#I’ve been through two fires and gas leak at this place now

[raeathnos]

.

[kpop---scenarios]

The Ride

Pairing: Mafia! Baekhyun x Reader

Genre: Mafia Au

Word Count: 4.8k

Warning: Gun Use, Mentions of Death, Kidnapping, Smut, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Sex Trafficking

Summary: Baekhyun was hired by your grandfather to watch over your cousin after she felt like she was being watched and marked. During his time at the diner with her, you and him became quite close. Little do you know the two of you are in for quite the ride.

Tagging: @shesdreaminginoverdose @ice-cold-taeyong @skittlez-area512 @exolnctzens @tacojisung @you-n-me-e-e @puli2things @xlxbaekhyuneex @blahblahblah-boo @precious-seungwooya @michimouse98 @ncteaxhoe @brokenbutchocolate @amixoferrthang @xiumin-tzuyu @biaswreckingfics @milky-baek @reynadelsol25 @maygem2780 @bbhmystar @xnovyx @sunbyun21 @jungkooksworld18 @noonawriter​

You lean over the counter, your cheek resting on your palm as you giggle at something Baekhyun had just said to you. 

"You're so gross. He's supposed to be here for me." Rose scoffs as she smacks her gum, continuing to text on her phone. 

"Oh my god, no." You laugh at Baekhyun before glaring at your cousin, scrunching up your face before hiding behind your hands. Your phone rings, you take it out and look at the caller ID, seeing grandpa flash across the screen you know he's there to pick up Rose. 

"Grandpa is here for you." You tell her, seeing his car pull up out back. As she gets up to leave, you turn away from Baekhyun when you hear the bell from the front door ring, along with mumbling deep voices. 

"Um.." Baekhyun says, making you turn around. You see a group of three men walking into the diner and Baekhyun's body stiffening up. 

"It's a group of old men, Baek. Stop." You laugh, grabbing menus before heading over there. 

"Hi guys." You smile, laying out the menus. "Can I get you guys something to drink to start?" You ask, slipping your notebook from your pocket. 

"Well aren't you a pretty little thing. Hey Jon? Dontcha think she's pretty." One man says, looking you up and down. 

"Absolutely." Another one murmurs. "She would make a nice fit with the others, hey Al?" He chuckles. "It's too bad she's not who we're here for." 

Your hand begins to sweat and shake as you try to remain cool. You felt uneasy but your grandpa always told you how to handle these men, should you ever encounter them. He always told you to not worry about it because the diner was a safe place, but on the off chance something happened, he was only a phone call away. 

"We heard Rose was going to be working today?" One man says with a smile. "I hear she gives great service. Could you get her?" He asks, his smile forced. 

"She's not here but I'll get you some waters." You mumble, quickly walking behind the counter. You notice the spot that Baekhyun had been sitting was now empty. You gather up the waters and head back to the table, placing one down in front of each man. 

"Do you guys know what you want to order or did you need more time?" You ask, your voice shaky. 

"Oh I know what i want." Al says, standing up. "Rose." 

"She's not here, I believe i said." You say, waving him off. 

"I don't believe you." He laughs. All three men stand up. 

"You guys can get the fuck out before I call the cops." You spit, placing your hand on your waist. 

The men laugh as they stand up, one of them winking at you as they walk out the door. 

"I'll be seeing you." He says, walking through the door, letting it slowly close behind him. 

"Not likely!" You yell. 

What a piece of shit.

You felt like you could finally breathe as you watched them climb into a car, turning your back before you even see them leave. 

You walk into the kitchen where the cook was cleaning the grill, the music blaring from his headphones. You tell him about your encounter and just ask him to keep an eye out.

You go back up front and you see Baekhyun walking around the front of the diner as you gather up some garbage, watching him turn the corner. You never understood why he stayed here after Rose left, since she realistically should be the only reason he was here. 

 You take the garbage out the back and through the door to the dumpster. As you see Baekhyun looking inside your car you notice a man with a gun sneaking up behind him, the gun pointed directly at his head. 

"Duck!" You scream. 

Baekhyun drops to the ground as the man fires his gun, the bullet going straight through the window of your car.

He pulls out his gun, swiftly turning around to shoot the man before getting up and running to you. He grabs your wrist, dragging you to his car, opening the passenger door and pushing you in before he hops in the driver's seat, starting the car, putting it in drive, as he screeches out of the parking lot. 

"Shit they had people waiting." Baekhyun spits, pressing down on the gas as two cars follow behind you. "I fucking knew it. I thought they would have moved on since she wasn't here." He mumbles. 

"Yeah cause sex traffickers move on that easily once they have a target." You sigh, rolling your eyes. "They're not dumb, Baek. They know you're there to protect her."  

"Here take this." He says ignoring what you said and handing you a gun. "Just keep shooting out the window. Try to aim for the tires." Baekhyun yells as he jerks the steering wheel to the left, the car behind you still trailing you too close for your liking. 

As you take off the safety, your mind wanders back into how you got into this position, meeting Baekhyun. 

**

"Ayn, this is Byun Baekhyun of EXO. He's here to watch after Rose while she's at work." Your grandpa, Chairman Yang tells you. 

"Watch Rose? Why? Because she does such a terrible job?" You laugh. Your laugh quickly fades away as you see the seriousness on everyone's face and that's when you knew it wasn't something to be joking about. "What's going on?" You ask. 

"She's been marked. Her car for the last few days have had the markings for trafficking." Baekhyun tells you. "This is how they do it, stake her out for a few weeks before they try to make their move." 

"So you're there.." you pause before he cuts in. 

"To protect her." He finishes. 

"Don't worry Ayn. Nothing will happen." Your grandpa smiles, trying to ease your mind. 

You weren't worried. You knew everything would be fine. 

"Don't they know who she is? Why pick her?" You wonder. Your family was powerful, so why risk it? 

"More powerful the family, more money for the girl. Some guys are just willing to take the risk." Baekhyun says. 

"I've got to go to a meeting. All will be fine, Ayn." Your grandpa finishes, placing a kiss on your forehead before walking away, leaving you with the man you soon would fall for. 

** 

The first day Baekhyun showed up you laughed. He sat on a stool at the counter and looked around the building trying to locate Rose. 

"Seriously?" You smile, looking at him with a blank stare. "First day and you already can't find her?" 

"I know exactly where she is." He scoffs. "Back there." He says, pointing to the kitchen. 

"Actually no. She didn't come in today. She had me take her shift today." You say, smiling wildy. 

Baekhyun laughs as he shakes his head, lowering it in embarrassment. 

"It's okay if you're not very smart, you're still hot." You smile. 

"You think I'm hot?" He asks. 

"Don't get all soft now, mafia man. You have a job to do." You say, walking away to serve the new group of people who just walked in. 

Baekhyun knew then things would never be boring as long as you were around. 

**

"I did it!" You exclaim excitedly as you watch the car behind you lose control and crash into a pole. 

"Good job." Baekhyun laughs. "One more to go." He murmurs, jerking the car one more time and speeding up. "Hold on tight." He spits, grabbing the wheel tightly, stepping on the brake and turning the wheel hard, completely turning the car around. 

You both speed past the car that had been trailing behind you, and laugh as you watch them through the mirrors, they slam on their brakes and try to turn to catch the two of you. By the time they had turned around, Baekhyun had already pulled into one of many side roads, turning off the car. 

Sitting there in silence, you squeeze your legs together, your clit throbbing. 

"Are you okay?" Baekhyun asks, worriedly.

"Adrenaline makes me horny." You breathe. You move your panties to the side, slowly slipping your fingers into your pussy, only letting out a soft moan. 

"Are you..?" He begins to ask, but is cut off by you getting onto your knees, pulling your fingers from your pussy and leaning over to him. You lift up his shirt, running your fingers through his treasure trail, licking your lips before whispering "nice." 

You unbutton his pants and he lifts himself up, making it easier for you to pull them down. 

You lick your lips at the sight of his cock, hard, leaking pre cum. 

You place your mouth over the tip wrapping your lips around it, swallowing his cock. 

Baekhyun moans as you gag yourself on his cock. His head falls back against the seat, his mouth hanging open as he thrusts up, shoving his cock further back down your throat. 

You bring yourself up, sitting up, you wipe your mouth, looking him in the eyes. "Im clean. Are you?" You ask. 

"Yes." He whispers as he watches you pull your panties down and throw them in the backseat. He leans his seat back, pulling your arm to help you climb onto him, hiking your skirt up in the process. He holds his cock as you slowly begin to sink down on him, his cock stretching you out an unimaginable amount. 

"Shit." He cries. "You're so fucking wet. You're drenched." He moans. 

You place your hands on his shoulders, you're rolling your hips, curling yourself into him. 

"Oh my god." You moan in his ear, leaning forward. 

You move your fingers down, putting them in between the two of you and in between your lips, rubbing your clit. You nuzzle your nose into his neck, the scent of his cologne filling your nostrils.

"Dont stop." You cry, rolling your hips in just the right way. Your clit becomes sensitive as your orgasm quickly approaches. 

You lift yourself up from against him, your head flying back as you cum all over his cock. You move your hand from between your legs, lowering your head to look Baekhyun in the eyes, you place your fingers in your mouth, sucking the juices from them. 

Baekhyun moans as his hands leave your hips, moving up to begin undoing the buttons of your top, exposing your bra. He pulls a cup down, letting a breast spring free. He moans as he cups it, leaning his head forward to take it in his mouth. 

Shivers run down your spine as he continues to suck while you ride him, his cock hitting the right spot every time. 

You move your fingers down, putting them in between the two of you and in between your lips, rubbing your clit. You nuzzle your nose into his neck, the scent of his cologne filling your nostrils. 

Baekhyun lets go of your nipple with a pop, but before he's able to say anything else, a pair of headlights are set on your car and a gunshot rings through the air. 

"Shit." He spits, turning the car on. You try to get off of him but his one hand keeps you there in place. "I don't think so, baby." He smiles, putting the car in drive and flooring it. "Grab the gun." He spits. 

You reach over to the empty passenger seat, grabbing the gun you had left there. "Aim it out my window. Try to hit wherever you can." He yells, jerking the car around another corner. You wrap your arm around his neck as he looks over your shoulder, watching the road. You stick your arm out the window and pull the trigger, doing your best to keep your aim at the car. You were having a little trouble concentrating with Baekhyun subtly thrusting inside you as he drove. 

As you aim the gun out of his window, a moan slips out of your mouth, whispering the sound into his ear. 

"Fuck baby, you can't do that." He groans, grunting as he bucks his hips up, pushing himself deeper inside of you. 

"And you can't do that, if you want me to shoot." You gasp, clutching the gun tightly. 

Managing to get a little bit of your concentration back, you squeeze your pussy around his cock as you aim and fire. 

"Oh my god." Baekhyun gasps, biting his bottom lip before thrusting his hips up, pounding himself into you. 

"Fuck." You cry out, bringing your free hand up to cup your breast, squeezing it tightly. Your eyes roll into the back of your head as you ride Baekhyun, forgetting that you would be distracting him from trying to get the two of you to safety. 

"Take another shot." Baekhyun groans, trying to concentrate, both hands on the wheel but his eyes on your bouncing tits. 

You stick your arm out the window again, firing another shot, this time hitting a wheel, making the car begin to swerve before inevitably crashing into a tree. Baekhyun laughs as he slams on the breaks, shifting the car into park before his hands end up on your thighs, pushing down while he thrusted up hard. 

"So fucking sexy." He grunts. You use your knees against the seat, bouncing on his cock, your tits in his face. 

"Fuck I'm gonna cum." You cry, your hand grabs a clump of hair as your orgasm hits you, halting all your movements, causing you to shake. "Shit." You moan as Baekhyun thrusts himself into you more, chasing his own high. 

"Im gonna.. cum." He stampers, his fingertips digging into your thighs as he shoots his load into your pussy, coating your walls with his cum. "Fuck." He huffs. 

You smile as you both catch your breath before you get off of him and sit yourself in his passenger seat, feeling his cum drip from inside your pussy. "You can just drop me off at home if you want." You breathe, running your hands through your hair. 

"I need to talk to your grandpa so yeah, let's go." Baekhyun says, turning shifting the car into drive and heading for your house. 

** 

"Yes sir." Baekhyun says as your grandpa gives him new instructions. 

"You're to be there all day everyday. If EXO wants us on their side, you better be keeping us granddaughter safe." He says, not looking up from his desk. 

"Yes sir. Of course sir." Baekhyun finishes, nodding his head. 

"You may go. Ayn?" Your grandpa says. 

"Yeah?" You say, turning around to face him. 

"Maybe you should take some time off from the diner. Just until everything blows over." He suggests. 

You laugh as you walk over behind him, wrapping your arms around his neck. "I appreciate the concern, but they're not after me. Besides, you know i can handle myself." You say, giving him a kiss on the cheek. 

"I know you're tough." He chuckles. "Doesn't mean I can't worry about you." 

"I'll see you later." You smile, walking out of his office. 

**

A few days later you were back at work, missing Baekhyun. He had gotten a phone call from Rose saying she had an appointment and he was the one who needed to take her and watch her there. You could almost guarantee that she did not have an appointment, she just didn't want to come to work like usual. 

You're brought out of your thoughts when the bell on top of the door rings and you heat the sound of footsteps walking into the diner. You turn around and see one of the men from before standing there, but this time he's alone.

"Table for one?" He asks. 

"Sit where you want. I'll be right with you." You say, turning around to grab a menu. You take a deep breath, planning out what you were going to yell at him. You walk up to him, dropping his menu on the table as he looks up at you. 

"Before you say anything.." he pauses. "I want to apologize for my friends and I the other day." He smiles. "They're into some weird business, we were drinking that day and things just got out of hand." He sighs. "A friend had told us about Rose and we pushed too far, we didn't mean any harm,  i'm sorry." He finishes. 

"If you weren't here to do any harm, then what about the guy who was shot?" You ask, trying to unravel his apology. 

"What guy? Someone was shot?" He asked, looking worried. 

"Nevermind.' You whisper. You weren't sure if you believed him but it's not like you would see him  often, so you let it go. But that wasn't true. You saw home almost everyday after that, and everyday you became increasingly more and more comfortable around Al. 

** 

"Hey Al." You smile widely as he walks into the diner for the fifth time this week. 

"Hello dear." He laughs, sitting down at his usual table. Already you were behind the counter grabbing his water and his coffee to bring to him.

"BLT or eggs today?" You smile, not even bringing him a menu considering he only ever ordered one of two things. 

"I think the BLT sounds good today, Ayn." He says, sipping on his coffee. "How's your cousin?" He asks. 

You had told him that she was a terrible coworker and he always liked to tease you about it. "Shitty, as usual." You smile. "I'll go put your order in quick." 

As the night went on and Al finished his food, he liked to stay and have a few cups of coffee after, reading the paper and just enjoying the sound. Yoh remembers how he told you his family was all gone, his wife passed away years ago, and his children were all grown up and left the house. He missed the noise, being surrounded by people. Or that's what he told you. 

"See ya, Ayn." He says, waving as he walks out the door a few hours later. You head over to his table to clean up his cups and underneath one of them was a $100 bill. He always managed to make you smile with his tips. 

**

A few weeks later, Al was still coming in and Baekhyun didn't like it. "There's something off about him." He says, sipping his coffee, eyeing up the man who you had become close to. 

"He's lonely. Leave him alone." You laugh, smacking Baekhyun on the arm. 

"How was your day today, Ayn?" Al asks as you refill his coffee. "The same as yesterday and the day before and the day before." You laugh. "Work work work, go home and sleep and more work." 

"You work far too much. You closing up again tonight?" He asks. 

"Not tonight, I'm off early tonight but the rest of the week I'll be closing." You tell him. 

"You make sure to be careful. There are some weirdos out there." He warns. 

You thank him and turn around, missing the small smirk that appears on his lips before disappearing quickly. 

At 7pm, you happily took off your apron, throwing it in the laundry basket in the back before saying goodbye and getting into your car. 

Once you were home you took a quick shower, not bothering to use a towel to dry yourself off, you prefer to air dry. 

You walk to your dresser grabbing your lotion off the top shelf as your door opens and in walks Baekhyun with his eyes closed. 

 "Look." He says. "We need to talk." He finishes opening his eyes, trailing your body up and down. "I.. we.. um." He stutters. 

"Im listening." You say, rubbing lotion over your stomach before moving up to your breasts. 

Baekhyun lets out a deep breath before moving to your desk chair, he sits down, biting his bottom lip. "Well.." he pauses. 

"What do you want to say to me?" You ask, standing in front of him. 

"I don't remember." He says, looking up at you. You smile as you crawl into his lap, straddling him. You wrap your arms around his neck, your breasts pushed into his face. You lift yourself up before rolling your hips against his clothed cock. You feel him grow beneath you as you continue to grind yourself on him.

"What do you want?" Baekhyun asks, his voice low. 

"Do whatever you want to me." You breathe. 

"Whatever I want?" He smirks. 

You nod your head, biting your lip to hide your smile. Baekhyjn stands up holding your back as you wrap your legs around his waist. His hands move to your ribs, holding pulling you off and throwing you on the bed. 

"Ropes?" He asks. 

"Handcuffs." You reply, pointing to your closet. Baekhyun gets off the bed, moving to your closet. He reaches up to grab the pair of handcuffs, twirling them around his finger as he walks back to your naked body laying on the bed. He crawls on, smiling as you hold out your wrists for him. Happily he locks the handcuffs in place and pushes your arms to lay flat over your head. 

"Hold onto the headboard and do not let go." He says with a growl. 

"Yes sir." You purr. 

Baekhyun moves down your body, forcing your legs open, spreading them as far as he can make them go. Your pussy is already dripping at the thought of him between your thighs. 

He lays down on his stomach, spreading your lips before flicking your clit with the tip of his tongue. Your back arches for a moment, until he pushes you back down, keeping his hand there to not let you do that again. 

"Oh my god." You cry out, his lips wrapping around you clit, sucking harshly. 

He releases your clit, sliding two fingers into his mouth before slowly entering them inside you. He slowly pumps his finger in and out of you, bringing his other thumb to your clit and gently rubbing, making you arch your back again. 

"Fuck fuck fuck." You cry out, the overwhelming sensation continuing to grow as he works his magic fingers. 

"You're going to make me.. cum." You scream out, your hands holding on tightly to the headboard as your orgasm washes through your body, Baekhyun's fingers still continuing to work on you. 

"Please. Please no more." You cry out, your body trying to twist away from him. 

"Shh baby, you told me I could do whatever I wanted. So stop moving and let me make you cum again." He snaps, his eyes dark. You bite your bottom lip, your body tries to relax but fuck you're sensitive. 

"I can't." You cry. 

"You can and you will. Cum again, baby." He says, his fingers thrusting in and out of you quickly while his thumb rubs your clit. 

"Fuck." You cry out, another orgasm washing over you, your clit throbbing from being so sensitive now. 

Baekhyun removes his hands from you, standing up and pointing to the floor. "On your knees." He states, pointing to the hardwood floor beneath him. You crawl off the bed, your hands still in the cuffs. Your sink down onto your knees, in front of Baekhyun. He begins unzipping his pants, letting his cock spring free. You notice the precum dripping from his red tip. 

"Suck." He demands. 

You take a breath before leaning forward, licking the tip of his cock, swallowing the cum before taking more of him in your mouth. 

Baekhyun's hands reach around and grab the back of your head, pulling a clump of hair to keep your head still before he slowly thrusts his hips back and forth, gently hitting the back of your throat. 

As the seconds went on his thrusts became harder and faster. His grip on your hair tightened as he slammed his cock into your mouth, sliding it down your throat to make you gag. Tears brimmed your eyes as you choked on his cock. 

"Such a good slut." He moans, pulling his cock from your mouth, letting you breathe. 

"On the bed. All fours." He spits, discarding his shirt somewhere in your room. 

You climb on the bed, mascara burning your eyes as it runs down your face. You put your face in your bed, pressing it into your sheets while sticking your ass in the air and wait for Baekhyun.  

You feel the bed dip behind you before a hard slap lands on your ass, making it burning. 

"Good girl." He purrs, grabbing your ass roughly before slapping it one more time. 

Baekhyun lines his cock up with your hole, pushing himself inside you a little bit before he grips onto your hips and slams himself inside you. 

"Holy fuck." You cry out but it's muffled. Your fingers hold tightly onto the bed sheets as your face is buried into the bed. 

"Such a nice pussy." He groans, this thrusts slowly but hard, hitting your G spot everytime. 

Seconds later he picks up his pace and begins pounding himself into you, his breathing heavy as his fingertips dig into your hips. 

"Clench." He grunts. 

You clench your pussy around him, making him cry out loudly. 

"Fuck, just like that." He groans, his thrusts becoming erratic. "Im gonna cum." He yells, his grip becoming even tighter before he stops moving. He's hunched over you, as he spills himself into you, coating your walls with his cum. 

"Shit." He breathes, giving small thrusts as he milks himself for everything.  

He pulls himself out of you, letting cum fall from your pussy, as he walks to the bathroom to grab you a cloth. 

He comes back with a smile on his face handing you the cloth before unlocking your hands, tossing the handcuffs onto your bed. 

After cleaning up, he crawls in beside you, pulling you in close to him, sleep coming easily to you both. 

Late in the morning, Baekhyun gives you a kiss on the lips as he quietly leaves your room, heading home to shower before going to the diner for his shift with Rose. "I'll see you later." You smile, knowing you'll be there in the next few hours for your long shift. 

** 

Over the next few nights of your closing shifts, Baekhyun had to leave early for the first two and had planned on staying for the third one. It was around 10pm when Rose had left to head home and it didn't take long for Baekhyun's phone to ring after that. 

"You just left Rose." Baekhyun sighs as he answers the phone on speaker.  

"I think someone's following me." She whispers. 'I've been taking a bunch of random turns and the car follows me the whole time." She says. You can hear the panic in her voice as you hear whimpers through the phone. 

"Where are you? I'm on my way." Baekhyun says, taking off from the diner. Your stomach was in knots thinking about what could happen to Rose. You just hoped Baekhyun got to her in time. As you watch his car screech out of the parking lot, the front door opens. You see Al walking in, a smile on his face. 

"Hey stranger." You grin, grabbing a cup for coffee. 

"None tonight." He says. He looks uneasy and uncomfortable. "I'm really sorry Ayn. It's not my decision." He says. Before you're able to ask him what he meant, you hear the sound of a bullet hitting something or someone in the kitchen and then a body hitting the floor. 

You look at Al with terror in your eyes as he shrugs his shoulders before you're hit over the head with something, making you fall into the darkness. 

**

Baekhyun got to Rose as fast as he could. She had pulled into a well lit gas station that had many people around while she waited for him to show up.

"They're gone?" She says, looking around as Baekhyun walks up to her window. "It's like they saw you and took off." She says shrugging her shoulders. 

His mind immediately went to you. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. He pulled out his phone, dialing your number but you didn't answer. His hand starts to shake as he presses redial before running back to his car. He speeds out of the gas station and heads back to the diner. 

You still didn't answer. 

Baekhyun dials Chairman Yang, who picks up on the second ring. "What is it?" He asks.

"It's Ayn. Meet me at the diner." Baekhyun says before hanging up the phone. His foot presses on the gas, jolting his car to go faster.

He finally reaches the diner, barely putting the car in park before he flies out of the driver's seat, running inside. He calls out your name but you don't answer. His eyes look to the floor where he sees a large spot of blood. 

"Ayn!" He calls again, no answer. 

Chairman Yang runs through the door, looking at the blood then back at Baekhyun. 

"It was never Rose." He breathes. "They never wanted her. It was always Ayn." He finishes, feeling like he's failed you. 

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

In your ask about how the nameless guy could be the nameless woman, you said that you thought the statute of secrecy is much younger than what is said in the series. Please elaborate how you know (not that I disagree with you. the wizards are s*** at keeping themselves a secret)

So, as I’ve discussed before, one has to take anything about history in the wizarding world with a large grain of salt. Specifically, I doubt the wizarding world approaches the discipline of history the way we do, history doesn’t seem to be much of an academic field (the wizarding world seems to only have two historians, one of which is dead), and there seems to be a strong incentive and tradition of propaganda.

So, that alone makes me suspicious of anything we learn relating to The Founders, Merlin, and even the Statute of Secrecy.

And now, JKR’s wiki.

JKR places the statute in the midst of the witch burnings (late 17th century) as basically an emergency action on the part of the wizarding community. Who had been steadily ostracized for about a century. 

The children were particularly vulnerable and eventually they put their feet down, across the entire world (Tibet is somehow included in this), and agreed to make all the muggles forget about them.

I actually had thought JKR had made the statute earlier than that, which is my bad, so I would probably date it nearish the same time (and they do probably have records of when they put it into law) but I think the why and the how are a little different than wizards remember.

The Modern Wizarding World

To me, the Wizarding World we see in Harry Potter doesn’t reflect this story.

We see extreme anti-muggleborn sentiment in Salazar Slytheirn (who is supposed to be dated 500 years earlier). Granted, this is likely propaganda/popular legend dated to near when the statute went into effect, showing that “SEE THIS HAS ALWAYS PLAGUED OUR PEOPLE”, except he’s portrayed in a very negative light.

Salazar is a known dark wizard and when he doesn’t get what he wants, he puts a monster in the basement of the school. Even before Voldemort warped society’s perception of Slytherin, this is...

Well, it’s not the kind of legend you have about the other three founders.

That’s... not what your Cassandra should be doing.

Wizards treat the witch burnings as a joke. Oh, they don’t like the sentiment, but within the books Hermione notably reads historical accounts of witches and wizards who enjoyed getting caught by muggles because they liked being lit on fire and laughing in their faces.

Now, this is one account we get to see, but that this is something taught to the children just emphasizes that muggles aren’t viewed as a threat. They’re a nuisance or else a people to be pitied for their lack of magic.

While it has been 400 years, I think that the reasons for the founding of modern wizarding society would run deep. If it was truly because of the witch hunts alone, and fear of persecution, their narrative and attitudes would look very different.

This is not a society that went into hiding because of big bad muggles.

It’s a society that went into hiding because they were sick of this bullshit

The Bullshit Turmoil of 17th Century Europe

17th century Europe was a mess. Large parts of countries changed hands all the time, the continent was nearly always at war, and England might have been one of the biggest messes of all. Civil war, deposed kings, reform of the state religion multiple times, the witch burnings, etc.

I think the wizards just got tired of it and didn’t want to deal with it anymore. They already likely had Hogwarts, their own private, secret, educational institution, and already feel quite cut off from muggle society. Why should they pay taxes to muggle kings who change every week and whose religions constantly persecute them?

So, in the midst of all this chaos, they enact the statute. And I imagine it’s surprisingly simple. Most pack up and move, creating all wizarding neighborhoods, they have a council of their most important families meeting every so often which becomes the Wizengamot, and they become essentially a sovereign nation that just happens to leach off muggle infrastructure.

And as the years go on, and they like this not paying taxes or going to church thing, they slowly become more and more alienated from muggle society until they fail to understand it at all.

And so you have the modern wizard who literally has no clue why they separated off except that the witch burnings had something to do with it. The idea that muggles even have problems like these (politics, civil war, changing of state religion multiple times) is likely an anathema to them.

