#SEMI DOUBLE CRADLE FRAME | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jetaime-jespere · 3 years ago

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I Was Enchanted To Meet You

This is a long time in the works, and a gift to my dear friend @cmhotchniss-blog, who sent me her idea of how Aaron and Emily met. Most of the ideas are hers, and I am forever grateful she let me connect some of the dots. 💓

"I’d like to think this is how we were supposed to meet. For a brief moment in time, that’s all. To steer one another in the right direction, if you will.”

One night for Aaron and Emily has a lasting impact on them both, twenty-four years later.

A mess of metal is what’s left behind on a dusky stretch of Route 66. Shattered glass sparkles like diamonds along the wet asphalt in the darkening sky as night meets the last moments of the day. Smoke curls and hisses around the mangled frame of the SUV, the stillness of the air a juxtaposition to the chaos that wraps around them - a slew of first responders, a few ominous rumbles of thunder, the mounting traffic on the other side of the highway. It’s a cacophony of sounds and sirens, shrill and relentless, that bring them all back to the reality that it can’t get much worse than this.

Read the rest below or on ao3!

There’s shouting - so much shouting - the frantic and panicked voices from the normally imperturbable team as one of their own is pulled from the passenger seat, limp and unresponsive. It only took seconds for things to go horribly wrong. Accidents were never supposed to happen, and yet here they were, helplessly surrounding a team of paramedics who were just a little too quiet in their intense focus, their faces stretched a little too thin, a little too grey, as they bent over Emily.

Her speech is slurred; her eyes flutter and blink weakly as they fight to keep her conscious and alert, rattling off blood pressure numbers with thinly veiled concern. They abruptly push JJ to the side, curtly demanding the need for more space to work, bark directions to the hospital, and start preparing to move her into the ambulance.

On the other side, a hand with a set of bitten down nails grapples for purchase at Dave’s shirt, fingers wrapping around the folds of expensive fabric to pull him closer in one last moment of semi lucidity. With a fading grasp Emily drags him down close enough to whisper something inaudible in his ear, words meant for only him to hear. The older man frowns, eyebrows furrowing with confusion as she falls unconscious, the last lick of light disappearing behind the trees.

____

“Dad, are you sleeping?”

Aaron’s eyes snap open a little too quickly, the bowl of popcorn nearly spilling into his lap when he jumps to attention. The voice, a familiar one, is insistent, as if it’s not the first time he’s said his name in the last few minutes. “No,” he says quickly and he’s not entirely sure who he’s reassuring. “No. I was just -”

“Let me guess,” Jack scoffs, taking a large handful from his own, much larger bowl of popcorn in his lap. “Just nodded off.”

“I’m paying attention,” Aaron attempts weakly as Jack laughs under his breath and shakes his head.

“I’ve heard that before.” His son reaches for the remote to rewind the last ten minutes of the scene he’d missed, still laughing. “This is what … the third week in a row?” While he’s right, Jack doesn’t seem bothered. The years away have made him wise beyond his years, with a patience not often possessed by hormonal teenage boys who spend most of their time with a screen in their face. Aaron often thinks his son inherited the best of Haley - her patience, for starters. He resembles her too, and every now and then, looking at Jack is like looking into a window of the past. A past that could have been a fantasy, for now it seems like so far gone.

“Something like that,” Aaron mumbles. It’s true. In the four months they’ve lived in the quaint Philadelphia suburbs of Chester County, an idyllic place without the Main Line housing prices, adjustment has taken on a new meaning once again. Gone are the fake identities, the constant checking and double checking of doors and windows, the frequent looks over their shoulders, the unsettling notion that it might not end - that this might, unfairly, be their reality. He knows they’d go to the end of the earth to find Scratch - they’d done it before to find Foyet, then Doyle. They fought monsters before, but somehow, this was different.

There had been a finality in his decision to take Jack and go into Witsec. His final act to name Emily as Unit Chief was an easy one, and while it didn’t lessen the blow of the circumstances in which he and Jack left, in a flurry of panic, reminiscent of one his son experienced once before, it gave him a semblance of peace he wasn’t expecting. A little bit of reprieve, the ability to sever ties that may never be rebuilt, to no fault of their own. The cruel and unusual situation was one that they always risked with the nature of their work, one that was always a distant possibility.

In the quiet moments, he thinks of her. The what ifs and the whys. Everything between them that was said, and what never was. What he’s never told anyone is just how long he’s thought of her in one way or another, the one night they shared together, years ago, tucked neatly away in his mind to save for nights when he wondered just how things got to be this way.

“Come on, Dad,” Jack laughs. “At least try to make it through this movie. You said you wanted to see this one.”

With a hint of guilt as his obvious disinterest, Aaron sits up a bit straighter on the couch, grips the popcorn bowl in his hands, locking his eyes on the television. The plot of the movie is already lost on him, despite it being a topic of conversation for the last several days. “Just play the movie, Jack.” He stifles a yawn into his fist and valiantly attempts to focus his attention on the screen.

Aaron is dozing when he’s interrupted again; this time by his phone vibrating on the table. He doesn’t miss Jack’s eyes flickering over to the phone. “It’s just like old times,” he sighs. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

The name on the screen is the very last he expects to see at such an hour in the middle of the week. Aaron frowns, the phone cradled in his hands as the phone vibrates insistently. It’s the familiar push and pull of guilt he feels when his eyes shift between his son and the phone again, an unexpected window into a life he long left behind. The phone keeps ringing, immediately following the first unanswered call. Not a good sign, he thinks.

“Dad?”

“I need to take this, Jack,” Aaron says quickly. It’s late enough that this is anything but a casual phone call. The blanket is tossed aside and the popcorn already forgotten. He barely hears Jack’s half-hearted protest as the phone crackles static and then connects. The voice on the other end speaks first, his tone clouded with thinly veiled fear.

“Aaron.”

“Dave.” His tone is equally clipped, even and steady even as the phone is held tightly in his hand, waiting for whatever news is about to come.

“Aaron, you need to get to Prince William Medical Center as soon as you can.” It’s the urgency in Dave’s voice that unnerves him; it sets off every warning bell in his head. His normally unflappable, at times annoyingly rational friend sounds harried and exhausted, as if it’s already been the longest of nights, as if making this very phone call was a last resort. “It’s Emily.”

Emily .

The words reverberate through his head, the implications tear through his chest like a series of spears. He knew it wasn’t good, but he didn’t expect this. “What happened?” But years of experience and unbridled heartache have steeled his nerves, tested his resolve time and time again. He should be used to this by now - bad news that haunts those he loves. But the fear is like a vice, a cold stab that wraps itself around his mind and back again.

“There was an accident.” Dave begins. It’s been a few years since he’s seen him, but through the phone Aaron can see the lines on his forehead that have certainly deepened by now, perhaps a few have been added over time as the years add up.

“Accident? What kind of accident?”

He barely listens as Dave recounts the last few hours in excruciating detail. They were on a case - local - Reston - on their way back to Quantico. A poorly timed summer storm made visibility terrible, rendering driving nearly impossible. They were sideswept by another SUV, the impact sending them careening into the median on 66 just outside of Woodbridge. It sounds like anyone’s worst nightmare - airbags deployed, the windshield shattered upon impact, the entire hood a mangled mess of metal as the car careened to a stop, the threatening hiss of the engine.

But the totaled car was the very least of their problems.

“She’s in critical condition, Aaron,” Dave says carefully, as if it’s only part of the truth, as if somehow it’s even graver than this. “She’s unconscious.” It doesn’t sound good - her head hit the window on impact, the rest of Dave’s news confirms his worst fears - a likely head injury, the extent of which they don’t know.

It doesn’t make sense. It seems like some kind of sick, ill joke - a nightmare he’ll wake up from, only to find Jack having devoured both bowls of popcorn and the credits of the movie he never actually watched rolling. “What aren’t you telling me Dave?”

“I think you’d want to be here, Aaron. It … it could go either way at this point.” Dave’s voice is so heavy, something Aaron isn’t used to. His friend was typically the voice of reason, the one he went to for assurance when things seemed to be spiraling out of control - something he did many times over. And now the tables were turned to their side, a cruel twist of fate. It takes no convincing; he’s already reaching for his jacket on the hook by the door, grappling for an umbrella shoved unceremoniously in a closet somewhere closeby.

“I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

…

“Mendoza is on his way.,” JJ says quietly as she rounds the corner with two cups of coffee in her hands. “ He just called me.”

“That might complicate things.” Dave wrings his hands and paces the tiny hallway. “Who told him?” He asks curiously. It hadn’t been long since Emily had shown up in his office one night, shoulders heavy as she relayed the news of their breakup. Dave is no stranger to the failures of love - having been thrice divorced himself. Sometimes timing was to blame, other times it was priorities. In their case it was commitment, or lack thereof, things fizzling out and hasty goodbyes, half-hearted assurances of keeping in touch, that one will call the other. Yet Dave isn’t exactly surprised to hear the news. Despite their challenges, Mendoza had been all but enamored with Emily, in awe of her at times. He wasn’t a stupid man; he wasn’t surprised when she didn’t follow him to Colorado. There was always something else that stood in her way. He just never knew exactly what.

“Word travels fast.”

“Aaron is on his way.” After a long pause, Dave scrapes a hand across his face, exhaustion bleeding through the cracks of age. “I just called him.”

JJ only nods and stares into Emily’s room with a pensive expression. “What do we tell them?”

“We tell them what we know. Hope for the best. That's all we can do.”

...

The storm takes the humidity with it, a soft chilly breeze spreading through the darkness. Aaron hurries through the hospital doors, charging past the triage nurse towards the elevators. He’s only vaguely aware of the other man that wedges himself past the doors just in the nick of time. He looks just as distracted as Aaron feels, eyes distant -worlds away - and lost in his own thoughts as he offers a quick smile, fists shoved in jacket pockets.

“What floor?” Aaron offers with a tight smile.

“The ICU.”

He nods and pushes just one button, indicating that they’re in fact going to the same place.

“I’m sorry.” The other man nods his head in solidarity, noticing the single illuminated circle on the panel, shuffles his feet, checks his watch and hangs his head. The phone in his pocket buzzes; he checks it with a resigned sigh. Aaron feels a touch of sympathy for him, wonders just what brings him there.

Except he doesn’t have to wonder much longer, because not only is Dave waiting when the doors open, but he clearly knows whoever Aaron just shared the elevator with. And judging by the way Dave’s eyebrows lift just enough at the sight of them both, practically side by side, something tells him there’s more to the story than just a simple coincidence.

“I see you’ve met?” Dave cocks his head to the side, scrubs his chin with his hand thoughtfully. “I wish it wasn’t under these circumstances.”

“What the hell happened?” The man beside Aaron demands, a little more forcefully this time.

“So you haven’t met.”

“What the hell is going on, Dave?” Aaron snaps first, his patience starting to wane. The last three hours of travel have already started to catch up with him. It’s been years since he’s had to channel his feelings into something more stoic and taciturn. It doesn’t return as easily this time. He tells himself it’s because of age and time, yet the nagging voice in his head says it’s something else entirely.

“Andrew Mendoza, meet Aaron Hotchner. The former chief of the BAU. Hotch, this is Andrew Mendoza. Mendoza was the Special Agent in Charge of DC’s Field Office. He consulted with the BAU on a few local cases about a year ago.”

“Was?” Aaron questions, quickly putting together what Dave doesn’t tell him about Andrew Mendoza. There’s only one reason why he’d be there - a reason he didn’t anticipate. He has to swallow the bitter pang of regret that rises in his throat. It shouldn’t exist at all, but a familiar feeling that has lingered just within his reach whenever he thought of Emily. The chances they never took, the timing that seemed to elude them for one reason or another. Time. It had never been on their side.

“The Denver Field Office offered me a promotion last month. My daughter and I are moving out to Colorado in a few weeks.”

“Congratulations,” Aaron says stiffly as he offers his hand. It’s obvious why he’s here - the same reason Aaron is. “I’ve heard good things about Denver.” There’s something about the news that satisfies him.

“I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances.” Mendoza glances at Aaron, then Dave, then back at Aaron again. “But what the hell happened tonight?”

“JJ didn’t tell you?”

“Just that there was an accident.”

Dave presses his mouth into a thin line, relaying the story with such tact that Aaron knows it’s an abridged version, a slightly less terrible rendition of what happened back on the highway. “We were right outside of Woodbridge. On our way back from a case in Reston. Visibility was awful. It happened so fast. Emily must have hit her head on impact. She lost consciousness shortly after the ambulance arrived. They’re considering surgery to relieve the pressure in her brain.”

Dave pauses, letting the news sink in, taking a deep breath of his own to compose his frayed nerves. “There’s a chance of brain damage but they won’t know more until after she regains consciousness.” His gaze shifts between them both, gauging their reactions.

“When will that be?”

“There’s no easy way to tell. Could be hours after the surgery. Or days. She’s not breathing on her own. It’s going to be a while before we know anything.” He repeats the doctors’ words as calmly as he can. Dave’s typically unflappable demeanor is strained; the weariness laces through his voice.

“How did this happen?” It’s Mendoza who speaks up this time, clearly distraught and searching for words of his own. He almost looks embarrassed by his uncharacteristic show of emotion.

“It was an accident,” Dave repeats as calmly as he can, as if he’s practiced this speech in his head before giving it. “No one is to blame.”

The air seems to thicken around them, the reality setting in that while it’s already been a long night, it’s only just beginning.

“We’re here because of Emily. It’s a waiting game now, as long as it might be. May as well make yourselves comfortable. There’s a waiting room just down the hallway and a cafeteria on the sixth floor, if you want some coffee. It might eat a hole in your stomach, but it’s something.”

The room around him starts to spin. Aaron can’t remember the last conversation they had - something hasty by phone, he suspects, in the days of time differences and small talk. Never awkward, but something always lingering beneath the surface. Their conversations were all about what wasn’t said - subtext, layers of awareness only they possessed.

“One other thing,” Dave adds, as if on afterthought, a fleeting thought he nearly forgot, nothing more than a passing thought. “Before she lost consciousness, she was rambling incessantly about apple pie.” Dave adds, as if on afterthought, eyes narrowing in confusion. “The best apple pie in DC. Any idea what that could be about?”

Aaron stiffens, his jaw flexing at Dave’s seemingly innocuous mention in the midst of everything else. It’s been years since he’s last seen her and another fifteen since that night, one he’s never actually spoken of out loud. It could have been a lifetime ago, a distant memory. It feels so foreign at this point he could have dreamed it. Surely he misheard - there’s no way she’d be thinking of that. He pinches the bridge of his nose, stifles a yawn into his fist. It’s about to be a very long night. “Where is she? Is she in surgery yet?”

“Not yet. She’s just down the hall.” In the distance a monitor beeps then an alarm starts to go off, punctuated by the efficient scramble of nurses. It reminds him just how much he hates hospitals, and Aaron breathes a heavy sigh of relief when they don’t go into Emily’s room.

“You can see her, you know.” Dave offers gently, sensing the growing tension. “One visitor at a time.”

It’s somehow decided, without officially being decided out loud, that Aaron will go in first. Mendoza quietly mentions something about needing to call his daughter. Not for the first time this evening, Aaron is actually grateful Jack can hold his own at home for a little while, that they’re long past those years of constant check-ins. A simple text will do in a few hours’ time. And he steels his nerves with a few deep breaths before slipping into the room, the silence punctuated by the staccato beeping of monitors and a ventilator.

She’s like a ghost, translucent almost - amidst the machines and wires. He remembers a time, years ago, when the roles were reversed. Aaron wonders if she felt the same clench of fear in her gut, the awful feeling of helplessness that came along with being at someone’s bedside in a hospital. He wonders if she felt the same desperation clinging to every nerve in her body that things would be okay.

“Hey,” he says, sinking into the hard plastic chair at the side of the bed. “It’s been awhile.” Deep down he knows she won’t - can’t - respond. But there was a moment of hope - a tiny one - flimsy and built on nothing - that maybe she would move or something to indicate she heard him. There isn’t one.

Aaron swallows the rising lump in this throat, thick and pressing right down into his lungs. “I really need you to wake up, Emily.”

...

“When’s the big move?” Dave presses Mendoza gently, asking all the questions Emily never gave answers to. He folds his arms across his chest, unable to tear his gaze from the scene before him. From his place behind the window, he watches Aaron lower himself onto a chair on shaky legs, taking a few steadying breaths as he settles beside her. He rests a weary head on his fist.

“Two weeks. Keely wanted to finish her soccer season.” Mendoza crosses his arms over his chest as his eyes follow Dave’s.

Dave nods without really comprehending the words. “You’ll have to let us know when you’re both settled out there.”

“Yeah.”

Dave breaks an awkward silence. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out between you two.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t.” By now, Mendoza’s full attention is on the scene before them both, face solemn and stiff. “What’s the story between them?” His eyes narrow ever so slightly, shades of suspicion cloud his features and his shoulders tense. Years of profiling make Dave keenly aware of these subtle changes in his behavior. He’s questioning it .

Dave shrugs. “Friends? Colleagues?” By now, Aaron is brushing Emily’s arm with his thumb, and if he isn’t mistaken, swears he sees his lips moving too. “Anything else and your guess is as good as mine.”

It seems to smooth things over for a few moments, even as something else is planted in his mind. Something he never considered at all.

…

“Have you been to Boathouse Row yet?”

It’s an attempt to make small talk as they sit down; it doesn’t get past Aaron, who stays silent, completely ignoring the question.

“So what is it you’re not telling me?” Dave passes a flimsy styrofoam cup over the small table.

“Now might not be the best time, Dave,” Aaron retorts, rolling a tiny cup of creamer in his fingers.

“We’ve got nothing but time, Aaron. Surgeon says things could take hours. She might even be conscious immediately after. And you’re not driving back to Philly anytime soon.”

He has a point . “She was talking about when we first met.” He sighs heavily as he spins the cup around in his hands. “It was a long time ago.”

“At the BAU?” Dave knits his eyebrows in confusion.

Aaron rubs his eyes tiredly. By now any movement feels like effort, the space behind his eyes starting to throb with an oncoming headache and exhaustion. “Before that.”

“You mean you knew - “ Dave stops, his coffee ignored and interest piqued. “You two knew each other before?”

“We met years ago. Would be at least twenty now.” He’s too tired to do the math of exactly how long it’s been. “We met when I was working for her mother one summer in DC.”

“I certainly had no idea.”

“No one did. It never really came up.”

“By choice or on purpose?” Dave quips, his eyes just a touch brighter than they were moments before. He chuckles when Aaron just stares right back, the hint of a smile hidden in his eyes. “So what’s the story?”

His expression is wistful, as if he were dusting off a long held memory. “It was kind of an accident.”

Twenty-Four Years Ago

Not for the first time that evening, Aaron checks his watch discreetly and sighs into his fist. It’s only eight-thirty; who knows how long this thing will last. It wasn’t that he agreed to this. It’s practically a rite of passage when working for an Ambassador, or so he’s been told -working one of the many extravagant parties and benefit dinners that were practically part of her job description. The ballroom is full of DC’s political elite - congressmen and senators, the Secretary of State and the Attorney General. Rumor had it the Vice President would be making an appearance. For that reason alone, security was heightened, every egress monitored, yet he’s never felt more invisible in a room full of people.

Aaron spots her accidentally, but something tells him she’s not trying to blend in. The tall figure on the opposite side of the room is entirely too young to be one of them , yet she mingles easily with a champagne flute between her fingers. She’s wearing an elegant black dress with a high neck and open back. It shows off delicate shoulder blades that jut out like wings when she moves. He isn’t the only one staring.

She’s the Ambassador’s daughter - Emily . Aaron has only heard of her from the others, her name being uttered in exasperation when one of the agents finds her breaking protocol yet again - sneaking out and in at all hours of the night, slipping an endless parade of friends past the entrance logs without proper verification. He’s never spoken a word to her; he knows almost nothing about her except that she’s a student at Yale, supposedly speaks multiple languages, and has a knack for causing trouble.

They haven’t spoken a word to each other, but her eyes meet his across the square in the middle of the room that is supposedly a dance floor. His mouth goes dry and he immediately looks away when Emily excuses herself from whatever conversation she’s immersed in, only to look back seconds later to find her sauntering directly towards him , effortlessly maneuvering through the crowd.

Aaron nods a polite hello, attempting to keep his expression neutral when she’s finally closed the gap between them both.

