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geesaotblog · 4 years ago

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Levi Ackerman x Reader x Eren Jaeger (Implied) Levi Ackerman x Reader

Tags: Fingering, Back seat fraternization. CEO Levi Ackerman COO Eren Jaeger. Personal Assistant Reader. 18+.

“Oh, now that’s not fair.” Eren’s own dark voice practically rang through your ear while Levi’s hands trailed up your thighs, fingertips slipping past your dress. “Levi, do enough for the both of us.”

“I do what I want,” Levi answered back haughtily, pupils blown out as he watched your lips part with heavy breaths.

You couldn’t really blame Floch for his current actions. After all, this was a rather huge company party, and the opportunities that came with such an event were overflowing. First of all, the networking possibilities were endless. The big named corporate goons were flooding the large Victorian banquet hall that had been rented out and hosted by Ackerman Co., the second largest technological corporation in the states. Everyone who was anyone had attended, ready to mooch off of the billionaires that walked through those lavish ornate doors.

Second of all, employees of Ackerman Co. were all invited, as per request from their generous CEO, Levi Ackerman. You hid a scoff behind the pristine wine glass that touched your painted red lips. Levi Ackerman. The man was anything but generous. He was short, rude, and irrationally anal about the most particular things. You should know—after all, you are his personal assistant.

More like glorified cleaning monkey but you digress.

Then there was Eren Jaeger, Levi’s own little pet project. Eren was a few years younger than Levi but was already being groomed to succeed the company. The two were around each other, practically feeding each other’s egos like the little power hungry mongrels they were.

Well, Eren was feeding Levi’s ego. Levi’s only words of praise being thrown towards anyone were ‘Nice job, not fucking up the data transfer you complete walking pile of shit stains.’

Isn’t he absolutely charming?

The two were also unfairly gorgeous; Levi’s sharp chiseled face and built frame making up for the slight height imparity as well as Eren’s other worldly iridescent viridian eyes and long brunette locks that looked soft to the touch.

God, what those eyes did to you.

Being Levi’s personal assistant basically meant being Eren’s as well. Regardless of just how handsome those two were, it wouldn’t make up for the absolute hell they rained down on you with the way they overloaded you with work.

Maybe you can blame Floch for trying to kiss up to Levi right now. It was pathetic, really. The bumbling idiot’s rambles were only irritating Levi and pissing Eren off which meant four glasses of wine for you to be able to deal with their moods.

Then Eren’s eyes locked onto your frame from across the floor. You wanted to narrow your eyes in distaste, to scoff and turn away, to pretend you didn’t see him—but it was hard to when his towering frame looked so unfairly good in that black tux. That was another thing that wasn’t fair when it came to the way Levi and Eren treated you; the sharp gazes that promised unbearable pleasure every time they laid their eyes upon you were inappropriate. You should be more upset, angrier at the way they looked at you with such possessive fervent hunger within their eyes. But in the end, it only served to burn embers deep within the core of your stomach.

You’ve spent countless nights alone in your bed getting off at the memory of those looks, off at the memory of Levi and Eren. It just wasn’t fair.

If there was a better time to say eat the rich, it would be now.

Before you could comprehend the slight gasps of the awestruck women beside you, Levi and Eren had walked across the floor standing right in front of you, ready to give you a migraine that would last a century.

“, Well don’t you look pleasant, this evening.” Levi snarked, your last name pouring out of his mouth like sweet, warmed honey, dripping down the octave of his voice that continued to lower as he spoke to you. “Usually you look like you’re contemplating murdering us, brat.”

Bristling immediately, you pursed your lips in a tight smile and tried to calm down. He always just got under your skin so quickly.

“Mr. Ackerman, I’d rather not discuss such grim topics in the middle of a party.” You brought the glass up to your lips again, not once breaking eye contact with that gun-metal gaze and took a sip. “Let’s keep that within work hours.”

Eren’s sudden airy laugh broke your staring contest with Levi, garnering attention from both you and the ebony haired man in front of you.

“Now that’s the bite we remember,” Eren murmured, smile softening and eyes glazing over with something more primal. “I was almost worried the atmosphere was affecting your mood.”

“You’re rather confident if you think that the atmosphere you two provide with your money has any effect on what my mood is.” You quipped back, feeling heat rise to your cheeks at the tone.

“Oh, we’re positive that we can provide an entertaining atmosphere, definitely something that’ll keep you…coming back for more,” Levi said, tone husky and guttural feeding the warmth in your stomach a little more. You swallowed thickly, ignoring their desire filled expressions and reached down to tug at the bottom of your dress, hoping to cover a little more of your thighs and hide the any evidence of the arousal that came when you were in contact with the two.

Eren’s hair, though pulled back into a slightly messy bun, still had a few strands peak out of the tie, framing his already symmetrical face and bringing out his prominent features. He ran a hand through those locks, pushing them back as he looked down at you like some sort of animal ready to strike down on its prey.

Levi was no different, more reserved than Eren, but his eyes held a deep promise of toe-curling ecstasy.

You hated those two.

Finishing your glass of wine as quickly as you could, you placed the empty cup on a passing waiter’s tray, fumbling with a hasty response and trying your damned best to get the fuck out of there. “Well, this was a lovely conversation, but I really should head back home for the night. I wouldn’t want to be late to work because of—”

“Because of us.” Levi cut off. You pursed your lips at the implication behind his words and slowly nodded, unable to deny them.

“Yes, because of you two.” You cleared your throat and tightened your grip on your clutch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Let us drop you off.” Eren offered, smiling almost childishly, throwing you off completely from the tension that had been building up between you three. “It wouldn’t be right to just let you take a cab on your own. And it seems like you had a little too much to drink so driving is out of the question.”

Alone. Inside of a car. With Eren and Levi. You were slightly tipsy, but you also weren’t stupid.

“No, I couldn’t impose—”

“You’re not imposing, brat.” Levi tutted out, digging through his jacket pocket for his keys before tossing them at Eren who caught them easily. “Come on. We’re driving you home.”

Eren sent another smile your way before gently laying a hand on the small of your back, the large encompassing palm warming the bare skin there but not at all inching any lower as to respect your boundaries. Him and Levi led you out before you could utter another word of protest and your mind was reeling with so many possibilities of just where this drive could end up.

No, you stated sternly in your mind, chastising yourself for your indecent thoughts. You are not sleeping with the boss and the boss’s protégé. Or one. Or the other. Or—why has god forsaken me.

You wanted to throw a tantrum at the fact that two delectable pieces of meat were hanging right there, right in front of you, but morally you understood that wouldn’t be right at all.

Accepting your fate, you decided to just be pressed against the side door in the back seat of the car for the entire ride, hoping to avoid any inappropriate interaction with the two. As you walked between them outside into the slightly chilly night air, you saw Floch standing by the drink table, looking absolutely furious as if he was trying to bore holes into your very innocent skull.

Hiding a smirk, you straightened your back and walked towards the black lavish vehicle, feeling much better from seeing Floch’s annoying little gerbil face scrunch up in envy.

Oh yeah, that was nice.

Rather chivalrously, Eren opened the back door for you, sending you another cute smile—damn him—before shutting it and stepping to the driver’s seat. You let out a small breath of relief. Good, this way Levi and Eren can sit in the front and you would be content, unbothered and definitely not sexually frustrated in the back.

But then the sound of the door on your other side closing was heard and you turned to see Levi right next to you instead of in the passenger’s side like he should have been.

“Um, sir.” You inhaled shakily. “I’ll be alright in the back alone, you don’t need to sit beside me—”

“Oh, I don’t ever remembering doing something I didn’t want to.” Levi hummed back sarcastically, raising an arched brow at you cockily. If you hadn’t found the look to be so attractive, you would have shoved his face in the car seat in front of you.

Saying nothing back, you sat still, hand curled in your lap and knees tucked together as you watched Eren start the car and begin driving to your destination.

It was almost too quiet, only Eren’s off tune humming filling the tense heavy air while you tried to ignore Levi’s body heat radiating off to your side. Ignore him, ignore him, ignore him—you continued to chant that mantra in your head, thinking of anything but the fact that Levi’s hands were laying so close to your bare thighs. The scent of heady, almost sweet black tea touched the tips of your taste buds, the aroma of Levi’s cologne so strong it was enveloping more than one of your senses and it was addicting.

No, you scolded yourself immediately, biting hard on your bottom lip as you clutched the ends of your dress unforgivingly. Do not go there.

Unfortunately, because you were chewing so harshly onto the abused appendage, the sudden pothole that Eren ran through caused you to jump and bite down on your lip harder than before making you gasp in pain. You let the plush, swollen skin fall out from between your teeth, touching it tenderly and wincing in pain.

“You fucking idiot.” Levi hissed towards Eren, grabbing your waist seeing as you had also unintentionally leaned onto him at the same time. “Watch where you’re fucking driving!”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me! Get mad at city funding!”

You giggled at Eren’s indignant remark, not minding the soothing rubs of Levi’s surprisingly large hands that grazed your back. “I’m okay.” You sighed out. “Definitely city funding’s fault.”

Eren shot you an apologetic smile through the rear view mirror before looking back at the road and driving much slower than before.

“Here let me see,” Levi murmured your name softly, uncharacteristically gentler than you thought was possible, and pinched your chin between his thumb and index finger. He turned your face towards him, nose only inches away from your own but not at all seeming to mind it as he ran his calloused thumb across the bruised skin of your bottom lip.

“You shouldn’t be biting on it.” Levi mumbled, voice low and filled with something you couldn’t describe. His eyes trailed back up to lock with your own and you held your breath, those silver irises always muddling your brain and turning your head into mush. “Look how red it is.”

“I-It’s fine—” You gasped as Levi practically yanked you onto his lap, your knees resting on either side of his waist. “Mr. Ackerman!” You yelled affronted, blush painting your skin as his breath fanned the sides of your neck making you tremble in unprecedented delight.

“I do what I want,” Levi answered back haughtily, pupils blown out as he watched your lips part with heavy breaths. You squirmed on his lap, trying to simultaneously get away from his ministrations as well as provide friction to your slick cunt.

“Mr. Ackerman we can’t.” You whined out, rather embarrassingly loud as Levi began to lay wet open mouthed, strategic, kisses onto the supple skin of your exposed neck.

“I don’t tend to take orders really well,” He sneered huskily, your last name added with the formal ‘Ms.’ prefix making your already racing heartbeat against your chest. He pushed the edges of your dress past your hips, exposing your black lace panties that were damp with arousal.

The alcohol must be getting to you because this can’t be okay.

His thumbs traced the edges of you’re the lace frills that your panties had adorned on them—they were cheap and cute from Burlington. You had no idea that anyone, let alone your boss would be seeing you in them. But here you are. You were really thanking your past self for thinking of you now.

“Do you want me to make you feel good?” Levi asked, teasing the edges of your inner thighs but never reaching that one place, making your pussy throb in need. “Answer me,”

“Yes,” You choked out desperately, moving your hips in slow deliberate circles, grinding your wet heat onto his slacks, dampening them with your slick. You were so shameless, but it didn’t seem like Levi minded. In fact, judging by the cruel smirk on his face, he was having the time of his life.

“Beg.”

You stopped immediately, eyes widened as you looked down at Levi to see if there were any signs of him joking anywhere. But he only stared back at you, stern and unmoving, hands slowly inching away from where you needed him most. You could feel your eyes dampen in embarrassment and desperation, a tiny mewl escaping your lips as you tried to grab his hands and bring them back. But his strength was unmatched, arms unmoving even with your insistent budging.

“You heard him, baby,” Eren’s heavy voice sending shivers down your spine. “Beg.” The command wasn’t any less powerful even though you couldn’t see him, and you let out a whimper, grinding your hips in slow circles, hoping to entice Levi into taking action.

“P-Please,” You gasped out, face heating up at the admission. All this time you had sworn you would never bow down to money or reputation, but this kind of power was something that Levi and Eren were born with—you were sure of it. “Please, touch me.”

“Touch you where?” Levi’s hands moved back to cup your aching folds, making you gasp and thrust your hips into the touch. “Tell me.”

“Fuck—Levi, please just—make me cum with your fingers, touch my cunt please.” You sobbed, pressing your lips together at the humiliation and arousal that came with submitting to such a man.

“Good girl.” Levi husked out appraisingly, finally, finally, pulling the fabric of your panties aside and pushing his thumb to rub up against your folds towards your clit, rubbing the throbbing area with slow deliberate pressure. You moaned, the sounds coming out of you so wanton and erotic, you almost couldn’t believe that they came out of you. Your eyes fluttered shut at the pleasure of Levi’s skilled fingers, pressing in and out of you, rubbing your damp walls and eliciting more of your slick out of you, dampening your inner thighs with the obscene liquid.

Each heavy thrust, each beckoning motion that he did inside of you, only served to abuse that one spot, making you see stars behind your eyelids.

“Yeah,” You moaned out, leaning your forehead against his as he continued to play with your soaked pussy. “That’s so…ah…good—!” You cut yourself off, a sudden shriek spilling from your lips as Levi curled his fingers, pressing hard against your bundle of nerves while pressing his wet thumb against your abused clit. It was electrifying, the heat boiling from your legs, up to your stomach and straight to your head making you unable to think properly let alone comprehend the salacious praises that you cried out towards Levi.

You wanted to rip away from that feeling. It was so terrifying the way that sharp coil tightened your insides and tore you apart with each push and pull of Levi’s skilled hands. It wasn’t fair. You had never reached the brink so quickly with someone before but within seconds you were putty in Levi’s hands.

“Look at me,” Levi ordered, sharply using your name in his command and using his free hand to pull your face towards him. “Look at me when you cum.”

You must have made such a sight. Debauched and ruined at the hands of your boss. But you couldn’t say you minded as one final purposeful shove of his fingers going knuckle deep inside of you sent you over the edge and into euphoria.

Your thighs quacked in overstimulation as you tried to muffle a scream by crashing your lips against Levi’s who met your desperation with his own starved mouth. The messy kiss helped ease your orgasm and ride the pleasurable waves down to a dwindling content buzz.

Pulling out his fingers with an almost sickening squelch, Levi eyed them with disgust mixed with a bit of arousal, before moving them towards your lips. He pried your lips open with his slick covered fingers, making you taste your own essence, shoving them inside your mouth unforgivingly. You shuddered at the strong taste but made no effort to disobey his unspoken orders, licking each appendage clean with your tongue.

“If you think we’re done with you, you got another thing coming.” Levi growled darkly, groping and massaging your thigh while trailing his fingers out of your mouth down your chin, creating a thin line of saliva mixed with come down your jaw.

“By the way,” Eren turned in his seat, facing both you and Levi with a sharp, toothy smirk. “We’re here. It’s my turn.”

Judging by the look on Eren’s face, the night was far from over.

#smut #reader #levi x reader #Levi Ackerman x reader #Levi x You #Levi Ackerman x You #eren jaeger #eren x you #eren jaeger x reader #Attack on Titan #Eren x Reader x Levi #Business Au #fanfic #aot fanfiction #eren jaeger fanfic #eren fanfiction #levi fanfiction #levi ackerman fanfiction

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dumbwaystodeviate · 6 years ago

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Home

The violent revolution had passes. Androids were considered equals when proven to be deviants. Machines though, they were still very much second class citizens. Years passed and RK900 was bounced from post to post. Nobody wanted the responsibility of employing an obedient killing machine. It was just as well he didn’t need much. An empty room to call his own, there were charging ports dotted around the city and thirium handouts happened once a month. As a top of line android, he didn’t need a top-up all that often. So he floated around the city, haunted the streets as he tried to find somewhere to fit in. Circadian rhythms meant nothing to him and he could be on the streets at 3am or 3pm, it didn’t matter to him. He was down by the waterfront, letting his feet get soaked in the lapping waves by the foot of the bridge when someone growled at him.

“Fuck off, this is my spot. Find your own!” The ‘fuck’ was slightly mangled and the voice rough with a lingering infection. RK900 looked around to find the source of the words.

“I said fuck off you plastic prick,” the lump of discarded bedding moved and a harrowed, scarred face glowered at him. He might have looked menacing and wild to a human but to RK900 is was like a kitten hissing at him. Full of rage and indignity but about as harmful as sandpaper if it lashed out.

“I believe that this is communal area owned by the city council so we have equal rights to be here,” Nines replied easily and wriggled his toes in his soaking shoes. “I’m an RK900, what can I call you?”

“You haven’t earned the right to call me anything, dip shit. Now get the fuck out of here before I beat you to a pulp.”

More out of respect than fear, RK900 got up and took sopping, wet steps as he retreated but still heard the grumble of “fucking androids” from behind him. Even though his room was stark white, empty of all personality, at least nobody could tell him to get out of there.

The next night, he found himself back at the foot of the bridge just before sunset. Carefully stashed away, the bedding was folded up into a holey bin bag. They were rolled tight and a quick scan suggested that clothes and other knickknacks were hidden in the centre. Whether they were valuable or not, RK900 didn’t have the time to scan because a voice was yelling at him again.

“Get the fuck away from my shit!” The same man from yesterday was hobbling towards him, fury etched into every line of his face.

Obediently, RK900 stepped away, hands up to show he meant to harm. He was surprised when the man all but ignored him, instead, turned to his worldly possessions and fussed over them.

“Get lost,” he grumbled to RK900 but didn’t look up.

In the light of day, he looked even less intimidating. Dirt and grime were embedded in his skin, making his wrinkles and scars even more prominent. He couldn’t have been much older then 40 but his situation had aged him beyond his years.

“I mean no harm,” RK900 tried to placate him but went ignored.

The bedding was unrolled and a book was pushed aside, along with a change of clothes which looked just as ragged and worn as what he was currently sporting. Something metallic was quickly palmed and shoved in a pocket with a muttered “thank fuck”.

RK900 watched him make his bed under the bridge, the support leg provided some shielding from the elements but it was no doubt useless against the bitter cold that was creeping in at nights.

“Is there not a shelter you could go to?” he finally asked.

The snort and side glance he got were as bitter as the reply. “They’re all full. Government spends all their money on android shit. They’re cheaper and easier to support and make their numbers instantly look better. Why care for a human when you can sort out eight androids for the same price?”

There was nothing RK900 could say to that. After all, he was one of the ones the government was providing for. He looked over at the man as he heavily sat down in his bed, rubbing his hip with a hiss.

“What happened to you?”

“None of your concern, now piss off.”

RK900 retreated a few steps but sank onto the ground and watched. His scans indicated a low level fever was plaguing the man, given his condition, it probably was the tail end of a chest infection. But given how bad the weather forecast was, there was a 57% probability of a relapse.

“Holy shit, you’re not a deviant, are you?” The man rasped from where he’d burrowed down.

“No, I’m not.” There was no point in lying or denying it. RK900 was what he was, he felt no shame in it. He felt nothing at all. What he didn’t expect was a barked laugh that ended in a hacking cough.

They said nothing to each other until RK900 left close to midnight. His silent companion had been fitfully dozing, obviously not used to the company.

Over the course of the next week, it became a bit of a habit for RK900 to sit by the water under the bridge for the first half a the night. His chosen companion said nothing most days, they just stared out at the water and waited for the sun to go down.

“Hey,” the man called one night as RK900 got up to leave. “I know it may mean nothing to you other than a dictionary definition but thanks.”

Puzzled, RK900 nodded and returned to his room. He didn’t know why he deserved gratitude. They were just two strangers occupying the same space for a little while. It wasn’t like they talked. Still, it was nice to know that his presence wasn’t outright loathed and feared like it was by most people. RK900 had detected many things in the man but not once did he see fear.

“Evening Nines,” the man was propped up against the concrete of the bridge, huddled in his blankets. Rain pelted down around them and was slowly soaking the bedding. “Was wondering whether you’d turn up in such miserable weather.”

RK900 dropped gracefully down next to him, water dripped from his clothes but he didn’t care. Left exposed to the elements as he was, he at least shielded what he’d started calling ‘his human’ from some of the rain. He turned to look at him with a question, “Nines?”

“RK900 was a bit of a mouthful.” It looked like there was a shrug accompanying the words but a shiver swallowed half the movement up.

There was a hiss and, as it had become almost habit, the man rubbed his hip.

“Does it hurt?”

“The cold sets it off. Old battle wound. You know what it’s like.”

A quick scan showed the piece of scrap metal was clutched in his hand and Nines filtered through his potential responses.

“What happened?” He finally settled on. It was open enough to give plenty of choice in response.

