#well actually they live and hawk dies but like its fine he just wakes up somewhere (somewhen) else. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

onechicagorpf · 5 years

Text

Not A Stranger - Part 2

Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader (Chicago Med intern)

Waking up in bed next to a random naked guy after a drunken night out usually sucks, but eh, whatever. you’ll never see him again, right? Well except this time, random naked guy turns out to be your ED attending’s little brother, so maybe you’re a little bit screwed…

Read Part 1 first here Read Part 3 here Read Part 4 here

Warnings: SMUT. Full-on, R-rated smut! Swearing, the usual cuss words. Dubious medical content, lol, because I don’t know a thing about medicine!

Your knuckles rap against the wooden door.

“C’mon, c’mon,” You whisper under your breath, your right leg shaking restlessly. Your heart feels like its in your throat, and you honestly feel like you’re about to pass out from either excitement or anxiety or both.

There’s soft footsteps on the other side of the door, and your back snaps straight.

Jay opens the door, a smile on his face, but his eyes quickly go wide once he sees you.

You don’t care.

You surge in, reaching out and cupping the back of his head, pulling him to you. You press your lips to his passionately, your other hand fisting his shirt. Jay’s hands land on your waist, the small of your back, and he’s almost tripping backwards by the force of you. In your head, you laugh at the fact that you’ve caught him off-guard, for the first time today.

You push forwards, moving further into the threshold of his apartment, still kissing him, but he stops. He grabs your arms and pulls away from the kiss, and you’re entirely confused.

Jay looks stunned and horrified, and you frown, opening your mouth to ask if you’ve made a mistake when you hear from further inside his apartment –

“Is that the pizza?”

You almost pass out.

Will.

Jay lets go of your arms and the two of you separate, putting a far-more-than-required distance between yourselves.

Jesus fucking Christ! The exact person I was trying to avoid! Does the universe just hate me?! What did I do to piss off God this much?! You’re screaming internally, and you kinda just want to rip your own hair out.

Will comes out of the kitchen, and you almost want to groan because he’s wearing a tee and basketball shorts and honestly, this is not how you want to see your attending. He looks fine, but you just feel like you’re seeing a version of him that you’re not close enough to meet yet, and it’s weird. Almost like this is exactly why the voices of your better angels were screaming at you to not sleep with Jay again?

Oh, and there’s also the fact that you’re really only here to blow his brother’s back out.

“Oh! Y/N?” Will’s brows are furrowed, and he freezes on the spot. “Is everything okay?”

“Uh…well,” You start, but your throat is dry and you’re not even sure what to say and you’re freaking the fuck out and –

“Actually, I invited her over.” Jay jumps in, and you turn to him, eyes wide, but trying to stay calm so you can play along. “We were chatting today at Med and she said she, um, wanted to talk to you and I thought you could…help her.” Jay says looking at Will, who turns back to you, concerned.

“Right, yes. I uh – I just, I keep thinking…about Toby Wilkerson. And his stroke. And about how I was this close to just not saying anything about his symptoms because I wasn’t sure, and he could’ve died.” You manage to get out, and my god do you feel like the worst doctor on the planet right now because the truth is you barely thought about Wilkerson since he got sent up to CT.

“Aw, that sucks. But trust me, every doctor’s been there at some point. Come on, let’s talk.” Kind Will, sweet Will, gestures to the couch and you throw your hands up, vigorously waving him off. “No, no, it’s fine I didn’t realise you guys were doing a thing and I don’t want to interrupt – ”

“Nah, don’t worry about that; we were just going to watch the Hawks game but – hey!” Will says suddenly, and you and Jay both look at him expectantly, immensely confused. “You’re a huge Hawks fan, right?”

Jay turns to you slowly, and you can see him begging you to say no, to just back out. Unfortunately, what he doesn’t know is that on your first day at Med, you came in wearing a Hawks scarf that Will pointed out, so you know there’s no way you’re getting out of this one.

“I…am, yes.” You manage to say without sighing deeply, which you very much want to do. Every second of this feels like divine punishment, perfectly crafted to suit your many transgressions in life.

“Alright, come on, let’s watch the game and then we can chat about Wilkerson during the intermissions.” Reluctantly, you and Jay make your way over to the couch and sit down. Right as the thought that this couldn’t possibly get worse passes in your head, Will obliviously plops down right between the two of you. At this point, you’re just pressing your lips against each other so that you don’t burst out laughing like a maniac at how perfectly ridiculous this all is.

Will leans forward to grab the remote and find the channel showing the Hawks game. You look over at Jay, on the other side. The younger Halstead looks back at you.

His eyes scan every inch of your body, from top to bottom, painfully slow like as if he’s mentally undressing you. Heat coils in your core and you swallow hard. Jay leans back against the couch and adjusts the crotch of his jeans subtly, but you notice. A small smile is on your lips, and you feel daring all of a sudden. Holding eye contact with Jay, you run your tongue over your bottom lip, getting it wet and glossy, before sucking it into your mouth.

“Okay!” Jay gets up suddenly, his voice loud. “I’m gonna – gonna go call the pizza guy and see where he’s at!” He goes straight to the kitchen, grabbing his phone on the way. You hold your laughter in.

“There we go,” Will says as he finds the right channel. “Hey, I’m gonna grab a cup of water, you want anything?” You ask and Will requests a beer.

Slipping into the kitchen, you see Jay’s got his back to you, and his arms are shoulder width apart, bracing the edges of the kitchen sink. His knuckles are ghost white, fingers clenching the sink like he’s trying to put a dent in it.

You line up right behind him, getting on your tip-toes so you can press a soft kiss to the back of his neck. Jay shudders, groaning, and you shush him.

“Keep it down,” You warn in a quiet whisper.

“How the fuck am I supposed to keep it down when you’re – fucking – ” Jay struggles, and you chuckle.

“When I’m what? Doing this?” You snake your right hand to the front of his body, letting your fingers softly – too softly – brush the front of his jeans. Jay bucks backwards into you involuntarily, swearing under his breath. His left hand grabs your wandering fingers and holds them as he struggles to get his breathing to settle.

“Y/N…I can’t – ” You turn him around so he’s facing you, and you can see him, see what you’re doing to him. Jay’s pupils are blown, his face is flushed, he’s sweating, and his brows are furrowed. His chest is rising and falling rapidly, and you place your hand over his sternum.

“Breathe, okay? Breathe. I want you to sit down, get through this hockey game, and once Will’s gone – ”

“Once he’s gone I’m going to fuck your brains out, you understand? Y/N, seriously,” Jay holds your chin, tilting your face up, and leans in, brushing his lips against your ear. “I’m gonna make you come all night long. You’re gonna be screaming my name, all night long. You’ll never want to fuck anyone else again after tonight. I’m going to make you mine, you hear me?” You want to nod, or say yes, but your thoughts are just so far gone you can’t. You suddenly feel Jay’s fingers pinching your right nipple through your shirt, and you can’t help letting out a throaty moan that Jay immediately stifles by sliding his thumb into your mouth. You wrap your lips around his thumb and start sucking fervently, closing your eyes but Jay grabs your jaw and pulls you off.

He’s got the dirtiest smirk on his face, after watching you so desperate for him in your mouth. “Easy babygirl, you’re the one that said we got a game to watch, yeah?” He murmurs, low. You begrudgingly nod.

The doorbell goes off, and Jay slides away from you. “I’ll get that!” He announces, and you take a deep breath, adjusting your clothes, before grabbing a beer from the fridge and heading back to the living room.

Thankfully, the one thing you haven’t lied about today is that you are genuinely a huge Hawks fan, so the game manages to keep your mind off of your…other preoccupations for the most part. It’s actually pretty fun, watching another side of Jay – the little brother who’s always ribbing at Will, who leans all the way forward when the Hawks get a powerplay, who tries to hold a whole pizza slice in his mouth so he can throw his hands in the air when they score.

The goal buzzer is going off obnoxiously, and Chelsea Dagger just starts to play. Jay grabs the pizza right before it slides out of his mouth and you just laugh. Will shakes his head. “Excuse my little brother – I promise our mother taught us manners and how to behave in front of women but he’s hit his head a lot over the years, so.” Will shrugs and Jay retaliates by punching his shoulder. “Can you please try and keep it together in front of my student and colleague, please?”

Jay rolls his eyes. “She’s not just yours.” Your eyes flash dangerously at Jay, who winks at you. Luckily, Will doesn’t spot either reaction, because he’s busy looking down at his phone that’s beeping. “She can be my friend too.” Jay adds.

“Yeah…maybe…” Will trails off, and you see his eyebrows drawn together as he stares at his phone.

“Everything good?” You ask.

Will slowly shakes his head. “Brittany Norwalk? The – ”

“- Peds vs auto that you looked at after lunch?” You interject.

“Yeah, they just tried to take her up for a thoracotomy and she couldn’t take the anesthetic so we’re going to have to go non-surgical…but apparently Lanik’s trying to get her shipped off to Lakeshore so we don’t have to keep a bed filled all night til I get back there tomorrow.” Will scoffs, and you just shake your head.

“No offense, and I know he’s your boss, but Lanik’s a complete dick.”

“Trust me, I’m with you on that.” Will replies, sighing. “So what now?” Jay asks and Will thinks about it for a moment. He turns to you. “You okay with it if we talk about Wilkerson tomorrow?”

Before you can say anything, Jay cuts in. “You’re going to Med? Now?”

Will throws his hands up in the air. “It’s the best course of action; I go down there, I can start the non-surgical procedure now, and frankly I’d rather do it myself because I’ve done it before.”

Jay’s eyes connect with you and you look away immediately. You know what he’s thinking. You also know he’s probably thinking the same thing as you – that there’s a patient whose welfare is on the line, so everything else needs to take a backseat now.

“You want me to come with?” You offer, and Will thinks about it.

“It’s fine, you should get some rest anyway. Wilkerson – ”

“Honestly Will, I feel okay already. I think I just needed to get my mind off of him somehow and – ” you gesture to the TV, where the Hawks have just scored another goal, “hockey and pizza’s done the trick.”

“And surely, the amazing company of yours truly?” Jay asks, leaning back against the couch with his hands behind his head, eyes practically twinkling. Both you and Will just stare at him, before you look at each other. “I’m scared to leave you alone with him.” Will says as he starts to grab his stuff.

“Calm down, I’ll give her back to you tomorrow in one piece.” Jay shoots back – which you highly doubt, by the way – and Will says that he better, before going into the bedroom to change.

There’s just silence, and a huge gap between you and Jay on the couch. Never having been one to be able to sit still for long, you fidget, bring your feet up onto the couch and hugging your knees. Jay doesn’t move at all, his eyes on the TV and it’s starting to unnerve you. What if he’s changed his mind?

Will comes back out, in pants and a proper shirt, and picks up his belongings before bidding his goodbyes and leaving. Once the front door closes, you turn the inside latch, locking it shut.

“So,” You start, shoving your hands in your back pockets as you stare at Jay, standing in the middle of his living room.

“So.” Jay parrots back, arms crossed over his chest. His face is neutral, and you can’t read it at all and it bugs you.

“You kinda talked a big game before.”

Jay shrugs, his green eyes fixed directly on you. “Just givin’ you an out if you’ve changed your mind. I wasn’t kidding about what I said before.” His voice is hoarse, deeper than it was before when it was you and him and Will all having fun. His eyes – they’re still, so fucking green but there’s a change. There’s something dark in them, and the thought of that only excites you.

“Make me scream your name, Jay Halstead.” You say, your voice sultry, and Jay comes undone.

He drops his arms and swiftly crosses the room to you, his hand grabbing your jaw as he crushes your lips with his. The two of you slam into a nearby wall, never separating, as you continue to kiss, stronger, deeper, more desperate. Jay expertly parts your lips with his tongue and you moan into the kiss. Running your hands down his body, you feel the lines of his abs through his thin cotton tee, and you catch the hem of it in your hands. Yanking it up, you and Jay part ways to get it off him completely.

Your eyes graze over the expanse of his body – his chest, his abs, his arms. You spot the little freckles dusted over his body, and you also spot the faint scars here and there, from a lifetime of fighting. You look up, and Jay’s watching you watch him.

Maintaining eye contact, you lean forward and start kissing his chest. Light, soft kisses, but as you travel downward, you increase the pressure of your lips on his skin, gripping his hips for support. Eventually, you’re down on your knees, your mouth right under his navel. Jay makes quick work of his jeans and you yank them down unceremoniously, along with his boxers. Jay’s thick cock bounces up, resting against his stomach. You look up from where you are, and you see Jay’s face – his furrowed brows, his open mouth – and you just smile.

You gently press your lips to the tip of his cock, adding pressure slowly. You lick the slit of his cock and Jay sucks in a sharp breath. His fingers run through your hair, still gentle but you suspect not for long.

You take his cock in your mouth, and you start bobbing up and down. With your right hand, you pump whatever your mouth can’t reach of his shaft, and quickly you get into a rhythm. You make sinful noises around his cock, your hand using whatever saliva is dripping down his cock as lube to stroke the base of his shaft. “Fuck, fuck…baby – ” Jay digs his fingers into your hair, grabbing all of it in his hand. You put your left hand over his, pushing, and he gets the message.

“Are you…sure?” Jay asks, out of breath, and you hum while your lips are still wrapped around his cock. The vibrations must have felt good, because Jay swears and involuntarily bucks into your mouth, and you can taste precum starting to leak from the head of his cock.

Jay grabs your hair, and your head, and slowly starts fucking your mouth. Thankfully, he quickly picks up the pace, and starts thrusting vigorously into your mouth. You gag on his cock, just like you wanted to, and every time his thick cock hits the back of your throat, you eyes tear up, but you fucking love it. Jay pauses when he’s fully in your mouth, letting you feel the massiveness of his cock possess what feels like the entirety of your mouth, before fully pulling out.

You gasp for air, breathing heavily, as saliva dribbles down your chin. Jay runs his thumb across your lips. “You look so good with my cock in your mouth, baby.”

“I want…I want more…” You whisper, wrapping your lips around the head of his cock once again. “I don’t want to hurt you, Y/N – FUCK!” Jay starts and you cut him off by swiftly deep-throating his cock. “Fuck fuck fuck – fuck!” Jay repeats, grabbing your hair and fucking up into your mouth. You feel him tense up, as he slams his cock in and out of your mouth, and you hear him shout, and he stops, your nose touching the base of his shaft, his cock entirely in your mouth, and you feel hot spurts of cum down your throat. When he finally releases you, his cock is red and wet, glossy all over from your saliva and his cum.

Jay lifts you up and aggressively kisses you. You grab and pull on his hair, and he retaliates by squeezing your ass hard enough that you know there’s going to be bruises tomorrow. You pull apart, and he tosses you on to the couch. He surges forward, and together you two quickly remove all of your clothing as well. He pushes you so you lay down on his couch, and Jay quickly makes himself at home between your thighs.

Keeping your legs spread with his arms, Jay starts by peppering kisses from the back of your knee to your inner thigh on one leg, before switching to the next and starting all over again. You whine, fisting his hair in your hands to try and get him to touch you where you really want him, but Jay's working his plan the way he wants to.

"God, I love the fucking sounds you make." Jay murmurs, looking up at you. Your eyelashes flutter as he softly blows at your clit, and you can hear him smirking.

"C'mon, c'mon," You beg running your fingers through his hair. Your suddenly feel the forceful pressure of a tongue against your clit, and it's so sudden and so hard that you immediately jerk, hips bucking upwards. “Oh!” You shout, and Jay grabs your hips, holds them down, and starts assaulting your clit with his mouth.

"Oh, fuck, yes, yes - please - uhhnnhh ahhh! Fuck - !" You moan, eyes squeezed shut as Jay softly sucks on your clit. You feel his fingers enter you, curling, stretching you out and you groan. With your free hand, you grab your right breast and squeeze yourself. You start getting lightheaded, and you know what's happening.

"I'm gonna...I'm gonna come..." You whisper, and Jay immediately stops what he's doing.

"No, no, no no Jay please please fuck - " You whimper, trying to grab his hair to push his face back between your legs where he's certainly an expert.

He pulls himself up, bracketing you with his arms as he's face to face with you now. Bracing himself on one arm, he uses his right hand to brush away the hair on your face. "Shhh baby, I've got you, yeah? You're mine, and I'm gonna take good care of you."

With his hand around his cock, Jay slowly rubs your opening with the head of his cock. You moan, grabbing his face with your hands, begging him to fuck you. “Say you want me,” Jay’s pupils are so dilated, and he’s breathing heavy.

“I want you, I want you so bad, please, please – ” You whine, and he leans down and presses his lips to yours, soft and gentle. Your kiss is slow, and sweet – Jay runs his tongue over your lips and you almost want to start crying because of how good everything feels. You start feeling pressure between your legs, and you grab Jay’s shoulders to try and shift yourself down to bring his cock up into you. Jay just laughs at your desperation – “I’ve got you, Y/N...easy now,” – and slides his tip into you.

You let out a loud, dragged out moan, your back arching off the couch. “You’re so fucking wet, you’re so fucking wet for me,” Jay groans, sliding his entire cock into you easily. He’s buried to the hilt inside of you, and he starts thrusting gently. So slowly, that you can feel every inch of him against your muscles, your core. You rock back against him, your pussy clenching around his cock with every thrust. “You take me…so good baby…its like your body...was made to get fucked by me,” Jay whispers into your ear, before quickening the pace, harshly slamming his cock into you with every rapid thrust. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh god – ” You whimper, your voice breaking off into a high pitched whine as you throw your head back. Your whole body is bouncing with every of Jay’s thrusts, and you know you’re so close, so close, when Jay suddenly halts his movements.

You’re going to kill him.

“You – fucking – fuck!” You breath, trying to rock yourself on his cock, trying to build up the heat in your core again, but Jay pulls out of you entirely. “Fu – Halstead!” You shout, eyes flashing but the intense look in Jay’s eyes silences you immediately.

“I’m not letting you cum until you’re screaming my name so loud all of Chicago can hear you, okay?” Jay’s voice is rough, deep and almost threatening, and you swallow hard. Eyelashes fluttering, you nod, your breasts softly bouncing as your chest rises and falls heavily. Jay grabs your arms and turns you over, so that you’re laying on your stomach. He presses his front to your back and moves your hair to the side. His lips roughly lay kisses over the back of you neck, between your shoulder blades, down your spine. You close your eyes, relaxing against his gentle movements. Eventually, his hands grip your hips and pull up, so that you’re on your knees, ass in the air, face pressed against the couch.

You feel the couch dip behind you, and you try to see what he’s doing, but you can’t, not from your angle. The suspense of it just makes everything so much more heated. You feel Jay’s left hand dig in to your left hip, and before you can even process it, you feel his cock thrust roughly into your cunt.

“Oh!” You shout, and Jay’s fingers dig into both your hips, and that’s the only warning you get before he starts pounding his thick cock into you. Obscene noises escape your mouth, and you squeeze your eyes shut as the sound of Jay’s thighs slapping against your ass resonate loudly in the room. You’re not going to be walking straight tomorrow, you know it, but it’s so fucking worth it because this feels so good, so amazing, so hot and it’s what you want and it’s what you need. Tears start spilling out of your eyes as you feel the orgasm you’ve been denied for about an hour now building again, stronger, heavier, deeper, and you start whining, whimpering, mewling.

Jay grabs your arms and lifts you a few inches off the couch, and you almost pass out because this new position gives him all the room he needs and more. Jay’s cock slams right where you need it to, and you feel like he’s fucking rearranging your guts at this point. Jay’s guttural moans are like music to your ears, and you feel your toes start curling, clenching around his thick cock.

“J – Jay, Jay, Jay! I’m coming, I’m com – JAY!” You scream, refusing to let his name part from your lips. Your vision whites out as you go over the edge, your body shuddering and twitching, and your orgasm slams into you so hard you feel like you’ve passed out. Jay slowly pulls out and gently releases your arms. He has to help flip you over because every part of you feels sorely fucked out and jelly-like.

Your eyes stay closed, and you’re drowsy, like you’ve been given every painkiller in the world. You vaguely hear Jay’s voice, and it feels like its in the distance, or as if your head is underwater.

“Hey. Hey,” Jay repeats, and you slowly open your eyes and you see him over you, watching your face with concern in his eyes. “Did I go too hard?” He’s worried, and you just slowly shake your head.

“Y/N, I – ”

You say something so soft Jay can’t make it out. “What is it, Y/N?” He leans closer. You just reach down between the two of you, and wrap your hand around his still erect cock that’s now leaking precum again.

Jay stiffens, but he grabs your hand. “It’s okay, I’m okay, let’s just make sure you’re fine – ” and he shifts to get up, but you stop him. Your eyes are wide open now, and while your head is still spinning, you’re a little more focused than you were 5 minutes ago. You send your right hand downwards, touching yourself and covering your fingers in your wetness. One of your fingers accidentally swipes against your sensitive clit and you twitch sharply, crying out, and Jay’s immediately holding you, worried.

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” You murmur, and bring your slick hand up, wrapping it around Jay’s cock. Jay settles his forearms on either side of your head, bracketing you, and he presses a soft, chaste kiss to your lips. Smiling against him, you start working his cock, your hand rubbing against his stomach and yours. Jay’s so close already, so it doesn’t take too long before he starts moaning. He dips his head into your neck, swearing under his breath. “Hey, no, I want to see you Jay. Look at me now,” You say, and Jay wordlessly complies, lifting his head back up. You see how absolutely wrecked he looks – brows drawn together, sweat all over his face, and body, breathing like he’s running out of air – and you reach up with your other hand and brush your thumb against his check. “You’re so good Jay, you’re so good, you’re almost there baby,” You encourage him, and he nods. “I’m clo – close, Y/N, I’m so – I’m almost – I – uhn, fuck – I’m so close baby – ” Jay babbles softly, eyes screwed shut. You almost come again, just watching how gone he is. Jay sucks in a sharp breath when you run your thumb over his slit, and then he’s over the edge.

“Oh fuck – fuck, fuck – Y/N, Y/N!” Jay shouts, shooting hot cum over your stomach, your breasts. You press kisses to his neck, letting him settle down and regain his senses as he sags down against you. The both of you are slick with sweat, and half unconscious, so it’s a while before anyone moves or says anything. Eventually, the two of you decide you need to get in the shower, so you do.

The two of you stand under the shower water, and you run your hands over each other’s bodies, cleaning away the messes of Jay’s orgasm. Well, at least you do. Jay’s fingers keep peeling off to thumb your nipples, or squeeze your breasts, and you have to grab his fingers to stop him from being so handsy. He laughs – a cheeky, I’m-not-sorry-at-all look on his face.

“So,” You start, looking at him.

“So,” Jay repeats, his lips curving into a smile.

“You kept your promise, I’ll say. Made me scream your name, fucked me so hard and so good I think you might have ruined everyone else for me,” You say, and Jay frowns. “Might have?” You just laugh softly, as does Jay, before his face drops the smile. “Seriously, though, are you okay? I went really hard on you – I swear, I didn’t mean to – I don’t know what happened – I just saw you there under me and I just – I lost my mind and you just looked so fucking good and I wanted to – ”

“Shh – Jay, look at me.”

His green eyes connect with yours, and your hearts warms with how full of concern and worry they are.

“I can take it. When it’s from you, I can take it,” You say, and then your heart’s beating like crazy in your chest because that right there? That sounds like its more than just sex. You’re not sure what this is, you’re not even sure if you should be doing this at all – Will’s still his brother and still your attending and having sex with Jay already screws stuff up but something more than sex?

That’s just a recipe for disaster, right?

Thankfully, Jay doesn’t seem to realise that you’re starting to panic, and he just leans in, and holds your face in his hands as he kisses you softly. You relax, Jay’s lips moving against yours, with yours, in a delicate dance that has you forgetting all your worries and feeling safe and comfortable.

***

A/N: Thanks for reading! I do have ideas for a part 3, but I’ve also kinda left it so that this can be the end of this series, so I’m probably not continuing it unless y’all want me to! If you want to see part 3, please leave comments saying so! Thanks :)

#jay halstead imagine #jay halstead x reader #jay halstead smut #jay halstead #chicago pd imagine #chicago med imagine #onechicago #chicago pd smut #cpd smut #cpd imagine #onechicago imagine #will halstead imagine #will halstead

724 notes · View notes

highwayphantoms · 4 years

Text

beep boop i have written some words. here they are. :P

a fill for the @dapromptexchange‘s winter fill-a-thon! the prompt:

Anders and Hawkes daughter is the herald of Andraste

I might end up adding more to this, might not. Don’t forget that likes and reblogs are excellent sources of serotonin and dopamine and I have clinical deficiencies of both ;) Fill is below the readmore.

- - - - - - - - -

"She's eight," Hawke snaps. Cullen actually takes a step back, and she might have been amused were she not so incandescently angry. “I don’t care what your reasoning is. She’s lucky to be alive--I’m not involving her in any more of this.”

“We don’t have a choice. She doesn’t have a choice,” the Seeker insists. “She can close the rifts.”

Unimpressed, Hawke crosses her arms and replies, “So could any other mage, if they tried.”

“They have tried,” Cullen says, in a tone that suggests a total lack of success.

She’s not terribly surprised. Of the fallen Circles in the south, most fell in with the rebels now hiding within the walls of Redcliffe. Mages north of the Waking Sea have mostly died, and the rest gone into hiding--which was exactly what she’d been doing until a little over a week ago. Not in the north, though. It had been too dangerous to stay in the Free Marches, and as much as she’d liked Antiva, it was hard to stay out of sight. So they’d gone south, back to Ferelden, back to the wide open farmlands she’d grown up in. Just… not the exact same lands. She’s stubborn, but not so stubborn as to try growing anything on Blighted land.

In other words, there weren’t many mages floating around, and the sort desperate enough to fall in with this ragtag outfit weren’t likely to be particularly talented.

“I don’t like this any more than you do,” the Seeker says after a moment. “An untrained magelet--”

"She's not a mage."

"No?"

"No." A lie, but a necessary one. Her daughter's clever, and she learns quick, but she's so young.

She grew up afraid--not of magic, but of templars. Afraid for her father, for herself, for her sister. Afraid for what would happen if templars ever did descend on their home. It had never happened, but as an adult she’d learned that there had been several close calls when she was young.

She had managed to protect her daughter from that fear so far. She was damned if she was going to let all that work go to waste now.

“Think about it,” Cullen eventually says, sounding oddly conciliatory. Maybe she had spooked him. “At least with the Breach stabilized, nothing has to happen tonight.”

Hawke snorts. Whatever had happened to “stabilize” the massive rip in the Veil, it had nearly killed her daughter. The world could wait. She had more important concerns.

Besides, she’d spent years in a city where the Veil was so thin that demons slipped through on the regular. Cullen ought to be used to it by now.

The village that the survivors of the ill-fated Conclave have set up in is tiny, and young. Likewise, most of its buildings are tiny. There’s a wooden wall surrounding the village proper, though it’s barely taller than Anders in spots. The Chantry is by far the oldest building to be seen; it’s made of stone, not wood, and she suspects the village has burned in the past. It happens, sometimes, in winter. In particularly bad years, there’s always tell of homes or entire villages gone up in flames when a fire lit to keep people warm reached too far. Besides, a little village like this is in the mountains and nowhere near a trade road. If it burned, there was no one to see the smoke rising over the trees.

The little hut that they’ve been… assigned, for lack of a better word, looks much the same as the rest. It’s closer to the gate in the wall than to the Chantry, which she appreciates, but she would’ve preferred being outside the wall entirely. She’d done some exploring before the Conclave; there were homes scattered outside the village, if not many. Any of those would have been preferable, but she knows damn well that the rest of them are happier knowing exactly where she is. Exactly where Anders is.

Exactly where their daughter is.

She grumbles a half-hearted curse on the health of everyone involved, and pushes open the door. The hut is only large enough for a single room, barely more than a hearth, a bed, and a chest of drawers, but it’s fine. It has a roof that doesn’t seem to leak, so it’s already a step above her uncle’s shack in Kirkwall. Her daughter is still as she left her, tucked in the bed and abnormally still; Anders is pacing in front of the hearth.

He stops in his tracks when she shuts the door with slightly more force than was strictly necessary. Glancing at her, he doesn’t say anything but she knows what question he has and what answer he’s hoping for. It’s the same answer she wanted, and didn’t get. Even if there wasn’t a single templar in or near the village--and Cullen is a templar, whether he wants to call himself that or not--she’d be reluctant to put her daughter anywhere near the rifts. Learning to ignore the promises of unseen demons reaching into a mage’s dreams is enough for an eight-year-old to handle. Actually physically fighting a demon that has crossed the Veil is a completely different matter. She would never ask her daughter to handle Justice--it was dangerous enough to do it herself and even Anders would freely admit that she was the stronger mage between the two of them.

“They want to keep her here,” she says reluctantly after a moment. “To use whatever that magic on her hand is to seal the Breach.”

His expression is difficult to read with his back to the fire, but she can see well enough to see fear, anger, and grief flash across his face. She half expects Justice to make a contribution as he quietly replies, “She’s lucky to be alive.”

“I know.” It’s not right. It’s not right, and it’s not fair, and what else is new? There’s no such thing as fair when you’re a mage. To be feared by common people isn’t fair. Being locked up because of something that you are, through no fault of your own, isn’t fair. The abuse of every mage locked in a Circle isn’t fair. Living a life on the run as an apostate isn’t fair. None of it is fair.

Some things never change.

“I don’t think we really have a choice,” she adds finally. There are no good options, but there never are. Let them use her daughter as a tool, risk losing her forever. Try to flee, risk dying. Once, she would have gladly opted for the latter, but not anymore. “I think the best thing we can do is go along with this, and protect her as best we can.”

He frowns, but she expected that. “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t either.” She sighs, and crosses the small room to join him by the hearth. Here, close to the fire, she can almost forget the bone-deep chill of the mountain wind. “There’s no guards posted outside the door, at least.”

This gets her a wry chuckle, at least. “It’s a start,” he admits, and glances aside at the bed. She follows his gaze, and when he looks back this time it’s her turn for an unspoken question. “She’s okay,” he says by way of answer. “Whatever happened down there, it’s calmed the mark. The magic’s not spreading anymore.”

For now, she amends silently. Where it came from is a mystery. Whose magic it is, a mystery. How dangerous it is, whether it can be removed, what it means for the future, all unknowns. As much as she likes solving puzzles like this, it’s different when it’s her daughter’s life at risk.

“I can’t lose her,” she mumbles. Wordlessly, Anders pulls her into a tight hug. Her mother, her brother, her sister, all her fault in the end. Losing her daughter would be enough to kill her.

“I won’t let that happen,” he says.

She wishes she could believe him.

