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tetsuroyaoyaoya · 4 years ago

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A Crow Without Wings

tsukishima kei x reader - part ten

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A/N: this chapter really tested me - cue the very alcoholic iced latte it took for me to finally finish it.

There were very few times in your life that you could say that you’ve hated someone. Being a poster child for a powerhouse middle school like Kitagawa First was almost as stressful as being one for Shiratorizawa, meaning there were very few mistakes that you were allowed to make.

You were never told where and when you could make these mistakes, since they weren't actual rules, but there was an unspoken agreement in an environment like that about standards, and you were the one to uphold those. Pretty much, every move you made needed to be thought out and calculated, or you career could end where you stood.

Basically, hating someone was off the table.

But you came very close.

Once.

Long and difficult practices were the norm in middle school, which you both loved and hated. You could improve your skills to the highest standards, but it was extremely tolling, given you were barely even fourteen years old yet.

It got easier when Tobio moved up from elementary school, seen as you could practice together, but things on the boys team weren't exactly as easy-going as they were on the girls.

There was always an unexplainable tension on the court whenever the boys practiced, and it always worried you just a bit.

Oikawa Tooru was an amazing setter for his age at the time, and everyone knew it. But sometimes, practice and experience just doesn't quite match up to pure natural talent.

Which is where your brother came in.

Oikawa was a third year not far off from graduating and Tobio was a first year fresh out of elementary. It was understandable that he would feel frustrated. It was only natural.

But Oikawa wasn't just frustrated.

At first, he was just impressed. Tobio was practically a genius, even at just thirteen. He had potential to be a great player in time.

But he had underestimated how long it would take for that raw talent to overshadow his own, and soon, he found himself benched in favour of his junior; something he was very much aggravated by.

You brushed all of this off of course, seen as you would have been equally as annoyed by it if faced with the same situation.

But you weren't.

There was no way for you to have understood how Oikawa felt during that time. and it’s why you couldn't predict what happened next.

Practice hadn't run over as much as usual, and you smiled to yourself as you jogged over to the other gym to see if the boys were still there so you could slip in a set or two of practice with them.

Although, your hope of that dwindled as you reached the doors to see Iwaizumi Hajime, another third year, stood at the doors ready to leave. He was mostly waiting for Oikawa, judging by the rhythm of the balls landing on the court from inside of the gym, and you greeted him quietly as you came to stand next to him.

“Oikawa-san?” Smiling fondly, you watched as your brother approached your senior, volleyball in hand.

“Please teach me how to serve.” It irked you slightly that he wasn't asking you to help him, but it was better that he was asking people on him team and trying to make friends.

You frowned when Oikawa didn't reply straight away, an uneasy feeling rooting itself in your stomach. He made a start to move and your body reacted before you mind did, lurching forward to stop whatever he was about to do.

Iwaizumi got there before you did, catching the captain’s wrist just before his hand hit your brother.

There was a pause before you continued to storm forward, fingers curling around the collar of the boy’s t-shirt as you pulled him away from your brother, a murderous look in your eye.

He stumbled back, eyes wide in terror, but you just couldn't place what it was exactly that he was afraid of.

You? Or himself?

“Stay. Away. From my brother.” He gulped, unable to move, leaving you to tut at him in disappointment.

Thanking Iwaizumi, you left him to deal with his friend as you ushered Tobio out of the gym, ready to go home.

The next morning, Oikawa stopped you in the middle of the hallway on your way to class. He looked nervous, wringing his hands together and avoiding your eyes as much as possible, and it only fuelled your existing anger towards him.

“I-i’m really, really sorry for what happened last-” The echo of a slap rang through the hall as your hand made contact with his cheek, forcing his head to the side.

Everyone in the surrounding area paused as they watched the scene unfold, excited to see the two most popular volleyball players arguing in the hallway.

“Never treat my brother like that again. I won't hesitate to do worse than that.” A shaky hand made its way to his face and you walked past him to continue on to your class, bumping shoulders gently as you did so.

And that was the last you ever saw of Oikawa, besides the odd glimpse of him at practice.

That is... until now.

~~~

Your eyes remained trained on the opposing captain as he sauntered over to the centre line of the court in order to shake hands with Daichi. Unable to help yourself, you narrowed your eyes in a glare as they met immediately finding his unwavering cockiness distasteful, especially after what happened in middle school.

Although, the more you looked, the more you realised that he had changed a lot since then, in appearance at least.

You had completely ignored him when you ran into him, Ushijima, and Iwaizumi earlier on in the week, so it had taken you until now to realise just how tall he had gotten in the past three years. He had always been taller than you in middle school, but now you were sure that he would tower over you as he stood a good three inches or so above Daichi.

Despite whatever reservations you had against the captain, you were interested to see how much he had improved since you saw him last, and it seemed that it would be long until you found out, since he was the one up to serve first.

The whistle blew, and the ball was high in the air, your hands gripping the railing of the balcony in anticipation.

His hand made contact with the ball, sending it flying over the net, and you raised an eyebrow, slightly impressed. The power of the serve was amazing, you had to admit, but it still wasn't your serve. There was just something missing.

Even so, it had a flair to it that only he could achieve, so in a way, he had kind or made it his own. You just hoped that eventually, Tobio could do the same.

Daichi managed to receive the serve straight away, but a hit like that was difficult to control, and unfortunately, he sent it right back over the net for a chance ball that Seijoh could take advantage of.

It was quickly approaching the net, getting a bit closer than you would have liked, seen as it would be so easy for someone to attempt a direct attack, which is exactly what Kindaichi seemingly had in mind as he jumped, dumping the ball over Hinata. Luckily, Tobio was there to receive it, but since he got the first touch, it meant that he wasn't able to set.

You panicked until you saw Nishinoya sprinting forward, leaping over the back line into a setting position. You smiled proudly at how well the libero set the ball, sending it over to Asahi for a back attack. Despite most of the players on the other side of the net being frozen in shock from the unexpected attack, one blocker still tried to get a hand on it, but it was no use, seen as he couldn't reach it in time. The ball landed cleanly on the other side of the net, Karasuno scoring the first point of the game.

While that was a good thing, the length of that rally worried you. It was only the first point and everyone was working their hardest to keep the ball in the air. If every point was like that, they’d be quick to run out of stamina, and the game would probably end sooner than everyone was expecting.

Tobio was up to serve next, and you crossed your fingers behind your back. His biggest rival was Oikawa, and considering everything that had happened between the two, you knew that his nerves must have been through the roof.

It seemed that all of the players on the opposing team were on high alert, knowing that your brother’s serve was almost as good as their captains. Tobio hit the ball, focusing more on direction than power, only for it to land slightly outside of the court boundary.

His anger was clearly visible, even from the balcony, and you cheered encouragements along with his teammates, knowing that the missed serve would only make his nerves worse.

Iwaizumi was up to serve next, and you took a deep breath. The ace had a mean spike, but his serves were equally as powerful. The team was in it’s best receiving formation, but that was only just enough as the force from the serve was enough to knock Asahi off balance, sending the ball slightly long.

The ball looked as if it was about to go over the net, and both Tobio and Kunimi jumped, the opposer clearly expecting your brother to simply dump it over the net, but he was smarter than that. He used all the reach he could manage to get his fingers on the ball enough to set it one-handed, leaving Tanaka to spike it over.

You cheered when Tsukishima blocked the ball out completely, albeit with less enthusiasm as you had in the past. Even though you were absolutely furious with him, that was no reason to single him out. He needed just as much, if not more, support than anyone on that court, and you weren't that cruel.

Seijoh was easily keeping even with Karasuno in terms of points, but even so, the match was already going better than you had anticipated.

But that didn't mean anyone was letting their guard down.

Another rally began between the teams, the ball going back and forth over the net but refusing to fall to the floor. You knew it was the perfect time for a quick, but if you could tell that from the audience, it meant that the other team knew that as well, meaning they were probably expecting Tobio to play that card.

As expected, Hinata spiked, only to be completely blocked.

Tsukishima was ready behind them to pick it up, but you knew that block would leave an impression on the two of them, and you just hoped it wouldn't distract them from the match.

The ball ended up over the net for a chance ball, and you kept your eyes on the duo, who were getting ready to block whatever attack they were about to face.

All of a sudden, Tobio kicked his leg up, hitting Hinata’s backside harshly. You burst out laughing, knowing that it was probably the only thing that you brother could think of to snap the smaller blocker back to reality.

It clearly worked in some way, as the ginger managed to get a hand on Iwaizumi’s next spike, preventing it from slamming down onto the court floor.

The ball was set up again, and Hinata was already sprinting forward, ready to spike once again. Kindaichi was there ready to block again, but this time, Hinata was ready, and made sure to avoid him, angling his hit to the side. The libero stuck his arm out quickly in an attempt to save it, but it only ended up bouncing off out of bounds, scoring the point for Karasuno.

The pair immediately freak out and you continue to giggle at them as the rest of the team joins in.

Oikawa, being the consistent little shit that he was, delivered another amazing serve, but Daichi wasn't letting him get away with any points, getting the ball in the air ready for Tobio to set.

Hinata was already in the air, waiting for the ball to reach him so he could spike it straight past Seijoh’s libero. Said player barely even flinched, but you could figure out whether that was because the spike was too quick or he purposely let it land in order to figure something out.

The pace remained pretty much the same throughout the first set, leaving everyone in the edge of their seat as they waited to find out who would make a break in points first.

You scrunched your nose up as you watched another blocker lock on to Hinata, restricting the direction he could spike and causing him to send it straight to Kindaichi to receive as he played right into their plan. This allowed Seijoh to counter too easily, scoring them the point.

Hands gripping onto the railing, you sighed. This meant that they had already figured out a way to deal with Hinata’s attacks, and were beginning to turn the match in their favour.

Although, not by much. You grinned as Hinata managed to block one of their spikes, earning another point and keeping them in the lead.

You narrowed your eyes as the captain stepped up to serve. He always seemed to step in at the wrong times.

Your jaw dropped at the sheer force he managed to hit the ball with, and you found yourself unable to breath as it hit the court floor, half expecting it to burst.

“Oh.” That... That was not your serve. That was... scary.

You had barely registered it, being to distracted to notice, but the ball had landed outside of the court, meaning that Karasuno got the point, bringing them to set point.

You sighed as Seijoh score the next point, but tilted your head upwards in curiosity as the whistle blew. Looking over to the referee, he was signalling a player change.

A player change? This late into the set?

Usually you could risk a pinch server, but this was weird.

“Oh? What’s this?” It was the player from earlier, the one that you didn't recognise.

Seijoh was difficult enough to deal with after the team had already played them, but this new player could change everything.

Iwaizumi’s serve was received by Daichi, but not as comfortably as you would have liked, and you winced as it spiralled off to the right. It was short, but Tobio still managed to set it to Tanaka, only for it to get caught by the blockers. Their libero easily put it back into play, and Oikawa prepared to set it over to Kindaichi for the spike.

You furrowed your eyebrows as you noticed the new player sprinting forward behind the spiker, gasping as he barrelled through to the front, forcefully knocking Kindaichi over and stealing the spike. Your hands gripped the railing a tad harder as he fell to the floor, but you were immediately distracted by the force this new player managed to hit the ball with.

It was unlike anything you had ever seen before.

His back arched back so far, you wondered how he could still move, and you watched in awe as the force it took him to straighten back out only added to the force of the spike, almost doubling the power any regular spiker could achieve.

You barely even saw the ball hit the floor, and had to rely on the referee to give the final judgement on who the point went to.

He lifted his arm and...

Out.

Karasuno had taken the first set.

You let out a breath of relief, but the feeling didn't last very long. Whoever this new player was, you didn't like him.

As a watcher, he was utterly amazing and you wanted to know more, but as a player, you were worried. Seijoh was already amazing, and Karasuno had only just managed to take that set.

It was already difficult, and yet now there was this new, completely unknown force on the court and even you didn't know how to handle it.

It seemed that the boys wouldn't have much time to figure anything out either, given that the new player ended up as a starter for the second set.

You frowned as you watched over the other side of the court. The boy didn't seem much of a team player, especially given what happened at the end of the last set, but even still, it was like he was a completely odd piece to the rest of the puzzle; he didn't seem to fit in anywhere.

Normally, you would think that it would be a good thing, since the balance of the team would most likely be throw right off, but this was Aobajohsai. They didn't do anything without reason, and even though that last spike was extremely risky, it was also extremely powerful, and given the right mindset, the player could quickly get a grip on it, if he hadn’t already.

This game suddenly got even more difficult.

The blow of the whistle pulled you out of your thoughts and you turned your attention back to your side of the court as Asahi threw the ball up to serve. It landed just behind the end line, and you giggled as you watched the rage take over his features.

“You’ll get the next one, Asahi!” He threw you an appreciative glance, but you could tell that he was extremely on edge; they all were.

Luckily, Oikawa’s serve went exactly the same way, but his power and speed remained almost exactly the same as they had with the last one, and knowing Tooru, it would be long before those serves started regaining their accuracy as well.

Tsukki’s serve clipped the net, falling to the front of the court. Iwaizumi managed to dig it, but barely, meaning their formation was well off.

“Mad Dog!” Oikawa tossed the ball over to the right for the new player to spike, and you furrowed your eyebrows as he began running completely parallel to the net, rather than towards it like a normal spiker would.

He had three blockers on him, and it was an almost perfect block, except Mad Dog’s spike avoided them completely, and your jaw drop as he pulled off one of the most amazing cut shots you had ever seen.

The insane serves, along with this new player’s play style were making it practically impossible for Karasuno to get any good footing in this set, and you bit your lip in anticipation of what was to come.

Two spikers approached the net at once and you winced as Hinata barely missed blocking the ball that ultimately went to Mad Dog.

He scored the next point as well, bumping into one of his team-mates in the process.

That was three shots in a row.

While it made for an interesting match, Seijoh were widening the gap a little too much for your liking, and you were sure that the players on the court were thinking the same thing.

The rhythm of this set was completely different to what they were used to dealing with from Aobajohsai, and it was painfully obvious that your team was struggling to handle it.

You sighed as Hinata jumped for a block, only for the ball to go to someone completely different. They were too focused on stopping Mad Dog - or Kyoutani as you had heard one of the players call him - and were losing points now because of it.

Although, it wasn't exactly going smoothly on the opposing side either, and you gaped at the court as you watched Kyoutani hit as hard as possible at a triple block, despite it being clear as crystal that it was just going to rebound and hit the floor. Anyone could tell that the block was pretty much impossible to get around, and yet he had hit anyway.

You gripped the railing of the balcony a little tighter as you watched the boy run up for another one of those insane cut shots, only to splutter out a laugh when he hit straight into the net. It was an extremely risky play, so you weren't surprised at the lack of consistency.

Even so, his spikes had amazing power, and even Noya was struggling to pick them up, which was rare.

His serve was a force to be reckoned with as well, or it would be, if he could actually land it in the court.

Karasuno was just managing to keep up in points now, since Kyoutani was making so many mistakes, but hadn't landed an actual attack in some time, and it was worrying you.

A rally broke out between the two teams, the ball going back and forth until Seijoh’s libero’s receive spun slightly out of control, and you could only watch as Oikawa baited your blockers off to one side, actually setting to the other, leaving Kyoutani wide open to score yet another point.

For once, you were grateful to be on the sidelines instead of actually playing. This match was going to take a toll on the team’s mentality, whether they won or not. There wasn't just the fact that this was probably the longest match you had seen them play, meaning they had to be getting tired by now, there were too many unpredictable factors in the actual plays and the boys weren't handling them fast enough. Even if they did win this match, the finals were being held tomorrow morning, so there wasn't really much they could do to improve before then.

You wanted them to win; you really did.

But you were scared.

And you knew they were too.

You held your breath as all four of your spikers began moving at once, setting their synchronised attack into motion. Hinata jumped up from just behind the back line, intending to pull off a back attack, only for it to be completely blocked out.

One look at Oikawa told you that he knew that Tobio was going to use that, and you scowled. Tooru had taught your brother pretty much everything he knew, so of course he though in the same way, if not, even better. It was just extremely irritating.

“Oh? Are they switching setters? It didn't look like Kageyama was doing that bad though.” Following Shimada’s gaze, you watched as Sugawara ran over to the bench, coming to stand in front of Ukai.

“No, I don't think they are. I think they’re going to sub out Kei.” The three adults looked at you in confusion, not being able to place your logic.

“Well, quite frankly, his receives are awful and his serves are mediocre, which makes him a target when he’s in the back row. So, it makes more sense to have all three third years on the court since they’re the most experienced, plus Noya, and then you still have three good spikers up front, a solid set of servers, and two setters. It’s a solid formation.” They gaped at your explanation, wondering how you could have observed all that information so quickly. You would have found their reactions amusing, if Oikawa hadn't just stepped up to serve.

You watched his eyes as he tossed the ball up into the air, watching how the spin of the ball slowed. It was a good ball, and you really didn't like that look on his face.

“Oh no,” His hand made contact with the ball with an unbelievable amount of speed, and the power wasn't something to brush off either, and no sooner had he hit it, it was lading in your side of the court, right between Daichi and Asahi.

He finally did it.

He had finally surpassed you.

After all these years, his serve was better than yours. and you weren't mad about it. In fact, you were happy for him. He ruined his knee trying to perfect it, and in a way, it was oddly satisfying.

Now, your team needed to stop him.

At all costs.

His next serve clipped the net, and Noya had to dive to the front in order to save it. Although, it meant that the formation was completely off.

Tsukishima sent the ball over to Tanaka to spike, and luckily, it hit the block before landing outside of the court, scoring them the point.

The whistle blew for the substitution, and you smirked at the other three when you saw Sugawara holding up a paddle that read ‘11′, pulling Tsukishima out of the game for the time being.

He was straight up to serve after being subbed in though, and you could see the nervousness on his face.

Sugawara was the best at aiming serves, and it was always satisfying to watch when something went exactly the way he wanted it to. Kyoutani received the serve, disturbing the team’s timing and making him late to the spike.

The ball went to Kindaichi instead, a spike which was easily received by none other than Sugawara, sending it over to Tobio and allowing the freak duo to pull of their quick, finally scoring them a clean point.

The same thing happened once again, the spike being received by Daichi this time. You grinned as you watched the setters switch players, allowing Tobio to join the other spikers for a synchronised attack. Tobio was the one to spike it over with a straight and you cheered as loud as you could manage, knowing he loved to spike every now and then.

That point meant that the boys were almost caught up again, and you weren't surprised when a time out was called.

They all looked pretty calm so far, and not as tired as you would have thought, which calmed you down considerably. You knew how much this match meant to them, especially your brother.

Suga tried the same serve again when they were back in the game, but they had clearly figured out a way around it, since Kyoutani stepped to the side to allow another player to receive the ball. This meant that he was able to get to the attack on time and score the point.

The loss of the point meant a change in rotation, and so Tsukishima was put back on the court.

It wasn't long before another rally broke out, the ball being returned again and again until Seijoh eventually pulled off a libero set and took the point. You sighed, rolling your shoulders as you began to feel them getting stiff.

No matter how much Karasuno had evolved since their last match with Aobajohsai, the two teams were a bad match. Your team weren't quick thinkers like they were, and Oikawa could almost predict every move Tobio made. If Karasuno was going to win, it was going to be very, very close.

Seijoh had clearly switched to the hardest attack strategy that their roster allowed since they brought Kyoutani in, and you groaned when they managed to reach the twenty point mark first.

Another time out was called and you ran a hand through your hair in frustration. It really wasn't going well, and you knew they were going to be in trouble if they didn't win this set.

The boys were panicking, and it was obvious when they resumed the game. They were took focused on trying to to be baited that they fell right into Seijoh’s trap.

Not only that, but Kyoutani was apparently just another insane server that Aobajohsai had hidden under their belt, and you could only watch the court with widened eyes when the ball flew straight past all of the players, landing on the gym floor just behind them.

They were gaining too many points too quickly, and you really did not like the look Oikawa had plastered on his face.

Takeda called for another time out and you bit your lip. Mad Dog was only getting better and more accurate the longer he played. This set was practically just a warm up to him, which is what worried you most. If Karasuno didn't take this set, Kyoutani would be in top condition while the rest of them struggled with stamina. Along with Kinimi’s ability to conserve energy until it’s crucial, you weren't sure if your boys could keep up.

Seijoh continued scoring points, Karasuno only being able to take back one, leaving the opposing team with a four point lead.

Dropping your head into your hands, you closed your eyes for a second and tried your best to block out as much noise as you could manage. The stress of the past week was finally catching up to you, and you weren't sure how much longer your own stamina could last, never mind the players’.

The whistle blew and you lifted your head back up, ignoring the pressure behind your eyes.

Yamaguchi was stood on the edge of the court, holding a paddle that read ‘10′. You broke out into a grin, cheering as Hinata took the paddle from him and he walked onto the court.

From what the boys had told you and from watching the recording of the last match, you knew Yamaguchi hadn't performed at his best after being subbed in, and you really did feel sorry for him. You knew how hard he had been working recently, and it was a shame that he didn't get to showcase that properly.

The other boys were clearly trying to be careful of what they said to his, so as not to make him any more nervous, but you rolled your eyes at them.

“Tadashi! Nice serve!” He turned to look up at you and you gave him the biggest smile you could manage, making him giggle at you.

Although, you missed the way Tsukishima turned his head to that side, just out of your view, before allowing himself to smile at your cuteness.

Yamaguchi looked happier than he had in the last match, but he was still understandably nervous, and you crossed your fingers. He closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath, and when he opened them again, he was completely focused. Your lips twitched up into a smirk.

He was ready.

The whistle blew, and Yamaguchi took his time, avoiding rushing into the serve like he had in the past.

The ball went up, and he hit it.

It went over the net.

But it was a bit long. The libero called it out, causing him and Kyoutani to take a step back to wait for it to land.

Although, at the last second, the ball lost momentum, dropping down and landing just before the end line, scoring them a point.

He did it.

His first service ace.

The team erupted into cheers, along with everyone on the bench as well as the crowd. Words couldn't express how proud you were of him, and by the looks of Shimada, the same went for him. He had been the one to train Yamaguchi, and seen him evolve over the past few months, even more than any of you, and you couldn't blame him for looking as though he were about to cry.

The whistle blew and Yamaguchi prepared himself, eventually throwing up another toss and hitting it in the same way. Seijoh weren't underprepared for this one though, and Kyoutani stepped in to receive it, but he clearly misjudged the distance and had to move his head to the side to prevent the ball form hitting his face, instead, knocking it with his shoulder and sending it out of bounds.

That was two aces in a row!

“Yamaguchi!” Hinata screamed out from the sidelines, and you couldn't help yourself from shouting ‘one more’ along with the entire team with the biggest smile on your face.

He was up to serve once again, and you couldn't dampen your happiness... until Seijoh actually got a hand on the ball, returning it with an overhand receive.

You scowled as you watched the panic take over Yamaguchi’s expression. You knew the high he had from the last two serves hadn't faded yet, and now all of that fear he had about being a failure was going to rush back to him. You just hoped he could keep it together, at least to react to an attack.

The ball went to Iwaizumi for a back attack and you bit your lip, gasping as the ball was spiked over the net, Yamaguchi barely receiving it with his shoulder.

Tobio dived over to keep it in the air, and then it was up to Tsukishima to get it back over. There were three blockers in his path and your hands started to shake, not wanting to lose this point.

He somehow managed to hit it to the left with something like a feint, and you let out a breath of relief as it landed safely on the court floor, scoring them the point.

They were just one point away from catching up now, but Aobajohsai’s coach decided to take a time out, and you all but growled in the man’s direction.

A time out may not be able to disrupt someone like Oikawa’s concentration, but there was a high chance that it would break Yamaguchi’s, especially if he was anything remotely near shaken from that receive.

The boys, however, still looked over pumped, even when they returned to the court. Yamaguchi didn't look even the slightest bit ruffled, as you had expected him to be, and it finally kicked in that this was not the same boy you had met when first transferring to Karasuno. He had evolved, just like the rest of them, and you felt a slight tug in your chest as you began to wish that you could do the same.

The ball went up, and was soon sailing through the air. It clipped the net, a move that you soon realised was deliberate, and tipped over to the very front of Seijoh’s boundary.

The libero dove to receive it, but wasn't fast enough, and the point brought Karasuno level with their opponents.

Even so, you really didn't like the look that Oikawa had plastered all over his face. He was such a smug bastard; he always had been. But it always meant that he had something up his sleeve, and all of a sudden you were a lot more anxious.

It was going to be close in scores, but Seijoh had a way of thriving in situations such as these; it had been the same back at Kitagawa First. It was impressive, but equally as infuriating.

Yamaguchi hit another serve, and you immediately saw the panic. He hadn't hit it the way he wanted to, and it allowed the ball to be pretty easily received by Iwaizumi.

Seijoh tried to attack, but were caught by Tsukishima, the blocker managed to get one hand on the ball, sending it spiralling into the air and allowing Karasuno to fight back.

Asahi barrelled towards the triple block, hitting hard enough to rebound the ball off of their arms. It came back towards the court and Tanaka dove to save it, calling it out at the last second. It did indeed land outside of the border, scoring another point for Karasuno and bringing them to match point.

Just one more.

The next serve seemed like a good one, but Seijoh wasn't going to let anything past them now, and the libero was quick to save them with an overhead receive.

Iwaizumi came from the back row to spike once again and you gripped the railing in anticipation, knowing how brutal his hits could be. Yamaguchi barely had time to react, the ball barely just hitting him with so much power that it knocked him to the floor. The ball ended up behind him, bouncing on the gym floor, giving Seijoh the point and bringing the two teams to a deuce.

Yamaguchi still looked ready to score more points, but his time as a pinch server was over, and he was soon switched out, putting Hinata back into the game. Although, the rotation had finally changed, meaning he was pulled back out for Noya to take his place.

Neither team wanted to give up, and they were soon in a sort of quarrel over the last point, Asahi scoring, then Iwaizumi. One team just couldn't get a lead over the other, maintaining their deuce.

This continued for a couple more points, until it was finally Oikawa’s turn to serve again. There was just never a right time for him to serve, and it was unbelievably aggravating.

You were envious of the unhindered power he was able to serve the ball with, and even Noya couldn't receive it, sending it upwards to rebound off of the balcony above.

That point meant that Seijoh was finally at set point.

Daichi barely managed to receive the next serve, and you held a breath as Kindaichi tried to land a direct. Tanaka was luckily there to bump it with his arm, allowing Tobio to get it up for Asahi to spike, but it was received, keeping it in play.

Iwaizumi swooped in from the back once again, spiking straight though a gap in the block and winning Seijoh the set.

You sighed, dropping your head into your hands. In a way, you saw it coming, but you just wanted to hang onto the hope that Karasuno could win in straight sets.

It was stressful, especially for them.

This was the decider set.

While you enjoyed viewing the game from up on the balcony, there was a very big part of you that wanted to be down on that bench, helping them think of a way to handle the next set. Instead, you were stuck wringing your hands, unable to do much else.

It didn't help that Seijoh’s coach looked way too comfortable for someone who’s team barely scraped the set. One wrong move and they could have given Karasuno the match in two straight sets. If you weren't already worried about everything that was already on the court, you may have been concerned that it seemed like they still had something up their sleeve.

You didn't have much more time to think about it, as the players were already walking back on the court, ready to begin the third set.

Asahi was up to serve first, but Seijoh easily received it, allowing Iwaizumi to score the first point.

Oikawa was serving next, and you knew that everyone was thinking the same thing; cut him off. If the opponents gained the advantage this early on in the match, then there was no telling how it would go.

The serve maintained the speed and power it had gained in the previous set, and Asahi luckily managed to get it up, only for it to travel back over the net because of the force of the rebound. Kyoutani leaped for a direct before Tanaka could block it effectively, scoring them another point.

Oikawa was quick to deliver another of the same serve, but Daichi was ready to receive this time. It went up, and your brother wasted no time in sending it over to Tanaka for the spike. The ball hit the block, but rebounded at an awkward angle, landing outside of the court and scoring Karasuno their first point.

Although, the relief of the point didn't last long, as Seijoh attacked right back, scoring a block out just like Tanaka had.

It was hard not to notice Mad Dog getting a lot more irritated than you had seen him so far, and you tilted your head in interest. Whether it was on purpose or not, Tanaka seemed to be really irk him, which wasn't really surprising, since that seemed to be his main purpose when encountering other teams, but Kyoutani already seemed to have a bad temper, so it was like he was a ticking time bomb at this point. Who knows what would set him off.

The set was another close one, even if they were only a few points in, but Karasuno could never quite take the lead. You decided to keep a close eye on Seijoh’s new addition, knowing that there was bound to be a moment where something went wrong.

You were so distracted that you barely registered someone tossing Oikawa a ball, until you realised that he was once again up to serve.

This one didn't seem as impressive as some of the last, and you had to resist the urge to smirk as it clipped the net, allowing the boys to counter. Tobio and Tsukishima pulled of a simple quick, but it was received, giving Seijoh another shot at a point.

Mad Dog went in for the kill, only to be completely blocked. You felt kind of sorry for him to be honest. It seemed like he hadn't hit a clean shot this entire set so far, and you knew from experience what that could do to a spiker.

You scowled as Tsukishima landed back on the court with the most smug look you’d ever seen on his face. Even after everything, it was still annoyingly attractive, and you hated yourself for being so distracted by it in the middle of a game.

Kyoutani tried again to score the point back, the ball heading straight for Tsukishima, who merely stepped aside and allowed the ball to land outside of the court boundaries.

That point meant that Karasuno had finally taken the lead.

You knew that Tsukishima was having fun with this, but it was helping them change up the momentum, so you couldn't really complain. If there was anything that Kei was good at, it was being annoying on purpose, and it suited him stupidly well.

Kyoutani was understandably fuming, you would be too if you were in his position.

Seijoh was known for their strategy of subtly riling people up and then completely destroying them, and it seemed that for once, they were getting a taste of their own medicine.

If Mad Dog completely lost it, it would cause their entire new dynamic to implode, destroying them from the inside out.

It was slightly satisfying.

Just as Tsukishima stepped up to serve, Seijoh’s coach called a time out, and your lips upturned into a smug smile at the look on his face. He definitely wasn't looking as calm as he did at the beginning of the set, and you knew their strategy had cracked, requiring them to think of something new already.

Despite the break, Kyoutani continued to make mistakes on the court, and you surpassed a wince as he spiked straight into the net.

It didn't seem like he was in a better mood either, and you frowned as he shrugged off what looked like the libero’s attempt at encouragement.

So, really, it was no surprise when the whistle blew, you eyes drifting over to Kunimi, stood on the sidelines holding the number ‘16′ paddle, ready for a substitution.

From up on the balcony, it just looked like he was a little toddler throwing a tantrum because thing weren't going his way. Even so, you found yourself distracted from the game, watching what looked like a heated conversation unfold in the opponent’s substitution box.

Your eyes sparkled in both shock and amusement as you watched their number six grab Kyoutani by the collar of his jersey, practically throwing him against the wall, as if he were nothing. The other players in the box had their backs turned to them, clearly too scared to get involved, which only made it more fun to watch.

Whatever confrontation they were having, however, soon ended, and you finally brought your attention back to the actual game. Not much time had passed, and Karasuno had managed to stay ahead for the first time.

Although, that didn't look likely to last that much longer, as Mad Dog was already being subbed back into the game.

It was a gamble, a big one no doubt, but that’s exactly what Kyoutani was to Seijoh; his entire presence was a gamble, and yet so far, it had been worth the risk.

Not only that, but it seemed that Oikawa was trusting him completely, no questions asked. It was cruel, but a captain knows their team best, and you knew whatever Oikawa decided was the option that benefited him and the team most.

And, of course, it paid off.

Kyoutani got past the block like it wasn't even there, finally scoring a clean point for Aobajohsai.

It was an extremely minor change, and you had no doubt that whatever was said to him while he was out of the game was the cause, but he no longer looked like the odd one out of the team. He looked like he belonged; and that could only mean trouble.

Seijoh were quick to score again, and you cursed under your breath. They were tied again now, and you knew they were extremely close to taking back the momentum.

Your boys clearly weren't going to let that happen though, a cheer ripping its way out of your throat as Asahi scored with a direct hit, literally knocking the opposing libero on his ass.

The scored maintained their tie, up until it was Oikawa’s turn to serve yet again.

You visibly winced as Daichi received, the ball hitting his arms with unimaginable force. It wouldn't be surprising if he ended up with bruises after today.

But you knew that Oikawa’s power was nothing compared to some other players, including Ushijima’s.

The receive wasn't perfect, however, and the ball was soon back over the net, giving their opponents a chance ball.

You couldn't help but raise and eyebrow as Kindaichi was the one to jump for the ball this time, going a lot wider than you could remember him ever going in middle school. Either way, it got him around Tanaka and allowed him to score the point, meaning that Seijoh were now the ones ahead.

It was amazing that Oikawa still had as much energy as he did to keep hitting serves like he sad been, especially in the third set. Even Nishinoya was struggling to receive them right, and the ball ended up closer to than the net than you knew Tsukishima liked. Not only that, but Kindaichi was stood directly opposite, ad you knew that if he spiked, it would set blocked completely.

They ended up in a joust, but of course Tsukishima won. He was smiled about Kindaichi in terms of blocking strength, especially after what Kuroo and Bokuto had put him through at the training camp.

The change in rotation meant that Hinata was finally up front again, and it put you at ease slightly. It seemed like forever since you had seen him score a point, but his appearance completely changed the atmosphere of the court, and you could tell even from up here that Seijoh were now on high alert.

Tanaka managed to get a one touch on Kyoutani’s spike, and Hinata was quick to reset his position, already in the air when the ball reached your brother.

You stiffened when you realise that he was way to close to the net, and if he touched it, the penalty he’d receive would negate the point entirely, and throw the flow off balance again.

Although, as observant and clever as ever, your brother was thinking exactly the same, and in a split second, had already found a solution, tossing the ball almost right on top of the net so Hinata could still reach.

“Slam it down!” There were no blockers in his way, and he did exactly as he was told, the ball landing unobstructed on the court floor.

It was a stupid set, you knew that. He was literally less than an inch away form a penalty, but Tobio had no fear, and that was one of the things that made him so impressive, something that you could never achieve as a setter.

The adrenaline from the success of that miracle point soon dissipated as Iwaizumi scored the point right back from the boys.

And yet, they didn't let it get to them as Tanaka took the next point.

It looked like it was going to continue to be a tug-of-war over the points, but Seijoh had other ideas, and soon, they were subbing in number six as a pinch server.

He looked calmer than when he had pinned Kyoutani against the wall earlier, and it intrigued you, leaning a tad further over the railing subconsciously to get a better look.

He was a decent server, and managed to throw the boys’ formation off slightly, but they were in no way ready to let the ball touch the floor. Although, the spike was received by Oikawa and you raised an eyebrow as the pinch server stood in as setter. Kyoutani was up to spike again, and easily got through, scoring another point.

It took a second for it to sink in that he had actually hit with his left hand. While it was a rare skill to have, and certainly impressive, it was a little bit concerning. Players with the ability to completely control their body were the most difficult to deal with, and Mad Dog was already a troubling player.

A smug smile made its way to your face as Hinata scored with a feint, Seijoh’s pinch server ending up over the centre line from having dove to save the ball. That point once again kept the two teams tied, and also meant that their pinch server’s time on the court was over.

The boys right now were probably the most concentrated you had ever seen them so far, and it made you slightly anxious. here had always been an air of lightheartedness to their practices, and even their matches most of the time, so the sheer aura of determination on the court was overwhelming.

After a painfully long rally, Tobio ended up being just a hair short of receiving the ball, meaning that Seijoh scored and hit twenty points first.

It was just one point, and given how the rest of the game had been going, they’d earn it back straight away, but it was worrying you how they would take it mentally.

Something about hitting twenty points first always shifted the atmosphere in the game, and you knew that from personal experience. For now, they just needed to keep going.

Kyoutani was up to serve again, and as he jumped, you lent forward slightly to get a better view. It awed you how he was able to arch his body so much. it gave an amazing amount of power to his hit, and sort of reminded you of Lev’s whip-like technique.

Daichi received the ball with ease, and Tanaka was the one to spike it over, the libero missing it by inches.

It brought Karasuno back to a tie with Aobajohsai, and allowed the rotation to change.

The whistle blew, and you sucked in a breath as you saw Yamaguchi once again stood at the boundary of the court holding the number ‘10′ paddle.

Like the rest of the boys, he looked deadly serious, and you crossed your fingers, hoping that he could pull of something like he did earlier and get them ahead by a couple points.

The first serve was aimed at Kyoutani, and you noticed the hesitation about whether to call it out or not, after what had happened the last time. At the last second, he decided to receive, but clearly misjudged the ball’s flight pattern, instead just brushing it with his fingers.

All of a sudden, Iwaizumi shot out from wherever he had been positioned in this rotation, digging the ball and putting it back into play.

You all but growled, knowing how close that had been to touching the floor.

The libero got the last hit, sending it back over to the boys for Tanaka to receive.

They immediately launched into a synchronised attack, all four spikers running at once towards the net. Asahi was the one to hit, but was almost blocked, the ball rebounding to the side and being received by Iwaizumi yet again.

He really was at the top of his game today.

The spiker who hit managed to trick the blockers with a feint, meaning that Seijoh scored and cut Yamaguchi’s serves off at just one.

He looked visibly angry, and you couldn't blame him. The fact that Iwaizumi had received it, let alone both of those times, was practically a miracle, but then again, he wasn't the ace for nothing.

Both teams scored points one after the other, going back and forth up until it was finally Oikawa’s turn to serve.

You froze as the captain looked up from the ball, your hands beginning to tremble as you noticed his expression. You knew what that look was; you’d hung around the boys’ practice enough in middle school to see what came after a look like that.

The ball hit the floor so fast that even you couldn't follow it, eyes wide and jaw slack. You felt your knees weaken and you had to grip the railing so hard you knuckled bloomed white.

That meant Seijoh was finally two points ahead and at set point.

Unsurprisingly, a time out was called and you let out a breath that you didn't even know you were holding. You had never been so desperate for something to break the flow of a match as you had been right in that moment.

A quick look at the team told you that most of them didn't look too worried, but you knew that was just a front.

The time out was over before you knew it, and Oikawa managed to hit another unbelievable serve, your heart dropping as you resisted the urge to close your eyes.

Daichi stepped in as he always did, the ball hitting his forearms so hard that he tumbled backwards with the force.

The ball was up!

They had a chance!

Asahi swooped in from the back, hitting the ball straight through the opponents block and scoring the point.

While it was a good thing, since it ended Oikawa’s serve, Seijoh were still at match point and the change in rotation meant Noya was now out of the court, lowering the team’s defence considerably.

Your worry was soon almost non-existent, as Sugawara walked onto the court, being subbed for Tsukishima. If there was anyone who could level the mood and throw Aobajohsai off of their game, it was him.

The serve was aimed at one of the back corners of the court, but was received overhead by Iwaizumi, his defence skills not wavering even for a second.

Kindaichi jumped for the ball, but at the last second, Mad Dog appeared out of nowhere, the ball ultimately going to him.

Tobio was the only blocker in position, and it looked like he was going to have to face that killer spike alone until Hinata practically jumped into his side, pushing him over in mid-air to get a hand on the ball.

His hand was forced back from the power, but he had blocked it none the less and it landed at the back of the court, the libero diving for it unsuccessfully.

That point brought Karasuno to a deuce.

Suga served again, and this time it barely made it into the boundary. Although, it threw Seijoh’s formation off, and you grinned as Iwaizumi stumbled forward.

The spike hit the top of the net, missing the block completely and almost falling into the front of the court when Sugawara dove for it, somehow managing to dig it.

You silently prayed that Tobio didn't use Hinata for the next attack, because it was beyond predictable, and Seijoh had apparently used that against them in their last match.

The spikers set out running, preparing for a synchronised attack.

“Bring it to me!” Hinata leaped for the ball...

For Tobio to dump it over the net.

You gaped in complete disbelief. Did... did your brother actually use his head? Against Aobajohsai?

The team rushed over to him, and you continued to just stare at the court. You couldn't imagine how furious Oikawa had to be. He had been the one to run for the ball, barely missing it.

The point put Karasuno in the lead once again.

Just one more.

A timeout was called and you drew a long breath. The pause in momentum gave you enough time to calm down as much as the boys did, and allowed yourself to space out for a moment.

You had always hated games like this, but having not watched or played one in a while, you had forgotten just how stressful it was.

Zoning back in, your eyes subconsciously drifted over to Tsukishima, only to see him already staring right back at you. Immediately straightening up, you raised an eyebrow at him. He tilted his head to the side slightly and stared at you for a few more seconds before returning to the mini meeting that the rest of the team were having.

It was almost as if you had just had a completely silent conversation, but you had no idea what was said.

Shaking your head, you swallowed heavily as the whistle blew once more, signalling it was time to restart the game.

Suga served to the front of the court again, causing Iwaizumi to stumble forward, just like he had before the time out.

Mad dog went in for a cross shot, but Tanaka was ready, and you had to seriously resist the urge to laugh as he received it with his forehead.

Nevertheless, it was up, and it gave them the chance to counter attack.

The setters switched places, and you clutched the railing as the decoys jumped, Asahi eventually being the one to get the spike straight through the blockers.

Although, it was received once again, and you found yourself holding your breath at the tension in the air, created by the rally.

The ball flew off court, and your eyes followed Oikawa as he ran after it, desperate not to let it touch the floor.

You found yourself dropping your jaw as he jumped, rotating his body in order to set the ball for all the way out of the court, an astounding distance away from any spikers. It was a wonder he had any strength left at all after three close sets, let alone enough to pull off a set that broad.

You winced as the captain continued to fly backwards, crashing into a table, but he still managed to get back on his feet to sprint back to the court.

Iwaizumi spiked the ball, and Daichi managed to receive it, but it was way off.

One of the Seijoh coaches began to celebrate, but stopped in his tracks when he saw Tanaka diving for the ball, only just managing to dig it.

Asahi hit it all the way from the back line, reminding you of the trick that Terushima had pulled off not too long ago.

The ball was received, but it was sent straight into the net, causing it to lose its momentum completely and began falling to the floor.

However, Kyoutani was there to get it up and Tobio jumped for a direct, only to be stopped by Kindaichi.

You gasped as the ball was sent flying straight into Sugawara’s head causing him to fall backwards.

“Give it to me!” Hinata sprinted towards the net screaming, and you held your breath. It was predictable, you knew that, and Seijoh knew that too, but he needed to land this, for closure and for the win.

Of course, their opponents had read the set up like a book, and the small spiker was met with a triple block, but you knew he wasn't about to let that get to him, especially not now that it mattered so much.

The ball hit Kindaichi’s hand, causing the ball to spiral, but Oikawa was already in position, ready to receive.

Even so, the ball barely brushed his forearms, continuing on, travelling far behind him.

After a hellish rally...

The ball finally landed on the court.

There was silence in the gym for a long moment, until it erupted into cheers once again.

Karasuno had won.

Tobio and Oikawa stared at each other through the net, their rivalry finally at its end.

That was his last high school match.

Drawing your eyes away from the two, you brought yourself to move, making your way down to the court as quickly as you could while they did their line up.

You made it to the team just as Noya and Hinata leaped at the team, tackling all of them to the floor. Giggling at the heap of boys, you decided to wait to speak to them until they calmed down a bit.

Instead, you walked right across the gym, towards the opposite team.

Some of the boys noticed you, watching as you walked towards them, the ones that didn't know you slightly confused at your appearance.

You stop a fair distance away from them, staring at them for a moment before finally letting a small smile make its way onto your face, bowing your head in respect.

“That was a great game. You did well.” A few players gulped, looking away as they began to cry again, some others giving you appreciative looks. Oikawa stepped forward, not close, but enough to separate himself from the group.

“Does this mean you’re not mad at me anymore, Rei-chan?” You laughed at him, bringing his usual cheeky grin back to his pretty face.

“I’ll think about it, Tooru.” His brief joy faded into a sad smile, and bowed back at you, prompting the other players that knew you to do the same.

You gave them all one last look before turning and making your way back to your own team.

They had made it to the finals.

One more step to go.

