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peachetteprice · 7 months ago

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Driving Habits | TF141

Disclaimer: Some of these are UK specific, including the style of car, manoeuvres, terminology, and gearbox. That's what happens when the boys live and work mostly in England! Also, I am almost taking my practical test in September, and I need to rant about certain habits. Sorry in advance to Soap and Ghost. Love you both, boys.

Credit to @soaps-mohawk for giving me the inspiration to explore this headcanon! It began with an exploration into what cars TF141 might drive! You can see the original post that inspired this here.

+ Including interactions when driving with an S/O!

Notorious one-handed driver. The other hand is either on the gearstick - just resting, contemplating - or mediating between the gearstick and your thigh. He loves a good reverse bay park. (He's an absolute beast at it, too. No need for minor adjustments. He just... knows the space. And he will make fun of you when you can't park as perfectly as him). Helps to get the shopping in better, because at least you can get to the boot! Has been known to swerve a little bit for birds in the road, but that's because he's an avid watcher, and the poor things get enough grief as it is - he wants to still be able to watch Robins and Thrushes in the trees on the weekend!

Captain John Price:

He does, however, neglect rabbits, foxes, badgers, squirrels, and rats. And the... occasional deer in Scotland? Not out of malice - not at all - but they're not worth swerving over and potentially causing a collision for. He might, only if you're with him - because you'll squeal if he doesn't and positively become harrowed by its body popping beneath the rear tyre - but it's much safer for a driver to simply ram it into the gravel than to mess around with the safety of himself, other drivers, and - of course - you.

Takes extra care around vehicles with stickers that denote that the occupants of said vehicle - bar the driver or secondary passengers - are animals or children. He will be extra sure to check his mirrors, touch on the brakes if need be, and will actively scan for dangerous drivers that he can shield the car from. His duty is to protect, after all, in whatever capacity.

That being said, in his youth, he was known to drive... a little faster than required. Only on country lanes does he still retain some of his more... reckless habits. He may go a touch too fast around corners, and ignore the chevrons that indicate the severity of a turn (one arrow, two, three), and if the road opens up to a sprawling range, whereby speed control for tight corners and blind junctions is not an issue, he will... perhaps... occasionally - only rarely if you're in the car with him - let her rip.

Begrudgingly drives your shuddering little Fiat 500 or itty bitty Hyundai i20 (hey, what do you mean, tiny, it's perfect for the city, John! Pay no mind if your boys giggle and point when you turn up at the base in it...), though much prefers the Triumph Spitfire, 1979, mint-condition, that he bought in 2008 for three grand and fixed up over a ten-year period (when he wasn't deployed, that was) which is now worth £18,000. That is his profit! But he won't let another soul touch it, drive it, or so much as look at it - unless it's you, on a good day - until the day he dies. It's in stunning condition, but God help you if you reverse into the driveway without him watching like a hawk, wiggling his hand as if it were the paddle of an aeroplane conductor, telling you to move closer to the wall and risk scratching your car just to protect his darling baby. It... oh no... it might be the only thing he loves more than you...

But those roads are his home, that's all!

Always, always, always over-revs the engine to get out of a junction. He can't help it! He's used to manoeuvring through rough terrain with a car the size of a military tank - he's bound to forget to treat a normal car with a normal amount of strength. He comes flying into and out of roundabouts for that exact reason! He has to get on and off them quickly enough - don't you know, they're deathtraps, they are!

Lieutenant Simon "Ghost" Riley:

He's also prone to checking his side mirrors and rear view mirror an inordinate amount of times for a twenty-minute pop to the shop. He is convinced that the Kia Sportage behind him is right up his tail - he's sure it's stalking you in the passenger seat, especially with your bumper stickers on the rear, the nasty perverts - no matter how many times you explain to him that the mirrors are convex! They will make everything seem closer than they truly are! Now, however, he does not and will not ever brake-check a car, but he will sure as hell give them the dirtiest stare if they decide to overtake him... or until they back off a few more feet behind you.

The poor man gets impatient at lights. He does. And crossings, too. Train, tram, pedestrian, any and all of them. Despises them all. He'd rather a set of traffic lights for people to cross at, than have those silly zebra, pelican or toucan markings along the road that he has to pray Grandma Doris won't divert her walking cane in its bilateral direction. Oh, and he bounces his leg like there's no tomorrow. Again, he can't help it! He isn't used to waiting in cars. He's used to tumbling down roads in Middle Eastern deserts as the crow flies. None of those silly turns and re-routes into estates because he took the wrong turn at a junction. He wouldn't have messed up had he had time to think! Had there been no traffic! And, oh, Christ, the traffic. Simon does not like traffic. He does illegal U-turns as soon as he sniffs there being a road closure - that's how much he dislikes waiting!

You'll never forget the day that he wrenched the handbrake up way too high, and you had to get your father to re-tighten it. You're sure there aren't any more notches he can lift it to. You're rarely ever on a hill that warrants it. He'll crank it up six times just to stop at the traffic light before the Tesco. It's bloody Tesco! It's not Mount Kilimanjaro!

Never gets the bite point consistently. Never gets the damn bite point. Always too low or too high. He doesn't over-rev it like Ghost does, but the amount of times he stalls the bloody car, thinking he's in another one of those tank-sized vehicles that has a brand-spanking new bite point - or dare he say, an automatic gearbox that doesn't even require a clutch - is incalculable. You'd think the man has only just learnt to drive!

Sergeant John "Soap" MacTavish:

Notoriously speeds through built-up areas. Often commits to doing 45mph in a 30mph zone. Only when there isn't anyone around, like at nighttime! He consistently zooms past speed cameras in his BMW. His poor 3L engine is just too powerful for those dinky little roads. And, promise, he doesn't do it on purpose! He just routinely forgets to glance at his speedometer (and his mirrors, but that's another issue), and he drives for himself and himself only. In fact, he often hums to himself and forgets you're even there, beside him, clutching onto the internal handle on the roof in case he veers too suddenly to either side. His object permanence doesn't prevail unless he has one hand on your inner thigh, and if he doesn't, well, you can kiss safe driving habits goodbye.

(Oh, and he always sits on the brake. And bite + gas. The handbrake is too cumbersome, and his feet are strong enough, Goddamnit!)

Alright, that isn't to say he's an... unsafe driver. He's only slightly inconsiderate. He brakes too harshly, too late, too suddenly, he coasts on the clutch around corners, he never feeds the steering wheel, and he sometimes forgets to check his mirrors before turning into a junction (but he's never T-boned a cyclist... yet... you can give him a tick for that one). But he hums and whistles a nice tune to himself - he prefers it to the radio, and that's not to say he prefers quiet so he can hear the sound of the engine, no, no... never... not at all - and he always makes an overt point to note every field of cows, sheep (especially horses!) as well as every cat he sees lurking along the pavements. Never dogs. Doesn't like the bastards. Got bit once. That was enough to turn him right off.

Sergeant Kyle "Gaz" Garrick:

Beautiful driver. Test-accurate. He could re-take it today and pass with flying colours. What a brilliant driver. The only bad habit he's picked up is driving with one hand (he tends to bite his fingernails on the other when he drives - helps with the stress of commuting in London), and never feeding the steering wheel through his hands. He does the wipe-on, wipe-off manouvre, mostly because he looks hot when doing it, though he tries not to. Mama Garrick always swats his hand whenever he does it because that's how drivers get into accidents, baby!

Car-shares with his mother, whether it's in her duck-egg blue Kia Picanto or his lime green Ford Fiesta - it has failed its MOT three bloody times, and he's revived that girl from death's vice grip more times than he can count, it has the mileage of a postal worker in the 1700s, nearing 200k - but this gentleman always remembers to bring the seat forward and upright after he's finished using it, so that her feet can touch the pedals, and to, naturally, reduce her back pain. He does the same with the headrest, too, because if there's anything he cares about more than his job, it's the safety of his family and friends!

Tends to drive on the cautious side. The only minor fault he'd get in a test would be hesitance because he simply doesn't trust any other driver but himself. His mother drilled that into him. She said that there's nothing worse than watching a car flash its headlights and signal you to go, with caution, as always, because the flash is not universal for 'go', only to pull in front of you and trigger you to emergency brake. Or, God-forbid, a pedestrian puts their hand up at you before they've even crossed the bloody road, and he has to slam on the brakes like he's Speedy Gonzalez at a traffic light. Lordy Lord.

Never mind the fact that he waits too long at pedestrian crossings because there could be somebody shrouded by that tree on the corner there. Do you see it? Over there! No, behind the sign, love! There could be someone - oh, whatever. He has to wait to make sure it's clear - otherwise, Grandma Doris is getting bumped in the legs and thrown fifty feet along the road! And he cares about the elderly!

Always nervously bites the insides of his cheek at roundabouts. Which is the most bewildering part of all, because he's so good at them! He always signals onto the roundabout. Never cuts lanes. Always follows directions perfectly, and if he doesn't, well, I guess you're taking a different route until you can turn around in a safe place. He always signals off the roundabout, too - even at mini-roundabouts - but he'll scrunch his face up every time, huff, and mutter:

"Yeah... botched that one."

...Regardless of how many times you tell him that he's a gorgeous driver! It's sexy, too, how he abides by the Highway code and gives way to more cars than he really should - no, except he really should stop doing that, actually, they're starting to take advantage of his kindness and he doesn't realise it - and how he's so... so... so fucking smooth with gear transitions. Going from stationary to a comfortable 20mph? He'll pop that sucker so fluidly into third (or second, if it's his mum's car) with such prowess that you barely notice the engine take the gas he's giving it. There's no jolt between first and second. He plays those gears like he's bowing a violin. How delicate his fingers are. How gentle his touch. It's mesmerising to watch.

And, you're about ready to give him your hand in marriage when you notice that every time he comes to a stop - on a hill, at a traffic light, in crawl traffic, waiting to turn into a junction, he puts the handbrake on, then takes his foot off the foot brake, then knocks the gearstick into neutral, then takes his foot off the clutch, and waits patiently like the darling man he is. Unlike someone else, he never sits on the brake...

Gaz even brakes in ample time, and you thought he couldn't be more perfect! That's what really gets you going - he gives the car behind him just the right amount of time to slow down that it's almost a waltz, and he's the conductor of traffic. Though... maybe don't let him get trapped at a stalemate on a mini-roundabout where all cars are turning left and are subsequently blocked by the need to give way to the right... his poor brain will short-circuit! If he does, give him a pat on the thigh and let him wait for someone else to make the first move - he hates decision-making when he's off-duty.

Bonus Round - Road Rage!

Captain John Price:

Lieutenant Simon "Ghost" Riley:

Road Rage? You mean, showing a healthy amount of anger and vigour towards a bloody idiot driver? You mean... baring his teeth and swatting a hand at them, occasionally honking the horn past eleven-thirty, even if people are sleeping, or pulling out one of his anger-insurance cigars? That's what road rage is? Well... Christ, he must be terrible for it. Don't tell his boys that... they think he's the most level-headed man on base.

He's slightly oblivious to the technique of cars around him. He drives like he's the only driver in the world, because usually he is - except for those fuckers behind you who won't back off - but if something does happen, and if it isn't too much of an issue, he'll grunt, clench his teeth, grip the steering wheel and let out a muttered 'bastard'. If, however, something really irritates him - especially if another car puts you in danger - he'll honk the horn and flail his hand at the windscreen in the hopes that the driver sees his frustration (even if you're the one driving, he'll reach over and honk the pad for you, even though you've told him not to!)

Sergeant John "Soap" MacTavish:

Well... he certainly knows a lot of Gaelic, doesn't he, your boy? You've hardly a monkey's bottom of what he's saying, but the vitriol in which he says it - he's not known for bottling his anger very well - makes it clear to you that he needs a hug and de-tox before bedtime. If the accused does anything on the defensive or antagonistic, he has been known to pull up beside them on a two-lanes-go-straight-on road marking, even if it isn't the right way to your destination, just to glare at them and give them the... stern finger. Maybe... maybe a word or two about precious cargo.

Sergeant Kyle "Gaz" Garrick:

Gaz is a simple guy when he's off-duty. He will sigh, tut, shake his head, and mumble 'nutter', or a very hushed 'oh, you absolute...' (bonus: he never finishes his sentence!) It's what his mum does! If another car puts you in danger, he may groan and roll his eyes - but he always asks if you're okay as soon as, and apologises for the sudden violence of his attitude! What a sweet man.

| Masterlist |

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loulouwrites · 7 months ago

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DIVULGATION . TOMMY SHELBY

summary: tommy's perfect life comes crashing down around him

warnings: angst, swearing, infidelity (sort of), talks of childbirth, terminal illness, child abandonment, infertility issues, period typical attitudes towards pregnancy and childbirth, period typical sexism/misogyny, loss of a parent, unedited

a/n: i will get to making a taglist, but life is a nightmare atm lmao

word count: 3.7k

In many ways, life had not been kind to Tommy Shelby. He had been raised in nothing more than a slum, in a town that saw no sunny days, any form of sunlight being covered by the thick smog of the factories that loomed over the town's residents - a constant reminder of their destiny. He had volunteered to fight for the King before he truly had time to understand what it meant, the thought of fighting men the same as him in a foreign country seeming better than being stuck in Small Heath for the rest of his miserable life.

He was meant for greater things, and he knew exactly what he had to do to get them.

As haunted as he was, Tommy excelled in nearly all aspects of his life. He had built an empire from nothing, he had secured a country manor for the cost of a shack in Small Heath, and he had a wife that had seemed to be put on this earth just for him.

Every decision he made, every step he took, was a calculated move to protect what he had built and to silence the ghosts that refused to let him be. Tommy Shelby was a man driven by both his aspirations and his demons, forever walking the line between triumph and torment.

She had married Tommy Shelby out of nothing but love. When they were wed, he had just arrived home from France, and people told her he was a shadow of the man he once was, though she never believed them. He was funny, charming, and clever; he just kept that part of himself hidden from everyone but her, which only endeared him to her even more.

They had come a long way since their wedding day. They had moved out of the terrace on Watery Lane into a mansion that was far too big for their small family. She no longer spent her days working in the shady betting office at the back of their house; now her days were filled with planning dinner parties and organising fundraising events for her husband's numerous charitable organisations.

Life was easier now, even if it felt a little emptier. She had thought her family would be bigger by now, expecting a few children to fill the vast house and keep her company, but it had never happened for her. She had wondered if there was something wrong with her, that her body was simply created wrong. It wasn't until she was having lunch at Polly's house that realisation dawned on her.

"You're pregnant," the older woman grinned behind her cigarette.

Her eyes widened at the words, and she dropped the china cup on the table. She had long given up on the thought of carrying a child, so the signs of her pregnancy had gone unnoticed. But the words Polly spoke hit her like a ton of bricks.

She was pregnant.

She left Polly's house hastily, barely glancing at the woman as she rushed to her car, a smile on her face, already imagining Tommy's reaction when she told him. She knew he would be thrilled. He had been pining for a child of his own even more than she had, and the hopeful looks he gave her whenever she was sick pierced her heart each time. But that didn't matter now, she was finally giving him a child, they were finally starting their family.

She called Frances' name as soon as she stepped through the door, asking if Tommy was home yet as she threw her bag and coat on the chair by the door. The housekeeper appeared in the foyer with a nervous look on her face, a rarity for the somewhat judgmental woman.

"Mrs. Shelby," Frances started, wringing her hands together in a timid manner, "you have a visitor."

"Who?" she asked, her joyful smile slowly fading.

"A woman," the older woman replied. "She claims to know your husband."

She understood Frances' apprehension in that moment. It was rare for Tommy to receive female visitors at the house, unless they were family or there for business.

She was about to question the housekeeper further but was interrupted by the front door swinging open. Her husband stepped inside, his eyes widening in confusion at the sight of the two women standing frozen in the foyer, their eyes burning into him.

"Mr. Shelby," Frances broke the silence. "You have a visitor."

"Who? I'm not expecting anyone," Tommy said, walking to stand beside his wife and placing a tentative hand on her waist, not missing the way she stiffened under his touch.

"A woman," his wife said, pinching her lips together.

"A woman," he echoed, his eyes flickering between his wife and Frances. "Did this woman happen to give you her name, Frances?"

"She said her name was Catherine, Mr. Shelby," Frances replied hesitantly. "There is something else..."

The husband and wife fixed her with such a burning gaze that the older woman had to lower her head to evade it, only daring to raise it again when Tommy cleared his throat, signaling for her to continue.

"She has a child with her, little thing, about ten years old."

The tension in the room thickened with Frances' words. All three bodies straightened, Tommy dropping his hand from his wife's waist to nervously rub along his lips.

He didn't notice his wife's absence at his side until he heard Frances' panicked voice call her name as she stormed towards his study, the skirt of her dress swinging from side to side with the force of her steps.

He joined Frances, calling out of her name, but she didn't listen, swinging the door to his study open, her heated gaze landing on the woman sitting on one of the seats at Tommy's desk.