Once the coughing had subsided, his companion too a breath. “What happened to everybody else. I trained years, no, decades to get where I was for my job. Then a piece of plastic waltzed in, fresh off the production line but had downloaded all the knowledge that took me years of study to accumulate.”

“I was designed for fighting in the arctic against Russian. Then the revolution happened. Now I am without purpose. Without a sense of self.” It only felt right that Nines would share a little of himself in return.

“Damn. That sucks. I had “Reed, you’re a drain on our resources, taken too many sick days, we cannot keep up this kind of wasteful behaviour.” Not even a sorry or asked to help train up cover. As I walked out with my box of shit, an android arrived, prim and proper as you please. Ready to pick up and do so much better than I did. Not like i had so much time off because I got fucking shot on a case.”

He fell silent after that, eyes tight with the pain of the memories. Nines didn’t want to press, he had a name now and that was enough. Eventually, Reed’s head tipped forward a little, face slack with sleep. On quiet feet, Nines rose up. For the first time in a long time, he had a mission objective.

Hacking into government files wasn’t a chore for an android of his calibre. Personnel files were less heavily protected. Searching for ‘Reed’ brought up several possibilities but sorting by rough age, gender and narrowing it all down to the Detroit area finalised it down to two potential people. A quick look at the attached photo and Nines had found his friend.

Gavin Reed, 41, discharged from service as a homicide detective two years ago. No known address as of 18 months ago. His last case involved a shootout where he’d jumped in front of an undeviated android, took a bullet to the hip. Insurance only covered so much of his bills and time off work. With a slow recovery hindered by infection, the DPD couldn’t keep his position open and filled it before he was fit to return to work. With no job to return to, he was fired on the pretext of too much time off work.

When Nines went to see Gavin the next day, he asked as much. Half expecting to be yelled at for such a breach of privacy, Nines didn’t expect Gavin to let out a bitter laugh.

“That’s the official story, yeah. What they don’t say it that I took the bullet for her and fell on her. Dented her chassis a little. She lodged a complaint but by the time internal affairs conducted a hearing, she’d had it replaced for an upgraded version already. Claimed that the shock of it all forced her to deviate in a traumatic way. Agreed to waive any charges if I was reprimanded and fired. Otherwise she was going to take the DPD to court over her deviation.”

There was nothing Nines could say to that, something simmered in his circuits, burned with something he’d never experienced before. Instead of speaking, he watched as Gavin got up and limped to the water, swirled his hands in it a couple of times before splashing his face. It didn’t seem to serve a purpose other than to human eyes, hide the tears on his cheeks.

“Couldn’t pay the hospital or the mortgage. Sold everything I could and have been trying to make ends meet on the street since.” He coughed weakly into the crook of his elbow as he settled back down and closed his eyes. “I’m tired Nines. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The next evening saw Nines back under the bridge. He didn’t expect Gavin to push something at him. Wrapped in a plastic bag was a brand new scarf.

“For putting up with me,” Gavin shrugged and Nines ran his fingers over the material. Cheaply made polyester that was rough against his fingers. Unlikely to keep him warm and it wasn’t exactly fashionable either.

“With the cold coming, thought you might look a little less out of place. Wanted you to have something of your own.” He carefully didn’t say how the colour made him think of Nines’ eyes.

Nines tucked it in his pocket with a soft ‘thank you’, completely at a loss as to how to handle such a gift. He left shortly after, ignoring he sad look Gavin sent him.

Only at home, when he sat in the corner of his bare room did he fish the scarf out again. The tags were still attached, the price hastily torn off but a quick scan of the item and Nines knew it cost a couple of dollars from a discount store. Realisation hit Nines then. It wasn’t an extravagant gift by any means. But those couple of dollars probably meant a day’s food for Gavin. He’d sacrificed that so he could make warmth flush through the circuits of an undeviated android who sat with him most nights because neither of them had a place in the world.

The walls around Nines were cracked, holes were letting the colours of the world shine through. He picked away at them for the rest of the night and wondered whether Gavin was sleeping well. His chest infection had been getting worse, his breathing shallow and rapid even in his sleep. The more Nines let the walls crumble, the more an overwhelming sense of worry crept through him.

With nothing better to do, Nines decided to surprise Gavin by being at their usual spot by the time he returned from the city centre. Some days he tried finding a job, other days he sat with a sign begging for change from strangers who barely even glanced at him.

Walking towards the bridge, Nines watched how pages from a book were scattered along the shore. They flipped and floated in the wind, pretty in their own right. The cover of the book at some way ahead of him, ripped pages fluttered in the breeze. It was surrounded by clothes strewn in a trail with familiar bedding that was half dumped in the river, sodden. Dread finally forced its way through the gaps in the wall which crumpled under its weight.

Gavin’s things were scattered all over, ransacked and destroyed in anger when nothing valuable was found. As Nines got to the bridge, he finally saw a familiar figure lying face down on the ground, one hand outstretched. Nines ran. He was kneeling next to Gavin in the matter of seconds and rolling him onto his side. Blood coated half his face, eye swollen shut, breath a shallow wheeze.

“Gavin?” Nines shook him a little. “Gavin?”

No response. All logic suggested that Nines calls an ambulance but he didn’t know how Gavin would be able to afford any kind of medical care. He’d left his chest infection untreated for that very reason. An ambulance ride and hospital stay was too costly.

A minute later, Gavin’s lashes fluttered and he whined as the pain registered.

“Nines? What are you doing here?”

“I came to see my friend,” the reply was all too easy. It earned him a soft smile from Gavin. His fist uncurled and Nines watched as the scrap of metal his scans had picked up so often before was finally revealed.

A police badge. Or rather, what has left of it after a bullet had passed through it.

“The bastards couldn’t get this. I wouldn’t let them.” Gavin smiled proudly even as blood welled up from a split lip again.

Mind made up, Nines gathered Gavin against his chest and stood as gently as possible. None of Gavin’s belonging were salvageable. The bedding was sodden, the clothes deliberately ripped beyond use. One step at a time, Nines carried him back to his room. It wasn’t much, barren and white but at least it provided a shelter from the elements.

Since activation, Nines had been without a purpose. A machine without a function in the world he was built in. Now, as he looked at Gavin curled up and small in his room, he knew what he needed to do. Lists of mission objectives filled his HUD, maps to the nearest free treatment clinics, food banks, forms to fill in for government aid which Gavin may not have been told about yet alone given the means to access.

They were two people society had shunned, wanted to forget even existed. Nobody needed an obedient killing machine or a disabled ex-detective but somehow they’d met and, as unlikely as it was, found themselves needed of each other. The future may have looked bleak but Nines finally saw the glimmer of hope.

#reed900 #dbh rk900 #dbh gavin #dumb ways to deviate #drabbles #leader of the rebellion #cw: homelessness #cw: blood

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artificialqueens · 6 years ago

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Just the Game We're In - Chapter 11 (Ortega)

a/n: sorry.

The rain was crashing against the pavement as Willam slammed the door of the taxi and ran across the shiny wet road into the pub. Immediately the heat of all the bodies packed into the bar made her face flush red, and she began to peel her coat off as she scanned the room looking for Sharon. She spotted her tucked away in the corner inconspicuously, drinking from a bottle of beer and gazing out of the window

She’d chosen a sort of nondescript pub for them both to meet in- in Chiswick, of all places. Willam had asked her why they couldn’t go somewhere more central, but then Sharon had moped that she didn’t want to run the risk of bumping into Alaska. Willam had been about to dismiss her as ridiculous until she realised that she didn’t really want to take the chance of meeting Courtney with Andrew, so she shrugged and accepted the fact her taxi was going to cost more than it usually would to get to a night out.

Sharon caught her eye as Willam began to make her way over and her face brightened up in a way Willam hadn’t seen it do in a good couple of weeks. She felt a little guilty as to how happy she was, thinking that maybe if she’d been a better friend to Sharon then she’d be feeling a whole lot better by now. As she reached her table, Willam gave Sharon a quick hug and sat down in the seat opposite her.

“Well, you remembered makeup exists then,” she smiled by way of a compliment, Sharon laughing and raising her bottle in a toast.

“I’ll take that as a ‘you look nice’, so thank you,” the other woman said in reply, taking a drink from her bottle. She gave Willam a guilty look when she was done. “Sorry. I got you one but I drank it while I was waiting for you.”

“It’s fine, I’ll get one just now and then we can sit and chat.”

Sharon gave a happy sigh. “We can have a good old nostalgia trip!”

Willam froze a little and glared at Sharon through narrowed eyes. “We’re not here to just chat about uni.”

Sharon looked taken aback. “We don’t have to! Just thought it would be fun.”

“Well, it won’t be. So let’s not,” Willam said quickly, pulling her purse out of her bag and leaving Sharon to queue at the bar. As she stood amongst the waiting crowd however, she couldn’t help but think back to that point in her life. Uni was so long ago now, but it still felt somehow so recent, and things that had happened years previously only seemed like mere months ago. Just like the first day at uni- it was eight years ago, really almost nine, but to Willam, it seemed as if it was yesterday.

***

Willam arrived at her new halls with most (not all) of her worldly possessions in a suitcase as big as a small bungalow. She’d had to lug it onto the train then into a taxi herself but, looking around at the car park of her new accommodation, she would conclude that it was worth it. To others, the self-catered halls would seem far from idyllic- the car park was hemmed in by four concrete towers which held tiny flats, the only hint at sunlight being the huge gate that was currently unlocked and allowing cars to stream through. To Willam, however, it was as far away from home as she had applied, and she would take what she could get.

Anything had to be better than back there.

Dragging her suitcase out of the back of the taxi and stuffing a few notes through the small gap in the pane of glass that separated driver and passenger, Willam looked around in the way someone does when they try to pretend they know what’s going on but in reality they’re as dazed and confused as they could possibly be. Looking at the other arriving freshers though, she smirked to see a similar expression on their faces- a self-confident girl in harem pants and a tan fresh from her gap year faltering as she realised she wasn’t sure how to enter her block, a boy in cuffed joggers and an Adidas hoodie chastising his parents for fussing over him but a look of fear in his eyes at being left on his own, another girl with glossy dark hair and bright makeup who seemed to be in Willam’s position in more ways than one- alone, clutching a huge holdall, and with absolutely no idea what to do. Well, thought Willam, I’m on my own, and so is she. Might as well attempt to say hi and if she’s a cunt then at least I know someone to avoid. Win win.

She made the decision and crossed the small expanse of courtyard to meet her.

“Hey. You look like you have no fucking clue what’s going on either, so I figured two heads are better than one,” she said blythely and shrugged as she reached the girl, who seemed a little taken aback that Willam was bothering to speak to her. She gave a reserved, if not relieved, smile.

“Oh shit, thank you. I don’t even know how to navigate this city, never mind the college! The letter said we need to go to the Smythe Centre for our keys but I’ve looked and looked and can’t find it at all. Maybe I’m just blind?” she joked nervously, waving the print-out map that the uni had emailed them.

Have to be to wear that outfit, Willam thought.

“Well, let’s see if Google Maps can help us out,” she shrugged instead, figuring that she should probably dial back the shade if she was to make any friends around here any time soon.

It turned out that the map the uni had given them failed to mention that the Smythe Centre was located outside of the blocks of flats, just beyond the black gate. As they walked, the girls made small talk that was a little awkward, but on the whole flowed easily. Willam found out that the girl was studying Law and that she’d moved to Uni from America. The girls also found out they were in the same block, but not the same flat. Eventually they picked up their keys and walked back to their building, Willam taking the lift up to her flat while the other girl was on the ground floor.

“Well, this is me, but I’m sure I’ll see you around. Thanks for helping a sister out,” the girl smiled warmly at Willam. Then her face contorted into one of surprise. “Oh shit I just realised- I never got your name?”

“Oh, it’s Willam. Like William but…without the extra “i”. It’s pretty stupid, but it’s my name, and I’m stuck with it.”

The other girl laughed and smiled, sticking out a laughably formal hand for her to shake. “Honey, I’m the queen of stupid names. Nice to meet you. I’m Mayhem.”

***

Willam sat down with a thud, surprising Sharon who had just been on her phone, scrolling.

“I’ve changed my mind. Uni chat might be fun. As long as we keep it lighthearted, though,” Willam said, trying to keep her voice free of emotion as she took a swig of her beer. Sharon snorted.

“I thought you were dead against it?”

“Like I said, it’ll be funny if we keep it light. Like I was just thinking about Mayhem.”

“Aw, Mayhem,” Sharon smiled and shook her head. “I wonder what she’s doing now. Christ, I haven’t spoken to her in ages. Haven’t really spoken to anyone from uni in years.”

“Yeah I can imagine your brief stint as a junkie interfered with any cosy reunions,” Willam deadpanned, earning her an unimpressed raised eyebrow from Sharon that indicated that she wanted to take offence but really couldn’t be bothered to. “To be fair, neither have I. Territory of the job, I guess.”

Sharon nodded and looked as if she was about to speak, but then Willam laughed as something occurred to her. “Alaska and Courtney were basically my friends, and now one’s gone off-grid and the other fucking hates me.”

“You’ve got me,” Sharon said, now taking slight offence. Willam tilted her head at her and frowned.

“Are we friends now?”

Sharon seemed taken-aback by the question. “I guess Alaska was all I really had too, and she was my girlfriend. I love Courtney, but I’m not really close with her, although I’d love to be. You and me, though, it’s different.”

Willam nodded. “Are we, then? Friends?”

Sharon blew into the air. “It’s your call, really. But I consider you a friend. I don’t really have anyone else.”

“Christ, what a pair of sad sacks,” Willam laughed, calming down as she looked at Sharon’s slightly expectant face. She paused, surprised she was in this position. “I mean, I guess we’re friends? Yeah. We’re friends.”

Sharon smiled easily, clinking her bottle against Willam’s own. “Cheers. To being friends.”

Willam couldn’t help but smile.

“Willam Belli, my only friend. God help me,” Sharon laughed jokingly, Willam instantly tapping the bottom of her bottle against the top of Sharon’s and causing beer to froth out the top and spill all over the table. As Sharon cried out and laughed, fumbling with some tissues in her bag to mop it up, Willam wondered how on earth she’d ended up here. It was at this point that she admitted that she couldn’t lie to herself any more. When Bianca had mentioned the name Sharon Needles to her, the picture in her mind hadn’t been a hazy remembering. It had been a thunderbolt, a complete and utter shock to the system, and there was a reason she’d been so against Sharon’s appointment.

***

Willam turned up on her first day to lectures with a hangover, a single scrap of paper that had her flat’s rules for some obscure drinking game she hadn’t quite got the hang of yet scrawled on the back, and a raging intolerance for anyone who was in the mood for making eye contact with her, never mind saying hello. She was lucky enough, however, to be blessed (or cursed) with the kind of hangover that naturally woke her up at around 6am and provided her with no ability to get back to sleep, and so she’d had enough time to shamble around the university buildings and figure out where her lectures were meant to take place. Even better, she was early enough that she could blag whatever seat she wanted, and so she was slumped over at the very back corner of a lecture theatre with raked seating, hoping that increased height and distance would stop the lecturer picking on her.

What the fuck did they think she was there to do, learn?

She watched as the other students began to arrive, all dressed in the same preppy designer clothing or working-class appropriating “chav chic” Reebok tracksuit. Looking down at the black playsuit that she’d woken up in, Willam felt out of place. She had thought she could style it out- she’d always been confident enough to before back home- but since arriving at uni her confidence wasn’t really what it used to be. The new confusing social circles of everybody trying to make friends or place themselves within the social hierarchy of being a certified “freshaaa” was almost suffocating, and Willam couldn’t really tell who out of her seven flatmates that she actually liked- she’d only ever spoken to them when they were all either drunk or hungover.

So Willam had done what Willam could do best and slept around. On the endless carousel of clubs that she and her flatmates had tried each evening, she always seemed to bring someone home, each boy more disappointing than the last but at least they filled some sort of void.

Willam looked up as people started to trickle into the lecture hall, averting her eyes from each one. She had Mayhem, the only person so far she felt she’d really connected with, and one was enough. She adopted the same sort of facial expression that kept people from approaching her when she was at school- dark, hostile, more an active bitch face than a resting one. Which is why she was confused when a girl- tall, with dyed hair that was more yellow than blonde- casually slid her way into Willam’s row. Noticing Willam’s eyes on her, she turned to face her and smiled. Willam gave a glare back, but the other girl only gave a laugh.

“Oh, okay. Not a morning person either, huh?” she offered, causing Willam to look down at the playsuit she was wearing and back at the other girl.

“Are you taking the piss?”

“No, definitely a night owl. Me too, babe, me too,” she nodded, as if Willam had even asked. Willam watched in disbelief as she lifted up a black backpack from the floor and took out an immaculate notepad and pencilcase. Looking in front of her, she instantly saw her problem.

She didn’t have a pen.

That was okay, though, Willam reasoned, as she felt an embarrassed blush hit her cheeks. She could just catch up with the lecture later in her flat and take notes then, even though she knew that was a pipe dream as she ached to sleep away her hangover as soon as the lecture was finished. Feeling watched, she looked to her side again and saw the girl looking at her.

“Can I help you?” Willam asked sarcastically, to which the other girl gave a snort of a laugh.

“Not at all. I was just wondering if I could help you, seeing as you don’t have a notebook or literally anything to write with,” she smirked, Willam cursing herself for her lack of organisation.

“I’m fine. I’ll just look over the slides at home and take notes then. I’m not going to be listening properly if I’m taking notes at the same time,” she replied, happy that she had the upper hand. The other girl frowned at her.

“As if you’re doing any more work when you get home, you’re clearly hungover to fuck!” she said, looking at Willam as if she had escaped from a psychiatric ward. “Look, just take a pen. Do you need paper?”

“No, I’ve got some,” Willam grumbled, gesturing at the crumpled mess that sat in front of her. The girl raised her eyebrows.

“Mm, I bet Ryman’s are shitting it,” she deadpanned sarcastically, Willam giving a colossal roll of her eyes as the lecture began.

***

“I fucking hated you,” Willam laughed, enjoying the trip down memory lane and remembering how incompetent she was all those years ago.

“I thought you were a fucking idiot!” Sharon exclaimed, then descended into snorts of laughter. “Who turns up to their first lecture of uni without anything to write with, and wearing a fucking playsuit?!”

Willam burst out laughing. It felt good to laugh and forget about things for a while, and not to be stressing about the future but remembering the past instead. “I don’t even think we introduced ourselves to each other that day.”

“No, it took a good three or four lectures before that happened,” Sharon smiled, her memory spot-on. “I think you dropped something with your name on it and I picked it up and handed it to you. So really I introduced you to myself.”

Willam nodded. “And then introduced yourself to me, which at the time I didn’t really give a fuck about.”

Sharon smiled. “Why did you hate me so much?”

Willam’s stomach dipped at the change in tone of the conversation. “You tried speaking to me when I was hungover, and you were that chirpy, upbeat kind of morning person that I fucking despised. I still hate people like that. Obnoxious,” Willam took a swig of her beer. “Anyway, from day one I had decided I hated you and I didn’t really go back on that ever. How come you hated me?”

Sharon blinked, confused. “I never hated you.”

“What? Yes you did!”

“I didn’t! I chose to sit beside you on that first day because I saw you and you looked like a laugh. Girl wearing a playsuit and last night’s makeup in the first lecture of uni, obviously going to be fun. How was I meant to know you were a complete bitch?” Sharon explained, laughing. “But I never hated you. I don’t know how you got that impression.”

Willam frowned, picking at the label on her bottle. She didn’t know either. Perhaps her own bad feeling towards Sharon in the early days clouded her own judgement of how Sharon had felt about her. Or maybe it was just the way she remembered it. It was weird, Willam thought, how your memories could be completely warped and changed over time. How they were affected just by thinking what you wanted to believe. It made her wonder just how differently Sharon remembered how they both met for the first time. Willam found herself hoping that she hadn’t been as massive a bitch to Sharon as she remembered.

“So when did we actually become friends?” Willam asked, frowning as she tried to work it out. Sharon screwed up her face.

“I don’t know if we ever really became friends, we just went straight into-”

“Was it not when one of your flatmates had a party? I think it was around Halloween.”

Sharon narrowed her eyes, then laughed. “That was my party!”

Willam shrugged. “Well it was at your flat at least. How come you even invited me to that anyway? I behaved like a total dick to you.”

Sharon looked awkward. “Well, because I…I did think you’d be a laugh.”

Willam eyed her suspiciously before taking another drink.