They’ve completely forgotten that they once had to deal with this too.

What About the Other Countries?

JKR doesn’t really cite when it became an international law but it’s presumably around the same time.

And you’re telling me that they were able to get people from every country, not just Western Europe, with starkly different cultures and attitudes towards magic, to agree to this? All at the same time?

To me, I think it was rapidly adopted in stages in Western Europe. Britain may have done it first then the French wizards went, “Hey, that looks like a great idea!” and went along for the ride.

I think it was imperialism/colonialism/westernization that spread the statue elsewhere. The British wizards get to China and India, sorry locals, you get to use wands, build magical academies, and have to go live separate from the muggles now. Doesn’t matter what you were doing before, our way is the right way!

With westernization, I imagine that the wizarding communities in those nations saw the changing times, and most decided to switch over to the more western model of disappearing as muggles seemed to appreciate them less and less. And even then we still have things like Rasputin happening.

The Statute Today

With increased technology, communication, and travel the Statute is untenable. It will fail. Eventually there will be something wizards can’t cover up with a gas leak. As it is, that’s very nearly Harry and Ron in 1992 when they fly a car over a populated city.

More, the alienation of the wizarding world doesn’t help. They now have no understanding of muggle culture. The only real understanding they have is through muggleborns and they’re disconnected from muggles as well as they’re essentially taken out of that society at the age of eleven.

The way wizards talk, the statute will always hold. Doesn’t matter that the obliviation department seems busier than ever, the idea that this didn’t always exist, that it can crumble, doesn’t even occur to them. 

But yes, those are my general thoughts on the statute.

[heavenunderthemoon]

Ten Fingers, Ten Toes: JJ x Male Reader

Sent in anonymously: Reader and JJ are married and he works for the fire department. They have to work together for a case with an arsonist. While visiting the suspect's house, he smells gas and tells JJ to be careful. As they slowly approach the house the suspect has a gun to their head with the cooker on. JJ tries to calm the unsub down but it doesn't work so he points the gun at JJ and the reader tackles him from behind before pushing JJ out of the house before it blows up."

disclaimer: I have NEVER written anything x male reader before so please, please, please be gentle with me. 

warnings: fire, explosions, injuries, violence, angst. 

Words: 5,589

It was rare that you and JJ ever met up on duty. So rare, in fact, that it just hadn't happened. In your ten years of marriage, it hadn't occurred even once. Arson charges in Quantico weren't rare, there just weren't that many serial arsonist charges for the BAU to pick up, and even so, your fire station wasn't in the districts that it had occurred the three times JJ's team had been called. But, this time was different.

The BAU arrived in its usual fashion, two separate government-issued SUV's, black and shining, dark as the soot that no doubt remained on your face from this morning's bout of firefighting. It had been a tough one, ventilation becoming a bit risky when your team noticed the roof was easily collapsible, but Station 13 had gotten the job done, as they always did. Your hands paused in their movements of shifting debris when the doors on the SUV's began to open, one of them revealing a rather familiar blonde figure, their bright blue eyes scanning the scene rapidly.

You smiled, knowing what the agent was looking for.

Letting out a low whistle, you made your way to the woman who's shoulders instantly relaxed when she saw you, eyes lingering on the damage done to the place. You knew precisely what was going through her mind, simply because it often rang through yours.

You both worked dangerous jobs, one running into fires and the other chasing down psychopaths who had a penchant for murder. Worrying about your spouse practically came with the marriage license. It had been something discussed extensively on both ends before you had gotten down on one knee all that time ago, asking for her hand in marriage. But, despite the multitude of reasons not to and the fears of what would come forth in the face of it all, there was a singular reason that made you both forget the rest; "I love you", You had said when she had asked, a shrug that told her how simple of an answer it was, but the look in your eye telling her that your love for her wasn't simple at all. Not really. It was convoluted and complex and deep and consuming and that was enough for her. That was more than enough for her.

So, each day when you went off to fight your fires and she went off to fight the monsters, you both reminded each other of that, of that love, that feeling of taking a leap, praying for a happy ending in which you both came home alive each night just to do it all again in the morning.

Except, now, here she was, and here you were, both of your battles being condensed into one.

"The calvary's arrived." You praised with a smirk.

Her blue orbs, intensified by the dreariness of the burnt surroundings, glanced over your body.

God, those eyes. Those eyes that you had fallen in love with, fallen so extremely and irrevocably hard for. Two glistening, gleaming, and just about every other synonym for glistening and gleaming under the sun, orbs that were like two little tiny pools of water. Water, a bit ironic given your occupation of fighting fires, but water all the same. Except, it wasn't exactly water, because you didn't think of water when you saw them you just thought of JJ, and that feeling you got around JJ. That fuzzy feeling in your chest, that dizzy feeling in your head and that tingly feeling in your legs that made you feel like you couldn't walk. The eyes that elicited those feelings were on you, checking for damage, scanning for injuries.

The turnout gear still laid heavy on your figure, but you stood tall beneath the weight of it all, accustomed to the sheer mass that it added. It was covered in ash, and stitched in tightly woven thread on your coat's breath pocket was your name. "Captain Y/N L/N", it read.

JJ remembered how you had received that promotion last year, the ceremony that Henry and Michael had tottered along to, how you had hoisted Henry up on your shoulder, Michael on your hip, insisting that your wife come by your side for a picture, one she cherished dearly. It sat in her wallet now and the weight of it in her jacket pocket felt heavier now for some reason.

When her eyes came back to your face, she frowned, her fingers coming up to rub your cheek. "You look like hell."

Worry. That was the look on her face, scanning the remnants of the house that had recently been ablaze but was now just smoldering ash. Your team packing things up as JJ's got to work, picking their way through the remains, asking Station 13 questions so to jump start their investigation.

"Thank you, darling, I just got back." You quipped cockily and she rolled her eyes, a twitch of her lips to indicate that she wasn't all too irritated with you, really. Just for show.

Her hand dropped, landing in her crossed arms as she faced the house, eyes narrowing as she entered her work mode, something you found rather amusing. You had rarely seen JJ in her work mode, and she you. You both liked to keep those versions of you separate, tucked away in the attic space of your minds, dirty blemishes to be hidden when around each other not because you were hiding secrets but because your demons, both of your demons were just something you needed to fight alone. The ghosts that followed JJ home after cases, whispering in her ear, nipping at her heels and the flames that engulfed you after calls, burning your eyes, searing your skull.

"So, what happened?"

You nodded, settling into work mode yourself. "We got the call around 5:30 am, house fire, one alarm. Family was asleep in the house, barely had time to notice anything was wrong before it was up in flames-"

"Carson family." She breathed, eyes flickering to you sympathetically. "Are they-"

"Alive and stable." And for a moment your chest swelled with pride. It hadn't seemed a possibility that morning, for the entire family to walk away as fortunately as they had. Sure, their entire house was gone, vanquished in nothing short of forty-five minutes, but their lives, each and every one of them, had been saved and it had everything to do with your team. A flash of that morning, the little girl in your arms, the mask around her face- your mask that you had taken off and given to her, just to give her lungs a few moments of relief- and her fingers clutching your turnout coat as you carried her out of the burning building. Those were the moments you lived for, the moments that made you proud for the occupation choice. "The parents got the worst of it, third degree burns, smoke inhalation damage, but nothing that the hospital can't fix. The kids are fine, I heard their grandparents are staying with them at the hospital until their parents are given the all clear."

She nodded, a bounce of her blonde hair. "That's good."

"It is," You nodded, motioning for her to follows you as you began your walk to the west wing of the house. "We thought it might've been a freak accident, faulty wiring or maybe a gas leak from the stove, but one of my guys found this." The two of you stopped, her shoulder lightly grazing yours.

Her eyes followed the gesture your hands made, landing on an object on the floor. There, covered in soft and ash, discarded on the floor of what used to be a beautiful two story home, was a bottle, its liquid remains only droplets now, the cloth poking out of it burned to shreds.

"Make-shift Molotov cocktail? You're sure?" She bent down, pulling on a latex glove and picking it up cautiously, turning it around in her hands before signaling one of her guys to come a grab it.

You had met the team, of course, you knew them quite well actually. Derek nodded at you, the two of you sharing a brotherly pat on each other's back before he was grabbing the evidence, scooping it into a plastic bag.

"Yep. When I saw it I called you, figured it might be the beginning of a string of fires."

The blonde sighed. "Smart call." There was something else in her voice, concern, stress, everything in between, and your own eyes narrowed, something that made her chest flair with warmth.

She never had to say anything. She didn't have to say that getting your call at seven in the morning, a time she usually spent feeding the boys before turning them over to the nanny who would inevitably be relieved at the end of your twenty-four hour shifts but was interrupted by that incessant ringing.

You had changed it from the default ring almost two years ago.

"What are you doing?" The blonde had laughed, reaching for the phone you had swiped out of her hands but you held it above you head, your figure towering over hers and her laughter had made the chuckle rumble in your throat just the way she liked it.

"I've gotta change it, so you know it's me."

You had fixed her with that stare, the one she knew you gave your team, the "I'm the Fire Captain and you have to listen to me" stare, though you knew it had never worked on her. To her, she said, it looked like you were constipated, but it always made her roll her eyes with that shit-eating smile, so you did it anyways.

"Yes, because in a world with Caller I.D., I will never know it's my husband." Tired of standing on her tippy-toes, she had slumped against your chest defeatedly, taking in your warmth, listening to your heartbeat as she listened to you choose that god forsaken song that she knew that you knew she hated- one that you two had fought over its validity as a song on one of your first dates when it came on in a sandwich shop.

"I'm Henery the Eighth I Am..." Played from the woman's speakers and she groaned, hitting her forehead against your chest in a playful headset that had made you roar with laughter.

"Perfect."

It had been that terrible, dreadful song, the song that would always remind her of you that interrupted her morning and made her heart stop because you never called her on shift unless something was wrong. Unless the fire had nipped at you a little too roughly, unless you were sitting in a hospital bed getting patched up. She had answered that call with a dry throat and almost forgot how to breathe until your voice telling her you were okay reached her ears. "I'm okay, but I think you should see this."

And now, at a time she should be focusing on her job, focusing on telling Aaron Hotchner what her husband just told her, focusing on the family that had luckily made it out unscathed, she wasn't. She was focusing the man before her, her man, her Y/N.

She was focusing on you because for once she was seeing your world, your world past the nice and cozy firestation that she had seen before, polished and clean. That fire station you had showed her on one of your days off, giving her a tour, silently telling her that you were okay, that you were always going to be okay. Now, she was seeing your team, people she had met before but now under your authority, placing all the gear they had used meticulously back into the rigs, and you, covered in soot with that look in your eyes. That look that made her hate you and fall back in love with you every time. The look of a hero. Because heroes are the ones who run into the burning buildings not away and the thought of you running into a burning building, somewhere you would go and not come back and leave her and Michael and Henry in the lurch made her sick to her stomach.

And you saw that.

"Hey," You said softly, noticing that far off look in her eyes. "Hey," You repeated once you noticed she hadn't responded the first time, lightly grabbing her shoulder. "I'm fine. We're all fine. Look," Your eyes were boring into hers, those baby blues that your sons had inherited because, god, they were spitting images of her and it was something you reveled in. Your fingers wiggled out of the gloves, ripping the other off and wiggling your newly exposed fingers to the woman. "Ten fingers, ten toes. I'm good."

It was silly, something you two had always recited, a mantra of sorts, when one of you injured themselves. A tiny little saying, one that said "I'm still alive, I'm still kicking, and you're not getting rid of me that easily", without saying it at all.  Picking her up from the airport after she called to tell you of her injuries, her small smile at the concern that would always be evident on your face no matter how many times she assured you. And she would take your face in her hands, make you look her in the eyes.

'Ten fingers, ten toes.' She would say with a playful smirk, wiggling them against your cheeks and you would smile, resting your forehead against her and now she did the same. A sigh on defeat or relaxation or maybe just a release of a breath she didn't know she had been holding.

She looked at you, eyes narrowing playfully once more. "You're cheating, I can't see your toes in those boots."

You laughed, that hearty rumble she adored and the two of you set to work.

Everything would be fine.

-

Everything was not fine.

"Are you mad at me?"

Frozen grass crunched beneath your feet. It was a cold day, winter still biting at Spring's heels and the brisk air was enough to make you wish you had more cover than the leather jacket slung over your shoulders. And if you were cold you knew JJ was (The girl was raised in a warm climate and basically declared it was winter anytime it hit below seventy degrees.). A quick glance to the blonde- who was apparently very cross with you at the moment- met you with a rather terse look, her lips pursed, eyes forward as she surveyed the side of there house, gun raised before her.

The last day and a half had been spent working hand in hand with the FBI.

It was almost like a game. The BAU spent their time assessing the victims, analyzing patterns, attempting to predict where the arsonist might hit next, though it was a game of cat and mouse because they hadn't perfected it, not yet. And your Station was getting called, putting out every fire just to jump to the next and when the team had finally determined a suspect, JJ was declared to be on the group to survey their house, it hadn't even taken you a moment to suggest your team join as well.

'Fire safety,' you had told Hotchner, 'Wouldn't it be safer to have us by your side in case he gets set off?' and much to JJ's chagrin, he had agreed. The fire rig itself was set up two blocks away, lights and sirens off, just waiting to be called upon, your team inside of it.

That was one of the perks of being Captain, you supposed. Calling the shots, getting to pick and choose when you ran into the fire, delegating your skills to the most high-priority situations and, yes, while you told your Station that the high-priority you were attending to was a possible additional fire as you approached the arsonist's house, they all knew the real reason. They knew it was the blonde by your side, no matter how angry she was with you.

"Okay, so you are mad at me." You nodded at confirmation of your previous question, one that had gone unanswered, and were met by a sharp glare before her eyes were back on the house.

The neighborhood itself was rundown, an area of town about to be lost to construction, properties being seized by the government, one of the arsonist's assumed triggers. His house was one of the only ones left on his block, sagging defeatedly on the corner of the street.

The other pair, Spencer and Derek, from the BAU crawled amongst the property, paired off and speaking into their walkies, both of them attempting to see inside of the house, cautious of how to approach.

"I'm not mad, I'm focusing."

You snorted. "Well that's funny, 'cause your focusing face and your mad face have a hell of a lot in common."

It wasn't a moment longer before she was huffing, pausing in her movements before tossing a glance to you over her shoulder. "Stop messing around, Y/N-"

"JJ-"

Her state was almost as cold as the weather. "No, this is serious. There's a killer in there and you're out here joking around-"

"JJ-"

And her gun was lowering itself for just a fraction of a second, eyes fixing you with that stern gaze of hers that she normally used with the children but still managed to make you feel just as intimidated as they probably did when it was used on them.

"You volunteered to come with us to catch a serial killer-"

"I know-" You tried, but you knew that look in her eye, that rise of an octave. The tone that let you know that she wasn't mad, she wasn't angry, she wasn't even furious, she was terrified.

And damn, you hated that. You hated that she was terrified, because you were terrified too. You had been ever since Hotchner had told her, Spencer and Derek to check out the possible unsub's house. Ever since those words had left his lips it was as if your mind had gone blank, something JJ would claim it perpetually was, but it wasn't. Usually, your mind raced about a million miles per hour, never slowing, never seizing, except for that moment, that moment that had made your stomach drop and throat clog. That moment that had you volunteering to go with her without hesitance because you were scared, scared because this was what she did on a daily basis and yes, while you thought about it, talked about it, and apparently had gotten over it long ago, you hadn't really because this wasn't just something you got over.

Having your wife chase serial killers wasn't something you could just be okay with and if you were given an opportunity to go with her, to watch over her, to look out for her, god damnit you would.

"You chose to put yourself in danger. It's different when it's your job, but, god damn it, Y/N, you don't have to be here-"

And whatever she was going to say next was interrupted, the porch light flickering on, that dim yellow bulb cackling under the sheet of ice it was buried in. The back porch became illuminated, revealing a broken rocker chair, it's left arm chair giving way due to mold or rot, caved into the smooth seat of the chair. It sat limply on the porch, those floorboards creaking in the winter wind and the two of you froze, her gun rising.

"Stay here."

Under different circumstances you might have laughed.

Under different circumstances, you might have thrown your head back and let loose that deep, throaty laugh that JJ always said was contagious.

But you didn't. You couldn't.

You couldn't help the dumbfounded expression covering your face, watching as your wife, your best friend, the mother of your children, began to climb the stairs of a serial arsonist, demanding for you to stay put. You couldn't help that swell in your chest, a swell of anger, no doubt, not at her, because you had known precisely what kind of person she was when you married her. You had known the minute you had met her in that crowded, smelly bar, the both of you both coming back from a long day at work, her tired eyes meeting yours and that wicked smile pulling you in.

You had known from just that first look that she would be hard work. And she had proven that every step of the way. She had proved that by demanding a background check before you two officially went on your first date (that first night in the bar didn't count, she said matter-of-factly.), or by all of her weird quirks and tics. Like, for instance, if you got her skittles she would patiently wait while you picked out all the green ones (They taste like toilet bowl cleaner and the longer they're in there with the other ones the more the taste will rub off on the good ones). Or that how if she vacuumed she absolutely had to have precise vacuum lines (if they weren't perfect, she started over, no matter what.). Or even how she set seven alarms in the morning, snoozing each and every one because she knew eventually you'd get too agitated by the constant interruptions to your sleep that you'd wake her up with your groans and force her out of bed far better than any alarm ever could.

You had known that she would be hard work, yes, but you also knew that she would be worth it. Every smile, every kiss, every laugh, all of it. And so when she told you to stay put you could hardly reign in your outrage enough to keep your voice to a hushed whisper.  

"No, I'm coming with you." And your foot began to raise, began to make its way onto that creaky, rotted, in need of a paint job floorboard of a porch before JJ was stopping you.

"No. You might be a Captain, but out here, I call the shots. Stay here and don't do anything stupid." And she was slipping into the back door before you could grab her. Before you could pull her into your arms and stop her.

And you were alone, alone with only the porch light flickering every so often, threatening to give way, that snow underneath your boots clinging to the soles of your shoes the longer you stood there.

How long had you been standing there, staring at the back porch door? You wracked your brain, trying to remember if JJ had said anything to Reid and Morgan about going into the house? Had she called for backup? You wished you had a communication piece on you, wished you had some way to make sure that JJ wasn't in there alone because, yes while you trusted her wholeheartedly, you didn't trust a batshit crazy arsonist who had started a string of fires.

Your nose twitched, snapping you out of your thoughts.

What was that smell? That smell, sharp to the nose, stinging your eyes, making the back of your neck hairs stand erect-

Your feet were moving, moving carefully and efficiently, trying not to make a noise but trying to get into the house as quickly as possible.

Gasoline.

That was what you could smell. You had smelled it a million times before, and this smell was no different, except it was. It was different. This time was a million times worse than any other time you had smelled it because JJ was inside the house. She was inside the house that reeked of gasoline, inside a potential explosion, and you needed to get in there as quickly as possible and so your hand was pulling not he back door and you were lurching inside the house.

"Trevor, I just want to talk, okay? Put the gone down-"

The back door let into the dining room, the inside of the house looking just as dilapidated as the outside of the home. Family pictures were strewn about the walls, each hanging just as crooked as the next. The glass was covered in dust, so much so that the pictures weren't even recognizable underneath, and the roof tilted at a downward angle so threateningly low you worried it might just collapse with the mere addition of your body inside it.

You could hear voices beyond the wall of the dining room, JJ's first, and it made your heart beat a little less frantically (though that wasn't;t saying much because right now you were pretty sure your heart was doing a line dance), and then the unsub's- Trevor.

Your hair brushed the wall as you peeked past it, clinging to that wall like it was a lifeline and in that moment it was. In that moment, it was the only thing separating you and the man pointing a gun at your wife.

When you saw the scene your throat struggled to contain the bile rising at the sight of it. Trevor stood nearest to you, his back to you completely, in fact. A dirtied t-shirt, one covered in scorch marks and ash hung loosely on his figure. He was small, smaller than you had imagined an arsonist to look like, which, you supposed arsonists don't particularly have a look, but still, he didn't look...evil and you had always supposed that bad guys looked evil. But this one didn't. No, other than his dirtied shirt he looked like a normal guy, except, of course, for the gun pointing at his temple.

There was a clicking sound filling the air, that familiar clicking sound that made you divert your attention to the stove, confirming your suspicions immediately. The gas was on, leaking it into the house and your head was already beginning to ache at just the smell.

And then there was JJ.

She noticed you immediately and she made a damn good job of covering that. Briefly, her eyes met yours, and you didn’t need words for you to understand. There was rage at you for following her, guilt because somehow she thought this was her fault, gratefulness because maybe she wouldn't have to leave here in a body bag and fear because what if your children grew up without both of their parents?

"Trevor, listen to me-"

Her voice was steady. How was her voice so steady?

"No! I'm done talking to you bitch!"

And just like before, just like when Hotchner was ordering JJ to go to the unsub's house, time slowed. Time slowed, and it became a long, torturous, eternal moment that made your mind wipe straight clean once more because there was really only one thing that could make it do that and she was standing right in front of you. The girl that had seen you from across that crowded bar, a bar that she later said was disgusting and dirty and made her boots stick to the floor, but would always pull you to because it was sentimental and they made good burgers. The girl who had answered your marriage proposal with "What took you so long?", which, would've been acceptable had your proposal not been asked three months to the day when you met her (Hey, when you knew, you knew.). The girl who talked through movies, beat you in poker, ate all your fries when she said she wasn't hungry and just a million other things that you hadn't even known you remembered until that moment when suddenly her very being was being threatened.

That girl was having a gun pointed toward her, and so you reacted.

Your body tackled the man before you easily, causing you both tp fall tp the ground in a jumble of limbs and grunts and the gun wasn't leaving his hand so easily but none of that mattered because you saw your chance.

You saw your chance for one more tackle and damn JJ was going to be extremely pissed at you, but it didn't matter because you were doing it before she could even register your movements to protest it. Your body slammed into hers, twisting your body in mid-air, preparing it for the impact it would surely take through the boarded up windows that were about to become a bit more open than before.

The wood splintered across your back, your head throbbed at the hit, but you barreled through just as you heard Trevor yell and, stupidly, predictably, unfortunately, he shot and as soon as he did, the heat from the bullet related to the gasoline in the air.

Your bodies hit the snow in record time, yours on top of hers, and the sheer heat from the blast was enough to make you never want to hear the words "Liar, liar pants on fire", again.

Breathing. Breathing and sirens and ringing, a horrible ringing in your ears that was quickly subsiding and a pulsing through your head that was not. You peeled yourself off of her with a grunt, your back landing roughly next to hers, the snow quickly clinging to the back of your jacket.

The two of you stayed that way for a moment, just a moment, because you both knew Derek and Spencer were just around the corner and if they found you two lying on the floor their first reaction would be to think you were both dead (partially because of your position on the floor and partially because of the fact that your left eyebrow was singed off and you were pretty sure your head was leaking out some blood onto the blanket of snow beneath you). In that moment, that tiny brief moment, your hand grasped hers, squeezing it, before sitting up with another groan.

She looked...like crap. Her hair was wet and frizzy, nose red to the bone, cheeks covered in dirt of ash, wood littered across her bulletproof vest, and her pony tail had loosened to the extent that half of it was just pouring onto the side other face. But she still looked beautiful to you.

“You did something stupid.” She said exasperatedly, reminding you of the last thing she told you not to do before leaving you alone but it hardly registered to you.

"I had to." You said quietly, so quietly that your ringing ears even had trouble hearing it but the squint of her eyes let you know she heard you just fine. "Earlier, you said I didn't have to be here."

You were not a quiet man. You just weren't. You were loud and brave and funny and JJ had always adored that about you but she loved these moments too. These moments where you were quiet, reserved, and afraid, because it showed her that you weren't just some pompous meathead charging into fires irresponsibly. It showed her that even the bravest of the brave get scared, and that fear was what would stop you from making a decision that would leave her in a world without you.

Her eyes softened. "You know what I meant-"

Your bottom lip quivered, hands going up to attach themselves to her cheek, just to feel her, to know she was real, that she was there, that she was alive. "I cannot lose you. I know that you do this everyday, and I know that you are good at your job, and I know that you probably had it handled back there, but damnit JJ, I was scared, okay? I'm sorry, but I was scared and I needed to be here, I felt it in my bones, okay? I just-"

All of the emotions from that night. All of the anger, the fear, the adrenaline, all of it left you, left you in the sob that had formed in the base of your throat, leaving you feeling hollow and empty as the world passed around the two of you. You could barely register your team rushing into the building, the hose spraying into the house, JJ's team approaching the two of you, because it was just you and her. You and her, and that was all that mattered to you.

Her hands clung to yours, piling atop her cheek and embracing the warmth it gave her, leaning in to let her forehead touch yours, your salty tears falling into her cheeks but she didn't say a word about it.

"I can't lose you." You repeated it again and it sounded so small, so lost that JJ was locking her eyes with yours.

"You didn't." A pregnant pause, a lick of her lips, a small beginning to a smile that looked so wrong given the state of her surroundings, and a tiny breath let out. "Ten fingers, ten toes."

Her thumb was reaching for your cheek, swiping the pad of it across it, clearing away the remnants of the tear that was trailing down the side of your face and then following it with a kiss, a small peck at where the tear once stood.

"Ten fingers, ten toes." You exhaled.

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Hope you enjoyed:)

-Toby

[misskittysmagicportal]

Happy Thirsty Thursday! 🍑🍆💦

I’m not sure if you’re up for writing for Nikolai but I saw this prompt and I just thought of him.

“you’re so cute I just want to eat you out”

“don’t you mean up?”

“no”

I Wish I Was The Moon (Nikolai x Fem!Reader)

Word Count: 1914

Warnings: Oh delightful full moon inspired smut

You floated along the lake on your back where you relished both the silence and solitude. The dark sky above you housed millions of stars hidden behind the smog of Manhattan where you lived. Nowhere in Sway Lake smelled like piss or garbage. Free from angry faces and graffiti. You were blessed to get away for the week.

You weren't certain if anything was hazardous to you as you swam naked not far from shore. You were so lost in your senses, ears underwater causing everything to be still except the faraway frogs and random cry of some bird. It prevented you from hearing the soft swish of someone swimming beside you.

“Privyet rybka” a deep Russian voice broke through the silence.

Startled all you could muster was a scream as you held your hands over your breasts and sank under the water. Bobbing back up, you began to tread water hoping you were far below the surface to hide your nudity.

“I promise I am here in peace. The USSR is no more,” he held his hands up in surrender.

“What.. What are you doing here?” you asked nervously.

“Is this not a free lake?” You assume he means public, but you nod in confirmation.

“Fair,” you're exasperated but drop pretenses and tread a bit harder. Your naked chest out of the water now catching moonlight. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

“I have business to attend to. For the Sways.” It's the first time you notice a canoe with a gas can perched on the front. “But I saw this gorgeous, naked woman just floating in middle of lake. I had to stop. Like a siren’s call.”