#dragon age #dragon age fic #handers fic #jay writes

11 notes · View notes

degenerate-perturbation · 4 years

Link

Chapters: 21/32 Fandom: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening, Dragon Age II Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Female Amell/Female Surana Characters: Female Amell, Female Surana, Anders, Velanna, Nathaniel Howe, Oghren (Dragon Age), Justice (Dragon Age), Sigrun (Dragon Age), Varric Tethras, Isabela (Dragon Age), Male Hawke (Dragon Age) Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Self-Harm, Blood Magic, Prostitution, Drowning, Wilderness Survival Series: Part 2 of void and light, blood and spirit Summary: Amell and Surana are out of the Circle, and are now free to build a life together. But when the prison doors fly open, what do you have in common with the one shackled next to you, save for the chains that bound you both?

All around Yvanne the enormous cypress thrummed with life. If there was a world beyond the belly of the hollow tree, she didn’t quite believe it.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Of course you don’t understand,” her great grandmother said kindly. Distant bells seemed to ring with every one of her words. All of a sudden Yvanne wasn’t sure if the old woman’s lips were actually moving when she spoke to her. “Who could possibly expect you to?”

“Why did you bring me here? That spirit I saw—was that you?”

“In a way,” the old woman allowed. “But I did not bring you here. You brought yourself.”

“But you called me. You told me to come home.”

“Is that what you heard?” She smiled. “Oh, my daughter.”

That stung. “Stop it,” Yvanne growled. “You don’t even know me.”

“Not as well as I’d like. But we have met, in the world beneath the world.”

“You’ve been spying on me,” Yvanne realized. “Through the Fade. Just what gave you the right?”

The old woman’s bright eyes flashed. “Precisely the same thing that gives you to look in on those you wish to see.”

“That’s—that’s not the same,” Yvanne faltered. “I didn’t want to look. I tried not to look. I couldn’t control it.”

“But you’d like to. And so you are here.”

“No, I’m here because you called me. I’m here because I had just settled into a perfectly contented life when all of a sudden I became tormented by these voices—your voice.”

Yvanne could load quite a lot of furious accusation into a short phrase spoken softly, but the old woman remained unmoved. “Believe me, my daughter, I do not have the power to bring about what you experienced. If you heard my voice, it was as a trickle in a torrent. You have begun to awaken as a spirit mage.”

“And just what in the void does that mean?”

In tones of infinite patience: “For years you have hobbled yourself; now you are beginning to walk freely for the first time. Of course you were overwhelmed. Anyone would be. Nobody here in Dairsmuid awakens in their third decade of life, without the benefit of any guidance whatsoever.” In tones of bottomless sorrow: “You have been done a great disservice.”

Yvanne stood for a while, feeling all the hot air leak out of her.

“So can you help me?” she said, defeated. “Or not?”

“Of course I can. And I will. If you choose it. But how far you walk along the path is always up to you.”

Something sat uncomfortably in Yvanne’s stomach. “Alright, fine. Can you at least answer me this?” she said wearily. “Where is my mother?”

The old woman cast her eyes down. “That I do not know. She never came here.”

An unspoken hope died in her chest. “My father, then? My sisters?”

“Three of your sisters live,” the old woman said. “In one way or another. But of all who I called, only you returned.”

All she did not say fell upon Yvanne like a mountain. She dropped her head. “I see.”

“Oh, my daughter. I am sorry.” She sounded like she meant it.

More questions sprung to her lips. When did my father die? And how? Which of her four sisters lived? And how? But as soon as they occurred to her, she thought better of them. She didn’t want to know. Of course she didn’t. If she’d wanted to know, she would have seen it in the Fade. It was a cruel thing to know about herself.

“Why me, then?”

“You are the one who answered.”

“No. Why call at all? My father never spoke of his home. We have nothing to do with each other, blood relatives or not. What do you want with me?”

“Is it so wrong for an old woman to wish to see her lost daughter?” The old woman’s eyes closed. She said no more for many long moments. “I apologize. I am tired now. I must walk in the Fade for a time.”

“What? But I’ve only just arrived!”

“We will speak again. For now you will go with Itai; he will be your companion today.”

“Now hold on, I—” Yvanne began to protest, but the old woman was already asleep, having slipped into dreams in the space of a few breaths. She was alone. But she did not feel alone. If anything she felt like an intruder. The tree keeping her great-grandmother alive thrummed steadily, like a heartbeat.

“Yvanne?”

She turned to face a young man with wide cheekbones and a halo of black curls. “How did you know my name? Or that I was here?”

He gave her a polite, puzzled smile. “Buya called me, of course. I’ve finished my training for today, so I can show you around.” He was younger than her. Was he even twenty? “I’m Itai—I think we might be cousins.” He crossed his right arm over his chest and tilted his chin down in greeting.

She stiffened. “Well, maybe we’re cousins, but you don’t know me, and I’m only staying here for as long as it takes me to get this—this problem under control, so don’t get too comfortable. There’s no need for all this…this…”

Itai shrugged. “Well, you’re going to have to wait at least a few hours anyway before she wakes up, so you might as well see the city, right?”

—

On her way to the great cypress, Yvanne had paid no attention to her surroundings at all. A compulsion to reach the tree where her ancestor dwelled had consumed her, and only now had it loosened its hold on her. Now she was finally seeing the city with clear eyes.

Dairsmuid was a city built upon the water. Wooden planks, shiny and smooth from the thousands of feet that walked upon them, were its streets, but so was the water; everywhere were gondoliers carrying goods by canoe, chatting with each other as they passed. Some of the buildings were built in the trees themselves, and what trees they were; they flared at their twisted, knotty bases. Some grew fused together, making masses large enough to support homes. Circling steps were bolted to many of them, and cables ran between the boughs, sending packages and messages zipping overhead.

Itai introduced Yvanne to more distant cousins and uncles and aunts than she could possibly keep track of, men and women of all ages. Each one greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and a quick embrace, too swiftly and with too much assurance for her to protest.

And not a single one of them batted an eye at all the magic.

Magic didn’t seem to exactly be common in Dairsmuid, but every once in a while she would spot a shopkeeper levitating his wares, or a gondolier lighting a lantern with a snap of his fingers. Everywhere she saw spirits, mostly formless wisps, but larger, more distinct spirits, too. Children chased them like chickens, earning scoldings from their parents when they were caught. She watched, rapt, one group of mage children play a game of spark-shooting with each other. As she watched something cracked open deep inside her, and suddenly she wanted to cry.

“Alright, there?” said Itai. She snapped out of it, drawing her eyes away from a scene where one child chased a wisp right over the edge and into the water, where he was fished out by an irritated gondolier. She just barely managed to nod.

Itai kept rambling as he took her around, away from the center of the city—”Dairsmuid’s mostly on the water now, but old timers will tell you how the sea used to be much further out“—past rows of fishermen hauling in oysters and crayfish—”They’re best with lemon sauce,”—inland towards residential areas that were raised over mud and peat rather than standing water. They went past shrines to Andraste laid with offerings of fire-lilies—”What? Of course we worship Andraste! What a strange question,”—past spirit-lanterns nestled in the branches of the cypresses—”They’re always lit, so nobody falls off the platform. And if someone does, the spirits signal the night watchman to come over and fish them out…it’s usually just the drunks, though.”

Yvanne found herself liking Itai quite a lot. Until—

“And my Templar training isn’t so bad, usually, but master has us getting up so early, and usually at night I find myself thinking of so many things and unable to sleep—”

She stopped in her tracks. It took him a few seconds to notice, and he turned, puzzled.

“Your what training?”

“Templar training,” he repeated. “Are you alright? You look like you ate something curdled.”

“I didn’t realize Dairsmuid had Templars.” She did not try to keep the hiss out of her voice. Including my own family.

He stared at her, uncomprehending. “Sorry, I don’t get it. What’s the problem?”

How in Thedas was she to respond to that? “So was that why they picked you to give me the tour? Were you supposed to keep an eye on me and cut me down in case I turned out to be dangerous after all? I knew I was right to be suspicious—”

“Hold on!” Itai was laughing. Actually laughing! “I think you’re confused. In Dairsmuid, Templar is a ceremonial role. We don’t take lyrium or anything like the westerners. I’m not even being taught to fight with this thing—” He tapped the ornate weapon belted to his hip. “It’s all just rituals and basic forms.”

“Then—” She stumbled. “Then what’s the point?”

He shrugged. “Tradition? Got to be a Circle at Dairsmuid, with Templars. So we have them. We’re supposed to keep the Seers safe, but the Seers don’t really need protection, so it’s pretty boring. Once I finish training, I’m probably going to be a fisherman like my da. Look, the sword’s ceremonial—it’s not even sharp.”

She must have still been staring. He smiled, embarrassed. “Sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I don’t really know much about western Circles.”

Maker, but this place was weird.

“I can’t believe the Chantry lets this place exist,” Yvanne said just as the silence was growing awkward..

“Well, Rivain’s pretty far from Orlais.” He shrugged. “We do things our own way. Really, the Qunari up north are a much bigger problem, but Dairsmuid’s not anywhere near Kont-Arr. Anyway, the Seers wouldn’t let anything happen.”

“Just what is a Seer? Exactly?”

Itai looked at her like she’d just asked the color of the sky. “Huh? But you’re a Seer. Aren’t you?”

She shook her head.

“You know—a woman who communes with the spirits. You call them mages out west, right?”

“But plenty of men are mages,” said Yvanne. “What do you do with the boys who are born with magic?”

Itai snorted, laughing.“Nobody’s born with magic. Spirits pick who they want to talk to. And sure, boys can talk to spirits, but they can’t be Seers.”

“Why not?”

“They just can’t.” He scratched his head. “Look, I don’t really know. Why don’t you ask Maita? She’s not a Seer yet, but she will be. Come on, you’ll like her. I have to get home and help da clean today’s catch, anyway, so I’ll leave you with her, if that’s alright.”

Three girls sat laughing and weaving reed baskets as Itai and Yvanne approached. One of them stood in anticipation, her eyes widening in delight. All three girls wore bright brass jewelry, but one—the Seer?—wore the most; bangles on her wrists and ankles, and a headdress of overlapping discs that glittered and clinked with her tiniest movement.

“Is this her?” she demanded of Itai, and didn’t wait for an answer. “Oh, it is! Oh, welcome! We are also so glad you have come.” She jangled as she wrapped Yvanne in a tight, loud embrace. “Ambuya told us you had come.”

“But how—”

“Oh, but your hair!” Maita gasped. Never had Yvanne heard anyone sound so heartbroken over hair. She glanced over her shoulder to plead wordlessly with Itai, but he was already grinning, waving goodbye, and backing away, the traitor. “You poor thing, you must have been through so much.”

Yvanne suddenly became aware of her body, sharply and unpleasantly. She hadn’t looked at herself in so long that she had forgotten that others could still see her. Maker, she didn’t even want to think about how she probably smelled She self-consciously tucked a piece of it behind her ear. Unending months of neglect and salt had caused it to dread up into unsalvageable masses.

“You must let me fix it for you. Oh, I love to do braids, but–may I?” She reached out to touch Yvanne’s hair. She struggled not to flinch. “No, I don’t think there’s enough left to do braids. How about knots? Or twists? I do the best twists; ask anyone.” She turned to her two friends, clinking, for confirmation. Both nodded earnestly.

Nobody had done Yvanne’s hair since she was nine years old. Loriel had been useless at it and nobody else had come close to earning the right. “I—Okay.”

“Yes! Wonderful! Please, do come in. You must have some of my beads. I’m getting married soon, so I won’t get to wear them, and I don’t even have any sisters to give them to. Only brothers–it makes me so sad!”. Then an expression came over her face. “Wait! You aren’t married, are you? I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have assumed…”

Yvanne felt the absence of the ring upon her finger, and answered, truthfully, “No, I’m not married.”

Maita’s animated expression returned. “Oh, good! Then you can have the beads. Come, come!”

She tugged her inside, enticing her friends to come join her in solving Yvanne’s hair problem. She was altogether reminded of Leliana. Yvanne slipped out of her grasp. “Look, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but—we’ve only just met.”

Maita gave her a confused smile. “But of course we’ve met. In the world beneath the world.”

Again that phrase.

“Maita, you’re shaming her,” one of the others said, rolling her eyes. “She has no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh,” Maita said, suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, no, you really don’t, do you?”

If Yvanne had not spent the past years being humbled over and over again, she might have taken offense. As it was, she only shrugged.

Maita covered her face in shame. “I’m so sorry—I assumed, since you were training with Ambuya—we were all so jealous when we heard…”

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m afraid I only look Rivaini. I’m not a part of any of this. I’m certainly not a Seer.”

“But you are a Seer,” Maita said encouragingly. “Or you will be.”

She crossed her arms, doubtful. “She said I was only beginning to learn. That I was already late.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’ll learn. You’re her blood, after all.”

“Isn’t half of Dairsmuid her blood? I’ve lost track of how many cousins I’ve met today.”

Maita laughed. She had a musical laugh. “Perhaps not so much as half! Our Buya had many sons, but even those who are not her blood are still her family; she is buya to all of us.”

Yvanne, who had been assuming that ‘Buya’ was the old woman’s name, made a small adjustment.

Dairsmuid had a public bathhouse, and she was in luck—today was the women’s day to use it. The next several hours went to matters of hair and beads and other things so trivial that Yvanne had nearly forgotten they existed. Was there really still a world of moisturizing hair cream and scents and jewelry? She had liked such things, once, because in the Circle they had been—if not forbidden, then strictly discouraged, and difficult to get a hold of. The habit had stayed with her as the Vigil’s keeper, and she had yet to be cured of it. It was so ridiculous. It was so nice.

Somewhere in this process she told the story of her travels. She hadn’t meant to—she’d thought it far too painful—but somehow it all came out. She started with hiding in Highever—she left out that she had ever been a Grey Warden—and by the time she got to the part with the pirates her hair was done. It had been long all her life, and was twisted close to her head and bound with bells and beads. She looked both like and unlike Isabela, like and unlike her old self. She had never felt so light; she couldn’t stop tilting her head back and forth and feeling the absence of the weight. It was strange, but not—bad. No, not bad at all.

By then it was time for the evening meal was upon them, and Maita’s mother—a stout woman who had clearly never taken no for an answer in her life—was insisting. Yvanne ate with Maita and her mother and her younger brothers who stared at her with curious eyes the size of dinner plates. Maita’s mother, it turned out, was not from Dairsmuid, but from a village on the eastern coast.

“—I came here to be with my girl, of course. She wanted to learn here in the capital, and I was not about to let her go alone,” she said proudly.

Yvanne slept there on a palette by the smouldering hearth, sick with imagining what it would be like to have a mother like that.

As the days passed and her great-grandmother did not summon her, she was folded into Maita’s family almost without noticing. Maita had three younger brothers who Yvanne somehow fell into the watching of—boys of six, ten, and twelve, who begged her to show them how to make lightning. She helped with the chores, kept the boys busy. She even learned a few words of the local Rivaini dialect. On the last day of the week, she helped decorate the household shrine to Andraste with marsh-lillies and necklaces of carved wooden beads. The prayers spoken over the shrine were not entirely unlike the Chant, but not entirely like it, either.

Finally came market day, so Yvanne saw the Dairsmuid market. Maita tugged her along as she did her family’s shopping, informing her of what fruits were in season and asking frequent questions about what things were like in Ferelden.

“Oh, I used to love the star-reader,” Maita sighed, pointing out a woman’s nondescript stall. “Of course, it is not Seeing, but that’s what made it special. My friends and I used to giggle for hours over the fates the stars had in store for us. The men we would marry, how many children we would have…” She trailed off, then finished cheerfully, “But I’ll be getting married soon.”

Yvanne could not help but notice that no husband-to-be was in evidence.

Maita clinked loudly as she laughed. “I haven’t met him yet, of course! He lives in a village far away from here, one that needs a Seer. Once I have passed the ritual, I’ll be ready to serve. I’m told he’s very kind. Is it bad that I hope he’s handsome, too?” She giggled behind her hand. “But you aren’t married! Do you want to consult the star-reader? Don’t you ever wonder what your husband will be like?

“Hm,” said Yvanne. “No, thank you.”

Soon after Maita encountered a friend of hers, and fell inextricably into an animated conversation that Yvanne couldn’t follow at all. Slighted, and resentful that she felt so, she wandered away. She could hear in the middle distance bell-like music. The source of it turned out to be a Vashoth woman sitting cross-legged, producing the tune from an instrument Yvanne had no name for, a wooden box lined with metal rods that produced unearthly music under the Vashoth’s careful fingers. Too soon, the song ended, and she lifted her hornless head to smile in thanks at the crowd.

Only then did Yvanne notice the scars around her lips.

“Did you mean to buy something?” the Vashoth asked suddenly. Yvanne forced herself not to stare.

“I have no money,” she stammered, then added, “Sorry.”

The saarebaas sized her up, and smiled. As she did, her scars instantly became the most noticeable thing about her. “Oh, I see. You’re new; one of Buya’s girls, aren’t you? I am called Amarna.”

“So I’m told,” Yvanne said stiffly

“You’re a bit old to start training.”

“I’ve had training.”

The saarebas laughed shrugging. “Mm. Well, it was probably better than the training I got.”

Yvanne’s eyes flicked to the woman’s scars again.

Amarna snorted good-naturedly. “Admiring these?” she said, touching her lips.

“I wasn’t—”

The former saarebas laughed. “Go ahead and look, I’m not ashamed.”

Yvanne wanted to apologize, but now she worried that it would only make it worse. Luckily the awkwardness was broken by a little Vashoth girl in pigtails, no more than eight years old, and already as high as Yvanne’s shoulder.

“Look what my friend showed me how to do!” the little girl said breathlessly to—presumably—her mother, ignoring Yvanne entirely. She extended her pudgy, little-girl hands palms up. Fireballs bloomed there, first, red, then yellow, then green and blue. Yvanne startled backwards and nearly knocked over a rack of fishing spears. “Are you proud of me?”

“Very good!” her mother beamed as Yvanne desperately tried to stabilize the rack of spears. “Indeed I am proud of you. But do you remember the rules?”

The girl let the fireballs dissipate. “No fire without my tutors watching,” she said ruefully, rolling her eyes.

“That’s right. Now go play.”

Only then did the little girl notice Yvanne and mutter a shy ‘hello’ before running off again.

“Sorry for her,” said the saarebas. “She’s always trying things she’s not quite ready for yet.”

“That…must be difficult.”

“I can’t even tell you how many times she’s hurt herself!” She shook her head. “But if she makes no mistakes, she’ll never learn.”

Yvanne had been that age when she’d first discover her magic. She never would have dreamed of showing her father. She’d hidden it. Had prayed for the Maker to take it away. “I’m surprised you don’t worry.”

“Of course I worry! What mother doesn’t? But she has good teachers here. I’ll never be much of a mage, but the Seers take care of her. And if she’ll receive some scars for her own foolishness, she will never have scars like mine.” She said it in well-rehearsed tones, like this was a speech she had been obliged to recite too many times.

Yvanne remembered Cheddar, and what had happened to her sarebaaset. But no, she daren’t ask. Instead she said, “What kind of instrument is that?”

And like so Maita found her some minutes later, profusely apologizing for leaving her alone, exchanging pleasantries with Amarna, and finally dragged her away.

“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you,” she said in hushed tones. “I forget that most people outside Rivain aren’t used to the freed saarebas. Quite a lot of them live here.”

That night Yvanne could not get to sleep beneath the unfamiliar ceiling. She thought of Amarna’s little daughter whose magic would only ever earn her a gentle admonition, and envy rose in her gorge like poison. What she would have given to have grown up here in Dairsmuid. What might she have become if her father had brought her here instead of to Ferelden? Why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he loved her enough to bring her here? All those years in Kinloch, the wretched thing that place made her—

She thought of Amarna’s scars, and thought—yes, it could have been worse. But it could have been better, too.

Yes, she was here now, but what good did that do her? It didn’t make up for it. Nothing ever would. Dairsmuid was not her home. If she had ever had one, it had been Vigil’s Keep.

That home was lost to her. Perhaps did not exist at all. Just like her mother and her father and her sisters. Everything was lost, lost—all that remained was here. A wave of nauseous longing rolled over her like the evening tide, and she went to sleep no less conflicted and confused.

—

She dreamt again of Loriel, buried deep within her tower of stone. Her hair was longer now than it had ever been, neatly parted in the center. Somehow in their time apart it had stopped frizzing, and fell to her back in elegant feathers. Were there new lines on her face? How old was she now?

She was writing busily in a blank parchment manuscript, occasionally consulting a tome at her elbow. She scribbled for hours, only occasionally pausing to sip water or stand up to stretch. All these little gestures, so familiar, so utterly strange.

Who was she? Who was she?

“I never even knew you, did I?” Yvanne said to her, knowing she wouldn’t be heard. “Not that you were any better. You never knew me either, did you? I don’t think I ever felt more alone than when I was with you.”

And Loriel kept scratching away, oblivious. It was starting to make her angry.

“You know,” she said, “If it hadn’t been for all that fucking blood magic, maybe you could have heard me say all these things. Maybe you could have heard me at all. I was too much a coward to say what I meant to your face, and now you’ll never know how I really felt. You selfish fucking bitch.”

And then—

—Loriel looked up.

Her forehead wrinkled in that burningly familiar way. Her mouth began to form the shape of the word, who—?

The dream collapsed.

—

Yvaanne woke in the middle of the night, knowing that she was summoned to Dairsmuid’s great tree. She received no message; only a conviction that she was wanted, and an intuitive understanding of where to go. She walked there, barefoot, the ancient half-drowned forest singing all around her.

Buya was exactly where she had been, awake and bright eyed. “I am sorry to have woken you. Did I interrupt your dreaming?”

She shook her head. “I did not want that dream.”

“I see.” The old woman’s lips still did not move when she spoke. “Have you decided, then, if you will stay and learn from me?”

“I…”

A heaviness lay on her heart. After a week in Dairsmuid, she had never missed the Vigil more. She missed her high grey walls, her fluttering banners, the smell of smelting iron in the air. She missed the training, the drinking games, the knowledge that everyone around her knew her name, that people would care if she was gone.

But here in Dairsmuid, everyone somehow knew her name. They would care if she was gone. So they didn’t know her, so what? Nobody had ever known her.

Dairsmuid was here. Dairsmuid was now. And was love not born of base familiarity? Was love anything besides mere exposure, mere proximity?

“Great-grandmother, I want to stay,” she said. “But…”

Ambuya waited, patient.

“But there’s someone I still love. Far from here.”

“Ah,” the old woman said. “I see. I will not pretend I am not disappointed, but it was good to lay my mortal eyes on you, my daughter.”

Yvanne shook her head, and knelt. Then she looked up, her eyes streaming. “And I never want to see or think about her, ever again. Please, grandmother—I am yours. Please, teach me.”

Ambuya smiled, reached out, and placed a hand on Yvanne’s bowed head. She was resolved; she would become a part of this. She would be one of many, and she would make this life a good one if it killed her.

#dragon age #amell #surana #femslash #rivain #dairsmuid #please read my wizard lesbian fanfiction

4 notes · View notes

sapphicparker · 4 years

Text

Fell from the sky into my lap // peppermay

Summary: "May Parker, will do you the honor of being my fake girlfriend?” She hold out her hand. May smiles.“Yes, I do, Pepper.” May intertwines their hands together. (AKA fake dating/college au)

Words: 21,231 | Other ships: SteveTony & Yelenat

Warnings: SMUT

(Also available on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23921644)

May Parker rarely lies but when she does, let’s just say she’s the mighty, great leader and sole creator of the ‘lying is totally okay and cool’ club. They even have jackets, leather ones to be exact. She doesn’t do it out of habit or force, it just happens and she, eventually, deals with the consequences later. The short list of lies she’s ever told aren’t as catastrophic, most of them range from lying about not doing homework to studying for an important exam, even making up an excuse not to go out. Even telling her boyfriend she was home sick when in reality she was cheating on him.

Okay, maybe the last one is a bit much, but in her defense, they were already broken up and she definitely didn’t think he would come back a few hours after their final fight to get his boxes of shit while seeing her go down on some girl she met at the bar right after their fight. The biggest lie she has told was to her parents, who she hasn’t seen in a couple months, is that she’s bringing someone home for winter break.

Before the inevitable break-up;

Honestly before the fight, her and Ben were doing great. They met at one of the bars, Carter’s, right down the block by campus. Did their usual routine, two or three beers, depending on what kind of day they had. He would talk about football and courses he was taking, but mostly about football. May honest to god tried to pay attention but that night, her mind was somewhere else. Somewhere else like finding an engagement ring in a drawer. She shuddered at the thought of marriage, not that she liked it, she did, it’s a huge commitment that she was in no way, shape, or form ready for it.

She grabbed her beer and chugged it as Ben began to about classes and bullshit drama that somehow crossed his path during the day. After an hour or two they went back to May’s place, put on Netflix and did some homework.

To this day May still silently thanks god everyday that meeting Ben wasn’t set up by some dating app but instead by one of their mutual friends. She still remembers it like it was yesterday. Carter’s bar is not the most spacious or extravagant looking bar, it still has it’s charm and outside good looks. The inside however smelled like aged old liquor and a weird sense of mildew. Truly comforting in its own weird way.

As for Ben, he’s just like any ordinary tall, brunette, college football player who is somehow not a pretentious douchebag. Him and May were friends at first, good friends even. Ben needed a place to stay for awhile, so she let him room with her. Awhile turned into weeks, which turned into a couple months, and then into him moving into his own place…down the hall from her.

May thought it was nice seeing him every time she had to do laundry or even throw out the trash, sometimes he would get both of their mail so she wouldn’t have to trudge down the flight of stairs to get it. May knew the first time she realized she liked Ben was when he came over for their annual Friday movie night. Usually, she was the one to remind him but, this time he remembered, it was a tiny thing that made her stomach do the weird butterfly thing. He even brought over Chinese food takeout and a cheap bottle of wine.

A couple weeks down the road they kissed and it was nice and exciting and new. They would wait for each other after classes, get some drinks and study together. May would go to his practices and games, cheer him on, even wear his jersey. After games they would get ice cream, it didn’t matter if he won or lost, or if it rained or shined, they would go.

They lasted around eleven months or a year, May honestly doesn’t remember, and it was bad on her part, actually it’s both of their fault. May told Ben she found the ring, he asked her if she wanted to marry him, she said no. May explained to him why she didn’t want to, that she wasn’t looking for that kind of commitment right now and she definitely didn’t want to be tied down. She was still young, she wanted to live more, worry less.

Ben didn’t like that, he got all defensive, arguing back about some bullshit leading him on, so what did May do? She rolled her eyes, told him she’s going out and to pack his shit and leave. Next morning, Ben comes home to get his things and sees May having sex with someone. He quickly shuts the door and never returns. May still has his boxes stacked in the hallway closet, she hasn’t opened the door since.

Flash forward to now. May’s currently very single and lonely at this place and time. She’s wearing an old ACDC shirt that she “borrowed” from Carol and a pair of plaid pajama shorts while sitting on an old maroon couch drinking wine as season six of Great British Bake Off plays in the background. Yeah, that little fling she had with that bar girl, she doesn’t remember her name, it sounded like that coffee company, Folgers. May tilts her head trying to remember the name, it takes her a moment until it comes back to her, like someone flicked on the light switch. She snap her fingers. Felicia, that’s it.

May pours more wine into her glass as she narrows down possible fake boyfriend, or girlfriend options. Separating them into two columns; boys slash girls, and jotting down basically everyone she knows. Boys; Steve, Quentin, and Bruce. Girls; Carol, Jane, and Maria.

She takes sip of her wine before immediately crossing out the lists and throwing the notepad onto the adjacent coffee table. May lets out a heavy sigh and lays her head back on the couch, she feels entirely overwhelmed and more stressed than when she took midterms. It’s at this moment her black cat, Milo, jumps onto the couch and purrs. He rubs his head on her arm and looks up with his black eyes, tilting his head, almost as if he can sense something is wrong. May gently scratches his cheek.

“It’s okay, buddy. Everything is fine,” she say to him as if he can somehow understand and magically talk back to her. He immediately jumps into May’s lap, curling up into a ball. This has to be some kind of witchcraft, she thinks to herself. Not that black cats are often associated with witches, they are, but Milo is special in his own way.

A groan slips out of her mouth when she realizes she has a, now, sleeping cat on her lap and she absolutely refuses to wake him up. That’s the second rule you have to follow when you get a pet, owner shall not move when said pet is sleeping on you. Right on top of feeding your pet and loving them unconditionally.

Mumbling ‘fuck it’ under her breath, May reaches for the tv remote and turns the volume up. In this particular episode of Great British Bake Off, the bakers are making a delicate spongecake. May has never in her life wanted spongecake more than she does right now. Grabbing her phone from the side table, May unlocks it and opens the notes app. Typing, GET SPONGECAKE, in all caps to let her future self know that it’s important to get it when she eventually leaves the comfort of her bed to do grocery shopping tomorrow morning.

She adds in the following; eggs, almond milk, coffee, coffee creamer, peaches, strawberries, mashed potatoes, box of pasta (x2), White bread, plums, chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

Satisfied with her list, she puts the phone down only to pick it up again when it rings. The name ‘Tony’ with the black heart emoji next to it flashes along with a horrible selfie of him. May’s finger slides over the answer and she puts him on speaker, holding the phone in her hand.

“What do you want you, gremlin,” May says annoyingly as she tries to focus on the tv, taking a sip of wine.

“Well, hello to you too, what’s up?”

May rolls her eyes. “You called me, genius.”

Tony lets out a gasp. “Yes, yes I did. My mistake.” He takes a breath before continuing. “Right, what are your plans for winter break?”

“I’m unfortunately going home, remember? Or did you completely forget what we talked about this morning at the coffee shop.”

“I didn’t forget.” May could hear the exaggeration in his voice.

“Yeah, sure you did,” May says as she raises an eyebrow at one of the contestants forming an elaborate cake that might possibly take up all the baking time.

Tony scoffs and May’s sure he’s shaking his head. “Do you or do you not want to come back with me for winter break, instead of going back home?”

“That’s sweet, Tones, but I already told my folks I’m coming back and that I’m bringing someone.” She mumbles the last part, hoping he doesn’t hear it.

“I’m sorry, what was the last part?”

May groans. Damn bastard has ears like a goddamn hawk.

She lets out a sigh, “I told my parents that I was bringing someone home for break. I’m pretty sure they think it’s Ben, they don’t know that we broke up, so they’ll find out when I come home.”

“You really need to stop lying about things, May. I know sometimes you can control it, but in situations like this you really shouldn’t.”

May pinches the bridge of her nose, “if you’re going to lecture me, please wait at least 24 hours before doing so.”

“Fine, at least tell me who you’re bringing?”

She pauses and that seems to be a good enough answer for Tony.

“Are you serious? Winter break is literally in a few days and you don’t know!” Tony exclaims over the phone loudly and May lowers the volume a tad bit.

