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wroteclassicaly · 1 year

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Summary: Two years. You never drive far anymore, you don’t linger outside of your new city limits. Because how can you drive into the desolate life you once had? Then again, Hawkins and its story book tragedies have a way of bringing you back for more. A mangled marriage, an abandoned two story, and a loved one in turmoil, it finally brings you back home.

Parings: Eddie Munson x Female Reader

Warnings: Language, shitloads of angst, mentions of major health trauma (it’s heart related, so be warned before reading, as I don’t want to trigger anyone), that angsty angst, but with a happy ending, & obvious smut/nsfw content that will appear later in the story!

A/N: Sneak peek/teaser into my new series, and the first one I’m publishing for this fandom — That House In Indiana (inspired by Ethel Cain’s ‘A House In Nebraska’. Lyrics below that I obviously don’t own) There will be a happy ending, so don’t worry! I’ve also drawn off myself for the situation with Wayne, based off what happened to my own dad. It’s pretty rough, but Wayne will be okay — I promise! He has a health crisis in this that might trigger some people, so please DON’T read if you know it’ll upset you! And let me know what y’all think if you do read, please and thank you? ❤️💘❤️💘

February 1st, 1990

~*~

Labored breaths and bed sores, sing it to me all day long

When the aching sound of silence used to be our favorite song

You and me against the world, you were my man and I your girl

We had nothing except each other, you were my whole world

Then the day came and you were up and gone

And I still call home that house in Nebraska

Where we found each other on a dirty mattress on the second floor

Where the world was empty, save you and I

Where you came and I laughed, and you left and I cried

Where you told me even if we died tonight, that I'd die yours

~*~

Shaking hands with chipped polish of a once fresh manicure, now worried down from alternating chewed grinds between chattering teeth and trembling lips, stained with overflowing salt — switch to a tight grip around a faded leather steering wheel, the cracking leather mingling with that of rustling denim. Scattered neon pink chips spray nail beds, making you twitch with the need to placate that urgency in your guts that pummels the muscles, seizing those in your eyes to force you to glance at where the gold band used to sit, used to distract you so perfectly. You were sure that you’d gotten over that. Funny what delusions the mind can bank on to get you through destruction and pain. You sniffle upon a jagged exhale, breath coming out choppy and overused.

Your body feels stuck to the seats, melted into a frozen statue. You really don’t want to be you, to think. Hell, your thoughts border on everything they shouldn’t, all the what-ifs, the blames, past tragedies, and your wishes that if this was the end result — maybe it would’ve been better if you died that night in the Spring of 1986. Long drives that aren’t in line with the simplicity of five minutes, you’d avoided for the last two years. Four hours from your one bedroom townhouse in Illinois to a hotel room in your hometown of Hawkins, Indiana — you’re a prisoner to your psyche.

You’ll see your crumbling dream in the form of white plaster, broken wood planks, and rotten rose bushes, frosted across shattered glass windows — ones you had stewed over for days on what color would look the best for curb appeal, and a large for sale sign in the front yard that was once littered with the cars of friends and loved ones. That very same home, the one you had shaped with your partner, that curly haired, doe eyed boy that you first met when he gave you money to pay for the groceries you couldn’t quite afford when you were fifteen, unbeknownst to you that it was his last five dollars, but he gave it to you because he knew you needed it more. He’d be fine as long as you were. You don’t have to try to embrace every whisper his hands had gifted your skin with. Your walls are gone, body ripped open and bare for the entire town you’d left behind two years ago.

The scenery is starting to fill in, barren trees near bloom. Maybe an early Spring, you can’t be sure? Your tires click against wet asphalt when you turn, splashing water on the chrome body of your car as you head into the embankment of treetops that glow, entwined into an arch that blankets the road in charcoal shadows. You manage to raise your hand to hit your windshield wipers, crystal clearing in a thick smear. Your sclera, however, floods over, lashes sticking to raw under eyes, puffy and exerted. You swallow harshly around a raw and wet throat, foot accelerating the gas pedal. You have to get there.

You haven’t slept since you heard his voice, your ears floating into a familiar peak, a swell of overwhelming longing stealing every ounce of breath from your lungs, trapping your diaphragm beneath whimpers not cried. You knew right away that something wasn’t okay. He called for the first time in years, he was in the place of his uncle, your confusion palpable as you hadn’t expected the youth for the familiarity of your weekly calls with his own family. You could hear his deep voice, raspy and shrouded in painful storms unmatched. Your body was like a dead weight, fingers struggling to hold onto the receiver, tone a mere whisper, one that felt like broken glass being dragged out through your windpipes.

“What’s wrong, Eds?”

“He… I, Y/N—“ Like a plea that was too silent to fully find its vessel, his voice became caked with an ocean of tears, thick like the swamps of isolating despair.

You’d almost resorted to begging, but you had known, even then, Eddie always took his own path to processing grief. Resisting an instinctual soothe towards him was like rejecting the air that earth offered you.

Your fingers prickled in an uncomfortable heat, numb and dulled, tongue heavy and choking you. The same as that night you awaited to hear whatever horror Hawkins had dropped into your lives once more.

“It’s Wayne.” There was an eerie quietness as Eddie had caught up with himself and moved forward enough to inform you. You couldn’t have stopped the gasping cry that left your mouth if you’d taped it shut.

He’d wanted nothing more than to reach through the phone and take you into his arms, needing to remember what the heartbeat of another human felt like, more specifically — his human. But you weren’t, you hadn’t been, and he wasn’t calling you to tell you that. You loved his uncle like a father. Having to break this news, to lay a layer of pavement over your spirit and let it dry, driving over it to forget, Eddie guiding your heart into another turmoil — it made him want to attempt to dislocate his own jaw.

“What about Wayne? Please tell me what’s going on?” You lost every piece you’d mangled together, helpless to their violent disappearance.

Eddie had trembled as he sighed, shaky and worn. “He had a heart attack a few hours ago.”

Your organ had begun to lose traction, beating sporadically that you were sure some of your bones had been reduced to ash beneath the forceful erratic rhythm. Leaving behind everything but your shoes, coat, keys, and purse, you were already at your front door, phone cord stretching with you. “I’m coming home. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Yeah. Kay. I’ll be here.” Eddie sounded lost, that light he’d accumulated in his lifetime, part of it was dimming. He couldn’t lose the one person that had been with him his whole life. You were already gone. This would devour him whole.

You sit up straight in your seat, the action causing your back to crack. You take a few deep breaths, engrossed in the glossy branches in your sky view, thunder roaring in the distance, your vehicle approaching the clearing and ready to hit that final road that will take you home.

~*~

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remembertheplunge · 4 months

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Martin and I visit New York City. Blog 3 of this series .

Continuing with 7/31/2011

7/31/2011 Sunday 11:54am

Greenacre Park. “A private park for public use.”

No cameras, no exercising, no kids and no pets except on a leash. There is a snack bar where they sell hot apple cider. NO ALCOHOL SOLD THERE.

It’s like a haven from the rest of 51st street.

MAC’s up showering. He feels better. His jangled body loosens.

Greenacre park is a good place to be just pre the World Trade Center (WTC) visit. There is a soothing waterfall int the park. A tribute to the WTC.

Sunday is a good day to visit the WTC. What were they all doing July 31, 2001, the people who died on 9/11/2001 at ground zero?

We were all 10 years younger.

Greenacre Park is also a nice place to think about my late partner Jim.

The ubiquitous, iconic, New York City water towers are visible from the park.

It’s kind of nice being in a place where photographs and exercise are not allowed. They are, in their own way, invasive.

This NYNY visit is not so much about running around and doing as it is about be.ing. Greenacre Park is perfect. A healing place.

It’s loud enough here because of the waterfall that it drowns out the city sounds. You can’t talk on the phone. It inspires and enforces contemplation. “My time”.

7 minutes to 2 pm

Martin beautifies. I sit by the air conditioner watching sun bathers on an adjacent roof top. “New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York” the radio rambles.“Sleepy's Mattress Sale! “One of the comedians made fun of it last night. I thought He made Sleepy’s up! “Sleepy’s, the mattress of professionals.”

7/31/2011

9:14pm EST

Dark again. The taxi dropped us at ground zero (WTC). What is this? A mistake? Nothing there but tomb stones, an old church and big fences. And a half way finished new tower. A foreign man kept asking me “Is this all there is? Is this 9/11?”

10:28pm

MAC’s back. Breaking Bad’s on.

11:57pm

MAC and I just walked back from McDonald’s. It was sprinkling and cool/warm. MAC ordered food, but, didn’t eat

We were going to go to the Empire State Building after dark. He sleeps now.

My body aches, knees and arms. What’s wrong? Instead of working out, we walked around ground zero. The biggest acknowledgement of what happened at ground zero on 9/11/2001 is the ancient church cemetery across the street from ground zero. It stands as a silent soldier saying “this is what happened. This happened." And jets flew "through" the buildings as we stood there. Haunting. People at ground zero today talked and thought and inquired.

Then we taxied to the High Line elevated walking trail. MAC loved it. The plants. The buildings.

Then, back to the Pod Hotel for a rest.

Oh, MAC and I then went up on the Pod roof and looked around at the view from there of the City."

End of entry

Greenacre Park is located at 217 E 51st Street, New York, NY.

The Tower built to replace the WTC twin towers is called One World Trade Center . It was completed in 2014.

The September 11, 2001 attacks, per Wikipedia, were four coordinated Islamist suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States. Four jets were high jacked. Two were flown into the World Trade Towers. One was flown into the Pentagon. And one, flight 93, was forced by passengers to crash in Pennsylvania. A movie called “Flight 93” later came out about the events that transpired that day.

Breaking Bad was a TV series that MAC loved. It was about an all American White family that got heavily involved in drug manufacturing and sales. It was outrageous and fun at the same time.

#7/31/2011 #World Trade Center #World Trade Center Ground Zero 9/11/2001 #The Winter Garden New York City #The High Line New York City #Greenacre park New York City #No phone #kids #cameras or exercise foster contemplation in Greenacre park #Breaking Bad

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radiationgroove · 1 year

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Day to Day

I can finally share my piece for the second volume of the @falloutghoulzine Greetings from Gecko! Much like the first, the second volume was a dream to work on. We'll be having our extras sale soon, so watch this space! Be sure to give this some love over on AO3 too!

It’s almost impossible to pin down what Carol could be daydreaming about. The possibilities, Greta learned long ago, were nearly endless.

Most of the time it was Gob and whatever troubles he was in. The young visitor from Vault 101 to the Northwest told Carol that instead of Gob exploring the world, he’d landed himself in some scummy little dive bar well outside the city. Carols’ mind raced with possibilities: Gob somehow owned this bar, or he was the life of the party, the bartender everyone loved, or was this something more sinister? The Vault Dweller seemed to choose their words too carefully. Was Gob in trouble? Danger? Did he need rescuing? Those fugues were broken with bouts of nostalgia; Greta spent countless nights listening half-heartedly to stories about Gob and the years Carol spent with her adopted son.

Sometimes she was trapped in thought and wandering centuries in the past. Those were the days Greta tiptoed around her partner, keeping any outside noise in their little hotel to a minimum the best she could. Those were also the days that more often than not began with Carol waking in the middle of the night gasping for air. She whimpered, sobbed, dropped her head into her hands and cried for her Daddy. Greta couldn’t imagine what Carol saw; her ghoulification had come after the Great War when she was old enough to understand what was going on. Carol watched herself fall apart unprepared.