You rolled your eyes but somehow felt heat as it crept up your cheeks. Your eyes had adjusted and you looked at him properly. His wet, dark hair plastered to his forehead. Sharp jaw and full lips. Eyes that reflected the moon and seemed to stare right into you. Muscular arms circled languidly in the water attached to broad shoulders. He was, you lacked real words, beautiful.

“I have made you speechless?” his thick eyebrow arched. His eyes moved towards openly staring at your bare breasts.

“No. What business could you possibly have with the camp? And why the hell are YOU naked?” there was a giggle in your voice. His shorts were hanging over the side of the canoe.

“I thought you may be more comfortable if you weren't alone?” It was a question. The excuse didn't make any sense. Your look challenged him. “Fine! Easier to move naked than with wet shorts on, yes? I need to run and don't get caught, I go quicker without clothes.”

“You're out of your fucking mind if you think no one will catch you. They party til dawn,” you gesture towards a revelry away from where you had left your clothes.

“I will blend in. How many you think are doing,” he paused and thought, “HAVING sex right now? Too drunk and horny to notice one more naked person at a party. Besides maybe I'm a siren too? I've already had sex with one of them.”

“Only one? Whatever. You do what you have to, I never saw you. You're a ghost,” you started to swim back to shore. Annoyed at your peace deferred but also at how turned on you were by his voice. His face.

Your back to him, you picked up some speed. Unfortunately, fortunately? He followed and caught up easily. “Let me at least ride you back to the beach? Then I go in from the side and back and they'll never see me.”

You snorted and covered your mouth, “Ride me.”

“Hey! I have only been speaking English a few years. Forgive me,” there was a laughter in his voice too. “Come. I'll get you back, and maybe you'll help me?”

“Commit a felony? No thanks, I'm trying to have a career as a nurse.”

“Oh good!” he turned to swim back to his canoe.

He pulled himself up over the side and you couldn't help but stare at his naked body as he did so. Lithe like a swimmer. You couldn't help but catch a glimpse of his cock too before it all disappeared into the canoe. Christ even that wasn't bad looking

“I get hurt, you kiss me and make it better?” There was innuendo in his voice as he held a hand out to help you up into the boat. “I'm Nikolai.”

“And I'm fucking nuts,” you quipped and anchored yourself with his large hand as you crawled on behind him. You stopped caring about hiding your nudity.

“I've never met someone named fucking nuts. I thought Ollie sounded funny,” he began to row back to shore.

You watched the muscles in his shoulders and back flex and tense with motions. Hypnotized a bit, you began to fantasize about his arms and body crawling over you. Lying down on top of you. Pushing inside of you. You shook your head free of the filthy thoughts. Not that you wanted to, because you felt a sense of self preservation. You were better than the townies who bet every year how many tourists they could fuck.

Or were you?

“You and Ollie Sway are friends?”

“Comrades yes! Closer to brothers. We are inseparable. This is why I owe him a duty to protect his lake. Make it clean for him and his grandmother and everyone else good”

“By setting fire to the camp?”

“No! Just a little.. fun with the jet skis. But yes, the easiest way to get rid of them is to set them on fire.”

“Won't they explode?” You were starting to freak out as he maneuvered the boat on shore.

“I can only hope for the best!” He hopped out and grabbed the gas can and a zippo lighter. “Wait here for me.” It was a command, not a suggestion. “We will celebrate.”

“Celebrate? By doing what? Did you bring vodka?”

“Did I bring vodka? Because I'm Russian?” he feigned being upset.

“Well-”

Then a raucous laugh, “OF COURSE! It's in boat. But I meant a different way. You're so cute, I could eat you out.”

Your eyes wide, “You mean up? Language barrier right? The phrase is eat me up.”

“No. I meant what I said. It is definitely out.”

Uncertain of why or what you were doing, you laid on the grass along the lake shore. Your heart was racing along with your thoughts. Then a fire blazed up near the dock where the cabins were. You scrambled to your feet in a daze. Eyes wide and mouth agape with shock, you couldn't believe he did it.

Nikolai actually set them on fire. Those nasty, gas leaking jet skis that terrorized swimmers and destroyed the beauty of the lake. Maybe it wasn't necessarily the machines themselves, but the pig headed assholes who drove them. Still there was a smug satisfaction.

Then in a blur of arms and legs, Nikolai in his nude glory came racing across the hillside. A devilish look of delight on his lips and eyes as he grabbed your hand and tugged you along. There was an explosion behind you that caused each of you to duck and stop in your tracks. Hearts racing as you turned to watch several more small fireballs shoot upwards.

Nerves or adrenaline made you both start laughing hysterically. It was surreal. Your night of serenity and solitude turned into one of aiding and abetting a Russian ex-patriot in the destruction of personal property. It was, you remembered, a full moon.

Nikolai was breathing heavily in the stillness. His body tense as he waited for someone to follow, but no one came. The fire danced in his eyes that you noticed were green. Or blue? Or ever-changing. His lean body tan from the late summer sun.

“I didn't know Russians could catch a tan,” you spoke your thoughts out loud.

“Maybe I am Gypsy,” he shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I work my magic on this place. They won't forget me. Or well, them I hope don't know it was me?” He scratched his head absently.

“Well I certainly won't forget you at this point. But wasn't there another offer I was meant to take you up on?” You heart pounds out a loud rhythm over the words you couldn't believe tumbled from your mouth.

Nikolai looked down at you and smiled again. The static in the air, or humidity, caused an electricity that ran through your body. Adrenaline made your hands shake with anticipation. This lake had a strange effect on all its visitors.

Then his hands were on your back and in your hair and your mouths were hungry for each other. Tongues and lips and teeth as you playfully nipped at him. He laughed and feigned hurt as you melted into him.

Your nails dug into Nikolai’s shoulders as he ground his hips into you. And erection hard against your thigh and your body responded in kind. Your mouths never stopped kissing as he pushed a knee between your legs so you had to straddle it. You rode it briefly, body unable to find control.

“A little fire and two naked people kissing,” his accent thick and low. “You're so ready for me, da?” There was a teasing in his question.

“Weren't you supposed to.. eat me?” you joked. only a little.

Nikolai backed away from you. “Get down on the ground.” A command again in lieu of a suggestion.

You complied and laid down. The grass and sand cool under your back. Nikolai followed. He parted your thighs to situate himself on top of you. His skin was warm and smelled like burnt wood as his mouth blazed a trail from your neck down over your body that arched reflexively underneath him.

You gazed up at the full moon as it shone down on the both of you. You stopped thinking, lost in the kisses that briefly strayed to your breasts. Lips that sucked and bit before they headed between them and over your stomach and to your sex.

Nikolai darted his tongue inside of you. It searched and snaked in and out. Traced up and down before it found your clit. His hands on your hips to pull you into him. Encouraged you to ride him as he lapped you. Tasted you and kept going. His tongue and mouth unflinching as you took a hold of his head and tangled your fingers in the thick waves.

“Fuck,” you moaned and writhed. You took a chance and looked down at him.

Nikolai locked eyes with you and your body started to lose control. His movements found a rhythm that never stopped. Just continued until you couldn't take it anymore and cried out. Your body exploded like the jet skis in the distance. The fire still reflected in his eyes as you both rolled through the orgasm.

“We blame it all on the moon, dorogaya,” Nikolai finally suggested.

His words filled your head as he kissed you behind the ear. You could smell yourself on him, taste yourself as he kissed you one more time.

“I must go. Ollie will be worried.”

You weren't so sure Ollie Sway even noticed the Russian was gone, but you didn't correct him. Then he was gone and you were left blissful in the silence and solitude. Still floating.

[herewegobacktomoon]

I can’t keep up

This fanfic was inspired by a prompt left in the comments on , where theey asked me to write about a situation where Maya comes to Grey Sloan to go home together with Carina, but when she enters the office she finds her asleep on her desk after a long shift. I hope you’ll like it. Let me know what you think!

It was 7.30 pm and Maya had just finished her shift: it had been an endless day of work where they had to rescue an entire family whose house caught fire because of a gas leak, but putting it out had been way more difficult than they expected.

She was extremely tired, every part of her body was aching, except for her heart: it was beating fast, almost jumping out of her chest at the thought of finally being able to see Carina. On her way to the door, she tried to call Carina, so that she would have known where to wait her, but she didn't answer. She tried to call her again, two or three times, but there was no sign of Carina. Thinking that her girlfriend had probably got stuck in a long unexpected surgery, by the moment her shift should have been over at 6, she headed to Grey Sloan to see what was happening.

As soon as she stepped into the hospital, she bumped into Amelia Shepherd, who welcomed her all covered up, wearing two masks and a face shield to protect her, but with smiling eyes: “Hey Maya! How is it going? Have you come to rescue your girlfriend?” she said jokingly.

“Well, it's hard but everything's ok, luckily. What about you? Yes, I've come to look for her, she didn't answer my phone calls, so I thought she was in the middle of some kind of last-time surgery or stuff like that..” answered Maya smiling.

“Yes, we're all good, thanks! Ehm..Actually I haven't seen Carina for at least one hour, but she should be in her office. It has been a very tough day, above all for her...Go check on her, as you probably know, she doesn't talk too much about what she goes through...” Maya nodded in approval, now looking a bit concerned, thanking Amelia and heading straight to Carina's office.

As she entered the room, she said softly: “Hi bella, I've missed you. I tried to call you earlier but you didn't answer me. Is everything ok?”. After closing the door, she turned around, in order to be able to see Carina, and she couldn't help but smile. The Italian was all curled up, with her head on her desk, hiding between her arms, still with her scrub on: Maya could tell she had  fallen asleep at least an hour ago, as she didn't make a move at the sound of the door closing. She walked towards her, hesitating a little: she stared at her, with eyes full of love, thinking that Carina was the best thing that could have ever happened to her. Then she got closer and when she was right in front of her, she lowered to kiss her head, gently stroking it, but Carina didn't move.

Trying to wake her up without scaring her, Maya crouched, putting her hands on Carina's thighs, caressing them and looking up to her face: “Hey babe, wake up...are you ok?” she whispered. She didn't want to ruin her sleep, but she knew it wasn't good for her to sleep that way and in that office. After a few seconds, Carina slowly turned her head, struggling to open her eyes: as she saw Maya, she tried to put herself together, even though her movements were still a little bit delayed: “Oh my God, I'm sorry Bella, I was checking a patient's report and I must have fallen asleep. I'm sorry, I'm...” Carina anxiously stated, suddenly waken up by an as implacable as unexplained worry.

Maya smiled at her, pressing a soft kiss against her lips: “Don't worry bella, no problem for me. I've really enjoyed watching you while you were asleep. But tell me, how was your day?”

Carina grinned and added: “Well, you should have got me wake up as soon as you arrived! Anyway, I'm glad you're here. Today has been very tough...”

Before asking what happened, Maya focused her attention on her girlfriend's face: her cheeks were red, probably due to the pressure against the arms, but her eyes were red too, as if she had cried before falling asleep. She didn't want to ask too many questions, she would have preferred Carina to tell her about what had been going on, so she simply said: “Why? What happened?”.

Carina got up from her chair, taking Maya by the hand and leading her towards the couch she has in her office, and decided to sit down on it: the blond followed without saying a word. Tilting her head back, against the backrest of the couch, she replied. “I don't know, too many things going on: two surgeries, my brother, the pandemic itself... I can't keep up”.

Maya took her hand back in hers, and brought it to her mouth, in order to place a gentle kiss on it: “Oh babe, I'm sorry. Tell me everything, I'm here for you.”

Carina took a deep breath, then turned her head, looking at Maya, without saying a word. There was something between them which was new and inexplicable to both: their eyes could talk, no matter how many words they were thinking without being able to say them out loud. Their eyes could read them all. Indeed, Maya opened her arms, slowly twisting her body, so that Carina could come and rest against her chest, hidden in the warmth of her girlfriend's comforting hug, an offer she was only waiting for.

Now resting with her back pressing against her girlfriend's chest, she continued: “Today was really hard: as soon as I got here,there was an emergency with a woman in labour who needed to be operated, as her baby had been having trouble breathing and his heart had a very low pulse.<br /> We were able to get him out just in time, saving both the mama and the baby, but there were some complications with the woman so it lasted for about 4 hours.”

Carina sighed as if she could feel all the tension of that moment back in her body again: Maya noticed it, felt her stiffening, and started kissing her neck, then lowering to her shoulder and asked: “Wow, it must have been tough!! But you're an amazing doctor bella, you found the problem in time and this gave you the chance to save them!”. She would have liked to ask her about the second surgery, but she didn't know what had happened, so she didn't know what reactions her words could provoke, she didn't want to upset Carina, so she just waited for her to reply.

“Thank you bella, but I only did my job! Anyway, the second surgery didn't go as well as the first... I mean, both the baby and the mama were ok, actually there were even less complications than the previous surgery, but something dreadful happened. When the woman delivered the baby, by the moment she had been skipping her check-ups for the last 5 months, she didn't know her baby had a heart defect, and when she found it out, she decided to leave the baby at the hospital, she just didn't want that little girl any more...”. 

Her voice was broken and she titled her head back, now resting in the space between Maya's neck and shoulder, trying to keep all her tears inside. Without even seeing her eyes, Maya could tell she was about to cry: her breath was heavy and she was slowly sliding down the couch, as if she was trying to hide and disappear. In order to calm her and remind her she was not alone, Maya tightened her grip, took Carina's hands and started stroking them, moving then to her face, where she had arrived just in time to wipe the first tear Carina had shed.

“Oh babe, I'm so sorry you had to go through all this today. Sometimes, people just fear the worse: probably that woman was too afraid to face something like that. But it's not up to you, it's not your fault if she did what she did. You don't have to feel guilty. I know you don't show it too much, but I also know that you're the most sensitive person that exists in this world, even though you try to shut your feelings down, to avoid being disappointed. But this makes me love you even more.” said Maya warmly, delicately kissing  her girlfriend's red cheek, in the attempt of making her feel any better.

“I know, it's just that the thought of that little girl, left alone, even though she will probably find a family, really upsets me. I don't even know why...I'm not judging the woman's decision, I perfectly understand the fear, the worry and all, it's just that the idea of her being abandoned just because she isn't perfect makes me both angry and sad...it reminds me of...argh..” said Carina, before starting to cry again. 

Maya didn't get what she was talking about, but now it was not that important, she would have figured it out later: she made Carina turn around, now chest to chest, and hugged her without saying anything, every now and then lowering to kiss her girlfriend's head. She had always been that kind of person who trips up on her own words, never knowing what to say, but in that moment, it wouldn't have made any difference: Carina just needed her to be there, to be present, and she was trying her best to show it. Carina didn't move: she hid her head, pressing it on the blonde's chest, similarly to a kid who has just fallen down and got hurt. She just wanted to disappear in the warmth of Maya's body, pushing all her thoughts away. 

After some minutes in that position, all curled up, with Maya never loosening her grip and Carina feeling safer and safer between her arms, the latter tried to say something, with her voice still sounding broken: “I'm sorry bella, I don't know what happened to me... it's just that it reminds me of my childhood...”. She then wiped her tears, moving her hair away from her forehead, and placed a kiss on Maya's neck.

Her girlfriend, after pressing a light kiss against her nose, replied: “ You have nothing to apologize for. Hey, remember? I'm here for you, as you're here for me. It was you who taught me to talk about our problems. It's normal, things can get overwhelming for everyone, also for my very special and amazingly hot Italian doctor. What matters the most is that you don't have worries about reaching out for help. I love you Carina, and I want to stand by you, to laugh with you but also to help you when you need me to.”

Carina's heart skipped a beat: she was tired, her eyes teary, her hair a total mess, but her heart felt safe and knowing Maya was there for her made her calm down. “ I love you Maya. I don't know how you do this... you always arrive at the right time, using the right words and you make me feel better. It's incredible.” she said, hinting at a smile.

Maya giggled and raising her eyebrows, quite proudly, answered: “The secret is to never leave. And I'm not going anywhere without you.”

They both laughed at Maya's statement, and then cupped each other's faces: with all the tension created by the eye-contact they were making, they couldn't help but kissing, a long, gentle kiss which warmed them up.

A few minutes later, they were no longer lying, but sitting next to each other on the couch.

At first, Maya hesitated, but then she couldn't stop thinking about a word Carina had mentioned before breaking down, so she asked: “Hey, I was thinking about what you were saying before, and...I don't want to upset you, so if you don't want to talk about it, it's fine by me, but I was wondering...what did you mean when you said that the little girl reminded you of your childhood? Do you know people who have been through stuff like that? Or it's about you?”.

Carina knew that Maya would have asked about it, and probably she had tried to avoid that topic before just to wait that question, so that she had no excuses to keep it to herself. Without even acknowledging it, she started playing with her fingers and her rings, more in an insecure way than a nervous one, and Maya immediately noticed it, taking Carina's hands in hers, keeping on stroking them, gently rubbing her thumbs on them.

Carina looked at her wide blue loving eyes, and finally decided to open up: “When I was a little girl, back in Italy, and my parents divorced, my mum decided to come to the U.S. with Andrea, leaving me there with my dad. I know that she decided to bring him here with her instead of me because he was too little to handle my dad's problem, but I didn't use to see it that way... I've always had  that feeling that if I had been a better daughter, with better grades, with some plans in life, she would have probably brought me here too. But I wasn't as perfect as my little brother, and I've always felt as she had left me alone... I know it's stupid, I...”

Before she could finish, Maya immediately interrupted her: “It isn't stupid at all. It's your feelings Carina and they matter. I'm sure your mama didn't mean to leave you, or think of you as her “imperfect daughter”. Probably she made a wrong choice, but that doesn't mean that what you feel is stupid, let alone unimportant.” She then looked at the Italian who was carefully listening to her and added: “Hey come here, I want to show you something...”

Carina was caught by surprise, but she got closer to her, curious to see what she had in mind.

They stood up, Maya still holding Carina's hands: “Close your eyes.” she said, putting one of her girlfriend's hand right on her chest, so that it could feel her heartbeat. Then, she leaned to place on Carina's lips an endless kiss.

After taking a deep breath, recovering from that feeling, she asked: “What did you feel? The first thing that comes to your mind?”

The Italian hadn't got the point yet, but she replied with a smirk: “Well, your heart feels like you've just won your second gold medal, it's beating really fast.”

Maya couldn't help but giggle and said: “Not that you're wrong, but I just proved my point”.

Carina now looked even more confused: “ I don't think I'm following you.”

Maya continued: “We've just kissed, and I could tell it wasn't just me who enjoyed it, but still the first thing you noticed is how I reacted to it, instead of focusing on the emotions it provoked to you. What I am saying is that you care too much about other people, which is not bad at all, but you often forget yourself. You have to learn to listen to your heart first, to your feelings: I know that it was probably screaming my name and you didn't want to give me the satisfaction, but I need you to remember one thing. You are important, you matter, always.”

Carina smirked at such a self-confidence, which she knew was only an attempt from Maya to steal her a smile, but her eyes were now teary again, this time for joy, because Maya's words had truly moved her. 

“I don't know what to say, you amazes me every time. I couldn't be any luckier in life. I love you bella, I truly do” the Italian said warmly, pressing her forehead against Maya's.

It was 8.45 pm, they had spent more than one hour talking in that office so they decided it would be better to head home.

After picking up all her stuff, Carina walked towards the door, followed by Maya, who was looking forward to going home. Out of the blue, before stepping outside the office, the Italian turned around towards Maya and said: “Oh, anyway... I forgot to say that you, Captain, would have probably arrived second if our hearts had to compete... the gold medalist is Italian this time!”

Maya smirked, in the softest possible way, kissed her girlfriend and replied: “Well, if so... my honour to lose, then.”

[sparklingpax]

What It Costs

Love is sweet, love is loyalty, love is unwavering, love is....sacrifice. Sometimes, one does not remember the last part until it is simply....too late. 

///

A/N:

-Angst. This is angst. If some of y’all don’t like that stuff and/or are bothered by it, click off or scroll by, please. Thanks. 

-Hhhhh speaking of that, I’ll have you know I’m terrible at this kind of writing. I gave it my all, however. I hope I did passably, at least...^^’’

-Um......I am very sorry if I made any errors, be it a typo or misinformation about something/someone, etc. I wrote a lot of this very late at night or at ungodly hours of the morning.....so that might explain a little of it ^~^’’ I’ll read through it as many times as possible after posting so I can catch and fix as many of those mistakes as possible....

-I’ll make this quick; sorry again to anyone who saw this the first time ^^’’ But this time, I’ve posted it intentionally so I hope you enjoy!! :’D 

-This is only one, long part so dw about cliffhangers or waiting 10 centuries a long time for me to finish it :3 

-Set in the TFP universe! And obviously, my attempt at some official OptiRatch content! :)

The sky was a dull, bleak grey.

Icy rain pelted the earth, pouring from the stormy skies with a vengeance as harsh winds tossed them around with an ominous whistling.

Yet the real storm had materialized inside the rocks—in the simple silo base where the Autobots resided.

               Today, the children had not been able to come to the base.

             Miko was in detention, Jack was busy working overtime at his job, and Raf was studying for a exam.

             It was just one of those days.

             “Thank Primus for peace and quiet!” Ratchet would have remarked as he usually did on days such as this.

             However, things were all but calm—even as a prickly silence filled the air.

///

             “I…I cannot let you do that…” Optimus stammered at last. He bowed his head and shifted his gaze to the left, clearly uncomfortable. “It is only a mere relic, not worth the life—”

             A fist pounded the wall, leaving a blackened scuff mark in the metal.

             “DON’T YOU CARE?!” Ratchet practically screamed. Optimus’s eyes rounded with guilt as he turned his gaze back to the medic sharply.

             “Of course I—”

             “Then GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD, OPTIMUS—” he hit the wall next to him once again, with more force. “It’s not about you!!!”

             He spat those words so coldly, so jarringly sharp, Optimus felt his spark twist.

             Old friend…I do not think you understand my intent at all…please be patient with me…

             The Prime opened his mouth to speak, but Ratchet flashed him an even harsher glare, silencing any further words. Optimus again cast his eyes momentarily to the floor.

             Pushing past his leader, Ratchet raised his fist, not turning to face Optimus, and flipped up his middle finger.

             Optimus would have given an amused laugh.

             ‘Did one of the children teach you that custom?’ he wanted to ask jokingly, teasingly.

             Agent Fowler had done it enough times for Optimus to understand what it meant.

             But all he could do was stare after his medic as the older mech stalked over to the groundbridge controls. All kinds of alarms were going off in Optimus’s head, and yet all he could do was…watch.

             Perhaps he could take no more of Ratchet’s harsh attitude—the anger that emanated off his old friend.

             Perhaps he really wasn’t making the right decision, but Ratchet was.

             Or perhaps…

             You’re a coward, Optimus. A big, strong, coward.

             “I’ll find the relic myself,” Ratchet announced to the other bots. Up until then, they had, unmoving and tense, watched the argument which had preceded all this.

             Don’t go, my Starlight…or at least…let me go with you…But the Prime stood immobile, watching the old bot speak.

             “I’ll find it myself and win us the war,” he repeated, still trembling with rage from minutes before. He turned that sharply angered expression—now laced with disdain—at the Autobot leader. “And I don’t need any backup.”

             A swirling portal of green, white, and purple roared to life when the medic shoved the lever downwards, his expression only grim now. Without saying anymore, he then turned and transformed. An ambulance raced through the portal and disappeared seconds later.

             While the Prime lingered absentmindedly near the bridge, eyes focusing on no one thing as he stared around, deep in thought, Bumblebee carefully padded over and pulled the lever up. The swishing, humming noise quickly faded as the groundbridge portal did, and silence rested over them once again.  

             Except that silence was still not peaceful.

             Optimus soon found himself speaking, not really thinking as he did.

             “Woah—you sure, Optimus?” Bulkhead asked, eyes widened a bit nervously. “I mean, no offense but…Ratchet might rip you to shreds…”

             ‘He looked pretty mad,’ Bumblebee agreed quietly.

             “If something were to happen to him, it would be my fault,” Optimus found himself saying. “For that reason, please reopen the groundbridge.”

             You scared of the blame, Optimus?

             You don’t want to be incriminated?

             Are you making this about you?

             Do you really care?

             Optimus didn’t want to shake those questions away just yet. He was unsure of their answers. The Prime wished his mind was where his body was, yet as he transformed and drove through the bridge, his thoughts continued to wander.

             They taunted him, echoing his medic’s scornful words.

             Why don’t you go after the relic, the one thing that could save us? Who cares if Megatron is there with all his troops? What makes that different from any other of your confrontation with him?

             A heavy feeling sat in the bottom of his stomach—a foreboding sense.

             Often—they say—if your loved one is in danger, you can feel it.

             Optimus pushed harder on the gas, thinking only of what was going to take place if he did not reach his friend quickly enough.

             The day was dark, cold, and rainy.

///

             Ratchet pressed his back against the side of a tall rock, not daring to peer again at the action taking place in the center of the clearing. He heard the footsteps of some vehicons heading his way. They drew their guns as they got closer.

             Above him, the dead-looking gray skies has stilled, leaving the air feeling taut—like it was holding its breath and ready snap any second.  

             The storm from Jasper must be close by, considering I bridge to—

             Ratchet gritted his teeth and snapped himself back to focusing on the current situation.

             The medic felt his spark racing. His arms began to tremor uncontrollably as he drew them upwards to get into a fighting stance.

             They saw you. They saw you and it hasn’t been more than 8 minutes you’ve been here. What a successful mission. It’s just you against Megatron and hundreds of vehicons. And—

             He glanced down at his leg a little worriedly.

             He’d jumped into action a week before and received a blow to the leg he was still healing from. At this very moment, in fact, he felt a faint aching start up again in his knee.

             Ratchet let his head fall against the rock, eyes squeezed shut, swallowing hard and drawing out his own blades.

             You idiot.

             He counted the seconds before attack.

             Optimus was right.

             “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! BRING HIM TO ME NOW!!” Megatron’s furiously growled order broke the tense silence.

             Instantly the slow footsteps became sets of scrambling feet, quickly heading for the rock. A second later, Ratchet watched (and heard) a shot of crimson red blaster fire whiz past his helm. Instinctively, he let out a cry of shock and stumbled to the side—right out from behind the rock.

             Before he could regain his footing to even turn around, the silence exploded into the deafening sound of hundreds of shots aimed for him. The medic turned and faced it, wincing and sucking in a sharp breath as one or two grazed his plating.

             He charged, strangely feeling almost a little….detached from his own body. Like he was on autopilot.

             “For Cybertron!!!” He heard a voice shout.

             What….am I doing here?

             “FOR VICTORY!!!”

             Oh…it was his voice. Right.

             The orange-white-plated mech swerved past the blaster fire, swinging his arms—now blades—back, forth, up, down….

             Optimus, forgive me. I was a fool. I was a prideful fool.

             He ducked a shot and kicked out, catching the vehicon by surprise and knocking him off his feet. Almost one motion, the old bot maintained his momentum and swung his blades at an oncoming opponent.

             The con dodged smoothly. He raised his gun and fired.

             Just as Ratchet thought to spring in the other direction, his knee gave out beneath him. Ratchet tripped over himself, grabbing his knee.

             Right in the path of the vehicon’s shot.  

