glorien never pushed others away. I should have.
‘I think I’ll go look for Aurora. Maybe she can help you?’
He didn’t react, so she went. By the time she and her sister returned, Glorien had calmed down a bit. His head was mostly filled with fog now. He felt slightly relieved to see Aurora squatting down in front of him.
‘Hey, how are you feeling?’
He blinked slowly. ‘Fine’, he said, for lack of a better word. ‘I’m a bit dizzy.’
‘Alright. That must have been scary. I’m proud you made it through.’
He didn’t know how to react, so he smiled faintly.
‘I finished my errand with the tailor. Do you want to see it? It’s for you.’ She held out a bag with a strap to hang it over one shoulder.
He reached out to touch the rough fabric and gently took the bag in his hands. ‘For me?’, he mumbled. Then he saw the yellow thread sewn on. His name, embroidered into the side of the bag. He let a finger brush over it. It didn’t look like it was worth much, yet never had a present ever felt so personal.
‘Since you’re allowed to go outside, I figured it would be useful to carry any belongings you need with you’, Aurora said. ‘I mean, that’s what a bag is for.’ She smiled.
He had failed this day, but… He felt warm inside. ‘Thank you.’ He’d keep this bag close to him. He couldn’t help it. When kindness was offered to him, pushing it away only hurt. He didn’t want Aurora and Carla to be hurt, but he couldn’t push them away either. Maybe he could look for a middle ground. If he kept them distant enough…
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o.0 Guys!!! I finished part 1! The division between parts only make sense in my head, so don’t worry too much about it, but!!!! I never thought I’d get this far! Honestly the support I received has meant so much to me, and I’m glad I decided to post this story online. Thanks for everything!
#whump#comfort#medieval whump#royal whump#ptsd#ptsd whumpee#panic attack tw#past torture mention#my writing#oc#glorien#aurora#carla
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and i’ll miss you
a run to paradise au | [ p l a y l i s t ]
Summary: Lola’s dad, Leo, lives. A series of conversations between Lola, Leo, and Irene, her mother, throughout her life.
A/N: 15,449 words. @misscharlottelee @local-troubled-writer for putting up with me all through writing this. this is making me so fucking emotional you don’t even know. lola’s parents aren’t shitty i promise!! i will say that lola is manipulative but it’s never for negative or selfish (mostly) reasons, but still thought i should warn you.
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Lola’s sixteenth birthday present from her parents is tickets to see KISS perform live when they were set to come to town in a few months, seeing as how they were currently her whole family’s favourite band. Well, okay, they were her dad’s and her’s, and her mom liked their music well enough but was never fanatical. However, Irene would hum along and tap her foot as she did the diner’s banking for the night once it had closed, as Lola and Leo blasted their music from the jukebox as they were cleaning up for the night.
“A friend of mine got me the tickets,” Leo was telling Lola, “you know Bill, he’s the guy who always eats his fries with no sauce,” he prompts, and Lola makes a noise of recognition.
“He hasn’t been in for a while,” Lola pointed out; he’d been a regular for as long as she could remember, he was a good friend to her father, and once snuck them onto set for a TV show he was working on at the time, though Lola didn’t recognise the show, her dad was overjoyed.
“’Cos he’s been managing KISS!” Leo’s practically bursting with excitement, acting like a big kid, up to his elbows in dishes with his daughter beside him, drying them. Lola, upon hearing this news, almost screams.
“Sweethearts, please don’t let the neighbours think we’re being murdered,” Irene called out from the counter, though there was the faintest smile in her words, and both Lola and Leo called back an apology.
----
For each day that the concert grows closer, Lola grows more anxious. Her friends, while she enjoys their company and their tastes in music, are far more fond of ABBA, and don’t get why Lola’s so excited about punks in face paint. Lola’s cut out a picture of KISS and sticks in the front of her binder, and one friend wrinkles her nose at it, calls them gross.
Lola likes ABBA. Lola likes all sorts of music, Leo had made sure of that, but it was disheartening that her friends weren’t so open minded. Which is why she can’t ask any of them what to wear to the concert; they don’t go to rock concerts. Her dad’s ‘you’ll look kick ass in anything, Lola’ is well-meaning but unhelpful; he has to say that, he’s her dad! Surprisingly, it’s her mom who saves the day.
“You’re fretting, Keola,” her mother says softly. They’re in the diner, side by side at the counter during a lull; the hiss of Leo cooking from the kitchen, and the hum of music from the jukebox fill the air, but Lola’s twisted the straw in her hands that no matter how she untwists it, it’s mostly unusable, not that she’s noticed, looking at the wall where her parents have put their music memorabilia.
“I’m not fretting,” Lola huffs a little. The concert is in two days and she still doesn’t know what to wear, “mom am I a dork?” And it’s more nervous than Lola had wanted it to sound, even if it had been playing on her mind for almost a week.
Irene’s lips twist into something faintly amused at the phrasing, but her eyes are kind and gentle.
“Sweetheart, you are mine and your father’s child,” she says, “we are both very big dorks.” Lola gives her a look as if to say ‘that’s really not what I wanted to hear right now’, but Irene continues, “but I would also say we’re the coolest people I know; me, your dad, and you, of course.” At least at this, Lola’s expression softens, turning honest and a little forlorn.
“All the outfits I try for Saturday make me look like a dork,” she says quietly, “and my friends think KISS is gross.” She doesn’t intend for it to sound petulant, or whiny, though it comes across like that a little, but thankfully her mother can hear how genuinely sad this all makes her.
“Do you want to borrow something from me?” Irene asks, and Lola gives her a somewhat sceptical look that she’d been expecting; her daughter’s only ever known her as her mom, and as an accountant. Even now, she’s in a smart, black button-down and black slacks, knowing full-well that the dress code at Leo’s is quite casual. “I wasn’t always a grown up, you know,” Irene gives a faint grin, and Lola gives her the benefit of the doubt.
----
“Dad, stop- come on dude, be cool,” Lola insisted as she stepped out of her room on Saturday evening, wearing a band t-shirt of his that he’d leant her, her favourite black jeans with the rip in the knee, Doc Martins that had been a present for her last birthday, and the leather jacket from the back of her mom’s closet.
Leo was tearing up. Irene says his name very softly, her hand on his shoulder, but her expression is understanding. He’s really trying to keep it together, but his expression keeps scrunching up like he can’t quite help himself.
“Is that your jacket?” Leo’s voice is strained, looking to Irene.
“The one I wore to every concert we’ve ever gone to together,” Irene tells him, and Leo wraps her up in a hug, hiding his face from his daughter as to not appear as emotionally overwhelmed as he clearly was.
“I can’t believe we raised the coolest kid in the world,” Leo finally spoke, clearly crying with pride. Irene laughed softly from amid his embrace, and as much as Lola could act embarrassed, she herself was trying to act like she wasn’t getting emotional, “it’s her first concert and she’s already cooler than me.” Leo crowed.
“Dad,” Lola said, trying to sound embarrassed, like she thinks any other teenager would probably be, and not grateful, the way she actually feels, “you’re gonna have to redo your eyeliner.” But she can’t help herself, and joins her parents, if only to hide how emotional the moment was, in the way they wrap her up in a group hug.
And before they leave, Irene sets firm ground rules, to make sure neither of them goes too haywire; above all, Lola is never to leave Leo’s sight, she’s strict about this.
“And Lola,” Irene adds, taking a deep breath, “but if you end up meeting the band, if Bill wants to you and dad to say hi after, I know this seems silly, but please promise me something,” Lola frowns a little at her mother’s intensity, but nods as a prompt, “don’t touch them. Don’t let them touch you. Don’t shake their hands. Don’t leave your father’s side at all. Please,” and she looks to her husband, expression imploring, “Leo please, I know you think I’m overreacting, but please.”
“I promise,” Leo says, as serious as Lola’s ever heard her father, and Irene gives a grateful smile, and wishes them a wonderful night.
----
Lola doesn’t have to ask her father if he can see alright, even as she’s sitting on his shoulders; he towers over most of the crowd, and from this vantage point, Lola feels like the most powerful person in the world... Right before the opening act finishes, and KISS walks on stage.
They know all these songs too well, have been listening to them intently for months, and Lola and Leo belt the lyrics back like their lives depend on it. They mosh together when she climbs off his shoulders.
“Don’t you wanna push through to the stage?” He yells over the music; he’s ready to steamroll through the crowd if Lola asked, but she’s shaking her head, grinning from ear to ear.
“I’d rather hang out back here than for people to start throwing stuff at you because you’re blocking their view,” she points out, before adding, “don’t be weird, dad, I’m doing this for the greater good.” Leo raises his hands in mock surrender, grinning from ear to ear with pride. He doesn’t say that she’s considerate, he doesn’t argue that even if she were at the front of the crowd, he could still stand back and still have her in his sights, he just enjoys the moment, enjoys the fact that his daughter still likes his company.
“You’re a good kid, Keola,” he tells her seriously, as the song is winding down. Lola makes a face at that, but then grins and shouts;
“And whose fault is that?!” With amusement and love in her voice.
She’d had her angry, bitter moments, had cursed him and her mom and the diner and the work she had to do when her friends were out being hooligans, but he was grateful for moments like this, for moments when he knew that deep down, she loved him, and loved her family.
As the night comes to an end with three encore songs, and as everyone’s filing out in a messy stream, a pair of surly-looking security guards cut easily through the crowd to Lola and Leo, telling them that they need to come with them. Lola, terrified that they were going to get reprimanded for how she’d been sitting on her dad’s shoulders and probably blocking people’s view for a third of the show, is glued to her father’s side as he’s trying to make conversation with the now-silent security detail.
But then there’s Bill, former diner regular, current KISS manager, beaming from ear to ear, welcoming them backstage with open arms, wishing Lola a happy birthday, giving a joking apology that the tour was two months too late for her. Lola laughs with relief, and steps apart from her dad as she follows Bill through the theater’s winding corridors to the green room, but Leo’s still got a hand on her shoulder; she’s glad for the contact, not wanting to get lost.
“You sure we’re allowed to be back here,” there’s something strange in her dad’s tone, like he’s trying to imply something that goes over Lola’s head. Bill gives him a knowing, but reassuring look, as he tells Leo that it’s fine, and that the band will be on their best behaviour while they’re there. His gaze flicks to Lola for a moment; she’s confused, what, are they drunk or something? Even at sixteen, and as much of a wild child as her father was - and still kind of is - she’s naive.
Well, okay, the band are already drunk, but at least that seems to be the worst of it.
They’re still in their makeup, though it’s a little smeared, a little sweated-through, but they’re bright and friendly and forthcoming, and seem so grateful when Leo and Lola both babble their praises. Bill introduces them as old friends, as ‘Leo and his daughter, Lola’ with a strange emphasis on daughter that Lola doesn’t catch, but then the band, who’d been watching the two of them, watching Lola talk about how cool it was, how much she loves them, they look at Leo as if seeing him for the first time. He’s bigger even than the security guards, with his hand on Lola’s shoulder, standing close to her; the band are watching him like startled rabbits all of a sudden, and when Lola looks to her father, she sees him levelling a look of warning at the band. The moment he sees Lola looking, however, he grins down at her, and addresses the band.
“Listen, we’re absolutely stoked to get to meet you guys, you fuckin’ kick ass -”
“Kicked. Fucking. Ass!” Lola agrees as punctuation, and the tension in the room eases considerably as they all give a fond chuckle at her enthusiasm.
“You want a beer, man?” Ace Freehly asks, and Leo hesitates, looks to Bill, who nods, and then to Lola, who’s finally looking around the dressing room with wide-eyes.
“Just one,” Leo concedes, and Lola nervously asks if she can look around. She gets permission, and Leo sits on the arm of the sofa that Bill had taken up, asking the band what kind of music they listened to in their spare time.
Lola’s naive, but she’s not an idiot; she’s heard bands sing about how they loved girls who were seventeen, she’s heard gossip about celebrities with young girlfriends, hell, she’s at an age where her friends are talking about ‘fooling around’ and it actually means something. And she’d seen how the some of the band members had looked at her, the way she’d dressed up to fit in, maybe looking a little older than she was - she can hear her mother’s warning in her head, and knows why her father was acting protective. For all that the kids her age might think she’s being too safe, being too childish, her parents have never lead her astray; if they’re working this hard to keep her from the band, there was a good reason, and she’d trust them on that.
