#I will think of nothing else for weeks | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

altcvnningham · 2 months ago

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needy

adler x f!bell

summary: adler gets up for a morning cigarette. or tries to. read on ao3

tags/cw: established adlerbell, f!bell, she/her pronouns, bell is russian, fluff, light angst, no plot, drabble, smoking mention, kind of domestic i guess, bo6 adler so he's a little soft, pre-bo6 but post-panama, cw references galore, dog imagery as is synonymous w adlerbell atp, author has adhd and goes on prosaic rambles in lieu of an actual plot. this fic could have been an email?? sorry wc: 3.1k

a/n: bwuhhh this was just an excuse to write self indulgent soft morning adlerbell at the rook while i work on my actual pre-bo6 adlerbell rook fic when i have the energy . no plot, lots of rambling, once again kind of just a thinkpiece on their relationship now adler's an old fossil. idk she was doing nothing being left in my notes app ajdkhjkasjk

He reckons she’s needier these days, more than she ever used to be back in Berlin.

Sometimes he wonders if it’s just his age that makes him feel that way; that perhaps she hasn’t changed at all, and instead it’s the dust settling on his bones, rusted shrapnel over the years snagged in the joints and sinews, that makes him feel sluggish in comparison. It’s the first time in his life since Livingstone brought up the CIA’s desire for more sprightly recruits that he wonders- is he struggling to keep up?

Their reunion after all these years was a messy one: a scrap in an indistinct bar, bloodied knuckles split and bruises welted dark blue, the white of his eye burst red, the curve of her jaw swollen for a good week. Fresh after Panama. As soon as she caught wind of what happened she’d picked up his trail barely a week after he arrived in Bulgaria. Had she come to kill him? He doesn’t know. It isn’t as if she’d confess to it even if she had, and maybe he had it coming anyway. It stopped mattering at all the second the fight had descended into the alleyway, wrestled onto their backs against the cobblestone, where hands had found throats and then jaw, waist, hip, and everything else. Punches had calmed to caresses, curses to kisses, and somehow he’d found himself patching her up back at the Rook, his stray dog come home to him, like old times.

She’d eased herself back into his life easily enough then. Simple and unspoken. Or, rather, wedged her foot back in the door well enough that he couldn’t shut her out again, even if he’d wanted to (as if he hadn’t always kept it ajar all these years just to let her in, never closed, never closed). Never a word for what they are, what they have, the routine they’ve slipped almost effortlessly back into again- that hasn’t changed since the old days- and yet he doesn’t find that it robs it of meaning whatsoever.

If anything, it makes it something rare, special, his diamond in the rough, glinting sea glass washed a perfectly chiselled bead upon the shore. Just as she’d crashed along with the tide as time brought her back to him, he picked her up, tucked her gently back into that place she belonged, in between the rib and vertebrae, nestled inside him all to steady the beat of his restless heart. Her alone enough to settle the frantic, ceaseless palpitations he’s suffered nightly, since… Solovetsky? He thinks? The dull gnawing in the back of his mind all those years in between, that wasn’t sure if he was more frightened for her inevitable return or her disappearing forever, slipping through his fingers back to sea again.

He supposes it doesn’t matter anymore. That was then, and now seemed to fare much nicer.

Now, she rolls sweet and placid onto her back against the mattress, limp as a daisy in rain, soft body bowing to his careful manhandling; he’s itching for a smoke, aching for his vice the second he awoke, hours too early for his alarm. He lifts her off him delicately, almost methodical as he starts with her arm, the heavy loll of her head, her shoulder. Like defusing a bomb, he’d joked once, a comparison she’d only proven right by her explosive reaction to it.

It’s an odd feeling, though, the calm where there had once been nothing but war between them, the quiet, the warmth upon his chest now fading where she’d laid her head after he came back last night- back home, back to her- and it’s in moments like these, just mere glimpses of normalcy, that makes him wonder what could have been his life, theirs, had things not happened the way they did. MK Ultra, Berlin, Solovetsky. Perseus. Then again, he supposes, if she hadn’t been shot in Trabzon that night, if she hadn’t been there at all, then he wouldn’t have known she’d even existed. This mundane moment lost to time like everything else.

