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myriadimagines · 5 years ago

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Trouble

Mission: Impossible One Shot

Pairing: Reader x William Brandt

Other Characters: Ethan Hunt, Ilsa Faust, Benji Dunn, Luther Stickell

Warnings: violence, alcohol consumption, swearing

Requester: anonymous

Request: “Omg I need a William Brandt x Reader oneshot where the reader is Ethan’s child and a member of his team. Brandt at first thinks that your going to be trouble but after you save his life, he can’t help but fall in love with you.”

Word Count: 1,733

A/N: i rewatched mi: fallout with my mom and halfway through my mom goes WHERE’S BRANDT??? and that was a Mood. also alanna and ilsa are so hot g damn. that is all. i’m not the biggest fan of this but when am i ever when it comes to my one shots but i hope you enjoy

please reblog/leave comments, they’re very much appreciated!

Your name: submit What is this?

You try your utter best to contain your excitement as you trail behind your dad, biting back an eager smile. Ethan casts a quick glance at you, his own lips curling into a proud smile as he can see you practically floating with every step. This is your first mission, having been approved to be out the field, and you couldn’t be more than excited to be joining your dad’s team. Although Ethan has his reservations — what parent wouldn’t after all, having their child in such a dangerous profession — he knows what a capable agent you are, and is more than proud of you for how far you’ve come.

Ethan pushes open the door, leading you into the small warehouse room the team has settled into. Ilsa leans over Benji’s shoulder as he intently fixes up a small gadget, and Brandt and Luther are on the other side of the room, where Brandt listens as Luther explains an enlarged map on his computer. All heads look up as you close the door behind you, and Luther’s lips quick into a smile as he offers you a small nod — Luther has been a family friend who you’ve known since you were born.

“Team, this is our newest member, y/n.” Ethan introduces you, and you square your shoulders as you can see them all making their own assessments of you, looking you up and down as they silently try to deduce what kind of person you are. Clearing his throat, Ethan adds, “y/n Hunt.”

Benji’s mouth drops open and Ilsa blinks in surprise before she quickly regains composure. Looking around at his teammates reactions, Benji stammers, “Okay, how did I not know you had a child?”

Ethan chuckles, and you step forward as you pipe up, “I’ve heard so much about everyone, and I’m really looking forward to working together.”

“Right, well, I have something you could work on for me.” Luther beckons for you to come closer, and you quickly oblige as Brant approaches Ethan, eyes narrowed as the two of you pass by one another. Ethan raises an eyebrow at Brandt as the two of them gather around one of the desks, Ethan quickly picking up on the obvious hesitation in Brandt’s expression.

“Are you sure this is the best idea?” Brandt blurts out, glancing over to where you and Luther are hunched over a monitor, rapidly typing away. Turning back to Ethan, Brandt continues, “Seems like a conflict of interest.”

“Brandt, I assure you, y/n will be a valuable asset to the team, and I won’t let my role as a father get in the way.” Ethan replies, his tone stern, and Brandt’s lips flatten into a line. Already predicting his next argument, Ethan adds, “y/n may not have as much field experience as the rest of us, but they’re a good agent.”

Brandt’s frown deepens, but he doesn’t push the argument. Ethan turns away, signalling for everyone to gather around.

“Our target tonight this man. Jeremy Mitchell.” Ethan points to a series of images that appear on the monitor next to him. “He’ll be at an exclusive party tonight, which we’ll all be attending, courtesy of Luther for getting us on the guest list. He knows information that is crucial to us, but he’s also targeted by a number of crime organization because of what he knows. Our mission is to protect him before safely escorting him back here at the end of the night. Understood?”

The team nods, and as everyone scatters to prepare, you approach Brandt with an outstretched hand. “I don’t think I’ve had the chance to talk to you yet. I look forward to working with you, Agent Brandt.”

Brant glances down at your hand, before curtly nodding at you. You seem too enthusiastic to him to the point where it seems almost naive, and Brandt’s worries about your relation to Ethan still plague him. Hastily checking to make sure his gun is loaded before tucking it into his waistband, covering it up with his suit jacket, Brant simply replies, “Don’t know if I can say the same.”

You blink at him in surprise, slowly drawing your hand back as Brandt walks past you. Your eyebrows furrow as Benji walks up to your side, and you mutter, “Jeez, what’d I do to piss him off?”

Benji follows your gaze to where Brandt is. Shrugging, he tries to give you an encouraging nudge with his elbow as he waves his hand. “Ah, don’t worry about it. Brandt’s always the pessimist of the group. Anyway, you ready to go?”

—

“I have eyes on the target.”

You weave in between crowds of expensive ballgowns and clean suits, keeping your head low as to not draw too much attention to yourself. Ilsa’s voice crackles through your earpiece, and you glance up at the second flood to see her leaning against one of the building’s columns, drink in hand as she distractedly swirls her champagne in her glass. She makes momentary eye contact with you, but shows no sign of emotion as her gaze quickly sweeps over you to where Mitchell is standing a short distance away from you.

“y/n, stay focused.” Brandt’s voice suddenly chastises, and you hastily look away as you can see him observing you from across the room, pretending to admire a piece of artwork decorating the nearby wall. “You don’t want to give us away.”

You press your lips together in a flat line, struggling not to snap back at Brandt. The night was full of similar comments from him, berating you over the tiniest things he feared would reveal the team to anyone who was watching you. Sucking in a sharp breath, you suddenly gulp down the remainder of wine left in your glass before marching over to Brandt, sidling up to him as he struggles not to look at you in alarm.

“What the hell are you doing?” he hisses, glancing over his shoulder before back at you.

“What’s your problem with me?” you hiss back, glaring at him as you barely manage to keep your voice a harsh whisper. You can hear Benji talking in your earpiece, but you ignore him as you continue, “All night, you’ve been picking on me over the most ridiculous things.”

“Those ridiculous things you’re doing are going to get us into trouble.” Brandt growls, and you scoff as your clench your hands into fists. “You could use some common sense-”

“Guys!” Benji interrupts, and you and Brandt flinch as out of the corner of your eye, you can see Ilsa and Ethan on the move, briskly weaving through the crowds. You and Brandt exchange confused glances before Benji’s panicked voice continues, “Mitchell’s gone.”

“What?” you spin around, eyes wide as you scan the crowds, a sinking feeling making itself at home in your stomach as you realize Benji’s right. Running your hands through your hair, you can see Ethan desperately searching the room as Brandt suddenly grabs your arm, pointing at a man’s retreating back disappearing behind an obscured door.

You and Brandt look back at each other, and you reluctantly put aside your argument as you give each other knowing looks, and Brandt moves his hand to his gun. Already on the move, you tell him, “I’ll see if there’s a way to cut them off.”

Brandt nods, not wasting any time as he quickly moves to the backdoor, whipping out his gun the second he steps into the narrow corridor. There’s a flight of stairs going down, and he can hear the faint yelling, the muffled protests and hurried footsteps, and Brandt breaks into a sprint as his finger moves over the trigger. He jumps down the stairs and turns the corner, aiming his gun at two armed men who have Mitchell surrounded, and Brandt yells out, “Hey!”

The two men turn, barely having time to raise their guns before Brandt shoots them. Mitchell lets out an alarmed scream, and Brandt rushes over to him, grabbing his arm as he hurriedly says, “I’m here to protect you.”

Before Mitchell can protest, Brandt’s head snaps up as he hears more men coming down the corridor, and the familiar sound of guns being loaded as their rumbling footsteps grow louder. Pushing Mitchell ahead, Brandt instructs, “Go, go, go!”

The two run down the corridor, narrowly dodging the rapid gunfire that ensues as soon as their pursuers catch sight of them. They navigate the intricate maze brightly lit by fluorescent lights, ducking into whatever door that appears in hope of an exit as Brandt yells into his earpiece, “I have Mitchell, but we’re being chased-”

Brandt grabs Mitchell by the back of his collar as he spots a door to his right, and he pushes it open before shoving Mitchell inside. The two continue to sprint, Mitchell struggling to keep up through his labored breaths, and as Brandt turns the corner, he’s confronted by three men waiting for him with guns.

“Shit.” Brandt raises his gun, but he’s outnumbered. The three men advance towards him, guns aimed, and Brandt backs up to retreat before abruptly hearing more men thundering up behind him yelling instructions and loading their weapons.

Brandt suddenly ducks upon hearing the loud burst of gunfire, and he instinctively pulls Mitchell towards him to shield him before he looks up and sees the three men fall, blood pooling out from their lifeless bodies. You run up from where you had managed to sneak up on them, and Brandt’s eyes widen as you grab his arm, breathless as you ask, “You okay?”

“How- how’d you find us?” Brandt stammers, almost too stunned to respond. After a beat, he adds, “You saved me.”

Your lips quirk into a grin, but it quickly fades as you heard the footsteps getting louder. You grab Brandt’s hand, and suddenly, Brandt doesn’t know why he now suddenly feels more flustered and impressed than he’s felt in his entire life. Heat spreads throughout his body from the simple touch of your fingertips, and you pull him upright and beckon for him to grab Mitchell as you urge, “Let’s move.”

He nods at you, the two of you exchanging a small, tentative smile, and all Brandt can think about is how you’re definitely going to cause him trouble, but not in the way he originally thought.

tag list: @fairytalesforever / @egg2k16

#mission impossible imagine #william brandt imagine #reader x william brandt #william brandt x reader #mission impossible #mission impossible one shot #william brandt #william brandt one shot #imagine #imagines #reader insert #one shot #oneshot #anyway i imagine the reader is like in their 30s or something and ethan had a child in his 20s so the age gap is acceptable akjsakd rip

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danfanciesphil · 6 years ago

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too high (can’t come down) by @danfanciesphil

Suspending himself 7,000 feet above the rest of the world seems likely to be a sure-fire way for Dan to escape normality, and isolate himself for the foreseeable future. The Secret of the Alps, a small hotel tucked into the side of the Swiss mountains is too niche for most avid adventurers to have heard of, making it the perfect place for Dan to work as he sorts through his problems. Unfortunately, privacy is a coveted thing, and as Dan soon finds out, the hotel harbours one guest who values it more than most.

Rating: Explicit Tags: Enemies to lovers, snow, mountains, skiing, hostility, slow burn, secrecy, longing, repression, nobility, classism, cheating, eventual sex

Ao3 Link

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five

Chapter Six

For a moment, no words will come. The blood in Dan’s wrist pulses in odd, shifting patterns beneath the skin. He swallows, caught on the edge of a gelid blue stare. “I… can’t.”

“You can’t ski?” Phil asks, his sneer an anchor that yanks Dan back down from the astral plane into which Phil’s touch had propelled him.

“Of course I can ski,” he retorts, bristling. He chooses not to mention that he hasn’t skied since he was fourteen, when his family went to Chamonix for a week, and his mum and dad complained the entire time that it was too cold. At a ski lodge. “But I have to… y’know, work. Hotel stuff.”

Mesmerised by the slight twitch of the corner of Phil’s mouth, which still doesn’t quite count as a smile, Dan’s hostile stance falters, then wanes. Like it’s a perfume wafting from Phil’s skin through the air between them, in the next second Dan smells the imminence of his own surrender.

“Come on,” Phil says, his voice quiet, like it’s just for Dan. It doesn’t seem to matter that nobody else could have heard him anyway. “What else are you gonna do all day? Cook lunch for the hotel ghosts? Sit at reception and pretend you’re not playing on your phone?”

A spurt of blood shoots into Dan’s cheeks; he’d thought he was so stealthy, hiding his phone under the desk as he attempted to load a single meme at a time on Tumblr mobile, using tenuous 3G.

“I- I don’t have any skis,” Dan says lamely.

“Lucky for you that my old ones were repaired by the elusive hotel elf, then,” Phil quips, already stepping away. “I’ll meet you by the front door, shall I?”

He’s gone before Dan can muster up a further refusal. He stands gormless in the middle of the kitchen, gazing around at the pristine surfaces. If only he’d resisted the urge to clean everything already, then he could at least have the excuse of needing to scrub the day away. Perhaps he could quickly throw open all the cupboard doors, ransack the fridge and hurl ingredients and coffee everywhere, feigning a wolf had snuck in somehow, or a snow leopard.

An image flashes into Dan’s mind, of Mona’s deepening frown as Phil explained to her that not only did Dan let some wild animal break in and contaminate the kitchen, but that he also refused to grant the one request of the only guest. He shudders, closing the door on that image before it can develop. Mona is already far too close to a stark realisation of Dan’s utter hopelessness; despite the words of any fortune-telling crows, a voice lingers at the back of Dan’s mind, assuring him that it’s only a matter of time before he slips up and disappoints everyone. His only hope is to stall that inevitability for as long as possible.

Plus Phil is, annoyingly, right. There is nothing else for Dan to do today; he and Mona did a deep clean of the whole hotel before she left, and the place is spotless. With no guests to look after, and a low chance of anyone phoning given that the Swiss news helpfully predicted a terrifying blizzard, Dan really is at a loose end.