They leave in much better spirits than they’d arrived, the tension having defrosted between Leo and the band, but even so, as they’re saying they’re goodbyes, and shaking hands, someone offers Lola his hand, but she hears her mother’s voice and moves on instinct, taking a step back, a step closer to her father, though she’s beaming and waving and thanking them for getting the opportunity to meet them, and see them play, and Leo’s hand wordlessly comes to rest on her shoulder, even as he’s using the other to still shake hands. It’s an unspoken connection between them. An understanding for which Leo is so incredibly grateful.
She’s a good kid.
----
“I hear you’re gonna start helping mom with the finances,” Leo says, tone light as he approaches Lola, squirrelled away in the corner booth that’s unofficially hers, as she pores over her homework.
“All I said was that I was thinking of taking a few of the business subjects as electives,” she says, not looking up, sounding distracted, “and music.” She added, as if to put her father’s heart at ease.
“Business subjects?” Leo asks, sliding into the seat across from her. Lola’s holding her highlighter in her mouth, looking up from what looks like English notes. She nods. Leo is quiet, and folds his hands on the table and gives a look that he hopes is intrigued, or curious, or some sort of non-judgemental prompt for her to explain why.
“Mom’s like a calculator of a person; if you could win at doing taxes, you know mom would win taxes,” she says, sitting back and pulling the highlighter from her mouth to fidget with, “and the only reason you don’t have a Michelin Star is because the inspectors are classist, bitch-ass jagweeds who wouldn’t even make the detour that you’re worth -”
“Lola,” Leo admonished her phrasing with a slight frown, and her scowl deepens as she looks to her father.
“Mom said it first.”
“Your mom did not call the Michelin Star inspectors classist, bitch-ass jagweeds,” he countered with, and Lola huffed, knowing it was the truth.
“She called them classist,” she corrects herself, sinking further into the chair and into her terrible posture, “and the other stuff she said too, just not the bitch-ass jagweed stuff,” she concedes, before sighing, and almost out of view from how badly she’s slouching down in her seat across the table, “but I’m just... here, and sometimes I think about seeing if I could talk to Bill about being a musician because I’m kind of okay at piano and singing and that stuff, and I love music and I think it’d be cool to have a job in the music industry, but every time I think about getting a note wrong while someone’s watching me I feel really sick, and now every time I even think about playing in front of people I start feeling really sick, so I’m trying not to think about being a musician, but I keep having these little ideas for the diner and I think about how one-day I’ll be helping run it, and I don’t wanna do what you guys are doing here, so maybe doing not-finance-business-stuff could be my thing.” She’s laying side-ways on the seat of the booth by the end of her rant, hands beneath head, staring at the gum someone’s put there. When she’d finished her homework, she’ll grab the scraper. Oh god, what other teenager thinks like that? Mom was right, she is a dork... Okay, maybe she should have realised sooner, like when she developed a strong opinion on the Michelin Star inspectors.
“Two things,” Leo says, after a beat of silence; he’s still sitting perfectly still, and his voice is kind, “one; if you want to have a job in music, you don’t have to be on stage, you don’t have to have people looking at you if you don’t want,” and as he speaks, Lola slowly raises herself to a sitting position, “and two; what ideas do you have for the diner, kid? I’ve always said we need a designated ideas man, I think you’d be perfect for it.”
In the end, still helps Irene with the finances, though her mom somehow manages to make it interesting, and Lola will always fondly look back on the night she and her mother had taken a break from working on the coming month’s roster to drink milkshakes.
“You’re his favourite person in the world, Keola, he’d steal the moon if you asked,” Irene spoke fondly of her husband, “and of course you’re my favourite too, sweetheart, but I draw the line at using our entire life savings and mortgaging the diner to buy enough tomatoes to fill the diner -”
“But theoretically,” Lola was trying to hold back her laughter, “if we did, we’d have enough money that we could buy enough tomatoes to fill the diner.”
“You’re greatly underestimating the amount of tomatoes we’d need,” her mother chuckled.
“What if I got a great deal on tomatoes, since we’re buying them in bulk?”
“We’re not -”
“Theoretically!” Lola had crowed, which had dissolved into laughter, while her mother played up her annoyance with a sigh, though she was grinning from ear to ear. As the laughter dies out, and Lola finishes her milkshake, she looks over the draft of the roster, and hums. Irene, intrigued, hums in return, hums a question.
“You should put Parker on the weekend; give him the Friday and Saturday nights, and the Sunday lunch,” Lola muses.
“I thought you said he was annoying? Do you want him cooking out the back?” Irene leans forward, following her daughter’s gaze and frowning at the messy schedule.
“Fuck no -”
“Language.”
“He ignores dad’s ‘no idle talking in the kitchen during the rush’ rule, and when he’s serving when it’s not a rush he won’t shut up about WWE, but, he’s cheerful as hell and works well under pressure, which,” Lola takes the eraser from the table and scrubs off a name, before taking the pen from her mother and writing the same name elsewhere, “is why Candice should be taken off the rush on Saturday since she had a meltdown the last three times she was scheduled then. But she’s really good when it’s slow; she refills stuff, helps with prep, folds napkins into swans, and makes great conversation with customers.”
Irene marvels as her daughter talks through a schedule that would optimise each of the strange and wonderful employees they had, and realises something with startling clarity.
Irene knew how the numbers worked. Leo knew how the food worked. Lola knew how the people worked.
----
“Sweetheart, it’s your second-last Prom, wouldn’t you rather go than spend the night at work with your parents?” Irene asked; Prom night was always a slow one, even for a Friday. Lola gives her mother a strange little smile, tapping her fingers against the counter.
“I’m gonna leave it up to chance,” she said, which confused her mother, who was refilling a napkin despenser.
“Leave what - oh, Candice; I know you worked hard as her campaign manager, but she’d want you there with her, win or lose,” Lola’s parents had been confused but supportive when Lola announced that not only their server, Candice, get nominated for Prom Queen, but that Lola was going to be her campaign manager, despite the fact that Prom Queen nominees didn’t usually have a campaign manager.
Candice, who was flourishing with her new shifts, curtesy of Lola’s scheduling, was more than happy to agree, and the two became fast friends. Lola herself was blossoming with the new task, staying up, excitedly making posters, and writing speeches, and hoarding the phone for hours every night to talk to Candice, and the new friends she seemed to be making. It wasn’t that she was unpopular, it’s just that she was standoffish, quiet, and focused, and took pride in her work, which happened to be at her parents’ diner.
Between the campaign, being in charge of the rosters for the diner, the general work she did around the diner, and her school work, Lola’s life was pretty full, and she was surprisingly happy.
Leo had overheard when Candice had approached Lola after her shift, had pointed out how Lola had scheduled her to work on the night of the Prom, and how Lola had sworn before profusely apologising. Lola had offered to cover the shift, and been quick to reassure Candice that it was okay, that she didn’t need Lola at Prom, that she’d do great and be wonderful and that all the hard work was done; now she just needed to look pretty and win. Candice had wrapped her up in a hug, overflowing with gratitude, assuring Lola that she’d owe her one, and in turn, Lola had brushed her off, saying it was nothing, apologising again for the scheduling mistake.
At the time, Leo’s heart had swelled with love for his daughter, proud of her for sticking to her commitments, and for being so kind and reassuring. On the night of the Prom, he sees Lola looking a little giddy, almost a little nervous, and thinks she might just be worried about Candice. Then, when the diner is at it’s quietest, there’s noise outside, and Lola almost shrieks, much to her parents’ dismay.
“They’re here!”
Through the windows, the little family, and the few other employees see a hoard of well-dressed teenagers, some where crowns and sashes, making their way past the window, lead by Candice in a crown, beaming.
There’s chatter, as the other teenagers realise where they are, saying they love this place, some a little tipsy making grateful noises as they divide themselves into groups and fill over half the diner in an instant. There’s a booth where everyone’s wearing crowns, and Candice leaves them, assures them she’d be back, before she bolts to Lola, who’s practically bouncing with excitement. The girls squeal about how Candice won, and she’s adamant she couldn’t have done it without Lola. Of course, Lola humbly brushes it off, babbles about how proud she is.
It ends up as one of the busiest night they’ve had in months.
Perhaps she’d just wanted to help a friend, maybe she’d worked in some way to bring the Prom to her when she ended up not being able to go; mostly her parents think it’s a fluke.
Until the next year.
Until, amid college applications, scholarship applications, work, and homework, Lola sets her sights on campaigning for their new cashier, Abigail, her classmate.
Until it’s her last Prom, and again Lola’s had to swap shifts with the girl she was campaigning for.
Until her parents hear it again.
“They’re here!”
It’s deja vu, with Abigail in a crown, so overjoyed, and grateful, bring with her even more than had been there when Candice had won.
“Didn’t we come here last year? Fuck, man, this place is the fuckin’ best, we should do this every year!” A boy in a white tuxedo announces to a resounding cheer, and yes, he seems a little bit drunk, but Irene and Leo have paused in their food prep to see Lola turn and look directly at them, upon hearing these words, grinning from ear to ear like it was her plan all along.
Oh.
“We may have raised a super villain,” Leo muses, though he can’t stop himself from sounding a little proud as Lola turns back around to head back out and take more orders from students clamouring for food.
----
“I feel like we should sit you down and talk to you about... something, but I’m not quite sure what,” Leo says, wiping down the tables well past midnight, while Lola was cleaning the windows that somehow had grease stains on them. Irene, from where she was organising the till, where they had received so much so quickly that half the bills had been stuffed in haphazardly, chooses this moment to pipe up.
“Using people is wrong, Keola; Abigail and Candice are your friends, you shouldn’t be using them just to make yourself popular,” she reprimands, to which Leo makes a stern noise of agreement. Lola, however, pauses, sitting on the table.
“Ma, if anything, they’re using me; I’m the reason they both won Prom Queen. I wanted to see if business management was something I’d want to do, and it turns out; yes, and I’m good at it. My two-year plan paid off,” she said simply.
“Two year plan?” Irene asked, baffled, and Lola, two months shy of eighteen, crossed her legs and beckoned her parents over.
It takes some explaining, from the fact that when she realised she might want to do business, that she might want to do business managing, and that she’d been thinking about how Leo had told her she could do work without anyone else realising that it was because of her if she wanted to. So she gave herself a challenge; work with the people she knew, to eventually help the business she cared about, the diner. Of course, this asks more questions than it answers.
So Lola explains that she’d switched Candice onto the shifts she works best in to keep her happy, and spent time getting to know her and being kind and building her confidence until she could casually bring up the idea of Prom, and how Candice would kick ass as Prom Queen, and that she had a shot at it, and that Candice would believe her and follow through, and more importantly, let Lola be her campaign manager. Lola knew how people worked, knew what certain people needed to hear, who to interact with to create the most wave, how to market an individual.
“Also, the scheduling thing wasn’t an accident; Candy and Abby love their jobs, and love this place - which is really a testament to both of you - and love me and the fact that I won them Prom Queen; if I tell them I can’t go to Prom and they win, even if I told them I don’t mind not being there, they’d still kind of feel guilty, and I figured they’d want to come and, I dunno, thank me and show off the crown. They love it here and love you guys, like I said, and it’s something to be proud of,” Lola shrugs, wrinkling her nose a little as she looks at her hands, “but, yanno, one night on it’s own doesn’t make a tradition, so I rinsed and repeated with Abby. Now two years in a row, the Prom Queen has come from here, and after the Prom they’ve come here and had incredible food; the people becoming Juniors and Seniors, the top contenders for Prom Court, remember coming here and having a great time after Prom two years in a row. I’m kind of working towards it being a tradition, it was my two year plan; turn one of the slowest Fridays of the year into one of the busiest.”
“While I’m very grateful you were thinking of us,” Leo says slowly, trying to process all the information he’d just received, “you shouldn’t manipulate your entire high school -”
“Twice,” Irene softly reminded him.
“ - twice, just to help the family business.” Leo had his head in his hands.
“No-one was hurt,” Lola added, “and, bonus, I know there’s already a few kind of superstitious Sophomores who will be coming in and asking for job applications soon,” she paused, “not that we need the help, but raises the diner’s profile a little, don’t you think?”
“You know the diner’s doing fine, we’re not struggling, sweetheart,” Irene still sounded like she couldn’t quite believe all of this.
“I know,” Lola’s voice was quiet, and finally her parents looked at her, saw her looking at her hands where she was fiddling, quiet and pensive.