She murmurs in her sleep, spurred to wakefulness when the mattress lifts and groans at his absence, her eyes squinting through the sliver of morning light bleeding through the gap in the curtains; even when she’s completely out of it, she doesn’t miss a thing. He’s never exactly been the paragon of stealth when he excels at everything else, but even if every factor in the world had worked in his favour- if the beaten mattress wasn’t so rusted, if the ancient floorboards didn’t squeal underfoot when he stood up, if there wasn’t a constant draft on his side of the room that hit her as soon as he moved- nothing would have stopped her from registering his absence, clawing to fight off sleep just so she had an excuse to grouse at him. Ever his stubborn girl.

“Mm… where y’going…?”

Adler smiles to himself, flat but genuine, stifled by the lethargy that hangs over his head heavy as an anvil. Her accent so thick in the early hours it hardly sounds like English at all. He’s half tempted to reply in Russian, just to see if her cottonmouth tongue latches quicker to that instead.

But he doesn’t, just lingers in the doorway leading out to the hall, feeling only a little guilty for letting in the cold. It rather satisfies him instead to see her shiver and pull the blankets further over herself, keeping her right where he wants her. Right where he needs her, so he knows she’ll still be there when he comes back.

“Smoke,” is all he says, rattling the crumpled pack for her to hear.

She’s half coherent when she grumbles, English sandwiched between Russian endearments. Cussing him out.

“Y’can smoke in here… m’don’t mind. Come back to bed.”

Something tugs at his heart, almost foreign, vague. Something he only feels when she digs her claws in him just like that, even if only to graze. It’s the same certainty as when he wraps his finger around a trigger, pulls a pin, wrenches his hand around the hilt of a knife- unspoken, inevitable. The drop of a guillotine, inexorably quick. A certainty that verges on frightening, a promise, which he’s never been good at keeping, but knows she means wholeheartedly, down to her marrow. Possessiveness, he thinks- (is it irony, now, how often he finds her fist wrapped around the leash he doesn’t even notice he’s wearing?)- people not in their line of work, those with nice houses and desk jobs and white picket fences, he’s heard, call that feeling belonging. To be beckoned like that. Home.

It’s her demand that he stays. Hardly a question. And Bell doesn’t beg.

He’s sure that in her spitefulness, if he’d had a trigger phrase just like hers, she’d spit it at him ‘til he turned heel and crawled back on over to her, slid under the sheets like an apology scrawled onto a note and tucked under the door. It’s a near enough thing- the way her bleary eyes fix on him vengefully through matted lashes, searing her betrayal into him. Every morning he gets up before her, it seems to say: you left me. A petulant notion, only half serious, but one cold enough that it almost works. Frigid. Familiar. Arctic air.

It works a little at least- getting soft in your old age- because he lugs himself back over to the bed and just stands by it, refusing to give her the satisfaction of quiet victory if he climbs back inside. She stretches a languid arm flat across the mattress, rolling catlike onto her stomach, splaying her fingers in the hopes that she might somehow pull him back in to her. She manages a knuckle grazing his knee, before she gives up, pulled under by sleep once more. Head slumped against the pillow, she muffles her disdain.

But Adler is nothing if not at least a little amenable. If he’s sweet on anyone, it’s his Bell. His baby. Hard to let a thing like that go, when she was quite literally made for him. Made by him, in his image. Scraped marrow from rib like Adam, caulking the hole Arash shot through her chest and bestowed life upon her once more. He’s happy to have a piece of himself broken off and left inside her, a tithe tossed to the slab of her altar. The fracture of his soul a discarded lamb in sacrifice, sustaining the sick hunger that starves her.

It keeps them inseparable, he thinks. He’d read something somewhere, pretentious shlock about strings of fate and those bound to it- romantic crap shmucks use to justify ugly marriages and affairs, the suffering of co-dependency given some transcendent meaning, a purpose greater than the mundane. The notion that two people, by whatever higher power, are bound to one another no matter what they do to separate themselves of it, tethered from their first breath and suffering an endless togetherness until their last. He’d rolled his eyes the first time he’d heard of it- there wasn’t a world where he’d be enough of a sap to actually buy into that shit. Maybe his ex-wife might’ve been fond of it, maybe it was something she wrote into one of the letters he kept under his bunk back in ‘Nam. He doesn’t know.