"Who are you?" she spat out, shaking off Tommy as he caught up to her and grabbed her arm.

The woman's eyes widened. "My...my name is Catherine."

"I didn't mean your name," she hissed, approaching the desk. "Who are you?"

"I'd prefer to speak to Tommy alone," Catherine answered meekly, dropping her gaze.

"You'd prefer to speak to Tommy," she mocked, leaning a hand on the desk. Tommy called her name again, shaking his head at her when she looked at him.

"Do you know this woman?" she asked her husband, whose gaze flickered to the woman sat by his desk, a blank look on her face.

"No."

Catherine scoffed at his words, standing up from the chair on shaky feet. It was only then the frail state of the woman was clear. She may have been pretty once, but her sunken cheeks and pale skin aged her, and the drab clothes she wore made her seem worn and tired beyond her years.

"This," Catherine pointed to the child sitting beside her, and the other two adults in the room looked at the boy for the first time since they entered, "is Frank."

The young boy didn't look up at the mention of his name, his eyes fixed to his swinging feet.

"He's your son, Tommy."

"Ha," Tommy's wife scoffed. "I'm sure he is."

Your paragraph is mostly clear and grammatically correct. Here's a refined version:

Tommy called her name again, a warning in his voice that he seldom used when addressing her. She fixed him with a glare she seldom directed at him.

"It was before you went to France," Catherine interrupted the husband and wife's silent conversation. "You and your brothers were buying whiskey for the whole pub. I always remember you sitting in the corner, just watching everyone else have fun. I came over and asked you if you were drinking to celebrate or to forget, and you said..."

"Both," Tommy finished her sentence.

"Oh my God," his wife gasped, her hands covering her mouth.

Catherine ignored the other woman, turning her attention to Tommy.

"By the time I realised I was pregnant, you were already in France, and when you came back, everyone said you were different...I was managing fine so I didn't feel the need to tell you..."

"But now you need money," Tommy nodded, reaching into his breastpocket for a cigarette. "How much?"

"What?" Catherine frowned.

"How much?" Tommy mumbled as he lit his cigarette.

"I don't need your money," the woman had the decency to sound offended at the man's words.

"Bullshit," his wife scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I don't," Catherine insisted. "I'm sick, Tommy. Very sick, and I have no family. It's just me and Frankie."

The silent little boy in the chair finally lifted his head to look at his mother, his eyes shining with unshed tears.

"He'll have no one when I'm gone."

"We run an orphanage," his wife spoke, her voice cruel and cutting, "we can reserve him a space."

Tommy's head snapped towards her, shock written clearly on his features. His wife was many things—sarcastic, witty, clever—but he had never seen her as cruel, not until this very moment.

"No," the boy shouted, getting up from his chair to stand beside his mother. "I won't go to an orphanage."

"You won't, son," Tommy addressed the boy for the fist time. "My wife was just joking."

His wife rolled her eyes, stormed out of the room, muttering a 'fuck you, Thomas' as she passed him on her way to the door.

It was late when Tommy finally entered the bedroom; his wife sat at her vanity, removing her earrings.

"They've finally gone then," she sighed, beginning to unpin her hair. "How much did you give them?"

He ignored her, throwing himself down on the bed and placing a hand over his eyes, doing anything he could to avoid meeting her gaze.

"Thomas," she warned, "how much?"

"Nothing," he muttered.

"Nothing? They left without a penny?" she scoffed.

"They didn't leave," Tommy snapped, raising his voice and slamming the arm that covered his eyes onto the bed. He groaned as the hairbrush she had thrown hit him in the chest.

"They're still here?" she hissed, standing from the vanity and approaching the bed as Tommy sat up.

"Just listen," he attempted to place his hands on her hips, but she smacked them away, pacing the floor with her hands in her hair. "I am that boy's father, whether we like it or not, I am, alright?"

She shook her head, muttering under her breath as she paced.

"I'm not going to throw him and his sick mother out on the street," he continued. "That's not the man I am, and you know it's not."

"No, your moral compass is a beacon to us all, Tommy," she rolled her eyes.

"What do you want me to do?" he shouted, beginning to lose his temper.

"Not get whores pregnant, for one!" she shouted back, throwing her arms up. "You've betrayed me, Thomas."

"Betrayed?" he repeated, the disbelief evident in his tone. "I didn't know you fucking existed then."

"Well, I still feel betrayed."

Tommy sighed, rising from the bed and approaching his wife the way he would a skittish horse.

"I know, I know," he sighed, placing a hand on her cheek. She didn't resist, though she didn't lean into it either. "It's a fucking mess, and I'm sorry."

She choked out a sob, dropping her head. "It was supposed to be a good day."

"I know," Tommy murmured, moving the hand that was holding her cheek to the back of her neck and pulling her to his chest. "I'm sorry I ruined it."

If only he knew what he had ruined.

The clattering of knives and forks was all that could be heard in the dining room, there were more than ten people sat at the table and it appeared nobody could find a word to speak.

It had been exactly three days since Catherine and Frankie appeared on the Shelby's doorstep, and the tension had only been rising. She had thought she was doing a good job of being civil towards the woman and child who had ruined her life—nodding at them politely when her attempts to avoid them failed, and choking out a 'hello' whenever she ran into them in the corridors.

Tommy had been less than impressed with her attempts to hide from the strangers, and insisted he throw a dinner party to offically introduce his son to the rest of the family, much to his wife's chagrin.

"Lovely lamb," Arthur muttered awkwardly from the other end of the table, his words met with half-hearted murmurs of agreement.

"Frankie loves lamb," Catherine responded, receiving eye rolls from the woman sat beside her, and Polly who was sat opposite.

"How lovely," Polly offered a fake smile.

"I don't eat it a lot, though," Frank spoke from his mother's side. "Lamb's too expensive for mum."

She and Polly sniggered at the boy's words, covering their mouths when Tommy threw them both a glare.

"You enjoy school, Frankie?" John asked.

"It's okay," the boy shrugged. "I'm not very clever, though."

"Takes after his father," Polly muttered, earning a laugh from the man's wife.

"That's not true," Catherine placed a hand on Frank's shoulder. "He's a brilliant artist, and loves to read."

"What about you, Catherine?" Polly leaned forward, puffing on her cigarette. "Tell us about yourself."

"Well...I was a secretary until recently, I'm from not far from you..."

"Fascinating," Polly dismissed her.

"Polly," Tommy warned, subtly shaking his head.

"Why don't we take Frankie outside, Tom?" Arthur interrupted. "Show him how to shoot a gun."

"Oh, I don't-" Catherine started, but was interrupted by Polly.

"That's a wonderful idea, leave us ladies to chat."

Catherine conceded, not wanting to offend the older woman more than she already had. The men all left the table, Tommy having to gently drag Frank away from his mother, leaving the three women alone.

"So, Catherine," Polly began as soon as she heard the door close behind the boys. "Are you planning on staying here until you die?"

"Polly," the other woman gasped at her bluntness, but couldn't help but turn her head to Catherine to await the answer. She had been wondering that herself.

"Well, I hadn't thought about it," Catherine laughed awkwardly. "I just...needed to know Frank would be okay."

"He will be," Polly nodded.

"I know, I know that now." Catherine nodded. "Tommy has been very generous." Her eyes flickered to Tommy's wife, sat beside her, the omission in her statement clear.

"You have no other family that could take Frank?" Polly question, and Catherine shook her head, sweat beginning to pool on her forehead.

"No, my mother died when I was about his age, and my dad passed a few years ago. I'm an only child."

"Bless you," there was malice Mrs. Shelby's tone when she finally spoke.

"It must be scary, knowing you're not going to be here for your child. Trusing two strangers to care for him," Polly continued, not noticing Catherine's face getting paler, nor the way her hands shook when she lifted them to rub her head.

"Polly, I don't think she's feeling well," the other woman frowned when she noticed Catherine's body begin to slump in her chair.

"She's fine."

"No," Catherine said. "I'm not, I think I need to lay down."

They called Frances over, instructing them to take Catherine to bed, neither woman standing up from their seats to assist. They watched as Frances struggled to hold up the frail woman's body as she hald carried her out of the dining room.

"She's a fucking good actress," Polly muttered.

Frances returned to the dining room to inform the two women that Catherine had taken a turn, and the doctor would arrive soon to examine her.

Polly sat unaffected by the housekeeper's words; her counterpart's eyes, however, widened in horror.

"Oh my God, Polly," she gasped. "Have we killed her?"

"Oh, shut up," Polly scoffed, stamping out her cigarette in the ashtray. "She was dying before she even got here."

"Polly," she sputtered. "Your interrogation has literally put her in an early grave."

"Oh, because you were treating her splendidly?"

"I was just ignoring her. You've fucking killed her."

The dining room door slammed open. Tommy stood there, his face red, his eyes stormy.

"What did you two fucking do?"

Two days following the dinner party, Catherine's condition had not improved. The doctor had told them that her illness was so advanced that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. Still, she couldn't ignore the guilt that was bubbling in her stomach when she thought about the way she had acted at dinner.

She knocked lightly on the door, opening it gently, careful not to disturb the frail woman that was lying in bed.

"I'm surprised to see you," Catherine choked out, weakly pulling herself into a sitting position.

"I'm surprised too."

"Is there something wrong? Is Frankie okay?"

"Everything's fine," she reassured the woman, moving to sit in the chair beside the bed. "I came to apologise."

She didn't miss the way Catherine's eyebrow's rose.

"The way I've behaved since you arrived has been terrible. I'm not a cruel person, I swear. I was just angry."

"I understand."

She paused, her breath catching in her throat at Catherine's words.

"I would be angry, too, if I were you."

"It doesn't excuse the way I've treated you."

"No," Catherine breathed with a laugh. "But I understand it anyway. You felt like you lost everything in a few minutes, and I was easy to blame."

"I am very sorry," she spoke through the tears in her eyes.

"I am too."

"Well," she coughed, standing from her seat. "I should let you rest."

Catherine called her name when her hand was on the doorhandle, and she turned to look at the sick woman.

"Look after Frankie, please," she said, her voice weak and teary. "He's a sensitive boy. Please look after him, and love him, love him as much as the child in your belly."

"How did you know?"

"I had the same mood swings when I was pregnant," she said. Both women let out a small laugh.

"I promise to look after him... and to love him like my own."

"Thank you."

She approached Tommy, who was leaning in Frankie's doorway, quietly observing the boy as he slept peacefully. She wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her head against his back. Tommy jumped in surprise before reaching to hold his wife's hands, which were clasped around his stomach.

"You'll be a good father," she spoke into his back.

"Just wish it didn't happen like this," Tommy mumbled. "It should have been you and me."

"It will be," she promised. "You, me, Frankie, and the baby."

Tommy unclasped her hands, turning to face her, a frown on his face.

"You're..."

"I am."

Tommy's expression softened as he processed the news, a mixture of surprise and tenderness crossing his features.

"You're pregnant," Tommy breathed, his voice filled with a mix of astonishment and wonder. He pulled her close again, holding her tightly against him. "We're having a baby."

She nodded against his chest, feeling his heart beat faster beneath her ear. "Yes, Tommy."

Tommy pressed a kiss to the top of her head, overwhelmed with emotions. "I love you," he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. "I love you and I'm so fucking sorry."

Tears welled up in her eyes as she hugged him back, her eyes landing on the boy asleep in the bed.

Catherine's funeral service was small. There weren't many people close to the woman, the majority of the mourners being the Shelby family.

Frankie didn't say much the whole day, he just stood at his mother's grave, an empty look in his eyes that she recognised all too well.

They arrived home in silence, Frankie jumping out of the car as soon as it pulled up in front of the house, running inside before anyone could stop him.

"He just needs time," she told her husband, resting a hand on his shoulder.

"I know," Tommy agreed. He was no stranger to death, nor the solemn emptiness that came after.

She knocked on Frankie's door later that evening, popping her head in to see him sat on the carpet, still in his suit from the funeral.

"I'm just checking in," she offered him a small smile, kneeling down beside him on the floor. "How are you feeling?"

Frankie shrugged in response, his eyes downcast.

"It's okay if you want to cry, there's no shame in it."

"I don't want to cry," his voice shook, "I just want my mum."

"Oh, sweetheart," she breathed out, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I know you do."

He didn't respond, he just kept his gaze pinned to the blue carpet beneath him.

"I lost my mum too, you know?" she said. Frankie's eyes snapped to hers for a moment, then snapped back down. "She died when I was a bit older than you. She got sick and died a few weeks later; there was nothing anyone could do."

"Do you miss her?" Frankie asked, turning to face her.

"Every day," she told him, "it doesn't get easier. You just learn to live with it. And then, someday, you'll be able to think about her and your time together, and it won't hurt so much. But you'll always miss your mum."

Frankie's lips pinched together in thought, and he nodded, accepting her ineloquent words greatfully.

"I know I haven't been very nice to you," she said. "But we're a family, and if you ever want to talk about her, you can come to me, and I'll listen."

"Okay."

"Okay," she rose from the floor.

"I'm sorry about your mum," Frankie said once she was standing.

"I'm sorry about yours," she replied, offering him one last smile before leaving the room.

Elsie Catherine Shelby was born in the early hours of the morning. She came quickly and was less fussy than other babies, according to the midwife.

Her big brother was excited to meet her, pacing the bottom of the stairs until the midwife allowed him to enter the room, a smile on his face as he greeted his little sister with glee.

"I'm not an only child anymore," he had laughed, poking the infant's cheek gently.

And just like that, the Shelby family welcomed their newest member.

#tommy shelby x reader #peaky blinders imagine #tommy shelby x oc #tommy shelby imagine #tommy shelby fanfiction #tommy shelby fanfic

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thoughtfullyrainynightmare · 8 months ago

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Jealousy

Summary: You're in a secret relationship with him, but as he sees you walking with another guy, he feels the need to throw you over his shoulder and carry you away Length: ~0,8k Contains: Themes of jealousy

Yami Sukehiro, the last man of the Yami clan, and the eldest of his family, was a sound man. He wasn’t about status, or possessions, or his own goals to begin with. He had been happy for the longest of times, if he had been able to just live his life, do things he liked… get better at it and just… have a peaceful life.

And when you had walked into his life, he… wasn’t exactly sure what to do about that. Hell, he’d say that getting together with you was a miracle in itself, because he didn’t deem himself to be anything special in the first place, but …Still, you had chosen him, a rat bastard from a foreign country with a strange grimoire. Which seemed so surreal.

But. He had to believe it. By now he had to believe it. Even if you two were keeping it on the downlow, due to him being a Captain. A lot of people might have wanted to use you to get to him, and that was the last thing he wanted.

And it wasn’t something that he was gladly thinking about, but … it was the reality in which you lived. That there were such individuals out there. And that getting under the skin of a Magic Knight Captain, would be a rock turned for the enemy.

It was all for the sake of keeping you safe. So, it would be worth the secrecy, the days and the nights during which he couldn’t see you. It would be worth all the sneaking around.

Or so he thought.

Until that one day… that one damned day when he was walking in a nearby village, and he saw you walking side by side with some guy. And obviously the guy didn’t know that you were taken. Plus, since you were in a secret relationship, with no actual proof of dating someone like a Magic Knights Captain, a title that he knew would hold some burdens, there was a good chance the guy wouldn’t believe even if you did say so.

But still…. Damn the nerve on that guy.

Just walking so casually with his spouse! It made him just bite down his molars. Irritated him. Made his breath low, and steady, and somehow rugged with every passing growl.

The nerve! The guy should just… stay in their own lane if he knew what was good for him.

He walked up to the two of you, radiating the mana only a Lord of Destruction could, and stared at him with eyes gleaming in the light of the sun.

“This guy botherin’ you?” He asked with that low baritone voice of his that vibrated through your body and soul.

“No,” you replied. “My brother isn’t bothering me.”

His eyes turned, cold and emotionless, or so one would have said as it was impossible to tell, towards the brother. The man who was feeble in comparison, and who was shaking in his shoes, looking pale as a ghost.

“I gotta talk with ye,” he told you, and before you barely had had the time to give you a nod, the mountain of a man that was known as Yami Sukehiro, threw you over his shoulder and begun carrying you away, almost as if to make a point.

“H-hey!” Your brother yelled, but you waved him off, telling him that it was fine. Really, it was fine.

And by the time Yami let you down, you were amused by the whole ordeal.

“What was that about?” You mused to yourself, while still managed to sound slightly accusatory.

“What?” He asked, as if it was clear as day. “You’re mine, and I’m territorial,” he explained. “The guy was just… trying to pick a fight.”

“My brother was trying to pick a fight by spending time with me?” You quirked an eyebrow at him, but received a kind of a shrug as a reply.

“Didn’t know it was your brother…” he uttered. “So he just looked like he was asking for it.”