It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Carol to just be sad. She drifted about the hotel like a ghost, face soft and distant. Greta caught her staring at the hallway painting in its gilded frame. Greta knew, once, who painted it, what it was called, but that had since been lost to time. These particular bouts of melancholy were sometimes too much for Greta and too hard to break. She spent longer on her smoke breaks, or tucked away in her kitchen. At the end of the day, separation was best for both of them.

Greta hid behind her interactions, her abrasion. She didn’t hold back when it came to the quality of her food (for the few tender-stomached smoothskins that managed to linger in their doorway, anyway), or her malice towards Azrukhal and the not-so-friendly competition his bar held across the hallway. Her patience for indecisiveness was thin; you either knew what you wanted at Carol’s Place or you got the hell out. Free time was spent concocting something new to put on the menu, or at least make something more than palatable.

She didn’t really do “friends”. At the end of the day all she needed was Carol and the little life they’d carved out with each other at Underworld. They’d been together so long it was hard to imagine a day spent without the other. Sometimes, though she wouldn’t admit it aloud, she wondered if they stayed this way because they always had been.

But, of course, that was nonsense. Love was a rare commodity in the Wasteland, and to have a love that lasted as long as theirs had was rarer still.

Carol’s Place was quiet today. A few of their friends and neighbors wandered in for breakfast and lunch, but the hours ticked by quietly. Tulip stopped by briefly on her break for the special (nothing at all was “special” about the special) and to drop off her copy of Paradise Lost for Carol to thumb through. Even their full-time boarder, Mister Crowley, made himself scarce with little fanfare. It was quiet, and Greta was glad for it.

Lost in the depth of her thoughts, Carol stood at the side of the bed she shared with Greta. She slipped a grimy pillow into a slightly less grimy pillowcase and fluffed. And fluffed. She fluffed again for good measure and centered the pillow on the bed. She bent to tuck the sheets into the mattress and smoothed the comforter over top…and paused.

She was young again, a slip of a thing, all of twenty-six. Carol woke early that morning with the intention of going into town for…who knew? A day of shopping, of selfish consumerism? Sight-seeing, maybe, a stroll through the streets of Washington, DC and take in the Halloween storefronts? Either way, Carol was planning on looking her best. Every blonde lock was tucked perfectly in place. Though her father said she didn’t need it, that she was beautiful as she was, she did her makeup, balancing a face that was all high cheekbones and a strong jawline. Carol smoothed the sheets and comforter over the crisp corners of her bed. It was shaping up to be a beautiful October day. The grandfather clock downstairs in the foyer struck nine o’clock in the morning with distant gong. Her father came barreling into the house, slamming the door behind him.

Father sped to the bunker. Chaos was still in the process of erupting around them. The streets didn’t feel any busier than normal, but people were pouring out of homes with duffle bags and suitcases. Sirens blared high above the city. The longer the sirens sounded, the faster her father drove. A crowd began to gather around the public fallout shelter; the car had barely stopped before Carol was commanded to run. Her father wasn’t far behind.

Until he wasn’t.

Another siren. Carol stopped only a moment, turning back to check on him. A mother, a woman barely older than herself, was struggling with her twin toddlers and new baby. Her father stopped to help, to gather the children in his arms. An explosion shook the ground beneath her feet. A flash of light blinded her. Someone grabbed her arm; she screamed. The shelter door closed behind her and the survivors were plunged into darkness.

It was too quiet. Greta wondered if this was what parents talked about before the Great War; if the children were quiet, there was usually trouble. Wiping her hands on the apron tied about her waist, Greta peeked around salvaged hospital dividers and down the little hallway. Carol remained frozen at the corner of their bed.

“Carol?” Greta murmured, stepping slowly down the hall. Carol startled. “Hon, you okay?” It broke Greta’s heart that the woman she’d spent decades with was so distant.

When they emerged once again, blinking into the sunlight, Carol was face to face with the blackened shape of her father scorched into the wall. She was sick all over the ground. The survivors from the shelter staggered about while DC burned. She just followed her feet forward. Always forward. The Museum of History, a place she treasured visits with her father, a place that would eventually become known to the Wasteland at large as “Underworld,” became a sanctuary. Then it became a home.

It wasn’t until her skin began to peel that she knew there was a problem. Great chunks of it sloughed off all over. Carol spent panicked mornings in the museum restroom examining the changes; what sort of twisted puberty had the bombs brought? Then it was her hair. Her beautiful blonde hair was falling out fistfuls at a time. Between losing her hair and staring at a face full of exposed muscle, it was a wonder Carol didn’t lose her mind as so many did in those first few years.

Carol blinked slowly. Greta didn’t look like Greta for a moment, just a mess of missing skin and clumps of hair that turned her stomach. It was like looking in the mirror in those early days when she was in pain and her body was falling apart. Panic swelled in her chest.

“Hey…hey, you’re okay.” Greta kept space between them for fear of startling Carol further. She lingered some feet away from the bed. To Carol, “okay” couldn’t be further from the truth.

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and eventually there was nothing Carol could do to stop the floodgates. They rolled down her cheeks unbidden. Her lips quivered and tension she didn’t know she was holding her shoulders released. Greta sighed and finally closed the gap between the two of them. Carol sobbed as she buried her face in Greta’s neck.

Helplessness was Greta’s least favorite feeling. More than anger, more than disgust, more than malice, it was helplessness. She couldn’t help Carol, not in any way that made a difference as far as she was concerned. All she could do was hold her. Greta carded her fingers through Carol’s hair while peppering her face with kisses.

They sank into the freshly made bed, Greta pulling Carol into her lap. Across the desk, the door opened. The quiet creak was enough to draw Greta’s attention away. Winthrop stood in the doorway and suddenly felt very awkward. He wasn’t sure if it was because of Carol’s tears or…no it was definitely Greta’s glare penetrating into his soul that made him turn tail and close the door behind him.

What had he come here for? Whatever it was he needed could wait.

The breath slowly returned to Carol’s lungs. The trembling deep in her shoulders and the knot in the pit of her stomach lessened. Her grip on Greta relaxed. Tears still rolled uneven tracks down her cheeks, but Carol was coming back into her body and her mind. Soon all they heard was the buzz of fluorescent lighting overhead and their own soft, synchronized breathing.

“Carol? You with me?”

“...Yeah. Yeah, I’m here, Greta”

“Good.”

Greta pressed barely-there kisses to Carol’s forehead and stroked the back of her arm. “Do you need anything?”

Carol sniffled and wiped her eyes and nose with the back of her hand. “No, I don’t think so.”

Another moment of long silence; Greta wasn’t going to pry as to what had brought this on. The options flipped through her mind once again: Gob, her ghoulification, just because? It was impossible to know what made Carol sad.

All Greta knew is that her girl needed her.

#fallout 3 #Carol #Greta #Carol and Greta #Rad Writes

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dollsonmain · 5 months

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New "houseperson" job posting from the Casino. I'd prefer that to cleaning the individual rooms, really. The part where it says you have to clean out the ash trays puts me off applying more than anything else. I don't want to work around smokers.

"Reports problems and safety issues to supervisor" could have been ONE bullet point, not added to almost every bullet point AND it's own bullet point.

Uses daily checklist to direct and record activities

Inspects entries including: door mats, trash cans and cigarette urns to ensure cleanliness standards have been met. Cleans and reports any problems to supervisor.

Maintains cleanliness of Lobby, sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, dusting, picking up debris and trash, emptying trash cans.

Cleans assigned public hallways, policing for trash and/or debris; vacuums and dusts hallway furniture and fixtures and washes corridor windows on schedule. Reports problems and safety issues to supervisor.

Greets guests in hotel public areas as they are encountered, always smiling and conveying positive hospitality standards.

Assists with setting and arranging conference rooms in preparation for events and meetings, according to Sales department specifications. Cleans room(s) after each day’s use.

Cleans Public restrooms and maintains room supplies.

Maintains cleanliness of Pool area, reports problems to supervisor or Maintenance as appropriate to property standard. Is there a pool on property?

Uses floor machine to scrub tile floors and uses floor wax to polish floor after application.

Uses carpet machine to clean carpeting and remove stains

Cleans, vacuums, dusts and empties trash cans in staff offices. Also maintains cleanliness and supplies for Employee Break Area as may be assigned to include wipe down, sweeping, mopping, emptying trash and re-stocking.

Delivers clean linens and collects/removes soiled linen.

Re-stocks Housekeeping storage closets as needed

Makes up cribs and rollaway beds (along with room attendants) after use and prior to storage

Delivers Housekeeping supplies as instructed.

Assists Housekeeping staff with movement of heavy items such as mattresses.

Responds quickly and courteously to guest requests. Follows up to ensure guest satisfaction.

May be required to clean rooms as may be necessary.

Provides a professional image in appearance and behavior at all times.

Follows all company policies and procedures and actively participates in all hotel meetings, task forces, training and programs.

Thoroughly familiar with Emergency Procedures.

Familiar with HAZCOM as related to position. Follows all chemical and equipment safety handling procedures.

Always alert for Security and Safety issues and hazards and reports same immediately to supervisor.

.... jfc that's a lot to expect one person to do.

The only thing I really can't do is using the floor buffer. My back can't take the side-to-side motion which is why I had "no mopping" on my permanent profile in the army.

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eponastory · 9 months

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@pizzalover8969

I come bearing gifts!

Marlene

If there was an award for the worst credit score ever, it would go to Dante. Not that he needed good credit to get what he wanted anyway, but it did help his chances. If there was negative credit, that was where his was. That did not matter because he found someone with a really good sale going on.

Two hours of talking to a sleazy car salesman later, he drove out of the parking lot with a very old red Dodge Caravan.

He got it for the rock bottom price of one thousand dollars. Which covered the price of the state of the art sound system from the early 2000s. It even had a CD player. Oh, and a tiny disco ball hanging from the rear-view mirror. There were some dents in the doors. The biggest one was on the driver's side, where he could not get the door open. That was not a problem. He could dive in through the window.

The seats were gray with some brown stains on them from soda or something else entirely. He was not going to really think about it. But it was clean. It smelled good even though there was the faint smell of pot and cigarette smoke still lingering in the AC. Overall, it had potential.

Oh, and it came with a built-in cat bed. Cat included.

Actually, the cat had been living in there for a while since one of the rear windows had a decent sized hole in it. That knocked five hundred dollars off the price. Overall, Dante was pretty happy with his purchase.

Now, he did not have to worry about spending money on hotels for jobs that took him away from home. Nope, he was going to rip out those back seats and throw a mattress back there. He even thought about adding in a little refrigerator in there for cold drinks. It was a solid plan.

Really, he had the ability to sleep anywhere, but he wanted a damn mattress to sleep on.

So that was that.

The best thing about the van... was the sound of the engine. It purred like a charger. That was because someone actually put a refurbished charger engine under the hood. Oh yes, it was a muscled up minivan that roared like it was going out of style. He had to have it.

And it was in his favorite color.

How lucky could he get?