***

Willam threw her notebook and pen back into her handbag and began sliding her way across the benches of the lecture theatre, eager to get home and start getting ready. It was Tuesday, there was a great club night on at one of the new-ish bars, and she, Mayhem and both of their sets of flatmates were going to go. 5pm lectures were always the worst, exacerbated by the blonde canary that seemed to always sit beside her under the mistaken belief that they were friends. Willam couldn’t stand Sharon, always asking questions in lectures or whispering loudly to her if she didn’t understand something. Even the way she leaned forward and squinted at the powerpoint when she couldn’t quite read something instead of actually fucking wearing the glasses in her case annoyed Willam, and she hadn’t at any point concealed the fact. Which was why Willam was stunned when Sharon turned to her just as she was about to leave.

“So are you coming to my party or what?” she asked, Willam stunned at her forthright manner. The heavy eyeliner around her eyes framed a glare that appeared to be somewhat accusatory.

“Oh uh, yeah, I got your invite,” Willam shrugged, remembering the Facebook event that had popped up in her notifications which prompted her to reply if she was attending, a maybe, or couldn’t go. Willam recalls wondering if there was a “fuck off, not a single chance in hell am I going to your shit party” option, and she wondered if she should say that to Sharon to make her piss off for good, but she supposed that was a little too harsh even for her.

“So?” Sharon smiled, upbeat and expectant and immediately draining Willam.

“Um, I don’t know. It depends where my flatmates are going, I’ll let you know,” Willam gave a reluctant smile as she made to leave. “See you later.”

She completely forgot about the party until she was getting ready with Mayhem later, the other girl having brought her makeup up to Willam’s flat so she didn’t have to get ready on her own.

“What are we doing for Halloween?” Mayhem asked out of nowhere, Willam looking up at her from her position on the floor where she was curling her hair.

“I don’t know. Probably Tornados? Maybe the union?”

Mayhem paused before replying as she swiped some clear lipgloss over her bottom lip. “Yeah, could do, or I was thinking maybe this flat party over at Tarvin’s Court? My whole flat are going and yours probably will be too.”

“Depends who’s hosting,” Willam said, hissing and scowling suddenly as she burned herself. “Although if everyone’s going I guess I’m going to have to come as well.”

“It’s a girl called Sharon Needles. She knows Mariah from my flat.”

Willam gave a groan and set her curlers down. “You’re joking, right? That’s that weird girl from my lectures.”

Mayhem raised her eyebrows. “Well, honey, that weird girl has got the most hyped Halloween party out of the rest of the flat parties that are going on, so we’re going. She could huff glue for all I care, if it’s a good party then I’m going and I’m getting wasted and you’re coming with me.”

So Saturday came, and in the days that preceded it Mayhem had managed to convince Willam that hey, maybe it would be fun after all to go to Sharon’s party. One of the cute-ish boys from her block that Willam had been eyeing up was meant to be going, and Willam wondered if she’d be able to corner him tonight. She’d bought a ridiculously revealing “Slutty Nun” outfit and new suspenders, all courtesy of Ann Summers in town- because in Willam’s view, what was the point of Halloween if you couldn’t dress like a massive whore?

Turning up to the party and walking through the already-open door, Willam was slightly thrown at how busy it was already. Grudgingly she admitted that it did seem like a good party, and she tottered through the door in her heels, the half-bottle of vodka she’d already downed at her flat’s predrinks making her a little unsteady on her feet. Weaving her way through the crowd, she quickly found the boy in question and struck up a conversation. In her drunken haze, Willam was happy. He seemed interested, and he definitely liked her outfit. She felt as if things were going to go somewhere. Suddenly needing to pee, she pushed her drink into his hand with an instruction to hold it and made her way to the toilet. Amazingly, there was no queue and she stumbled into the tiny cubicle-like room.

She was just about to sit down when someone else barged in through the door which she’d obviously forgotten to lock.

“What the fuck? Get out of here, bitch,” Willam slurred, pulling some hair out of her face which was tricky with the habit on. Leaning against the wall she was shocked to see Sharon in the cubicle with her, dressed as a devil with a red feather boa draped around her neck. She was looking at Willam with wide eyes.

“Hey. That’s, um. A costume,” Sharon stammered, Willam feeling a little funny under her gaze.

“Yeah, it is. Now can you piss off so I can pee?”

Sharon shook her head, her gaze switching into something that conveyed a sense of urgency. “That guy you were talking to spiked your drink.”

Willam blinked slowly, her mind processing everything at 0.5% speed. “What do you mean, spiked it?”

Sharon frowned. “How can I make that any clearer? He put something in your drink.”

Willam rolled her eyes, annoyed at Sharon’s mothering. “Well I hope it’s good shit, getting fucked up is the aim.”

Sharon gave an agitated sigh. “Willam, this is serious, he’s going to take advantage of you.”

“How do you even know what…how do you even know he’s doing?” Willam slurred out, acutely aware of the fact she wasn’t making sense.

“I saw him! When you were talking. You looked away and he put a pill in it. I tried to tell you sooner but I couldn’t get through the crowd, I’m sorry,” Sharon explained quickly, her expression concerned. “Are you feeling alright?”

Willam narrowed her eyes at Sharon. “Why were you watching me?”

“What?” Sharon asked, taken-aback.

“You’re at a party, why were you watching me?” Willam found herself asking, although she wasn’t really sure why. She continued on in a sort of ramble. “You don’t just watch people at a party, you don’t just stand and watch…it’s not a cinema, you don’t watch people…”

“Well, I don’t know, I guess I was staring into space and saw you both,” Sharon explained, her cheeks a little red. “Are you feeling okay? I told my flatmates to chuck him out.”

Willam suddenly felt as if she had to sit down. She sunk onto the toilet seat. “I’m fine. Leave me alone.”

“Christ, Willam, you had at least three drinks out of your cup after he put that pill in, I’m not leaving you,” Sharon hissed, exasperated. Willam watched as the other girl bent down and took her face in her hands, kneeling between Willam’s legs which were splayed open. “Are you seeing things clearly?”

Sharon’s face seemed a little blurry. It was probably nothing, though. Willam nodded. The seat she was sitting on suddenly seemed very unsteady. A gradual sense of dread began to creep over Willam that she couldn’t really explain, and all of a sudden the party seemed incredibly scary and full of the unknown. Sharon seemed to be the only thing that was safe.

“I want to go home,” Willam found herself slurring in a small voice.

“Are you sure? You can stay here if you want, my room is quiet,” Sharon offered, her face full of concern and making Willam feel as if maybe she didn’t have anything to be afraid of. Still, her own bed seemed safer than a bed in a flat with a party going on, where anyone could walk in. Willam shook her head, which felt as if it was full of cement. “Right. I’ll go get Mayhem, she lives with you, right?”

Willam tugged on Sharon’s arm as she made to leave. “Can you stay?”

Sharon nodded immediately. “Have you got your phone? I’ll call her.”

Willam reached into her bra and produced her phone, which Sharon started scrolling away at instantly. She began to phone Mayhem who somehow miraculously answered. As Willam felt suddenly tired, she heard snippets of the conversation as she slipped in and out of a doze.

“…so you can’t get in? Okay, but could she stay at yours?…Perfect, thanks. Sorry about this,” Sharon signed off, putting the phone down on the floor as she straightened Willam up on the seat and took her head in her hands again, tapping it gently. “Willam? Mayhem’s coming, okay? She’s just outside smoking, she’s coming up and she’ll take you home. I didn’t realise she wasn’t your flatmate, but she said you can stay with her, okay? Don’t worry, Willam, you’re safe.”

That was the last thing she heard and Sharon’s face was the last thing Willam saw before she passed out, and even though Willam was terrified and didn’t know what the fuck was happening to her, Sharon’s words were a comfort.

Maybe she would be alright.

***

Willam found herself shivering a little as she recalled the memory of that night, Sharon’s face taking on that concerned look again from across the table.

“Yeah…wasn’t the most amazing party I’d ever been to,” Willam said awkwardly, peeling at the label on her bottle.

“I remember seeing that guy at a party in like final year and punching him in the face,” Sharon smirked fondly at the memory. “I must have been jacked up on so much shit that night, I would never have had the balls to otherwise. But I’m glad I did it.”

There was a small silence as Willam remembered feeling so small and so scared.

“That was a bitch of a hangover the next day,” Willam laughed bitterly, attempting to make the mood lighter. Sharon frowned.

“You kept apologising to me in lectures on the Monday, as if any of it was your fault,” she shook her head, the memory clearly paining her.

“Well, it was the only time you’d ever get an apology from me. You should have savoured it,” Willam brushed off her concern and took another drink. “Anyway, that was definitely when I started tolerating you. Couldn’t have let you save me like that and kept being a cunt to you.”

Sharon smiled warmly, laughing a little. “I still remember-”

She stopped abruptly, her eyes darting about a bit in panic before she took a swig from her own bottle. Willam was amused.

“What?”

Sharon picked at the label on her bottle. “Nothing it’s just. It was a good costume.”

Willam snorted a little and bit her lip to keep from responding. She still remembered how blown Sharon’s pupils had become when she’d seen what Willam had looked like and the way her mouth had dropped open a little bit. Her pulse thudded beneath her skin. She took another drink and found that she’d reached the end of her second bottle. Sharon’s eyes darted to the empty bottle and she stood up.

“I’ll get them in. Same again?” she offered, Willam only nodding and not trusting herself to speak.

She remembered everything that came after the Halloween party. The lectures that followed where she and Sharon had got closer and Willam had warmed up to her a bit, how they both laughed together until Willam felt that her ribs would break at this one lecturer that came in wearing an obvious toupee. She remembers no longer feeling annoyed by anything Sharon did, and instead feeling glad that she would ask the questions she was too afraid to, or smile when Sharon would squint at the powerpoint and refuse to wear her glasses, or even feeling an inexplicable sense of joy when Sharon leaned in to whisper something to her. At the time, Willam remembers feeling confused about how her feelings had changed, explaining it all away by thinking she was just making a friend in Sharon at last. Willam swallowed roughly.

If fucking only. It would have made my life a whole lot easier.

***

It was just before the Christmas break- exam season. Willam was nervous. They were the first exams of her degree and she was determined to do well in them, if only so she could prove to her Mum that her degree wasn’t too hard for her and that she was, in fact, suited to it. And it was true, she was doing well- she understood her lectures, she participated well in tutorials- but there was one module that really fucked with her, and she found it incredibly difficult. Luckily, Sharon seemed to get it with no problem.

“I can come over and help you with it, if you want?” she had offered earlier when they were in a tutorial. Willam had accepted, happy that she was getting to spend more time with Sharon, and so they had walked back from lectures together to Willam’s flat in the freezing cold, Willam shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her faux-fur coat and hoping her flatmates had switched the heating on. Miraculously they had, and as soon as they arrived at Willam’s flat Willam threw herself down onto her uncomfortable uni halls bed and moaned that she didn’t want to revise, that her and Sharon should just get drunk and watch It’s Always Sunny instead, and Sharon had laughed and pulled her up into a sitting position and told her that they’d be done before they knew it.

They had started to revise with good intentions, Willam concentrating and actually learning something from what Sharon was saying. But soon enough, Willam found herself beginning to lose focus as the heat of the room prompted Sharon to take off the huge jumper that she’d been wearing, leaving her in a strappy black top and her red leather skirt. Willam couldn’t tell why she was suddenly distracted by everything Sharon did. Every time she would push her long, thick hair out of her face, or push her glasses up her nose, or bite down on the pen she was using, Willam had to narrow her eyes and blink a couple of times to re-gain concentration. She didn’t know why Sharon was doing this, and it was beginning to piss her off.

It was only when Sharon leant forward slightly and crossed her legs that Willam couldn’t stop herself from blurting out.

“Okay, Sharon, what the fuck?!”

Sharon was startled and dropped the pen she was holding. “What?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Willam shook her head, her eyes tightly squeezed shut. When she opened them, Sharon was still there, only staring at her as if she was insane.

“I’m not doing anything! What are you talking about?” Sharon snapped, irritated. “You’re behaving like a total idiot, you’ve not been focussed for the past fifteen minutes at all!”

Why was this feeling not going away? Willam frowned deeply. “Sorry.”

“Right,” Sharon calmed down, looking at Willam in confusion again. “Okay, so see this diagram? This is showing circular- oh, hang on, you can’t see that from there.”

To Willam’s dismay, Sharon shuffled closer to her so that she was sitting right in front of her. If Willam leant forward, their faces would be only centimetres apart. As Sharon continued explaining, Willam finally realised what she was feeling. It was the same fluttery feeling she’d get when she was talking to a guy when she was out, knowing that she was going to go home with him when the night was over. Except she wasn’t out and this wasn’t a boy, it was Sharon, a girl from her lectures, and she was feeling this way about her. Why was Willam apprehensive? She was never this nervous with any of the guys she’d hooked up with before. So why was Sharon different because she was a girl? Fuck it, thought Willam. She might as well.

“So at the top is the, um, households,” Sharon said, her eyes darting to Willam who was looking at Sharon and trying to figure out if she had the balls to actually do what she was thinking about doing. “And, um, they spend money on goods, which go to firms. And the firms then provide the incomes, which provide, um. Which provide…”

Sharon trailed off as Willam leant forward, placing a hand on her thigh. “Willam, what are you-”

Without thinking any more about it, Willam closed the gap between them, placing her other hand on Sharon’s jaw and kissing her. She didn’t expect the kiss to be as heavy as it was, and before she knew it Willam had her tongue in Sharon’s mouth. Sharon tasted of cigarettes, and Willam absent-mindedly wondered why she’d never seen her smoking before, but it didn’t matter because her perfume was all Willam could smell, and it was fucking incredible. She realised that Sharon had rested one of her hands on her waist, with the other buried deep in her hair. The kiss was deep and Willam could feel her lips becoming swollen, and she found herself wishing that Sharon would trail one of her hands down underneath Willam’s top and take it off, so she pushed two of her own fingers under Sharon’s skirt, her heart feeling as if it was beating at an unhealthy rate as she willed everything to go further, and just as she felt that she was about to burst Sharon pulled away. Willam opened her eyes and saw her in front of her again, breathing heavily with her eyes wide. Sharon spoke first.

“Um. Okay. Where did that come from?” she asked, Willam a little nervous and wondering how she had felt about everything that had happened.

“I just…” Willam started, her heart still beating too fast and her eyes unable to look away from Sharon’s face. “Um. I don’t really know?”

To her relief, Sharon let out a laugh. For a second, Willam wondered if it was meant to be mocking. “Sorry, you probably didn’t-”

“Don’t be sorry. I liked it,” Sharon laughed breathlessly. She looked momentarily as if she was about to lean in and kiss Willam again until she looked up at the clock on Willam’s wall. “Shit. I have to be at my tutor meeting in ten minutes. I need to rush off.”

“Oh, that’s okay,�� Willam blinked, a little thrown. “I’ll, um. I’ll see you for the exam, yeah?”

“See you then,” Sharon smiled apologetically, pulling her jacket on and rushing out of the door.

She didn’t realise she’d left her jumper and, like an idiot, Willam picked it up from its position on the floor and held it close to her, her head spinning and leaving her dizzy.

***

Sharon returned from the bar with four beers as opposed to the promised two, but that was alright with Willam. Fuck knows she’d need it, the way things were turning out. As Sharon sat down, she smiled apologetically.

“I thought two each, save us having to queue at the bar again,” she shrugged, tipping her head back as she drank some of her third bottle. Willam smiled tightly, not speaking just yet. Sharon looked at her inquisitively.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re thinking about something, I know that much,” Sharon gave a look of disbelief, and Willam sighed deeply.

“I’m thinking that Andrew cunting Brady will probably be balls deep in Courtney right now and that I’ve completely fucked the one chance I got to be with her. Happy?” she reeled off, giving Sharon an irritated glare and swigging her beer back, slamming it down on the table with a thud. Sharon only widened her eyes in amusement, then her gaze softened.

“You haven’t fucked it. She still likes you, I can see it,” Sharon smiled, Willam letting out a tut of indignation.

“Your eyesight’s even more shit than I thought. She hates me.”

Sharon took another sip, a thoughtful look on her face. “Have you actually told her how she makes you feel? From my memory you’ve never really been too good at admitting things to people.”

Something snapped inside of Willam like a match to petrol. “Don’t you fucking dare. We both know what happened when I tried that the first time, and from what I remember I wasn’t the fucking problem.”

Sharon winced, a small silence descending for a moment. “I’m sorry, Willam.”

“Whatever. Let’s just keep drinking,” Willam rolled her eyes, too tired to argue or push the situation further

As she took another long drink, Willam remembered what Sharon had been referring to. It hadn’t been the moment Willam was thinking of- it was another, after Christmas, when they were both still in their first year, and Sharon was right. Willam hadn’t been really big on talking. Then again, neither of them had.

***

Willam fucking hated Christmas.

She wanted desperately to look forward to it like other people, normal people, to be excited by it and celebrate it like the families in Christmas movies. Willam remembers watching Elf as a child, wishing that she had a magical long-lost-elf brother who would come and bring her family together and there wouldn’t be any more fighting and tension and her parents would be happy together.

But she didn’t, and her family was dysfunctional to a ridiculous degree, so Willam’s first uni Christmas contained terse conversation with her Mum about how no, there were actually lots of girls on her course and no, politics wasn’t just for guys, and yes, she was coping fine with the work and no, she was sure she didn’t want to drop out. Her Dad, disconnected from her as always, would continue his aggressive, tense comments to her and her Mum and, like a moth with anger management issues to a flame, her Mum constantly bickered and fought with him and broke down afterwards, Willam having to pick up the pieces.

So her Christmas holidays were dire, and they weren’t helped by her sitting and replaying the moment she’d shared with Sharon weeks before over and over again in her mind. She’d seen her once after that, at the exam, and afterwards she’d practically bolted out of the building, too afraid to face her. That was the last time she’d seen Sharon. She wondered how the other girl was doing and what she was feeling or thinking, but realised that she was probably enjoying herself too much celebrating Christmas with her family to even think about Willam.

New Year passed and she thought about sending Sharon a text, something, anything to let her know that she was thinking about her, but every time she stopped herself. If Sharon didn’t actually give a fuck about her, Willam was damn sure she wasn’t letting her know that she cared about her either. So time went on, and at last Willam finally went back to uni, away from the tension and tears and noise and unhappy silence of her family and back to the hilarity of her block. As Willam stepped through the door of her room she could feel herself instantly relax, her shoulders slumping in relief. She unpacked the gifts she’d been given at Christmas and said hello to her flatmates, then bolted downstairs to see if Mayhem was back.

As she wandered down to the other flat, though, she couldn’t help but feel uneasy. Now that she was back at uni she was back in the same place Sharon was, and so she could bump into her anywhere- fuck, lectures only started in a couple of days. She had to figure out what she was going to do before she saw Sharon again.

It turned out she had less time than she thought she would as, when Willam found Mayhem and they hugged and caught up with each other, she found that she was hosting a party that evening.

“I know that it won’t be huge since not everybody is back yet, but there’ll still be a good turnout- Rhea, Jackie, Mariah, Asia, Sharon-”

“Oh fuck,” Willam’s heart plummeted. “May, I can’t go.”

“The fuck are you talking about? What…” Mayhem then did a sort of double-take, narrowing her eyes at Willam. “Has something happened with you two?”

Willam tore her hand through her hair. “We got with each other in my flat before Christmas.”

“Willam! Holy fucking shit! How?!” Mayhem screeched, Willam frantically shushing her in case her other flatmates heard.

“I don’t know, we were just revising…we weren’t even drunk, fuck, and now I don’t even know how to react with her. We haven’t even spoken since.”

Mayhem hadn’t stopped smiling since Willam had told her. “I mean, do you like her?”

Willam made a face. “I don’t know? Like, she’s cute? I’d never thought about her like that until she was in my room, it was insane. I don’t know, though. I don’t know if I want to see her again yet.”

“Well,” Mayhem suggested, her face scheming, “Come tonight. See how she is with you. And then see what happens.”

So Willam spent the next five hours til the party exfoliating, fake-tanning, and wondering what the hell she would say to Sharon if she saw her. Maybe she wasn’t going to see her- maybe she wouldn’t come after all, but then Willam found herself hoping that she would be there for some unknown reason.

The party arrived and so did Willam, dressed in a deliberately short and strappy blue dress and towering gold heels. If Sharon was at the party, she wanted to look good. It had only been around five minutes before Willam saw her from across the room- skintight black jeans and a ripped band t shirt that seemed to be an accessory for a plain black bra. Her heart ricocheted off her ribcage as Sharon made eye contact with her. Panicking, Willam decided to pretend that she hadn’t noticed her and instead skulked off to the kitchen.