“You know,” Emily says with amusement, eyes flicking over him. “You could at least try not to look so miserable.”

“Who said anything about being miserable?”

“It’s practically part of the job requirements if you work for my mother. Besides, you’ve been wearing the same expression since this thing started.” When she catches his look of sheer bewilderment and mild annoyance, she laughs softly. “Trust me. I’ve been to enough of these things to know what I’m looking for.”

“Are you spying on me?” He glances around, wondering just where the Ambassador even is amidst a sea of black suits. He should be keeping a close eye, after all. He strains his neck a little, scanning the crowd purposefully until he sees the woman that strongly resembles the miniature version of her in front of him.

“No. I’m just observant.” Without missing a beat, Emily waves to someone - a Congressman Aaron immediately recognizes from the news - something about a scandal involving a rather young intern under a desk - but he hadn’t been paying too much attention to remember all the details. “He’s such a scumbag,” she adds quietly without any elaboration.

He senses her reticence immediately; he wonders just how she knows all of this, if he should push, if at all “Isn’t that part of their job description to a degree?”

“Some of them,” Emily mutters. “But he’s one of the worst.”

“So I’ve heard,” Aaron murmurs, tearing his eyes away from the crowd to get a better look at her. Up close she’s even more stunning, with sharp cheekbones and a perfectly symmetrical face, her smile wide and eyes like dark orbs. “I’m sorry, have we met before?”

“I’ve seen you around. You’re the new guy.”

“New-ish. I started in March.” It comes out a bit more dejectedly than it should, but it’s hard to hide the disdain he feels for it all. Things have been far from easy over the last few months. It’s a mindless shuffle of one foot in front of the other, days that blend together similar to the ones before, with the slightest hope that a few more weeks of patience might wield a change.

“New to me.” She’s only been home for the summer a few weeks at most, so he can count on one hand the number of times he’s actually seen her. “So what’s your story?”

“My story?”

“You stick out like a sore thumb.” She cracks a grin at her own remark. “You’re too tense.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Agent …”

“Hotchner,” he fills in quickly.

“Agent Hotchner, you certainly wouldn’t be the first security detail to use this as a stepping stone to a different career. You’re all just biding time until something better comes along.” She’s so matter of fact, so assured, it’s as if she’s had this very conversation with every other agent in the room at one point or another. “It’s usually the quiet ones. They have less to prove.”

“Are we that transparent?”

“Some of you. And I can’t say I blame you. This place surely isn’t a means to an end.”

“What does your mother think of your beliefs?”

“My mother knows exactly what I think of her career and everything that goes along with it. It’s what’s gotten us to this point, actually.”

“And what point might that be?” He’s only heard of some of the epic arguments between the two of them, the harshness of their voices reverberating around the Ambassador’s office or some ornately decorated living room. The bitter clashes of two strong wills, hidden behind the fact that just maybe they were more similar than different.

“A story for a different time,” Emily says smoothly. “Can’t exactly talk about it here.”

“You’re full of stories, aren’t you?” Aaron deduces but she isn’t even paying attention anymore as she scans the crowd. He can see the wheels start to turn in her head, the flicker of an idea materializing somewhere. She turns back, this time a grin stuck to her lips. “What?” He asks reluctantly.

“Let’s get out of here.” Emily bats her thickly lashed, heavily lined eyes. “This thing is going nowhere fast. Besides, you look like you could use a break. “How long have you been on?”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere,” she says casually with a wink as she plucks a champagne flute from a nearby tray, downing it quickly. “I probably shouldn’t drive, but you can.” It’s accompanied with a flippant toss of hair over her shoulder, an expectant purse of her lips.

It’s certainly not the smartest idea or the most prudent, but something tells him Emily could care less about prudence and image. “I could be suspended for unauthorized use of a government-issued vehicle.” Not to mention, having his boss’s daughter in said government vehicle with him, or completely leaving his assignment altogether. He remembers skimming over the terms of employment months ago, specifically the section about fraternization with members of the Ambassador’s Family.

“Who said anything about one of theirs?” She looks almost bored now, tapping her fingers against the empty flute. “That’s no fun anyway. They have trackers on them. For security purposes.” She forms air quotes with her fingers. “We wouldn’t get far.”

He’s about to ask her how she even possesses that knowledge when he feels her hand on his waist, dipping into the creases of his jacket like a lover would. It doesn’t phase her, and while normally his reflexes would spring into quick action, he’s glued into place.

“You have a car don’t you?” Emily unabashedly pats his pocket, feeling for keys.

He opens his mouth to object, but she’s too fast. She grins with satisfied smirk, a triumphant click of her tongue as he stiffens awkwardly when they jingle against her hand. “You aren’t a great liar, Agent Hotchner.”

“Aaron,” he says somewhat stiffly, resignedly. He’s doing his damn best to keep his eyes centered on the ballroom but it’s getting harder and harder to concentrate on the task at hand. The scent of perfume - something undoubtedly expensive - lingers and it makes him dizzy even if he hasn’t had a sip to drink. “And I didn’t lie.”

“Aaron.” His name rolls off her tongue thoughtfully. “Aaron,” she repeats, as if it’s the first time she’s ever heard it. “I never understood why there were two A’s. What do you do with the second one?”

His head spins to keep up with her, how her mind somehow bounces from one thought to the next with seemingly little direction. “Never gave it much thought myself, actually.” From the corner of his eye he catches one of the other agents giving him a quizzical, perhaps slightly jealous, eye roll. It’s a bad idea to entertain, but one he can’t ignore. Emily is staring at him, eyes sparkling, with the slightest touch of longing. Longing for what he isn’t sure, but whatever it is, it wouldn’t be found in the middle of the opulent ballroom.“What do you have in mind?”

“I’ve been told of a place not too far from here,” she begins slowly, a smile on her face at his gradual acquiesce. “A diner that supposedly has the best apple pie in DC.”

“Apple pie?” Just how much has she had to drink?

“I’m starving ,” she offers with a hand pressed to her flat stomach. Aaron’s eyes follow, lingering up and down on her narrow frame.

“They’re about to serve dinner,” He says lamely, shaking his head to ensure he heard her correctly. Waiters have started to circle the room with large serving trays balanced precariously above their heads, passing around the plates that he guesses must cost a few hundred dollars a head, maybe more. The crowds have thinned as more guests take their seats.

Emily shrugs with disinterest. “Once you’ve been to one of these things you’ve been to them all. Besides, this is when things start to get really insufferable.”

“Is that so?”

“Someone will start talking,” Emily drawls sardonically, surveying the crowd starting to take their seats at previously assigned tables - tables he could probably rattle off by name if asked. “Make some big speech promoting their campaign trying to get reelected or whatever. Then they all will. They love hearing themselves talk.”

“Part of the job, I guess.” He stares, unsure of what to say next. Her attitude towards politics is the complete opposite of that of her mother. His interactions with his boss have been somewhat limited; he doubts if she even remembers his first name. Yet he’s seen the way Elizabeth Prentiss revels in a world seemingly dominated by men, a woman in a league of her own. He wonders just how much the Ambassador has sacrificed; wonders if her daughter might be amongst that list. It would certainly explain their tenuous relationship.

“So what do you say? Surely you don’t want to sit around listening to a bunch of old guys spout a bunch of half truths to line their pockets?” She seems unbothered yet again, almost amused by the sight in front of her - as if her premonition of how the night would go is coming true.

There’s nothing he wants less. “How do you suppose I get out of this? I’m still on the clock, you know.”

“I’ll leave that up to you.” Emily sets the champagne flute on a nearby serving tray and spins on her heel, sauntering back towards the center of the ballroom. “I’ll be outside of the South Gate when you figure it out.”

…

In the end, he makes up an excuse to leave. It’s not exactly convincing and the agent in charge doesn’t exactly believe him when he feigns an emergency - food poisoning. But Aaron has always had an exceptionally good poker face, grimacing just enough to make it look questionable, and the other agent curtly nods, grunting something about having enough security for the evening, and making up the hours later in the week. It falls on deaf ears - he’s already out the doors of the security office, a small grin playing at the corners of his lips as he strides across the asphalt driveways with his back toward the house.

Sure enough, Emily is waiting for him, finishing the rest of a cigarette when he pulls around to the South Gate. He keeps his taillights off; the less attention he draws to himself the better.

His car has seen better days, the leather seats worn smooth and the stereo outdated, the steering wheel permanently indented from the grip of his own two hands, scuff marks and faded carpets. But it’s well maintained, and Emily smiles appreciatively when he holds the passenger side door open, then explains how to adjust the seat, just in case . She doesn’t seem to notice at all, just unceremoniously tugs her long skirt out of the way of the door and kicks off her heels.

“Fucking things,” she grumbles. The heels are sharp as knives, ridiculously impractical yet Aaron can’t help but picture her wearing them in a dress much shorter than the one she currently has on. He shakes his head, reminding himself not to go there, because the reality is, she’s still his boss’s daughter, and if anyone were to see them, he’d most definitely be written up, maybe worse, for taking her off property without following protocol. But she’s close enough to touch, her arm a gentle weight against his own on the center console.

“So,” Aaron asks, his voice barely audible. He shifts the car into reverse, breath hitching when his knuckles brush against her hand. “Just where is this diner you speak so highly of?”

“Silver Spring.”

“I thought you said DC.”

“It’s close enough.” Emily tucks a long piece of hair behind her ear with a roll of her eyes. “Just trust me.”

It’s the way she says it that makes him wonder if she would do the same for him. Aaron grips the wheel in silence as the cool night air seeps through the open windows. He catches her shiver and is about to offer his jacket when she breaks the silence.

“Make a right up at the light, and then it’s a quick left.” Emily shifts in the passenger seat. Her fingers twitch as if she were still holding a cigarette between them; she tucks her hand against her cheek daintily. She’s very much aware the passenger side is nearly spotless - nothing to indicate someone sits there frequently. No wayward sunglasses or a forgotten piece of jewelry belonging to a significant other. She straightens the wrinkled fabric of her dress and lowers her eyes.She’d had him pegged wrong - certainly he’d had it all figured out, the well intended nature that comes along with a mostly idyllic existence. She imagined a naive wife or girlfriend completely enamored with him, both parties working to make ends meet for bigger and better things - not happiness, for one. That they had in spades. But maybe a white picket fence, a dog and a baby or two one day.

Instead, he seems lonely and guarded, a choice he was forced to make. Circumstances, maybe, she thinks as the traffic light ahead blinks from a glowing green to yellow, to red. It shines a little brighter than usual, a universal warning everyone should understand . It makes her shiver again.

“Here. Take my jacket” The red light gives him the chance to shrug out of the confines of his suit jacket, which he hands over. He palms the wheel a little tighter when she wraps herself into it, the fabric draping over her like a shield.

“This is the place?” Aaron studies the gaudy exterior of the diner, hard to miss and yet, the type of place you wouldn’t give a second thought. The fluorescent lighting nearly blinds him, and he’s somewhat surprised to see through the windows that multiple tables are full despite the late hour. He can hardly conceal his disbelief. “How’d you learn about this place?”

“Word gets around,” Emily says lightly as she slips her shoes back on, wincing slightly when she stands upright, nearly enveloped by his jacket. “I’ve learned not to judge a book by its cover. Maybe you should do the same.”

They find a booth in the back, tucked away from the clamor of the bustling kitchen and constant jingle of the doors. Again they’re left with nothing but silence, a few wayward glances, and two plastic coated menus between them. The haggard waitress only nods abruptly at their order - two black coffees, one with splenda and one without, one slice of apple pie, and two forks.

“You think she thinks we’re a couple?”

“I’m sure she has a lot more on her mind than us.” Aaron twists the paper straw wrapper between his fingers and studies her across the table. What he’s not expecting is to realize she’s doing the same thing - analyzing his body language with a degree of precision that matches his own, an expression that hides what she’s thinking. He wonders if she’s practiced it over time. She wears his jacket like a coat of armor yet she’s curious, the mundane quietness of the diner a stark contrast to their initial surroundings a short time ago.

“How does someone like you end up working for my mother?” Emily asks out of nowhere, direct and forward without an ounce of hesitation. It could be mistaken for an interrogation, he muses.

“Someone like me?”

“Decent. With manners. Not some macho guy with a little man complex or some baggage like that who gets off swinging his gun around.” She blows the straw wrapper across the table; it hits him square in the shoulder and stays here until he flicks it off. She doesn’t seem to notice as the waitress sets down their much anticipated order amidst a promise to come back with some cream for the coffee.

It’s his turn to laugh; he knows exactly what type she’s referring to. He could name more of them than he has fingers. “Trust me, it wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.”

Emily carves out a large bite of apple pie with her fork, eyes closing with delight as it disappears between her lips, along with a delicate moan. “This is so good.” She pushes the pie plate towards him. “So then what was it?”

“Bad timing, for starters.” Aaron stabs his fork into the jagged slice of pie, cuts off a bite for himself. His stomach growls; it’s been hours since the early dinner he’d scarfed down behind the wheel on his way back to work the shift he just abandoned. “You’re right,” he says around a mouthful of apple and pastry crust. “That’s really good.”

“Told you.” She proudly lifts her shoulders, momentarily triumphant before she digs in for another bite. But she also looks expectant, ready for an answer, even with another forkful of pie. He supposes he owes her one.

“I wanted to join the FBI,” Aaron begins slowly. It comes to him that she’s only the second person he’s ever told any of this to. He supposed talking about it would make it real, take it from a pipe dream to something that could irrevocably fail right in front of his own eyes.

“The big leagues, huh?” She waves her fork in a circle, and it takes a moment for him to realize she isn’t totally shocked. “I could see that, actually, now that you mention it. You have the poker face for it, at least.” Emily gives a little grin, one that meets her eyes. “But that didn’t happen?”

“Had the application filled out and everything. Was going to send it in.”

“So what happened?”

“My girlfriend … She didn’t like the idea. The recruitment process takes months and basic training even longer. Close to a year sometimes. Haley wanted me to do something a little more traditional. Wanted me home at 6 for dinner and around on the weekends.” He takes another bite of pie, partially to gather his thoughts, and to let Emily give her own.

“Girlfriend, huh?”

“Well.” The fork in his hand feels heavy all of a sudden; he sets it down with a clatter. “We’re taking a break right now.”

She takes in his words, chuckles a little bit. “I’m a little disappointed in myself. I definitely had you all wrong.”

“You keep saying that.” It’s more of a question than a statement, a curiosity he can’t contain.

“I took you as settled. Happy. With Haley. ” His girlfriend’s name rolls off her tongue; hearing it sounds strange, like she’s saying something she shouldn’t.

“I’m ... figuring things out. We’re figuring things out.”

“Do you love her? Does she love you?” Emily asks directly without hesitation. “If you do, there shouldn’t be much to figure out.”

He stiffens. “I don’t … not love her. But we want different things. At some point, you have to be honest with each other, right? When you can’t make it work, what do you do?”

“I’m definitely not the person to ask.” She laughs but there isn’t any humor in it, more of a resigned sadness if he looks close enough through the rough edges hidden by carefully curated appearance. “Relationships aren’t something I’ve had a ton of luck with.”

“Maybe you’re dating the wrong people.”

“Maybe.” She looks around the diner, rests her chin in her hands. “I’m pretty directionless myself at the moment, if it makes you feel better.”

“It doesn’t, but thank you.” He takes a sip of coffee, more for something to do with his hands than a need for it. He wants to know more, wants to ask just what could possibly make her directionless. Someone who seemingly had it all.

“Sounds like we’re both lost.” There’s a dreamlike tone to her voice, as if they’re sharing a secret.

“We don’t have to be.”

“If I keep going at this rate, I’ll be a bored socialite by 30 throwing cocktail parties every night and getting drunk by the pool by day.”

“Who says?”

“No one has to say it. It’s … expected of me, I think?”

“Is that so?”

“I’m certainly not following in my mother’s footsteps into politics.” She scoffs. There’s contempt in her voice, for what he deduces is years of being put second, something she never asked for but received over and over again. “What else is there for me to do? Someone has to carry on the family tradition somehow.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Emily says, dragging her fork through some of the remaining bits of pie on the plate. She flicks a crumb into the air. “I’ve never really had a home , you know. Most of my life has been spent overseas. Just staying in one place for a while would be nice.”

“I always wanted to get away.” Aaron laments. “From Manassas at least.”

“Well, that’s understandable. You aren’t missing much there, or so I’ve heard.” She stirs a spoon into her coffee to work in the mess of splenda packets she’s dumped in.

He watches the liquid swirl, her mezmirzation at it. Something comes to him - something he’s always wanted to know. “Is it true you speak four languages?”

Emily looks up from her coffee, temporarily distracted by his question. “Six, actually. French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Greek, and some Russian.” She ticks them off on her fingers nonchalantly as if she were counting inanimate objects.

He does a double take. “Six? I can barely handle English.”

“It’s always been easy for me. I just wish I knew what to do with it, you know?”

“When I applied, I remember seeing that the FBI needs linguists. People with language experience to work overseas.” He takes his own fork to the last remaining bits of the pie, watching her face carefully for a reaction. She’s almost unreadable; he can’t discern just what she’s thinking.

She laughs - not the reaction he expected. “You know, applying for the FBI would absolutely piss my mother off entirely. She would hate it if I did that. Kind of makes me want to do it.”

“She and Haley should meet. I’m sure they’d have lots to talk about.”

“You want to hear what I think?” Emily says after a few long moments, the coffee and the pie that once sat between them are now gone. “I think you should go for it. The FBI. Do it and don’t look back. And call your girlfriend. Let her talk, but tell her how you feel.”

“And?”

“If she comes back, then you know it’s meant to be.”

...

“Never even knew this place existed,” Aaron says, lingering at Emily’s elbow as they pick their way across the pebbled driveway of the diner. She’s a little unsteady on the heels now, not unsurprising given the late hour and the time they spent sitting down.

“Who knew a diner in the middle of Silver Spring Maryland would have such great pie?” Dangling from her wrist is a to-go bag with an extra slice of pie for the morning - the waitress had kindly given her one on the house - the leftovers from the day before.

“I thought New Jersey was the diner capital of the world,” Aaron muses. “New Jersey is all about their diners and traffic circles.”

“And Bruce Springsteen,” Emily adds pointedly. “He’s from New Jersey.”

“Him too.” Aaron laughs quietly. The tension in his shoulders mounts; he doesn’t want this to end. He wants to talk to her, wants to keep her there. But the moment feels final. Emily catches the wrist of the hand that reaches out to cup her cheek, wraps her fingers around it. “If things were different -” he starts quietly, looking almost embarrassed.

“I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to go, is it?” Emily leans into the weight of his calloused palm, into the touch of a man that isn’t her own. It feels foreign, like she’s taking something that isn’t hers. “I don’t think that’s in our cards, Aaron. Maybe in a different life.”

The ride back to DC is again silent, save for the crinkling of the paper bag in her lap. Aaron skips the main entrance and the long paved driveway, taking a shortcut around the massive property to the South Gate entrance. Emily side eyes him, looking slightly impressed. “Trying to remain inconspicuous?”

“I think that’s for the best.”

“I’d like to think this is how we were supposed to meet,” she offers as he pulls up to the outside of the South Gate. “For a brief moment in time, that’s all. To steer one another in the right direction, if you will.”

“Maybe.” He tells himself to pull away, curling it back around the steering wheel protectively. “Remember what I told you, Emily.” He watches her reach for her shoes, their moments together dwindling down to seconds. “Don’t live your life on the terms of someone else. Especially your mother. If our paths cross again and you’re a bored socialite throwing cocktail parties, we’ll have to talk.”

She loops some hair behind her ear, gives him a small smile. “If our paths cross again in ten years and you aren’t leading some FBI unit somewhere, I’ll have some words for you as well.” She draws a breath, carefully slips on her shoes. “Thank you for the pie, Aaron.” The creak of the passenger side door is the only thing he hears as she slips away like a ship in the night, not to turn back around.

Aaron watches her disappear across the grass, blending into the deep blue of the early morning, the sky not quite awake but out of the depths of night. She’s a shadowy dark figure amidst the promise of a new day. The clock on the dashboard nears 6:00 AM. The little red numbers glow are a reminder of the inevitable crash that will most definitely come later on. He isn’t 20 anymore, after all. But when he drives away, there’s a sense of renewal, one he can’t explain, but deep down understands.