“I’ll figure it out, I always do,” May confidently says, knowing damn well, she have no clue what to do.

“I don’t believe you but, alright. I’m coming over for lunch tomorrow since Steve’s taking his last midterm, sound good?”

“Fantastic. See you then,” May says before Tony mumbles out a ‘bye, love you’

May casually tosses her phone onto the side table, not really caring whether or not it dies overnight, or mysterious lives thanks to the new and improved battery life span. Eventually she finishes the episode, the credits begin to roll when Milo stirs in her lap. He turns his body facing her, a small meow echos throughout the room along with the Great British Bake Off song credits.

“Did you have a nice nap?” she says softly, rubbing her nose against his fur, he purrs in agreement. “Yeah, I bet you did, buddy.” Shutting Netflix off, May carefully lifts Milo off her lap and cradles him in her arms as she simultaneously grabs her phone.

Once in the bedroom, May puts Milo down on the bed, he immediately curls up at the end of it. Plugging in her phone and setting it down on the bedside table, she grabs the blankets and comforter, shuffles a couple times before finding a comfortable position and falls asleep.

It’s next morning when she hears her phone ringtone blaring throughout her room. May’s eyes are still closed when she reaches over, answering it without a care in the world who could be calling her this early in the morning.

“Hello?” She mumbles, her voice still horse and clouded.

“I’m here with coffee, let me in.” It’s Tony because of course it is.

May lets out a groan, she hangs up, and rubs the sleep out of her eyes. She trudges to the door, unlocking it, and welcomes Tony in. She lets out a yawn as she stares at the brunette man now standing in her kitchen.

“You know, you could be nicer in the morning. I did bring you coffee.” Tony hands her an ice coffee. May takes a sip and a small smile appears on her face. She sticks her tongue out at him before sitting on the couch, one leg under the other.

“Why are you here? I thought we were meeting for lunch, not breakfast,” May calls out to Tony as he’s lazily pouring cat food into Milo’s dish, some of it tumbles out of it and onto the floor, Tony shamelessly kicks it under the fridge. Milo appears in front of him and Tony lets out a gasp, clenching his chest.

“Jesus christ, Milo!”

May lets out a loud laugh and Tony stares at her, completely flabbergasted that she would laugh at his pain. May lets out a breath, “I should’ve warned you, he tends to do that when he gets food.”

“You think!” Tony exclaims as he shakes his head. He kneels down to scratch Milo’s head, the black cat lets out a small meow before digging into his breakfast.

“I’m telling you, he belongs to witches or something.” Tony shakes his head and smiles at Milo before standing back up and grabs his coffee. May looks up at him when he enters the living room, Tony jumps onto the couch and sits crisscross, staring at her.

“What?” She asks questionably.

“Did you think about who you’re bringing home yet? You still have time to change your mind and come back with me.”

May immediately lets out a groan, she hoped Tony would have forgot it by now but, no. He can remember what they talked about yesterday but he can’t remember his goddamn anniversary.

“Not yet,” May pauses to take drink the rest of her coffee, occasionally slurping it, causing an annoying sound to echo in the room. Tony rolls his eyes at her childlike behavior. “And, no to coming with you. As much as I love Jarvis’ cooking, I promised I would go home for break.”

Tony nods his head. “I’ll bring you leftovers but you might not get it with how much Steve eats.” May chuckles.

“That’s alright, i’ll take my chances. I just need to find someone who will actually go along with it.” A sigh escapes May’s lips.

Tony thinks for a moment and snaps his fingers, breaking May’s train of thought, not that she was thinking about anything in the moment anyway.

“What?” She asks.

“I think I know someone, wait do you want male or female?”

May stares at him, one of her scary death stares that Tony hates. He immediately puts his hands up. “Alright, jeez. Just stop looking at me like that. God, you’re worse than Milo.”

It’s nighttime and May is sitting uncomfortably in a fancy restaurant, she checks her watch again for the third time that night. Her date, who Tony set her up with, was fifty minutes late and she felt awful for the poor waitress who kept coming up to her asking for her order. May sighs as she drinks the remaining wine in her glass, she gestures towards the waitress for another bottle, dear god she’s going to need it. The waitress, Pepper is her name, leaves the bottle on the table.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything else? I’m sure bread and wine isn’t the most suitable meal.”

May reads the menu again. “You’re right. You know what? I think I’ll have the ravioli.”

“Excellent choice, I’ll bring that out for you shortly.” Pepper smiles.

May bites the inside of her cheek. “Please take your time, it’s not like I’m waiting for anyone else.” She gestures towards the empty seat in front of her.

Pepper’s lips curl up into her mouth, she looks around the restaurant before leaning down to May’s height, “I’ll throw in a free desert, just for you.”

The glass of wine stills in May’s hand, the red liquid swooshes around in it. She turns to look at Pepper, her tongue poking out to wet her lips. “Why, thank you.”

Pepper walks away towards the kitchen and May can’t help but stare at her as she does. Her line of sight is interrupted by her phone ringing. Without even reading the I.D, May already knows who it is.

“Hi Tony,” she grumbles into the phone.

“Hi darling, so tell me everything, how is he? Great?”

May’s jaw clenches, she doesn’t want to cause a scene in this very nice restaurant. “Well, darling,” she imitates Tony’s tone, “it’s been an hour and I’m sitting here alone in this fucking expensive ass place.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Stark.”

“But I- I don’t understand. He was actually excited for it, I don’t know why,” Tony rambles on and May isn’t listening to a word he’s saying because her eyes are flowing over to Pepper talking to customers.

“May? You still there?”

She lets out a cough, “yeah, I’m still here. I’m getting dinner for one.”

“Oh, okay, I was just gonna come to you but if you’re good,” Tony’s voice trails off as May stares at Pepper who’s carrying a tray of food over one shoulder and placing it down onto the serving table. She bends down to grab extra napkins and forks and May can’t help but advert her eyes down to Pepper’s body. Tight black jeans do wonders for everyone.

“Parker!” Tony yells out. May does a double-take and blinks repeatedly. “Jesus christ, what the hell! I’ve been talking for two minutes without an interruption.”

“Sorry, I got distracted,” May says as her face becomes flushed.

“Distracted from?” Tony coerces out.

“There’s a really cute waitress who’s working tonight,” May whispers into the phone and Tony reacts how anyone would, by letting out an excited scream.

“No way! Steve! May’s crushing on the waitress,” Tony says excitedly. In the background May can hear Steve say ‘are you serious, Tony hang up! Let her get back to the date.’ Tony shushes him.

“Goodbye, Tony,” May hangs up the phone as Tony yells excuses to not hang up.

May’s putting her phone back into her bag when Pepper is walking towards her with dinner. She places it in front of her. May takes a breath. “This looks great, thank you.” A genuine smile flashes across her face.

“Enjoy, I’ll just be over here if you need anything.” Pepper smiles and nods her head in the direction where she’ll be. She begins to walk away when May grabs her forearm, stopping in her step.

“Please, sit,” May gestures towards the empty seat in front of her. Pepper looks around the restaurant, it’s late and nearly empty with a few stragglers and the clean up crew’s about to start coming in. Pepper immediately sits down and loosens her tie, pulling it down a few inches before unbuttoning her collar.

May digs into her ravioli, it tastes so delicate and warm, and the sauce is great, a mix of red and vodka sauce. It might be one of May’s new favorite dishes. “So do you like being a waitress?”

Pepper chuckles, “Is this how you always begin conversations?” She grabs a water pitcher from a nearby empty table and fills up a glass, nearly downs the whole glass and lets out a breath. May smiles before taking another bite. “Not always but I thought I would give it a shot.”

A small smirk appears on Pepper’s face, “I just need this job to help pay for college. It’s only a couple days a week so it’s not all bad.” May hums in agreement and takes a sip of wine.

“Can I be honest for a second.” May nods her head. “Who the fuck stood you up tonight?” May lets out a loud cackle. She covers her mouth with her hand to subdue her laughter. Pepper stares at her, for the first time that night she actually really looks at her. She notices how May gets crinkles in the corner of her eyes when she laughs really loud. She notices her dimples rise up when she grins a certain way. She notices how her brown eyes look lighter, more warmer in the light. She notices how her cheeks get more flushed, a light shade of pink. And lastly, Pepper notices how her heart is beating like a drum in her chest and how her palms are suddenly clammy, and how she wants May to feel like this every day of the week.

Once May has calmed down, she wipes an invisible tear from her eye and drinks the remaining wine in her glass. “Thank you, I needed a good laugh.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll let you finish your meal and I’ll bring dessert out,” Pepper says as she stands up from the table.

“Hopefully for two?”

“Absolutely,” Pepper walks away towards the remaining stragglers, talking to them. May sighs contently, she suddenly feels very warm and a tad nauseous.

Ten minutes pass by and May eats half of her ravioli dish. She leans back in her chair, deciding she’s definitely bringing leftovers home. Pepper exits the kitchen carrying a plate of dessert. Once in front of May, she places it on the table. “Chocolate mousse cake with vanilla ice cream on top.”

May licks her lips. “Looks great, shall we?”

“We shall,” Pepper hands May a spoon and they dig in. It’s so rich and creamy and delicious. Once dessert is devoured by the two of them, Pepper grabs a take-out container and puts May’s leftovers in it, sealing it in a brown paper bag. May hands Pepper her card for the check, after a brief moment she comes back with it.

“Thank you. I hope the rest of your night is lovely.”

May smiles, “Yours too.” She pauses for a second, her breath catches in her throat. “When do you get off work?”

Pepper stares at her, mouth agape, and she looks at her watch. “My shift ended ten minutes ago.” She chuckles awkwardly, hoping to ease the sudden tension.

May has her coat on, her bag slung over her shoulder and leftovers in hand. She turns to look at Pepper, “You wanna get out of here?”

Pepper nods her head, “yes, yes. Let me get my things.”

May watches Pepper run off to get her things, as she does, she quickly texts Tony. No, she texts Steve because he’s more likely to read it. She texts him; ‘I know Tony won’t respond so I’m telling you to tell him to not come over in the morning for breakfast.’ Seconds later Steve replies, ‘will do’ with the thumbs up emoji, followed by, ‘late night? And wink emoji.’ May responses back with the middle finger emoji and once she does Pepper is at her side. She puts her phone in her bag and they’re out the door.

The minute they’re back in May’s apartment, May has Pepper pressed against the door. They shuffle their jackets off, their bags land on the hardwood floor with a thud. Peppers arms are around May’s waist, pulling her closer. She presses her soft lips onto May’s, they move in sync, letting out breathy moans before Pepper slides her tongue into May’s mouth, deepening the kiss. May grabs Pepper by her neck, pulling her closer until the silky fabric of May’s dress rubs against her now, slightly unbuttoned shirt. Pepper shivers at the touch of it, small goosebumps rise on her exposed skin. They pull away for a second, both chests heaving and feeling hot.

“Bedroom?”

“Definitely.”

It’s early in the morning when May wakes up, she turns her head to look at the alarm clock, instantly rolling her eyes when she sees that it reads exactly eight a.m. She wipes the sleep out of her eyes before rubbing her bare shoulders and reaches down to the floor, grabbing a white t-shirt and throws it over her naked torso. It’s not perfect, there’s a small coffee stain on it, but she doesn’t care because Pepper is still in bed.

May carefully reaches over to move a blonde strand out Pepper’s eyes before placing a kiss on her forehead and quietly gets up to make some coffee and breakfast. She hears the pitter-patter of Milo behind her as she enters the kitchen. As the coffee machine powers up, May gives Milo his breakfast, he lets out a soft meow as if he’s saying thank you. May ponders for a moment deciding on what to make for breakfast, she opens the fridge to see it almost bare and empty. She lets out a groan when realizing she got held up with Tony and forgot to go grocery shopping. She settles on making French toast, making a couple slices and topping it with powered sugar and syrup. The coffee machine lets out a beep and she pours the dark, warm liquid into two mugs, adding two spoonfuls of sugar and an insane amount of coffee creamer. May lets out a content sigh when she takes a sip, it’s perfect.

Pepper wakes up as sunlight shines through the window, her skin feels warm and soft and golden. She reaches over to check the time on her phone, it reads eight-thirty along with text messages from a group chat. She stretches a hand out to feel a cold spot, her bottom lip pokes out. She wanted to wrap her arms around May and thank her for making her feel like she escalated to another world, for feeling like she saw the moon and stars and everything beyond.

Pepper grabs a discarded hoodie that was on a nearby chair and throws it over her, lifting up her blonde locks that got stuck under the neck hole. The smell of French toast leads her to the kitchen, where she quietly watched May sit on the counter sipping her coffee while watching tv. May looks up from her coffee and sees Pepper, her eyes light up.

“Morning! I made breakfast and coffee.”

Pepper swears she could stay here forever, she could get use to this. May hands her the other coffee mug and Pepper doesn’t miss the cute look on May’s face when she takes a sip of her black coffee.

“I’m not even going to ask about that,” May’s eyes advert towards the mug in Pepper’s hand. Pepper nods her head. “Good, cause that’ll be up for debate later or another day.” She takes another sip of coffee.

“I forgot to go grocery shopping so I made French toast.”

Pepper smiles. “It smells wonderful. I haven’t had French toast in forever.” She cuts a piece off, dips it in syrup, and takes a bite. She gives May a thumbs up as continues to devour the breakfast food. May finished her remaining piece of French toast a few minutes before Pepper came into the kitchen, she sits quietly drinking her coffee as Pepper eats. May smirks to herself, god knows she worked up an appetite last night.

Once Pepper is done eating, she looks up at May, silently hating that she has the height advantage now that she’s on the counter. She places her hands on May’s thighs. “You have a little,” May begins before licking her thumb and wiping off some powder sugar at the corner of Pepper’s lip, “there. All good.”

“God, you’re so cute,” Pepper breathes out before kissing May. Her hands slide up her torso towards May’s face where she cups her cheeks, her thumbs comfortably resting on her cheekbones as she gently caresses her soft skin. May smiles into the kiss, she feels lightweight, like she’s floating on a cloud. It’s soft when Pepper kisses May, she grabs Pepper’s waist pulling her in between her thighs. She holds onto her waist as she wraps her legs around Pepper's.

Pepper’s tongue darts into May’s mouth as she lets out a low moan, a hint of heat radiating off both of them. Pepper pulls away for a moment, a pout immediately forms on May’s face. Pepper chuckles as she takes off the hoodie, she’s bare underneath except for her underwear and May bites her lip. Pepper lets out a gasp when May’s cold hands touch her, the hair on her arms stick up slightly as she moves her hands towards Pepper’s neck. Her hands remain still on Pepper’s chin, “if you’re cold, I can warm you up in no time.” May pulls Pepper into a kiss and they return to their former position. May’s about to take off her shirt when there’s a knock at the door.

“Who the fuck is that?” May growls as she jumps off the counter and darts towards the door. The door is open in a flash and May is annoyed at the sight in front of her. Of course, it's Tony, with a smile on his face while Steve is daunting an ‘i’m sorry’ look. May is looking at them both with an expression that could make a child cry.

“Go away,” she practically yells at them.

Steve sighs, “I’m sorry, you know how he gets. I tried my best to make him stay home.”

May rests a hand on her hip. “Yeah, that worked out pretty well, huh Steve. Did you not try sex?”

Tony perks up at the mention of sex, “Oh, you bet he did.” He mouths the word ‘twice’ and holds up two fingers, Steve rolls his eyes. May shakes her head knowing there’s no way they’re not just going to stand in the hallway all day, she moves out of the way to let the boys in.

“Put the hoodie back on, we’ve got company,” May says annoyingly as she makes her way back into the kitchen. She begins to put the dishes into the sink when Tony lets out a shriek, almost making May drop a mug.

“Shut up, Pepper!”

“Hi Tony.”

Tony does a double-take, looking at May then Pepper, then May again before letting out a gasp. “Oh my god.”

Steve gently pushes Tony into a seat on the couch, letting him absorb everything his genius brain can handle, before helping May in the kitchen. He’s handing her various plates and forks around the kitchen, eventually getting distracted by Milo who was now sitting on the counter, meowing at Steve to pet him. He happily obliges, a smile plastered across his face as he does.

“Okay! I’m good,” Tony yells as he claps his hands together.

Pepper shakes her head, she looks over his shoulder to see May making another pot of coffee. It only takes a few seconds before May is looking back at Pepper, she mouths an ‘i’m sorry’ with a pouty look. Pepper shrugs before mouthing back, ‘it’s okay’ and blows a kiss. May blushes.

“So how did you two meet?” Tony says as he rests his arm on the couch, leaning closer to Pepper. May is in the living room now, changing the tv channel on the remote to a Will & Grace marathon. She falls into Pepper’s lap, earning a giggle from the blonde and blocks Tony’s view of her. Steve carefully drops Milo into Tony’s lap, he stares at the black cat, still not over yesterday’s incident of scaring him to death. Milo looks at him before jumping down and walking over to Steve, who sat in the corner loveseat. Milo jumps into his lap and comfortably lays down.

Steve smiled, his dimples coming into play as Tony shared a look of jealousy at him. He let out a scoff before bringing his attention back to May and Pepper. Tony let out a cough. “Can I get an answer or is this going to be a bigger mystery than finding out if an actress is gay or not?”

May scoffs, “First of all, we always find out. Second, we met last night at the restaurant. Remember, your guy didn’t show up? Pepper was the waitress.” Tony’s face lit up like a little kid on Christmas. Pepper chuckled as she shook her head. God, Tony was one of a kind, there was certainly no one in the world like him.

“How did it go?” Tony asks as he sits in a criss-cross position, hands clasped together with his chin resting in them. A literal child.

“It was going well until you showed up,” May blurts out as Pepper shushed her. May sighs. “It’s very good.” Pepper rubs her arm up and down May’s in a comforting manner, already feeling how tense and annoyed she is. Something she’ll definitely have to get used too.

Steve snaps his fingers causing everyone to look at him, including Milo who raised a paw at him. “Why don’t you ask Pepper to come home with you for winter break? You said you were bringing someone. Well, here you go.” May looks at Steve with an expression he can’t read, nor understand. She side eyes Pepper, she was definitely not in the position to ask Pepper to come home with her to meet her family. They just met last night and May was in no way ready for her to get caught up in her bullshit, she wanted Pepper to be hers and only hers. She didn’t want her to be a victim to the chaos her family causes, May just wanted to stay in the little happy bubble with her. But eventually the bubble pops and you have to make a new one, oh, what the hell could go wrong.

“What’s he talking about?” Pepper asks, a wave of concern flashes across her faces. May sighs.

“I wasn’t even going to bring it up, Steven,” May angrily says as she looks at Steve, his face is filled with regret the moment May says his full name. He immediately looks down at Milo, petting him softly as he licks Steve’s hand.

“I told my parents I was bringing someone home for winter break, so I told Tony I just need to find someone to fake date until it’s over, it’s only for two days. I was planning on cutting the reunion special early anyway.” Pepper nods her head, taking everything in.

“Okay,” Pepper says.

May raises an eyebrow, “okay what?”

“I’ll do it, I’ll come with you. I’m not doing anything for break. My parents are going to some ski resort upstate. Plus, I’m an only child.”

May hesitates for a moment, her mouth agape. For once, she’s utterly speechless. Her mouth curls up into her mouth, “you know what? Fuck it. Yes.”

Pepper grins, “Let’s make it official. May Parker, will do you the honor of being my fake girlfriend?” She hold out her hand. May smiles.

“Yes, I do, Pepper.” May intertwines their hands together. They stare at one another and Pepper looks at May like she holds all the secrets to the universe and wants to discover all of them, including the hidden ones. It’s no secret May’s a tad bit scared of commitment, but she’s looking at Pepper as if all the stars and moon combined into one single element. It’s barely been twenty-four hours and she knows she wants Pepper in her life.

It’s the day before they head to May’s family home and May is immediately regretting even going. She hasn’t packed yet, and she can’t bring Milo with them because her dad is severely allergic to cats. May rolls her eyes for the third time, Pepper has counted so far, sitting across the island table as May talks to her mother on the phone. May put her on speakerphone so Pepper could hear what the devil incarnated sounds like before meeting her in person.

May mouths ‘blah, blah, blah’ as her mother goes on and on about her cousin getting remarried again. She imitates Darth Vader using the force to choke herself until her mother calls her name.

“May”

“Yeah?”

“Are you listening to me or are you drowning me out by staring at the tv screen?”

May lets out a cough, “no, i’m totally listening. You were talking about Natasha getting remarried.”

“Yes! I can’t believe she’s already getting remarried after divorcing Matthew last year!” May’s mother exclaims. May could hear the annoyance through the phone.

“Well, some people move on fast and I think this is good for Nat, you know how she can be,” May says genuinely, she always defends Natasha.

“I just don’t understand,” her mother trails off and May looks at Pepper. She’s caressing Milo as he’s lies down on the counter, his eyes are closed and purring softly.

“Your dad said you’re bringing someone with you? Is it Ben? I’ve missed him, how is he?” And just like that, May’s entire demeanor is changed, Pepper immediately stops petting Milo to look at May.

“Oh, um, yeah i’m bringing someone but it’s not Ben. We broke up,” May says carefully, almost like she’s stepping on eggshells, one wrong move and it’ll break.

“Oh no, what happened? He was so sweet, May.”

May ran a hand through her brown locks, she pulled on the ends. “I don’t really remember, mom. Listen, I gotta go, I have to start packing.”

“Okay, sweetie. Remember to bring sweaters! It’s cold here!” May hangs up and lets out a heavy sigh as she crosses her arms on the counter, resting her head in them. Pepper is behind her, rubbing her shoulders in a comforting manner, she places a kiss to her hair. “It’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

May lifts her head up and turns to face Pepper, she blows a raspberry. “You really think so? I mean, what you heard was only the beginning of it. We don’t even have to go, we can just stay here or even go to Tony’s.”

Pepper shakes her head, “there’s no way you can get out of this, you promised and you’re going to fulfill it.”

May lets out a groan and crosses her arms over her chest, “fine but you’re helping me pack.” She grabs Pepper’s arm and drags her to the bedroom.

“I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”

They haven’t gotten on the plane yet and May is already dreading this. She hasn’t even had her coffee yet, and it was definitely killing her mood. Steve, the ever so sweetheart, drove the two of them to the airport at the ass crack of dawn. He was already out on his morning run before picking them up and was in the most perky, happiest, mood ever. In the car ride to the airport, Steve was telling them that he let Tony sleep in, knowing how much of a little shit he’s going to be when Steve eventually wakes him up to get on the road to his parents house later in the day.

May’s knee bounced up and down as she waited for their flight to be called, she was getting impatient as she laid her head back on the chair, eyes closed. A sudden cough made May open her eyes, she looked up and saw Pepper standing in front of her, holding two hot cups of coffee. May perked up, her eyes widened. Pepper outstretched May’s cup, their hands touched briefly when May grabbed it. She took a sip and let out a heavenly sigh. Pepper smiled at her as she took a sip of her own, sitting down next to her.

“When do you think our flight will be-”

“Flight 702 to New Hampshire is now boarding,” the announcer yells in a horrible, yet mildly disgusted, tone.

“Never mind,” Pepper chuckles as both of them stand and grab their carry ons . On the plane, they have a row to their selves, Pepper gives May the window seat. It’s a short flight and May falls asleep the entire time, her head resting on Pepper’s shoulder. Pepper doesn’t sleep, she’s too busy reading the book she brought with her and making sure May’s okay. She doesn’t tell May that two people told her they were a cute couple, Pepper smiled and thanked them for their kind words.

May wakes up when the plane touches down on the runway, she looks out the window to see that it’s snowing, she lets out an inaudible groan and turns to see Pepper talking to the flight attendant about the weather. Their conversation ends when she announces they can start exiting the plane.

“Did I sleep the whole flight? I’m sorry.”

Pepper pushes a strand of May’s hair behind her ear, “It’s okay, you were tired. Everyone heard you snoring.” May gasps, “I don’t snore!” Pepper lets out a chuckle as she grabs her bags in one hand and May’s in the other. May smiles.

Natasha is waiting outside the airport for them and May’s entire mood is lightened. She pulls May into a hug and ushers them into her car, instantly cranking the heat up before turning to Pepper, in the backseat. She holds her hand out, “i’m Natasha, May’s favorite cousin.” Pepper shakes her hand. “Very nice to meet you, Natasha.” Natasha smiles and pulls out of her spot and starts driving to their destination, the radio is playing soft music on low.

“Mom told me you’re getting remarried?” May questions once their silence got enough. Natasha smiles and holds out her left hand, the diamond on her finger isn’t big, it’s small, wrapped around a silver band, and it’s just perfect for her. “It’s so simple, I love it,” May says happily as she watches Natasha take another look at it before using said hand to turn on the blinker, making a right turn.

“Do I even want to know who gave it to you?” May says curiously.

A hint of blush appears on Natasha’s face, she clears her throat, “guess.”

May lets out a heavy sigh, “are you kidding me? I haven’t seen you in so long and you’re making me guess! Can you believe this Pep?” May turns in her seat to look at Pepper who pauses for a second, “Is it a woman?”

Natasha doesn’t say anything which essentially means yes, and May lets out a gasp. She repeatedly claps her hands in excitement, “Oh my god yes!” Natasha grins.

“How did you know?” Natasha asks into the rearview mirror, her undivided attention on Pepper. Pepper smiles and she leans forward, resting her arms on her knees. “You look happier, and the ring is simple, yet elegant. It’s not drawing a lot of attention, it’s just right. Plus, you should have cleaned out your car before picking us up because there’s a lace bra back here.”

May laughs loudly as Natasha mumbles ‘fuck’ under her breath. She puts the car into park once they pull into a driveway. May lets out out a deep breath. “Do mom and dad know?

Natasha shakes her head, “not yet. She’s coming over soon. I can’t wait for you to meet her May. You too, Pepper. You’re gonna love her.” May smiles. In all her years she’s known Natasha, she’s never once been this excited for May to meet someone. She’s met her former husband, Matthew, but only on rare occasions. Natasha was never a very open person with her relationship, so this was all new to May, and she likes it. She likes it when Natasha is openly accepting and vulnerable, showing her true colors to people she loves dearly. May can see it in her eyes, the way she talks about her fiancée is so soft and unique, you can see how in love she is. May reaches over the cupholders to pull Natasha into a hug, she instinctively wraps her arms around the smaller woman, burying her head into her shoulder.

“You know I love you,” May mumbles. Natasha smiles into her shoulder, slowly swaying her back and forth. “Of course I do, you dork.” Natasha releases May from her embrace and they exit the car. The snow is coming down hard as they stand outside the front door of May’s parents house. May exhales a shaky breath as Pepper grabs her hand and rubs her knuckles softly.

“You know, we can just run back to the car and get a hotel?”

Natasha gives her a look, “you know we can’t do that. Stop trying to run away.” She opens the front door and the three of them are instantly greeted by warm air and the sound of voices echoing throughout the house. May immediately leads Pepper up the stairs to her former room, the loft a.k.a the attic. Once in the room, May shuts the door, locking it before letting out a breath. Pepper looks around the room, curiosity getting to the best of her as she takes everything in, admiring all of May’s little nicknacks and decor.

“This is where the magic happens,” May says as she slides a hand over her comforter, a sly smirk flashes across her face. Pepper chuckles as she shrugs off her carryon bag, placing it onto the couch in front of the bay window. May’s room is very cozy and simple, Pepper’s eye is immediately drawn to the huge bookcase adjacent to the queen size bed, the books on the shelves are old and new, and of course they’re in alphabetical order. She drags her fingers across the books.

“It took me awhile to finally complete it and a lot of money at thrift bookstores,” May chuckles as Pepper smiles, still taking her time to look at the books, “it’s very impressive.”

There’s a knock at the door and May lets out a groan, she trudges to the door, opening it to reveal Natasha standing next to a petite blonde woman who looks nervous. They don’t bother asking to enter because Natasha grabs the woman and pulls her into the room, taking a seat on the couch. May stares at the empty hallway, flabbergasted, she shuts the door.

“A simple hi would’ve done but okay, what’s up?” May rests her hands on her hips. She gives Pepper, who leans back on the book shelves, a confused look. Natasha grabs the woman’s hand, intertwining them together, her thumb rubs her knuckles. “This is my fiancée, Yelena.”

May lets out a gasp, her mouth agape. She runs over to the two of them and hugs them tightly, Natasha has to pry her arms off of them. May awkwardly chuckles. “Hi Yelena, i’m May. Natasha’s favorite cousin.” She extends an arm out to the blonde. Natasha rolls her eyes, “you’re my only cousin, idiot.”

Yelena shakes May’s hand, “it’s very nice to meet you, May. Nat has told me a lot about you.” May lets out a squeak, “you let her call you Nat! That’s so cute! No one in the family is allowed to call her that.”

“It’s true,” Natasha says as she shrugs her shoulders. She pulls Yelena in closer, making her comfortable as she lays back on Natasha’s chest, pressing a kiss to her hair. May grins, she extends a hand out to Pepper, pulling her to the bed. They lay back against the many pillows on the bed.

“This is Pepper, my girlfriend,” May says to Yelena, they both wave to one another. Natasha gives May a look, like she trying to figure something out but, May shrugs it off.

“Your mom’s looking for you,” Natasha says when she’s putting Yelena’s hair into a French braid. Yelena smiles at her through the mirror next to them. May lets out an incoherent groan and drops her head back on the headboard, banging it slightly. “Did you see her?” May looks at Natasha.

“Yep,” Natasha says as a small chuckle escapes her lips. Yelena turns to look at Natasha, “tell her, please.” A smile is across her face in a flash. May immediately sits upright, “tell me what?” She’s curious, along with Pepper who imitates her.

“Melina had already met Yelena a couple days ago, and she’s really happy so I thought it would be the same with your mom so,” Natasha is interrupted by May letting out yet, another groan, “let me finish telling the story you little shit.” A pout forms across May’s face. Pepper kisses her cheek, and the pout disappears.

“So I introduce Yelena to your mom and she said,” Natasha laughs, along with Yelena. She takes a breath to get regain her composure, “she said it’s so nice of you to bring your gal pal with you, the matching rings are adorable!” May cackles loudly to the point where she’s clenching her stomach and repeatedly hitting Pepper, who’s covering her mouth with her hand to subdue her laughter.

“Shut the fuck up! You’re lying!” She blurts out as she takes a deep breath.

“I swear to god May, Yelena can vouch for me,” Natasha gestures towards Yelena who nods her head and wipes a tear from her eye.

“I told you it would be a nightmare,” May whispers to Pepper, turning to look at her. Pepper tucks a strand of brown hair behind May’s ear as she looks into May’s eyes. Pepper can tell she’s nervous and scared to show it, “you did. Many, many, times but i’m here, so it’ll be okay and if not then there’s always a hotel.” May leans into her and Pepper places a soft kiss onto her forehead, May smiles.