It takes about two minutes of dithering in the kitchen before he has to admit defeat. Dan lets out a dreaded sigh, pushing all the air from his lungs, and then goes to wash up the two mugs he’s still holding. As he’s scrubbing the coffee stains, he decides that caffeine is the only acceptable (or available) drug he can utilise to get through whatever lies in store, so he places the mugs on the drying rack, and rinses out a thermos flask he finds, along with Louise’s percolator. He makes the coffee very strong, pours it into the flask, then thinks for a moment, and adds a dollop of soya milk.

As soon as he opens his chest of drawers, Dan is struck once again by how ill-prepared he is for a sudden, impulsive foray into the snowy wilderness. As he lacks proper ‘ski-wear’ - whatever that might be - Dan Instead chooses to go for layers. A clingy t-shirt that barely fit him when he was sixteen, then a baggier, long-sleeved t-shirt. He covers these with a shapeless grey jumper, then a black jacket, and then, finally his warmest coat. He adds thick socks, a hat, boots, sunglasses, gloves and a scarf. By the time he feels he’s ready, his arms stick out stiffly from his sides, but he figures that a little loss of movement is a fair price to pay for not getting frostbite.

He slots the flask into one of the deep pockets of his coat, and tries not to think too hard about what he’s about to do. Or with whom. He deliberately takes his time getting down to the lobby in order to prolong the inevitable, and also because he likes the idea of the Fresh Prince of the Alps having to wait for him. Phil lowers his phone as Dan approaches, pushing off from where he’s leant against the wall. It takes a moment for him to drink in the sight of Dan, and then his eyebrows shoot up, and he seems to swallow something suspiciously close to a laugh.

“Err, think you’ll be warm enough?”

Dan rolls his eyes. “I didn’t exactly pack for extreme sports.”

Phil just makes a ‘hmm’ noise, turning to the collection of skis and poles leaning against the wall. “Not sure cross-country skiing could be classed as an extreme sport, but you do y- er, suit yourself.”

If Dan tries to reply, he’ll probably swear, so he clamps his mouth shut, and sticks an arm out to grab for the the red skis. Phil snatches them up first.

“I’ll wear these,” he says. “You take the new ones.”

He doesn’t look at Dan, just pushes the shiny new skis into his hands. Bewildered, Dan stares at his warped reflection in the electric blue varnish.

“What? Why?”

It takes a minute for Phil to respond; he’s tugging at the repaired bracket on the red ski, seemingly to test its durability. This alone is enough to make Dan want to slap it out of his hands. Then, he turns to Dan, that vague almost-smile still tucked beneath his smug expression.

“Haven’t tested the new ones out yet,” he says with a shrug. “Reckon it’d be better for my caddy to fall on his face than me, right?”

Dan splutters, outraged. “Caddy?”

“Grab those ski poles for us, would you?” Phil asks, a spritz of amusement perfuming his words.

Dan might be intrigued by the lightness of his tone if it weren’t for the fact he were quietly steaming inside his many layers. The heating in this place does not fuck about. Worried he’ll boil alive unless they get outside soon, Dan chooses to just do as he’s asked. If Phil insists on calling him a caddy again, at least Dan will have four long weapons to wield. Dan gathers the four poles up in his arms as best he can, along with his own skis; on the verge of dropping everything, he opts for speed, and scurries after Phil out of the front door.

“If you expect me to haul all of this up some peak or other-”

Dan can’t see, as he’s got a number of pointed objects obscuring his view, so he doesn’t realise that Phil has stopped directly in front of him, a few paces beyond the door. Dan bumps straight into him, and instantly everything he’s holding drops to the ground. When he looks up, Phil is aiming an exasperated gaze down at the pile of poles and skis, as if he’s already regretting inviting Dan along.

“No, I don’t expect you to actually be my pack mule. We’re going to wear our skis,” Phil explains slowly, like he’s talking to a child.

He’s already got his skis laid neatly out in front of him - two bright red parallel lines striking through the snow. As Dan watches confusedly, Phil pushes the tip of his right boot into one of the skis. Dan’s stomach squeezes with discomfort; he’d been correct before, when repairing the skis. The fastenings are not the same as he’s used to.

“Erm,” Dan says, moving his attention to one of his own skis, laying at an angle in the snow. It has the same unfamiliar fastening, much to his dismay.

Mind racing to figure out every option available to him that doesn’t involve swallowing his pride and asking Phil for help, Dan moves to inspect the contraption. As if he’s sensed Dan’s incompetence, Phil drops into a crouch anyway, and reaches for Dan’s boot. Instinctively, Dan jerks his foot away. Phil lifts his head to look at Dan. Viewing him from this angle is strange. From this perspective, he seems hunched, small, insignificant. He has none of his Lordly airs about him, hunched down in the snow near Dan’s feet. Phil doesn’t say anything, he just waits, hand calmly outstretched towards Dan’s boot. Wordlessly, Dan moves his foot back into Phil’s reach, and watches as Phil carefully rights the ski, then pulls his foot towards it. He fits the toe of Dan’s boot into the unusual strap.

“They’re telemark skis,” Phil says, tightening the strap around the ball of Dan’s foot. “I’m guessing you’re more used to Alpine skis? They’re the ones with the strap at the back as well.”

Dan bristles again at the condescending tone. “I’m familiar with both,” he says, because he’s a stubborn moron. Phil says nothing, but that near-smile returns as he reaches for Dan’s other foot; Dan wobbles slightly as Phil guides it into the left ski. “But, uh, it’s been a while. So... remind me again of the difference between, er, telemark and…”

“Alpine,” Phil supplies, standing up. He holds Dan’s gaze for a moment, and then laughs, short and quiet, but just enough for Dan to catch a glimpse of two rows of pearl-white teeth, with a flash of pink tongue caught between them. It’s the most Dan’s seen him smile yet, though he’s obviously laughing at Dan which isn’t ideal. “Telemark skis are designed so that you can wear them for both hiking and skiing. You can move your ankle in them, see?”

He demonstrates, twisting his un-strapped heel to and fro. Dan tries to do the same, and almost falls over. “Why do we need to use our ankles, exactly?”

Dan doesn’t remember skiing requiring a lot of joint movement. From what he can recall of his brief experience as a teenager, he strapped the skis on, let the lift drag him up a big hill, and gravity did a lot of the work getting him to the bottom again.

Phil is full-on smirking now. Dan thinks he preferred the non-smile. “You may have noticed that we don’t have chairlifts up here. We’ll be hiking to the slopes on foot. I’ve put skins on the bottom of these to give us more grip, but we can take them off when we get there.”

Dan tries not let the alarm show on his face. They’re going to be walking up hills? In skis? “And... I suppose once we ski down the slope we’ll be having to...”

“Walk back up again? Yes. Unless you fancy setting up camp down there.”

An ill-timed image of the Brokeback Mountain tent attacks Dan so viciously it nearly knocks him sideways. “No! No, no. Walking back up. Cool. Good thing I’ve been practicing with those bloody hotel stairs, right?”

Dan forces a laugh, but this time Phil’s face remains unmoved. Clearly it’s only Dan’s unintentional idiocy that can procure a genuine smile from him then, right.

Phil looks to the sky briefly, seeming to assess something in the heavens themselves, and asks, “ready to go, then?”

He doesn’t wait for Dan’s reply. He picks up his ski poles, then turns and begins sort of slide-walking away from the hotel, in seemingly no particular direction. There’s a large thicket of trees ahead of him, but then there are thickets of trees in a few other directions too. Nevertheless, Dan has no choice but to trust this man’s sense of direction, so attempts to move after him; to his horror, his legs immediately split apart in a move he is certainly not flexible enough to achieve. He manages to stab his ski poles into the earth and rectify himself before pulling anything, but in doing so he flails, and almost falls. Luckily, he’s gotten back into a reasonably dignified standing position by the time Phil turns to him, wondering what the hold up is.

“Sorry,” Dan says, making a valiant attempt to copy Phil’s movements exactly as he inches forwards again. It works, sort of, though he doesn’t do it anywhere near as gracefully as Phil seems to be able to. When he gets to Phil, he shrugs, like he’s totally fine. “Just… admiring the view,” he explains. “Lead on.”

It takes over thirty gruelling minutes to cross the plains of the mountain in pursuit of a supposedly safe ski-area, but eventually they reach an abrupt dip, where the mountain begins its gradual slope downward. This close to the edge of the mountain, the view is breathtaking. Dan can’t focus on it, however, because his thighs ache, the moisture in his lungs has turned to ice and is freezing him from the inside out, and for the last twenty minutes, Phil Novokoric has been unhelpfully telling him everything he’s doing wrong with the stupid ‘telemark’ skis.

“Is this where we do some actual skiing then?” Dan asks crossly, jamming his poles into the snow.

He’s so glad to get to a point where he actually knows what he’s doing that he’s already shuffling up to the edge of the slope, more than ready to get this over with. He’s so keen, in fact, that he’s only just about saved from teetering over the edge and hurtling down in an enormous cartoon-style snowball, by a far more sensible Phil. He grabs Dan by the hood of his coat before he can topple to his untimely death.

“Careful!” he exclaims as he yanks Dan backwards. Yet again, the irritating warning is at least ten seconds too late. Dan has already been an idiot; unless Phil expects him to travel back in time to ten seconds ago, and take heed of Phil’s caution. Phil pulls him so sharply that Dan jolts backwards, skis slotting between Phil’s as his back crashes against his chest. His heart pounds incessantly. Or maybe that’s Phil’s heart. “Are you some kind of moron?” Phil asks, then pauses, like he’s actually waiting for an answer. “Just wait a minute, we’ve got to take our skins off. Then I’ll lead the way.”

“Remind me why I agreed to this,” Dan mutters, carefully sliding away from Phil whilst trying not to accidentally fall down the slope.

Sulkily, he stands to the side and watches as Phil removes one ski, and peels a thin black strip from the underside, then does the same to the other. Dan copies his action in silence, though he has no idea why on earth this is necessary. Phil monitors Dan wordlessly, but thankfully makes no judgemental comments.

“Ready?” he asks once Dan has his de-skinned skis back on.

Dan shoves the bunched up skins into his jacket pocket. No. “Yep.”

And then, with enviable ease, Phil pushes himself over the edge of the slope, and begins drifting downwards, swaying gracefully to and fro as he descends. Somewhat alarmed by how quickly that just happened, Dan swallows his nerves and shoots after him. It’s terrifying.

Dan hasn’t experienced this level of self-propelled velocity for years, let alone the searing chill that whips his cheeks, or the sensation of being at once in control of his own speed, and simultaneously ill-equipped to do so. He grips his ski poles tightly, attempting to copy Phil’s swooping motions up ahead, leaning left and right as much as he dares in order to slow his pace. The slope had not looked particularly steep from the top, but Dan should probably have been more concerned about the amount of debris on the path that he has to keep swerving to avoid. Annoyingly, Phil was completely right in insisting he went first, as otherwise Dan would have crashed several times into boulders and tree stumps and icy patches.

It can’t last particularly long, but it seems to Dan that he’s skiing, teeth gritted, eyes frozen open, for hours. Eventually however, the slope evens out, and flattens enough that they slow to a stop. Somewhere in the recesses of Dan’s brain, he scrounges up his knowledge of how to point the tips of his skis together to halt himself. Phil does some kind of impressive, sudden, 90 degree turning move, but he doesn’t outright laugh at Dan’s less stylish method, thankfully.

Dan is just about to collapse to the floor and weep, relieved he survived that and didn’t so much as fall over once, when Phil pulls off his sunglasses, and gives Dan the widest, most brilliant grin. His teeth are as white as the snow surrounding them. Seeing such animation on his usually sullen features is so unexpected that Dan swears his heart literally skips a beat, though that might be on account of all the adrenaline from plummeting down the side of a mountain. Dan removes his own sunglasses, somewhat shakily, and aims a tentative smile back at him.

“Not bad,” Phil says, eyes bright and crystalline in the light. “If you did some fitness training, you might be halfway decent.”

The smile wipes itself away again. “Thanks,” Dan mutters.

“What did you think?” Phil asks, elbow resting on one of his upright ski poles. He’s a tiny bit breathless, which gives his words a whisperish quality. In another setting that wasn’t as eerily silent, it might be difficult to hear him. “Fun, right?”

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Dan replies, heart still pounding at double his normal rate.

Phil chuckles. “This is probably the gentlest path I’ve found.”

“Found?”

“Yeah. I can’t be certain of course, but I doubt anyone else has ever skied up here.” He grins again, jarring and hypnotic. “I’m the Columbus of the Alps.”

This seems highly unlikely. Dan’s no expert in mountaineering, but surely other adventurers have come up and explored the mountain before now. Phil being the first one to ever scope out reasonably skiable pathways seems incredibly dangerous, and probably illegal.

“Are you, like, allowed?”