He hands in his resignation before he can work another shift, and he never does make up the time he promised. Three days after that, he mails a thick packet of papers in a standard manila envelope to the FBI Headquarters in Quantico.

A week after that, he takes out his phone and dials Haley’s number. About thirteen years later, his son comes into the world, wailing and screaming with healthy lungs and a head of dark hair. Haley is tired and beaming, his pride is obvious as the tiny bundle is placed in his arms.

They name the baby Jack.

In some ways, the stars aligned.

He’ll sometimes wonder if Emily’s did too.

…

Present Day

“Why didn’t things ever work out between the two of you?”

Dave’s voice brings him back to reality, out of the daydream he’s held so close to his heart for so many years. It’s jarring at first, a confusing limbo of then and now, past and present blending together for a few long moments. He glances around, the harsh overhead lights glaring bright, the low hum of hospital sounds reverberating through his ears. Along with it comes the reality of why he’s there, and the bitter rush of fear that floods his consciousness.

“Timing.” Aaron spins his now empty coffee cup in his hands. “Even after Haley and I got divorced, it was never the right time.”

“You’re going to blame timing ? That’s the oldest trick in the book.”

“I never wanted to take the risk.” It’s the closest thing he can think of as truth. They built a tentative friendship after a rocky start, something built on mutual respect. His divorce brought new challenges - co parenting amidst a ridiculously stressful career, supporting and leading his team. Emily had always been one to hold her own, a silent backbone of their team, a friend to all of them. He’d relied on her, never wanted to lose what they had in hopes of something else . Ian Doyle had taken her from them all; her return was tense and it didn’t take a profiler to understand that Quantico just wasn’t home to her anymore. He let her walk away, encompassed by a fragile shell of his own tentative happiness, and in the years after she went to London, there was a permanent hole in his heart that never quite mended itself again. “Maybe I should have.”

“Love is a choice, Aaron. It doesn’t just happen. You have to choose to make things work.” Dave leans back in his seat, checks his watch, an eyebrow arching just a bit. “I thought you would have known that by now.”

“You and Krystall made a choice?”

“We still do. Every day we have to choose to love each other. Some days it’s easy. Others, not so much. But you know the best part?”

“I think you’re going to tell me anyway, Dave.”

“It’s never not been worth it, Aaron.” There’s a subtle gleam in his eye that wasn’t there before. “Something tells me you might just feel the same, if you gave it a chance.” Dave fumbles for his phone, patting the pockets of his jeans and then that of his blazer before finally pulling the phone from his breast pocket. He flips it open, his eyes widening at whatever message lights up the tiny screen.

“What is it?” Aaron asks with baited breath.

Dave looks up from his phone. For the first time since all of this began, he looks full of hope. “Emily’s out of surgery.”

…

The surgeon is pleased with the outcome of Emily’s procedure, and the air around them seemingly lightens with each minute he explains the procedure, and its success. The three of them hang on every word he says, asking questions and seeking assurances.

“She should be awake within a few hours. We’ll know more then, but her brain activity is good, and her vitals are strong. Agent Prentiss got very lucky. I have patients who often have a very different outcome.”

The relief is palpable, as if the tension was cut with a knife as they all exchange optimistic smiles and tentative handshakes, while profusely thanking Emily’s surgeon. Aaron excuses himself to call Jack - something he should have done hours ago. “I’m not going far,” he reminds Dave, his words a warning of what to do if anything changes in the next few minutes.

“We’ll be right here.”

Mendoza is shrugging into his jacket and digging for his keys with a look of resignation on his face. He catches Dave’s sideways glance. “I think it’s time I head out, Dave. Please give Emily my best wishes on a quick recovery when she’s discharged.” There’s a change in his voice, one that wasn’t there earlier.

“You’re leaving?” Dave asks curiously. “You aren’t going to stay and see Emily? It shouldn’t be much longer before we can go in.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

Mendoza shakes his head, runs a hand over his scalp. “I learned something tonight. You know when it’s just not meant to be, but you can’t find the reason why?”

Dave nods, a glimmer of understanding appearing in his eyes. “I do. I know it very well, actually.”

“I think I found the why.” His eyes roam around before they finally land on Aaron and Dave’s do too. The phone is still pressed to his ear but he’s still staring right into Emily’s room, never once looking away, even as his mouth moves in conversation to Jack on the other end. “I tried to deny it, so did Emily. But I don’t think her heart ever belonged to me. I think it belonged to him.”

—

Emily finally wakes up a few hours later. Aaron and Dave wait outside the room as she’s tended to by a horde of surgeons and nurses, testing brain function and vital signs, spattering off medical terms with ease. It’s a language only they understand, one Aaron never wants to learn. But their voices are hopeful, they have smiles on their faces as they talk to Emily, assessing her cognition and running tests. She’s a little confused and extremely tired, but awake and alert . Dave is just as relieved to see things appear normal; they’re both very aware of just how lucky they got.

Eventually, they’re finally allowed to see her.

“Do you mind if I … “ Aaron trails off, except he doesn’t need to finish the question.

“Go, Aaron. I take it you have some things you want to get off your chest,” Dave quips. “I’m going to call the others and give them an update. They’ve been waiting awhile.” He departs with a pat of encouragement on the back, a shared moment between them.

Moments later, he’s back in her room, at her side on the same uncomfortable chair from earlier. Her eyes flicker open once again, widening almost impossibly when she sees him. Years of unanswered questions are written on her face in seconds, a shared history fraught with more than what most people experience in a lifetime. But there’s something oddly content there too, as if she woke up from a dream that has somehow materialized in front of her.

“Hey,” Aaron says softly, reaching out with a nervous hand to touch her for the first time in years . He dodges wires and IV lines, finds her fingers with his own and gives a gentle squeeze. “You’re up.”

“You’re here?” Emily blinks with confusion, still making sense of just how she got there in the first place. “But I thought you were .. you and Jack are in Philadelphia. What are you doing here?”

“Of course I’m here,” he says soothingly, ignoring her question. They can talk about that later. “How are you feeling?”

Emily gives a wry grin, slightly distorted and weak, but there. “They asked me who the President of the United States was.”

It’s his turn to smirk. “What did you tell them?”

“To ask me after 45 leaves the Oval Office,” she says without hesitation. “I think I made at least two of them laugh.” But then something comes over her face, the reality of it all setting in. “You came all this way,” she croaks, throat raw from the intubation tube. “How did you know about all of this?”

“You were there for me, remember?” He’s not only talking about Foyet, but all the years she spent at his side. The years they spent doing a dance around one another, their steps never quite aligning. This time feels like a second chance he never thought he’d get, one he can’t mess up.

“That was a lifetime ago, Aaron. So much has happened since then.” Emily tries to sit upright, pushes herself up about halfway before exhaustion overtakes her. She grumbles in frustration; he shouldn’t smile but he does. It means the Emily he knows, the Emily he fell in love with years ago is somewhere in there.

“Take it easy,” he soothes, adjusting the pillows so she’s more vertical than horizontal. He uses the opportunity to press a kiss against her forehead. He touches his own to hers and murmurs, “That’s something I should have done a long time ago.”

A smile spreads across her face, just as brilliant as the night he met her. She remembers it all, just as well as he does. “Funny how it always seems to take one of us dying to figure things out.”

“What are you talking about?” It’s a morbid thought, one he can’t entertain for long because despite his question, there’s an element of truth to it. He brushes some hair from her eyes and tucks it behind her ear. It’s matted in his fingers and dirty yet he doesn’t even notice. His heart swells, the hand in her hair trails down to her cheek, a thumb against the blush that spreads there. “And by the way, that’s not funny.”

“I’m saying maybe after I get out of this place,” she gestures to the mess of monitors and wires and tubes, “You can ask me out on a date. Finally.”

“Anywhere,” Aaron agrees. He would go anywhere, if it meant he could be with her.

“I know a place in Silver Spring. Supposedly they have the best apple pie in DC.”

#hotchniss #hotchniss fanfiction #young hotchniss #Aaron Hotchner #Emily Prentiss #aaron hotchner x emily prentiss #Aaron x Emily

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square-blunt · 3 years ago

Text

It's honor among theives, it's all that we've got.

Just a silly little c!karlnapity fic I've been working on. It's a little out dated but yknow, it is what it is.

Tw- Major ptsd, trauma/abuse flashback, panic/anxiety attack, it's lovely for Q Wc: 1624 AO3:link

It’s early in the morning, light filtering in through the blinds, dust suspended in the air. Quackity turns over, trying desperately to hold onto the remnants of sleep. The birds grow louder, as does the soft drone of life outside the walls, and he realizes his attempt to slip back into unconsciousness will be unsuccessful. He lets sleep slide from his grasp. Q sits up, and the room is a lot colder than he’d hoped. He bends sideways, feeling around for a hoodie he might have thrown on the floor last night, finds one, and tugs it over his head. There’s a knock at the far door, and he smiles as his partners walk in, padding across to him with a tray of food, very loudly- and badly- singing happy birthday. Q’s grin grows wider as he notices that he’s not wearing his own hoodie, but one that belongs to one of his boyfriends- the one who’s putting the tray down on his lap- and his other slides into bed next to him to give him a kiss on the cheek.

“Happy birthday, Q!!” Karl grins, handing him a napkin.

“Happy, happy,” Sapnap says, immediately cutting off a piece of pancake and shoving it in Quackity’s mouth. Q groans and playfully smacks Sapnap’s hand, and the fork, away.

“Thank you, I’m gonna be honest I was not expecting you guys to do this- I forgot about today completely, anyways.” Q, mumbling around the bite of a rather dry pancake, takes the fork and knife back from Sapnap.

“Of course we would, we fucking love you, dude.” Sapnap adjusts his position to lean back against the bed frame, steading the tray with one hand.

“I know that, dumbass, but I didn’t even ask you to do this- like I said, I forgot that today was my birthday at all.” Q fidgets with the fork.

“Well, we didn’t- Sapnap didn’t at least,” Karl says, giggling- Q loved that little laugh he does.

“You didn’t have to ask us- don’t tell me you’ve never had breakfast in bed before,” Sapnap says.

“I- no, I guess I haven’t-” Q begins.

“In all your years no one’s ever brought you breakfast in bed?” Karl asks, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“I mean, yeah, once, but I kinda spilled it everywhere.” Quackity tries to put a lightness in his voice, but Quackity couldn’t really manage it. He did have breakfast in bed once. The reason he got it was because he couldn’t get out of bed in the first place, the night before that had been absolutely awful. Maybe the worst of his life-

“Was that when you were a kid? You got someone to do it again?” Sapnap reaches over and sneaks a piece of bacon and stuffs it in his mouth, snapping Quackity back to reality.

“Not exactly. I- I didn’t know that was something you could do when I was a kid, and, uh, y’know, there’ve been only a few people willing to do… this… for me at all anyways,” Q mumbles, passing the fork through his fingers. He hopes they don’t press any further.

“Well, had it or not, you have hardly eaten anything so hush and let me feed you.” Karl seems to have completely missed what Quackity just said, and he was relieved.

“Wait- no- Karl I wanna do that.” Sapnap grabs the fork out of Quackity’s hand again, making the coffee mug teeter. Quackity shoots out a hand to steady it.

“Hey that’s not fair you get to sit next to him I wanna do it.” Karl crawls over Quackity’s legs and reaches out for Sapnap-

“Hey- guys-” the plate is sliding around on the tray, and Quackity would very much like to not stain the sheets. Not more than they already were, at least-

“You got to bring the tray to him I wanna do it-” Sapnap rotates away, hiding the fork- and his knee pops up, flipping the tray over. Quackity holds onto the steaming hot coffee mug, so at least that didn’t burn him, but the pancakes, bacon, and eggs fly everywhere. The plate bounces off the bed and shatters on the floor, leaving a sticky circle in its wake. The three of them are silent- but Quackity’s head rings with the sound of the plate breaking. It sounds so much like glass. It sounds like glass breaking. It sounds like a bottle being thrown and hitting a wall, missing your head by inches. It sounds like him. The tray clatters to the floor, but Quackity pays it no mind. The sound of shattering glass, porcelain, is drowning out the sound of his breathing, of the blood rushing through his skull. He doesn’t know if Karl and Sapnap are talking to him and quite frankly he doesn’t care. He doesn’t know where he’s looking, the image doesn’t make it to his brain. Another image, a memory, takes its place. He can’t feel the mug in his hands, but he knows it’s there, because every one of his muscles are tensed. He is completely still. He was never able to hurt him if he stood still. The ‘seeing-double’ myth was true and it always worked. If he got drunk, he got drunk enough to see quintuple. He never knew which Quackity to hit. All but once. The morning after, Quackity had leftover steak and potatoes, and a whisky stained kiss, for breakfast.

Quackity jumps as a hand cradles his face, some of the coffee spilling out- he braces himself. The coffee burns his hand. His mind spirals down and crashes back to reality.

“-you ok? Q?” An image of Karl, brushing his hair out of his face, and Sapnap, bent down cleaning up the plate off the floor, attacks his mind. The clinking shards, Karls light breathing and even lighter questions bombard his ears. His eyes sting. He pushes the mug into Karls hand and rushes out of the room, running down the hall and out to the balcony. It’s way too loud out here, too. Birds, cows, sheep, the distant sound of gleeful squeals and song. It’s too bright. There are too many colors. There’s too much going on. He just wants to hide.

“Quackity?” Sapnap calls from down the hall. Quackity loves him but he can’t do this right now. He digs through his pockets, and somehow, he has a three minute invis pot. That’s more than enough. He unstops the bottle, and downs it, the light liquid making his skin feel funny. He’s used to the feeling. He pockets the bottle, and turns down the hallway, Karl has joined Sapnap, the mug still in his hands. They both look really worried. He would be worried, too.

‘They wouldn’t hurt you and you know that. They’d rather die than hurt you. You know that. They’re not like him.’ Q tells himself. Karl and Sapnap pass by him, the breeze they produce ruffles his hair. Q hopes they- wait. He should be hoping they worry. Why is he hiding? He should talk to them about this. He’s running away from it, from them, again. But it's all he knows. Running from people who were supposed to protect him, when they didnt- when they hurt him- they left him- stood by and watched. No one protected him. No one ever cared enough to protect him-

"Sapnap-" Karl is stood in the middle of the hallway, he had come back up after checking for Quackity downstairs. Karl in front of Quackity, and Sapnap responds from a hallway out of Q's sight.

"Sapnap the balcony is open-" Karl says, worry tinting his voice.

"Yeah? Is he on the balcony?" Sapnap jogs back into view.

"Sapnap the front doors are still locked. He'd have left the front doors unlocked if he left through there." After a beat, both Karl and Sapnap break into a sprint down the stairs.

'What are they doing?' Quackity thinks, confused. 'What did it matter if the balcony- was the only way he could have gotten down- oh god-' Quackity runs after them, stopping to grab a bucket, he might be able to find a cow. Out on the patio, Q frantically looks around, trying to find any sign of movement, when a message pings on his wristband.

[S a p N a p]: H a s a n y o n e s e e n Q ?

Does he answer? Does he want- yes. Yes he wants them to find him. Q wants them to know he's safe. He's spent so long hiding from him, he needs to be found now.

/ m s g [S a p N a p]: I ' m s t i l l a t t h e h o u s e

He hears a semi-distant noise, the sound of running, as Karl and Sapnap round a tree and come barreling up the path. Q doesn't trust himself to speak. He reaches out and his hand brushes Karl's arm, and Karl stops.

"Karl?" Sapnap catches himself on the doorframe, and Karl looks down to where Q's hand rests on his arm.

"Quackity?" Karl asks, looking about three inches left to where Q actually is. Q squeezes Karl's arm. "You're invisible, honey." He covers Q's hand with his own, a twinkle in his eye.

"Is he here?" Sapnap walks up to them, and Q cups Sapnap's face with his other hand. Sapnap jumps, obviously, but still swoops in for a hug, getting Karl, but completely missing Q.

Quackity laughs. He joins the hug for himself, sandwiched in between Karl and Sapnap, and very faintly, "Thank you for not being like him."

The invis wears off.

Quackity doesn't need to hide.

He's been found.

#tw trauma #tw abuse #tw ptsd #tw panic attack #tw anxiety attack #karlnapity #c!karlnapity #dream smp #dsmp #dsmp writing #c!sapnap #c!karl #c!quackity #sapnap #karl jacobs #quackity #i miss them :pensive:#gremtalks

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chopcult · 4 years ago

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Christian Newman does not disappoint! We can wait ti see this beauty at the @bornfreeshow! Reposted from @ctnewman Get excited about @bornfreeshow Twin turbo. Twin carb. 8 valve. Ultra narrow. Stainless steel. Oil-thru frame. (Yeah that’s an oil cooler built into the engine cradle). The brake pedal doubles as a kicker pedal. Super narrow transmission. One-off internal front leg springer. Handmade. I’m doing some final engine mock-up before tear down for motor machine work and paint. Cylinders back from @dgmchrome look great. Some things coming in the semi-near future: top motor mount, carb linkage, one-off petcock/fuel rail, rear exhaust mounts, turbo feed and drain lines. #bornfreeinvitedbuilder #bornfree12invitedbuilder #bornfreeshow #chopcult https://www.instagram.com/p/CMXqB4-Dg26/?igshid=g4eqoelhlwqz

#bornfreeinvitedbuilder #bornfree12invitedbuilder #bornfreeshow #chopcult

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chiseler · 5 years ago

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Mitchell Leisen: How’s About It?

Mitchell Leisen was a major American film director. He belongs in the first rank, not the second tier, where he has often been placed by those who value the scripts he was given by Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett more than what he actually did with those scripts. Leisen’s name was usually written in sloping cursive in his opening credits, and that set the mood for what he had to offer. His was a gentle style, a deliberately unobtrusive style, smooth and gliding, attentive to nuances, visual and emotional.

Leisen made a point of nearly always moving the camera only when it is following a character who is moving right along with it, and the edits in his movies are as invisible as possible. He made three films that are undisputed classics: Easy Living (1937), written by Sturges, Midnight (1939), written by Wilder and Brackett, and Remember the Night (1939), written by Sturges. All three of these classic Leisen movies are partly about pretending to be something you’re not in order to move up or over into another social atmosphere or class and take on a new identity, and this theme is something that always interested Leisen particularly.

He got his start making costumes and dressing sets for Cecil B. DeMille, and he also made costumes for Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. That training shows through in his later work, that sense of fantasy and beauty for its own sake. Leisen had a fetish for absolute authenticity when he did period pictures, and he took this fetish to nearly Erich Von Stroheim lengths if he had the money to spend. Remember the peacock headdress that he designed for Gloria Swanson in DeMille’s Male and Female (1919), or the sexy harem pants he put on Fairbanks for The Thief of Bagdad (1924), or the barely-there garments he designed for Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross (1932) and you can get a first sense of Leisen’s aesthetic: hopeful, fantastical, erotic. And he was a pretender himself on some of these early movies because he was very skillful at making sets and crowd scenes look more opulent than they actually were given some of the budgets he had to work with.

He took the reins from nominal director Stuart Walker for two films that proved his range: Tonight Is Ours (1933), a high comedy that begins with a sexy masked ball, and The Eagle and the Hawk (1933), as grim and concentrated an anti-war film as you will find from this era. Leisen next graduated to prestige pictures like Cradle Song (1933) and Death Takes a Holiday (1934), with its high-flown Maxwell Anderson script. Leisen was fond of Death Takes a Holiday all his life, and he even wanted to re-make it in the late 1940s, but it has not held up as well as some of his lesser-known pictures from the 1930s.

After Murder at the Vanities (1934), a backstage movie with some odd musical numbers, Leisen took flight with three pictures that demonstrated the full scope of his talent. What makes a really great director, a major director? The ability to take a poor script, like the one Leisen was given for Behold My Wife! (1934), and make it into something that moves like a dream and seems inevitable. While you watch Behold My Wife!, there is a double consciousness of how outlandish and slapdash the plot and dialogue are and how Leisen transcends this through pacing, framing, and staging, so that there is always something to delight the eye. Leisen movies generally have a difficult-to-describe kind of creamy look, as if every person and table and chair were covered in the same sort of protective satin sheen.