After an hour of catching up, Natasha and Yelena retreat to their room, they already had dinner and May felt bad for keeping Pepper all cooped up in her room. It’s after eight pm when they ascend down to the kitchen, May heats up whatever leftovers the family had for dinner as Pepper grabs two sodas from the fridge. A light flickers on and they freeze in place. “If you were hungry you could’ve just came down for dinner like everyone else, May.”

May curses under her breath, “hi, mom.” A fake smile flashes across her face and Pepper knows this because May’s real, genuine, smile causing those cute dimples that she loves so much. “And you must be Pepper, hi i’m Claire Parker. It’s so nice to meet one of May’s friends other than that Stark boy.”

Pepper shakes her hand, “yeah, Tony can be a bit of a handful.”

May takes out their leftovers from the microwave when it beeps, grabs two forks and walks past her mother, “actually, Pepper and I are together, you know like Natasha and Yelena, except without the rings.” An expression flashes across Claire’s face that neither Pepper nor May can read.

“Oh, okay. You gals have fun. I’m just going to make some tea,” Claire says as she turns on the stove, boiling water in the teapot. May lets out a deep breath, she clenches her fist in her free hand not holding the takeout and forks. “I don’t know what century you’re in but, no one says gal pals anymore, and it’s quite an out of date term and i’m not sure you think you’re saying it correctly.”

Claire gives May a confused expression, “of course, I am. You’re girlfriends.”

Pepper now understands why May didn’t want to come home, she’s also feeling a tad bit uncomfortable as the tension in the room has reached a higher level. May is resisting the urge to slap herself across the face, how was she related to this person.

“No, mom, I-“ May pauses. She mumbles ‘fuck it’ under her breath and licks her lips. “Pepper and I are together as in we kiss and have sex and go on dates like everyone else. The same way as you and dad do. The same why Natasha and Yelena do, it’s normal.”

Claire’s face is as white as a ghost and she doesn’t say anything for a solid minute which means it’s a good time to run upstairs and eat, and they do exactly that. May and Pepper climb the insane amount of stairs back to May’s room, sit on the couch by the window and eat as they look out the window at the stars. It’s silent for a moment, they’re eating as May’s record player is quietly blasting a spice girls record.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Pepper says once the silence got enough for her, she looks up from her container of food to see May smiling. “I didn’t think I would do it but it just got so frustrating. We can leave tomorrow if you want, i’m sure I can get Natasha and Yelena on board.”

“Don’t you have family staying over the weekend?” Pepper questions as she snatches an egg roll out of May’s takeout dish. May gasps and shrugs it off, it’s only food.

“Yeah, I haven’t seen most of them since last break, but i’d rather just spend it with Natasha and you.”

Pepper looks up at May after taking a bite of her egg roll, “I’m in, whatever it is you want to do.” May cheeks turn a light shade of pink and she smiles. She smiles the real, genuine one, cute dimples and all, that makes Pepper’s heart beat fast in her chest, it echos in her ears.

“Thank you. I appreciate it,” May puts her now empty container onto the coffee table, she sits in a criss cross position and leans forward towards Pepper. “Tell me something about you. I want to know everything.”

Pepper tilted her head, pausing for a moment to think, “I wanted to be a vet when I was younger. I loved animals, still do, so much until I realized going to school for almost seven years seemed too excessive.” May smiled at the thought of Pepper being a vet, helping animals, making sure they’re happy and healthy.

“That’s cute. I always knew I wanted to do something with my love of books, whether I decide to become a writer or open up my own bookstore, it’s where I truly feel like myself, when I’m surrounded by books and of course, Milo.”

Pepper rests her chin in her hand, she looks at May as she talks about her love for books and writing and what she could do. She notices that May talks with her hands a lot, they’re constantly moving in different directions when she speaks, making her point across. Pepper also notices there’s a tiny twinkle in her eyes when she talks about anything she loves and Pepper decides right then and there that she has moved from the like stage of their relationship to love, and it was going to be difficult.

May lets out a yawn, breaking Pepper’s train of thought. She gets up from her seat, shuts the record player off and grabs a pair of pajamas from the wardrobe. She changes into them, not caring if Pepper sees, they already had sex. May lazily braids her hair as Pepper changes into her own pajamas.

Pepper’s flannel pajama set is far more gracious looking than May’s old Beatles shirt and some boxers. They throw out the empty containers, shut the lights off, and are immersed in the softness of the sheets and comforter. May turns on her side, she pulls the comforter up to her chest, and faces Pepper. The blonde imitates her, they stare at each other as the moonlight shines through the window onto their face. May’s tongue pokes out, wetting her lips, before whispering, “Did you know that the moon is a lesbian?”

Pepper covers her mouth with her hand as she laughs. She takes a brief pause to collect her breath. “Are you serious, who told you?”

May raises her eyebrows, “Um, everyone knows. The moon and the sun are lesbians, they’re together.” Pepper nods her head, “yes, what was I thinking? They definitely are.” She didn’t know much about the moon and sun, even the stars, but what she did know was that May was very enthusiastic about the moon being a lesbian and Pepper didn’t have the heart to tell her what she thought of it.

“It’s just a theory, I’ll let you sleep on it.” May says before giving Pepper a sweet, soft, kiss and turning the other way to get some sleep. Pepper freezes, she didn’t expect that at all. She mumbles out, “Night, May.”

The bedroom door barges open, it smacks against the wall. May instinctively sits upright in bed, her hair is disheveled and eyes are still closed, and Pepper is still soundly sleeping.

“What,” May mumbles out, eyes still closed, her voice is hoarse.

“Breakfast is ready,” Natasha says as she leans her back on the doorway frame “I’m not leaving until you get up.”

May lets out a groan, she runs a hand through her hair and gets up quietly from the bed without waking Pepper. She takes one last look at the sleeping blonde and follows Natasha down the stairs. It’s suspiciously quiet for a Saturday morning in the Parker household, besides the tv in the next room playing the news on blast, it made May feel a little on edge. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes as Natasha immediately grabs the already made coffee pot and sits in the empty chair next to Yelena.

Natasha hands May a mug, she pours the steaming dark goodness into it, adding a touch of creamer and sugar before taking a sip and letting out a content sigh. There’s a variety of breakfast foods scattered along the island table. Eggs, pancakes, bacon, and toast. Even some boxes of cereal and bowls of fruit.

May rolled her eyes, her parents always go all out when they get together and there was only eight of them currently in the house. Three of said eight were currently sleeping. Claire hasn’t even acknowledged May’s presence yet, occasionally sipping her coffee and looking over at the newspaper her dad was currently reading. May let out a huff and piled some of everything onto a platter, she grabbed a glass from the cabinet, filled it with orange juice and set it onto the tray. She lifted it up and began to walk back upstairs to her bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Claire called out. May bit the inside of her cheek.

“Upstairs. Pepper’s still sleeping, so I thought I would surprise her with breakfast in bed or is it mandatory to eat in the kitchen now?”

“That’s very sweet, kiddo,” May’s dad, Ed, said as he licked his finger and turned a page in the paper. A half smile appeared on May’s face, she ascended up the stairs when no one objected, though May knew as soon as her back was turned her mother had a stern look on her face.

Natasha and Yelena sat quietly watching May walk up the stairs. Yelena gave Nat a look, almost asking if we should follow but Natasha shakes her head. She broke off a piece of pancake, dipped it in syrup and took a bite. Yelena craned her neck to look at May’s mother, she felt a sense of uneasiness but discarded it when Natasha threw a berry at her.

“Why?” Yelena asked when Natasha threw a second berry.

“Because I wanted too,” Natasha argued back, instead of throwing another fruit, she popped it into her mouth. Yelena stared at her, her nose scrunching up.

“If you keep doing that i’m going to kiss you,” Natasha said as she scooted closer to Yelena, her arm rested on the back of Yelena’s chair. Yelena moved closer, she reached over to wrap an arm around Natasha but moved it at the last second to grab a strawberry off her plate. Natasha let out a small fake gasp before smiling, she knew what Yelena was going to do before she even did it. It was a little thing that Yelena loved, like Natasha was part witch or something, she had a sixth sense.

“No PDA in the kitchen please,” Ed said without even looking up from his newspaper as he did the crossword of the day. Natasha rolled her eyes, “we weren’t doing anything, uncle Ed.”

“Oh, I know, but who knows what happens after the kitchen gets covered in fruit, I definitely don’t.” Natasha let out a chuckle. She cups Yelena’s face with her hand and gives her an eskimo kiss, Yelena lets out a giggle.

May shuts the door quietly behind her as she places the tray of food onto the table. She walks over to Pepper’s side of the bed and places a kiss on her forehead, Pepper stirs and mumbles, “Why are you giving me kisses, no one’s around.” May chuckles, “that makes it even better.”

“I brought up breakfast since you wanted to sleep a little late.” May leaves Pepper’s side to bring the tray over onto the bed, Pepper is immediately woken up by the warm, delicious smells of food. Her stomach rubbles. “First of all,” she lets out a yawn. “You didn’t wake me up so don’t blame it on me, sweet cheeks.”

Pepper ties her messy bed hair into a ponytail as she sips her orange juice and cuts into her pancake. It’s covered in syrup and completely lathered in butter, just the way she likes it.

“What are we doing today?’ Pepper asks after she takes a bite. She pops a pre-cut strawberry into her mouth.

May takes a sip of her coffee. “I’m not sure, maybe we’ll go to a museum or just hang out.” Pepper nods her head. They sit in silence as Pepper eats her breakfast. Occasionally May will steal some fruit out of the bowl, earning a glare from the blonde. Pepper lets out a huff as she sits back, she’s content and in a slight food coma, it’s good though. May stares at her and raises an eyebrow in her direction before standing up, taking two long strides to the dresser and grabbing an outfit for the day.

“I’m heading to the shower,” May suggests as she walks towards the door, “unless you want to save time and water.” She raises both eyebrows up and down. A small smirk appears on Pepper’s face, she licks her lips.

“Love to, sweet cheeks. But, I’m afraid I can’t get up, due to the food coma that has overcome me. Raincheck?” A pout forms on May’s face, “okay.” And she’s out the door. Pepper lays her head back onto the pillows, closing her eyes as her nose scrunches up and a sigh escapes her lips.

“You should’ve went,” Natasha calls out.

Pepper looks up and sees Natasha with her arms crossed, hair braided, standing against the wall. She’s dressed like Lara Croft, black jeans and leather jacket. Pepper gets up from the warm, comfortable bed, to her suitcase, pulling out an outfit.

“It’ll be fine, I’ll make it up to her,” Pepper says as she stands awkwardly holding her clothes in her crossed arms.

“This has nothing to do with morning shower sex but please don’t hurt her. She can overthink anything and is a little fragile.”

“I won’t. You can count on me to pick up any broken pieces that have fallen,” Pepper swears as she places a hand on her chest. Natasha looks at her, almost stunned, maybe her little cousin finally found someone who equals her.

“Well we’re going to the museum today, because I don’t think anyone wants to be in this house right now,” Natasha nods her head and walks way, leaving Pepper alone to get dressed. She’s half naked in just her bra and pajama bottoms when May comes back into her room, towel wrapped around her body and her brown hair is dripping wet down her back.

“Oh,” May says as her cheeks flush, she shuts the door behind her. “I thought you were going to shower after me.”

Pepper shakes her head, “dry shampoo does wonders.” She chuckles. “I’ll do it tonight, you did say you wanted a raincheck.”

May does a double-take, “You’re right, I did say that.” She smirks as she pulls her jeans over her tan, skinny, legs.

“I always am,” A now dressed Pepper says as she runs a hand through her hair. She turns around to see May standing in front of her mirror, admiring herself. Pepper smiles as May turns around.

“Let’s go,” she says as she glides past Pepper and out the bedroom door.

The four of them exit Natasha’s car and head to the museum, it’s not as grand as the one in New York, it has its perks and small flaws. Natasha grabbed Yelena’s hand and drags her in the opposite direction May and Pepper are going. “We’ll see you at the gift shop later!” She called out over her shoulder. Yelena sent the two women a sympathetic smile.

May let out a groan, “of course she wouldn’t want to keep the buddy system in place.” She opened the museum map and began to walk towards the art section, Pepper followed.

“It’s alright. They just want to do their own thing. C’mon,” Pepper smiles as she links her arm around May’s. They’re standing in a gigantic room, paintings scatter the walls in various directions and Pepper’s eyes are immediately fixated on a flower portrait. She stand in front of it, her hand rests on her chin.

“Whatcha thinking about?” May asks as she slides next to Pepper, her eyes move back and forth from the painting to Pepper.

“The colors in this blend almost like a sunset. See here,” she points. “The way the purple moves into the blue then fades into green and so on so forth.” May nods her head. It’s this moment she really wished focused during art class she had to take as an elective.

“I take it you like art?” May asks as they move down the line of paintings, staying in sync with Pepper.

“Yes, very much.”

“God, you and Steve would get along so great,” May says drastically as she looks at the map.

“Why’s that?’ Pepper asked curiously. She tilted her head to the side.

“Because Steve’s an artist, or at least trying to become one. He’s fascinated by it to the point where his apartment is filled with paintings, old and new, unfinished and completed. It’s really remarkable to see someone with their life together and completely immersed in their work.” May frowns and shamelessly tilts her head down to the floor. She walks towards the next set of paintings. Pepper’s eyebrows furrow, she’s not sure how to respond to the truth hidden between the lines. She lets out a breath and follows May.

It’s quiet in the museum besides the soft, elegant, classical music playing throughout the room. May and Pepper don’t speak for a moment until they reach another exhibit, the statues. May’s demeanor has completely changed. She pulls out a camera that Pepper had no idea she brought with her. May ran over to an open bench and rolled back the camera. She disposed the film into it, slow and steady, and snapped it shut. The sound of the camera rolling film was pure, soothingness, to Pepper’s ears. It was equivalent to a wave coming to the shore or the sound of coffee pouring into a mug. With a content sigh, May looked up at Pepper and smiled.

May jumped up from the bench, rolling back and forth on the heels of her shoes. She ushers Pepper to stand by the statue. “Imitate it please.”

With her mouth now agape, Pepper drops her bag next to May and immediately does what she’s told. The statue’s arms are slightly crossed with one another and her head is tilted up, showing off her jawline and collarbones. Once Pepper is in position, May adjusts the zoom and clicks the shutter. “Nice,” May says as she rolls the film. “Come on.” Pepper blinks and nods her head, she grabs her bag and follows the petite brunette.

They spend the next forty minutes lost in one another’s presence and taking photos of the statues while also recreating some of them with the help of a very nice bystander. By the time they’re done, it’s time to meet Natasha and Yelena at the gift shop. Natasha is talking indistinctly to Yelena, May can see that Yelena has a bag of goodies, no doubt in her mind Natasha bought her it.

“Did you guts have a good time?” Yelena asks as she pulls her bag tighter around her shoulder and leans into Natasha.

Pepper nods her head, “Yes, I loved it.” She pauses to glance at May and clears her throat. “The art was beautiful, this was a lot of fun.”

A small smirk appears on Natasha’s face, “good. Let’s go.”

May lets out a groan, “Awe, come on. I don’t want to go home just yet.”

Natasha sighs, “you know we have to go back eventually. You can’t keep hiding in your room until you leave tomorrow night.”

“I can try,” May mutters under her breath as she follows them to the car. Pepper rubs May’s shoulder in a calmly manner.

“I heard that,” Natasha calls out over her shoulder. May rolls her eyes because of course Natasha did. She probably, no definitely, has a sixth sense, May thinks.

They’re back again in the driveway and May just wants to stay in the car. She hates confrontation and she knows it’s only going to get worse. Maybe she can leave early, she thought. No, that would do no one good. Natasha and Yelena exit the car and head towards the house when May pauses in her step before entering. Pepper’s next to her, holding her hand. Getting a weird sense of deja vu.

“It’s alright if you want to leave tonight instead of tomorrow.” Pepper looks at her with concern, her eyebrows furrow. May sighs and says nothing when they enter the warm house. Her mother has definitely been baking as the smell of chocolate and cinnamon flow throughout the house. There’s a roar of laugher coming from the living room.

Natasha takes a pause when she sees Melina and Alexei sitting on the couch with May’s dad. They’re in the middle of a game of chess and a bottle of bourbon has been opened, the bottle is empty halfway. “Um, hi,” Natasha says and their attention is immediately drawn from the chessboard to her.

“Natasha!” Melina says as she gets up from her seat to hug Natasha. Natasha doesn’t know if she should hug her back or remain stiff as a board. “I told you we would come. Hello Yelena.”

“Hello,” Yelena responds as she glances at Natasha. The expression on Natasha’s face is hard to read. Yelena doesn’t know if she should comfort or drag her away from the scene in front of them. Behind them, May and Pepper lean their heads in the room to see what the commotion is and May’s eyes widen. “Those are Natasha’s adopted parents,” she whispers to Pepper. Pepper nods her head. “We heard you were going to be here for the holidays so we thought we would surprise you,” Melina says as she glances back at Alexei, who is taking a gulp of his cold, bourbon, glass. Natasha swallows and clears her throat. “Not that I’m happy to see you, but you didn’t have to come here. We would be with you for the holidays anyway.”

Melina’s eyebrows furrow, “I thought you would be excited to see us. It’s our first Christmas here and it’s been so long since we saw our dear niece, May.” She pauses to look around for the brunette and her eyes land on May slowly sneaking upstairs with Pepper. “May!”

May sighs and turns back around with a smiles on her face, “Hi aunt Melina.” Melina embraces May and rubs her shoulders. “It’s so good to see you dear, how are you?”

May is taken back by the question. Ever since she arrived home, no one has asked her that and she is once again reminded why she likes Melina more than her own flesh and blood mom. May sniffles.

“I’m doing my best, aunt Melina. Um, this is Pepper, my girlfriend. Pepper, this is aunt Melina, Natasha’s mom.” May says as she glances at Natasha, who is sneaking away with Yelena to another room.

“Hi Pepper, it’s so good to meet you” Melina outstretches a hand to her. “How are you enjoying our cold weather? I bet it’s a bit upscale from New York.” Pepper softly shakes her hand, she brushes a strand of hair behind her ear.

“It’s definitely colder than New York but nothing I can’t handle. Actually, I quite like it.” Pepper says honestly. She doesn’t know where this sudden burst of confidence and truth came out. Maybe it has something to do with the way Melina does things and asks the right questions.

“That’s wonderful to hear. I can’t wait to tell you more once we have gotten settled,” Melina is interrupted by Alexei yelling at Ed, she rolls her eyes. “I have to go calm him down before things get out of hand again. I’ll see you girls later.” As quickly as she came to them, Melina is next to Alexei, rubbing his arm calmly.

May exhales, “there, you met Melina. I think that’s everyone besides by brother and sister who,” May pauses for a second to overlook the living room and part of the kitchen, “who, aren’t even here.” May rubs a hand over her face, she was starting to get tired of her family.

“If my mom and I don’t make up tonight then we’re hopping on the first plane out, is that alright with you?” May asks Pepper, she looks up at her, there’s almost tears in May’s eyes.

“Come on,” Pepper says as she grabs May’s hand. Together they walk up the stairs to May’s room and shut the door. Both of them let out a gasp when they see Natasha and Yelena sitting on the couch.

“I thought you guys were still downstairs,” May questions as she sits on the bed, Pepper following.

“How did you forget your house has more than one set of staircase in it? It truly baffles me that i’m here more than you are,” Natasha says as she plays with Yelena’s hand, instinctively drawing circles on it.

“Yeah, well, don’t take that as a compliment or let it go straight to your head,” May argues back. She leans her head back onto the pillows.

“Do you want to tell or should I?” Pepper whispers. May turns her head towards her, “No, I can”

“Anything you’d like to share with the class, Parker?” Natasha says with an eyebrow raised.

“If mom and I don’t make up tonight, we’re leaving,” May says calmly as she intertwines a finger with Pepper’s, locking it together. Yelena’s eyebrows raise and she cranes her neck to look at Natasha.

“Are you sure?” Natasha asks in a concerning voice, surprising May.

“Yeah. I’m tired of it, I just want to go home, be in my bed and see Milo. I knew I should’ve gone to Tony's.” May angrily says as she hits her head back down onto the soft pillows.

Yelena was about to open her mouth but Natasha beat her to it, “Milo is her cat.” Yelena nods her head and closes her mouth, smiling.

“We have a cat too. A white cat named Luna,” Yelena says smiling.

“She hates me,” Natasha says with a straight face.

“No, she doesn’t,” Yelena looks at her defensively as Natasha rolls her eyes.

“Awe, we can have cat playdates,” May says grinning and definitely doesn’t miss the awful, horrid, look flashing across Natasha’s face.

Yelena laughs. “I’m so down for that. We need to set up at date.”

“No.” Natasha immediately says.

“Yes.”

May clears her throat, “can I just ask-“

“No,” Natasha says once again. “We’re not talking about why they’re here. I have no idea. I didn’t ask them, neither did Yelena.”

May nods her head, “okay, good.”

“Good,” Natasha repeats as she rubs a hand across her forehead, trying to relieve the sudden tension she had.

There’s a knock on May’s door.

“Yeah?” May calls out.

Ed pokes his head in with his eyes closed when he opens the door, “is everyone decent?”

Natasha chuckles, “yes, uncle Ed.”

“Oh, good,” Ed opens his eyes. “Dinner’s ready.” He turns to head back down the stairs before pausing to turn back to May.

“May, it’s okay with me if you want to go back to New York. I know you’ve only been here a short time but, it was nice to have you back home, kiddo.” He smiles and trudges down the staircase. May sighs and thinks to herself, he’s definitely a spy or has cameras everywhere.

Dinner that evening is quiet, the tension in the air is thick. Melina helped Claire make pasta, even their homemade sauce. It was delicious and very comforting. Alexei and Ed talked amongst themselves, discussing various things from cars to the economy. The girls sit at the booth, Natasha and Yelena sat in during breakfast, while the other adults claimed the island.

Melina, who sat the closest to them, turned in her seat. “So Pepper,” Pepper pauses, her forkful of penne froze midair. “How did you meet May?” May glances at Pepper.

Pepper places her fork back into her bowl, “we met through Tony, one of May’s closest friends. He introduced us and the rest was history.” Pepper smiles.

Melina nods her head, “very cute. Tony as in Tony Stark?”

“Yes,” May says this time, allowing Pepper to continue to eat her pasta. “You met him, I think, last year when we came over for Christmas. It was the year Natasha got sick.”

Melina’s face lit up, “yes! I remember, he was very sweet. He helped me bake cookies and talked about a boy named Steve, whom he had a crush on.”

May smiled, “they’re together now. They’re disgustingly adorable.” May sticks her tongue out before taking a bite of bread.

“That makes me so happy to hear! Alexei, dear."

Alexei pauses his conversation with Ed and focuses his attention on his wife, “yeah?”

“You remember last Christmas when May brought home her friend Tony?”

Alexei face also lights up, “of course! I told him he needed to grow more, he’s uncomfortably short for his age. How is he doing May?” He cranes his neck to look at May from over Melina’s shoulder.

“He’s doing very well, he’s trying to get into business while working part-time at a garage. And as I told Melina, he’s with Steve now. I think they’re going on almost a year together, right, Pepper?” Pepper nods her head.

“Get outta here!” Alexei exclaims. “That’s wonderful. Please tell him I wish him all the best, I hope one day we can meet Steve.”

“I’ll pass it along, uncle Alexei. You can count on me,” May says smiling as she takes a sip of water. She glances up at Natasha and Yelena who can sense a relief coming from May, more like a breath of fresh air. It’s extremely comforting for all of them in their little booth.

A pair of utensils clattering onto a plate makes everyone jump in their seats, except for Ed, who continues eating and is definitely used to this annoying behavior from his wife by now. Claire stands up, her chair screeches on the hardwood floor, she puts her dish into the sink and heads towards the living room. The tv echos throughout the first floor of the house.

Ed lets out a heavy sigh and excuses himself from the kitchen, he follows in his wife’s footsteps while absentmindedly scratching the back of his neck. Melina and Alexei side eye one another before they continue eating, occasionally grabbing more bread from the bowl.

May lets out a puff of hair, a strand of hair blows. She pushes her pasta bowl away from her and crosses her arms over her chest. Natasha looks at her sympathetically, she reaches across the table, palm facing up. May looks at it before putting her own hand on top, Natasha rubs her hand with her thumb, in a circling motion. Pepper leans over and places a kiss on May’s temple.

“If you want to go, we can go,” Pepper whispers. May nods her head and gets up from her seat, she takes the semi-empty bowls to the sink. As she pushes back her hair from her face and ties it onto a low ponytail, she turns back to Melina and Alexei.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t spend more time together. I hope you’ll come to New York soon and we can do something, maybe i’ll cook and bust out the card games,” May says as she laughs uncomfortably.

Melina nods her head, “I would love that May, thank you. Definitely stock up on beer for this guy,” she nudges Alexei who raises his glass.

“I’ll keep my schedule open,” May responds before signaling the girls to head upstairs. They pause in their steps when yelling is louder than the tv.

“I don’t want to hear it Claire. I’m tired of it and getting annoyed every second,” Ed exclaims.

“You’re tired of it? Tired of what exactly, me telling you how I feel?” Claire says back, hostile as usual. May rolls her eyes.

“Tired of you treating May and your niece like this,” Ed gestures his hands out. “Like they’re not human beings, they are, and one of them is your flesh and blood. Have you even talked to Pepper since she’s been here, besides the hello from yesterday? Cause I have. She’s incredibly smart and I can see how much our May means to her.” Ed argues back.

May looks at Pepper, who’s eyebrows are furrow. Pepper may have forgot to mention that she did talk to Ed when she came down for lunch. May grabs her hand and kisses her knuckle. Natasha and Yelena continue up the stairs while Pepper and May linger for a minute.

“Change our attitude and mindset, even the way you treat everyone in this house. I’m sleeping in the guest room for the time being.” It’s quiet for a moment until Ed’s footsteps are being heard and he’s standing on the bottom step of the stairs, looking up at May and Pepper. A smile appears on his face and he puts a hand on May’s shoulder, rubbing it in a comfortingly. The three of them head upstairs, Pepper continues walking while May and Ed stop at the landing.

“Have a safe flight, kiddo. Please call me when you get home.”

“Will do, dad. And, um, thank you. You didn’t have to do that,” May says when Ed pulls her into a hug. She feels a little uncomfortable with the sudden affection, something she’s not used to since she was a child. She hugs him back, wrapping her arms around his torso. He pulls away after a full minute.

“Remember what I said,” Ed says while pointing at her, smiling, and enters the guest bedroom. May chuckles and throws her arms up in the arm and brings them back down while letting out a breath she didn’t know she was holding it.

May enters her room when Pepper is packing her suitcase, she’s folding her clothes neatly, making sure they fit perfectly. “You know the t.s.a agents don’t credit you for how well you pack your suitcase?”

Pepper chuckles, “is it a crime to have everything neat for when I unpack at home? No.” May shakes her head and starts packing.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that I talked to your dad while I had lunch and you were with Natasha. It slipped my mind,” Pepper confesses while looking at May throwing her clothes into her suitcase.

“It’s okay, you don’t need my permission to talk to anyone. I appreciate you talking to him. Please tell me he didn’t dive into his dad talk or completely overshare about my childhood,” May pleads as she holds her hands together, praying. Pepper smiles, “Yes, he talked about you but, nothing bad I promise.”

May smiles as she zips her suitcase shut. She reaches down to grab her carryon and puts her necessary items in it, including the book she wanted to read but never got the chance to. Pepper puts her coat on, not caring that the outfit she wore, a pair of leggings and a hoodie, didn’t match. She lifts her hair that got stuck under the collar and turns to May. “Ready?”

May has her coat on and throws her carryon over her shoulder. “As I’ll ever be.” They walk down the stairs, suitcases in tow.

“Hey, wait, who bought our plane tickets?” May asks with an eyebrow raise.

“Your dad,” Pepper says enthusiastically as she looks at her feet, worrying she might tumble down the flight of stairs.

May smiles and mumbles, ‘of course’ under her breath.

At the bottom of the stairs is Melina and Alexei, they embrace the two girls in hugs. May promises Melina she’ll call her when they get home to arrange when they can get together, because let’s face it, they need a redo of this Christmas break.

As they head out the door, Claire gives them no attention, her sole focus is the reruns of criminal minds. Pepper shakes her head. Natasha opens her trunk and helps them put the suitcases in it. The door closes shut and they’re in the car. Natasha starts the engine and before she can pull out of the driveway, Ed comes out of the house, yelling, “wait!”

May rolls down her window, “yeah, dad?”

Ed stops in front, pausing to catch his breathe even though the distance between the front door and driveway was no longer than eight feet.

“This is for you,” he hands her a present wrapped in red paper and a bow on top, “Merry early Christmas, May.” He smiles. May’s eyes widen and her eyebrows raise high enough that she has lines on her forehead. “Open it when you get home or even at the airport,” Ed says before sending May one last smile and running back into the house.

“What was that about?” Natasha asks as she looks into the mirror, pulling out of the driveway.

“A present,” May says smiling as she rubs her hands over the wrapping paper.

“Great, so you get one early while we have to wait until tomorrow,” Natasha says sarcastically as she turns right.

“Are you going to open it?” Yelena asks May, turning in her seat.

“Later, I will,” May replies as she glances at Pepper.

Natasha puts the car in park when they arrive at the airport. There’s a sudden realization between the four of them that this could be the last time they see one another, until Natasha’s wedding, at least. Natasha doesn’t say anything when she exits the car and pops the trunk open for May and Pepper to grab their luggage.

May sets her luggage on the concrete and immediately grabs Natasha in for a hug, the redhead instinctively wraps her arms around May’s petite form. She buries her head in May’s neck.

“You know you’re my maid of honor, right?” Natasha mumbles against May’s neck and May lets out a sob and laughs.

“Of course, I know. Who else puts up with your shit?” This time Natasha laughs, a real genuine one. They pull away slowly and dry their tears with the end of their jackets and laugh. “Promise to call me?” Natasha says as she extends out her pinky finger. May nods her head and wraps her own finger around Natasha’s, they shake. May turns her head to see Pepper and Yelena exchanging numbers and talking quietly amongst themselves.

“She’s a good one, I hope you keep her,” Natasha nods her head in Pepper’s direction. May licks her lips and smiles, “I plan too.”

May waves over to Pepper, “we better get going.” Pepper nods her head. “It was nice to meet you Yelena. I hope you know you have a long road ahead with this one” May nudges Natasha’s arm. Natasha glares at her.

“Oh, I know. I’ll enjoy it,” Yelena says with a grin on her face.

“And that’s our cue to go. Goodbye, I love you,” May exclaims as she blows the two of them a kiss. Natasha imitates her before pulling out of the spot.