Phil shrugs, slipping his shades back on. “Who’s gonna stop me?”

It’s this offhanded, entitled flippancy that Dan detests about the rich. He chooses not to respond to such an irritating question, and instead asks, “so, what now?”

“Climb back up,” Phil says, already pulling his skins from his pocket. “Unless you wanna check out one of the trickier slopes?”

“No, thank you,” Dan says tightly.

Phil chuckles again. “Alright then, skins on, Howell.”

In hindsight, Dan should really have given more thought to the idea of climbing back up the hill they’d just skied down, in skis. To say it was difficult would have been generous. By the time they reach the top (it shouldn’t go unmentioned that Phil was much, much quicker than Dan at getting back up, and then shouted helpful suggestions of how he should turn his heels, or dig his skis in to the snow from the summit) Dan is so exhausted he never wants to lift another limb in his life, let alone slide down a hill just to climb it yet again. Phil is raring to go, of course, but Dan simply unfastens his skis and falls back onto his bum, unconcerned that the snow immediately begins seeping into the seat of his trousers, and gestures for the other man to go on without him.

“Suit yourself,” Phil says, snickering, and pushes over the edge.

From his position, Dan is able to watch as Phil airily glides down. It’s obvious, from this vantage point, that skiing gives Phil an air of freedom that he lacks in everyday life. His limbs are loosened of their usual tension, and even from a distance Dan can see that he is calm and happy. As Phil re-climbs the slope, Dan peels off the weird skins from the underside of his skis again and studies them for a bit, then stuffs them into his pocket, deciding they’re just flaps of fabric you could make in five seconds, probably sold in sports shops at an absurd cost. He then attempts to browse the internet on his phone, though given that they’re currently in the middle of absolutely nowhere, this does not go well. He quickly abandons any attempt to check his Facebook feed, and plays Crossy Road until a shadow washes over him. He looks up just as Phil slumps down beside him, panting.

“You’re a bad influence on me,” Phil says between breaths. “Usually I do this about twenty times, up and down. On the steeper slopes, too.”

Dan snorts. “Excuse me, but screw that. Nobody told me there’d be climbing involved. Give me a terrifying ski lift any day.”

“Anywhere there’s a ski lift there’s a hundred tourists crammed on, waiting to dawdle in front of you on the slope on the way down.”

Again, Dan doesn’t remember this being particularly true from his previous skiing experience. On the red and black runs, there were only a handful of other people to avoid. He can see nothing wrong with something being made safe by professionals. Deciding it’s probably wise to keep this thought to himself in order to keep the peace, Dan instead digs the flask of coffee out of his pocket, pulls both the plastic cups off the top, and hands one to Phil.

“So you’ve skied in a lot of places, then?” he asks.

Phil is looking down at the cup like Dan just pulled it out of his rear end. “Er… yeah. Quite a lot.”

Dan ignores the curious expression being aimed at him, and just focuses on pouring out the coffee. He’d remembered at the last minute to bring sugar for Phil, so he digs out the packets from his pocket, and presses them into Phil’s free hand along with a wooden stirrer.

“Cool,” Dan says. “Where abouts?”

For a moment, Phil says nothing. It’s as though he’s forgotten how to move, or speak. Dan just waits, the warmth of the coffee cup in his hands starting to spread through his gloved fingers, melting the stiffness. He sips his own coffee until Phil regains composure and pours the sugar in.

“Uh, lots of places. My family used to go every year at Christmas.” He stirs the coffee slowly, gazing out at the thick, snow-frosted trees lining the slope. “I’ve been to Andorra, Saalbach Chamonix…”

This peaks Dan’s attention. “Chamonix? I’ve been there.”

Phil’s eyes go round. “Oh my God… I knew I recognised you.”

Dan’s stomach drops. “W-what?” Surely this cannot be happening.

“The New Year’s Eve party…” he gushes, placing a hand on Dan’s shoulder. Fuck, fuck, fuck, abort, abort, abort. “There was karaoke... we were dragged on stage to sing a duet…”

For a split second, Dan’s mind is hurtling in circles as he tries to remember any such awful event, and then he notes the twitch of Phil’s mouth, the glimmer of obvious teasing lurking in his expression. Right as Dan’s about to grab a handful of snow and smash it into that obnoxious mocking face, Phil clutches his chest and belts out, “this is the start of something newww!”

Dan groans, eyes rolling so far backwards he can see the folds of his brain. “As if you’re making an actual High School Musical reference right now.”

“Hey, you’re the one that got it,” Phil points out, giggling softly.

“You’re so irritating,” Dan mutters, sipping more coffee.

The snow has officially soaked all the way through his trousers, and his bum has gone entirely numb from the cold. If he has to sit here and listen to Phil’s annoying, posh-boy teasing for a second longer, he’s going to ski directly into a nearby tree.

“Are you supposed to call your guests irritating?”

Dan fights a smile, hiding his mouth in his cup. “Depends how much they piss me off.”

This makes Phil laugh; a sound Dan is sure he will never grow used to. “At least I have a dry bum right now. Your idea of appropriate ski attire is as shocking as your technique.”

“You know what?” Dan says brightly, and stands up. He pretty much instantly regrets doing so as the cold water that’s been soaking his bum for the last half hour trickles down the backs of his thighs. He chucks the remainder of his coffee into the snow, and pockets the cup along with the flask. “Being the official laughing stock of the slopes is not part of my job description. It’s been a blast, Mr Novokoric, but I have a hotel to run, so if you’ll excuse me-”

“Ooh, back to Mr Novokoric, is it?” Phil asks, standing up as well. He drains the last of his own coffee, and gathers his ski poles. “Hang on then, let me-”

“No, no,” Dan says, swishing his ski pole at Phil as he tries to slide closer. “I’m clearly stopping you from throwing yourself down some more death-defying hills or whatever. I can get back to the hotel on my own just fine.”

He shoves his feet back into the skis one by one, thankfully able to tighten them to his feet without help this time, and then awkwardly shuffles around to face the direction they came from. There’s a bit of a hill ahead, but in comparison to the one he climbed up not long ago it looks tiny, so he slides towards it with determination.

“Dan, hold on,” Phil says impatiently, still strapping himself back into his own skis. “You can’t just-”

“I said I’m fine,” Dan says through gritted teeth. In truth however, gaining any sort of momentum on this incline seems a lot harder than it had been previously. “Just go do your thing.”

He’s about halfway up the small hill, and he feels alarmingly unsteady. The skis seem to have a mind of their own, and keep threatening to slide out from under him. Dan just shoves his ski poles into the snow as hard as possible, using them to help drag him upwards.

“Dan,” Phil is calling from somewhere behind him. “Can you stop being so pig-headed for a minute? You’ve forgotten-”

Dan cuts him off with an embarrassingly high-pitched yelp as his right ski slips sharply backwards, splitting his legs wishbone-style. With the help of his ski pole, he manages not to rip his own crotch in half, but the back of his right ski crosses over his left, and in trying to correct it, Dan falls backwards. His right ankle seems to not want to cooperate with the angle Dan is toppling, and twists beneath him; his boot still being attached to the ski, this hurts like a motherfucker.

“Shit! Ow, ow ow-”

Pain, scorching and sudden, shoots up Dan’s leg. His ankle is bent somehow beneath him, and it’s agony. He only has mere seconds to revel in the pain however, as then hands are on the strap of his ski, scrambling to unattach him, and blissfully his ankle pops free.

“I told you to wait for me!” Phil shouts, though the sound is fuzzy and distant from the leftover cloud of pain hazing Dan’s senses. “You forgot to put your skins back on, you idiot.” Dan barely understands, too focused on his throbbing ankle. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes it bloody hurts!” Dan snaps, clutching the ankle. "What kind of idiotic question is that?!”

“Let me see.”

“What? No!”

“Dan, I need to see how bad it is.”

“It’s fine,” Dan protests, but Phil is already picking at the knot of his laces, clearly not listening.

As he reluctantly surrenders to Phil’s insistence on acting the hero, Dan realises for the first time just how… close he is. At this level of proximity, it’s possible to detect notes of the shampoo Phil uses dancing on the thin, icy breeze. Coconut, possibly. Or watermelon? In the distraction of trying to place the smell, Dan doesn’t realise what’s happening until his laces are untied, and Phil begins carefully pulling off his boot. He removes his gloves, and blows quickly on his hands before reaching out and rolling down Dan’s thick sock. Something about this whole scenario is so intimate that Dan wants to squirm. Presumably, he’d only blown on his fingers to warm them - to ease Dan’s discomfort. Dan wouldn’t expect such consideration from his own mother, let alone this dick-brain. To stifle his drumming heart, Dan bites down on his lip, and turns his face away.

“Looks swollen,” Phil mutters as he pulls the sock down. Gently, he presses the pads of his fingers to the puffed, pink skin around Dan’s ankle. It doesn’t hurt any more than the existing pain, but Dan twitches nonetheless, and Phil’s blisteringly blue eyes flick up to his. “It doesn’t feel broken. Do you think you could stand on it?”

Experimentally, Dan tries wiggling his toes. It’s unpleasant, sure, but not completely unbearable. “I’ll try,” he says, attempting bravery.

Phil begins rolling his sock back up. “Good choice,” he says, reaching for the boot. “It’s just you and me up here, so unless you fancy spending the night in minus six degrees under the stars, I’d advise hopping if you can. It’ll start getting dark in a few hours.”

“Gee, thanks for the sympathy,” Dan snorts, batting Phil’s hands away to re-tie his laces.

Phil waits, saying nothing, and when Dan is done, he holds out his hand. For a moment Dan just stares at it. He’s seconds away from slipping his own hand into it, when Phil says, “your skins? I’ll put them back on for you.”

“Oh, right,” Dan says, hoping Phil doesn’t notice his odd behaviour. He has no clue what the fuck this mountain air is doing to him recently. He digs in his pocket and pulls out the skins, then shoves them into Phil’s hand. “Cheers.”

“You’re much more… bony than you look,” Phil huffs.

They’re about halfway through the hideous journey back, as far as Dan can tell. Approximately three minutes in, Dan had realised that attempting to walk on his own, wearing the damn ‘telemark’ skis, was not an option.

“I apologise sincerely for having bones,” Dan replies scornfully. In truth, he feels like a pile of boneless goo, so it’s surprising that Phil seems to think he’s the opposite. His arm is wound around Phil’s shoulders, allowing Dan to lean a great deal of his weight onto the other man. He’s got one ski on, the other is in his right hand. Phil is carrying all four ski poles, tucked under his arm.

They’ve been moving at a torturously slow pace, so the sun is already dipping towards the horizon at their backs. Even in the space of a few hours, Dan can feel the drop in temperature, and it wasn’t exactly warm before. They were lucky, in a way, that Dan’s little accident had happened whilst there was still a lot of light left. He leans closer into Phil’s body heat, hoping the other man doesn’t notice.

“Are you cold?”

Crap. “Um, a bit.”

They hobble further on in silence. Dan wonders what the purpose of Phil’s question might have been, as now he seems to be deliberating something silently. Please, God, don’t say that Phil Novokoric is about to hand over his snow jacket to invalid-Dan so he can tell the story of his chivalry to some doe-eyed journalist months from now.

In a way, Dan is almost glad when Phil, predictably, says, “another reason to invest in some proper thermals. Might have been an idea, considering you’re living up a snowy mountain.”

“Noted,” Dan says through gritted teeth. Finally, the sight of the hotel crests the horizon, some way off still, but at least within view. “Thank the fucking Lord,” he mutters under his breath.

“You could get on my back for the last bit, if you like,” Phil suggests, tone lilting into something like a tease.

“You’re alright, thanks,” Dan replies tersely. He sincerely wishes he could extricate himself from this infuriating human and sprint the rest of the way back, but unfortunately he thinks he might snap his own ankle off, brittle as it is now from the cold. “Can we just focus on getting to the hotel without any further injuries, please?”

“Sure,” Phil says, then effortlessly hitches Dan’s arm a little higher across his shoulders, taking on significantly more of his weight. For a reason Dan refuses to analyse, this action makes his stomach flip multiple times, but he has no time to dwell on the how’s or why’s, because Phil has doubled the pace now, near-dragging Dan along.

(Chapter Seven!)

#phanfic #phan #too high #enemies to lovers au

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dominodebt · 6 years ago

Text

four-stroke cycle

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living." -Johnathan Safran Foer

(They meet at an impasse—the proverbial fork. Who were they before they buried themselves beneath all this metal? Who are they now?)

overwatch | 5,048 | ao3

At this point in his tenure at Blackwatch—which is more or less a month and a half—Genji has learned that appearances can be deceiving.

It's a lesson he learned first with Dr. Ziegler—the slender, pale slip of a woman with fair hair who Genji had immediately branded as unremarkable, save for the brilliant brain that kept her useful. She'd walked into his room upon their first meeting, head bowed over the clipboard in her hands, and he'd waited for her to look up—waited for this unarmed woman to shrink back from him like all the others.