That barely qualified as an answer. But you’d let it slide. This once. Just this once…

“So…” you uttered, while taking a step closer, and fumbling with this cape. “You are… territorial?” You asked, which was replied with another shrug and him rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yeah…”

“So… you’re not jealous, by any means? If I spend time with another guy despite being in a relationship with you?” There was a tease in your tone, one that made his gaze wander.

“I’m… territorial,” he repeated with a forced tone and a tense jaw.

“I know,” you mused with a kind of a giggle, “ and that’s one of the things I love about you.”

“One of the things?” He glanced with a kind of a smug face, while you knew that it wasn’t genuine smugness. Just a pleased, proud, confident smirk.

“One of the things,” you nodded while leaning forward and pressing your body against his, as he leaned down, and closer to you.

“Good to know…” he uttered with a hushed tone that tried to be a whisper, but the voice that always vibrated through you, resonated with you, wouldn’t allow it to be quite just that.

Another thing you loved about it.

#black clover fanfiction #black clover oneshot #black clover x you #yami sukehiro x reader #yami x reader

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waklman · 2 years ago

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The Showoff

summary: jake likes to show you off or you learn why jake keeps protein bars he’s allergic to in his bag.

pairing: jake seresin x female reader

warnings: no use of y/n. fluff, allergic reaction, mentions of dying, jake being a little mean for a second. 18+ blog in general.

word count: 1k

olympic swimmer au

the halfway mark masterlist

Jake Seresin had virtually every reason to be a show off.

The moment his muscled body hit the water, he was truly unmatched—a force to be reckoned with—a smug face you wouldn’t want to see stretching in the lane beside you. If his name merely floated into the ears of elite coaches, the rival teams they managed were in for it on training days. But no matter how many grueling drills their swimmers were pushed to do, they could never truly emerge as a threat to the United States team.

So, the heavily decorated athlete never faltered, not when he knew his country dominated every arena they strode into.

However, Jake did falter when he was too busy boasting, that he didn't think to check the peanut butter protein bar that his giggly girlfriend was happily feeding him. There weren’t many things that could render the Olympiad breathless, though, you wearing his gold medals did, that was a given. But, peanuts—his worst food allergy to date, that was also a given.

Before Jake could tell you how his coach had no critique for his freestyle stroke, the walls of his throat started to close in on him—leaving him quite literally breathless.

To his disbelief, you were so distraught that you had to stab your boyfriend with an EpiPen, that your mind simply erased the memory of you coming to his rescue.

Even when he spent half an hour swiping away the fattest tears he’s ever seen off your cheeks, you were still adamant that you most definitely killed him. That he refused to move onto the afterlife because he wanted to look after you.

“Giggles, you need to calm down. I’m not dead,” he firmly assures you, for what feels like, the hundredth time this afternoon.

If Jake had to sit on the edge of the pool any longer, legs submerged into the water, his toes might as well shrivel off, separate from his feet, and find its final resting place on the pool floor.

Straddled on his lap sits his teary-eyed girlfriend, tracing a trembling finger over the Olympic rings tattooed under his left pec. “What if…you’re just a ghost right now,” you hiccup, eyes still trained on the red ink you’re drawing over.

“If I was a ghost I’d be haunting Bradshaw right about now,” he confirms bluntly, eyes running over your stuffy nose and puffy eyes. It looks like you’re the one that just had an allergic reaction.

You sniff, feeling a bit lightheaded when you lift your chin to look at him.

“But…Casper the ghost—”

“Alright, that’s enough. I ain’t getting myself compared to that pale freak,” he cuts you off, pulling his arena jacket back up your droopy shoulders. Splashed across the back of the official team jacket is Jake Seresin written in white blocky letters, contrasting against the navy blue of his flag colors.

A weary sigh leaves his lips when the reprimand only makes you weakly fall forward, stuffing your face into the crook of his neck. Then, another flow of tears slip out of your eyes, wetting his shoulder.

It should’ve been obvious to him that you were sensitive enough to start crying again. Jake should’ve known that—should’ve watched his tone with you. But he didn’t. And for that, he feels like a complete asshole.

Carefully, he wraps an arm around you, bicep flexing to ensure that you won’t fall backwards into the pool. Jake is acutely aware that you can’t swim—or float on your own, so he scoots away from the water, petting the back of your head to signal the sudden movement.

“It wasn’t your fault, Gigs,” he finally whispers, staring ahead at the floating ropes, separating the swim lanes. Months ago, Jake had been hanging onto one of them, playfully arguing with Bradshaw during practice when he spotted you for the first time, sitting in the stands with the coach’s daughter, peanut butter protein bar held up to your smiley mouth.

“Yes it was. It's all my fault. I packed your lunch today,” you’re quick to blame yourself, mumbling guiltily against his tan skin.

“Actually,” he lets out a soft breath of amusement, coaxing you off him. With his hands moving to cradle your head, Jake intently cools your hot cheeks with his thumbs. Somehow, they're still cold from the frigid waters soaking his legs.

“I might have snuck those into my bag when you were busy adding Taylor Swift to my playlist,” he confesses, pulling your face closer in to kiss away a tear that formed in the corner of your eye.

Not quite sure if you heard those words right, you keep still as he leans back and cocks his head at you, waiting for a reaction to load in.

Once it all hits you, you slap your own hands on his cheeks, holding his head between your smaller palms. Now the both of you are grabbing onto eachother's heads. “Why on earth would you do that!”

There’s not one plausible reason for him to purposefully toss that in with his ham and cheese sandwich. Did he not like what you made for him today? Was that it? Or did it just slip his mind that peanut dust could take him out faster than a bullet can?

“You’re—you’re allergic to peanuts! And you hate the chalky taste of protein bars!” You exhaustedly remind him, more confused than ever.

There’s a crooked, and somewhat bashful smile on his face when you widen your eyes at him. Sheer horror is written across your features, leaving you oblivious to the gradual heat that colors his cheeks.

“Okay, but. Don’t you like them? I wasn’t gonna let my girl starve while I ate like a king,” he gives you a offhanded shrug, as if he wasn’t practically contaminating his own food by squeezing the protein bar next to it.

It’s silent for a few seconds while you two stare at each other—until your face suddenly scrunches up, bottom lip starting to wobble, and tears beginning to drip onto his thigh.

You can't help but to cry at the small gesture. Because Jake knows how much you love snacking on something he was deathly allergic to. Because Jake loves you enough to remember that. Because Jake doesn't care if it could hospitalize him if he kissed you while you ate it.

“No, no—hey quit crying,” he laughs, chest warming when you weep tears of happiness this time.

The athlete barely flinches when a confused Bradley and Bob walk through the locker room doors, clearly confused by the sight of their teammate chuckling as his girlfriend sobs in his lap, blubbering about peanuts.

All because, Jake Seresin likes to show off his pretty girlfriend—pathetically drowning in her own tears or not. When he goes to kiss the tears away again, Jake thinks that he has virtually every reason to be a show off.

note: okay i love them so much, i've been wanting a grumpy jake x sunshine reader on my blog for awhile so here they are!! thank you for reading and as always reblogs are greatly appreciated.

join the taglist for this series here or follow me on @waklman-library and turn on notifs to be notified when i post!

tags: @genius2050 @eli2447 @s-u-t @dempy @averyhotchner @et-homephone @olymosity @wkndwlff @cruelmissdior @eternallyvenus @laneylovesglen @queerqueenlynn

#jake seresin #jake hangman seresin #jake seresin au #jake seresin fanfiction #jake seresin fic #jake seresin fluff #jake seresin x reader #jake seresin x y/n #jake seresin x you #jake seresin imagine #jake seresin oneshot #jake hangman x you #jake hangman x reader #jake hangman x y/n #jake hangman fic #jake hangman imagine #tgm au #tgm fic #the halfway mark

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svthub · 2 years ago

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svthub's secret garden: a spring collab

This spring, love is in the air! Take a stroll through our garden and discover our secret world of colorful blooms. Who knows who you might run into...

This collab will contain a combination of SFW and NSFW works. See each individual fic for tags and warnings.

Join the Secret Garden taglist!

peony: one trick peony • @wongyuseokie [NSFW] fluff/angst • csc x female reader

synopsis: choi seungcheol could only do one type of floral arrangement, and the rest he’d pawn off to you, granted he got a ton of orders, but he would always take the orders for arrangements that he could never do. this time he went too far. he took an ‘only peonies’ arrangement–a painfully delicate flower–and took an order for a wedding, and with your luck, you’re the only two florists available that weekend.

tulip: my destiny • @wonuhour [SFW] fluff/romance/angst • yjh x female reader

synopsis: when he first met you he didn't think anything of it but he felt drawn to you. When you two started to spend time with each other he fell in love with you. So he takes you to the tulip garden, hoping you felt the same for him, since this is the place you two met each other for the first time.

dandelion: whichever blooms first • @strawberryya [SFW] fluff/hints of angst • hjs x gn reader

synopsis: a dandelion is resilient, it can weather any storm, and at the end of its life it will even grant wishes to whoever sees its worth as something more than a simple garden weed. your relationship with joshua is the same, you hope, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to make a wish that your love will last a lifetime anyways.

rhododendron: sunkissed • @junkissed [SFW] fluff • husband!wjh x wife!reader

synopsis: this year for your anniversary, jun takes you on a trip down memory lane through the flowers of your past together.

carnation: be sweet • @heartkyeom [NSFW] angst/smut • prince!ksy x princess!reader

synopsis: with your country’s finances in trouble, an arranged marriage with a fellow royal is the only viable solution. yet, kwon soonyoung is not a good person, a good prince, and he is certainly not meant to be someone’s husband

foxglove: by line • @wonwussy [NSFW] smut/drama • jww x female reader

synopsis: you know the hotshot ceo is up to no good, and with the interview that can make your career, you’re finally going to have proof.

lily of the valley: valley of broken dreams (and lilies) • @duhnova [SFW] angst/fluff • ljh x female reader

synopsis: you met jihoon when you were both young and dumb — a promise you two made to become big in the music industry laid shattered years later when you lost your ability to sing, and now you have to live in the shadow of your boyfriend while you struggle to come to terms with your broken dreams.

orchid: he was sunshine, i was midnight rain • @dkakapizzaboy [NSFW] fluff/angst/smut • lsm x female reader

synopsis: he was sunshine and roses and you were orchids and moonlight. two very different people in the same industry. he was loved and you were feared, he was a warm cup of tea on a cold day and you were a bucket of ice cold water. what would happen if two highly sought after, up and coming sustainable fashion brands decided to work together on an exclusive, once in a lifetime collaboration?

zinnia: everlasting love • @sluttyminghao [NSFW] fluff/smut • kmg x female reader

synopsis: mingyu wants you to know how much he loves you after dropping hints for years, and takes you on a date you'll never forge, and maybe you'll also figure out you love him too.

lavender: and we meet again • @idyllic-ghost [SFW] fluff/angst/romance • xmh x reader

synopsis: there is something familiar about that house on the hill, even though you swear that you have never seen it before. but you’re drawn to the lavender fields and the oceanview - and the lonesome looking man you see sitting on the porch. when you approach him there is something in his eyes that you cannot understand - a knowing, a deep feeling. the question is, will you ever have enough time to figure out what that look means?

hyacinth: how flowers bloom • @cheolism [NSFW] fantasy/smut • bsk x reader

synopsis: every year, you and the god of spring meet at the edge of the clearing to perform the ceremony that decides if winter will endure or if spring will prevail, repeating the ceremony weekly until spring finally wins. after you won the last five weeks, keeping the world under your icy spell, seungkwan decides to use alternative tactics to dominate you and bring spring back.

trillium: trillium • @beahae [NSFW] fluff/smut • hvc x female reader

synopsis: vernon is flying in to see his girlfriend. oh shit, that’s… you. being away from him since it happened a few months ago makes it hard for it to feel real, especially after two years of what you both convinced yourself was a purely platonic friendship. now that he’s here in the flesh, you are determined to make it feel real. and very non-platonic.

forget-me-nots: promise ring • @lovelyhan [NSFW] fantasy/fluff/a pinch of angst/smut • lc x reader

synopsis: no one would've guessed that the daughter of the town’s royal mage has a soft spot for the clumsiest fire elemental in the entire realm. but when the crown prince suddenly asks for your hand in marriage, you're forced to consider how you feel about a certain lee jung chan a lot more seriously.

#svthub.collab #svthub: masterlist #the secret garden

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semper-legens · 1 month ago

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132. Running Close to the Wind, by Alexandra Rowland

Owned: No, library Page count: 433 My summary: Avra Helvaçi has a problem. He's in possession of the world's biggest secret - the formula that wards off the sea serpents that swarm the shipping lanes in this season. If he can find a buyer, he could sell it for a fortune. If he can find a buyer. He thinks he's got a chance with his ex, pirate captain Teveri az-Haffar. Who hates him, currently. And to make matters worse, the statuesque and perfect Brother Julian has eyes on him - a shame about Julian's vow of chastity. No, despite being blessed by luck, Avara always finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Will he survive his brush with the seas once again? My rating: 5/5

This book. Hoooooooooooo boy. This book. I picked it up for reasons that, if you know me at all, are entirely obvious. Pirates! Magic! Fraught relationships! Characters sparking off each other on the high seas! And when I cracked it open, I…gotta say, I was not expecting what I got. This book is silly, it's horny, it's absolutely ridiculous and very much not for everyone. I spent most of the first quarter of it unsure whether I liked it or not. But by the end, I couldn't help it. I was invested. Something about this silly, silly book drew me right in, and I was absolutely hooked. Gotta hand it to the author, they really know how to keep things interesting, and by the end I was completely sold on this world and these characters and everything going on. What can I say, it's a pirate's life for me!

So, like I said, this book is silly. And yet, there's still a grounding in reality that is much appreciated. For example, a large part of the plot is that the sea is impassable at certain times of year because sea serpents are breeding - typically referred to in crude terms. Characters angsting about not being able to traverse the giant fuckpiles of sea serpents is, in itself, funny! But the danger they pose is real, and the consequences of trying to sail is grave for the characters. The pirates have an annual cake contest which is the most serious business in the world to them, and once the narrative begins exploring that, the reader understands it on a deep level. It's not silly no-consequences land, characters that are under threat of pain or death are still under serious threat. There's just fuck serpents and horny ghosts and spooky dentists and spooky dildos, too.

Our main character is Avra, an ex-spy who was supremely bad at his job and is also the ex of Teveri, longsuffering pirate captain. Avra has stolen a secret that might be the reason how one of the countries can get through the sea serpents, but he doesn't know how to use it, and he's hardly in anyone's good graces. That's what being a silly little s1ut will do for you. He's honestly delightful - his manner of speaking and the repetitive nature of his toadying and weaselling his way out of trouble might be grating to some, but I enjoyed him immensely. Tevari's stoic, no-nonsense, gruff mien provides a great foil for Avra. I like that they have some kind of Tragic Past, but that the narrative decides it isn't the focus and, while it sometimes comes up, doesn't spend too much time mining it for angst points. And I like that Tevari isn't humourless! They just tend towards the sarcastic rather than the silly, balancing Avra and some of the other characters perfectly. Rounding out our protagonists is Julien, a monk of unparalleled hotness, who provides the heart of this story. He's sincere, he's heartfelt, and he's passionate about his convictions, which is interesting to see for his character archetype. I think he wound up my favourite, just for his antics around the cake contest.

For a book that's so, so deeply h0rny, I'm legitimately impressed with how well I, a sex-repulsed ace, could get along with it. The conclusion that I have reached is that it is horny but not necessarily erotic, which is a huge distinction for me. Characters have sexualities and wants and desires, but they have other facets to them too, and actual sex is more of a punchline than a Drama. Sex seems to be quite casual in this world, at least among the pirates, and that goes a good way towards establishing this fact. What else? I liked that the book committed to its premise and its worldbuilding. I really enjoyed how a lot of the names and cultures seemed more Arabic-inspired than European - Europe is often seen as the default model for fantasy worlds, but there's a wealth of history in literally every other continent too! Overall, this was just fun. I loved it, and I'd highly recommend it.

Next, an island full of magical children faces down the government.

Editor's note: the author uses they/them, which I didn't know when first writing this, so I've sneakily corrected a pronoun or two!

#Running Close to the Wind #Alexandra Rowland #bookblr #book blog #5

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cecilysass · 10 months ago

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Shine On (16/16)

Read on AO3 | Tagging @today-in-fic

Chapter 16: Crazy Diamond

Farrs Corner, Virginia February 25, 2015 Two hours later

It turns out that Bunny Man Bridge is just a bridge. And okay, it’s a little creepy-looking—a one lane road going into a yellowed concrete tunnel under a train overpass—but not very eventful on a sunny, late winter afternoon. There aren’t signs of apparitions, dead bodies, or even Satanic graffiti. Which Jackson finds kind of disappointing after all Mulder’s talk.