He used a similarly fast, super-controlled pace for Four Hours to Kill! (1935), another backstage movie where Leisen himself plays the orchestra leader but you never see the numbers on stage. A kind of musical proto-noir, this movie depends on Richard Barthelmess, who is playing a criminal waiting to be taken to jail, and Leisen is alert to Barthelmess’s needs and sensitive to his big scene, where his character talks about his unhappy past. And then Leisen was given a script (by Norman Krasna) and two stars, Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray, that were particularly congenial to his style, and the result was his first classic, Hands Across the Table (1935), a rather anguished comedy about love and the urge for security. Leisen had mastered form, and now he mastered the content that interested him, good-bad people navigating their own wants and desires and what they will do for them. For Leisen, mixed emotions are really the only emotions possible.

In all of his most characteristic films, Leisen’s characters are at a crisis point and need to decide to take a chance and see what they can get away with to become another version of themselves. There is lots of comedy in a situation like this, of course, but Leisen always hints at the dark underside of pretending. There is an American urge in these pictures that says, “What I say I am is what I am,” and that urge is usually naïve (think of early Joan Crawford heroines). Leisen looks at this urge from a height of sophistication, almost always warmly and tenderly, but sometimes he lets a really grim insight slip through. Think of Carole Lombard’s anti-social asides in Hands Across the Table, or that harrowing scene where Barbara Stanwyck goes home to her grudge-holding and cruelly puritanical mother in Remember the Night and you will feel the hurt that animates Leisen’s search for a created world of his own.

In many ways, the 1930s were Leisen’s best creative period, where he turned out beautifully balanced and finished entertainments like 13 Hours by Air (1936). He was a romantic who had a special way of visually enfolding the lovers in his movies that is almost Frank Borzage-like, and he glorifies very different women in what must be the best close-ups of their careers: look at some of the close-ups of the melancholy Sylvia Sidney in Behold My Wife! and then look at the close-ups of the wised-up Joan Bennett in 13 Hours by Air and see how Leisen gives them the same glamorizing treatment without ever losing what makes them so individual. Even pure assignments like Artists and Models Abroad (1938) glow with a kind of dreamlike assurance, as if to say, “Why shouldn’t a comedy look beautiful?”

And when Leisen had a meatier script, like Swing High, Swing Low (1937), which also starred Lombard and MacMurray, he was capable of virtuoso work that blended comedy and drama so seamlessly that it’s difficult to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. He did some Sturges-like slapstick for Easy Living, including the famous automat scene where the windows fly open and everybody grabs at the food, which was his idea. But for Remember the Night, Leisen pared down the Sturges script, cutting unnecessary scenes and verbose dialogue until he had what he wanted, a portrait of a hard-boiled woman who starts to long for the warmth of a “why not?” idealized mid-West home. Remember the Night is probably Leisen’s finest film, and a peak in his career, a comedy-drama or a dramatic comedy all whipped together until the consistency is exquisite and just right.

After the very sensitive Hold Back the Dawn (1941), a Wilder-Brackett script about a hard-boiled male gigolo (Charles Boyer) pretending to love a sheltered, repressed girl (Olivia de Havilland) until his feelings actually become genuine, Leisen’s career settled in for a few years to minor comedies, as if wartime austerity had affected his budgets, his scripts, and his imagination. In 1944, he did two movies in color, Lady in the Dark and Frenchman’s Creek, one anti-feminist and one feminist, and both rather nightmarishly disconnected and self-indulgent.

Leisen was going through a crisis in his personal life by the mid-1940s, and it showed in his work. He was mainly gay, but he didn’t want to be, and so he had married a fledgling opera singer (“a horror” according to the sharp-tongued Ray Milland) and he was carrying on a tortured affair with costumer Natalie Visart while also pursuing men. Leisen’s loyal secretary Eleanor Broder told David Chierichetti, the author of the definitive Leisen book, Mitchell Leisen: Hollywood Director, that her boss tried taking hormone shots at one point because he thought they might eradicate his homosexuality, but of course that didn’t work. Leisen lived with the pilot Eddie Anderson in the late 1930s, and Anderson left him for Shirley Ross, the actress who talk-sings “Thanks for the Memory” with Bob Hope in The Big Broadcast of 1938, an unusually sentimental scene within his work that Leisen insisted on. When that picture finished, he had a heart attack, and his health was never quite the same afterwards.

In the 1940s, after Visart had gotten pregnant with his child and lost it, Leisen took up with the dancer Billy Daniels, and his unhappiness grew. Daniels dances in what has to be Leisen’s worst feature, Masquerade in Mexico (1945), a semi-remake of Midnight that is so distracted and poorly timed that it would seem to give credence to Billy Wilder’s many complaints about Leisen over the years in interviews; if you were to watch Masquerade in Mexico right after Midnight, it would seem like a mark against Leisen as an artist in his own right rather than a servant of superior scripts where he could get them. Daniels is actually the only thing this movie has going for it: he’s an exciting dancer, and an intriguing screen presence, sexy, petulant, a little dangerous. Many in Leisen’s inner circle disliked Daniels, but maybe Masquerade in Mexico might work if it could just be Daniels dancing as Leisen watches.

The blandness of the décor in something like Suddenly It’s Spring (1947) is a real comedown from his Art Deco 1930s pictures, but Leisen rallied in this period with some of his best and most personal films, starting with Kitty (1945), a sumptuous Gainsborough period piece with all the trimmings and a Pygmalion subject that activates all of Leisen’s interest in pretending and “passing” as something you are not. Best of all from this time is Song of Surrender (1949), an uncommonly severe movie about a New England girl named Abigail (Wanda Hendrix) who finds a way out of her repressive environment by listening to music. What Abigail feels in Song of Surrender is surely what Leisen himself must have often felt as a young man growing up in the mid-West at the turn of the last century, and so this picture, which he said he didn’t much like, is his secret movie, his confession movie. It’s a great film, daringly stark and stripped-down, and it is as unerringly paced and controlled as all of his best 1930s work; there are moments when it feels like a precursor to Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) in its insistence on the will power needed for a woman to find aesthetic and sexual fulfillment.

Leisen did an intriguing noir with Stanwyck called No Man of Her Own (1950) and an overlooked, charming adaptation of J. M. Barrie called Darling, How Could You! (1951), which is filled with longing for family life that Leisen certainly knows is a fantasy like any of his others. (How poignant it is when Joan Fontaine says in that movie that if her children are going to love her they mustn’t “think me over first.”) He spent twenty years working at Paramount Studios, and he was a creature of the studio system; when the studio system went, so did he, but not before one more diverting small musical, The Girl Most Likely (1958), which was the last feature made at RKO. “When the studio decided we no longer needed a certain department, it was shut down and if we needed something after that, we had to make do ourselves,” Leisen said. “It was really eerie.”

Ill-health and an unwarranted reputation for spending too much money kept Leisen mainly working for TV in his last years, so that he was back to low budgets and bringing in his own furniture to dress his sets. He had been fired from Bedevilled (1955) for hitting on one of the straight actors he was working with (the actor complained to MGM), and this put another shadow over his reputation. He had made Fred MacMurray’s career, but when he tried to get work as a director on MacMurray’s hit TV show My Three Sons, it was no go. “He sent me a telegram asking for the job,” MacMurray said. “He was, well, you know, a homosexual and he had gotten into some trouble on a picture he was making in Europe. With the three young boys we had working on the show, I just didn’t think it was right. So I never answered the telegram.”

It was his women who stayed loyal to Leisen in his final years, both his secretary Broder (who was a lesbian), and his old lover Natalie Visart, who had never really gotten over her love for him and came to stay with him toward the end (Visart’s son Peter was killed in a gay-bashing in the 1970s). Leisen’s responses to David Chierichetti’s questions in their interview book are unfailingly candid, insightful, and juicy, but his standing has never ascended to the level of that of Preston Sturges or Billy Wilder, even though his visual style was far more developed than theirs, and his point of view arguably more sophisticated and certainly more kind-hearted. He was a romantic with an edge of disquiet, and this made for matchlessly rich pictures, pulsing with hope and with pain.

Leisen knew about all aspects of picture making, and he has the requisite number of classics for entrance to the pantheon, plus a whole slew of other pictures of interest. He made Remember the Night and Song of Surrender. He made Midnight and Kitty. And he made Easy Living and Darling, How Could You! Those are all heights, and from different periods, and they prove the consistency of his inventiveness and the distinctiveness of his talent. His creativity came out of personal unhappiness on the one hand and unprecedented creative license and support under the old Hollywood studio system on the other. We will not see that particular combination again.

by Dan Callahan

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the-original-b · 4 years ago

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Archangel--Chapter 4: the Orham Occurence

Format: Prose / Fiction, multi-entry

Part in Series: 5 of 9 (Previous Chapter | First Chapter)

Word Count: c. 7,300

Summary: the Specialist follows the trail of bodies to its apparent source, where his checkered past catches up with him in a way for which he could never have prepared.

Trigger warning(s): blood, (semi-graphic) violence

[A/N: this work of fiction is neither sponsored nor endorsed by Heckler & Koch, GmbH]

Bayview Hospital, Monday 8:46pm.

A fair-skinned woman in her mid-30s entered the building through the visitors’ entrance on the ground floor and walked up to the desk, wearing dark jeans, ankle boots and a thick scarf under a short black leather jacket. In her arms she carried a bouquet of flowers, and from the crook of her left elbow hung her handbag.

She made her way to the desk and got the receptionist’s attention. “Excuse me?” she said from behind the bouquet.

The receptionist looked up from behind his monitor.

“Hi,” she added with a smile. “I’m here to see Walter Mills. I’m his daughter, Jennifer Marshall.”

He ran a quick search for Mills’ case in hospital admissions, and scanned a registry of family members to find her name. “Ah, there you are, Miss Marshall.” He looked back up at her. “Do you have ID?”

“Yes, of course..!” Jennifer freed her right hand to fish in her handbag for her bi-fold wallet, which she opened one-handed, and dug her driver’s license out of the slit with two of her fingers while the other three held the wallet steady. When she was done she held the license out for him between her two fingers.

“That’s impressive,” he nodded, taking her ID. “With dexterity like that you must do a lot of work with your hands.”

“Sometimes,” she shrugged, “when the need arises.”

“I hear ya,” he added with a grin. He compared Jennifer’s face with the license picture. Unlike the picture her dark brown hair was down past her shoulders and she was wearing glasses with thick black frames in front of him, but behind the rectangular lenses were the same icy blue eyes featured in the picture. Her round face and full lips matched too. He briefly scanned the text on the document—her listed height of five feet seven inches seemed right from where he sat, and the rest of the listed information was previously verified. Finally he shined a barcode scanner onto the back of the license and, when it came back as a legitimate document, he handed her a visitor’s badge. “ICU suite 17,” he said. “Down the hall to your right, then hang a left when you get to the end, through the double doors. His room is the second on the right hand side. He’s still comatose after the accident, but I’m betting he’ll hear anything you have to tell him.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking the badge and clipping it to her open jacket’s zipper. “And I just come back here for the license when I’m done.”

“That’s right, miss. Return the pass and I’ll give you back your license.”

“Perfect, thank you.” She smiled warmly at the receptionist before turning to head down the hall, cradling the bouquet with both her hands.

She made her way to the end of the hall through the doors and turned left as the receptionist suggested, and counted two doors on her right hand side to arrive at ICU suite number 17. She took a quick, inconspicuous look around her to verify the only medical staff in the unit that night were with other patients, and crossed the doorway.

Jennifer stepped up beside Walter Mills, looking down at him on the bed, and exhaled. Then she placed the handbag and flowers down on a tabletop behind her, where other wilting arrangements were, and removed the bouquet sleeve. She spread the individual flowers apart just enough to expose a 1mL syringe loaded with a botulinum toxin solution. Her back turned to the hallway, she picked it up, unsheathed the needle and stuck it into the injection port on Walter Mills’ intravenous drip, fully depressing the plunger before removing the syringe and placing it back onto the table to re-sheathe the needle. A quick check over her left shoulder assured her she was still in the clear, but she had to move quickly. She neatly arranged the flowers she brought him with the others that were there from before, reclaimed her handbag and the now-empty syringe, turned on her heel, and strode out of the room to deposit the spent needle in a wall-mounted biohazard trash bin on her way out. Finally she turned right again, not back toward the way she came but deeper into the hospital.

A woman and her husband entered through the visitors’ entrance and made their way to the desk.

“Hey man,” the husband said. “Kurt and Jen Marshall to see Walter Mills.”

The receptionist looked up from his monitor, confused. “Didn’t you check in already, Miss Marshall?”

“What?” Jen Marshall shook her head as she stepped up to the desk. “No, no, I just got here with my husband.” Her exhaustion was audible.

“I still have your license here—” he looked down at the document on his desktop. The name listed was Jennifer Marshall, and the height and eye color were correctly listed, but the bone structure of the face was completely different.

Jen’s confusion and frustration began to bubble. “What are you talking about? My license is right here..! Please, just let me in so I can see my father.” Kurt wrapped a supportive arm around her shoulders.

Their attention was stolen by the chirp of a doctor’s pager. Panic washed over his face as the doctor read the message on the display and raced down the hall toward the ICU.

The same message was displayed on the receptionist’s pager—ICU suite number 17 was coding.

Jen could see something was terribly wrong. She began to hyperventilate at the possibility of her worst fears coming true, and Kurt held her tight with both arms. “What’s going on?” she stammered. “What’s happening??”

In the chaos, the assassin who introduced herself as Jennifer Marshall slipped unnoticed behind an employees-only door and traded her ankle boots for indoor cycling shoes she kept in her handbag. She continued down the hall, discarding the boots, handbag, glasses, and visitor’s badge in a trash chute along the way. She undid her scarf and wrapped each end around her hands, tying it tight around the neck of a custodian she passed by to incapacitate him. When she was sure he was unconscious, she wrapped her scarf back around herself and proceeded to the parking garage.

She deactivated the portable CCTV signal jammer she had in her jacket pocket when she entered the car. She pulled a flip phone out of her other pocket and speed-dialed a number. She held it to her ear long enough to hear the click of an answered phone on the other end.

“Contract T-A-three-oh-four-point-seven status update: closed.” Certain Arabic intonations lingered on her natural spoken tones, far from the suburban accent she mimicked before.

She shut the phone to end the call before it buzzed in her hand again. She read the message on the display—an open termination contract in Northeast Pennsylvania, marked to expire in twelve hours.

She was lucky enough to be within range to take the job. She opened the phone back up and dialed the number at the foot of the message “This is Nomad,” she said as soon as the other parties answered. “Responding to your Pennsylvania offering—send details and coordinates to this number.” Nomad shut the phone again and started the engine of her sedan.

~~~~

Krueger arrived at the Armory early the following Tuesday morning, clad in dark tactical gear, where Khai was waiting for him. Her dress was similar to his own—a thick black sweater and gray pants with mid boots.

“Good morning, Krueger,” she said. She had her hair tied back into a ponytail to keep it away from her face and out of her glasses. “I’ve already curated your selection for today.” She gestured the table down the hall. “Right this way,” she added, leading him to the new arrivals.

Krueger followed her down the hall, watching the sway of her hips for a moment before bringing his eyes back up to look directly ahead. “That’s a nice look for you, actually,” he noted.

She chuckled and looked back at him over her shoulder, smirking at him. “It looks much better on you, believe me.” She said playfully. “Here we are.” She presented the items she ordered for him, on display atop a table beside which a third man in a black jumpsuit stood. “I take it these need no introduction..?”

Krueger leaned over the table, examining the weapons he’d identified earlier in the invoice a few days ago. He looked over a USP, an MP5, an MP7, a G36, and a PSG-1—all firearms he had used during his time with KSK. “Nein,” he said sotto voce. “Ich bin vertraut.”

The .45-caliber USP Tactical was the obvious choice for his sidearm; this one featured a 12-round magazine, high-profile sights, barrel threading to accommodate a suppressor, a textured grip to reduce slippage, and serrations in the rear of the slide for easier cocking. As usual he held the gun out in front of him and dry-fired it to re-familiarize himself with the sight picture and trigger weight. “Suppressor?” he asked.

Khai nodded and handed him one. “Silencerco Octane HD.”

He attached the suppressor and raised the handgun again. When he approved, he set it aside and reviewed his options for close-quarters engagements. He examined the MP5 first; this one featured a built-in suppressor and collapsible stock with a 30-round 9mm magazine. He held it up to his shoulder and looked through the sights, then put it down and picked up the MP7. This one didn’t have a suppressor but fired small, high-velocity proprietary rounds that were better at penetrating armor than its predecessor. Its magazine held more rounds than the MP5, and the platform offered tactical furniture, a flip-down fore-grip, and collapsible stock. He made the conscientious decision to sacrifice stopping power for penetration and chose the MP7.

Once he set it aside with the pistol he considered his distance-combat options. He took a look at the G36, a rifle that entered service just about the same year he joined Special Forces. The 5.56mm NATO rounds, long barrel, and built-in optics would offer the range and precision he needed, but not the power to drop a target from a few hundred meters. He put the assault rifle down and picked up the PSG-1, a weapon literally named precision sharpshooter rifle. It was undeniably bulkier and heavier than the assault rifle, but its larger rounds hit much harder over longer ranges, and the proprietary 6x42 scope permanently affixed to the receiver would ensure they were on-target. He made his decision and went with the larger rifle.

Khai signaled the man in the jumpsuit to load the weapons into their cases.

Then Krueger headed over to another table and secured three magazines for each of his selections. He doubted he would have to use that much ammunition but he always felt it was better to have more than he needed. He turned to Khai after handing the magazines to the man in the black jumpsuit. “The rest of the equipment?” he asked.

“The drone is loaded in a van outside,” she said. “We’ll maintain communications via radio.” She handed him a headset with a microphone. “Put this on,” she instructed. While he did she sorted through stacks of broken and ill-maintained equipment to find a working radio. “Check,” she said into the mouthpiece. “Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” Krueger said.

“Excellent.” She lowered the communicator and motioned Krueger to take off his headset. “You’ll drive the van with the drone and the guns,” she continued when his headset was off and he could hear her again. “I’ll follow behind in another car. When we get there I’ll provide info with the drone and prepare for the retrieval of the server’s files.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“No,” she said, taking a few steps up to him and stopping less than a foot away. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk along the way.” Her gaze remained on him, looking up into his eyes as she placed her hand onto his chest. It remained there long enough for her to feel the beating of his heart. Then, she pulled her hand away and let the van keys she held up against him fall toward the floor. Krueger caught them instinctively and followed her back outside where the two cars were parked.

~~~~

Ninety minutes into their trip, their conversation continued.

“Okay,” Khai laughed over the radio. “I’ve got one—easiest money you’ve ever made..?”

Krueger, in the van ahead of her on I-80, replayed every assignment he’d been a part of since leaving Special Forces. “That would have to be when I was sent to kill the leader of the Sen Guren clan and retrieve his sword. It must have been four years ago.”

“You killed Takahashi Genbu?”

“No, actually,” he affirmed. “By the time I got there the clan begun tearing itself apart and he was already dead. I never did find the sword, but I got paid without having to raise a hand, so I didn’t care if they withheld the bonus.”

“That is easy,” she said. She changed lanes to stay behind him. “Pretty hard to beat getting paid just to show up… toughest job?”

“Oh, no contest there,” he said. “The Laos-Cambodia border—my team and I put a resistance cell down for a warlord in 2012.” He spat the words out quickly, still not comfortable with them after so long. “And you? Hardest thing about working with the Branch?”

Khai put the radio to her lip for a bit before answering. “Having to leave home for it,” she finally said. “I mentioned I grew up with the Partners?”

“You mentioned that over lunch the other day, yes.” Even if she hadn’t, the framed picture on Everett’s desk would have lead him to the same conclusion.

“When the Branch was in the red back in Oh-Six, they had me move across the country to provide support for somebody I didn’t even know. I was terrified,” she continued. “Twenty-two year old girl right out of college, working a high level job in a brand-new city. If not for Henry I don’t know if I would have made it.”

“I’d say you adjusted well. When I first saw you I thought you’d been doing it all your life.”

Khai exhaled. “I did, yeah. But I still miss my mom’s rose garden sometimes.”

Krueger thought for a little before asking his next question. “Do you ever get lonely?” he finally inquired.

“Sometimes,” Khai offered after a moment’s silence. “The big empty house certainly doesn’t help that. I do get to socialize every now and again but nothing outside the family, so to speak. It would be tough to explain my role in a criminal enterprise to just any handsome fellow I meet at happy hour, you know?”