“You ready?” Pepper says once she’s next to May at the check-in line. She instinctively reaches out for May’s hand and intertwines their hands together.

“Yes,” May says without a beat. She kisses Pepper’s knuckle and they’re off back to New York.

It’s only nine-thirty when they’re in a taxi headed out of the city when May begins to question where they’re going. She does a double take before asking Pepper, the right and only question, “Where are we going?” To which Pepper responds with, “just relax and you’ll see when we get there.” May sighs and leans her head against the headrest, she slowly begins to drift off. With the day she had she at least deserved some sleep. Another thirty minutes pass and May is awaken by the car door shutting, she jumps in her seat and rubs her sleepy eyes. Pepper opens the door for her and unbuckles her seatbelt. May feels like a little kid when her parents used to wake her up after a long car ride and carry her into the house. No way is she allowing Pepper to carry her. “I’m alright,” she says once she gets her bearings. Pepper nods her head.

“C’mon, I’m sure they’ll want to see you,” Pepper says as she hands both of their luggage to a man at the front steps. May raises an eyebrow when she steps out of the taxi, she’s about to pay the driver when Jarvis steps up to do it for them. May’s eyes widened. She wants to squeal but she knows it’s late and she definitely didn’t want to wake up the whole neighborhood. Jarvis turns to face them when the driver pulls away from the sidewalk.

“Good evening miss Parker,” Jarvis says in his wonderful British tone that May absolutely adores every time she hears it. May is hugging Jarvis faster than Pepper can blink. The tall man smiles and imitates her, wrapping an arm around her neck. May breathes in his scent, a smell of cherries and a hint of scotch. They pull away and walk in arm and arm towards the house, Pepper follows closely behind, smiling to herself.

“I’ll have you know miss Parker that I have missed our weekly board games. I can play a mean game of poker.”

“Oh, don’t I know it, J. You always beat me but, never at checkers. That’s my speciality.” May says as she winks back at Pepper.

Pepper’s never been inside the Stark family home before and it’s much more beautiful than she imagined. It’s like it was taken straight out of a renaissance painting and fused with modern elements.

“Beautiful, is it not?” Jarvis says, breaking Pepper’s train of thought.

She clears her throat. “Yes, it is.” She extends a hand out to him. “I’m Pepper Potts, we spoke on the phone.”

“Yes, of course, miss Potts. It’s wonderful to finally meet you.” Jarvis shakes her hand before reaching over to grab the phone.

“Tony, you have company. Can you and mister Rogers please come down.” Jarvis nods his head and hangs up. He turns to the girls. “Would any of you like some tea? We have every kind.”

“Yes!” May exclaims as she follows Jarvis to the kitchen, dragging along Pepper. “Jarvis makes the best tea, you’ll love it.”

“I’m sure I will,” Pepper responds with a smile on her face.

Jarvis starts up the teapot by pouring water into it and setting it onto the stove, igniting it. He takes two tea cups and sets them next to the stove, a teabags in each. As the teapot heats up and begins to whistle, Tony and Steve enter the kitchen. Tony’s eyes widen as he runs to them, hugging both of them tightly. Steve smiles with his arms crossed against his chest.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were home,” Tony questions May, a concerned look plasters his face. He rubs her shoulder in a comforting manner.

“Not now okay? They just got here,” Jarvis says suddenly when he pours, now four cups of tea.

“Yes, sir,” Tony says as he sits next down to May.

Jarvis adds honey to every cup and slides one to each of them. “There are some lemon squares on the counter, feel free to take as much as you like. Tony, mister Rogers, miss Parker, and miss Potts, it’s been a pleasure. I bid you all a goodnight.”

“Thank you, Jarvis” They all say in unison, and that makes Jarvis grin.

Steve slides in next to Pepper, he blows on his cup of tea before taking a sip of it. “Thank you for calling me. He was getting worried about the two of you going to May’s home. I’m glad you cut it short.”

“Anytime, Steve. I mean it. I should be the one thanking you, not the other way around.”

“I’ll take you up on that anytime, starting now,” Steve lets out a chuckle.

“How was your weekend before we crashed yours? Sorry,” Pepper says shamefully as she sips her tea.

“It’s been great, Tony’s parents aren’t home and—“ Pepper raises and eyebrow and smirks. “hey! None of that.” Pepper chuckles. “Anyway, it’s been really good getting to know Jarvis. He’s really the best, I finally see what Tony’s been talking about all this time.”

“That’s really great, Steve. You got the approval of the highest person on Tony’s list of who he truly cares about. The second being you, then May and me.” Steve smiles bashfully.

“Thanks, Pepper. I appreciate it.”

“Hey,” Tony suddenly says making Pepper and Steve look in his direction. “What are you two talking about that’s making Steve go as red and hot as his tea?” Steve chuckles.

“Nothing that concerns you, sweetheart.”

“Oh, god,” May gags before taking a bite of a lemon bar.

“Oh, shut up Parker, you’re much worse.” Tony says as he drinks his tea in slight disgust. Tony wouldn’t dare say he hates it because he does. He just couldn’t live with himself to see the look on Steve’s face when he disappoints him.

“You got me there,” May mumbles through the lemon bar and holds up a pair of finger guns. She chuckles. Tony sets his cup down on the counter.

“Okay, lay it on me. We have plenty of time.” Tony rests an arm on the counter, his head lay in his comfortably in his palm. He looks up at her with eyebrows raised and a concern look. May sighs heavily. “First, Natasha’s getting married.”

Tony’s eyes widen. “I thought she was divorced?”

“She is. Now, she’s engaged to Yelena, who is just wonderful. You’ll love her, she’s so sweet.”

Tony’s mouth is agape with a grin on his face. “To a woman?! Why didn’t you lead with that! That’s great.”

“It is. I’ve never seen her so happy before, it was relieving.”

“Okay, so that’s the good news. What’s the bad?” Tony’s face is all serious. The grin from before is replaced with a stern look. May wets her lips and stops herself from looking anywhere but Tony’s face. “Um,” she pauses, moving a strand of hair out of her face. “My mom doesn’t approve.” May lets out a dry laugh. Tony immediately pulls her into his arms, wrapping his arms around her frame. He comforted her in the same way Jarvis had did when his own father didn’t approve of him being with Steve. Tony felt May’s tears soak his shirt as she sobbed into his arms, clenching his shirt in her fists. A wave of anger washed over his face as he looked up to Pepper and Steve sitting quietly, letting them have their moment. One look at Tony and Steve knew, of course he knew. How could he not? It was the exact same face Steve made when Tony told Howard. They understood one another. Pepper began to rub May’s back gently, she let out a sigh. None of them moved for a solid seven minutes, occasionally drinking their tea in silence. Tony held his breath when May lifted her head off of his tear stained shoulder, she sniffled.

“Sorry, about your shirt,” she rubbed her nose on her sleeve and wiped her eyes.

Tony chuckled, “it’s okay. I have plenty of shirts.” He tilted his head to the left and raised an eyebrow. “You okay?”

“Yeah, eventually.” May let out a breathy laugh. “Thanks for that, I needed a good cry.”

“Don’t we all.”

Tony reaches over and grabs a lemon bar. He takes a bite of one and looks at Steve. “Ready for bed?” Steve nods his head and puts his cup into the sink and rises it out.

“Ladies, we’ll see you in the morning. Jarvis is making his special pancakes.” Tony beamed as he wraps and arm around Steve, slowly leaving the kitchen.

“You must be exhausted, baby.” Pepper gently says as she moves a strand of hair out of May’s face and places a kiss to her temple. May blushes at the nickname, she always does, as she ponders saying something but stops when she instinctively leans into Pepper.

“C’mon, let’s get to bed. We’ve had a long, tiring, day.”

May nods her head. She slides her empty cup over to Pepper who gracefully takes both and puts them into the sink next to Steve’s.

Arm in arm they walk up the mahogany staircase. Steve had told Pepper that they would be staying in the guest room across from Tony’s. May flops down on the soft duvet, too lazy and drained to change into her pajamas. Pepper looks around the room and notices their luggage is stacked neatly by the door, along with an adjoined bathroom.

“You lay there. I’m gonna get changed, okay?” Pepper tells May as she grabs her change of clothes. Before entering the bathroom she turns to see May lift up a thumbs up. Pepper chuckles. Not even four minutes later, Pepper is changed and much more comfortable, she sees May completely passed out on the bed. Pepper shakes her head and smiles. Slowly but carefully, without waking May, she moves her under the covers. Pepper slides in next to her and wraps an arm around May’s chest, kissing her forehead. Matching May’s breathing, she slowly begins to fall asleep.

May wakes up from the best sleep of her life, the kind of sleep that gives you lines on your arms when you wake up. She lets out a content sigh and rubs her eyes. She feels a weight on her chest and looks down to see Pepper sleeping soundly on her. May smiles. She slowly moves out from under Pepper and stretches her legs, arms and back until she hears her a cracking sound that is slightly satisfying to her ears. May heads to the bathroom quietly, without waking Pepper, and does her business before hearing a faint tapping on the bedroom door. With an eyebrow raise, May opens the door just a crack and fights the urge to let out a scream when Tony’s head peeks in. She glares at him and flicks him in the forehead, Tony’s not phased by it at all.

“Jarvis has breakfast ready, come on.”

May nods her head, feeling a bit fatigued after yesterday's unfortunate events, she rushes over to a sleeping soundly Pepper. She brushes the hair out of Pepper’s eyes as the blonde lets out a content sigh and blinks repeatedly.

“Good morning, sleepy head. Jarvis has breakfast ready, you hungry?” May asks as she slowly removes the covers from Pepper’s body.

“Starving, but I’m not imposed to staying here all day.” Pepper raises an eyebrow.

May bites her lip. “Tempting but, i’ve been craving Jarvis’ chocolate chip pancakes since we got here last night.”

Pepper hangs her head low, “It was worth a shot. Lead the way your majesty.” She bows ever so slightly before May grabs her arm, pulling her off the soft bed and into the hallway where Tony and Steve are still standing. Pepper laughs.

“Dear god, another minute and we would’ve left your ass in the dust.” Tony joked as Steve nudges him making Tony yelp out an ‘ow.’

Tony gawks at Steve. “You’re just pure muscle, aren’t you?”

Steve rolls his eyes as a sly smirk appears on his face. “Oh, shush. You love it.”

Tony blinks repeatedly and moves to kiss Steve. He pauses in his step when May lets out a barf sound, their eyes immediately glare at her.

“Can we please go eat now?” May pleads. She clasps her hands together, begging. Tony sighs as he puts an arm out, gesturing May and Pepper to head down the stairs towards the kitchen.

“Yes!” May exclaims and grabs Pepper’s arm dragging her down the stairs, semi tripping in the process. Steve chuckles.

The kitchen smells like a bakery, a heavenly, beautiful bakery. There’s plates of eggs, bacon, sausages and chocolate chips pancakes. Amongst the food is orange juice and of course, coffee and tea. Jarvis is mid pouring coffee into a mug when the four of them come in and sit at the island. A ear to ear grin flashes across his face. “Good morning, and Merry Christmas!”

A flash of confusion is on May’s face, she cups her face with her hands and gasps. “Holy shit I forgot.”

Pepper rubs May’s arm, “it’s okay. Yesterday was chaotic.”

“After breakfast, we’ll open gifts. Tony, your parents left gifts out before they left. I think it would be wise to at least call them for this occasion.” Jarvis says sternly, looking Tony in the eyes. Tony lets out a groan.

“I’ll do it later, J. I promise.” Jarvis nods his head, gesturing everyone to begin eating.

May immediately grabs a plate and takes a stack of pancakes. She adds a dab of butter and a lot of syrup and lets out a heavenly sigh when she takes a bite. May looks up at Jarvis. Pepper smiles, a giggle escapes her lips.

“Jarvis I want these pancakes every time I come here, you hear me?” May says as she raises a forkful of pancake in the air and into her mouth.

“As you wish, miss Parker.

May lets out a gasp, “Nice Princess Bride reference there, J.” May smirks.

Jarvis hides the smile across his face by taking a sip of his coffee. Tony shakes his head and whispers something to Steve that May, nor Pepper can hear, which results in Steve chuckling as he eats his scrambled eggs. Tony takes a sip of coffee and places his cup back down on the marble countertop.

“After gifts I assume you’ll be heading back to the city?” He questions, looking to Pepper, who is smearing butter onto a piece of toast.

“Yes?” Pepper questions as she side eyes May who nods her head. “Yes.” She repeats, more clear this time.

“Good. So are we. You’ll come back with us.” Tony grins, not missing the sudden death glare on May’s face. “Oh, cheer up, May. It’ll be fun.” May shrugs her shoulders.

Once everyone has eaten a little bit of everything, they graciously help Jarvis clean up and head to the living room with the biggest Christmas tree. Tony opens his gifts from his parents, from Maria, a record vinyl, and a watch from Howard. Tony shakes his head as he tosses both aside. Both gifts he had gotten from the previous Stark Christmas gathering.

Tony’s mood is instantly changed when Steve opens his gift from him. He takes a polaroid of Steve as he opens the blue wrapped box, inside it is multiple paint sets. Steve knows it’s the expensive one he’s been saving up for but he doesn’t care about that at all right now. He leans in to give Tony a kiss that Tony happily obliges with, wrapping a hand around his neck, deepening it. Jarvis lets out a cough before either of them can continue their PG-13 film.

Steve turns red, blush forming from his cheeks down his neck, while Tony shamelessly rubs the back of his neck. Tony gestures for May to open her gift, the one her father gave her before they left. It’s wrapped neatly with a red bow around it, and it’s a little on the lighter side. May untangles the bow and sets it off the the side. She lifts the cover of the medium size box to see a second box inside, it’s smaller and wrapped in tissue paper.

May’s eyebrows furrow as she rips the tissue paper off, throwing it into the previous box. She opens the box to see a folded up letter and a silver chain with a locket and ring around it. She gasps at the coldness and initials written on the locket; E.P. It also smells very old, like the smell of old books or an antique shop. Setting the necklace back down in the box, May opens the folded letter and the first thing she notices is that it's in her father’s handwriting.

‘May,

This necklace belonged to your grandmother, my mother, Edith Parker. You know for a long time she was with grandpa Parker but that wasn’t her first love. Her first love and other woman in the locket is Sophie. As for the ring, it was Edith’s. Sophie gave it to her and she wore it everyday around her neck hidden.’

May does a double-take, her mouth agape, and continues to read.

‘I’ve known Sophie all my life, you would’ve loved her my dear, May. and be absolutely enchanted by all the stories and special moments she would tell you one on one. I have other items from their time together, a box of trinkets and letters in a box, hidden, of course. Your grandmother asked me to pass this down to you when it was time and I think right now is a good one. I’m sorry, I have to give you this when you’re not here in front of me. I hope it puts a smile on your face. I love you. Happy Holidays. — Dad’

May doesn’t know how to react other than with tear-filled eyes. She smiles, a real genuine one, dimples and all. She gently holds the necklace in her hands afraid it might break, as she opens the locket and low and behold, two photos on equal sides of the locket are Edith and Sophie. May sighs, she rubs her thumb over the photos. She can see a little resemblance of herself in her grandmother. Her eyes advert to the ring, a silver thin band with multiple roses on it. Upon a closer look May notices their initials are engraved in it as well. She decides to leave it with the locket as intended. As May unclasps the necklace, Pepper is next to her, moving May’s hair onto one side of her frame.

“Let me,” Pepper whispers. May nods her head.

Pepper dangles the necklace around May’s neck, goosebumps arise on her skin. Pepper’s hands are shaking slightly, she doesn’t know when the sudden nervousness started. Probably when she realized she’s completely in love with May Parker and everything in her body is telling her this a red flag because there’s no way this angel sent from heaven likes, hell, loves her back. None of the less, Pepper shakes her head, clearing the thoughts, she fastens the necklace clip and pulls May’s hair back around her neck. May looks down at the necklace, and turns looking up at Pepper. “Thank you,” May whispers. “It’s beautiful.”

“You’re welcome. And yes, it is,” Pepper says quietly, heart thumping in her chest, as she looks at May. May looks into Pepper’s eyes, her eyes widen, almost as if a light bulb went off in her head. She gasps quietly and excuses herself from the group. Pepper’s eyes follow her. “I’ll be right back.”

Tony claps his hands. “Shall we continue? Jarvis, this one’s for you.” Tony hands Jarvis a present. Their chatter slowly fades out when Pepper closes the kitchen door to have privacy. May is standing with her arms crossed, her back against the counter, and eyebrows furrow with thin lines across her forehead.

Pepper intertwines her hands together in front of her, she pauses in her step afraid of getting closer she will spook May. “You okay?”

May immediately looks up, her mouth agape. “Why didn’t you tell me you were in love with me?” Her arms relax at her sides.

Pepper’s mouth opens then closes. She ponders for a moment. “I was going to tell you.” She clenches her hands, knuckles turning a shade of white.

“When? In a year or two?” May steps forward.

“I mean, maybe,” Pepper shrugs. May scoffs. “And how did you think I would feel, huh? What if I started dating someone? Or you started dating? Would you just stay quiet about it and suffer in silence?”

“In the case of you dating someone, yes, I would stay quiet about it, because it’s unrequited love. If I started dating someone, I wouldn’t give my all to then and I know that’s not fair at all. Pepper takes a step forward, she unclenches her hands.

May licks her lips. “What if it’s not unrequited love?”

“Then we do something about it.” Pepper takes two steps. She wipes her clammy hands onto her pants.

“Let’s do something about it.” May strides over to Pepper, wrapping a hand around her neck, pulling her in for a kiss. It’s hot, and heavy and teeth clashing. Pepper’s arms instinctively wrap around May’s torso, sliding down to her hips, fitting perfectly into May’s love handles. Pepper lets out a small moan when May pulls away, her pupils are wide and there’s a spark in them.

“I love you.” Pepper grins like a Cheshire Cat. Her heart is banging like a drum and she feels like she can suddenly float on water. She pulls May back in, mumbling, ‘I love you too’ on her lips. Pepper lifts May onto the counter, May dangles her legs on either side of Pepper. She wraps them around Pepper’s legs, pulling her towards her. May’s hands roam Pepper’s body, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, almost as if this is their first time. It’s not. She feels goosebumps and soft skin, and the smell of roses. It soothes her. May moves away from Pepper’s mouth to place delicate kisses along her neck and collarbone. Pepper bites her lip.

Pepper sighs heavily. “We’re in the kitchen. I don’t think it’s a good idea to get hot and heavy in here.” Pepper leans her forehead against May’s. May pouts, her bottom lip poking out. “You’re right.”

Pepper helps May down from the counter and together they head back into the living room where the others have unwrapped all the presents.

“Hey, you’re back! We opened everything because it’s my house and I can,” Tony smirks.

“That’s okay,” May says smiling. “We’re just going to relax and get things ready before we leave.” She side eyes Pepper and grabs her hand.

“That’s right, I totally forgot,” Steve gasps. His eyes still fixated on his paint supplies. Tony’s heart swells in his chest every time he sees that glimmer in Steve’s eyes.

“I’ll pack leftovers for all of you,” Jarvis announces before heading into the kitchen.

“Thank you, J.” Tony yells with a smile on his face.

May leads Pepper up the stairs to their room, she shuts the door. Pepper leans back onto the bed, she closes her eyes. May licks her lips before lunging herself on top of Pepper. Her arms rest on either side of Pepper’s head, the necklace dangles, occasionally bumping into Pepper’s nose.

May kisses Pepper slowly and softly, she slips her tongue in. Pepper lets out a low moan as she switches their position, without breaking the kiss. Pepper slowly lifts up May’s shirt to unbutton her pants. She slides them down her legs and drops them to the floor with a silent thud. May rubs her hands along Pepper’s arms, feeling how they twitch anytime she touches them.

Pulling away, Pepper kisses May’s stomach and slowly kisses down until she reaches her underwear, placing a kiss there too when May lets out a whimper. Pepper wraps a hand around her thigh, kissing the side of it before using a finger to drag down May’s underwear and off the bed, dropping down on top of her pants.

May’s hips lift off the bed when Pepper kisses her clit. She slides two fingers through her folds, feeling how aroused she is and slowly begins to rub in circular motions. May lets out a breathy moan. “Pepper.”

“Yeah?” She raises an eyebrow and looks up.

“C’mon already, please.”

“As you wish.” Pepper says before licking a long stride. She goes up and down, very slowly, teasing May. She slides one finger in and May’s hips once again, lift off the bed as she grabs onto the sheets. Pepper kitten-like licks her clit as she slides a second finger in, she speeds up her motion, feeling May’s walls clench around her fingers. She’s close and May bites her lip to the point where it starts to bleed. Pepper removes her fingers and replaces them with her tongue and May moans loud.

Pepper grabs May’s hand with her, now free, one. Too caught up in the act to care about the wetness of Pepper's hand, May intertwines them together, knuckles turning white as Pepper’s tongue goes deeper until May’s backs arches off the bed for a final time and she gasps. May sees a blinding light and stars as Pepper continues to lick, not leaving anything behind and lays her head on May’s stomach, breathing heavily.

May chuckles. “I’ll never get tired of that.”

Pepper kisses May’s thigh. “Neither will I.”

May runs her hand through Pepper’s hair as they lay there for a moment or two. May sighs.

“I have to shower before we go. Unless you want to take me up on our previous rain check?” May smirks as she raises an eyebrow.

“Tempting but if I go with you, we’ll never get out.” Pepper pushes a strand behind May’s ear.

May rolls her eyes playfully and gets off the bed. "Pick something out for me."

Pepper tilts her head down, “of course.” May smiles and closes the bathroom door behind her before poking her head out.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Pepper shakes her head and stands up, stretching. She lets out a content sigh before taking out some clothes for May and herself.

Fifteen minutes later, May is out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her body. She graciously puts the clothes, Pepper laid out for her, on. It’s just her usual grey crewneck and matching sweatpants, but May can’t help but smile to herself.

“I figured you would want to be comfortable in the car,” Pepper says honestly as she heads to the bathroom.

“Thank you.” May pulls the crewneck over her head and untucks her hair from the neckline. She puts her grandmother’s necklace back on and holds it in her hands.

Pepper quickly vanishes into the bathroom as May gathers her things. They barely touches their suitcases when they arrived, only to change into pajamas and get necessities. There’s a knock at their door and May has an inkling she knows who it is. Her suspicion is correct when she opens to see Tony staring at her. May raises an eyebrow.

“You had sex.” Is the first thing to come out of Tony’s lips and May gasps. May’s nose scrunches up as she tries to weasel her way out of talking about it but Tony ignores her and hops on the window seat, avoiding the bed at all cost.

May rests her hands on her hips. “What do you want Tony?”

Tony leans forward. “Well I would love to hear about the sexy stuff but Steve told me I have to tell you we’re leaving soon. As in five minutes because mr perfect doesn’t want to hit traffic.”

May chuckles. “You guys have the weirdest nicknames, I’ll never understand it.” Tony shakes his head.

“And you never will, my dear.”

Pepper comes out of the bathroom fully clothed, she’s not surprised to see Tony here, after all it is his house, well, parents house technically. She had a feeling he would be in the room and definitely didn’t want to scare him into oblivion at her nakedness.

Tony raises his eyebrows up and down with a smirk plastered across his face. “So,” he drags out.

“So what?” Pepper rolls her eyes.

Tony claps his hands together and lets out a child-like giggle. “I can’t believe you guys had sex in my parents room! I can’t wait to tell Steve.”

May and Pepper fall silent, they side-eye one another and shoulders tense up. Tony’s hand covers his mouth to contain his laughter.

“What!”

“Can you repeat that one more time?”

Tony takes a breath and grins. “Yeah, we don’t have a guest bedroom. Most of the rooms up here are offices and libraries, it’s just their room and mine. Jarvis has the guest house out back.” He giggles once more. May and Pepper stare at him flabbergasted. They’re at a complete loss of words and remain silent until Steve comes to check up on them.

“Hey, you guys ready to go—“ he pauses. “What’s wrong?” He raises an eyebrow. Tony lips fold into his mouth as tries not to let out anymore laughter. He scratches the back of his neck as he lets out a breath.

“These two,” he gestures towards May and Pepper. Steve looks at the both of them. “Had sex in my parents room.” Tony then gestures with his hands, in a jazz hand motion, the room. Steve’s eyes widen as he lets out a snort followed by a loud cackle. His back arches as his head tilts back, he wants to cover his mouth to suppress the laughter but he just can’t do it.

May’s mouth is still agape and at a standstill when Pepper rolls her eyes and gathers their suitcases. May feels the roughness of her suitcase handle in hand and Pepper’s warm, soft, hand in the other. She drags May along out the door, still hearing the loud cackling from Steve and occasional shushes from Tony.

May bounces back to reality when Jarvis stands in front of her, handing her Tupperware of goods. May nods her head, smiling. “Thank you, Jarvis”

“Anytime, miss Parker.” Jarvis leans in to hug May, she happily obliges, wrapping her arms around his slender frame. She pulls away when Jarvis moves to Pepper, hugging her as well.

“It was lovely to meet you miss Potts. You’re welcome to come here whenever you please.”

Pepper smiles. “Thank you Jarvis.”

Tony and Steve come trudging down the stairs. “Ready to go?” Steve asks before grabbing their suitcases and heads out the door, May nods her head.

Tony turns to Jarvis. “Happy Holidays, J. We should do this every year, it always gets better and better.” Tony sends a sly smirk to May as she rolls her eyes and heads in the direction Steve went. Pepper quietly follows not a minute after.

Jarvis rubs Tony’s shoulder. “We do this every year, Tony. Even with the exception of your parents.”

Tony shakes his head. “No, I know. I mean, it’s just better without them, more quiet and relaxed rather than the chaotic mess.” Jarvis hums in agreement.

“I see, sir. Well they won’t be back for another two weeks, can I expect to see you and mister Rogers before then?”

“Of course you can.” Tony smiles and hugs Jarvis.

Jarvis looks up and out the open door to see Steve waiting by the passenger side, arms across his chest, one over the other.

“I like this one.” Jarvis says quietly even though they’re the only two in the foyer. Tony wants to scream with glee, but he doesn’t. Instead, a tear slides down his cheek, he quickly wipes it away. Tony grips Jarvis’ jacket tighter, he starts to shake, knuckles turning a shade of white. All Tony has ever wanted from his parents is love, affection, and acceptance, maybe even an occasional ‘i love you.’ So far he has barely gotten any of those. That’s an understatement. The only ‘i love you’s’ he’s heard is from Jarvis, Steve, and May. And now, to hear something so pure and something he shouldn’t even ask for, from Jarvis, someone Tony absolutely adores and admires is just the thing he needed to hear this weekend.

Jarvis rubs Tony’s back comfortingly. Tony mumbles a ‘thank you’ into his neck and Jarvis smiles. They stay like that for a moment until Tony pulls away, wiping his face.

“Out of all of them, you’re the best one,Tony. I mean it.”

“Thanks, J.” Tony sends Jarvis one last glance and a smile before grabbing his backpack and is out the door. Steve uncrosses his arms and opens the passenger door for him. His eyebrows furrow and his smile is replaced with a concern look. “You okay?” He rubs Tony’s shoulder once he’s in arms length.

“Never better.” Tony says smiling. Steve ushers Tony into the car and shuts the door. Before entering the car, Steve turns back to Jarvis and waves. Jarvis smiles and nods his head. Steve puts the car in drive and backs out onto the main road. The radio plays soft 70s music that Tony silently hates but Steve knows he enjoys it from time to time. Tony grabs Steve’s hand and kisses his knuckles before rubbing a thumb gently over it. Steve side eyes Tony, keeping his eyes on the road but a warm smile plasters his face and Tony’s heart swoons in his chest.

In the backseat, May rests her head on Pepper’s shoulder. Their hands intertwined as May reads the book she brought with her. Pepper silently following along with her.

They’re in the car for over an hour and good thing they left when they did because traffic just started as they entered the city. Pulling up to the curb in front of May’s apartment complex, Steve’s puts the car in park and unlocks the trunk. He places their suitcases onto the curb.

“Thanks, Steve.” Pepper says with a smile.

“No problem.” Steve stuffs his hands in his pockets as he leans against the trunk. Pepper glances at May talking discreetly to Tony by the passenger side door.

“She’s a good one.” Steve says suddenly, breaking Pepper out of her trance.

“I know. Thank you for reminding me.” Pepper blushes as she fixes her shoulder bag. May shakes her head and chuckles to herself when she walks back to Pepper. She leans her forehead on Pepper’s shoulder. “I’m so tired.”

Pepper places a kiss on the crown of May’s head. “I know, babe. C’mon, I’m sure Milo misses you.” May’s instantly perks up and runs to the apartment door, suitcase in tow, yelling, “I hope Loki didn’t kill him!”

Tony shakes his head as Steve chuckles and Pepper sighs. “See you guys later. Get home safe.”

“Will do.” Steve sends her a salute and is in the car, pulling away from the curb as Tony waves goodbye.

Pepper meets May in front of the elevators and smiles when she sees May getting antsy, she’s jumping up and down in place.

“I can’t wait to see my baby boy!” May yells when the elevator doors let out a beeping sound. They’re in the elevator in a flash and immediately press their designated floor button. May’s still bouncing up and down, like a little kid in a candy store. The elevator lets out another beep and May runs as fast as she can to the door and unlocks it, leaving it open for Pepper who is still walking.

“Milo! Baby!” Pepper hears May and she giggles to herself. Once inside, Pepper shuts the door and places her suitcase by the door. She takes off her jacket and places it on the coatrack. Pepper heads to the kitchen to get a drink but pauses in her step when she sees a note on the counter. It’s for the both of them.

‘Dear May and Pepper,

Milo was an absolute dear. He was very lovable and affectionate and the most sweetest cat. So no, May, I didn’t kill him. He’s very much alive and waiting to see you again. You too, Pepper. I hope one day we can meet face to face, I’ve heard wonderful things. P.S; I would love to cat sit any time, any where.

Love, Loki’

“May, there’s a note here from Loki,” Pepper says as she carries the note with her to the living room. May is cuddling with Milo who has his head is resting on her chest and purrs softly. May takes the note with her free hand and reads it with a smile on his face. “I’ll text him later to say thank you.”

“And you thought something bad would happened to him,” Pepper shakes her head as she takes the empty seat next to May on the couch, petting Milo slowly. May glares at her.

“I have to take precautions, he’s my son. Ain’t that right, Milo?” She lifts him up so they’re face to face, Milo tilts his head and licks May’s nose. She grins. Pepper chuckles and Milo iears perk up at the sound. He's focused on her now as he jumps out of May’s hold and walks over her legs to Pepper and purrs.

“Yeah, sure, kid.” May rests her arm on the back of the couch, she stares at the two of them. “So, what now?”

Pepper eyes advert from Milo, who is rubbing is head on her arm, to May. “U-haul?”