Mulder drones on about the telltale hallmarks of paranormal activity, but since most of them would have involved interviewing human witnesses, they don’t seem very promising to investigate. There’s no one around but Jackson, Mulder, and Scully. And interested squirrels.

Still, Jackson is enjoying the outing. He and Mulder scramble up to the top of the bridge and look around the railroad tracks for any clues. Scully watches from the road below, leaning against the car, smirking to herself. After a few minutes Mulder begins to call for the Bunny Man like a lost dog— “here, Mr. Bunny Man, come on, boy”—which makes Scully cover her mouth with her hand and laugh.

Mulder looks down from the bridge at her with this goofy little smile, a whole lot like he’s an eighth grader pleased with himself. Jackson tries hard not to shine the man’s mind, as he’s thinking a surprising quantity of inappropriate thoughts for an old guy.

He gets the basic gist, though—the important highlights. They’re back together.

Jackson can’t help but feel happy for them. Mulder’s hope is contagious. It’s everywhere in the man’s mind right now, even in the dirty parts. It’s inescapable, Mulder’s hope. Like an annoying mylar balloon that keeps floating into your face. Even shining him a little makes Jackson’s own emotions begin to feel lighter, too.

“Is the investigation over?” Scully calls up to them. “I’m hungry.” She cocks her head strategically. “We could go pick up fresh bagels.”

Jackson raises his eyebrows. “I could eat.”

“I think we’re just about wrapped up here,” Mulder calls back. “It’s going to be kind of a drive for bagels though. We’re in the country, Scully.”

She shrugs and smiles. From her pocket her phone starts to buzz, and she rushes to pull it out, sliding into the car to take the call. As Jackson understands it, she’s finishing up odds and ends of her hospital job before she goes back to the FBI.

Mulder regards Jackson seriously. “I’ve got to tell you, Jackson—I’m not noticing any classic signs,” he says, gesturing around them. “No change in temperature, no strange odor.” He points to the birds chirping in the trees around them. “I still hear local wildlife going strong.”

“Yeah,” Jackson says with a sigh. “Maybe the Bunny Man really does only show up on Halloween.”

Mulder’s eyes light up. “Well, possibly we could come back—” He stops himself, but it’s too late. Jackson knows exactly what he was going to say, and he knows exactly why he stopped.

They don’t know where Jackson will be at Halloween. That’s eight months away. He could very well be locked in a juvenile justice facility. That reality hasn’t gone away, however much Mulder and Jackson want to forget and play ghost hunter. Everyone keeps acting like Jackson is just going to stay here and play pretend son, but that’s just not the case.

Jackson has to turn away from Mulder now. Sometimes other people’s hope is painful.

They have to be careful on the way down; the embankment down the side of the bridge is steep. Jackson’s feet, skidding out of control, stumble the last few steps down, and Mulder grabs his arm to steady him.

“You okay there?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Jackson mumbles.

Mulder’s thoughts are a burgeoning swell of concern, and Jackson knows he’s probably been doing a little shining. “Listen, Jackson—”

“You’ve actually seen ghosts before, right?” Jackson interrupts. He looks around at the wooded area around the bridge, then back at Mulder. “Not just read about them?”

Mulder considers him a moment. “I have, yes.”

“Who were the ghosts?” Jackson asks.

“The ghosts themselves? You mean in life?”

“Yeah. Did you know them?”

Mulder thinks about his answer. “One time it was a couple,” he says. “A couple who died together on Christmas.”

Jackson thinks about that for a moment, a couple who died together and spent eternity together, too. It seems like that might be good. Not entirely unhappy. He gets little visual flashes from Mulder’s memories, but he pushes them out—he’d rather make up his own little story about these ghosts.

“You never met the ghost of anyone you knew when they were alive?” Jackson asks. He hesitates. “Like … your own parents, maybe?”

Mulder’s head turns sharply to him. His gray-green eyes are sorrowful, then shift infinitesimally into sympathy and pity.

“Jackson,” he says, his words subdued, “you won’t get your parents back by searching for ghosts.”

A bird trills nearby, and Jackson’s gaze follows the sound. “Yeah,” he says.

His eyes again fill with tears. This is one of those things he knows he should know better about. Something he can see is a delusion—an idea gullible kids hold on to— but he wants to believe anyway. He wants to think that one day he might see his mom and dad again. How stupid, to imagine friendly ghosts who might pat him reassuringly on the shoulder and tell him it’s okay.

They both stand facing the steep bank of trees, saying nothing.

A very clear sentence runs through Mulder’s mind. If he were staying with us, I would make sure he got a new therapist.

Jackson can’t help but smile, wiping his tears. “If I were staying with you, I’d probably really need one.”

“Yeah.” Mulder snorts a laugh. “You probably would.”

***

Back in the car, Scully is sitting in the driver’s seat, unmoving, waiting for them. The radio is on, turned down very low, a murmur of voices.

“No ghosts,” Jackson informs her as he slides in the back. “Mulder says we can try Gadsby Tavern in Alexandria next time.”

“You all done with your call?” Mulder asks her, giving her a curious look. “Was it the hospital?”

“It wasn’t.” Scully says in a strange voice. “It was Skinner. He had news.”

“Oh yeah? What kind of news?”

“There’s been new evidence in the Van De Kamps’ case. Apparently a … witness remembers seeing a man wanted in Colorado in the neighborhood that morning, leaving the scene.”

“What?” Jackson inhales.

“The charges against Jackson have been dropped. He’s considered a missing child now. The Rawlins police are having a press conference, so it will be hitting the media today at some point.”

“A witness emerges from nowhere?” Mulder asks.

“Yes,” Scully says, and Jackson watches her eyes latch on to his. “And Skinner says the name of this witness has been strangely hard to come by, even for the Bureau.”

“This is good news though,” Jackson insists. “Right? It means I’m free. It’s good.”

He looks from Scully to Mulder. They both turn to him in the backseat, their faces blooming in simultaneous smiles. They’re both holding something back, but they’re not insincere.

“It is, Jackson,” Scully agrees. “You’re right. It means you have a lot more options.” He senses her worry simmering underneath. Something wrong here. Another shoe about to drop.

“Maybe I can call people now,” Jackson says, his eyes darting hesitantly between them. “My friend Louis. Maybe my uncle Wyatt.”

“Probably very soon,” Mulder says, nodding. “I’d like to wait until we know … just a little more.”

“You’re both worried,” Jackson observes softly. “You think something is weird.”

There’s a silence in the car as Scully starts the engine.

“We’re cautious,” Mulder says. “Happy, but cautious.”

***

When they get home from their bagel pick up—and Mulder was right, it was kind of a drive to get to the place with good bagels—Jackson is washing his hands in the kitchen when he feels Rose’s tiny nudge into his mind.

Apparently she’s back at home now, wherever that is. She tells him to pass on some messages. He’s happy to hear from her. He badly wants to tell her his good news, but he thinks about what Mulder and Scully said, and he decides to wait a little.

Jackson can hear Mulder talking on the phone outside. Actually, he is apparently taking a break from talking to whoever is on the line to discuss something back and forth very animatedly with Scully. Neither one of them really holds back their opinion, he’s noticed.

He’s started to put together a few more pieces about them. For one, he’s been curious about how Mulder pays his bills. Jackson’s parents always were very careful about money—clipping coupons, thinking through monthly budgets—but Mulder thinks about money much less than most adults.

Jackson knows that Scully is a doctor, and Jackson understands that doctors make high salaries, which explains her nice car and nice clothes. But Mulder hasn’t seemed to have a regular job for years, and Jackson doesn’t think FBI agents make enough to retire decades early.

When they came home with their dozen bagels, Mulder and Scully went to call this lawyer right away, both of them very determined. From what Jackson can gather, it seems to be a lawyer associated with Mulder’s family. So, Jackson infers, Mulder comes from some kind of family money. He wonders why Mulder doesn’t use it to buy a fancier house or car.

As he selects another bagel, he wonders about Mulder’s family. Who were they? How did they get rich? He wonders about Scully’s family, too. What’s her mother like, the one who is still alive? He could probably ask them all of these questions now that he isn’t a wanted man. Maybe he could even meet the mysterious grandmother now.

Outside Mulder and Scully still seem deeply invested in talking to the lawyer, so Jackson plops down on the couch with his cinnamon raisin bagel.

Chewing silently, he remembers what Scully said about the media getting the story soon. He searches around for the remote and turns on Mulder’s TV, pressing buttons to find a news channel.

When he does, he can tell instantly: the story is public.

A blonde reporter clad in a bright blue coat stands on a snow-covered street in downtown Rawlins, with the words “New Development in Wyoming Murder Case: Police Apologize to Runaway Teen” sprawled underneath her. Jackson is so shocked to see the familiar storefronts of his hometown on the national news he can barely focus on the words.

“...police believe that the victims’ son fled out of fear, and they hope Jackson Van De Kamp will be found safely.”

One of the police officers who’d been at Jackson’s school that horrible day—Davis was his name, Jackson remembers—stands in front of a microphone, looking gray and stricken: “We admit when we make mistakes, and this was a mistake. Mr. Van De Kamp is innocent of all wrongdoing. In all likelihood, he’s a scared and grieving kid. If you can hear this, Jackson, buddy, we want you to come home.”

Jackson stares at the screen open-mouthed, clutching his half-eaten bagel tightly. The rest of the report seems to slide right past him.

“Was that it?” Scully says sharply from behind him. The news has moved on to something else. “Was that the story about you?”

“Yeah,” Jackson says, his voice sounding like a small boy’s.

Scully walks around and sits down next to him on the couch. She picks up the remote and switches the TV off.

She peers at his face. “Are you okay, Jackson?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “The police … uh, begged me … to come home. To Wyoming.”

Scully’s eyes are so wide, so icy blue—exactly like Rose’s. They run all over him, as if studiously taking in every detail.

“Do you want to go back?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he repeats, blinking.

She picks up his plate off of the coffee table, offering it to him. He sets his bagel down on it dazedly. She replaces the plate on the table.

“You have some decisions to make, Jackson,” she says, her voice gentle. “Not all of them right away. But you do have some decisions to make.”

Mulder appears behind her, his hand reaching for her shoulder. He’s watching Jackson closely, too.

“We spoke to the lawyer about the … custody possibilities,” Scully says. Jackson recognizes suddenly that she’s very nervous. He can feel fear starting to roll off of her in steady waves. “It’s most likely a relative has official custody of you now. Probably your uncle Wyatt?”

Jackson nods slowly. He can’t think of who else would.

“We can talk to your uncle about other possibilities,” Scully says carefully. “Living with us. Short term … or longer term. There are a range of options in the kind of relationship you could have with us. You could just do visits. We could have some kind of shared custody. There’s, uh, more permanent arrangements. Like legal guardianship. Adoption.” She swallows. Her fear is pulsing around Jackson now like a heartbeat. “I don’t know how your uncle will feel about any of this, but we thought we’d check with you before pursuing anything else. We want you to be the one … in the driver’s seat.”

Jackson reaches out his hand to rest on her arm. He doesn’t want her to be so terrified. It’s stupid. Unnecessary. Of course he wants to live with them. She stills at his touch, her eyes widening.

“Yeah,” he says. “I want to see Uncle Wyatt—like, for visits. He’s family. But I’d like to stay here. If that’s possible, I mean.”

Scully seems unable to suppress her initial reaction: she bursts into a pink-cheeked smile; she exchanges a quick, amazed look with Mulder. Her hand covers Jackson’s, and he can feel her intentionally calming herself down. “We’re happy you feel like that, of course. But that was … a fast decision. Are you sure? You can think about it. All the time you need.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” He tries to make his own tone sound casual, breezy. “Uncle Wyatt has too many dogs and goes to a crazy church,” he says with a shrug. “And I don’t think he’ll argue with you too much if you say you want me to live here. I broke his big screen TV once, and he thinks I’m annoying.”

Jackson doesn’t say everything he’s thinking. That he would actually really like to see what it would be like to be part of their family. That he’d like to know what love felt like, everyday, with them. That he thinks it would be easy, somehow—much easier than he might have expected. That he thinks he understands now that this new relationship with them has nothing to do with replacing his parents.

Mulder’s smile is so wide that Jackson suspects he eavesdropped. “We’d love to have you, Jackson,” he says.

“We’ll talk to your uncle,” adds Scully. “We can be more specific about your options after that.”

“Rose said she could teach you more about how to block me, you know,” Jackson tells them tactfully. “So you wouldn’t have to worry as much about… not having privacy. You know.”

Scully flushes, and Mulder hides a smile. “That might be nice,” Scully says.

“She also said there was a really good STEM high school in Alexandria,” Jackson suggests with more feigned disinterest.

“Rose is full of advice,” Mulder observes wryly.

“Yep,” Jackson agrees. “I got a message from her, by the way.” He eyes the bagel on his plate again. “When you all first went in to call the lawyer.”

“Really?” Mulder says. “A … psychic message?”

“That sounds kind of overdramatic,” Jackson says, rolling his eyes and picking his bagel back up. “But yeah. She said she was home.”

“Good,” Scully says. “That’s good.” She throws Mulder a glance.

“She also said to tell you something, Scully.”

“She … did?”

“She said to tell you that they listened to her.” He looks at Scully to see if that’s meaningful, but her face looks blank. “Rose said that … she told them what she wanted, and they listened.”

He shrugs, deciding it doesn’t matter that much, and he takes a big bite of the bagel. Scully has a point about getting them fresh, he decides. They taste so much better this way. You could only get bagels in a bag at the grocery store in Rawlins.

A plummeting feeling from the pit of Scully’s stomach makes him look up.

“What?” Mulder asks her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Scully’s face has lost color. “No. I just …”

“Who listened to her?” Mulder insists. “What does that message mean?”

“I asked her … if the Walled Garden leaders listened to her,” Scully says in a low voice. “If they respected her.”

Jackson swallows part of his bagel so he’s able to talk. Through a mouthful: “You think she asked the Walled Garden for something she wanted?”

Mulder stares at Jackson, and then turns back to Scully, his eyes widening. “You think she asked them for something she wanted,” he repeats in a low voice, realizing. “Oh wow.”

“This morning, she said she was going home to take care of something,” Scully whispers, her eyes on him.

Jackson swallows his last mouthful. “What?”

“So she goes home,” Mulder says in disbelief to Scully. “And within a few hours…”

“Is it possible, Mulder?”

Jackson finally gets it. “You think she asked the Walled Garden to make sure the charges were dropped against me. Don’t you?”

Scully and Mulder are still looking hard at one another. “It happened so fast,” Mulder says. “All in less than six hours. If it was really the machinations of the Walled Garden…”

“They have an alarming amount of power,” says Scully. “Over multiple entities of government. An amount of power comparable to…”

“The Syndicate.” Mulder sits next to them on the couch, puts his head in his hands. “Can this be true? I don’t know what to make of an organization like this. They’re not even… strictly human. But they may be involved in… it’s overwhelming.”

They don’t say anything for a moment, looking dazed. Jackson watches them both in profile, unsure what to say.

“What do we do, Scully?” Mulder says.

She looks away, towards the window. There are entire worlds—entire universes—in Scully’s eyes. Jackson feels weirdly like his shine is lost in something enormous.

“I guess it’s fortunate there’s an investigative unit of the FBI qualified to keep an eye on them,” Scully says slowly and resolutely at last.

She turns and picks up Mulder’s hand. He lifts his head out of his hands and meets her stare.

“And keep an eye on Rose, too?” Jackson says incredulously.

“Yeah,” agrees Mulder, a strange finality. “And keep an eye on Rose.”

A fierce undertow of worry from Scully. But is Rose on the right side? How could we convince her? What if Rose were involved with something fundamentally wrong? What about any other members of the Walled Garden Mulder might feel connected to?

They’re frighteningly powerful anxieties, and Jackson doesn’t even understand some of them. They’re shot through with the stinging, luminous heat of her love. But weirdly he doesn’t feel himself getting drawn into these anxieties right now, even though he’s prone to worrying himself.

It’s just the more overwhelming emotion coming at him right now is what’s coming from Mulder. This ridiculous hopefulness. Bigger and more buoyant than ever. It fills up, expands and crowds out all competing feelings.

Jackson isn’t sure if Mulder is essentially being like a gullible kid—if he wants to believe things that aren’t true just to comfort himself. If that’s true, he is much, much better at it than Jackson. Because every cell in his body seems to be singing the same song: somehow, this will be okay. Somehow, what's wrong is going to get better. Jackson decides Mulder feeling like this is a good thing, even if it's not an entirely logical or sane thing.

As Mulder draws Scully into his side, and suggests they watch his favorite movie—some old movie about space that Scully protests vehemently—Jackson notices the influence of Mulder’s hope beginning to work on her, too. She’s arguing back, but she’s starting to relax, too. She’s got this little smile on her lips. Her anxieties are receding, falling into the background.