“I imagine it would be… have you ever found someone?”

Khai was quiet before she answered again. “I thought I did once or twice. But they both stopped calling after a while, which in this line of work means they probably ended up killed… that dread, that fear of probable death, it makes it hard to get close to some people.”

That was something Krueger understood very well. “I’ve got two ex-wives who would agree with you on that,” he said.

“You’ve mentioned Emma once, who was the other one again?”

“Jocelyn,” Krueger said. “She’s in Essen.”

“And you said your son, Alexander, is in Düsseldorf, right?”

“Correct.”

“Do you ever miss them?”

“Absolutely,” Krueger said. “But it isn’t like I can ever go back home and stay. I have to travel where the work takes me.”

Khai shook her head. “That’s terrible,” she said. “You must be so lonely.”

Krueger let himself absorb the sorrow in her voice. “No,” he said. “I’m not really lacking companionship. Just stability.”

~~~~

They arrived at an old nature preserve a few miles off of I-81. Krueger took the van a few miles down a dirt path before pulling over and stepping out. Surrounded by dense greenery in every direction and comfortably tucked away from any prying eyes, he opened the van’s back doors and unfastened the straps holding the quad-rotor recon drone to the cargo bay floor. He hit two switches on its port side before carrying it out and kneeling to place it onto the ground.

“Peek-a-boo,” Khai jested, her voice crackling in his headset. She sat in the other car a quarter mile up the road from him with a tablet computer in her lap from which she could control the recon drone.

Krueger looked at the camera—at Khai—and smirked. “That answers my next question..!” he said into his microphone. He stood up and took a few steps back. “Alright, start the drone.” The rotors began spinning with a surprisingly quiet hum. “Huh. Not as loud as I expected,” he noted.

“It’s designed for stealth,” Khai said. “They couldn’t have it sounding like a table saw while surveying a point of interest.”

“Of course they couldn’t… Now raise altitude three meters.” Khai took the drone up in the air ten feet and maintained altitude. “Descend one meter.” The drone crept down a few inches per second before stopping at the mark Krueger designated. “Forward one meter.” Khai did as instructed, taking the drone forward until it was almost directly above Krueger. “Reverse one.” The drone reclaimed its original position. “Yaw left thirty degrees… now right. Good, now strafe right one meter.” Khai followed his instructions and completed the test run of the drone. “Now left one… Perfect.” He returned to the open cargo bay and pulled out the duffel bag carrying his weapon cases. He squatted down next to them. “Do we know where Orham’s cabin is from here?”

“My associate in Brooklyn couldn’t get an exact position, but it’s in there somewhere. Give me a moment…” The drone’s rotors buzzed to life again, and it zipped up a few hundred feet above him with a quiet hiss and disappeared from his sight.

Krueger opened the cases and sorted out the weapons and ammunition, fixing the MP7 to himself with its sling and placing three magazines into slots on the vest he wore over the jacket. Then he took one five-round 7.62mm NATO magazine to carry as a spare, and loaded a second into the PSG-1. He hit the charging handle and chambered the first round before switching the fire selector to SAFE and hoisting it over his other shoulder.

“Got it,” Khai said. “It’s about a half-mile southeast of you. Personnel on site. They’re armed—looks like 9mm PDWs… Hold on, there’s at least one carrying a five-five-six.”

Krueger stood up as he finished constructing the tripod for his rifle, and made adjustments to the weapon’s grip and cheek rest. “How long before you have a head count?” Then he put a combat knife into a sheath on his belt and pocketed a handful of thermite charges before starting in the direction of the cabin.

“I’ll get you a definitive figure by the time you’re there.”

Krueger moved through the dense forest, mindful of where he put his feet to avoid breaking twigs on the ground and potentially giving his position away. He slowed his movement down and maintained a lower profile as he approached a clearing, and stopped completely at its edge just as the cabin came into view; even without the scope he could identify at least half a dozen people on patrol around the lodge. Krueger decided this was as good a place as any to set up position.

He knelt down and placed the tripod on a fallen log, and rested the rifle on its cradle to peer through the scope. The men around the cabin wore hunting jackets, blue jeans, and work boots—they were either armed amateurs or trained professionals, it was impossible to tell without getting closer.

“I’m in position,” Krueger whispered into the headset receiver. “Northwest corner of the clearing. I can see seven of them from here.”

“I see you,” Khai reported. “There are nine more of them on the other side of the cabin, who knows how many more are inside.”

“I suppose we’ll find out when we’re there.” Krueger thumbed the safety off the rifle and held his finger beside the trigger. He knew the moment he squeezed he would give his location away, and he would either have to scramble to find a new post before shooting again or put as many of them down as possible with five rounds in the magazine. Either way all hell was going to break loose after the first shot. “I have a shot on their rifleman on the roof,” he noted, adjusting his angle and lining up the crosshairs.

“Hold it,” Khai said. “I’ve got movement on the east side.”

Krueger pulled away from the scope to look in the direction she noted. “Reinforcements?”

Khai took a moment to study the newcomers. “Not likely.”

Krueger turned his rifle in that same direction to get a better look at them. After a second or two he spotted one of them—clad in black tactical gear and a face mask and carrying a bullpup automatic rifle he couldn’t identify. He spotted two more, similarly armed and dressed. “Then they’re here for the same reason we are..! How many?”

“I see eight of them.” Khai tried to keep herself from panicking.

Krueger sighted one of the newcomers in black gear and inhaled as he lined the crosshairs. He slipped his finger in front of the trigger and slowly exhaled as he braced the rifle against his shoulder. He shut one eye and squeezed the trigger.

The crack of the rifle split the afternoon air in two as he watched his target fall through the scope. In that instant the other intruders dropped to the floor; he didn’t stay there long enough to see what happened next. He pulled the rifle away and turned over onto his back behind the log as he imagined what would follow:

Orham’s men would turn toward the direction of the gunshot, and a few would slowly advance with their weapons at the ready. They wouldn’t get too far before they crossed the intruders’ line of sight, they would open fire on Orham’s people and the two factions would start trading shots shortly afterward.

A distant pop-pop and subsequent rattling of gunfire proved him right.

Krueger kept close to the ground as he moved east to get a better angle on the intruders. He got set up and was able to fire two more times to put one down before having to relocate again. He retraced his steps and headed west, circling around the back of the cabin to get a better shots on Orham’s forces.

He raised the rifle just in time to watch one of the intruders sneak up behind one of them and plunge a shiny piece of metal—maybe a large knife or machete—into his neck and toss him aside on the way toward what looked like a basement entrance. This intruder was different from the others he saw earlier. The gear was similar enough but this one wore a half-mask that covered the mouth and nose, and wore dark sunglasses partially obscured by side bangs. The rest of the intruder’s dark brown hair was tied in a braid that came down past the shoulder blades.

He could see now, this intruder—a woman judging by her hair and the way she moved and filled her pants—was a cut above the others with her. This was their leader, a deadly professional. “Khai, do you see this? West side of the cabin. “I think I just found another specialist.”

“There’s more of you out there?” she said, her voice in his ear as if she were right beside him.

“No,” he replied, standing up and firing twice at the other specialist. She slipped behind cover after the first impact in a wall near her. “There’s only one of me.” He swapped the spent magazine for a fresh one and raised the rifle to his eye again to reacquire her, but she was gone, out of sight to breach the cabin from some other entrance. “They’ve made it to the cabin,” he said, placing the rifle on the ground and loading his MP7. “No time to fight them from afar, I have to get there now..!” Krueger sprang out of cover and rushed for the basement entrance.

He had to stop behind a wide tree to exchange fire with one of the intruders. After putting him down with two bursts from his carbine he broke from cover again and made it to the basement door, where he placed one of his thermite charges onto the lock to cut into the space. He engaged another of the intruders from behind partial cover as the compound burned through the metal.

~~~~

Orham’s forces began retreating back into the cabin. One of them held a two-way radio up to his mouth as he led two more into the house via a second-floor balcony. “We’re getting killed up here,” he said into the receiver. “Hurry the hell up and finish whatever you’re doing!”

“They’re breathing down my neck too,” Orham said on the other side. There’s one outside trying to cut into the basement as we speak.”

“When this is over, we’re gonna have to have a serious talk about your definition of easy money.”

“You think I expected them to send professionals? I don’t deal with this high-level black ops shit.”

“You started to deal in high-level black ops shit when you bugged that Simon guy’s office. You should have known they’d come with the steam roller.”

During their exchange, the professional made her way to the balcony. Slowly, deliberately, she pulled herself up and over the rail into a handstand and front walkover to clear the banister and land silently on the other side. She stayed low as she approached the three of them from behind and placed her hand on the hilt of a wakizashi sword, drawing it from its scabbard on her left hip slowly. In a flash she cupped her hand over the mouth of the man closest to her and thrust the short blade through his back and out his chest. As he hit the floor the others turned to face her; the first was cut down by a lightning-fast forehand diagonal slice and high horizontal one, the second was floored by a spinning side kick before he could point his gun and fire. The assassin turned the blade downward and plunged it into the man’s chest with both hands and remained there until he lost consciousness beneath her.

“What was that?” Orham’s voice coming through the walkie-talkie.

The assassin looked over to the radio and picked it up.

“Hello?”

She thumbed the power switch off and discarded the device as she pulled her sword from her victim. She cleared the blood from the blade with a flick of her wrist and returned it to its sheath before activating her own communicator. “It’s Nomad,” she said. “I’m inside on the top floor.”

“Copy,” one of the answered. “The basement entrance is locked down; we’ve taken casualties and can’t provide assistance. They’ve got somebody there, he’s trained and trained well.”

“Finish the others and fall back to secure our exit,” she commanded. She slid a fresh magazine into a Five-seven USG and chambered the first round. “He’s mine.”

~~~~

“It looks like they’re pulling away,” Khai said. “One came in through a second-floor window, probably stayed behind to get the data.”

Krueger knew who she was talking about. “Then we better beat her to it.”

“Once you’re inside I won’t have eyes on you anymore. You’ll be on your own.”

“Then I won’t take long.” He stacked up against the doorway and clutched his USP to his chest.

“Good luck in there.”

Through his gloves he gripped the door’s edge with his fingertips and flung it open, staying behind to wait for gunfire. When none came his way, he raised the weapon and crossed the doorway. “Heimdallr,” he called. “Miles Orham!”

Orham scrambled to his feet and went for the stairwell.

Krueger took off in a sprint after the young man, throwing all one hundred and seventy-six pounds of himself into Orham and careening into the wall. “I’m not getting paid to hurt you,” he warned, “so don’t make me..!”

“You don’t want to do that!” Orham pleaded. He was a small-framed guy young enough to be Krueger’s son with fair skin and light brown hair.

“And why is that?”

“You ever hear of a Dead Man’s Trigger? The moment I flatline, the servers dump their memory. Then they’re destroyed.”

Krueger quickly scanned the room around them, noting plastic gallon-jugs loaded with what he concluded was either water or a caustic solution fixed to the walls behind the computers. The jugs were wired to small explosive charges.

“And then there’s the encryption. If you want the data, your best bet is to keep me alive.”

“I hate to say it,” Khai noted, “but he’s right.”

Krueger exhaled a quiet sigh of relief that she could at least hear what was going on inside. “Then get to work and start decrypting.”

“Like hell I will—!”

Krueger grabbed Orham’s right hand and bent one of his fingers back with his thumb, nearly breaking it.

“Okay, okay!” he yelped. “Yes, I will..!” He led Krueger back across the room to his workstation. “Jesus,” he winced rubbing the finger with his other hand. “I’m a righty you know, I can’t work with a broken hand.”

“Then you better learn with your left,” he commented.

~~~~

Nomad watched their exchange from the shadows behind a table. When the time was right she slowly peered around its corner and raised her Five-seven, placing the sights over Krueger.

Krueger inserted the USB antenna into Orham’s workstation and turned to face the stairwell. “Transmitter is in,” he said. “Are you getting it?”

Nomad caught a glimpse of his profile as she heard him speak. Realizing who it was standing before her, she lowered the gun. She couldn’t bring herself to kill him but she still had a job to do; she slowly stood up and raised the gun again, pointing it at Orham.

“I’m getting everything,” Khai said. “ETA to completion, sixty seconds—”

They were interrupted by the loud crack of a handgun firing in a confined space. In that instant Krueger dove to his right and pointed his own gun at the source, but was too late. Nomad was already on the move, bounding over the table and heading toward the stairwell.

Krueger shot a quick glance over to where Orham sat, now slumped over his workstation face-down, blood on the monitor. More of it leaked out of the exit wound in his forehead onto the keyboard. How long had she been there? How much of their exchange did she hear? And why didn’t she shoot him? “Khai,” he exclaimed as he got to his feet. “She just took Orham out, I’m in pursuit..!”

He sprang off the floor and chased her up the stairs, nearly tripping over the severed arm of one of the late Orham’s men as he turned the corner. She moved like the perfect predator, bounding effortlessly over overturned chairs and tables, skipping over bodies and seemingly flying from one end of the ground floor to the other, nimble in a way Krueger hadn’t been for years. He managed to keep up with her, but eventually she pulled away from him as he turned the corner of another stairwell.

He made it to the second floor and advanced on a closed door with his handgun raised. He had no sooner crossed it than had the gun kicked from his hands across the room. He wove under a second kick and returned fire with a right hook which she blocked, and he caught the jab she threw in response before firing a knee into her ribs to get some distance. He scanned the room around them, noting the balcony behind her and the other three bodies on the floor in the room with them, all the while keeping an eye on the sword on her hip. He held his hand over his knife, wondering why she didn’t use it earlier; her still-covered face and eyes weren’t giving him any clues.

Krueger unsheathed the weapon and held it with its blade pointed down in front of his face; Nomad replied by raising both her hands into an open-handed fighting stance. He sprang toward her and started swinging, changing the direction of the blade with each attack but still failing to cut her as she wove between each of them. Finally, she stopped the swing of his weapon with a quick strike to his forearm before taking hold of his wrist and pressing the blade of her other hand against the flat of the knife to pry it from his grip and fling it across the room. She reestablished their distance with a side kick to his stomach.

As Krueger lurched backward and reclaimed his footing it became clearer to him: she wasn’t trying to kill him. She was testing him, measuring her skills against his. She had accomplished her mission already—now that she was done with work, she took some time to play before leaving.

“Do you have… the slightest idea,” Krueger uttered between breaths, “what you just cost me?” He engaged Nomad again, exchanging a string of close-quarters fist, palm, and elbow strikes that she defended and retaliated against which he in turn defended against. Deadlocked between countered strikes she backed away to lead him toward the center of the room before she restrained his hands and swept him to the floor, gaining a position on top of him, crossing her wrists over his throat and grabbing hold of his jacket collar with each hand to press the blades of her hands into his neck and cut off his brain’s supply of oxygen.

Krueger armed a thermite charge and placed it in her jacket pocket before she could lock the choke in. Once she realized what happened she sprang to her feet and cast the jacket to the corner of the room where it burst into flames. Under the jacket she wore a dark green A-shirt that highlighted her toned, feminine figure.

Krueger stood back up to look at her again, and froze when he recognized the half-sleeve of dense tiger stripes tattooed on her left arm and shoulder, identical to his own. It all made sense now, the reason she didn’t take any of the numerous opportunities she had to kill or maim him, why he couldn’t beat her in hand-to-hand combat. It was her. She was the other specialist.

Nomad relaxed her stance when she acknowledged the expression in his eyes. “When I heard I would be competing with another professional,” she began in her native accent, “I didn’t want it to be you.” She pulled her mask down to reveal her round face and full lips to him, and discarded her dark lenses to look at him with her icy blue eyes. “But in a way, I’m happy it was…” She shifted her weight to one side and placed one hand on her hip. “How long has it been, Archangel?”

Since 2012, when the only other four people on earth with those tattoos were killed near the Laos-Cambodia border. “That’s not my name anymore, Seza.”

“It is,” Seza said, taking a few measured steps toward him. “That’s what the others called you.” She stood inches from him, looking up into his eyes. “That’s what I first called you…” she whispered, bringing her hands up around the base of his neck and pulling herself against him as her lips parted. “Remember?”

She gave him a long, heated kiss, holding him close with her arms wrapped completely around him. He hesitated at first, but reciprocated her passion as all the years between now and those nights they spent together evaporated. Their embrace escalated, his hands riding up her thighs and her tongue between his lips. Krueger’s hands came to a stop on her hips before he gently pushed her away to break them up and come back to his senses. He let his forehead touch hers for a moment as he exhaled and fought to reclaim himself before opening his eyes again. “Who sent you here?” he finally asked her. “Why did they want Orham dead?”

“You know I won’t share that,” she said. Her disappointment at his ending their embrace prematurely was there for half an instant before vanishing back behind her eyes. Her left hand still lingered on his belt.

“Of course,” he noted. “Rules of the trade.” He backed away from her, letting her hand fall away from him. “Good to see you’ve held onto what I taught you. I’d even say in some ways you’ve outgrown me.” He motioned the carnage around them. “Who gave you the blade?”

Seza crossed her arms. “Takahashi didn’t need it after I killed him,” she replied, straight-faced.

Even back then she was running circles around him. Krueger was proud of her; she had grown out of his shadow into a capable fighter and iron-willed person. But still he feared for her safety. “Walk away, Seza,” he said to her. “Not just from this cabin, but from all of this. The life, the taking work for dangerous people, all of it. Don’t let what happened to the others happen to you too.”

After all these years, here he was, still trying to protect her. She shut her eyes and let a breath out to suppress the feelings she still had for him. “I can’t walk away,” she said. “Not after what happened to them.” She shot a look over her shoulder in response to the revving of a small engine. “I thought you would understand that, Archangel.” Then she turned on her heel and sprinted for the balcony behind her, vaulting clear over banister and falling out of Krueger’s sight.

Krueger darted to the lookout after her, leaning over the rail to watch her speed away on the back of a dirt bike driven by one of her associates. The two of them disappeared into the trees over the wail of the cycle, leaving Krueger behind among the wreckage.

“Who’s she?” Khai finally inquired after ten seconds of silence.

In all of that time, he’d forgotten she was listening in. “How much of that did you hear?”

“All of it.” In his mind’s eye she could see her accusatory glare. “So, who’s she?”

Krueger frowned as he looked to the distance, in the direction Seza took off. “We… worked together once.” He turned back around to reclaim his knife and handgun from opposite sides of the room while what remained of Seza’s jacket smoldered in the corner.