~~~

*buzz*

You jumped at the sudden vibration of your phone, almost causing the glass of juice you were holding to slip from your grasp.

Looking at the notification quickly, you noticed that it was a text from Tsukishima, prompting you to place down your glass and pick up your phone to see what it said.

sodium chloride ;P:

can we talk? in person?

You swallowed, train of thought halting in its tracks.

Was it really the best idea to be seeing him right now? It was late, and there was the biggest match they’d ever had in the morning, and after everything that had happened in the past week, you didn't actually know if you could handle it if an argument broke out.

With a sigh, you rolled your eyes, already knowing that no matter what excuse you gave yourself, you were going to say yes.

You needed to see him. You missed him. And you hated it.

Texting him back, you pulled on a jacket, and slipped out of your room, already walking out of the front door when he text you back, telling you to meet him at the park not far from your house.

It was already late, and even though it was a short walk, it was practically pitch black by the time you got there. He was already waiting for you on the swings, his slumped form illuminated by a nearby streetlight.

He looked slightly shocked when he looked up to see you there, the sound of your footsteps on the gravel alerting him to your presence. If he was honest, he’d say that he didn't actually believe you’d show up, yet here you were, a hard look on your face, hands stuffed deep into your pockets.

You lowered yourself onto the swing next to his, hands loosely hanging on the chains as you rocked yourself back an forth gently, attention turned upwards. The sky wasn’t as pretty as it usually was, dark clouds blocking the twinkle of the stars, barely just letting a few slivers of moonlight through the gaps.

You were evidently still mad at him, judging by the silence that settled over the both of you, but he couldn't blame you.

He’d been a dick, quite frankly.

He just hoped you had it in you to forgive him.

“My biggest fear is putting my entire trust into someone, only for them to throw it away, as if it never mattered in the first place.” Your eyes shot over to him as he stared at the ground, completely avoiding your gaze. It was confusing for a second, until you remembered the conversation you had started with him that one night a few weeks ago, on your way home from his brother’s practice. You had asked him what his biggest fear was, and he couldn't give you an answer then, but he was now.

You continued to stare at him in shock until he sighed, lifting his head up to glance at you before elaborating.

“My brother was the ace of his team in middle school, and when he moved up to Karasuno, I thought that would stay the same, and he told me it had. But he never let me go to any games. Eventually, I went to one without him knowing. He wasn't on the court, and he wasn't even in the box. He was across the gym from me, staring at me from the other side of the stands.” With wide eyes, you sucked in a breath, watching as he clenched his hands in his lap.

“He lied to me for so long, while I was out there bragging that my brother was the ace of a powerhouse school.” He turned his attention over to you, looking you straight in the eyes with a distraught expression on his face. It pained you to see him so upset, and it was the fist time you had ever seen him so vulnerable. But you couldn't bring yourself to say anything.

“I like you too, Rei. So fucking much. But I didn't want to risk that happening again. I’m sorry.” As much. as you still wanted to be mad at him with how he treated you, you smiled at him, sighing as you watched the relief fill his eyes.

Not being able to find the words to reply, you let the silence settle between the two of you once again, both of you looking up at the sky to see a few stars peeking out from behind the clouds.

You tentatively reached your hand out towards his, brushing against it before linking your pinky fingers together.

Tsukishima looked down at your intertwined fingers and smiled to himself, taking the chance to stare at you while you were distracted by the stars.

You eventually caught him, and giggled as he blushed, absolutely teasing the hell out of him for it.

Almost everything was finally back in it’s place.

Your life was finally back on track.

J: fun fact - this chapter takes the total word count to almost 71,000 words which is roughly the length of a full novel!

taglist: @iamthepenguinwhosearseisonfire, @loreblackthorne, @tchalameme, @lorentime, @influxencer, @enagmaticether, @nerdstuff1994, @keikink, @centinoahs, @ewwis, @flwrjxx, @ciaobella943, @tinymouth, @strawberrykeiii

bold couldn't be tagged

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#tsukki #tsukishima kei #tsukishima x reader #tsukishima #tsukishima kei x reader

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ayamari-no-goshi · 4 years ago

Text

Verboten 5 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary: AU. When Danny was five years old, he went missing for 2 weeks. In the years that follow, his family tried to make sense of what happened, only for the truth to be discovered years later.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, language. Be prepared for some very weird things.

Chapter warning: there be death and blood. Tread at your own risk

Parings: Danny/Sam

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr. This fic is very heavily inspired by folklore surrounding mysterious wilderness disappearances

Chapter 5

"Yo, Fenturd, funny seeing you here."

"Last time I checked, our entire class is supposed to be on this trail. I don't know why you're so surprised," Danny quipped before he could stop himself.

Dash grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "What was that?"

"Could you deal with your beef with this loser later? I'm all sweaty and getting covered in dirt. My designer clothes will get ruined at this point," the one girl, Paulina whined. The other girls in the group, her satellites, quickly tried to comfort her.

Danny caught sight of the scowl on Sam's face as she took a step forward. His friend held distain for the popular girls on the best of days, but it was situations like this which really upset her. They didn't care about anyone outside of their group, and often stood by and laughed as the jocks bullied others.

Paulina, who was the unspoken queen of their grade, was often outspoken about girls who she thought was beneath her, but she had also begun her own form of bullying in their sophomore year. She used her beauty to make guys fall for her and give her items. Once she was finished using them, she often publically embarrassed them or had Dash and his cronies throw a few punches. She had tried to go after Danny once, but after encountering his parents and their eccentricities once, she wanted nothing more to do with him.

"Can't I at least get one punch in?" Dash requested as he sized up Danny. "I mean, this is my last year to wail on him."

"You can't argue with that," Zack added as he crossed his arms and leaned against a nearby tree. "Why deny a man a simple pleasure?"

"Fine, but hurry it up," Paulina finally agreed as she and her friends moved to the side.

"You hear her. Grab him," Dash instructed has he pushed Danny backwards. He barely had time to catch himself before his arms were grabbed by two of the jocks.

Before he had a chance to throw his punch, Kwan grabbed his shoulder. "Hey, is this really the best place to do this? That one Ranger wasn't that far behind us."

"So?"

"Your buddy has a point," Sam spat as Tucker tried to hold her back. It was clear she was itching to hit someone in the shin with her combat boot. "If a Ranger catches you assaulting someone, not only could you lose your spot on the football team, you could get jail time."

Before Dash could make his decision, a scream rang out through the area. Everyone glanced around, but it didn't seem as if anyone found anything unusual. "Didn't that sound like Mikey?" Tucker asked after a moment.

"Drop him. That will definitely draw attention we don't want," Dash told his friends. "Mikey was up ahead of us, wasn't he?"

"I think so. Why?" Kwan questioned.

"We should go check on our other punching bag. Make sure he's not too hurt. Besides, maybe we'll learn something we can use to scare him with later. Come on." He beckoned them forward as he began following the trail again. The girls quickly followed him. The jocks holding Danny shared a look before letting him go.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Danny looked up to see Kwan watching him. "Yeah. I know you were trying to help out there. Thanks."

The football player nodded before he ran after his friends. Although Danny didn't exactly trust Kwan, he knew that he was a much kinder person than most of Dash's friends. Kwan really didn't want to be involved with the bullying, but was forced to go along with it for reasons Danny didn't quite understand.

"Do you think we should follow them?" Danny turned to see his friend's responses.

"Absolutely not!" Tucker shouted before Sam could respond. "Dude, didn't you notice that Dash is in one of his moods?"

"You're such a coward, Tucker." Sam grabbed his arm and began pulling him along the path. "He could need our help."

"Or we could get beaten to a pulp too."

"I'm with Sam on this one." When Tucker sent him a look a betrayal, Danny amended, "I mean, we don't have to get close if nothing is wrong, but if they need help, we can go get a Ranger. Didn't Kwan mention there should be one not too far away?"

"Fine, but don't expect me to get killed along with you."

…..

After a few minutes of walking, Danny and his friends first caught sight of Dash and his friends. They seemed to just be staring at something in the woods. The girls were nowhere nearby. Mikey was sitting on the ground at their feet and was crying inconsolably.

"What… what should we do?" Tucker whispered as they hid behind a nearby tree and monitored the situation.

The hair on the back of Danny's neck felt as if it was standing on end. As soon as they got to this area, something felt extremely wrong. "Although this goes against my desire for self-preservation, something's not right."

"You noticed it too?" Sam asked as she stepped out from around the tree and approached the group. "Hey! What's wrong?" Danny and Tucker shared a look before they followed her.

Mikey noticed them first. His glasses were somewhat foggy because of his tears. "Lester…" he choked out.

"What about Lester? Mikey, talk to us." Danny kneeled down so his distraught classmate wouldn't have to look up at him.

"He… he… we lost sight of him for just a moment," Mikey whispered as he grabbed Danny by the arms. His wide eyes almost made him look insane. "He didn't answer when we called him, and we didn't see any signs of him. After… after searching and not seeing him… Jimmy and Clark went off to tell Mr. Lancer. I stayed put just in case… Then… then something fell over there… and… and…" The sob that escaped the boy was somewhere in between a scream and absolute despair.