“Then why, Lola?” Leo asked, finally, and she shrugged, a little helpless, as if she hadn’t spent the past two years carefully manipulating her friends, colleges, and peers, simply to increase business at the diner for two nights, one year apart, hoping it would become tradition going forward.
“I wanted to see if I could.”
Looking at their daughter, Irene and Leo see themselves in how she came to be like this; Leo’s got more love in his body than almost any other human, he’s personable and kind and hard working, while Irene’s smart, driven, and ruthlessly pragmatic. Their differences complimented each other, it’s why they worked so well together in all aspects of their life, and to see how well those traits worked within their daughter, they were certainly proud, but Irene quietly suspects that Leo may have been right.
If Lola didn’t become one of the best managers in her field, she’d end up a super villain... Irene’s actually kind of proud, and honestly, so’s Leo.
----
Going to college for Business Management seems like the most logical thing in the world for Lola to do next, and of course her parents would be happy to pay any costs associated, but it’s still nice to discover she’d received a scholarship, thanks to the glowing reports from several of her teachers, whose subjects she made sure to do well in as they would look good when applying specifically to be a business major.
Leo’s the one who drives with her and her things to her new college housing in New York, to her dorm, who meets her roommate and dorm mother, who hugs her for a full minute in the carpark before he leaves. They’re both pretending like they don’t have tears in their eyes.
Lola’s babbling away, reminding him about how he should start advertising the Prom-related discounts for the diner three weeks before the Prom itself, how he should have his employees who are students put up posters around the school, or at least he should put up posters around the school, and the places where teenagers hang out. She’s reminding him which of their employees work best in different circumstances, and why Belinda can’t work with Judas for more than two hours and -
She’s crying, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hands as she talks, until Leo takes her shoulders firmly, and her voice dies in her throat as she comes back to reality.
“You’re going to be amazing,” he says softly, tears shining in his eyes. Lola’s lip quivers at this, and she surges forwards, wrapping him in another hug as she cries.
“You’re going to be amazing, we’re always just a phone call away, my sweet girl, but I know you’re going to take the world by storm,” Leo mutters into her hair, holding her tightly.
“Be good. Be kind. I love you,” he tells her as they finally step back from each other, and Lola wipes at her eyes again, quiet this time, nodding adamantly, before telling him she loves him too, that she’s so grateful for him, that -
“Come on, dude,” Leo says softly, with a gentle smile, “be cool.” And hearing the words that, for so long, had come to mean ‘I love you, I feel the same, but you need to be strong’, since Lola had first said it back when they’d first seen KISS together, has Lola laughing with fond adoration.
None of the other Freshman moving in, saying goodbye to their parents, appear to be half as emotional as she was, but honestly, she didn’t really care.
----
“Hey, question;” Lola’s voice is hesitant over the phone when Irene picks up one quiet evening in the diner at the end of Spring, at the end of Lola’s second year of college, “would you or dad know how to get in contact with that guy who manages KISS? The old regular? Bill?”
“Why?” Irene asked slowly, a little concerned given how much she and Leo had omitted when they talked about him to Lola when she was younger.
“I wanted to see if he needed an intern for the summer.”
It makes sense, but the prospect still makes Irene nervous.
----
“Leo I’m home~” Bill practically sings as he throws the door open to the diner on a bustling Monday afternoon. The server at the door skitters back in the face of his enthusiasm, and as a few mean-looking individuals slink into the diner behind him. Through them all, however, is Lola, who doesn’t even announce her presence, just slips past Bill, darting through the diner and through the kitchen, so by the time Leo’s looks their way, he’s already being bowled over with a hug.
It was a surprise, and Leo’s yelling he’s so excited. KISS is halfway through their tour, playing Providence the following two nights, but Lola and Bill had dragged the band along to surprise Leo while they were close.
Leo’s babbling away as Lola ties up her hair without even having to ask, stepping up beside him and falling into the routine of helping him prepare food. Bill and the band have taken up residence in a booth, chattering amongst themselves, while Lola and her father work and catch up.
“Wait, Lola, sweetie, go sit, go sit,” Leo insisted, catching himself before he lost sight of the whole situation, “I’m not paying you, go sit with the band; you’re customer -”
“Dad -” Lola tried to protest, but Leo was adamant, nudging her out of the kitchen with determination. As they pass the counter, Leo grabs a note book, and gives the confused server a kind smile, following Lola to the band.
“Vito, what do you recco...” Ace asks glancing up from the menu, but he trails off, seeing her father practically shadowing her.
“You guys remember Leo, right?” Bill looked like he was trying not to laugh as he shoved Peter further into the booth to make room for Lola. The others were all, for what seemed like the first moment on tour, silent. Then, Gene speaks.
“If you’re sick of our fuckin’ shit, Bill, murder us yourself, like a real man,” he says, voice gruff, and Lola has to fight not to smile in the face of her father’s bemusement.
“No-one’s getting murdered; Leo’s has the best food this side of the country, right, Vito?” Bill asks easily, looking to her, and she can feel her father’s questioning gaze on her too, so she looks to the others, smile blinding.
“I know I might seem biased, but I swear I’m not,” she fans her fingers out on the table, leaning forward, eyes shining with sudden enthusiasm, “I know you guys have a weird history with my dad, I wouldn’t bring you here if it wasn’t worth it.” She assures, and slowly but surely, the others look at the menu; her dad’s still watching her carefully, even as she’s sitting back, confidently telling the others that whatever they order would be good.
“Was it you or ‘rene who loved The Godfather?” Bill pipes up, addressing Leo, and Lola, in her seat, goes still.
“It’s ‘rene’s favourite movie,” Leo says with a slowly forming smile, as Lola chances a look up at him. When she sees the amused, even proud look in his eyes, she gives a small smile back.
“Is mom around?” Lola asks, gaze quickly darting to the counter and the kitchen, and then to the nondescript door that led to the second floor where she her family had lived all her life.
“At the grocery store, we ran out of whipping cream,” Leo explains, smile growing wider as he lets himself bask in the moment, “menu hasn’t changed much in the last few months, what are you hungry for, Vito?”
Of course Lola’s right about the food, of course, and the band chatters amongst themselves, and to Leo easily enough, though when Irene gets back, for all that she’s thrilled to see her daughter, she’s less than thrilled to see KISS being obnoxious in one of her booths.
Pulling Lola aside, she speaks quietly, glad to see her, demanding to know if the band treats her with respect, scowling when Lola casually rolls her eyes and says the band doesn’t treat anything with respect.
“But I still live by what you said the first time I saw them,” she added, and Irene frowned, “don’t let ‘em touch me, don’t shake their hands.” And Irene gives a faint smile at that. After a moment, Leo’s warm, booming laughter fills the restaurant, and both women turn to see him throwing his head back, eyes creasing in the corner as the rest of the band seem pleased to have made him laugh.
“They’re gonna give you and dad all access passes to their Wednesday show,” Lola says softly, watching the band, watching her dad sit in the seat she’d vacated.
“Oh, that’s so nice, but you didn’t have to -”
“I didn’t ask them to,” Lola tells her frankly, “they’ve been acting like my dad is some violent asshole whenever I bring him up because he was super protective when they met him the first time, even though they know I love him, so I brought them here, and knew dad was too kind of a person, and too good of a chef, to not win them over. They also definitely didn’t believe me when I said how good his food was, even when Bill backed me up. They’re not exactly introspective people, so when they offer the tickets, they won’t realise it’s because they feel guilty for making me upset whenever I bring up dad, but still, they’re trying to make up for it without realising what they’re doing; they think they’re just being kind to a new friend and a cool dude, without thinking about why giving these tickets feels better than it usually does. Friends are made, you guys get cool tickets, everybody wins,” Lola’s still watching the band joke around with her dad and Bill, and she lets herself smile a little, even as her mother is quietly watching her.
“They aren’t my friends this time, mom, this is business, and if they didn’t want to feel guilty for shittalking a good man, then they shouldn’t have shittalked a good man,” and though her mother says her name with a faintly disapproving tone, Lola’s lips thinned with annoyance, “if you disapproved of me doing this shit, you wouldn’t have told Bill about the Prom scheme I pulled in high school.”
Then Irene says her name again, like an apology, like regret, like she was aware of her betrayal.
“On the plus side,” Lola took a deep breath, grinning and finally looking to her mother, “I’ve already kind of got a reputation; Bill called me Vito the first day I came in, which is how I figured out you’d told him, and someone misheard and thought it was my name. It stuck.”
“They’re calling you Vito?” Her mother said softly, earlier disapproval vanishing with soft glee, “for the record, I said that while I don’t condone some of what you did, I admired your tenacity, perseverance, and finely tuned social awareness.” Okay, that made sense, and something warmed in Lola’s heart hearing that.
“Well thanks to that, I think they’re implying that I’m The Godfather,” Lola snorts, looking back at the table, “well, Bill was, the others don’t actually believe it, but they still use the nickname.”
“You don’t want them to know that that’s... your goal, do you?” Irene said, wrapping an arm around Lola’s shoulders. Lola rests her head against her mother’s.
“I’ll only use my powers for good... usually.”
“I know, sweet girl, you’ve got a good heart.”
----
“I’ve got my own desk! I’ve got my own office!” Lola’s all but squealing over the phone to her parents, explaining about how she’d been offered a job with Bill’s company as a PR consultant while she insisted on staying in New York and finishing her degree.
She’s living with her music-producer boyfriend, spending every other weekend at industry events, spending nights in dingy bars that boasted live music as if she were scouting talent, attempting to study during the day while putting out various bands’ fires from afar.
“That’s wonderful, Lola,” her dad gives a contented little sigh where he and Irene are pressed together, both trying to listen to her speak.
“You’re still studying hard though, aren’t you? I’m glad you’re doing well but you know you’d regret it if you didn’t finish your course so close to the end,” Irene pointed out, and Lola assures her that she’s still going ahead strong, that the company gives her half-days when she has lectures to attend, and she sounds... fulfilled.
They’re still calling her Vito; she’s garnered herself something of a reputation in the months leading up to her graduation, and anticipated full-time employment with the company. People from all sides are urging her to move out to LA, but she’s refusing to budge until she graduates, and for that her parents are proud.
Back home, there’s been a strange influx of out-of-town patrons to the diner, music fans, or bands, or part of the industry, usually New York based, saying that Lola had recommended this place, if they were ever in the area. It was heart-warming to think she still thought of her parents so often that she’d still go about recommending their diner. They don’t think much beyond it; she’d been true to her word and only seemed to be using her way with people in professional matters.
But still, it was jarring hearing ‘the Godfather sent me’ when chatting with customers, even moreso to know they meant Lola every time.
----
“One of Bill’s friends in LA called me up about a job,” Lola’s fretting in her parent’s diner for the first time in a long time. A year out of college, she’s been on the road essentially since graduation, working as an assistant manager, for Bill for some time, then for Kenny Laguna with Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, and a few smaller bands around New York as a manager in her own right, though by virtue of her role as an assistant, she’d been working with everyone in the industry that he usually had dealings with, setting up meetings, organising schedules for the band, setting everything up so all her bosses had to do was sign off and only worry about the bands themselves.
Lola had her fair share of flings in that time, but it was hard when she was always travelling, and even with the people who she seemed somewhat serious about, she never brought them home to meet her family. Her parents tried to reason that she was just young, that if she wanted to find love, she’d find it in time, but thankfully she seemed more concerned with her career than ever dwelling on heartbreak.
“That’s exciting; would we know the band?” Irene asked, printing off a receipt for a customer and wishing them a good day. The customer smiled back, and went on their way, and Irene joined her daughter, stealing one of Lola’s fries.
“Not really, they’re a little metal, kinda punk band, Motley Crue, but Doc - that’s Bill’s friend - he thinks they have potential, and he thinks I’d be the right person to help him, and help them.”
“As an assistant?” Irene asked, frown creasing her brow, and Lola makes a face.
“As co-manager,” she said, clearly in two minds about the situation.
“Co-manager?” Her mother prompted, and Lola wrinkled her nose for a moment, taking a sip of her drink.
“I’ve been on tour, all over America, right? But I’ve never...” she hesitates, “actually ever lived more than two hours away from you guys.” Lola fidgeted, “which I know is a dumb reason to not move, I’m an adult, and everyone’s pushing me to move to LA, so even if it falls through I’ll probably still get work, but -”
“Sweet girl, you don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with, you don’t have to explain yourself, not to me, not to anyone,” her mother says, reaching out to rest a hand on Lola’s cheek. For just a moment, Lola leans into her mother’s hand, taking the familiar comfort and basking in it, letting out a gentle sigh.