Then she'd turned her eyes on him—and fuck those eyes—sharper than his own sword and drawn to his flaws faster than his face. Genji had swallowed very, very hard.

He'd misjudged Jesse McCree in the same way. Upon their introduction, he'd seen little more than a messy, unsophisticated arms dealer prone to a lucky shot now and again. He'd talked too loudly, dressed too ostentatiously—Genji once spent a summer with a shock of green hair, so he knows damn well what he's talking about—and tried too hard to be everything for everyone. He seemed to be trying to make a brother out of Genji, and considering how things had ended with Genji's last brother, he wasn't exactly in the market for a new one.

Then Genji found the jaw of a Blackwatch agent who had been antagonizing him for weeks mysteriously broken, and McCree nursing a bruised fist with a cocky grin the very same day. Genji had merely quirked an eyebrow.

Commander Reyes had perhaps gotten the worst of Genji's ill-founded verdicts—a tall, brick wall of a man whose steady tones and wise advice and genuine concern clashed with Genji's fresh hatred and anger, and he'd railed against him for no reason other than his unwillingness to accept the help and support so calmly offered to him. He'd disparaged the man in his mind, ducked his gaze when he could, skirted his path at every opportunity until even the young girl—the sniper's daughter, Fareeha—had loudly and unabashedly asked him why he was so afraid of Gabriel.

Then of course Genji had sat and listened as Reyes had vouched for him before a United Nations council—watched as this man who was loyalty and steadfastness personified—put his own honor and prestige at stake in defense of a boy who had done nothing but shun him. Afterwards, when the council had grudgingly agreed to Reyes' terms, Genji had forced himself to quietly thank the Commander, and nearly stumbled when the man replied by placing a heavy hand on his shoulder and giving it a squeeze.

And yet despite all this, he can't stop judgment from clouding his vision as he catches sight of a newcomer speaking with the quintessential trio of Overwatch brass—Reyes, Morrison, and Amari—in the Blackwatch hanger.

The girl is short and thin—willowy frame swallowed up by the enormous blue hooded jacket she wears. Her skinny legs sport black leggings with a hole or two, and her shoes look to be clunky and ineffective—high-top sneakers with the laces untied, a blinding shade of yellow with neon pink accents. On her head, she wears a backwards baseball cap. Genji squints. If he's not completely mistaken, the logo it bares is some kind of…glaring rabbit.

"You wanna put him in a mech?"

So caught up in his appraisal, Genji nearly misses the girl speaking. She's studying a tablet, appearing completely unaware of his presence while Reyes and Morrison glance up in horrifying unison to meet his eyes where he lurks across the hanger, trying to melt into the shadows cast by a stealth jet.

Amari doesn't look up, but then she doesn't need too—she sees everything.

"Not quite," the sniper murmurs, reaching out to change the image on the tablet. Genji cranes his neck, trying to see what she's looking at, but the angle the girl holds it at obscures his gaze.

"Oh." The girl seems to consider whatever new information she sees, rocking back on her heels, one hand deep in the pocket of her jacket. "You wanna make him the mech."

Genji bristles at the implication—he doesn't know how, but he knows he's the topic of conversation—but the girl chatters on, handing the tablet back to Amari and calling up a handful of holographic screens around her.

"Sure, I mean—Omnic tech is wicked—but it depends on how much of his fleshy bits he's got left, y'know?" She tugs idly on one of the strings of her jacket, while her other hand moves through the air—thin fingers sorting through various holographic screens that Genji can't make out from his distance. "He'd need a helmet, for sure. Probably something to stabilize his spine, because that shit looks wonky as hell—"

"We were hoping you could speak with Dr. Ziegler," Morrison cuts her off as politely as he can. "Perhaps combine your mechanical knowledge with her medical knowledge."

Something about this seems to amuse the girl, Genji notes—her lips tug up in a half-smile as she dismisses the floating screens with a quick, flippant gesture.

"Sure," she agrees easily, dropping her arms. She's restless—fingers of one hand tapping out a rhythm on her hip, while her other hand traces the zipper of her jacket, picking idly at the metal teeth. "But like, you do know she can do that on her own, right? Like, you don't need to spare my feelings or try to make me feel useful or whatever—Angela Ziegler doesn't need anyone's help." She shrugs. "For anything."

Genji can't see the small, sharp smirk that twists Ana Amari's face from his vantage point, but he knows it's there when she says, "If only that were true, Sergeant."

The girl—Sergeant? Genji chooses to ignore that—just shrugs again, and Reyes decides to speak up.

"She designed the suit Genji wears now," he remarks. "If nothing else, maybe you could give it a look and see what you think?"

"Be happy too," the girl agrees affably. "I assume that's him lurking over by the stealth jet, yes?"

Genji goes deathly still—Reyes and Morrison find him again, and this time Amari joins them, her buckshot eyes picking his form out of the darkness with ease.

"So it is," she murmurs, accented voice warm with amusement. "Speak of the devil."

Caught beyond a shadow of a doubt—he should have known better than to bet against Amari's sight—Genji slinks into the open, squinting slightly under the bright lights of the hanger.

The girl studies him curiously for a moment—he can feel her gaze rove over his form—before shrugging, apparently uninterested by the miracle of medical technology that stands before her.

"Neat," she offers, turning her back on him. "Come on, let's take a walk. It's nice out."

Genji hesitates—he had honestly only been trying to eavesdrop on tomorrow's plans regarding the mission to Ilios—but with a somewhat stern look from Morrison, a smirk from Amari, and a firm nod and a glance that all but screams behave from Reyes, he follows the girl out of the hanger and into the cool Milan evening.

They walk in silence for a moment—conversation not quite possible with her outdistancing him, given her head start and Genji's disinterest in catching up with her—until she stops atop the hill that overlooks Blackwatch's training fields, turning around to face him somewhat expectantly.

"So." Genji bristles on instinct as her eyes—large and brown and bright in the moonlight—meet his. "You're Genji Shimada."

He says nothing. Who else could he be?

"Sergeant Hana Song," she tells him breezily, sticking out a hand. He ignores it, and she doesn't seem surprised, smoothly withdrawing it after a moment to pull a soda can out of the pocket of her jacket. "I'm with MEKA."

Genji has no idea what that means. He also doesn't think he's ever cared less about something. The girl's casual mannerisms—the way she'd nonchalantly discussed something so monumentally important to him—rankles Genji in a way that draws out his worst temperament as they make their way away from hanger and the watchful eyes of their superiors.

Well, his superiors, anyway. The fact that this girl has rank of any kind already puts her leagues above him—the thought annoys him even more

"You are a child," Genji says coldly, and the girl—Hana, not a girl but a Sergeant—just rolls her eyes, popping off the tab of her soda with a practiced flick of her thumb.

"I get that you think you probably look, like, super cool and badass with all that Omnic tech," she says, taking a swig. "But you're obviously not much older than me. And my age doesn't define me, but thanks for playing." Her tone is off-handed and casual—like she's telling off some punk at an arcade and not dishing out sass to the half-dead heir of a clan of assassins.

Genji scoffs out of habit, but his curiosity is piqued. He knows there has to be more to her than what he sees—Reyes had left her out here alone with him while he's fully armed—and Genji can't remember the last time he'd been unaccompanied in the presence of someone who couldn't subdue him should the need arise.

Probably because it had never happened.

She must catch his wandering stare, because her lips quirk up in a harsh kind of smirk—tight, with a few too many teeth.

"I'm a gamer," she explains casually, leaning back against the half-wall that overlooks Blackwatch's training fields. This late at night they're completely empty, and the artificial turf is bathed in an eerie glow by the floodlights stationed around. The aluminum can flashes in the light as she lifts it to her lips. "Professionally," she adds, like that makes any difference.

Genji just stares, irritation darkening his expression. Endlessly clever, their little guest. A gamer. Honestly. What does she take him for?

"There's no need to tell such a stupid lie," he says, tone dark with dislike. He folds his arms, glaring out into the inky blackness of the training fields. "I'm the property of a secret organization. I'm familiar with the concept of confidentiality."

Something he says snags—her eyes snap to his sharply in the near-dark, expression suddenly cold.

"You aren't property," she tells him, and he's caught off-guard by the bite to her words.

"As good as," he retorts, unsure why he's angry in response to her anger, but there it is.

They glare at each other for a moment—Genji's struck by the raw ferocity of her gaze, before it seems to melt back to that coy coolness she'd sported earlier.

"Then let's go." She shrugs away from the wall, arching an eyebrow. "If things are that bad, you shouldn't be here." She takes a swig of her soda, and Genji honestly can't tell if she's joking or not when she lowers the can and tips him a wink. "I'll bust you out."

He gives her a hard look, trying to place her tone. Her smirk implies a joke, but her eyes are staggeringly serious. He resolves to ignore the whole display, folding his arms across his chest and looking away from her.

He counts three merciful seconds of silence before she's speaking again.

"I have a question."

"Of course you do."

"This, not wearing clothes thing—" she gestures helpfully to his half-bare chest "—what's that about?"

Genji bristles. "What?"

"Because I'm pretty sure being half-Ominc isn't an excuse to let it all hang out, y'know?" She quirks an eyebrow and Genji glares down at her, bewildered and annoyed. "You're like, legally indecent right now."

Genji honestly sputters—his typical angry indignation can't quite find a handhold on his tongue in his haste to assert the fact that he is not legally indecent, thank you very much, and who does this girl think she is?

She takes another sip of her soda, eyes crinkling with laughter over the top of the can as she smirks at him.

"I hardly think—" he begins.

He breaks off as she chucks the empty soda can at his face—his hand jerks up to catch it before he can even consider the action—and it gives a satisfying crunch as he sinks his metallic fingers into it.

For a brief moment, he debates just throwing the damn thing back at her, but he stays his hand when their eyes catch. Her eyebrow quirks.

"Throw it," she says, inclining her head out towards the training fields.

"What?" Her hand has disappeared up the back of her jacket, and he has a feeling it isn't more sodas she has stowed away there.

She rolls her eyes at his apparent incompetence, miming a throwing action with her free hand.

"Throw it," she repeats, more firmly this time, and with a scoff and few idle curses, Genji hurls the can out into the darkness as hard as he can.

It's quickly swallowed up by the dusk that's settled over them, and Genji squints, trying to track it, but his gaze is quickly diverted as Hana rustles with something at her back—a determined cut to her jaw—

In one smooth movement, she's drawn a weapon—a blaster of some sort, with a charm swinging from the butt of it—takes the briefest of aim, and fires.

A brilliant green burst of energy fires out the barrel, streaking through the sky and Genji has exactly one second to consider how fucking impossible this is—

A quiet ping! echoes back to where they stand as she picks the soda can out of the night sky, and he sees shards of aluminum wink as they catch the glow of the floodlights in its resulting burst. Hana tucks her blaster back in the waistband of her pants with a smug grin of satisfaction.

"Like I said." Genji snaps his gaze down to see her stowing the gun away, one hand on her hip, surveying her handiwork—she hardly moved to take the shot. Her eyes cut to his—sharp and bright. "I'm a gamer. Professionally."

He moves away from the wall to stand over her—an old intimidation tactic that feels like a reflex—and she just looks up at him without a glimmer of interest, utterly unbothered by the red-eyed creature looming above her.

"You did not learn that from playing games." His voice rattles out from beneath his half-mask with white-hot anger.

"Do you actually think being taller than me makes you scary?" she drawls, lifting an eyebrow. She sounds uninterested—bored. Her hands are back in her pockets, not even reaching for her weapon. "Because in case it somehow escaped your notice, I'm pretty fucking short."

Another stand-off—she refuses to duck his gaze, holding his eyes forcefully. Genji can't remember the last time he'd been challenged like this—even before he'd become a mess of human and Omnic parts, he'd been the damned heir of the Shimada Clan—but this girl doesn't seem to give a shit about any of that.

As she shifts her weight something flashes on the inside of her wrist, and it catches Genji's gaze, arresting his attention until she notices.

"What are you—oh." Spying his object of interest, she pulls up the sleeve of her jacket to reveal a sort of wrist brace with a keypad. She twists her arm to give him a better view, and it glints with a metallic sheen in the artificial lights of the training fields.

"It calls my mech," she explains—unprompted and off-handed—and Genji frowns hard behind his mask.

"It what?"

"My mech," she repeats, rolling her eyes. "Should we switch to a different language? My Japanese isn't great but like, you're clearly not hearing to me—"

"Why do you have a mech?"

Something about his question—posed sharply for no reason other than his utter fucking annoyance at her ability to keep surprising him—seems to amuse her, and he watches warily as she lets loose a rather tight smirk.

"Because I have a slightly higher percentage of taking down Omnics while inside it," Hana replies, quirking an eyebrow. "Only slightly though."

His anger deflates—flat lines into disbelief.

"Really." He stares her down, a little unnerved at how evenly she meets his eyes. "You. Fight Omnics."