The night went by in a somewhat similar vein- Willam would somehow find herself looking Sharon’s way, then having to look back and pretend she hadn’t seen her. She didn’t know why she was avoiding Sharon like a child playing a game of peek-a-boo, but it seemed easier than going over to talk to her.

Except finally, as the night was reaching its peak, Willam had no choice but to speak to Sharon. Someone had told her that there were some spare cans of Red Bull in a box room down the hall, and Willam had wanted to make Jaegerbombs, so she’d gone in to get some. As she turned to leave, however, someone was standing in the doorframe. Sharon.

“Oh. Hey,” Willam slurred, awkwardly looking anywhere but at the face in front of her. “How are things?”

“Yeah, they’re good,” Sharon smirked, rolling her eyes. “Apart from the fact that the only way I’ve managed to speak to you tonight is basically cornering you in a fucking cupboard. Willam, what’s going on? You’ve just totally avoided me.”

Willam felt surprised at how eloquent Sharon was being, then drunkenly remembered that they were both quite drunk and to a sober person everything would have probably seemed like gobbledygook. Blinking, she shook her head. “I just didn’t, um. I didn’t think we had to talk? You know…what happened happened and…there’s no point in talking about it, I guess.”

Sharon blinked then smiled slowly, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind her. The darkness suddenly closed in around them, and the only light was three long strips of yellow from the hallway outside. Willam suddenly felt her heartbeat in her ears, her pulse hot under her skin as Sharon took a small strand of her hair and tucked it behind her ear, the tiny amount of contact making Willam’s breath hitch in her throat. She was pissed off- she, the girl who could manipulate any boy to do anything she wanted, the girl who didn’t call anyone back and slept with people without forming any attachment was completely and utterly under a spell, and she could feel herself melting as Sharon’s hands found her hips and pulled Willam in close.

“Well…we don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

WIllam didn’t know who initiated it, but suddenly their lips crashed together, both pairs of hands touching and trying to rip off any clothing that stood in the way of bare skin. Teeth grazed at necks, fingers tore their way through two sets of blonde hair, and Willam had never felt more completely and utterly torn apart and yet so put together all at once.

It was only when Sharon’s fingers had found their way under Willam’s dress and were inching up her thigh that Willam stopped, pulled away, and looked with distaste at the carpet on the floor.

“I live upstairs,” was the only thing she said, looking at Sharon’s huge, blown pupils before the other girl grabbed her hand, pulling her out of the box room and out of the flat.

***

“Willam?”

Willam slowly turned her head from its position looking out of the window and staring into space, and forced herself to look at Sharon. All of a sudden her eyes seemed far too intense and familiar, and Willam swallowed roughly and crossed her legs.

“We should stop talking about uni.”

Sharon looked at her suspiciously. Her eyes had that sort of glazed look, and Willam knew instantly that she’d had one too many drinks- but then, perhaps, so had she. “What? Why?”

Willam shifted in her seat. Realisation suddenly dawned on Sharon, and she let out a cry followed by a yelp of laughter.

“Oh my God,” she screeched, before her voice dropped to a whisper as she leant across the table, her eyes lighting up excitedly. “You were thinking about me and you, weren’t you? The sex we had…oh my God, you were, weren’t you?!”

“Shut up, no I wasn’t,” Willam put her head in her hands, angry that she’d been called out.

“Yes you were. You always do that little wiggle in your seat when you’re thinking about dirty things. It was how I used to know we had to leave a party.”

“Let’s not do this,” Willam rolled her eyes and tipped her head back.

“It was kinda awkward having to watch you do it when Courtney came into work in that pink pencil skirt a few weeks back, though. No class.”

Willam narrowed her eyes and sat forward. “Well if we’re playing this game, I wasn’t the one who suggested fucking in your flat kitchen after St Patrick’s day that time, was I? Classless bitch.”

Sharon laughed unashamedly. “No, but I don’t remember you having any complaints at the time. Wait! That’s a lie. Your complaints went more like uh, harder, uh, faster, oh fuck!”

Willam launched herself across the table and walloped Sharon on the arm as the other woman laughed. She could feel her cheeks were bright red, but she supposed that the more they were speaking about the whole situation the less awkward it became. There was a small silence as Sharon’s laughter died down.

“Did you ever actually get a chance to sleep with Courtney?” Sharon asked, out of the blue. Willam snorted.

“A lady never kisses and tells.”

“Well, A, you’re not a lady and B, you do kiss and tell, so give me the chat,” Sharon said, sitting attentive and patient.

“No, we didn’t. Happy?”

Sharon blinked, taken aback. Willam took a drink from her bottle and scowled at her.

“Surprised?”

“Yeah, actually. It’s you, you know? I guess I thought that would have all happened after the first date,” Sharon shrugged, taking a drink herself. Willam felt a flame of anger flaring momentarily inside her.

“Well maybe if-” she shut herself up. Keeping herself calm, she reminded herself that she probably shouldn’t say anything she would regret. Sharon seemed to sense that wish too, and she didn’t push it any more.

She could think it, though. The thing she’d wanted to say, and on reflection it would have sounded a bit pathetic out loud. Instead, Willam dwelled on it from the privacy of her own head.

***

The sex she had with Sharon was unlike anything Willam had ever experienced before. Whenever they were together she felt as if fireworks were exploding in her heart, as if it was about to burst or break. Her breath came so fast she sometimes felt she might suffocate. Every moment of every time seemed unreal to Willam.

But it was real, and it kept happening. She didn’t quite know how. It started off with the parties they went to- eventually the lights would come on and they would wind down, and Sharon would simply look at Willam and they’d both know how the night was going to end. Then it progressed into something that happened when neither of them were drunk, when Willam would be about to get ready for bed and her phone would go off with a text, or she’d send one to Sharon. Eventually it would just happen unexpectedly- Sharon would be studying at Willam’s, or just having pizza at her flat, and one thing would lead to another.

Willam didn’t mind. She’d been amazed at how completely not awkward the two of them had been about it- they were sleeping with each other, they made each other feel good, they both found the other incredibly sexy, and that was that. She didn’t really know what they were, but that was okay, maybe she didn’t really need to. Summer came and uni finished for her first year and she’d wondered if everything would stop and if Sharon would forget about her but instead they would call each other, whispered phone calls late at night as Willam bit her lip and forced herself not to be too loud and have her parents hear as she came undone in her bed. When they came back after the summer, their routine fell back into place again, and before Willam knew it she’d been sleeping with Sharon for eight months without even noticing how quickly the time had passed.

She didn’t really know how she felt about Sharon. She’d never felt this way about anyone before, perhaps that was why she found it difficult. She was still friends with her, that was why they hung out together and did things just the two of them when they weren’t fucking each other. Was that what girlfriends did? Probably, but they weren’t that, Willam reassured herself. It wasn’t as if she was in love with Sharon. Or was she? She didn’t really know what that sort of thing felt like. All she knew was that when she spent time with Sharon she felt calm but also so constantly excited, and whenever Willam said something that made her smile and show the little gap between her teeth Willam would want to hold onto her and not let go.

They were together in bed one day, naked and curled up in each other’s arms, and they were watching something- Willam can’t remember what. She turned to Sharon, watching the images from the laptop flicker against her glasses, and noticing how intently her blue eyes gazed at everything.

“Have you ever slept with someone else?” she asked Sharon. Surprised, Sharon blinked then laughed.

“Do I really fuck like a virgin? That’s embarrassing. You’ve embarrassed me,” she shook her head, laughing into the duvet. Willam frowned.

“Shut up you dumb bitch, no, I meant like…since me. Since May’s party. Have you?”

Sharon blinked again, suddenly looking awkward. “I mean, no. Have you?”

“No,” Willam replied instantly, unable to tear her gaze away from Sharon’s eyes.

“I mean, we could if we wanted to, right?” Sharon asked, her voice holding something that Willam couldn’t quite decipher. A plea for reassurance?

“Oh, Christ, yeah,” Willam nodded curtly, giving the answer that part of her didn’t want to give. It was worth it though for Sharon to smile at her, giving her a kiss on the cheek and turning her head to face the laptop again.

***

They had been sat in silence for a small while.

“How are things at home?” Sharon asked, her brow furrowing. Willam sighed heavily.

“Oh, fuck me. I’m going home,” she shook her head, despite not making any movement that indicated she was leaving.

“No, don’t. I’m sorry, that was shitty of me. I just wondered if things were still…how they were.”

“Yes, my parents still take every chance they get to mock and belittle my sexuality, thanks for asking, Sharon,” Willam stared coldly at Sharon, who for her part looked uncomfortable.

“So no better then.”

“No.”

Sharon heaved a sigh. “That fucking sucks, Will, I’m sorry. I just would have thought after eight years they might have been more accepting.”

Willam snorted a sardonic laugh. “Yeah, well. I guess if someone’s really set on the fact that bisexuality doesn’t exist then they’re not going to have their minds changed.”

Sharon shrugged. “Despite the fact you’re the evidence.”

“Despite the fact I’m the evidence. I should get Courtney to fuck both of them, then they’ll see,” she joked darkly, being bitterly reminded of the fact that Courtney was no longer her friend. Sharon laughed and Willam relaxed a little, glad that the ice was beginning to re-break.

“Do you ever think-” Sharon began, then cut herself off. Willam narrowed her eyes at her.

“What.”

“Nothing. I had a thought, and then I thought you’d yell at me if I told you it, so it’s nothing.”

Willam rolled her eyes. “We’ve already talked about the time we fucked on a dirty kitchen table, I think in the words of Yazz, the only way is up.”

Sharon picked at a bit of candle wax on the table with the lid of her beer bottle. “Do you ever think the reason you’re so eager to please Bianca and the reason you look for her approval all the time is because you’re trying to replace the mother figure in your life?”

Willam looked at Sharon in disbelief. “What the fuck. You’ve outdone yourself now, what the fuck is that pseudo-therapist bullshit?”

Sharon gave a calm smile. “Well I have been to many hours of therapy so some of it’s eventually going to rub off.”

Willam couldn’t tell if she was completely enraged or if Sharon was actually on to something. She shook her head. “You’re being ridiculous. Bianca’s my boss, of course I want to get her approval. It’s the only way I’m going to get anywhere in this job.”

“I think you’re forgetting that I’m your boss,” Sharon frowned, sipping her drink. Was this her fourth? Had to be. “Are you not happy with where you are now?”

“I want to be in Number 10. That’s the dream. That’s always been the dream.”

Sharon raised her eyebrows. “There’s more to life than politics, Willam.”

Willam sighed heavily and brushed some hair out of her face. She thought about what Sharon had said. “I’m at peace with the fact my parents are complete arseholes. I’m not trying to replace them, okay?”

Sharon nodded. “Okay.”

Willam looked down at the table, her head full of too many thoughts. Maybe Sharon was on to something. The very fact that Willam had wanted to distance herself from Courtney was to make sure that she didn’t go down in Bianca’s estimation. She couldn’t have handled it if Bianca had reacted to her and Courtney like her Mum had to her and Sharon. Shivering, Willam inwardly shrugged as she took another drink. It was probably for the best that Courtney wasn’t with her any more. The thought of having to introduce her to her parents made her want to jump in front of a car.

Sharon laughed. “Remember that time we gave Rhea a ProPlus and we pretended it was Mandy?”

As Willam worked up a fake laugh, she couldn’t help but replay another memory, one that she really didn’t want to relive.

***

“So, darling. Any boyfriends on the horizon? Any lovely handsome uni boys?”

Willam gave a swallow. Here it was- the question she knew she’d be asked, the question she’d vowed to be honest in answering. Christmas was a time for being truthful and admitting things and potentially tearing her family apart. If she’d learnt anything from Eastenders, she’d learnt that.

“Well actually I’ve been, um. I’ve been seeing someone,” she said tentatively, her heart breaking as she saw her Mum’s face light up.

“Oh, darling! That’s amazing, I’m so happy for you. What’s his name?”

Willam picked hard at a bit of skin on her thumb. “It’s Sharon.”

She watched, almost as if she was watching a movie, frozen to the sofa as she saw the cogs turning in her Mum’s head, then the penny finally dropping as her words caught in her throat and her eyes grew slightly wider. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Her Mum took a deep breath. “So you’re a lesbian.”

Willam’s stomach had never been so tense. “No, I…I still like boys, just I like girls as well. I’m bi.”

Her Mum screwed up her face, then barked a laugh. Willam’s stomach spasmed. “No that’s not…Willam. That’s not a real thing.”

Willam took a deep breath. “No, Mum, it is. Honestly it’s just…how I feel. Well, it’s more than that, it’s who I am.”

Willam watched in despair as her Mum tensed up, drinking a gulp from the glass of wine she’d been re-filling for hours that day. “No, Willam. I’m sorry. That doesn’t exist. You’re either one or the other. You can’t be both.”

“You can’t-” Willam started, frustration suddenly bubbling up inside her before she caught herself. She knew how things would escalate if she rose to her Mum’s bait, and she’d rather spend the evening having to comfort herself than mopping up the tears of an alcoholic’s nervous breakdown. “Look I know that it’s hard for you to accept-”

“Don’t call me unaccepting, Willam, because I’m not. You’re trying to make out that I’m homophobic and it’s not true,” her Mum bristled, the knot in Willam’s stomach worsening. Oh Christ, please don’t kick off, please don’t kick off…

“Sorry, I’m not trying to say that. I mis-spoke. I’m sorry,” Willam said, forcing herself to make her voice soft, quiet, comforting. “Obviously we don’t agree, but I’m bi. And I’m seeing Sharon.”

“See, you’re seeing her. That’s not a commitment. You’re just pretending, it’s just a phase. You can’t seriously be telling me I’m never going to have any grandchildren?” Willam’s Mum twisted the knife, her cold, matter-of-fact tone making Willam want to burst her lungs just screaming at her, begging her to listen just for once, to just once not make everything about her.

“Well she’s my girlfriend. I’m not pretending, Mum, I-” Willam stopped. She’d embellished the truth a little- Sharon wasn’t her girlfriend, they’d never breached the topic, but they were together in all but the title. And she was about to say the other thing, the thing she’d long been considering and thinking but never had the courage to say to Sharon herself. “I love her, Mum.”

Willam’s Mum snorted, swirling her wine around in her glass. “Well I’m glad you love her, because you certainly don’t love me.”

With that, she got up from the sofa and flounced out of the room, Willam sighing deeply. The knot in her stomach was sore and painful, and she tucked her legs up and hugged them close to her chest, looking at the Christmas tree lights in her living room through blurry eyes.

***

Willam suddenly stood up, cutting Sharon off halfway through her story. She didn’t really know what she had been talking about, too lost in thought. All she knew was that she had to get outside for some fresh air and, primarily, a smoke. Everything was too much, and in that moment she needed a break.

“I’m going for a cigarette,” she explained, before grabbing her twelve pack from her coat pocket and heading outside. The air was balmy in the way it sometimes was in the transitional period between Spring and Summer, and Willam knew she’d be safe without a coat- although she couldn’t help wishing for some cold, some sharp air to hit her face and sober her up a bit.

As soon as she was out the door she was lighting up with shaky hands, and of course, of fucking course, Sharon had followed her.

“Willam.”

Willam blinked once, twice, three times, four times, until the unexpected tears that had appeared in her eyes had gone. She sniffed and watched as a blonde girl and a dark-haired man with a beard shambled drunkenly across the street. She’d thought it could have been Courtney, but the more she looked the less it looked like her.

“Willam, what’s wrong.”

Sharon’s voice was soft and all too familiar, and Willam hated herself for agreeing to go on this night out. There were so many memories she’d not properly confronted, so much she’d blocked out for years and years, and talking about it all was only bringing those memories to the fore, forcing her to acknowledge them. Willam took a deep breath.

“I’m fine.”

Sharon frowned and shook her head. “You’re not. You can tell me. What’s the matter?”

Willam looked to the sky. If she kept staring at Sharon any longer then she’d cry, and she didn’t want to cry. She kept her voice level as she spoke. “You never said sorry.”

Willam felt a change in the energy of the woman standing next to her. She watched as Sharon pushed some hair away from her face and frowned. “I guess I didn’t…feel like I had anything to apologise for.”

Willam gave her a scathing look. “It was a year, Sharon. A year of us fucking about and spending time together and getting to know each other- fuck, you knew the complete shitstorm that was my family, I hadn’t even told Courtney that. Of course I was going to fall in…of course I was going to develop feelings for you.”

Sharon scuffed at the ground with her foot. “I just didn’t know what I was doing, okay? We were both young and I felt like I was going to live forever…all the drugs and drink and parties. I didn’t realise that what we had was so special to you and…well, for what it’s worth I’m sorry, Willam.”

Willam took a long, hard drag from her cigarette, her lungs burning as she sucked in a deep breath. Seeing sense, she shook her head. “It’s not your fault. You were my first real relationship.”

Sharon had the good grace to look ashamed as Willam took another drag. She didn’t seem as if she was about to say anything, so Willam went on.

“All this shit with Courtney,” she sighed. “Maybe if it hadn’t been for all that had happened between us I’d feel more open to admitting things to her, you know? About how I feel and about just going for it with her. It just ended so fucking badly with us, Sharon. I wish it hadn’t.”

Sharon sighed. “Fuck, I feel like everything that happened between you two is all my fault.”

“No, no, don’t feel that way,” Willam frowned, finishing her cigarette off and stubbing it against the wall. “Maybe I should’ve checked out therapy too. Maybe everyone needs a bit of therapy.”

“I’m a firm believer in that,” Sharon smiled a little and shrugged, her face suddenly taking on a look of gentle concern. “I’d have thought you would have gone to see someone at least once though, you know. After my whole…”

“After you overdosed? No. It was scary but it happened. I just happened to be there.”

Sharon shook her head and laughed. “You’re downplaying it so much, Willam. You saved my life.”

Willam sighed and shook her head. “Let’s go back inside. I think we’ll just be in time for last orders if we’re quick.”

Closure. It was weird for Willam after all these years. It was even weirder that she’d managed to go from hating Sharon, to being in love with Sharon, back to hating her, then to only mildly disliking her and now being friends with her again.

As Sharon held the door to the pub back open for her, the memories in her head seemed to sting a little bit less than usual.

***

It was New Years’ Eve, and Willam couldn’t quite believe it had almost been a year since her and Sharon began whatever they were calling this weird relationship-that-wasn’t-quite-a-relationship. There was no label on it, but tonight that was all going to change. Christmas at home had lit a fire underneath Willam, and if her parents weren’t going to accept her how she was, then fuck it. She might as well admit everything to Sharon. She certainly wouldn’t let her down as badly as her Mum had.

They were all walking up the big hill that looked over the city, stumbling in their heels and trainers in the pitch black which wasn’t helped by all the drink and pills they’d consumed. Luckily their stomachs were all lined with chips that they’d stopped off for on the way through town, Jackie handing over her card for the whole thing and Sharon laughing and adding on a kebab and falafels to her order. She certainly didn’t seem affected by all the food she’d eaten standing at the top of the hill, barely out of breath as she twirled around and took in the city below her. Willam watched her as she got her breath back, laughing at the sight of her. She was fucking beautiful, and it only made Willam more determined than ever to tell Sharon exactly how she felt.

“We made it with five minutes to go! Take that, hill!” Mayhem cheered, picking up a rock from the ground and launching it down the steep incline they’d just walked up. Willam giggled. It was so stupid and so dangerous, this whole situation, but nothing bad had happened yet so for now, it was perfect. Realising that she didn’t have long to tell Sharon everything, she strode over and pulled the other girl close to her, leaning in and kissing her deeply. She could feel Sharon’s dumb smile against her lips.

Fuck, she loved her so much.

“Hey,” Sharon grinned, pulling away and hugging Willam close. “What was that for?”

“I don’t know,” Willam sighed, anxiety fluttering away at her stomach. Was she going to do this? She pulled slightly away from Sharon so that she could see her face. “I just love you.”

Sharon tipped her head back and laughed, squeezing Willam’s waist. For a moment Willam thought she hadn’t heard her. “Yeah, and I love you too, you big idiot. You say the funniest fucking shit, Willam, it’s too much.”

Panicked, WIllam forced a smile on her face. This couldn’t be happening. She could have backed out there, pretended the whole thing was just a big joke, but for some reason she forced herself to commit to the confession. “No Sharon, it’s not a joke. We’ve been sort of…doing girlfriend-y things for a while now, you know, and fuck it, why don’t we just give ourselves a label and fuck what everyone else thinks? I love you, Sharon. I want to be your girlfriend.”