But Bell made him understand it. He’d dug a grave in her when he denied her her own on that airstrip in Turkey, and he buried himself in it, over and over again. His memories, his life, his voice ringing like God’s. His favourite things, treasured, secret. His fears and doubts and worries, every little thing that made up the culmination of his being. It was never just Vietnam he put there. It was everything. She’s half himself, a faded mirror image. It only makes sense that they’d find each other again, eventually. She’d walk the earth, stalking like a bloodhound trailing his dried scent until she found him. She’d roam the endless nights, a ghost shivering their old haunts until he meanders his way back to her again, pulled along by a gnawing ache inside himself- a missing piece he’d seek the rest of his life to fill. She could track him blind. And he would feel her coming, like blood in the water. He did. He did.

It’s that tether that makes it impossible not to relent to her, when he kneels down next to the bed, knee joint cracking under his weight, the mottled floorboard doing nothing to steady him. It’s her, when she has enough leverage now to close the distance between her fingers and the collar of his shirt, curled inside the bleached cotton, fist wrenched tight. The seam digs into the back of his neck but he doesn’t let her pull him to her; he waits, making her work for it. The satisfaction that tends to follow when she does is usually worth her ingratiation.

She drags herself across the mattress, using his body as an anchor. Heavy and boneless, she lays right at the edge of the bed where he kneels, her nose nudging at his jaw as she turns, belly up like prey. Too easy a kill, he knows that. She’s gloating. The fact he’d come back at all means she’s got him right where she wants.

“C’mere,” she murmurs gently, saccharine, cloying. He’s surprised it doesn’t make her gag- the pretend domesticity of it all. Dragging her dried lips, smiling, against the underside of his jaw, her fingers sliding idle up the back of his neck, arm slung around his shoulder like she’s expecting to be carried out.

He humours her with a smirk, his blues nearly grey in the dim dark of the room as she mouths at him, vying for his attention. It’s as much a demand as her words had been, sharp as her tone as she nips at his jaw. Adler sighs, as though turning his face to gaze down at her were something laborious, and not the blessing he counts on every finger, every day, seemingly numbered since Panama. He tuts, and it says, what am I going to do with you?

But if his condescension was an attempt to dissuade her advances, it doesn’t work, because she sees right through his playful façade, and the wry smile that unfurls sleepy on her lips betrays her excitement, the sifting of her legs under the sheets audible as she squeezes them together. Needy. She knows he notices.

“Not gonna work, Bell,” he hums dryly. Yet he steals this moment of her surrender, his eyes flitting to every feature of her face. He doesn’t need to commit her to memory, she’s dug in there like a tick. But God, if he doesn’t like to look at her. He brings a rough hand down against her temple, smoothing the baby hairs back, eliciting a satisfied sigh from her as her eyes slip shut. Her head falls back against the pillow, anticipating a kiss he doesn’t give her.

“C’mon. Back to sleep. I’ll be ten minutes.”

“Five.”

“Bell.”

“Five minutes.”

Adler sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and scrunching his eyes shut.

“C’mon,” she croons, “five minutes… n’then…”

He thinks she’s fallen back asleep, the way her sentence carries off like that into silence. But when he opens his eyes she’s blinking prettily up at him, looking far too satisfied. Just as he opens his mouth to ask why, he feels the warm press of her hand against his knee, sliding up his thigh, fingertips tugged impishly at the sweatpants he’d haphazardly thrown on. He’s lightning quick to catch her, fingers circling her wrist; where the darting action might scare a weaker person it makes Bell’s eyes light up like stars, enamoured with his roughness. Excited. The way only she could be, eager pup biting at his ankles for a reaction.

“Behave,” he scolds, giving her knuckle a cursory smack before releasing her. That must finally be enough to spoil her fun, because she huffs, growling low in her throat, and rolls back over, burrowing herself deeper into the blanket than she’d begun.