Now, all he had to do was pop a few decals on it, tear out those seats, and name the cat. The cat was not leaving without a fight, so it stayed. Doing all of that took less than an hour. Well, except naming the cat.

"What is this piece of shit doing here?" And there it was. The voice that always had something to say. "Oh no... this can't be his." He popped his head out of the back of the van as he was adjusting the mattress in the back. "Dante, are you for real right now?" It was Lady.

"As real as my new baby." He smiled wide as he hopped out and patted the exterior of the van. "You like her?"

"Her?" Lady looked at him in shock as he stood next to his new pride and joy. "You named this hunk of junk?"

"Hey, you're gonna hurt Marlene's feelings if you don't stop calling her names." He caressed the chipped red paint as though it were his one true love. He was only doing it to get a rise out of Lady anyway. "It's okay, Marlene, I'll make the mean lady apologize." The absolute shock on the huntresses' face at how outlandish Dante was being had him close to breaking down in laughter. "See, you hurt her feelings."

"Dante, cut the bullshit." She fell into a dead stare and crossed her arms. He could not help himself.

"Lady, do you see any bulls out here?" Her buttons were easy to push at this point as he held his arms out, motioning to the street around them.

"Ugh... you're infuriating!" And that was when she gave up. Stomping away like a teenager after being picked on by an older sibling. "I'm going to Starbucks!"

"Hey, can you get me a pumpkin spice latte?" He asked as she walked away, but instead, she just threw her middle finger up in the air. "I guess not." Dante turned his attention back to the red van with a smile. "She'll come around."

Once everything was in place and the black cat affectionately given the name of 'Lulu', the van was ready for its first job. The only problem was that there were no jobs. It had been a bit dry in the gin and tonic department, too.

There was Vergil.

Bad idea. Vergil would not set foot or ass in Marlene.

Trish?

Nah, she was likely to throw the van at him for even asking.

Nero.

Nero could use a little bit of a night out. He happened to be in town, doing who knows what. It was the perfect night, too, because there was a band playing at one of his local haunts.

He even bought a new pair of shades to wear while cruising around in Marlene. Putting them on, he climbed in through the window and started up the engine. The grin on his face when the beautiful beast under the hood roared to life only grew wider. Yes, this was a very good buy.

"Let's rock, Baby!" He turned the music on, playing 80s rock. It was a good thing he kept all of those CDs from the 90s.

As he rode down the street with the windows down and a terrified cat curled up in the bed behind his seat, he sang to Metallica. That was when he spotted Nero walking down the sidewalk with his hands in his pocket. That was also the moment that 'Don't Stop Believing' came on.

It was time to embarass the shit out of his nephew.

Dante hung his head out of the window as he sidled up to the curb, singing loudly. Every word sung really loud and surprisingly not off key, but it was enough to stop Nero in his tracks.

"Get in Loser! We're going bar hopping!" The look on the kid's face was somewhere between confused and embarrassed. Just like the day Dante told him Vergil was his old man. Ah, memories.

"What the hell is this?" The younger man motioned to the red van that Dante was practically hanging out of as he parked. "You going through a midlife crisis or something?"

"Nope, just taking an idea from you." He pulled his sunglasses down to look the kid in the eyes. "I couldn't pass up a good deal."

"What do you call a deal these days? Chipped paint and a cracked up engine?" Nero laughed as Dante put the vehicle in park and climbed out of the window.

"I'll have you know, the car was free." He grunted as his feet landed on the ground. "I pretty much paid for the stereo system, and the cat was free too."

"Cat?" He nodded at the younger man as he reached back into the van, pulling out a black cat who was growling.

"Meet Lulu, my newest employee." Dante scratched the irritated cat under the chin, only to recieve a bite. "Okay, let me just put that back in there. She doesn't like to be disturbed." He gently put the cat back in the van.

"I don't even know what to say." Nero could not believe what he was seeing. Or why he was even seeing it. As a matter of fact, he was not even sure he was in the same reality at that moment. Sure, Dante could be a bit... out there... but this was something else.

"Don't say anything and get in the van." Dante set his shades back up on the bridge of his nose as he hopped back into the driver's seat.

"I'm going to regret this." There was no point in resisting. Nero sighed as he walked around to the passenger side and got in. At least the door opened on that side. "It smells like weed in here."

"Shhhhhh... just sit back and enjoy the ride."

#yes dante named his minivan marlene but we can change it #dante makes people lose their minds with his antics #humor #devil may cry #dante #dmc #fanfic #devil may cry fanfiction #dante sparda #devil may cry 5 #nero #Lady is done with Dantes BS #pizzalover8969

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dtaylor67 · 1 month

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The Role of Luxury Hotel Mattresses in Elevating Guest Experience ?

In the competitive hospitality industry, the comfort and satisfaction of guests are paramount. One of the most crucial elements contributing to a memorable stay is the quality of the bed. Luxury hotel mattresses play a significant role in elevating the guest experience, ensuring that every night spent at the hotel is a restful and rejuvenating one. At Respa Beds, a leading provider of luxury beds in Ireland, we understand the importance of a high-quality mattress for hotel beds. Here’s how luxury hotel mattresses can enhance the guest experience.

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sisterspooky1013 · 2 years

Text

Nuptiae Sub Rosa, Ch 25

Rated X | Read it here on AO3

On the one-year anniversary of when we posted the first chapter, we bring you a bonus chapter to this story that means so much to us both. Thank you to every single one of you who has taken the time to read it. We appreciate you more than you know. - @xfmaweezy & SisterSpooky1013

Scully leans her head against the doorframe and closes her eyes, letting the warmth of the desert wind rush over her cheeks. They spend half of the year chasing the sun and the other half avoiding it, criss-crossing north to south with the changing seasons and east to west with the changing months. It’s somewhat arbitrary, but the routine of it makes their nomadic life feel just a little bit predictable. Maybe she doesn’t know what small town they’ll call home this November, but she knows it will be south of possible snowfall and not so far east that they’ll spend more than four days in the car getting there.

Four days in the car, four weeks in one location, four months before they trade in their vehicle for something new. Four years of living her life in sets of four with no end in sight. She pulls in a deep, arid sigh and rolls her head across the seat back to look at Mulder.

He shaved this morning, which was a pleasant surprise, and he’s been drumming his fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of the music like he used to when their time in the car took them from hotel to crime scene, or airport to home. He glances over at her and pops his eyebrows suggestively, then reaches across the console and squeezes her knee.

“Almost there,” he says reassuringly, and she offers him a weak smile.

Even on the days she hates him for leading her to this life, she still loves him very best of all. Still reaches for him across king size mattresses, still grabs his hand on crowded sidewalks, still chooses him over white picket fences and HOA meetings. He is the only viable choice.

Las Vegas

Next Exit

She quirks her head and looks back over at him, finding a little smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. They typically avoid tourist attractions after spotting Holman and Sheila Hardt at the Grand Canyon, thankfully too distracted by keeping their boisterous six-year-old away from the rim to recognize the former agents who played a large role in their eventual union.

“Vegas, Mulder?” she asks him, curious and surprised.

“Sin City, Scully,” he says brightly, his hair whipping in the wind. “We can take in a show.”

She smiles at him, bemused. They haven’t attended anything more populated than a county fair in years, and she is skeptical that he’d suddenly change his policy now, but stranger things have happened. At least the food in Vegas should surpass their typical fare in quality, albeit also in price.

She scoots up in her seat as they roll onto the strip, taking in the hordes of tourists interspersed with showgirls and card slappers littering the sidewalks with advertisements for call girls. Vegas during the day is bright and busy, full of youthful charm and holiday novelty. After the sun sinks below the Spring Mountains, however, another side of the city will emerge and bring a more lustful, seedy type of entertainment. Starved for excitement that doesn’t include threat of harm, Scully finds herself feeling buoyant and piqued.

As the day unfolds, Mulder continues to surprise her in ever-increasing layers. He treats her to an expensive lunch and then sends her off with an envelope of cash to buy herself “something nice to wear to dinner.” She wanders The Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian feeling like she’s in a scene straight out of Pretty Woman, though thankfully the sales women are more than happy to take her money and help her find a dress in her size.

She expects that they’ll be staying in one of the run-down, older motels on Fremont, and when Mulder drives up to the mirrored letters of The Cosmopolitan and hands over the car keys for valet, her jaw nearly hits the concrete.

“Who are you?” she asks him playfully. He winds his arm around her waist and whispers, “Fox Mulder, FBI,” in her ear, making her heart ache with nostalgia and joy.

It’s only when they’re standing outside the elevators that she realizes. She looks up at him, her eyes welling with something hopeful that she hasn’t felt in far too long, and he smiles knowingly.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks coyly, and she barks a laugh that echoes off the lobby walls.

“You can kiss me whenever you want. I’m your wife, aren’t I?” she replies cheekily, and he scoops her up off the floor and kisses her like it’s the very first time.

They miss the next two elevators.

Mulder rubs his clammy palms over the tops of his thighs, then checks the interior pocket of his suit jacket for the envelope again. His stomach is in knots, and he’s both delighted and surprised that she can still make him feel this way after so long.

He glances at her over the table, admiring the way the light from the votive candle dances along her cheekbones. She stopped wearing makeup over a year ago, but he supposes she never got rid of it based on the smoky haze around her eyes and the bright berry color on her lips. The dress is—indescribable. Black and tight without being flashy, hugging every gentle curve of her body and falling just above her knee. He knows she isn’t wearing a bra by the way her nipples puckered under the air conditioning when they walked in, and he hopes to find out if she took a similar approach to panties. But those are things to look forward to later—right now he has something more pressing to attend to.

“I can feel you thinking,” she coos, plucking the olive out of her martini and pulling it off the swizzle stick with her teeth.

He pulls in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, then retrieves the envelope, which is now soft around the edges from overhandling.

“Happy anniversary,” he says as he sets it on the table top and slides it across to her.

She narrows her eyes at him, maintaining a skeptical expression as she lifts the flap and extracts a trifolded sheet of paper. His heart begins to pound as she unfolds it and reads it once, twice, three times.

“Farrs Corner, Virginia,” she says, her tone disturbingly neutral. “Have we been there?”

He shakes his head slowly. “Not yet.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” she says, reading the document again. “Who is Allen Utke? And why are you giving me the deed to his house as an anniversary gift?”

“Well, technically speaking he’s one of the founding members of MUFON,” Mulder answers, his throat becoming tight with nerves. “But in this case, he’s me. Or I’m using his name as a pseudonym, anyway, to keep mine off the legal documents.”

She blinks at him, looks at the page again, then back at him. Her expression shifts from confusion to realization, then to something resembling fear.

“You own this house?” she asks quietly.

“We do. What’s yours is mine, et cetera,” he answers.

“Wh—when, how…why?”

He sees the way that a lack of clear information is sending her into a tailspin, and he reaches across the table to grab her hand.

“A few weeks ago,” he says hurriedly. “We still have some connections I was able to leverage, and we’ve known for a while that it’s safe for you to live out in the open. And as to why…I want you to have a home, Scully. And a yard, and a dog, and maybe one of those porch swings. Whatever you want, I want you to have it. It’s been too long since you had a home.”

She picks up her napkin with her free hand, dabbing carefully under her eyes so as not to ruin her makeup.

“I don’t know what to say,” she whispers. “When can we go?”