"What are you talking about? What happened?"

"Danny… I think you need to see something," Sam whispered as she shook his shoulder.

After gently prying Mikey's hands off of him, he stood up and looked at his friends. Both were incredibly pale, which was quite the feat for Tucker due to his naturally dark skin. Sam glanced at him before she pointed at something off the trail. At first, he had no idea what he was supposed to see, but after a moment, a soft dripping sound caught his attention. As he focused on that, he felt his blood run cold.

The dripping was coming from blood falling from a figure in a tree that was about thirty yards off. After a moment, he realized the figure was Lester. It almost looked as if someone had thrown him onto the branches, but with how limp his figure was and the strange pallor of his skin, Danny was convinced he was dead.

The sound of retching caught his attention. He turned to see Tucker wiping his mouth as he weakly straightened his posture. "That's… that's so messed up."

"We… we need to get help," Danny stammered as he glanced at the jocks. They all seemed to be in a trance. He snapped his fingers in front of Kwan's face. "Hey, hey! Come on! Snap out of it." The jock shook his head for a moment and glanced around before stumbling backwards into Dash. That seemed to break the rest of them out of their trance.

After a moment of confusion, Dash spotted Danny and once again grabbed him by the shirt. "Alright, Fenturd, you better have a good explanation of what happened!"

"Get off of me!" he snapped as he wrestled out of Dash's grip. "I don't know what happened either. You got here first, remember? I do know we need to alert the Rangers."

"Dash, what happened to the girls?" Lucas asked as he glanced around before he glared at Danny and his friends. "If you losers did anything to them…!"

"We haven't seen them since we got here," Sam replied as tried to help Mikey stand. He wasn't complying and had opted to stare at the ground. "Tucker, what are you doing? Don't tell me you're taking pictures."

"I am," he shakily told her as he tapped his phone. "I… I still can't get a signal. This way… we have a record of where we are… and, what the?!" As he spoke, another scream broke the silence of the forest.

"That sounded like Star!" Kwan yelled as he took off to investigate.

"Hey, wait up!" The rest of the football players quickly ran after him leaving Danny, Sam, and Tucker alone with Mikey, who still seemed dazed.

"I vote we try to get back to camp." Tucker had put his phone away and was glancing around nervously.

Danny nodded as he and Sam picked up Mikey. His frame was small and lanky, so he thankfully didn't weigh too much. Although he wasn't exactly responding to them, they were able to get him to walk by tugging on his wrist.

The group headed down the path as quickly as possible, but it wasn't fast enough for Danny's liking. The uneasy feeling he had when they first reached the area where they found Lester hadn't left. It felt like they were being watched and followed, and it made him want to run. As uncool as it was, he wanted to run away as fast as possible, but he couldn't leave his friends alone with whatever was lurking out there. He also couldn't just leave Mikey.

A glance at the shocked boy told Danny that he was having a hard time processing exactly what happened to his friend. Although Danny really couldn't say that he and Mikey were friends, he knew the boy enough to know that he and Lester were almost like brothers. It was understandable he couldn't function after witnessing that, but he really did wish the boy would move faster. They needed to get to a safer location, preferably sooner than later.

"Are we going to talk about it?" Sam hesitantly asked as they moved.

"Nah uh. No way. We're still out in the woods with something without any adults around. You saw what happened!" Tucker sounded frantic as he looked around the area.

"It can wait until we get back to camp," Danny agreed as he kept his eyes on the trail. A strange noise caught his attention, and after a moment, he stopped to listen.

"Dude, what are you doing? You can't stop now."

Danny shushed him as he listened. A strange sound, almost like a bird call but almost metallic, was coming from somewhere behind them. He turned to see if he could catch sight of whatever the source was, but he didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. After a few moments, the bird call was joined by the sound of rustling wings, but that also sounded almost metallic as there was a strange buzz to it.

"It's back!" Mikey suddenly shouted, causing the rest of them to jump. He then wrestled out of Sam and Danny's grips before he took off down the trail.

"Mikey! Come back! What's back?" Before Danny had a chance to go after him, Sam grabbed his arm and pointed to something in the trees.

A silvery flash caught his attention. As he watched it, he realized it looked like a skeletal bird made from some sort of metal. It finally came to a stop on a tree branch a few yards down the trail from them. Its eyes were an eerie red. After it appraised them, it let out a horrifying screech.

"I see you found the target!" an excited voice rang out from the woods.

Danny and his friends formed a tight circle with their backs on the inside as they scanned the area. No one seemed to be nearby. Other than the sound of the strange bird and their breathing, there were no other sounds. After a moment, a figure emerged from shadows of the forest.

The figure was the size of a young child and was carrying something over its shoulders. As it came closer, they could tell that it looked like a young boy, expect his skin was abnormally white, seemed to have green hair, and it almost seemed like he was glowing.

"Is that Mikey?" Tucker whispered as he pointed to what the strange glowing figure had over its shoulder.

"Get away from him!" Danny shouted, uncertain if it was even able to understand him.

"And what are you going to do about it?" The boy laughed as he watched them. "I was told I could take a playmate if I helped Plasmius get his target, so I'm not giving him back!"

"What should we do?" Tucker whispered as he took a few steps backwards. "I don't know what that thing is, but I don't think that's a person."

"I think you're right, but we need to help Mikey," Danny told him. "But I have no idea how to safely do that." Before he had a chance to make a decision, Sam threw a few rocks at the strange boy. However, they passed through him without any damage.

He stuck his tongue out at the group. "That was mean, but luckily for me, stuff like that can't do any damage." A devilish grin crossed his face as his hand began to glow a sickly green. "Although I'm not allowed to touch Plasmius' target, I'm allowed to have some fun with anyone else who gets trapped."

"Run?"

"Run!" Danny and Sam yelled in response to Tucker's question. The three of them quickly ran off down the trail.

As they moved, the forest around them seemed to grow darker and more menacing as the trail became harder to follow. After what felt like hours, the three of them finally came to a stop in a decently sized clearing as Tucker and Danny had reached their limit.

"Guys, I don't think this is normal." At Sam's strange statement, the boys looked at their surroundings. The trees appeared dead and were a strange and unnatural gray color. The sky above them was a radioactive green mixed in with swirls of a neon purple.

Someone behind them began clapping. They turned to see a figure wearing white approach them from the trees. Instead of being a child like the previous one, this one was clearly an adult male. Its skin was a sickly blue, and its dark hair almost looked like horns.

"You've led me on a merry chase," it told them. Its voice was cultured and confident. Danny caught a glimpse of fangs as it spoke "However, I was only supposed to take one of you. What exactly should I do with the extras?"

"You could let us go. Pretty please?" When Danny and Sam shot Tucker an incredulous look, he quickly defended himself. "What? It doesn't hurt to ask."

"I appreciate your attempt at civility," the creature told him. "However, it that is not something I can easily do. You see, it's fairly difficult to bring over more than one human at once with normal techniques. That bird of Youngblood's is something to behold. Its magic is just subtle enough to distract someone just long enough for one of us to take him or her. I must find out if I can get one of my own."

"Where are we? What are you?" Danny demanded, sounding a lot braver than he felt. This things was terrifying.

"It's rather rude to ask that, but you're clearly frightened, so allow me to explain. "I am called Plasmius, and this is the realm of the dead."

===========================

Note: shout out to anyone who caught my unintentional Superman reference.

For the international readers, 1 yard is about 91 centimeters, and 1 foot is approximately 30.5 centimeters.

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skylarmoon71 · 4 years ago

Text

Nick Amaro x Reader- Chapter 5

“Ugh!” you dropped your head on the stack of forms in front of you. Nick chuckled from his seat.

“Bet you’re regretting getting out of the hospital so early.” you turned your head to the side with a nod.

“Definitely.” A few days after your little fainting spell and you were good to go. When you heard what the doctor told Nick and the other’s you were uneasy.

You knew they just assumed it was faulty tech, and the thought comforted you, but there was just an inkling feeling that could have very well found out about you. This was the main reason you avoided hospitals if you could help it. When you were aware of your capabilities you steered clear. Caitlin was the only doctor you felt completely safe around.

“Looks like you have a lot on your mind.” Nick’s words pulled you out of your own musings.

“Just tired I guess, it’s been a tough week.”

“You’re telling me.” He added. He was handling his share of documents. Earlier in the week you’d manage to take down an entire drug cartel, as well as free more than a dozen teenagers that were being trafficked throughout New York.

The look on those girls' faces were forever embedded in your mind. This was the hardest part. With all that you could do you knew you could have permanently dealt with those horrible men. You’d almost lost control when Olivia interrogated the boss. He had such a smug look on his face, like he’d never be caught. For a while it even looked that way. But you had faith in Olivia, and in the end it all worked out. You were scared though, scared of what you would have done if he got away.

You were glad that you had people like Joe West and Barry Allen to help you navigate between the lines of right and wrong. You were a cop, it was a part of the job. Still, there were times where you wondered if getting rid of all these awful people wouldn’t help the world. You raised your head off the table, eyes moving to Nick.

You had partners before, but something was different about him. Nick was shouldering so much in his life. A month or so he’d told you about his ex wife and daughter, granted he was partially hammered. It was such a sad story, you could tell how much he loved his daughter. After that wild night of drinks though, he assured you that things were going great with her. Well as great as it could get with his limited visiting hours. You just wanted him to be happy.

Carisi walked in just then, a man in handcuffs in his possession. “Caught this punk flashing his junk in the park.” Nick laughed, leaning back in his chair.

“Maybe an overstay will help clear his head.” the guy was obviously drunk, he was barely keeping himself upright. Carisi nudged him in the direction of the cells to help him clear his head. “Is that common here?” you inquired. Nick raised an eyebrow. “Why, you wanna go sightseeing.” You flushed.

“W-What NO! That’s gross!” you protested with a huff. Nick was laughing once again. “You’re way too easy to rile up (Y/N).” you pouted. Another thing that annoyed you was the way he treated you. You could tell he respected you, he really did, but maybe it was in a little sister sort of way. The very thought made you cringe. You did not see him that way at all. “It’s not like anything’s going to happen between us anyway.”

The unspoken rule of the universe was to never date anyone you worked with. It always complicated everything. So even considering getting into something with your partner was out of the question. You didn’t have the slightest idea in the dating department anyway, so you weren't that worried. Olivia walked out from her office, dropping a file on your desk.

When you saw it you groaned and she smiled. “I knew you’d come to your senses.” She teased. You wore a wry smile. “I had to at some point.” you shifted back into the chair, only turning when you saw Amanda walk in. It took you a second to realize she had a strained look on her face, There was also someone else behind her. His hand was on her back, and when he gave one last shove you noticed something.

“Everyone freeze!” he yelled. All the officers braced immediately, drawing their weapons. You could tell now that there was a gun pressed to Amanda’s back.In his other hand was a phone. The man holding it pulled his shirt to the side. Your eyes grew wide at the bomb strapped to his chest.

“Everyone drop your guns, NOW!! Or I’ll send this place up in flames. “ The officers present looked skeptical. “It’s okay, listen to him. Put down your guns.” Olivia was the first to drop hers. One by one everyone followed, reluctantly.

“You have one hour to get my brother, John Hesley out of police custody. I want ten thousand dollars and a private plane out of New York City, if not.” He pressed a button, and a light flicked on his chest. Your fists tightened.

“Then everyone here is going down with me. “ Your mind was reeling at his threat. The guy he was asking for was the man in charge of the drug cartel. You turned to Olivia who looked just as lost. Your eyes caught sight of Rafael from his office. He’d obviously noticed the commotion. He was typing furiously on his cell. You sighed a bit relieved. At least help would be alerted.

“Listen to me, what’s your name.” Olivia was trying to negotiate.

“It’s James, I’ll make sure you never forget it. Give me your phone.” He pushed against Amnada’s back and she stumbled slightly forward.

“Okay, take it easy.” Olivia reached into her pocket slowly, pulling out the phone. “Now get on the phone and get my brother out now!”

She shook her head. “A request like that is going to take time James. “

“I see, you still don’t think I’m being serious.” he pressed another button and the hour had now become thirty minutes. Everyone flinched, bodies still.

“Okay! I’ll see what I can do.” She dialed a number, talking to who you assumed was a higher up that could make James request a reality.

Barba was still hidden in the office, which you were thankful for. When he caught your eyes he nodded. You returned it. At some point Nick had made sure to stay close to you. Carisi was background seething, you knew he probably wanted to kill the guy for taking Amanda.

You were still staring at the bomb, it was down to twenty-five minutes minutes now. With your abilities you were positive if you could just get outside, you could easily get it far away from any civilians. The task was convincing this psycho to take you somewhere alone.

“I was the one that arrested John.” James’s head whipped in your direction, his gun was now aimed at you. Nick’s eyes hardened.

“What the hell are you doing!” you ignored him, walking closer to James.

“I cuffed him, he was a coward. A sloppy one at that. He got what he deserved.”

“(Y/N)!” Olivia warned. She caught on to what you were trying to do.

James looked like he was about to put two bullets in your head. He didn’t though. A sick smile made its way on his face.

“New plan. I’ll be taking little miss sunshine over here. “ he shoved Amanda and moved over to you. Nick stepped forward, blocking his path with a dangerous look. “Touch her and you die.” you’d never seen him so enraged since you started working there.

“Move.” James instructed. Nick didn’t budge and James clocked his gun, pointing it at Nick’s head. He didn’t even flinch. You stepped away from Nick, and he gave you a look of disbelief. You couldn’t risk anyone getting hurt. This was something you had to do. The chances of them actually getting what he wanted was slim, if push came to shove you knew you could handle yourself.

“Seems she’s tired of you.” he grabbed your shoulder roughly, dragging you along. As soon as the both of your were out of sight behind the elevator, everyone grabbed their guns.

“Secure all exits, if he leaves with her it’s all over. I don’t want anyone other than necessary personnel in the building. Everyone else needs to go.“

Olivia instructed. Barba ran out of his office, immediately going to Olivia.

Carisi was also now rooted to Amanda’s side. “You okay?” she nodded, eyes moving to where you once stood. Amanda looked back at Nick who was clenching his jaw.