It’s always a game to her, one she doesn’t much like losing. He can’t blame her for it. It’s always been that way. Back in Berlin, he’d taught her to play poker the proper way, the American way- whatever that meant- her downfall eternally being the fact she couldn’t bluff for shit around him. And it was just him- she’d caught on quick to the play, and had triumphed a couple times against Sims and Lazar; Park had refused to indulge the game, and Woods wiped the floor with the lot of them, even Adler. But with him, Bell just couldn’t lie. He was carved from marble, impassable- what he’d been trained to do. And she was a piece chipped off his softest part, malleable- of course he’d catch every minute twitch and wince, the flitting of wet lashes, the purse of an uncertain lip. She always told him the truth even with her eyes, her heart bore on her sleeve. It almost always felt like cheating. After all, it was what she was made for, wasn’t it?

And this felt much the same way. Not as strict as the luck of dealt hands and stifled poker faces but she’s never said or done anything to him she doesn’t mean. After he missed the shot in Solovetsky, all cards were strewn on the table. There was no mystery anymore. No joy taken in a good old fashioned backstab when the real damage was done, much too late to rectify. Maybe that’s why she makes it her personal goal to poke and prod and tease him now, chasing her fun in her own way, a decade late. Suppose it’s why she hates when he doesn’t just drop the cool attitude and give in.

He rises from the floor, that same knee joint clicking again. Where she might have mumbled a curt jibe about it, she’s silent, sulking into the pillow.

But just as he goes to leave, Adler stops at the door, a foot out into the hallway, the rest of him still stuck here, stuck on her. He sees a similar image in the back of his mind, of her laid upon the gurney in Die Landebahn, halfway into the back room with a syringe in hand when for one single moment of sobriety it dawned on him, what he’d been doing to her. Nothing like guilt, but it came close. Tinged with the regret of something so shameful as affection, Cupid’s arrow dipped in kerosene, shot straight through his heart; to come out the other side, to let him survive, to let him have this, here, her, now. And it’s a torture to have lived it, to know he doesn’t deserve a lick of it. The soft rise and fall of her breath beneath the blanket. Her hair splayed upon his pillow. She buries her nose deep in the old goose feather to try and keep him where he’s left her. Hold him close even when he’s gone.

The decade’s done much to him. He’d put on a couple pounds, had to start plucking the errant greys flecking his hairline, begun to wake most mornings with a tell-tale crick in his neck. He’s learned to relax that hard line in his brow, drawn too deep to reverse the evidence of age; let himself laugh a little easier, surprised people with his newfound ability to actually smile. He’s lost a lot, gained half as much. He’d been through hell and back, worse maybe than what he did to her- his karma, he supposes. And he supposes the decade’s made him soft, sentimentality creeping in to nestle somewhere he can’t reach, hidden inside himself with all the other things he doesn’t talk about. And he supposes of everything he’s lost, he has Bell again, and all things considered- it’s a fair trade.

He sucks in a breath, a sigh made audible for her to hear. Even as she feigns sleep, he knows she catches it, a flinch of her shoulder- where the shot he missed had landed in lieu of her head. In Solovetsky.

Then, Adler sighs, followed by a promise that feels to her like a confession.

“Five minutes.”

And when the door clicks shut, Bell steals herself a little victory smile.

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dirtytransmasc · 9 months ago

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Modern Aocorro high school au: what if Spider was a harpist in his high school orchestra and Ao'nung was down bad about it.

Spider was already your classic high school heart throb. He was popular, buff, handsome, a little rough around the edges, yet still a total sweetheart.

For Eywa's sake, he carpooled his siblings to school or rode his skateboard to school, volunteered around town 24/7, used reusable straws, he'd hand his pocket change to anyone in need, and was known for getting into fights with bullies in the parking lot.

Not to mention that he had the prettiest golden curls and brown eyes anyone had ever seen (at least in Ao'nung's opinion).

So to say Ao'nung was crushing, hard, was probably the understatement of the century, and could you even blame him? The guy was perfect, an angel, and it was driving him insane.