             A shot ripped through his shoulder, followed by another closer to his neck, tearing from the medic such an ugly, guttural cry that even the vehicon flinched. The medic crumpled to the floor in a writhing heap of short, agonized exclamations.

             Meanwhile, the vehicon’s gun wavered a bit, drawing back a second. Ratchet’s pained noises faded from the air of the clearing, replaced only by the sound of his tremoring breath. Clearly struggling, the medic reached over and clasped his shoulder so hard his digits shook. A small flow of energon began to leak through, soiling his servos and the dirt surrounding his figure. Turning his face to the con, he let his eyes show off his anger.

             In a smaller, quavering voice, he managed to say, “C-coward…hold y-your…w-w-weapon….straight why don’t you—” He spat out, wheezing a bit, then falling limp into the ground. Not unconscious, but simply out of strength.

             Or…will to live.

             The Vehicon shook its head and held the gun firmly upwards again. The weapon was trained directly on Ratchet’s helm.

             Just at that moment, the skies snapped.

             A bellowing rumble of thunder sounded, the clouds suddenly looking bigger, darker, greyer….

             It’s pointless…we’ll just lose, won’t we? Like we always do. Megatron will have his way today, and he’ll have his way until he kills all of us and ends this fragging war….

             Ratchet looked up, hearing a low, gravelly cackle.

             Speak of the devil and he doth appear—is that not the phrase?

             The medic let out a little moan, rolling over onto his side, still clasping a hand to his bleeding wound. His gaze, sharp with pain and yet dull with exhaustion, stared ahead to see the vehicon back away twitchily.

             Megatron’s footsteps shook the ground a little as he stalked in Ratchet’s direction. The huge figure of the ex-gladiator soon towered over Ratchet. He smirked a little, slowly folding his hands behind his back and tilting his head.

             “Ratchet….” he paused to chuckle. “Tell me, what ever did you think you were going to accomplish?”

             “T….the relic—” he hissed tightly, breaking off abruptly to suppress a noise of pain as his shoulder burned with pain under his grip. His optics, trained on Megatron’s sneering face, spoke more than a thousand words of hate and fire.

             Megatron laughed out loud.

             “Oh, you must mean—” he turned and make a rough motion at the vehicons behind him. The one holding the escape pod immediately scurried across the clearing to them. “This trinket?” He asked, grabbing the object from his  soldier.

             The pod hadn’t been opened yet.

             The pod hasn’t been opened yet. The weapon is still inside.

             Ratchet let his mind fixate on that one thought.

             There is time still….if I can just…..

             Megatron started one of his small monologues, something Ratchet wasn’t listening to. He switched on his comm link as discreetly as he could. Pride was not of importance now, Ratchet told himself.

             Optimus had been right, and he knew it. It would be entirely foolish not to try to—

             “Ratchet?”

             Megatron instantly stopped dead in his tracks. His head whipped around as he processed the voice. His eyes darkened when he registered.  

             “I see.” Was all he growled in a chillingly quiet voice.

             “Ratchet, what is going—”

             The medic fumbled to switch it off again, internally kicking himself for so stupid a plan. Of course his idiot sparkmate would call out to him the instant his switched on his comm lines again!

             He meant well, Ratchet. He loves you. He cares about you. Keep that in mind.

             Ratchet let out a grunt of both pain and frustration.

             Optimus, hurry! There isn’t anymore time!

             Ratchet watched as Megatron dropped to his level and grabbed his chin. Mustering all his confidence, the medic stared with an unwavering gaze right back.

             “You’re a fool, Autobot. Much more foolish than I remember you being,” he snarled.

             Ratchet narrowed his eyes and fired back, “Not as much of a fool as you—and unlike you, I’m not a pile of—”  

           “SILENCE!!!!!!!”

             Megatron’s roared command silenced the medic instantly. Ratchet was not afraid, just startled.  Around him, all the vehicons nearby had flinched and taken steps back—even though they were as far away as they were. The Decepticon leader gave another growl, indignant and angered at his prisoner’s insolence.

             He released Ratchet, cursing under his breath.

             Now the Prime is coming. I can’t just leave.

             The huge figure of Megatron paced around, his grey metal looking oddly shinier in the greyish lighting the skies were providing. He was formulating a course of action.

             A plan.

             His eyes lit up and he straightened again, looking once more as if he was in control.

             Just at that moment, a terrible rumble that Ratchet felt all through his body sounded in the air.

             The storm had arrived, and the great roll of thunder was its announcer.

             Megatron looked around casually, then back at Ratchet. There was a dry amusement dancing in his optics.

             “Today shall be the day another one of you dies,” he spoke with a terrifying finality.

             The medic’s spark skipped a beat. He felt a cold fear run through his veins, and sit at the bottom of his stomach—like  a rock. Yet it was not fear for his own life.

             “How can you be so certain?” Ratchet fought to keep his tone level—steady.

             Blinding white flashed through the air, accompanied by a tearing, cracking sound that rang in everyone’s audio receptors. However Megatron stood, and had not flinched. His eyes held a dangerous light of unbending desire.

             “One of you will die by my hand,” Megatron repeated himself, turning away. “For it is as I will.”

              Then, the ex-gladiator stalked back across the clearing. Vehicons immediately scurried to form a circle around Ratchet, two of them coming even closer to guard him, guns drawn and ready to fire.

             Softly, gently, unrelentingly, drops of moisture began to fall from the sky.

             Rain.

             Ratchet closed his eyes, letting himself focus on the odd sensation of those thousands of drops of liquid created when they repeatedly hit his plating.

             With a heavy, exhausted sigh, Ratchet let his head fall into his hands.

             Optimus….my sweetspark…..forgive me…

             He jolted as a vehicon reached over and slapped his helm harshly.

             “Up.” He snapped, holding up stasis cuffs.

             Ratchet sincerely hoped, with all his spark, that he would be the one.

///

             “Ratchet? Please respond, Ratchet.” Optimus repeated himself once again, speeding down the empty road in alt-mode. He finally rolled to a halt, transforming and taking a look around.

             Dark clouds poured rain, the rising winds causing the little droplets to mercilessly pelt his plating from all sides.

             “Old Friend,” he tried his comm for what felt like the hundredth time. “Sweetspark, respond.”

             Urgency laced his tone, concern burning clearly in his gaze.

             Please, my love. Something happened, I am sure of it. But….what?

             Static sounded in his audio receptors until, with a sigh, the Autobot leader switched his link off again.

             I must find him on my own, then—

             He perked up suddenly, hearing a faint noise of….blaster fire?

             A cold, sick feeling twisted in his stomach. Dread weighed heavily on his chest.  

             Hang on, my Starlight….!  

             Without a second to spare, driving as if a fire chased his tailpipes, Optimus pushed his engines to the max. He sped closer, feeling that dread and despair sink further into him as he could more clearly make out the sounds of a fight.

              All he wanted was for Ratchet to be okay.

             All he wanted was for Ratchet to come home.

             Maybe he was selfish for not wanting to attempt to steal that relic, but Optimus knew that he couldn’t go on if anything happened to his teammates over some weapon. The war was not worth anyone’s life.

             If he could save yet just one more, he’d take that option first.

             You will come home alive. No matter the cost. I will not fail you, old friend.

             He pushed the brakes and skidded to a halt, catching sight of the commotion. There was a space between two towering canyons below his road. In that rocky clearing, Optimus saw an orange-white-plated mech darting from left to right, fending off as many of the oncoming vehicons as he could. Sure enough, Megatron was also there. At present, he simply stood by, watching.

             Enough was enough. Ratchet needed help.

             Optimus transformed and gripped the side of the mountain he’d been driving up, vaulting off the top and landing with a huge ‘THUMP!!’ on the road below.

             He cared not for the huge crater that now lay in the road.

             Optimus ran as fast as he could, drawing out both his guns and firing as soon as he was in range of the fight.

             “STEP AWAY FROM RATCHET!!!” Optimus commanded, nailing two vehicon soldiers with two shots as he continued to cross the distance of the clearing. Some of them scrambled back, many others turned their fire on the Prime, charging at him with a strange confidence.

             Optimus felt his blood boiling. The rain seemed to intensify as another bolt of lightning ripped through the sky with great ferocity. Almost like it had hit Optimus himself, he put away his guns and drew his swords, feeling electrified—powerful.

             I am not afraid of you, Megatron. Nor of your legions of breakable troops which you care nothing for.

             He saw the warlord, standing far across the clearing, arms folded.

             “FACE ME, MEGATRON!!!!”

             And with a powerful war cry, Optimus bolted forward, swords drawn. Vehicons poured in from all sides, shooting at him and trying to throw themselves in the Prime’s way.

             He didn’t notice pain from shots that ripped through his armor, the blows that landed on his chest—before he grabbed his attackers and dismantled them one by one.

             The Prime had but one target.

             Optimus wanted Megatron, and he wanted the end of this selfish, futile war.

///

             Megatron inspected the pod, wondering if he should open it now or wait until—

             “Step away from Ratchet!!!” He heard the enraged command from across the clearing. Before his eyes met the scene, Megatron already knew who it was. He grinned, baring his teeth with excitement.

             Ah, yes, Optimus. That’s right. Come closer. Let me finish you once and for all…

             With an unchecked level of anger, he yelled for Megatron to face him, tossing away the corpse of yet another dead vehicon as he spoke. The Decepticon warlord stood, unmoving, gazing with a taunting amusement in his eyes as he watched Optimus fight his way through the vehicons, tearing them apart as they would approach him.

             At last, no one dared to approach the Prime. The rest of the vehicons there had either fled or threw themselves behind rocks to hide. Optimus stood for a second, panting, energon spattered all over his body and swords. He looked around to find Ratchet passed out in a heap, far to Megatron’s right. No vehicons stood guard.

             Of course, with Megatron there, guards were not a necessity.

             You’re a fool, too, Optimus. You all are.

  ��          Thunder rumbled, louder than before.

             “So, you’ve come to rescue your lapdog, have you?” Megatron asked, sneering through every word he said. Optimus seemed to vibrate with anger. He didn’t respond, eyes a sparking electric blue behind his battlemask.

             “You can take him, Optimus,” as the Prime twitched to move, Megatron held up his arm—the one with the fusion canon—and added, “For a price.”

             Optimus looked ready to rip his head off.

             He had clearly seen Ratchet’s wounds, and the new ones from a….punishment. Minutes after the medic had tried to escape, Optimus had arrived.

             It was almost like they were going to succeed!

             However, the large grey-purple mech had also made absolutely sure Ratchet would not escape, no matter what.

             Megatron thought he’d feed his ‘old friend’s’ anger.

             Or perhaps…his guilt.

             “While you were busy tearing vehicons to shreds, Ratchet was able to be successfully contained. We had to rough him up a little, as a result of his foolish actions…..but he’ll live…for now.”

             He gave a little chuckle as Optimus made a quiet exclamation.

             “You might have succeeded had you kept yourself focused on getting your friend out of here, Optimus!”

             “You will let him go.” He growled, taking a fighting stance.

             “Make me.”

             “Very well then,” The Prime drew his sword and started towards Megatron. “I shall.”

             Megatron dropped his canon. “Or…listen to my offer.”

             Optimus stopped, dropping his arms a bit.

             “Speak.” He let his gaze burn with a terrifying electricity. “Quickly.”

             Megatron was of course, not even slightly fazed. “My terms are simple,” he paused to make a gesture to the clearing in which they stood. “Fight me now, unarmed. If you win, I’ll let you and the medic here return to your base. No one will harm you as you leave.”

             It was a simple proposition.

             It was a simple goal.

             Ratchet would be safe.

             You could fail…Optimus, you could fail and get Ratchet killed…

             The rain poured from the skies ever harder, a storm unrelenting and harsh.

             Megatron took a few steps until he stood right in front of Optimus.

             The third stroke of lightning lit up the skies, flashing in the reflection of Optimus’s blue optics. Megatron grinned, tilting his head. He reached out his hand.

             “So?”

             Without a single hesitation, Optimus took it.

///

A cold, familiar ache in his shoulder.

Burning sensations of pain from fresh cuts and dents in his body.

Merciless rain battering his plating.

Ominous, loud whistles of wind sounding in his audio receptors.

             Ratchet’s optics snapped open when he heard the resounding clang of metal on metal.

             “IT IS FUTILE, PRIME—GIVE IT UP!!!”

             “NEVER!!”

             “MAYBE I SHOULD KILL BOTH OF YOU!!”

             There was another sound of impact, punctuated with a short cry of pain. The voice was Optimus’s.

             The medic sat up, looking around briefly to see that any remaining vehicons who hadn’t yet traveled back to the warship—hovering a short distance away—were cramming themselves behind rocks, flattening themselves to a corner. Others were presently trying to escape the scene.              

             Clearly, they wanted no part in any of this dispute.

             But I do.

             Ratchet hoisted himself up despite the way his wounds stung.

             I must.

             He watched Optimus and Megatron for a few moments. Neither one seemed to be using their weapons—it was simple combat.

             Except there was energon splattered around the grounds where they fought.

             Who said swords and guns were the only things that could kill?

             “Well, then,” Megatron laughed a chilling, malicious laugh. “Do you surrender yet, Optimus?” He bent down and thrust his face into Optimus’s, while the Prime struggled to get up. Optimus retracted his battlemask, gritting his teeth with anger and in an attempt to stifle pained grunts of effort.

             Energon stained the side of his face, dripping steadily from his mouth. He flinched back from the warlord and pushed himself to his feet, taking a fighting stance again.

             Ratchet stood, mesmerized.

             The sight that lay before him was nearly poetic, in a strange way.

             Not the “good” kind of strange.

             Rain poured from the heavens, the air was cold, and the winds raced noisily about. Smokey breath billowed from Optimus’s mouth as he panted, looking ragged and angry. His gaze fixated on Megatron.

             “This ends today, you lunatic—” he forced out, gripping one of his newer wounds gently. “Even…even if it kills me….”

             Megatron grinned. “Oh, it will,” he said slowly, deviously, not moving an inch as Optimus began to circle him. They eyed one another, anticipation hanging in the air as one silently dared the other to make the first move.

             I will be the victor today, Optimus, and then I shall win this war!

             Time seemed to slow, and suddenly Optimus couldn’t move—yet nothing held his limbs in place.

             Instead, his eyes were trained on Megatron as the warlord had suddenly turned.

             He chuckled lightly and aimed his fusion canon at Ratchet, who was standing frozen, watching them.

             The medic seemed to snap out of his trance and flinched, taking a step back defensively. Optimus felt a new rage form in him. Something unseen tore another war cry from the Prime and he charged at an almost desperate-looking pace.

             “LEAVE HIM ALONE!!”

             He threw himself at Megatron, knocking the huge mech to the ground. Megatron gave a short cry of surprise, then immediately locked his jaw, biting down on his tongue. Optimus’s eyes burned with such a ferocity that the ex-gladiator had not seen—not for a long time.

             Not since he last fought a wild beast in the arena of Kaon.

             Never from the soft eyes of Optimus.

             “YOU….KILLED THEM,” Optimus snarled, pinning Megatron to the dirt. Rain pelted down, bouncing limply off Optimus’s frame. He glowered over Megatron, seething at him. “YOU DID ALL THIS, YOU MONSTER!!!”

             Megatron looked surprised only for a moment, then narrowed his eyes belligerently.

             He could only grin. A sick, twisted grin that said, ‘I don’t care.’

             Limbs burning with exhaustion, Optimus began to pummel Megatron. He swung side to side, pounding his opponent with all he had. Wordless cries of anger poured from him as he punched…harder, harder….

               “Optimus!”

               His servos began to tear and feel numb. Streaks of faded blue and purple stained his plating.  

               “OPTIMUS!!!”

               Distantly, a voice registered in his ears. What was it trying to say?

               “OPTIMUS, WAIT!!”

               All the Prime could see was a blaring, bright red. Steady clanging of metal on metal against the static rain sounded loudly in his optics.

               “ORION, PLEASE!!! LISTEN TO ME—”

                           Optimus felt as if an electric shock had been passed through him. Hearing his name, he froze, panting, trembling, blood roaring in his head. Beneath him, he could feel Megatron tremoring. Yet the silver-purple mech still bore that scrap-eating grin.

             He knew something.

             Something he won’t tell me, the Autobot leader thought, feeling some of his frustration return. He glanced up again at Ratchet, who was still backing away. The air around them began to vibrate, waves of hot air joining with and drowning out the blustering, icy, rainy wind.

             Something was definitely wrong.

             Optimus narrowed his optics and raised a readied fist above Megatron’s face.

              “What are you not telling me, Megatron?” Optimus gripped his rival by the neck. Nothing but a feeble-sounding laugh met his words. The red optics staring back at him squinted with fatigue and fell shut.

             Optimus knew Megatron was still awake.

             “I’m more than finished with all your little mind games, this war, your treacheries,” he spat. “What else are you trying to take from us all now?!” His voice rose with every word as Optimus began to work himself up again. Centuries of anger and sadness began to pile on his spark.

             Waves of warm, stifling air drew closer. A reverberating hum sounded in Optimus’ skull. Something like….a ship.

             All the same, sound faded out around him as he zeroed in on Megatron.

             Finally, he was at his fingertips—his mercy. Finally, Optimus thought, he could bring a final peace to—

             “You lose,” Megatron sneered, a new fire lighting his optics. Beneath him, the Decepticon leader tensed and felt as if he was about to make a move. Optimus gritted his teeth and held steady, tightening his grip on Megatron’s throat.

             “OPTIMUS, YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!!”  

             Ratchet sounded on the verge of tears, practically shrieking at his partner.

             He realized in an instant what exactly Megatron had meant before.

///

             Every wound made itself known, throbbing with pain. Megatron could barely move.

             Yet victory buzzed through every cell in his body, giving him just enough strength to carry out the last step to complete his grand plan to end it all.

             Farewell, Orion. Ironic that it was your uncontrolled emotions that led to your downfall.

             Optimus, fist raised, opened his mouth to ask again. Megatron suddenly let loose a surge of strength, pushing up and thrusting his legs under his opponent’s torso and kicking outwards. Optimus’s blue optics widened with shock and he uttered a short cry as he was thrown a few feet across the clearing.

             He landed and instantly got to his feet again, activating his battlemask.

             The Prime stared for a moment at the odd scene before him.

             Megatron stood—albeit shakily—and began to back away, pulling Ratchet with him. No vehicon stragglers were in sight, and even more odd…the rain had begun to let up just a little.

             Soft rays of sunlight began to show through the clouds. His mind drifting, Optimus turned slowly to gaze up at the clouds. He was met with the huge mass of metal and a blast of air and sound.

             It was the Nemesis. A huge canon under the ship readjusted itself with an audible whirring noise.  

             “NOW, SOUNDWAVE!!”

             “OPTIMUS, RUN!!!!!!”

               Ratchet….I’m sorry I failed you….

             In the time of a split second, the world around Optimus lit up in a brilliant, blaring flash, and a deafening explosion filled the air.

             Never before had murder seemed so ethereal.

///

             “Ratchet?”

             No response.

             “Ratchet..?”

             Nothing.

             “RATCHET!!” Miko tried, her loud voice jolting the medic out of whatever trance he’d been in moments before. He turned slowly from staring at his screen, a dead-looking gaze meeting the children’s.

             “Do you…need something, Miko? Rafael?”

             “Oh—well, it’s uhm….it’s nothing….I’ll let you get back to work…” Raf mumbled, suddenly sounding nervous as he fumbled to hide the object he’d been holding. Miko rolled her eyes.              

             “After all the work I did to get his attention!” She followed her friend back to the lounge area. Ratchet watched them, not really processing what they were doing. He then turned back to his task.

             What was I doing again?

             “Hey, Ratchet,” Bulkhead greeted, coming from the hallway. “How’s your, uh…data surfing going?”

             Right.

             “Very well. I am nearly finished with three of the four sectors I was to organize today,” Ratchet heard his voice respond.

             He looked up to see Bulkhead staring at him, eyes rounded with concern and worry. However the moment he raised his head to see him, he switched his expression to a normal, casual one.

             It was fine if he did that, Ratchet thought to himself. Everyone had been doing it for the last two months now, anyway.

             “Well…that sounds good! A-anyway, I’m gonna…go for a drive…” he responded, sounding awkward. Ratchet nodded an acknowledgement and turned back around. Feeling guilty, Bulkhead looked as if he wanted to say more.

             But he knew better than to bring up what it was they were both still thinking about.

             He turned and transformed, then left. Meanwhile, Ratchet tapped at the screen, barely thinking about what he was actually doing.

             Some small part of him wished for a warm touch on his shoulder as he was finishing up.

             A warm, baritone voice to calmly whisper, “Good work today, my love. Come, rest with me in my quarters.”

             It’s not your fault…it’s not your fault….there was nothing you could do!

             His mind repeated what the others had gently murmured over and over on that day and every day after.

             But it was…

             He heard the small voice protest. He clenched his fist and locked his jaw.

               It’s not your fault, Ratchet. You didn’t kill him!

                           The medic felt a lump in his throat. With all his might, he swallowed it, controlling himself.

             But I did…I killed him.

             “Ratchet?”

             Jack. It was Jack’s voice.

             Ratchet felt his arm quivering, his gaze and body frozen in one place, as if someone had hit the pause button on him.

             “Yes?” Everything felt distant now. He felt his arm drop and his head turn to stare at the small human teenager.

             “So…how’s it going?”

             “Fine.”

             “Oh…well, it’s raining cats and dogs out there!” He joked, pointing at his shirt. “I got a little of it..”

             “You did?”

             “Yep. Might wanna tell Bulkhead to be careful on the roads, right?”

             “Right.”

             “Right…so, I guess I’ll leave you alone, then…” Jack backed away, saying something to Miko and Raf as he neared the couch and TV. 

             All of a sudden, Ratchet was aware of how cold his shoulder felt.

///

HNNNN THIS PIECE OF GARBAGE O///O’’ THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING AT AA >///< Sorry, I know I’m not good at angst. But I wanted to write this anyway.....

If you like, listening to this for the last 2-3 parts of the story might....set the mood  better..? Idk. For me, I heard that recording and instantly felt my heart twist. And had this idea. So.....^^’’ (yes, I know about this piece btw I just like the slowed version because,,,aesthetic,,,,jsjdsjsd) 

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely eveing/day/whatever time it is where you are!! <3 

Feedback, likes, reblogs, and all that stuff is always welcome!! ^///^ 

// Kuni out :’3 //

[fckitslizzie]

little fires everywhere

Who: Lizzie Olsen & Chris Pratt { @prattyprattpratt-town ) 

Summary: After a night of awards parties, Lizzie & Chris return to Lizzie’s house to find her home up in flames. Literally. Like..on fire.

Lizzie: Lizzie was honestly just glad that the awards was over. She had spent the last two months anxious about the ceremony, even though she knew her category was a tight one and her chances were..basically non existent. It was still very, very exciting being nominated and now she could add 'Emmy Nominated' to just about everything she does going forward. She may not have left the ceremony with an Emmy, but she had gotten the chance to get all dressed up and spent the night at a few different after parties with Chris, so over all it was a pretty great night. As she dropped down into the passenger seat of Chris' car, she instantly reached down to tug the heels from her feet, letting out a groan. "Next time, I'm just wearing slippers. I don't even care." Dropping the shoes onto the floor by her feet she leaned back against the seat, relaxing. It was already passed midnight, and even though it was late she didn't find herself that tired. "You wanna come in when we get to my place? I weirdly wanna bake cookies. I have that easy pre-made stuff you just pop in the oven." Lizzie let out a laugh, already looking forward to being able to get out of this dress and into her pajamas. "Thanks for coming with me tonight. I know you just did it for the swag bags, but..", she teased with a grin in his direction.

Pratt: Big events were always stressful, even if you weren’t even nominated. Even so, Chris viewed it as his job to make sure Lizzie had a good time, Emmy or no Emmy. After helping a heeled Lizzie into his truck, he walked to the other side and climbed into the drivers seat. “I don’t know how you guys wear them all night anyway,” he shook his head with a small chuckle. Chris started the car and began driving towards her home. “Yea, I’m cool with that. As long as I can eat one or two of those little squares of cookies…like pre-baking.” He looked over to the girl on his right, “what? Everyone knows the dough is better than the actual cookies.”

Lizzie: "I don't know how we wear them all night either. It should be against the law. It feels sexist somehow." She was only half joking, but she did wear flats more often than not if she had a choice. Tonight just called for more of a fancy get up and she was okay with that since it was kind of rare in her life. "Hey--you will hear no complaining from me. I've had nights where the dough doesn't even make it into the oven." She said with a laugh. Rummaging through her clutch she found the hair tie she had put in there earlier when she put the finishing touches on her shorter hair, using it to pull some hair back into a pony tail even though it was so short, it really didn't matter. As they got closer to her house and near her street, she saw a fire truck turn and head down her road. She didn't think much of it, silently hoping whoever was in trouble was okay.

Pratt: He laughed lightly at her comment, but found himself nodding in agreement with her. Chris kept his eyes on the road as he made his way back to her home. Seeing the fire truck he gave it a small glance as he slowed and drove past it. "Wonder whats going on," he said casually to Lizzie, only slight interest in his voice. As they made their way further up the street he saw more fire trucks pulled to the side of the road and his brow furrowed in confusion. "Must be something big," he commented. But before he could speculate what it could possibly be he saw the flames ahead of them and his eyes widened. "Is that your neighbors?" he asked, glancing over to her, still not able to make out exactly what house was actively on fire.

Lizzie: Lizzie couldn't help but feel some anxiety kick in when the got closer to her house and she noticed how basically by her house was blocked off, and there were more than a couple fire trucks on the scene. Even though she felt Chris' eyes on her she couldn't take hers off the flames in front of them. "I can't tell.." the car was barley stopped by the baricade that was set up, and Lizzie was out of the car not even thinking of or worrying about her shoes. As she got closer, the blondes eyes widened when she got a good look at what was happening and it was /her/ house the flames were coming from, specifically the entire top floor of her house. A firefighter moved to stand in front of her to block her from going any further, the girl finally tearing her eyes from the fire to look at him. "That-that's my house." She could barley get the words out, a wave of shock washing over her from what she was seeing.

Pratt: Chris slowly approached the police/fire barricade, moved his truck to the side of the road, and shifted it into park. Before he could open his door, Lizzie was out of the car and heading past the blockage. It didn't take long for the man to climb out of the car and follow after her, "Hey, I think we sho--" he was about to say that they should be behind the barricade when he saw which house was actually at the center of the action. The sight had stopped him in his track and when he finally tore his eyes away, he saw a man holding Lizzie back from advancing further towards the house. Chris moved forward quickly and put his arm around Lizzie's waist, pulling her towards him so the firefighter could get back to work. "Liz, we can't go up there," he said, trying to keep his voice soft, he couldn't imagine what was going through her mind at that moment. His eyes scanned the people around them and it didn't take long before he'd lightly grabbed the arm of a police office to get their attention. "Excuse me," he said, pulling his arm back, "Can you tell us anything about what happened here? This is her house," he told the office, gesturing to Lizzie.