She scoffs at his tone, rolling her eyes up to give him a look of annoyance. "Y'know, for a guy who's gone through all the shit you have, you sure seem to be taken by surprise a lot."

Genji huffs a sigh, working to marshal his temper. "I've fought Omnics before, and I hardly think—"

"Not like this you haven't," she says—and there's a sudden catch to her voice, like the scrape of a struck match.

He opens his mouth to rebut, but she's hit some switch on her wrist brace, and Genji watches as a hologram blooms to life between them.

It's enormous. Genji blinks, stepping back on instinct as both he and Hana are bathed in the watery blue glow of a massive, snake-like creature that unfurls from the light put out by Hana's device. It twists within the confines of its projection, flexing its claws, baring its teeth—

"It rose out of the East China Sea three years ago," she explains quietly, and Genji starts at the sound of her voice. "Obliterated the Korean Peninsula and assaulted its neighbors—China, Japan, parts of Russia—only to sink back into the water. We thought it was just…a fluke. A freak accident." She shifts inside her jacket—thin fingers of her free hand tugging on the strings of the hood. "Then it came back. For Korea, specifically."

The name of the country falls from her lips in a way that immediately tells Genji it's home—more than that, even. It's her heart, her judgment, her will. He never had that love for Japan, but he once held it for his own family—it's a staggering, overwhelming kind of devotion.

Genji gives a slow nod. He can't look away from the hologram. Neither can she.

"We made drones—hundreds of them—operated by artificial intelligent to try and destroy it." Here she swallows hard, and Genji realizes she hasn't even gotten to the worst part of the story. The light from the hologram highlights worry lines that mar her forehead.

"So what happened?"

"It learns."

Genji's eyes snap to hers, confused.

"The drone's AI couldn't keep pace with the Omnic's," she says. He wonders what she's seeing as she gazes up at the serpentine Omnic winding and writhing between them—wonders what memory she's reliving. Her expression is haunted, and he can tell by the way it sits on her face that it's familiar to her. "So they decided to give them pilots."

Genji frowns. "You're a pilot?" That still doesn't explain the skill and authority this girl touts. And aren't pilots supposed to be…tall?

She heaves a very put-upon sigh, rolling her eyes with exaggeration. "I'm a gamer," she reminds him. "As I apparently have to keep telling you."

"How does a gamer—?"

"The flight controls of the mechs are identical to the ones used in 16-Bit Hero." He snaps his eyes to hers—affronted by her interruption—and is struck by the way her gaze gleams—a stare like a switchblade. She punches a code into the keypad, and the hologram winks out of existence, dousing them with darkness once more.

"A game where I've held the top score for about five years."

Genji balks.

"They put video game players—"

"Why are you so hung up on that?" she cuts him off again, hand on her hip. Genji just glowers back. "Yeah, okay, so I'm a gamer. If I can pilot a mech as well as I can—and believe me, I'm pretty damn good at it—why does it matter how I learned?"

Genji just gazes evenly at her, trying to temper his mood, but Hana continues hotly, "People were dying—my people—my friends and neighbors and family!"

"Had you ever been trained in combat?" Genji asks, voice harsher than he intends. "Games might have sharpened your reflexes, but there is more to fighting than—"

She flings her arms wide, exasperated. "Look, dude, just because I'm not, like, a sword master or whatever doesn't make me any less of a fighter than you, okay?" She drops her arms, and they flop to her side with a soft whumpf. She suddenly looks very, very small, silhouetted against the training field floodlights as she is.

"I'd die for my country—for the people I care about. Isn't that enough?"

Genji looks away, staring out into the training fields. Hana chases him—sidesteps until she stands before him, and while he could easily dodge her gaze by merely staring over her head, he finds his eyes drawn to her own.

"What do you fight for, then?" she demands—she doesn't raise her voice, but her words still burn—eyes narrowed and too bright in the darkness. "What makes your cause so fucking noble that you have a right to judge mine?"

Genji's voice whips out low and fast. "I never judged your cause."

"But you judge me."

He scoffs. "That doesn't make you special."

She mutters something under her breath—so curt and harsh he knows it to be a curse—and looks away, the new angle allowing the floodlights to fall across her face, sharpening the look of annoyance she wears.

"I should kidnap you," she grumbles, half to herself, and Genji starts slightly. "Your head's way too far up your ass."

He bristles again—her unpredictable pace and tone is a stark switch from the typical steady seriousness of Blackwatch.

A moment of silence rolls over them as they both glare off in different directions. Genji keeps waiting for the moment when she'll just throw him a dirty look and march off—nothing's keeping her here, as far as he's aware, and he's been far from polite—but instead she just sighs, crossing her arms and looking up at him, expression distinctly exasperated.

"Look. Dude. Do you want this fancy Omnic suit or not?"

Genji frowns. "What?"

Hana sighs again, waving a hand around a bit wildly. "The whole reason I'm here. Do you want an upgraded suit? One that would let you fight? Well, fight better, anyway." She's watching him closely now—like she can draw the truth out of him without his permission.

Genji's not entirely sure she can't.

"It's your call. I get the feeling you've done a lot of fighting." Her eyes quickly skirt his profile—lingering on some of the raw scars bare in his half-armor. "I'd understand if you didn't want to fight anymore. Overwatch can beg for MEKA's expertise all they want—but if you don't want it, they can choke."

His eyebrow rises without his permission. "Choke?"

Hana shrugs. "Sure. I mean, I'm pretty sure you didn't really mean it when you said you were Blackwatch's property, but that feeling had to come from somewhere." Her hands grow restless again—Genji watches as she fiddles with the cuff of her sleeve, eyes lowered. "I like Commander Reyes, but Morrison…" she trails off, chewing her lip. "He gives me weird vibes. Win at all costs kind of vibes." Her gaze flickers to his, like she's gauging his reaction. He keeps his expression expertly schooled.

"I just—I don't want to act like I know what you've been through. You can't imagine the kinds of things I've seen and done, so I'm not going to do the same to you, but—" she cuts herself off, whisking her hat off for one moment to drag her hand through the long brown locks, staring out into the night closing in around them, huffing out a sigh.

"But?" Genji prompts lightly.

Her eyes cut to his—Genji wonders if he'll ever get used to the immediacy with which she commands his gaze.

"It feels like it's you against the world," she tells him softly. "But sometimes…it's just you against yourself."

Genji doesn't speak for a moment—just lets the many meanings of her words wash over him.

"As long as we're quoting philosophies at each other," he offers quietly. "Have you ever heard that life isn't a game?"

A small smile quirks her lips, and she glances up at him, tucking stray strands of hair behind her ear. She absolutely has heard this before, he surmises. Probably many times.

"I mean, if you treat everything like a game," she says. "What's the difference?"

Genji frowns hard. "When it's your own life at stake—" he begins.

Hana scoffs, shaking her head. "I have to," she interrupts. "I have to have a degree of separation—pretend like I'll just respawn if I go down, act like I've got a bunch of extra lives or whatever—the alternative is too horrifying." She looks up at him, expression disarmingly serious. "I'm too young to die."

So was I, Genji wants to say, but for the first time that night, bites his tongue. He's not dead—not really. A dead man couldn't be standing out here, in the cool Milan evening, trading barbs with a professional gamer who boasts a shot that rivals a soldier's.

He's not him. But he's not not him either.

"I meant what I said, by the way," she murmurs, drawing Genji's gaze once more. She lifts one eyebrow, assessing him calmly. "You feel indebted to Blackwatch, and I get that. But before you throw yourself out into a conflict like this, maybe know yourself a little better?" She shrugs, features pinched with a sudden flash of pain. "Seems like kind of a waste to risk your life when you haven't even decided what you're living for, you know?"

Genji tilts his head, digesting her words.

"And you?" he asks quietly. "You've weighed the risk yourself?"

Hana nods absently. "My equation was a lot easier," she replies. Busy fingers tap against the brick of the wall they lean against. The girl simply can't sit still, it seems. "I live for Korea or I die for it."

The unshakeable sureness of her words—and the disarming calm with which she speaks them—throws Genji. What would if feel like to care that deeply and honestly for something? He didn't want to die for Hanzo's pride—so what would he be willing to die for?

Then—so fast Genji's hand twitches toward his blade on instinct—Hana lurches forward to seize his good arm, pulling a sharpie out of her pocket and yanking the cap off inelegantly with her teeth.

He jerks away, but she tugs right back, and after a brief stare down, he surrenders and lays his arm flat in her hands.

"Soda, sharpies, a gun…" he watches her scribble down a set of numbers on the pale expanse of his skin. "What else do you have in your pockets?"

"Everything," is her prim response. "And I don't keep my gun in my pocket, that'd be stupid."

His lips curve in the makings of a smirk, but it falls as she pulls away, admiring her handiwork as she looks over what he can only assume is her phone number scrawled across his arm.

"There." She pockets the pockets the pen with a pleased expression. "Now you can call me or something?"

Genji bends his arm to inspect the number, lifting an eyebrow at her wording. "Or something?"

She rolls her eyes, flapping him quiet. "You know what I mean. Text me. Send me a picture of your dinner. Write me angsty poems about how much you hate the gorgeous rolling hills of Milan. I don't know." She shrugs. "You need a friend, dude. Like, desperately."

His expression sours—he does not need a friend—but she smiles softly and knocks her hip against his, their contrasting heights making the action a little awkward.

"We'll come up with a code for when you want to be busted out of here," she tells him, leaning close into his space, voice low and conspiring. "We'll call it, like, jailbreak or something."

"Not a very complicated code," he murmurs back, playing along at least partially.

She groans and pulls away—her eye roll so completely over-the-top and dramatic he almost cracks a grin.

"Fine," she bites out in a tone that holds absolutely no heat. "Since you're so clever, you can decide what the code is."

Genji is about to reply—can feel a sarcastic remark on the tip of his tongue, and it tastes so familiar, so like him—

A figure approaches—Genji suddenly hears the crunching of grass and his whole demeanor shifts and darkens as a man in a stiff uniform stops a few feet away.

"Sergeant Song."

Hana turns, and Genji watches—transfixed—as the girl's casual stance snaps into a formal salute.

"Sergeant Jo," she greets the man, the timbre of her voice lower and steadier than it has been all evening.

He nods, and Hana drops the salute.

"We're leaving soon—you done?"

She gives him a firm nod and the man's gaze skims over Genji for a moment before he turns to leave, and Hana follows suit.

Genji stands alone at the half wall a bit awkwardly for a moment—does he say goodbye?—when Hana's voice drifts back.

"You should check out my stream sometime," she calls to him. He can hear the shit-eating grin in her voice, so help him. She tosses a throwaway glance over her shoulder, eyebrow raised. "Maybe you could learn something."

He pulls a face, bewildered. "Stream?"

"I'm a gamer!" she shouts back at him, the anger in her voice belied by her grin. "Profess—!"

"I know!" Genji interrupts, smirking below his face-plate. "Professionally."

Her answering smile is dazzling. Then she holds up a fist—thumb stuck between her middle and index finger—and vanishes over the hill after her fellow solider.

knock knock guess who it is with a fic that nobody asked for and shouldn't have taken four fuckin' months to write???

so things have been rough. very very rough. but in a new game I call Stop Being A Bummer On Main, I'm just gonna say the worst isn't quite over, but a lot of good stuff has happened and things are starting to even out. my motivation to write took an obvious hit since it's been uh checks notes a cool four months since I've posted something but hey! I'm here and you're here and this fic is mediocre at best but dammit I'm trying lmao

anyway hi my name's Duch welcome to Headcanon Land:

1) Angela Ziegler is a fucking icon and people everywhere look up to her, but particularly young girls interested in science and medicine, such as Hana Song

2) I know skins don't have any bearing on canon or lore (nothing in Overwatch seems to have any bearing on canon or lore) but I like to think D.Va's Junker skin implies that, should the need arise, she could totally recreate her mech out of spare garbage lying around, thus implying she's handy as hell with mechanics. Going further with that, we know Hana's skill as a pilot is credited to her skill as a gamer, but I like to think gamers proposed themselves to the military and not the other way around. I think it makes much more sense that Hana herself built some sort of prototype that utilized the controls from 16-Bit Hero

3) Genji and Hana are much closer in age and are absolute nightmares to each other for no reason other than they can be

4) I hate the Black Cat skin and I know that's not a headcanon but goddammit Blizz give me a Sgt. Song skin I'm fucking begging you please

Like this piece? Here’s my billboard!

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francesderwent · 7 years ago

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“In Need of a Generic Father Figure” A Veronica Mars Everybody Lives/Nobody Dies Meet-Cute LV AU Week Day 7 Canon-typical language, but otherwise general audiences On AO3 Inspired by this post and that one scene in Charlie Don’t Surf.