“We’ll head east when we leave here. We can be there in a few days.”

“Before Thanksgiving?” she asks with a teary smile, charmed by the idea of a real table, and a turkey cooked in an oven, and potatoes that didn’t come from a box.

“Definitely before Thanksgiving,” he answers. “We can invite your mom to come down.”

She looks at him sharply, her chest heaving as she attempts, unsuccessfully, to quell an onslaught of fresh tears. One ragged sob escapes, and then another, and patrons at nearby tables glance over at them before politely averting their eyes.

Mulder stands and comes around to her side of the table, kneeling beside her. She immediately threads her arms around his neck, pulling him close and tight as she whimpers.

“Why did you tell me this in a restaurant?” she admonishes him, but her tone is light and he knows she isn’t angry.

He pulls away a little, brushing his thumbs over her cheeks, which are now streaked with mascara, and smiles at her.

“Sorry, I think I forgot how to give good news,” he says.

She pulls in one more big breath, settling her tears, and pushes her mouth into a closed lip smile.

“Thank you,” she says, and then leans forward and kisses him once on the lips.

She tugs on the ties of the hotel-issue bathrobe, cinching it around her waist. She’s nude underneath, having lacked the forethought to buy something sexy while she was out shopping, and lingerie has never been part of her traveling wardrobe.

Her throat thickens every time she thinks about the house. Their house. A home, finally. The idea of seeing her mom after all these years—it’s the best kind of overwhelming. She knows that if it were up to Mulder, he might just keep running forever out of paranoia and fear. He’s doing this for her, for them, for their future, and while it may be a way of loving someone that’s hard for other people to understand, to her it feels like the purest form of love imaginable.

She exits the bathroom and finds him sitting on the end of the bed, his belt and tie discarded. He straightens up when he hears the door open, looking over at her with a warm smile. As she walks towards him she catches their reflection in the mirror over the desk, and something about seeing him see her feels like she’s watching them through a looking glass, observing from the outside. She leans against the desk, which is situated directly across from him, and stuffs her hands in the pockets of the robe, crossing her legs at the ankle. She heaves a sigh, and his mouth stretches into a grin.

“What?” she asks, quirking her head.

He shakes his head slowly, dragging his eyes from her face to her feet and back up.

“You were so nervous that night, and look at you now,” he says.

“You still give me butterflies, Mulder,” she offers demurely, blushing a little at the thought. All the times he’s caught her off guard, surprised her with his possessiveness or his dominance, sometimes his sweetness.

“Whatcha got on under there?” he asks with a wag of his eyebrows, jutting his chin towards the robe.

“Under here?” she asks, touching the tie. “You’ll have to use your investigative skills to find out, agent.”

His demeanor shifts, his eyes darkening and his shoulders somehow becoming broader. He reaches for her, grabbing her by the hips and tugging her forward so that she’s standing between his knees. She feels blood rush to her pelvis, the sweet anticipation of arousal swelling in her veins.

Mulder lays his palm against the side of her neck, brushing his thumb over her throat. He catches her eye and holds it for a beat, long enough to assert himself as the dominant party in this exchange. She sighs raggedly, and he slides his hand down and across her shoulder, pushing the fabric of the robe to the side.

“No bra strap,” he observes in a level tone. “Could mean no bra, could mean strapless.”

She bites her lip to stifle a smile, and he arches up to press his lips to her clavicle. He kisses a trail down the middle of her chest, nudging the robe aside with his nose as he ventures lower and lower. When he reaches her breastbone, he swipes his tongue across the place where a bra would typically sit, then looks up at her.

“Unless you’re wearing pasties…” he says, drawing the robe to the side with one hand and exposing a breast.

Her nipple puckers under the chill of the open air, and he licks his lips, brushing them back and forth across the stiff bud and making her shiver. He pushes the robe off her shoulders, leaving only the bottom half still secured to her by the tie, and then spends several minutes kissing, licking, pinching and caressing until her knees grow weak and she falters, grabbing onto his shoulders for leverage.

“No bra,” he says, reporting on his findings as he reaches under the robe and rests his hands on the sides of her thighs.

He watches her face as his hands sail higher, and her breath hitches when they slide back and meet with the seams of her ass cheeks, his thumbs swiping over bare flesh experimentally.

“Could be a thong,” he posits.

He runs his palms up and up until his fingers settle into the dimples at her lower back. He smirks, then pulls his hands free and begins to loosen the knot on the tie.

“Conclusion: commando,” he states, letting the robe fall to the floor around her feet.

She watches him as he takes her in, just as much wonder in his eyes as there was in those early days. He turns her around, pressing wet kisses to her back and the tops of her ass cheeks. She looks at their reflection in the mirror, his fingertips on her hip bones and the minky crown of his head appearing and disappearing behind her. She sees her own body, the shimmering slivers of stretch marks on her belly and the once-full swell of her breasts, now slightly fallen.

“Beautiful,” Mulder murmurs, and she sees that he’s peeking out around her, studying her as well. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Scully.”

He tugs her back sharply and she falls against him, sitting heavy on the bed between his legs. He opens his thighs wider to accommodate her, touching the insides of her knees and pushing them out so that she is exposed and accessible to him. She leans back against his chest, her head resting on the front of his shoulder, and again they take in their reflection in the mirror, visible as far as her belly button before the image is cut off by the desk. He runs his hands over her body, his eyes following his hands in the mirror as he palms breasts, belly, thighs. He settles his hand over her vulva, cupping her lightly as he kisses her temple.

“Do you remember this?” he asks, his eyes on the mirror. “The first time I ever made you come?”

She arches into his hand a little, seeking more pressure.

“Yes,” she whispers, needy. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“You wanted it so bad,” he growls, and she feels his erection pressing into her lower back.

“I wanted you,” she tells him.

Their eyes meet in the mirror and his middle finger begins to tease at her opening: soft, barely-there circles that make her whimper. He slides his wetted finger up over her lips and across her clit, and her eyes slide closed.

Sometimes she thinks he knows her body better than she does. She rests her hands on the tops of his thighs as he touches her expertly, his mouth sucking at the skin behind her ear and his fingers slipping up, around, down, in, over and over like a well-rehearsed dance. His other hand finds its way to her breast, rolling and pinching and teasing her closer and closer to the edge. To the place only he can take her, no one else. Not even herself. Not like this.

“Open your eyes.”

He’s looking at her face, at the stitch of her eyebrows and her gasping mouth. She watches the flex of his forearm, feeling but not seeing what those muscles are doing to her. Coaxing, pulling, gathering, bundling her tighter and tighter. One of her arms snakes up, her hand wrapping around the back of his neck as she opens herself up to him, melds her body into his. She feels a telltale tingle, and a low moan rumbles in her chest.

“Mmm, good girl,” he encourages her, and her eyes slide closed again.

It’s slow, languid, overflowing steadily like a cresting river. She’s acutely aware of every sensation: his chest warm against her bare back, his breath hot on her ear, his arms encircling her and his hands—god, his hands. Hands that have cared for her, loved her, teased her, saved her, occasionally hurt her. Hands that always catch her when she falls.

He eases off as she comes down, stroking her swollen lips while she sighs with satisfaction. She opens her eyes again and sees him smiling, proud and coy. She smiles back and they sit like that for minutes, marinating in dopamine and the most exquisitely complicated love.

“Did I ever tell you that for months after, this was what I thought about every time I touched myself?” he asks, one hand on her belly and the other still resting gently over her vulva.

“Not the sex?” she asks, surprised.

Her mind always went first to their middle-of-the-night tryst under the cover of darkness, knowing there was nothing between them. Knowing that a part of him would be left behind inside her. The day after, as they made the journey home to Washington, she forwent a panty liner in favor of feeling the dampness against her skin, getting a little thrill from sitting beside him on the airplane as he leaked out of her for hours. That’s what she thought about when her hand wound its way under the covers in those months and years until she could simply roll over and reach for him instead.

“Well, that too,” he admits, stroking the tops of her thighs. “But there was something about that, making you come with my fingers. I don’t know—don’t take this the wrong way, but I think I was surprised by how easy it was.”

She hums, then slowly sits up. He pulls his hands away from her body and rests them on the bed behind him, propping up his torso as she stands and turns around to face him. She reaches for the top button on his shirt, slowly slipping each one out of its slit until she reaches the bottom, then tugs the shirt free of his slacks.

“I was surprised too, for what it’s worth,” she says huskily, running her hands over his belly beneath his undershirt. “You’re a quick study.”

She pops the button on his slacks, draws down the zipper. His fledgling erection comes back to life, visibly thickening beneath the fabric of his boxers.

“You’re a fascinating subject,” he says in reply, his hips flexing up off the mattress.

She takes a step back, signaling him to stand with a barely noticeable lift of her chin. He follows her direction and she peels his shirt off his shoulders, then pushes his slacks down to his feet as he pulls his undershirt off over his head. She runs her fingers around the perimeter of the waist of his boxers, stepping up close and resting her chin on his sternum as she pushes her hands under the fabric and grabs two handfuls of his ass cheeks.

“Should we turn the lights off?” he asks, and she blinks slowly, rolling her head back and forth in the negative.

She knows it was rhetorical anyway: he likes to watch, and she likes to see the look on his face when he’s watching. The hypnotized swell of his pupils, the slack of his jaw: his pleasure is her aphrodisiac, a cyclical loop of taking and giving that is prone to leave them both limp-limbed and breathless.

His boxers land at his feet, and she reaches for his shoulders, guiding him back down to sit. She steps into the space between his legs and he reaches for her, cupping her chin and pulling her lower lip down with his thumb. She sucks his finger into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it as his cock jumps in her periphery.

She lowers herself slowly to her knees, the change in position shifting her back into a submissive stance. Not that she can’t suck him off when she’s in charge, and in fact she often does. But today, he pushes one hand into her hair along her occiput and grips the base of his cock with the other, bouncing the head against her closed mouth as she slides her hands over the tops of his thighs. She parts her lips slowly, slipping her tongue out to provide a slippery surface for his play. When she tastes the salted slick of his precum, she opens her mouth and takes him in until he butts up against the back of her throat.

He lets out something between a gasp and a moan, moving both hands to the sides of her head as she bobs up and down. He doesn’t push her, doesn’t force himself deeper than she’s ready for, but it still feels possessive and commanding. She flashes her eyes up to him and a throb sets off between her legs at the look on his face, those lust-drunk eyes and his tongue flexing in his mouth. Her fingernails dig into his flesh and she increases her pace until he stops her, pulling her away gently with panting breath.

“Too good,” he says appreciatively, and she rises to her feet with a satisfied smirk.

He stands and moves to the head of the bed, leaning against the padded headboard and stroking himself as he watches her crawl towards him. She sits atop his thighs and takes over, one hand cupping his balls as the other runs slowly from base to tip, her eyes on his face.

“I’d take a picture of this, if you’d let me,” he says in a thick, syrupy voice.

She cracks a smile.

“I seem to recall a few nude polaroids kicking around in one of those boxes in the car,” she says, tightening her fist until he groans a little.

“Not just naked,” he elaborates. “Sitting like that, like a queen on her throne with my cock in your hand. Way better than any of those movies in my old collection.”

She lifts her hips, scooting up and positioning him at her opening.