“She was doing what she thought was best Nick.” She placed a hand on his shoulder but he shrugged it off angrily.

~~~

You were in the basement of the building. James still had a gun on your side. He opened a door, all but throwing you forward.

“Some act you tried to pull. I guess it was stupid of me to think they would actually give up my brother. “ Your eyes narrowed when he shut the door. He still had the gun pointed in your direction, but he was unstrapping his vest. When he took it off completely, the light shut off. He dropped the phone in his hand, smashing it under his feet.

“It was a fake..” you stated in confusion.

“Why the hell would you take such a risk.” You thought you’d grasped the situation, but apparently you were wrong.

“See, I know what John is in for. There is now way the police would have let me walk out of here with him, not after all the evidence against him. Even if I threatened to blow up an entire precinct. What I did know was the rookie cop that caught him. I read up on you, dedicated, passionate, selfless.”

The reality of your situation was kicking in.

“You knew I would try to minimize the damage. You played me..” His goal was never to rescue his brother, but to punish you. This whole ruse was to get to you.

“And you fell for it, hook line and sinker. I thought I would have had to just grab you, but the brave little detective just offered herself. How lucky could I get.”

You snarled at him, backing into the wall as he approached.

“Now, I’m going to have a little fun with you, when your squad finds you, there won’t be much left for them. “ he started unbuckling his belt.

“Your brother was a monster, just like you, and you have the gall to get revenge. What about all those girls? Do you even care about all the lives you destroyed!” you snapped at him.

He was moving in on you. “Who cares, we gave those whores food and shelter. You think for a second they didn’t like what was happening. They enjoyed it. Just like you are going to love this.” Your blood was boiling. You closed your eyes, pulling in a breath.

He must have assumed it was out of fear. He cackled, standing right in front of you now. “Now lie down like a good girl and I just might leave your pretty face in one piece. “ You smirked. He didn’t get why you were smiling in such a situation.

“Get on your knees bitch!” you opened your eyes and he gasped, staggering back at the glow around your orbs.

“W-What the hell!” Your eyes moved to his hands and the gun flew from his grip. You could see the terror now on his face. He was scrambling for the door, he didn’t even have a chance. You lifted his body into the air, his screams encasing the room. You dropped him, and the crack of a bone in his body was heard.

He was breathing heavily, wailing as he tried to crawl away from you. Your back was to the door now. “Now, whose is the one that’s cornered like an animal. How does it feel, being helpless, unable to protect yourself. Are you enjoying it like they did!!” you yelled. His body raised into the air again, your glowing eyes marking him like prey. You gritted your teeth, eyes blazing.

“HOW DOES IT FEEL!!”

He shouted in fear, eyes wide, completely horrified. You slammed him into the opposite wall this time. His body crashed and he grunted at the impact, falling to the ground. He was now curled into a ball, crying his eyes out.

“Please don’t kill me I won’t do it again I promise please!!”

You scoffed. “When they begged you to stop, did you? Did you care when those girls were screaming for their lives as you stripped every piece of their innocence. “ he was still cowering.

“PLEASE DON’T KILL ME!!” you sucked in a breath and raised your hand. You weren’t going to kill him, but you would make sure he felt every bit of pain that those girls suffered.

“(Y/N)!!” you turned when you saw a torch light pointed in your direction.

“N-Nick!” your hands lowered and the regular color returned to your eyes. Nick scanned the area, stepping in.

“They're in here!!” he called someone. It wasn’t long before a S.W.A.T team was piling into the room. James was still on the ground shaking. One of them took the vest, scanning it to make sure.

“It’s fake.” you stated a bit uneasy. They pulled James off the ground, bounding his arms. Nick holstered his weapon rushing to you.

“Are you okay? Did he touch you?” Nick was badgering you with questions. When they walked James by, he started screaming as soon as he saw your face.

“NO!! GET HER AWAY SHE’S A DEMON!! GET HER AWAY!! SHE’S GOING TO KILL ME!! LISTEN!!” he kicked and shouted. Nick watched as they escorted him out. One of the members looked at you with uncertainty.

“You sure did a number on him.” you looked down. “I-I was trying to survive.” you answered. He nodded. “I don’t think anyone one of us is going to lose any sleep over that.” he held out his hand for you. “Thank you Detective.” you shook his hand. “Yeah no problem.” When there was no one else but you and Nick in the room, your nerves kicked in. If he’d just gotten there a few seconds earlier he could have seen. You had no problem with James knowing because they would probably just think he was insane. You were scared to look at Nick. He didn’t say anything, but you could tell he was staring at you.

When the silence became too much you spun around.

“Listen Nick I-”

He crashed into you, and you almost fell. He pulled you into his arms, holding on so tightly. You shrieked in surprise. “N-Nick!” his hand held your head securely in place as he embraced you. After a while, you gave in, returning the hug. “Don’t ever do that again.” he ordered. The low tone of his voice could make the strongest officers relent. You nodded slowly.

“I won’t, I promise.”

It was stupid to make such a promise, but you wanted to give Nick a piece of mind. He must have really thought he would lose you. You buried you face into his neck, reveling in the warmth of his skin.

“I’m sorry Nick.”

#Nick Amaro #Law and Order: Special Victims Unit #amandarollins #carisi #fin tutuola #oliviabenson #rafaelbarba #nickxreader #metareader #telekinesis #crime #fear #court #NYPD

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monisse · 5 years ago

Text

To Hope Again

Pairing: Conrad / Nic Summary: A patient reminds Nic of one of the worst days of her life, but Conrad is by her side to sooth the worries of the past, until hope turns it into one of the best days; Author’s note: My first attempt at a story in this fandom. It's a very simple one, with a fluffy ending. Leave some love if you can; Trigger warning: Miscarriage memories.

She heard his gruff voice long before he rushed through the ER doors, commanding the people quickly gathering around him and leaving no space for questions. His urgent demands prompted even herself into action.

“…severe abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding.” Conrad finished while pushing the gurney into a vacant exam room.

Nic stood across from him and began assessing the patient with stethoscope in hand and expert eyes that took in every detail of the patient on the gurney. The woman therein was curled around her abdomen, eyes tightly shut and beads of sweat forming on the visible expanse of her skin.

“Ma’am, are you pregnant?” Conrad asked as he slowly removed her reluctant hands away and replaced them with his own. They pressed gently into the abdomen, and a loud cry filled the room immediately. Gritting her teeth, the woman only nodded in reply.

With their usual harmony of movements, Nic reached for a bottle to apply a generous amount of gel on the abdomen and Conrad pressed the doppler against the skin there. The eerie silence that followed seemed to echo around the room and beyond. In that suspended moment, the steady sounds of their own heart beats, strong and alive, were deafening in their ears. Conrad shook his head dejectedly.

“Please help me, it hurts so much.” the woman pleaded, eyes now wide open in fear.

Instantly moved by the agony in the woman’s voice, Nic reached for her hand and held it between hers. “I know.” and even though Nic whispered, her tone carried the loud memory of a shared pain, which did not go unnoticed by the other occupants of the room. The weight of their gazes rested solely on her, and among them, Conrad’s stare was the heaviest.

“I’m taking her up to obstetrics.” he finally said.

As she watched the woman being rushed through the corridor, Nic’s own hands came to rest on her still flat abdomen. In the sudden stillness of the vacated room, an unwelcome memory resurfaced from the darkest corner of her mind, forcing her to relive a day just like this.

Unlike the hazy quality of a nearly forgotten memory, she remembered that day all too vividly. Outside her house, a cold storm had ebbed into nothingness in the early hours, finally resting upon the ground, white and thick. Nic woke up to a pure silence, peaceful in a way that contrasted with the restlessness she felt and the dull pain low on her abdomen. Unpleasant as it was, she had rapidly disregarded the pain as menstrual cramps. Even as a highly qualified nurse, it had not occurred to her how long it had been, having missed the cycles in the rushing of seemingly endless shifts and days that blended into each other.

As the day progressed, the pain subsided to nearly insignificance while her mind became occupied with people’s demands for her undivided attention. Still, she felt uneasy. In the frenetic human flow of the corridors, Conrad had crossed her path many times throughout the day, his dark eyes, framed by fair lashes, grew heavier with concern. And every time he asked, her reply had been a single word. Fine.

The hours had stretched into night when she finally settled in bed with Conrad beside her, his soft snoring lulled her to sleep despite the ache that had then settled on her back. Only a few minutes later, she was forced into consciousness by a sharp pain on her abdomen and her body bent forward in reflex. Always a light sleeper, Conrad was fully alert as soon as he heard a breathless gasp. Her desperate hand sought his arm in the darkness and dug its nails deep into the flesh, effectively demanding his attention. He searched blindly for the lamp only to illuminate her whimpering form, with tears on her dark eyelashes and blood on the sheet underneath her. And amidst the intense pain that clouded her mind, she vaguely heard Conrad call her name over and over.

Not long after, Nic found herself in a hospital room, with the buzzing of the fluorescent lights above and the familiar smell of antiseptic making her feel surprisingly nauseated. The doctor spoke at length, though she only caught miscarriage and common out of a stream of words she struggled to assimilate. In contrast, Conrad absorbed every word in stoic silence while his hand held tightly to hers. His apparent calm demeanor was only betrayed by the glistening of the unshed tears she saw in his eyes.

On the last day of the year, Nic lay on the sofa with tears burning her eyes, wondering how could someone grieve so deeply for the loss of something, someone, unexpected. But there she was, suddenly empty again, robbed of a possibility she had no time to acknowledge. That night, and for many more afterwards, Conrad kept his feelings unspoken and well hidden inside.

Her page biped relentlessly for attention, which brought her back to the present. The memory, along with its feelings, faded slowly to the back of her mind and the surroundings became sharper once more. Finally, her body was in motion again with the resilience and dexterity gained from years of practice.

Much later, Nic sat alone in the nurse’s lounge, taking slow breaths and savoring a rare moment of complete silence. The setting sun filtered through the window, casting long shadows on the walls and bathing her lonely figure in both light and darkness. She then felt the cushions of the sofa move under the weight of a man, and even with closed eyes she recognized his familiar presence.

“Are you alright?” Conrad asked, his voice was as deep and soothing as the silence had been.

“Yeah,” her breath came out shaken, finally releasing all the tension accumulated throughout the day, “It was a hard day and I’m just really tired.”

His fingers lightly brushed the skin of her palm and laced themselves with hers. Silence stretched between them for a while, although she felt him restless and on verge of speaking again.

“I never answered the question you made some years ago.” he eventually said.

“What question?” Nic turned her gaze towards him, entirely confused.

His breath faltered slightly before answering. “What I wanted to do if we knew you were pregnant back then.”

Her heart pounded in her chest, eyes fully open in shock. It was uncanny, and occasionally annoying, how he could understand her unspoken feelings and seemingly read her mind with such ease. Even after all these years, she was still surprised by his ability to summon her most fearful thoughts and hanging them wide open between them. Such capacity went far beyond the talent of a doctor with great aptitude for diagnostics, it was a natural skill sharpened over the years by a deep love.

The surrounding air became dense with tension, or perhaps was just her sudden inability to draw steady breaths, and he seemed very aware of that while choosing the next words carefully.

“I would have wanted the baby, but I didn't know how to tell you then.” he stated, eyes steadfast on hers, “Saying that out loud would make it hurt so much more, and I was scared of feeling the kind of raw pain you felt so openly.”

“I wanted it too.” she said with a small sob, the leftover of a pain that had not been entirely healed. However, those were the words she had wanted to hear from him for a very long time, and his sudden vulnerability felt akin to a soothing balm on a scar that would never fade. He had in fact come a long way from the reserved, constantly on edge, Conrad she one knew.

“I'm sorry.” his voice was a broken whisper under the weight of the past.

“I'm still scared, Conrad.” her free hand rested nervously on her abdomen when she spoke. “What if it happens again?”

“It won’t. I know next time will be different.” there was a hint of a smile in his lips before he dropped a lingering kiss on her forehead and threw an arm around her shoulders.

Nic wanted to protest against his relentless confidence and reproach him for promising what he could not keep, but there was an illusion of faith to be found in his words, which put her mind at ease for now, and made her body relax into his warmth at last.

She turned in his embrace and moved her lips close to his ear. “Well then, I’m glad you are so sure, because I’m pregnant.”

Conrad moved so fast that she suddenly found herself held tightly in his arms, and there was a childlike note in his voice as he laughed openly. When he finally looked at her again, Nic saw a spark of happiness that would never be quenched. His brown eyes turned into half circles, wrinkling at the edges, deepened by a large smile. Nic could not resist smiling along, infected by his own joy. He kissed her with abandon then, and she poured into him the lingering sorrow of the past, and forgot, for a brief moment, all the worries about the future. Her mind was finally savoring the knowledge of their new baby.

#the resident #nic nevin #conrad hawkins #the resident on fox #conic fanfiction #the resident fanfiction #conic

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ferryboatpeak · 5 years ago

Note

Can you share a lil snippet?

anon, i’ll give you the whole damn meal

tom/harry/ben/meri, chapter 5

[previous installments gathered here]

Harry’s at work all the time now. He’s on his laptop by the pool, or pacing around the garden taking calls at odd American or Japanese hours, or in the office with the door closed to dampen the squawking of a Skype meeting. Tom can’t quite reconcile it with the Harry of the first couple of weeks, lazing serenely by the pool like he was docked, recharging, and now he’s back in service.

Tom can hear his voice in the office after he puts Ruby down for her afternoon nap. Meredith’s, too, so Harry’s not on a business call. Over the last few days, Tom’s been good about heading straight up to his room to dig into his thesis while Ruby naps, as if Harry’s setting some kind of productivity standard he has to live up to. Today, he detours into the kitchen. There’s laundry to get out of the dryer, anyway. He leaves the hissing baby monitor on the island, facing his direction.

The dull background of white noise doesn’t quite muffle the footsteps in the kitchen. Tom leans back to peer out from the laundry alcove as he rolls a pair of small striped socks together. Harry’s filling one of his ubiquitous plastic water bottles at the sink. A clip perched on top of his head doesn’t quite manage to hold back his hair, leaving stray pieces sticking out behind his ears.

Tom stacks up the folded laundry and goes to grab the monitor. He resists the temptation to poke at the battered leather notebook that’s now sitting on the countertop next to it. The edges of the pages are unevenly worn, and the covers bulge slightly, as if it’s pregnant with something.

Harry downs half the water bottle and screws the cap back on. He tilts his head in the direction of upstairs. “Ruby down?”

“Yeah, just went down.” Tom hooks the loop of the baby monitor with his finger, balancing it with the stack of rompers and sundresses in his arms.

Harry boosts himself up to sit on the counter next to the sink. “What are you up to today?”

The era of tea parties seems to be over. Harry’s not hanging around with them on the lawn during Tom’s shifts with Ruby any more, although his presence is still inescapable - an emphatic phone conversation heard through the open office window, or a fragment of melody floating back to them from the far end of the garden, where Harry spends hours hunched over his guitar, stopping to make notes in the fat and mysterious leather book.

“Went to the playground this morning.” Tom shifts the laundry to catch a pair of socks in the crook of his elbow before it falls to the floor. “Probably just stick around here later.”

It’s too hot to bike anywhere in the late afternoons. And anyway, when he and Ruby stay around the house, sometimes they’ll get pulled into cocktail hour instead. Harry will beckon them over to where he and Ben and Meredith are drinking gin and tonics under the trellis, making grabby hands for Ruby until Tom gives her up. There’s enough time, sometimes, for Tom to pull up a chair and join them. With no drink in his hand and the clock ticking away toward Ruby’s bedtime, Tom’s role as the hired help is prominent in a way it won’t be at dinner, or after. But it’s nice, to see Harry toss her around until she’s giggling and then set her on the terrace to run back and forth between the four of them. It must be nice to grow up like that, surrounded by so many people ready to take care of you.

He gestures at the notebook. “What are you working on?”

“Little bit of this and that.” Harry flutters his hand vaguely, brushing the question away like it’s a gnat.

“Is it hard?” Tom doesn’t know how to put it, exactly. Harry’s got so much going on… movies to be in and music to write and this television project with Ben and the packages that keep arriving with fabric samples and photos and sketches… and he seems to throw himself at all of it with his whole focus. How are you doing all of this at once, is what Tom really wants to ask.

“Writing an album?”

“If that’s what you’re doing.”

Harry half-laughs. “Doesn’t always feel like it,” he says wryly.

“Like what, then?” It’s so hard to figure out the right question to ask Harry. The more specific the question, the vaguer Harry answers it.

Harry uncaps the water bottle and takes another drink, tipping his head up and away from Tom. Tom waits. After he finishes, Harry gestures wordlessly, bottle in one hand and cap in the others, before a slow answer finally starts to come. “I guess I wouldn’t say it’s exactly hard.” He bounces the heel of one of his trainers gently against the cupboard door. “Or it is, sort of, but hard like a workout, or, like, getting a tattoo. Where it hurts but it feels good, you know?”

“Sure.” Tom doesn’t know, not exactly, but it’s the closest thing he’s ever gotten to a straight answer from Harry.

Harry hops down from the counter. “They always say you’ve got your whole life to write your first album and a year to write your second.” He scoops up his leather book on his way to the back door.

“When was your first?” Tom asks the first thing that pops into his head, willing Harry to keep talking.

Harry pauses with his hand on the knob of the back door. “More than a year ago.” It sounds like this isn’t the first time someone’s reminded him of that timeline.

“Pressure.” Tom says, shifting his arms around the stack of clothes again.

“Eh.” There’s a shrug in Harry’s voice. “Hey, Ben’s shooting tonight.”

“Okay.” Tom looks back over his shoulder, already halfway to the stairs with his load of laundry. He envies the easy access Harry seems to have to Ben’s schedule. Tom never knows what kind of an evening to anticipate until cocktail hour rolls around, and Ben’s either home or he isn’t.

Well, at least he can use tonight to make up for dragging his heels on his thesis this afternoon. And it’ll be a nice companionable dinner with Meredith and Harry and Ruby, anyway. Everything’s a little louder and looser with Harry involved, but Harry’s clearly in on the unspoken understanding that nothing happens with Meredith without Ben involved. It’s one of the rules that comforts Tom, one of the gridlines he can follow to assure himself that there are boundaries, that he’s not navigating through dangerous lands without a map.

“Meredith and I were going to watch a rom-com, if you want.” Harry’s all the way outside now, leaning back into the kitchen with his elbows on the bottom half of the Dutch door.

“A rom-com?” This is unexpected, and therefore treacherous. It’s not going to be the usual evening of slotting himself into the occasional spaces in Harry and Meredith’s banter and convincing Ruby to eat green beans. He’s going to have to be on alert, trying to decipher a new set of rules.

“Yeah,” Harry says, breezily, as if there’s no explanation necessary as to what film he has in mind, or what Tom should be prepared for, or what Ben would make of any of this.

***

It doesn’t turn out to be so hard. Dinner’s the same as it always is with Ruby, one long series of interruptions as she drops her cup onto the floor or demands more bread or wants to jabber half-baked sentences at them. Tom carries her off for her bath afterwards, and brings her back downstairs to say goodnight once she’s shampoo-scented and cuddly in her pajamas. By the time he finishes putting her to bed, the others have cleaned up the kitchen, and Meredith’s carrying a mug of tea into the main room.

Tom claims a spot one cushion out from the end of the sectional, not so far that it looks like he’s fleeing, not so close in that it looks like he’s expecting anything. Colin immediately jumps up next to him and curls up in the space between the arm of the sofa, resting his head on Tom’s leg. Tom scratches his ears. The dog chose him. The dog’s on his side.

Harry’s at the intersection of the sofa’s two halves, settled into the corner with his bird feet tucked underneath him. “You traitor,” he says to Colin, with indignation that might actually be real. “You’re supposed to be paying attention to me.”

“Sorry,” Tom says smugly. Colin has clearly discerned that he needs a lapdog more than Harry does. Brilliant creature.

Harry shifts onto his hands and knees and crawls down the couch toward Tom. Tom curls both arms around Colin. “You’re not taking the dog.”

“I’m not,” Harry says cheerfully, flopping on his side to face the television with his head on the remaining half of Tom’s lap. “Scratch my head,” he demands.

“You’re worse than the dog.” Tom flicks Harry’s ear. Harry just asks for what he wants, with a straightforwardness that Tom reacts to with an uneasy combination of awe and horror. His head is warm and heavy on Tom’s leg.

“Not at all.” Harry swats at Tom’s hand and wriggles into the sofa until he’s found what looks to be a comfortable position. Maybe it’s easier to ask for what you want when the world’s answer is always yes. It doesn’t seem like people tell Harry no very much. Only Ben, and only because he knows it’s what Harry wants to hear.

“Let’s search romantic comedies on Netflix and see what we find,” Meredith says from the other end of the sofa, brandishing the remote. Harry’s shoulders shake with laughter. Some inside joke Tom can’t ask about without underscoring that he’s outside of it.

Tom scritches at the crown of Harry’s head just behind his hair clip, the same way he’d scratched Colin’s ears. Harry sighs. Tom gingerly releases the clip and clamps it to Harry’s sleeve so he can rake his fingernails all along Harry’s scalp. His fingers find the edge of Harry’s ear, the contour of his hairline, the base of his skull, all the inconsequential places he’s never touched before. The rom-com that Harry and Meredith decide on might as well be the white noise from the baby monitor.

Harry doesn’t move out of his lap, not when Tom starts to work the tangles out of his hair from roots to ends, not when Tom runs out of reasons to prolong the headscratching and settles his arm on top of Harry instead. Later, Tom washes his hands in the hottest water he can stand, but it doesn’t stop him from unconsciously brushing them past his nose, as if they might still hold the scent of Harry’s hair.

***

Ben’s on set again the next night, and several others after that. It’s almost enough time for Tom to get used to a weird new normal where the three of them put off dinner until the baby’s down, and carry their plates to the sofa to eat in front of a movie. It’s an unexpected halfway point between the ease of the dinner ritual with just Meredith and Ruby, and the late-evening adult dinners that Tom’s lived for.

There’s work he should be doing on his thesis, but he can’t stop testing the strange suspended feeling of Harry casually leaning against him on the sofa or propping his skinny calves across Tom’s lap while yet another rom-com spools out predictably on the screen. Touching Tom without expectation. Touching him, Tom assumes, because Harry’s not supposed to touch Meredith. He rests a hand on the uneven handwriting inked over Harry’s bony ankle and concentrates on keeping still, fighting the impulse to rub his thumb along the smooth depression behind Harry’s anklebone.

Tom’s reading Ruby a bedtime story the next time he hears the Range Rover pull into the gravel driveway before dark. He turns the board book face-down on the arm of the nursery chair and stands up to hoist Ruby onto his hip. “Let’s go say goodnight to your dad, all right?”

She’s wide-eyed at the unexpected interruption to her routine as they descend the stairs and follow the cacophony of Colin’s joyous welcome toward the kitchen. When they round the corner, Tom realizes too late that the commotion muffled the sound of his approach. Ben’s leaning back against the kitchen island with Meredith in his arms, kissing her in a way that doesn’t seem meant for Tom to see. Colin’s barking at their heels, ignored.

Tom freezes. He ought to back out of the room before he’s seen, but he’s held to the spot by the fear of missing out, the possibility that he deserves to be included. Ruby squirms in his arms.

Colin starts to jump and paw at Meredith, and she opens her eyes to look at Ben with fond exasperation, her arms around his neck and her face still close to his.

Ben smirks at her. “Guard dog.”

“Cockblock.” Meredith pushes the dog back onto all fours and toward the door. “Go!”

“Mama!” Ruby squeals, just as Tom speaks up, a little too loudly. “Ruby wants to say good night.”

“Oh…” Meredith pulls back from Ben as he straightens up, opening space between them even with his arms still around her waist. “Thanks, Tom.”

She and Ben each hold out an arm. Tom hands the baby to them and they fold her into their tight circle. “Hiya, sweetheart,” Ben says, kissing Ruby’s head.

Tom takes an awkward step back. Every time he shepherds Ruby through cocktail hour, there’s a moment when she’s handed back to him so he can whisk her upstairs to go down for the night. Maybe he’s supposed to wait. But he feels frustratingly unnecessary.

Meredith glances at him. “We’ll put her down.” She’s smiling, but the dismissal’s as clear in her tone as it is in her words. Her attention’s back to her family before Tom can even react.

“Thanks,” Tom says. None of the Winstons acknowledge him. He bolts for closest exit. On the back steps outside the Dutch door, he pauses, a little dazed. Harry’s on a lounge on the far side of the pool. He’s got a paperback book in one hand, folded around on itself. Tom wanders toward him, his feet not knowing what else to do. “Ben’s home,” he says, as Harry looks up at his approach.

“Oh yeah?” Harry swings his feet over the side of the lounge, poking his toes around in a search for his loafers. His sunglasses slide forward off the top of his head, landing crookedly on his nose. He pushes them back as he stands up, keeping his hair at bay.

“Um.” Tom doesn’t know how to warn him. Danger: kissing. “Maybe not right now…”

Harry’s already halfway to the kitchen door as Tom searches for the right words. “I think they took Ruby up,” Tom finally says, just as Harry looks into the kitchen.

“Yeah, they’re not in here.” Harry looks back at Tom, his hand on the door. “Want a drink, then?”

Tom shrugs. “Sure.” It’s all topsy-turvy for him to be starting cocktail hour with Harry, but it’s clear he’s done with Ruby for the night. No reason to wait on a drink now that he’s off duty. No reason at all, and god, could he use one.

Harry’s looking into the refrigerator when Tom catches up to him in the kitchen. “White OK with you?”

“Sure, fine.” As if Tom’s said no to anything anyone’s offered to pour him this summer, every last drop of it better than anything he’s ever drank on his own budget. He retrieves two wine glasses from the cupboard and lines them up on the island across from Harry.

Harry works his way down the island, opening and closing drawers. “I can’t ever remember which one the corkscrew’s in.”

“Other side, under the glasses.” Tom points out the right spot. Harry tucks the wine bottle under his arm, and Tom watches his hand as he twirls the corkscrew expertly and tugs out the cork, the flimsy wine key tucked in his palm. He leaves the tool on the counter with the cork still screwed in, and adds a modest pour to the first glass before he slides it across the granite to Tom.

Tom takes a drink even before Harry’s filled his own glass. The wine is crisp and cold and doesn’t do anything to stop his head spinning.

“Chin-chin,” Harry says, holding out his glass toward Tom in an unspecified toast.

“Yeah, cheers.” Tom chimes his glass against Harry’s and takes another sip. It’s a strange state of suspended animation, drinking alone with Harry, waiting for Ben and Meredith to appear. He reaches for the corkscrew and works the speared cork loose. With his fingernail, he pushes the divot on the end of the cork back into place and tries to stand it on end. It tips over and rolls toward the edge of the counter. With a loud smack, Harry slaps his hand down on the countertop to catch it before it goes over.

Tom jumps. “Jesus.” Harry flicks the cork across the counter toward him.

“Have you ever…” He trails off. Have you ever seen them kiss, he was about to ask, but of course Harry has. Tom must have too, casually passing each other in the kitchen or Ben arriving home at the end of the day. He can’t understand why it’s never registered until now. Have they ever left you out, more like.

“Have I ever what?” The wineglass seems small against Harry’s mouth.

Tom looks away. “Never mind.”

Moisture beads along the sides of the wine bottle. It’s been long enough to put Ruby down. Tom was already at the end of her bedtime routine, just needed to finish up her book and turn out the light. Maybe she’s fussy. Maybe they need help. Maybe he should go upstairs and see.

“You okay?” Harry’s looking quizzically at him.

“Yeah.” Tom turns the stem of his wineglass between his thumb and forefinger. The glass scrapes against the countertop.

Harry glances around the kitchen. “We should start dinner.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“There’s this fish.” Harry’s peering into the refrigerator again. “And stuff for salad?”

They work in silence. Tom sets out salad plates and heaps arugula on them, Harry chops rosemary and slices lemons. Tom rummages in the cabinets for another cutting board, but the broad wooden board that Harry’s working from is the only one. When Harry scrapes the pile of rosemary into his hand, Tom holds up a pear from the fruit bowl. “Okay if I…”

“Sure.” Harry pushes the lemon slices to one side, leaving Tom a patch of space on the cutting board.

Tom moves next to Harry, shoulder to shoulder over the cutting board. The fragrance of the chopped rosemary mingles with Harry’s cologne. He slices the pear and divides it among the salad plates, hoping it won’t go brown before Ben and Meredith reappear. What are they doing? Is everything all right?

They hear Meredith’s light footsteps on the stairs first. She slouches into the kitchen in the pajama pants and tank top she’s been wearing for their movie nights, instead of one of the summer dresses she’s usually got on for dinner.

“Oh, you got dinner started.” She tucks a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “Thanks, guys.” She leans an elbow on the island with a casualness that seems forced. “What have you got going, Harry?”

“I thought the fish, is that all right?”

“Perfect,” she says, with a bit more enthusiasm than a piece of halibut warrants.

Ben comes up behind her an rests a hand on her shoulder. He’s shower-damp around the ears, and the sport coat he came home in has been swapped for an untucked t-shirt and shorts. Meredith leans back against him.

Tom’s stomach swoops as he realizes: they’ve just fucked. Just the two of them, while he obliviously sliced fruit in the kitchen. He tries to catch Harry’s eye, wondering if it’s as obvious to him, but Harry’s focused on arranging slices of lemon on top of the fish. Why couldn’t they wait? Or come downstairs to get them? Why leave them out?

“Ready to go?” Ben moves to slide the pan of fish out from under Harry.

“Hold on.” Harry twists the peppermill over the top of the fish. “And, you’re good. Want a glass?”

“Bring it to me?” With the fish in one hand and the grill tongs in the other, Ben uses his elbow to nudge open the Dutch door. “I’m going to get this on.”