That was the moment that everything came crumbling down.

“Willam I didn’t…” Sharon’s face had dropped, her grip on Willam’s waist loosening. “I didn’t know you…oh, fuck. Willam, I don’t want a girlfriend.”

Willam’s chest physically hurt, as if someone had stomped on her heart. All the air seemed to have been removed from her lungs.

“Oh.”

She’d never seen Sharon look so awkward. “Yeah, I just…I don’t like committing myself and I want to keep my options open. I mean obviously I love spending time with you, I just…you’re a friend, and you’re a good fuck, but I can’t see myself seeing you as anything more than that. You know what I mean?”

Willam blinked and nodded slowly. Was she fucking serious? Looking Sharon in the eyes, she tried to search for something, anything that gave her a clue that Sharon was just fucking about and not actually being serious. She gave a short exhale. “I mean, I should have done this when we were both sober, right? Because you know..you’re high and you’re drunk and you probably don’t even know what I’m saying or what you’re saying.”

Willam found herself giving a short, hopeful laugh. Fuck, she was desperate. Sharon looked at the ground and shook her head. “Willam, no babe. I know what you’re saying. And I might be fucked but I’m telling you how I feel, I promise. I don’t feel anything…deep for you like that.”

There was a silence in which Willam looked at all the stars in the sky, balls of burning gas. She focused on them until her eyes hurt.

“Is that…alright?” Sharon asked, the awkwardness in her voice drawing everything out. Composing herself, Willam tipped her head back down and nodded briskly.

“Mhm. Yeah, of course.”

Sharon smiled and hugged her quickly. “You’re a good friend, Willam.”

As Sharon bounded her way over to the other girls, Willam trudged behind her until she found Mayhem.

“Listen, I’m going to go,” she said, Mayhem’s happy face dropping instantly at Willam’s words.

“What?! But bitch it’s almost time for the countdown! You can’t go yet!” she squealed, tugging on Willam’s arm. Willam shook her head.

“No, really. I really need to go.”

Mayhem looked concerned. “What’s the matter? Has something happened?”

“No, no, honestly it’s fine. I just need to go home, I’m not feeling well. Probably going to spew. But listen, I’ll be fine,” Willam said, suddenly feeling a lump in her throat which she hurriedly swallowed down. She suddenly needed a hug and found herself wrapping her arms around Mayhem. “I’ll be fine. You have fun, okay? I’ll see you when you get in.”

And then Willam made her way back down the hill, the freezing cold air hitting her face as shouts from her friends heralded the start of the New Year.

From then on, it was about healing. Willam still saw Sharon in lectures, but they didn’t sit near each other anymore. Sharon often cast her glances from across the lecture theatre which Willam forced her eyes not to meet. Of course they still shared all the same friends, which made the social aspect of things difficult, and Willam found herself going to less and less parties. Given that she shared a flat with Mayhem, she still got all the gossip and stories, so she had all the excitement of being there without seeing Sharon and without the inevitable downer and hangover the next day. As they entered their final year together, Willam began to hurt less and less but resented Sharon more and more, and suddenly their relationship had come full circle. Knowing that the year she graduated was the year that counted most, Willam spent most of her time in the library whilst Sharon, enabled by Mayhem, seemed to spiral further and further down a drug-fuelled rabbit hole. Willam hardly saw her in lectures. She still thought about her sometimes, a pang at her heart when she considered what could have been, but Willam knew her future was going to be good if she got the degree classification she needed.

It was January of her final year, around two years since everything began with Sharon, when Willam awoke startled and scrambling for her bedside lamp as somebody screamed and crashed through her bedroom door. In her sleepy mind, she only half-recognised the voice as Mayhem’s, but it was so full of terror she wasn’t sure at first. Finally reaching the switch for her lamp, she turned it on to find that there were in fact two people in the room- Mayhem, as she’d thought, and the other, Sharon.

Willam wasn’t in the mood. She wasn’t in the mood for drunk, drug-fuelled let’s-wake-up-my-flatmate fun at 4am, and she certainly wasn’t in the mood for properly seeing her ex for the first time in so long here in her flat of all places. On second glance, though, Willam saw that something was wrong. Something was badly wrong. Sharon’s eyes weren’t open, and Mayhem was holding her in her arms. Her body wasn’t lifeless- it was shaking violently, and blood was pouring from her mouth. Suddenly feeling as if she’d been shocked with a thousand volts, Willam leapt out of the bed and ran onto the floor.

“What’s happened?”

Mayhem’s face was covered in black tear tracks, and her breath came in harsh judders as she explained to Willam. “We just came home…we took a few lines, but it must have been stronger than usual, or cut with something…I only had two but she had five…”

“Five?! Jesus fuck,” Willam cried out, holding Sharon’s shaking head with both her hands and fleetingly being reminded of all those years ago at the Halloween party, when Sharon had done the same for her. Willam looked at Mayhem. “Did you phone an ambulance?”

Mayhem looked guilty. “Willam I can’t, they’d send us to prison…I can’t have my parents know…there must be something we can do-”

“Oh my God Mayhem, phone the fucking ambulance now!” Willam yelled at her, full of rage at how careless her friend had been. “You’re expecting us to treat a cocaine overdose with what, a packet of fucking Beechams? Get on the fucking phone!”

Mayhem looked embarrassed as she fumbled about in her clutch bag for her phone, dialling 999 as quickly as she could with her fake nails on. As she spoke to the operator, Willam continued to hold Sharon close as her body began to still from the seizure. She was unsure if this was a good or a bad sign. Struck with a bolt of common sense, she tipped Sharon on to her side, allowing the blood to pour out of her mouth and onto the wooden floor. She had obviously bitten her tongue, but Willam didn’t know how badly. She didn’t want to look and see.

“You’ll be okay, you dumb fucking bitch,” Willam whispered to her, feeling the panic continue to rise in her chest. “I’m here, and the ambulance will be here soon. It’ll be okay.”

***

Sharon blinked and drank the last of the beer in her bottle. They were back inside, and had somehow got back onto the topic of that evening.

“If you hadn’t got Mayhem to phone the ambulance,” she said quietly, only slurring her words a tiny bit. “I would be dead.”

Willam scrunched up her nose, not accepting the flattery. “Mayhem would have done it eventually, I had nothing to do with anything.”

“You saved my life even though you didn’t have to,” Sharon looked at her with an intense gaze. Willam exhaled loudly.

“This isn’t a superhero movie. I got my flatmate to phone 999 because your dumb ass took a drug overdose,” she snapped, wanting so much to reject the affection that Sharon was attempting to give to her. Softening, she looked at the table top. “That was the last time we really spoke, wasn’t it? Until you joined at work. Well, I suppose you didn’t really speak, you just…gargled out blood.”

Willam gave an awkward laugh, and Sharon laughed with her. Willam looked at her, curiosity suddenly filling her.

“Why did you never say anything? You know, when you joined Dosac. You could have spoken to me about everything. Why didn’t you?” she asked, Sharon taking on a thoughtful look.

“Why didn’t you?” Sharon asked, shrugging and knowing she had Willam well and truly in her place. Willam frowned, trying to articulate her thoughts which was difficult after five beers.

“I feel like neither of us have ever been really big on communication,” she laughed, Sharon agreeing with a giggle. “I guess I just defaulted to dislike. There was nothing to say. Everything to say had been said years ago. There was no point dredging everything up.”

Sharon nodded. “I’d agree with that.”

Willam considered something. “Did you tell Alaska about us? I know she knows we went to Uni together, but-”

“Yeah, I did.”

Willam didn’t know what to do with that information. “What did she say?”

Sharon snorted a laugh. “She says I behaved like a first class cunt.”

“That sounds about right,” Willam laughed. “And she doesn’t mind us working together?”

Sharon frowned. “No. She’s not a weirdo, she knows I’m obsessed with her and you’re obsessed with Courtney and there’s not going to be anything going on between the two of us.”

“I’m not obsessed with her, I just…” Willam trailed off, jumping as the barmaid rang a huge bell. She looked at Sharon with disappointment. “Well, I guess we need to drink up.”

Sharon nodded. “Do you want to head somewhere different?”

“Nah. I don’t feel like talking about our bloody breakup and your overdose gave me many going-out vibes, do you?” Willam deadpanned, Sharon looking at the table and laughing.

“I guess not,” she smiled guiltily, taking Willam’s hand and squeezing it. “I am sorry, Willam. For everything that happened between us.”

Willam found herself rubbing Sharon’s knuckles with her thumb the way she used to do. “Don’t be sorry. I’m glad we did this tonight. It was good.”

They began to make their way out of the pub, grabbing their jackets and bags but somehow keeping their hands intertwined, and they still didn’t let go once they were outside, alone on the quiet street. Willam felt odd and her stomach felt bubbly with feelings that were strange and yet so well-known.

“How are you getting home? We could share a taxi?” Sharon offered, squeezing Willam’s hand.

She shook her head. “Nah. I’m Clapham. It’s out of your way. I think I can get a night bus somewhere down the road so I’m just going to walk down.”

“Fair enough. I’ll head across the road, there’s a taxi rank down there,” Sharon smiled, looking at Willam wistfully. She hadn’t yet let go of her hand, and now she was taking the other one. “Hey. For old times’ sake?”

Willam considered it. They’d both been dumped, they were both pining after someone else, they both needed affection, and they were both friends.

Shrugging, Willam leaned in to meet Sharon who instantly let go of her hands and brought them around her waist, holding her close as their lips met gently. They were both tentative, as if neither of them were really sure what to expect. Sharon tasted exactly as she did eight years ago, of cigarettes and something that Willam couldn’t articulate then and still couldn’t articulate now. It was as if she was smelling a perfume she’d used so often and then stopped, forgetting its scent and then suddenly remembering- haunting, carrying so many memories, and taking her right back to a specific place and time. Willam brought her hand up to cup Sharon’s jaw, kissing hard and feeling the other woman’s tongue against her own. The whole situation was insane, but it was strangely comforting.

Willam pulled away first, just so that she could have the satisfaction of knowing she’d pulled away first. Sharon smiled at her and she smiled back, and soon the two of them were laughing at nothing.

“Yeah. I’m definitely still in love with Alaska,” Sharon shrugged, walking slowly out onto the road and making to cross it.

“You’re a rotted whore,” Willam yelled at her, still laughing. Sharon paused in the middle of the road, swaying a little in her heeled boots and tipping her head to the sky.

“I’m not a rotted whore,” she cried, making Willam laugh even more. “I’m Sharon Needles, Cabinet Minister! Sharon Needles, Minister for the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship!”

“Sharon Needles, the UK’s political heavyweight!” Willam laughed as Sharon doubled over in the road.

“Sharon Needles- making history! A legend! An immortal!” she drunkenly shouted. Neither of them had stopped laughing, and Willam felt as if Sharon seemed to be bathed in a glow of white light, as if she really was some sort of celestial being. Sharon’s laughter died down and she smiled affectionately at Willam, and the light seemed to be getting brighter and brighter. Willam frowned. It seemed really real, and Sharon seemed to notice it too as she turned around in the road.

It was only then than Sharon’s face dropped into one of complete shock, and Willam all at once realised where the light was coming from. The car could have been going at any speed, Willam didn’t know, but everything happened so fast as Sharon’s feet were swept off the ground from underneath her, her body rolling over the car’s bonnet, then windshield, then finally over the roof before smacking with a crack against the concrete of the road.

The car was gone and the white light was gone, and all that was left was the darkness that enveloped the street, the blood ringing in Willam’s ears, and Sharon’s lifeless body on the tarmac.

#just the game we're in #ortega #witney #shalaska #au #courtney act #willam belli #sharon needles #alaska thunderfuck #tw drug overdose #tw car accident #rpdr fanfiction #jtgwi #shillam

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mitchmarnier · 7 years ago

Note

45/46 with reddie for the prompts please :)

45: do you trust me? & 46: can i kiss you right now?

A/N: Myra’s existence and relationship with Eddie is very important to canon but this isn’t canon and i can do whatever i want. :)

Somehow the drop hadn’t seemed quite so high in childhood, Richie marveled to himself as he stared down off the edge of Quarry. It had been three years since Richie had tossed what little worldly possessions he had into the back of his shitty pick-up truck, bid farewell to his parents and Mike, and driven off to UCLA with no intent of ever looking back.

Richie had driven to the Quarry the second he’d gotten into Derry, not even bothering to drop his stuff off at home. He couldn’t explain even to himself why he’d suddenly gotten overwhelmed by the urge to come home. He just knew he’d woken up yesterday morning and called his parents to say he was coming home for spring break.

“Well, are you just going to stare down and are you going to jump?” A familiar voice- oh, all too familiar, it brought on the best kind of ache in Richie’s chest- called from behind him. Richie jumped and nearly ended up falling off the cliff.

Eddie Kaspbrak slapped a hand over his mouth and cackled as he watched Richie attempt to regain his footing. The Eddie standing by him now was far from the Eddie which Richie had known in his youth. He’d traded out the tiny colourful shorts with polo t-shirts for beige khaki pants and soft looking sweaters. His hair had grown out to curl at the ends, his skin had tanned and there wasn’t a single fannypack in sight. He’d shot up, too, not as much as Richie for sure, but Eddie seemed to own his body with a confidence that Richie had never had in himself.

He was, in short, more beautiful than ever and it made Richie’s chest tight with something he hadn’t been able to describe at eleven years old but maybe he knew what it was now.

“Well, Eddie fucking Kaspbrak, how the hell are you?” Richie cried, ignoring his emotion like he’d always done best. “It’s been what? Six years?”

“Seven.” Eddie corrected, grinning from ear to ear. Richie jumped away from the cliffs edge and tossed his arms around Eddie. As Eddie fell forward to hold him close, Richie’s mind chased down the road of how little seven years can change a heart. He hadn’t thought of it in a good four years, but he suddenly vividly remembered feeling like he was dying when Eddie told him that his mother was moving him away. It had, truthfully, been a long time coming. Sonia Kaspbrak had been trying to pull Eddie away since That Summer and she’d finally done it. Richie’s entire chest had felt like it was going to cave in when Eddie told them- them, at the point, being just Mike, Stan and Richie himself.

When Richie had hugged Eddie goodbye seven years earlier, they’d been thirteen and Eddie’s hair had smelled like blueberries and he’d been so much shorter than Richie- who’d started hitting his growth spurts the summer before high school, making him an unhappy giant for a long time before anybody caught up- he’d had to stand up on his tip-toes just to rest his chin on Richie’s shoulder in a quick, thirty second embrace.

Now, at nearly twenty-one years old, Eddie’s hair smelled like that mornings rain and Richie could comfortably rest his chin on top of Eddie’s curls. And this hug lingered much longer than thirty seconds. It lingered long enough that Richie was forced to pander if it was possible to really have missed somebody so much, when you hadn’t thought of them in at least five years?

Richie didn’t pander on that very long, because, of course, he already knew the answer.

“So?” Eddie finally pulled back, and if he was staring up at Richie’s with beautiful, all too familiar, teary eyes then neither of them chose to speak of it just then. “You gonna jump or what?”

“Jump?” Richie laughed breathlessly. “No. Come on, Eds, I’m not twelve years old anymore.”

A small look of confusion flashed over Eddie’s face at the nickname, as though he was trying to refind his footing before he grinned mischievously. “Do you trust me?”

And oh, hell, Richie hadn’t seen him in close to a decade but God help him, he did. He had no true reason to, he didn’t even have a real reason to connect this man with his childhood friend but this twinge of something was tugging at Richie’s heartstrings and he couldn’t deny that Richie’s superstitious ass had never believed in coincidences. So, instead of trying to pull apart the millions of contradicting thoughts in his head, Richie just cleared his throat and pushed out a “Yes.”

Eddie’s face brightened and he grabbed hold of Richie’s hand and broke into a stuntering run towards the cliff. Richie momentarily panicked, because it certainly seemed like Eddie Kaspbrak was trying to kill him, but then Eddie grinned at him over his shoulder as he jumped and Richie forgot to be nervous. As he broke the surface, Richie was marveling at how seven years earlier, it would’ve been himself taking an terrified Eddie over the cliffs edge.

Richie surfaced and Eddie was already laughing. The other man swam forward and pushed Richie’s dripping curls from his face. “Your hair has always been ridiculous, you know that, right?”

“What are you doing here?” Richie spit out the question that must have been in the back of his mind this whole time, continuously pushed away by other thoughts of Eddie, but still sitting there. Eddie face contoured awkwardly, lips twitching to the side slightly, and that was a face Richie knew well. It was Eddie’s thinking of a lie because Eddie Kaspbrak was a lot of thing but a good liar had never been one of them. “And don’t lie. I know you want to, but i’ll know you are.” Eddie clenched his jaw for a moment, looking ready to argue with him, before he let out a breath and rolled his eyes. “My mom had a stroke last week. She died.”

“Oh, man, Eddie, I-” Richie bit down on his tongue, a certain bad habit he’d picked up in high school as a way to slow his mouth down so his brain could catch up. Did he apologize? He didn’t know anything about Eddie’s life for the last decade, but he could remember many things about Sonia Kaspbrak and her ways. The way she’d messed up her son. Acting as though he was so sick and delicate to point where everybody- Eddie himself- believed it. He remembered he’d never seen Eddie so hurt as the day he found out his medication was all fake, just a means of controlling him.

Looking at Eddie now, he didn’t look like any sort of sick little boy, and didn’t seem to be carrying around any medications or fake inhalers. It was entirely possible that Eddie and Mrs Kaspbrak had patched up their relationship and managed to move on from what she’d done to him. On the other hand, Eddie certainly didn’t seem particularly sad, either.

“Don’t apologize,” Eddie jumped in before Richie could even start to make a coherent thought out of his racing thoughts. “I haven’t talked to my mother in almost three years. I got into NYU and left her to deal with her own issues. She was… pretty fucking terrible.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Richie said, forcing back what would easily be a WAY too inappropriate Your Mom joke. Eddie raised his brow as though he could tell.

“Her funeral started about… two hours ago,” Eddie said. “I was on my way there, I really was, but somehow, I just started driving here instead. So, I guess I don’t know what I’m doing here, in truth. Avoiding my past? Embracing it? Both? I don’t know.”

“I don’t know why I’m here, either,” Richie told him, momentarily glancing up at the too clear spring sky. He hadn’t felt the chill of the water and he certainly hadn’t felt him reaching out and pressing his hands onto Eddie’s hips. Eddie had swam closer to him, and they were practically nose to nose now. “I just woke up yesterday and I knew… that I needed to come home.”

Home. Richie hadn’t thought of Derry as home in a long, long time. Not since the end of junior year when Stan had left and Richie had fully faced the brutality of this town alone. The words coming from his mouth surprised him but seemed to surprise Eddie more.

“I would’ve had to be making my wrong turn to get to Derry from New York instead of my mom’s funeral around then,” Eddie was whispering now but he and Richie were close enough that it was as though he was speaking at full volume anyway. “Richie… I don’t believe in like… I don’t know… Is it stupid to think…”

“I had the biggest crush on you, Eddie Spaghetti.” Eddie might have been the one who jumped from the cliff that afternoon, but Richie was still the one who took the big plunge. “Like, forever. Before I know I even liked boys, I knew I liked you.”

Eddie’s breathing was heavy against his face and his eyelashes fluttered against his cheek. “Can I kiss you right now?”

“You fucking better, Edward Spaghed-”

Richie had never enjoyed being shut up more.

#reddie #reddie fic #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #it fanfiction #it (2017)#my writing #prompt #answered #ya bitch is back to writing POV richie #but lets be real #im not good at anything else ;P #an unnecessary use of eddies first and last name

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tired-writeblr · 6 years ago

Text

My first chapter

Sup dudes!

Some of you seem interested in my current wip, so I thought ‘what the heck, let them read some of it.’ Please bear in mind that it is the very first draft, and is by no means even near perfect, but I think it has some moments that shine through, and I hope you enjoy!

It was a relatively average night for a country village. There was a spot of rain, but the kind of rain that struggles to make a person even slightly damp, rain so light it’s almost as if it apologises for each little drop that hits. “Oops, I’m awfully sorry” the rain might say “I really hope I didn’t make a mark.” It’s awfully polite rain. The village, though small, had everything a person could need (as long as that person was a medieval peasant). It had some stalls to purchase goods, farms to work, a Blacksmith's shop, and the two most important buildings, that would remain a vital necessity for every Christian town, city and village for centuries; a place to worship, and a place to get drunk afterwards.