May laughs. “Too soon.”

“Definitely.”

There’s a moment of silence before Pepper speaks up. “I don’t want to go home just yet.” May smiles and stands up from the couch. She puts a record on and moves the dial onto it, turning the volume up. Of course, Wham! plays softly through the speakers.

May gestures a come hither motion with her hands and Pepper can’t resist but move Milo out of her lap, he looks up at them with wide, curious, eyes. Pepper holds May’s hands as they sway together, back and forth to the beat of the music. Pepper twirls May around as she throws her head back, laughing, she pulls her in and rests her forehead against May’s. May pecks her lips before spinning around in a circle, moving her arms in the air. Pepper pauses and smiles at May dancing. Yeah, she could get use to this.

#Marvel #peppermay #stevetony #may parker #pepper potts #steve rogers #mcu #yelenat #natasha romanoff #yelena belova #marvel imagine #avengers #fake dating #college au

2 notes · View notes

thicclaurance · 5 years

Text

Two Hundred and Twenty Nine Days and Three Quarters.

Yody Yo! This is my piece from the summer Aphmau magazine that was put together by @aphmauzine ! Please check out the zine to see all the lovely work everyone submitted including my friends Char, Al, and Yesani!

This is also my first Aphmau writing piece, and the first of my writing that I’ve shared here on this blog; I hope its well recieved and that I’ll be able to share more work with y’all.

Pairing: Dan-Chan

Series: MCD (original)

Warnings: None

Word Count: 2508

Two Hundred and Twenty Nine Days and Three Quarters.

Rays of golden sun cascaded through the glass of the window and into the bedroom. It heated the room, but instead of providing a comfortable and cozy warm like snuggling up with the one you love in front of the fire, it was a humid and sticky warm. It felt like being trapped in a pot of water that was quickly reaching boiling point. The heat was excruciating, it was so maddening it caused Dante to stir. He lifted his body only to twist before dropping back against the mattress like a sack of potatoes; but he only receive those lovely golden rays right in his eyes. His eyes opened, only a sliver, only to realise it was only another summer day.

To Dante, summer only ever felt like it droned on, It was like a meeting discussing how everyone was fine and the village faced no threats, but still lasted hours. Summer was only filled with sweltering days filled with humidity and annoying swarms of insects that buzzed in his ears and bit at his skin. The days felt like they droned on, lasting like weeks instead of hours as he almost roasted alive in his armor. Most people, especially in Phoenix Drop, felt that it was winter that droned on, and sure the season was a full month longer than the rest; but the days go by at the snap of a finger. You wake up and blink once and it’s already time to sit down for dinner with your lover. But for Dante, summer was the worst.

It took all the willpower he held in him to actually get up; he only got up because he knew he’d never be able to fall back asleep. Dante flipped onto his back and pushed his palms against the aged mattress to gain leverage as he forced himself into a seated position. His hands left the mattress and balled as he brought them to his eyes, a loud yawn escaped his mouth as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He felt the weight of the mattress shift next to him and heard a small and almost inaudible groan.

His gaze met the woman next to him as she shifted into a more comfortable position. Long pink hair laid tangled around her head and over her eyes, something Dante envied was the ability to ignore the sun. Her bare shoulder peaked out from the dull colored blanket as she curled herself back up. A smile spread across his face and his gaze softened as he looked at her, she was beyond compare to anyone nor anything. He leaned over and placed a sweet kiss to her shoulder; he twisted back around and let his feet rest on the upsettingly warm wooden floor. He stood and stretched his arms above his head and arched his back.

Dante’s next action was to track down his clothing that laid in various places on the floor alongside Kawaii-Chan’s. It was a simple yet tedious task to find specific articles and to dress himself, it only added to the heat. His chainmail, awful. The suit of armor, horrendous. It’d been about nine years since he took over as the head guard, nine and a half years since he began his daily task to watch the gate; nine years and a half since everyone’s disappearance. It was hard for him to think about all the friends he lost; but it was even harder not to seeing as he left his home at the same time every morning just to wait for them, waiting for them at the gate, hoping they’ll all return.

That’s where he found himself after hours, at the gate. The village walls had begun to crack and crumble as the weather took its toll, and ivy and moss grew against the sides. Birds chirped happily to one another, all enjoying the heat. The ground below his feet had worn down a bit and dipped down into the indent of his feet, it’s what happens when you three thousand four hundred and sixty nine days standing in one specific spot. And Dante stood in the same exact spot again today, he stood there for hours, hours spent almost succumbing to heat stroke. He stood there, until the sun had made it to the tree line and the air had cooled, until it was time to go home. He pivoted on one foot and turned away from the entrance. The trip to the gate and back was always nice. Though the houses had begun to suffer the same fate as the wall, they were still filled with kind villagers, well kind villagers that were still left.

“Fancy running into you here Dante!” The chipper country accent of a certain chipper brunette run out. She smiled brightly at him and lifted a hand to give a short wave from the end of the path. Instead of being able to walk down the path, she more waddled, one of her hands laid on her swollen stomach. “You headin’ home for the night?”

“Good evening Donna! My shift just ended so I’m heading home to Kawaii-Chan.” Dante responded as she approached him, a kind smile weaved it’s way into his face as he spoke to Donna.

“I’m sure she whipped up something nice for the two of you! I swear ever since she found out she was pregnant too all she has is baked! I can’t go a day without her springing some muffins or a cake on me!” She laughed.

“Don’t I know it! I don’t think I’ve gone a day without fresh baked goods in eight months!” He returned her laughter, it was a nice change of pace to laugh.

“Logan’s been enjoying it though, he can’t get enough if those cookies she brings over!” She placed a hand on her chest as she threw her head back and laughed. Dante was sure she hadn’t had a good slug in a while either. As their laughter died down, Donna’s gaze softened as she spoke again, “You gonna do what you talked to me about the other day?” She asked.

“I think I am, I plan on finally telling her” He nodded as he talked. “That you for helping me sort it all out!”

“Of course I would dear! Thank god you came along when you did! Logan won’t let me do anything as long as I have these creatures in me!” She motioned towards her stomach as she let out the complaint. “You better get going if you want things to go as planned.” Dante nodded again and said his goodbyes. The green eyes woman waved him off before returning to her evening stroll.

Dante took in the rest of the town’s scenery as he walked. Passing the village square that laid in disarray, the overgrown guard tower, half harvested golden fields, and even the hill the house of old lord, Aphmau, resided on. He passed a few people, Alexis and Kyle looked to be playing in the grass, but they were obviously training to be the next village guards, they swung wooden swords at each other and took turns dodging attacks. Not too far from them stood Molly and Dale, never seen too far from Alexis. They’ve both watched over her like hawks ever since the Zane incident about ten years ago. Dante provided a wave to the long term couple as he passed, they both returned his motions.

Finally, he had made it to his home. It was a standard house alongside the rest of the homes in Phoenix Drop. When him and Kawaii-Chan first decided to start living together she was upset at the lack of originality, she wanted a bright colored home, just like the pink one she lived in. It was a miracle Dante had convinced her otherwise, but he compromised with allowing her to plant whatever type of flowers she wanted in front of the house. He walked slowly up the cobble stone path and up the dark wooden door. He filled his lungs with one large breath and allowed his mind to become a blank slate, free of worry and hurt, before letting it out slowly like he releasing air from a balloon, and opened the door.

“Ah Dante-Kun! Welcome home!” He was greeted with the sweet voice of the woman who loved him. The atmosphere was warm and peaceful, like it always was around her. A few candles had been set out, ready to be lit as soon as it got dark enough, and she stood by the front door, in the kitchen. “How was your day Dante-Kun?” She asked as she waddled towards him and forced herself up to is height before she left a sweet kiss on his cheek.

“We don’t have time to talk about that darling, I need to bring you somewhere.” He spit out as soon as her heels came in contact with the wooden floor.

“What do you mean Dan-”

“I’m not joking Kawaii-Chan, I need you to come with me this instant.” Dante made sure his tone was calm as he spoke, careful not to scare the pregnant woman in front of him. He grabbed Kawaii-Chan’s hand, and barley let her slip into her shoes, before he led her out of the house.

“Where are you taking Kawaii-Chan, Dante-Kun?!” She asked, confused and slightly panicked. Their feet pounded against the cobblestone streets as they passed Molly and Dale who still stood watching the kids, and past the half golden fields.

“You’ll see when we get there!” He continued to remain vague as the two passed the street Dante took to and from the gate every morning and evening.

“Good luck Dante!” Donna yelled and waved as she made her way back up the street.

“We’re almost there” Dante huffed as he led her up the hill to the old lord’s house. Before stopping for a second to let Kawaii-Chan catch her breath.

“Why’re we at Aphmau-Senpai’s house?” She asked, before Dante dragged her to the left. They passed the large tree in the front yard and playset meant for the long gone Levin and Malachi, for they had left along with their caretaker Zoey, long ago. They weaved through the oak and birch trees, swerved past berry bushes, and avoided pesky evening insects.

“Be careful, I don’t want you to get hurt.” Dante said as he slid down a short sandy slope. They had arrived to the yellow sanded beach of the cove. “Take my hand.” He instructed as he reached a hand out to the amber eyed woman. Even though she was hesitant, afraid to fall and hurt herself let alone her unborn child, but yet she obliged. Her slim hand fit in Dante’s calloused one like puzzle pieces as he helped her down from the grassy area of the woods to the sandy shore of the beach.

“Just in time!” Dante mumbled and led Kawaii-Chan to the final destination, the shoreline of the beach.

It was a well known spot to the villagers. But it was rarely used since it was a place Aphmau had spent time and after her disappearance, no one picked up the habit of visiting. Dante and Kawaii-Chan were different though. They visited here on their first date, they didn’t care that it had been covered in snow at the time, instead they built snow maids and men together. That was exactly two hundred, twenty nine days and three quarters ago. He’d kept track of every day, every moment they shared together, and this was the perfect place.

“Dante-Kun, Kawaii-Chan is still confused.” She said her amber eyes trying to meet his deep sea blue ones, but instead of meeting her gaze he stared out at the horizon. The sun had just become halfway submerged into the sea leaving behind a painting of rose gold skies that blended into vibrant purples and deep blues.

“Kawaii-Chan, I need your one hundred percent attention.” Dante said and took both her frail hands into larger ones, finally able to meet her gaze. Unable to know how to respond, Kawaii-Chan simply nodded. “We’re alone so I know you’ll trust me to say this, Nana,” Dante took a deep breath to prepare himself to what he was going to say after this.

Dante felt her stiffen at the use of her real name. Something she’d trusted him enough to tell him just before they moved in together. He squeezed Kawaii-Chan’s hands in reassurance and she allowed herself to relax. It was short lived though, because immediately Dante released her hands and crouched down, kneeling on one knee.

“Nana, I know I’m not much with words. I never have been. But I’m going to speak from the heart.” He started off with, “I have known you for ten wonderful years, though we’ve only been together for eight months, I’ve never felt more connected to anyone before.”

As he finished that sentence, tears began to stream down Nana’s face. Tears of happiness, tears of surprise. She didn’t care when the tide had begun to come in and rolled over her feet, ruining her new dress. Dante didn’t care either, he didn’t care if it would leave his armor a sepia colored rust, he could get a new set.

“I never expected to fall in love with such an incredible woman, such an exciting woman, such a unique woman, such a gorgeous woman. Let alone did I expect to be expecting a child with her, to have a bundle of joy that would be a product of our love. I’ve had relationships in the past, good and bad, but none of them hold a candle to you Nana. None of them come close to how you make me feel.” Dante began to choke on his words, a tear began to slide down his cheek as he spoke, but it was no match the rivers flowing from Nana’s eyes.

He fumbled with his side, fingers mismanaging to grasp the box at his side. As he finally grasped it, his hands shook as he held it up to the beautiful pink haired woman in front of him. He opened it to reveal a small, but gorgeous silver ring encrusted with three small pink diamonds.

“I’ve cherished every day you’ve spent with me. All two hundred and twenty nine days and three quarters have been a dream, a blessing. So Nana, will you continue our two hundred and twenty nine days and three quarters streak and spend every day, until the day we die, together with me, and marry me?” He finally asked, a weight lifted from his chest as he finally got the words out, but it was replaced with the anxiety of rejection.

“Of course Kawaii-Chan will marry you Dante-Kun! Kawaii-Chan couldn’t think of anyone else she’d spend the rest of her life with!” She sobbed. She grabbed the sides of his face and bent down, as far as she could without crushing her stomach, and pulled Dante into a passionate kiss.

21 notes · View notes

v-thinks-on · 5 years

Text

A Break in the Chain

Part 3 of The Man Who Sold the World

First | Previous | Next

To Dr. Jonathan Holmes’s surprise, when he returned home from his investigation, the landlady greeted him at the door looking more than a little frazzled.

“Dr. Holmes, there you are! You’ve had two visitors while you’ve been out. Talia Houghton came by to say that she has the phone numbers you asked for.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Holmes replied - that, at least, was going just as planned. “Who else?”

“An old man. He let himself in and said he was going to wait in your sitting room - said he was a friend of yours.” She dropped her voice a little. “He hardly made it up the stairs, I was worried his legs were going to give out.”

Dr. Holmes recognized that description. The man was no doubt disguised as an old sailor, no doubt. He only belatedly remembered to say, “Thank you.”

There was one player absent whom he had not expected to make an appearance. But it seemed here he was, right on cue; it was two days after his dear Mary had come to ask for Holmes’s assistance when an old sailor had arrived in their sitting room and insisted he had some knowledge as to the whereabouts of the Aurora that he would only deliver to the detective himself.

Did the culprit think Dr. Holmes needed some help to solve their little puzzle? A hint? They had already made a poor imitation of his dear departed Mary, he had thought they considered him a sufficient enough substitute for the detective himself and would not disturb his dear old friend’s watery grave, but apparently they had decided to bring him in after all.

Dr. Holmes clenched his fists in anger. Could they not let the dead lie where they were? He had already suffered through their deaths once, he did not need these cruel, mocking reminders. He knew that the whole world he had once known was gone, he did not need a hollow recreation.

“Is everything alright?” the landlady asked - he heard her as though from some distance away.

Dr. Holmes forced himself to calm down. He would see what the mastermind behind this whole contrived game had in store for him now. Perhaps this would provide him with some fresh clue he could use to bring all of them to justice. He let out a long breath and unclenched his fists.

“I’m fine,” he said, though he did not even convince himself. “I suppose I’ll go up and see what this old friend of mine has to say.”

With that, he climbed the stairs up to the flat at 221B. He found the door unlocked as he had not left it - someone attempting to imitate Sherlock Holmes ought to, at the very least, have some small portion of his skills. Dr. Holmes stepped inside, locking the door behind him just in case he needed to detain his guest.

Sure enough, seated in what had once been Holmes’s and was now his usual place by the fire, was an old sailor. The man’s face was mostly covered by a scarf and bushy facial hair, no doubt fake. The distinctive dirt caked on his boot clearly indicated that he had spent a lot of time on Baker Street of late, and they did look familiar - it seemed the homeless man he had used as a blind when he was following Miss Marston had been watching him in turn.

“Hello, Sherlock Holmes, is it?” he asked without any attempt at pleasantries.

Keen, bright gray eyes stared back at him. Somehow the sight of this imposter made his blood boil even more than the mockery of Mary had. Perhaps it was his own fault for giving the culprit so much to work off of in imitating Holmes. All the others had been superficial replicas at best - after all, it was impossible to replicate someone’s appearance from a mere description - but for some reason this one cut him to the core. He felt tears threatening to moisten his eyes. He knew Holmes was dead, he needed no reminder.

“I am he,” the man said simply, his quick, high, somewhat strident voice was clear and young and achingly familiar.

Watson wanted to stand up and punch him, to demand that whoever it was stop his damned charade and face him as himself. It was impossible to repeat the past, no matter what anyone may want, he knew that and the culprit ought to learn it!

But Watson did none of those things. Instead he demanded, “What do you want with me?”

The man hesitated, but soon came to an answer, “I am here to see an old friend, is that not enough?”

“What? Do you not have news about the Aurora?” Watson’s voice came out harsher than he knew it should have if he wanted to get evidence out of this man, but he was beyond thinking clearly.

“I do have news of the Aurora as well, but I found my personal reason for visiting to be more important.”

“And pray tell, what is that?”

The actor’s eyes fell as though he had actually been injured by Watson’s scathing tone. He stood and for an instant Watson readied for a fight.

Slowly, the man lifted his hand to his scarf and drew it away from his face. Watson's every instinct screamed to stop him, to push him out the door before he could do more damage than he had already done by his impersonation. But Watson stood transfixed as familiar features gradually made themselves known. Next, the man removed bushy white fake eyebrows and whiskers, and lastly took off a white wig, which he held in front of him in both hands with an entirely sheepish air.

“Hello, my dear old friend,” Sherlock Holmes said at long last.

It took all of Watson's constitution not to faint on the spot. He was left breathless as though the wind had been knocked out of him, standing face to face with a ghost.

The ghost peered back at him with sharp, piercing gray eyes that practically shone with all the emotion that dared not encroach upon his thin, firm lips. His black, close cut hair, messy from the wig, framed a narrow, eager face that was much more gaunt than Watson remembered. Still, his hawk-like nose and square, prominent chin gave him an air of alertness and determination. Now that he stood at his full height, Watson remembered just how tall and lean he was. The sailor’s costume hung off of him, suddenly baggy about his thin frame. His long, delicate fingers, as always blotted with ink and chemicals, fidgeted nervously with the white wig.

It was utterly impossible. Watson may very well have conjured the vision straight from his memory. There were small differences here and there, but for all Watson knew, the man before him could have just stepped out of his past. Holmes looked little older than 40, not well over 100 and long dead besides. Watson’s brain recoiled and time seemed to stop in its tracks or perhaps even reel backwards from the shock.

“You- you’re dead,” he stuttered in shock that threatened to approach hysterics. “You died at Reichenbach. Moriarty-”

Holmes deliberately placed the wig upon his chair and took a step toward Watson so that there was only a foot between them. He held out his arms and took Watson’s hands in his own. He was solid and warm - real, alive. A hundred years seemed to fall away around them, as though it had all been a hazy dream.

“I am alive,” Holmes said, his voice calm and reassuring with only the slightest hint of a waver, “As are you. You are not the only one who has been deceptively bereaved.”

And so Watson stood at the heart of a paradox. Perhaps they were both dead, perhaps he was hallucinating, perhaps it was all an impossible dream and he would wake up back in the home he once shared with Mary, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps… The possibilities swirled around his skull and poured out his ears. But there Holmes stood in front of him, his hands warm and solid and alive in Watson’s own. No imposter could be this indescribably familiar.

“How?” was all Watson could stammer out.

Holmes gave him a crooked smile. “That’s the question. I can only begin to answer it, perhaps you may be able to fill in the rest. Come, I’m sure we have much to discuss.” He led the way to the settee, not relinquishing his hold on Watson - he could feel Holmes’s hand shaking a little in his own.

“How I reached my 160th birthday, I cannot say,” Holmes continued once they were comfortable. “I assumed I was some fluke, a freak of nature or a cosmic mistake - utterly inexplicable. I hardly expected you to share my sorry fate, but I cannot deny that I am glad to see you alive.”

The man before him displayed more of his heart than Holmes ever had. The emotion in his words was more likely a figment of Watson’s memory tinged by ages of wishful thinking than any reality. Holmes had cared for him, that Watson knew, but never like this.

Holmes seemed to take Watson’s wide-eyed gaping for incredulity and explained, “I am not quite so miraculous as to have returned from the dead. I faced Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, prepared, as you know, to face my death. But at the last instant, I managed to wrest myself from the Professor’s grasp and he tumbled to his death alone. Perhaps it is because I evaded death then that it has missed me since, but that is hardly a scientific hypothesis and it does little to explain your situation.

“Having bested Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach, a wiser man would have returned the way he came and resumed his life the better for it, but I did not. At the time, I believe I rationalized my flight with fear of being pursued by Moriarty’s men, but even after I bested each of them in turn, I still hesitated to return. And so, the years passed and I remained on the run. Somehow it was all too easy to come up with excuses not to come home; it had already been too long, I would only disrupt the lives that had gone on without me. It built upon itself so naturally that before long it was too late. I could not have imagined that you would still be alive as I was.

“For the first several years - or it may have been closer to twenty - I continued working as a detective, traveling here or there under various pseudonyms, solving cases for hire or sport and writing my monographs - perhaps one or two of them reached you in England. Then the Great War came and Mycroft, who aided me all those years, until his death,” - Holmes’s face fell at the mention of his long dead brother - “He called upon me to spy for England in her hour of need, and that is how I have lived since. I was stationed in Germany through the World Wars and then sent to Moscow.

“For the past twenty years or more, I have been serving as a humble bartender, forgotten by the world at large. Once I eavesdropped on the most powerful men in Russia, but they have long since moved on, and I fear my British employers believe me dead as I assumed you were. When I heard word of the ‘Sherlock Holmes murders,’ as the press has been calling them, I decided it was past time I return to London, perhaps try my hand at solving the case and meet this Dr. Jonathan Holmes whose name I had heard in connection with the mystery. I could not have imagined that this promising upstart could possibly be you, but I would want it no other way.”

Holmes’s eyes practically glimmered as he looked at Watson, so earnestly, like there was nothing he wanted more in the world that to see him there.

“And so you have my tale,” Holmes concluded.

It was all too much. The way Holmes was looking at him, that impossible, incredible story, the fact that this man before him was such a perfect rendition of the dear old friend Watson had known so long ago.

“I can’t believe it” - Watson may have said the words aloud.

Even his wildest imaginings could not have created such a tale. And, as Holmes had always said, when the impossible was eliminated, what remained could only be the truth. Still, even as the evidence stood before his very eyes, as he held it in his hands, he could not believe it.

“I see that you’ve done very well for yourself,” Holmes remarked, cutting through Watson’s erratic thoughts.

“I’ve only been following your methods,” Watson insisted as his mind raced to catch up with the conversation. “I owe it all to your tutelage.”

“And a century of experience, no doubt. I confess, even I have been able to glean little of your history. To your neighbors, you are known only as a fixture, of course none are old enough to remember more.”

“It was after Mary’s death,” Watson began haltingly. “She died in ‘93.”

Holmes’s grasp on Watson’s hand tightened a little. “I didn’t know.”

Watson just shook his head. “It was long ago.” Watson paused a moment to collect himself before he continued, “I started to take some interest in crime for something to do, as a distraction. After you, well I always read the criminal section in the paper, and I even took up a bit of a hobby reading the agony section in search of something beyond the usual twaddle.

“It didn’t amount to much until the Adair murder. I was interested in it from the first; it seemed like exactly the sort of thing you would go for. Our old friend Lestrade was on the case. The papers made it sound like he was onto something, but I knew well enough by then that he couldn’t make head or tail of it. It got so bad that one evening he showed up at my practice and asked if I could take a look, that maybe, after working with you, I might be able to shine some light where they couldn’t. We caught him more by coincidence than anything, but after that it became something of a regular thing.

“Eventually, I moved back to Baker Street and started back up your practice. I was never as successful as you were, but I made do. I don’t know why my age hasn’t caught up with me, but I confess I haven’t paid it much heed. I changed my name because I ran into some trouble with the records department on account of my age. There was some suspicion of fraud - that was probably the first time I realized I should have been dead. So, I thought I might as well take your name, since I was already living in your place.”

“You certainly do it justice,” Holmes said with a smile. “It’s a shame you haven’t published accounts of your own adventures. I particularly enjoyed the ones you published while I was on the run. Meanwhile, I’ve been playing the part of a man by the name of Ivan, but I fear another John Holmes would be redundant, so perhaps it is time I dig back up my old name, if you have no objection to sharing it.”

“Of course! It’s yours after all.”

“Thank you, I’m honored to share it.” Then Holmes changed topic and remarked, “I don’t suppose you require some aid in your current case? I have discovered that the Aurora is in the hands of a fellow named Johnson who was asked by a man with a peg-leg to repair its fully functional rudder. I was informed that it will be leaving at seven o’clock tonight. I have stationed a street boy by Johnson’s yard to signal when they launch. All we need to do is commandeer a faster boat of our own and the chase is on!” He rubbed his hands together in enthusiasm.

His enthusiasm was contagious, but Dr. Holmes had already considered and dismissed such a plan in favor of something the culprits would be less likely to expect. Still, Watson struggled to find the right words to explain. “I tried that with Jefferson Hope, doing the same thing you did and expecting the same result, but he fled before we could catch him. The man behind these murders clearly knows your old cases, so we have to stay one step ahead of him. I actually have a plan of my own...” Watson faltered.

Sherlock Holmes leaned toward Watson to examine him with an expression of utmost interest. Watson was convinced he hadn’t explained it half as well as he should have, but Holmes was impassive as ever.

“Go on,” Holmes urged.

“Well, Mi-” Watson corrected himself, “Detective-Inspector Houghton came by earlier today to say that she has the culprits’ cell phone numbers, which she can use to locate them - I’m not exactly sure how it works, but it does. That way, we can find their hideout without them ever knowing and ambush them there. There are already officers watching the river as backup, just in case, but hopefully we won’t need them.”

Holmes watched him with the most peculiar expression. Watson was half convinced it was disgust and half convinced it was ridicule and somehow, between the two, he managed to find the space to hope that it was pride. It was as though he was some fascinating specimen, the likes of which Holmes had never before encountered.

“Very well,” Holmes said at last, leaping to his feet, “If that’s the case then we have no time to waste. Shall I call a cab to take us to the Scotland Yard to speak with this Detective-Inspector?”

Watson shook his head, still bewildered by it all. “I can just use the telephone. We’ll meet her wherever they’re hiding out.”

The doctor forced himself to his feet and made his way over to the telephone. Holmes watched keenly over his shoulder as he dialed Mrs. Houghton’s number from memory.

“Hello,” she said, “Dr. Holmes?”

Dr. Holmes nodded though he knew she couldn’t see him.

“Did your landlady tell you? I got the phone numbers and I’ve located Small not far from the river. We’re ready to go in and arrest all of them unless you have something else in mind.”

“No, that’s exactly what I had in mind,” Dr. Holmes said with some relief. “What’s the address? We can meet you there.”

He scribbled down the location as she recited it.

“We’ve found where the Aurora is being kept,” Dr. Holmes added, just in case. “It’s in for repairs at Johnson’s yard, not far from there. If they flee, that’s where they’ll leave from.”

“Great. I’ll tell the officers who have been patrolling the river to get over there.”

“If the boat is about to depart, a boy will stand by the dock and wave a white handkerchief.”

“I’ll pass it on. See you soon.”

“Yes, see you soon,” Dr. Holmes said and hung up the phone.

Holmes was still watching him with a quizzical expression.

“What is it?” Watson asked a little more tersely than he had intended. “If I’ve done something wrong, I ought to know before we put it into action.”

Holmes shook his head. “No, you haven’t done anything wrong. I’m sorry for getting in your way, you seem to have everything well under control.”

Watson wondered if this was what it felt like to be an Inspector of the Yard working with Sherlock Holmes. Maybe he was just imagining the sharp undercurrent of ridicule, but whether it was there or not, he needed to focus on everything that was about to unfold that very evening, “We ought to be going - if you wish to see the resolution of the case.”

“I wouldn’t miss it!” Holmes declared, any hint of an edge gone from his voice as though it had never been.

And so they were off, speeding through the busy London streets. They spent most of the ride in a tense silence. Watson attempted to focus, to make sure that no detail had been forgotten, while Holmes reclined almost languidly in his seat beside him, staring out at the city as it passed them by. Holmes made no effort to begin a conversation, and despite all of the questions that churned in the back of his mind, Watson was at a loss for words.

They saw the flashing lights of several police cars before they reached the address. Watson told the cabby to stop there and they walked over to the perimeter. Holmes remained silent and let Watson take the lead for the time being.

“What’s going on?” Watson asked the officer watching over the scene. With Holmes watching everything over his shoulder, Watson felt like a rookie officer being tested by a superior, but he forged on all the same.

“There’s nothing to see here-” the officer began to recite, but stopped short. “You’re Dr. Holmes? You work with D.I. Houghton?”

The doctor nodded.

“Everything’s mostly taken care of here. D.I. Houghton is just finishing up.”

“Good, I have to talk to her.”

“After you.” Holmes helped Watson under the perimeter with exaggerated politesse.

“Who’s he?” the officer asked.

“He’s with me,” the doctor explained the complicated situation as succinctly as he could.

The officer seemed to accept it and they made their way past the line of police cars without further incident. The doctor soon spotted Mrs. Houghton leaning against one of the cars, talking with Detective Inspector Charles Gregson, her partner in the squad.

“Dr. Holmes,” Inspector Gregson called out to them, “Talia said you’d be here. I’m afraid you’re running late.”

“Not too late, I hope,” the doctor said.

“That depends,” Mrs. Houghton said darkly. “I hope you’re not looking for Jonathan Small because he was dead when we arrived. According to a couple of men who were working for him, the child that Small kidnapped killed him with his own poison when she tried to escape. So, all we’ve got left now are the child, who we can’t talk to until we’ve found a translator, some people who were working with Small, and Patrick and Alan Smith - you’d recognize them as Mordecai and Jim - who claim they were just hired by Small to get the boat.”

“What about Miss Marston?” he asked urgently.

“We’ve just traced one of Small’s contacts to the address she gave you. Do you think it’s safe to bring her in for questioning?”

“It shouldn’t tell her employer any more than he already knows, now that we’ve found Small - or at least his men. Do you have enough evidence for an arrest?”

“Would you say she’s a flight risk?”

“Certainly.”

“In that case, I think we have enough evidence to hold her for a little while, at least,” Mrs. Houghton said with a glance at Inspector Gregson.

“Then we have not a minute to waste,” Dr. Holmes declared.

All four of them piled into a police car, Holmes and Watson in the back and Mrs. Houghton at the wheel. Once they were comfortably outside of the perimeter, Mrs. Houghton glanced at Sherlock Holmes through the rear-view mirror.

“So, who are you?” she asked. “I take it he’s the ‘we’ you mentioned on the phone.”

“Sherlock Holmes, at your service,” he said with a flourish, despite the cramped quarters.

“What? Is he your brother visiting from out of town?”

Holmes chuckled and Watson had to bite back laughter as he answered, “No, he’s an old friend. He’s the one who inspired me to become a consulting detective - he’s the original.”

“You flatter me,” Holmes said. “I am but a visitor who has been away from London for much too long.”

“I see.” Mrs. Houghton sounded a little less than convinced.

“You’re a consulting detective too?” Inspector Gregson asked with a glance over his shoulder at Holmes.

“I merely dabble in deduction,” Holmes demurred. “I believe I missed your name?”

“Charles Gregson,” he said.

“Detection must run in your family. I take it you are descended from Inspector Tobias Gregson?”