Harry fills another wineglass from the cupboard and follows Ben out the door, with his own glass in his other hand. Tom gathers up placemats and silverware and trails behind them. He furtively watches Ben and Harry at the grill as he lines up the place settings on the table.

“Get right after it, eh, tiger?” Harry leers.

“Shut it.” Ben pokes him in the arm with the tongs. “You’ll get yours later.”

Harry drapes himself over Ben’s back and says something into his neck. Tom can’t quite hear, but he can only assume it’s something like, “I better.”

***

Tom thought that Ben’s return would feel like finishing one of Ruby’s stacking toys, the last missing layer sliding into place so that all the pieces fit smoothly. Instead, there’s a bright sharp edge to the evening, as if Ben’s making up for lost time, or reasserting something.

“Arse up for me.” With a hand between Harry’s shoulder blades, Ben bends him over the foot of the bed.

Tom scoots back until he’s up against the headboard next to Meri. She’s still in her pajamas, self-satisfaction radiating off her. Tom’s clothes have come off somewhere along the way, but to what end he’s not sure. Harry’s the center of attention, even more than usual.

As Ben rolls on a condom, Harry gets his knees up on the mattress and buries his face in his arms.

“Slut.” Ben says it fondly, but the hairs on Tom’s arm stand up. Harry’s posture goes a little more melty and he presses his hips back into Ben’s grasp. With his mess of hair obscuring his tattoo-scrawled arms, all that’s visible is the clean line of his back, laid out over the white sheet like a sacrifice.

Ben’s fingers leave dents in Harry’s skin as he pushes slowly inside him. Harry groans, deep and fulfilled, when Ben’s hips are finally flush with his own. The sound goes straight to Tom’s dick. He shifts incrementally against the mattress, almost squirming with the need to be touched, to touch himself. But Meredith’s leaning lightly against him, and if he was supposed to be doing anything, she’d be telling him. So Tom waits, and watches.

If he was Harry he’d probably have his fingers inside Meredith right now, or his tongue. But he feels a guilty relief at being excused. It’s obvious that Harry’s better at it, coaxing the kind of blissful sounds out of her that Tom had never heard before Harry’s arrival. He wonders if Ben even bothers to go down on his wife any more, or if he just leaves it to Harry. Harry’s got the kind of enthusiasm for oral sex that Tom hasn’t experienced since his first teenage boyfriend, drunk on each other and half-convinced they were the first boys in the world to discover that sucking cock could feel like this.

Ben rolls his hips for another slow thrust, forcing another noise of primitive satisfaction from Harry. Harry pushes himself up, arching back into Ben’s rhythm, getting his hands under him. Lips parted, eyes closed, every exhale a noise of pleasure. The more Tom sees of Harry, the more he realizes Harry is the same in bed or out of it. Wanting everything, wanting it all at once, opening his arms wide and joyously pulling it all in. It would seem selfish or greedy if it was anybody else, but on Harry it just seems scaled, like the bigness of what he wants has to match the bigness of what he is.

“Tom.” Meredith lips brush his ear. “Harry needs something to do with his mouth.” Harry opens his eyes at that and looks up at Tom and Meri. The tip of his tongue drags across his bottom lip, slow and obscene. Maybe that’s Ben’s plan, to make Tom come just like this, his charred remains burning a hole into the headboard as he immolates at the sight of Harry, gorgeous and filthy.

Meredith nudges Tom’s shoulder. He shifts forward, bending until he can meet Harry’s mouth with his own, an awkward missed connection of a kiss as Harry rocks with Ben’s thrusts. Their chins collide and Harry’s mouth smears the corner of his. Tom leans in further and further, chasing Harry, dark-eyed and wanting. Ben stills for a moment to let Harry press forward, tongue plunging hot and wet into Tom’s mouth, before hauling him backward into a rough thrust that makes Harry gasp.

Without warning, Ben smacks Harry’s arse. For a panicky second, Tom doesn’t know how to react. But Harry dips his head, lowering himself, inviting Ben to give him more. The part of Tom’s brain that’s still trying to keep score starts tallying the balance, testing for the jealousy that’s always there when Harry’s given something he’s not. He straightens up onto his heels, instinctively taking space to size up this new strangeness.

“I’m going to make you come with a cock in your mouth.” Ben’s palm connects again, deepening the red mark flushing Harry’s skin. “Your filthy… slutty… mouth.” He thrusts into Harry to emphasize each word. Harry moans from some deep secret place that Tom’s never glimpsed before.

The hot rush through Tom’s body has nothing to do with jealousy. This isn’t the firm authority he gravitates to. He wants to be directed, not degraded. But it’s desperately, shamefully hot to watch it happen to Harry. To see the way it makes him dip his head into the mattress, set his teeth against his forearm, arch back into the sting of Ben’s hand.

“You want to suck Tom’s cock?” Ben looks up at Tom as he says it, checking for permission.

Tom burns. Yes, yes, oh god yes. He inches forward on his knees, into Harry’s space.

Harry looks up at him, face transparent with want. “Yeah,” he breathes. Tom moves closer, closer, until he can feel Harry’s hot breath on his thighs.

“Say it,” Ben demands.

“Yes, please,” Harry keens through gritted teeth, and Tom can’t tell whether the supplication is to him or Ben.

Ben fucks Harry forward until he almost lands in Tom’s lap, his nose colliding with Tom’s crotch. Harry feels out Tom’s cock like a blind person, lips and tongue messy and tantalizing until he presses his forehead against Tom and takes him into the wet heat of his mouth, and Tom wants to cry and gasp and yell all at once at how impossibly good it feels.

He tries to cup Harry’s head in his hand, to steady him against the force of Ben’s thrusts, but he’s got to lean back on both hands to hold himself in place as Ben keeps forcing Harry forward. Ben fucks Harry harder and faster, driving his face into Tom’s belly and his cock down Harry’s throat. It’s uneven and messy and so, so hot, to have Harry caught between them, to watch him split on Ben’s cock as he swallows Tom down, Ben’s strong hands on Harry’s hips and his face screwed up with the effort and pleasure of fucking Harry just right, of making him moan around Tom.

There’s too much sensation to parse out, the ache in his bent legs and the softness of Harry’s hair in his lap, the scrape of Harry’s teeth interrupting the perfect lushness of his mouth when Ben jolts him unexpectedly, Ben’s grunts and Harry’s muffled cries and the broken moan, the gasping incredulous jesus, fuck, that Tom realises are his own, pulled from him without consciousness or intention.

Tom could get lost in this, could drown without even trying to come up for air. He’s been close, achingly close, since the first brush of Harry’s lips, and now he’s gritting his teeth and clinging to the edge, determined not to let go until Ben and Harry are done with him.

“Ben,” Meredith’s saying, and it takes a moment to reach Tom inside the entire world that is Ben and Harry. “Ben.”

Ben looks up at that. Understanding crosses his face. Harry, stilled for a moment, curls his tongue along the back of Tom’s shaft and Tom comes as if it’s being exorcised from him, pulled from his body by Harry’s inhuman mouth.

“Sorry,” he gasps, “sorry,” but Harry’s coming too, streaking the inside of Tom’s thigh as Ben pulls back on his hips with one hand and works the other around Harry’s cock. Harry lets Tom fall from his mouth and rolls away, breathing hard.

Tom stretches out alongside Harry, letting feeling seep back into his numb legs. He rests a hand on Harry’s chest. Okay? he wants to ask. Harry reaches a hand over his head toward Meredith, and Tom realizes she’s not there.

“That’s it for tonight.” Ben’s standing at the foot of the bed, stripping the condom off his still-stiff cock. Orgasm-drunk and still breathless, Tom can’t process the contrast between Ben’s words and his erection. As he lets his head fall toward Harry’s shoulder, he catches sight of Meredith, next to the bed, one knee resting on the mattress. It takes him a moment to connect the neat triangle of her bush with the realization that she’s shed her pajama pants.

“Take yourselves to bed, boys.” Meredith touches Harry’s shoulder. He opens his eyes, and immediately gets to his feet.

Tom’s left on the mattress alone, cold and abandoned. “What?”

“Come on.” Harry beckons to him.

“Why?” They’re all supposed to be recovering with him, piled into the bed warm and crowded and drowsy. Come back.

“Let’s go, c’mon.” Harry’s talking to him with the patient encouragement he’d use with Ruby. Tom pulls himself to his feet, confused and embarrassed. He looks to the floor for his clothes, but they’re gone.

“Got them,” Harry says, bundling shirt and shorts and sandals into Tom’s arms. He guides Tom toward the door with a hand on his bicep. Tom’s half tempted to dig in his heels like Ruby would. He looks over his shoulder. Ben’s on his back, pulling Meredith on top of him. He pushes at the hem of her tank top, and she crosses her arms to tug it over her head as his hands slide up to her breasts.

Harry reaches past him to pull the door closed, bumping Tom’s heels so he stumbles the last few inches out of the room. One of Tom’s sandals slips out of his hand. When it hits the floor, it takes him a moment to recognize the source of the thud. Harry picks it up and tucks it back under Tom’s arm. “Come on,” he says, again. His own clothes are wadded up in one hand.

Tom watches wordlessly as Harry pads down the hallway with the careful gait of the well-fucked. He’s still standing there, dazed, when Harry reaches the door to his room. He looks back at Tom. “Sleep in mine?”

Tom can’t think what else to do. He’s unsteady on his feet as he follows Harry, queasy with the hairpin turn from orgasm to eviction. In Harry’s room, he crawls gratefully under the duvet and curls onto his side. He’s still damp between the legs; he should have put on his boxers instead of mindlessly dropping them on Harry’s floor with the rest of his things. For all the motivation Tom has to get them, they might as well be in London. He stays where he is, eyes closed, trying to let his heart rate slow, while Harry cleans up in the bathroom.

He can’t believe it’s never occurred to him. Tom’s been having sex with them for weeks now, and somehow he hasn’t noticed that they never have sex with each other. Or never when he’s with them, at least. He thought they’d let him into their life, but he’s barely stood on the front porch. There are rooms and passages he’s never known existed, whole levels of intimacy he was never meant to see.

Tom thinks back, suddenly, to the first time Ben touched him. Got him off right there in the kitchen, his hands braced on the granite, exposed and wanting and desperately glad that the thing he could hardly believe was building among the three of them was finally bursting open. Meredith watched from the other side of the island with the corners of her lips tucked into a small smile. And then she’d kissed his cheek and said good night before she led Ben upstairs, sending Tom off to bed confused and elated.

He hadn’t understood then. He’s just an appetizer, a wholly optional accessory to whatever they have together. Him, and Harry? The scale in Tom head tilts back and forth, enviously weighing. What’s Harry been allowed that he hasn’t?

The light in the en suite clicks off. A moment later, Harry slides into bed. Tom watches his dim silhouette as he prods pillows into place, tucking one under his arm to sleep on top of. He sighs into it once he’s got everything arranged. The line of his body relaxes.

Tom’s never once asked Harry about the Winstons. Asking would be a concession that he cares, that it’s relevant, that Harry knows something he doesn’t. He’s never needed to know any of it badly enough that he’s been willing to ask. But it’s easier to ask questions in the dark, or else there’s finally something he can’t live without knowing. “So,” Tom starts quietly, half-hoping that Harry’s already passed out.

“Hmmm?” Harry opens one eye, on the side of his face that’s not pressed into the pillow.

“Has that ever happened before?” Tom asks softly in the dark. It’s too embarrassing to name it, to say out loud that he was dismissed, discarded.

Harry shifts so that his mouth’s not completely buried by the pillow. “Has what ever happened?”

Oh. A whole lot just happened. All Tom can think about is their banishment. It’s an effort to summon the memory of Harry caught between him and Ben, Harry’s forehead forced into his belly, the messy urgency of Harry’s mouth. Ben and Meredith are cheating him out of the hottest thing that ever happened to him. The latest hottest thing, at least. So many moments this summer have held that title fleetingly, barely long enough for Tom to knead at the memories before they got flattened by another night, another invitation upstairs, another pleasure he’d never even thought to fantasize about. This summer just keeps setting the bar higher. Tom sees the end approaching like a brick wall blocking a car chase in a film; no choice but to crash though full speed.

He’s got to say it now, even though Harry’s wary tone makes it harder. “Have they ever kicked you out before?”

“Oh,” Harry says, sounding relieved.

Tom remembers the sound of Ben’s hand connecting, and flushes at the realization of what Harry may have thought he was asking. “Yeah, that… not…” The last thing he wants to do is review Harry’s sexual resume.

“Um…”. Harry gives the question some thought, as if it might not have registered if Ben and Meri had cast him aside before. As if something like that wouldn’t even matter to him. “No, I don’t think so,” he says eventually, sounding unbothered.

Harry’s answer is actually the inverse of what Tom’s afraid of. If they’ve never kicked Harry out to have sex, there’s another possibility. “Have you ever seen them…”

“Sort of.” Harry laughs, sparing Tom the rest of the question. “There was one night, while I was sort of still living there, but I was supposed to be staying” – he pauses – “some place else.” Tom immediately wonders where that might be. “But I ended up coming home, and they were on the sofa…”

Tom waits, hungry for the story. Maybe this is how it started with Harry.

“I didn’t, like, see anything, but obviously I interrupted something.” Harry kicks at Tom’s ankle. “It was a little bit awkward at dinner for a few days.”

“Just, like, a roommate fuckup?” It’s so hard to picture Harry having roommates, the way Tom has roommates. Hard to imagine Harry, who takes up all the space in any room he enters, sharing space with anybody. Navigating the unspoken ways roommates pretend that there’s some semblance of privacy around everyone’s sex life. Making extra noise with the key in the lock when he comes home early; lining his bed up with a wall that doesn’t border George or Carl’s bedrooms; knowing when their class schedules will give him two hours with the flat all to himself. Tom imagines Harry and Ben and Meri arguing over who took the last of the milk and who’s going to do the dishes and who used somebody else’s bath towel to wipe up something nasty. “Not, like, with you?”

Harry’s response is puzzled. “No, why would they?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” He’s done everything with them, things he never even thought he’d want to. Why wouldn’t they let him in?

Tom rolls onto his back abruptly. He rubs at the stiffening streak on his thigh, flaking off Harry’s dried come. He can feel Harry watching him, one-eyed.

“It would be weird if they didn’t have some stuff that was just them,” Harry says after a while.

Tom stares at the ceiling silently, clinging to a position he doesn’t understand how to defend. The end of the summer seems perilously close, the brick wall filling his windscreen, no alleyways in his peripheral vision. He should have hit the brakes when he had the chance.

“I always used to get asked who my relationship role model was.” Harry’s voice is slow in the dark. “I’d always say Ben and Meredith. I like what they have. I wouldn’t want to, like, be in the middle of it.”

Relationship role models. Tom closes his eyes. He wonders if that was before or after Harry started fucking them. “That’s what you want?”

“Sure.” Of course it is, of course that’s what Harry wants, Harry with his French girlfriend and his tongue in Meredith’s pussy, of course it is. A wife and a baby and a dog and the possibility of some dick on the side. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Not me.” It’s a clipped, emphatic end to the conversation. Tom wants what Ben and Meredith have, directly, a share of their life, not some hypothetical where he builds his own castles with an unfathomable future wife. Not any kind of future with a wife.

***

Tom’s finally trapped just the way he longs to be, belly down against the mattress, breath pressed into shallow gasps. Harry moves inside him without letting his weight off Tom’s back, small rolls of his hips that keep Tom pinned down and filled up.

He didn’t know to want this but it feels so good, Harry’s body heavy and close and warm, crowding him, constraining him. Tom ignores the faint sounds of Ruby crying in the distance. Just a little longer, he’s so close, she can wait just a moment or two.

The sheet under his nose smells of soap and vanilla and a musky tang that Tom recognizes as Harry, sex with Harry. He can’t move against the mattress under Harry’s weight; pressure more than friction filling his belly with warmth. Why is the baby crying, why now of all times, why can’t she give him just one more minute?

Harry’s slowing, fading. Tom spreads his knees out over the sheet, stretching his legs open for him. Just once more would be enough, he just needs Harry to slam into him once, hold himself deep inside, finish them both. Tom strains his hips back, and doesn’t meet any resistance. Harry’s gone, dissolved, and Ruby’s lonely cries are getting more insistent.

Why is he able to hear Ruby? Tom startles awake into a defensive curl. Pleasure evaporates into sickening adrenaline. His cock throbs painfully, and Tom recognizes the small mercy: Ruby’s kept his humiliating sex dream from turning into the waking nightmare of nutting all over Harry’s sheets.

There’s no sound from Harry’s side of the bed. Tom waits before turning toward him, hoping desperately that he’ll find him deep asleep. He’d settle for plausible fake sleep, if it signaled an intention to pretend Harry doesn’t know anything about this.

Ruby’s still crying, muffled but unmistakable through the thin walls of the old house. He wonders why Meredith hasn’t gone to soothe her yet. Maybe it’s harder to hear from their side of the hallway. Or, he thinks bitterly, maybe she and Ben are preoccupied.

Well, it’s not his job. Not now, not in the dark of the night. Ruby’s not his to tend to until tomorrow morning. Meredith can get her.

The mean satisfaction he feels at the idea of Ruby interrupting their night, forcing Meredith to leave Ben alone in bed, is immediately replaced by guilt. He can’t root for Ruby to come between them. And now that he’s awake, he can’t just lie here and let her cry, alone in the dark, far from home. It probably wouldn’t take much to get her back down. He could sleep in the bed in her room, if she wants company. It’s the right thing to do. Ben and Meredith will be grateful, maybe, that he let them sleep.

Tom slides out of bed slowly, trying not to disturb Harry, and then realizes that Harry’s gone. His stomach falls. What if Harry heard something, saw something, while Tom was dreaming? Has he been making noises, twitching his hips against the mattress? Did Harry guess what was happening inside his head and flee the room in horror? What if he’s back in Ben and Meredith’s room, telling them how he had to take refuge from Tom’s creepiness? He almost hides back under the covers thinking about it.

But that’s not fair to Ruby. He finds his boxers and t-shirt on the floor, and takes the few steps down the dark hallway to Ruby’s room. He opens the door slowly, so as not to startle her, and the dim glow from the nursery lamp spills out to greet him. The stars and planets cast by the lamp wheel slowly around the room, drifting bright spots over the empty crib.

Harry’s standing at the window with his back to Tom. Ruby’s in his arms, her tears slowing to whimpers as Harry sways back and forth. He’s singing something to her, too low for Tom to tell what it is over the fuzz from the white noise machine. She lets her head fall into his neck. As Tom watches, frozen, a single star from the lamp traces a bright path over Harry’s bare shoulder.

Tom backs out of the room and keeps his hand on the doorknob, letting the latch slide into place slowly and soundlessly. He leans his shoulder against the wall. He can’t get any of it out of his head, not the heavy satisfying weight of Harry from his dream, not the image of Harry tender with Ruby in the starlight.

Only the fear of being caught in the hallway forces him to propel himself back to Harry’s room. It’s like walking through quicksand. He’s stepped beyond his limits into a hazard he didn’t know was there. Now it’s pulling at his ankles, climbing up his body, dragging him into depths he never had a chance to avoid.

#sorry for the delay anon i couldn't figure out a good snippet from this chapter #thanks again and again forever to invaluable beta lunarrua #this chapter probably warrants a warning that there is much smut behind the cut #i keep reminding myself that i already put all my apologies for the roughness of this WIP on the links page #so i can't reiterate them every time i post something #but consider them reiterated #french countryside tomrry

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skyhooks-notebook · 6 years ago

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My John Wick/Jason Bourne movie which will never be made

(Bourne, of course, is a brutally disillusioned idealist. He had no idea he was signing away his soul. Wick likely sold his soul with his eyes wide open, though he probably only understood the ultimate cost later on - a naive pragmatist.)

I don’t post much at all, but here is a thing that happened on my computer. I was thinking about how John Wick and Jason Bourne could be brought together. My thoughts became long, and I started writing it down. This isn’t a story, just a sketch of how I think such a movie could be made. It’s not really edited either, this is all off-the-cuff.

[I only know what’s in the movies. I don’t know other canon from either ‘verse.]

So, if I were making a movie…

The universes of John Wick and Jason Bourne have very different styles, creating a problem.

Problem: - Bourne lives in a Universe where government is large, powerful, knowledgeable and nearly competent. - Wick lives in a Universe where a vast and elaborate criminal underworld exists, where we’ve never seen those major criminal figures worry about law enforcement or government.

The discrepancy must be resolved.

Simple.

Jason Bourne has never dealt with crime. Everything has been political and confined to the intelligence community.

Wick has never dealt with politics or the intelligence community.

So.

We must assume that the intelligence community is perfectly happy to leave common crime in the hands of law enforcement.

- Law enforcement has an unwritten and fatalistic attitude that there will always be some level of crime no matter what you do because it’s innate to human nature. And if you’re going to have crime, it might as well be organized. Let the strongest and most dangerous criminals accumulate power and influence, because they will go a long way to controlling the stupid, the excessive and the disruptive crooks. Better to have one major weapons trafficker controlling the traffic than have a thousand slightly smaller and more disruptive dealers completely out of control. (You can strongly hint that there’s an uneasy, unwritten and largely unspoken agreement between crime and law enforcement, and that it’s often a two-way street.) And if the big crime gets too big, it’s easier to knock it back down to “acceptable” levels because you’ve got bigger targets, which are easier to hit and which make a large and impressive splash across the front page when you throw RICO charges at them.

Plus it would also illustrate that Wickian Law Enforcement at its highest levels is just as dirty, amoral and underhanded as the Bournite Intelligence community.

- So, with a little work and willing suspension of disbelief (which wouldn’t be hard, because who wouldn’t want to see Wick and Bourne on the same screen provided it’s done with at least half an ass), it’s possible to bring the two Universes together.

- We start with Bourne. Someone else, like an hard ass, experienced reporter, is snooping into the government’s history of creating conditioned assassins. Maybe because a public face, like a former intelligence director, has left the shade to become a politician. And many strongly suspect that he’s dirty as fuck, but our snoopy reporter is just figuring out how deep the rabbit hole goes. Our politician was, of course, instrumental in developing programs like Treadstone, Blackbriar, et al.

- The Snoop finds out, one way or another, that one of the earliest failures of these programs was an “asset” who experienced a psychological break, went “off the res”, starting killing people and still turns up now and then to kill more people. To our Snoop, it appears that the government has created an uncontrollable monster who is still on the loose and possibly lurking right outside the White House, dear reader, are you scared now?

- The story, scanty, incorrect and harshly spun, gets printed as above. A few names are named, but mostly dead people (and maybe someone who has already been publicly discredited.) Our politician is not named because our Snoop doesn’t yet have absolute proof linking Mr. Politician to the Treadstone/Blackbriar/etc. machine.

- The evidence still exists. Witnesses still live, in numbers too great to be cleanly eliminated.

- Mr. Politician is sweating bullets.

- The Snoop isn’t done. He wants to find Bourne so he can say, “Here’s your monster, where’s my Pulitzer?” As investigation continues, the story becomes clearer to the Snoop, and the monster starts to look like little less monstrous and little more victimized. Which is an even better story.

- Now Mr. Politician is not only worried that he will be named, he’s worried that if Snoop makes contact with Bourne, or simply as a consequence of Snoop stirring the shit, Bourne will find out who our Politician is and how complicit he was in the program that destroyed David Webb. Mr. Pol knows this is likely to be a death sentence.

- It has become obvious to everyone who isn’t deeply deluded that Jason Bourne is practically indestructible and that sending more valuable and increasingly scarce ‘assets’ against him is just going to result in the loss of those assets. Agents available may be trained and conditioned to within an inch of their lives, but Bourne’s psychological break caused him to exceed his limits, training and conditioning in a way Black Ops programs haven’t been able to replicate. Those with a pragmatic attitude believe that they have no agent who can measure up to Bourne. Politician believes this as well.

- But Mr. Politician knows some things that the intelligence community has never concerned itself with. In his many years of government service, Mr. Pol was also involved with Law Enforcement at various times. Maybe he did a stint with the effa-bee-eye. Whatever. He knows about the Criminal Underworld, he knows that to maintain the ugly equilibrium, the Underworld may be influenced to comply with certain requests. And he knows a name. John Wick.

- Mr. Politician is also savvy about recent developments in the Underworld. He’s got a friend who’s still in the business of monitoring organized crime and keeping tabs on what’s going on down there. Mr. Pol has listened to recent stories with fascination because of certain similarities to a well known government failure who has haunted his dreams for decades. It has become a fact in Mr. Pol’s mind that the CIA will never be able to take down Bourne, but maybe there’s another way.

- Mr. Politician approaches a major Crime Lord and tells him point blank to activate John Wick by any means necessary and set him on the trail of one Jason Bourne. If Wick can’t be activated, Crime Lord will receive his own personal set of extensive criminal and RICO charges, delivered to his doorstep by the entire FBI

- Crime Lord knows if he gets charged, he probably won’t survive because other crime lords are going to want to make sure he doesn’t talk - about them. Also, his family will be endangered no matter which way the sword swings; either the FBI will be targeting them or his fellow criminals will be.

- Crime Lord knows John Wick. They’re old friends. Crime Lord feels a bit conflicted about it, but his first loyalties are to his family and his own hide. So he swallows his fondness for John Wick and commits falsehood, deception, a calling in of favors, maybe a little blackmail and the old Rock-And-A-Hard-Fuck-You-Up-Place on Wick. An elaborate, manipulative lie, that sets a misinformed John Wick on the trail of a man potentially as dangerous as himself.

- Now, we’ve got Jason Bourne being hunted by the Snoop, which has him on alert. We have John Wick hunting Bourne because he believes, once again, that he has no choice.

- We also have a Jason Bourne who is somewhat confounded. We need the scene where Bourne finds out, before contact ever takes place, that someone has taken out a contract on him with an Underworld assassin. Bourne doesn’t know much more about the Criminal Underworld than Joe Schmoe from Kokomo, just what he’s seen in the news and largely ignored, because it never had anything to do with him. Even in all that training years and years ago, there was this gap, because organized crime wasn’t the CIA’s beat. Maybe at first, Bourne even assumes that this Wick character isn’t a threat because he’s just a murderer, a thug, and not a highly trained government operative like himself.

- So in a riveting scene where Bourne and Wick first come into contact, we see Bourne - under the influence of his ignorant assumption - nearly getting killed by Wick and making an extremely narrow escape by use of desperate measures. We also have Mr. Wick limping away, suitably impressed with the skills of his opponent.

- Now we have that stretch of the story where Wick is on the hunt, Bourne is on the run and Bourne is trying to uncover any information he can find about this assassin. Wick doesn’t research much, though, because that’s not how he works. Bourne is a machine; the gears must grind. Wick is a force of nature, like a tornado; most of the info he gets he just picks up along the way, either paying for it or having it given to him by friends.

- Bourne discovers that Wick had a military past, Special Forces, maybe he was fucked over by the military/government in his own way. Or Bourne sees it that way. Bourne finds out about Helen and her death, and maybe not the whole story, but quite a bit about how John cut through a small army of Russian mob mooks for vengeance. He identifies with Wick’s grief and anger. He sees something of himself in John Wick. He sympathizes with the devil.

- John hasn’t done the heavy research. He understands that Bourne is dangerous, perhaps more dangerous than anyone he’s ever met. He consolidates his resources and finds someone else to do his research. He is awaiting a report on Jason Bourne when…

- Bourne stops running, goes to confront Wick and ends up trying to explain, while fighting of course, what he knows about the Dirty Politician and the Crime Lord who has called John out of his troubled retirement yet again, and how Wick has been used and betrayed (this time) until he says something that causes Wick to call truce long enough to hear it all.

- Bourne can see the beginning of a way to solve the whole mess. After some persuasion, Wick is on board and has some ideas of his own.

- Now we’ve got our boys on the same side and it’s only left to decide whether the war will be conventional or nuclear.

- There are two victories we need to see. We must see the destruction of Mr. Politician and Mr. Crime Lord.

- You might-could send Bourne, who doesn’t really give a shit about the covenants and conventions of the criminal world, to the Continental - probably breaking in, instead of checking in. Luring the Crime Lord out into the open, perhaps on the intimation that Mr. Politician is about to take up backstabbing. Draw the Crime Lord out to confront the Politician. Bourne’s plan, reluctantly agreed to by Wick, is to draw the Politician and the Crime Lord together, get evidence and even a full recording of the meeting and expose them both to the world.

Or course, this backfires. Bourne finds himself in a position where he has to kill either Crime Lord or Mr. Politician in self-defense. Probably the Crime Lord.

- It would also be immensely satisfying to see Wick take out the dirty politician with a head shot. Bourne would, of course, be stoically pissed about it all, but it also illustrates the difference. Bourne is willing to let even unrepentant bastards live because he’s tired of having blood on his hands. Wick doesn’t let anybody live who’s fucked him over. Bourne is still conflicted about who and what he is. Wick has come to terms with himself. Bourne believes in atonement. Wick believes in damnation. Bourne still cares. Wick doesn’t give a fuck. Bourne still dreams of inner peace. Wick would settle for a little peace and quiet, would you motherfuckers just leave me the fuck alone already. Get off my lawn. And stop teasing my dog, you bastards.

- You must also show Wick taking an active role in planning, because if Bourne does all of it and says here’s what we’re going to do, then 1) he’s just using Wick as a tool or weapon, instead of treating him like a person and an equal and 2) Wick once again is being controlled by someone else instead of doing what he does best, which is take matters into his own hands (shooting Santino may have looked like a misstep, but who in the audience didn’t love it?)

- I’ve forgotten our Snoop reporter.