“They’re flying me out in two days to meet the band, and I can decide where to go from there,” she says softly, and Irene gives her a fond pet, assuring her that nothing is set in stone.
----
“Do you remember when I did that thing in high school, that whole thing with those girls, Abigail and... Candice? I think? How I managed them and got them voted Prom Queen?”
“Lola I love you with my whole heart, but sweet girl, you had a whole supervillain monologue prepared that night, so yes, I remember,” Leo says to his daughter, the two of them in the kitchen of the diner the night before Lola’s set to leave for LA. They’ve closed up for the night, and Irene went upstairs to their little home above the diner to relax for the night while Lola stayed, and Leo refilled the salt shakers. The corner of Lola’s lips quirk into a faint smile where she’s leaning her hip against the counter a few feet away.
“I still can’t believe no-one caught on; only you and mom had any idea, or even still know,” Lola admitted with a faint laugh, and Leo assures her that he’ll take that secret to his grave, his tone amused at how he was overstating the importance of the secret. Lola considers for a moment, shifting her weight on her feet before asking, “do you remember, even before that, saying about how I understood people the way you understood flavours, the way mom understood numbers?”
“Vaguely,” Leo’s voice was concentrated as he reflected on his daughter’s teen years in the diner. Lola made a faint hum at that.
“Do you think there’s ever going to be anyone other than you and mom who understands me?”
It hits Leo like a truck, the tone, the rawness to her voice, the way so much had suddenly clicked into place with understanding.
Lola was who she was because she was listened to, because Leo and Irene had worked to make sure she felt understood, showing by example as they befriended their customers, the people around them too, to build a kind, family atmosphere in their business too. So too did Lola, going through life listening to people, getting to know them, understanding them, understanding more and more as she went that while people loved feeling understood, feeling seen, they very rarely put in the effort to understand others in such a way, even people who were putting the effort into them.
“Oh Keola,” Leo’s voice comes out an apologetic breath as he puts down the salt shaker he’d been working with, and at that, he can see the tears spring up in Lola’s eyes. Without hesitation, he’s crossing to her, wrapping her up in a firm hug, “you will find someone who sees you, Keola, who understands you, and maybe they won’t understand the world as well as you do, but it won’t matter, because they’ll understand you.”
Lola, who’s hugging him back tightly, fingers digging into him as she’s shaking, crying, scared to leave, scared to be truly on her own. It’s breaking Leo’s heart to see her like this, to not know what to say or how to comfort her in the right way, so he holds his daughter close, and reassures her, and she gives a quiet thanks, muffled against his shirt.
----
“They live like horrible, little, drunk rats and I hate them,” Lola tells her mother flatly over the phone from the hotel Doc McGhee’s company had put her up in for the week.
Doc she liked well enough, she’d been to events with him, gotten to know him, and spoken extensively to him after he’d called her to ask if she’d co-manage Motley Crue with him; he’d called her up because the band had talent and potential, but he could see that if they weren’t managed properly, they would end up as their own worst enemy, with the whole world loathing them. Some controversy was healthy, but it felt as though this band could be capable of worse.
He’d called asking for Vito, for the Godfather specifically, and despite Lola’s apparent lack of experience in the industry, he knew what he was doing when he called her.
The day after she’d flown out, she’d had a meeting with Doc before he’d brought the band in. She’d worn all black, well fitted and perfectly tailored suit, with black shirt to match, hair perfectly straight and makeup dark but clean. She’d looked the part, had stood beside Doc as the band was brought in, her hands clasped behind her back, not sure what she was expecting to see. The band had been dressed down for the most-part, all in varying dark colours, all denim and hints of leather, and boots that made them a little too tall for her liking. She’d held out her hand across the desk, expression stony, and as they’d all shook her hands, they’d looked her over, and while some were leering, one, who looked to be the oldest of the group, Mick, seemed unimpressed.
“That’s a child,” he had said, and Lola had blinked slowly at him, allowing Doc to make the introductions.
“That is Vito Fields;” Doc corrects, tone firm, and Mick, upon hearing this, looks to her very suddenly. Lola raises a single eyebrow at him as Doc keeps talking, “she’s worked with KISS and Joan Jett; anyone in this industry who knows of Vito knows you want her in your corner, you boys are lucky she’s considering working with you.”
“She seems like a bitch,” the one in the middle, Nikki, pipes up, his pupils wide and shiny, a dead giveaway that he’s high, and he’s smirking at her like he’s waiting for a reaction.
“I am a bitch,” Lola tells him flatly, looking him dead in the eyes, while the younger two on his other side, one dark haired, Tommy, and one blonde, Vince, startled by her response, break out into giggles.
“You’re Magic Touch Vito?” Mick asks, voice having taken on a strange quality she couldn’t quite identify, though her lips quirk into the barest smile, even as the other three clutch at each other, trying to muffle their laughs at their own dirty-minded implications.
“The very same,” Lola gave a slight nod, and suddenly, there was something impressed in Mick’s eyes. After touring with them, KISS had kindly written a song entitled Magic Touch, about Lola, which as the line ‘she's got the magic touch / oh no, but it ain't what it seems’ implied, wasn’t sexual in nature. In actual fact, it was about how they hadn’t realised how much she’d worked to make their lives run smoothly, to keep them from any serious controversy, how they’d seemingly worked more cohesively and agreeably when she had been around, until she was gone. When asked who it was about, the band would always answer ‘the chick from our management team last tour, Vito’.
They don’t quite know what to make of her, think she’s too uptight, too serious, and they invite her to their gig the following night, in an attempt to see if she could loosen up, fit in, and Lola accepts easily, knowing she has Mick on her side, and that the other three should be easy enough to win over, if what she knows of them is correct.
So she dresses up for the show, clothes tight and dark and revealing, boots high and hair higher, makeup dark and smoky and eye catching; if nothing else, she looks the part. She sits by the bar, nurses a single beer all night, and at least Doc wasn’t kidding about their talent; small miracles, she supposes. They’re loud and energetic and everything about rock and roll that she has come to love, but once the gig is over, they’re messy, spilling off the stage after their gear is packed up, easily distracted by pretty girls and promises of booze. Mick is the first to the bar, and seems surprised to see her dressed the way she is, fitting in so easily, and she gives him a smile, a nod, a raised glass of appreciation, before someone stumbles from the crowd and almost runs straight into her, bracing themselves on the bar either side of her, sweaty and panting and grinning and babbling apologies - Tommy, if her memory serves her well.
“Hey, Doc was right, you guys play well,” she tells him amicably, tone much sweeter and more animated than he’d heard yesterday, so it takes him a few moments to place where he knows her from before it dawns on him. And he’s drunk and tactile, his hands on her arms, her thighs, her face, as if making sure she was real, and she was the same girl from yesterday.
“Vito?” Tommy asks, still only inches from her where he’d almost bowled into her. Lola, seemingly unphased by the proximity, smile and confirms as much, her hand coming to rest on his where he was braced against her thigh, gentle contact, nothing more.
And he’s telling her she’d gotta come back to the after party, at the Motley House as he called it, and he turned, wanting to call the others over, still with his hand on her thigh, but they’re lost in their own various states of debauchery. Lola buys him a few shots for good measure, which he’s grateful for, and lets him loop his arm around her shoulders as they head back to the Motley House with the crowd.
Another pretty girl, however, calls Tommy away with promises Lola definitely won’t make, so he goes, and Lola follows the crowd back to the house with the door nailed shut. Her fishnets catch on something as she’s climbing through the window and they rip, and a guy hoots appreciate from inside the house, but she’s not bothered by him as much as she is by the house itself as she takes in the scene.
“No shame in admitting you can’t hack it,” a voice in her ear mutters, accompanied by a hand on her hip, and for a moment Lola’s composure breaks as she’s startled, turning sharply to see Nikki Sixx, standing over her in his platform boots and stupidly tall hair, wearing a grin that’s all teeth. Lola doesn’t know enough about Nikki to read him, to understand him, apart from the fact that she recognises that he’d putting up something of a front, and had been both times he’d spoken to her.
“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” tone cool as she finds herself quoting Star Wars with a smirk, she looks Nikki in the eyes, and is glad to see the momentary flicker of confusion as she refuses to back down despite his goading. Then, she looks over her shoulder, “you live like rats, but that’s not necessarily a complaint since it fits with your brand.” And he doesn’t seem to know if that’s a compliment or an insult, but he’s left bemused by the encounter, as Lola heads through to the kitchen, avoiding making eye contact with Vince who’s getting head from a groupie on the counter, as she takes a beer from their fridge and goes to mill about in the main room.
Lola’s never been much of a drinker; Irene’s been sober since she was pregnant with Lola, and Leo only ever drank socially outside of work, and he didn’t exactly have a lot of social encounters outside of work to begin with. Lola herself was never particularly discouraged from drinking as long as she took care of herself, and sure she had some wild nights in college, but despite her field of work, she preferred to keep drinking to a minimum. Drinking dulled her senses, and she didn’t want the people she was working with to see her as anything less than what she wanted to show them.
She’d be the first to admit that she had issues with control, both of herself and other people, but it was yet to detrimentally effect her life, or the people around her, so she found it to be more of a strength than a flaw, at least for now.
All through the night she found herself talking to fans and groupies, talking up the band, the boys, putting on a bubbly persona, perhaps overplaying her own inebriation after only two drinks, giggling and making a spot for herself amongst their groupies. She declined the drugs as they were passed around, keeping her mind clear as she was able, while not being a buzzkill, pouting and making up excuses about a drug test at her work the next morning, how she’d only just gotten the coke out of her system and she couldn’t fail another one -
Everyone was so understanding of her fake sob story, she almost misses Mick, sitting a few feet away on the arm of the sofa, laughing to himself, watching her.
“You’re good, girlie, you’re good,” he gives her when she approaches, and Lola raises an eyebrow at him, still smiling, “you planning on outright fuckin’ our frontman, or you gonna tease him like you did the drummer?”
“If I have to fuck him, I’ll fuck him,” Lola shrugs with a smirk, joining him and looking out at the gathered crowd, “but I don’t think it’ll come to that.”
So the next day when she calls her mother, tells her mother that the band lives like rats and that she hates them, she immediately follows it up with ‘but I think I’m going to stay’.
----
Be sweet to Tommy. Be honest with Mick. Keep Vince’s revolving door of girlfriends from seeing him hook up with groupies. That’s the trick to keeping three quarters of the band happy.
Nikki changes from moment to moment it seems. He’s a hard worker musically, but a loose canon in the rest of his life, and he never seems to be sure of what to make of Lola, so she can never be sure of what to make of him.
She still lives loosely by her mother’s suggestion, to never let them touch her, which means she’s never done anything more than let the three younger ones cop a feel occasionally, or kiss them on the cheek, but she’s never let them get further than that, she doesn’t need to. She’s kind to them, good to them, she compliments their music and their work ethic when they’re working particularly hard. She remembers the names of the hookers they like when Zutaut brings them in, and she gets on well with the rest of their team. Their scandals are kept out of the papers, and when they release Too Fast For Love there’s buzz in the industry from the moment it drops.
“I know a guy,” is all Lola says when they ask, when in reality she spends nights that she’s not with the band going to VIP events for music executives, rubbing elbows and kissing ass and casually talking up the band within earshot of the bigwigs. Her free time in the day is spent reading tabloids and listening to the bands being managed by the people she meets, and making friends with club owners up and down The Strip who she’d met before, through KISS or Joan Jett.
“Sweet baby Vito,” Doug Weston kissed Lola on both cheeks as she walked through the doors of the Troubadour one sunny afternoon, the day the band was set to perform, “it’s been too long; have you gotten taller?” Doug smiles from ear to ear, holding her shoulders and looking her over as the band, behind her, seems bemused, “how are my boys, Bill and Kenny? You hear from them much anymore?”
“Dad tells me Bill is good -” Lola assures with a smile, before looking over her shoulder, “boys if you wanna start setting up you can go ahead, right Doug?” She grins at the club owner, who nods, gesturing to the stage for Motley and their roadie to go ahead as he takes Lola and leads her to the bar.
Lola seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the bands who have come through the Troubadour before they’d made it big, praising Doug on his foresight, assuring him that Motley would be one of the names on that list he helped grow in popularity. He asks her how she knows so much, how she remembers so well; simply put, Lola tells him it’s her job.