______________________________________________________________

It was supposed to be a kind of housewarming-slash-homecoming party, the kind of event that was totally low key in its formulation and planning stage but got completely out of hand once things got rolling. All their friends from the old neighborhood were coming over, and it was supposed to be all nostalgic idiocy born from the eternal familiarity of each having been present for one another’s particular flavor of shitty childhood. There were no delusions about the depth of this bond, and so they weren’t expecting it to be a great party, not the best night of anyone’s life by any means, but it was the sort of gathering you could predict, could depend on. Low-pressure, low stakes, low key.

So, precisely the kind of event which would have a giant wrench thrown into it if you were to add in an unknown factor, say, a perfect stranger to man the grill.

“But he wouldn’t be a stranger,” Dick is insisting. “He’d be a dad.”

Logan gapes at him. “Whose dad?”

Dick shrugs, ineloquently.

“So by dad, you just mean some unknown-as-yet male person who has at one point fathered a child?”

“Sure.”

“So, some unknown person’s father, standing on the corner of our property, making hamburgers.”

“Grilling hamburgers, that’s essential.” Dick looks up from his computer and gives Logan a look like he’s disappointed in him for missing an obvious point. “And it’s not just some random sperm donor, dude, he has to be fatherly and shit. I put it in the ad.”

“Ah yes, the ad,” Logan says. “The Craigslist ad, which you put up online without consulting or telling me. I read the ad. And yet here I stand, questioning the entire premise behind it.” But Dick has returned to his computer, presumably to scroll through his emailed responses. Logan pinches the bridge of his nose. “Alright, the court recognizes that grilled hamburgers are better than any alternative. But why do we need someone else to come grill? You and I are fair-to-average at setting things on fire already.”

“We don’t have a grill.”

“No, but we both have trust funds that kicked in some time ago. You may remember them. They’re how we afforded the house…”

Dick huffs. “So we just buy a grill?” Logan gives him the raised eyebrows and jazz hands: duh. Dick bangs on the space bar. “Just buy one, from the depths of our rich boy pockets, without working for it or anything.”

Logan stares. “Are you having some kind of break?”

“It’s stupid to spend money if we could just borrow one.”

“Okaaaay,” Logan says. “So why aren’t you advertising for a grill we can borrow?”

“Because!”

“Because what, Dick?”

“Your dad is supposed to teach you how to grill!” Dick bites out.

They stare at each other for a long beat, then Dick tears his eyes away and starts clattering angrily on his keyboard. Logan sighs, then gingerly sits next to him on the sofa.

“You know,” he says, careful to keep his tone conversational, “if you wanted to sign up for one of those programs for kids with deadbeat dads where they hang out with well-adjusted adult men and learn life skills, I would have happily signed up with you, but we really should have done that when we were younger.”

Dick throws an elbow into his ribs half-heartedly. “Shut up.”

“I’m not saying, like, when we were twelve,” Logan goes on, warming to the topic, “because we mostly hadn’t figured out our dads were deadbeat by then. But definitely before we finished college and joined the workforce. I’m thinking like nineteen or twenty would have been the ideal age. Our father figures could have taught us to consume alcohol, in addition to teaching us to grill.”

“We were already pretty good at drinking alcohol by then,” Dick reminds him.

“Then they could have given us a strict talking-to about underage drinking,” Logan says. “It’s far too late for that now, and we’ve missed our chance.”

“Missed our chance…” Dick echoes.

Logan looks at him sideways.

Dick catches his eye and actually sniffs a little. “I know it’s stupid. You don’t have to tell me it’s stupid.”

Logan shifts uncomfortably. “It’s not stupid, man. I just wish we knew of some actual father figure we could get to sub in for you, rather than resorting to Craigslist dads.”

“It’s not just for me, dude,” Dick insists. “I know you care about this shit, too.”

Logan cracks a smile despite himself. “If some guy with a beer gut shows up and grills me a hamburger and calls me ‘sport’, that’s not going to make the old man any less of an abusive asshole.”

“I know, but we can make some nicer memories can’t we? Some nice dad-memories?”

For a second, Logan allows himself to enter into the delusion, but almost immediately becomes sidetracked on the mental image of Gregory Peck from To Kill a Mockingbird standing in their backyard, holding a light beer and grinning affably. That would be one thing – but he can’t imagine that any fathers like that actually exist in the world. No, this dad was probably going to be more or less a deadbeat himself, or else how would he have time to babysit a bunch of profligate twenty-somethings? At best, it would be some old guy whose kids were too grown-up and busy to talk to him anymore, a dad whose desperate neediness for attention and affirmation matches Dick’s. But then again, Dick will inevitably be drunk for the entire party – he wouldn’t notice if the dad was an escaped convict in black and white stripes with a literal ball and chain on his ankle. What harm could it do? He sighs, asks in a wry tone, “Are you going to ask for proof of paternity, or is this person going to be a fake dad on top of being random?”

Dick lights up. “That’s a great idea, I’ll edit that in!” He resumes typing at a frenzied pace; Logan watches bemusedly.

Still. It’s one weird thing on one day. It won’t make any difference one way or another, in the long run.

Nobody’s life was ever changed because a stranger made them a hamburger.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

After that, Logan tries to extricate himself from the whole dad-audition process, but Dick is, as usual, both oblivious and incorrigible. Logan very quickly comes to dread the phrases “hey, listen to this” and “what about this”, since both are sure signs that he’s about to be read a joke resumé with phrases like “excels at offering positive reinforcement”, or shown a headshot of a guy in a sweater vest. So when he gets home from work and the first thing he hears is “Logan, dude, this is the one”, his first response is to groan and flop face first onto the sofa. They found the sofa at the side of the road the second week in the house and it is therefore a little worn out, so the decision to be dramatic hurts.

“Asshole,” Dick tells him absently, wandering in from the next room holding his laptop. “Listen: father for twenty-plus years, expert level jokes and manly affection, bonus secret-family-recipe hot sauce.”

“The hot sauce is a nice touch,” Logan admits, rolling over onto his back and kicking his feet up onto the sofa arm. “All of the other applicants have really fixated on the ‘dad’ part of ‘grill dad’.”

Dick nods so enthusedly it looks painful. “I know, right? And get this, there’s an attached letter from his kid,” he says. “Dear advertiser, I can confirm that the applicant has been my father for my entire life, and I can honestly say that he has excelled at the position. You would be lucky to have him at your party, where he would strike just the right balance between embarrassing and fun, call all of you by the wrong names and then substitute “son” or “honey”, and repeatedly tell you he’s proud of you. His hamburgers are to die for, and he brings his own fire extinguisher in case anything should go wrong. He has my unreserved recommendation. Also, if this is some kind of dad kidnapping scheme, I will hunt you down and kill you. Cordially, V. Mars.” Dick looks up expectantly; Logan fights a smile.

“They wrote a letter of recommendation for their dad?”

“Uh huh.”

“Hmm,” Logan says neutrally, then says, “Mr. Mars,” trying it out, hitting the ‘r’s and dragging out the ‘s’.

“Keith Mars,” Dick adds helpfully, and turns the computer so Logan can see the attached photo. Keith Mars is bald, just slightly on the portly side, staring adoringly down at the tiny pigtailed child with whom he is dancing, her feet on his – V. Mars is a girl, apparently. Dick tabs to the next picture: Keith Mars standing next to a grill holding a hot dog over the head of a plaintive-looking pitbull while a gap-toothed, elementary-school-aged V. Mars laughs in the background with a blue-haired friend. In the third picture Keith is older, wearing a suit and grinning widely, hugging someone in graduation regalia, her face obscured by her cap. “He looks cool, right?” Dick prompts eagerly.

“Yeah,” Logan says, tearing his eyes away from the graduation photo. Neither he nor Dick had had any relatives attend their college graduation, and he’d seen plenty of family reunions at the baccalaureate celebration that seemed more stiff and awkward than anything else, but Keith looks like he just might burst with pride. “Yeah, he seems nice.”

“Like a real dad, right?” Dick persists.

Logan snorts. “As if I have any experience with which to judge that quality.”

Dick offers a fist bump and Logan complies. “Trauma twins!” Dick says, sing-song. Logan rolls his eyes. “But he seems legit?” Dick says, returning to the salient point. “This is okay?”

Logan stands and claps his roommate on the shoulder. “Sure, man. If you say this is the one, I think you’re probably right.”

Dick beams at him. “I’ll tell him he got the gig!”

“Cool,” Logan says drily. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Since Dick thinks it would be acceptable to simply explain the dad-for-hire situation when their guests show up, Logan finds himself calling each invitee one by one the day before the party and beginning with the statement, “So you know how Dick has a tenuous relationship with reality?” Lilly laughs for a full minute and a half, and Duncan, no matter how many times Logan runs through the concept, just doesn’t seem to get it, but everyone else just thinks it’s sad.

“Oh my god, our lives suck,” Gia says, sounding as if she just realized it. “Does no one in our group have a functioning father figure?”

“Carrie’s dad was okay,” Logan offers. “But he moved out of state a few years back.”

“And he never knew how to grill!” Dick yells through his bedroom door.

“And he never knew how to grill,” Logan repeats.

“Yeah, well,” Gia says skeptically, “I’m bringing extra booze for when this weird-ass idea causes someone to have an emotional breakdown.”

“Appreciated.”

And when the day arrives, booze is the one thing they do seem to have enough of.

“Why did we say we were going to supply ingredients?” Logan wonders aloud as he methodically opens and shuts every cupboard in their kitchen. “You forgot to buy onions, we don’t own any spices, I don’t even think we have salt and pepper –”

“Logan. Man! Relax.” As anticipated, Dick is already halfway to trashed, and far from caring if their hamburgers are seasoned.

“This was your idea,” Logan says, accusing sliding into sardonic. “You’re the one who wanted to make some new dad-memories, and now because you were overly confident in a Craigslist ad, our new dad is already going to be disappointed in us.”

“Dude, holy shit –” Dick bursts out laughing and can’t continue his thought. Logan turns around to glare at him in exasperation. “What if –” Dick stammers, chortling, “what if he says the thing? ‘I’m not mad I’m just disappointed?’ How absolutely sick would that be?” He’s wheezing now, and Logan can’t think of anything to do except stare at him. “Just like a real dad!” Dick howls.

Logan stands, frozen, for a beat longer, and then abandons his search for the probably-nonexistent spice cabinet to reach for the scotch instead. “Gia was right,” he says flatly. “This is going to end in tears.” He pulls a little too sharply on the tab of the wax seal and it snaps off with the seal still in place. He looks at it in consternation, and it is at this point that the doorbell rings. Dick makes no sign of moving from his position, giggling slumped over the kitchen table, so Logan jogs to the front hallway, only to discover that Dick has placed all the beer they bought in front of the door, barricading it closed. He’s kicking six packs out of the way and trying to open the scotch bottle with his teeth when he finally manages to wrench open the door and is greeted by the genial but not-quite-non-threatening face of Keith Mars.

For a moment the desire to say something dismissive rises up, as if this was still high school and he was still incapable of engaging with an adult on mutually respectful terms, but Logan takes a deep breath and forces it down. “Mr. Mars,” he says.

Keith sticks out a hand. “Richard?”

Logan snorts, but accepts the handshake. “Richard is inside. I’m the roommate, Logan.”

Keith’s eyes drop to the scotch bottle still in Logan’s hand. “I hate it when that happens,” he says mildly.

Logan makes a non-committal noise. “We probably have a wine opener somewhere that should do the trick.”

“We don’t!” Dick yells from the kitchen. “I told the chicks to bring one!”

“That would be Richard,” Logan tells Keith wryly. Keith raises his eyebrows, but then reaches into his jacket pocket and offers Logan a multi-tool. “Thanks,” Logan says uncomfortably, looking down to flip through utensils instead of making eye contact. “Can I offer you anything?”

“Nope,” says Keith cheerfully, “just point me to the backyard and I’ll get the grill fired up.”

“Get the grill fired up!” Dick’s voice repeats, maniacally.

“He’s fine,” says Logan, unconvinced himself. “The backyard’s through this way.”

“No!” Dick stumbles into the hallway and spreads his arms wide, probably so as best to show off the tshirt he bought specifically for the occasion which reads “you’re all up in my grill”, a decided improvement over the grill-themed shirt Logan had to initially talk him down from, which had a meat-related innuendo on it. “I will show you to the backyard, sir!”

Keith offers a hand. “Keith Mars.”

“Awesome, dude.” Dick shakes his hand, which is apparently hilarious because he cracks himself up again. “Welcome to the party!”

Keith glances at Logan, who shrugs. “I’m just happy to be included,” Keith says, sounding, against all odds, like he means it.

“Dope,” Dick responds. “Follow me, mon capitan, I will show you to your grill kingdom!”

“Please stop mixing your metaphors,” Logan tells him, but Keith waves him off and allows Dick to sling an arm around his shoulder and lead him towards the screen door to the backyard.

“Dude, seriously, your application was whack,” Dick says. “I was like, whoa, this guy is like a serious dad!” Logan is watching them go, wondering if he’s responsible for making Keith feel safe and if he should therefore follow, when there’s a voice at shoulder-level behind him.