“I kind of miss your old collection, Mulder,” she admits as she sinks onto him. “Now that we’ll have our own place again, we can start a new collection.”

He sighs and touches her hips as she sits on him fully, every inch. Her hands move to his shoulders, running up the sides of his neck to cradle his jaw. She kisses him, softly and sweetly, and she feels him throb inside her when she runs her tongue across his bottom lip.

“Fuck me, Mulder,” she says pleadingly, even though she is the one on top.

He groans, his fingers digging into her hips as his pelvis jumps off the bed, rutting into her. She flexes her hips forward and back, and they fall into a harried, desperate rhythm that is somehow complimentary. Just as in so many other ways, they are two mismatched halves of a perfectly symmetrical whole. They shouldn’t work, but they do. They shouldn’t still be here, so many trials and tribulations and pain and heartache later, but they are. Unstoppable, inseparable, inextricably bound: he is hers and she is his.

“You feel so fucking good,” he professes, pulling her closer such that the peaks of her nipples drag over his chest each time she lifts her hips. His words are ragged, breathless, pushing out in pants between thrusts. “I can’t believe how wet you still get for me. Since day one, Scully. When I touched you that night? Jesus fuck, you were so wet.”

He knows she loves this, when he talks to her. When he tells her how much he likes it, how he feels about her. She holds her cheek against his, stubble scratching her face as he fucks her and his words pour right into her ear.

“You remember that night, in the dark? You climbed right on top of me, and you were so fucking wet. I couldn’t believe you let me come inside you,” he tells her, and she feels herself clench around him.

“I wanted you to,” she admits, flicking at his earlobe with her tongue. “The second we got home I got myself off thinking about it. I could still smell you on me.”

“Goddamn,” he growls. “Thinking about that is gonna make me come right now.”

She lifts her cheek off his and kisses him, forcing her tongue into his mouth as she brings one hand down to touch her clit. Every bit of skin where they are joined is wet and slick, and she slips her finger quickly back and forth over her hood until she feels that same tingle again, that point where she’s close enough to feel it in the base of her spine.

“Come inside me,” she hisses, her body stiffening as the height of it passes over her, sending her crashing over the edge into a sea of delicious waves. Rising and falling and rising and falling, she hears him moan and then feels him quaking inside her. Expletives pour from his lips and he clings to her, their bellies pressed together and their mouths sharing shuddering breaths, and every drop of him is in every corner of her, united completely, eternally one.

His head thumps back against the headboard and she collapses against his chest, her muscles dissolved to jelly and her heart so full it hurts.

“I love you,” she whispers tightly, overcome with emotion, and his hands run up and down her back comfortingly.

“Oh, brother,” he mumbles, and she pinches his side. “I think about that a lot, too, you know. The first time you said that to me.”

She lifts her head, puzzled. She’s not sure she can remember the very first time.

“After Padgett,” he reminds her. “You said you’d felt it for a long time but couldn’t bring yourself to tell me.”

She nods sleepily. “That’s true, it was a long time before I said it. I think I was afraid of what would happen if I said it out loud.”

“And what did happen?” he asks, pushing her hair behind her ear.

She smiles, leaning into his hand. Her eyes fall closed and she thinks back and back and back, so many years. Lifetimes ago.

“Everything,” she says on a sigh.

“I love you, too,” he says after a beat. “So much it scares me sometimes.”

“That’s bravery, isn’t it?” she asks, settling back against his chest. “Being afraid, but doing it anyway.”

“I don’t feel brave,” he says, tugging the comforter up over them both.

“You are,” she says resolutely. “You’re the bravest person I know.”

“Right back atcha, G-Woman,” he replies, and they drift there for a long while, too content to move.

When she wakes, it’s to the brush of rough fingertips across her forearm. She grunts in protest and the fingers sneak higher, detouring towards her armpit until she opens her eyes and glowers at him.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says with a smile. “I brought you coffee.”

“What time is it?” she grumbles.

“Just after 7:00,” he says sympathetically, “but if we maximize on daylight, we can make it home in three days.”

Home.

She cracks a smile and sighs, remembering. She finally has something to look forward to, and it’s a feeling she hadn’t realized she was missing. She sits up in bed and he brings her a very decadent cup of coffee that’s far better than any she’s had in years, then tells her about his planned route home as she savors it.

“It’s completely unfurnished, right down to appliances, so we’re going to need to do some serious shopping,” he warns her, and she nearly laughs.

“I think I’ll survive,” she tells him, and then they just sit and look at each other, smirking like they share a secret that no one else is in on.

“Oh, I got you something,” he says suddenly, reaching into his pants pocket. “I know the ten-year anniversary gift is supposed to be tin, but this seemed more fitting.”

He hands her a magnet in the image of the iconic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada” sign, but the words “Welcome to” have been replaced with “Married in”.

“We don’t have a refrigerator, Mulder,” she says playfully, smiling.

“We don’t have one yet,” he corrects her.

“Well, I suppose we’ve never paid much mind to the proper order of things, have we?” she says, and he shakes his head, a look of complete adoration on his face. She leans forward, cradling his chin in her hand and kissing him firmly. “Thank you,” she says against his lips, “I love it.” She then throws back the covers and stands, stretching. “I just need to take a quick shower and we can head out,” she tells him, and he follows her into the bathroom.

“Care for an escort?” he quips, then makes a show of washing her back to prove his lack of ulterior motives.

She gets to be the one to slide her slippery fist around his cock in invitation, gasping when he hoists her up against the cold tile wall of the shower. They take advantage of the fact that the hot water will never run out, and her voice echoes loudly off the walls when she comes, too wrapped up in hope and love to care that the residents of the room next door can surely hear her.

An hour later, they are back on the desert highway. Mulder tunes the radio to a station claiming to play “old school hits,” and they laugh at the fact that many of the songs were new releases when they were still holed up in the basement office, unaware of just how much joy and pain and adventure lay ahead. Even now, she remains acutely aware that the path ahead is never predictable, even when it appears to be.

She holds the magnet in her hand, its rubber composition growing warm and pliant from the heat of her palm. She turns it over and over, imagining it adorning the refrigerator of a house she can’t yet picture, but will soon become as familiar to her as her apartment in Georgetown once was. She sees a full Thanksgiving spread laid out on a table at which her mother will sit, four years aged and brimming with the relief of having her daughter back.

She remembers snippets of her dream, of a dark-haired child carefully constructing a turkey from his handprint and holding it up with pride in his eyes. It’s only the latest in a series of dreams that feel like looking through a window, catching a glimpse of the life not led, or maybe the one being lived in a place not too far from some of their four-week stays.

It all feels so hopeful, so blessedly good it makes her want to cry. And then she does, quietly with eyes cast out the window until she sniffs and he reaches for her hand. She looks over at him, windswept and handsome and so completely hers that fresh tears well in her eyes, making him frown.

“You okay?” he asks, his eyes jumping between the open highway and her face.

She nods, pushing her mouth into a smile.

“Let’s go home.”

Tagging @today-in-fic

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grouchythefish · 1 year

Note

So I saw your reblog about truckstops, and as someone uniquely qualified to answer your rhetorical questions, this excited me. My qualifications include living within fifteen minutes of and having two family members who currently work for the Iowa 80 Truckstop, having worked there for six months after high school, and then having a parent who worked there for seven years before working for the other truckstop across the road.

The truckstop I worked for, Iowa 80, is located in Walcott, Iowa, is the world's largest truckstop. They almost lost that title to their sister location and had to expand their square footage. Inside this truckstop is a 24-hour restaurant, a laundromat with at least fifteen washers and dryers (I haven't counted), a dentist (who I highly recommend for dental emergencies), full scale showers for purchase that include private restrooms (some are fully wheelchair accessible), a small movie theater, a hair salon, a chiropractor, a small office that's used as a church/worship space for truckers with resources for local actual churches and advocacy groups, a food court rivaling our local mall, a game room, a gift store, and finally, the showroom. There's also a small truckers lounge with free internet access and lots of space to sit and converse.

The only thing missing from the post is places to sleep. You could technically sleep there. It is a 24-hour business, and I have seen people take their dogs inside during storms and camp out on the floor of the showroom before. But there's not like... beds or anything. There are a few hotels nearby, but as can be expected due to the nature of the trucking industry, they're all motels and cheap places to sleep that's not the bed inside your truck.

The showroom is large enough to house a full semi with trailer (used for storage), with an electronics section, chrome department, and a small graphics printing section called the custom shop, where you can have embroidered t-shirts and vinyl stickers made of your company's logo, or whatever you want. For sale on this floor includes all kinds of accessories and electronics for truckers, as well as a small media selection of DVDs, CD's and audio books. They also have a section for mattresses for your semi, as well as they used to have a small spot to buy musical instruments.

The foot court and convenience store are a huge room with a Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Wendy's, combination Einstein Bros Bagels and Caribou Coffee, Dairy Queen/Orange Julius. There is also a full-scale convenience store, with every soda, snack, and candy you can imagine.

In the gift shop, you can buy your normal stuff. T-shirts and such. But you can also buy katanas. For some reason. And I used to have to sell those at 3am. They also at one time sold a whip. But no guns or alcohol, thank god. That would've been too much for the family-friendly label that the family that owns the company has.

There's also a service center, with access to truck diesel, DEF, etc. It has a Chester's Chicken, a Blimpie, and a smaller little gas station selection of candy and drinks and such.

Now, if you want alcohol or lottery, you gotta go across the road, to Pilot.... which is where my mom defected to after like six years of working for Iowa 80. They sell booze. But there's not only one, there's TWO of them, across the road, and across the interstate from Iowa 80. One has an Arby's, and the other has a Subway.

In this small section of town, there's also a McDonalds, but it's not part of everything else. It's just there, between the little Pilot store and one of the aforementioned motels.

You now know everything there is to know about my weird situation with Iowa 80/Pilot.

But there is one thing I gotta say, this is pretty unique. Most rest stops, and gas stations are like Pilot. Located off the interstate, a little shop to get gas and snacks, a restroom, and some space to stretch your legs. Iowa 80 is a big ass building and part of a family owned business with multiple sister locations. In the US, most rest stops and such are just a gas station, maybe a bathroom with a place to get out for vending machine snacks and a spot to hide from bad weather.

Okay that's all bye~

Omg thank you so much for sending me this!

No place to sleep does make sense since most transport trucks have beds built in anyways.

Most truck stops here are basically just roadside food courts with a gas station outside and sometimes with a tiny gift shop that might have t-shirts and keychains. I pass 5 on my way to and from work (god my commute is far too long) and all except one are owned by the same company (OnRoute) and are pretty boring.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure the only truck stops I've been to with anything more than that have all been in the US on roadtrips. Though obviously none as exciting as the one you are describing (Jesus Christ a movie theatre and a dentist??)

I kinda wanna own a truck stop katana now.

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the-blind-assassin-12 · 2 years

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Bare Branches

June Drabbles 2022 Day 29 - Birch Trees

A/N: I have been wanting to challenge myself to write a drabble a day for a whole month for quite some time now, and I finally decided to just go for it. The goal is to fill every prompt on this list by @creativepromptsforwriting with a short one shot (500 - 2k words) by the end of June. Can I do it? I do not know. But let’s find out! - Listen, I am well aware that it is the end of August and I am still here posting these, but after this one there are only two more and despite failing dismally to complete them all within the month of June, as well as keeping them all under 2k, I will not fall short of completing them if it’s the last thing I do. Anywho - this one falls into the A Clumsy Romance universe, and yes, I do intend to write about what happened in that hotel room on their trip back to Buenos Aires. ;)

Word Count: 2,166

Warnings: brief mention of sex, some mild angst

Summary: Ten years is a long time.