For a moment, Doug is quiet, looking at her, his eyes searching her face for any hint of insincerity or doubt, and upon finding none, he gives a strange little smile.
“You know what they say about me, little Vito, don’t you?”
Lola hesitates, because of course she knows, and him so pointedly using her nickname only makes clearer his meaning.
“You’re essentially the Godfather around here, Doug, I know that, I wasn’t trying to -”
“You’re putting the work in; I’ve heard your name time and again now from my friends and colleagues, you’re working with one band but the whole Strip knows you, kiddo,” he’s giving her a fond, perhaps even impressed look, “little Vito, you’re so young, but I can already see you growing into your title.”
And pride swells in Lola’s chest as she hears this.
A week later, a tabloid article will be released with an article on Motley Crue’s quick rise in sucess, with a quote from Doug himself.
“How could I say no to having them play here? Those boys have got more talent in one hand than any do in their whole bodies, not to mention they’ve got Doc and The Godfather behind them; mark my words there’s success on their horizon.”
“Lola!” Leo had shouted excitedly through the phone the moment she’d picked up, and Lola had laughed nervously, unsure of the exactly reason for his call. Leo had babbled about seeing the article, how he’d pinned it up on the wall of the diner, right next to the photos of KISS, and Joan Jett that had been taken when they’d visited. He goes on in delight about how he and Irene were so proud; Lola couldn’t help but tear up.
“Doug Weston called you The Godfather, Lola!”
“I know, dad,” Lola had laughed a little, and Leo had whistled through his teeth, low and proud.
“What did I tell you, kiddo, already taking the world by storm.”
----
“You know how I was... I was like having trouble with Nikki? Like I could figure him out?” Lola brings up over the phone to her father, a few month into being in LA.
“Nikki’s the asshole one?”
“The asshole one, the one you’d like,” Lola clarifies and confirms, and Leo makes an understanding noise in the back of his throat, “I think... I think I’ve figured him out, I think I got him.”
“How so?”
“He, um,” Lola hesitates for a moment, shifting a little where she was sitting on her bed, “he’s actually kind of like me, which I think tripped me up, not like, as refined or anything, or as invested in people, but,” she can’t help but softly smile, “he just wants to be seen, you know, as a musician, as himself, except that things have been shitty for him so he’s actually scared to feel seen, you know?”
“So are you going to make him feel seen, or would that scare him?” Leo asks, and Lola tells him that she’s going to be careful, like she’s always been.
She’s already started; a few days before, she’d turned up to the studio only for a beleaguered assistant to nervously warn her that Nikki had been in there all night, drinking, snorting, and writing music frantically.
“Sixx?” Her voice had been quiet, and he’d looked up with wild, tired eyes, levelling a pen at her through the glass into the sound booth where she’d entered.
“You!”
“Me?” She gave a slight smile, despite how there was paper and broken glass everywhere, and one of his hands was bleeding.
“You!” He’d reiterated with a scowl, though Lola kept her approach slow, opening the door to the recording studio, carefully picking her way over to him, while he continued to point at her.
“What are you writing?” She asks carefully, and finally he looks down, to the page with it’s bloody fingerprints, and messy scribblings.
“What do you want from me?” He asked, and she’s wondering if he’s talking to the page before he looks back at her, confused and hostile as he regards her. Lola’s expression falls.
“Right now? I want you to come to the bathroom so I can clean you up and get you some medical attention -”
“You want something you always want something, you know too much about everyone we meet, everywhere we play, every photographer who shoots us, every writer who writes about us, every interviewer we speak to,” he sounds half-mad, but Lola’s blood has run cold, “it’s like the more you know about everyone, about us, you can predict us, can plan for if we go rogue, how you can lasso us back in line like we’re your cattle; you’re The Godfather but you never explained to us what that means.”
Lola swallows hard, steeling herself for a moment before she looks Nikki in the eyes.
“What do you want from music?” She’s dropped the kindly voice, “you understand it, you understand how to make it sound good, how to make something people will like and want to listen to, and you know what to do to keep it from being a disaster because you know the note before, and what notes should go after,” she explained, and in the face of her cool composure, Nikki’s hostility was actually... disappearing. “To me, people are their own kind of music when organised well enough, when I know where they’ve been, so I know how to keep them out of disaster, which topics not to talk about, to know what’s worked to bring things to their attention in the past, so I can use those for you guys in the future.”
Nikki is quiet, looking up at where she’s standing over him, and then at the paper in his hands.
“You’re organising us to... to what?”
“To optimise productivity,” Lola said bluntly, “which is hard, considering who you all are, but I’m glad Doc called me in. I feed your egos in the way you all respond to best, and keep you all from self destructing, and I pull you assholes from the gutter, and you get a successful album. I’m not hurting anyone, it’s my job to make you successful.”
She’s got her hands behind her back to hide how they’re shaking; she’s never been so bluntly honest with anyone since she’d explained her Prom Plan to her parents years ago.
“You won’t remember this,” she tells him, and he looks sharply at her, though she’s saying it more for her own peace of mind than for him. She offers her hand to him, and he quietly takes it, lets her take him to the bathroom and clean him up. She calls the Motley House, and Mick, and Doc, and lets them know that Nikki wouldn’t be in today, and she takes him back to her little apartment a few blocks from the Strip.
“This is tiny,” Nikki comments, his first since Lola’s monologue about her true intentions.
“I’m frugal,” Lola responded, flatly, showing him through to her bathroom, advising him to shower or bathe, though he made a face at that.
“Why am I here?”
“Because I have actual toilet paper and I didn’t want your hands to contract sepsis,” she responds with irritation, but soon enough, as she’s reading through the stack of tabloids that she has delivered daily, she hears the shower being turned on.
After an hour, she realises something may be wrong, as she hasn’t heard him moving about in there for a while, and when she knocks there’s no answer, and cracking the door reveals that he’s fallen asleep sitting at the bottom of her shower. Sighing deeply, Lola turns off the water, tries to wake him, and gets a sleepy, groaned response, which at the very least means she doesn’t need to call a paramedic. So she dries him off, and wraps him up in her bathrobe, and deposits him in her bed, while she listens to the radio and takes notes while reading the tabloids.
“Vito?” Nikki’s bleary voice greets her around sunset, and Lola, who’d been painting her nails and humming along to a cassette of the latest Queen album, looks up sharply at him. When their gazes meet, he regards her curiously before yawning, “I remember, you know?”
“Remember what?”
“What you said, how you use people because they’re like music,” he says, and grimaces when he tries to use his hands, only to see they’re bandaged. When he asks for a drink, Lola has to tell him she has nothing in the apartment, and he calls her a bitch under his breath, but that was to be expected.
“I don’t use people for fun, I... I...”
“There’s no sweet way to say it, is there?” He sits up with a groan, though he still manages to smirk, and Lola’s expression sours.
“Are you mad at me for manipulating people in the industry to make Motley Crue successful?” Her lip curled, tone derisive as an insult sat on the tip of her tongue, but Nikki paused.
“Are you trying to manipulate me by saying that?”
“What? No!” Lola had insisted, “everyone else thinks I’m the version of me that I want them to know, okay? But you... you’re the only motherfucker who knows I’m all of them at once, and also, well, none of them,” she admitted after a moment.
“Well how does me knowing that help you?”
“It doesn’t, okay?! I can’t figure you out, Nikki, I don’t know how the fuck to -”
“How the fuck to control me,” Nikki said, seemingly proud of that achievement.
“I don’t control you dumbasses, I keep you out of jail; if I wanted to control you, I’d try keeping you from hookers and drugs and falling asleep in gutters, I’d make you presentable for a mass-market audience, but none of you want that, so I’m trying to keep you alive and keep you productive while still being yourselves, get it?”
“You really want Motley to do well?” Nikki asks, tentatively, surprising Lola, who had her head in her hands.
“You fuckin’ dickbags have so much talent and absolutely no ability to function as human beings. Yes I want you to do well, I know you can, and I know you will, but dude, if you all go out in a firey ball of carnage, they’re not gonna blame you guys, because you’re the talent, live fast die young is what talent does, and they’re not gonna blame Doc,” her voice catches in her throat, and Nikki realises she’s on the verge of tears, “they’re gonna blame the twenty-three year old girl who everyone in the industry knows, and is calling The Godfather, who has a reputation despite only doing this shit for a few years -”
“Vito -”
“My name’s Lola!” She’d snapped, and Nikki had gone quiet. “You’re a talented musician, Nikki,” her voice had gone soft, and she gently thumped her forehead on the table, “you’re all talented men, I’m just doing the only thing I can do to get you the success you deserve, okay? I made a promise to never manipulate people for evil, and I don’t break my promises.”
After a long silence, Nikki finally spoke up, saying her name, her real name.
“Lola, thanks for taking care of me.”
----
“So this is Motley Crue,” Leo says the day Lola walks into the diner with the band and Doc, and Leo’s trying to reign in his instinct to be excited and proud and loud, trying to act discerning from behind the counter... Right as their Too Fast For Love album begins playing over the jukebox. The band seems confused, Lola hangs her head, and Leo’s lips immediately twist into an overjoyed grin, “that wasn’t planned but I love it!” He delights, and goes over to greet the band, giving each member a hearty handshake, managing to name each and every single one of them before they introduce themselves, which only serves to mortify Lola.
“You talk about us?” Tommy teases, while Lola’s standing by her father, face bright red.
“Drummer Boy, you’re killing me,” Lola groans, but takes her seat beside Nikki, and he throws an arm around her.
“Don’t worry, Leo, we’re taking care of her,” and he gives Lola’s shoulder a squeeze.
The thing is, Leo knows he can believe Nikki, knows because after a year, Lola’s told her parents practically everything about the band, every terrible, sordid detail, but also about their talent, and how they can be good people when they want to be. Leo and Irene have hear the change in the way Lola spoke about the band, heard Lola marvel at the way the band seemed to grow more protective of her after her breakdown in front of Nikki, how they defend her when they’re in their right mind, and at least attempt to listen to her some of the time. They’re still themselves, still far from perfect, but it’s become a known fact that The Godfather had the might of Motley Crue behind her now.
Mick and Leo got along well, of course Leo got along with all the band well, but he and Mick’s taste in music aligned, and there was a certain wisdom to the pair of them that eluded the others.
And when Lola hands tickets to the band’s show the following night to her mother, she assured her that it wasn’t their idea, it was all Lola’s. Irene wraps her in a tight hug, pride in her eyes, before she looks over at the band, louging in a booth like they own it while the diner was meant to have closed twenty minutes ago, and Leo’s still talking to them. It’s empty apart from the band, and Lola’s about to start washing up so her dad can keep getting to know the band, but her mother speaks quietly.
“They’re good boys,” she muses, and Lola snorts.
“They’re garbage boys, ma, pretty terrible, you know they fucked an eggroll so their girlfriends couldn’t tell they slept with other girls?”
“Oh I know they’re terrible - eggroll, really? -” Irene made a momentarily horrified face as Lola confirmed, but as a shiver of disgust passed down Irene’s spine, she continued, “but they’re good to you.”
And looking at them, Lola sees the band and Doc smiling and laughing and chatting with her dad, picking at the crumbs they had left of the food they’d been served, and for a moment, Nikki looks over and catches her gaze. He raises an eyebrow at her, a silent question; Lola gives the barest nod back, and he turns back to the conversation.
“They’re pretty good to me when they want to be,” Lola agreed.
----
“Lo, we wanted to run this past you first,” immediately hearing these words from her father, Lola’s stomach drops, “but you remember your Aunt Malia who lives back in Hawaii, right?” And as Lola confirmed as much, Leo went on, “her youngest, Kai, is going to come and live at the diner; he’s about your age and Malia says he’s wanted to be a chef for a long time. I thought he could come work with us, or maybe stay here if he wanted to study in the states.”
“Why do you need to run it past me?” Lola asked, voice quiet, though her heart eased considerably; the news had been much less dire than she had been anticipating.
“He’s going to be sleeping in your old room is all, I know you’ve moved everything out, but I didn’t want you to be surprised if you dropped in; when you stop by, we’ve converted the old study into a spare bedroom.”
“Okay,” Lola wasn’t quite sure why the news hurt so much, but it did, though she tried not to let her father hear as much, “as long as he does a good job, that’s all we can ask for, right?” And Leo seemed happy to hear as much.