“That certainly is one way to put it…”

Krueger didn’t respond to her. He headed downstairs for a fire extinguisher to stop the jacket from starting a forest fire, and when he was done he started for the exit, heading back to reclaim his sniper rifle and tripod before leaving.

~~~~

Not a single word was spoken between the two of them during their three-hour trip back. They only spoke again after coming face-to-face outside the Armory in lower Manhattan.

“What did we get from Orham’s servers?” Krueger finally asked.

Khai took a breath. “One and a half percent,” she said. “It’ll be some time before whatever we can salvage becomes useful, but given the scope of what we lost…” Khai shifted her gaze to avoid his eyes and shook her head, defeated. “I don’t think it’ll make a difference, honestly.”

“I suppose we’ll wait and see,” he noted, matching her tone. He stood there looking at her, wanting to apologize to her. For not being good enough, for letting Orham die, for Seza, for anything. For everything. But he didn’t know where to even begin. So instead he turned away. “Take care, Miss Khai.”

Khai watched him leave. She could see the pain in his expression but didn’t act fast enough to offer consolation. She left the loaded van with the armory technicians and went for her own car.

She didn’t return to the Branch office on Sixth Avenue. She went up the Henry Hudson Parkway on the west side and headed straight home to Westchester. Once there she stepped out of her boots and socks and stayed a moment in the foyer to enjoy the heat radiating from the floor tiles before heading up the spiral stairs and washing her face in the bathroom.

She traded her sweater for a cozier t-shirt and returned to the kitchen, replacing the water and filter in her coffee maker and spooning fresh coffee grounds into it. She hit the switch and placed her favorite mug under the spout, then went to her patio door and wrapped her arms around herself while she watched the sun set behind the trees and delayed making the phone call she was dreading.

She replayed the day’s events over and again in her head until the coffee maker’s gurgling called her attention to it once again. She shut the machine off and retrieved her full mug before returning to her spot at the patio door. She held the mug with both hands and sipped slowly, finding joy in the heels of the day she just had. She even considered spiking it with Irish cream but opted out, since she needed to remain clear-headed for her conference with him.

When she finally mustered the courage to dial her boss, she took a seat at the kitchen table and held the phone to her ear.

“There’s been a complication, sir,” she said. Her tone was flat to keep it from wobbling. “Another group arrived about the same time we did, and in the fight that followed… we unfortunately lost the data.”

The voice that responded was a fruity, sonorous, masculine baritone. “Do we know who they were with?” There wasn’t a trace of reprimand in the way he spoke to her.

“No, sir. As far as I can tell they were independent contractors.”

“And we don’t know who it was that hired them…”

Khai swallowed. “No, sir.”

After an agonizing seven-second silence, the voice on the other side spoke again. “Until we can prove otherwise, we have to assume this was an inside job,” the voice said. “Keep a closer watch on Simon. Monitor his emails and phone records, and forward anything you find suspicious to me or the other Partners.”

“Understood,” Khai nodded. She took from her coffee mug and asked a follow-up question. “What about our specialist?”

The voice considered for a moment. “I think it’s time we brought him up to speed. Let him know to whom you report, and have him stand by for further instructions.”

“Yes, sir.”

“None of this is your fault, Miss Khai,” the voice reassured her. “Remember that. And remember there’s no one I and the others trust more to solve this problem than you. I have faith you’ll get to the bottom of this, and regain control of the situation.”

Khai let out a quiet sigh of relief. “Thank you, sir.”

“I’ll speak to you again soon. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

“Good night, Mr. Hayden.” Khai hit the button to end the call and stood back up, reclaiming her spot at the patio door with her coffee as she watched the last of the sun’s rays disappear completely.

(Next Chapter | Masterlist)

#fiction #Original Work #original content #original fiction #prose #creative writing #drama #crime fiction

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orcinusorca1617 · 5 years ago

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Let's Give 'Em Something to Talk About astoriamalfoys

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks her, a wry smile twisting his lips. Jyn ducks her head. “Nightmares or the medicine?”

It’s meant to be an easy conversation, but she says, “I was worried about you,” and his heart stutters to a staccato instead.

Han x Leia captainkitten

Important Thing of Awesomeness™ meets Dumpster Fire of a Human Being™

REYLO

we could plant a house, we could build a tree Like_A_Dove

Ben takes a deep breath. “It’s—it’s a project. Conceptual art. You wouldn’t get it.”

Rey presses her lips together to keep from laughing. She plans her next words quickly and carefully, determining what will get her the best reaction. “Really? Looks like you ruined a bedsheet to me.”

His reaction does not disappoint. “Get out.”

Parenthood (series) pontmercy44

What to expect when you're expecting the child of a rich, womanizing, alcoholic, unredeemable asshole? And what to do when the unexpected, improbable, irrational happens?

What She's Worth g_girl143

After being sent to train under his uncle in the Jedi academy, Ben Solo meets a youngling girl who would change the course of his life. An alternative universe companion fic for Claudia Gray's "Bloodline" novel. A scenario in which Ben Solo and Rey are fellow students of Luke's Jedi Academy and the events that led to the birth of Kylo Ren.

A Proposal by Any Other Name LucidLucy

Rey and Finn have been A Thing for a long time now. Since she was eighteen, to be exact. When Finn leaves on a trip to Europe for six months for work, Rey finally chases after him to Dublin to do what he seems to be putting off: propose. | Leap Year AU

If You Trust What's in Your Heart (What Better Can You Do) TheJGatsby

After the war, Rey likes to savor the peace on her own sometimes. Then she's not alone anymore.

Black Gloves, Orange Soup Solia

While the dwindling Rebellion starves, awaiting their chance to attack a First Order supply vessel, Rey is trying to keep busy repairing the lightsaber. As luck would have it, her Force-bonded rival Kylo Ren is knowledgeable on the subject and keen to help, but he is also very... distracting.

A Good Fall ohwise1ne

Ben Solo refuses to take a stunt double and pays the price when he breaks his leg filming his latest action blockbuster. His new physical therapist, Rey Sanders, seems to be the only person in Hollywood who doesn’t recognize the infamous Kylo Ren – and for some reason, he finds himself fighting to keep it that way.

A Royal Mistake reyofdarkness

Ben Solo (aka The Playboy Prince): Prince of Alderaan and tabloid sensation, never seen with the same girl twice.

Rey: Mechanic, blissfully unaware of Ben Solo's very existence.

Until Paige recruits her for a night servicing the Met Gala, host to a diverse class of guests, including royalty. It is there that a chance encounter gets Rey caught up in a pair of pretty eyes and a charming personality that she knows she should stay far, far away from. The universe, however, seems to have other plans. Hot Tip: Don’t look up your crush’s sex tape.

The End of a String Silvershine

A bridge still exists between the Supreme Leader of the First Order and the rebel known as Rey. As the connection winds tighter, the line between enemy and friend continues to blur, and Rey's loyalties are called into question. A force bond can bring companionship and support, but it's not without its dangers... or delights.

No Ill Will Castiloar

His face set into a resigned expression before tapping his phone with a final flourish, sending whatever excuse he made. She almost jumped when he squarely met her gaze. “Me? Your hostage? I’d almost think you like having me here.” Even with the congestion he managed to drop his voice low enough to make the quip weigh heavy.

variations on a theme of you disasterisms

"Who knows?" Luke darted a faint smile at Ben and Rey as they stewed in silence and disbelief. "The two of you might even learn to get along. Right, Leia?"

"Like a house on fire," the General deadpanned. "Complete with screams, flames, and people running for safety."

"Indeed." Luke's blue eyes twinkled. "There may be no survivors."

As Hard As I Try... KKetura

When her friends find out about her force bond with Kylo Ren, Rey finds herself more alone than ever. But in her forced solitude, she slowly discovers a better understanding of herself and the man to whom she's inextricably linked.

lying restless (as the dawn comes near) TheJGatsby

They have a tradition for nightmares.

you gotta stop doing that semi-hiatus

She caught herself right before the words ‘you gotta stop doing that’ slipped from her lips, saving her from having the explain why she randomly started talking to herself in the hallway.

Why Her? Aramenialys

Just one last battle. One. Then they can be done and put everything behind them. That was the plan. Then it's smashed to bits, and Kylo has to figure out how to come back from tragedy and form a new one. A short drabble/oneshot about Rey dying and (redeemed) Kylo learning to cope.

Quiet issueswithjedipedagogy

He wasn’t sleeping. She had caught sight of him in the darkness, blinking awake to the strange vacuum the bond created around her; the quiet focus on two souls that seemed to make everything else fall away.

Soft Things catmusing

Kylo Ren wakes up aboard a familiar and yet unknown ship. His body aches and it hurts to remember but there is Rey of light.

Aphelion ambiguously

Stranded on a barren planet together, Rey and Kylo Ren have only each other to help them survive.

Vulnerability and Soft Hair smallenoughtofit

After two years with the Resistance, Kylo Ren still lacks any real security or relationships outside of his tenuous whatever-this-is with Rey. And Rey still wonders what his hair feels like.

the remedy is the experience (i won't worry my life away) TheJGatsby

Rey gets sick, and she isn't very good at letting people look after her.

Proper Sleep tearoomsaloon

Much to her frustration, Rey can no longer properly sleep unless she's snuggled between Ben's glorious pecs

ad infinitum hyperphonic

for the prompt: Rey and Kylo telling Leia, Rey is pregnant. Leia had no clue.

any way you want it thegoodlannister

rey helps ben begin to work through the process of making decisions - even really simple ones - for himself. rehabilitation is a slow process in the aftermath of the mess snoke has spent three decades making of ben's mind.

It Will Come Back ReyloTrashCompactor

“Honey, don’t feed it. It will come back”

A Series of Firsts Tandy

Ben (or is it Ren?) and Rey sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love and then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage.

A story told in firsts.

Dark Prism whythokylo (OpalElephant)

Rey awakens again, except this time it's to a life she can't recall with a man she only knows as her enemy. My attempt at a long form, dark AU. (Formerly titled Aphelion)

A Few Small Repairs TourmalineGreen

Rey buried her face in her blankets. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t going to allow herself to feel anything. Rain was just water, and so were tears. It would all dry, in time. The storm would pass, and then she’d keep going. That’s how it always had been, and that’s how it was going to be.

She would be alright, after this. She would find a way, find something…

what ails you thegoodlannister

or: three times ben solo was sick and one time kylo ren was. unabashed reylo and even more unabashed hurt/comfort.

100 Ways to Say I Love You AquaWolfGirl

Taken from a list on Tumblr of 100 Ways To Say I Love You, 100 little oneshots leading up to Valentine's Day.

I'm always in this twilight (in the shadow of your heart) disasterisms

Coded on a secondhand datapad in a run-down motel room in Mos Eisley, deleted and never sent: Everything about us was a whirlwind.

Written on a scrap of durasheet in a Tion Cluster outpost, the words fading after a while into air and ghosts: You shouldn't have forgiven me for any of it.

Scraped into the bark of an oak tree on the Argazdan homeworld: You won't believe the dreams I have about you.

the one with the lust writing-reylo

She has bigger things to worry about than that.

The most pressing of which is reclining in her bed, shirtless.

“Can you move?” She asks, unwinding her scarf and shrugging off her huge jacket.

Milking It thewayofthetrashcompactor

“Rey.”

The voice was deep and familiar, rough with exhaustion, and echoed across the gap closed by the Force.

She ignored it, hunched over on the edge of the cot she'd been sleeping on. She wanted nothing more than to lean back and curl up into an unconscious ball again, but another voice, this one much closer, called her name again.

morning in the burned house disasterisms

Leia's not really surprised at all, to be honest, but, for the sake of his pride, she should probably pretend to be.

find a thread to pull, and we can watch it unravel again_please

The war is over, Snoke dead at Rey and Kylo's hands. The two of them find themselves feeling a bit out of place as the Resistance celebrates and decide that the answer is a bit of good old fashioned Corellian whiskey. Enjoyed responsibly, of course. And in private.

Because You're There disasterisms

Three years ago, Rey had not yet climbed Everest.

Presenting the first half of my fic/art trade with the lovely lilithsaur, based on her trash triplets x 2 universe. The gist is that there are three Solo boys— Kylo, Ben, and Matt (the character from Adam Driver's SNL skit)— and three Kenobi girls— Kira (dark Rey), Rey, and Daisy (undercover Rey).

Sword of the Jedi (series) diasterisms

“What do you think?” Luke asks his nephew. “She has potential.”

“She bit me, Master,” is Ben’s stiff response. “Any opinion I give would be biased.”

Or: Everyone is connected, even if, sometimes, it's just by the skin of our teeth. Even in the midst of darkness, still, luminous beings are we.

Reign OptimisticBeth

Alternate Ending to "The Last Jedi." Rey accepts Kylo Ren’s offer in return for the lives of the retreating ships.

Political maneuvering is not Rey's forte. She must adjust to life as the First Order's first lady, making friends and enemies along the way and indulging in sweet awkward romance with her Ben.

Burgeoning Hope crossingwinter

#ShesPregnantAndHesDumbAndHasntLeftHisJobYet

miles from where you are mooncactus

After an argument over Star Wars fandom with a "gatekeeping, entitled monster" with the cryptic username of KyloRen, Rey finds herself stuck in a series of unavoidable video calls.

Prisoner orphan_account

Rey has been running all her life. She had known since she was a small girl that she was born with the powers that had been cursed and labeled evil by the galaxy. Running had worked for so long, that she was almost surprised when the bounty hunter Kylo Ren had caught her trail. But they might have more in common than they both originally thought.

Hand of Fate sweetestcondition

Rey is offered a choice at the end of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. This time, she takes the hand of Kylo Ren, grasping at the chance to transform the First Order from the inside. She hopes to create a Resistance from within, starting with the heart of Ben Solo. | feat. KoR, Kezzik

keep me in your clouded mind hi_raeth

Flu season has claimed its latest victim: Rey’s roommate, Ben Solo. But it’s fine. She’ll get him dressed, bring him to the hospital, and everything will be okay. Things are totally under control.

Except for the part where Ben has completely lost his verbal filter and keeps babbling about his feelings for her.

Exile Ernzo

The war is over and the First Order has fallen. Ben has returned home to face his consequences.

A story of Rey and Ben finding peace in the aftermath of war as Ben accepts his punishment.

made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter disasterisms

The First Order does not exist, what is dead stays dead, and they grow up together at Luke's Jedi Academy.

Or: The one where everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

(Then again, it's Ben and Rey, so maybe things hurt a little.)

A little ginger, a little honey Areah51

Rey is sick, and Ben shows up where he's not wanted, but in the end, we all need someone to take care of us when we're ill.

my wildest wind (come blow into my room) meritmut

“Would it have been so terrible?” he asks. “Staying?”

Could we have had this? she thinks, like she always does.

Non-consecutive ForceTime vignettes in the days, weeks and months after Crait.

Play to Win Enterprisingly

Ben Solo – aka KyloRen – is a professional gamer, playing the first-person-shooter StarKiller for the internationally ranked eSports team, The First Order. He’s made a name for himself as a ruthless competitor with a ferocious temper and top-notch skills that can’t be beat. That is, until a mystery player named ReyOfLight begins thoroughly trouncing him whenever they cross paths.

Unwell AquaWolfGirl

Jakku was cold, but nothing compared to Hoth. While staying at the old Rebel base, Rey catches a cold, and someone is a huge worry wart over the woman who denied his offer.

The One Where He Decides writing_reylo

He’s on the bridge and he’s alone.

The First Order are no more.

It only took him a year, carefully manipulating every weak mind he came across, emotionally manipulating the ones he couldn’t.

Embers sciosophia

All the myriad things he’d been—someone who made her laugh; the warmth on the other side of the bed; her best friend—those things, Rey had buried.

Rey left Ben two years, three months, and sixteen days ago. But who's counting?

Interstellar Transmissions LovelyThings, ricca_riot

Rey’s interrogation at the hands of Kylo Ren triggered an awakening in the Force, as well as an unwelcome bond that links them across the galaxy and grows stronger every day.

What Stays and What Fades Away astra_inclinant

Her feelings for Kylo Ren are quiet, not acknowledged, but deeply felt. She cannot make peace with them and send them from her mind.

Or, everyone is emotionally stunted and no one has healthy coping skills.

Our Heaven is Just Waiting FrostedFox

It's his turn to fall wounded before her, and her turn to decide where to go from there.

If only she could convince him to stay alive.

make it look just the way i planned TheJGatsby

Ben buys the painting on a brokenhearted impulse, and somehow it ends up being exactly the right choice.

(Based on the song Paint Me a Birmingham)

#reylo #rebelcaptain #star wars #sw tfa #sw tlj #kylo x rey #ben solo #cassian x jyn #rogue one

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chrysolina · 6 years ago

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Unprepared

Ask - Can you please write a chris evans imagine when the condom breaks, and the reader ends up pregnant. And she’s not happy while chris is over the moon about it. And they kinda get into an argument - anon

Thanks for the great ask anon, I’m so sorry I changed it up a little bit still, here it is!! Hope you enjoy ((:

Summary - You had always been so careful when having sex with Chris, the prospect of being a mom always scared you lifeless. So how will everything turn out when you forget to use contraception and fall pregnant with Chris’ baby?

Word count - 3k ish (flashbacks are in italics)

Warnings - SMUT at the beginning (again +18 readers pls), crying, anxiety mentioned, bad childhood mentioned, floof, heartwarming shiit (:

M A S T E R L I S T

A quiet and deep slumber had set around the neighbourhood that was settled deep in one of the boroughs of Boston. You didn't care to know about this tranquility outside as you slept peacefully in the strong arms of your boyfriend of four years, Chris Evans.

Face resting beside his chest and his arms warming you like a human blanket, nothing could wake you from your sleep - not even Chris could wake you from your dreamful slumber.

That, however, was just what he wanted to do. He took a quick glance at your alarm clock and sighed in defeat. Being awake at 3:45am with a raging boner from a hot and heavy dream he had wasn't ideal for Chris, nor was the fact that the subject of his dreams was attached to him like a magnet to a fridge.

Chris had to do something about this, his balls were screaming with release and needed to be freed from his boxers now. He thought good and hard about his decision, he could get up to go to the toilet to find his release but you were right there before him in one of his shirts, your pussy tantalisingly close to his boner and with nothing else on underneath - how could he deny himself of some earth shattering sex with the hottest woman around?

'Fuck it.' Chris decided on what to do and began to slowly rub his straining erection up and down the inside of your thigh.

Much to Chris' delight, your brows furrowed ever so slightly and you mewled at the friction on your leg. Truth, you were also having an increasingly hot and heavy dream with your one and only. You thought this was a joke; Chris rubbing his erection up against you as you two hugged and waited for a cab outside a restaurant in Boston was just ridiculous but when your eyes fluttered open to find his hips grinding on your own - you knew this was real.

"Chris.." you mumbled out with a slight moan when his erection touched your heat. "What are you doin—mmfh" lips were on suddenly yours, silencing you in a flash. You caved in and pulled him closer to you, his erection nestled under your dripping pussy. Without much thought, the covers were pulled away and Chris lazily rolled you on top of him, shimmied his boxers off in the process; allowing his heavy, pulsation dick to spring up and hit your lower stomach with a smack.

"This," Chris smirked devilishly and positioned his tip at your lips, his length tearing you open inch by inch.

———

You didn't know where this had all come from. Maybe you had eaten something bad at work? Or maybe you had a stomach bug after eating all those spring rolls from the Chinese the other night, yes that must've been it.

In your mind, there was no reason you should be throwing up the contents of your stomach every several hours..or become more fatigued than usual or be more hormonal than usual.

Before you could think of anything else, you locked the bathroom door and rummaged feverishly through the neat baskets in the cabinet behind the door.

Cumbersomely, you picked the pregnancy test box from its place and hatched it open, the contents of the box falling with a loud clatter on to the floor. In fear of waking Chris - who was just the other side of the door - you quickly picked up the contents and read through it.

"Three minutes..three minutes, got it." You mumbled to yourself, took to the toilet and began to pee on the plastic stick of doom.

You begged to whatever divine being in the skies you weren't pregnant, the thought of introducing up possible parental worries to your mix of a bad childhood, anxiety and tendency to fear the worst only made your stomach drop in terror.

You just did what you had to do, put the cap back on the stick, set the timer and left it on the sink basin.

Instead of pacing around the bathroom like most soon-to-be mothers would do, you just sat silent on the rim of your marble bath thinking rationally about the outcome.

So what if you were pregnant?

Would Chris be happy with the news?

Of course he would, he wouldn't have stopped in the Babies-R-Us section of Toys-R-Us to look at those cute baby grows last week for no good reason. Nor would he have fussed and cooed over your nephew as much as he did.