Jackson pulls his knees up at his end of the couch and stops listening to their good-natured argument. He wonders how it would be received if he asked if his friend Louis could come visit some time. He has a brilliant idea about splashing red paint around the inside of the Bunny Man Bridge and freaking the shit out of Louis. It would be hilarious. Also, he’d just like to see Louis. He misses him.

Mulder and Scully want Jackson to be the tie-breaker in deciding the movie. They both look over and ask him, with curious faces, what he wants to watch.

He doesn’t hesitate. “Finding Nemo,” he suggests at once. “Or The Incredibles.”

“Aren’t those kid movies?” Mulder asks suspiciously.

“Not ... entirely,” Jackson says.

“What are they about, then?”

Jackson considers his answer a minute and lands upon the right words. “They’re about doing crazy shit for your family.”

He wins.

***

Y'all, thank you so much for reading. I’m truly grateful for all of your encouraging, supportive notes and tags. You have no idea what they mean.

#xfiles fanfic #the x files #x files fanfic #fox mulder #dana scully #x files #xf fanfic #msr #jackson van de kamp #x files revival #my fic #shine on

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goldenseresinretriever · 6 months ago

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You Catch More Bees With Honey: Chapter 20

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Reader

Part of the San Diego Dogfighters universe

Summary: Bradley Bradshaw, blindsided by a team he trusted like family has been traded to the San Diego Dogfighters. Across the country from the place he calls home, Bradley feels lost and betrayed. Not to mention the familiar faces and ghosts from his past that he now has to face every day at work. Bradley’s caught between wanting to show his former team the mistake they made in double-crossing him and wondering if it’s time to hang up his skates after one final season. You’re living your dream as the PR representative for the Dogfighters. When Coach Maverick made a bid to bring his godson to the team, you hadn’t batted an eye. Bradley was a good teammate, and a good player. Unfortunately, the Bradley that shows up in San Diego is nothing like your research suggested. He’s moody, irritable, aggressive, and angry, throwing a wrench in all your careful planning. What’s caused such a drastic change in him? And can you figure out how to help him before he makes a mistake you can’t fix?

Series CW: 18+ ONLY, swearing, dead parents, drunkenness, alcohol consumption, violence, sports violence, blood probably, angst, fluff, eventual smut, age gap (28 and 38), enemies to lovers, suggestive language, hockey inaccuracies etc. There will be individual chapter warnings. No use of Y/N.

Word Count: 3.3k

A/N: This is a repost of my completed series, You Catch More Bees With Honey. It was originally posted in November-March 2023, and was lost when my blog was deleted.

Previous Chapter // Series Masterlist

That night Jake calls for a team outing and Bradley is surprisingly not begrudging as he agrees to tag along despite the fact that usually he’d point out that he’d rather spend the evening with you. There’s one more game on New Year's Eve but the coaches are cutting the guys some slack since it’s the holidays. That’s how you find yourself glaring at your boyfriend as you line up next to each other and you strongly consider accidentally dropping your bowling ball on his foot.

It’s boys versus girls in neighboring lanes and you and Bradley have been tied for the better part of the game. Sure, Jake’s ahead of him, but this competition between the two of you supersedes the overall game. You’d be playing better but Javy had implemented a rule that dictated that you take a shot if you land a gutter ball and you’re more tipsy than you’d like to admit. Bradley, despite his multiple gutter balls, is built like a brick wall and therefore the shots have had little to no impact on his game. You’re beyond arguing the skewed fairness of the game and you’ve descended into quiet rage. You still lead the girls but that means nothing to you if you can’t beat Bradley and as you watch every pin in the lane next to you clatter to the floor with a satisfying crack you’re wondering how good you’d be at shotput. He turns to you, a cocky smile on his lips that dares you to match him.

Sure you and Bradley have a softer relationship but you both have a natural competitive edge that comes from growing up in the world of sports. Yours manifests more often in the form of your stubbornness but when a game does happen to be on the line you’re determined to win. As you scowl at Bradley you catch sight of Mickey smirking behind him. He knows better than to goad you when you’re in competitive mode. You take a deep breath in a poor attempt at collecting yourself. The alcohol is starting to dull your senses so when you release the ball in your hand it veers left, just barely clipping the furthest pin and saving you from another shot.

“You can still spare,” Bradley remarks and you glare daggers into him as you line up again. The sound of his soft chuckle only makes you frown harder and Mickey calls out from behind him.

“Hit them with the trick shot!” You turn around, your attention now on him as you consider his words. The trick shot in question is something you coined back in college when you and Mickey were out with his team and someone challenged the group to a round of bowling with a catch. Every shot had to be embellished in some kind of ostentatious and ridiculous way. The game had quickly devolved into chaos but you’d patented what went on to become your signature move.

“Trick shot?!” Javy exclaims. “Now we have to see it!” Then there’s a chorus of drunk hockey players chanting at you to show off the trick shot and you roll your eyes before you step back and slide your bowling shoes over the slick floor, testing the resistance. You should be able to pull it off even though it’s been years. You take a deep breath and bring the bowling ball up to your chest as your friends start to cheer. Despite your intoxicated state, in college you mastered being able to keep alcohol from affecting your skating technique so as you push into the spin that’s almost a pirouette letting the weight of the ball steady your center of gravity before you slide forward on your shoes across the slippery ground, extending your arm clutching the ball in a ramrod straight position and releasing the ball. You watch as it takes the speed your spin charged it with and barrels straight down the center of the lane before colliding with a satisfying crack and you smirk as the pins tumble in a wave. Behind you, the guys are going crazy and the girls are cheering. You’re about to turn and rub it in Bradley’s face when he scoops you up from behind, burying his face in your neck as he whispers into your ear.

“That’s my girl,” and you feel your cheeks heat as you lean into his touch before leaning up to whisper back in his ear.

“Afraid you’re going to lose?” His laugh vibrates through his chest against your back.

“Challenge accepted, Honey. What do I get if I win?” You can hear the tease in his voice as it rumbles against the shell of your ear and you suppress a shudder.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” you say, voice saccharine sweet, batting your lashes up at him. “Of course, the same goes if I win.”

“Deal,” Bradley says before turning you in his arms so he can kiss you and you can taste the alcohol on his tongue. You hear wolf whistles from behind you that you’re sure are Javy and Mickey as your cheeks heat slightly. Bradley rolls his eyes and pulls you back so the next people can take their turns, not letting you out of his arms quite yet.

***

You smirk across the packed booth at Bradley where he’s sulking over a beer. You’d moved on to a local karaoke bar you’d been to with Mickey and Bob before after the bowling concluded. Jake won for the boys and you won for the girls, Bradley trailing you by a measly two points. He was currently soothing the loss with alcohol as the others excitedly made their karaoke selections. His ruddy cheeks tell you he’s made up for his lack of shots during bowling and you gaze at him fondly thinking of the last time you saw him drunk. You bring a hand up to rub at your long-since-healed jaw and you catch Bradley’s eye as he flushes deeper at the memory.

“Zam, what are you going to sing?” A drunk Mickey interrupts your moment, thrusting the list at you but Bradley plucks it from his grasp, scrawling down his suggestion as your eyes widen with surprise. He’s drunk enough to let his guard down. You’ve heard him sing before, of course, but that was in the privacy of his car and along with the radio. You never pegged Bradley as a performer when it comes to music but absently you remember the baby grand piano in his living room that you’d written off as merely ostentatious decoration. He gets to his feet without a second glance and takes the list back up to the front, ignoring Mickey’s protests that you haven’t signed up yet. He pushes over to where Jake and Javy are arguing over who’s going first and takes charge of the kiosk as they gape at him. You're all watching Bradley with varying degrees of surprise as the alcohol in his veins fuels this bout of confidence.

He grips the microphone, ascending the small stage next to the bar you danced on the last time you were here as the familiar opening guitar riff of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meatloaf fills the bar and he fixes a hard gaze on you as you realize what he has in mind and you smile, nodding at him.

“Well, I remember every little thing as if it only happened only yesterday,” your crowd of friends erupt into rowdy cheers as Bradley croons into the microphone. He reaches out to crook a finger at you and you bounce to your feet, reaching him just in time for him to lean down with the microphone so you can join the harmonies.

“Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night, I can see paradise by the dashboard light.” He reaches his free hand down to you to help you onto the stage before passing you the microphone.

“Ain't no doubt about it we were doubly blessed, 'cause we were barely seventeen and we were barely dressed.” You sing as he grabs the second microphone. You know it’s an almost nine-minute song but Bradley doesn’t show any signs of slowing as you join the performance, your friends going wild from the table.

Mickey brings you both a glass of water as the spoken interlude takes over and the two of you refresh before the next part of the song. You hand him back the glass just in time for you to take the lead.

“Stop right there! I gotta know right now! Before we go any further! Do you love me?” You meet Bradley’s eyes with a fiery gaze as you crow the lyrics. “Will you love me forever? Do you need me? Will you never leave me? Will you make me so happy for the rest of my life? Will you take me away and will you make me your wife?” You see something shift in his eyes through the alcohol-induced haze as you continue. “Do you love me!? Will you love me forever!? Do you need me!? Will you never leave me!? Will you make me happy for the rest of my life!? Will you take me away and will you make me your wife!? I gotta know right now. Before we go any further, do you love me!? Will you love me forever!?” You step up to him, getting into his face as a part of your performance as your friends lose their minds and the other patrons cheer. Bradley nods softly and it steals your breath as he takes over.

“Let me sleep on it. Baby, baby let me sleep on it. Let me sleep on it and I'll give you an answer in the morning. Let me sleep on it. Baby, baby let me sleep on it. Let me sleep on it and I'll give you an answer in the morning. Let me sleep on it baby, baby let me sleep on it. Let me sleep on it and I'll give you an answer in the morning.” The intensity in his eyes as he falls to his knees is at odds with the words he’s singing and you know he’s promising the opposite of his words as you continue to play your part, tossing the words from earlier back at him in a back and forth.

“Will you love me forever?” You demand.

“Let me sleep on it.” He begs.

“Will you love me forever!” You can’t keep the grin off your face.

Bradley gets off his knees and you feel your heart catch as he crows the next part, his voice blowing you away. “I couldn't take it any longer, Lord I was crazed. And when the feeling came upon me like a tidal wave, I started swearing to my god and on my mother's grave that I would love you to the end of time. I swore that I would love you to the end of time!” Your heart flutters at the sweet words falling from his lips as you watch him with awe and you wonder if this is the Bradley that Logan, Alex, and Wyatt knew in Philadelphia. “So now I'm praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive 'cause if I gotta spend another minute with you I don't think that I can really survive. I'll never break my promise or forget my vow, but God only knows what I can do right now.” His amber eyes burn into you and you can’t help but simply stand in awe of him. “I'm praying for the end of time, it's all that I can do. Praying for the end of time, so I can end my time with you!” The crowd does wild and you join them before joining Bradley for the last few bars as the song faded away in true 70s fashion. The crowd in the bar roars as Bradley takes you in his arms and kisses you hard, dipping you in front of the crowd and the whoops and cheers echo off the walls. This feels like a beginning, a new chapter and you’re excited to see where it goes as your teammates storm the stage, tackling the two of you with hugs and more cheers. You laugh and you don’t remember the last time your heart felt so light. Looking over at Bradley you can see the same thing expressed in his eyes and you feel like you’re finally home.

***

“It’s PINK,” Bradley says for what must be the fifth time and you nod yet again. He’s gazing at the fabric spread out on the bed.

“Technically it’s salmon,” you point out and he just gapes at you. You shrug, not an ounce of mercy in your eyes. “A deal’s a deal, Brashaw.” You watch the fear grip his features before you push up on your toes to press a kiss to his cheek. “You’re going to look amazing.”

It’s New Year’s Eve and spirits are high at the arena. The boys are playing their last game of the year tonight and the locker room is buzzing. The boys have tomorrow off since the only game on New Year’s Day is the Winter Classic. You’re waiting patiently outside the locker room for Bradley. You hear a crow of pure delight from Javy on the other side of the door and you smirk as you imagine his reaction. A few moments later the door swings open and Javy’s wearing a feral smile as he wraps you in a hug.

“I love you, you know that right? It’s like Christmas all over again!” You roll your eyes as you hug him back. The door swings open again and Bradley appears, his cheeks ruddy and matching the salmon suit that makes him cut a dashing figure. His eyes widen as he sees that you’re dressed in a similar shade, the suit new, and you smile at him shyly.

“I thought we could match,” you say with a shrug and he smiles softly for the first time all night. He’s forgone a tie and his shirt is slightly open, exposing his throat and a sliver of his chest that makes your heart flutter in your chest. His curls are perfectly styled and his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides let you know he’s making an active effort to not run them through his hair. “You look so handsome,” you compliment him as you cross over to wrap your arms around him and his cheeks turn red for a different reason. His relaxes a little under your touch but you can tell he’s still uncomfortable. “I’m sorry you’re uncomfortable,” you whisper so just he can hear, guilt gnawing at your chest slightly even as you’re elated that he complied. After losing at bowling the other day, Bradley was at your mercy to do whatever you wanted. Likely he expected it to be something sexual as the two of you can barely keep your hands off each other these days, but you’d surprised him by asking him to let you choose his suit for their next game. You claimed it was retribution for how much he used to hate your suits, to which he reminded you was no longer his opinion on them.

He wraps his arms around you in return, burying his nose in your neck as he strokes your back gently. “Are you happy?” He asks and it’s genuine. You nod against him.

“Very,” you feel his lips tilt up into a smile against your skin.

“Then I’m okay.” He says and your heart aches. He pulls away and bumps your nose against his, gently. “Shall we go?” You nod, and the locker room door swings open and the other guys start filtering out in their suits. Jake��s eyes soften as he takes in the two of you.

“You guys look adorable,” he compliments, fishing out his phone to snap a picture and Bradley doesn’t argue.

“Oh my god, you guys!” Bugs exclaims as he comes around the corner, hearts in her eyes as she takes in your matching outfits.

“We have to do that sometime.” Jake agrees as he finishes with his pictures. Bugs agrees enthusiastically. “And you need to wear his jersey sometime,” Jake points out to you.

“Oh don’t worry, I have,” you say with a cheeky smile that makes Javy whoop with excitement even as Bradley squeezes your waist. The guys start moving to go get their photos taken before the pre-game press and you lean your head against Bradley’s shoulder. “Good luck, tonight.” You murmur and he leans to press a kiss to the top of your head.

“I have my good luck charm, I’ll be fine.” You giggle at that and he pulls you close.

***

Laughter and music are echoing off the walls of Jake’s house. The living room is full of teammates and their families with a combination of children and animals weaving between legs. After the game, everyone met up here to welcome the new year before they’ll eventually head out to enjoy having New Year's Day off. You’re standing in Bradley’s arms, listening to Bob explain the myth of Alaska having six months of darkness. You glance up and you can tell that Bradley’s far away so you gently tug on his sleeve and lead him out the back door to get some air. Jake’s backyard opens out onto a semi-private beach and you slip your hand into Bradley’s as the two of you make your way across the sand. You ditched your heels by the door ages ago and the sand feels cool under your feet. You can’t help but remember the last two times you and Bradley found yourself on the beach as you’re drawn towards the water.

The water is cold as it laps as your toes and you skirt back as Bradley stares wordlessly out at the sea. “Everything okay?” You ask softly as he turns at your words. There’s something you can’t place in his eyes and you’re about to push him gently for an answer when he drops to one knee and your eyes widen. “Bradley. Bradshaw.” Your voice is shaking as you admonish him. His eyes are soft as he squeezes your joined hands.

“I’m not proposing,” he assures you and you let out a shaky breath, “not yet.” He says with a brazen, boyish grin and it steals the breath from your lungs. “But I do want to make you a promise, because you’re it for me, Honey. There’s no one I’ve ever loved more than I love you and like I told you, you’re my family. I will always stand by you and protect you. You’re my everything, and one day I’m going to ask you to be my wife.” Your eyes are full of tears as this perfect man is once again on his knees for you, offering you the whole world. “There’s nothing in my life that’s more important to me. Not myself, not hockey. I don’t believe in fate, but I feel like our moms masterminded this and sent us to each other. I’ve never been so thankful, that I get to love you in this lifetime. A few months ago I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to live anymore and now I don’t think there’s anything I’d rather do than spend every single day I possibly can with you.” He lets go of your hand then, reaching down to shape the damp sand beside him and you smile through the tears cascading down your cheeks as he makes the little sandman, shaping the body and then scooping up twigs and fragments of shells to adorn it. The surf licks up, dampening his pants where he kneels but he’s undeterred. When he finally dusts off his hands after, he stands taking both your hands in his. “You’re my dream, Honey, and I think it’s going to be the sweetest one I’ve ever had.” You smile at him and as he kisses you, you think he might be right.