Candle light could be seen glowing in the church, even though it was in fact completely empty. The tavern, on the other hand, was packed. Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise; drinking is a lot more fun than praying, even the priest and monks agreed. Hell, at a time when even drinking the water would probably kill you, getting drunk was one of the few pleasures people had. And since the water was likely to give you a minor case of death, it was much safer to drink wine and mead, and so getting drunk was just a daily fact of life. The tavern was quite large, with plenty of wooden stools and wooden tables, most of which were occupied by drunken men and women (and some drunken children). The owner, a large bald man with a crooked nose, light brown skin, and a very welcoming smile, was behind the counter serving people drinks, whilst his two daughters, Camilla and Magdalena, were running about carrying food and collecting the tankards. Camilla was a large woman, with her father's smile, a broad nose, long black hair in a bun, and brown eyes. Magdalena was thin, and had her father's crooked nose, but unlike her sister had brown hair in a long plait. Both were beautiful in their own way, and both were often the victim of unwanted advances from some of the non-local male patrons, which often didn't end well as Magdalena had a hell of a right hook, and Camilla often used it as an opportunity to pick the man's pocket.

The tavern was often a noisy place. That night was no exception. And one table a drunken coachman was telling tales no sober person would believe, but the men and women at his table were not sober and took him at his word. At the bar itself sat a large drunken monk with a big walrus moustache. He was one of those people that would be incredibly forgettable if it weren't for one single feature. For this monk it was his moustache. It was so memorable that people simply called him Friar Moustache, which he believed to be a term of endearment, but was in fact because not a soul in the village knew his actual name, not even the priest (who was at this point sat next to Friar Moustache resting his head on the bar, drunkenly mumbling incoherently). Friar Moustache was leading a choir of drunken men singing a popular drinking song. There were a lot of harrumph's and ho's, and a great deal of crude language and descriptions of various lewd acts. The only one more enthusiastic about the song than Friar Moustache was an old man, possibly in his early to mid sixties, known to the villagers as Ser Malcolm the White. He looked a bit like a mid-sized bear. Well more accurately, a mid-sized, shaved, pink, alcoholic bear wearing an almost shoulder length curly white wig, with a scruffy white goatee, a wrinkled face, and tired eyes. His accent was surprisingly similar to the modern Glaswegian accent. He had once been a knight who fought for glory and honour and place in the history books, but he never won any of those things. All he did achieve was reaching a ripe old age, and now the only fight he had was the one to get out of bed each morning, which was getting harder every day.

On a table near the back of the tavern sat a young man just holding a tankard. His skin was pale, his eyes were wide, and tired looking. He gazed ahead of him as if he were staring into the abyss itself. This young man was an unfortunate peasant by the name of Glenn, and earlier that day he had died, which, as it usually does for most people, was causing him a great deal of distress. Now, many may think ‘well, he doesn’t seem that dead, he seems pretty alive.’ And those who do think that would be correct. He was in fact very much alive.

***

“Don’t worry, I got this this” Glenn had said to the huntsman, as the boar began charging and he attempted to pull back the drawstring on his longbow. He most certainly did not. You see, longbows require a great deal of upper body strength, which weedy, little Glenn didn’t actually possess. Why he had been given a bow by his father, it’s hard to tell. Perhaps his father hated him, which actually seems quite likely; he did have several more capable siblings. He managed to pull the bowstring back only a little before releasing, causing the arrow to travel only a couple of feet in a downward arch until it landed on the ground in front of him, seconds before the boar collided with him, knocking him to the ground. It would have actually been a little funny if he weren’t about to die. The huntsman tried to stab the beast with, but he missed, and the boar itself narrowly missed him. He immediately decided the best course of action was to run away before he was killed horribly. The beast chased him off a little before turning back towards Glenn. By this point he had managed to get to his feet, but his head was still spinning, and he was very unsteady on his feet.

The boar looked more like a monster than anything else now. It looked almost the size of a cow, with huge sword length tusks either side of its incredibly large snout. Of course, it was not in fact that size, or even especially monstrous. It was an average boar, but in his panicked, and dizzy state, his imagination had gone mad. It didn't help that he had never actually seen a living boar this close before, so he had no memory to compare it to. He attempted to stagger away, with little success. He stumbled just as the beast charged at him again, and this time was immediately gored by the creature’s tusks. It was a rather unpleasant sight, huge gashes into the poor man’s flesh from the beast’s tusks. Spaghetti sauce or blood gushed out of the wound, covering his shirt. It was probably blood. Either way, it would stain. The world around him began to dim, and the last thing he saw was the bloody beast wandering off back into the forest.

“Holy mother of god!” he screamed, on the edge of tears. Lying there, at his feet, was him. Well, more accurately, his body. Even more accurately, his very bloody body, with the exact same wounds he had. He stood there, staring at his own corpse for a while, sobbing in a very gross, ugly fashion.

Now, without an actual face the being couldn’t really provide any facial expression that would suggest just how annoyed they were, but they were incredibly annoyed, and would have scowled at Glenn if possible, which it wasn't (no eyebrows). They were so annoyed that they gave off this feeling of deep, intense annoyance, that even the dimmest of people could pick up.

“Oh great” said the being sarcastically “another dead mortal, just what I wanted.” Glenn shuffled awkwardly and didn’t say anything. He tried to avoid making eye contact. He didn’t want to make the skeletal being even angrier by saying something stupid. It did not work.

“I was happily doing my crossword, drinking my coffee, but you just had to die, didn’t you?” continued the being, slowly becoming less sarcastic, and more openly angry about having been disturbed “bloody mortals, I hate this damned job.” At this, Glenn was confused.

“What job?” he inquired

“Oh for goodness sake, are you really that dim? Must I explain everything?” replied the being

Glenn shrugged and nodded awkwardly.

"It might help a bit" he said.

The being groaned at this and would have grimaced if they could have.

“Very well. I am Death, claimer of souls, destroyer of worlds, and you died” said Death reluctantly “I’m here for your soul blah, blah blah, take you to the afterlife and all that crap so you can be judged by some jumped up little prick” Glenn just stood there, slightly stunned by the fact that he was talking to death, but also a little underwhelmed. He expected more from Death, though he couldn’t tell you exactly he expected. He definitely would have preferred someone nicer.

“That it?” he said after a few moments of silence.

“I’ve been doing this for a while buddy, and honestly I can’t be arsed with this” replied Death tiredly. They stood in silence for a few minutes. Glenn wasn’t sure what to say to an immortal cosmic entity. Death was beginning to think they should have listened to their mother and become a butcher (though in a way, being the grim reaper isn’t all that much different to being a butcher, at least, that was what they had said to her).

“So, mister Death, sir” began Glenn ending the awkward silence.

“Now listen here mate” said Death, interrupting the recently dead person “I am a skeletal cosmic freaking entity that exists outside of space and time, I really do not have the time for the restrictive genders of you mortals”

“Oh, right, sorry” responded the recently deceased Glenn “you could be a bit nicer about it though, I have just died!.” He gestured to his still warm body, that was lying in a pool of his own blood (or spaghetti sauce, though probably blood), and was being pecked at by a bird that looked a bit like a raven, though since Glenn knew nothing about birds, especially ravens, he wasn’t entirely certain.

“Mate, shut up” said Death “damned mortals!”

“But what now though?” asked Glenn, ignoring Death, “do I go with you? Or am I stuck here?”

“Honestly, I don’t care mate, do what you want” replied Death exasperatedly “I just want to go back to my crossword, but now I have to deal with all the sodding paper work!”

“Could you just let me go back to being alive?”

“Not likely, I mean look” Death said as he pointed at the corpse being pecked at what may or may not have been a raven “you are pretty obviously dead.”

“Oh, right” responded Glenn gloomily “I understand.”

“Although” began Death craftily

“Although what?”

“You could just be mostly dead”

“How can I be mostly dead?” asked Glenn confused by the whole situation

“Well, you personally are obviously properly dead, but sometimes people are a little bit alive, and in those circumstances, I can let them go back to being alive”

“Okay!” responded Glenn excitedly.

“And thankfully there is no paperwork because you were alive” continued Death happily, using his skeletal fingers to do air quotes around the word alive “plus I don’t have to deal with you anymore, so go on back.” Glenn nodded and followed Death’s orders. He lay down on top of his body, and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, and then winced in pain. His eyes shot open, and he sat up, covered in his own blood, shirt ruined, glad about not having to be dead, but understandably still rather shaken by the whole experiences.

“Oh, by the way, don’t die again anytime soon, because if you do I’ll make you regret it” said Death threateningly before grabbing his newspaper and disappearing.

***

"Helloo, anyone home" said a woman's voice startling Glenn a bit, causing him to drop him his empty tankard. It was Camilla.

"Ah bollocks" exclaimed Glenn

"Watch your language Glenn" responded Camilla feigning offence

"Sorry, I was someplace else" explained Glenn

"No worries sweetie" she said reassuringly "is everything okay? You look like death." Glenn reached for his side. His shirt was still a little damp with his spaghetti sauce, I mean, blood. It was probably some sort of health and safety violation for him to be in the tavern, but they didn't have health and safety, which explains a great many things about the period, like why there were so many things that could end your life prematurely.

"Its...err...I'm fine?" he replied, though it came out as if he were asking a question.

"Oh, that's great sweetie" said Camilla, completely uninterested, she wasn't really paying attention. The tavern was busy and Glenn was one of those people who you could easily forget about. She grabbed his tankard and got back to work.

The singing had all but come to an end, even Ser Malcolm had stopped. The only one still singing, if you could call slurring most of the words and forgetting the other ones singing, was Friar Moustache. He was swaying a little one his stool and swinging his arm about, seemingly forgetting he was still holding a half full mug of mead. His big finish came, and he leant back on his stool and toppled over, flinging his mug into the air, which quickly came crashing down onto the head of another drunken patron.

"oi, Wheresh me drink gone?" slurred Friar Moustache "were in me han!"

He struggled to get back up onto his feet. Camilla walked quickly over to see what the commotion, and bent down. "Let me help you Friar" said Camilla. He smiled at her a great big stupid drunken grin.

"Yur a riight goodun" he replied taking her hand and letting her pull him up.

"You need to go home Friar" said the owner in a thick Lancashire accent from behind the counter "You've had a bit much mate."

“Iamsickofyourshit,” Moustache said, his words tumbling from his mouth in a rush of barely distinguishable syllables. The owner nodded to his daughter, and a couple of his larger, more sober patrons, who grabbed the drunken holy man, and tried to escort him calmly out.

“Gerroff me!” he said as he wobbled “I’m ash sober ash ‘m gonna git. And there nuffink - wait wait wait - nuffink you can do ‘boutit.” He shook free of their grasp, and ambled back to the bar without so much as hiccup in their direction. The owner was much less polite after the first attempt.

"Just carry him out" he ordered a couple of patrons.

"Gerroff! I'm a man o cloth" objected Friar Moustache "I'ma have words with god if ya don't gerroff." They ignored him, and carried him through the tavern, whilst the other patrons simply ignored what was pretty average for a Sunday evening.

"Itsh fine, gerroff" he said "I can do it meself." The men looked at one another, shrugged and went back inside. The friar climbed back onto his feet and stumbled forward. He grabbed a wooden hitching post for support. He clung there, slack-jawed and slumped over, for a long time before he began staggering away from the tavern towards the church. He was planning to have a bit of holy wine before heading to bed. It was dark, and the polite rain had become proper rain. He was drunkenly mumbling angrily to himself about having been thrown out of the tavern. He was insistent that he wasn't that drunk, even though he was barely able to stand, or string a sentence together.

As he approached the midway point between the tavern and the church he noticed a very bright, almost blinding light out of the corner of his eye. He turned¸ squinted, and walked towards the light.

"Whasis? Whas goin on?" he exclaimed, though still slurring his words "Lord is tha you?"

Friar Moustache walked into the light, and fell backwards with a loud 'oof'

"Watch where you're going, drunk prick!" yelled a feminine voice, coming from the light, as it seemed to float round the friar and wandered towards the edge of the village. Moustache sat there for a minute, his mouth agape, shocked. After a few minutes of watching the light float away, he drunkenly climbed up onto his feet, looked towards the church, then at the tavern, then at the church again, made the sign of the cross, then staggered back towards the tavern.

#my wip #long post #writing #comedic fantasy #fantasy #indecentpause #wip

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heartslogos · 8 years ago

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newfragile yellows [45]

“You forgot?” Dorian exclaims, “Lavellan it’s your own anniversary, how could you forget? You know the city where I was born. I don’t even know where I was born, you know the doctor who delivered me by name. And you forgot your anniversary?”

“In my defense,” Lavellan sounds out of breath on the other end, “I’ve been very, very busy.”

“I can’t believe this. You asked me to plan this thing out for you a year and a half ago.”

“Dorian, I am currently on the run for my life.”

“That’s what you get when you take an assignment on your tenth wedding anniversary. What do I tell the Bull now?”

“I don’t know!”

Dorian stares at the venue he’s had set up overlooking the beach of the Storm Coast. It’s one of the few days where it isn’t raining and it’s actually pleasant. Dorian can stand to look at the water without getting seasick.

Literally everything is here - the guests, all of their friends, the food, the decorations, the fucking weather -

Except Lavellan.

“Bull!” Lavellan exclaims.

“Yes, Bull! As in the man you’re married to and expected to be here with. Bull who is probably on his way over right now thinking you’re already here. Bull who - “

“Bull leave it behind! Leave it! Leave it!”

Dorian stares into the sun and thinks he feels something in him crack.

“Don’t you dare tell me - “

“I don’t know what you’re going to tell Bull that you aren’t going to tell me,” Lavellan says, and then there’s a brief moment of static as she does something presumably dangerous and impossible outside of fiction, “Considering he’s with me. I feel that it’s incredibly unfair that you’re lecturing me as if I’m the only person in the wrong here. I mean, clearly he forgot too.”

“You both went on assignment on your ten year anniversary together and forgot?”

“Apparently yes,” Lavellan says, “Bull, as an aside, I’m sorry we both forgot our anniversary. I promise to say something about it later.”

Dorian hears a vague grunt of acknowledgement in the background and then Lavellan lets out a small moop and then there’s the sound of two people breathing.

A door opens and slams shut. A car engine revs.

“Pavus,” Bull says a few moments of Dorian mentally spiraling down a drain later. He doesn’t even sound out of breath.

The man is pushing fifty at least and he’s still doing this absurd bullshit.

“Bull.”

“I want to say that I also forgot the anniversary,” Bull says, “Because Lavellan is glaring at me because I guess I was supposed to remind her. Point is, every day is important and I lost track of how much time we spent together. Sorry, Kadan.”

“Just because every day with you is lovely to the point where I lose track of time doesn’t mean you’re getting away with it!” Lavellan says, “Now you’ve gone and made Dorian cross with me.”

“Sorry, Pavus.”

“I am charging all of the expenses to you,” Dorian says. “At first I was only going to do half because this was my present to you both for surviving each other for so long. Now as a present to myself I’m charging you both plus a service fee. This is my present to myself for putting up with the both of you for so long without killing either of you.”

“Love you,” Lavellan says.

“I love you too,” Dorian replies, “Don’t die. I’m rescheduling this but right now everyone here is going to eat all of this food and enjoy this perfect venue I set up for you two ungrateful lovebirds and celebrate not having you around.”

“Why are we at a fair?” Sera asks, “And why are Dalish and Lavellan crying while eating cotton candy?”

“They just found out that they aren’t related,” Krem says, offering Sera a corn dog. She takes it, and bumps it with his as they watch the two women crying over bright pink and blue bags of sugar. “They got the results earlier and haven’t been the same since. The Chief thought maybe it’d cheer them up if they went somewhere with bright lights and sugar and grass.”

“Sensory overload and a sugar crash.”

“Hey, don’t judge. It’s going well so far. They couldn’t even sit up on their own earlier. Look at them. Eating with their mouths and everything.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Yeah, well. That’s them.” Krem says. “Did you come here with Dagna?”

“Yeah,” Sera says, “She’s off conning some booth out of, like, all their prizes or something. Sera gestures to a giant plastic bag by some tables. “I’m watching the rest of it. I don’t even know what we’re going to do with all of it. I guess charity. Dunno. Can we borrow some of your truck to carry it in?”

“Sure,” Krem says. “Might have some trouble fitting it though because the Chief and Skinner are doing the same thing.”

Krem points in the direction of some shooting galleries.

“Sensory overload, sugar crash, giant animals,” Sera says.

Krem gives her a thumbs up, “Also deep fried nonsense.”

“This is the worst family trip ever,” Lavellan declares, sitting down on a plastic recliner chair, pushing at Sera until she makes room. “They just read the last will.”

“And?” Sera flicks up her sunglasses.

“And he left me everything,” Lavellan says, “What an asshole.”

“Told you,” Sera drops her sunglasses back in place. “Now you’re a rich prick.”

“I don’t want to be,” Lavellan whines, picking at a tray of french fries. Sera smacks her arm.

“Not yours.”

“Come on! I just found out that not only is my adopted father dead - probably, or faking - but he’s also left me all of his money, worldly possessions, and problems.”

“You’re rich now, go buy your own fries,” Sera teases. “Right Varric?”

Varric holds up his hands from the next sun chair over, “I am not part of this. I am here for emotional support and to make sure that Hawke and Isabella don’t get thrown overboard.”

“How’s that going?” Lavellan asks.

“We had a few close calls but the situation was salvageable and there were no witnesses.”

“Nice,” Sera and Lavellan says.

“Hey, Boss,” Lavellan glances up and sees Bull crossing the deck, waving at her, “How’d it go?”

“How are Dorian and Cullen?”

“Greener than Dalish’s pretty, pretty eyes,” Bull replies, “Josephine and Cassandra are ready to just pitch them overboard or smother them to be done with it. How did the will go?”

“Terrible.”

“What, he cut you off and lecture you via video tape or something?”

“No! Worse! He left me everything!” Lavellan says, throwing herself backwards onto Sera. Sera grunts, pushing at Lavellan. Lavellan puts her arm over her eyes. “I don’t want Solas’ bullshit!”

Bull sits down on the sun chair on Sera’s right, “Well, you could always just use that to piss him off. Like use his money to fund shit you know he hated or something.”

“I like that,” Sera says, “Spite from beyond the grave countered spite for things in the grave.”

Lavellan sighs and sits up, frowning.

Bull holds out a container of fries.

Lavellan smiles, “You know me so well.”

“Nah, Fenris texted me.”

Lavellan twists around and waves at Fenris two chairs over, “I knew you had a soft spot for me.”

Fenris rolls over, “Payment for the opportunity to see Hawke and Isabella almost plunge to their certain deaths.”

#heartsfic #gather your party and venture forth

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analogguyinadigitalage · 6 years ago

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Meeker’s Tale...by Scott Connors

[Thousands of books and stories have been written about November 22, 1963. This one differs in that it was bequeathed to me by my dying father on his death bed. My father was a pilot, and on November 22, 1963 he was paid five thousand dollars to fly to Dallas, pick up a passenger and fly him to parts unknown. When my father died, he had no worldly possessions, but he had this story, and he left it to me to write so the world might know the truth.]

Meeker downed the last of his coffee, his half eaten eggs lay on the plate congealing. He stubbed out his cigarette in the eggs, put some cash on the table, folded his newspaper and walked out of the diner to destiny. The rain had stopped and the sun had come out. Meeker checked his watch, he had some time to kill before he had to be at the book depository so he strolled around Dealey Plaza. He had been here before and checked every angle and every approach and departure route. He had photographed the entire area, he had been in several of the buildings, on the rooftops, in the basements, in the parking lots, railroad yards, and even in the sewer at one point. Meeker had surveilled it all and he had come up with the perfect sniper’s nest, the ideal location to hit his target. Everything had been set in motion and like a train that had left the station there was no turning back now.

Meeker was a contractor and the best in the game. He had never worked for the FBI, CIA, or any governmental agency in any official capacity. He was not a member of the Mafia. He had no particular political leanings. But being a contractor, he had many contacts in both the government and the underworld. Money was what motivated Meeker. He sold his services to the highest bidder and in doing so, he held a vast network of resources. People in the know knew how to get in touch with Meeker if his services were needed.