"Hey babe! Come have a look at these!" Chris caught your attention from the breastfeeding pump section and dragged you over to the baby clothes section. "Aren't they adorable?" He mused dreamily at the tiny pink frilly dresses, baby-grows and other accessories, an arm winding its way around your shoulder and pulled you into him.

"They are, yes but my brother had a boy, Chris. A boy. And besides," you rolled your eyes at the pout on his plush pink lips. "He's got loads of clothes." You laughed and pushed the trolley back to the various priced pumps, the sizes, different contraptions and names were starting to freak you out a little.

"Well what happens if one day, we could be buying some pink frilly dresses for our own little princess.." Chris mused again, this time more purposeful as he drew soft circles into your hips with his large warm hands. Like a switch, your back straightened tensely and made your mind do a double take.

"How about it Y/N?" Chris hummed into the crook of your neck as he kissed and sucked the area tentatively, hands still drawing circles on your hips - much to your displeasure.

"I would like it yes," You huffed with a slight sharpness. Chris' head rose from your neck and you could feel the smile radiate off him without looking. You didn't want to break that beautiful smile but god were you scared of parenthood.

"But I'm not quite ready yet Chris." You released yourself from his hold and went on with the baby-based shopping list for your little nephew, picking up the best sounding and looking pump and placing it in the trolley.

A unruly ringing noise sounded from your phone and broke you from your silent trance. You were rapidly quick to turn it off and then rushed straight to the sink to find out the answer on the stick.

'Breathe Y/N! Breathe! You have to breathe!’ You thought frantically to yourself as your eyelids slammed shut and you inched towards the stick, hands out in trepidation and fear.

It was at that moment that you knew that all your prayers, wishes and pleads had gone unanswered and that your life was going to change very drastically. Nobody prepared you for the moment your eyes peeled open and you saw the answer stating you dead back in the eyes, nobody told you the feeling of dread you'd feel once you saw those words displayed like a hazard sign.

It was undeniable. You were indeed three to four weeks pregnant with yours and Chris' child.

•=•=•=•=•=•=•

For what could've been hours, minutes or seconds, you sat at the base of yours and Chris' bed with the positive pregnancy stick in hand. Much to your relief, Chris wasn't in the room when you opened the door with tears rolling down your cold red cheeks.

He had gone out to get the two of you some breakfast and coffee and would be back in ten, so said his note that sat on the semi-made bed. That was twelve minutes ago, according to the time on your phone but like his ways, Chris was still on time and the sound of his car rumbling back into the driveway broke your trance on nothing particular.

The front door slamming shut, Dodger's gleefull bark and the sound of feet padding back up the stairs became more enhanced to your senses. Everything was dialled to ten and you hated it.

The bedroom door then creaked open - to your shock - and in slipped a lazy looking Chris dressed in black joggers and a beautifully tight cream white long sleeved t-shirt, his hair tussled here and there most probably due to his baseball cap he ditched downstairs.

You weren't meant to stare at him so blankly but judging by the worried look on his face once he saw you, you knew you'd probably lost your colour whilst you were waiting for him with the worrisome thoughts channeling through your brain.

"Y/N, talk to me. You're not looking too well, are you alright?" Suddenly Chris began to lightly shake your frame and broke you out of your deep trance, your eyes focusing immediately on his worried blue eyes right before you.

"I'm—I'm fine Chris. I—I just wanted to let you kn-" before you could almost tell him the news, Chris' eyes rolled down to the stick that sat limply in your hands and took immediate notice over it.

"Hey what's this?" Chris interjected and licked the stick from your hands quickly. It didn't take him more than a second or two to read the answer on the tiny screen and before you could register it, Chris had stood up and had his back to you and was cradling the stick like a newborn.

"Chris I—" You tried to backtrack on what was most probably going through his head by standing and reaching out to him, the most you could do was pull on his t-shirt feebly.

Without hesitation, Chris spun around and embraced you in a bone clenching hug that lifted you a few inches off the floor and choked you for air.

"You're...actually?" Chris mumbled after he put you down and stared you down with a face splitting smile that could beat any other soon-to-be father's smile out there.

You smiled pathetically, shrugged your shoulders and nodded your head with a grimace - how were you going to tell Chris? What were you going to tell him?

'Oh yeah I don't want your baby since I have a freakish fear of becoming a mom - no, that wouldn't go down well' you thought to yourself and watched Chris back away from you and fist bump the air in joy. As if he had heard your thoughts Chris stopped his celebrations immediately and turned back around to look at you, perplexed as to why you weren't as happy as he was.

"You are happy about this? Aren't you Y/N/N?" Chris inquired in such a false manner your blood boiled at his tone. Why would he be using such a tone on you? You didn't know why but he sounded selfish and unresponsive to your anxious disposition. "Tell me you are, please."

"I can't lie and say I really am, Chris." You shrugged off his stare with a straightforwardness you didn't think you'd have at such a time.

Like fire to oil, his eyebrows furrowed quicker than you could imagine and his hold on your forearms suddenly became loose as he backed away from you.

You didn't understand, what was Chris doing? One minute he was making you furious, the next weepy and guilty. You just couldn't stick it.

"And why not? Didn't you say you wanted a baby?" Chris snapped with a bitterness similar to your own on the inside. He was getting defensive, you could tell by the tight disposition of crosse arms and his clenched jaw - and judging by the tone of his voice, he wasn't going to be up for a heart-to-heart discussion right about now.

"Yes I did Chris but I'm just really—" your bottom lip trembled with a quiver you knew was soon to bring back tears. You couldn't keep looking at Chris, instead you took to looking at this inanimate object on the floor and allowed your arms to wrap around your torso protectively - a comforting habit learnt through time.

"You're just really what? If you're gonna start pegging blames on me then just fucking don't. Sure we had sex one night a while back without protection but I assumes you were on the pill so.." Chris mumbled the last part of his speech more to himself as he rubbed his beard in frustration, to what you couldn't understand.

He was getting so feisty all of a sudden, you just couldn't understand it; it didn't help anything at all and only made you feel more ashamed of your fears by the second.

"Why are you acting like this Chris?" Your voice broke out in a strangled heartbroken sob, your eyes clenched shut in an attempt to stop the tears, ever-so slightly.

Chris' heart broke at the sight of you before him, ghostly pale, a shaking and sobbing mess covered only by one of his large sweaters that reached about midway down your thigh.

If it wasn't for his ego, Chris would've just scooped you up into his arms there and then and kissed the tears and fears out of you. His ego, however, chose a different route. "Acting like what Y/N?" You have no clue how long I have waited for a family of my own! A happy family just like everyone else has, just for me!" Chris partially yelled at you as the tears of his own woes stung the corners of his eyes and burned them without second thought.

"I get that Chris! I'm just—I—I—I'm so so scared being a mom!" You similarly yelled at Chris but your yell was more heartbroken and honest than his was defensive and protective of his own wishes.

As if on cue, the anger within Chris bubbled down to a mere blip at the sight and belief that you were scared; he knew all about your anxiety and crappy childhood with crappy parents and he hated himself even more for not realising earlier.

Slowly, Chris reached out to you and made contact with a tender touch, a touch you only caved into and crashed into his arms without hesitation. The sobs just wouldn't stop coming out for a good while as you stood there in Chris' tender embrace, your tears stained and wet his shirt carelessly.

After a solid two or three minutes of having a good cry, your tears turned to sniffles and you poked your head up to look at your boyfriend with a small smile.

"What's the matter baby?" Chris cooed and rubbed your cheeks with both hands in an attempt to warm them up. "What are you scared of?" Chris inquired again, this time more gentle than the last as he lightly kissed your forehead in an attempt to coax the worries out.

"I'm just..scared I'll be a really bad mom, that's all." You huffed in a defeated and guilty tone.

It was all true, as much as you really wanted to be a mom to your own bundle of joy, you never had any real standard to prepare you for a possible motherhood role - your own mom passing away when you were twelve hours old and your not-so motherly aunt taking and your brother in from that point on.

"Really?" Chris' eyebrows flew up in surprise to your confession. "Considering how motherly you naturally are with children, I wouldn't say you'd need to be scared at all baby." Chris smiled at your embarrassingly flushed cheeks and kissed them as if they were pieces of fresh gold.

"You think?" You mumbled into his chest out of sheer embarrassment. You never let anyone catch on to your maternal ways or dreams, you thought you had been successfully that department but apparently, not so much.

Chris just laughed and agreed positively and wondered how you could be so scared of something you were so good at.

Even though Chris had never told you, he always seemed to catch your lingering gazes on passing pregnant women, baby clothes or babies in strollers walking down the street whilst you were with him. He never told you either that he somehow knew you were pining for a family either, but you didn't need to know that right now - so he thought.

“No honey, I know you’ll be the best mom ever.” Chris told you sincerely, his lips then meeting yours in a passionate yet tender kiss that could make you easily see stars. The two of you stayed in each other’s arms for what seemed like an eternity, Chris’ hands slowly working down your frame to the lowest part of your stomach and rubbed the soon-to-be domed area with a touch that only radiated love.

Only when air became absolutely necessary did you and Chris break away from each other and gazed into each other’s eyes, your hands finding their way on top of Chris at the bottom of your stomach and cupped them tenderly.

“I know I haven’t done anything romantic for this and I will make it up to you..” Chris began to ramble and took to looking away from your inquisitive stare on him. “But first, I need to know something...Y/N, will you marry me?” Chris smiled nervously down to you and watched your face shrink from its smile to a shocked smile.

“Are you sure—you you want me?” You blubbered out bewilderedly and stared at Chris like he was insane. “This isn’t because of the baby—is it?” Your voice quivered at the thought that he was just marrying you for convenience sake.

“No, no god no!” Chris stammered with a tone that you couldn’t understand. “Y/N, we’ve got nine months to be selfish with each other and do as we please before it’s the three of us. And..and as bad as it sounds, I wanna be so selfish and have you all to myself for these nine months.”

“And what about after the baby?” You teased and tickled his hairy jaw with your index finger.

“I’ll still want you to myself.” Chris smirked at your teasing tone and hooked his arms around your back and pulled you into him. “Sure the timing isn’t right but Y/N, you gotta understand I’m not doing this for the baby; I’m doing this for us.” Chris looked you dead in the eye as he spoke

“You’ve always been the one, the only one I want to spend the rest of my life with - children or no children. So what’d you say?” He smirked at you as if he already knew your answer and he was right, he did know your answer.

“A million times, yes.”

Tags - @patzammit

#steve rogers #chris evans #captain america #steve rogers x reader #chris evans x reader #queued bby #chris evans headcanon #chris evans fluff #chris evans x pregnant!reader #chris evans imagine #imagine steve rogers #steve rogers smut #chris evans smut

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pertamax7 · 5 years ago

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Harga Rangka Yamaha WR155R Mulai Rp.2,7 Jutaan, Bisakah Dibeli?

., salam pertamax7.com, Harga Rangka Yamaha WR155R Mulai Rp.2,7 Jutaan, Bisakah Dibeli?

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eclecticminded · 6 years ago

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Love notes written in flesh

Also awhile back @madpanda75 and I discussed jealous sex with Nick in the polyamory AU and well...this happened.

Part One and Part Two and Part Three and Part Four and Part Five and Part Six and Part Seven and Part Nine and Your Wallet

You’re brunch date with Rafael and Sonny turns into a sexfest. Cue dinner with Nick where he finds copious hickies.

Warnings: Sex. Semi-rough sex. Use of daddy/papi, good girl, kitten/gata, and princesa. Food. Brief alcohol.

Tags: @southsiderepresent @glimmerglittergirl @madpanda75 @southern-magnolia @katmstanton @esparza-army @sweetsummertime99 @obfuscateyummy @lifeisbetterwithbarba @lyssa1385 @hux-me-up @bowieisawizard @raulmonamour

Also I have a Kofi (link in blog description).

This week had been a hectic one for all four of you. Rafael was in court with one case where Nick was a witness, and he was prepping another where Sonny was. Plus the detectives still had their regular duties. Not to mention Olivia and Amanda had an emergency two day overnight work trip that left you with Noah and Jesse and you just got back from visiting your sister and her new baby. Needless to say you didn’t see them all week, and the little time Rafael and Sonny had was strictly professional.

Friday night you fell asleep sandwiched between Rafael and Sonny, all three too tired to do anything but fall into bed. Saturday morning, you were woken with sloppy kisses all over your face and exposed midriff. Rafael’s had a bit to them causing you to whimper while Sonny’s stubble tickled you sensitive skin.

“Wake up doll,” Sonny kissed your temple, “We’re going to brunch.”

“No. Sleep,” you whined.

“Bottomless mimosas,” Rafael placed a kiss to your other temple.

“Okay fine,” you giggled and climbed out of bed, pulling your shirt off and digging through your drawer in Rafael’s dresser.

“Picked you out a dress,” Sonny called, “It’s on the back of the bathroom door.”

“Thanks honey bear! You’re the best,” you blew Sonny a kiss and sashayed towards the bathroom.

“What about me,” Rafael pouted.

“Sonny picked out a dress for me so I didn’t have to. What did you do,” you stopped in your tracks and turned around, raising an eyebrow.

“I picked the place with bottomless mimosas,” Rafael crossed his arms in mock frustration.

“Thank you sugar, you’re the best too,” you blew him a kiss and turned around, “stop staring at my ass and get dressed. Or I’ll go alone.”

“Yes ma’am,” Sonny laughed as you shut the door to get ready. He and Rafael spent ten minutes making out on the bed, certain it would take you twenty minimum to get ready. They got dressed and were pulling their shoes on when you emerged.

“Sonny this sundress does the thing,” you spun in a circle and your dress flowed out around you.

“You didn’t know your own dress did that,” Rafael scrunched his forehead up.

“Oh I knew,” you spun again, “But Sonny knows how much I love when dresses and skirts do the thing. I love you!”

“That’s why I picked it doll,” Sonny winked, “Love you too.”

“Dresses that do the thing. Alright. Adding that to my list of things to remember,” Rafael nodded seriously and tied his shoe.

“Let’s go! Are my flats—“

“In the closet with my shoes cariño,” Rafael cut you off.

“Gracias, te quiero,” you scurried into the closet and slipped your shoes on.

“Love you too,” Rafael called after you.

“Woah doll, slow down,” Sonny steadied you so you didn’t fall after running into him.

“Sorry,” you pecked his lips.

“Let’s go,” Rafael motioned you both out the door.

“I call middle,” you grabbed your purse from the counter and followed two of your men out the door.

“Fine,” Rafael swatted at your ass when you walked past him, “But only cause I got it last night.”

Sonny drove so he only had one drink, Rafael mostly drank coffee, and you drank them both under the table. Before the food had some you’d drank at least four, or was it five, mimosas because you couldn’t taste the alcohol. They cut you off and made sure you ate and drank plenty of coffee and water. By the time you left, you were sobered up but still giggly.

You spent most of the ride to Sonny’s place half in Rafael’s lap kissing him and teasing him with Sonny’s hand on your thigh. At red lights you sucked on Sonny’s neck and palmed his erection, causing several people to hank at you. When you finally made it into the elevator of Sonny’s building, you trapped Rafael in the corner with your hips and he sucked a hickey on one side of your neck. Sonny pressed you against Rafael from behind and sucked a twin hickey on the other side of your neck.

Before long you were naked on your knees in Sonny’s living room with Rafael’s cock down your throat. Sonny had a fistful of your hair and made you bob up and down. You gagged and your eyes watered but loved every minute of it. Sonny forced you all the way down Rafael’s length and held you there, causing Rafael to moan. A double tap to Sonny’s thigh and he pulled you up. You gasped for air, tucked safely against Sonny’s chest. Rafael kneeled in front of you and wiped the spit from your chin.

“You okay gata,” Rafael caressed your cheek.

Yes daddy,” you nodded.

“Check in kitten,” Sonny smoothed your hair.

“Green sir,” you moved back into a kneeling position on the pillow, “I want you both to face fuck me!”

“Done,” Sonny scrambled to his feet and plunged down your throat. While he pumped away, Rafael pulled a vibrator from the coffee table and positioned it against your clit. His hand joined Sonny’s in your hair and you mouth was pulled off Sonny’s cock long enough to breathe before you were swallowing Rafael. The pattern went on for a few minutes, and one orgasm for you, before both men agreed you’d had enough. Rafael quickly cleaned the vibrator while Sonny carried you to the bed.

Sonny wasted no time attaching himself to your right thigh, sucking hickies and leaving a trail of bite marks. Rafael crawled into bed to the left of you and attacked your neck with his mouth. They took their time, making you squirm around while they painted your skin with love bites. Halfway through the swapped, Rafael took your left thigh and Sonny your neck. You felt a little bad you had plans with Nick later, but not enough to stop them.

Sonny was the first to get a condom on and plunge inside of you. Rafael pinned your hands above your head and sucked on your closest breast. His free hand rubbed your clit, making you cum on Sonny’s cock. When Rafael released your hands, they clawed down Sonny’s back and he came with a shouted moan.

Giving you little time to recover, Rafael rolled his condom on and started fucking you roughly and with abandon. Sonny mimicked Rafael’s earlier actions, teasing your other breast and rubbing another orgasm out of your soaked core. He cradled your head in his lap and loving held the hand not scratching down Rafael’s chest.

“What a good girl, taking daddy’s cock like that,” Sonny cooed to you.

“You gonna make me cum like you did sir,” Rafael gripped your hips harshly and answered his own question by growling through his orgasm. His condom was tossed in the trash with Sonny’s and they disappeared, but not for long. Soon they were back and fawning over you. Rafael helped you drink down a whole bottle of water, he and Sonny had both chugged one in the kitchen. Sonny cleaned you up with a warm wash cloth.

“We really did a number on you,” Sonny surveyed the marks peppering your body and gave Rafael a worried look.

“I love every single one of them although…”

“What,” they exclaimed in unison and froze in fear, afraid they’d hurt you somehow.

“Nick is gonna blow a gasket. I have dinner plans with him in three hours,” you laughed.

“I bet he just adds to the artwork,” Sonny relaxed and pulled your back against his chest.

“His jealousy tends to end in you walking funny. Can’t wait for that,” Rafael nestled your head against his chest. The next couple of hours you spent dozing on and off and chatting with your men. They had reservations and you had a nice night in with Nick. You all got dressed and Sonny dropped you off. You lingered kissing them goodbye then made your way to Nick’s door.

“You done sucking face,” Nick teased and opened the door before you knocked.

“Nope,” you rose to your tiptoes and kissed him chastely.

“Get in here princesa,” Nick tugged you through the door and pressed you into the closed frame, kissing you and holding you firmly against him.

“I missed you too baby,” you grinned.

“What’s on your neck,” Nick raised an eyebrow.

“Huh,” you chewed your lip nervously.

“And your thighs,” he raised your dress and tsked.

“What,” you crossed your arms suddenly self-conscious.

“No, don’t hide. Let me see. Strip,” Nick snapped when you didn’t move fast enough.

“Like this papi,” you pulled your dress seductively over your head and dropped it behind you.

“Sí and the panties,” he pointed to your already wet center.

“Sí papi,” you stepped out of the red panties and threw them at Nick. He caught them and glared.

“Come here princesa,” Nick threw you over his shoulder and took you to his sofa, setting you down.

“Now what,” you giggled.

“Who gave you these,” Nick pushed into the tender bruises and teeth marks on your right thigh.

“Sir,” you whimpered and he rewarded you with a brief swipe through your folds.

“And these,” he pinched your left thigh.

“Daddy,” you yelped and Nick dove into your folds. You were still sensitive from earlier in the day and it didn’t take you much to cum on his tongue.

“What about your neck and chest,” his large hands caressed the marks.

“Both of them,” you breathed and pulled him up to your lips.

“My turn,” Nick growled and pinned you beneath him. He sucked and nibbled in the blank spaces of your neck and chest, making sure to cover the bottom of your breasts. When he was satisfied, he flipped you on your back and smacked your ass. A small moan escaped your lips, and he changed tactics, sucking hickies and leaving deep bite marks scattered across your ass cheeks.

“It’s a good thing I work for Liv,” you jokingly complained, “An office job would think I’d been attacked.”

“Stay still,” Nick got up and returned, taking a couple of pictures of your ass then flipping you over to take faceless pictures of your neck, chest, and thighs.

“You gonna fuck me or what,” you spread your legs and he dropped his forgotten phone to the side table. In a flash his pants were off and a condom rolled on.

“Fuck,” his eyes rolled back as he slipped inside of you.

“What no foreplay,” you teased.

“You’ve been fucking all day and I need you now princesa,” Nick growled and forcefully thrust into you.

“Use me to cum papi,” you batted your doe eyes and Nick lost it. He braced himself on the arm of the sofa with one hand and gripped your hip to guide himself. You moaned and writhed underneath him, playing with your clit, and soon another orgasm was ripped from your body. Hearing your shouts of pleasure sent Nick over the edge and he stilled inside you.