“What? How did you know that?” Inspector Gregson nearly leaped from his seat in surprise despite the seatbelt fastened across his chest.

“I am somewhat familiar with the criminal history of London.”

“I knew Tobias was well known in his day, but I didn’t know people recognized the name even now!” Inspector Gregson exclaimed.

“You do not do your great-grandfather - is it? - enough credit.”

Watson detected a hint of sarcasm in Holmes’s tone, but Inspector Gregson seemed deaf to it as he answered, “Apparently!”

The doctor only half listened as Holmes plunged into an account of some old cases that had involved the late Inspector Gregson, much to the younger Inspector’s amusement. Holmes portrayed the late man of the Yard in a much more flattering light than Watson had ever heard him speak of Inspector Gregson in life. But the doctor had little thought to spare their conversation as he kept an eye on the road, hoping with mounting nervous energy that the impostor, Miss Marston, would still be there when they arrived.

Finally, the car rolled to a stop and they all stepped out. Holmes and Inspector Gregson fell silent as they all hurried to the front door of the darkened house. Mrs. Houghton did the honors of pounding at the door loudly enough to wake anyone who happened to be sleeping inside.

There was no response.

Mrs. Houghton tried again, even louder if possible, and Inspector Gregson rang the doorbell for good measure.

Still, no answer.

“I'll go take a look around back,” Inspector Gregson offered.

Holmes joined him as he went to circle the house. The doctor and Mrs. Houghton were left waiting in the front in case someone came to the door after all.

As soon as the other two were out of earshot, Mrs. Houghton said, keeping her voice low just in case, “Sherlock Holmes, that was the name of the detective in those stories. Who is he really?”

The doctor sighed and shook his head in an attempt to clear it. With everything else, he had forgotten that he had initially mistaken Holmes for an impostor. It still seemed too good to be true.

“That’s his real name. It’s just a coincidence.” The lie even sounded hollow to him, but the truth was even more unbelievable.

“You’re sure?”

The doctor nodded. “I would know him anywhere.” That, at least, was the truth.

“And you don’t think he’s involved?”

“No, he couldn’t be.”

More conversationally, she asked, “So, what’s he doing in London?”

“He heard about the case and it piqued his interest. I don’t know what he’ll do now; I suppose he expected to see me as much as I expected him.”

“He showed up unannounced?”

“Yes, in disguise,” the doctor could not help but add.

She laughed. “He seems like he would.”

“It was a favorite trick of his. At least this time he didn't remove the disguise while my back was turned - I would have fainted from the shock.”

“It's been a while? How do you two know each other?”

“We were flatmates until I got married. A mutual acquaintance introduced us.” He smiled at the old memory, no doubt rosier for all the time that had passed.

“You were married?”

He nodded. “A long time ago.”

Inspector Gregson returned before they could continue. Sherlock Holmes was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Holmes?” the doctor asked, a little more exasperated than perplexed.

“I thought he’d come around to join you,” Inspector Gregson said. “He told me he would meet me around front. You’re sure he’s trustworthy?”

The doctor answered reflexively, “I would trust him with my life.”

Inspector Gregson appeared taken aback, but did not question it. Mrs. Houghton gave him a knowing smile.

“He’ll probably make an entrance any time now,” the doctor explained. More importantly, he asked, “Did you find anything around back?”

Inspector Gregson shook his head. “Not a peep or even a footprint to go off of. Either they’re holed up in the house or have been gone for some time. Unfortunately, it hasn’t rained recently enough for there to be any useful footprints.”

“In that case, we have no choice but to enter by force,” Mrs. Houghton said.

However, before anyone could attempt to kick the door down, they all heard a loud creak from inside. The door swung open to reveal Sherlock Holmes standing upon the threshold.

Watson was the first to recover from the initial shock. “I take it the house is empty?”

Watson thought he saw a flicker of disappointment cross Holmes’s face and for an instant he felt a little sorry for his impatience, but Holmes recovered so fast Watson almost suspected he had imagined it.

“You can see for yourselves, if you like,” Holmes said with a wry smile.

They all stepped inside and the four of them searched the house from top to bottom, but Miss Mary Marston was gone without a trace. There was little evidence that anyone had lived there at all and no suggestion of where its former residents could have possibly gone. All that had been left for them to find was a pair of disposable phones sitting in the middle of the dining room table.

Plainclothes officers were stationed in the neighborhood to keep an eye on the abandoned house, but Dr. Holmes did not have high hopes.

It was getting on toward the middle of the afternoon the next day. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson had reclaimed what had once been their usual chairs by the fireplace in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street.

“He died in ‘84,” Holmes was saying, “And when the Soviet Union dissolved in ‘91, my mission followed. As the regulars would tell you, I’ve been handy in solving a few of their little problems, but those are mere trifles. I’ve been stagnating, Watson! I’m sorry you have to see me in such a state.”

“You’ve given up on the criminal class of Moscow too?” Watson asked, only half joking.

“Pah!” Holmes exclaimed. “Forget criminals! I’ve been chasing after lost boots and cheating wives.”

Watson gave a dark chuckle. “I’ve had a few of those cases myself. The job of a consulting detective is becoming increasingly obsolete as the police force improves - they’ve co-opted many of your old methods. People come to me mainly for cases outside the officials’ jurisdiction. Ever so often Mrs. Houghton, and sometimes a colleague of hers, will come to me for consultation when they come across something particularly puzzling, but I fear even then most of my expertise is in old cases that they will soon be able to more easily find on their computers. ”

“You underrate yourself and your occupation,” Holmes insisted. “I find the officials often need someone to put the pieces together for them.”

Watson gave him a skeptical look, but did not argue.

“And if I am not mistaken,” Holmes said, sounding quite confident that he was not, “Here one comes now in search of our aid.”

Watson glanced out the window to see Mrs. Houghton walking up to the front door. He heard her knock, followed shortly by the pounding of her footsteps on the stairs. Holmes stood to welcome her into the flat, allowing Watson to remain in his chair.

“Mr. Holmes,” she exclaimed in surprise, “You’re here just in time to hear the latest news on the case from last night.”

Holmes chuckled. “It’s little coincidence. The doctor was kind enough to provide me with refuge for the night, so I’ve been here since.”

“Come in.” The doctor waved them both into the room proper. “What’s the word?”

Holmes resumed his chair by the fireplace and Mrs. Houghton took the near end of the settee.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” she explained once she was seated. “Doctor?” she asked with a glance at Holmes. The doctor nodded his assent and she continued, “I’ll get the bad news out of the way first. We haven’t had any luck locating Miss Marston, and from what the men working for Small have said, she was the one organising things. Other than that, they haven’t given us much to go off of, and we’re starting to suspect it’s because they don’t know much more about what was going on. They were just hired for one job.”

“What of the good news?” the doctor asked warily.

“We’ve finally found an interpreter to talk to the girl. Thankfully she knows Hindi, I don’t know what we would have done otherwise. She’s actually from Andaman Island, from one of the indigenous tribes. A couple months ago, the man who was calling himself Jonathan Small arrived in her village with a few other men - we’re still trying to find them.

“They visited a couple of times and seemed particularly interested in talking to children around her age. One night, they broke into her house. She remembers waking up to see them in her room, but they must have knocked her out because she doesn’t remember anything after that until she was on a plane over the ocean. They flew her back to England, dressed her up in a loincloth, handed her a spear, a blow gun, and a bunch of poisoned blow darts, and told her that she had to kill Mr. Duvall or they would kill her. When they didn’t need her, she was kept her in a small cage in their hideout.

“She described what happened with Mr. Duvall, and it’s pretty much what we expected. They had her climb onto the roof and inside through the attic. When she arrived, Mr. Duvall was probably already dead, but they made her shoot him with a blowdart anyway, and help Small in through the window. They finished setting up the scene, had her step in some tar, and left back over the roof.

“When they were done, they locked her up again. Yesterday, before we reached their hideout, they were apparently getting ready to move and she tried to escape. She still had one of the blow darts and stabbed Small with it when he tried to grab her. His accomplices managed to get her back into the cage, where she was when we found her.

“Smith and his son deny knowing anything about her. We’ve got one of Small’s accomplices who corroborates most of it. The other is still keeping quiet, but I think we’ve got enough without him. We’re working to get the girl home as soon as we’ve finished questioning her. She’s pretty shaken up, as you might imagine.”

“It’s horrible,” Dr. Holmes said at last.

Mrs. Houghton nodded in grim agreement. “We’re going to prosecute Small’s accomplices on charges of human trafficking and murder.”

“At least the child will have justice,” Dr. Holmes said, though it seemed to be little consolation.

He was at a loss for words and Mrs. Houghton seemed to be of a similar mind. The doctor had been so preoccupied with defending his own past that he had not even paused to consider those alive who were affected by the culprit’s heinous crimes.

They hardly noticed Holmes, who up until this point had remained an impassive portrait of contemplation, leaning back in the chair, his eyes all but closed, and his hands tented in front of him with his fingertips pressed together. He glanced between the doctor and the Inspector before he broke the silence, “The best we can do now is stop them from doing any more damage. Do you have any other leads?”

“We’ll do what we can to find ‘Mary Marston,’ but the trail’s only getting colder,” Mrs. Houghton said.

“What of Mr. Thaddeus Sholto?” the doctor suggested. “Have you gotten anything out of him?”

“No, he’s sticking to his story about being an out of work actor. I doubt we have enough to prosecute him.”

“We may be forced to wait until they strike again and hope they make a mistake,” Dr. Holmes said, none too happy about it.

“We’ll catch him yet,” Sherlock Holmes insisted with a gleam in his eyes.

“Hopefully before he does too much more damage,” Mrs. Houghton said. “It’s time I get going. I take it I’ll be seeing more of you, Mr. Holmes, Doctor.”

With that, she stood and took her leave. Holmes watched the door close after her with an appraising gaze.

“She seems a promising young officer,” he remarked.

Watson couldn’t tell if he was being genuine or sarcastic and made to reply.

Holmes beat him to it, taking the conversation in an entirely different direction, “What would you think of that? Seeing more of me. I don’t have anything to return to in Moscow and I admit I miss the old detective work. Perhaps I’ll start up a practice in London again, though I don’t mean to be in competition with you. We could even work a few cases together, for old times’ sake.”

Watson smiled at the thought. “You’re always welcome in Baker Street.” He hesitated. “There’s still an extra room if you’d prefer the company of a flatmate. Though, I must admit, I’ve been living as a lone bachelor all these years, I fear I’ve accumulated many habits that aren’t exactly conducive to company.”

Holmes seemed uncertain, fidgeting his long fingers as he rambled, “If you wouldn’t mind it, I confess I’ve had more than my share of solitude, though I could certainly find other arrangements if that would be more amenable to you...”

“No,” Watson interrupted, “Solitude has become distasteful to me as well. I would like nothing more than for you to return to Baker Street.”

“You’re certain? I doubt I’ve become any easier to live with.”

“Absolutely,” Watson said and he held out a hand to Holmes, who, after an instant’s hesitation, eagerly took it.

#v writes #Sherlock Holmes #H/W #The Man Who Sold the World

1 note · View note

tis-i-the-most-uncooked-fry · 6 years

Note

2, 5, 9, 10, 11, 17, 20, 21, 23, 33, 44, 47, 56, 57, 59, 66, 74, 87 for all

~Ylva~

2: She has a very silvery voice, so clear, light, and pleasant to listen to.

5: She just kinda walk it off and say she’s fine with gritted teeth. She won’t admit she needs help and will accept it when she’s dropped to the ground in pain.

9: She toss and turns a lot at night much to Vilkas’s dismay.

10: She absolutely loves lavender dumplings, but any kind of baked good in general.

11: Since she uses magic she sometimes get insecure about other Nords shunning her since magic isn’t honorable.

17: Oh drunk Ylva is entertainment..for the other patrons…She’s very clingy and affectionate, personal space? She’s never heard of it. She also has very loose lips when she’s drunk so expect the secret you told her to the latest town gossip the next day.

20: Small dark spaces, the people she cares for getting hurt, and spiders.

21: Rain. She loves the sound of it, the smell, and the atmosphere it creates.

23: Books and alchemy ingredients yes.

33: The amulet of Talos she wears was her fathers that he gave to her before he died.

44: She’s a honorable person that drops everything to help the people she cares for, having her in your corner is a good thing.

47: I’d hope so, she’s married to Vilkas.

56: Probably Gryffindor.

57: I’d say she’s Chaotic Good.

59: She slightly fears death. After what happened to Kodlak she fears the same thing will happen to her but she can’t bring herself to cure herself of lycanthropy yet,but she plans to because she wants to be with her dad again in Sovngarde.

66: She loves it, she’s into some pretty kinky shit too ;)

74: It takes a lot to make her mad but if you do manage to, you better fucking run because she’s out for blood. There’s been a handful of times that Vilkas has had to physically pull her off of someone before she beat them to death.

87: She’s a young 23 year old.

~Tayani~

2. She has a smokey voice being a Dunmer and all that.

5. She grits her teeth and angrily waves the people that tries to help her off.

9: She sleeps with one eye open and never in the same place twice except for the sanctuary.

10: Sujamma..just sujamma.

11: She feels insecure about her people skills..she’s always so hostile towards people and she hates it.

17: She’s a very emotional drunk..she’ll apologize for past wrongs and break down crying afterwards.

20: She fears loosing the people she cares about and being alone.

21: She likes warm sunny days the most because it always seems to change her mood for the better.

23: She likes to collect different daggers she finds.

33: She has a bracelet her brother bought her for her 10th birthday that she treasures.

44: Despite having a hard and hostile exterior she has softer easy going side that she doesn’t show often and only select people.

47: After traveling with Teldryn for a few months she finds herself not guarding her walls as much as she used to and much to her dismay she has devoped feelings for him.

56: She’d definitely be a Slytherin.

57: Neutral evil is a perfect example of her.

59: On one hand she doesn’t really care but on the other she’s not keen on the idea of it.

66: She’s very cautious when it comes to sex and she’s only had a handful of partners.

74: Its very easy to make her angry and if you do you won’t have a chance to apologize because you’ll probably already be dead.

87: She’s 22

~Galiena~

2: She is a very softly spoken person.

5: She’s got enough common sense to ask for help when she’s injured but she’ll scream her head off in agony if it’s really bad.

9: She’s a very light sleeper so it takes her a while to fall asleep.

10: She really loves Shepherd’s Pie because it’s what her other used to make a lot when she was a kid.

11: She’s lowkey insecure about her height when she’s around Nords.

17: She’s a very giggly drunk, everything is funny to her and you’ll have to carry her back to her bed.

20: Putting her friends and family in danger, small dark spaces, and heights.

21: The light drizzle of rain that makes the air smell fresh and makes everything more cozy.

23: She likes to collect necklaces from all the places (houses she’s stolen from) she’s been.

33: A locket that belonged to her mother that she never ever takes off.

44: She’s really a sweet girl when you get to know her just a…little..guarded..

47: She has a HUGE crush on Delvin and Brynjolf, she thinks they don’t notice but let me tell you..they do.

56: She’s a Ravenclaw ftw.

57: Chaotic Neutral definitely.

59: She’s afraid of it yes but at the same time she knows she’ll get to see her mom again.

66: Being a virgin she has no experience but has a good idea of what to do and can’t wait to try it out.

74: Considering she’s ticking time bomb she’s very easily angered, and its like the Oblivion Gates have opened up once again.

87: She’s a wee 21 year old.

~Adahy~

2: He has a very throaty voice that makes him seem older than he actually is.

5: He’s skilled enough where he doesn’t get injured often but when he does he will kindly ask for help.

9: He’s an average sleeper, he stays in one spot and hardly moves all night.

10: He LOVES snowberry crostatas, well any kind of crostatas really.

11: Being a Bosmer he’s very insecure about his height when compared to others.

17: When drunk he gets a false sense of bravado and it ends up getting him a black eye most of the time.

20: He has a fear of water, or more accurately drowning.

21: Rain because it masks his scent and he can better stay off of an animals radar longer.

23: The antlers or teeth of his kills.

33: A saber cat tooth his best friend gave him before he left Valenwood.

44: He’s really a stand up guy and generally pleasant to be around.

56: He’s a Slytherinfor sure.

57: Neutral Good.

59: He doesn’t care either way he just wants to make the most out of his life.

66: This man is one kinky fuck let me tell you. So needless to say he loves it.

74: He’s a pretty chill guy so it takes a lot to make him mad. When he is mad you have a chance to apologize but if you don’t he’ll probably either sit down and simmer or break your nose.

87: He be 24.

~Telnian~

2: He has a very husky voice that has women and men dropping to their knees.

5: He’ll admit that he’s been injured and will kindly ask for help to dress his wounds. Not without groaning in pain for a little while though.

9: He sleeps pretty soundly, but will wake up say if a twig snaps. He also turns a few times in his sleep.

10: He’s a huge fan of horker stew because it reminds him of when he was a boy.

11: He hates it but sometimes he gets insecure about being an Altmer. Even though he was born and raised in Skyrim people judge him before they even know him.

17: He’s a flirtatious drunk. Anyone in sight is fair game too.

20: He fears disappointing those who look up to and care for him the most.

21: He loves bright sunny days because he loves getting to see the world when it’s most bright and vibrant.

23: He collects samples of plants he finds interesting and researches them later.

33: A small whittled hawk sculpture that his mother made him when he was young.

44: He’s the sweetest and smartest guy around, who could not? He just has that charm that draws everyone to him.

56: He’s definitely a Ravenclaw.

57: He’s Lawful Good.

59: He doesn’t dwell on it just makes the best of every day and thanks the Divines when he gets to live another.

66: He’s had 3 partners at max but don’t you dare think for one minute that he’s inexperienced this man would have you begging in 5 minutes min.

74: Being the sweetie he is he never really gets angry but if he does he tries to hold his tongue and defuse the situation without violence.

87: He’s 24.

~Runa~

2: She has a small voice which makes people ask her to repeat herself.

5: She is pretty tolerant to pain will let you know when she’s injured.

9: Depends on how tired she is, either she falls asleep in 5 minutes and can’t be woken or she stares at the ceiling for 3 hours before finally falling asleep later to be rudely awoken by a loud crash.

10: She’s such a child at heart, this girl loves sweetrolls out of all foods.

11: Since she was just a hunter when she joined the Companions and can’t fight with anything bigger than a dagger she’s very insecure about her fighting skills.

17: She’s only gotten drunk once and that unfortunately was on full display to all the Companions…She gets really clingy and giggly..The poor girl was mortified when she learned she latched onto Farkas and Vilkas had to pry her off of him.

20: After loosing her parents in a fire she has a massive fear of loosing others that she cares for..that being said she gets jumpy around fire for that reason…

21: Sunny still days are her favorite.

23: She collects pretty or interesting rocks in her travels and displays them proudly on a shelf when she returns home.

33: An emerald ring that belonged to her mother and the bow her father gave her for her 16th birthday.

44: She’s a super sweet girl that’s actually the embodiment of sunshine, only a monster with no heart would hate her.

56: She’s a Hufflepuff.

57: Lawful Good.

59: She does hate the idea of it but she knows she’ll go to Sovngarde so she isn’t petrified of it.

66: Oh how sweet and naive this little virgin is, she gets super shy when it’s discussed but she does want to try it..with Farkas What? I didn’t say anything.

74: She hardly ever gets mad but when she does she’s a angry crier.

87: This sweetie is only 19.

~Yazmar~

2: He has a VERY guttural voice one where you can hear each consonant in his chest.

5: TOO. MUCH. PRIDE. He will not ask for help and hostile if you try to help.

9: He sleeps like a rock, not even Alduin himself could wake him.

10: He really likes venison stew, or really anything that contains meat.

11: He occasionally gets really insecure about harsh exterior but it passes.

17: He’s an angry drunk, everyone’s out to get him and against him.

20: He has a small irrational fear of skeevers any time he gets around them his skin crawls.

21: He loves dark clouds and thundering lighting followed by a downpour.

23: No not really.

33: A piece of braided twine that’s tied to his sword given to him by a cherished friend.

44: He has a unbelievably harsh exterior but when you actually take the time to get to know him he’s actually a really nice guy.

56: Gryffindorall the way.

57: He’s a True Neutral, he doesn’t care either way.

59: Being an Orc he doesn’t really care if he lives or dies.

66: Doesn’t do it often but when he does OH wOw HE iS hArD AnD RoUgH.

74: He’s pretty level headed but when he does get angry his Berserker Rage really shows when he breaks your spine in two.

87: He’s 25.

FINALLY IM DONE OH MY GOD.

#Skyrim #skyrim oc #ylva strong sword #tayani #galiena liore #adahy forestbrook #telnian #runa steel arrow #yazmar buruk

3 notes · View notes

mommas-wombats · 7 years

Text

Say You Won’t Let Go

It was a warm spring night, the kind that drew everyone outside and created a festival kind of feeling. Marinette and Alya walked merrily down the sidewalk, both of them looking forward to their dates. A new restaurant had just opened along the river, and the place had quickly become a favorite spot because of its beautiful outdoor seating area. Adrien had managed to snag four reservations for an open mic night.

“I’m telling you, your voice is great and you gotta get up there!” Alya said.

“No way, that place is gonna be so crowded,” Marinette shook her head. “I don’t think I could do it with so many eyes on me.”

“You sing for us all the time when we have karaoke night,” Alya pointed out.

“Yeah but that’s just us. I don’t want an audience.”

“Fine,” Alya waved a hand. “But if they have that new zedd song on the roster I’m dragging you up there with me.”

“Doesn’t Nino feel betrayed that he’s not your favorite musician?” Marinette asked with a teasing smile.

“Eh,” Alya shrugged. “He knows I love him.”

They rounded a corner and could suddenly see the restaurant, the outdoor seating already glowing from the countless strings of fairy lights. Marinette understood what Alya meant when she’d called the place ‘crazy romantic’.

“Hey!” Alya called out, waving. Nino and Adrien were standing on the edge of the crowd, but they didn’t notice the girls approaching at first. Nino was thumping Adrien’s shoulder, while Adrien (whose back was turned) was slightly hunched over something. He even bounced a little on the balls of his feet. Was he anxious about something?

A little closer and Marinette and Alya were finally noticed. Their boyfriends greeted them with warm smiles and light kisses, and then the two couples wound through the crowd to their waiting table.

“You look beautiful tonight, buginette,” Adrien said in Marinette’s ear. She blushed.

“Alya helped me pick out the dress,” she said. Credit where credit was due.

“Well the dress helps,” Adrien leaned back a little to admire the dress. It was dark blue with little pale pink flowers printed around the hem and waistline. “But I was talking about the happy glow around your face.”

There it was, the fluttering of Marinette’s heart in her throat that she was sure would never go away. It happened every time they kissed, showed up with every good morning text she got, and especially when she was reminded how incredible her boyfriend was.

“Thank you, mon minou,” she stretched up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

“So what kind of food do they have here? I’m starving!” Alya announced as they finally sat down.

Someone came around to give out menus and, a few minutes later, their orders. The four of them enjoyed the live music that was playing, sometimes singing along or talking about the singers.

“Too bad they don’t have a DJ table,” said Nino, drumming the edge of their table. “I’d kill it up there.”

“I talked to the owner, he knows maman,” Alya said. “They want to eventually get one if their open mic night gets popular enough.”

Nino’s mouth popped open. “Babe, we’re coming here every week.”

Marinette’s attention turned to the stage. Someone had just started singing a song about Ladybug and Chat Noir. The song had come out a few years ago, shortly after the defeat of Hawk Moth.

“I miss them,” Alya sighed wistfully. “I miss running the Ladyblog.”

Adrien and Marinette glanced at each other, and under the table Adrien gave Marinette’s knee a light squeeze.

“But you don’t miss the city being attacked, do you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Alya shrugged. “Some of them were cool. It was definitely a trip when I almost got sacrificed.”

“I thought you were terrified then,” Marinette frowned.

“Ladybug was there to save the day, it was no big deal!”

“I’m sure they just went somewhere else that needed them,” Nino shrugged. “I mean I miss seeing them too, but our cops can handle the regular crime.”

As the evening wore on, and the food on their plates was reduced to scraps and crumbs, Marinette felt her eyelids growing heavy. She felt warm all over and content, and she knew she’d sleep very well when she got home.

“Alright folks, we’ve got time for just a few more songs before we call it a night!”

The announcement rang out, and Marinette checked her phone. It was nearly eleven. How could the time have passed so quickly?

“I’m, uh, I’m gonna go to the bathroom before we go,” Adrien said, excusing himself from the table.

“Good luck, bro,” Nino said, raising his fist. Alya and Marinette exchanged a look.

“Why did you wish him luck?” Alya asked.

“Wouldn’t you want good luck going to the bathroom?” Nino laughed.

Marinette poked her straw at the ice in the bottom of her cup. She was debating asking for another refill, but she wasn’t sure how much she wanted to run to the bathroom as soon as she got home. Besides, she and Alya were gonna walk, and that wouldn’t be nearly as fun with a full bladder.

Another song started, just soft guitar playing over the speakers. Alya smiled and cooed. “Ooh I love this song,” she leaned on Nino’s shoulder.

I met you in the dark, you lit me up

You made me feel as though I was enough

We danced the night away, we drank too much

I held your hair back when

You were throwing up

“Oh hold up,” Alya straightened up, craning her head around. Marinette was still preoccupied with her ice. Alya whacked Marinette’s shoulder, then nodded toward the stage. Adrien had the microphone, and he was looking straight at her.

Then you smiled over your shoulder For a minute, I was stone-cold sober I pulled you closer to my chest And you asked me to stay over I said, I already told ya I think that you should get some rest

“What is he doing?” Marinette asked, her jaw feeling slack. Adrien rarely sang at their karaoke night.

“Nino?” Alya narrowed her eyes at her boyfriend, who just put up his hands.

“I’m not saying anything.”

I knew I loved you then But you'd never know 'Cause I played it cool when I was scared of letting go

Marinette’s heart fluttered in her throat again, and a thousand memories flooded her mind at the look on Adrien’s face. The countless times he’d flirted with her as Chat. The first time he actually brought her flowers. When he’d traded (most of) his puns for compliments. How insane that week had felt when they first found out about each other. The absolute giddy way he’d announced they were dating. The way she’d held him tight after they found out who Hawk Moth was…

I know I needed you But I never showed But I wanna stay with you until we're grey and old Just say you won't let go Just say you won't let go

By now, it was apparent throughout the crowd that Adrien was singing to a specific someone, and most of the chatter had died down, and one of the roof-mounted spotlights that was meant to be pointed at the stage suddenly swung across the space to shine on Marinette. She could barely breathe.

I'll wake you up with some breakfast in bed I'll bring you coffee with a kiss on your head And I'll take the kids to school Wave them goodbye And I'll thank my lucky stars for that night

Marinette’s thoughts were going a mile a minute. A year ago they’d stayed up too late, and Marinette had let slip some of the details of the future she wanted for herself. Adrien had called it adorable, said she was amazing for looking ahead that far. Beyond that, though, they hadn’t actually talked about the future very much. Whenever the subject came up Adrien had gone red faced and changed the topic.

When you looked over your shoulder For a minute, I forget that I'm older I wanna dance with you right now

Oh, and you look as beautiful as ever And I swear that everyday you'll get better You make me feel this way somehow

Alya’s eyes widened imperceptibly, and she dug in her purse and pulled out her phone. But instead of pointing it at the stage like Marinette thought she would, Alya aimed her camera straight across the table. At Marinette.

“What are you doing?” Marinette asked.

“Recording for posterity.” Alya said simply. “Don’t worry about me, enjoy the song.”

Marinette cast one cursory glance at Alya and then shrugged, turning back to the stage. Adrien really did have a nice voice.

I'm so in love with you And I hope you know Darling your love is more than worth its weight in gold We've come so far my dear Look how we've grown And I wanna stay with you until we're grey and old

Just say you won't let go Just say you won't let go

Adrien took the microphone out of the stand and hopped down off the stage. By now everyone was sitting and being a perfect captive audience. He didn’t have to squeeze through any spaces as he made his way towards Marinette.

I wanna live with you Even when we're ghosts 'Cause you were always there for me when I needed you most I'm gonna love you till My lungs give out I promise till death we part like in our vows

Marinette’s breath caught in her throat. Suddenly she knew exactly what he was doing, and she couldn’t help but stand up when he reached her. The corners of her eyes prickled with tears, and all she could see was Adrien. He reached out and cupped her face with one hand, brushing away a tear with his thumb.

So I wrote this song for you, now everybody knows 'Cause now it's just you and me till we're grey and old

Just say you won't let go Just say you won't let go Just say you won't let go

As he repeated the last few lines of the chorus, Adrien stepped back. He dipped his free hand in his pocket. He pulled out a simple round, red velvet box. He sank down on one knee.

If Marinette had been paying attention to anything other than him, she would have heard Alya’s “holy crap!” and the collective breath from the crowd. But she didn’t. All she could process was the ring. A single ruby framed by miniscule black gems. It was gorgeous.

Oh, just say you won't let go

The song ended and the silence prevailed. Everyone was watching them. Marinette’s eyes flicked from the ring to Adrien’s face, and she was astonished to see his eyes shining, excitement and fear and anticipation all rolled into one sunshine child. He dared crack the smallest of Chat Noir smiles.

That broke Marinette out of her revere. She choked out a laugh, and grinned at Adrien in spite of the tears that were now trailing down her cheeks. Happy tears.

“Marinette, I’ve loved you since the day I met you,” Adrien said. He didn’t bother using the microphone. Everyone could hear him anyway. “And then when I found out you loved me too I realized that my bad luck doesn’t have to last.” Marinette laughed again, glancing at the finger his miraculous used to sit on. “I want to show you for the rest of my life how much that love means to me. Will you--” he took a steadying breath. “Will you marry me?”

All Marinette could do was nod. Adrien’s smile nearly split his face, and he jumped to his feet to pull her into a tight hug. Then he was peppering kisses all over her face and she was laughing at his enthusiasm. The restaurant crowd cheered, offering congratulations, and a waiter appeared at their table with an ice cream sundae that seemed to have been specially made. Adrien slipped the ring onto her finger with shaking hands, and then they were kissing again.

The music resumed after the crowd died down a little, playing one last song for the night. Though Marinette couldn’t see how they’d top Adrien’s performance.

“I love you, chaton,” Marinette said softly as they took their seats. Adrien scooted his chair around so he was right next to her.

He kissed her nose. “I love you too, my lady.”

They kissed again, briefly, and let their foreheads rest against each other. Marinette gazed down at her ring. It looked very much like it was ladybug inspired.

“Hey lovebirds,” Alya waved her hand to get some attention. “Are you gonna eat that ice cream or can Nino and I split it?”