We could let Bourne track him down, in which case he will almost certainly die, because going by canon everybody who sympathizes with Jason Bourne must die.

We could let Wick find him, in which case he probably has a much better chance of surviving to publish his Pulitzer Prize winning story provided he’s not armed when he meets Mr. Wick. Hell, Wick could give him a coin, which could buy him entrance and protection at the Continental (even the government doesn’t want to mess with that bunch - like stirring a hornet’s nest with a stick; you might survive, but it will be excruciatingly painful and you’ll look like an idiot the whole time with all the screaming and flailing and jumping around in a panic.)

John Wick’s name will not appear in the story. Only a vaguely defined “other sources”.

- And after all is said and done, Bourne and Wick part company, with mutual respect and recognition. Though they really don’t like each other very much.

So that’s my John Wick/Jason Bourne movie which will never be made. But I had fun.

P.S. Please excuse crappy photoshop, I just wanted something there.

#john wick #jason bourne #matt damon #keanu reeves #movies that will never be made

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bangchanshehe · 7 years ago

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Andromeda pt. 3 (M)

Summary: You were no one, a goody-two-shoes who always played by the rules. When you decided to change yourself and live a little more dangerously you got caught up in Taemin’s trap. He had no use for you and no desire to have you. You were a toy and a time killer. But, he just so happened to have a lot of time and you happened to be his new favorite play thing.

Genre: Vampire!au / Smut / Angst /Violence

***please do not read if you are underage***

word count: 4.6k

Something about Suho’s smile lingered in your mind and you hated it. It felt like he knew something that you didn’t and it made you incredibly uneasy. The walk to the restaurant was incredibly awkward and silent and you and your best friend mostly stuck to yourselves. Suho interacted with Minho and followed the two of you from behind. You could feel the stares burning holes in the back of your head and you wanted to run away from the two men as fast as possible.

You arrived at the restaurant and relaxed at the smell of sweet garlic and pasta. Your mouth watered and you happily walked up to the hostess patiently waiting at the front to greet incomers. This was the moment when you would finally split up from the overbearing men and you celebrated on the inside

“Hi, we have a reservation for y/l/n”

The petite woman at the front smiled and looked down at her podium looking over the reservation list and open tables. She grabbed menus and politely guided you to your seats. You sat down and were shocked when you looked up to find both Minho and Suho seated and giving you a wicked grin. You stared back at them with no emotion on your face making it clear that you were not amused by their joining you. With your friend sitting across from you Suho sat in the chair next to her and Minho took the seat directly next to you.

You looked over to your best friend and smiled apologetically to her. But to your surprise she slightly shook her head. Knowing her she probably was loving the company of the two incredibly handsome men. Her lack of conversation and the slight pink tint on her cheeks was quick to give her away. You scoffed at her and rolled your eyes. Poor girl was just as much of a hermit and as lonely as you are.

“So, Miss. y/l/n, how did you and Minho meet each other?” Suho asked you curiously

You opened your mouth to answer, but thought twice about it. It wouldn’t be such a good thing to admit to your boss that you had gone to a club the night prior to work, nor the honest truth about how you knew him. You closed your mouth and tried to think of a quick answer that sounded reasonable.

“We met in my club” Minho said quickly

You were surprised that he would reveal to your boss that you went out to clubs, specifically his- since his had such an erotic connotation attached. Your turned your attention to him and glared.

“Oh, I didn’t know that you went out” Suho exclaimed

“I don’t… usually” you admitted quietly, mostly to yourself

Minho chuckled to himself and took a sip of water. You wanted to kick him underneath the table for laughing at you. Truth be told this entire scenario was a nightmare. It was so embarrassing to have to look your one night stand in the face after he ditched you in the morning. And now here he was, intruding on your meal with your friend and laughing at you.

“No, y/n is a good girl who just happened to be in my club for the first time, and being the gentleman I am I showed her around the place a bit” Minho added

“Alright” Suho said nodding his head “well the next time you come, I’d like to be there too!” he said flirtatiously

Minho snapped his head to his friend and glared at him slightly. Suho paid no mind to him and smiled at you.

“I’m interested in seeing what my employees are like outside of work” he explained

A waitress came over and asked for your orders you all gave her your preferences and waited patiently for your meals to arrive. Soon Suho swept up your friend in conversation, leaving you and Minho to sit in silence.

You could feel him looking at you and you tried your best to ignore him and look ahead. Minho slid his hand across your knee and up to your mid-thigh. You squirmed in your seat and were instantly alert to exactly where he was and focused all of your attention on him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked you quietly

You turned to him and glared. Seriously?

“You were quick to leave after you were done last night so I don’t understand why you’re so adamant to be here now” you answered through your teeth

Minho sat back and withdrew his hand. He looked genuinely hurt by your statement. He blinked his eyes and then smiled to you.

“I didn’t leave you last night because I wanted to!” he explained and wrapped his arm around your shoulder. “I had a meeting this morning at 6 and needed to go home”

You suddenly felt bad for jumping to conclusions about Minho’s intentions. But you couldn’t help but jump to conclusions knowing about stereotypes of one night stands. Another part of you was still angry at him for making such a point of seeing you today. This entire negative energy could have been cleared up had he have spoken to you sooner or even left you a note to find this morning.

“What? Did you think that I was just going to have one night with you and then move on?” he asked with a laugh in his voice. You tuned and looked at him skeptically “I’m not into one night stands my love” he leaned in to your side whispering in your ear “So if you’re trying to get rid of me you are going to have to try a little harder”

You looked away from him and licked your lips trying to ease your suddenly dry mouth. The small waitress came back and distributed the plates and dishes that everyone ordered. You and your friend began eating and the table became quiet. Minho and Suho both ordered small salads and refrained from eating a single bite of it. Instead the two of them watched you eat. You made curious glances at the men and their plates.

“Is it not good?” you asked them quietly

“I’m sure it’s delicious” he said with a smile “But I’ve got my mind on something else that I’d rather eat” he chuckled.

You immediately blushed hearing the obvious lust and suggestion in his voice. Your best friend slightly gasped and ate her food quickly trying to cover up her small slip up. Minho glared and clenched his jaw at the other man, and made furious eye contact. The table suddenly seemed tense between the two males and you shrunk at the bad vibes sent from one to the other. Minho wrapped his arm around your back and pulled you closer to him by the side. He firmly placed his hand on your knee locking you in place and declaring you as his own. You gasped at his roughness and looked up at him with wide eyes. But he wasn’t looking at you, he still had his gaze permanently fixed on the other male. Suho raised his eyebrows and cocked his head asking Minho an unspoken question. Minho just sat still and gave away nothing to the other.

“Does she kn-“ Suho started and was abruptly cut off

“No, she doesn’t and for now it’s going to stay that way” Minho answered

“If I can feel the pull then I’m sure the others can too.” Suho said concerned “you should get it done sooner rather than later” he finished

Minho just nodded his head to the other and turned to you to give you a small smile. You had no idea what the two were talking about but you knew it had something to do with you.

The rest of the meal was eaten in complete silence up until the very end. Minho was very gracious and paid for everyone’s meal and bought coffee to go at a small café next door for you and your friend before sending you off to work. But before you could even make your way through the front doors of the lobby Suho had stopped and turned to you and Minho.

“Emily why don’t you take the rest of the day off and talk with Minho, I’m sure he has a few things that he needs to discuss with you”

You were about to protest when Suho raised his hands up and stopped you from speaking.

“Please, don’t worry about missing your hours I will still pay you for your scheduled time.”

You raised your eyebrows at him in shock. Why would he do something like that for you? And what was so fucking important that he would let you do it just to talk to Minho? You quickly decided that paid time off was probably not something that you would ever come across again and nodded your head. Suho nodded to his friend once before escorting your friend back up to their offices and back to work.

“You don’t have to spend the rest of the day with me if you don’t want to” Minho offered “but, if you would allow me I would really like to take you somewhere”

You looked up to him and cocked your head to the side.

“And where is that?” you asked him

“Well I noticed this morning that I seemed to have ruined your dress last night” he stated and you blushed remembering the sound and feeling of the clothes being ripped off of you. “so I would like to buy you a new dress” he offered you and you smiled and nodded your head.

Minho escorted you out of the lobby and down the street a few blocks. He slipped his hand into yours and intertwined your fingers together. You looked down at you now joined hands and back up to him with a small smile. Did he actually like you? He bought you lunch, coffee and now he is going to buy you a dress? He smiled back down at you and guided you down the road only to stop in front of a small boutique.

It was one that you recognized and been inside of countless times before, but one that you had never actually bought anything from. The clothing inside were very cute and stylish but being a shop on one of the busiest streets in the city, its prices were out of this world. You were hesitant to go inside knowing that your dress was previously only worth $40 as opposed to the minimum of hundreds that he would be spending inside. Minho recognized your hesitation and pulled you by the hand to make you go inside the store.

Upon your entry the sales associate immediately bowed and locked the doors behind you and made her way to the back of the store.

“Where did she go?” you asked no one in particular

“I come to this store frequently and ask that my visits be made private so I may shop in peace.” He answered you

You were taken back by his answer. A part of you was impressed and another part of you was off put by his luxurious treatment. He turned around to look at you and smiled a wicked grin. He stepped forward and bent down to look you closer in the eye.

“Why? Are you scared to be alone with me?” he asked with a deep voice.

You coughed slightly feeling cramped and pressured underneath his intense gaze. You shook your head no without making eye contact with him. He chuckled at your voiceless answer and stepped even closer to you. He took your chin in his fingers and forced your eyes to meet. He leaned into you about to give you a kiss and you closed your eyes. Except nothing ever happened. No kiss no nothing. You opened your eyes and found Minho still impossibly close to you and smiling with a lustful amazement.

“Good” was all he said as he released your chin and stepped away from you to look around at the clothes lining the walls.

You sighed in desperation, slightly upset that he never followed through with the kiss. You licked your lips and turned away from him view and walked to the opposite side of the store. You were embarrassed that you were so easy for Minho to play with. You were in his spider web and he was only going to play with you before he would finally make you his snack.

You looked around the room with new determination to try to forget what had happened and find the perfect dress. You didn’t feel bad anymore for spending Minho’s money. If he was going to be an ass you would gladly accept an expensive dress.

You found three that you loved and wanted to try on, not even bothering to read the price tag. You headed towards the fitting rooms with your dresses and closed the curtain that separated you from the rest of the store. You tried on each dress but just weren’t happy with the way that it looked on you. It was either too poufy or was too short or not short enough. You grabbed the dresses and opened the curtain ready to look through the store once more. What you didn’t expect was for Minho to be standing outside of the room with a dress of his own choice in his hands. He gave you a small smile before he stepped closer to you and closed the curtain behind him- isolating the two of you from view. You eyed him wearily before you looked down at the dress that he had in his hands.

“I’m willing to bet you that this is best dress for you in this store.” He said

You looked it over and admired its simplicity yet elegant and elaborate design. It was slim fitting and black with gold embroidery. It looked long enough to cover all of your unmentionables and had long beautiful sleeves. You looked up to Minho and smiled at him impressed that he picked out something that was your style. You imagined what you would look like in it, what shoes and jewelry you would wear and where all you could wear it. It was something that you could wear on multiple occasions and was classy enough for you to be able to wear it in other places then just the club.

You took the dress from his grip and placed it against you and looked in the mirror gauging its shortness and how you think it would fit. You still had one of the dresses on and placed the dress Minho gave to you on the hook on the wall.

“Thanks, I think I’ll like it” you said with a smile and attempting to shoo him out of the dressing room

He smiled and nodded his head, but instead of leaving the room he stepped behind you and eyed the dress that you had on in the mirror. You watched as he looked you up and down and skeptically eyed how the fabric laid across your skin.

“Don’t you think that this covers a little too much?” he asked you with raised eyebrows

You scoffed at the typical male question and rolled your eyes. You were a second away from saying something snappy back to him when you heard the unmistakable sound of your zipper. Minho slowly drug the zipper from the bottom of your neck down to the bottom of the small of your back. He parted the collar and revealed more of your back, exposing the back of your white lace bra and the tops of your matching underwear to him. He placed his hand on your back and ran it down the exposed flesh

“That’s better” he whispered and smiled at you through the mirror.

You stared back at him wide eyed for being so forward and so calm about intimately touching you. Sure last night the two of you hooked up but, that was last night. You were drunk and in the mood, but it was a new day, you were much sober and the two of you were in a small boutique dressing room.

“What are you doing?” you asked him calmly

“what?” he asked you back meeting your gaze with a wicked smile. “It’s not like I haven’t seen your body before”

You gulped down you anticipation and continued to watch his every move in the mirror. Minho looked over your back as if he were assessing a valuable piece of fine china. His fingers skimmed over your bare flesh and he slowly ran his hands back up to your shoulders. He pushed the fabric away to expose your chest to him. He growled lowly as the material pooled around your waist and he immediately slipped a arm around your waist to hold you in place and another inside of the cup of your bra, messaging your breasts.

You moaned into his touch and leaned back into his strong chest. Minho’s touch and the risk of being caught for such a lewd act made you wet and you could feel yourself becoming turned on. Minho released his hand around your waist and grabbed your chin and forced you to look up at him. You complied with his silent demand and looked up to him and captured his lips in a searing kiss. He leaned into you further pressing his body flush up against yours and you could feel that he was just as aroused as you were. You reached behind yourself and palmed Minho’s prominent erection through his suit pants. He grunted and thrust his hips up closer to meet your hand and let out a string of curses.

“Fuck… FUCK… what are you doing to me?” he asked through gritted teeth.

You continued to message him through his pants until you could feel his dick twitch and feel his balls squeeze- telling you that he was about to come undone. You removed your hand from him and he growled at you deeply making you slightly regret not letting him finish but making you soak through your panties. That sound would destroy you no matter where you were or what you were doing.

Minho roughly pushed you by the shoulders and bent you over at the waist. You put your hands out in front of you on the mirror for balance and watched him as he hiked your dress around your waist and dropped your panties down- just enough so he could free his erection and slide it inside of you.

You moaned as the fullness overwhelmed you all at once. The position made his sit inside of you tighter than before. The pressure drove you insane and you could feel every detail in his slick cock. You screamed out in pleasure and Minho grunted as he bottomed out inside of you. He paused for a moment allowing for you to adjust to him before he roughly grabbed you by the hips and fucked you relentlessly. Every other thrust had you falling down, making your knees weaker and weaker. But Minho used his insane strength to hold you up so he could use you for his pleasure.

“Fuck, Minho….. Don’t stop…. That’s it….” You chanted out over and over

Nothing else existed in your mind. Not that you were in a dressing room in a high profile boutique, not that Minho was fucking you without a condom, not even that you were still in a dress that you hadn’t paid for. Minho’s cock pushing in and out of you. Pounding and slapping at your skin, ultimately wrecking you in the best way possible was all that you could think of.

You began to tremble and shake as the fire began to build in your stomach. Minho sped up to catch his and your release at the same time fucking you furiously at a pace that was nowhere near humanly.

“You gonna cum around my cock?” he grunted out as his fingers dug into your skin as he slowly lost his own cool

All you could do was nod your head. Your building orgasm rendered you speechless and all you could do was allow for it to overwhelm you. His quick thrust were becoming slower and less even as he buck into you pulling out the last bit of energy that he could use on you. He grunted as he pushed into you one last time and came inside of you. You could feel your insides fill up with his semen and you relaxed against the cool surface of the mirror. There goes fifty bucks straight to plan b, you though.

Minho pulled out of you and wiped away the mix of yours and his fluids as they ran down your legs, with one of his handkerchiefs. He stuffed the dirty cloth into the back pocket of his pants and fixed his clothing so it would be back to normal. You did the same pulling up your underwear and taking off the rest of the dress to try on the black one that Minho had suggested.

“Fuck trying on the dress; you’ll look good in it anyways. Let’s just pay and go home.” He said taking the dress out of your hand and going to the front desk to pay for it while you change back into your work clothes.

You were slightly embarrassed to go out to the front of the store knowing that the sales associate undoubtedly knew exactly what the two of you were up to the entire time. The two of you were so loud and really it was quite obvious when couples went into changing rooms together, what was going on. You left the changing room and walked around the store while Minho paid the girl at the desk. You refused to face her and smile like everything was normal, because it certainly wasn’t everyday that you fucked people in changing rooms.

The car ride was long out into the country wherever Minho was taking you. You watched as trees and mountains passed by and saw only a few cars pass you as you made your way farther into the woods. Minho held your hand throughout the car ride and asked you a series of questions about yourself as he tried to get to know you more.

“What is this place?” you asked as you arrived at a mansion.

You looked up to the roof and noticed the gothic detailing in the stained glass and window panes. The white brick and stone exterior was beautiful and looked modern yet the house itself was old and gaudy. The front door was a huge massive double door made out of dark wood. There wasn’t much vegetation around the front but you supposed when your building looked like this you could get away with less decorations.

“This is my house” he said matter-a-factly, like it was no big deal

You turned to him with wide eyes and a open mouth. He looked back at you like it was a totally normal thing and laughed once at your astonishment.

“You live here?.... Alll by yourself?” you asked again to clarify

“Not by myself” he started smiling and looking up at the giant house “The other men who you met at the club last night live here too” he said sheepishly

You relaxed a little now knowing that he wasn’t some man with unlimited powers and money. Sure he had money, but living in a place like this meant that he had to be a…trillionaire, gazillionaire. He had to be swimming in money and burning it just for fun.

Minho walked up the drive way and opened up the front door and held it open for you. You entered the house and were amazed by the industrial theme of the house. Dark maroon and black decorations with a splash of gold made the place feel like it was a royal palace. The two of you rounded the corner and walked into the kitchen to see Taemin standing with a whiskey glass in his hand and a dark liquid filled up inside halfway. You looked at him with a blush on your face, remembering what you witnessed at the club. You smiled politely and slightly bowed as a greeting. Taemin eyed you like he was uninterested or un-amused and left you in the kitchen.

Taemin wasn’t exactly thrilled to see you in front of him. You were the only person in the whole world who he didn’t want to see. Especially after your face haunted his every waking thought. He rolled his eyes as he saw Minho’s proud expression and sipped on his B+ once more. You bowed down to him politely and he watched your petite frame bend slightly. He smiled slightly at the small smile that you wore yourself and quickly removed it from his face. What the fuck was that? He thought to himself. Did you just smile? He asked himself. He scowled at his unusual behavior and walked away from you, no longer patient enough with himself or dealing with you to stay. As he walked past he smelled your sweet aroma. The sweet tinge of your blood was the first thing that immediately overwhelmed him and next it was the smell of your natural smell. You had an unusual natural aroma about yourself. It smelled like vanilla and oranges with a hint of cinnamon. Taemin was intrigued by your scent and took a bigger whiff before he was completely out of the room. And that’s when he smelled it. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at Minho’s tall frame hovering over you and smiling at you.

He was sick to his stomach and angry. Very, very, angry. He could feel the blood begin to boil inside of himself and his fingers reflexively sharpened into pointed evil talons ready to rip whoever get in his way apart. He knew that he was supposed to have a strong reaction to the smell of you and your arousal but he didn’t know that the smell of Minho’s scent all over you and the salty tinge of his semen would trigger him so extremely.

He saw your happy smile and the way that you looked up to Minho in awe of your surroundings. He was starting to shake and completely lose his cool. How could Minho actually pursue you? Especially if he knew that ultimately you were his anyways. Suddenly you didn’t see Minho as a friend anymore but the enemy. If he didn’t get himself out of earshot and view of you he was going to murder Minho. He growled lowly as his desire to possess you ripped through his chest. He hated the way that you smiled at Minho like that, and hated it even more that Minho had been so intimate with you already. But most of all he hated that Minho met you a second time. Being a professionally fuck boy was Minho’s one and only forte, which meant that he was serious about you.

Taemin decided then and there that he wouldn’t allow you to fall for anyone else ever. Unless that person was him. Only he could truly please you. Only he could make you scream his name. Only he could be the one to make you Because no one but him was allowed to look at, touch or fuck his soul mate

NEXT PART

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skyhook-sly · 6 years ago

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My John Wick/Jason Bourne movie which will never be made

[I only know what’s in the movies. I don’t know other canon from either ‘verse.]

So, if I were making a movie…

The universes of John Wick and Jason Bourne have very different styles, creating a problem.

The discrepancy must be resolved.

Simple.

Jason Bourne has never dealt with crime. Everything has been political and confined to the intelligence community.

Wick has never dealt with politics or the intelligence community.

So.

We must assume that the intelligence community is perfectly happy to leave common crime in the hands of law enforcement.

Plus it would also illustrate that Wickian Law Enforcement at its highest levels is just as dirty, amoral and underhanded as the Bournite Intelligence community.

- The evidence still exists. Witnesses still live, in numbers too great to be cleanly eliminated.

- Mr. Politician is sweating bullets.

- It has become obvious to everyone who isn’t deeply deluded that Jason Bourne is practically indestructible and that sending more valuable and increasingly scarce 'assets’ against him is just going to result in the loss of those assets. Agents available may be trained and conditioned to within an inch of their lives, but Bourne’s psychological break caused him to exceed his limits, training and conditioning in a way Black Ops programs haven’t been able to replicate. Those with a pragmatic attitude believe that they have no agent who can measure up to Bourne. Politician believes this as well.

- Now, we’ve got Jason Bourne being hunted by the Snoop, which has him on alert. We have John Wick hunting Bourne because he believes, once again, that he has no choice.

- Bourne can see the beginning of a way to solve the whole mess. After some persuasion, Wick is on board and has some ideas of his own.

- Now we’ve got our boys on the same side and it’s only left to decide whether the war will be conventional or nuclear.

- There are two victories we need to see. We must see the destruction of Mr. Politician and Mr. Crime Lord.

Or course, this backfires. Bourne finds himself in a position where he has to kill either Crime Lord or Mr. Politician in self-defense. Probably the Crime Lord.

- I’ve forgotten our Snoop reporter.

We could let Bourne track him down, in which case he will almost certainly die, because going by canon everybody who sympathizes with Jason Bourne must die.

John Wick’s name will not appear in the story. Only a vaguely defined “other sources”.

- And after all is said and done, Bourne and Wick part company, with mutual respect and recognition. Though they really don’t like each other very much.

So that’s my John Wick/Jason Bourne movie which will never be made. But I had fun.

P.S. Please excuse crappy photoshop, I just wanted something there.

#John Wick #Jason Bourne

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wolfeyeslonelynights · 7 years ago

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Oz Three

“So..what’s your name?” Mason felt Liam’s wide eyes on him but chose to ignore him to offer the stranger a tentatively smile, nodding encouragingly when he turned back to look at him. There was a huff of breath before he responded.

“Does it matter? But it’s..Theo.” The last part was unsure, as if he didn’t quite believe that he had answered. Mason, feeling the need to fill the quiet, jumped on that response.

“Theo, cool. I’m Mason and this is Liam. How did you become a hunstmans?” He had never heard of a huntsman so young, truth, he hadn’t ever heard of them or Wendigos but didn’t want to show his ignorance to the other two. They seemed to be recovering from the whole ordeal rather well; Liam keeping a wary eye on the new comer but otherwise relaxed while Theo just ignored his questions, brows furrowed as he scanned around the trees.

Not feeling put down at all, he pushed on, “Do all huntsman’s go after supernatural creatures? You aren’t human so isn’t that a conflict of interest? Are we going to go through the orchard again?”

He stumbled back a couple steps when Theo swung around abruptly, glaring at him. Liam stepped in between them, back tense in front of Mason.

“Do you always ask this many questions? If so, how the fuck did you almost get eaten by Wendigos?” His snap was cut off as if he realized something, irritation sliding away into confusion, “Why were you in the orchard?” Liam stayed quiet so Mason continued on, forcing his voice to stay upbeat. He was exhausted, the aftertaste from being sick earlier drying in his mouth like mold, but at least he wasn’t hungry anymore. He wasn’t sure if he was ever going to get his appetite back; not with the image of cut off ears falling through the air.

“We are on the way to the Wizard.” A flash of unreadable emotion crossed Theo’s face before he was turning away to start forward again. When they started he spoke, voice quiet but still scathing.

“You both must be idiots.” Liam must have caught something in the tone, or maybe he was just offended because he was growling back, “We aren’t going for a stupid wish but to get answers.” Mason took note of the drying blood on the werewolf’s neck and face, guilt flooding him at the evidence of how badly his friend had been hurt.

“Answers?”

Mason ignored Theo, stopping with a hand on Liam’s shoulder. Blue eyes looked at him in surprise before softening with concern. He didn’t deserve that look.

“What’s wrong? You okay?” He didn’t respond, pulling his pack off to grab the small amount of water to wet a tiny corner of an old shirt, wordlessly holding it out for Liam to take. The teen looked at it for a moment before an uneasy expression appeared on his face. He took the shirt and silently cleaned his face, body turning away as if he was didn’t want them to see.

Drawing their eyes away while Liam cleaned up, Mason turned back as Theo groaned loudly before swinging his own pack off. The bag dropped to the ground before the huntsman was unclasping his axes, setting them down more gently.

“What are you doing?” Eyes flashed gold at him before turning away to start collecting pieces of wood from the area.

“Since you both are taking your sweet fucking time, I’ve decided to not make this apparently long ass journey in the dark. Believe it or not, worse things happen in the night. So shut up and start collecting firewood.”

Before Mason could turn towards the task Liam was there, blood mostly gone, hand on his arm, nudging him towards a nearby log, murmuring “Mason you look dead on your feet, sit down and rest, I got this okay?” and to make sure that happened, he followed Mason over - digging in the pack for the rest of the water and bread. When Mason started to protest, he was cut off by the werewolf shaking his head with his mouth a firm line.

“No, I’m good I promise.” Then he was watching the shorter teen step away, heading across the way to start looking for wood dry enough for a fire. Glancing towards Theo, he saw that the hunter was watching the exchange with an almost wistful look before he met Mason’s eyes and abruptly turning away. Slowly bringing the water up to his lips, Mason drank only a small amount between tiny bites, hoping not to overwhelm his raw stomach.

Left alone as the other two worked let him try to organize his thoughts. The day had been like a tornado; throwing him around wildly without letting him catch his breath. Before leaving his town, he had never seen anything so violent beyond the occasional tragic carriage accidents or someone getting hurt while building something. The biggest injury he had was when he fell out of a tree and badly twisted his ankle. Now he was tromping through woods that may or may not try to choke you while harboring creatures that looked human. That might decide you would be a tasty snack.

Images of the over large fire place back at the cottage came to mind, the extravagance now making sick sense. God those two had eaten people.

Setting down the small tear of bread, hard and crumbling after a day rolling around in the pack, Mason tried to swallow - his throat feeling thick at the thought that they could have been someone’s stew.

“Okay?”

Looking up he absently nodding at Liam’s smiling face, watching the teen turn away to help start building a fire. It was amazing how resilient the werewolf was. Liam had joked about the bodyguard act but so far every time they had been in trouble Mason had watched him step in front to cover him. Protecting with his body as if it was natural. His cheeks flushed with warmth as he watched the werewolf snap something at Theo who smirked in response. This was his first real friend.

Feeling his throat catch, Mason stared at the ground, blinking rapidly at the silly overhaul of emotions. He didn’t realize the other two had frozen, sharing a surprised glance before Liam slowly made his way to sink down next to him. Theo turning away with stiff shoulders; as if the display made him uncomfortable.