Looking over the stockade fence from the rail yard towards Elm St. Meeker watched the traffic flow by. Earlier, this had been his choice from where to fire from, it was secluded and he could be in a car and gone in a matter of seconds. But Meeker was a perfectionist and after looking at this area from every conceivable angle he had changed his mind and his plan. The Texas School Book Depository would suit his needs better. The building itself provided the advantages; it was easily accessible, had several entrances and exits, gave him the height he needed, temporary employees were used so a strange face wouldn’t draw unwanted attention, and the most important advantage, he had a contact who already worked there. Meeker never met the man, but they had a mutual friend. Meeker knew the man only as Lee and their mutual friend had told him that earlier in the year Lee had made an assassination attempt on the life of General Edwin Walker. Meeker contacted their mutual friend and had him make some overtures to Lee. As the old saying goes, money talks and all Lee had to do to earn a quick five thousand dollars was to order a quality rifle through the mail and bring it to the sixth floor on November 22nd. Lee took the bait as Meeker knew he would and their mutual friend had been the go between so Lee would never know who Meeker was and Meeker would never know who Lee was, well until later that is.

Meeker lit a Lucky Strike and walked up Elm towards the book depository. He walked around the back of the depository and looked to make sure the package he had left there a few days ago was still there tucked between the dumpster and the loading dock. He checked the doors and police presence which was non-existent, the heavy police contingent would come later when the President’s motorcade rolled by on the way to the Dallas Trade Mart. He walked down Houston and turned onto Main where the crowds were five deep on each side of the street. The temperature was in the mid-sixties according to Hertz sign atop the Texas School Book Depository. Walking back towards what would become the sniper’s nest of the century he glanced up at the façade of the building, several windows were open while others were closed, perfect cover. Meeker passed a cop who didn’t give him a second glance, just another guy going to work. Meeker learned long ago the key to surviving in this trade is to blend in, act like you belong there. People see what they want to see. Ten people would walk by a homeless person in the street and “not see him” but look right at him, it was imperative to appear to belong to whatever environment you were in and today he was just an average Joe going to work even though the President was coming to town.

He walked around to the back of the depository, pulling his package from its hiding place, he removed the tool belt, strapped it on, stripped off his windbreaker revealing his Bell Telephone shirt, and stuffed the windbreaker back in the bag and proceeded towards the front of the building looking like a telephone repairman. He had used this ruse a dozen times or more and no one ever questioned him. He climbed the front steps of the depository, made his way across the first floor like he owned the place. At the northeast corner of the building he found the stairs and made his climb to the sixth floor. Once there he went to the southwest corner where Lee was supposed to have put the rifle loaded and ready to go. Meeker got to the corner window, the floor was deserted, he put his gloves on and pushed some boxes back, slid in behind them and moved them back into place so he was concealed from anyone’s view who might be approaching him. The rifle was on the floor between two boxes, he picked it up and examined it. “What the fuck?” he muttered to himself. Lee was supposed to order a quality rifle and here he held this piece of shit Italian made Mannlicher-Carcano. He checked to make sure the rifle was loaded, then peered through the scope. He figured he’d had to make at least three shots to get one good one after having to adjust the scope. Fucking dimwit Lee, he should’ve known better than to trust some idiot he had never met, but live and learn.

Checking his surroundings one more time to make sure his position was fully covered and masked by the boxes around him, Meeker settled in and glanced out the window. The motorcade had just turned from Main onto Houston. Meeker readied the rifle. He would take his shot as his target was coming towards him on Houston that would provide the majority of the target’s body. He was hoping for a clean head shot, but a shot through the heart would do the trick and he may have to make a lower shot due the shitty rifle he was using. The big limo had just made the corner onto Houston and his target came into view. He looked through the scope and saw the pink pill box hat, moved the scope a little to the left and saw JFK. His mind slowed and it was as everything had gone into slow motion. Meeker remembered meeting his employer and being hired for this job.

An airline ticket appeared in his mailbox one day with a note attached and instructions to fly to the designated city and go to a designated hotel room at a designated time for a possible job. This was not unusual in Meeker’s line of work. He didn’t necessarily work a 9-5 job and there was a vast underground network of people who knew how to hire guys like him. So when notes or airline or train tickets mysteriously showed up Meeker would go for a meeting and decide if he would take the job after meeting his prospective employer. He remembered that day, the hotel was four star and the room was a suite, the door unlocked. He walked into the semi-dark suite, all the curtains drawn. Meeker looked around and sat in one of the two chairs facing each other next to a small table with a lighted lamp on it. He waited. These things tended to be power plays, the employer wanting to make the prospective employee wait to show who held the power. Meeker had waited in coffee shops, diners, railroad stations, cheap rooming houses and waiting in a four star hotel suite wasn’t so bad. The door to the adjoining room, cracked open and his prospective employer walked in.

Smiling Jack Kennedy was taller than he’d imagined him. Perfect haircut, teeth white, suit perfectly pressed, and that Boston-Irish accent. He reached out and shook Meeker’s hand like he was courting voters. He motioned for Meeker to sit.

“Uh have a uh seat and thank you for coming today, Mr.? I don’t believe I know your name.”

Meeker sat. “Well maybe it’s better that way sir.” Both men laughed, an uneasy tension hanging in the air.

JFK smiled, “Mr. X will have to do. It’s a bit cloak and dagger, but I uh guess uh it’ll serve us for now.”

“Sir I’m not sure if I’m in the right place, you see I’m an –“ Kennedy cut him off with the wave of a hand.

“Mr. X I know exactly what you do. You come highly recommended from an old friend of my father and he assures me you are the best at what you do and that is why you are here.”

Meeker wondered why in the hell the President of the United States was in a room with him because most certainly these matters were taken care of at a much lower level for reasons of plausible deniability. Meeker shifted in his chair, he knew whatever this job was it would be a life changer. Kennedy stood and moved his chair closer to Meeker, his usual loud “Ask not” voice lowered to a whisper.

“Should you decide to accept this assignment, there is a half a million dollars in that case beside the couch. Upon successful completion of the assignment an additional half a million will be deposited into an account of your choosing anywhere in the world. Should you choose not to accept this assignment, well then this will remain our little secret, but then I’ll have to hire someone else and you’ll always be looking over your shoulder. If I’ve learned one thing in politics it is that it’s better to be on the inside looking out rather than be on the outside looking in.” Meeker listened. JFK laid out the “assignment” as he kept referring to it and the further he went, the more Meeker was astounded and astonished. He realized he was in way too deep to back out.

Back in the book depository Meeker sprung back to life like waking from a dream. Fuck! The motorcade was off Houston and onto Elm now heading away from him. He raised the rifle, slipped it through the window and aimed at his target. The limo rolled away from him gently descending down the slope of Elm St towards the underpass. He sighted his scope on the target, the pink pill box hat. His mind raced, but his heart beating normally, just another job. In that split second he thought of smiling Jack and his Boston Brahmin accent, that smug fucker. People thought Joe Kennedy was a ruthless opportunist, but this guy took the cake. This guy who for the past few months realizing the political capital his wife played in his presidency had brought them here. This guy who broke Secret Service and Presidential protocol by allowing and insisting that she exit Air Force One in the proceeding months so the crowds could see her first and so Meeker could get a shot if he decided to exercise his assignment on one of those trips. That was the other thing smiling Jack insisted on when they met that he not know when the shot was coming knowing it would make for better political reaction. This guy was something else but Meeker had to give him some credit. He pictured Kennedy at his wife’s funeral after she had been slain in public by some nut, holding his two young children’s hands consumed in grief. What voter Democrat or Republican wouldn’t vote for that guy? What world leader wouldn’t fear and respect for that guy? What woman wouldn’t want to fuck that guy? With one bullet smiling Jack would raise his political capital, eliminate the need for keeping his affairs a secret and his pussy quotient would go through the ceiling. He would be shoe in for re-election in ’64. And the best part was he had engineered the perfect murder.

Meeker pulled the trigger and the first bullet went astray. He ejected the shell and racked another into the rifle, his scope clear on the center of smiling Jack’s back as he squeezed the trigger and in that instant the world changed. The train left the station. Kennedy’s hand rose to his throat, Meeker ejected the second shell and rammed another one home. He aimed, fired and saw a rose colored red mist rise into the air as JFK’s head exploded. Meeker set the rifle down, made his way to the stairs, walked down assuming his telephone repairman role, exited the building, waked to the rear, retrieved his windbreaker, hopped in a cab and was gone. The cab took him to the airport where he had arranged for a small plane to be waiting, he wasn’t about to trust smiling Jack with his getaway. He boarded the plane and as it rose into the clear blue Dallas sky Meeker ceased to exist. Where he was going they’d know him by a different name and where he was going a half a million dollars was plenty to last a lifetime. He knew Kennedy would have arranged to have another contractor waiting at the bank and when Meeker showed to get the rest of the money he’d be killed. So he said fuck it, he’d screw big Jack and the whole Kennedy machine and forfeit a half a million in the bargain.

Weeks and months later sitting on a beach looking out into the ocean Meeker would smile as he read and re-read the accounts of the assassination and how poor Lee ended up being blamed for the whole thing. He especially smiled when he read Lee used the term patsy, he certainly was and that was Lee’s own doing. But Lee was stupid, all he had to do was sit tight and stay in the building, but he freaked and ran. Lesson one, act like you belong. And Lee belonged there, he worked there for Christ sake all he had to do was get rid of the rifle. Instead he freaked and ran. Once the police took an attendance of the depository employees and he was the only one missing and then they found the rifle well the rest as they say is history. He often wondered as did a lot of people how different the world would be if he had hit the pink pill box hat?

#writerscommunity #author #my wrting #shortstory #jfkassassination #112263 #writing

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alegriaspain · 6 years ago

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Two Spains, the Coast and the Rest

The Spanish real-estate brochures produced for unsuspecting foreigners like to sell “Gracious living in the South of Spain,” which conjures up visions of pseudo sophisticates drinking endless gin tonics on a bouganvilla-draped veranda. Most of the Brits fleeing to Spain to escape immigrants who can’t speak the Queen’s English properly become migrants themselves, who can’t speak any Spanish and are hemmed in by golf courses on narrow strips of land along the Mediterranean Coast.

Our experience of inland Spain was different. It was about learning and working, about forming a family and staying alive in a society where practically nobody spoke English. There was so much to learn, even beyond the language. We had to learn what to eat and how to cook it. We were put off by the taste of olive oil, we didn’t know what to do with a persimmon or a quince, a calamar. We also learned to make two great Spanish cold soups which alleviate the summer heat: ajo blanco with almonds and garlic, and the tomato-based gazpacho.

We had to learn to relate to our neighbors, who are all Spanish. They did fine; they treated us like children. It was trickier for us; we had to learn their language. It looked impossible until I got involved in renovating a house we were about to rent. Suddenly I had to communicate seriously about bricks and beams and fireplaces. There was no other way out but to learn the language. That urgent necessity did wonders. In a couple of months, with the help of the workers on the building crew I was actually speaking basic Spanish fairly comfortably. That was the top of the learning curve. From there, with the help of a little book of Spanish verb conjugations, it was gently downhill. That said, I still have an American accent and a lot of spicy Spanish bricky vocabulary.

Spanish Customs Are Gentler

There were also new customs to learn. If you approach someone here when they’re eating they will always say, “¿Quiere usted comer?” “Would you like to eat?” In the beginning I would reply, “What have you got? Sure I’ll have a bite of that chorizo.” I soon found out this custom was formula politeness that the Moors brought with them when they invaded Spain in 711 a.d. to stay for 800 years Nobody expects you to say yes or actually eat anything. The proper response is to say, “Que aproveche…” “Bon appétit…” This is just one example of the exquisite manners of the Spanish, which are a bonus for anyone coming to live here. Luckily our neighbors were-and still are-tolerant of our ignorance and strange customs of our own.

You almost never see fistfights. I think in all the time I’ve been here I’ve only seen one and that was a case of road rage many years ago. As for bar fights, they must exist but I never saw one. Spanish people, in general, hold their liquor exceedingly well. I think that’s because alcohol was never prohibited nor considered a sin. So there’s no rebelliousness associated with drinking. The bars are not darkened dens of iniquity; they’re family affairs. Spanish almost never drink without something on their stomachs. That’s solved for them by the tapas custom. Traditionally, they bring you a little snack with your drink: some olives, a slice of potato omelet (tortilla española), some tidbits of fried fish, some mountain ham or cheese… These tapas used to be free all over the country, but with the onslaught of modernity, a lot of the more advanced regions charge for them today. Luckily, we live in the province of Granada, one of the more backward places where bar managements compete for the most creative, most abundant tapas.

The Bear Escapes from the Circus

At bottom, discovering Spain is like discovering anything else. If you’re lucky and perseverant you’ll find what you’re looking for. My wife, Maureen, arrived in Spain from a bourgeois life in northern England with two kids and her soon-to-become ex-husband. I arrived here from Detroit, after a stint in the U.S. Army with a backpack a clean pair of jeans and two used Nikons. I gave away all my worldly possessions before I left. You would not believe the sense of freedom that creates, like the dancing bear returning to the forest. Four months after meeting in one of those storybook fishing villages on the Mediterranean coast Maureen and I and her two children, six and eight, left town together to find a different Spain a hundred miles or so inland. It was the end of the sixties and we were both overdue to change our lives.

So we settled our newly-formed family in the Granada village where we still live today. Our rented house was originally a family residence but for at least the previous dozen years it had been a barn for sheep and goats, so it maintained a goatish air. Fair enough, we cleaned it and installed a bathroom. On the plus side, our sheep shed had running water from a spring up on the mountainside and a big fireplace and charming old flower-print cement tiles in the kitchen. We were, however, without electricity for the first two-and-a-half years. That’s not as complicated as it sounds. You just light your life with pretty kerosene lamps and you go to bed and rise early, taking advantage of the daylight. Our theme song was a poem by William Butler Yeats, “Beggar to Beggar Cried.”

The Luxury of Inventing a Life

Maureen had started painting before she left England and wanted to become a professional artist. She rented a studio in the coastal village and sold most of her early paintings. She thought the life of an artist would be smooth sailing. A couple of months after landing in that same fishing village I sold my first story to the New York Times. I had the feeling that freelancing articles from Europe would be fun and easy. How naive we were.

The second year in Granada a generous hotel owner invited us (Maureen was one of the models) to eat the king crab (centollo) I had just photographed for a brochure. A week later I showed up at the door of the village doctor. Without leaving his desk on the other side of the room he exclaimed, “Hepatitis aguda!” I was in bed for 30 days. A neighbor, who had been a medic in the Spanish Civil War climbed the hill to our house every day for a month to give me an injection. Others brought food and drink and one of them I hardly knew offered cash, something I shall never forget. Our neighbors from then until now, 50 years later, have always been cordial, respectful, generous and tolerant, even after the time I yelled at the priest in the door of the church for interrogating our kids one day after school.

Recreating A House of Our Own

When we later were able to buy a house–with both light and water–we maintained practically the same simple lifestyle. We were young, our blood circulated vigorously and we had no interest in a centrally-heated house. We loved our fireplaces and wood burning stoves. We even had the good luck to find an old cast-iron wood-burning kitchen range that heated water in a deposit on one side. Our house is a campesino cottage built in 1940 at the end of the Spanish Civil War. But, given its primitive construction of stone and mud (piedra y barro), poplar beams and Roman tiles, it’s no different from a house built in 1540.

We didn’t have much money for renovating the place so we kept it very basic. Today it’s virtually a museum of what houses used to be in this village. Those were the days when they were tearing down whole neighborhoods of old houses in Granada so I became an expert scrounger. I would cruise the demolition sites looking for old beams and tiles, wrought ironwork and old windows and doors. Often the foreman would say, “Just bring a truck and take away whatever you want.” On one occasion I discovered a great beam that would cross the house from wall to wall, to use over the fireplace. One beam didn’t merit calling a truck, so I hefted one end of it onto my shoulder and dragged it halfway across Granada to the plaza where the bus left for our village. The driver was a good sport and he not only helped me put it up on the roof of the bus but stopped at our house to help me unload it. That would be unthinkable today. It was almost unthinkable then. That was when our village had half a dozen cars and fifty mules.

Geology and Biology Take Revenge

We live on a 45-degree hillside, so not only do we have an unhindered view of the mountains opposite and the river below, where nightingales sing in summer, but our garden steps down the hill in a series of coquettish terraces that I used to be quite fond of. I say “used to be” because most of them no longer exist. Between the torrential winter rains and me leaving the irrigation water running overnight (mainly the latter), they’ve been washed away. Finally it occurred to me to install a drip irrigation system to limit the amount of water in the ground. That was quite a clever solution until I left it on for three days and three nights and it washed away another sizeable chunk of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

In this exuberant climate everything grows. We can still grow enough summer vegetables for our kitchen, and enough fruit that there’s usually something to pick in all seasons, from loquats, raspberries and figs in summer to pomegranates, persimmons, oranges, grapefruit and lemons in fall and winter. Our best crop, however, is morning glories which are vigorous and form a carpet of ground cover which shoots up the trunk of any tree it encounters eventually sprouting flowers out of the top of the tree. The neighbor who gave us the cuttings warned us that it was invasive, but he gave no hint that it was Atilla the Hun.

Part 2 coming after Christmas

Thanks for liking, commenting and sharing.

Remembering Spain 1/2 Two Spains, the Coast and the Rest The Spanish real-estate brochures produced for unsuspecting foreigners like to sell "Gracious living in the South of Spain," which conjures up visions of pseudo sophisticates drinking endless gin tonics on a bouganvilla-draped veranda.

#Life in Spain #Moving to Spain #Spain is Different

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almorganfiction · 6 years ago

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Up Top - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Wingspans

2 Hours, 40 Minutes

After about ten minutes of being dragged along the rooftops Maple could hear voices. He listened close and assessed the situation.

“Interesting,” he thought. “Whoever is speaking (or is it whomever? I remember Miss Eerie taught us the difference but Eddie the Mole was shooting elastic bands out the window and one of them landed on a car and the driver didn’t even notice-) no, focus now, what can you see? There’s a few people. It’s a gathering. A secret rooftop gathering and a man who caught me in a net…

It’s a black market! He’s going to sell me! This Po guy is a slave trader! He’s not a chief of anything!”

‘I am Chief Po of the Wingspans!’ called Po, the chief of the Wingspans. ‘You have been brought before me by our scout and security supervisor, Gulliver. On his travels he has found you and claims you say you’re from the surface world. Is this true?’ His voice was sophisticated and firm.

‘As far as I’m aware.’ Maple called back, still in the net. ‘Although I can’t guarantee his name is Gulliver, but I guess you’d know that. Can I come out now? I think I’m allergic to nets, my heart is thudding really fast and I feel a little anxious. Might be anxiety actually.’

‘Not yet,’ Po bellowed. ‘We must know you’re not a spy.’

‘A spy? I don’t even have any spy skills. Tell me to sneak somewhere and I won’t even be able to do it-‘

‘True thar is!’ Gulliver interjected.

‘In fact,’ Maple continued. ‘Last Thanksgiving- we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving but that’s what day it was- we were having a family meal, a turkey dinner I think- wait a second, were we celebrating Thanksgiving the whole time and no one told me? Thanks mum… Anyway, I had to go to the bathroom but Uncle Eric was in the hallway and I didn’t want to hear another fake Vietnam story so-‘

‘Just let him out Gulliver! I shall see by looking at him.’ Po shouted over Maple’s story, although Maple kept talking for about a minute before he realised he was being let out.

The Chief pulled Maple up by the arm. The two were flanked by guards with pointed sticks, aimed at Maple’s neck. Both guards were wearing feathers pinned somewhere on their person one in a black shirt, one in white.

Po leaned in close. He was dressed like a skinny cartoon image of Julius Caesar only instead of a white robe it was black and the crown was made up of black feathers.

‘Interesting adornment. Black coat with white undergarment- quite smart. A rope around your neck? Peculiar,’ Chief Po said, examining Maple’s tie. ‘Say, you’re not a member of the Knots, perchance? I won’t tell if you let it slip.’

‘I’m awfully confused,’ Maple answered. ‘I’m not with anyone. I mean I am with someone, I’m getting married today. They’ve closed the city off so I came up here to-‘

‘Why?’ Po demanded. ‘What’s happening below?’

‘I dunno. A bomb threat, I think. Kind of a stupid move on my part I’m realising but-‘

‘Ah. A bomb. I see what’s happening here. You’re attempting to tempt me with news from the war. Well, valiant effort but we’ve got news enough as it is.’

‘News? What war? What are you talking about?’

‘You’ve missed your chance to backtrack now. I heard your offer of fake news. Olive, Maggie, escort him to the cages.’