“So that’s the Craigslist guy?”

He turns, smoothly accepts the proffered casserole dish. “Craigslist dad, actually, or you’re missing the whole point.”

Carrie stands on her toes to look over his shoulder at where Keith is patiently observing Dick’s wild gesticulating at all the ingredients they bought. “Huh,” she says. “I guess he does kind of look like a dad.”

“I should hope so, we took the casting call very seriously.”

Carrie rolls her eyes. “That’s a fruit salad,” she informs him, indicating the dish he’s holding. “I’ve just gotta grab my guitar out of my car and then I can help set up or whatever.”

“You brought your guitar?” Logan repeats. “Are we gonna sit in a circle and sing campfire songs? What the hell kind of barbecue do you think this is?”

“A nice wholesome one, of course. You were kind enough to invite Susan and her kid, and you specifically got a random dad to come grill you food.” After a pause and seemingly despite herself, Carrie asks, “You really couldn’t have just bought a grill yourselves?”

Logan sighs. “Actually, the grill is ours. Keith had one but it wouldn’t fit in his car, so Dick went straight out and got the most expensive one there was.”

“Don’t all serious dads own pickup trucks?”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“And now you have your own grill.”

“We even managed to work it ourselves; we made marshmallows over it last night.”

Carrie makes a face. “I can’t believe you guys are living together. You’ll both starve to death or suffocate under dirty laundry within a month.”

“Nah,” says Logan, dismissive, “we can live on marshmallows for at least two months, and we can just buy new clothes and burn our dirty laundry on the grill.”

“That,” Carrie tells him calmly, “is disgusting.”

“People who bring acoustic guitars to house parties shouldn’t throw stones,” Logan counters.

She laughs and flips him off. “When’s everyone else getting here?”

He indicates careless ignorance with a wave of the hand. “Hopefully soon. I think we need to set up a watch rotation to make sure Dick doesn’t start crying on the grill dad.”

Carrie snorts, tosses him her keys; he manages to switch the fruit salad to one hand and snag them in the hand holding the scotch. “In that case, you go grab my guitar out of the trunk. What did you say the guy’s name is?”

“Keith Mars.”

“Got it. Do not leave me out there by myself for more than a minute.”

“Of course not! In fact, I wouldn’t dream of getting in your car and driving far, far away from here.”

She elbows past him, laughing, and jogs through the house to make a dramatic exit out the back door, where she is greeted by Dick’s incoherent shouts. Logan sighs, then picks his way back through the six-packs to the kitchen to put everything down, finally open the scotch, and knock back half a drink. When he gets back out to the driveway Casey Gant is there with his newest arm-candy girlfriend, and Logan finds himself cajoled into giving a house tour so he can explain to her why he and Dick decided on this house, how all the guests know each other, and that, no, Casey wasn’t lying about the Craigslist situation. By the time Logan manages to extricate himself, everyone has arrived and is milling around the backyard. Carrie waves to him from a picnic blanket in the middle of the lawn, where she is in fact playing guitar for Susan and her adolescent daughter. He likes Susan and the kid fine, but the three of them seem to be working on a warble-y song from the latest Disney princess sensation, so he hides a grimace, waves back, and looks elsewhere. There’s a few people clustered around the grill, listening to Keith tell some story which is apparently fascinating; Logan gives them a wide berth and joins Lilly and Gia instead, who are standing off to the side eyeing the whole scene skeptically.

“Don’t you ladies want to take advantage of this unique opportunity to interact with a genuine, human parent?” he asks.

“Nope,” says Gia, at the same time as Lilly says “Not even a little.”

Logan snorts. “Well, cheers to that, I suppose.”

“Yes, cheers!” Lilly says. “To dealing with our issues in therapy, rather than projecting all of our buried hopes onto a stranger with a novelty apron who could never live up to our ideals anyway.”

“Like motherfucking adults,” Logan echoes solemnly. They clink glasses.

Gia looks contemplative. “It’s not so much that he’s a random stranger,” she says. “I even kind of trust that he’s for real, you know?”

“I know,” Lilly retorts, pausing to take a big gulp of her drink. “That’s the worst part. Dick introduced me to him when I got here, and he was immediately more interested in my life and my job than my parents have ever been.”

“Yeah, but like, actually interested,” Gia adds, “like he thought I was worth his time and couldn’t wait to hear more about me.”

“How dare he,” Logan says mildly.

Gia elbows him in the ribs. “I don’t see you over there talking to him.”

Logan shrugs. “If I met him on the street maybe I’d be able to trust that he’s the real deal, but the fact that he answered the ad just seems fundamentally suspicious.”

“Yeah, but you guys aren’t paying him, are you?” says Lilly.

“Just in beer.”

“He’s probably just lonely,” Gia suggests.

“I thought the same thing,” says Logan. “But if he’s such a good father, then wouldn’t his own kid want to see him? So why would he need us?”

Lilly pats him on the shoulder. “Logan, you’ve honed your trust issues and pessimism into quite an art.”

He huffs, irritable despite himself. “I’m just saying, don’t anyone go writing him into their will just yet.” Gia looks at him little worriedly, and he attempts a reassuring smile. “I need another drink, can I get either of you anything?” They both wave him off, and he makes for the deck where all the refreshments are, but in his haste to get away, forgets to avoid the grill group and accidentally makes eye contact with Dick. Dick, of course, begins frantically waving him over, and though Logan lifts a hand in acknowledgement and tries to stay course, this only means that Dick starts yelling his name. Logan silently swears to himself that he will not enter the fatherland without a drink in hand, so yells back that he’ll be right there and prays that they’ll be out of something on the drinks and appetizers table so he’ll have to go inside to get it, if not drive to the store. Tragically, Carrie is already there, refilling chip bowls, and when he offers to help she just gives him an unsympathetic look.

“Go get it over with, before Dick convinces everyone to start chanting your name,” she says.

Logan sighs, grabs the beer with the highest alcohol content he can find, and skips down the stairs. “Logan!’ Dick crows. “Logan’s here, guys!”

“I live here,” Logan reminds him. The obvious statement is greeted by polite laughs from the Keith fan-club and drunken giggling from Dick.

“Get this, Logan!” he says, childlike excitement radiating off him in waves. “We didn’t even need salt and pepper, Keith brought his own burger rub!”

Logan looks obligingly at Keith, who nods. “Secret family recipe.”

“I thought the secret was the hot sauce?” Logan says.

“I’ve got that, too.”

Logan raises his eyebrows. “Everything’s a secret with you, Mr. Mars. And here I thought we were just on the verge of opening up to each other.”

Keith laughs good-naturedly. “I’m an open book, Logan.”

Logan is mentally scrolling through options for sarcastic replies which aren’t overly combative when suddenly he feels very, uncomfortably cold, from the back of his neck down, and can do nothing but gasp stupidly. For a moment he thinks Dick has poured ice down his back, but Dick is standing on the other side of the grill from him, looking genuinely surprised albeit delighted. Logan cranes his neck and turns in a circle, but can’t see what’s been spilled on him, though it’s entirely clear who’s to blame. “Duncan,” Logan says, flat and edging toward a growl.

Duncan has the nerve to roll his eyes. “Come on, man, it’s not my fault.”

Logan gestures to where Duncan has clearly dropped his solo cup and half a plate of appetizers on the lawn. “And how do you figure that?”

Duncan shrugs. “You know how hard it is to hold a drink and a plate of stuff at the same time.”

“Hmm, then maybe you should go inside and eat at the table – or better yet, maybe the family down the block can loan us their high chair.”

Duncan scowls at him. “Do you have to be like this, Logan, seriously? It’s just a shirt. And it’s your freaking house, you can just go in and change.”

Logan flicks his eyes over at Keith, who thankfully doesn’t appear inclined to use his fake fatherly authority to intervene and is pretending to look intently at something across the way. Logan fakes a laugh and says as evenly as he can manage, “And it was your freaking drink, so you could have just apologized.” Keith abandons his examination of the next-door-neighbor’s maple tree to give Logan a side-eyed smile, and for a moment, Logan feels a vague sense of satisfaction, before he remembers that he doesn’t care about Keith’s approval. He makes a wry face back.

“Logan,” Keith says mildly, “keep an eye on the grill? I need to grab something I left in the kitchen.”

“No problem, Mr. Mars,” Logan answers, saluting sloppily. Keith nods at him, and then pats Duncan on the shoulder as he passes; Logan interprets the move as condescending and is pleased again, and again annoyed at himself for being pleased. As a pathetic attempt at distracting himself, he pulls his arms into what was previously his favorite gray v-neck and puts it back on backwards so he can look at the stain, and then is horrified all over again. “Duncan, what the fuck were you drinking?” he demands.

Now, finally, Duncan has the grace to look ashamed, or at least defensive. “Mike’s,” he mutters.

“Mike’s lemonade is not this color.”

“It was Mike’s hard black cherry lemonade, alright!”

There are various titters from the group; Logan snorts inadvertently and lifts up the shirt to sniff the purple-y stain, which smells more like sugar than anything else. He knows he should stop pushing, but can’t quite restrain a “Dude, really?”, which turns the titters into full-fledged barks of laughter.

Duncan snaps. “Why do you have to be such a –”

“Donut!”

Duncan freezes at the sound of Lilly’s voice.

“Quit being a drip!” she yells. “Or go home!”

For a second, Duncan turns his glare back on Logan with full force, and Logan almost thinks he’s going to spit in his face or something, but then he just kicks at his dropped solo cup and slinks off toward the front yard.

“Wo-o-ow,” says Dick, with barely contained glee. “This really is the best party ever.”

Logan rolls his eyes, grabs the spatula hanging off the grill, and starts idly pushing burgers around to have something to do. “You’re happy with your Craigslist investment?” he asks Dick.

“Absolutely, dude!”

“And the weirdness of the concept still hasn’t dawned on you?” Casey adds, snickering.

“How could it be weird? Keith is awesome, and he’s the perfect addition to the party, just like the application said.”

“Of course he is.”

Logan jumps, almost drops a burger on the ground, and then turns to find that Duncan’s place in the circle has been filled. She’s on the shorter side, with blonde hair falling down her back in waves, a leather jacket slung over one shoulder, and a completely unreadable expression on her face – and based on the looks she’s getting from the others, no one else has the faintest idea who she is either. “Uh –” Logan says.

“Keith Mars is still here, right?” she asks, voice somewhere between businesslike and belligerent.

“Well –”

“He just went inside,” Dick says, helpfully. “He’ll be back out in a minute.”

Logan groans. “Dick, remind me never to commit any crimes you’d have to be interrogated about.”

Dick shrugs, the whole movement exaggerated by drunkenness. “Look at her, man, what’s she gonna do?”

Logan looks at her, less sure that he should be unintimidated than Dick seems to be; she gives him an unimpressed once-over, but then cracks a smile seemingly despite herself. “So was it some combination of getting dressed in the dark and a wet tshirt competition, or is this a bold fashion choice?”

Logan glances down at his backwards v-neck and the damp, purple circle on his chest. “Bold fashion choice,” he answers, looking up to raise his eyebrows at her.

“I wouldn’t have been able to picture it,” she says, looking him up and down again, “but now that I see it, I guess it works. In fact, you should only wear this. Like, ever.”

Logan grins awkwardly, unsure whether she’s mocking him or flirting with him, and still unsure what he, as a homeowner, is supposed to do about strangers in his backyard, even if they are exceptionally cute.

“So, this is weird,” Dick offers.

“Hey, honey!” Logan turns; Keith is coming down the steps of the deck with burger buns and cheese in hand, beaming at the interloper.

“And it just got weirder,” Casey announces.

“Yup,” echoes his date. “More drinks?”

“You bet.” They wander off arm in arm; Casey salutes Logan with his beer can.

“What are you doing here, sweetheart?” Keith says, dumping his armful of food onto the picnic table so he can hug the blonde girl.

She shrugs, looking considerably more relaxed now that he’s appeared. “I’m an only child, dad, you didn’t honestly expect me to let you adopt a whole party without at least coming over to check up on you. I’ve never had to share before.”

Keith laughs. “Of course, why didn’t I think of that. Why wouldn’t my grown adult daughter show up at an honest Craigslist gig to make sure she wasn’t losing her spot as my favorite child?”

“I dunno,” Dick says suspiciously, “I think she might also be here to flirt with Logan.”

“You two have met?” Keith turns a surprised look on Logan, who does his best innocent blink and tries not to broadcast that a few seconds ago he was considering using Duncan’s spill as an excuse to take his shirt off in front of this girl.

“Only just now,” Keith’s daughter assures him.

Logan nods. “You’re V. Mars?”

“Veronica,” she answers. She offers her hand to shake.

“Don’t take this personally,” Logan says, “but I wouldn’t. I’m honestly kind of covered in Mike’s hard black cherry lemonade.”

“That exists?” she says.