He'd catch himself staring during gym practice, marveling at his muscles, cheeks flushing, or in the locker room when he took his shirt off to change, his heart pounding away in his chest.

he thought he couldn't be even more down bad for that boy than he already was, his confident personality rendered null and void when he was around, his tongue caught in the back of his throat, unable to do so much as squeak at him… until the day he caught him in the orchestra room, practicing.

Now, he had heard Spider was in orchestra and had even seen him rolling around some large black case around the school before, but he'd never actually caught what he played.

But walking past that half-opened door was how he found out the love of his life wasn't only a sweet handsome hunk of a guy, but he played the harp, the instrument of an angel.

The sheer audacity of this boy was getting out of hand, he swore to Eywa, he was gonna kill him one of these days with his impossibly hot antics.

He stands and watches as Spider presses up against his harp, eyes focused on his sheet music, hair tied up in a messy bun but a single golden curl hangs he keeps blowing out of his face, and his fingers strum along the strings, working the muscles throughout his hands and arms.

The sound of gentle music flowed from the gap in the door, and it sounded just as pretty as Spider looked, soft and sweet, but still robust, still full of base and bravado. It was so fitting.

Watching Spider's face quirk with focus and frustration and pride as he worked through the song made the other's heart swoon, he swore it must be palpating or maybe skipping beats. He just knows it wasn't beating right, especially as he rubs his hand over his chest and feels how heavy it beats against his ribs.

And thats when Spider just so happens to turn to see who was gawking at him from the hallway, and instead of telling him to stop staring or throwing a pissed-off glance like Ao'nung is sure most other's would do if they caught someone staring like he had been, Spider just smiled.

"Like what you hear?" he quipped, leaning forward to turn the page of his music binder.

"Y-Yeah, yeah, you're... amazing," he choked out an answer, coughing into his fist to try and cover up the stammer in his voice and the blush on his cheeks.

"You flatter me," he replied, sitting back and looking Ao'nung right in the eye before he looked away with an even brighter smile, and it was like his skin was set on fire by just that single glance. "Are you gonna come in or are you gonna keep standing out their like some weirdo?"

"Oh, I-I wouldn't want to bother, I was j-just passing by,"

"It's free period, it's why I'm in here all by my lonesome," he puts on a fake pout and bats his lashes in his direction for show, "keep my company yeah? I'm sure you've got nothing to do if you've already spent so much time staring."

He moved his bag off the chair next to him before patting it.

"Sit," his tone was warm and inviting and his eyes were soft and almost pleading, so he did, with a deep breath, he sat next to the other boy.

He managed to be even prettier up close, and Ao'nung had to tear his eyes away so he didn't make a fool of himself. He decided to turn his attention to the harp. It was beautiful, made of a soft, warm-toned wood, intricately carved and painted with the image of flowers he couldn't name off the top of his head.

"She's a beauty isn't she?" Spider asked

he only nodded at first, before feeling the urge to touch, his hand moving before he could think better of it, but he managed to stop himself before he made contact with he wood.

"Can I?" he asked, quite pitifully, finally making his own eye contact with the blonde. Eywa save him, he was too pretty, it was unfair. He felt butterflies tickling his stomach and his head getting fuzzy. Why didn't he run when he had the chance?

"Go ahead," he answered with a huff of laughter.

He tried to steady himself as he stroked a hand down the curved wood that he saw resting against Spider's chest earlier when he was playing, feeling the warmth from the other boy's skin still clinging to the wood.

His fingers sought out the strings Spider's rested on moments ago, the metal threading bit into his flesh ever so slightly when he ran his fingers down them.

"I catch you staring all the time y'know, you're not very good at hiding it."

Ao'nung feels his heart drop through the floor and into the stone-cold basement beneath them. Fuck. He fucked up, he fucked up so bad, Spider must think he's a freak-

"It's cute."

"What?" he didn't mean to ask that out loud, but when he did, he said it far too loud.

Spider just laughs at him, gently and without malice, his eyes crinkling into almost nothing, his cheeks going a little red, his nose scrunching a little. Ao'nung feels his heart swell.