But it had sent Lola spiralling; all her life she’d thought she’d end up running the diner when she got old enough, but now she was getting to be old enough, and living a completely different life.
“Would it make you happy?” When had coming to Nikki Sixx for life advice become a real option? They’re sitting in a round booth at a bar, both dressed casually, sitting side by side, probably closer than was necessary, though Lola liked the contact.
“Yes,” she admitted, “if I went home and ran the diner with mom and dad for the rest of my life, I’d honestly be happy.” She admitted.
“And us, the industry, everything you’ve been working for, you’d give it all up for them?” He asked, and Lola picked at the label on her beer bottle, stomach twisting with guilt.
“If they asked,” came her answer.
“Did they ask?”
Lola swallows hard, and realises with startling clarity that Nikki knows where her train of thought is headed.
“Does the life you have here make you happy?” He asks, tone demanding an honest answer, and Lola nods once, before his final question hits her squarely in the chest; “would they want you to give up this happiness you’ve built, the experiences you’re still yet to have, for them?”
He understands her.
“And if I asked, would you stay here and manage us?”
“What?” Lola’s voice came out soft and surprised as she looked to Nikki, her eyes wide, and a little misty with all the emotions and thoughts blurring together in her mind.
“If I get any sort of say or vote in this, I’d like to keep The Godfather on my team,” he muses, grin getting a little wider, tone a little more honest, “‘d like to keep you around, Lola.”
----
Kai vaults the counter the first time Lola walks into the diner after he arrives. It’s been a few months, Lola’s been overseas with the band, but she’s back, and had wanted to stop in home to see how he was going. They’d spoken often; he’s as kind and outgoing as her father, and seems just as enthusiastic about food, which is good. At first there had been jealousy, that he was there, while she couldn’t be, but her parents always assured her there was a place for her if she wanted it, if she wanted to come back.
But Nikki had been right, they wanted her to see the world, so long as she knew they’d always be there for her to come home to.
But it’s Summer, Saturday afternoon, and Kai looks up as the bell rings, spots Lola, and drops the napkin dispenser he’d been refilling, vaulting the counter to sweep her off her feet in a hug. He’s chattering away about how good it is to meet her, how people keep saying the Godfather sent them and how it’s weird knowing they mean her, about how a few more bands had come through, without Lola even, word of mouth having spread that this was the place to come to in Boston, and he gestures proudly to the wall of photographs, and how more had been added; Areosmith, the Pixies, Blondie.
“And you! You’re -” suddenly spotting the person who’d come in behind Lola, Kai’s eyes go wide and his words stop for a moment.
“Nikki Sixx, man, good to meet you,” Nikki grins brightly, “Kai, right?” And Kai nods, before blinking away his shock and nodding, shaking Nikki’s hand vigerously.
“Good to meet you, dude, lemme go get Aunty; Leo’s at the markets,” he says, and then he trots off, calling out to the kitchen staff where he was headed. The moment he’s disappeared up the stairs to the flat above, Lola leans into Nikki, huffing a laugh.
“God, he fits right in,” she muses fondly, and Nikki wraps an arm around her, himself trying to process Kai’s enthusiasm.
And Irene greets Nikki and Lola with warmth and excitement, the three of them sitting in a booth together while Kai goes through any changes to the menu, lighting up when Lola asks what he recommends. Nikki and Lola sit close as they chatter away, recounting stories to Irene about their travels, words flowing together like they were rehearsed; as Lola’s overcome with a fit of giggles recounting one of Nikki and Tommy’s stunts, Nikki wraps his arm around her, pulling her close as he seamlessly takes over the story, grinning from ear to ear. As Lola’s giggles subside, she looks back to her mother, and Nikki’s voice goes quiet as Lola takes back over telling the story, instinctually in sync, and oh, Irene realises fondly, they understand each other. Despite everything she’s heard about the band, about Nikki, she’s filled with an indescribably sense of calm knowing Nikki made Lola this happy, made her feel understood. She’d be here if he broke Lola’s heart, but until then, she’d be happy for them.
“Lola!” It’s Leo’s voice that interupts them, and instinctively Irene reminds him that he’s holding eggs, without even needing to look at him. When they all do, they see Kai handing Leo an empty, plastic fries basket for him to drop in surprise instead, and he does so, which makes Lola laugh, even though she’s tearing up at the sight of him.
Nikki relaxes his grip on her shoulders without her needing to ask, and she ran to Leo, jumping to wrap him in a koala hug as he anticipated as much, holding her tight.
“If you guys ever wanted her back here to stay, you know she’d be more than happy to do it, I don’t know how you guys did it, but she loves you more than anything else in the whole world,” Nikki says quietly to Irene, the pair of them watching Lola and Leo, still hugging, with Lola koala-ed onto her father, talking to each other.
“She’s lucky to have Leo,” Irene said softly, “and so am I,” she admits easily, with a smile, “we both just wanted to give her the world, and if that, for her, means taking over the diner, then she’ll always have a place here, but if she wants more than that, if for her the world is the world, we’ll do everything in our power to help her get it,” she paused, before her smile turns amused; the expression looks so much like Lola’s, “but I suspect she doesn’t need our help with that.”
“And Nikki,” Irene turns to him, to look him in the eyes, and he knows that she knows every terrible thing Lola knows about him, but the thing is, he trusts Lola, and Lola loves and trusts her parents more than anything in the world, so if she’s trusted them with his dirty laundry and they still treat him kindly, he knows he has nothing to fear, “as long as you love her and treat her well, you’ll have us in your corner too.”
----
In 2005, it seems as though everyone in the entertainment industry knows about Boston’s famous Lionheart Diner, renamed in the mid-90s to coincide with the official forming of Lionheart Talent Management in LA, a label that would develop a reputation for finding talented underground acts, and making them huge.
Over the years, it had become a tradition for touring rock groups to visit the diner, claiming The Godfather sent them, even if Lola had never interacted with the band. As time wore on, bands outside of the rock genre caught on to the tradition, and soon even those from film or television or even art had joined the tradition too.
The business was booming, it had become a spot for tourists to come take photos against the wall of famous band photos, and people would often stop by on the off chance that someone famous would be around. They’d invested in selling shirts, plain black with the Lionheart logo over the left breast, and the word ‘crew’ printed in all capitals in white across the back.
The heart of the business remained, with Leo, seventy-one and still spry, as Sous Chef, while Kai had stepped up as head chef. One of the benefits of being part-owned by a successful management company was that Irene was able to retire, as Lola’s in-house accountants took care of the diner’s finances, and her little sixty-nine year-old mother could spend her time relaxing, or playing with her grandchildren.
In 2005, Lola went home in anticipation of a letter she hoped her parents would be receiving, taking Nikki, their son, and her entire rolodex of industry contacts with her.
In 2005, Lola and her family are awoken by a legitimate yell sounding through the little flat above the diner; it’s Leo, he’s excited and nervous and panicking, and Lola’s rubbing sleep from her eyes as she finds him, alongside her mother, sitting at the kitchen table, looking at a pristine, off-white envelope.
“We should wait for Kai, we have to call him, we have to call him now,” Leo’s chattering away, already up, and when Lola sits at the table, Irene hands her the bulky envelope before she even has to ask.
The return address was the Michelin Offices in Paris.
Lola’s smile grows wider.
The kitchen is eerily silent, apart from Lola’s son Mal moving about the kitchen, making himself cereal, as all the adults wait quietly for Kai to arrive with his own wife and baby daughters.
“I heard they were... were coming to America, but I thought it was only New York,” Leo looked so much younger for his nervous excitement, and once Kai had sat down and realised what it was, Lola pushed the envelope towards her father.
With shaking hands, Leo opens the letter, he and Kai reading the congratulations that had been sent to them, the praise for their food, their plating, their atmosphere and service. Leo’s crying, his hand pressed to his mouth, he’s crying, and Lola can feel the tears in her eyes too.
“They gave us two stars,” he chokes out, pride in his voice, “two whole Michelin Stars, the only restaurant outside of New York,” he’s sniffling as he lets Kai take the letter, pulling the book from the package, thumbing through it, and bursting into tears, the book in a white-knuckled grip as a lifetime of work is finally granted the recognition it deserved.
“Two stars; excellent cooking, worth a detour,” Kai was crying too, his pride overwhelming him, and it seemed, all other at the table, aside from Nikki, and Kai’s wife Julia.
Lola spends the next week organising a party, calling everyone and anyone to invite them to Leo’s, promising her father the night off to celebrate, but he waved her off, so long as she would work by his side for the night. Of course she agreed.
It was a star-studded event, surprising the locals, with Lola calling her contacts who loved the restaurant, and Leo and Irene and Kai calling old regulars they wanted to celebrate with, everyone who heard the news was delighted, knew it was well earned, and cheered as Leo unveiled the new sign with the Michelin Stars on full display.
“Thirty years ago,” Lola makes a toast, and the room falls silent, all looking at her on this night of mirth and merry, on this night of celebrating Leo and Irene and their family and their staff, “I claimed that the Michelin Star Inspectors were classicist, bitch-ass jagweeds, who hadn’t given the diner a star because they couldn’t even be bothered making the detour it was worth,” and that got a laugh to rise from the crowd, while Leo’s surprised Lola remembers that, hell, he’s surprised he remembers that, “but they’ve finally come to America; they said they were coming to New York, but you know what- you know fucking what? They made the detour! Because they’d heard this place was worth it! They knew what my parents built, what everyone here still upholds, it’s world class, it’s excellent cooking, it’s worth the detour!” And a cheer rises from the crowd, just as the diner deserves.
But something about it sticks for Leo, something about it is familiar, perhaps it’s just the way Lola’s smiling, but he asks for a word with her, and she agrees easily. She’s not his little girl anymore, neither of them as young as they once were, but they sit on the back step of the diner, the door shut, the celebrations inside muffled.
After a long while, Leo looks to Lola and gives her a fond little smile.
“I’ve really raised a supervillain, haven’t I?” And Lola acts confused for all of two minutes before she gives up the ruse, grinning like she’d been caught red-handed.
“Hey, if this place didn’t deserve any Michelin Stars, it wouldn’t get any; I just wanted to get the word out there so people would know where to look,” she shrugged, and Leo threw an arm around her, pressing a kiss to her temple.
“How long were you planning this?”
“That day in the diner when we talked about my future, and I said this place deserved a Michelin Star,” she admitted, and Leo’s eyes went wide, realising just why she’d remembered that day so well during her speech.
“Your thirty year plan?”
“I didn’t know when they’d come to America, honestly I think you guys would have still had enough notoriety to warrant someone coming to check this place out fifteen years ago,” she mused, “but like I said, it’s because this is a good diner, dad, I only brought it to their attention.”
“Lola, this is you life -” he tried with concern, though Lola rested her head on his shoulder, cutting him off with reassurances.
“I love my job, I love the life that I have, and the people in it, and it just so happened that the thing that I’m good at and do professionally means I have some influence; I promised I’d only use my powers for good, and this is the good-est thing I could think of,” she ducks her head, to hide her teary eyes, so glad that finally her family, her father, got their deserved recognition.
“All for your lil’ old family,” Leo gave a watery chuckle, overwhelmed with pride.
“All for my lil’ old family,” Lola agreed, sniffling, and Leo pulled her into a tight hug, so Lola’s next words were muffled against his chest, “come on, dude, be cool.”
“You made the whole world love us because how much you love us, I will not be cool,” Leo held her tighter, and Lola laughed softly, wanting this moment to last forever if it could, “you were never a supervillain, sweet girl, you’ve always been my hero.”
#rtp#nikki sixx#nikki x lola#tommy lee#mick mars#Doc McGhee#vince neil#kiss band#the angry lizard writes
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Teacher´s Pet
Prof. Draco Malfoy x fem (Slytherin student) Reader
Summary: You start having somewhat of a relationship with your Professor…
Words: 5.4k
Warnings: implied smut, age difference, drinking, drug abuse, triggering relationship, kinda toxic
A/N: inspired by Melanie Martinez song. Read at own risk, since this isn´t the typical fluffy oneshot with many rather difficult topics…
It all started out innocently.
Professor Malfoy had started last year in Hogwarts teaching potions, in your last year, he then became your teacher. Against much anticipation, he was a good Professor and within his first year, the comments behind his back became less and less. You were one of Slytherins top students, potion making was a game to you. Which was also why you never had much interest in it, however it changed when you raised to be Malfoys top list.
It was the last lesson of Friday, all standing against the weekend everybody secretly hoped for.