#miraculous ladybug #adrien x marinette #adrinette #mlb #say you won't let go #guys i am so dang proud of this #it's been in my head for DAYS

91 notes · View notes

the-master-cylinder · 4 years

Text

SUMMARY Steve Malone, an agent from the Environmental Protection Agency, is sent to a military base in Alabama to test possible effects on the surrounding ecological system caused by military actions. With him is his teenage daughter from his first marriage, Marti, his second wife Carol, and Marti’s half brother Andy. On their way to the base, they stop at a gas station. In the restroom, Marti is threatened by an MP member with a knife. When he notices her fear, he lets go of her, satisfied that she shows an emotional response. Before she leaves the room, he warns her, “they get you when you sleep”.

Steve and his family move into their new home on the base, and Marti makes friends with the base commander’s daughter Jenn. On his first day in day care, Andy runs away because he is recognized as an outsider among the other somehow conformist children. He is picked up and brought home by helicopter pilot Tim. Marti and Tim quickly feel attracted to each other. Meanwhile, while examining soil samples, Steve is approached by medical officer Major Collins, who asks him about psychological effects, particularly narcophobia (the fear of sleep), and their possible relation to toxication of the environment. Steve believes that a physiological reaction would be more likely.

In the evening, Marti and Jenn go to the bar attended by the station’s military personnel, where they meet not only Tim but also the MP who threatened Marti at the gas station. He denies that they ever met before. That night, a group of soldiers can be seen picking giant pods from the river running by the base. When Andy wakes up and enters his mother’s room, Carol’s body crumbles to dust, while a naked soulless double emerges from the closet. Nobody believes Andy’s story that his real mother is dead and the person pretending to be Carol is only an impostor.

The following night, Marti and her father are nearly “taken over” too by duplicates emerging from the giant pods. Carol attempts to convince Steve that the takeover is a good thing, claiming that it ends confusion and anger. She also claims that there’s no place to go, as the events at the base are not an isolated incident. Steve is almost shocked and saddened into compliance, but Marti and Andy drag him out the door. Carol emits a shrill and mechanical scream that alerts other “pod people” to the presence of a human being. Now the majority in numbers, they swarm over the base chasing the remaining humans.

After hiding Marti and Andy in a warehouse, Steve enters Major Collins’ office. The hysterical Major tries to call for help, but the line is blocked. While swallowing sleep-prevention pills Collins announces that it is too late to run; all they can do is fight. Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a group of pod people, led by base commander General Platt. While Steve hides, the pod people try to convince the Major that the individual is not important, and that only conformity can solve the world’s problems. The Major shoots himself rather than live in such a world.

Steve returns to his children and tells them to follow him, claiming to have found a way out. They drive aimlessly through the military base, as loudspeakers shout out instructions for spreading the invasion by carrying out pods in trucks. Realizing that her father was replicated while he was away, Marti swerves the car to the side and tries to escape with her brother. Tim, who escaped his former comrades who tried to turn him into one of them, suddenly appears and Marti takes his gun and shoots the Steve duplicate. Pod Steve’s body shrinks into a mass of seething, bloody goo.

Tim manages to get hold of a helicopter gunship, but Marti and Andy are taken away by the pod people. They sedate both of them and take them to the base infirmary where the remaining human beings are being systematically duplicated by pods. Tim is able to rescue Marti, despite her pod duplicate trying to seduce him into compliance. Incomplete, it dies when he pulls its connecting tendrils off Marti.

Marti and Tim leave the building, pretending to be pod people so they can get to Tim’s helicopter to escape. However, they are spotted by Jenn, now a pod duplicate, who gets suspicious and tells Marti she saw Andy looking for her. When Marti reacts by displaying emotion, Jenn responds by giving out a pod scream to alert the other pod people. Tim and Marti manage to get in the helicopter and are joined at the last minute by Andy who runs up to them. But right after taking off, Andy, who is actually a pod duplicate, attacks both and tries to bring down the helicopter. After a short scuffle, a heartbroken Marti is forced to throw Pod-Andy out of the helicopter and he gives out a pod scream while falling to his death.

The ending of the film is an ambiguous one. Tim destroys the trucks filled with pods with the helicopter’s rockets, while Marti confesses her profound hatred in a voice-over narration, thereby hinting at a loss of humanitarian quality. While they land on another base, the words of Marti’s replaced stepmother earlier in the film can be heard, suggesting that the phenomenon may have already spread beyond the army base: “Where you gonna go, where you gonna run, where you gonna hide? Nowhere… ’cause there’s no one like you left.”

DEVELOPMENT The Body Snatchers project has been kicking around for a long time. “I began thinking about Body Snatchers again around 1987,” Solo explains. “Once I made a deal with Warner Bros. to produce the film, Larry Cohen was the first writer, which seemed appropriate given that he stole the idea of Body Snatchers for The Invaders TV series,” Solo laughs. “He’s said as much to me. Anyway, he did two entirely different scripts, and Warners liked the second one but decided they wanted to go younger.

“Last January, a new executive was assigned to the project; he thought the script was terrific, but wanted to get some work done on it,” Solo continues. “So Stuart and Dennis started rewriting and rewriting, for the better part of six months. Then Warners brought in another writer, who did five or six drafts. Meanwhile, Stuart was working on another film, Fortress, that went pay-or-play. Stuart didn’t want to leave Body Snatchers, but you have to make a living; he went off to Australia, and we had to find another director. Abel came in, and he wanted to work with his own writer. So we started all over again; that must have gone seven or eight drafts. It was endless. Finally, they approved a script in November, and here we are.”

After producer Robert Solo had Larry Cohen write a couple of drafts, Stuart Gordon and his writing partner Dennis Paoli came aboard the Warner Bros project in December 1990. Gordon committed to direct FORTRESS in April after Warners sought to entice Stephen King to do a rewrite.

“Our feeling was that if you’re going to have a new writer come on board, it should be someone really sensational,” said Gordon. “Stephen King sent back this wonderful note saying, ‘I was interested in doing the adaptation, but the script is fine the way it is. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.””

King’s praise prompted Gordon to prod Warner Bros to give BODY SNATCHERS a green light, but they insisted another writer be brought in to polish the script. Gordon worked with Nebin Shreiner until he left to direct FORTRESS in September 1991, but he would have preferred to direct BODY SNATCHERS had he been given the go ahead.

When informed that director Abel Ferrara’s scripter, Nicholas St. John, toned down the graphic nature of Gordon’s draft, Gordon responded, “It takes a lot more to scare people now that it did in the ’50s when the first movie came out.”

One Gordon concept not retained was the idea to provide the pod organisms with human exteriors, but insides of pure plant material, like Howard Hawks’ THE THING (1950). “To me, that idea had a lot of potential,” said Gordon. “Unlike a human being, whose brain is located in a specific part of the body, the consciousness of the creature is spread throughout so that if you were going to, say, slice off its head, it would still be able to think.”

A sequence in Gordon’s draft had pod people closing in on a family trapped in a garage. “The family was using gardening tools—spades, rakes, hedge clippers—to fight back,” said Gordon. “Ultimately they discovered that weed killer was the only thing that could stop the pods. It dissolved them,” said Gordon.

Gordon revealed that the memorable pod scream from Solo’s 1978 version (created by Ben Burtt) will be reused in BODY SNATCHERS. “Sound has a huge effect on you psychologically,” said Gordon. “The cry when they discover an intruder in their midst is wonderful.”

Though Solo and Ferrara were said to have beefed up the action in the film, Gordon noted his version had a “sequence of them dropping defoliant on the pod people at the end of the movie. The idea for a helicopter dog-fight at the climax came from Bob Solo, if I’m not mistaken.”

Gordon noted that he and Paoli played with several endings. “We had one where they just fly off into the sunset, not knowing what they were going to find,” said Gordon. “Another had them landing only to find that the people were pods as well.” Gordon hinted that further sequels might be planned. “There’s some talk about setting the next one in Washington, D.C.”

Gordon likes both of the earlier film versions, but the 1956 Don Siegel film is his favorite. “It’s a brilliant, timeless movie that holds up just fine,” said Gordon, who finds the 1978 Philip Kaufman version more “dated” despite it being the more contemporary of the two. The theme of all the versions, springing from the Jack Finney novel, is the same, i.e. conformity. “It was a strong force in the 1950s, but it’s still very much with us,” said Gordon. “One of the points we got into in the script is that the people who had the best chance of surviving against the pods were the rebels, people rejected by the system.

Screenwriter Nicholas St. John is an unusual presence here. Although many directors don’t like having the writer on the set, Ferrara and St. John work differently. The pair have collaborated for many years, so when Ferrara agreed to direct Body Snatchers, he asked St. John to rewrite the script by Gordon and Paoli.

“Everybody was looking at the third act,” says St. John of problems with the then-existing screenplay. “We wanted to take it in a different direction from what was originally envisioned.

We wanted to get the general feel more toward the original movie, more toward the psychological aspects than the spectacle. We ended up having plenty of spectacle, too, but we’ve set a different tone. Even this scene we’re shooting tonight is very dark, going along with this Gothic feel. and that’s what we tried to get into. That’s what I think the first movie did.”

Much of the story remains from the earlier screenplay, according to St. John, including the premise and the heroes. “We inherited the military base [from the Gordon-Paoli draft], and we stuck with that. The protagonists are young, as opposed to the other movies, where they were older.”

The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers reflected the paranoia of the 50s McCarthy witch hunts, while the *70s film displayed the then-prevalent New Age “Me Decade” thinking. St. John says that this new film reflects a different theme for the ’90s.

“For me, it’s involved with a very, very grand scheme of evil vs. good. The evil that you see every day pervading mankind is so seductive. There must be a reason why all of these things we see in the world happen. You go to sleep one day, you wake up the next, and you have the disease, and the disease spreads! You’ve got to be strong, you’ve got to have love; you’ve got to have all of those things in your heart to beat it.”

You can’t think about that while you’re writing it, you must remain true to what’s in front of you,” he says. You have to build a world and inhabit in with the people that you need to do it with and you must keep it true to itself. After that, you hope people like it and that you did as good a job as the other guys have done. But, I feel confident and really good about it, because it’s a strong piece and a real strong idea, Body Sculpting The writer says he und Ferrara worked on the script together to make the characters more emotional and to emphasize the family structure much more than in the first two films, “We take characters to their emotional and logical extremes. We push them to the edge, and that’s what you need to do. That’s what I think our films do we really get out there with them, put them in a situation and tum the screws on them .

“That’s what I think we’ve done here. We have this incredible antagonist who has just taken over everything. So, we’ve had a good time-we can really get some truths in here and make statements that normally, we couldn’t do. If people reacted in that way, you would say, “Huh? Who would believe that?! But we can do it here because of the sel-up.”

Another principal difference with this Body Snatchers is that the hero isn’t a Kevin McCarthy or Donald Sutherland type, a teenage girl-thereby giving the story a more youthful slant. There were choices made before we got involved,” St. John reveals. “I don’t know if I would have made that choice from the beginning to make her a 17-year-old, I don’t think I would have, because I don’t know how much I have in common with a girl like that. It certainly is different! The other films were geared for an older generation.

“Look this is a sophisticated message, and they were trying to give it to a sophisticated audience. We’re giving to the kids on this level, and they have to learn to deal with good and evil as well. If we can get the 17, 18 and 19-year olds out there, they’ll get a good film with plenty of excitement. At the same time, we want to put our Vision of the world into it, which is “There is an enemy

youtube

“There were a couple of plot turns that we really liked, and we’ve tried to keep them through all of the rewrites,” he adds. There’s one thing specifically in the last five minutes, and I hope it stays. It’s rough, but it’s good, and it was really powerful.”

Although many screenwriters aren’t welcome on film sets, the improvisational manner in which Ferrara works makes St. John a vital part of the shooting process. “Abel has to have some kind of control or conduit to make sure it doesn’t go all over the place—and who better than the writer?” says St. John.

“I understand the structure, I understand what each scene is supposed to do, and if the actors want to say, ‘Hey. I’ve got an idea,’ we can talk about it. If it’s off the mark, I’ve got to stop them. I’ve got to control it, to make sure it gets where it has to go. That’s really it. I’ve worked on all of our films: I’m always on the set with Abel.”

As they have throughout their partnership, St. John says he and Ferrara “have been close throughout” in developing the film’s final screenplay. “He doesn’t sit down and write scene-by scene. We’ll talk out the ideas together, and then I’ll run with it. I usually knock out a first version for general guidance, and then we start to get more specific, and as we get actors, we really hone it down.”

PRODUCTION To assist him on the visual side, Ferrara brought in cinematographer Bojan Bazelli, who shot his China Girl and King of New York. Both films are distinguished by rich, stylized lighting and sinuous camera movement; even people who hate the films have to admit that they look great. The Yugoslavian-born Bazelli has also been responsible for the lush look of such films as Pumpkinhead and Deep Cover. “But Abel is my creator,” he relates in his slightly accented English. “He found me. I was in LA, six or seven months after I arrived from Europe. All I had done was school work and a low budget feature in Czechoslovakia. Somehow Abel got hold of some of my work and offered me China Girl. Next thing I knew, I was in New York, sitting on a crane on Mulberry Street. First day on the set.”

Bazelli sips a cup of coffee and continues. “I’ve done many things since then, but my best artistic work is with Abel. He doesn’t just want functional film language enough light to see what’s happening and for continuity. He wants film language that’s expressive.

“The colors are very important in this movie, or, more accurately, the absence of color,” Bazelli explains. “Black and white in color. It’s all tones, a palette of monochromatic hues—shades of gray. The sky is white in virtually every shot, and often the foreground is very dark, a little ominous. We used different film stocks for the pre-pod and post-pod periods, and though the difference is very subtle, audiences will see it, even if they’re not consciously aware. The camera is constantly in motion, and the compositions are very much off-center, people over in the corners of the frame. That helps achieve a feeling of weirdness. uneasiness.

“I just love it!” he exclaims. “I loved the 56 version. There’s something about the MacGuffin that has always fascinated and intrigued me, and that’s why I did the *78 version. It works, so why not? There’s something really insidious and terrifying about it, and it’s something people can relate to: That there are forces beyond their control, that their lives are really not in their own hands, and that unseen forces are really running our own country and our world. We’re just pawns, and they are taking over! In a way, you see some of that in the contemporary politics of the Far Right-‘they’ are taking over, and ‘we’ are being wiped out and taken over by them, whoever the ‘them are.

So, there are always people who feel a kind of alienation and powerlessness, where their lives are being run by unseen others. That’s what touched a chord in all three movies. That’s why people feel it in a kind of visceral way, and that’s why the films work. We can relate to the people involved, and things aren’t the way they used to be. “Something’s happening and life isn’t the way it used to be. I’m not living as well as my parents did.’ ‘What’s going on here?” “Our factories are closing. Who’s doing this?’ They are! I’m not saying this film is a metaphor for that, but that’s an aspect of the Body Snatchers’ MacGuffin that I think touches people.”

St. John is pleased with the way the actors help him sharpen their lines and characters. “Everybody has brought much life to these characters. It’s amazing! From little Reilly Murphy, who plays five-year old Andy, to Meg [Psycho In Tilly, everyone is awesome! I only had a fuzzy picture of the faces of these people, but now, they are the characters! It’s amazing, but it happens every time I do a film. I have a general idea, a phantasm in my mind, and suddenly, “Yeah! That’s Tim!'”

Meg Tilly took a very internal approach to the transformation. opting to convey it in a subtle, low key manner. “I just made a switchover in my way of thinking, my way of looking at things,” she explains. Searching for an example, she says, “I look at my children in one way, and a chair in another. Because they’re different–one is a living being and the other is an object. When Carol stops being Carol, there’s no longer any difference for her between the chair and the child.”

Discussing Body Snatchers director Abel Ferrara is easier. “Abel really threw me, because he doesn’t work the way I’m used to,” she offers. “I’m the kind of person who likes to know exactly how many steps I’m going to take and when I’m going to look up, and that’s not him. Body Snatchers has been like a roller coaster ride… Whoa! And away we go!” Tilly snaps her head from side to side to illustrate. “At first I was like, ‘Help, I’ve got to get off!’ I’d be agonizing over individual words, and I’d come in and the dialogue would be completely different. Then I’d be totally flipped out, saying, ‘Abel, you’ve got to help me here.’ I wasn’t sure I would be able to cope, but I have. It’s been all about letting go and not having to know exactly what I’m going to do.

“Now I feel like a rodeo rider: I’m slammed on this wild horse and it’s bucking and bronking and I’m really exhilarated, but I’m hanging onto its ears and mane and screaming. It’s fun, but it’s scary as hell!” Tilly laughs. “I’d work with Abel again; I’ve actually really enjoyed myself on this movie. There are some directors you put up with and some directors you love, and I really love Abel.”

SPECIAL EFFECTS Getting St. John’s concept of disease onto the screen is the responsibility of makeup effects expert Tom Burman, who worked on Solo’s 1978 version under arduous conditions (out of a suitcase, no less). For BODY SNATCHERS, Burman redesigned the pods and devised a method of depicting what occurs to the bodies of those who are taken over. “Science fiction audiences are more demanding today,” said Burman. “I feel that they are owed an explanation of what happens to the old bodies.”

Surprisingly, Body Snatchers isn’t a state-of-the-art makeup FX festival. “This isn’t Terminator 2,” Solo says. “It’s not a $60-, $70-, $80-million film, and we’re not using ILM or morphing. It’s not that kind of picture.” But what about the body snatchers? “Abel didn’t have a strong vision of the special effects,” makeup FX designer Tom Burman, who also worked on the 1978 edition, carefully explains. “I love the guy, and we didn’t fight or argue, but at the same time he didn’t have a clear vision of what he wanted from us, so it’s hard to say what’s going to end up in the finished film. He really wanted to see what we could do and then decide. But that’s a problem, because you often find yourself painted into a corner, and effects aren’t very flexible.”

Nevertheless, Burman designed a full range of pod FX, including “effects that show what’s happening inside the pod as the replicas are developing, which is something that wasn’t done in either of the earlier versions. In those, you see the pod replicas from the outside as they’re forming, and you see them emerge when they’re complete. For the pods themselves, we tried to create something that was ominous and unfamiliar looking, yet organic. We tried to go in the direction of things that looked like a distortion of something you might find here on Earth, rather than something that screamed “outer space.

Burman was not on the set continuously, but he did arrive in order to supervise one of the movie’s most startling effects in which female lead Gabrielle Anwar shoots her “father” and he appears to deflate, leaving nothing but his glasses, ring and bloodstained clothing. The craftsmen achieved this effect molding a likeness of actor Terry Kinney’s torso and then attaching a suction device which reduced the body to virtually nothing.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A major component of the film’s effects is, of course, the body snatching pods themselves. These were replicated to Burman’s specifications by Matt Marich and Star Fields on location in Alabama. “Originally they wanted 50 pods,” said Fields. Then they decided they wanted a hundred—just to fill the trucks. But once we hit a hundred, the producer just said, “Keep going.’ Tom designed the prototype, and they wanted different sizes, so, going off his design, Matt sculpted the rest.”

As humidity, cold or any extreme of temperature affects the latex casting, heaters were set up inside the Alabama shop in order to maintain a constant temperature of approximately 90 degrees. Raw pod-making materials had to be shipped from Los Angeles, some of it by ground transportation because it contains hazardous chemicals. Marich confirmed its volatility. “It’s a pretty toxic paint that we’re using because we wanted to be sure that once we start working in the swamp that it doesn’t rub off. Heck of a buzz from it. We had to go home early a couple of days.”

From what does one construct a pod? “These are, mainly, just an AB urethanetype foam,” said Marich. “We’re also making about 75 of the rigid lightweight foam ones because when they’re harvesting them, they have big nets and so we had to make some light enough to be carried.

Abel Ferrara

Interview with Abel Ferrara

What are your memories of making Body Snatchers? Abel Ferrara: Jack… what was the name of the guy who wrote the original story? Jack Finney. That original story’s a masterpiece. It’s brilliant writing. Don Siegel’s movie was a pretty impressive movie, and he was impressive as a movie director. But it was very true to the book. Then Warner Bros, they switched it around.

So you spoke to Jack Finney? Abel Ferrara: Yeah, absolutely. That’s one of the perks of being who I am! You get to talk to Jack Finney, you get to talk to William Gibson. But then you’ve got to work with the Warner Bros guys! The difference between Jack Finney and Warner Bros… Jack was really cool, very helpful, just what you’d expect. Then I got a call from the Warner Bros guys saying, “Don’t talk to that guy, because, like he basically got $500, and that’s all he’s gonna fuckin’ get, and we don’t want him asking for more.” So that ended that conversation.

That seems to be a common theme with writers of these stories. The same thing happened to the guy who wrote The Day The Earth Stood Still. I think he got $500 too. Abel Ferrara: That was the going rate for masterpieces back then! Five hundred, and yeah, be happy you got that!

Body Snatchers is more mainstream and commercial than your early work. And at $17 million, it’s a big budget movie by your previous standards too. Abel Ferrara: It isn’t commercial at all. And I personally don’t think it’s as good a film as Driller Killer. I’ve made big budget movies like it before. And I was the first person to be offered Die Hard. Take Fear City which I made in 1985 for $6 million. That figure would be tripled today allowing for inflation. If I can get a film of just close-ups of Harvey Keitel in The Bad Lieutenant then I don’t need $17 million. If I’m working with a thousand extras and helicopters like in Body Snatchers, then I do. You dig?

Body Snatchers is the first movie you’ve directed not based on your own original material. Abel Ferrara: You make a concession working with someone else’s ideas. It’s a step away from your ego. I just thought the Siegel movie was so great, a f**king masterpiece. I’ve seen it 200 times now. The way that cat set up his shots. That’s why I decided to make it. Why Warners decided to back it had something to do with Martin Scorsese remaking a Fifties movie, Cape Fear, and having a hit. You know, Finney only got $500 when they optioned his novel in 1954. And it went on to make three feature films! I found out he was still alive and called him up a month ago. He’s still writing at 75 years old and had no idea we’d made a new version of his story. No one at Warners had told him because they were afraid they’d have to pay him. That’s f**king Hollywood right there, man. They f**ked him and went on to burn him big time. And this is the man whose novel was outrageous for the time. When I first read it, it was like a door being opened in my imagination.

Many people are credited for the Body Snatchers script including Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli, Raymond Cistheri, Larry Cohen and Nicholas St John. Abel Ferrara: And only Nicky St John, my longtime screenwriter, deserves the credit. I never met those other guys. It was purely contractual. I took their shit and threw it out, man, it was pathetic. Really pathetic. I wouldn’t know those other people if I fell over them. Nicky wasn’t that enthused over the Body Snatchers idea but I talked him into it and he saved the f**king picture.

Was it St John’s idea to have the aliens invading through the military? Abel Ferrara: No, that was in the first script Warners gave me. I felt it was a strange idea at first. The novel was set in a small town. All those ideas in the script from the guys I’d never met were all bogus, all wrong. How can anyone say you aren’t you if they didn’t know you to begin with? I thought the story had to take place in the town the lead guy grew up in. Like in Siegel’s film. Kevin McCarthy was a doctor who knew everyone and could therefore tell the difference when the pods took over. Putting complete strangers on a military base was ridiculous. But we accepted the concept and said it sounded a good idea. You tell me if it’s a fatal flaw or a brilliant concept.

So if you were to remake it, you would take it back to the small town. Abel Ferrara: Yeah, absolutely. The doctor in the small town somewhere. Why change that? It’s brilliant. Why would you change that? If you’ve got a great reason for changing it, then yeah. But if you’ve got an arbitrary reason? You’re gonna make a $40m film on some arbitrary, dopey-ass fuckin’ chase some idiot screenwriter made – that was fired anyway? That’s it in a nutshell.

What about the pivotal ‘sleep’ scene where Gabrielle Anwar is dozing in the bath and the alien tentacles are crawling all over her body? She comes round, runs out of the bathroom yelling, and suddenly she’s wearing a towel! How did she have the time to grab the towel if she was so terrified? Abel Ferrara: I hate that scene. It was a major error. The actual snatching process is good though. I thought it would give the movie a more ’90s look and make it tougher if we showed the things that were hinted at in the other versions.

The visual style of Body Snatchers is very distinctive. Abel Ferrara: It’s my third film with cinematographer Bojan Bazelli. He shot China Girl and King of New York. He’s awesome and his work speaks for itself. He’s from the Prague Film School and is half Italian too. Powerful and brilliant stuff. I don’t want to swell his head but he’s a bad motherf**ker. Whatever critics say about the film, it looks fabulous and it’s shot in Scope, which is like a big trip Jack, know what I mean? It’s state of the art in motion pictures and with $17 million at my disposal I could well afford it. Much of the movie was shot at night and everything was back-lit. It was very difficult to match the day stuff as a result. Warners were very unhappy because they couldn’t see the actors’ eyes. They asked for reshoots. But that was a conscious artistic decision on my part. However, it wasn’t my idea to paint all the trees on location black!

How did you find Reilly Murphy who plays young Andy Malone in Body Snatchers? Abel Ferrara: He’s my discovery, my Macaulay Culkin! He’s great, right? It was a classic major studio search. We looked at hundreds of boys and ended up finding Reilly in LA. He’s the grand nephew of Lloyd Bridges so he comes from good movie stock. He was very natural in his feelings and instincts for the role. He plays Harvey Keitel’s son in my new movie Snake Eyes. For the youngsters in this film, it’s about finding a sense of identity, of their own individuality, that’s missing in their lives. It takes a cause to rally around, and ideals to believe in, to make them aware of their humanity and fight for it.

Did you have a fight with the studio over what happens to Reilly at the end of the movie? Abel Ferrara: Let’s say they weren’t too happy. They wanted to know why he had to meet the fate he does. We fought back and forth over that. Solo wants to try another take on the Body Snatchers because of his affection for the subject matter.

What do you think is the core of Body Snatchers that makes it so resonant? Abel Ferrara: Spirituality of the writer. Him trying to come to terms with the possibility that the world could possibly blow up in his face. It’s just a beautiful work of fiction, man. It’s creative. He was a talented guy at the top of his game. That’s why it resonates. They gave Jack Finney 500 bucks, and that was it. That’s all he got. They made four studio films based on that idea, and the guy got 500 bucks. And when I talked to him about it, he had no resentment at all; he said, “Hey, that’s the deal I made.”

Body Snatchers Score – Joe Delia The film being scored is Warner Bros’ BODY SNATCHERS, the third adaptation of Jack Finney’s durable story of alien invasion and evil within. Ferrara is adding his own brand of horror to the classic tale, with the longtime friend and composer Joe Delia. Delia is to Ferrara what John Williams is to Steven Spielberg. Since being introduced to each other nearly 20 years ago, the two have worked together on eight films.

For BODY SNATCHERS, a revolutionary approach to scoring is being employed. Using state-of-the art equipment at National Sound studios in New York, Delia is able together with Fish, creative director of the studio complex-to compose in ways he hasn’t tried before. The Synclavier—the most sophisticated instrument in the world has allowed Delia to micro-score the film, putting down and modifying theme after theme while BODY SNATCHERS is still being edited.

Joe Delia

Ferrara, subscribing to the auteur approach, influences every stage of his film, including scoring. The Synclavier seems tailor-made for his stream-of-consciousness creativity. As a result, Delia’s scores are organic, with the ability to change at any time during the process: “Never a bit of music goes into Abel’s films that he doesn’t feel is right,” says Delia. “He likes to have near-finished music in hand as he structures his films,” Delia, (known in music circles as “Killer Joe”) is no stranger to films that shock people. His long list of credits include films that draw their terror from real life, creating a Dante-like Inferno for the characters: a man driven to using a power drill to kill people in DRILLER KILLER; a mute woman,an turned bloody vigilante after being raped twice in one day in MS.45; strippers brutally murdered in Times Square by a serial killer in FEAR CITY. In more recent years, Delia has scored Ferrara’s CHINA GIRL and last year’s sensation, BAD LIEUTENANT. He has also scored episodes of WAR OF THE WORLDS for television.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAI8XfklBLo

“This score is more textural and visceral than the first film,” says Delia of BODY SNATCHERS. Carmen Dragon (father of “Captain” Daryl Dragon of Captain and Tennille fame) scored the 1956 original. “Dragon’s approach was very ‘film noir,” says Delia. “We tried to stay away from the typical scary music. This score is synthesized with otherworldly sounds, which I think is good—it adds a different spin. The first film was more psychological than rock ’em shock ’em, although it was very, very scary. The new one remains true to that. It’s not “Freddy Krueger” at all; it’s much more subtle. Of course, there are a few moments that will send people through the roof. What I tried to create with this score was a composition that goes beyond music. There’s one theme-the pod theme-which keeps appearing throughout. It’s a throbbing, droning, bubbling musical bed that will make the film very scary.

“With BODY SNATCHERS, my music coproducer Peter Fish (who also wrote additional music for the film) and I abandoned the traditinal. approach to film scoring. We were brought in early in the game, working with rough cuts for a long time, getting ideas and themes together. Abel likes to have a lot of options.”

“In terms of musical keys, rhythm and tone, our approach was completely non-conventional,” says Fish. “There’s an internal logic to the score in that it comments very specifically on every scene and was composed because of the new technology available at National Sound—with a great sense of creative freedom.”

With BODY SNATCHERS the music was married to the effects. “With some cues, it was difficult to decipher what were sound effects and what was score,” says Delia. “That was the nature of the film.”

Delia’s scores for Ferrara always end up being part of the film’s guts. If that means the music doesn’t work as well without the film, that’s fine with Delia. “The music needs to serve the film first and foremost, everything else is secondary,” he says. A case in point is one of his favorite scores, for Ferrara’s MS. 45. In that film, the “internal logic” of Delia’s music, described by Fish, is borne out; music is used sparingly as a direct texture to the film’s more intense scenes. The music and images need one another to create the desired effect for the viewer.

CAST/CREW Directed Abel Ferrara

Produced Robert H. Solo

Screenplay Stuart Gordon Dennis Paoli Nicholas St. John

Story Raymond Cistheri Larry Cohen

Based on The Body Snatchers Jack Finney

Gabrielle Anwar as Marti Malone Terry Kinney as Steve Malone Billy Wirth as Tim Young Meg Tilly as Carol Malone Reilly Murphy as Andy Malone Christine Elise as Jenn Platt Lee Ermey as General Platt Forest Whitaker as Major Matthew Collins Kathleen Doyle as Diana Platt Elvis Phillips as Pete Tonea Stewart as Mrs. Fitzpatrick

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY denofgeek.com Starlog#181 Starlog#185 Starlog#189 Starlog#190 Starlog#192 Fangoria#118 Fangoria#121 Fangoria#122 Cinefantastique v23n04 Cinefantastique v24n01

Body Snatchers (1993) Retrospective SUMMARY Steve Malone, an agent from the Environmental Protection Agency, is sent to a military base in Alabama to test possible effects on the surrounding ecological system caused by military actions.

#90sMovies

0 notes