Lizzie: She honesty didn't know what to think, say or do in this moment as all she could see was her house being engulfed in flames that they were working to put out. She barley comprehended when Chris was next to her, or when he told her she couldn't get any closer right now. What the hell had happened? She hadn't been cooking all day, it wasn't like she left the oven on. Was there a gas leak of some sort? Lizzie looked to her neighbors houses to see if maybe it had started there, but they stood untouched unlike her own. Finally snapping out of her thoughts she heard Chris speaking to a police officer, the girl looking to the officer. The gentleman shook his head, "We don't know for sure yet what the cause was. We still have some guys in there trying to get this thing out, and after that we'll know more." His eyes moved from Chris to Lizzie giving her a sympathetic look. "I'm sorry that this is happening to you. Stay put and I'll be over in a minute to take down your contact information, okay?" He touched her arm as he passed, heading back over to his patrol car. In that moment Lizzie did the only thing her brain could think of doing and that was--laughing. The girl laughed, bringing her hands up to cover her face for a moment. "You know-an Emmy really would have made this situation easier." Coping with sarcasm and humor was always her go to and even now, even when most of her life was quite literally up in flames, it was all she could do.

Pratt: Pratt listened to everything the office was saying. How could no one know how this happened? Logically he understood that they'd need to look into what happened after the flames had subsided, but in the moment it just didn't seem like a good enough answer. Even so, he jus watched as the man walked away from them, leaving them alone to stare at the scene once again. He didn't really know what to say. What could he say? After all, nothing was going to reverse time and make it so the fire didn't happen. Before he could even make an attempt at finding the right words, she was speaking. He let out an automatic chuckle at what she'd said, his eyes looking to the smoke bellowing into the night sky. "I-" he started before stopping. "I don't know what to say right now," he said finally, giving up on trying to find words that he was sure didn't exist. "I'm sorry we came back to this," he shook his head at the whole situation.

Lizzie: The laughter only lasted a few moments and once it was gone, she could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. It seemed silly to start crying now or something like this. It wasn't like anyone was hurt, and she was well enough off that she could replace what had been ruined-hopefully, she didn't want to start thinking about her family photos or the momentos she had. The thought of them just brought on new tears and she couldn't really break down right now like this, here. Quickly wiping a few tears before they could fall, Lizzie shook her head, her eyes landing on Chris. She needed something to ground her, to not completely push her over the edge. "Can-Can we just go? I'll give him my info or whatever, but I can't just stand here and watch." Lizzie couldn't just stand there and watch her house burn to the ground. She honestly didn't even know where she would go, what she was going to do tomorrow, but she couldn't think about that in the moment.

Pratt: Looking over to Lizzie he saw the tears in her eyes despite the fact that she was trying not to cry. He slipped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her into a sort of half hug. He wasn't sure if it would do anything to actually comfort her but it was the only way he could think of to at least try. "Yea," he nodded, completely understanding what she was saying. "Lets go find that cop and we can get out of here. We'll just go back to my place, alright?" he asked. With Lizzie by his side, he began making his way back towards his truck and almost ran into the officer they were looking for. "Officer, is there anyway we can leave her information with you? She really just kind of wants to get out of here.." he trailed off, looking over to Lizzie so she could take over given that it was her they'd need to contact in the coming days.

Lizzie: Lizzie leaned into Chris for a moment as he lead her back over towards his truck, trying to find at least some sort of comfort in him. She was thankful that he had offered to take her to his place. Sure she didn't think he would leave her on the side of the road but right now she wasn't thinking clearly about a lot of things. Looking to the office she nodded as he began asking her questions about her name, number, and if she had insurance or anything like that. They had only been at the scene for maybe fifteen to twenty minutes but by the time Lizzie climbed back into Chris' car, she felt like she had been hit by a truck. "I'm sorry." She said instantly, suddenly feeling the weight of now being a burden because of this disaster.

Pratt: Chris took a step back and let Lizzie giver her information to the police officer. He listened as the man said they didn't know when they'd back to her with more information but they would call her as soon as they had information to share. With that, the pair made their way back to his truck. He pulled the door open for her and closed it behind her once she was safely inside before making his way to the drivers side and getting in. He started the car and began reversing out of the area until he could turn around and drive normally. "What're you apologizing to me for?" he asked, a bit confused by her words. "Its me whos sorry you have to go through all this. Its crazy and you don't deserve it.." he told her seriously.

Lizzie: Lizzie frowned, glancing over to him for a moment before she looked out the window. "It's crazy how shit just happens to you. You are driving down the road and suddenly your car is hit by a truck. You're walking minding your own business and then your falling, breaking a bone or two. You come home and your house is gone. How-", she paused for a moment, trying to not break down right there. "..how does someone even prepare for that?" She was honestly just thinking out loud and didn't expect him to have any answers. Maybe she just needed to talk her way through some of what she was feeling. Sniffling, Lizzie wrapped her arms around herself as she settled back into the seat. "I'm sorry because now you're nice and you're going to let me stay at your place tonight and yeah, that makes me feel guilty a little."

Pratt: He listened as she spoke, he could tell that nothing she was saying in that moment actually required an answer, so he didn't give one. Not that he actually could say anything, she was right. Sometimes life just happened and you had to deal with it. "Yea, you're also my best friend. You think I'm gonna make you go stay at a hotel or something?" It was a rhetorical question because they both knew the answer. And fact was, she'd do the same thing for him. "Theres nothing to feel guilty for," he reassured her, "This is what we do, right? We're here for each other. No matter what."

Lizzie: Slowly nodding her head, Lizzie knew he was right and if the roles would be reversed she would be bending over backwards to help him and yell at him at any type of apology that he tried to give her. "You're right..I know you're right. I just..I don't know what to think right now, or do." She wrinkled her nose, glancing down at her dress. "I don't even have clothes." She chuckled. "I have no clothes probably. Like at all. That's..that's great." Sighing she dropped her head back against the head rest, closing her eyes for a few moments. "I just want to take a shower and drink. Maybe even drink in the shower." She looked over to him, giving him a small smile in an attempt to show that she was at least a little okay.

Pratt: He hadn't even thought about clothes or any of the day to day things that were typically gathered over time that she would now have to reacquire once everything was sorted out. "Don't worry about any of that tonight. You'll sleep in one of my shirts or something and we'll deal with the rest tomorrow." He didn't really know what that would look like, but he knew they'd figure it out. "As for the rest of it, we can make that happen," he offered her a small smile. "I think I have a full bottle of that wine you like, I think its a red. And as always, beer. Whatever you want," he told her.

Lizzie: She nodded a bit, giving him a small smile. She honestly didn't know what she would do with out Chris on a normal day, let alone a night where it felt like her world was falling apart around her. "If it makes me at least sort of forget about tonight, I'll be happy with whatever you have." She did just want to forget. She wanted to pretend at least for a little while that tonight had never even happened.

[cicada-bones]

The Warrior and the Embers

Chapter 7: Brawling

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Maeve nodded, and Rowan let the girl stalk into the waiting hallway, following close behind. Both of them were positively seething, radiating heat and tension and fury. Now that the inescapable force of Maeve’s presence had been removed, there was no damper on either of their tempers, no check on the threat of violence that steadily spread between them like a pit of lava.

Rowan would count himself very lucky if they made it to her rooms in silence, if the princess managed to keep her mouth shut. Any word exchanged between the two of them would serve as a match being thrown, inevitably causing the noxious gas swathed around them to spark into a fiery explosion of rage and violence.

Rowan told himself he could keep himself in check, could retain his tight hold on his anger. It wouldn’t be a good idea to give in while still under Maeve’s nose, and so soon after the two females had struck their bargain and made their tentative peace. They were so close, only a few more turns, a few more steps –

But then the girl spoke, sparks igniting. “You must be very important to Her Immortal Majesty if she put you on nurse duty.”

Lightening crackled through his veins, icing over his limbs. There was a great roaring in his head as the primal part of him rared to meet the challenge the girl was setting him, to fight his opponent until she was defeated, or destroyed.

He responded without thinking, focusing on keeping the leash he held on his anger from snapping. “Given your history, she didn’t trust anyone but her best to keep you in line.”

The words were barely more than a growl. Rowan couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to someone with so much heat, so much vitriol. Not even Fenrys’ taunts could pull him out of his icy shell so easily.

The princess’ eyes lit up – he was giving her exactly what she wanted. Rowan lashed down even harder on his fury as she retaliated, “Playing warrior in the woods doesn’t seem like the greatest indicator of talent.”

He clenched his jaw tight, speaking through his teeth. “I fought on killing fields long before you, your parents, or your grand-uncle were even born.”

Rowan nearly snarled in satisfaction, seeing the girl bristle in indignation. “Who’s to fight here except birds and beasts?”

He had to choke down a laugh. The child had no idea, none whatsoever. If not for her arrogance and conceit, he may have sympathized with the girl’s obvious ignorance. As it was, it only served to increase his contempt.

“The world is a far bigger and more dangerous place than you can imagine, girl. Consider yourself blessed to receive any training – to have the chance to prove yourself.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “I’ve seen plenty of this big and dangerous world, princeling.”

A soft laugh escaped through Rowan’s clenched teeth. Two could play at that game. “Just wait, Aelin.”

The barb hit home – she dropped all pretense of playfulness, her voice now filled with pure aggression. “Don’t call me that.”

Rowan’s eyes sparked. “It’s your name. I’m not going to call you anything different.”

She stepped in front of him, and he flashed his teeth at her. Rowan could smell the scent of her power as it writhed around her, filling the corridor. He choked on it.

“No one here can know who I am. Do you understand?”

He pressed down hard, pushing his advantage. “My aunt has given me a harder task than she realizes, I think.” She flinched slightly as his claiming, his dig at her demi- status. She did not belong, and Maeve was his, not hers.

The she responded, loathing coating her voice with its slimy fingers as she bathed in its addictive touch. “Fae like you make me understand the King of Adarlan’s actions a bit more, I think.”

Before he could reconsider, Rowan punched the girl in the face. He had aimed for her nose, but she had managed to roll slightly to the side, catching the blow on her chin. She hit the opposite wall hard, her head connecting with the bricks. Blood leaked from her mouth.

But the spark in the girl’s eyes didn’t fade. She wanted this fight, wanted Rowan to beat her into a pulp. Why, he didn’t know. Probably to get him in trouble with Maeve – a ploy to alter the bargain they’d struck in her favor.

So before Rowan could strike her again, he halted, preventing himself from fracturing her jaw and instead snarling in her face, low and vicious.

She just purred, “Do it.”

Rowan only barely maintained control, knowing that this would do nothing to teach the girl respect or humility. It wouldn’t make her yield, or break, or hurt. He’d have to find another way to penetrate her armor.

“Why should I give you what you want?”

“You’re just as useless as the rest of your brethren.”

He just laughed again, lowering his fist. “If you’re that desperate to eat stone, go ahead: I’ll let you try to land the next punch.”

She didn’t hesitate, swinging wildly, no control, no discipline. He moved quickly and easily aside, then hooked his foot around hers, sending her careening into the wall once more.

Rowan stepped back and crossed his arms while the girl spat blood, swearing. He smirked, sending her hurtling towards him again, so overwhelmed with fury that she moved with no plan, no strategy.

Rowan grinned viciously as he efficiently countered, sending her crashing into a darkened brazier behind him and landing on the hard stone floor, her teeth ringing. The monster in his chest purred its satisfaction – the struggle providing an outlet for his fury, allowing it to ebb from his limbs.

“Like I said, you have a lot to learn. About everything.”

“Go fuck yourself.” She snarled past her already swollen lip.

Rowan sauntered down the hall, leaving her lying there in a heap. “Next time you say anything like that,” he said without looking over his shoulder, “I’ll have you chopping wood for a month.”

Rowan paused momentarily, listening to her drag herself off the stones. Then they made their way down the hall, and he dumped her in a small, cold room that was tucked away in a corner of the fortress, which would be hers for the foreseeable future.

It was little better than a prison cell, and would be achingly cold at night. There was no fireplace, only a small bed, a chamber pot, and a washbasin filled with a layer of water currently coated in ice. Perfect for the spoiled brat.

“Give me your weapons.” Rowan picked up a bucket and tossed its contents into the hall, holding it out towards the girl.

“Why? And no.”

“Give me your weapons.”

She just looked back at him, eyes blank. “Tell me why.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Then we’re going to have another brawl.”

Rowan raised his brow. You call that a brawl?

But still, the girl’s face was leaking blood like a dripping faucet, and he would already have to answer to Maeve for the punch he’d thrown. And, now that he’d struck out, he’d lifted some of the burden of his fury and what remained was far easier to ignore.

So instead of giving the girl what she wanted, he answered, “Starting at dawn, you’ll earn your keep by helping in the kitchen. Unless you plan to murder everyone in the fortress, there is no need for you to be armed. Or to be armed while we train. So I’ll keep your daggers until you’ve earned them back.”

Her mouth twisted into a frown. “The kitchen?”

Rowan bared his teeth in a wicked grin. “Everyone pulls their weight here. Princesses included. No one’s above some hard labor, least of all you.”

Her frown deepened into something deeper, and darker, her teeth clacking together with an audible snap. “So my training includes being a scullery maid?”

“Part of it.” And I’m going to savor every damn second of your misery.

She pursed her lips. “For an old bastard, you certainly haven’t bothered to learn manners at any point in your long existence.”

“Why should I waste flattery on a child who’s already in love with herself?”

“We’re related, you know.”

“We’ve as much blood in common as I do with the fortress pig-boy.” He shoved the bucket in her face, exhausted by this trying game of wills.

Her nostrils flared, but finally she acquiesced, and began to disarm herself. Rowan carefully counted the weapons she pulled from beneath her clothing, running them against the mental tally he’d generated.

When she finished, he tucked the bucket into his side and strode from the room without a farewell, calling over his shoulder, “Be ready at dawn.”

The door slammed shut, but he could still hear the girl say, “Bastard. Old stinking bastard,” before he stormed down the hall and back up the spiral staircase.

···

Rowan had never stayed the night at Mistward, though he had passed through it countless times. So while he had never slept in the room he was heading towards, he knew that it was the one he would be given.

He opened the wooden door and slid quietly inside, utterly spent. The room was small and shabby, a large four-poster bed occupying much of the space. Worn rugs were thrown over much of the floor, an attempt to soften their cold stone chill. A small but acceptable fireplace was set into one wall, with a worn wooden worktable placed in front of it.

Rowan placed the bucket of weapons on the ground next to the table, where his saddlebags were already waiting. He turned to the fireplace, and set to work constructing a meagre fire, knowing that as night came on, it would get harder and harder to keep the mists’ cold chill from freezing his bones.

Just as he got the fire lit however, Rowan felt that familiar tug deep in his chest, pulling him out of his room, back up the stairs, and over to the small office where Maeve still sat, holding court.

This time once he approached, Rowan knelt, bowing his head before the Queen of the Fae.

She didn’t waste any time with formalities. “I see you and the Heir of Terrasen have become quite close over your travels.” Rowan didn’t respond, keeping his eyes low. Waiting to see how she would react.

Maeve regarded him carefully, evaluating. “I’d just struck a bargain with the girl, a formal agreement between Doranelle and Terrasen – a historic moment. Even accounting for the princess’ tenuous relationship with her throne.”

Rowan frowned. He was completely empty, the girl’s fire having robbed him of all remaining strength, and was far, far too exhausted to continue to play this game.

“And then the moment she leaves my sight, you hit her.”

Rowan’s fingers twitched. “My apologies, majesty.”

Maeve smelled an easy victory. “Does your remorse undo the potential damage you have done to this bargain, and to the future relationship of Doranelle to the nation of Terrasen?”

“No my queen.”

“Then I would say that you have a debt owed, Rowan Whitethorn.”

Rowan finally raised his eyes to look up at her, his face carefully blank. Maeve’s eyes were narrowed, her brow set and her mouth wry. She seemed to be coming to some kind of decision, to be weighing different strategies against each other.

Her presence was lighter than it had been earlier; her dark power was still there, but it was no longer oppressive in its weight. Now that the princess was gone, Maeve’s performance had slipped ever so slightly, become more comfortable, easier.

She was no longer actively malicious, and yet still Maeve was a force to be reckoned with.

“I do not know if this is fortunate, or unfortunate, Prince Rowan, but I believe that there is no punishment that I could bestow upon you that would be more effective than that which I already have.” Maeve’s grin twisted into something dark and inescapable – a cage.

Rowan’s jaw twitched in response, but he was far too drained for Maeve’s harsh words to cut him the way she intended them too. He'd already accepted his fate, any more fury expended on its behalf would just be an unnecessary excess. So instead of snarling, or protesting, or asking why it had to be him to train the girl, and not someone with far more experience or ability, he just said quietly, “Yes my queen.”

Her lips tightened, “I must admit, while I had formed very few expectations regarding the heir of Terrasen, I certainly had not expected for the two of you to detest each other so entirely.”

Rowan remained silent, still watching his queen’s face intently.

She watched him right back, seeing past his icy armor and down into his very essence. Maeve knew him better than any still living, knew him better than he knew himself. There was nothing he would hide from her, nothing he would deny her – even if such a thing would have been possible.

Yes, Rowan had known who this female was when he had tied his life to her, had known her many faults, known of the darkness that nestled deep in her soul. But she was all Rowan had, the only person he had left.

Maeve looked right through him, divining whatever knowledge she sought. Then she leaned back, and turned to look out the window, ruminating. A whisper of words passed her lips, “It seems I did my work too well.”

But before Rowan could begin to question, she turned the full weight of her gaze back onto him, saying, “Regardless of your feelings for each other, I expect adequate results.”

Rowan nodded brusquely.

“The girl will likely prove difficult. She has received almost no training whatsoever. Her mother…was difficult. She never believed the girl needed to receive proper training in order to achieve the necessary control. The princess was only taught to suppress.”

Maeve scoffed. “The woman knew that the only way the girl could be taught was through me. And after her disobedience in marrying that Terrasen prince, she feared me too much to allow her daughter within my clutches.” She smiled wickedly. “But it didn’t work, and the girl ended up here anyways. As was inevitable.”

Rowan just nodded.

Maeve spoke more to herself than to him. “The journey may have been more winding than I initially supposed, but now here she is. And the next stage can begin.”

Maeve paused for a moment, and then spoke directly to Rowan, her voice hard and commanding. “I want you to unleash her for me Rowan.”

He nodded grimly.

“That child has no idea what agreement she just made. Yes, when she comes to me, I will give her the answers she seeks, but she will not get a chance to do anything with them. You will train her for me Rowan, reforge her. Make her into a weapon.”

Maeve stood, her violet skirts billowing around her, obviously dismissing him. Rowan stood, beginning to leave, but then Maeve spoke again, a dark finality coating the words.

“I need you to break her.”

Rowan bowed low, and strode from the room.

···

Rowan sat on the edge of his bed, staring into the writing depths of the flames before him.

The smell of ash and burning wood permeated the space. Rowan wondered dully if he would ever be able to dissociate the scent from the princess of Terrasen, or if for centuries to come Rowan would be forced to think of the insufferable girl whenever he smelled flames.

And now he would be forced to spend the coming weeks and months and years in her delightful company, training her.

He had only rarely trained individuals – normally he was placed in command of large groups of soldiers, to lead them in battle and ready them for war. Occasionally, he shared the duty with one or more of his fellow blood-sworn. But most often he was alone, at the head of a legion that could number in the thousands.

Within that very small group of individuals, he had only trained a handful in magic. And never had he taught one with even a drop of power such as this princess had.

Normally, when a demi-Fae sought to enter Doranelle they were trained for a number of years in combat, and if they had it, in magic. Until they were given some kind of test to evaluate their abilities, and were either let in or turned away. Only a very, very select few were allowed to enter, and once they were, even they were not greeted with open arms.

In Doranelle, the demi-Fae were second class citizens, relegated to the tasks that full-blooded Fae regarded with contempt and distaste. Particularly those who weren’t gifted with magic. Lorcan, the most powerful demi-Fae male living, was the exception, not the rule.

However, this girl was unlike all the others, even Lorcan. Her training, and her life afterwards, would be unlike any he had heard of. Even Rowan’s own training those centuries past would not compare to what this girl required, despite the similarities in the strength of their power. He had very little relevant experience to draw from.

Rowan had given the girl kitchen duty, meaning that he had mornings to himself. Maeve hadn’t given him any other tasks to fulfill at Mistward, meaning that he now had the unexpected benefit of a limited freedom, and time. Time away from Maeve and her conniving court, in an outpost where he so outranked the occupants that he had no one to bother him, no one who would seek him out. Where he could do what he wished.

If it weren’t for the princess sleeping in the bowels of the fortress below him, Rowan may have been anticipating this unexpected freedom with gladness, or at least a measure of relief. It was rare that any of Maeve’s warriors were given such time.

And yet Rowan was sure that the Heir of Terrasen would find a way to ruin it for him, just as Maeve had promised. This was far from a gift.

Rowan wanted the coming months over and done with. Wanted the princess gone and out of his life. But Maeve had ordered him to train her, to break her and unleash her power, and so he would do so. But he didn’t have to ensure that the princess followed through with her side of the bargain. If she abandoned it of her own volition, Rowan would be free. Free to return to Doranelle and face Maeve’s wrath empty-handed. It might even be worth it.

In the meantime, Rowan would have to figure out some kind of plan, a test for the princess to take. A way for him to evaluate the girl’s magic and her control. For that was the real talent in working with magic – not your ability to manipulate it, but your skill in conforming your power to your will.

Stubbornness was equally helpful to creativity and ingenuity when working with magic. And while the princess was perhaps the most stubborn person he had ever encountered, she hadn’t demonstrated one scrap of self-control in the week that he had known her. Rowan’s stomach sank.

Perhaps he would have her face some kind of threat…a foe within reach of the fortress.

He sighed. He could think on it further some other time, when his head wasn’t pounding with exhaustion. Rowan still had weeks before that day dawned. Weeks he would spend almost entirely in the company of that spoiled, useless, insufferable child. Trying to teach her. To get her to listen.

Through the exhaustion, Rowan felt the familiar stirrings of a well-worn irritation, deep in his gut. He frowned as he turned on his side, falling into an uneasy sleep.

···

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

[365days365movies]

January 4, 2021: First Blood (1982) (Part II)

Quick Recap before we go on. Oh, and SPOILERS right up top!

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is a Vietnam vet wandering through Washington State, until coming upon the town of Hope, run by the Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy).

Sheriff Will Teasle is an absolute dick who arrests Rambo for no real reason; just for being a “drifter.” His police force, which includes the sadistic Galt (Jack Starrett) and sympathetic Mitch (David Caruso, AKA Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami), beats John Rambo, and post-2020 me is UNCOMFORTABLE!!!!!!!

Rambo has Vietnam flashbacks (like you do) and escapes the prison, pursued by the obsessive and dickish Sheriff and his equally dickish men (except for Horatio, maybe).

Galt tries to shoot Rambo, and karma bitch-slaps him RIGHT in the face, holy shit. He dies, and Rambo is blamed and shot at, escaping into the forest.

OK?

OK. On with the recap!

At this point, all of Rambo’s actions are in self-defense. In truth, it’s been self-defense since the beginning. However, he does kill two dogs, so...yeah, can’t really justify that. That sucks. The dog’s handler gets shot by Rambo, who now has a gun, and we also see that Galt’s certified sociopathy has leaked into everybody else but Horatio upon his death, including the dog guy, who tells his dogs to straight up kill Rambo. But, as previously stated...that’s not what happens.

At this point, I should introduce the amemedala.

The amemedala is a portion of the mesencephalon (or midbrain) discovered in the brains of millennials and younger individuals, recently discovered, named, and made up by yours truly. This area, attached to the thalamus, acts as a relay center between the cerebrum and the various sensory receptors of the body, similar to the function of the thalamus. However, while the thalamus governs the broad relay of senses to the appropriate areas of the brain for analysis, the amemedala relays appropriate sensory signals to the frontal lobes, where catalogs of shared sociological trends, or memes, are housed. This relay and association generates connections between extrenal stimuli, and entries in the meme catalog of the frontal lobes. While this is technically an autonomic process, it can be suppressed with enough willpower.

Why am I ringing this up in the middle of First Blood? Because EVERY. SINGLE. CELL of my brain is working to suppress the amemedala right now. Why? BECAUSE OF THE LORAX, AND FOR WHOM HE SPEAKS.

Is it an outdated meme? Very much so. BUT I CANNOT GET IT OUT OF MY GODDAMN HEAD AS I WATCH THIS MOVIE.

OK. That is now out of my system. Anyway, Rambo continues to speak for the trees, which is understandably starting to spook the smalltown cops. This leads to the VERY surprising moment where a camouflaged Rambo appears OUT OF NOWHERE and stabs Horatio in the goddamn leg! Like, wow, he was invisible! I had to rewind the film to see where he was. This is tense...and awesome, not gonna lie. This is awesome.

And then, he gets another cop by JUMPING FROM A TREE. Well, a tree stump, BUT STILL. After he takes him out, he stands in plain sight in front of an approaching cop. That cop, subscribing once again to the shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy, fires. And I SWEAR, Rambo is FASTER THAN THOSE SPEEDING BULLETS, as he dodges out of the way, and the bullets HIT THE COP HE JUST TOOK OUT!

And then, when I didn’t think this could get any more intense, that cop triggers a booby trap, and A STICK WITH WOODEN SPIKES GOES THROUGH THIS MAN’S LEGS, AND HE’S SPEARED LIKE A KEBAB OH MY GOD

The asshole sheriff runs to the NEW set of panicked screams, and his compatriot is just Batman-ed away by Rambo. It’s just the sheriff, now. The storm is building, and the forest is getting darker. The sheriff frees leg-spike cop, and goes to find the other cop, who’s been PINNED TO A TREE LIKE A BUTTERFLY IN A DISPLAY CASE. See, look!

HOLY SHIT IT’S RAMBO WITH A KNIFE IN THE FOREST. He pins the sheriff up to a tree, then with some legitimately badass lines, threatens with the sheriff with “a war [he] wouldn’t believe,” and telling him to make like Elsa and…

I love this sequence. It is the most intense, crazy, holy shit sequence I’ve seen so far this month. Wow. I understand why people talk about this movie. Man, that was a hell of a ride! Good movie, though. All right, so, time for the final sco-

Oh. Oh, my God. I’m only HALFWAY INTO THE MOVIE?

...Wow. OK, then.

We now meet Colonel Sam Trautman, Rambo’s commander in the Green Berets. He’s come to “get his boy.” He says that he came to rescue the Sheriff’s dumb ass from Rambo, rather than the other way around. And the Sheriff is...an idiot. He’s an ass, he’s a maniac, and he’s a stubborn idiot. Even after learning that Rambo is the best, he’s unwilling to back down, the dummkopf.

Rambo kills a wild boar in the woods, which makes no sense for Washington State, but whatever, sure. Anyway, they try to get the colonel to lure Rambo out, even though that’s obviously gonna make his PTSD, just...SO much worse. Especially as he starts using Vietnam parlance in contacting him. Not gonna end well, guys. But it’s then that we learn that Rambo is now the last surviving member of his unit, contributing to his trauma. Rambo’s also been trying to get in contact with the Colonel, winding up here because he has no place to go. He says that there are no friendly civilians, and the trouble’s been caused by that “king-shit” cop. I will be using this term from now on.