Draco sighed as he felt the eyes of his students lingering on the clock, waiting for the last minutes to go over soon. “Since I clearly have your full attention, Y/n would you mind answering the question?”
You quietly cleared your throat, looking up from the doodles on your notes. For seconds you and Professor Malfoy had eye contact, he waited patiently and under the stare of his blue-greyish eyes, you couldn´t help but bite your lip. Within the past weeks a scenario like this happened more often than you would ever admit. Potion remained to be the last class of the week; concentration levels often laid low.
Girls gushed over Draco behind his back, he was the most attractive teacher Hogwarts might have seen and the rumors about his younger looks back in his days, didn´t stop either.
“Yes, Professor.”
As per usual, you didn´t make any mistakes and Draco nodded approving, leaning back on his chair while folding his hands. He continued to make his appearance in a black suit, a tailored suit fitting perfectly while he struck down the halls of the wizard school. Unlike the girls talking behind his back, you watched him quietly. Draco announced the homework, which you all wrote down willingly before most of the students stormed off. With your friends, you packed your stuff together and left the room, Draco still seated. It was your last year in school, you didn´t wear the uniform and Draco subconsciously noticed how the tight skirt enhanced your curves. You were the last to leave, and before you glanced back, finding that Professor Malfoy was already staring at you. You offered him a rather polite last smile, but the quickly beating of your heart which followed, didn´t feel like “just polite”.
This was the day, you described as the beginning. Because the only word that came to your mind when remembering his stare, was lust.
Caught the teacher giving his eyes to a student
Pouty, pretty cute, and she bit her lip back to him
It was Sunday morning when Draco found you in the library. For once, you were actually studying potions. He couldn´t help but let out a chuckle. He didn´t know, that you were awoken by an all too real dream with him as the leading role. “Never imagined to find you with this book on a Sunday morning here.”
Or what he was doing to you in the dream.
You swallowed, the vivid images still in your mind. “Couldn´t sleep.”
He sat down to your opposite and you felt your heart beginning to beat faster and heat rising to your cheeks. “May I?” He pointed towards your notes and you passed them over. While he took them, his hand brushed against yours and a shiver ran down your spine. To be honest, you felt like a renaissance painting. The sun rays of the morning sun falling through the dusty windows with the hottest teacher sitting across the innocent student. While reading, he nodded approving while you began noticing awfully small details about him. The veins on his strong hands, small strands of his hair falling over his breath-taking eyes, his cologne smelling, how his tie sat so perfect, that you wanted to rip it off… wait what?
When he was finished, he handed you the notes back. “They´re good, but if you want, I can teach you to do a more skilled version of the potion mentioned here?”
You looked up, a surprised look on your face. You and Draco, alone. His words replayed in your mind like a broken record. Come one babygirl…
“Sure, how about Tuesday, I have the last period off?”
Chewing on her nails and her pens while she's dreaming of him
And he's fucking in sin, You know he is
Monday went by so awfully slowly, you wanted to start screaming. The only good thing was that Draco stopped by in your defense against the dark arts class, since he needed to talk about a conference with your teacher. However, while he waited so the teacher assigned you some spells to practice in the mean-time, his eyes laid on you. First, you thought it was an illusion your mind was playing on you, but then you glanced at him. He didn´t even move, waiting leaned against the wall and with his thumb, he was brushing against his lower lip. You noticed how the shirt under his jacket was an ever so dark green, it almost seemed black. It reminded you obviously of your, and his former house, Slytherin. None of the teacher would admit, but they all favored their old houses.
Dear Merlin, you prayed and your following reaction went by as you crossed your legs on the chair. A nudge from your friend brought you back into reality and you nodded quickly as you started practicing.
On Tuesday morning you took your extra time getting ready, also effected by the fact, that you couldn´t sleep anymore. With the night, came insecurities. He is your teacher, Y/N. He doesn´t want you like that. It´s all in your head. None of them stopped your from wearing your favorite leather skirt, which you usually only wore to parties, paired with a fishnet tights and a lose shirt with the Slytherin emblem on it.
Nadia, one of your closest friends watched you as you spun in your mirror a last time. “So, when are you going to tell me who the lucky guy is?” She asked grinning. You shook your head. “I think I need to figure some things about him first.” Nadia nodded, accepting the privacy you tried to keep. She knew you´d eventually talk if you were ready. Luckily for you, she didn´t even assume that your study date, wasn´t with a student today. You didn´t need to hide anything, Nadia knew you since your first day in Hogwarts, but something about your meeting with the Professor just felt forbidden. A sigh of relief escaped your mouth, because since your lesson yesterday, where Draco had stopped by, you were afraid of getting caught. You knew you shouldn´t be, nothing happened and the worst thing that could come out, is that you had a crush on the Professor half of the school had a crush on. But it continued to feel forbidden.
Then, finally the last lesson for the day was over, but your main event was just about to begin. You took a last breath before knocking at the door to his office. A simple “Come in”, followed. You never had been to Professor Malfoy´s office, he was a rather quiet teacher and kept everything besides the lesson to himself. Maybe you were just a little special?
He sat behind his large, dark wooden desk; his hands folded over his mouth as you entered. His blonde hair pushed back as usual. While he began some explaining, after you had sat down across from him. You studied the ingredients. To your left was a small pot and other utensils. The beginning went smooth and you began to wonder, what you were so nervous about. Something about being around him felt oh so natural to you. When you were 20 minutes into the potion making, you had to put in some beets, but they seemed to be not cuttable. Draco chuckled lowly and rose from his chair to walk over to you. “Like I said, it´s a tricky potion, mostly because the instruction in the book is a little off.” He leaned over your right shoulder and without any warning, not that it would have softened your inner shock, he took your hand holding the knife. “Here let me show you, that it is easier to press out the juice this way.” He remained standing next to you, you felt his breath on the skin of your neck. “Now the herbs”, he advised and pointed towards the small bottle of pre-mixed herbs on the table. You had to stand up to reach them, which you did, but when you turned back to the Professor, you underestimated the distance. Bumping into his chest, the small bottle glided out of your hands. But Draco always had been swift, his days as a seeker didn´t lay behind, and he caught the bottle with ease. A sharp breath escaped your mouth and within his movement, you leaned down as well. When his eyes flickered up, he found your face only inches away. Slowly the two of you ascended. You voice felt like a shaking mess when you opened your mouth. “I´m so sor-“
Draco put the bottle on the desk, then his hand came to the back of your neck to pull you in. His simple touch was enough, your body reacted alone and you drew yourself closer to his body. Your hands glided up on his chest, up to his neck, while one of his hands travelled down from your back until resting on your waist. His tongue slipped across your lip until you let him enter. Adrenaline kept shooting through your veins and when his strong hands arrived at your butt, you were sure that you had a heart disfunction. Without any warning, not that he was the type to warn you, Draco lifted you onto the desk. A few ingredients fell down, which didn´t seem to bother neither of you and while continuing to heavily kiss each other, you slowly leaned back on the table.
“Y/n”, Draco moaned in between kisses and the pure sound of his low voice gave you a grin.
“We shouldn´t be doing this.” He was right and yet you didn´t stop.
“Why not, Professor?” Your voice dripped like honey and when using the word Professor, you could´ve sworn he flinched. His hand quickly grabbed your neck and while he tilted your head closer to his face, you bit your lip. “I told no one that I´d be here today.”
“Fuck”, he groaned again and you felt something hardening between his legs…
She said, "It's for all the right reasons, baby
Don't care 'bout grades, just call me your lady
If I pass this quiz, will you give me your babies?
Don't call me crazy
You sat outside, Nadia and two of your other friends seated around a table with a bank. You all decided to study together for the upcoming exams, but your mind wasn´t functioning after the past day. Nadia pushed her pen into your side. “Huh?”
You flinched and looked at her irritated. “Are you even listening? You´ve been so distant lately?”
The other girls nodded agreeing. “Haven´t slept well, stress I guess.”
Luckily, they didn´t have time to question your excuse when a group of Slytherin guys approached. They had just finished their Quidditch practice, still glowing in an ever slightly sweat, only wearing tops with exposing their trained arms. Your friends immediately hushed, clearly interested in what they wanted. You caught eye of a certain Professor leaning against the wall from the hallway leading parallel to the yard. You blinked and suddenly leaned in to join the conversation as well.
“You know about our game on Saturday, we could use a little cheering.” Aaron asked, number one fuckboy of the school. “So, you´re saying you need us to win?” You asked provocatively, knowing well that Draco was watching you. Aaron let out a laugh and leaned closer to you. “No, but it would give us some motivation if we´d win some pretty girls like you.”
Usually you weren´t interested, especially since Aaron tried to hit on you since third grade. But now with him watching, you had suddenly the most interest in him since Merlin´s death. Even after what had happened, you were sure to show him, that you weren´t anybody´s to own.
You touched Aaron´s arm and started running up and town with your fingertips. “So, what do you expect from me when you win?” The eye contact you were establishing with him barely gave you enough view on Draco´s angry expression. “How about we talk about it on the party afterwards?”
One of Aarons tipped him anxiously on the shoulder. “Professor Malfoy is-“
“Schneider, aren´t you supposed to be in detention for punching some second grader?”
You didn´t know which look was better; Aarons face dropping when hearing about his punishment, your friends trying to hold in the laughter, or Professor Malfoy boiling in anger by your shameless flirting. Oh wait, you did know.
“Miss Y/L/N, you wanted some more information about the potion you asked me about?”
Scrambling together your study things, you stumbled after your Professor, offering your friends a sympathetic smile. “Sorry”, you mouthed them. But they had already focused on the remaining Quidditch boys, not even suspecting.
You love me, but you won't come save me
Don't know why you even need me
Teacher's pet
If I'm so special, why am I secret?
Yeah, why the fuck is that?
You entered the office after him, he hurried to close and even look the door. It was still the middle of the day. Immediately after he grabbed you, pushing you against the next best wall, your study pad fell to the floor. “What Professor, haven´t I been a good girl?”
He knew you were pushing it, but it worked, so why stop? “Maybe, if I was a bad student, you should give me attention as well?”
His hand ripped open the blouse with the green symbols on it, and his lips didn´t waste anytime and travelled down your body. “I have something else for in mind.”
A knock on the door let the both of startled. “Professor Malfoy? Draco?”
It was Professor Longbottom, he had recently started teaching as well. You knew that the two of them were together in school and Draco´s eyes were still widened when he pulled up his pants again, panic spreading.
“One second, Longbottom.”
He looked around, while you gathered your stuff. “The desk.” He advised and while you crawled under the luckily large desk which gave you a good hideout due to the many drawers, Draco sat down as well. With a wink of his wand the door was unlocked and swung open.
Neville and Draco had their differences back then, but now they seemed to almost get along. “Why did you lock the door?” He asked absent minded while bringing some files to the desk. You saw the shadows of his feet under the desk. “Some students had fun playing some pranks and I needed quiet to grade those papers.” You listened interested; your class had given some papers just last week which were supposed to get marked…
While the two teachers exchanged some courtesies, you realized that the fly of his pants was still opened. When your hand reached into the hole of his pants, you observed how Draco panic-stricken grabbed the rim of the desk. You could only imagine how much it took him to make Longbottom not notice anything.
The door closed behind Neville and Draco rolled back on his chair, his hand grabbing your wrist.
“What do you think you´re doing? Do you know what happens if we´ll get caught?” You ignored the comment and fluttered with your long lashes. “Are those our papers you have to mark?”
Do you regret the things we shared that I'll never forget?
Well, do you? Tell me that
I know I'm young, but my mind is well beyond my years
I knew this wouldn't last, but fuck you, don't you leave me here
Teacher's pet
If I'm so special, why am I secret?
You weren´t some kind of possession to win, you weren´t a cheerleader to dance after some whistle either. But you did clap each time Aaron shot a goal. And you then shot a daring glare over to the stand with the teachers seated. Afterall the Gryffindor´s had a difficult start to the season and Slytherin won. Which then led to the follow-up party hosted in the Slytherin Common Room. As so often within the past weeks, you had decided to wear something off-showing, a green silk dress. Aaron had tried to catch you immediately after the game, but you slipped away. You managed to get in four full cups of alcohol infused drinks, before Aaron caught up to you, a sheepish grin on his lips.
“We won”, he added. You let out a chuckle. “I saw that.”
His dark eyes scanned up and down your body. “You look good”, he commented and you nodded yet again. Poor Aaron, didn´t know that it wasn´t him to make you feel bold this evening.