It was early October when you bought the house that brought you and Nico back together.

How could I not?

Fate typically didn’t knock twice, but for the two of you it seemed to be pounding at the door, and at this point it felt rude not to answer. Since you were legitimately in the market for a new place when you’d pulled up to find him standing out in front after having just finished touring it himself, it was practically a done deal before you’d even set foot inside.

Once he admitted that he had returned to Buenos Aires like you had both planned to do, once you glanced down at his left hand and saw that there was no band on his ring finger, once you threw caution to the wind and your arms around his neck to kiss him like you’d wanted to for a decade, you knew that you couldn’t - wouldn’t - let someone else call the place home. Just the thought of other lives being lived out within those rooms was enough to twist your heart. The concept of other bodies casting shadows on the walls felt wrong, the idea that the bird who belonged to no one would be fed slices of fruit from anyone else but you or Nico just as off putting. The house had hosted other occupants before you, and it would certainly do the same after you were gone. But there it stood, ready to become your home at the precise moment that the man you’d started to think had been a mirage stepped back into your life. The decision to buy the house didn’t even feel like a decision.

How could you not? Especially after he had confessed to thinking of you as he made his way through the halls and up the stairs, as he turned the faucets and lay on the floor and imagined the shelves in the library full of books belonging to both of you.

I couldn’t.

The sale was finalized shortly after your return from Argentina, a fact that only made the last minute trip feel more like an extended dream than it already did. For the first time not only were the two of you going to be living in the same city, but since your reunion in the driveway you’d spent only a handful of nights not sleeping in the same bed - the two immediately after running into him again, and a scattered eight or nine others that you hadn’t spent in his arms.

There had been a second bed in the hotel room on the trip, Nico sheepishly smiling with a small shrug and telling you that he didn’t want to make assumptions. But after ten years of nothing but wanting and wondering, for the five days that you were there neither of you had even acknowledged it as more than a suitcase rack. Instead, you tumbled onto the same mattress and tangled yourselves under the covers. You’d shared skin along with sheets, finally learning his body with your touch, letting him navigate yours as well, and when the sky outside your window was sprinkled full of stars you couldn’t see beyond the rose colored tint of neon lights, you learned what it was to share sleep with each other. To let your breathing find rhythm with his, to feel his arm grow heavier around your waist, to let your cheek sink into the pillow with his chest at your back and his lips so close to your ear. And even as it happened, even as you were aware of how easy it would be to become used to it, accustomed to it - dependent on it - you gave in and let it happen, falling asleep with a smile on your face.

How the hell could I not?

It was mid-November when you realized that falling - plunging - for Nico was never really a decision, either. And it terrified you.

One night, 3,562 nights ago. That’s what all of it was built on, and it scared you, how precarious it was. How novel and shiny and fragile it was. It scared the shit out of you to think about what ten years really meant and if any of what you knew about him was still true, or if you still lived up to the memory of you that he held for all that time. The trees outside your living room window had just a few golden leaves still clinging to their branches. Soon they wouldn’t look anything like their Spring selves, all green and full of life. Soon they’d be stripped of all their finery and laid bare for what they were. It scared you to think that soon Nico would have that same perspective of you.

And it scared you to know how hopeful you were that it wouldn’t matter.

You’d spent the weeks since he’d been back in your life catching each other up on things. The highs and lows. One Saturday afternoon you’d told him you’d spent a year engaged to another man, but that you’d broken things off, breaking his heart when you’d returned the ring he’d given you. You knew your admission would open the door for him to tell you about any relationships he’d been in, and though you didn’t want to think about him with anyone else, you were unprepared for how hard it hit you when he said that outside of a few short lived flings and quick burning flames, there had never been anyone he’d considered creating a life with.

That had been the first thing you noticed that was different from the Nico that you strolled Calle Corrientes with all those years ago. You had been the one to say that you weren’t sure where you stood on marriage or long term commitment of any kind. He had been the one focused on the potential merits of spending your life with someone that you knew, someone that you enjoyed, that you wanted around even when you were angry at them. It was something that he had seemed to want then, and you wondered what had caused the change. It almost saddened you, even though it would have meant that he wouldn’t be there with you now, standing in front of the plate glass that looked out into the yard, his bare feet just a few inches from your socked ones, his left arm curling around your body as he rested his chin over your shoulder.

“I never proposed to anyone,” he mused. “How did your ex fiancé do it?” His tone was casual and calm, warm and soft and you had no idea how he expected you to talk about the way another man had asked you to marry him when he’d just told you that there’d been no one in his life that he’d wanted to ask the same question of.

“Why not, Nico?” Tears were sliding silently down your cheeks but you didn’t lift your fingers to your face to wipe them away. Instead you watched them fall in the reflection of the window you stood in front of. The trees on the other side of the glass - a cluster of paper birches, their bark peeling away in curling sheets - faded as your focus shifted to where his image appeared in the window next to yours, and the first thoughts that came were of how else he had changed.

His cheeks are fuller now. His beard is…

You blinked to free another droplet from your lashes, licking the salt from your lips as it rolled onto them. The patches of skin that you remembered kissing flaky empanada crumbs from were still there, never grown over. But the soft hair that edged the places where his flesh peeked through had started to go gray, and you realized then that your tears weren’t really coming out of fear or anything so predictable. They were falling for the moments that you missed with him. For the silver streaks of time across his beard and scattered over the crown of his head. For the way his frame had filled out in places, grown softer in others. For the divots and creases cut into his expression from worry and laughter and stress and things you weren’t there to see change the man that you met in Buenos Aires ten years ago into the man standing just behind you now. You mourned those lost moments as much as you celebrated the possibility of being there for future ones.

I’ll be there for as many as I can. As many as he wants to share with me.

But you still needed to know, needed to hear the answer to your question from him. So as he turned a few degrees, his eyes leaving the reflection of yours in the window to land instead on your salt stained cheeks, you asked again. “Why didn’t you ever try to-” You sniffed, finally thumbing away the wetness from your face and looking up at him. “To find someone?”

“I did.” Your heart clenched as his thumb came slowly up to swipe away a spot you’d missed, his fingertips brushing the curve of your jaw. What? You shook your head as his free hand came up to cradle the other side of your face. If he did, then- “I did try. For a while.” He sighed, his entire chest rising and sinking with the emptying of his lungs. “But no matter how long I was with any of them… a month… half a dozen months… a year?” His eyebrows came together as he spoke your name, his hands dropping down, one to your shoulder and the other to your wrist. “I never felt anything with any of them that even came close to what I felt from the one night we had together. Never.”

It was why you’d ended things with Martin. He was sweet and funny and he treated you like you were the only person he saw when he looked at you. He got along with your friends and he fit well in your life. He even knew about Nico and never seemed jealous of the connection you’d made with him. He would have been a good husband

But in the entire time you were together he never stirred your thoughts and shocked your soul the way that Nico had in just those brief hours when your paths intersected and cut straight through one another’s hearts. “I never have either.” Your voice was thin, but you’d stopped crying and it took you a moment to realize that was because he was holding you.

“I know.” You felt the tip of his nose drag against your temple as he pressed you closer. “For a long time I told myself it wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real. What we had that night.” His hands swept slowly up and down your back as he shifted so that you both could still look out at the trees as he continued. “Because if I never found anything that came close, then it must not have been real. It must have been fantasy.

You’d lost count of how many times you’d told yourself - unconvincingly - the same thing.

“But I decided it didn’t matter.” He squeezed you tighter as he inhaled, and you felt his breath fan out against your scalp as he let it out slowly. “I remember everything about the way I felt that night.” Your name left his lips and you peeled yourself away from his broad chest to peer up at him. “Everything. And unless I could have exactly that feeling with someone else, it wasn’t worth settling for anything less.”

“Nico…”

The bird squawked from the dining room then, and though you felt close to tears again the two of you just laughed. “No name’s hungry,” he said, leaning in to kiss the corner of your eye. “Is there fruit in the refrigerator?”

When late December rolled around and the birches had long since lost their golden halos, the snow covering the piles of paper bark and their thin limbs stretched naked towards the white sky, you realized that the reason that neither of you had ever fallen in love was because both of you had already dove in head first ten years ago. You knew he would eventually do something to make you upset. That you’d inevitably say the wrong thing and get under his skin. You knew you’d learn things about him that you didn’t want to hear, that you’d have to tell him things he wouldn’t want to know. But it wouldn’t matter, because it was still you, and it was still him. He had chosen you and you had done the same with him.

How…

He came in through the patio doors with snow in his hair and a few logs in his arms, carrying them upstairs to build a fire in the new fireplace he’d talked you into adding to the library.

How could I not?

Thank you for reading! If you would like to be added to or removed from the tags for this or any of my stories, please feel free to let me know by sending a message or filling out the form on my masterlist!

tags: @something-tofightfor @littlemisspascal @alraedesigns @lowlights @writeforfandoms @nuttyenthusiastdetective @its-mochi-boba-tea-blr @harriedandharassed @swtaura @practicalghost @trickstersp8 @princessxkenobi @imtryingmybeskar @mswarriorbabe80 @theredwritingwitch

#nico (house comes with a bird)#nico x female reader #nico x you #nico x reader #pedrostories #house comes with a bird fic #a clumsy romance #pedro pascal character fics #pedro pascal character #june drabbles 2022 #(yes i know it is august lol)#day 29 - birch trees

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voluptuarian · 11 months

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Moved my bed's position in the hopes it would help my insomnia, in the process discovered a 1" wide hole in the bottom of the mattress, which means best case scenario one of the springs is busted and sticking out the bottom, worst case something gnawed it open... either way I need a new mattress

Very uncharacteristically decided to splash out and got like a hotel quality mattress with pillow top and everything on sale for $600. I'm going to be in debt for it for the next 6 months but like... the Decadence, the Hedonism...

#can't wait for it to get here.. !!

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lilyvandersteen · 1 year

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Home Away From Home Chapter 2: Charming

Chapter summary:

Blaine arrives in Ohio and starts to tackle the disaster zone that is Cooper's hotel. But after he's been there for just a week, inspectors arrive at the hotel. Can he convince them to give him extra time to fix things?

Many thanks to my beta @hkvoyage!