The guards moved in on Maple. Gulliver stood behind him. Nowhere to run. Maple knew the only other option was to talk. Talk and talk and talk until he figured out a better plan, or failing that just talk forever.

‘Wait!’ Maple shouted. ‘I am a spy! But not from who you think.’

‘No?’ Chief Po looked intrigued. ‘Who are you from?’

Maple thought hard. “Gulliver. Maggie. The Wingspans. The way they’re dressed. All of them have feathers. I get it. So maybe the way it works up here…”

‘The Forest! That’s our gang’s name. Yep. We’re all named after trees, see? That’s why I’m called Maple.’

‘I did not know that was your name,’ Chief Po said, unimpressed.

‘You didn’t?’ Maple scowled. ‘Then why did I- Well never mind that! The important thing is I’m not here to harm you in any way, I’m just spying for… non-harmful reasons. Just to make… alliances. In fact-‘

‘You’re from the surface,’ Po stated.

‘What? No I’m from The Woods-‘

‘Forest.’

‘-and I’ve been sent here to look for help. Our tribe is being threatened by a gang called the… Grasshoppers… they’re making us give them food and if we don’t have enough by the time the last leaf- wait a minute why am I trying to keep up the lie?’ Maple shook his head to clean out the cobwebs. ‘Yes I’m from the surface. What finally clued you in?’

The Chief pointed at Maple’s shoes. ‘We’ve no mud up here yet your shoes are covered in it.’

‘They are?’ Maple looked down at his feet in distress. ‘Axel’s gonna kill me.’

‘You can stand down now Olive, Maggie. See to it Gulliver is rewarded.’ The guards nodded and hurried off to catch Gulliver who had gotten bored and wandered off. ‘Now, we shall talk.’

‘Gladly. Any chance you’ve got a change of shoes?’

2 Hours, 35 Minutes

The Chief’s home was a grey tent the colour of the roof tiles. A taller building provided the back wall of the tent and, as the settlement was between two slightly higher roofs, Maple’s captors were well hidden from the people below.

‘What about windows? Don’t they ever see you?’ Maple asked Po as they entered his tent. ‘There’s some really high buildings in cities these days.’

‘They see us quite often. I imagine we’re nothing more than an anecdote to them, if they’re not too busy to remember us,’ Po replied, opening a tin of beans and pouring it out onto a piece of slate.

‘What about the rooftops with doors on them? Don’t- oh I’ve eaten thanks- don’t people come out and spot you?’

‘We mark those on the maps and avoid them. We lost a good man once. He was captured by a Belower and detained by your policies men.’

‘You mean police men- and women! Although policies officer isn’t a bad name.’ Maple watched in disbelief as Po slurped the entire tin of beans from the slate with no cutlery.

‘So,’ Po said, wiping his mouth with his hand. ‘You surely must have real news. This bomb, is it a threat to us?’

‘Well it might not even be a bomb, to be honest.’

‘I see. Any other news from the war?’

‘Right, see, this is where I’m confused. What war?’

Po exhaled sharply. ‘What war you ask? Come now. The war. The very same war that’s been going on for the last 100 or so years.’

‘The hundred years war? That ended like hundreds of years ago. Everyone got in an ark and they set it on fire. I think.’

‘No, not the hundred years- well in a way yes but not that one. It’s a grand, epic war. You must be familiar. The Great War?’

Maple’s brow descended hard. He opened his mouth to speak but, in an unprecedented turn of events, couldn’t find a single thing to say.

Po waited a moment, expecting something at least from Maple but carried on if only to fill the silence.

‘Surely you’ve noticed the constant conflict down on the surface world?’ he asked, frowning a little himself.

‘World War One- The Great War, I mean, ended a long time ago. We’ve had a sequel since then and I’ve gotta say they really topped the first one, higher stakes, much more memorable villain. Have you not noticed that there’s been no fighting down on the streets?’

‘No fighting? You jest! There’s several skirmishes a week down there, mostly weekends by nightfall, but-‘

‘There’s not a war! Those are just kerfuffles!’

‘Call them what you wish-‘

‘Why do you think the war is still going? Where are you getting this information?’

Po stared deeply at Maple. ‘Look, you may not be a spy but you are still a stranger. I can’t divulge to you our sources. I think it’s best you leave soon, It’s a shame, I thought I’d finally be able…’ He sighed. ‘I thought we might have something here, but you’re just peddling propaganda. I’m sure you yourself believe it too.’

‘Believe it? I live down there! Trust me there’s no war!’

‘That’s enough now!’ Po commanded. ‘You’ve been a fine guest considering we trapped you in a net and I’d like to continue thinking of you as such. No more talk of the war, then. You have your reasons for denying it, but I am interested only in the truth. Now, perhaps you’d like a drink before you go? It rained last night so-‘

‘Chief!’ a woman’s voice called from outside the tent. As she entered Maple saw it was the guard in the black shirt, a black and white feather was pinned to the strap of the satchel she wore. ‘Just got word from the market. Today’s our day. Short notice, I know, but there’s something going on down below that’s causing them issues.’

‘Today?’ Po asked. ‘As in, now, Maggie? We’re undermanned. Ken is away working on bags and Goosey’s been missing for weeks.’

‘I know that!’ Maggie snapped. ‘I live on the same rooftop as you, you know! We’ll have to bring Gulliver along.’

‘It’s just not possible. We can’t take all of us, we need someone to stay here, that leaves us with three. I’m not comfortable crossing the K-line with three.’

‘We’re low on food. Very low,’ Maggie pleaded. ‘It’s not been our turn for weeks. What about that guy?’ Maggie pointed at Maple who pulled a face that would fit nicely on a poster with the caption “Who? Me?”.

‘A stranger guarding our worldly possessions?’ Po scoffed.

‘Well, leave Gulliver behind. Take the stranger,’ Maggie suggested.

‘Gulliver!? Guarding our worldly possessions!?’

‘Oh fine, Olive then. Bring the stranger and the idiot. Then that’s four. It’s not a strong four but it’ll do.’ She paused. ‘If you agree, of course.’

Po thought for a while. He stared at Maple.

‘How about it?’ He finally spoke. ‘A journey to the market, Maple?’

Maple checked his watch quickly. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’ve got time.’

#UT

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tired-history-graduate · 8 years ago

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I finally actually finished the first draft of my first chapter for my novel! It only took a few months, but hey! I don’t know how to start the second chapter, and I’m still not entirely sure on why the characters actually join together, but still, its a start! If you have any criticism (if you read it) feel free to share it with me! I’d prefer constructive criticism, but if you just want to tell me its crap, thats fine! It won’t destroy my self esteem (because I don’t have any anyway!) Most of it is under the cut thingy because its like 3000 words.

It was a relatively average night for a country village. There was a spot of rain, but the kind of rain that struggles to make a person even slightly damp, rain so light it’s almost as if it apologises for each little drop that hits. “Oops, I’m awfully sorry” the rain might say “I really hope I didn’t make a mark.” It’s awfully polite rain. The village, though small, had everything a person could need (as long as that person is a medieval peasant). It had a some stalls to purchase goods, farms to work, a Blacksmith's shop, and the two most important buildings, that would remain a vital necessity for every Christian town, city and village for centuries; a place to worship, and a place to get drunk afterwards.

Candle light could be seen glowing in the church, even though it was in fact completely empty. The tavern, on the other hand, was packed. Of course this shouldn’t be a surprise; drinking is a lot more fun than praying, even the priest and monks agreed. Hell, at a time when even drinking the water would probably kill you, getting drunk was one of the few pleasures people had. And since the water was likely to give you a minor case of death, it was much safer to drink wine and mead, and so getting drunk was just a daily fact of life. The tavern was quite large, with plenty of wooden stools and wooden tables, most of which were occupied by drunken men and women (and some drunken children). The owner, a large bald man with a crooked nose, a large scar along his right cheek from some previous bar fight, but a very welcoming smile, was behind the counter serving people drinks, whilst his two daughters, Camilla and Magdalena, were running about carrying food and collecting the tankards. Camilla was a large woman, with her father's crooked nose, long blonde hair in a bun, and brown eyes. Magdalena was thin, and had her father's welcoming smile, but unlike her sister had brown hair. Both were beautiful in their own way, and both were often the victim of unwanted advances from some of the non-local male patrons, which often didn't end well as Magdalena had a hell of a right hook, and Camilla often used it as an opportunity to pick the man's pocket.

The tavern was often a noisy place. That night was no exception. And one table a drunken coachman was telling tales no sober person would believe, but the men and women at his table were not sober and took him at his word. At the bar itself sat a large drunken monk with a big walrus moustache. He was one of those people that would be incredibly forgettable if it weren't for one single feature. For this monk it was his moustache. It was so memorable that people simply called him Friar Moustache, which he believed to be a term of endearment, but was in fact because not a soul in the village knew his actual name, not even the priest (who was at this point sat next to Friar Moustache resting his head on the bar, drunkenly mumbling incoherently). Friar Moustache was leading a choir of drunken men singing a popular drinking song. There were a lot of harrumph's and ho's, and a great deal of crude language and descriptions of various lewd acts. The only one more enthusiastic about the song than Friar Moustache was an old man, possibly in his early to mid sixties, known to the villagers as Ser Malcolm the White. He looked a bit like a mid-sized bear. Well more accurately, a mid-sized, shaved, pink, often slightly drunk, bear with almost shoulder length curly white hair, a scruffy white goatee, a wrinkled face, and tired eyes. His accent was surprisingly similar to the modern Glaswegian accent. He had once been a knight who fought for glory and honour and place in the history books, but he never won any of those things. All he did was age, and now the only fight he had was the one to get out of bed each morning, which was getting harder every day.

On a table near the back of the tavern sat a young man just holding a tankard. His skin was pale, his eyes were wide, and tired looking. He gazed ahead of him as if he were staring into the abyss itself. This young man was an unfortunate peasant by the name of Glenn, and earlier that day he had died, which was causing him a great deal of distress. Now, many may think ‘well, he doesn’t seem that dead, he seems pretty alive.’ And those who do think that would be correct. He was in fact very much alive.

“Don’t worry, got this this” Glenn had said to the huntsman, as the boar began charging. He did not. You see, longbows require a lot of upper body strength, which weedy, little Glenn didn’t actually possess. Why he had been given a bow by his father, it’s hard to tell. Perhaps his father hated him, which actually seems quite likely; he did have several more capable siblings. He managed to pull the bowstring back only a little before releasing, causing the arrow to travel only a couple of feet in a downward arch until it landed on the ground in front of him, seconds before the boar collided with him, knocking him to the ground. It would have actually been a little funny if he weren’t about to die. The huntsman tried to stab the beast with, but he missed, and the boar narrowly missed him. He immediately decided the best course of action was to run away before he was killed. The beast chased him off a little before turning back towards Glenn. By this point he had managed to get to his feet, but his head was still spinning, and he was very unsteady on his feet. The boar looked more like a monster than anything else now. It looked almost the size of a cow, with huge sword length tusks either side of its incredibly large snout. Of course, it was not in fact that size, or even especially monstrous. It was an average boar, but in his panicked, and dizzy state, his imagination had gone mad. He attempted to stagger away, with little success. He stumbled just as the beast charged at him again, and this time immediately gored by the creature’s tusks. It was a rather unpleasant sight, huge gashes into the poor man’s flesh from the beast’s tusks. Spaghetti sauce or blood gushed out of the wound, covering his shirt. It was probably blood. Either way, it would stain. The world around him began to dim, and the last thing he saw was the bloody beast wandering off back into the forest.

Okay, so it wasn’t the last thing he saw. Not long after, he awoke to find himself still in the forest, and caught a glimpse of the beast’s backside as it wandered off. For a second he froze and held his breath, but when he was sure the boar wasn’t going to charge again, he sat up, and touched him side. He found two large, deep gashes from the boar's tusks on his right hand side that should have killed him as far as he was aware, but there was no blood. He stood up, and looked back to where he had been lying. His eye widened. “Holy mother of god!” he screamed, on the edge of tears. Lying there, at his feet, was him. Well, more accurately, his body. Even more accurately, his very bloody body, with the exact same wounds he had. He stood there, staring at his own corpse for a while, sobbing in a very gross, ugly fashion.

He was disturbed from his silent mourning by the sounds of loud slurping. He turned to see a skeleton in a large black hooded cloak, and bright blue fluffy bunny slippers, drinking something from a ceramic mug covered in little colourful fish. The being was reading a newspaper (of course, Glenn had no idea what a newspaper was, as they wouldn’t be a thing for a few more centuries, he was also mostly illiterate, so it just looked like a piece of paper with squiggles one – which is all anything is really) and hadn’t noticed him. He coughed a little to get the being’s attention, with no success. Whatever they were reading in the paper, they were engrossed in it. The being took another large, loud sip from his fish mug, and spoke. “Hmm, four down, five letters, unpleasantly bitter” said the being in an almost ethereal, other worldly voice. The being reached to put their mug down on a table that wasn’t there. The mug fell to the ground, and smashed. The being looked up from his paper, and down at the broken mug, then looked at Glenn, then back at the mug, then back to Glenn. Now, without an actual face the being couldn’t really provide any facial expression that would suggest just how annoyed they were, but they were incredibly annoyed, and would have scowled at Glenn if possible (which it wasn't). They were so annoyed that they gave of this feeling of deep, intense annoyance, that even the dimmest of people could pick up. “Oh great” said the being sarcastically “another dead mortal, just what I wanted.” Glenn shuffled awkwardly and didn’t say anything. He tried to avoid making eye contact. He didn’t want to make the skeletal being even angrier by saying something stupid. It did not work. “I was happily doing my crossword, drinking my coffee, but you just had to die, didn’t you?” continued the being, slowly becoming less sarcastic, and more openly angry about having been disturbed “bloody mortals, I hate this damned job.” At this, Glenn was confused. “What job?” he inquired “Oh for goodness sake, do I have to go through the entire spiel?” replied the being Glenn shrugged and nodded awkwardly. "It might help a bit" he said. The being groaned at this and would have grimaced if he could have. “Very well. I am Death, claimer of souls, destroyer of worlds, and you died” said Death reluctantly “I’m here for your soul blah, blah blah, take you to the afterlife and all that crap so you can be judged by some jumped up little prick” Glenn just stood there, slightly stunned by the fact that he was talking to death, but also a little underwhelmed. He expected more from Death, though he couldn’t tell you exactly he expected. He definitely would have preferred someone nicer. “That it?” he said after a few moments of silence. “I’ve been doing this for a while buddy, and honestly I can’t be arsed with this” replied Death tiredly. They stood in silence for a few minutes. Glenn wasn't sure what to say to this eternal cosmic entity. Death was beginning to think they should have listened to their mother and become a butcher (though in a way, being the grim reaper isn't all that much different to being a butcher, at least, that was what he had said to her).

“So, mister Death, sir” began Glenn ending the awkward silence. “Now listen here mate” said Death, interrupting the recently dead person “I am a skeletal cosmic freaking entity that exists outside of space and time, I really do not have the time for the restrictive genders of you mortals” “Oh, right, sorry” responded the recently deceased Glenn “you could be a bit nicer about it though, I have just died!.” He gestured to his still warm body, that was lying in a pool of his own blood, and was being pecked at by a bird that looked a bit like a raven, though since Glenn knew nothing about birds, especially ravens, he wasn’t entirely certain. “Mate, shut up” said Death “God damned mortals!” "But what now though?" asked Glenn, ignoring Death, "do I go with you? Or am I stuck here?" "Honestly, I don't care mate, do what you want" replied Death exasperatedly "I just want to go back to my crossword, but now I have to deal with all the sodding paper work!" "Could you just let me go back to being alive?" "Not likely, I mean look" Death said as he pointed at the corpse being pecked at what might not have been a raven "you are pretty obviously dead." "Oh, right" responded Glenn gloomily "I understand." "Although" began Death craftily "Although what?" "You could just be mostly dead" "How can I be mostly dead?" asked Glenn confused by the whole situation "Well, you personally are obviously properly dead, but sometimes people are a little bit alive, and in those circumstances, I can let them go back to being alive" "Okay!" responded Glenn excitedly. "And thankfully there is no paperwork because you were alive" continued Death happily, using his skeletal fingers to do air quotes around the word alive "plus I don't have to deal with you anymore, so go on back." Glenn nodded and followed Death's orders. He lay down on top of his body, and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, and then winced in pain. His eyes shot open, and he sat up, covered in his own blood, shirt ruined, glad about not having to be dead, but understandably still rather shaken by the whole experiences. "Oh, by the way, don't die again anytime soon, because if you do I'll make you regret it" said Death threateningly before grabbing his newspaper and disappearing.

"Helloo, anyone home" said a woman's voice startling Glenn a bit, causing him to drop him his empty tankard. It was Magdalena. "Ah bollocks" exclaimed Glenn "Watch your language Glenn" responded Magdalena feigning offence "Sorry Maggie, I was someplace else" explained Glenn "No worries sweetie" she said reassuringly "is everything okay? You look like death." Glenn reached for his side. His shirt was still a little damp with his blood. It was probably some sort of health and safety violation for him to be in the tavern, but they didn't have health and safety, which should explain a great many things, like why there were so many things that could end your life prematurely. "Its..err..I'm fine?" he replied, though it came out as if he were asking a question. "Oh that's great sweetie" said Magdalena, completely uninterested, she wasn't really paying attention. The tavern was busy and Glenn was one of those people who you could easily forget about. She grabbed his tankard and got back to work.

The singing had all but come to an end, even Ser Malcolm had stopped. The only one still singing, if you could call slurring most of the words and forgetting the others singing, was Friar Moustache. He was swaying a little one his stool and swinging his arm about, seemingly forgetting he was still holding a half full mug of mead. His big finish came, and he leant back on his stool and toppled over, flinging his mug into the air, which quickly came crashing down onto the head of another drunken patron. "oi, Wheresh me drink gone?" slurred Friar Moustache "were in me han!" He struggled to get back up onto his feet. Camilla walked quickly over to see what the commotion, and bent down. "Let me help you Friar" said Camilla. He smiled at her a great big stupid drunken grin. "Yur a riight goodun" he replied taking her hand and letting her pull him up. "You need to go home Friar" said the owner in a thick almost Lancashire accent from behind the counter "You've had a bit much mate." “Iamsickofyourshit,” Moustache said, his words tumbling from his mouth in a rush of barely distinguishable syllables. The owner nodded to his daughter, and a couple of his larger, more sober patrons, who grabbed the drunken holy man, and tried to escort him calmly out. “Gerroff me!” he said. “I’m ash sober ash ‘m gonna git. And nuffink I - wait wait wait - nuffink you can do ‘boutit.” He shook free of their grasp, and ambled back to the bar without so much as hiccup in their direction. The owner was much less polite after the first attempt. "Just carry him out" he ordered a couple of patrons. "Gerroff! I'm a man o cloth" objected Friar Moustache "I'ma have words with god if ya don't gerroff." The ignored him, and carried him through the tavern, whilst the other patrons simply ignored what was pretty average for a Sunday evening.

They carried him through the door and dropped him on the ground. "Sorry Friar" said one of the men who had been carrying him. The friar rolled over and struggled to get up, but refused to any offer of help from those who had just chucked him out. "Itsh fine, gerroff" he said "I can do it meself." The men looked at one another, shrugged and went back inside. The friar climbed back onto his feet and stumbled forward. He grabbed a wooden hitching post for support. He clung there, slack-jawed and slumped over, for a long time before he began staggering away from the tavern towards the church. He was planning to have a bit of holy wine before heading to bed. It was dark, and the polite rain had become proper rain. He was drunkenly mumbling angrily to himself about having been thrown out of the tavern. He was insistent that he wasn't that drunk, even though he was barely able to stand, or string a sentence together.

As he approached the midway point between the tavern and the church he noticed a very bright, almost blinding light out of the corner of his eye. He turned, and walked towards the light. "Whasis? Whas goin on?" he exclaimed, though still slurring his words "Lord is tha you?" Friar Moustache walked into the light, and fell backwards with a loud 'oof' "Watch where you're going, drunk prick!" yelled a feminine voice, coming from the light, as it seemed to float round the friar and wandered towards the edge of the village. Moustache sat there for a minute, his mouth agape, shocked. After a few minutes of watching the light float away, he drunkenly climbed up onto his feet, looked towards the church, then at the tavern, then at the church again, made the sign of the cross, then staggered back towards the tavern.

#my writing #ramblings of a personal nature #writing #I don't know if anyone wants to read it #but ah well

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