One thing led to another and within the next ten minutes, you were in his lap casually enjoying a light make out session. You sighed, leaning back to get some distance from his thirsty lips. You knew as long as you remained in the safe walls of the common room, you wouldn´t get what you wanted.
Leaning closer to his ear, you whispered; “Let´s get out of here.”
Aaron was desperate, the grin he wore when people saw you two leaving together was disgusting you. You found a nice, quiet niche and landed back in his lap. “Aren´t you afraid of getting caught?” Aaron asked while placing wet kisses down your neck. “Nope.”
“Malfoy´s office is close.”
“I know.”
“Mister Schneider, Misses Y/L/N! Care to explain?”
Aaron flinched when hearing Professor Malfoy´s voice and slightly pushed you off his lap. But you stayed seated and leaned even closer to Aaron. “Detention, and 10 points get taken away from Slytherin, for each of you!”
Aaron wasn´t one to protest, or stand up for himself. He did however hurry back into his chamber.
“Detention?” You asked lingering and fetched the rim of his suit to pull him closer. “I´d prefer to get some private lessons to make up for it.”
But Draco pulled you up by your wrist, yanking you on your feet. “Don´t take this easily, Y/n. This is not a game, if people find out, I´ll lose my job and you´re probably getting expelled.”
She's feeling like a spider in a cage
You liar, you were her desire
Now she wants to light you on fire
He stared at the blank spot you had left behind. He remembered the pain in your eyes, the verge of tears. He knew it was a mistake, he had known from the very first second. But you were young and wild, like hurricane and he had reached the quiet middle. It had begun as a game, but Draco was just realizing, that things were getting out of control. He needed to end this, but how?
The entire weekend, no one saw you. Not your friends, not your roommates, not the other students or teachers. But you were there, hanging on his shadow like a ghost. It was driving you insane, what started out as fucking around with the Professor, had turned into more. You had fallen for him.
When you came to class on Monday, you didn´t look good. Deep dark circles under your matt eyes, no makeup, your skin pale. Everything you wished for, was to finish school and graduate as quickly as possible. So, you started focusing back on studying. It worked well and the first weeks after your recent encounter with Draco, you skipped the potion class.
It must have been around three weeks later, when Draco overheard your friends talking after class on Friday afternoon.
“No, I barely see her as well. She runs off after class claiming to study”, Nadia explained trying to keep quiet. “Study? She´s never at the library!” Amber added.
“You think it´s about Aaron?”
“Aaron´s a dickhead.”
The girls disappeared and Draco blinked, continuing to stare into the empty wall. He needed to talk to you, but if your friends didn´t even know where you were... It hit him like a brick, when remembering his not so pleasant school times; The room of requirements.
You didn´t want your friends to find you, but a weak, almost mute voice wanted Draco to find you. It was the only reason, why he was able to find the magical door that afternoon. Within the years, the room had begun to transform back into what it once was. Useless objects and furniture laying around, not in the amount it used to be. But Draco followed the music that played loudly on an old gramophone. Several school books and loose papers written with notes were spread on the floor around you. He spotted three empty wine bottles and who knew what was in the rolled cigarette hanging loosely from the corners of your mouth. Your eyes were fixed on the ceiling, which reminded you of a baroque church you had once visited. Draco accidentally dripped against an empty bottle, but you didn´t flinch or look up. Unsure of what exactly to do, Draco sat down a few feet next to you. He eyed the herb rests, which you had used. As a Professor, he could easily tell them apart.
To conclude; you were high.
“So that´s what you do when you don´t come to my class.”
Abruptly you sat up and fired glaring shots at him. Draco feared you would start screaming, so angry you looked, but then you suddenly relaxed again. “I´m studying different effects of certain herbs.”
Then a pause. The smoke you exhaled glided through the air. “What do you want?”
What did he want?
He came to talk, talk like an adult, about commitments, obligations and shit. But the moment he saw you, he melted. Was it the anger in your eyes, the puffy shadows from crying, your pouting lips or the air filled with smoke? Whatever it was holding him back, he threw the plan to talk into the trash.
“Wanna get high with me?”
But fuck it, she'll still give you a call
And a lighter when you wanna get high
And mess around 'til you get numb
She said, "It's for all the right reasons, baby
Don't care 'bout grades, just call me your lady
If I pass this quiz, will you give me your babies?
Don't call me crazy
The clock from the astronomy tower tolled midnight. You laid in Draco´s arm on the satin couch in the room of requirements. A simple blanket covering to two of you. The breathing calmed down slowly while your fingertips traced circles on his bare chest.
Oh, you knew why he had come to find you. Talk, talk, talk. All bullshit.
Your fantasies about your Professor had turned, it wasn´t purely physical, you wanted to go on dates. Go out. Stay in. Hold hands.
After all, you should’ve seen it coming. It was inevitable.
Draco opened his mouth; his thoughts had spiraled over the same topic obviously.
You sat up. “Don´t, Draco.”
Turning to face him, your hand traced along the side of his face, to his jawline and stopped at his chest, where his hand caught yours. “You never said my name.”
Because he wasn´t Draco to you before, he was Professor Malfoy.
“Draco”, you repeated.
“Y/n.”
“Professor Malfoy.” His lazy smile dropped.
“158.”
“What?” Draco sat up as well, pushing strand of your hair back. “In 158 days I will graduate.”
He furrowed his eyebrows. “From Monday on, I will come to every class. I will call you Professor, I will answer the questions, but out of the class. We will not talk. Not for school, not private.”
You slipped away from the warmth of the blanket, swinging your legs over the couch and gathering your clothes.
“But you will wait all 158, until I´m done with you. Because I´m not your pet to fuck around with.”
You love me, but you won't come save me
You got a wife and kids, you see them daily
Don't know why you even need me
Teacher's pet
If I'm so special, why am I secret?
Yeah, why the fuck is that?
Do you regret the things we shared that I'll never forget?
Well, do you? Tell me that
I know I'm young, but my mind is well beyond my years
I knew this wouldn't last, but fuck you, don't you leave me here
Teacher's pet
If I'm so special, why am I secret?
158… 150… 130… 113… 100… 76… 43… 28… 10…
Every beginning was hard, and so was the beginning of the countless days as it felt to you. But even so one, the nights where you silently cried yourself to sleep became less and your unsteady heartbeat towards the potion classes became dead silent. Every ounce of feeling you had left, you buried, literally. A shirt you had once stolen, notes from him, everything. You burned it on a full moon night and dug a deep hole in the forest, swearing under your heavy breath.
One day 15 you told Nadja. She was clearly shocked to begin with, but after she heard every detail, she hugged you tightly. Explaining that she would never judge you due to that fact. She asked why you hadn´t told her earlier, why you went through the biggest part of your heartbroken times alone. You didn´t have an answer though.
Your parents were very pleased by your sudden interest to graduate as possibly best. Often had they criticized your party behavior, both being pureblooded Slytherins. However, your grades went only up through your heavy studying, as you came back to mind, you realized that Draco, wasn´t the best teacher. In his possession you found last notes from the half-blood prince, important hints to good potion-making. Why he hadn´t taught anyone them? Who knew. You didn´t question him though and you both held the promise. None of you talked to each other.
It was day five. The last exams were over and your last days in school were spent by playing pranks, parties, cozy get-togethers and cutting class. You found yourself to appreciate the beauty of school, friends and young-adulthood again, knowing well that time was almost up.
Then the graduation ball; a truly beautiful evening.
Together with your girlfriends you got ready, without magic, without talking or gossiping. It was all on the memories you had made together. You wore a long golden dress, absolutely ball worthy fitted with green details, representing your house a last time. Before the doors to the great hall, you all took a deep breath. It was then when you caught an eye of Professor Malfoy. He stood aside, looking out the window, eyes focused on the astronomy tower. “I´ll catch up to you”, you explained and Nadia threw you a worried glance, when she noticed the Professor as well. But you shrugged and stepped closer to him. A feeling of nostalgia drew you to him and for the first time, it felt like you were actually strong enough to face him.
Without turning his eyes from the window, he spoke up. “You look stunning.”
He must have seen you through the reflection and you remembered times where your heart would jumped at a comment like this.
“I looked through your exams, you did very well, better than I back then.”
“My grades were never depending from your teaching or yourself.”
“I know.” Finally, he turned away from the window to face you. But you stood still and sturdy. “I appreciate how you didn´t tell anybody.”
“You should focus more on your teaching methods than your students.”
He paused, still struck back by your stern expression. “I guess I always learned more from you, than you from me”, he chuckled. It was the first time in a long time that you heard his voice chuckle and even you cracked a small smile.
“I wanted to give you this.” He gave you a dark satin bag, and you immediately opened your mouth to protest. He didn´t give you a chance to do so and placed a kiss on your cheek, before wandering back into the halls of Hogwarts. Was it a goodbye? Maybe.
You carefully opened the small bag, which revealed a golden necklace with a crystal? No… It seemed to be a diamond. Not sure how to assess the present, you put it back in the bag. You had every right to be angry for the expensive present, but surprisingly you weren´t.
A gust of different feelings hit you instead, some bad, other on a more positive side. But you weren´t going into detail with them, it was your evening and you were planning on enjoying it. You had given up too much energy on bad things.
Gimme back my money
Didn't learn a damn thing, honey, from you
Except how to lie and cheat while inside the sheets
Stop calling me your bunny
I won't hop and you don't own me
Do you? I bet you think you do
Well, you don't
16 days over the margin of the days between breakup and graduation, you had spent your weeks in freedom at your parents. Technically seen, it was all over, at least you thought so. You met up with Nadia and other friends, even ran into Aaron in London. And even though it had barely been to weeks, it already felt like years to you. Facing now new duties, you had started thinking about a job, but you hadn´t decided yet. If it was up to your parents, you were basically up to marry (preferably a pureblood). You argued against that in a strong matter, like you so often did, but they did still throw a little after graduation party for you. Most of your friends, as well as their families came. But even more friends from your parents were invited. It was more a show-off event.
You had settled on a simple black dress for the evening, but your mind then slipped to Draco´s present and it might have been stupid, but you decided to wear it. When you walked down the stairs, most of the guests had already arrived. Your eyes fell to your group of friends and you smiled at them. But firstly, you joined your parents, both of them complimenting on your looks, but then you noticed the third person standing with them. You recognized her. “Y/n, this is Narzissa Malfoy.”
Your smiled twitched, but you kept it up. For your own sake mostly. “We think you should really meet her son; he is still single.”
You rolled your eyes at your mother´s comment. But then Narzissa spoke up, she didn´t seem to bothered about the rather unfitting comment. She wore the grey, black strands of hair in an elegant updo, but she seemed exhausted. You knew that the Malfoy´s had avoided the public long, it didn´t need to be explained why. “I think you already know him, wasn´t he your Professor?”
You swallowed. “Yeah.”
Wondering for a second, if she knew something, or if she knew the necklace you were wearing. If she did, she didn´t give it away. “Draco, come here, would you?”
She waved and the tall blonde joined your small group. You hadn´t seen him before, which made you somewhat proud. You weren´t anymore too focused on him. And even though he was a guest in your house for your party, he still seemed surprised. Maybe he had hoped to avoid you. For a split second he starred at the necklace and his eyes glistened.
“Y/n.” “Professor.”
Your mother nudged your side. “He isn´t your teacher anymore, I don´t think he minds you calling him by his first name.” She whispered, but was still loud enough for every one to hear.
Oh, he wouldn´t.
Your father smiled awkwardly at your mother´s behavior, pulling her slightly away. “I think Y/n, is in good hands, we should greet the other guests.”
Left alone with Malfoy, you took a few steps away from the crowd.
“They´re right, I´m not your teacher anymore.” Draco cleared his throat. It was like he was actually trying to say something, but nothing followed.
“But am I still your pet?”
Teacher's pet
If I'm so special, why am I secret?
Yeah, why the fuck is that?
Do you regret the things we shared that I'll never forget?
Well, do you? Tell me that
I know I'm young, but my mind is well beyond my years
I knew this wouldn't last, but fuck you, don't you leave me here
Teacher's pet
@feelthefeelingsinsideyou @illuminateshawnm @imaginesforlotsofthings @suburbiasqueen
#draco malfoy imagine#draco malfoy oneshot#draco malfoy x reader#Draco Malfoy#Tom Felton#harry potter imagine#mariamermaidimagine
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