You can also read this story on AO3.

~~~~~~

Chapter 2: Charming

It didn’t take long for Monique to call Blaine back, and the news she had for him wasn’t all bad. The property’s title was in Cooper’s name. There would be no problems on that score.

“And it’s quite a bit bigger than just the hotel. The sale also involved 500 acres of land. That’s a lot. Not around the hotel, it’s further away. It used to be an industrial area. Factory buildings that haven’t been used since the eighties or nineties at the latest. Might have squatters in them, though. Lot of poverty and crime in that area. Not really the ideal place to buy a hotel. I don’t know what Cooper was thinking.”

Blaine snorted. “I doubt he was thinking at all. Anyway, thanks a bunch, Monique!”

“Are you sure you want to go to the trouble of doing up the place?”

Monique sounded worried.

“Well, Cooper put a lot of money into this, so we’ll have to make the most of it. It’s right next to Interstate 75, so I’m sure there will always be travellers needing a place to sleep. Right?”

Monique tut-tutted. “Don’t throw good money after bad, Blaine. I doubt you’d be able to make the place profitable. I’d advise to sell it again, for the best price you can get for it, and cut your losses. Mind you, it won’t be easy to sell, what with the neighbourhood it’s in. My hubby and I passed through Lima on a road trip a few years back. I’d rather have driven on for another eight hours than sleep there. You should have seen the trailer park we drove through, and all the boarded-up buildings – it looked eerie.”

“Maybe things have improved since then,” Blaine said. “But here’s what I’ll do: I’ll ask Cooper if he wants to sell or not. It would help if you could e-mail me an estimate of what the renovations would cost. If he decides not to sell, I’ll tell him to make you an authorized signatory on his bank account, so that you can buy stuff for the hotel in his name, and pay the renovation bills and the staff’s salaries, including my own if I’m to spend my whole summer running Coop’s hotel. Is that okay with you, Monique?”

Monique sighed. “There’s no talking you out of it anymore, is there? All right, lovey, I’ll send you that estimate for the renovations, and if you decide to go through with this, I’ll help you as much as I can. I already have my eye on a lot of beds and mattresses. If I can get a nice price for them, I’ll send them to Lima asap.”

“You won’t get into trouble over this with Father, will you?”

“Nah, he trusts me blindly, after all these years. And you’re his sons, so when I’m working for you, it all stays in the family.”

“I’m not sure he considers me family anymore,” Blaine muttered, but that made Monique scoff.

“You’re his child, Blaine, and you always will be, and I’m as loyal to you as I am to Mr. Anderson himself.”

Blaine wiped away a tear and thanked Monique again. “Anyway, my roommate grew up there, and she’ll help me out, she says. I will contact Cooper, and I’ll let you know what he’s decided. Okay?”

“Okay. Talk to you soon!”

K&B

The day after, Blaine and Tina flew to Columbus, Ohio.

Cooper didn’t want to sell and had given green light to renovate the hotel.

Thankfully, however stupid Cooper was where money matters were concerned, his entourage was not. His agent and manager were competent and shrewd, and made sure he got paid well for every project he did. He’d spent the bulk of his money on the property he’d bought, yes, but there was still enough left to get started on the renovations, and more money was on the way for several ads he’d done, as well as some voice-over work.

“You tell Monique she can use it all. I trust her, and I trust you.”

As soon as Blaine had gotten the okay, he’d contacted the pest control firm as well as an electrician and a plumber recommended by Monique. Then he booked his flight and started packing.

Tina remained determined to come along, and she’d called all her high school friends to see who was in the area and who would be willing to help out. Two girls called Marley and Unique promised to drop in and help as soon as the weekend rolled around, and a guy called Puck said they could count on him for handyman jobs.

A good thing, too, for as soon as they walked into the hotel, they found out they might not be able to count on the existing staff.

A group of uniformed people were surrounding a guy in a suit, yelling at him about months of wages he owed him, about horrid work conditions, about being understaffed and having to work double shifts, and about being harassed by unhappy guests.

“And if you think I’m going to stick around to see if this new owner is gonna treat us better than you, think again! I’m out of here, and I’m gonna ask if I can have my old job at the Lima Bean back.”

There were a lot of yeahs in response to that, and muttering that they could do better, and then everyone took off their name badges, threw them at the guy in the suit and walked off, straight past Blaine and Tina.

The guy in the suit just shrugged and walked in the other direction, without so much as looking at the stuff his former staff had chucked at him.

“I know some of them, I’ll smooth things over,” Tina whispered to Blaine. ”You go talk to the manager guy.”

Blaine hurried after the guy in the suit, guessing that this had to be the one Cooper had bought the property from.

“Mr. Smythe?”

“What now?” said the guy in the suit, turning around and scowling.

“I’m Blaine Anderson, sir. I’m here on behalf of my brother, Cooper Anderson…”

“Ah, Cooper’s little brother! Yeah, he told me you’d come and sort things out here for him.”

Smythe smirked at Blaine, giving him a lingering once-over. “Guess he got the looks and you got the brains in your family. Not everyone can have it all, like me. Looks and brains and money. But don’t worry. I’m sure some people are into the bashful schoolboy vibe you give off. Plus, you’ve got a great ass. Very nice. I wouldn’t say no to a quickie, if you’re game.”

Charming. Not.

Blaine felt his ears redden, but kept his response formal and to the point. “I’d like the keys to this establishment, please, as well as to the factory buildings you also sold to my brother. The insurance information would be welcome, too. And I need to know who’s been managing this hotel until now. I’ve been informed the factory buildings are not in use, is that correct?”

“That is correct, killer,” Smythe drawled. “Come with me and I’ll give you the keys.”

Blaine shot a desperate look behind him, but Tina had caught up with the hotel staff and was talking to them, so he wouldn’t be able to use her as a buffer from this sleaze. Ugh.

It took a quarter of an hour and plenty more innuendoes before Blaine got the keys and the information he’d requested, and Smythe made Blaine very uncomfortable, touching Blaine any chance he got and staring at his lips, crotch and ass without even being subtle about it.

Finally, with one last smirk and a “Good luck”, Smythe departed.

Blaine let out a deep sigh and got up to find Tina and get an update on the staff situation.

He heard someone laugh, and looked up to see Tina in the doorway with the Latina staff member who’d been yelling at Smythe when they came in.

“Smythe takes the word eye-fucking to a new level, doesn’t he?” she drawled.

Blaine shuddered, and she laughed some more, Tina joining in too.

“He’s good-looking, though. You sure you don’t want to tap that?” Tina teased him.

“I’m sure,” Blaine gritted out, taking his laptop to send the insurance information to Monique.

Tina introduced the staff member to Blaine. Her name was Santana, and she’d been in high school with Tina.

“I sounded her out on what staff members to keep; and what others we need to recruit. And I promised you’d pay them the back wages Smythe owes them.”

Blaine nodded. “Of course.”

Santana took him to see the rest of the staff and told him their names and what each of them did to keep the hotel running.

When they heard Blaine was willing to make up their back pay and hire extra staff, all of them readily agreed to stay on, and they even suggested family members of theirs who could come and work at the hotel.

That was one worry down.

“So what’s next?” Tina asked.

What was next was the electrician and plumber showing up to tour the whole building with Blaine, and give their professional assessment of what had to be done.

Blaine followed in their wake, jotting down everything they mentioned to compile a to do list and starting to panic the longer the list got.

“This is going to take longer than our summer break,” Tina whispered.

“I know. We’ll do what we can, and the rest will be Cooper’s responsibility.”

Fat chance of that, Blaine thought sourly. It was way more likely that Cooper would wait for Blaine to finish the work he started once his next school break rolled around. No, Blaine had better hire a manager for the hotel before he left, so that he could leave the place in good hands.

While touring the place, Blaine also found out there was a family of five, the Evanses, living in a hotel room permanently, for now, because they’d lost their jobs and consequently their house, too.

“The previous manager gave us a hefty discount,” said Mrs. Evans, wringing her hands.

Mr. Smythe hadn’t mentioned anything about this, but Blaine nodded. “No problem. No problem at all. We will be renovating the hotel, though, so it’s possible you will have to move to another room at some point. But we will honour the agreement you had with Mr. Smythe, absolutely, please don’t worry about that.”

“Maybe we can help with the renovations?” said Mr. Evans. “My eldest son Sam has a job as a bike courier, but that’s mostly in the evening. During the day, he and I can help you spruce up this place.”

Blaine smiled at the man. “That would be a tremendous help.”

“I could help with the cleaning,” Mrs. Evans offered, “and I’ll make sure Stevie and Stacey stay out of your way.”

When they went on to the next room, the plumber whispered to Blaine that it was sad, really, that the Evanses had come to this. “They worked at that chemical plant that closed down. They’re such great, stand-up people. And now because they both got laid off, they’ve lost everything, and they need to rely on charity to get by. Most people who get laid off here are taken in by family, but the Evanses are from Kentucky. They don’t have any family here. And the children want to stay here in Ohio because all their friends are here, but the parents are struggling to find a decent job. It’s so sad.”

After the tradesmen had left, Blaine let out a deep sigh.

Apart from technical stuff, he’d also noticed lots of trash, dust, grime and filth.

“This place needs a deep clean,” he sighed.

“True, that, and we need to do something about the smell, too,” said Tina, wrinkling her nose.

She was right about that. The hotel smelled stale and musty because none of the air conditioning units seemed to work.

The HVAC specialist Blaine had contacted hadn’t been able to come straight away, so they’d have to have some patience.

In the meantime, all Blaine could do was keep as many doors open as possible, including the outside doors, to get some fresh air circulating.

“Cleaning party?” Tina asked, waving her phone at him, which was showing her dance playlist.

Blaine grinned and nodded.

“I’ll go fetch Santana and the other housekeepers,” Tina said. “There’s only three of them, can you imagine? For a hotel this big! How many rooms are there exactly?”

“114 rooms and suites. Yes, no wonder the rooms aren’t clean, they must have been rushed off their feet doing the bare minimum. Let me get Mrs. Evans, too. She promised to help us out with the cleaning.”

The six of them teamed up and managed to give about a dozen rooms a thorough cleaning.

Then Santana looked at her watch and said her shift was over. She and her colleagues Zoey and Kaylee went home, promising to come back the next day.

“Let’s continue cleaning for a bit longer,” Mrs. Evans said. “We won’t be able to get all the rooms done, but the more we can do the better.”

Blaine kept the receptionist updated on which rooms they’d tackled so far, so that when a new guest was sent up, Blaine could show them to a sparkling clean room.

When Blaine’s stomach began to growl, he ended the cleaning party and announced that it was dinner time.

“What do you usually do for dinner?” he asked Mrs. Evans, and she said they normally had Sam pick up some take-out.

“Would you and your family have dinner with Tina and me?” Blaine asked. “We’ll make something quick here in the kitchen. Maybe stir-fry?”

She smiled at him and said that would be lovely.

“Let’s check what’s in stock in the kitchen and then go grocery-shopping,” Tina said to Blaine. “Santana said the cook had walked out before we arrived, and that he wasn’t any good anyway, so we’ll have to hire a new one. Until we’ve found a cook, we’ll need to prepare the breakfast buffet for our guests ourselves. Nothing too fancy. Orange juice, coffee, rolls and scrambled eggs and bacon, that sort of thing. I’ve asked Santana what we need to serve, and where it’s normally bought. And we can buy supplies to make ourselves dinner. Thank heavens the electrical appliances in the kitchen all seem okay, according to Jim. I can’t live without an oven and a refrigerator.”

Blaine checked the provisions and drew up a shopping list.