Wow. Damn. Hell of a reason for that title. And I think I love this movie. Seriously, I’m having a good time.

King-Shit Cop keeps going ahead with his absolute idiocy, despite all warnings to the contrary. So, a bunch of troops now converge upon Rambo’s place, but he naturally opens fire on them, without killing a single person. In fact, he hasn’t killed anyone this whole movie, and they make a point of saying that he’s been holding back the whole time. So, they decide to use the next, most logical course of action. They FIRE A ROCKET AT HIM.

Afterwards, the Colonel and King Shit Cop catch up at a bar, where the latter exposes his full sociopathy, commenting that he just wanted to kill Rambo. This is opposed to the Colonel, who doesn’t really know what he’d do if Rambo survived.

Which, of course, he did. C’mon, you think a little military-grade propelled explosive is gonna kill John Rambo? Nah. He’s the best there ever was, and he’s gonna prove it now. He jumps into a military vehicle holding an M-60, and hijacks it. Doesn’t take long for the news to break that Rambo’s still kicking, and he’s quickly intercepted by King Shit Cop, who JUST. DOESN’T. KNOW. WHEN. TO QUIT. And I’d admire his tenacity if he wasn’t SUCH AN ASSHOLE.

The cops try to run Rambo and the truck of the road, and he plays the UNO Reverse Card on them instead. And I’m pretty sure at this point…

...that old Johnny boy’s just killed some cops. So, yeah, now there’s a bigger problem. He powers through the State Police blockade like it was a banner blocking a football team, stops at a gas station, grabs the gun from the car, and LIGHTS ALL OF THAT SHIT ON FIRE! Destroying the livelihood of an individual who had nothing to do with this.

Yeah, Rambo’s starting to turn from innocent acting in self-defense to public menace REAL quick. And yeah, it’s King Shit Cop’s fault entirely...but, yeah, Johnny needs some help, because he’s losing the train at this point. But, not to be outdone, King Shit Cop is also beginning to lose it, and it’s definitely beginning to seem like only one of them is going to come out of this alive. And the Colonel tries to give him an out, but King Shit Cop’s prepared to go down with the ship that he blew a hole in in the first place. Like an asshole.

But here we go, the finale. John Rambo vs. King Shit Cop (whose name, by the way, is Will Teasle. I just like Rambo’s name for him better). KSC’s on the roof, Rambo’s on the street. Rambo causes more property damage, possibly because banks also give him PTSD (I joke, but PTSD is no laughing matter, John clearly needs help), and then finds his way to a store that has just all of the ammo a psychologically-damaged Vietnam War veteran on a revenge quest could ever need.

And then he BLOWS. THAT. SHIT. UP.

And he does this...ALL of this...just to lure KSC out of hiding. This man DESTROYS A TOWN because this idiot, sociopathic, unhinged, King Shit Cop, won’t just STAND. THE FUCK. DOWN ALREADY.

Rambo enters the police station, where KSC is on the roof. And, like the Colonel and the rest of us guessed, KSC gets shot in the process. And as Rambo stands over KSC, the Colonel finally shows up and does what literally everybody else should have done.

Talk. He just...talks to Rambo. He talks to this mentally ill man, and that mentally ill man responds, espousing his pure anger at the war, the public, protesters, work, the country, the town, himself...everyone. And goddamn, is that shit palpable.

This man can no longer fit in the world that he was forced to leave, and forced to return to. This poor, poor, poor man. It hurts. And it sucks. And he pours his heart out to the Colonel, and to us, and...you feel it. You feel his trauma, you feel his pain. You feel the aftermath of war. And it’s been seven years at this point for the Colonel, but no time for John. Not Rambo. John. And it’s just...never over.

Damn. Goddamn.

This...this is one hell of a good movie. And not just a good action movie, either. A damn good movie.

And that’s it. That’s First Blood.

[feedmecookiesnow]

Can I Stay With You?

For @hopelessly-me who asked for a Winterhawk “Can I stay with you” from the prompt list:

Not NSFW, but we’ll say 18+ just to be safe.

***

At three am, there’s an unholy sound of someone pounding on his front door. Bucky stumbles out of bed, remembering at the last second to put pants on, and wrenches it open with a very irritated, “What?”

Clint is standing there, looking just as exhausted and annoyed as he is. “Hi,” he says. “Can I stay with you?”

Bucky rubs his eyes and tries to force his brain online. “What?”

“Can I stay with you?”

He stares at Clint for a moment, then opens the door a little more and gestures to the couch behind him. Then he turns and goes back to his own room. Behind him, he hears Clint close the door with a quiet, “Thank you.”

Bucky makes a sound that could maybe be described as “whatever” and is asleep again before his head hits the pillow.

It’s seven am the next time his eyes open,  He sits up fast, still covered in cold sweat from his last nightmare. Nothing unusual there.

What is unusual is the smell of pancakes drifting through the apartment. Burnt slightly, but still kind of appealing. Bucky rubs the grit from his eyes and gets up, tired and sore from sleeping wrong, and goes to investigate.

Clint is standing in his kitchen, wearing nothing but a black t-shirt and a pair of boxers with little purple things on them. Eggplants, maybe? His back is to Bucky, and he’s humming something quietly.

“The fuck are you doing here?”

Clint jumps a little, dropping one of the pancakes onto the floor. “Hi. Good morning. You let me in last night, remember?”

“Yes.” Bucky rubs his forehead. “No. Kind of.”

“There was a gas leak in my building,” Clint says. “The fire department dragged me out of bed and made me leave.”

Bucky sits at his little kitchen table and looks at the two plates set out. “Why?”

“Why did they make me leave?” Clint raises an eyebrow. “It’s a gas leak, Barnes. The building could have exploded.”

“Why are you here?” It’s not that he doesn’t like Clint, but it’s weird that he’s here. At the very least, he would’ve thought Clint would try Natasha or someone first.

“Oh.” He grabs one of the plates and starts putting pancakes on it. “Because you live closest to me, it was three in the morning, and I was standing outside in my underwear?”

Well. That’s probably fair.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” Clint says. “I wouldn’t have if I could’ve avoided it.”

Bucky waves a hand. “Whatever.” He takes the plate from Clint and looks at it. “Pancakes?”

“Consider it an apology breakfast.” Clint pours him a mug of coffee. “We can eat, wake up a little bit, and then I’ll go back to my place and see if I can get in. Okay?”

“Okay.”

The pancakes are good, if not slightly burnt, and the coffee is perfect. It’s nice, actually, to sit and eat breakfast. He usually skips it---either too keyed up from his nightmares, or too busy to have real food. “These are good.”

“Thank you.”

Bucky drains the coffee and gets up for another mug. “So...gas leak?”

Clint shrugs. “Apparently. I don’t know much. All I know is that I was sleeping, and next thing I know, there was some super hot fireman standing over my bed, shaking me awake and telling me to come with him. I thought it was a dream until I got outside and saw everyone else.”

Bucky laughs. “What about your roommate?”

“Kate’s with her dad in California. She’s got Lucky too, so it was just me in there.” He looks at his legs with dismay. “They didn’t even let me get real pants. I had to walk twelve blocks like this.”

“You can borrow some of my stuff,” Bucky says before even realizing he’s made the offer. “I won’t make you walk back wearing just eggplants.”

Clint smiles slightly and nods. “I would appreciate that. Thank you.”

They finish breakfast. Clint insists on doing the dishes too, so Bucky goes back to his room and tries to find some clothes that’ll fit him. He finally settles on a pair of jeans and a clean shirt. “Here,” he says, handing them to Clint. “I think these’ll fit you? Might be a little short.”

“Curse of being tall,” Clint says with a grin. “Thanks, Barnes. Seriously.” He pulls the jeans on right there, almost tipping himself over while he hops around on one foot.

Bucky rolls his eyes and steadies him. “Are you capable of doing anything without injuring yourself?”

“Yes,” Clint says, sounding mildly offended. He buttons the jeans, then reaches up and pulls off his shirt, revealing a very muscular torso half-plastered with bandages and medical tape. He looks at himself for a moment, then adds, “This means nothing.”

“Uh-huh,” Bucky says, oddly disappointed when Clint puts the new shirt on. He takes the other one and tosses it in his laundry basket. “I’ll wash that and give it back.”

“You’re awesome,” Clint says. “Insults to my capabilities aside.”

Bucky grins. “Come on. Let’s go see if you can get into your place.”

They can’t. They can’t even get close to it. A main gas line has blown, apparently, and they’re not letting anyone in. The whole block is cordoned off. After an hour of fruitless negotiating, pleading, and begging, the best answer they get is “It’ll be about two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” Clint throws his arms out. “But I don’t have any stuff! What am I supposed to do for two weeks, be homeless?”

“Sorry, sir,” the fire chief says. “Can’t help you.”

He walks away. Clint stares after him. “Great,” he finally says, and tilts his head up to the sky. “What did I do to deserve this, huh?”

“Sorry,” Bucky says, not sure what to follow it with.

Clint waves a hand and rubs his forehead. “It’s fine. I’ll figure out something.”

“You can stay with me again,” Bucky offers. “It’s only two weeks. We can buy you some clothes, and I’ve got an extra toothbrush.”

“No, I don’t want to be in the way---”

“It’s not,” Bucky says quickly, for some reason desperate for him to say yes. “It’s fine. It would be nice to have a roommate. For a bit.”

Clint studies him. “You sure?”

“Definitely.” Bucky nudges him with an elbow. “I expect breakfast every morning, though.”

Clint laughs. “Okay. I can do that.”

So that’s how Bucky ends up with a temporary roommate. It’s weird at first, if he’s being perfectly honest with himself. He hasn’t lived with anyone since joining the Avengers, not even a guest, and it takes him awhile to get used to sharing a space---particularly the bathroom. But other than a couple of arguments, they manage to make it work, settling into a comfortable rhythm.

Three weeks into this new arrangement, Bucky comes back from the grocery store to find Clint packing his clothes into a duffle bag. He’s wearing Bucky’s jeans again, and Bucky can’t help but notice how tight they are, riding low across his hips. “What’s going on?”

“I’m good to move back,” Clint says, grinning at him. “Building is safe for habitation again.” He hefts the bag. “I’m just using this for transport. I’ll bring it back.”

“You can keep it, I don’t care.” He tears his eyes off the jeans and looks up. “Well. Congrats on getting your apartment back.”

“Thank you,” Clint says, apparently oblivious to the disappointment in Bucky’s voice. Bucky swallows it down and helps him pack the rest of his things. When they’re done, Clint shoulders the bag and looks at him. “Well. This has been fun.”

“It has,” Bucky agrees. “Do you need help moving in?”

“Nah, I’ve interfered in your life enough.” Clint taps his fingers on his thigh for a moment, then says, “Seriously, though. Thanks for letting me stay here.”

“Anytime,” Bucky says, trying to imbue the words with all the subtext he can. “I liked having you here.”

Clint looks like he wants to say something, but after a moment, he shakes his head. “I’ll see you at work?”

“Sure.”

He leaves, then. Bucky doesn’t close the door until he disappears around the corner. Then he turns to look at his apartment. It seems smaller, somehow, which definitely doesn’t make sense. It should feel bigger now that there’s not two grown men taking up space.

Maybe smaller is the wrong word. It’s not smaller. It’s empty. There’s a distinct sense of something missing. Like losing a tooth, Bucky thinks, and all he can do is probe at the blank space where there used to be something better.

“Get over it,” he says to himself, and starts picking up blankets from the couch. “It didn’t mean anything. You were just being a good friend. That’s all you want from him. You’re just friends.”

He keeps telling himself this. He repeats it all day.

He doesn’t believe a word of it.

A week later, he’s watching TV. He misses Clint’s running commentary, which usually ended with both of them laughing their assess off. It’s just not the same on his own.

His phone rings, and he answers without looking. “Barnes.”

“Hey, it’s me.”

Bucky sits up straight and mutes the TV. “Clint? What’s up?”

“Kate’s back,” he says, “and she’s having a sleepover.” There’s a distinct shrieking of laughter in the background, and Bucky can almost hear Clint’s wince. “They’re loud and they’re very girly. Which is fine, but also they’re so loud. Did I mention they’re loud? We’re talking undiscovered decibels here.”

“I think you mentioned it, yeah.”

“Anyway. Can I stay with you?”

Bucky blinks. “What?”

“Just for tonight,” Clint rushes to add. “Not three weeks again. I just need a break. They’re loud. Have I said that yet?”

Can’t you just take your hearing aids out? is the first thing that comes to Bucky’s mind, and he almost says it.

Then he looks around at his empty apartment, and the newscaster on television, and instead says, “Bring something to drink.”

“Awesome,” Clint says. “I’ll be right there.”

He hangs up. Bucky stares at his phone for a moment, then looks around his apartment. It’s---well, it’s not a mess, but it’s not pretty. Not fit for company. He quickly gets up and does some frantic cleaning. He’s not sure why---Clint’s worse than he is, he makes Bucky look military neat---but he does it anyway.

He’s working on the dishes when the door opens. “Hey,” Clint calls. “Door’s unlocked, I’m coming in.”

“Hey,” Bucky calls back. He puts the last plate on the rack and dries his hands. “Good to see you.”

“You too,” Clint says, flashing a smile, and Bucky’s chest gets a little tighter at the sight. “I brought beer.” He raises a six-pack.

“Works for me.” Bucky sticks it in the fridge. “So how’s Kate?”

Clint winces. “I love her, but man, when she gets together with her girlfriends...” He shudders and drops his bag by the couch. “I don’t think they communicate with words. I think it’s just high pitched squealing noises. Seriously.” He shakes his head.

Bucky pulls two beers out and drops on the couch next to him. “Well, you’re welcome over here anytime.”

“It’s very appreciated.”

They drink beer and watch TV. It’s like how it was before, stepping back into their routine with barely a beat missed, and Bucky can’t stop himself from smiling.

Clint notices. “What’re you so happy about?”

“I like having you here,” Bucky says honestly. “It’s nice.”

Clint blinks, and then a smile spreads across his face. “Yeah?”

“I liked living with you too.” He’s already started, he might as well keep going. “I didn’t realize until you left, but it was really nice to have someone around.”

“It’s nice,” Clint agrees. “Roommates can be awesome.”

They’re quiet for a while after that. Bucky tries to think of something to say, but he can’t focus. Clint is wearing his jeans again, and they’re still too tight, and they’re still obscenely low across his hips, and the casual way he’s sitting---

“Eyes up, soldier,” Clint says, watching him, and Bucky blushes hard. Clint grins at him and sips his beer.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, face still burning. “I’m---that was rude, I shouldn’t do that.”

“I’m just teasing you,” Clint winks. “I don’t mind. I know these look good on me.”

“They’d look better on my bedroom floor,” Bucky says without thinking, and then nearly drops his beer from shock as the statement hits him a second later. “I mean---that’s not---”

Clint is suddenly very still, eyes fixed on the beer in his hand. After a moment, Bucky stops stammering out excuses, and resigns himself to dying of embarrassment. “Sorry,” he mutters again, and wishes he could just disappear into the couch.

“You mean that?” Clint asks after a moment, He turns and sets his beer down, then looks at Bucky. “Seriously?”

Bucky shrugs, trying for casual and definitely not making it. “Just a thought.”

“Just a thought,” Clint echoes. “Okay. And if I wanted it to be more than a thought?”

Bucky stares at him, barely daring to hope. “Wait. You do?”

“Uh, yeah.” He sounds a little breathless, a little excited. “Have you seen yourself? Of course I want that, you’re---”

He cuts off with a surprised noise, as Bucky leans forward and kisses him. Then he loses his balance and falls backwards, whacking his head on the arm of the couch with a soft, “Ow.”

Bucky chuckles. “Can’t do anything without hurting yourself, can you?”

“Your fault,” Clint pants, grabbing his shirt and pulling him down. “You knocked me over.”

“My bad.”

They kiss again, intense and hungry and heated. Part of Bucky feels like he should take it slow, make it a little softer. But then Clint’s leg hitches over him, pulling him closer, and all coherent thought flies out the window.

They break apart with a gasp, both panting. “Think we knocked your beer over,” Clint says.

“It’s empty,” Bucky says, kissing him again.

“Good.” Clint’s hand slips under his shirt. “Off.”

Bucky tugs his shirt off and tosses it somewhere. Clint puts a hand on his chest, skimming over his torso with an appreciative touch. “Your abs are unfair,” he says, poking them. “Seriously. Like, Greek god levels of unfair.”

“You’ve got abs.”

“Not like this.”

“Do more sit-ups, then.”

“I do sit-ups!”

“Not enough, apparently.”

“You---” Clint scowls up at him, and it’s honestly kind of adorable. “I don’t need your judgement. Shut up and kiss me.”

“Sure,” Bucky agrees, leaning back down. It’s a little slower this time, a little less frantic. Bucky hasn’t done this in a long time, but he’s missed it. He’d forgotten how nice it can be to get wrapped up in this, how easy it is to get lost in the taste of someone else---

They tip sideways and fall, Bucky twisting at the last second so he takes the impact instead of Clint. “Shit,” Clint says, flushing red. “Sorry, that was my fault.”

Bucky laughs. “It’s fine,” he says. “But why don’t we take this to my room before you really hurt yourself?”

“Works for me,” Clint says, standing up. He offers Bucky a hand, and pulls him to his feet. “I have been known to fall off beds, though. Fair warning.”

“That’s okay,” Bucky says. “I’m sure I can figure out a way to keep you in one place.” He winks. “For safety reasons, you know.”

“Looking forward to seeing your methods,” Clint says with a grin, and lets Bucky tug him down the hallway to the bedroom.

***

Charity Hawktion Self-Promo! If you like the things I write and would like me to write something specifically for you, you can bid on me here!  Winner will get a 5-10k word story of their choosing (possibly longer because I am a verbose motherfucker). If you can participate, I encourage you to do so, and if not, that’s okay too! Thank you for reading!

[tarlosprompts]

Can you do protective officer Carlos and scared TK. A guy blames the 126 for his loved one dying and takes a gun to the fire house and ends up taking TK hostage but Carlos comes and saves him. Thank you!

Pain

Claimed by Red💋

Warnings: depressing, guns, mental instability, threat of life, shootings, mentioned death, suicide, cursing (I think)

The day started out pretty normal. After the last shift filled with hard call after hard call, the team was thankful that they only had moderate, light calls. They had gone out about three times in seven hours for minor fires and gas leaks. While TK was happy for the break, he was beginning to get bored. There was only so much cleaning, stocking, and checking logs that one person could do before they died of boredom. 

That’s why the second he saw someone enter through the bay doors, he was immediately on them. “Hey there! Is there something I can help you with?”

“You killed my wife,” the man muttered.

The smile dimmed on TK’s face. “I’m sorry, what?” TK’s eyes flickered down to the man’s hands as he shuffled. He reached a hand to his radio, but the man straightened his hand with the gun, the shaking gone. 

“You touch that radio and the rest of your crew will be cleaning your brain matter off the station floor.”

TK moved his hands out, palms facing the man to show that he wasn’t a threat. “We can talk this out, Man. You don’t have to do this,” he nodded to the man’s gun.

“But I do! You and your crew let her die! I told you exactly where she was and you watched as she burned,” recognition flashed in TK’s eyes and that was enough for the man to step closer. He towered over TK and TK was now terrified. He’d seen that look in another’s eyes before. It had been when he was relatively new on the job in New York. They’d gotten called to an apartment complex on accident-the police were supposed to respond. It was a domestic disturbance and TK had entered with the battering ram when he’d heard someone scream. He saw the same look in the man’s eyes that day as he pulled the trigger, killing his girlfriend and then himself...he didn’t want to be on the opposite end of that look.

“Hey TK, have you see-” TK didn’t have time to give Judd a warning before he turned around the fire truck. The gun went off and Judd was falling, clutching at his side.

TK tried to go aid Judd, but the man turned the gun back on him, placing it to his forehead. “You don’t get to move,” he growled. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”

“It-it doesn’t have to,” TK whispered, afraid that if he spoke too loud, he would spook the man and he’d pull the trigger again. 

“What’s going on down here,” he heard his father ask. He knew he was up on the second floor...knew his dad could see the gun pressed to his head. 

The gun pressed harder into his temple and TK flinched, trying to get away from the gun. The man put an arm around TK’s neck, pulling him snugly against his chest, gun pressed even harder against his head. TK could now see his dad and the rest of the crew looking down at him and Judd. Michelle had her bag on the ground next to her, ready to run to Judd’s aid. “Y-you-you should let-let our paramedic look at Judd,” TK tried.

He was rewarded with the gun being moved to be placed under his chin. “I think it would be best if you kept your mouth shut or I’ll shut it for you,” the man growled. TK gulped. He had no doubt that if his shaking wasn’t visible before, it was now. He was helpless. He couldn’t do anything to help himself or Judd. “You let my wife die,” the man continued, “and now you’re going to let him die.” 

TK could feel the tears starting to build up in his eyes. “I can’t let you hurt him,” his dad responded after taking a moment to calm himself down. 

“You don’t have a choice,” the man growled. 

“But you do have a choice. You can put that gun down, there’s nothing that’s been done here that you can’t come back from,” TK would know that voice anywhere. Carlos...his dad had probably radioed dispatch the second he heard the gunshot and Carlos happened to be the first cop on scene...no doubt others were on the way. 

The man turned so that TK was shielding him from Carlos. Carlos, who had his gun raised and to the trained eye, looked very distressed at the fact that there were two guns pointed directly at the man he loved. “They just watched the place burn. They didn’t try to save her. Do you know what it’s like not being able to save the love of your life? Have you ever felt that kind of pain?”

Carlos took a moment to study the man. He was grieving and he wasn’t thinking straight...he had to do something to get the gun pointed away from TK...he just didn’t know what the right thing to do was. “I don’t know that pain...but I know the pain of seeing the one you love bleeding out in front of you...seeing their chest stop moving and CPR taking longer than wanted meaning they could have brain damage...I know what it’s like to see your loved one in a hospital bed in a coma, not knowing if they’re going to wake up...I know what it’s like to have to focus on your job while your lover does his without backup and seeing a bus go up in flames with him still in it. Don’t make me have to know the pain of losing the one I love when I’ve just been able to convince him that he deserves nothing less than the best...that someone can love him without having an ulterior motive.”

TK was openly crying by this point and Carlos could feel the tears prickling at his own eyes. He hoped that connecting with the man was the right way to go. He doesn’t know what he’d do if the man pulled the trigger. “You love him,” it wasn’t a question, it was more like a statement.

“More than he’ll ever know,” Carlos responded.

The man was crying by this point. “But they just-they stood around and did nothing...I don’t know how I can live without her.”

The man released TK, but instead of getting out of harm's way, the firefighter turned to the man, gripping his arm that had the gun in it. “She wouldn’t want you to kill yourself just because she’s gone. She’d want you to live on and carry out her memory...she’d want you to find a way to be happy again.”

The gun that had been making its way to his head paused as TK placed his hand around his arm. “There’s no life without her, Kid.”

With that, the man ripped his arm out of TK’s grasp and raised the gun the rest of the way before TK could stop him again. TK could only yell as he reached for the man. The bang of the gun going off stopped TK in his tracks. He could only watch as the man’s body fell to the ground. 

_______________

TK felt numb, even hours after the fact. He’d had a gun pointed to his head and a man so determined to take revenge for the loss of his wife’s life behind the trigger. He’d tried to help the man and was only able to watch as he put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. He’d been checked over by the paramedic team before being ushered to the hospital with Judd, his father telling him that he and the rest of the crew would join him when the relief crew came in.

That’s how TK found himself in a hospital waiting room, staring blankly at the wall in front of him. A door slammed to his right and TK flinched, it sounded too much like the when he’d used the battering ram to open the door and the little kid had shot him. Another emergency rushed by, something crashed and it took everything in TK not to scream because it sounded like the gun going off as he watched the man pull the trigger to kill himself. 

It was the numbness that was really driving TK crazy. It was the numbness that made him want to get high after he became addicted to drugs. It was the numbness that pushed him over the edge every time. But it was also how the numbness made him feel that was driving him crazy. He felt like he wasn’t himself, he felt like he was watching everything from the balconies of a movie theater. 

By the time he realized that he should probably call Grace, the woman called his name. TK stood, turning to see her. “I should have called,” his voice sounded weird to his own ears...he could only imagine what it sounded like to her.

Grace shook her head, “no sweetheart, you have enough going on. Have the doctors told you anything yet?” TK shook his head, not trusting his own voice. “Have you been looked at yet?”

“Michelle looked over Judd and the others checked me out. Not a scratch. Probably will have a bruise or two, but I’m good,” and it wasn’t that TK didn’t want to be fine, but for fuck’s sake, he should have been the one shot, not Judd. The man had the gun pointed on him 99% of the time, but the second Judd walked around the truck, he should have shot TK, not his pseudo big brother.

“TK Strand, this is not your fault, do you hear me?” It must have been something in his voice or a look on his face that gave him away. 

“The gun was pointed at me, Grace. When he pulled the trigger, the bullet should have gone through me.”

“And if it had, you might be dead right now. Judd is a fighter. He’s going to get through this and he isn’t going to blame you, just like I don’t blame you.” Grace wrapped her arms around TK. “Where are you?”

“What do you mean? I’m right here.”

“You’re not. You’re off in your head. I need you to focus on five things you can see.”

TK was quiet for a moment before responding to Grace. “Waiting room chairs, you, nurses, civilians, fluorescent lights.”

“Good, four things you can feel.”

“Your arms around me, the scratchiness of my uniform, warm breeze every time the doors open, my heart pounding.”

“Three things you can hear.”

“The intercom, people talking, blood rushing through my ears.”

“Two things you can smell.”

“Your perfume and antiseptic.”

“One thing you can taste.”

“The blood from biting my lip.”

Grace was silent for a minute before talking again. “Are you with me, TK?”

TK nodded, placing his head on her shoulder. He took deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart and keep the tears at bay. “Thank you,” his voice cracked and he hugged the woman tighter. 

She held him just as tight, muttering assurances in TK’s ear. They were so caught up in comforting each other that they didn’t hear the rest of the crew enter the waiting room. Owen slowly approached, catching Grace’s hand. “You’re dad’s here, Bud,” she whispered to TK. 

TK whipped around, wrapping his arms like a vice around his father. Even though they were about the same height, with everything weighing down on TK, he seemed so much smaller. Owen engulfed him, the shaking subsiding as he held his son. “I’m here son, let it out.” TK’s shaking increased as quiet sobs overtook his body. 

_______________

No one knew how long they waited until a doctor came out asking for the family of Judd Ryder. “The bullet didn’t damage any organs. He should make a full recovery. Make sure he doesn’t do anything strenuating for at least two months. He’ll have checkups during that time to make sure everything is healing the way it should be.”

“Can we see him?” 

“Of course. As soon as he’s moved from recovery, someone will come to lead you to his room. We ask that for the first few days, only two people in the room with him at a time.”

And that was how TK found himself being pushed to follow Grace when the nurse came to retrieve them. Judd was still knocked out from the anastesia. TK awkwardly stood in the door as Grace made herself at home next to the bed, gripping her husband’s hand tightly in her own. “TK, if you don’t get in here, I swear to the Almighty,” she trailed off.