#san diego dogfighters au #San Diego dogfighters #San Diego dogfighters hockey au #you catch more bees with honey // goldenseresinretriever #ycmbwh // goldenseresinretriever #bradley rooster bradshaw x you #bradley bradshaw x you #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #bradley rooster bradshaw #bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley bradshaw #rooster x you #rooster x reader #top gun maverick hockey au #top gun maverick #top gun #TGM #no use of y/n

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bromcommie · 10 months ago

Text

moving like a river of trouble crossing

Rating: M | Word count: 10,260 | Tags: Set in the lead up to and right at the end of CATWS, Character Study, PTSD, Grief/Mourning, Dissociation, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug (And A Friend), Wait No Not That One, Going Down Memory Lane, SHIELD Has Shitty Therapists, Horrible People Still Acting Like People, Captain America Politics, Natasha's Love Language Is Surveillance, Folks Trained For Violence Engaging In You Guessed It: Violence | Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanoff, implied Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers/Brock Rumlow (non-explicit, but still reasonably fucked up by virtue of Rumlow being Rumlow)

(belated) fic for @catws-anniversary, day 2. Thank you so much for putting it together, guys! | march 27th theme: steve rogers | prompts: guilt, "it kind of feels personal" | on AO3 here

and because I apparently can't help myself with the music-fic thing, playlist for this here

Good morning Captain Rogers. It is 05:15 AM, EST. Up 'n' at 'em. Good morning, Captain Rogers. It is 04:41 AM, EST. Would you like me to set the blinds to a lower density? Don't you nuh-uh at me, sunshine - get your lazy ass out of bed. You're gonna be late. Good morning, Captain Rogers. I understand you are under some duress right now, but please do not be alarmed. It is 2:32 am, EST. The year is 2012. You are in New York City. You are safe. Please try to take a breath. Would you like me to call anyone?

Good morning, Steve. Good morning. You're gonna be late. You awake? You awake yet?

Sure. Sure, he's awake.

That afternoon he packs his bag, the single duffle that fits all of his earthly possessions. He tries to ignore the vaguely smug tone of Fury's voice when he tells him they already have an apartment set up for him in DC: ten minutes from HQ, real convenient, and has he ever been to see Lincoln Memorial? He'll love it, it's a nice spot for a walk, especially in the summers, or so Fury's been told.

Steve's been to DC, but he's never beeen to the memorial, never seen much of the city outside the confines of the hotel the USO booked for them. He thinks he can count the grand total of places he's gotten to see up close on his right hand, and half of them were in the European Theatre. The other half he's running from now.

He's sure it'll be grand, he tells Fury. Beats the smell of moldy brick in the heat and a patchwork city manifesting ghosts out the corner of his eye, he doesn't say. ii.

They get him a therapist as a part of his onboarding at SHIELD. It’s due diligence, they say, in the aftermath of New York – someone to help him transition into his new role. But it’s been almost nine months now, and Steve’s learning their language, the words that get caught up in between all the red tape: saying assistance when they mean overwatch.

“This is supposed to be a safe space, not an interrogation,” the woman says at the start of her first evaluation, meeting all of his unease with a reassuring smile, and something about the misplaced quality of it puts him on a knife’s edge.

He only pieces it together the second time he’s called in to meet with her, when he's a bit more clear-headed and a whole lot more impatient than during their initial encounter. It only takes a few perfunctory exchanges before he starts registering the image as a whole: the painstakingly nonthreatening, gentle demeanor, the conservative clothes she’s wearing; the pale complexion and the sharp features and the unmistakable lilt to her voice, soft and rolling and decidedly more old country than east coast.

It would feel almost perverse, he thinks from a distance, if it wasn’t already painfully transparent and tactically inept to boot: this attempt at the same trick that didn’t work in their favor the first time around. He supposes he can’t blame them for trying to fill in the gaps between what they could scrounge up from paper and old photographs with something predictable and comforting, something expected of his background and what is now probably regarded as an antiquated time period.

He also knows that going off of little information when dealing with a potential threat is dangerous. What’s even more so, he thinks as he nods politely along to the lady's explanation of their work together, is believing you know more than you do, and that’s the easiest mistake to exploit.

Here's a fact probably still recorded somewhere on a faded death certificate: Sarah Rogers never lived long enough to get gray in her hair like that.

Here’s another, probably only still recorded in his memory and nowhere else: his mother had been fiercely caring, yes, and compassionate to a fault, but her kindness had never translated to docility, and it sure as hell had never translated to softspoken dishonesty.

So when the shrink bearing a near-painful resemblance to her starts asking incisive questions enshrouded in unoffensive words and indulgent tones, Steve packs his entire reality into a series of half-truths without batting an eye and doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt.

Yes, he’s eating. Yes, he’s sleeping well. No, he’s not on edge – sure, it gets hard, sometimes, but exercise helps, meditation, music. Going out into the world, meeting new people. Trying new things. Yes, he’s ready to be back in the field. No, not so much so that he’s itching for it. Yes ma’am, he’s doing fine, just fine, thank you for asking. iii.

“I heard Hannah’s single,” Romanoff's saying, and it’s not the first time his brain is latching onto the fact that she’s keeping pace with him without losing too much breath, without any discomfort in the cool air that's just starting to roll in as fall bleeds into the city, painting it in darkening evenings and dimming colors. “You know, from forensics? Glasses, leggy, science-y type. Blonde – you like blondes, right?”

“I’m starting to think you only have one thing on your mind,” Steve pants, pushes harder ahead until his calves start burning, just to see if she'll allow herself to follow. Keep moving, keep moving. You awake yet? “Gotta admit, it’s making it kinda hard to enjoy all this quality time we spend together.”

“What, you’re going to stop inviting me on runs? Aw, Rogers. Break a girl’s heart, why don’t you.”

“It’s not really an invitation if you just show up without me letting you know where I’m going, you know.”

She shrugs. “I needed to burn some energy, and you’re not exactly the most unpredictable person in this city.” Her ponytail whips over his shoulder as she follows his sharp right turn around the War Memorial and passes him towards Constitution Gardens, too close and competitive. “Brunette, then? There’s a girl in operations, real tough, good with a gun – at least your propensity for that type has been well documented, but I guess you didn't really have enough time to enjoy it, y'know, all the way –”

Steve knows she’s talking about Peggy, he does. It doesn’t help the hard-wired alarm bells going off in the back of his head any. He digs his heels in, skids to a stuttering halt over the wet pavement, and somewhere in the back of his consciousness he’s quietly pleased that it catches Romanoff off guard a little.

“What, too far?” she jokes, but her eyes are quick over his face; cataloguing the boundaries, the places she can still push.

He's sure it's well-meaning, as much as a blatant handler can get. But some habits are just harder to shake than others. That, he's intimately familiar with.

“If I say yes, will you stop? Or at least stop tailing me?”

“I don’t tail you. That’s below my paygrade,” she says, mouth quirking up at the corner like that’s all the punchline she needs as she types something into her smartphone. “I’ll text you her number. She likes spicy food and old movies.”

“Sure, fine. Great.”

“It is. You'll see.” The phone disappears back into one of the many hidden pockets of her skin-tight leggings. The marvels of modern technology, Steve thinks. Natasha quirks a challenging brow. “Now can we start the actual run finally or have you reached your limit, grandpa?”

He's all but ready to chicken out of the date all week, fighting the urge to cancel at the last minute, but he figures the girl doesn't deserve his bad manners just because he feels like spiting Romanoff when she tries to play his puppetmaster.

In the end it goes...surprisingly well. As Romanoff described, Lina’s beautiful and sharp and a little closed off, tough as nails and maybe even more rigid in her approach than him, but once they get over the initial hurdle of awkwardness and expectations the conversation flows with relative ease. They swap the basics, they talk interests and habits and what moving to DC's like, fun little stories from growing up; he tells her about the butcher on his block when he was a kid that kept a rooster in the backyard, and she tells him about the kid on her floor at community college that set the dorm on fire trying to boil an egg. They talk SHIELD and her work training the new recruits and there’s a spark in her eye as she dives into giving him a breakdown of what he should look into, BJJ and MMA and gyms around town that would be discreet enough to take him in.

“SHIELD’s got plenty of hand-to-hand experts,” she says in a pensive tone over the dessert, “but it can get a little…”

Steve chuckles around his spoonful of the sticky rice, the sweetness of the mango across the back of his palate soothing the previous burn of the spice. Turns out he likes Thai food, too. Who would’ve thought. “Intense?”

“Testosterone-riddled, I was gonna say,” Lina grins, conspiratory. “And paranoid. Not the best scene if you just want to learn,” and he nods along because it’s true, and because it’s a relief to have someone else say it for him.

So it’s nice, and sweet, and ultimately entirely impersonal. He walks her to her door and she gives him a kiss on the cheek, and when she explains how she’s not really looking for anything right now her dark eyes are warm and honest but not overly apologetic. It’s a gesture he’s grateful for.

“Besides, not to be blunt, but you don’t seem all that…” She trails off, waving her hand.

He winces. “Interested? I am, really, but...” And that’s just it, isn’t it. He’s interested; she’s wonderful, just his type, seems to like him well enough. But.

“Look, I get it. We’ve all been there. Can’t really avoid it in this business.” She shrugs as if to say what can you do, smiles up at him knowingly. “Wrong place, wrong time, right?”

And Steve thinks, yeah. Yeah, something like that. iv.

“–piece of shit, every time, sand all up in the fuckin’ thing. Goddamn Kandahar all over again,” Rumlow’s muttering, agitated and half to himself, and Steve doesn’t ask about the last part, just dumps his own gear on the rack and drops down onto the bench. They might be friendly, but they’re not friends – Rumlow doesn’t owe him his history. “I get sent to the fuckin’ desert in this weather one more time, I’m gonna start missing New York winters.”

The jet’s engines hum at his back, adrenaline leaving his body in slow pulls as he watches Rumlow work, notes the intermittent scarring over his hands as they strip the jammed gun down like it’s muscle memory, quick and capable. There's not a spot on him that seems unmarred, really - the scars are a continous, scattered motif up to his face, moving faint in the dim light of the jet.

Loved being in the ring, he'd said once, as far back as I can remember. Might've gotten the shit kicked out of me more than was strictly necessary, though. Accounts for me ending up here, in any case.

He’s drawn this exact scene, it occurs to Steve before he can push it away; down to the boxer's shoulders, down to the complaining, and more than once.

“You from the city?” he offers, an easy distraction that Rumlow seems grateful for.

“Yeah. Yeah, born and raised right off of Arthur Ave.”

“No shit?”

“Yep. Good old Belmont.” He looks up, gaze turning sharp at whatever he catches on Steve’s face before he can look away. “Wouldn’t think you’d know where that is. You ever even been past Central Park?”

Steve gets a flash of washed-out color and brilliant light, of Art and Charlie and the rest of them from the Y dragging him up to Harlem; thinks of the queens with their elaborate glamour and loud, unapologetic laughter and that last wet spring before the cops started shutting everything down, of stumbling tipsy towards the A down 155th Street with empty pockets and Jeanie giggling into his shoulder about some honey-eyed daddy that gave her a sweet kiss goodnight. A well-insulated secret, a fleeting memory of feeling like he could swallow the world whole.

It’s not what Rumlow’s talking about, he knows. He nods anyway.

“Loved that neighborhood. My folks moved us out to Staten when I was in high school, though,” and Steve must make an involuntary face at that because Rumlow chuckles and says, “Alright, tough guy. Not all of us had the privilege of living within two blocks of Prospect Park.”

“Neither did I, but it sure beat Staten," Steve snorts. "And it wasn’t even as much of a privilege, back then.”

“Yeah, I think you’ll notice a lot of things’ve changed.” He tilts his head, scratches contemplative at his stubbled chin. Steve wonders if he’s projecting the bitterness in Rumlow’s voice. “A lotta things’ve gone to shit in that place. Food’s still way better than fuckin’ DC, though. Not nearly enough Italians over here.”

“Yeah. All that white marble and not a single decent, roach-infested deli. Real shithole,” Steve says after a moment, testing the waters more than anything. “Should put that on the tourist brochures.”

It gets another laugh out of Rumlow, low and maybe a little surprised. The sound settles like molten lead in Steve’s stomach, grounding.

One morning in November he gets a phone call from a Washington Post journalist asking for his statement on the newly planned Captain America exhibit, and then in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it feat of persuasion it’s three days later and he’s somehow been roped into a grand opening ceremony, a speech and a press conference at the Smithsonian.

It lasts for-fucking-ever.

By the time he's back in his neighborhood his ears are ringing with leftover noise and applause, his cheeks sore from a constant smile that'd felt more like a slashed tire than a friendly gesture even as he was forcing it. He'd reverted back to the Best Foot Forward, Always mentality of the bonds circuit quick enough - but at least back then it felt like it had a marginal purpose, no matter how flimsy or false. Back then it didn't drain him this much, he doesn't think.

Best Foot Forward these days feels more like sleepwalking his way off a cliff than anything else.

The second he's through the door he shrugs out of the tie and starched shirt chafing at his neck, tries not to think about how he still would've preferred all the commotion and the pretense to the unfamiliar silence of the otherwise big apartment building. Tries to give the feeling resurfacing in him now that he's got attention enough for it a name other than unbearable.

Here's the thing: pain, Steve knows on an intimate level, is something you get used to. It's not to say you forget it exists completely: you just subsume it, you learn to expect it. It’s less about it becoming a habit and more that it becomes a part of you when you’re not looking: fills up all the empty crevices it can find and creates a mold, and that’s the shape you start to take if you live with it long enough. The problem with that is that the longer it goes on, the less space in you there is for other things.

He was five the first time he got really sick. It'd started simple enough – the winter of ’23 came early and sudden, and New Year’s Eve found him in bed with a fever that earned the dreaded prefix scarlet soon enough when the spread of dotted red started taking up more and more space on his body. He'd spent two weeks feeling like someone's dangling him off the edge of the unknown, and much longer than that after with his mother's watchful eyes following him from the window whenever he left the house, like she couldn't force herself to look away.

But he made it. Despite all indications, little Stevie Rogers didn't die, and it was a miracle with a capital M. All he had to do is make peace with having a somewhat faulty heart as a keepsake of all that survival and maybe never playing for the Dodgers, which is not to say it stopped him from trying.

But then next year it was the whooping cough so bad it cracked a rib, then his left ear giving out on him after a prolonged sinus infection, then the asthma he barely even noticed amidst everything else until it layed him out flat midway through a game of stickball bad enough it landed him in the hospital. The minor league dreams dissolved fairly quickly after that.

In ’25 he missed more school than he attended. The kids from down the block came round to call on him less and less, and it wasn't too long before they forgot completely and it was just him and a handful of toy soldiers left, with names like Joe and Jack and occasionally if he allowed himself, Steve. Their neighbors started smiling at him more. The grocer started handing him a fistful of candy under the counter every time they came in, looking at his mother in a way that said sorry for your loss and that Steve hated with a passion, least of all because he couldn't even enjoy the pity because hello, here comes diabetes. Then it was the pernicious goddamn anemia and months and months of the liver-fucking-everything diet followed closely by its sworn enemy the ulcers, and then the growing pains, and then the bad back, and then the bum joints – And then, and then, and then.

Here’s the thing about pain: the longer you carry it, the more you forget you’re doing it in the first place. You ignore it because it’s the only way to survive it, because what the hell else are you supposed to do? And that’s when you start thinking you have it under control. You start to think you’ll be ready when it comes for you again.

Here’s the other thing about pain: you’re never ready. It comes as a surprise each time. He wasn’t ready in ‘30 when the neighborhood suddenly started reeking of despair and death and he wasn’t ready in ’36 when his ma went and he wasn’t ready in ’44 when he got shot in the neck and thought oh, so it can still hurt like this. I can still bleed.

Then '45 rolled around and a new thought followed, a miserable dot at the end of a sentence: maybe bleeding out would've hurt less. At least it would've made us even.

None of that experience and understanding stops him feeling it now, again, still, like an uninterrupted line from that first fever chill to here, standing in the middle of his living room with a glossy brochure full of dead faces in his hand and an exhaustion so deep it roots him to the spot.

And then there’s the anger, of course: equally familiar but much more muted, less expressive than it used to be, dancing around the edges of everything else. He looks back down at the crumpled pamphlet, to where the folded-unfolded-refolded creases cut through the title:

Captain America’s team: the top tier of the World War II effort and a leading example of integration!

As if they were somehow Captain America's or even the US army’s to begin with; as if it was encouraged and Steve didn’t have to stand around in moldy tents arguing his brand-new, star-spangled ass off with Major Whatshisname and Colonel Whoever-the-fuck for days on end just to keep them eating in the same mess hall and sleeping in the same barracks. Nothing about any of the ugly parts, about the blood and the bureaucracy and the bullshit. Nothing about any of them, either - no mention of Dernier's politics or Gabe's professorship or Morita's writing. Not a single inch of space left for their families or their own stories except as a footnote in Steve's own, a way to make it picture perfect.