"Oh, it's never subtle, especially since you turn bright red, and the second you realize I'm looking back, you turn tail and run away like you have the devil on your heels," he pauses to wipe the tears from his eyes, "It's just cute, adorable even. I kinda like having a not so secret admirer."

"You don't think I'm some total freak?"

"Nah dude.... who's to say I'm not staring back?" he said nonchalantly.

Ao'nung was sure his brain was melting, cause he just found out his crush might like him back? Potentially. And that was just simply mind-boggling, cause, he wasn't gonna sell himself short, but he never thought he could be on Spider's radar.

They hung out with different people, and he used to be an ass to his siblings before he transferred to be here, and sure he apologized and made up with them, he always seemed to hold a bit of a grudge.

"You are?" he had to ask.

"Mmmmmm, maybe a little," he replied with a cheeky grin plastered on his face. "I will admit, at first it was because I was trying to make sure you weren't being an ass, but, things might be changing."

Ao'nung nodded to himself, clearing his throat, trying to decipher what that could even mean. Was Spider saying he was starting to like him too? did he have a shot with him?

"Listen, the bells about to ring, so why don't I give you this," he pulled a pen from the spine of his binder, tearing the corner off of one of his sheet music, which felt oddly intimate, and wrote something down on it, before handing it to him.

It was his number. Spider just gave him his number.

"Text me? we can start gettign to actually know each other, and maybe you could start joining me in here during free period, I could give you some lessons on the harp if you'd like?" now Spider sounded a little sheepish.

Which somehow made Ao'nung feel a bit more confident, so for the first time in seemingly forever, he answered Spider with some level of confidence.

"Yeah, I'd like that, I'd like that a lot."

"Good, good, I'd like that too."

They were both smiling now. The bell rang. They both hesitated to break eye contact.

"I'll text you, promise." Eywa, he was making promises. Already. He really was a hopeless sap. But it felt right when Spider huffed a laugh at it, a hand coming up to cover his smile a little. He was flattered.

"You better, stalker," Spider laughed, finally starting to pack up his stuff.

"Rude," he faked a gasped, lingering in the door, knowing he had to get to class, and he needed to let Spider pack up so he wouldn't be late himself, but wanting to let the moment last just a little longer.

"I think staring is rude, but I think I'll give you a pass, so long as you stop running away when I catch you, deal?"

"Deal."

"And you have to meet me here tomorrow."

"I will, it's a date," the words slipped out of his mouth without thinking about how it could be interpreted, "oh, not like-"

"It's a date" Spider repeated.

Ao'nung found he could only nod. It's a date. Even if it wasn't like that, it was still nice to think about. a date with an angel.

"Now go, before you're late, wouldn't want you to get in any trouble." Spider crossed his arms and jutted out his hip like he was some disappointed mom or something.

"Right, bye Spider."

He waved goodbye. It was corny and childish, but he waved. Spider waved back. He had his number clutched tightly in his other palm. Spider had his phone clutched in his hands as if he couldn't wait for the message to come any longer.

"Bye Stalker."

He has a feeling he's gonna have to get used to that nickname, but as he rounds the corner, his chest still feeling warm and full of butterflies, he doesn't think he minds all that much.

#this was so random #but I loved the harp back when I was in highschool orchestra and fought to play it myself but failed to get the funding for it #(harps are so expensive oh my god)#and I really think it's an instrument so fitting for Spider so I projected it onto him #and I have aocorro brainrot at the moment. so I wrote this.#when Spider called Ao' dude. he really meant “future boyfriend”#writing romance is not my strong suite so I don't know how good this is #and Ao'nung is surprisingly hard to write #so idk how I feel about this #ending this felt impossible #it wouldn't just come to an end #even when there was nothing else to write #Spider was making a move. this kid had been staring at him for weeks and acting a damn fool. he was putting an end to it #and how to pop that conversation on a guy other than to wait till his guard was down and he was moments away from a heart attack #they're just silly #avatar 2 #avatar the way of water #spider socorro #miles spider socorro #miles socorro #ao'nung #aonung #aocorro #tigerseal #seamonkey

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