“Fuck,” Nick chuckled and pulled out of you, “You could never date just one person. Your sex drive would kill them!”

“Damn right,” your stomach growled and Nick tossed you your dress. You both got dressed and went to the kitchen to cook dinner. Correction, Nick cooked dinner and you helped. And to help you sat on the counter sipping wine and kissing him when you could.

[To: Rafael and Sonny 7:30pm] I added more marks to our girl.

[To: Nick and Sonny 7:36pm] Send pics.

[To: Nick and Rafael 7:38pm] I agree.

[To: Rafael and Sonny 7:49pm] <4 attached photos>

[To: Nick and Rafael 7:52pm] Aren’t we the luckiest men in the world?

[To: Nick and Sonny 7:57pm] That we are.

[To: Rafael and Sonny 8:01pm] Sí.

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prettyboiiharringrove · 6 years ago

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#3) What about some Harringrove “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” (was anyone else obsessed with this show on TLC)

( alpha/beta/omega masterlist )

boy was i ever. my favorite part is that the actors for the reenactment never looked like the actual people. It was amazing television, so chaotic and confusing and great, and if you haven’t seen is there’s full episodes on youtube, please join us on this wild ride.

also i don’t know if you’ve ever seen the night shift but i’m basing the doctor in this off of tc and the nurse off kenny because i feel like they’d have a good vibe. honestly actually everyone from the night shift would just take in billy and be like must protec and if neil showed up talking shit literally EVERYONE would be ready to square up thanks now i need this completely unlikely and irrelevant crossover i legit have ideas for it but like no one would be into it lolol

lol y’all got two show recs before i even got to the ‘good’ stuff, finally filling your request darlin. let it be known this could have gone a lot darker but i tried to keep it as angst with a semi happy ending (but also with a where the fuck could this go vibe because i just love to do that to y’all) so please enjoy

also i know you didn’t ask for it but i did teen billy just because like idk it’s what was speaking to me so i hope that’s okay

back at it again with my fav omega son

😱 😱 😱

The most surprising part of all of this is that Nancyfucking Wheeler’s the one that convinces him to go to the hospital. The love ofhis life’s shitty ex and newly appointed best fucking friend, the main sourceof all his jealousy, not including his nagging insecurity, is the one thatdrags him to the car and drives him to the emergency room.

Billy and Steve hadbeen in a fight, still are actually, which means that his stupid fuckingfriends were sent to check on him. He still hangs out with Tommy and Carol, andthey’ve kind of made up with Steve for his sake, so it isn’t that bad when they’reasking fucking questions, even though they never really cared, but when fuckingWheeler and Byers are in his goddamn business, it pisses him off.

He’s sitting on thefloor in front of his locker, curled up into a ball as he tries to bite backthe pain pulsing through him, uncaring of the fact that he’s blocking at leasttwo lockers that don’t belong to him.

“Fuck off Wheeler,” hegroans when he sees her tiny little feet standing in front of him. He’s kind ofpissed off that he can recognize her without looking at her stupid pretty fuckingface.

She crouches down toglare at him, every inch of her 5’4” frame giving off judgement and impatience.She clearly doesn’t want to deal with his shit. Good, she’s equally as unhappyabout these little interactions then.

“Steve’s worried,” shetells him, as if he doesn’t already fucking know, as if he hasn’t been dealingwith these fucking cramps for the last three days, as if he hasn’t wanted tocurl up in Steve’s lap since he woke up at four in the morning sobbing becausehe was in so much fucking pain.

“Good for him,” hetries to sound angry, but Nancy sees right through him. She rolls her eyes. Howthe hell she deals with high school boys and their bullshit on a daily basis,she’ll never know.

“You look like crap.”

“You sure know how tomake a guy feel special,” he huffs out a laugh but then he’s doubling over,cradling his stomach as tears burn in his eyes.

“You should go to adoctor,” she sighs, looking sympathetic. Funny, Billy never thought he’d seethat look directed towards him.

“I’ve had worse,” hebarks.

Fucking liar. If heweren’t in so much pain, he’d probably wonder when his conscience started usingSteve’s voice to get to him. As if to prove a point, his stomach and back startpulsing, and he can’t hold back the whimper that bubbles up from his throat.

When her eyes go wide,he can’t help the pang of worry that he feels in his gut. Nancy Wheeler is veryrarely ever surprised or scared, or rather she does a very good job of hidingit. The only person that locks away worry and suffering better is Billyhimself.

“You’re bleeding,” shewhispers, her tone unsettling.

“So, I probablyscratched a scab open, or walked into something, shit happens,” Neil pushes himinto the brick of their fireplace at least once a week, twice this week, it wouldn’tsurprise him if he got cut; he hardly notices when it happens anymore.

“No, look at yourpants,” Nancy’s gone pale, so he takes a while to look down. He’s already inpain, he’d like to live in blissful ignorance for just one moment longer.Eventually, he glances down, his pants wet with both blood and some otherfluid. He hadn’t even noticed, he was in so much pain.

“Shit,” Billy’strembling now, both from pain and fear. That’s never happened before. Pain so hard to handle that’s he’s in a heapon the floor, that’s happened before, not to this caliber, but it’s happened.Blood leaking through the crotch of his jeans though, that’s completely new.

“Come on, I’m takingyou to the hospital,” she’s already moving to help him up, and when her handgoes under his armpit to keep him stable, he realizes she’s surprisinglystrong. She probably would have had him up in an instant if he were being evena little cooperative.

“Can’t,” he doesn’ttry and say he’s fine, knows she’ll call him out on his bullshit, but there’sno part of him that is stupid enough to think that blood changes anything. Ifhe goes to the hospital and they see all the cuts and bruises, he’s dead.

“Stop being a child,get up,” she scolds him, tugging on his arm once again. He jerks it away, histemper firing back up despite his pain.

“You’re not fuckinglistening. I can’t go,” he tellsher. He moves to get up himself, to stand and walk the opposite direction, butall he manages to do is crawl less than a foot away before he’s practically sprawledout on the floor, leaning on his backpack. “He’ll kill me.”

Nancy furrows herbrow. She’s not stupid, but he’s always been pretty good at hiding this, andSteve wouldn’t rat him out, not even when they’re fighting. She sighs, noddingin understanding when the gears stop turning. So, she knows his secret now,great.

“Yeah, well if we stayhere, you might be dead anyways. Come on,” she’s gentler now, moreunderstanding, but she’s still forceful. There’s no room for argument, and atthis point Billy’s trying his best to stay conscious and keep himself frombiting his fucking tongue off, it hurts so badly; he doesn’t have any fightleft in him.

He’s not sure how theymake it outside, she’s practically dragging him, and he thinks they run intothe lockers a few times. He vaguely remembers her stealing his keys and shovinghim in the passenger’s seat; it reminds him of the few times he’d beenarrested, the way she cradles his head so he doesn’t hit it and slams the dooronce he’s in. If he were more himself he’d mouth off to her about being morefucking gentle with his baby.

He blacks out on hisway to the hospital.

———————————

He comes to in a room, apparently blood, random body fluids,and being unconscious speeds up the wait time. He’s got an IV in his arm andthe sterile smell is making him sick to his stomach. It’s too familiar, remindshim of the last time he saw his mom and it burns.

He thinks what woke him up was the prick of a needle,considering he sees a nurse stepping away with a small vile of his blood. He’snot quite sure, because the sting of the needle is nothing in comparison to thecramping that’s been coming and going all day.

“Tell me you didn’t call my dad,” are the first words out ofhis mouth, desperate and pleading. He doesn’t care about who answers, just whatthe answer is.

“Your girlfriend told us not to. It’s not usually what we’ddo, but considering all your injuries, we figured that’d be the best decision,called social services and the chief instead,” the nurse tells him.

He doesn’t argue with him about the girlfriend comment,although he would never be caught dead dating her. He doesn’t have the time tocare, not when another sharp pain hits him in his abdomen.

He almost misses the scoff that helps him realize Nancy isstill there with him. He’s kind of appreciative for a second before he realizesit’s all for Steve’s benefit, and then he becomes distracted as he realizeswhat the nurse had said. Everyone’s been called and Neil is going to rip himapart.

“Fuck,” he chokes out as he struggles to breathe. He doesn’thave panic attacks often, and these days when he does Steve’s there to talk himthrough it. A nurse looking at him as he hyperventilates, telling him to calmdown isn’t helping, especially not when his stomach is cramping so badly he’scontemplating finding a scalpel to rip himself open, and he has to count downthe minutes until his dad finds out and slaughters him.

“I’m dead, I’m so fuckingdead. He’s gonna kill me because you assholescouldn’t keep your m—” he cuts himself off with a yelp; at least the pain isdistracting enough to have him biting down on his lip and holding his breath.It doesn’t put a full stop to his panic attack, but it does get him breathingnormal again.

The nurse takes his yelling and general shitty attitude instride, and Billy kind of really hates him for it, because he would very muchlike it if he wasn’t the only one suffering. “Sorry kid, I know it sucks, butwe can’t give you anything stronger than some Tylenol until we know what’swrong with you.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you suck?” Billy croaks out,clutching at his abdomen. Nancy makes an offended squeak, as if she expectedhim to have more manners and is hoping the nurse doesn’t take Billy’s attitudeas a representation of her own. Honestly, who the hell does she think she’swith right now ??

“All the time, part of the job,” the nurse answers with asweet smile, and Billy would probably have a crush on the guy if thecircumstances were different.

“No seriously, if I didn’t think I was gonna be dead by theend of the day, I’d spend like an entire fucking hour telling you just howfucking horrible you are, like I want to like you, but you really really suck dude.”

“No one’s letting you die,” he sighs, almost like he kind ofwants Billy to like him. Billy thinks he sees some glimmer in his eye, like heplans to win him over; he kind of wishes he would have the time to. He’swishing for a lot of things in this moment, for pain meds, for everyone toleave before his dad gets here, for them to believe him when he lies about thebruises, for Steve, oh god does he want Steve.

“Doesn’t matter if you let me or not, I’m screwed,” Billysays it more to himself, but he doesn’t miss the nurse pausing in the doorwayas if he were contemplating saying something; he probably couldn’t think ofanything comforting so he moved on. Billy thinks he made the right call,because there are absolute zero words that can make him feel any better rightnow.

He chances a glance at Nancy, who is just looking at himwith concern and disappointment as she sits awkwardly in a hard plastic chairagainst the wall. He doesn’t say anything to her, wants her to be at leastuncomfortable if he has to be miserable.

———————————

This doctor strolls into the room with a chart and Billy hasnever been so upset to see someone that fucking gorgeous. Of course they’d sendin a fucking supermodel to take care of him on the absolute worst day of his life.Does everyone in this goddamn hospital have to be so pretty ??

“Please tell me I’m dying,” the doctor laughs, probablythinking Billy is joking, but he would much rather die in that hospital bedthan at the hands of Neil Hargrove.

“Heard you’re complaining of stomach cramps and vaginal bleeding.”

“Complaining makes it sound like I’m being fucking dramatic,and trust me I’m not. I get the shit kicked outta me all the time, so trust mewhen I say this shit is fucking miserable.”

“You get in a lot of fights?” the doc questions with a glintin his eye, and Billy notices that the guy’s got a split lip and bruised cheekof his own. He wonders if he sees some of himself in Billy. If they’re anythingalike, Billy feels sorry for the guy.

“Something like that,” Billy shrugs, not in the mood forsmall talk. He just wants to get out of here. If they leave him alone longenough he can walk out before people start asking all the right questions andmaybe Neil will go easy on him.

“Well, if it’s alright with you, we’re gonna do an ultrasoundand a pelvic exam, make sure you’re not dying after all.”

“Trust me, doesn’t matter what you find, I’m a dead manwalking, but sure, do whatever you fucking want if it makes you happy,” it’snot like his body’s ever belonged to him, he might as well let them poke andprod, maybe alleviate the pain so he can have a few minutes of peace beforeNeil rips into him.

———————————

“Well I’ll be damned,” the doctor says as he pulls away fromBilly, letting him drop his legs back down into a more comfortable position andcover himself up with his gown and the blanket. “You didn’t think it might havebeen a good idea to tell us you’re pregnant?”

“What? I’m not,” Billy answers as he looks at this fuckingquack. Pregnant ?? He would have fucking noticed. If he was, how far along ??If it’s hurting this badly something must be terribly wrong. His desperatelonging for Steve hits again, knowing there’s not a damn person in that roomthat can comfort him the way he needs.

“Kid, I know you’re probably scared, you’re what, sixteen ??I get it, but no one here’s gonna judge you. You have to be honest with us.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he barksout, unable to even accept this information. This guy has to be fucking insane.

“You’re in labor and you’re telling me you had no idea aboutthis baby?”

In labor. Okay, no, this guy has to be messing with him.That, or he’s fucking insane.

“Look doc, I appreciate a good joke as much as the next guybut I’d really appreciate it if you stuck to your fucking day job right now andfigured out what the fuck is wrong with me because that’s not possible.”

“You tellin’ me you’re a virgin ?? Never had sex before, noteven once ??” the doctor looks at Billy with a raised brow and a smirk. Billywants to punch the look right off his face. The most annoying part is he’dprobably like the guy if he wasn’t in this particular situation.

“Well, no obviously I fucking have, I’m not a nun,” he rollshis eyes, falling back on the pillows.

“So there’s a chance you could be pregnant ??”

“I’m on fucking birth control, and I think I would havenoticed if I was pregnant, I mean do I look—”

“Doesn’t matter how you look.Birth control isn’t a guaranteed deal. It decreases your chances significantlybut it’s not one hundred percent. Sorry kid, but it’s not just a maybe, you’repregnant and that kid’s coming tonight.”

“Fuck me,” Billy groans, leaning back onto the bed andjamming his eyes shut. If he closes them and waits long enough to open them,this nightmare will be over.

“Looks like someone’s already beat me to it,” the doctorsays with a smirk and Billy lifts his leg to try and kick him since the guy’sstanding by the foot of the bed. He can’t quite reach him, and the stretchfucking hurts, but the nurse behind him smacks him upside the head and callshim an asshole. Okay, so maybe the nurse is a pretty good guy after all.

Normally Billy would have a comeback ready, but this timehe’s gripping the metal railing so hard his knuckles have gone white.

“I can’t do this,” Billy’s shaking again, pain and terrorovertaking him as his breathing becomes shallow. Nancy moves from her placeagainst the wall, desperate to think of anything that could get him to calmdown. “I can’t fucking do this. Where the fuck is he ?? I can’t, fuck, I can’t,” he’s hyperventilating now, andat least the doctor has wiped that stupid look off his face.

“Listen, you need to breathe, alright ?? We can help you,but this isn’t going to get you anywhere, it’s just gonna make things worse foryou and your baby, so you need to calm down.”

“Easy…for you…to say,” Billy struggles between breaths, hisargumentative nature never faltering, even as every good thing he’s built upfor himself comes crumbling down on top of him.

“I called Steve. He should be here any minute. It’s gonna beokay,” Nancy tells him, speaking for the first time since he’s woken up. Whythe fuck is she even still here ?? Billy can’t stand her, but the more hethinks about her leaving, the more he realizes he hates the idea.

“None of this is okay,” he argues as he bites back tears,but his breathing finally starts to settle at the thought of Steve. He closeshis eyes, forcing a few deep breaths, and he thinks he hears his doctoroffering up gentle praises for getting his breathing under control, but hecan’t really keep up because he’s not so patiently waiting on Steve while hetries to concentrate on not screaming due to what he now knows are labor pains.

———————————

Billy doesn’t really pay attention to anything anyone has tosay until they’re trying to move him to labor and delivery and Steve’s stillnot fucking there.

“I can’t, I can’t go yet,” Nancy’s never heard Billy sodesperate, and she’s sure she’s never seen him cry. “Wheeler, tell them, tellthem I need him, please, Nancy please!!”

The contractions are getting closer together, and apparentlythere’s a huge fucking chance for complications since he didn’t do any prenatalcare, there’s not much time and he needs to get up there, but if he’s desperateenough to ask Nancy for help, then they both know he can’t go anywhere untilSteve’s by his side.

“Five minutes, come on, just give me five minutes and if he’snot here you can take him,” Nancy and Billy are both looking at the nurses anddoctor with big pleading eyes, and they must be the most charming pair in the entire county,because the group reluctantly agrees.

“Five minutes,” the doctor tells her sternly, and Nancy doesn’twaste any time, heading towards the hallway to try and get cell reception tocall Steve again.

She starts to dial him only to see Steve barreling in, shoessqueaking as he practically slides down the corridor. Social services goes tostop him, although Hopper just rolls his eyes and is happy to let him by.

“He’s the father !! Let him through !!” Nancy yells, and the overdressedjudgmental strangers let him squeeze on by.

“Hey Nance,” Steve answers, panting as he’s hunched over,hands gripping tightly to his knees as he tries to catch his breath. “Wait…father?!!”

“Steve?!” Billy hears his voice, and Nancy decides thatinstead of answering, she’s just going to push Steve into the room to seeBilly, because their five minutes are slowly dwindling down and they can walkand talk.

“Daddy dearest I presume?” the doctor answers with a smirkand Billy, who still has tears in his eyes, groans in both aggravation andpain.

“Can someone please tell him he’s not funny ??”

“Sorry kid, we’ve tried, he just doesn’t learn,” the nurseshrugs, and Billy’s decided that if that nurse leaves his side he’s going tolose his shit.

“Took you fucking long enough,” Billy sighs when he finallyturns to address Steve.

“I’m sorry, someone said father, is no one gonna tell mewhat the fuck is going on ?!!”

“Oh, right. Your boyfriend’s in labor and you’re the dad.Congrats,” the doctor nods and when he’s met with several glares he almostlooks offended. “What ?! Someone had to tell him, and we don’t exactly havetime to draw it out. Rip the fucking band-aid.”

“Your bedside manner is shit,” at least three people saysomething similar, but Billy only has time to hear himself before he turns toSteve, who is a carbon copy of Billy about an hour go, when he was given thesame news. “Steve, baby, I know this sucksand like you can totally be pissed at me later for screwing your life up butcan you just, can you wait until this is over to have your meltdown? I really need you right now.”

“What? Oh, yeah, yeah,”Steve has several thoughts floating around in his head, like how he’s a fewhours from being a dad, maybe less, how he would never blame Billy for this, howhe loves him, how maybe this isn’t actually a bad thing, but his vocabulary isvery fucking limited as he tries to cope with the shock of it all, so he justnods stupidly and doesn’t even notice when the doctor snorts out a laugh.

“Thanks,” Billy croaks, shyly reaching for his hand, unsureif he’s still allowed to touch Steve after dumping this whole mess at his feet.Steve accepts it without question, squeezes it in a comforting gesture, andBilly thinks that despite the pain, he can do this. He can face death so longas Steve still loves him, so long as Steve gets their baby and Neil never getsclose to them.

———————————

Billy spends an hour and a half gripping Steve’s hand sotightly that at one point Steve thinks it might be fucking broken, until heloses circulation in it completely, and then there’s relief as he hearsscreeching, as his daughter is placed on Billy’s chest and he looks at her babyblue eyes and little tufts of hair and loses himself.

Billy finds himself missing the other doctor when the onethat delivered his daughter tells him that this is the easiest labor she’s seenin a while; he has half a mind to rip out her uterus and ask her how she feels.

Billy finds himself daydreaming as Steve climbs into the bedwith him. He rests against Steve and cradles their little girl in his arms andjust pretends, for a moment, that they could be happy. He knows eventually he’llhave to accept reality, that social services and the police are going to wantto talk to him about all the bumps and bruises only for his hope to fallthrough the cracks and Neil to drag him home and beat him bloody, but as hesits in the blissful silence, he lets himself be happy.

“She’s perfect,” Steve whispers and a single tear slips downBilly’s face as his daydream is interrupted.

“I can’t take her home Steve, she won’t be safe,” his voice ishoarse, but his conviction is strong. He needs Steve to hear him.

“What do you mean?”

“You have to promise you’ll take care of her, please, justpromise me,” he begs, holding her closer to his chest, enjoying what littletime he may have with her.

“I’ll always take care of her baby, I’m gonna take care ofboth of you,” Steve tells him, and god does Billy wish he could find comfort inthat.

“He’s gonna kill me, the second he finds out, I’m dead and Ican’t…I can’t let him hurt her too.”

“No one’s hurting anyone,” Steve sighs, leaning in closerand kissing Billy’s temple. “I’m not going to let him hurt you ever again.”

“You don’t know that, don’t make a promise you can’t keep,”he argues, but he finds himself leaning into Steve’s embrace, trying andfailing to fight the hope bubbling up in his chest.

“You’re not going home with him,” Steve says it with suchdetermination that Billy finds himself believing it.

It’s the truth, Steve won’t let them take him, he knowsthat, and even if it’s only their truth for the next ten minutes, he will baskin those ten minutes and hope for a future that may never come, because nomatter what happens to him, their little girl will always be safe in SteveHarrington’s arms.

#biancatorres1 #harringrove au #harringrove fic #omega billy hargrove #alpha steve harrington #alpha/beta/omega #harringrove #harringrove ficlet #harringrove drabble #omega billy #alpha steve #irrelevant but i need to catch up on nightshift now that four seasons are up thanks #i know that it's set in texas and billy is in indiana but let a girl live

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