“Let’s also bake some cookies to get a better smell circulating here,” Tina suggested. “Chocolate chip!”

“Chocolate chip it is!”

As they went out, Blaine told Jayden, the front desk clerk, that he’d be gone for a while, and would Jayden hold the fort in the meantime? The guy scowled. No doubt he’d been hoping to go home. It was getting late, and he had to be hungry too. But Jayden was the only front desk clerk Blaine had at the moment, so he’d have to stick it out a little longer.

Blaine resolved to be as quick as possible with the shopping.

When he and Tina came back, both carrying overflowing grocery bags, a loud voice berated them as soon as they came near.

“This hotel is the WORST I’ve ever been to! I’ve got a reservation for tonight, and I can’t even check in! There’s nobody at the desk and when I ring the bell, nobody comes. And don’t think I’m the only one! You’ve missed out on at least five customers while you were away!”

And yes, there was no-one behind the front desk. It seemed Jayden had not waited for Blaine to return and had left his post and gone home. Probably seconds after Blaine’s car left the parking lot. Ah well.

Blaine hurried to get behind the desk and check the girl in. She looked no older than he was, but stylish and sophisticated, and he wondered why on earth she’d be staying in this run-down hotel in the middle of nowhere.

He checked the reservations spreadsheet on his laptop, and yes, her name was on it. Harmony Brentwood.

“I apologise, Miss Brentwood,” Blaine told the girl. “My brother has only just bought this hotel, and we’re short-staffed. I hope you don’t mind waiting in the lounge area while we prepare a room for you, and I hope you will join us for dinner, on the house, to make up for any inconvenience.”

Miss Brentwood’s chin went up. “No, thank you. I’m going to eat at my grandma’s. I just want to leave my luggage here and get the key to my room. You can expect me back around eight thirty. Make sure my room is ready by then.”

“Certainly, Ma’am.”

Blaine handed Miss Brentwood a key, jotting down the room number in his spreadsheet, and grimaced as she left the hotel, still clearly displeased.

“We’re not making a good impression on our customers.”

Tina shrugged. “We’ll have a grand re-opening once the renovations are complete, and invite the local press. That should help.”

A while later, they were eating stir fry with the Evanses. The chocolate chip cookies were just out of the oven, and Stevie and Stacey were sniffing the cookie smell appreciatively.

“Much better, huh?” said Tina. “We’ve made good progress already. Thank you for your help, Mrs. Evans. I’m sure you’re just as glad as I am that your room has been cleaned thoroughly for a change. And we managed to do enough rooms from top to bottom to offer each of our guests a clean place to stay. Plus one extra for Blaine and I to sleep in. Thank heavens we bought those towels and sheets that were on sale at Walmart. The ones that were in the rooms were dingy, ugh. And we’ve gotten the trash out of all the rooms and put some cleaner in every toilet, sink and shower to let it soak. That’s a good start.”

Blaine hummed in agreement, too exhausted to speak. They’d not only cleaned rooms, but also the reception and the lounge.

While making the stir-fry, he’d resolved to get started on the kitchen the following day.

The state of the kitchen was horrendous – no wonder the guests had mentioned mice!

It needed a good scrubbing until all the stickiness was gone from the counters and the floors. They would also have to clean out the grubby fridge and oven and wash all the cooking utensils thoroughly, until they were spotless.

Recruiting more staff was on the agenda for the next day too. He needed more staff, and that really couldn’t wait if he wanted the hotel to run like clockwork.

After finishing the stir fry and having two cookies each, they put the rest of the cookies in a plastic container, washed up their plates and cutlery and wished each other good night.

Blaine and Tina headed to the room they’d assigned for their own personal use.

“Do you think Harmony has arrived yet?” Tina asked.

As they approached their room, the question was answered by loud singing further down the hall.

“I think Miss Brentwood’s in her room, yes,” said Blaine. “I really hope she doesn’t plan on singing long. My head aches enough as it is.”

“So what’s your plan for tomorrow?” Tina wanted to know.

“Recruiting staff. Apart from that, it’s going to be cleaning again. This place needs it.”

K & B

The next morning, Blaine woke up early, slipped into his clothes without waking Tina and went downstairs to prepare the breakfast buffet for the hotel guests plus Tina and himself.

Most guests that turned up in the dining room ate the breakfast he provided happily enough, but Miss Brentwood turned up her nose again for his cooking, requesting only hot water with lemon.

She thawed out, though, when she inquired at check-out who the new owner was, and Blaine told her it was his brother, Cooper Anderson.

“Cooper Anderson? The actor?”

“Yes, Miss Brentwood.”

“So he might show up here any moment?”

“Well, not any moment,” Blaine hedged, “seeing as he’s in New Zealand right now, for…”

“Oh, yes, I know! I so look forward to seeing him play in Dragons and Rings!” Miss Brentwood squealed, all smiles now, and she winked at Blaine. “Tell you what, if you give me a heads-up when Cooper arrives here, I’ll give you a good Yelp review.”

Blaine, who knew Cooper enjoyed being fawned over, readily agreed to that, and added her e-mail address to his spreadsheet.

Blaine spent most of the day interviewing job candidates, sent his way by the existing staff and by all the temporary employment agencies he’d contacted in the area. The very first people he recruited were Mrs. Evans as the head of housekeeping and Mr. Evans as the maintenance manager.

Mrs. Evans teamed up with the housekeepers and Tina again to give the kitchen and the rest of the rooms a thorough scrubbing.

Though Blaine had been afraid Jayden would not show up anymore after having to work such long hours the day before, the clerk was back at the front desk by nine a.m.

Blaine made sure to recruit more hospitality staff so that they could work in shifts from now on.

In the afternoon, Tina’s friends Marley and Unique showed up. Marley was accompanied by her mother, who wished to apply for the job of hotel cook.

“My name’s Millie, sir, Millie Rose. I can’t do any fancy cooking, but I gather it’s just breakfast you need here. I can do breakfast.”

“The hours are early, though,” Blaine warned Mrs. Rose. “You will be expected here at five o’clock in the morning, seeing as breakfast is served from six until ten.”

“Those hours are perfect! I’m an early riser anyway, and I work as a lunch lady at the McKinley High School, where I’m expected at eleven.”

Blaine pursed his lips. “The kitchen staff will be expected to tidy and clean the dining room and the kitchen as soon as the breakfast buffet is closed. You will have help, of course, I’ll hire a few bussers, but…”

“Oh, no worries, sir, I won’t leave before everything’s sparkling clean. I’ve got time enough. The school is only five minutes from here, so even if the last guests don’t finish their breakfast ‘till after ten, I’ll still have enough time to clean up after them.”

Millie smiled at Blaine with hope in her eyes, and Blaine nodded. “Welcome to the team, Mrs. Rose!”

K&B

After a week, the first shipment arrived of what Monique had managed to buy for the hotel: beds and mattresses. The entire hotel team helped unpacking the shipment, and after that some of the male staff, supervised by Mr. Evans, started taking apart the old beds and assembling the new ones.

Monique had called ahead and apologised that the lot she’d bought wouldn’t be enough for all the rooms, but Blaine was very pleased nonetheless, and thanked her with a lot of gushing.

He’d been sleeping on one of the old mattresses, and now his back was aching worse than it ever had. So even one new mattress would have been welcome, and she’d sent enough of them for at least half the rooms. Seeing as the hotel wasn’t exactly overflowing with guests, that would be enough for the moment being.

Mrs. Evans was happy as well, telling Blaine that even Stevie and Stacey had complained about back pain. “And these new beds look so comfy, and they don’t creak at all. I think we’ll all sleep a lot better tonight!”

While having a quick lunch, Blaine went over his checklist.

All the rooms were clean now – check!

The rooms that were in use had new beds, new mattresses, new bedding and new towels -check!

The reception and lounge were tidy and clean – check!

The kitchen and everything in it was clean – check!

The pantry, fridge and freezer were stocked – check!

He halted at the next item. “Provide ramps for wheelchairs and strollers.”

Right. That was definitely something he needed to do as soon as possible. And he needed to look into making some of the rooms on the ground floor accessible for people with mobility issues.

He spent the rest of his lunch break researching and then called Monique for advice on where to get ramps, automatic door and blinds openers as well as grab bars for the toilet and the shower.

She promised to order all of those for him with next-day delivery. “No skimping on that, it’s too important. Are you doing all right otherwise?”

“So far, we are, yes. Thanks for all your help, Monique!”

A bit later, the pest control firm arrived, and Blaine had to warn the Evanses that they would have to leave their room for a bit so that it could be fumigated.

Blaine was replacing a lightbulb in the lounge, humming along with Sam, who was playing the guitar and singing to entertain his younger siblings, when he saw a van arrive in the parking lot. Minutes later, two men headed towards the hotel. One of them was in a wheelchair.

“Sam, go find a few sturdy planks from the old beds please, we need a wheelchair ramp!” Blaine yelled.

Sam was back in a jiffy, carrying the planks with his dad, and Blaine helped them create a makeshift ramp.

It did the job, though the man in a wheelchair told them they needed a permanent ramp.

Blaine was so glad he could tell the guy they would have a real ramp the next day.

He forgot all about that, though, when he asked if they had made a reservation, and the answer was that they were inspectors. The one in the wheelchair was called Inspector Abrams, and the other, who was tall, stunning and sharply dressed, introduced himself as Inspector Hummel.

Wow. We’ve only been here a week and we’re already being inspected? That’s not good. There’s still so much to be done!

Inspector Hummel asked after Smythe. Clearly, no-one had informed them the hotel had changed ownership, so Blaine hastened to tell them his brother owned it now, and that they were in full renovation mode, sending the inspector his most charming smile, and hurrying to fetch the documents he requested.

The charm offensive did not work. Inspector Hummel frowned at him, a frown that only deepened when Tina turned up and happened to know Inspector Abrams from high school.

She spent some time chatting with him, which led to Inspector Abrams offering them more time to fix up the place.

Inspector Hummel looked like thunder by now. His jaw was set, and Blaine couldn’t help but admire the classic beauty of his profile – like a marble statue.

The two inspectors argued, and Blaine was quick to point out issues he’d already solved so as to tilt the scale in favour of him getting extra time.

The stakes were high, that much was clear.

From the argument between the inspectors, Blaine learned that they’d come to inspect this hotel several times, and that Smythe had made promises he’d never delivered on so as to get them off his back. And this was supposed to have been the final inspection, and if anything wasn’t in order, the hotel licence would be revoked.

Wow. No wonder Smythe wanted to offload the hotel. Bastard.

Inspector Hummel didn’t want to grant them any more time, fearing that Blaine was going to back out of his promises too.

Tina was quick to defend Blaine, and in the end, that must have helped.

Inspector Hummel agreed to give them more time. There were two conditions, though. Blaine would receive a list of issues from the inspectors, and had to solve each and every one. And the inspectors would come back every fortnight to check up on his progress.

Well, that was no more than Blaine had expected, and that list would be handy to have, so he readily agreed to those terms, and gave the inspectors his contact information, promising to keep them in the loop.

He was thankful to have averted the crisis of losing the hotel licence.

For now, yes, but Inspector Abrams was friendly enough, and Inspector Hummel, well… He’d win him over too, Blaine vowed to himself. He would put the inspector’s fears to rest by improving the hotel in every way he could.

He watched the inspectors leave, enjoying the back view Inspector Hummel provided, and looking forward to seeing the gorgeous man again.

However handsome the inspector looked when he was angry, Blaine was determined to get into his good graces.

I bet with a smile he looks even more stunning!

#klaine fanfiction #klaine prompt reverse bang #enemies to lovers #artist: justgleekout

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