Nothing about Bucky other than the barebone facts: he was Steve's friend, he was a good soldier, he died. The meat and blood and soul of the person, left out; the fact of whose fault it ultimately was, conveniently gone.

And that name – the Howling fucking Commandos. The bunch of them would’ve busted a rib laughing at it, laid out all grandiose like that. For one, it’s still as ridiculous as it was back then – sounds more action novel than historical account and distinctly less bureaucratic and arbitrary than the Specialized 107th, which is what they were strictly called in the paperwork. Personally, Steve always thought that out of the variety of nicknames they’ve been awarded, the Invaders was by far the most fitting. Truer to wartime, to what it was they really did, and far more threatening if it ever reached the other side of the line. Then again, from what he’s gathered so far, it seems like America’s done far more than its fair share of invading since. It definitely accounts for the 180 degree change in branding.

Turns out it’s still all about selling comic books and war bonds. And Steve, too caught up in his own sorry wallowing, is just going along with it.

Jesus, he thinks, the tone of it coated in a wry, familiar voice nestled in the back of his brain but much harsher than it ever was in reality, drop the philosophy for one goddamn minute. Anybody ever tell you idle hands are the Devil's playthings? Get moving, Rogers. Trade the speeches in for something useful.

So he does: chucks the paper into the empty white fruit bowl collecting dust on the countertop, turns the TV on to a random channel to break the silence. He doesn’t recognize the title of the movie playing but it’s soothing, the background awash with static and the accents just familiar enough to make for pleasant white noise. He heats up his leftovers, sprawls out on the couch and gets to reading the reports Fury had unloaded on him, tuning in every so often to the witty back-and-forth dialogue. It’s maybe half an hour of squinting at indecipherable bureaucratic jargon before he finally gives up, lifts his head to rub the sleep from his eyes.

One of the men on screen – Nick, Steve thinks, or maybe that one’s Mikey, he hasn’t been following along all that well, to the work or the film – is trying to dissuade the other from visiting his mother’s grave in the dead of night. Comedic, he thinks, for all its grim setup.

It’s 1 in the morning.

That makes it nicer.

It doesn’t make it anything, Nick. A grave is a grave. There’s not a religion in the world that says a person’s soul is buried with them in their grave, the man argues, and it’s like whiplash pulling him out of the serene lull; the unasked for memory of a name over a plot in Greenwood he’d never gone to visit, and he thinks, a little disoriented – of course there’d be no soul in that patch of land. The grave itself is empty.

They’d given him reports in the beginning, too: a neat stack of papers, most of them stamped DECEASED in glaring red letters, and the single mocking MISSING IN ACTION. At the very end there’d been a laughably short list of contacts, among them a phone number and address for one Rebecca Barnes-Proctor.

God help us all, he can imagine the voice of George Barnes saying even now, jokingly abject, our Becca’s married a Proddie.

But there had been briefings, then, and the shitshow over Manhattan, and in between all of that the days where he couldn’t even find the will to leave his apartment block, let alone go to Brooklyn. Over and over, he’d given himself the same excuses as with Peggy – it would be too much, too soon, too selfish to usurp her life like that.

Of course, the truth of it all was much simpler. All too cowardly, too, in a way that has the guilt blooming with a vengence somewhere in the pit of his stomach: he didn’t have the guts to look Bucky’s baby sister in the eye, no matter her age, and say, I’m sorry you didn’t get a body to bury. I’m sorry the one time he needed it I didn’t do the job he spent his whole life doing for me. I’m sorry I left him behind when it should have been me down there in the first place.

He watches the two men stumble around in the muddy dark of the graveyard and yell and bicker in a way that strikes Steve as bitterly melancholy all of a sudden, the familiarity of it unmooring.

Mike, y’know what? Now that I’m here, I don’t know what to do, Nick finally admits at the foot of the tombstone, wild-eyed and devolving into a rambling laugh, and ain’t that a kicker. Welcome to the club.

It’s very hard to talk to a dead person, we have nothing in common. Hi, ma.

Nick, you’re making me forget the kaddish, Mike chides with mounting frustration as Nick keeps giggling and it’s not funny, it’s really not, the whole premise of it deeply morbid, but Steve finds himself laughing right along with Nick’s hysterical hiccups, his childlike plea of I don’t wanna die, ma.

You don’t get a choice in the matter, his own mother had told him when he was maybe 8 or 9, faced with a more concrete concept of death for the first time, if that’s the way the chips fall, then that’s God’s will. But what matters is the middle, what you choose to do with it. Do you understand?

He didn’t, really, not back then, and ten years later when they’d lowered her into the ground all he could think was: what is the point of it, anyway, of all those right choices, if all that happens is you end up dying alone?

Steve hadn’t been, of course. For all of the isolation he’d felt during those last few months of his mother’s illness, he’d never been really alone. There’d been the Barnes’ and the old ladies from church and even some of the folks Sarah had helped treat at the hospital coming by and Bucky, Jesus Christ; Bucky crying at the funeral and saying kaddish for months like Sarah was his own and letting Steve rage and lash out until all the fight had drained out of him, his arms like a vice around Steve’s shaky frame.

And there’s the actual goddamned truth, he thinks, bone-weary. The only truth that matters, the one that’ll never get written on any museum walls: Steve was only ever as strong as the people propping him up.

I think that’s the reason we’re such good friends, Nick is saying to Mike when he tunes back in, and Steve’s not laughing anymore, hasn’t been ever since his throat had gone tight a long few minutes ago, because we remember each other from when we were kids. Things that happened when we were kids that no one else knows about but us. It’s in our heads. That’s how we know they really happened.

What are you talking about? I know what really happened when I was a kid.

Yeah, but no one else does, Nick says, painfully earnest. I mean, everyone we knew as kids is dead.

He shuts the TV off with a soft click, waits a long while before the heartbeat pounding in his ears has settled. Thinks about what it really means, then, to embody the final resting place of all your ghosts.

Maudlin, Bucky’s voice echoes in his head again, fills out the crevices of the silent apartment like a slow bleed. Always gotta be so maudlin, Rogers, like you’re Scarlett O-fucking-Hara. Just get up. Get up, Steve.

“Yeah,” Steve sniffs, wipes a rough hand over his eyes; laughs again because it’s a damn joke, all of it, and he can afford to lose the plot in the privacy of his own home. “Yeah, fuck you too, asshole. Go haunt somebody else.”

vi.

"Heard you had an eventful weekend," Rumlow comments when they all pile into the locker room the following week, a little roughed up and beat and stinking of iron and sweat but otherwise in decent spirits. "Seemed like a good time, all those pretty girls throwing themselves at you to shake their babies and kiss their hands or whatever."

"Shows how much you know. The pretty ladies were all balding men over the age of 50," Steve says, only half-joking, shrugging into his civvies with a wince. There's a cut on his side where he fell a little too close to a protruding piece of rebar that's already reopened twice by the time they've gotten off the jet, but despite the sharp sting of it he's feeling better than he did just a mere twelve hours ago.

Idle hands, after all, turns out to be true enough. Wryly he thinks he might owe sending an apology up to Sister Andrea, although he figures anyone that enjoyed using a ruler on little kids that much wouldn't have ended up in Heaven, anyway.

"But sure, it was alright. A little too much attention all at once, if I'm being honest."

"Oh?" Rumlow huffs. "Big talk coming from someone who dresses like you do. I hope you didn't show up there wearing that."

Steve frowns down at the faded jeans, the fitted grey shirt – one of many pairs that came with the closet in his apartment. It rubbed him the wrong way, at first, but it's easier in the end; not having all that wide array of choice dumped over his head all the time. "What's wrong with my clothes?"

"Nothing. I just get worried they're gonna start cutting off blood flow at some point, y'know," Rumlow grins, his teeth very white in the bright fluorescent lights. "God forbid we finally get to a bar one of these days, I'd have to mind every creep from here to Dupont tryna get a peek down your shirt."

"Fuck off," Steve huffs, feeling heat flush down into his neck despite himself. Yeah, blood flow really isn't the problem. He gestures at Rumlow's own undershirt, all slick black and skin-tight, motion packed in. "Look who's talkin'."

"Yeah, but I don't dress like this out there. This is all for you guys," he yawns with a stretch, all exaggerated bravado. "I got one of those, y'know - work-life balances. Out there I clean up nice. You, I figure you sleep in that shit. Or is it a ‘full-gear’ kind of situation?"

Steve snorts, turning back to his pack and the blank reprieve of the dull metal wall of lockers. "You'll be happy to know I clean up just fine. Got the one tux and everything."

"Is that right? They get you decked out in some bespoke threads for the parade, Cap?" He chuckles at the face Steve makes when the word bespoke fully registers. "See if I believe that without any evidence."

Steve digs out his phone reluctantly. He does have pictures, is the thing, woke up the next morning feeling like a sack of potatoes tossed from a great height just to see his phone light up with an email from SHIELD's HR with an attachment sent over for approval - like he was a celebrity ending up in a tabloid, he thinks again with distate, like he should care much either way what he looked like. He thumbs through his email to the one labeled FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, and shoves it over at Rumlow before he can think twice, drops onto the bench to sort out the rest of his pack.

"Looking good, you weren't kidding. And the mural's all heroic," Rumlow comments lightly as he scrolls through with lingering scrutiny. "Wait, don't tell me - the little mustachioed, scruffy looking one is the frogeater, yeah?"

Steve laugh comes easier this time. "The little mustachioed, scruffy looking one would've kicked your ass six ways from Sunday if he'd heard you call him that. Yeah, that's Dernier. Gabe, next to him," he lists, trying not to think about how it comes across that he's memorized the order, "Dum Dum - he didn't like that nickname, either - Bucky, Monty, and Morita."

"Sure were big on callin' each other everything other than your names, huh?" The joke is followed by a stretch of quiet, and when Steve looks back up Rumlow's frowning at the phone a little, a flicker of uncertainty over his face that Steve doesn't get to figure out before it's gone. His face smoothes out into a mostly flat expression, an undercurrent of something unnerved and rippling, and Steve can't help himself.

"What?"

Rumlow passes him the phone back with a shrug. "Nothing, just - haven't seen those pictures since I was in high school," he says, a little distant like the memory's faded to oblivion since, and hell if Steve'll ever stop finding it strange that all of them ended up in dusty old school books, obsolete. "Long time ago, now. Guess I just remembered all of you being much older, is all."

He leans back against the wall of lockers, pensive, watches Steve fumble with the zipper of his hoodie where it keeps sticking for a minute. "You must miss it, though. The good old days. Your people."

"Yeah, well.” Steve clears his throat against the uneasy heat of the room, yanks at the cheap piece of plastic again. The fit and cut, he might've gotten used to - but he'll never get over the waste; just how quickly everything falls right apart in the future. “Like you said, it was a long time ago."

"It was, wasn't it. Longer for some than others, though," he says cryptically, and Steve really has nothing to say to that that won't land him right back where he was two days ago. He doesn't have to, in the end, because Rumlow throws a curt nod at his front, and it takes a second too long for him to interpret what his zeroed-in expression means, to register the dotting of blood through the thin fabric of his shirt. "You're bleeding all over the place again."

"It's fine. Don't feel it much," Steve says. Something's different. What's different? Wake up.

"Sure. Never do, do you," he says, gesturing to the hoodie with a thoughtful look that's inching away from the easy banter. "That shit's gonna stain, though."

"I was gonna throw it out anyway."

It should be enough, and in any other situation it would be. Any other situation he'd shrug it off with more conviction, Rumlow'd call him a tough guy with just the right amount of mockery, and the tension would pass. Except that Rumlow had to lead them into uncharted territory and Steve hadn't been quick enough to notice before he was flailing, too exposed.

Except that instead of a quip what he gets is Rumlow's stepping into his space, the casual slouch of his shoulders replaced with something more deliberate when he reaches for where Steve's hand is still holding onto where the teeth of the zipper have gotten all gnarled. In a heartbeat Steve's back to square one: keenly aware of the proximity and every inch of his body in the cramped space; back to that first day in the elevator with Rumlow's dark eyes turned on him with a questioning look and a twist to his mouth that said it's a pleasure, Cap but meant I've been here long enough - you don't impress me any more than any other kid I've seen this place chew up and spit back out.

It'd been enough to get his spine straightening of its own accord back then, too; the sheer challenge of it, pushing at the boundaries of hierarchy. It makes him want to pull away now, want to put the usual distance between them, to get the hell out of this stuffy locker room. Makes him want to push forward until he meets something immovable and solid.

Want, want, want - too much and for things that were unreachable. That's always been his problem, hasn't it?

The sound of the zipper is too loud in the mostly empty space when it gets yanked loose, pulled up and over the slow spread of the stain, and Steve realizes with a start that he didn't notice the chatter die down as the few stragglers left the room. Realizes that he hasn't moved a muscle in a good minute, like a butterfly with its wing pinned.

Rumlow's touch lingers, just the barest pressure under his Adam's apple, and Steve's breath catches. Rumlow makes a considering noise.

He snapped a guy's neck with those hands not two hours ago: a thoughtless, instinctive thing in the middle of the ambush that was waiting for them. It's not that Steve's forgotten it; Steve's aware of it to the point of failure. It's just that it got bound up with everything else, the easy reliance and the ribbing bordering on rough and the adrenaline under his skin like a necessity.

Wake up.

Rumlow's eyes on him are sharp, a little curious. Less surprised than they ought to be.

Wake up, get moving, get out of sight. We've been here before.

Steve swallows. "Thanks."

"Sure." Rumlow steps back to hoist his bag over his shoulder and the moment breaks as quick as it came on, the whole uninterruped line of him lax and easy again, surface friendly. "Now you won't scare the guys at the front desk."

And then he's off down the hallway, leaving Steve to lean on the cool metal of the wall and do everything but think about the sudden feeling of being off balance, a little too tight in his skin in a way that only half has to do with the too-quick beat of his blood, the lingering smell of Rumlow's cologne.

vii.

Funnily enough, the Christmas gala almost slips his mind – an extraordinary accomplishment, considering that he spends most of December thinking up viable excuses not to go, dodging Romanoff’s questions and sideways looks with the agility of a man running for his life.

“We can hang out with the civilians. Break the record of how many weapons contractors you can piss off in one night,” she says one brisk and sunny afternoon when she manages to drag him out to a coffee shop barely across from SHIELD, the steam from her tea swirling up in billows to fog her opaque sunglasses. “It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t know any civilians,” he says, deliberately obtuse. It’s a joke; he can’t help that it’s also mostly true.

“What about Kate?”

It’s not a surprise anymore, really, that she knows everything about his life, that she has no problem making that clear to him when she wants to. He’s fine with it, he has to keep reminding himself. Maybe it’s a control thing, like when she acts like she’s not holding back when they spar, a holdover from some other life. Maybe this is the closest they get to trust, and it doesn’t matter. Much like the tails that he pretends not to clock, the check-ins and evaluations and this whole neatly preordained life someone else's drawn up for him – it comes with the package, and what difference does it make, anyway? It’s simpler like this. He can do his job, and if thinking that he’s a situation she has a handle on makes Romanoff feel better, then that’s fine, too.

“What about her?”

“You talk to her yet?”

“I talk to her all the time,” he points out. Natasha cocks her head, the rest of her expression as obscure as her shaded eyes.

“It’s for a charity. The gala.” She keeps switching lanes. Trying to get him to stumble, he thinks.

“Yeah, Ms. Potts said.” Two can play at that game. “You want a date so bad, why don't you pester Barton this much about it?”

“Clint doesn’t need pestering. It’d be good publicity if you showed, you know.”

He scoffs; there it is. “For what, the charity or Stark Industries?”

“So it is about Stark, then.”

He takes a sip of his coffee, over-sweetened and dark. 100% pure Colombian arabica, apparently, and with the price tag to reflect it. The acidic taste sticks at the roof of his mouth. “I don’t have a problem with Tony.”

He doesn’t. Stark’s a good man, he thinks, despite having inherited all of Howard’s arrogance and none of his approachability. Whatever tension was there in the beginning had dissipated, though, the second Tony plummeted thousands of feet from the sky after having, for all intents and purposes, blown himself up to save all their sorry necks. They’d broken bread, shaken hands, parted ways.

For the best, probably. Good man or not, Tony has a singular way of getting under his skin.

And then there’s also the fact that being in Manhattan just doesn’t feel right, not with the destruction still settling over everything like a cloud of noxious dust, the fenced off craters and leftover vigils scattered every few blocks like an improvised graveyard. Good morning, Captain Rogers. It is 4:47 AM EST. It is a new day. Do you see it? Do you see it yet? Are you awake?

It’s not new, this sense of loss: looking at the city and feeling grief, compounded.

“Not what I said.”

“What are you saying, then?”

“I’m saying SHIELD throws shitty office parties.” Natasha frowns and chugs half the scalding cup in one go before pushing up from the table, checking her phone. “I have to go,” she says, gives him a long look that he can’t really decipher, unusually lingering and far too serious by Natasha's standard. “Come to New York, Steve. Or at least think about it.”

viii.