“I want to ask what’s wrong, but well…a lot went wrong huh?” This ended with an awkward laugh making it more obvious Liam didn’t know what to do or how to go about comforting someone. There was a few moments of silence, the two sitting next to each other while Theo got a small fire started - feeding the flames until it was steady enough - making himself a spot opposite of them. In the flickering light his attractive features were enhanced, even if he was frowning at them like he didn’t know what he did to deserve this.

When his eyes met Masons, his frown deepened. “You said you were going to get answers?”

He shared another glance with the werewolf next to him, asking and answering unspoken questions before Liam was shrugging leaning farther back against the wood behind them, leaving Mason to decide. For once not exactly eager to discuss his reason nonetheless Theo had saved them, even if all he did was supply Liam with a weapon.

“Don’t you ever wonder why the Wizard grants wishes the way he does? How does he get the magic? Why all the creatures around his castle?”

The usual steam was lost in the words, sounding more tired and forlorn, as if subconsciously Mason was starting to realize the hopelessness of this journey. Starting to wonder if the cost was worth the effort, but at the same time the hollowness, the burning to know the why was still there - quietly urging him on.

“Yeah…yeah I’ve asked myself that.” Mason felt Liam’s head pop up as he did the same, eyeing the teen across the flames. Theo’s was sitting against a tree, elbows resting upon his knees, hood up again as he looked at them.

“I can tell you though, a lot of the creatures aren’t necessarily all from the Wizard."

Liam tilted his head, “You mean like those trees?” his eyes looked a little haunted when he whispered “It was like it bled when I cut it.” Now Mason leaned a little against Liam, offering silent support. Theo stared at Liam, head nodding “They were created. As were the Wendigos. That’s why I hunt them down.”

The water and little bit of food must have helped because Mason was feeling a little more alert, sitting up straighter as he asked “How do you know that?” When Theo didn’t answer, Liam spoke up - eyes taking in the other as if he could discern something Mason wasn’t able to see.

“I went to the Wizard.. but I don’t remember much about it. As if..as if as soon as I left my memories were blurred on purpose. Leaving me with this..” He trailed off staring at his hands that he had stretched out before him, clenching them tight, “this rage I fight all the time to control, never feeling afraid.”

Theo didn’t mock or say anything when Liam finally looked back up at him. In that moment, Mason felt a little like an outsider, looking in on something that seemed oddly intimated even if the two had practically just met. Shaking his head he reached into his bag and pulled out a worn blanket. Wrapping himself in it, Mason slid down until his head was against the harsh bark, eyes closing as he tried to relax.

“The point is, I just want to know why he does things the way he does. We are going to see him and get answers.” Then as an after thought, body softening as the final adrenaline slipped away, Mason added, “You can come with us if you want - find the answers you want.”

Theo stayed quiet for so long that Mason slipped into sleep.

…

Liam woke to Mason gently shaking him awake before moving away to pack his bag. Sitting up he stifled a groan at the stiffness in his shoulders and neck. Sleeping in odd places was normal for him, having been living in a cave for so long, but it had been a while since he had a real fight that had left him with bones that needed to heal. Mason had looked so down that he tried to hide the fracture in his arm, using mostly his uninjured one as he felt the injury slowly heal itself with a combination of stabbing pins and moments of breathlessness as something shifted back into its proper place.

He didn’t mind doing the work, a glance at Mason’s bruised and scratched neck enough to make his teeth grind together with anger. Liam had felt the cocky hunter’s eyes on him when he had been collecting wood, knowing he knew Liam wasn’t fully healed. Instead of saying anything about it he had shrugged and murmured that he would take first watch. Not sure if he trusted the..whatever he was, he did’t smell fully wolf but didn’t smell fully coyote, Liam knew that he was going to have to because his eyes were already fighting to stay open.

It was then he realized that the hunter hadn’t woken him up for the second watch. Looking towards the older teen, he saw that Theo was ready to continue; idly whittling a piece of wood with a small sharp knife. Confused, was it a kind gesture or that he didn’t trust Liam to keep proper watch? Liam quickly got packed, eager to move forward and farther away from the cottage of dead cannibals.

When he saw that they were ready, Theo stood up with an impatient huff, “Finally, let’s get a move on.”

Liam saw Mason’s eyes light up, the human jogging to reach the hunter. “Does that mean you’re coming with us?”

A brief moment, Liam watching Theo’s shoulders tense before he answered, walking fast enough so they couldn’t see his face, “That a problem?”

Liam snorted softly as Mason made an excited noise before assuring the hunter that it was definitely not a problem and he was excited.

“You just want him so we don’t get lost again, don’t you?” Mason grinned as he fell back to walk next to Liam. He took in the bruises and scratches - scabbed ugly, and sighed quietly before shaking off the guilt. Next time. Next time he would be faster.

“You guys always walk so damn slow?” Liam grimaced as he looked up to see Theo watching him over his shoulder, the remorse fading away in a flash of irritation.

“It’s not like we have a deadline asshole.” Despite him hissing that, the two sped up to walk alongside the huntsman. There was a brief pause before Theo was holding two perfectly normal size apples, eyes staying forward as he waited for Liam to take them. The idea of eating them after what happened yesterday made his throat close but he took it anyway, quietly handing the other one to Mason. His friend mirrored his reluctance, but still bit into the fruit dutifully.

“Thanks.” He mumbled before starting in, trying to picture anything other than the memory of how the tree bled. Theo nodding absently, hands slipping into his pockets, expression relaxing. They walked quietly, the two boys crunching away on their food while Theo scanned the area. The trees were thinning out, but Liam didn’t notice any of the apple trees from before. In fact it seemed like they were still heading in a direction that wasn’t leading to the road.

Tossing the apple core into the trees, he asked “Where are you taking us?” It wasn’t said in accusation but Theo shot him a glared anyway. Liam scowled back.

“I’m not going back to that damn road until it’s absolutely necessary. Do you guys realize how much bad stuff goes on around there?” Mason looked up from where he had been seemingly contemplating the other half of his fruit, eyes inquisitive, “What do you mean?”

Liam watched Theo give them a look that clearly said ‘you are both idiots’. He didn’t notice last night that his eyes weren’t dark so much as a hazel; gleaning towards a greenish hue currently.

“I mean, is that the closer that road gets you to the castle, the more nasty creatures hang out around it. It’s like some weird beacon for them. Probably because only easy targets would use such an obvious path.”

Mason blinked slowly at him “But we met the Wendigos like..in the middle of the forest?”

Theo scowled at the valid point, “Yes but away from the road you get things..more thinned out - easier to manage, whereas at the road they like to group together. Just..just believe me when I say, we are skipping going back to that yellow brick road for a while.” He sped up almost jogging to put a small distance between him and the other two. Liam watched him, thinking of the Wendigos and the trees.

“You know, I think he’s right,” he rushed to continue when Mason raised his eyebrows, “the Wendigos were scary yeah, but there was only two and if I had been paying better attention we probably could have skipped past them. The trees though…they were almost on top of the road.” The axes swayed with the movement of Theo’s back, the edges reflecting the little light the trees let in.

“Yeah, yeah okay I wasn’t disagreeing it’s just,” he moved his eyes from the hunter’s form to watch Mason a deep breath, as if he was bracing himself. Instead of saying whatever it was, he puffed out the air with a loud gasp, before muttering, “oh well, at least the view is nice.”

Liam felt his cheeks heat up even as his eyes flickered back to the person in front of them. Mason grinned widely at the embarrassment. Hunching his shoulders Liam slapped the bottom of the hand that had the uneaten half of Mason’s apple upward - cackling when the boy let out a ‘oofed’ when it struck him in the face.

Hustling to get away just as the fruit was launched at his head, Liam caught up just in time to see Theo biting a grin away.

….

“Guys…not to sound like an alarmist but I’m alarmed.” Mason’s voice broke through the argument Liam was having with Theo. The two had fallen behind when they started walking through a thick field of corn; voices hushed as they bickered about whether walking through was a good idea or not. Liam didn’t see a problem while Theo kept glancing up almost nervously, muttering about monkeys with large fangs.

“What do you mean?” Now they paused to look at the other boy. Mason was standing still as his eyes darted around the tall stalks uneasily. Liam followed the action, body raising goosebumps in reaction the other’s anxiety.

“It’s just, for a while I feel like someone is watching us?”

Theo was slowly spinning around, brows drawn together as he slowly pulled one of his axes off his back, eyes shifting to peer around them, “Get a specific direction from your creeper vibe?”

Liam cracked his neck as he shifted. Claws sliding out with small flashes of pain as he flexed his fingers. He followed Theo’s lead, the two rotating in a small circle with the vulnerable member of their group in the middle. Supernatural eyes trying to locate the threat; one pair looking up while the other was looking in the dark spaces between the plants.

Mason swallowed as he kind of huddled between the two, eyes squinting, “Somewhere close by, like in the - !” He was cut off with a strangled yelp. They spun towards him as Mason was yanked out of the formation; one hand held out as if something was holding his wrist.

“What the fuck!”

They all stared as delicate pale fingers appeared around Mason’s hand. Their eyes followed as an arm seemingly melted into view before they were looking into a young male face framed with dark hair that stuck up in unruly spikes and almost overtaken by a pair of panicked brown eyes. He was tugging at Mason “You guys are in danger! Run!”

Just as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone again, except for the invisible hold on Mason’s wrist. The pulled teen stumbled forward with renewed energy. Liam glanced at Theo feeling a small relief at the equally bewildered look. When the hunter met his eyes after another glances towards the sky, “Guess we follow?”

They broke into an jog when the air seemed to vibrate. All seemed to pause, a breath held, as a low thundering reached their ears.

The sound of hundreds of wings battering the air.

“Flying monkeys! Shit!” Theo was shoving Liam in front of him, chasing after Mason’s retreating form.

They batted corn stalks aside, bodies and faces getting hit with those they missed as they sprinted through the field. He wasn’t sure what a flying monkey was but he was sure he didn’t want to meet one.

Liam shouted as he closed in on Mason “We won’t make it out of the field before they reach us!”

Theo’s hand was still a reinforcing presence between his shoulder blades, even as he hissed “I told you this was a bad idea!” Liam growled back, “You wanna bitch about that now?”

The rumbling grew closer cutting off Theo’s reply. Ahead of them a bodiless voice called out “There’s a town nearby that they refuse to enter. We’ll be safe there.” Liam was the only one who heard Theo’s muttered “Yeah, that sounds reassuring.” before they fell quiet, focusing on running for their lives.

#Thiam #if you squint #Shitty fanfic #Teen Wolf Imagine AU

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bellabooks · 7 years ago

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Fanfiction to Published Novelist Finalist #3: “I Sing the Body Electric” by Zoe Kane

I Sing the Body Electric by Zoe Kane Work: The 100 Pairing: Abby Griffin and Raven Reyes, The 100 (set post-season 2 finale) She had no idea how long it was before she slowly edged back into consciousness again, but she was immediately aware that she was no longer collapsed on the ground inside the Mount Weather door. Everything felt different, sounded different, smelled different. Not like home, but not like concrete either. She lay for a moment with her eyes closed, trying to analyze the strange sensations hovering at her periphery. What was it? Something was off. Something was strange. It took several minutes for it to click – it was such an alien sensation – but when she did she was so startled that she spoke the words aloud. “I’m in a bed,” she exclaimed in wonderment. “Good morning,” came Abby’s sardonic voice from nearby. “Gold star for observational skills.” Raven opened her eyes. She was lying in a large, expensive-looking carved bed, in an otherwise spartan bedroom, with no other furniture except a small chest of drawers and a wooden chair, in which Abby was currently sitting. An open door nearby led to an equally deserted-looking living room, where the corner of a couch was barely visible. No personal effects anywhere. “Guest quarters, I suspect,” Abby explained, answering the unspoken question. “Or maybe they had more rooms than they needed. I didn’t want us sleeping on concrete, but the living quarters felt, well, too…” “Haunted,” Raven finished for her, struggling to sit up. “Exactly. But I did want to try and make you comfortable.” “It’s morning, you said?” Abby nodded, which when the penny dropped and the thing Raven really ought to have noticed first finally jumped out at her. Light. “Right. So. I have good news and bad news,” Abby told her, watching Raven’s eyes flick upwards to stare at the electrical lamp shining merrily from the ceiling. “The good news is that the backup generator kicked on about an hour after you conked out last night. The bad news is that the security systems aren’t on the backup generator. So we have light, and power, and oxygen, and heat, and food, and all that good stuff, but we can’t unlock the doors. I’m afraid we’re camped out until Wick arrives to jailbreak us.” She looked at Raven appraisingly. “How do you feel?” “Lucid,” said Raven. “Better than last night.” “You were lucid last night,” Abby informed her. “Very. You were having an anxiety attack brought on by the sound of somebody from the convoy using an electric drill. Right?” Raven nodded. “Is it better today?” “Yeah. I think so.” “How do you feel?” “Hungry.” Abby laughed. “Good,” she said dryly, rising from the chair and making her way towards the bedroom door. “That’s promising.” Raven pulled back the covers and stood up to follow her, then froze, suddenly startled by the whisper of warm air on bare skin alerting her that she was wearing only her cotton shorts and camisole, the rest of her clothes folded neatly at the foot of the bed. “You undressed me,” she said to Abby, unable to keep a faint note of accusation out of her voice, though she didn’t quite know why. “I didn’t think you’d want to sleep in your boots and jacket,” Abby pointed out reasonably, to which Raven couldn’t really argue. “Get dressed, I’ll be out here when you need me.” Then she left, closing the door behind her. It took Raven a second to pin down what exactly it was, that strange electrical current that pulsed through her when she thought about Abby removing her clothes. Abby’s hands on her. Abby’s fingertips brushing her skin, gently easing the shirt over her head, unbuttoning her pants and slipping them over her hips, tucking her into a bed she had somehow located pillows and blankets for, after carrying Raven downstairs in her arms all by herself. When Raven realized what it was, it startled her. It wasn’t discomfort, embarrassment, awkwardness . . . it was regret. Abby had touched her whole body, and she had been unconscious and missed it. Her feelings about this were decidedly more complicated than they should have been. She dressed quickly and opened the door to the living room to see Abby folding up a thin blanket, setting it on top of a flimsy pillow on a cramped ancient-looking sofa. “Jesus, Abby, is that where you slept?” “It was fine.” “Now I feel like a jerk. We can trade tonight. I’ll take the couch.” “Nonsense. I don’t mind. Better than my cot at Camp Jaha, in fact. Here,” she said, handing Raven a cup and a plate. “Breakfast. And coffee.” The coffee was good and strong and black, and it made Raven feel human again. The plate had a small pastry on it, glistening with crystals of sugar, and a heap of fresh fruit. She devoured it in seconds. “I had some time to explore after I put you to bed last night,” said Abby, “and the good news is, we won’t be going hungry.” Abby had finished her work while Raven slept, crates of medical supplies now neatly packed and waiting by the Mount Weather doors, so now she had nothing to do except appoint herself Raven’s new assistant. “I’m a doctor with exactly one patient,” she said firmly. “You.” Raven was uneasy about returning to the control room, but it was different with Abby there. Abby brought blankets and couch cushions to make them more comfortable, and several battery-powered lanterns, “just in case.” She took careful notes while Raven worked and dictated instructions, and disappeared from time to time to return with food – real food, not protein rations, things grown in the ground that Raven had only heard about in stories. Their system for hauling produce from Mount Weather to Camp Jaha was still limited, so they’d mostly been ferrying back sturdy things, like root vegetables and squash. Raven had never tasted a strawberry before. “Stop working for a minute,” Abby ordered her each time, “and taste this.” And Raven did. Strawberries first, later in the morning; then, a few hours later, for lunch, a plate of sliced tomatoes drizzled with a tart-sweet dark syrup – “balsamic vinegar,” said Abby – and thin slices of several dry, highly-spiced cured meats, alongside thick torn wedges of crusty bread. Then tea, in the afternoon, real black tea, not just weak forest leaves steeped in boiling water to give it some dull kind of flavor, but a sharp, brisk, richly-flavored Darjeeling with milk and sugar, served alongside impossibly delicate little sweets that looked like edible lace. The drill did not return with Abby there. The drill stayed far away. Raven began to feel like Raven again, drawing maps, examining wires, logging into the control room’s computer system to pull up building schematics. She would, as it turned out, need Wick for this – which annoyed her – but her mounting excitement was so powerful it could withstand even that. With Wick and Monty’s help, she felt sure there was a way to funnel power from Mount Weather down to the camp. She kept her promise not to mess with anything, but she had done what she came to do. Abby finally made Raven stop working to eat dinner, which they ate in their rooms; Abby was willing to brave the storage rooms and kitchens, but not the dining room where all those dead bodies had lain for so long. The little apartment felt unexpectedly homey, Raven thought, stepping inside to see Abby setting plates down on the rickety wooden table and pouring two big glasses of wine. “This was my deal with Sinclair,” she explained, handing one of them to Raven. “I said if he couldn’t figure out a way to spring the locks from the outside and get us out for another night, then I would be cracking into the liquor storage. He said that sounded fair.” “What is this?” “Bordeaux, it said. I have no idea what that is, by the way. I don’t know anything about wine or food.” “Could’ve fooled me. Whatever you’ve been feeding me so far has been amazing.” “Well, I have to look it all up,” Abby confessed as she returned to the stove. “The whole kitchen storage system is cataloged so it tells you what each thing is and where it’s stored and it’s cross-referenced to a library of recipes.” Raven stared at her, which Abby misinterpreted and gave an apologetic laugh. “Don’t worry,” she reassured the girl. “I’m a scientist. I’m really good at following directions.” “You learned how to cook,” Raven said blankly, eyes wide. “For me. In like . . . a day.” Abby waved this off. “None of this was real cooking. Just putting things on plates. And this was in the deep-freeze, I only had to warm it.” “I don’t care,” said Raven, taking her seat. “You’re my hero.” And as Abby brought dinner to the table, sat down and picked up her glass of wine, Raven clinked her own lightly against Abby’s and drank deeply. The whole evening became a soft, languid haze of magnificent sensations. The wine spread a rich, heavy warmth inside Raven, like a velvet blanket unfurling. The stew in front of her – a hearty, well-spiced concoction of white beans and sausage, flecked with greens, in a thick red broth – was savory and filling and lovely. She ate three bowls full, sopping up the last of the broth with more of the same crusty bread they’d had with lunch; no, she hadn’t baked, Abby explained laughingly in answer to Raven’s question, the bread had also been in the deep-freeze but warmed up good as new in the oven. They spoke little, the silence between them relaxed and happy, both immersed in the sensory experience of eating like this. It was still such a novel experience to be free of Ark protein cubes, to eat things whose scents and flavors awakened long-dormant senses and desires inside of you, to feel content, to be full. When they were finished, and the bowls were rinsed clean, Raven poured the last of the wine into their glasses and moved to the couch. After a brief hesitation, Abby followed. “Can I ask you a question?” Abby sat down on the opposite end of the couch, drawing her feet up underneath her. “Sure.” “Why don’t you hear the drill?” Abby understood immediately, and took a long thoughtful sip of her wine, unhurried, carefully considering her answer. “I do,” she said finally. “I do hear it sometimes. And I see Jake being floated. And the blood on Clarke’s hands. With – ” She stopped suddenly. “With Finn,” said Raven, voice flat and heavy. “You can say it.” “Yes.” Abby’s voice was impossibly gentle. “With Finn. I see it. I see all of it. When I sleep. When I’m awake. When I look around the camp at those kids. I see it. But it doesn’t hit me the way you do. I don’t know why. We all experience it in different ways.” She looked at Raven seriously, steadily, for a long moment, and answered the question circling around Raven’s mind without it even being asked. “You’re not weak, you know,” she said bluntly. “It isn’t a character flaw. The anxiety attacks. This wasn’t the first one, was it?” Raven, startled, froze before finally conceding. “And you look at me, or Wick or Kane or Bellamy, and you don’t see them responding in the same way, and you think everyone has figured out how to sleep at night except for you. That you’re the soft one, the weak one. That they got to you. You’re afraid it will be this way forever. You’re afraid that it means they’ve won.” Raven couldn’t look at her. But she didn’t have to. Abby was right, and both of them knew it. Abby knocked back the rest of her wine, set the glass down and took the younger woman’s hands in hers. “Listen to me, Raven Reyes,” she said, voice sharp with some nameless emotion. “You are the strongest person I have ever met. You are extraordinary. You are a warrior.” She reached out a hand, almost absentmindedly, and tucked a loose strand of Raven’s hair behind her ear. “But it’s okay for the warrior to admit that she’s survived a war. It’s okay for her to admit that some of her scars are on the inside where no one can see. They’re still battle scars, Raven. There’s no shame in them. You’re not weak.” Raven didn’t speak. For a long moment, they just looked at each other, as something electric crackled in the air between them, something hovering just out of reach. Finally Abby, ever sensible, broke the tension herself, rising from the couch to take both now-empty wine glasses over to the counter to set them by the dinner dishes before turning back around without quite looking at Raven, hips pressed up against the counter as her hands gripped the edge of it as though for balance, even though she was standing still. “It’s getting late,” Abby said finally. “We should both get some sleep. Now scoot,” she added, gesturing towards Raven, still on the couch. “You’re on my bed.” “Don’t be stupid,” said Raven, exasperated, making her way into the bedroom and stripping back down to her shorts and camisole. “You’re not spending another night on a hundred-year-old couch.” Abby didn’t follow her, didn’t even move. “I’m telling you, it’s fine.” “And I’m telling you, you’re insane. This is a huge bed, and you’re a tiny lady. Get in.” She climbed under the covers and scooted over to one side of the bed, leaving the other half pointedly open. Abby finally moved from the kitchen to doorway but hesitated there, looking from the empty pillow to Raven to the sofa and back again, her whole body taut with uncertainty. “Abby,” Raven exclaimed. “Seriously. I’m never gonna sleep if I’m feeling guilty about you on the shitty couch all night. Will you please just come in?” So Abby came in, perching hesitantly on the very edge of the bed, on top of the covers, and sat for a long moment facing away from Raven as if unsure what the next step in the process was. “You’re still wearing all your clothes,” Raven pointed out. “Well, yes.” “Is that what you sleep in?” “No.” “Why are you being weird?” “I’m not being weird.” “Take off your pants and get in bed with me, Abby,” said Raven, in a joking voice, but the joke didn’t land, and she realized, with a tiny thrill, the reason why. Abby was nervous. Raven’s heart began pounding. If Abby felt nothing – if there was nothing between them – why had she slept on the couch last night, and why was she so uncharacteristically timid now? She’s thought about this, she realized suddenly. She wanted to get in bed with me last night but she resisted and that’s why she’s afraid to now. “Abby,” she snapped, a little too forcefully, desperately fighting to conceal the flutter of nerves in her own stomach. “Just do it.” Perhaps to escape being forced to articulate an explanation if pressed any further, Abby gave in, switching off the bedside lamps to undress in the dark. Raven could feel her hesitant, quiet movements close by, and the soft rustling sounds of fabric falling to the floor made her swallow hard. Finally she felt the covers move and the mattress shift, and then all was still. Abby was lying in bed beside her. For a long moment, neither of them spoke or moved, just lay staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. “Goodnight, Abby,” Raven finally whispered, rolling over to face her as her eyes began to adjust to the darkness and the curve of Abby’s form beneath the white sheets and duvet became visible. “Goodnight, Raven,” Abby said back, without moving or looking at her, and Raven closed her eyes. She slept for a little while, soundly and well, untroubled by dreams, soothed by the sweet sound of Abby’s breathing. She woke only once, in the middle of the night, when an unexpected sensation of chill roused her. She opened her eyes and rolled over and saw that the duvet had become entangled on Abby’s side of the bed, while she was shivering. Raven sat up, straightened the covers, tucked herself back in, and moved herself away from the cold edge of the bed into its warm center, so when she lay back down, the empty space between them was gone. Abby did not notice – might have still been asleep – but her body was blissfully warm beside Raven, suffusing her with a marvelous, silky heat. And so Raven could not stop herself from doing the thing she did next. She lifted up her head and moved her pillow until it lay end to end with Abby’s. Then she reached out her arm and slipped it across the velvety skin of Abby’s bare stomach, pulling her close, curling up into her. Their arc of their bodies fit together perfectly, smooth and warm and right. Abby said nothing, but Raven felt her soften, almost imperceptibly, and heard a small sigh escape her lips. Abby was awake. And she did not pull away. Feeling a little bolder, Raven opened her palm and rested it flat against Abby’s stomach, letting her fingertips stroke the delicate skin just a little. Abby sighed again and melted against Raven, becoming liquid, pliable, and the heat where their skin touched made Raven feel dizzy. But in a lovely way, a sweet blissful safe way, with no fear or pain. Just this beautiful woman she was unexpectedly holding in her arms in the softest bed either of them had ever felt in their lives. She held her close. They slept. You can vote for this entry, here. http://dlvr.it/PxvnJT

#Books #News #contest

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powertobehandsome · 7 years ago

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The Way I See It || Matt and Seth

Part three for you. @blindlyburning

"Elektra Natchios? She and Matt used to date in college. From what I understand, she really broke his heart or something, but I don't know why it's so important for him to know she's back in town... good riddance to her, basically. He was such a wreck. Like he's Matt, so he was pretty good at not showing it, but I mean, I saw through his shit."

"Naturally. I've... been there with the man who hides the emotions but you're the best friend so you can see through it." He smiled and started to relax.

"What kind of name is Elektra? Like... that alone sounds like a nightmare."

Fun. Seth was trying to... what? Get close with his lawyer while in the middle of this? And now the heartbreaking ex-girlfriend was back. Great.

"Right? She's all gorgeous too. Like supervillain gorgeous. I wish..." Foggy huffed, took another bite of heaven, and continued a minute later. "At least you'll be there. He seems to really like you, and I bet having someone nice around will help him not... slip back into Elektra-land."

"Of course she's gorgeous. The super-villains always are." Seth, for the first time in what felt like months, thought of Summer. She was no Villain. She had done some great things for his self-confidence. But maybe she was a lower case villain. Because recovering from her leaving had taken far longer than he cared to admit.

"Sure, though. Maybe I can read him bedtime stories and cook him a meal for once. Ryan only really works with a grille. He's the ultimate outdoor cook. Me? Not so much. I like ovens and processors and that kind of thing."

Matt didn't get back until almost five thirty. When he walked in, he stopped, sensing the somewhat tense mood of the place. His hand gripped his cane reflexively before he made himself hang it on a hook.

"Somebody die?"

"Mnnnnn. This cop's got shitty handwriting."

Matt frowned, then shook his head. "It's fine."

"Fine? This is embarrassing even to read."

"So don't read it."

"Bite me, Murdock." Foggy groaned and looked up. "How'd it go?"

Matt's smile was secretive for a moment before he spilled. "They dropped all charges."

"What? HELL YES! Officially?"

"Officially." Matt tossed him a manila packet, then turned to Seth. "You and Ryan are free to go anytime."

Foggy was flipping pages. "This is incredible. Yes. Yesssss. I knew the one-two of me with photos and you with your creepy, stubborn, eloquent ass would work."

"Bull."

Foggy flipped him off, too happy to even get into the verbal sparring. "Too bad we can't go after the guys that did this. They shut that down nicely.. but whatever. Freedom for the good guys! Seth, where's your better half at? We gotta tell him the good news!"

"He is on his way back from JFK with our luggage. Since... well, since this all seems to be over..." You'll probably want us out of your house. "If you'd like to discuss your fee, we'll get that to you before I leave here."

He text Ryan the address, who responded with a simple:

>> What are the plans tonight?

And Seth locked his screen without replying. He'd hear soon enough.

"On top of your fee, since you didn't get to charge us for going to trial, I would like to buy you both drinks tonight. I insist. It's the least I can do for all that you've done.”

"You can mail a check if that's easier," Foggy shrugged. "Karen will make the bill up when she comes in tomorrow. Drinks sound --"

"Like a terrible idea for someone with your injuries and on prescription painkillers," Matt interjected. "But if you want to stay a while -- I'm sure flying will be needlessly painful -- maybe we can do drinks in a few days. I mean not that you have to stay, but... the company is nice. And I don’t want to stick you on a plane until you’re actually ready. This isn’t a client thing.. it's a friend thing."

"Oh. No. We'd planned on staying at least a week. And I... was offering to buy drinks. Not to drink them myself. I'm not suicidal." He shrugged at Foggy and then looked back at Matt.

It wasn't his place to bring down the room, and he thought the mention of the man who'd made an appearance, and the message he'd delivered, might do just that, so Seth stuck to happier things. "But you're sure? Will you let me at least buy groceries? Something? You've done so much."

"You can buy groceries," Matt agreed, grinning. "But you've got to let me cook."

"Matt we should go out tonight though, celebrate! If Ryan votes go, it'll be three to one, and you can suck it."

Something seemed off with Seth, Matt thought, and felt a sliver of worry. "Okay... Seth, you okay?"

"Tired," he replied softly, his smile was genuine. "You should have a bagel. I ordered too many. And though your partner and I put a decent dent in what was delivered, there are still more to go around."

He didn't know why he felt uneasy, honestly. Maybe it was just the exhaustion. The pills. The pain that riddled him from armpit to hip. Well. With the lucky addition of his face, too.