“There’s no limit to the abominations which crawl this earth,” he replies, straight-faced. She laughs.

“See what I mean,” Dick says to Keith. Keith looks at him blankly; Dick belches, shoots Logan a complicated and incomprehensible hand gesture, and wanders off after Casey, leaving Logan alone with the two Marses. He looks back and forth between them, trying not to stare, and wondering if it would be weird to ask what kind of degree Veronica just graduated with based on the picture Keith sent.

“So!” Veronica says, into the strained silence. “You’ve been treating my dad well?”

“He’s getting all of the standard grill-dad benefits,” Logan answers. “We didn’t want to have the agency all over us, or god forbid, the unions.”

Veronica smiles in acknowledgment, but her eyes flick to her dad with something like nervousness.

“Do you two need a minute?” Logan offers.

“No!” says Keith, confidently calm. “Everything’s all fine, here. Son, can you start putting cheese on hamburger buns? Veronica, honey, help him?”

Veronica rolls her eyes, but bumps Logan out of the way with her hip so she can grab the cheese. “So, daaad,” she says, sing-song.

“Veronica,” he says, warningly.

She actually pouts. “Come on, dad,” she says, the words coming quicker now. “It’s pretty clear Logan doesn’t care about you being his fake father for the day; his entire body flinched when you called him son.”

Logan hands her a hamburger bun he removed from the block of them in the bag, says mildly, “I thought I managed to reserve my flinch to only seventy percent of my body.”

“Nope!” Veronica gives him an apologetic smile, and then turns back to Keith. “Dad, please.”

Keith glances at Logan, back at her, and sighs. “Make it quick, Veronica.”

She drops the package of cheese and reaches into her bag to retrieve a giant camera. “So-o-o,” she says, lowering her voice, “you know that guy I’ve been on all week for a completely unrelated…work thing?”

Keith rolls his eyes. “Yes.”

“Well, he just walked through the front door of your guy’s house.”

“No, he didn’t,” Keith says drily. She tabs through a few photos on the display, shows him one. Keith looks at her. “That can’t be good.”

She lets out a huff of breath. “No, I didn’t think so either.”

“I can see both exits from here, honey, and I haven’t turned my back once.”

“From here?” Logan repeats.

They ignore him. “If I didn’t notice him going in, it was because I wasn’t looking for people entering,” Keith continues, reassuringly. “Nobody could have gotten away, so they must all just be inside. We’ll wait it out, it’ll be fine.”

Logan is just about to give up and leave them to it so he can find another drink, and maybe even change his shirt, but that, of course, is when the air is filled with the sound of breaking glass.

Some kind of instinct takes over and he dives in between the sound and Veronica, dragging her to the ground with him despite her incoherent noise of protest. He looks up in time to see a flailing person hit the ground below the next-door-neighbor’s maple tree, surrounded by the debris from the shattered second-story window.

“That’s yours!” Veronica gasps, but Keith has already produced a gun from somewhere under his novelty apron and is pointing it at where the fallen man has gotten unsteadily to his feet.

“Police!” Keith shouts. “Don’t move!”

There’s a stunned pause, Logan takes in the faces of gaping astonishment on his friends, and then the man takes off running in the opposite direction. Keith lets out a brief curse and rips off his apron. “He’s running,” he announces to thin air, and Logan hears a siren start up down the street, so apparently he really is police. Keith throws the apron at Veronica. “Don’t let the hamburgers burn,” he orders, and then he climbs on the picnic table, vaults clumsily over the neighbor’s fence, and takes off after the runner.

“You’re going to strain your back,” Veronica yells after him, almost petulant. She elbows Logan in the ribs and he rolls off her, not sure whether she’s about to join in the chase herself or whether she’s just going to lay into him for tackling her. She gets up, checks her camera and is apparently convinced that its not broken, but still looks dissatisfied about something. She peeks into the grill, lifts a single burger with the forgotten spatula. “They’re not going to burn,” she says, disdainfully.

“Dude.” Dick jogs over so he can give Logan a hand up off the ground. “Dude,” Dick repeats, “is it just me or was our grill-dad packing heat?”

Logan pats his arm. “Not only was he packing heat, but he was almost definitely using us to surveille the house next door.”

Dick looks flabbergasted. “Shit, man. Even my fake dad didn’t really want to spend time with me.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back, once they’ve collared the guy,” Veronica offers. As if inspired, she removes the first burger patty from the grill, puts it on one of their prepared buns, and hands it to him.

Dick looks at it suspiciously, takes a bite, and then nods, but adds accusingly, “Whatever, man. I’m going to need therapy from this.” He shoots a finger gun at Logan. “So, you do whatever you’re doing here, I’m gonna go apologize to Susan for exposing her child to all this violence.”

“That’s really mature and responsible of you, Dick,” Logan says, surprised.

“Duh,” says Dick. “It’s up to us to break the cycle.” And with that, he heads back towards the rest of the party, who are all staring at Veronica with no small amount of apprehension. She doesn’t seem to notice, but absently picks up Keith’s apron and puts it on, and starts assembling burgers.

Logan can’t help but ask, “You’re not going to follow them?”

“Nope,” she says, shortly, “not my case.”

“Do you need to go after…your guy?”

“No, I’ve got the pictures I needed.”

“Then I’m sure Keith would appreciate the backup…?”

She lets out a short laugh, and Logan sees with dawning comprehension that she’s worried. “He needs it,” she answers, “but he wouldn’t appreciate it. I don’t have the clearance.”

“You’re not his partner?”

She turns to look at him like he’s an idiot. “No-o-o,” she says. “I’m his daughter.”

Logan grins, lifts his hands in surrender. “Sorry, I wasn’t sure how deep the undercover scheme went.” She snorts, flips her hair over her shoulder, and turns back to the grill. “That one on the right is getting a little overdone,” he says, pointing.

“No it’s not.” She swats his hand away, and then moves the offending burger closer to the coals, Logan suspects just to be contrary.

“So you’re not a cop?” he tries again. She shoots him an exasperated glance over her shoulder, he grins, says, “If you’re not a cop, why were you surveilling the house too?”

She huffs a sigh, puts the spatula down with a clatter, and reaches for her bag where it had fallen on the ground. “Here,” she says, and tosses something at him. He catches it, turns it around, opens it.

“You’re a private detective?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Not a cop?”

“I’m going to throw a hamburger at you.”

Logan laughs. “So, what, you didn’t want to follow in your father’s footsteps?”

“I did, he didn’t,” Veronica says casually, returning her focus to the grill. “He wanted me to aim higher. I got accepted to Quantico, and was sent home after three weeks because of my issue with authority.” She shrugs, spins the spatula like a baton. “Turns out, I’m more suited for private eye work than I am for either the feds or the boys in blue anyway.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

Logan shrugs, thinking that she was already exceptionally cute, but she just became the most fascinating person on the planet. “I don’t know.”

She removes the last burger from the grill and spins to look at him, hands on her hips. He feels a goofy grin spreading over his face, and she rolls her eyes at him. “What, Logan?”

“You should only wear this.”

She looks down at Keith’s apron, which reads in big, bold letters, “NEVER TRUST A SKINNY CHEF”. She snorts. “If you haven’t figured out yet that you shouldn’t trust me, no amount of written reminders are going to do the trick.”

Logan ducks his head, rubs the back of his neck. “So I’m trusting, sue me.”

“Ah!” She taps her chin with one finger, mock-contemplative. “Is that how you ended up advertising for a strange dad to on-site cater your barbecue?”

“That wasn’t my idea.” Veronica raises her eyebrows, Logan adds, “I actually feel a lot better about your dad now.”

“You feel a lot better about him now that you know he deceived you?”

“Well, yeah,” Logan admits. “He seemed way too normal to be the kind of person who responds to Craigslist ads, so there definitely had to be a catch.” She raises her eyebrows at him, he adds lamely, “So it’s nice that the catch was he’s mainly here to catch bad guys.”

As if on cue, Veronica’s cell phone buzzes; she picks up on the first ring. “Dad?” The worry smooths away from her face at his response, and she mouths a quick apology to Logan before retreating into the corner of the yard to debrief. The last thing he hears her say is “I can’t believe you jumped over that fence, are you trying to kill me?”

Logan walks over to where Dick and Gia are relating the main event to Duncan, who has reemerged and is trying very hard to appear as if he doesn’t regret missing out. “Then Keith magically pulled a gun out of nowhere,” Dick says, miming in slow motion, “and yelled get on the ground or I’ll shoot!”

“He didn’t exactly yell that,” Gia puts in. “I’m pretty sure he basically just said ‘police’.”

Dick ignores her, too invested in the story. “But the guy just books it, and so Keith literally vaulted over the fence and chased after him, yelling and firing at him –”

“No,” Gia says.

Duncan rolls his eyes. “This is what you get for inviting strangers into your home,” he says derisively.

“Trained professionals to arrest the criminal who apparently lived next door to us anyway?” Logan pipes up.

“Professional or not,” Gia says, upbeat, “as soon as shit started to go down, Logan shielded the cop’s daughter with his body, which was pretty cool.”

“Aww,” says Lilly, coming up to put an arm around her brother’s shoulders. “And you were out in the car, sulking because everyone laughed at your drink choice!”

Reminded, Logan glances down at his shirt, which he’d mostly forgotten in all the excitement; it is now starting to stick to his skin uncomfortably. What the hell, Keith won’t be back for twenty minutes at least; he can definitely get some mileage out of this. He takes the shirt off. The girls wolf-whistle, Duncan groans.

“You know,” Lilly suggests slyly, “there are definitely easier ways than Craigslist to incorporate a new father figure into your life.”

“What?” says Dick, immediately intrigued. “Is there a more specific service?”

“Is there?” Logan repeats, alarmed.

Lilly starts laughing. “You’re both idiots,” Duncan tells them, with significantly more affection now that his knowing something they don’t has reestablished him in a position of authority.

Gia appears to be about ready to take pity on them, but is interrupted by Veronica’s return. “They got the guy,” she announces. “Dad is driving him to the station. Logan, he says he’s leaving you in charge until he gets back, not Richard.”

Dick flips her off; Logan replies, “I’m touched that he’s ceding authority to me in my own home.”

Veronica performs an elaborate double take, gestures at the house. “This is yours?”

“As far as the eye can see, or at least until where I imagine the police tape will be going up.”

“It’s my house, too,” Dick puts in.

Veronica ignores him. “I took you for an out-of-towner,” she tells Logan.

The fact that she thought of this means she’s not uninterested in the possibility of seeing him again. “Nope, local boy, though and through.”

Veronica eyes him thoughtfully. “And why are you half naked?”

He realizes he doesn’t actually have a good reason. “I was really starting to smell?”

She pretends to consider this. “I guess I’ll take it,” she finally says. Lilly starts cackling.

Logan tries not to preen. “Veronica, this is everybody; everybody, Veronica.” Veronica waves awkwardly.

“Are you going to stick around until your dad gets back?” Gia asks, faux-innocent.

Veronica looks sidelong at Logan. “Stay,” he says, hearing it come out somehow as if he were laying his heart on the line. He adds, more casually, “You can scold him for his fence-jumping.”

She considers him. “Do you have anything other than Mike’s hard black cherry lemonade?”

He cracks a smile. “I think I can scare something up.”

“The good stuff is all inside,” Lilly lies, straight-faced, then elbows Duncan, who says with faux-enthusiasm, “Oh yeah, and while you’re in there, maybe Logan could put a shirt on.”

“Like, if one jumps out at him,” Gia puts in. “Not every color works on Logan.”

“Yeah,” says Lilly. “He went through a whole orange phase. It was bad.”

Veronica looks bewilderedly around the circle, then back up at Logan. “I guess I could stay awhile,” she says, a smile pulling at her mouth.

“Don’t forget to grab hamburgers before you go in,” Dick says, serious. “That’s literally the whole point.”

“Right,” says Logan, not taking his eyes off Veronica. “Thank goodness for those hamburgers.”

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Yahoo answers post from user MeCasablancasIsTooCasablancas:

So a few years ago I met this really cool dad, super great, very wise, lot to offer as a father figure. I put a lot of effort into getting to know him and he’s always been totally chill. My roommate, on the other hand, barely wanted to talk to the dad, from day one. Only problem is, now that’s changed and we’re in competition, and I was wondering, how do I make sure that my prior claim to the dad is respected? My roommate didn’t even want a dad, but now just because he’s marrying the guy’s daughter everyone’s telling me father-in-law trumps the fact that I clearly called dibs? This can’t be right.

Also, the wedding is in two months, and even though there’s no way they go through with it, just in case please go to Craigslist and look for my post seeking a new roommate. If it helps, we have a grill.

#LV AU week #veronica mars #cate fic #vm #this fic brought to you by general insanity and my conveniently timed spring break #aaaaaaaand that's it for now folks!!#I promise I am working on the teachers AU #it's just very difficult to write a teacher AU #without including lots of stuff about students #which takes up space and time

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