He goes to see Peggy again, because of course he does. She greets him at the door with her most pleasant, polite smile this time, the kind reserved for strangers – Time for my medicine again, is it, darling? – but it’s alright, he understands. They’ve explained it to him, the good and bad days, how there’s rarely any constant. He’s grateful, anyway: just so grateful to have her around, as much as he can. Which is why he doesn’t flinch when she cries, when she calls for him like it’s been another seventy years, why he holds her brittle hand in his until she gets hazy around the eyes again and he feels a nurse’s gentle tap on his shoulder, hears her suggest that he come another time.

He takes the Harley out on the highway and drives aimlessly for the rest of the evening and well into the night, down and out and then back again until the traffic has thinned out to semis and the rare leftover commuter. He watches the speedometer kick up to 80, 90, a 100, the bike struggling, feels the rumble of the engine all the way up his spine when it skids unbalanced over the odd ice patch and thinks, grateful, grateful, grateful.

ix.

“You’re up late.”

“Hey.” Most of the building’s emptied out by now – he’d thought he’d find some privacy in the abandoned atmosphere of the holidays, and instead here Rumlow is when he was meant to be three states over, strolling through his periphery looking like he’s got nothing but time on his hands. “Thought you left with everybody else.”

“Nah. Had some business to take care of.” He settles against the wall opposite Steve, watches him shake out a one-two-three pattern that has the chain of the bag groaning. “Thought you’d be at Stark’s fancy party and putting that suit to good, promotional use.”

He never gets a chance to think about it, it turns out, getting called in two days before Christmas and ending up sending Ms. Potts – Pepper, please, call me Pepper – an overly apologetic, last-minute message excusing himself from the night. It’s a good call, in the end. The last thing he needs tonight is to be stuck in a room full of obscenely drunk, obscenely rich people expecting him to gush over the hors d’oeuvres and play at appearances.

He feels as though what he’s doing right now isn’t much different, though. It takes a whole lot of effort and posturing to dredge up a wry smile for Rumlow, anyway. “Well, it’s been busy here. Couldn’t fit it into my packed schedule.”

Rumlow snorts. He gets that expression on his face, sometimes, that same brand of amusement that makes Steve second-guess whether he’s actually in on the joke or just the punchline of it, that gets him hot under the collar in all the wrong ways. Maybe it’s just that his particular brand of humor is by a degree off from familiar; a degree too cynical, like so much seems to be nowadays. Maybe it’s just that for better or for worse, Steve has never exactly excelled at letting himself be just one of the guys, for all that entails.

That chip on your shoulder’s big enough I swear you could knock it off a mile away, sometimes.

The punching bag chooses this moment to finally release its desperate grip on the physical realm, flying off the chain with one last pitiful creak and sending sand spraying across the floor. Rumlow’s eyes track the movement with unabashed fascination.

He walks over to the neat row of bags Steve’s lined up and picks one up with relative ease, a casual show of strength. “So you gonna talk about it,” he pipes back up, handing Steve the replacement with steady hands, “or do I have to keep standing around here until you’ve run the rest of ‘em into the ground?”

“Talk about what?”

“Whatever’s got you shredding through these poor fuckin’ things at 11 pm on Christmas Eve.”

He wants to point out that he could be asking the same question – that there really is no reason for Rumlow to be here this late when he’s still technically on medical, to be in his usual tac clothes and looking as wired as Steve’s feeling. You ever take a day off? he considers asking, but that’d be prodding. What’s worse, it’d be hypocritical.

Steve shrugs, lining his shoulders back up to the unsteady sway of the bag. “Nothing, you know how it is – mission ran long. Had some leftover energy.”

“Yeah, Rollins mentioned you guys ran into some kinks.”

It’s not exactly the word Steve would use to describe the shitshow of that morning, utter failure avoided by a narrow margin because it was an old school lab, Christ, still had extracurriculars on the weekends and everything, and they just charged in half-blind.

It’s rigged, naturally. The room blows as he’s getting the janitor out, tears the face of the building open towards the sharp drop below, and all Steve can think is what a stupid, avoidable way to die. The electrical fire smell lingers for a long time after the explosion, the patter of the wet snow through the blown roof nowhere near enough to put the flames out.

They’re told to avoid detailing the collateral in the report, after: SHIELD had no way of knowing the complete situation beforehand, they say, short and brooking no argument, and Steve’s getting real damn tired of hearing that. By the time they wrap up cleanup he’s shivery and exhausted and when he finally dozes off on the long flight back with his ear to the monotonous drone of the engine, it’s to vague, uneasy bursts of the taste of ash in the mouth and many small, cold hands dragging him deep into the frozen ground.

Absurdly, the first thing he thinks of when he startles awake is Dugan’s thick mustache chained solid with frost, lips blue with the cold and grumbling under his breath.

"Gee, you're looking awful familiar there, Dum," Gabe'd say, biting off the ends of his sentences with the chatter of his own teeth. "Made this snowman that looked just like you when I was a kid - all white and lumpy with a great big bush over his lip. 'Cept his carrot nose was half as long and he never ran his fuckin' mouth this much."

And despite the cold and the misery, Dugan would elbow him and Gabe'd elbow back, obstinate. And Bucky'd laugh, Bucky'd call them all a bunch of fucking morons, and do they really want their last to be the Germans hearing them squabbling like two bitter old biddies out on the steps of the church for the whole neighborhood to see? Think of the image of our troops, golly gee. God forbid.

He strips out of his wet suit at the compound by rote and doesn’t think about the numbing cold of December among towering trees, of snow burning his fingers raw, clinging to his lashes. He runs until his lungs burn and it’s nothing like that thin, strangling air of the mountain range, nothing like warm skin sticking to icy metal, muscles all locked up and tears hot like bile in the back of his throat and the wind screaming in his ears, and –

Winters are warmer now, somebody’d told him at some point. Something about northern lights and the ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Kinks, right.”

He smooths out the edges of the tape that’s come loose over his knuckles, tries to tuck it in where he’s spotted red through the fabric. Suddenly he’s all too aware of the seconds lumbering on in silence, the eerie, empty quiet of the building; Rumlow looking at him with a single-minded intensity that makes the back of his neck prickle with heat, gets him on edge in a way he doesn't want to parse, doesn't have the energy to hide from.

It'd be no use, anyway; sometimes he thinks Rumlow can smell it on him, blood in the water.

“Alright, then.”

He aims a perfunctory jab at the bag and lets it swing back to catch it mid-air, brand-new vinyl creaking under his fingers. He considers cutting it off there. Despite the best effort he’s not feeling generous with his words tonight, a feeling exacerbated by the lingering shadow out the corner of his eye. He’d consider asking Rumlow what the hell he’s here for, or telling him he’s got someplace else to be, except for how there’s a voice in the back of his head telling him not to budge at all cost.

Except for how there’s a quieter one echoing: Where would you go, anyway?

“Alright what?”

When he turns back around Rumlow’s ditching his holstered gun on the bench. Steve didn't even notice he was armed. “You said you got some energy to burn – so let’s go a few rounds.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Come on,” and it’s his voice in the end, if he’s being honest with himself, that makes Steve fold; the cajoling tone and those long, tightly rolled vowels that curl and hook into the sheltered space behind his ribs. “C’mon, man, it’s been a while. I could stand to let off some steam, too.”

Come on, do it for me, Bucky had said in dozens of different iterations over the years and then only once after when it had meant something, only once when he was really asking, back up against the hard bark of the tree with his hands dangling between his legs like a man who had no more use for them. You gotta promise me, Steve, he’d tried, low and worn thin, and Steve didn’t, couldn’t find the words to that wouldn’t be a complete lie and a betrayal. Instead he’d leaned harder into his side, hand at the back of his neck, and wanted and wanted and wished like hell, not for the first time, that he could drain the misery and exhaustion out of Bucky’s body at every point of contact.

Come on, Rumlow says, and Steve goes, Pavlovian.

He rewraps his hands in silence, waits for the other man to tape up before he steps into the ring.

“Y’know, it could’ve been worse,” he says, circling Steve, tone casual, “No casualties is better than what we get most days. So you might as well stop with all this self-flagellation bullshit, Cap. It’s no good.”

“You wanna keep talking,” Steve goads him because it’s worked in the past, because it really has been a long day, “or do you wanna fight?”

They start off slow, Rumlow testing the waters and Steve pulling his punches by habit by now. He manages to land a few hits that don’t really scratch the surface, doesn’t pull back in time to avoid Rumlow’s hook. His blood rushes at the first, second, third collision, zings up his spine and sharpens everything out, bright Technicolor; it’s good, doesn’t even hurt, he’d almost forgotten –

It gets real brutal real quick, after that.

“C’mon. What, you gettin’ bored already?” Rumlow says the third time he gets past his guard, an edge of something mean and frustrated in it. He strikes out again just to skirt off Steve’s belated block, more provocation than actual intent. “Jesus, you fallin' asleep on me? Fight the fuck back, old man.”

“Look who’s talkin’,” Steve gets out, putting distance between them. “Ain’t you supposed to be passed out drunk on eggnog in Staten Island right now?”

“You ever stop running your mouth? No wonder you were the neighborhood punching bag, kid.”

“I weighed a 100 pounds soaking wet, I had to compensate. What’s your excuse?”

He’s slow this time, too. Rumlow’s not someone who signals. The kick to the plexus sends Steve stumbling back and something pops, loud. He coughs once, twice; shakes it off.

“Aw, there he is. You’re alright,” Rumlow says, deceptively sweet, dismissive. “You’re just fine. Come on, Cap. You gonna quit being a pussy or what?"

Here’s the thing: he’s not sure he likes Rumlow all that much, really, can’t read him all the way to be able to say for sure; isn't sure that he wants to. They don’t know each other, not in a way that counts – it’s only been a handful of times that they’ve even worked on the same team in the time Steve’s been in DC, even less they've gotten to have anything that counts as a real conversation outside the single locker room incident, but he’s been leading men long enough that he can pick up on the patterns. He can see the way Rumlow commands respect among STRIKE, knows the type, besides: collected and confident and purposeful, committed to the cause to the point of failure. Violent, too, sure, shooting for the head when Steve’d still be asking questions; a little too rough around the edges, sometimes, yes, but so what – Steve’s seen his fair share of that. Steve’s lived it, felt it on his own skin, inside and out, been in it for long enough. So what. He’s not about to run away screaming.

It isn’t even the first time they’ve done this, beaten the shit out of each other after hours in the deserted facility. It’s not the first time he’s seeing Rumlow in this light, eyes dark and focused; liking it a little too much, maybe, liking riling Steve up and drawing blood. A natural progression to all the things about him Steve maybe didn't want to notice and all the things that had his full attention since the second they met.

It’s fine – Steve figures, this body can take it. It’s what it was made for, anyway. Steve figures better here than out there, and out there Rumlow’s all brutal efficiency and casual competence and Steve trusts him to have his back, get the job done, which is the only part that matters. Steve trusts him, is the thing, and that carries more weight than likeability ever could.

Rumlow’s fist connects with his jaw and he feels it rattle up into his teeth, the dull pain like a live current through his body, whiting everything else out: you awake, Steve? You awake yet? Is it enough, to still be able to bleed?

So sure, maybe it’s the violence that gets him. Maybe it’s that Rumlow fights just dirty enough and doesn’t pull his punches with Steve, grins at him sharp when he spits blood from his busted lip and squares back up. Maybe it’s just that he’s not afraid to touch him or look at him wrong. Everyone else seems to be.

He blinks sweat out of his eyes and creeps in close, lands a few swings in quick succession that have Rumlow easing off, his head snapping to the side.

“Yeah. That’s it, there you go. C’mon,” he laughs, pushes damp hair out of his face in a well-worn afterthought of a move, and Steve –

Steve has to remind himself, is the thing. Every goddamn day of the week he has to keep reminding himself of where he is. Eventually, he thinks, it might stick – but God, he’s sick and tired of it.

They don’t even look alike. For one, Rumlow’s much older than Bucky ever got to be. Has the scars and the experience and the too-mean edge to his voice to prove it.

But in the end, when he's got Steve face down on the floor, breath hot down his neck, it turns out it doesn't really matter all that much.

He bucks anyway, if for no other reason just to prove a point to himself, just to feel his bones grind together. You're still moving, you're still just going forward. Hart pumping like it's gonna burst with it. It's all there is, all that's left.

Rumlow twists his arm further up his back, grip iron tight. “I said stay down.”

“Yeah, fuck you,” Steve pants into the mat. “Pretty sure this ain’t within kickboxing rules.”

“Pretty sure there was no talk of rules in the first place. I keep tellin’ you, don’t I, you gotta get that or else people’ll think you’ve gone soft. Someone might take advantage.”

“You ever quit talkin’ shit?” Steve throws back at him.

“Nah.” Rumlow shifts, the weight of him heavy and hot, too close. Steve can’t catch his breath. Rumlow’s knee is still pressing into his back and he can already feel a bruise spreading at the bottom of his ribs that’ll be gone in the morning. He doesn’t even feel it all that much. He never even – “See, I don’t think you’d want that.”

Steve could break the hold with ease. He could throw Rumlow off and still walk away with most of his dignity intact. Steve could do a lot of things.

He’s fucking tired, is the thing. He’s in his body and buzzing hard out of his head and it hurts, Christ, it hurts so bad, has for such a long time now, and it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter one bit.

Keep moving, keep moving. Maybe he doesn't want to. Maybe it's alright if it's not him, anyway; a river of trouble, cross currents, carrying him along.

It’s just easier, in the end, to trust someone on his team. That’s all there is to it. It's easier, it is, it's getting there at least, Steve keeps telling himself as he lets Rumlow take him apart in more ways than one.

Eventually, he thinks, he might even believe it.

He meets Sam Wilson on a humid day in late May when the sun's barely made its way up, the sky an overripe color and all of his bruises already healing or healed or tucked neatly all the way back under the surface. Like many things with him these days, it starts off as muscle memory; then a shot in the dark, then relief when it works.

It still takes all of his willpower not to physically retreat when he's hit with the familiar, tired refrain:

You must miss the good old days, huh?

But then Sam cuts straight through the middle of it: Sam calls his bluff, quick as hell but with kind, serious eyes and an outstreched hand, and by the time the sleek black car rolls up to the curb with a roar Steve's got another title in his little book of the future and a chest that feels slightly lighter than it did when he jolted awake at 3 in the morning.

Romanoff pulls them back out onto the street without a word, and he doesn't even mind the knowing look she casts his way all that much. Just looks out the open window, the spring air whipping past as the speedometer ticks up 40, 50, 60, and thinks about whether the farmer's market will be open when they get back in: having some fruit in that goddamned fruit bowl might be nice for a change.

(epilogue)

When all is said and done, he thinks he really should have seen it coming. There was no talk of rules, and it's Steve's own damn fault for not listening. When the dust settles and the Potomac still reeks of a gasoline fire, when Steve's switched back onto battlefield efficiency despite the nightmares creeping into his subconscious with a vengance, it really shouldn't feel personal.

Except for the memory of Rumlow's slick grin in the too-bright, too-close space of the elevator, except for the phantom feeling that he can still sometimes smell scorched skin on his stomach; except for the way Bucky's horrified expression is burnt into the backs of Steve's eyelids like a brand, like a scar that won't heal fully.

Except that it's nothing but personal, in all the ways that matter.

Sam looks at him in question when he pauses in the middle of breakfast, eyes glued to the closest thing that passes for a modern TV in a roadside diner in Bumfuck, Iowa. Hospital breakout, the breaking news states, three dead, seven injured, dangerous fugitive on the loose. Be advised. Do not engage. Do not engage.

Yeah. Too fucking late for that now, isn't it.

"You alright?"

That's a loaded question, he thinks. I'm not sure what that really means and I don't know if I have for a while, he thinks.

You awake, Steve? You awake? You see it yet?

"Fine," he says, and digs back into the cold, gummy pancakes. "You think they got any blueberries in this place?"

Sam's face cracks into a smile, dubious and slow and then all at once. Sure, if you say so. Sure, I see what you're doing, but I'll trust your lead. Prop me up, I've got you right back. "Man, I don't think they even have hot water, but. Gimme five minutes and a Captain America name drop, I'm sure we can figure something out."

#this got very long jesus christ #I overthought it so now I'm just hoping it fits the event and the prompts??? anyway #so unbeta'd. my apologies and also enjoy! I hope!#catws10 #catws anniversary #steve rogers #brock rumlow #natasha romanoff #don't wanna tag sam because he only shows up for a blink of an eye but. he shows up and also I love him<3 #idk if it’s actually an M rating but. just to be safe #gaslighting #by sheer virtue of the bastard involved #stevebucky #steve rogers/brock rumlow #I don't know the tag for that and I kind of don't want to know #my fic

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