TK walked slowly to the other side of the bed. His hands reached out to Judd’s other hand, but he pulled back as if he’d been burned. “He’s not going to be mad at you either...in fact, he’ll probably ask for you immediately when he wakes up. He takes his duty as your big brother very seriously,” Grace took a second to look at TK with a smile on her face. “And the second he realizes you blame yourself for him being shot, he’s going to try to knock some sense into you by getting out of this bed and hitting you up side the head.”

“But Grace, I-”

“But nothing. It wasn’t your fault.”

TK placed a hesitant hand on Judd’s arm, patting it slightly. “I should let the others come see him,” he made a hasty retreat. 

_______________

Carlos had been in the waiting room when he made his way back from the room. He’d taken one look at TK and immediately offered to take him home. TK expected to be taken back to his house, but Carlos parked in front of his own house. “Carlos…”

“I’ve got you,” was Carlos’s response as he opened the door for TK. 

They made it inside, Carlos getting TK settled on the couch as he went to make food for them. TK’s hand reached out as the man made to leave...he didn’t want to lose contact. “Baby, I’ll be right back. I’m just going to fix us a light snack and then we can do whatever you want.”

TK had begrudgingly let him go. He knew he needed to eat and he knew Carlos wouldn’t stop until he’d eaten. After their snack, TK had looked longingly towards Carlos’s bedroom, so Carlos had pulled him up and led him to the room. He made quick work of TK’s clothes, pulling out one of his shirts that he knew TK liked to sleep in. 

Having changed while waiting for TK to come back to the waiting room, Carlos got rid of his shirt before climbing into the bed with TK and pulling him close. “I’ve got you, Tyler,” he whispered as he felt TK sob quietly against his chest. “I’m not letting you go.”

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Witness State & Coup de Grâce | Feeding Habits Update #3

Hey People of Earth!

Before we get into this update, TRIGGER WARNING that this chapter discusses attempted suicide, mental health issues, animal cruelty, toxic relationships, and some nods to starvation, so if these are topics you’re sensitive about, I would skip out on this update!

This chapter was a slight nightmare to draft as it went through many, many iterations due to a real struggle to attain the desired emotional arc, and also because of a few logistical problems. In total, it’s about two and a half months of work as it combines some scenes from the old chapter two while also patching areas I cut with new content. Despite the difficulties, I am so happy I pushed through because the final product is quite strong. Here’s a scene breakdown:

Scene A:

We start at the “beautiful place” AKA the cove Lonan and Eliza frequently visit. The last time we’ve seen Lonan was at the end of chapter two, when he had his mild “public freakout moment” on the steps of a cathedral. 

On the beach, he rests on the shoreline while reflecting on all the things he’s been tormented by since chapter two (wicked children, fathers, parenthood etc).

He sees an illusion of his father who is obviously not there (he’s very dead!) which propels him to converse about him with Eliza (remembering that Eliza and Lonan’s father were once romantically involved).

This conversation goes south as Lonan is able to unpiece some of Eliza’s mistruths until Lonan finally admits he wants to see his father again, insisting he’s still “alive” through the darkroom abandoned in Oregon him and Harrison failed to destroy in ch. 1 of Moth Work.

Scene B:

Lonan watches a moth through the window (that moth motif tho). Here he recounts what occurred at the hospital in ch. 2--the mother and her three kids taking him there, and then eventually being whisked away by Eliza.

Lonan heads to the kitchen to drink an acetaminophen but quickly realizes he’s not alone in the main apartment. His father sits on the couch looking over photo albums, each leaf holding the same photo: the postcard of Eliza that Harrison initially finds in chapter one of Moth Work. This vision obviously does not exist and is prompted by sleep deprivation but he doesn't know that lol.

Seeing this photo and his father prompt him to believe that he can only get away from this feeling of being haunted without Eliza in his life and further bad decisions ensue which I won’t get into!

I explained the meaning of the title HERE.

Excerpts:

Here’s the opening bit which is the most recent addition to the chapter:

The water is never murky, but today it doesn’t sparkle. Like it’s taken a low dose of cyan, it foams pale against the shore, an offering that wets the tips of Lonan’s shoes. He sits under the cove with one hand pressed into the current, each singular wave like a finger tottering over his veins. Today, their beautiful place is only an arched wall of stones and roily ocean.

Eliza is sunbathing. She lies on her back in the centre of the cove, where its mouth opens to a ceiling of sun. On the drive from the hospital, they both remained silent, Eliza’s hands taut like leather around the steering wheel, and Lonan’s head soldered to the cool window. Even when she pulled into the lot of a diner, named after a vague Canadian city or perennial flower, she said nothing, exiting the car to return to it with two crayon-coloured slushies, his red, hers orange. By the time she pulled up to the beach, her drink was half empty, his fully melted, urging against the brim of the cup. He followed her when she exited the car, parked against a row of pebbles, and placed his hand palm-first against the water the moment she lay against the sand and closed her eyes. Now, water puckers over the shoreline and between each of his fingers, a sort of absent massage. The water is a dull, vitamin-like blue. Warmer than he’s expected for the middle of February, pleasantly pruning his fingertips.

This is a direct continuation of that:

The sun has started to set. It flares against the horizon, its orange singeing the water’s blue. Like in front of the church, it fills him, its heat a comfortable grip around his throat. Though it should remind him to keep awake, its warmth lulls him closer to the sand until he rests his head just where the water laps. He knows it says nothing. He knows he has not slept in days. But to him, its rays nurse his skin like the loop of a nursery rhyme, and when he is parallel to the sky, he closes his eyes and welcomes the sun like it’s an infection. As colours pulse underneath his eyelids, water soaks the crown of his head, and it truly is like being buried at sea, just him, the sun, and the water at his perimeter.

The next chapter in this update is chapter four, aka Coup de Grace. This chapter was an absolute joy to write after struggling to get a handle on chapters two and three, and I’d consider writing this chapter to be, by far, the best writing sessions of my life. In this chapter I feel I really figured out the “crux” of Lonan’s character/his darkest secret, and that’s essentially that he believes all children are the wicked stems of adults, a belief he actually doesn't want to have, and actively combats until he sort of becomes absorbed by it. I learned a lot about my boy in this chapter and learning such important details about a character I’ve been writing for five years feels like a gift!

This chapter plays with form/the timeline a bit because we jump around on the timeline, almost like a movie that begins at the end. This was difficult to do in fiction, but I think I pulled it off, and am really happy with the chapter. Bear with me tho as this breakdown may be confusing:

Scene A:

We start with Lonan rapidly making his way to his father’s darkroom which sits in the middle of a forest. He’s brought supplies with him to destroy it.

The first line of this chapter mimics the first line of Moth Work, which you’ll see below.

Scene B:

We jump back in the fictive past to the morning that would’ve occurred right after the end of chapter three. Lonan goes about his morning routine but is disrupted by a loud thud from outside. Anya, the woman he’s befriended from chapter two, has jumped from the roof of the apartment complex. This attempt is unsuccessful.

His first reaction is to run to Anya’s apartment to see if her son, Joey, is okay. 

Scene C:

Less of a scene and more of an internal monologue of Lonan reflecting on Anya’s attempted suicide, and that he feels in some ways, she’s administered her own “death blow”.

Scene D:

Eliza takes Lonan to his father’s cabin to “get him away” from what’s happening at the apartment since he’s really taking the news badly.

Eliza tries to get Lonan to eat something because he hasn’t eaten much since Anya’s news, and they have a conversation about Eliza’s motives in volunteering Lonan to help Anya in the first place.

Scene E:

A flashback where 14-year-old Lonan and his father are at the cabin, about to kill a fish using the ikejime method. His father has informed him the fish is dead, but Lonan knows this is very much a lie.

Scene F:

The fictive present, where Lonan lies on a couch inside the cabin, Eliza tending to a fire. He has a bad feeling (he’s right about that lol)

Scene A2:

We continue the events from scene A as Lonan enters the darkroom, only to find out it’s been cleared out save for three pictures hanging that tell a story and reveals a lot of Eliza’s secrets.

All you need to know about these photos is that it makes their romance feel somewhat like a lie lol.

Eliza finds him at the darkroom despite telling him not to go alone, and Lonan tries to process the new info/secrets revealed.

Scene G:

In the fictive present, Eliza cuts off Lonan’s hair and together they burn each weft. They discuss a few things (his father, the women he’s befriended, future children, mating habits of the praying mantis)

Scene E2:

Back to the flashback where Lonan and his father have killed, cleaned, and eaten the fish. They rinse their hands off in the lake before his father knocks them both into the water.

Excerpts:

This is the opening, ft. the mirroring first line which makes me a lil too giddy:

The darkroom isn’t haunted, but a dead man owns it—and he knows exactly where to find him. Through the woods, Lonan brushes past bushes of gooseberries and wild rhubarb, a gas can sloshing rhythmically in his hands. In his teeth, he holds his flashlight so its beam brightens the pathway. It is not yet dawn.

This is a description of the darkroom that leads to the end of the scene:

He shouldn’t know where he’s going. The forest is so dense and unanimous, a duplication of itself, nothing more than repetitions of the same tree, same flower, same stream. But he doesn’t need to see to know where his feet take him—he doesn’t even need the flashlight. He’s memorized the direction to the darkroom like the pattern of veins on his own arm.

He is not surprised to see it still stands. As if protected from rain, thunderstorms, the fallen trees that crisscross at the walkway; it’s always been a divine place. The air is damp, and particles of mist cling to his throat.

He sets the gas can in front of the steel panelling that makes the door with urgency. He does not need to rush but cannot take his time.

Wildflowers burst from in between the cracks of concrete the shed sits on and he knows each species like they’ve been bred in his blood. Wax flowers, thistles, clusters of asters he’d sometimes gather as a boy and leave as offerings in the heart of the forest’s most prominent clearings, like an offering, or a ransom.

Lonan kneels once the first thread of sunlight leaks between the whisper of trees. He is familiar with this forest, the cabin not too far away, the messages the water speaks to him when he sits at its edge most nights, why the darkroom was his father’s favourite place and why it always will be. So when sunlight hits his eyes, he presses his fingertips against his lips, and looks to the sky for mercy.

Lonan watching his fave TV show that leads into Anya’s jump:

He turned the television onto its usual program while on his last three mandarin segments and looked on as a herd of caribou dotted a waterway. They moved like the current, pattering along the prairie, worriless. He should have heard the part where a wolf caught up to the herd, the same wolf that would later go on to single out a young fawn and silence it with two teeth in its throat like bullet wounds. He should have seen the part where the prey was consumed, its flesh a desperate shade of red. But the thud distracted him. Maybe not even a thud, more like a crash. A sound he felt in his temples, a ringing in his ear, like a chickadee. Lonan set the skin of the mandarin onto the coffee table and stood slowly. It’s his body that moved him, no force of the mind, toward the balcony. In one movement, he unlocked and shoved open the glass sliding door, rucking it forward with his body weight when it stuck. On his lip, he tasted citrus and salt, a mixture of fruit and sweat.

He heard death before he saw it. The way each identical sliding door of the apartment units around him shook open, just like his. What a woman on the sidewalk declared, her tone so shrill, he couldn’t tell if she was delighted or horrified, something like, “I thought she was a bird—I thought she was a gift from heaven.” The garbled sound of an infant, confused by the sound concrete makes when a human batters it.

We get Lonan’s first response and some Joey and *that stunning motif tho*:

Lonan did not deescalate the stairs to the ground floor to join the growing crowd. He did not call an ambulance or rush to perform CPR. He ran upward, scaling flights of stairs as if airborne, with little effort. Once he reached her unit, it was the tin of madeleines he noticed first, sitting unopened, untouched, dare he thought, neglected on her welcome mat. It’s this that lulled him, freezing him in place for a moment. He recollected nothing of bringing the madeleines to her the evening previous, of leaving them neatly tucked against her straw welcome mat. Innocently idle there, his gift unrecognized.

Joey sat on the couch. The television was on, projecting technicolor polygons onto the boy’s face. Lonan did not register what it was he watched, which animated shapes pounced and danced on screen. Joey did not cry at first. He sat, staring wondrously at the screen like it was a trap door to a different dimension. The socks secured around his miniature feet looked freshly ironed, and his hair smelled like his mother did when Lonan first met her—like coconuts.

The buzzing of onlookers and neighbours sounded like the caribou running. A constant drumming of a snare, a guttural kind of ambience. He thought of Anya the day previous, her desperate excitement to paint over the wall, the way she mixed that orange juice drink, incredulous, experienced. He thought of the sourdough he never picked up, and there on the counter they sat, one torn down the middle like it was ripped bare-handed, the other skewered with a chef’s knife. He thought of Anya’s hospitality, her coy excuses to help them both avoid embarrassment, the way each part of her apartment transformed into gold. He thought of their conversation, Anya’s initial instruction when she left him alone with her son. So when Joey cried, Lonan knew exactly to reach for the remote and tick the volume up until his sobbing quieted, like the last few minutes of a rainstorm, passionately loud, then stunningly silent.

Here we briefly reference 2 Kings 21:6: “And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.”

Anya will never be the mother she once was, in the capacity she longed to be. Joey will grow up without a father and with a mother who cannot mother him in the ways she’d always hoped; he’ll have no one to recreate. That is the real loss—what could have been. Anya burned herself into an offering, administered her own kill shot, provoked her own fate; either life or death, and her fate chose neither.

The following mirrors something Lonan’s sister, Reeve, says in Houses With Teeth about hunger:

The day Anya jumped from her balcony onto the sidewalk below, Eliza took Lonan to his father’s cabin. In a daze, he watched her pack a bag with enough things to tide them over for a month, and in that same daze, they reached the cabin before sunset. That night, Eliza rifled through the cabinets to put together a meal, and her findings assembled as a can of tuna topped with crumbles of saltines—cheap take on a deconstructed pâté.

She served him his dinner on a set of plates he vaguely recognized—terrazzo with a scalloped edge, maybe held a scrambled egg or halved tomato when he was a child. He stared through the French doors, down to the water that padded below. Even when she tried some for herself, putting on her enjoyment in exclamations like “It’s a culinary masterpiece. Refined. Daring. A little spectacular,” she couldn’t convince him to eat. His appetite disappeared when Anya fell from the sky; there would be no hunger as penance.

This is the fish flashback:

Lonan knows the fish is not dead. He is fourteen but not naïve. Sun warms the back of his neck; maggots shimmer over the gummy slick of the water’s surface. Today is what someone would describe as the perfect day. Trees whisper secrets amongst the spines of their leaves. Birds teeter on the neck of birch trees. A butterfly dusts its wings of the shore’s sand and nips at his childish knuckles.

The fish is not dead. This is fact. In his palm, it expands, its gills like the crescent cut of the moon. The fish is not dead. Its mouth kisses the air like it’s a divine thing, each blip of its lips greedy, like the air tastes of gold. The fish is not dead. Its scales grate against Lonan’s palms, shimmering, its prettiness its last defense mechanism. The fish is not dead.

More with this fish memory:

“It’s dead. It does not even know the taste of life. Why save it?”

“I don’t want to save it,” Lonan says. His father’s wedding band digs into his forehead. To an onlooker, it may look like he’s about to dip him forward into the water, not a drowning, but a baptism.

“What do you want to do with it?”

Mourn it, he wants to say. Pity it. Sacrifice it.

The water whistles ahead of them, all the uncaught sunfish gloriously slashing naively in the water. They are unaware of their future demise, and the current demise of their loved ones, bodies all piled into the net as if on display. Lonan’s eyes sting with lake water, a streak of it dripping onto his lip so when his father reaches over him and secures his hand like a marionette around the screwdriver, he tastes salt and doesn’t stop tasting it.

And the end of part A of the fish memory that gets a little gory:

“It dies for us,” his father says, his voice dampened, like the distant blip of the lake. “So we give it mercy in return.”

As the screwdriver’s tip lowers closer to the fish, Lonan licks his top lip and asks, “Why do we need to show it mercy if it’s already dead?”

“Le coup de grâce. A death blow. To end the suffering of the wounded.”

“But it’s already dead.”

“Even the dead still suffer.”

Lonan does not register when the screwdriver impales the fish’s brain. He does not register when his father uses both their hands to slit the fish’s gills with a hunting knife or register the warm spurting of its blood up their knuckles. He stares at the fish’s glasslike eye, and as he and his father gut and scale the fish, puppet and puppeteer, he imagines the way he’ll feel with its head in his mouth.

Here’s a section from the fictive present:

Seven days after Anya jumps off her apartment’s balcony, Lonan lies on a pig’s leather couch his father once towed in from the city, a damp washcloth doused in eucalyptus essential oil pressed to his forehead.

At first, he fears the blinking comes from stars and that the cabin’s roof has been removed. But as he comes to, he smells it, the earthy crack of wood, the wisp of smoke, and he knows the light that pulses is a fire.

Lonan opens his eyes. As he’s thought, he lies on his father’s couch, essenced water dribbling down his temples from the washcloth. Eliza sits hunched on the stone of the fireplace’s ledge, her shoulders ripening under the orange heat. She’s burning something. The scent of scorched film is not unfamiliar to him. Like his mouth, it is dry and acrid, like the lick of a battery.

“You promised,” she says, as if sensing he’s awoken. Lonan does not move, even as the eucalyptus soak drizzles into his eyes.

Eliza no longer wears the parka. She’s stripped to a pearl-coloured camisole, her feet bare and propped flush against the brick. Glossy red lacquer colours her toenails, reflects the light in ovular patterns along its surface.

“A false witness shall be punished, and a liar shall be caught,” she says. “Proverbs.”

Going to leave this tea here casually:

The darkroom was misplaced. This was Lonan’s first thought when he yanked open its steel panel door and entered to reveal its contents. He did not need the glimmer of a flashlight to confirm his instinct. This was not the same darkroom he’d known as a child, or the darkroom he found his sister in, or the darkroom him and Harrison tried to destroy. Everything was slotted away, puzzled back into a configuration so unknown to him, so wrong to him, that the organization felt more like war.

Unlike when he and Harrison had last stepped foot inside of the darkroom, lugging the gas can along with them, not unlike what he did then, the photos that used to string clothespinned in no justifiable order were now taken down. The bricks of photo paper forming a maze around the developing tables, the amber bottles of chemicals—all of it, meticulously put back in places Lonan knew they never had. Under his boots, he did not feel the crunch of glass or slip of forgotten negatives. The darkroom had been swept clean.

Lonan dropped the gas can at the darkroom’s entrance, and removed the flashlight from between his teeth, thumbing it off. He worked his way around the shed like he’d been wounded, staggering, stopping to hold himself upright. Nothing was in its rightful chaos. Expired film lay stacked in a waste bin he’d never seen before. Bad paper cuts had been shredded. The photos he’d been so accustomed to not looking at, all gone, except for three, evenly clipped on the last three lines.

In the distance, an eagle cawed. The stream trilled. Tadpoles cricketed along the embankment.

Lonan approached the remaining photographs like they’d electrocute him. They were displayed one after the other, each on its own line. The first, a picture not unfamiliar to him. Eliza standing in front of a colourful street of vendors. Her loopy signature on the back a jagged indication of where she signed it, most likely wobbling on a train, or in the back of a taxi. He picked it off its clothespin and held it up to a hole in the roof where sun bled through. Nothing had changed from the photo since he’d taken it last year, and he was almost grateful she’d left it fossilized when she took it from his pocket. His gratitude did not last by the time he saw the second photo, so unexpected, he had to glance twice.

His father stood arced slightly behind him, his hands not visible. Lonan knew where they were—one secured around his forehead, the next urging a screwdriver up a stone. Sun scalded the water’s surface, wrinkled it with light. He remembered the song his father whistled as he fried the sunfish on a birch branch, truly less of a song and more of a reminder as he hummed up and down each minor scale, not once stopping to check his work, like he knew better than any instrument.

Lonan plucked the photograph off the line and held it closer. Though he was shaded mostly by his father’s back, he knew they were both in it. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he turned it over to find that same looping signature inked onto the back, smudged, like she’d forgotten to let the ink dry before handling.

It would’ve been easier to think about the second photo’s implications had he not seen the third. He could’ve excused it—a shot taken by a neighbour, though the cabin was remote. A shot that fired itself, the camera discarded on the ground, though it was taken at eye level. A shot signed with familiar initials E.L.K, as if those letters could stand for anything but Eliza Louise Kiang. It would’ve been easier to excuse her presence. To excuse her knowledge of him, to forget she’d ever told him she didn’t know his father had children, that she swore she’d never have been with him had someone informed her. It would’ve been so much easier.

The last photo was not a photo at all, not in the same capacity at least. The ink had gone purplish from the elements but swirled, almost horror-like around the photo’s frame. He could have pretended the white swishes of colour were strands of lace, or the awkward scratch of photo blur. He could’ve pretended to not understand. But there it was. The light funnelling down on the black and white shape so he understood it was not a photograph he looked at, but a child.

I have already shared this line a few times, but it’s my favourite thing I’ve ever written oops!:

When she looked at him, she grinned, and he turned his face to the ceiling where a hole in the roof caved around a branch. The sun’s eye disappeared behind the bullet of the wood, leaving only its outer edges to skirt the sky, a veiling that felt less like an eclipse, and more like evidence of an exit wound. 

Obligatory “I’m the grass” shoutout:

“All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field,” he says without once reading what’s actually written on the page. “Isaiah.”

“Isaiah was onto something, don’t you think? Poor grass, poor flowers—they all die in the end, but they have their God. They have their saviour. Everything dying except for God and his word.”

Eliza cuts another clump of hair. The fire welcomes its feed with haste.

“What does this have to do with children?”

“Do you feel you’re the God of these women, Lonan? Are you their saviour?”

Lonan shakes his head. “I’m the grass.”

And to finish:

After they eat the fish, Lonan and his father rinse their hands in the lake. This is respect. This is self-ordinance. This is a holy act.

His father stoops farther into the stream than he does, water nipping his knees. The sun has disappeared beyond the horizon, the sky now coloured periwinkle, silvering his hair. The taste of sunfish coddles Lonan’s tongue, oiled and briny with saltwater. They share a bar of orange glycerin soap, its scent cloying, like a rotting fruit basket. His father peels the bar between his palms, scrubbing until his fingers disappear under suds.

That’s it for this update! Hope y’all enjoyed! :) I’ll be back soon to update on chapter 5!

--Rachel

[scriveyner]

let it rest in peace - 3/4

James made it an hour before he pulled the truck off the highway, onto a deserted exit ramp with old green signs and a bent route number, and not even so much as a gas station. Keith didn’t say anything as James got out of the car and walked down the embankment, away from the road; though after a few minutes James heard the passenger door slam.

“So we’re talking about this now, huh,” Keith said, arms folded, and James, with his back still to Keith, pushed a hand through his hair and exhaled, looking at the pale blue sky.

“Guess we are.”

Read on AO3 or

He didn’t turn around, listened to Keith shuffle and say, finally, “what the fuck was that, Griffin? You said your family died in a fire.”

James rubbed his hand over his mouth, put his hands on his hips and hung his head. “They did die in a fire.”

“Don’t lie to me, James.”

“I’m not. It’s,” he turned now, felt so, so tired. “It’s complicated.”

Keith snorted. “Complicated.”

It felt weird to be discussing this, standing in green grass and under a blue sky. “We lost my dad first. Mom locked us in our bedrooms, we heard the hounds outside, and found him in the cornfield in the morning.” He rubbed his mouth again, looked past Keith, past the cars on the turnoff, directly into the memory.

“So the hounds killed him.”

“No, that’s just it. He was alive. But he wasn’t… there. Lights on, no one home.” His mother standing dead-eyed in the kitchen, the phone to her ear and cord wrapped around her fingers, staring at nothing at all. “I don’t know what they did with him, but you can’t call that alive.”

Keith was silent, watching him.

“I was too young, I didn’t understand it until I heard the horn myself.” Distant again, his brother’s eyes fixed on the window, their bedroom door locked from the outside. “My mom did everything she could to stop my brother from joining the Hunt, locked him in his room when you could first hear the dogs, but.”

Seeing the fire engine and the ambulance both tearing past, the light of the fire illuminating the countryside for miles, the smoke billowing into the air, and just knowing.

Seeing the horned figure in the flames and hearing the bark and bay of hounds that the fire crew, the paramedics clearly did not.

James swallowed, crossed his arms, looked at Keith, and said softly, “my family’s cursed. I’m the last. The Hunt will come for me, someday.”

Keith crossed the distance between them, put his hands on James’s shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

#

James stretched out on the bed, luxuriated in the faint ache in his muscles, and buried his face in Keith’s pillow happily. He could hear the shower running, listened to Keith hum a little, probably washing his hair, and thought about joining him. His stomach reminded him of other priorities, though, and regretfully he emerged from the cocoon of covers.

By the time Keith wandered downstairs, damp and dressed, James had the coffee on and was scrounging in the fridge, disappointed. “Didn’t even leave us any groceries,” he huffed, leaned on the door with one elbow. “Bacon sounds heavenly right about now.”

Keith fetched his own coffee, leaned against the counter and watched James. “How you feeling?”

“Hungry,” James grunted, without taking his attention off the contents of the fridge. After a moment of silence from Keith, he lifted his head and gave Keith a look. “You don’t have to treat me with kid gloves,” he said. “I’m fine.” Better than fine, actually, he felt rather like he could take on the whole world right now, if only he could get a little meat in him to jump start the engine.

Keith smiled into his coffee, holding the cup cradled between his hands. “I can see if I can’t grab a deer or something,” he said.

James thought about it, imagined he could hear a deer right now, stepping softly between the trees that had been cleared out by the new construction. When he looked at Keith, Keith’s head was tilted, somewhat distracted—and in the direction James had imagined he’d heard the deer. “In fact,” Keith said, placing his coffee on the counter. “Hold that thought.”

Fear spiked in his chest, and James grabbed Keith’s wrist. “On the other hand,” he said, hoping he masked well, “scrambled eggs sound good too, right?”

Keith leaned a little bit away, considered, and finally said, “yeah, that sounds great.”

They ate in the kitchen, at the small table, and James tried not to think about how his mouth watered when he imagined the deer, the meat fresh and hot, flush with blood and entrails, steaming in the morning sunlight.

“You all right?” Keith gave him a weird look, and James stuck a fork full of eggs in his mouth and smiled, nodded, and really, really hoped he was.

#

Summer dawned hot and muggy, and the salt air rolling off the sea bit at his bare skin as Keith straddled him in the bed of the truck. It was deserted here, always was—there was no beach to speak, but the overlooks were fantastic and there was something about fucking in the open air, where he could hear the waves hitting the shore that really drove Keith over the edge.

“No sex on the beach ever again,” James had said in the shower, still scrubbing sand out of crevices he didn’t even realize he had; Keith laughed and carded his fingers through James’s damp hair in response.

Now though, Keith panted loudly, moving slowly as he rode James, sunlight dappled on his shoulders through the trees. James was breathing equally as hard, fixated on Keith’s face, watching the pleasure chase across his expression with abandon. Keith was close, he batted James’s hand away when he reached for his cock, and braced his palm on the window behind James’s head.