"And, while I hope he'll agree, Ryan might try to err on the side of reason. The little shit."

The door opened just then.

"Someone say my name?" Ryan smiled, lugging two duffle bags and a suitcase.

"Seth invited us out for drinks and you're the swing vote," Foggy explained, and went to help him with the luggage. "Celebration thing, since the charges are all dropped."

Matt got a plain bagel and sat down to tear at pieces of it. He rolled his chair over to be near Seth, feeling a strange need to just be close. "Everything go okay, Ryan?"

"Completely? That's awesome. Yeah. Let's... I would like to go out. If Seth is up for it. We have money. Still no cards, of course. But those... I asked that they be delivered here. Is that okay? They said it would be about three days. But we have clothes and we can finally get out of Matt's hair."

"Actually, he's invited us to stay. Surprising, I know. Since nobody can sleep with your train charging through the living room."

"Bite me."

"I prefer things a bit more kosher."

Ryan was smiling and rolled his eyes, looking at Foggy as he happily reached for a bagel. "I see Seth called Sandy for lunch. The Cohens never take bagels lightly."

Reaching out toward Matt, Ryan alerted him of the returning of his phone, thanked him again for it, and then settled back against the wall. "So, you two know the city. Where are we having dinner?"

Foggy had just gone for another bagel as well, and at the last question, he and Matt asked in unison: "Isn't this dinner?"

Foggy stared at Matt for a minute, then laughed. "You guys didn't hear that. I swear we aren't married. You heard nothing. And there's a pretty good kosher diner down the block, if that'd work?"

Foggy sent Seth a text while talking: 'pls dnt be mad. I dnt want 2 tell him 2nite. Will upset him. Want him to have a good nite. Will tell tmrw. K?'

"I was just joking. Literally any food is more kosher than biting Ryan."

"An no. Bagels do not constitute as dinner. Find a pub. Cheese fries. Hamburgers. Beer and whiskey. Seth can be our designated driver."

"I'm high on pain meds."

"We'll get an uber."

Seth smiled then, nodding. "Would... would it be too much to ask for a little nap before we opt for anything dealing with the outside world? I'll set an alarm. I promise it'll only be an hour or two. Just enough to recharge."

Ryan looked to the other two for confirmation. He didn't care either way. He figured they were all full on bagels for the time being anyway. "You nap. I have freedom. And I want a proper, double decker bus tour through the city."

Seth wasn't even listening, but he nodded all the same. Instead he looked at his phone.

>> It's not my place. He's your best friend. You know what is best for him. But... if we somehow run into her tonight, or your friend Andrew, be prepared to lie your ass off.

>>matt sucks at lying but I passed that class in lawyer school. Thanks Seth. I appreciate you.

Once it was decided to go home for a while first, they went. Foggy went with them to Matt's place, wanting to help with the luggage, and he gave them a friendly goodbye when he headed back out, already trying to decide what to wear and where to take them.

Matt seemed glad to be home. "You guys both napping?" He asked. "Or are you going out to be free right now, Ryan? You should still try to stay wary of your surroundings if you do. Just... a New York thing."

>> I know he does.

"I'm going out. Only taking enough money for the tour. They last about an hour or two. Go down to Brooklyn. Up to Wall Street. They show you were the soup nazi kitchen was from Seinfeld..."

"Dude, you're such a tourist."

"And you're a dick. But you're still my best friend. You guys enjoy your time. I'll text if there's any trouble."

With that and a wave at Seth, Ryan was lightly stepping out the door again.

Seth wrapped an arm around his ribs and moved to go sit on the couch. It didn't matter how comfortable the bed was, or that he'd shared it the night before, he still felt like he didn't have the unspoken right to go in there and sleep whenever he pleases.

"You... don't have to stay, if you have other things to do. But thank you, Matt. For whatever it was you did. You're quite literally a life saver. I owe you a lot."

"Literally just doing my job... and I was thinking that a nap sounds good actually. Would it be weird to share the bed again? It's yours as long as you're here, and if you don't want me there, I understand."

"I would rather you there," he replied, perhaps a bit too candidly. But Seth stood again, and then worked to catch his breath as he walked back to the bedroom.

"I don't understand how it all just went away."

"It's mostly about who wants to be the biggest pain in the ass. The people who hurt you refused to come forward for whatever reason, and with the photos and medical reports on your injuries, it's pretty clear you were a victim. The prosecutors’ office knows that sometimes, police reports aren't... as accurate as they should be." He helped Seth to bed, then helped him undress to whatever level he wanted once they were there. "Basically... a lot of little things came together in our favor, and Foggy and I pushed on all of them as hard as we could."

His underwear was what he'd opted to sleep in, knowing now how warm the covers got in Matt's room, and he silently watched Matt help him get undressed, thankful for the kindness, for the help, for everything his new friend had done. It was too much, and Seth wanted to repay the kindness. Someday, maybe, he would.

Seth's eyelids became almost instantly heavy as he laid down in the bed shaped heaven, and he rolled to the comfortable, non-bruised side, slinking closer to Matt. For some reason, he felt the need to be close, to have some kind of contact, so he moved until his forehead was pressed up against the other man's shoulder. "Fuck. My phone. I was going to set an alarm."

Matt had stripped down to his boxers as well, and he reached back to very, very carefully stroke his fingers somewhere he knew was uninjured. "I'll wake us up in time," he promised. "Get some rest."

Seth dreamed a little, he thought, but by the time Matt woke him, he couldn't remember any of them. Some time in his sleep, he'd managed to scoot closer still, and thanks to the affection he'd received, he had draped an arm (and muttered something in his sleep about telling his hurt ribs to fuck off) over Matt's side.

Ryan returned about three hours later. He went straight for the couch and collapsed, figuring Seth would wake him too when it was time.

When Matt finally did wake him, tired, but happy eyes looked up. "Sorry," he whispered, pulling his arm free. "Thank you for the nap. I feel better."

"I'm glad. Are you sure you're up for going out, though? Do you need another day to rest?"

"I'm fine," he replied quietly, sleepily. "Besides, I'm not the one partying, remember. But Ryan and Foggy deserve a night out to celebrate. And today was a good day."

Seth looked at Matt for a long minute. "Are you okay, though? Today was only legal business? Your bruise from last night is pretty subtle. More so than I would have expected. I'm impressed."

"Strictly legal," he promised, then stretched with a quiet, pleased sounding little moan. "And you're right. They deserve some fun. But if it gets to be too much for you, tell me and we'll call it a night, okay?"

"As you wish," Seth replied a little playfully, and then finally had to make himself pull away with the reminder that this wasn't his boyfriend, and he needed to get his shit together.

When he was finally up and dressed in his own clothes from his bag, Seth went to get Ryan. "I'm gonna take pills. You get up."

Ryan groaned, nodded, and then sat up in a rush. He looked at Seth's mess of curls and smiled sweetly. His dumb brother was too good for this world. "Any word from Foggy on where we're going?"

Matt shook his head and got dressed, then called Foggy, who answered with a ridiculous amount of energy.

"Hey! So let's take them to Josie's! I know it's a dive and a half but the food doesn't suck and c'mon, Matt, Josie's!"

"Okay," Matt agreed, smiling. Ever since they'd added food options at Josie's bar, Foggy had been addicted -- when they could pay. "Half an hour?"

"You bet your blind ass, Matty-boy!" Foggy hung up.

It felt good to hear him so happy, Matt thought. Foggy needed this sort of thing. "Looks like we're going to Josie's.. Foggy's second favorite place on earth. It's a shitty bar, but surprisingly safe."

"Sounds perfect," Ryan replied, and Seth hummed his agreement. It would be fun, they were both sure of it.

Seth walked over to where the Western Union envelope was placed and thumbed through the bills. He knew if they'd just gone to a bank to pick up the cash from their own accounts, things would have been fine. But at the time, they were being as low key as possible.

By time they were all ready to leave, most of Seth's pain and quiet resolve had dissipated. "Ready? Let's go get you three drunk and happy."

"Two of them, anyway," Matt said, smiling. From there, it wasn't long until Foggy was giving all of them hugs in the doorway to Josie's, although his hug for Seth was more of a delicate pat than anything else.

The bar was sleazy, but the drinks were strong and the food surprisingly good. Matt slowly worked on just one drink and didn't partake in the food, but he seemed very happy to be there with them. He stayed close to Seth all evening -- unless Seth indicated he didn't want him there. Matt told himself that the nearness was in order to help Seth if he needed it, but the truth was that he felt happier and more at ease when they were close enough to touch.

Eventually, Foggy tried to entice the others into a game of pool. Matt had been loving all the warm interactions, but the pool worried him. "Maybe Seth should sit this out... Seth, come be a wallflower with me, tell me how the game goes?"

Playing pool definitely wasn't an option. Not with the leaning and stretching across the table. But he liked the idea of going over and sitting beside Matt anyway.

He leaned, whispering in Matt's ear against the steady buzz of the bar noise. "As if you can't hear each play better than I can see them," he teased, brushing against Matt's shoulder, and lifting his glass of ice water to his lips.

"So, I fly to New York... Foggy is stripes. He sunk one on the break; I'm convinced it was pure luck... the airline sent my luggage to Georgia. I had to wait two days to get it.... Ryan sunk two, but he scratched on the second, so it's Foggy's play... I figure my luck surely can't get much worse, considering my layover in Indiana was four hours, and then another delay because of plane maintenance. So Ryan and I go out for drinks... Foggy and Ryan both missed, but Foggy made one... no. Shit. Three, before missing... Then I got too drunk. Got beat up, then arrested. And you came to the rescue warning me that I fucked with the wrong people and all that... led me here. And I hurt. And I feel like I've been high for days, but I don't regret any of it. I'm happy to be here."

Seth's whispers made Matt shiver in a familiar, sensual way he'd only ever experienced with one person. His lips parted a little as he listened, but it wasn't the words that drew him in so much as the sound of Seth's voice and the little clinks of the ice every time he moved his glass. He liked the smell of his skin, even the traces of blood and drugs, because Matt could practically taste Seth's body healing, and that was a nice thing. Seth was nice. He was awkward and strange sometimes, but who wasn't? And none of that mattered. He was too nice, too sweet, too good seeming for any of that to matter -- and that was when Matt realized he was definitely forming a crush on Seth... a crush Seth probably didn't mind.

So much for being straight. The realization was a little frightening at first. Matt wasn't sure how to process it or if he was even okay with it -- but did his acceptance really matter? Either way, Seth was here and making Matt feel wanted, and Matt wanted him to feel the same.

"You give an excellent narration," he replied during a pause, his whisper very low and a little gravelly, lips ghosting against Seth's ear. "I can hear them, but can't see the colors or the numbers.. and I like listening to you." He touched his forehead to the side of Seth's head for a brief moment, then turned his attention back towards the game and put his arm around Seth, mindful of his hurts.

"And I'm glad you're here, too. I wish it was under better circumstances... but I'm still glad."

Seth's lips parted to allow a slow, shaky intake of breath to pass through. His stomach twisted in a way that felt much different than nausea as he felt Matt's whispers against his ear. His eyes closed when Matt's head rested against his. Seth smiled.

The arm around his shoulders was welcome, and Seth inched just a little closer, wanting to lean in to rest wholly against Matt, but opted to keep things casual for the time being, just in case Matt was wary about Foggy or Ryan getting too interested too quickly.

Seth continued to narrate the game, including when Foggy sank the eight ball. "Unfortunately it wasn't the pocket he'd called out. So Ryan technically won," Seth said, smiling and taking a moment to look at Matt while the game wasn't actively being played.

"Would you like another drink?"

"No, I'm..." in a heartbeat, Matt's entire demeanor changed. He stiffened and seemed to shut off his warmth and humanity at once, despite not moving, and he turned his head towards the door.

The men who'd attacked the boys had just walked in, looked around, and headed for them.

Matt stood up and grabbed his cane.

Foggy looked up and then over at Ryan in question.

"You friends with these guys?" The leader -- who was the only one that hadn't been there for the attack -- asked Matt.

Foggy quickly moved up to stand next to his partner. "We're their lawyers," he said, and didn't seem half as drunk as he had a few minutes ago.

"If you're here for trouble," Matt started to say, but the leader shushed at him.

"I'm not going to start trouble with a blind man. I'm Hector Ramirez. My parents raised me better than that. No. We have something to say to Cohen and Atwood. Just words."

Matt looked tense, but he nodded. "Okay. Ryan. Seth. You mind coming over here?"

Though he looked like shit, and he was more frightened than he cared to admit, Seth exchanged a glance with Ryan using his one good eye.

Ryan had expected Seth to follow him up, stand right behind his shoulder, as he normally did when they were faced with a potential fight. But this time, Seth stood a little closer to Matt, looking like he was a little more his partner in crime than he was Ryan's.

Meanwhile, Seth had to bite his cheek to keep from running his mouth. He was sober. And these guys could clearly beat the shit out of him.

"I think whatever message you have to deliver was done by your lackeys the last time we met," Ryan said, nodding at Seth. "What is it you want?"

"To offer my apologies," Ramirez said. "What they did was unconscionable. I am sorry. We are trying to make Hell's Kitchen a safer community, and attacking guests is a terrible way to do that. Please. Accept my apologies, my assurances that no further harm will come to you from my people... and my gratitude for the discretion of your lawyers. I will handle discipline privately with these men. We do not assault people here -- and we do not commit gay bashing."

Matt took a small step forward, stunned by what he was hearing, because Ramirez seemed to be telling the truth. "Are you serious?"

"I am. This isn't going to be the beginning of any vendetta. We won't do that here. Your clients are safe. You are safe. We only kill our enemies in Hell's Kitchen, my friend -- and these two men are not enemies."

Foggy wished he was a little more sober, because he had to be hallucinating.

Seth and Ryan looked at each other in surprise. This wasn't at all what they had been expecting. A fight. A warning to stay out of their clubs. A threat that Seth wouldn't be so lucky next time.

But an apology.

Seth was willing to let things go. He wanted to enjoy the rest of their time in New York. He wanted to enjoy the rest of their night.

But Ryan wasn't so easily swayed.

"Yeah? You gonna have your guys pay for the hospital bills? How about the pain pills he has to take because he can't hardly move without them?"

"Ryan, let it go. He said he wanted peace. The whole thing is over. Let's just start up another game."

"No. Because you can't play a game. Because your fucking rib is cracked."

"I know. I know it is. But I just want this to be over." Seth reached out to put a hand on Ryan's shoulder, who jerked free of his touch. "Ryan, please."

Finally Ryan looked at Seth, still fuming. But his gaze shifted to Foggy, and then Matt. Eventually, he nodded. "Fine. But when you next want to call your dad and tell him how great the world is, how nice your time in New York was, don't forget to tell him you were the victim of a hate crime. I'm sure he'll appreciate hearing the story."

Ramirez listened and watched Ryan until he was done. He smiled then and held his arms out to his sides.

"It is not enough? I see. You come from California where everything is fair. Where everyone is paid. It is not enough for you to escape with your lives, to be given an assurance of safety that you clearly don't want."

Matt shifted so as to stay between Ramirez and the Californians, but his heart was already sinking.

"Okay. I take back the apology, Ryan Atwood. One should never give a gift that isn't wanted. But I'll give you one more, a lesson: sometimes, drunken men do stupid things and nobody pays. Sometimes, sober men do things that are laughed at. The world? Not a fair place. Lawyers cannot fix everything for you. They cannot always get you money. Sometimes, all the lawyers can get... is killed.

"You'll go home tonight, Seth Cohen and Ryan Atwood. Because if we see you in New York again... it's a dangerous city.

"You got what you wanted now."

Seth’s heart fell to his stomach and effectively made him nauseous. Ryan’s temper had never been a good thing. And while what the men had done was unforgivable, there were certain instances where he should just know when to let things go. It was a lesson he had never learned. And, it seemed, one which was likely to get them killed before they made it out of the city.

“It is a dangerous city, and though you may believe otherwise…”

“Ryan.”

“You don’t own it.”

Seth grabbed Ryan by the arm and pulled him around to face him. “Will you fucking knock it off. I know you were uninjured in the fight that happened the other day. But I already fucking feel like death. I get it, you’re pissed. I’m pissed. But he came looking for peace and now you’ve essentially turned that olive branch into a pistol.”

Ryan pulled his arm free of Seth’s grasp, spared one more glare in the direction of the Ramirez, and then moved back to the pool table, inserting another couple quarters to release the balls for another game.

Seth didn’t apologize for his friend. It was clear, he hoped, that he didn’t stand in the same position, but he knew Ryan was angry for Seth, and so to speak out against him, or to apologize for him would feel like a betrayal Ryan didn’t deserve. So Seth moved back to where he had been sitting beside Matt before the others arrived, knowing in his gut that they would likely be shot while leaving the bar tonight.

“I know you don’t approve but…”

“No, Ryan. No ‘but.’ These men put me in the hospital. And we don’t have a weapon in this fight. Literally. So all you’re doing is waving the fucking red cape at the raging bull and asking me to stand behind it. I wanted a week of tourism and shopping.”

“You don’t expect me to apologize for standing up for you, do you?”

“Is that what you were doing?” Seth looked down at his glass of water, his eyes following a drop of condensation along the outside of the glass as it gathered with the rest of the drops at the wet ring at the base. “Play your game or let’s get out of here.” Seth turned his attention to Matt and Foggy. “I’m sorry. For whatever trouble that just caused the two of you. I’m so sorry.”

Matt had stayed put while Ryan and Seth wandered off. Ramirez was still there, watching, and Matt could feel satisfaction rolling off him. Ramirez would have honored his word, Matt thought -- and now he would honor this one.

"It's too bad," Ramirez murmured and patted Matt on the cheek.

"Don't touch me." Matt slapped his hand away.

"I won't have to." He nodded to his crew and they left. He was the last out the door. As for Matt, he seemed rooted in place, hands tight around his cane.

Everyone else in the bar avoided looking at them.

Foggy took his phone out.

"Don't bother," Matt said. "You know the police won't help. Especially not us."

"Then who will? Matt? We can't exactly get in a gun battle or whatever with an entire gang! In case you didn't notice!" Foggy wasn't sure whether he was more frightened or angry, but decided it didn't matter. "We need help. Maybe the cops..."

"We both know exactly how this will play out." Matt's voice had become a growl. Finally, he moved. He went and got his jacket and pulled it on. For a moment, he stood still, between Ryan and Seth, and then he shook his head without a word. He couldn't disagree with what Ryan had said, no matter how naive it had been. Ryan had an angry passion for justice, it seemed, and Matt could understand that.

Matt headed for the door.

"Matt! Where are you going?"

"Home. Make sure they get back safely, Foggy. Goodnight."

The door shut behind him.

And now, as if the certainty of his own impending death wasn’t enough, as Seth watched Matt exit the bar, he stood, winced, and considered trying to run after him. He was worried. Anxious. He had read plenty, heard plenty of stories about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. And he had no doubt that Matt was every bit that man and more. And so, as he left in a huff, Seth wondered if he was really going home, or if he was going to make sure they could leave the bar without being attacked.

Speaking of which, Seth didn’t know what to do. Leaving was dangerous. And even though the entire bar had heard Ramirez threaten their lives, he doubted their deaths would even warrant questioning of that man and his gang. Ryan was impossible to reason with right now, and he likely wouldn’t be approachable for the rest of the night. Still, he racked another round and didn’t give Foggy the option to break, but when none of the balls actually made it into a pocket, he stepped back and rested the butt of the stick on the ground, his head hanging low.

Seth looked at Foggy. “You are not obligated to play with him. My friend and brother is a moron. But, this is also his olive branch to you. You’ve done a lot for he and I, and he’s not so good at the ‘sorrys.’”

“I’m not sorry for what I said.”

“You put our new friends in danger. You better fucking be sorry.”

Ryan looked up to meet Foggy’s eyes, and though his pride wouldn’t let him say it, his eyes admitted his remorse.

“I’ll call an uber whenever you two are ready to leave.” Let’s just hope it’s not one of the gang members who answers the call.

"Something tells me we should... finish the game," Foggy said, his voice a little tight. His vision blurred and he reached up to wipe quickly at it, then took his stick back up. He set up a shot and froze in place, ready to take it -- but he couldn't. Instead, he closed his eyes and let his head hang.

"Matt's gonna die, Seth. I know you know... it. He's gonna die. If he... stays home alone." His voice was so quiet that he wasn't sure either of them would hear it. Hell, he wasn't sure he wanted them to. He straightened up after a moment, looking pale, and took his phone out again. "Andrew? Hey. Um. It's Foggy. Look. If you. You can get hold of Elektra. Matt needs her. Right now.... yeah.... no we're in a bar. He left. Josie's. Yeah. No." Foggy sounded on the verge of tears, or maybe like he was going to be sick. "She'll understand. Please tell her." When he hung up, he hurried away to the bathroom where he was promptly sick.

A few minutes later he came out, having rinsed his mouth and washed his face. He still looked pale, but this time he took a shot.

"Lucky thirteen," he said quietly, when the thirteen plopped in.

Seth had heard him. Ryan was too busy taking a deep pull from his glass of whiskey, treating it much more like a shot than the slowly sipped on glass it was supposed to be. Seth had heard him, but he didn’t know what to do. He was less help to Matt in his condition than any of the others, and while his heart was aching and yeah, maybe he should go home… or, back to Matt’s home, he didn’t even know if Matt would be there. He didn’t know what to do.

When the Foggy returned and took the shot, Seth sat up straighter, his stomach twisting with uncertainty, and he waited for some sign, some suggestion on Foggy’s part. Ryan, however, had decided that getting drunk would be the best coping mechanism. He was brooding and silent, and every time he looked at someone, his eyes screamed that he was amping up for a fight. But Seth didn’t want it to come to that.

Ryan lost that game, horribly, and as when Foggy still had two balls left, Seth had put in an order for an uber, and he got the notification that the car was waiting outside just before Foggy sunk the eight ball.

“Right, well, our ride is here, and I think it’ll be better for all parties involved if we get out of the bar and just go somewhere quiet where we can lock the doors.” He wanted to find Matt. He wanted to make sure he was okay. And while Seth had no idea that Foggy had tried to reach out for Elektra, Seth prayed that there had been someone on Matt’s side who could help him in whatever it was he was trying to do.

Ryan swayed as he leaned against the pool stick, but he eventually nodded and -- with several attempts -- stuck it back in its place on the wall. Seth pulled cash from his wallet and closed out their tab, leaving a more than generous tip for the trouble they’d caused. And then he turned back to look at Foggy. “I think we should at least get out of here. Whatever that translates to for you, we’ll go along with. But I can’t… just sit still in here any longer.”

"We should go to Matt's..."

But gunshots drowned out whatever else Foggy was going to say. People screamed and ducked, but the bar seemed untouched.

Several more shots rang out and then a man screamed in agony, a sickening, blood-chilling cry.

Foggy curled up on the floor and prayed.

Bullets sprayed in through the glass.

There was another scream from outside. Shouting. More shots -- then silence.

Seth had ducked, like everybody else, crouched down so he was below a window, but he also crawled through the grime of the bar floor to the door.

Matt.

Was Matt out there? Was he safe? Had one of those cries been him?

Seth was about ready to run out the door — now that there had been silence — adrenaline muting out any pain he had, when he heard his name being called.

“Seth!”

When he looked back over his shoulder, just shy of pushing the door open to try and go out there, to make sure Matt wasn’t the one who had screamed out in pain, his eyes caught sight of Ryan, his face screwed up in agony, clutching at a slowly growing red stain on his lower abdomen. The words to describe what had just happened wouldn’t come to Seth’s mind, he couldn’t fathom them, couldn’t put them in the correct order. But the sight alone, and the knowledge, however incapable he was of putting it to words, of what had just happened to his best friend, to his brother, kept him inside the bar and running back in the direction of the pool tables.

Ryan slid to the floor, clutching the wound. Seth pulled out his phone and immediately called 911. “Yeah. We’re at a bar called Josie’s. There were gunshots outside. My… My brother’s been shot. In the abdomen.” Seth peeked around to look behind Ryan and then shook his head, as if answering a question. “It didn’t go all the way through.” He helped Ryan all the way down to the ground, laying on his back, hoping gravity would work in his favor and keep some of the blood inside Ryan’s body. “You fucking idiot,” he whispered to Ryan while dispatch alerted him that help was on the way. “You mother fucking idiot. You had to go and get yourself shot.”

Foggy crawled over to help with Ryan, too numb and horrified to actually think through any of this. He couldn't handle it, it was all too big, all too terrible, so he had to focus on just one thing. Just Ryan. Just Ryan and his blood.

He couldn't think about Matt. He couldn't even let himself start to wonder.

Just Ryan. Only Ryan.

----

At the hospital, Foggy couldn't leave. He looked like another sibling, too lost and worried to just be a friend or a lawyer. When they were finally allowed in, he sat numbly on one side, holding Ryan's hand, and he silently prayed. Please don't die. Please don't die. Oh my god, no. You're too young. Please don't die. We could be brothers. Please don't. Please don't.

Surgery had lasted too long, though with the touch and go situation, any length of time felt too long. Seth had tried to call Matt, but it had gone to voice mail.

“I know you’re… Fuck. Just let us know you’re alive. Tell me where to find you.”

The surgeon had assured them that Ryan, if he woke, should be through the worst of it. The bullet had hit a bone in Ryan’s hip, and they’d had to screw in a metal plate. He’d lost a lot of blood, but his blood type was O-, common enough. While Foggy sat and held Ryan’s hand, Seth paced. He was hours past the time he was supposed to take another pill, but he’d left them at Matt’s, figuring they would be back in time. The police came to talk to the guys after another hour. Luckily, they weren’t ones they’d dealt with earlier that week.

With as level of a head as he could manage, Seth explained to them the proceedings of what had happened not just that night, but that week. He said he had not seen a shooter, and could not flat out claim that it had been Ramirez, but he did share the threat that had been delivered. Seth left Matt out of it as much as possible, saying that he had left as soon as Ramirez had, and had gone home. He even claimed that he’d spoken with Matt on the phone just before he’d contacted the uber company — was the driver okay?

The cop told him they would be in touch, but to not go anywhere, not to go back home to California just yet, and they would keep him updated.

Seth returned to his seat by Ryan’s side, checking his phone.

He was distracted when Ryan opened his eyes, exhaled miserably, and then peeked down at Seth, who shook his head.

“What? I couldn’t let you continue to be the center of attention with your injuries. You know how much I like for things to be about me.”

“No. Ryan. That’s me. I’m the self-absorbed one. You’re the reckless, fighty, impulsive one. And you’re an idiot. But i’m glad you’re alive.” Seth squeezed Ryan’s hand, spared a hopefully reassuring — though still plenty worried — glance at Foggy, and then went to get the nurse.

Several hours later, a text message arrived from Matt:

>> am alive. Am safe. Can't join you at the hospital tonight. Will try tomorrow. End message.

Foggy was asleep in the chair by that point, completely unwilling to leave Ryan's side. A nurse had been in recently to check on Ryan, but things were generally quiet in the hospital -- until there came a very light tap on the door and it was pushed open by a young person.

He barely looked like he was out of his teens. Soft, dark curls framed a youthful and somewhat effeminate face, and he was dressed plainly, as if to purposefully offset his almost delicate beauty. Gray jeans, a tight gray shirt, and a dark gray denim jacket left him looking more like trash that had been swept off the street in the eighties than anything else.

"Sorry to intrude," he whispered. "Are you guys Andrew Gale's friends? He said you might need... someone to protect you." Although it seemed far too late for that, Montparnasse thought.

Seth read the message over and over again. He considered offering to go to Matt, but he needed to stay at Ryan’s side, and he knew this. But still, he hoped that Matt wasn’t injured and trying to treat himself. He didn’t question how Matt knew they’d gone to the hospital. That part of the message seemed less important. And Seth still didn’t know that Elektra had been contacted. So all he had left to do was worry. Not just about Ryan, but Matt too. As he read the message again, he considered waking Foggy just enough to give him the little bit of reassurance he might receive at knowing that Matt was alive. But Seth figured he would receive his own text message, so letting him sleep would be the kindest thing for now.

As the kid, for that’s the only word that really came to mind when he looked at the young man, entered the room and mentioned Gale’s name, Seth stared at him for a long moment, and then just gave one singular nod of affirmation. “Thanks,” he whispered, his throat full of gravel, and he shifted in his chair, holding his breath as he did, wishing he again had that same surge of adrenaline to down out the sharp jabs once more.

He didn’t know how this kid would protect them, but it seemed like a pointless conversation. Seth turned back to Ryan, leaned his head over the edge of the bed, and tried to sleep.

Both he and Foggy were woke at close to six the next morning.

“I’m sorry, boys, but during shift change in the ICU, when linens get changed and doctors make their rounds, we have to ask families to leave. Just for two hours. Then you’re welcome to come back. And hopefully he’ll be awake when you do.”

Montparnasse had been perched in the windowsill, and when those instructions came, he shook his head.

"Sorry. They can go, but I've got to stay." He reached into a pocket and pulled out a thin little badge wallet, which he offered to the nurse. "I need you not to talk about that," he said, gesturing to the id he'd handed over. "I'm undercover, but I've been tasked with protecting this man."

The nurse frowned but gave the id back. It looked genuine enough. "Alright... but the others have to go."

"Mm. We gotta get some breakfast, and go get your pain meds, huh?" Foggy stood up. He gave Montparnasse a confused look, but decided to believe him. The guy looked familiar -- and Foggy was blissfully unaware of the Uzi tucked under Montparnasse's jacket.

He got up, stretched, and kissed Ryan's forehead lightly before looking at Seth. "Matt's place? Then back here?"

#blindlyburning #one shot #the way i see it #part three #(asldkfj there will be at least ten i imagine)

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