James laughed, unsure how exactly his head was still screwed on enough to murmur, “want to come on just my cock, huh?”

Keith shuddered, gave a little moan of encouragement, and shifted his weight, sitting all the way down on James’s cock. There was a weird bit of resistance as Keith shifted, and then it was gone and Keith’s head went back, hair flying loose and eyes wide as he climaxed, tightening on James harder than he’d ever done before.

God, he was so tight—James’s fingers left bruises on Keith’s thighs, holding him, keeping him flush on his lap as Keith milked him dry. Spent, James’s shoulders hit the dirty window and Keith… didn’t move, palm still on the window beside James’s head, other hand stroking his cock now, languid, slick with spilled seed.

Keith lifted his head, pupils blown wide, wet his lips and kissed James. James panted into his mouth in return, and Keith rested his forehead against James’s, looked him in the eye and said, dazedly, “do you have a fucking knot?”

“What?” James asked, surprised his brain wasn’t leaking out of his ears at the force of his orgasm.

“You,” Keith laughed, eyes gone closed and looking content. “God, it’s good, it feels so good, James.” He hummed a little, and when James released his legs Keith pulled slightly, but his cock did not slide free. “Fuck,” Keith breathed, tilting back. “Just, shift a little—“

Obediently, James shifted, moving Keith slightly on his lap—and suddenly Keith jerked and let out a strangled gasp, and his cock dribbled as he shook. “Fuck!”

Later, when he finally slipped out of Keith’s battered hole, Keith ran his fingers down his half-hard cock and over the still slightly-visible knot. “You do,” Keith breathed, wrung-out. “Fucking hell, James…”

#

“So what else have you been hiding from me?” Keith asked, and James, sitting cross-legged on a rock in just his briefs, shook his head.

“I mean, I’ve been able to hear things better and see a little better, but I didn’t think it was worth mentioning, they measured all that shit in the hospit-OW.” Keith yanked on his ear and James smacked his hand away, rubbed his ear. “I’m not a fucking child, Keith, don’t do that.”

“You have a fucking knot.”

“Yeah, it’s news to me too,” James said, dropping his hand and glaring at Keith. “So my senses are a little sharper, I thought it was a win considering I almost fucking died.”

Keith had his arms crossed, standing naked on the shore. He exhaled in aggravation, looked to the water and then back to James. “Can you shift?”

“What? What the fuck, no, Keith, I’m not a wer—“

“YOU HAVE A FUCKING KNOT, JAMES.”

James swallowed hard, rubbed his mouth, looked away. “No,” he said.

“Is that a ‘no, you can’t’, or a ‘no, you haven’t tried’?”

“What does it even matter? The answer’s no either way.” The two men glared at each other in the sunlight, and then Keith groaned and pushed his hand through his hair. James pointed at him. “Don’t you fucking dare call the Blade,” he said. “I do not want to be their lab rat again; besides they fucking cleared me, Keith. Said I was human.”

“I know, I know.” Both hands scrubbed back through his hair, and Keith crouched for a moment, thinking hard. “You don’t want to even try to shift, see what happens?”

The flat look James gave him made Keith groan. He dropped his elbows to his knees, hung his head. Then he laughed a little and pushed himself upright. James eyed him warily, and Keith patted James on the shoulder before walking past, back toward the truck. “What,” James said, turning, and then getting up himself. “Why are you laughing, what? Keith!”

#

They lay side by side on an old quilt under the stars, just like they used to when they lived out of his truck and old motels. James watched the thin clouds scuttle across the night sky, startled only a little when Keith woke, threading his fingers through James’s as they lay shoulder to shoulder.

“I’ll have to tell the Blade eventually,” Keith murmured, sleepy, and James sighed because he knew it was the right thing to do, even if he didn’t like it. “They need to know.”

“Is that a normal thing, to be infected by blood?” James asked, and Keith shifted, turned his head to look at James.

“No,” Keith said quietly, and James laughed softly. “Shiro’s...special,” he said. James knew that much by now, a werewolf unbound by the moon.

“How much blood did he give me?” It felt like something he should have asked ages ago, still in the observation room without windows, but now was better than never.

Keith was silent. “I don’t know. I wasn’t… I wasn’t there, James.”

Lance, in the hospital room, voice haggard and repentant. “It was my call.”

James exhaled, squeezed Keith’s hand. “Well, you’re here now,” he said, and Keith squeezed back, then rose up on his elbow, touched James’s face tenderly, and when he tilted his face into Keith’s hand, leaned down and kissed him.

[instakpop]

Bambam scenario - Dress to impress

Summary: Going out to a business meeting with Bambam means you have to wear something that’ll make a lasting impression. Unfortunately, the dress you chose did just that and so much more.

Genre: Mafia!au, angst, some fluff

Being married to Bambam has been incredible. Most people just see him as a businessman with a… rough temper, but he’s so much more. You were the only woman who was able to see past all the noise of the mob and find the loyal, caring man underneath. It’s not every day that a girl who has no experience in the mafia world wins the heart of a don. And for that reason, he was protective of you. Very protective. In the few years you’ve been married, he only takes you to the “low-risk” meetings. Places like quiet business dinners, or scouting trips like tonight. 

There’s a club in the heartbeat of the city and Bambam has finally gotten the owner to partner with him. But before any contracts are signed, Bambam has to get the approval of his most trusted advisor: you. He is convinced that you have the magic touch. Bambam has quickly become the king of nightlife because every club or restaurant you’ve given you approval to, has been a roaring success. The same worked for places you didn't like. The shabby dinner on the edge of town was a hard no from you and sure enough, a gas leak caused a massive fire that burned it down. At least the police said it was a gas leak. You, on the other hand, are not so naive.

But you had a good feeling tonight. This was the club where Bambam took you on your first date. He bought you a new dress earlier in the week and this was the perfect place to wear it. You put your hair up to show off the necklace he bought you to match your wedding ring. Oh, how you love your ring. The bright blue Kashmir Sapphire took your breath away. But as he said in his vows. “For a smile that shines brighter than diamonds, you deserve a stone that’s much rarer.” The fit of the dress was snug in all the right places. You turned to each side, enjoying how slim your waist looked. Perfect.

You made your way downstairs and smirked when you saw Bambam in his suit. It wasn’t uncommon for him to wear suits, but he just cleans up so well. You came up behind him and tapped his shoulder. Turning to face you he smiled when his eyes met yours. But the loving expression was short-lived when he saw your dress.

“You’re wearing that out?” He asked.

“Of course. This is what you bought for me. I want to make a good impression.” You felt a little offended by his question, but he quickly defused your hurt feelings.

“Baby, I bought that for an intimate dinner here,  just the two of us. That way I’m the only one who can see… all this.” He grabbed your waist and pulled you to him. “And it’ll be easier to get you out of it if we’re in the comfort of our own home.”

“Bam… It’ll be fine. I’ve got this.” You waved your left hand at him, flaunting your ring. “Besides, we’re just there to check things out.”

“So long as your things don’t get checked out, I’ll be fine.” His stare was glued to your breasts, making you laugh. You leaned in to kiss him, but one of his associates interrupted.

“Sir, the car is here.” He said.

“Alright.” Bambam’s curt tone made you giggle to yourself. With a quick kiss, you took his hand and walked out to the car.

A soon as you arrived, you were both given the star treatment. The security guard outside, let you in without a word and Bambam lead you to the VIP section where a bottle of champagne was chilled and waiting for you. The bass thumped in your chest and the atmosphere was electric. Just as you remembered. 

Bambam handed you a glass and leaned into your ear. “To possibilities.” You clinked your glasses with a smile and took a sip. 

After a few minutes alone, the owner came over to greet you both. He was near 50 years-old but tried not to look it. He extended his hand straight past Bambam and to you.

“Y/n, you look ravishing as always.” He shook your hand and sent you a wink. Bambam’s hand tightened on your knee, attempting to mark his territory, but the owner clearly didn’t care.

You gave his hand two firm shakes and pulled away. “Thank you.” Draping your left his on Bambam’s arms, both showing the owner that you’re very taken and consoling Bambam. This deal is not off to a good start.

The two men shook hands and started talking business. The tension in the air faded away and you felt more comfortable as the night went on. But after two more glasses of champagne, you had to use the lady’s room. Leaning into Bambam’s ear, you excused yourself and quickly made your way around the dancefloor. 

When you finished, you were about to walk back to the VIP section when you heard your favorite song blasting through the speakers. It was remixed with a heavier bassline and mashed up with a club mix. What’s one dance? Bambam’s too busy anyway.

You moved to the beat, working further and further into the crowd. You danced around with a few other girls, enjoying the song. They must have been apart of a birthday or bachelorette party judging by their tiaras. You sang along to the lyrics and swayed around with the group. It was all fun and innocent until a pair of hands snuck around your waist.

You turned around, expecting to see your husband, but to your surprise, it was a random drunk guy. He pulled you closer to him, but you pushed away, denying him. You moved away and continued to dance, but he still tried to grind against you. You swatted them away and decided that was enough dancing for the night.

Sneaking back out of the crowd, you were suddenly stopped. Bambam appear out of thin air and had you by the wrist. His eyes were fuming and you looked past him to see the drunk guy getting up from the floor, holding his bleeding nose.

“We’re leaving. Now.” He placed his hand on the small of your back and ushered you out the door. 

The car ride home was silent. You didn’t want to say anything, because you weren’t sure if he was angry at you or the guy. Or maybe the owner said something that pushed him over the edge and what happened on the dance floor made it worse. Either way, it was better to just keep quiet.

Bambam parked the car and opened your door for you. He walked into the house and went straight for the stairs. You tried to keep up with him and broke the silence.

“Bam, just tell me what’s wrong. I didn’t mean for anything to happen. Not that anything would have happened. I was just enjoying myself while you were doing your own thing. I’m sorry. Whatever I did, I’m sorry.” You pleaded. But he didn’t budge. He still walked with fire in his step down the hall.

He passed by his associate in the hallway and paused. “I want everyone out of the main house.” He barked. 

He nodded at Bambam and spoke into his earpiece and ordered everyone out of the house. That usually happens at the end of each day, but never after a business meeting. Bambam typically wants to stay up and sort things out. But tonight didn’t end well.

Bambam stomped into the bedroom, headed straight for the walk-in closet. He tore off his tie and belt while you followed behind. You leaned against the door frame, watching him change into his lounge clothes.

“Bam. Talk to me. What happened?”

“I.. I just… Y/n are you happy?” His question confused you.

“Yes. Of course, I’m happy. Maybe not at this exact moment, but I’m happy being with you.”

“Sure, but what about going with me to that meeting tonight.”

“Well, yeah. I like going out with you.”

“But we didn’t really go out like a normal couple. We never do, and it’s my fault.” He walked past you and sat on the bed, rubbing his temples in frustration.

“What do you mean?” You sat next to him and laid your hand on his back.

“I’m not the normal husband that takes his wife out to a club to dance and have a good time. I sit with some creep of an owner and watch my wife dance with other people.”

“Bam, it wasn’t like that.”

“Yes. It was. You got bored sitting there with me talking business so you went to actually have a good time. That’s how it always is.” He looked so defeated and it killed you. What he was saying couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

“I wasn’t trying to get away from you. I just heard my favorite song and decided to dance for a while. It wasn’t intentional.” You raised his head to look at you and kissed him. “I chose you, Bambam. This life just came along with it. I don’t mind having quiet dinners at home because I get to spend time with the man I know and love. And I like going to business deals with you because you look unreal in a suit.”

His laugh warmed your heart. He took a hold of your hands, kissing each of them. “I’m sorry, baby. I just feel bad about the circumstances of everything.”

“You don’t have to apologize. Besides. The night is still young. And you said you preferred it if I wore this dress for dinner here at home. We can still make that happen.” You suggested.

Bambam smiled at you and kissed your forehead. “Say no more.”

He got off the bed, ordered dinner and got dressed in his suit again to satisfy you. The rest of the night was spent in peace. After dinner, you put on some music and slow danced on the balcony. He was able to let his guard down and relax with you in his arms.

After that night you both made a pact: For every business meeting he takes you to, he owes you one date night out to a place of your choosing. The dress you wear, however, will be chosen with his help.

[shanoaravendare]

Camp Unus Annus: The Author (Part 5)

Previous Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4

              Shanoa felt the void around her ripple as she floated through it. She no longer felt any connection to her body, so the sensation surprised her. For a moment, her mind floundered trying to remember what she had been doing, the thoughts spilling from her grasp like water from her hands. Her hands, what was in her hands? Her notebook and pen?

              “I must be writing,” she thought hazily. “Why don’t I know what I’m writing?”

              Her scattered thoughts began to coalesce into a picture, like watching a show through the viewpoint of one of the actors. She could see her hands now, holding the open notebook with her hand poised ready to write. Her familiar chicken scratch covered half the page before being replaced by an unfamiliar scrawl. As she watched, her hand began writing in that same unfamiliar script.

              The girl relaxed and closed her eyes again, letting the words flow through her and onto the page.

              The words on the page were echoed by a deep male voice in her mind and the view of her hands began to fade. A wave of involuntary relaxation washed over her thoughts, dragging her mind back toward the void. Unnerved by the she reacted to the words she had just watched herself write, Shanoa fought against the urge to relax and focused on her hands again. With great effort she brought back the image of the notebook and pen in her hands, noting that this time she could feel them as well. A new sentence was written on the page, this time in her handwriting.

              Shanoa opened her eyes again.

              Mark watched as Shanoa’s arm twitched, switching back and forth between writing styles. He could tell she was fighting for control of her own body and gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Beneath his hand he felt Shanoa’s shoulder drop to a more relaxed position. He watched as her hand began to move across the page once again.

              Shanoa could feel the pressure building up once more and focused her attention on her thoughts, wary of anything that may come from outside. Now that she knew the Author was trying to use her against Mark and Ethan, she wouldn’t fall for his tricks so easily. Desperate to break the stalemate created by the Author’s manipulation, she wrote out a plan hoping the counselors would forgive her for trying to control them.

              Ethan distracts the Author giving Mark time to recover the knife. The Author moves away from the desk.

              The Author slammed his hand down on the desk, cursing in frustration under his breath. His sudden motion startled the other two men in the cabin. Ethan jumped back a step drawing the Author’s wrathful gaze to him. As the Author stared at him, Ethan realized that he was now the sole focus of his attention. Squaring his shoulders, he began to move toward the door and the broom that lay across the threshold. The Author lunged toward Ethan who deftly backflipped out of his grasp, then dove under his arms to grab the broom. Forewarned by Shanoa’s writing Mark launched himself at the desk and snatched up his knife from beside the typewriter. Faced now with two armed opponents the Author froze with his hands in the air.

              “No! This is not what is supposed to happen,” the Author raged as Mark and Ethan pushed him back into a corner. “Why won’t any of you cooperate?!”

              “Why would anyone cooperate when you’re trying to kill them, you psychopath?”

              “Because they’ll live forever in my novel, with so many more people caring about them than they ever would have had without ME, Ethan. Isn’t that worth dying for?”

              Mark and Ethan looked at each other out of the corner of their eyes before replying with an emphatic, “No!”

              “I’m sorry you feel that way,” the Author said softly,” …but this isn’t about you. This is my story and you are nothing but puppets set on the stage to act it out. You have no say in any of this and you’re delusional if you think otherwise.”

              Ethan lowered the broom a little. “Is that all other people are to you, puppets,” he asked sadly.

              “Why shouldn’t they be? If they are so weak willed that they can be so easily controlled, then why shouldn’t I use them as the tools they are meant to be?”

              “Weak willed, huh,” Mark mused aloud.

              “Yes.”

              Mark burst into laughter.

              “What’s so funny?”

              “You,” Mark choked out between laughs. “By your own logic you’re just as weak willed as the rest of us.”

              “How dare you…”

              “Shanoa wrote you moving away from the desk when Ethan distracted you,” Mark cut in.

              The Author paused and stared past the two counselors to where Shanoa sat behind them. “Did she now? I didn’t think she had it in her to try something like that on her own. Well done, Shanoa. You’ll be a best-selling writer like me in no time.”

              Shanoa flinched at his words and looked down at the floor.

              “Why the long face? Isn’t that what you’ve dreamed of?”

              Ethan raised the broom menacingly. “Leave her alone. You’ve messed her up more than enough.”

              “I messed her up,” the Author asked sarcastically, placing a hand on his chest. “I did no such thing. On the contrary, I think I’ve made some rather significant improvements. Her writing is so much more… impactful now.”

              Sobs wracked Shanoa as the Author’s words hit home. Anything she wrote would happen. To someone, somewhere who fit the character she was writing about. Anything she wrote would put someone through the horror of losing control to an unknown power. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks to fall on the open notebook in her lap. She knew she would never be able to live with that knowledge hanging over her like the Sword of Damocles.

              “No,” she coughed out between sobs, “…I won’t do it. I’ll never write again. Not if it means I have to think of people as puppets like you do.”

              The Author smirked at her. “Oh, you’ll write again. You won’t be able to help it. Writing is like breathing for people like you and me. We can’t live without it.”

              “That’s enough,” Mark interjected.

              “It’ll never be enough! You know that as well as I do. How long have you been able to resist the urge? How long before your fingers start itching to put pen to paper? How long until you have to sit down and let the words flow?”

              “I said, that’s enough.” Mark looked over his shoulder at Shanoa. “Don’t listen to him. It’ll be fine.”

              Ethan looked quizzically at Mark. “What’s he talking about?”

              “It’s not important right now,” Mark replied.

              While their attention was focused elsewhere, the Author quietly slid a hand into his pocket and pulled a lighter out. Though the cabin door had remained open, he could smell the gas leaking from the stove he had turned on but left unlit before leaving earlier. His movement went unnoticed by the other two men and he grinned a little.

              “It’s not important right now? When else would it be important? Because I’m a little uncomfy with the thought that if you don’t like the way I’m acting you could just write me to be different! How would I know? Have you done it already? Is that why you isolate yourself when you’re writing, so you don’t have to see what you’re doing to the people around you?”

              Mark stiffened at Ethan’s accusations and looked him square in the eyes. “Ethan, you know me better than that. But now is not the time for this discussion. I promise you we will talk about it later when a psychopath isn’t actively trying to kill us. For right now can we focus on that?”

              Ethan nodded wordlessly and the two counselors returned their attention to the Author who grinned maliciously at them. The near silence was broken only by a heart wrenching sob from Shanoa as the notebook slid from her fingers and thumped to the floor.

              “It’s a little depressing, really,” the Author mused aloud, “…how easily the two of you are willing to let your gift go to waste. So many interesting ideas you could literally be bringing to life and you refuse to take advantage of the opportunity. Oh, so willing to be less than you are. To fade slowly into obscurity, or never leave it in the first place.”

              “You’re talking about real people’s lives. Not some fictional world you’ve created. There are real consequences for what you make them do and do to them. They have to live with that and so do you,” Mark gestured angrily with the knife, pointing it accusingly at the Author’s chest. “I certainly couldn’t live with that on my conscience, and I don’t understand how you can.”

              “Comfortably,” the Author replied casually. “Very comfortably. At least when my characters cooperate. It’s never as good when I have to get involved personally, but sometimes people just need a fire lit under them to really get things going.”

              The distinctive metallic click of a lighter case flipping open punctuated the Author’s statement followed by the scrape of the strike wheel being flicked. A small flame burst into life glinting off the Author’s eyes as he tossed it casually toward the stove before either Mark or Ethan could react. The accumulated gas in the air ignited with a whoomph, sending a fireball rolling across the ceiling over everyone’s head. Taking advantage of the distraction the Author lunged at Mark trying to wrench the knife from his grasp. Shanoa hunched in on herself as she dove to the floor beside the chair. The sudden heat wave caused whisps of hair that had broken free of her braid to dance in the air and, in a few cases, curl at the ends. Ethan swung the broom handle at the Author’s back only to strike Mark in the shoulder when the Author wrenched him sideways.

              “I’ve got this under control, Ethan. Get Shanoa out of here. I’ll catch up,” Mark grunted through clenched teeth as he fought for control of the knife.

              With a nod, Ethan pulled the front collar of his shirt up over his nose in a makeshift mask and sidled toward Shanoa. Thick smoke already was beginning to fill the small cabin making his eyes and lungs burn. Fire climbed hungrily across the dry wooden walls, it’s crackling a counterpoint to the grunts and muffled curses of the two combatants. Chunks of flaming wood dropped through the smoke around him like shooting stars in the darkness. A thin layer of clear air at floor level allowed him to see where Shanoa knelt by the chair, her face pressed to the floor and both arms covering her head.

              “Come on Shanoa, we’ve gotta get out of here,” Ethan called as he reached out and set a hand on her shoulder. He could feel her whole body shaking but couldn’t be sure whether she was crying or coughing at this point. “It’s gonna be okay.”

              Shanoa glanced up at Ethan through eyes red with tears and shook her head sadly. “This is all my fault. Just go. I don’t want to become a monster like him.”

              “Can’t do that, we’d be breaking the buddy system. So, either we both go or neither of us goes. Now come on!”

              Shanoa took Ethan’s hand and crawled up beside him. “If you insist. But what about Mark? Aren’t you his buddy?”

              “Don’t worry about Mark right now, I’ll take care of it,” Ethan shoved Shanoa ahead of him toward the door and safety outside. As they gulped in the fresh air an ominous creaking sounded over the crackle of the fire. Ethan ran back to the door shouting for Mark to get out. Just as he was about to step back inside a flaming ceiling timber dropped with a crash, blocking the way.

              Inside the cabin, what had started as a battle for control of the knife quickly escalated into a full-on fight. A sharp blow to Mark’s wrist sent the knife back to the floor and the Author’s quick kick ensured it was out of reach for the time being. The two men sized each other up for a moment before Mark lowered his head and charged the Author, grabbing him around waist as he drove him to the floor. The Author, momentarily taken by surprise, hit the ground hard but used Mark’s momentum against him to propel Mark over his head to crash against the table.

              “You never did answer me, Mark,” the Author said as he regained his feet.

              “And I’m never going to,” Mark responded slapping away embers that had alighted on his arm. “I don’t answer to you.”

              “Is that it? Or are you afraid of what those answers would say about you? We both know you still write. So, tell me, how many puppets do you have?”

              “None. I don’t need to make anyone suffer just so I can create, not that it’s any of your business. What you’ve done in the past is unforgivable and I’m not going to just let you keep torturing innocent people for your own personal gain.”

              Both men were now finding it harder to see and breathe through the thick smoke and began to move in a crouch to get to the clearer air near the floor. A spray of sparks showered the inside of the cabin as the ceiling beam struck the ground sending light glinting off the discarded knife. Mark dove for it as the Author was wracked with a coughing fit from too much inhaled smoke. In that same moment, the Author dove for the baseball bat he’d dropped near the door earlier. Re-armed, the two men charged at each other through the smoke. The Author’s wild swing sent the smoke spinning into curls along the path of the bat making an opening just big enough for Mark to get clear sight of him through.

              “So, what are you going to do about it,” the Author taunted through the smoke as he swung the bat again, “… kill me?”

              “Death comes for us all eventually,” Mark answered, slashing with his knife as he dodged the Author’s bat. “Who can say what shape it will take?”

              The Author’s bat connected with Mark’s shoulder on the backswing causing him to stumble. Mark took a step back trying to regain his balance, only to trip on Shanoa’s discarded journal and fall as the bat passed through the spot his head had occupied only seconds before. From his back, Mark kicked out wildly connecting with the Author’s knee and sending him to the floor as well. As both men began struggling back to their feet a section of the flaming cabin roof came crashing down. A piece struck Mark’s head stunning him momentarily.

              Outside, both Ethan and Shanoa were circling the cabin looking for another way in or out of it without any success. Their throats were raw from the combination of inhaled smoke and shouting for Mark with no response. The crash of the roof sent embers flying toward the trees surrounding the little clearing and they rushed to stomp out the small blazes before they could become larger. Ethan turned to Shanoa with determination in his eyes.

              “I can’t just wait out here, I’m going in after him. Stay here and try to keep the forest from catching fire,” Ethan blurted out. “I think I saw a pump around the side of the house, maybe you can wet things down? I don’t know. But if I’m not back in a couple minutes follow the path back to camp and tell Amy and Evan what happened.”

              Shanoa stared wide-eyed at the cabin behind Ethan and began to raise a shaking hand to point when a soot covered hand rested itself on his shoulder.

              “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Mark rasped as Ethan turned to face him.

Epilogue

              The cabin fire had been easy to put out once everyone from the camp was working together. Having seen the smoke rising in the distance Amy and Evan had put together a fire brigade that met up with Mark, Ethan, and Shanoa halfway between the camp and cabin. On the walk back to camp the three had agreed not to tell Amy, or anyone else for that matter, what exactly had happened at the cabin with the Author. The rest of the week passed in a flash and soon there was only one day left before everyone would be departing for home.

              Shanoa sat on a mossy rock under a tree overlooking the camp as the sun began to set on the last day at Camp Unus Annus. Darcy sat nearby in companionable silence, whittling away at a stick she had picked up on the hike up the hill. The smell of ash still hung in the air when the wind would blow from the direction of the clearing previously occupied by the cabin. The relative quiet of the woods was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming up the path towards them.

              “Mind if I sit with you,” Mark’s quiet voice by her ear startled Shanoa out of her reverie. Turning her head to look at him she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and realized that Ethan was escorting Darcy back down the path toward camp. Shanoa shrugged listlessly and moved over to make a spot next to her on the rock which Mark promptly settled onto. Neither one said anything for a moment as they watched the sun start to dip behind the hills to the west.

              “I didn’t see you at the writing workshop today,” Mark remarked off handedly. “Amy said you weren’t feeling well but I don’t think that’s the real reason.”

              “I meant what I said that day.”

              “I know you did. I once said the same thing.”

              Shanoa turned to look at Mark. “So, what changed? Obviously, you still write otherwise you never would have made the Heist.”

              Mark nodded. “It’s true, I do still write. But that’s because I figured out something the Author never did."

             "What's that?"

              “Just because I can make everything I write happen; doesn’t mean I have to do it. It’s a choice, Shanoa, just like everything else in life. The Author chose to exploit others for his own gain with his gift, that’s something I like to think I could never do. If it’s in you to write, then write. But do it on your own terms.”               Mark stood and offered his hand to help Shanoa do the same, which she accepted gratefully. The two dusted themselves off then started back down the path to camp before it could become too dark to see clearly.

              At the bottom of the hill Mark stopped and set a hand on Shanoa’s shoulder. “I almost forgot, I think this belongs to you,” he said as he slid Shanoa’s now slightly scorched notebook into her hands.

              Shanoa ran her fingertips across the dry, cracked leather of the cover before opening it and leafing through its pages. In places the ink had bled from where water had soaked into pages while they were putting out the fire. In others the edges of the pages were browned and irregular.

              “You know,” Mark mused, “…that notebook probably saved my life. If I hadn’t tripped on it, I would have been right under the main beam of the roof when it fell.”

              Shanoa nodded thoughtfully as she continued to leaf through the notebook. A single page slipped loose from the back of the book and she quickly grabbed it before it could hit the ground. In the fading daylight she could just barely make out three words written in the center of the page in a now familiar scrawl:

              The Author lives.