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megs-mostly-past-random-fandoms · 4 years ago

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A Few Words

Based on this request: I’ve never requested anything but here goes: how about a Thomas Jefferson Modern/Soulmate AU where the reader is friends with Hamilsquad and is really shy and quiet and hadn’t heard the words on her arm yet. When she meets Jefferson, Hamilsquad tries to stop her from falling for him until they all realize that he’s her Soulmate. Is that okay?

I’m a sucker for a Soulmate AU! *Familiar Characters are NEVER mine!*

Fandom: Hamilton: An American Musical

Warnings: Modern/Soulmate AU, FLUFF!!! Alexander hating on Jefferson.

Pairings/Characters: Thomas Jefferson x fem!reader, Hamilsquad, James Madison

You met Thomas Jefferson through your best friends when he came to see Lafayette one evening when you were hanging out with the guys. Well…sort of met him. You hadn't actually said two words to the man. You were far too shy to talk to a guy like him. He was charismatic, charming, with a smile that could light up an entire room and eyes that seemed to say so much without any words actually leaving his lips. You could never pluck up the courage to talk to a guy like that. Which is probably why you had yet to meet your soul mate.

"Excuse me, darlin'" were the words permanently etched on the skin of your wrist, the place your soul mate would touch first while saying the words. When you first heard Jefferson speak, although it wasn't to you, you thought maybe he could be your soul mate. Not many people went around calling others "darlin'". But the longer you knew him, the more your heart sunk. And it didn't help that, even though you didn't speak directly to him, he was around all the time and you found yourself becoming attracted to him.

Your attraction was something Jefferson himself didn't seem to pick up on although your friends certainly did. "That's a bad idea, Y/N! The man is insufferable!" Alexander practically whined at you when he figured out what was going through your head. In fact, the only one who didn't speak against Jefferson was Lafayette. "You're insufferable," you mumbled, "Besides, didn't you used to say the same thing about Aaron until the two of you finally duked it out? In the middle of study hall a few years ago?" That shut him up for a moment.

"Besides, it's not like he even notices me. I can't seem to speak to him," you said, making your friends frown a little bit. "Anyway, I'm gonna go. I need to pick up a few things for the party tomorrow. Laf, you did invite Madison and Jefferson, right?" He nodded and beamed. "Good. See you tomorrow!"

Meanwhile, across town, Jefferson was poring over his paper work in his office with Madison. "Are you sure it's a good idea for us to go to this party? I mean, Hamilton isn't exactly your biggest fan," Madison said before coughing into the handkerchief he always kept handy. Jefferson shrugged a little before absent mindedly scratching his soul words.

"It's for Lafayette's birthday. What kind of friend would I be if I didn't show?" Jefferson replied, his lips stretching into a smile. Madison glanced between his face and arm. "Maybe you're hoping you'll finally hear those words." Jefferson glanced down with a sigh. Even though he couldn't currently see the words on his arm, he knew them by heart of course. "Sorry! That was stupid!"

"Regardless, I'm going. I'd appreciate it if you came with me. I can ignore Hamilton for one night. For Lafayette's sake." Madison arched a brow. "And for Y/N's?" Jefferson's eyes widened a little. He hadn't expected Madison to pick up on the fact that he was interested in you. You were different. You didn't fawn over him or ask him a thousand questions, daring him to prove his love for both America and France. You actually didn't say much to him, but you intrigued him nevertheless, especially when he learned a little bit about you from Lafayette.

"Y/N? She that pretty one that hands around Lafayette's place all the time?" Jefferson asked, trying to play it cool. Madison rolled his eyes. "Yeah sure. Like you haven't noticed her a dozen times before. I'll see you tomorrow." He left, leaving Jefferson to think about you and hoping that maybe you could be his soul mate.

The next night, Jefferson arrived to a party in full swing. It wasn't a large party, but that didn't mean anything. Lafayette preferred it that way. Jefferson said hello to everyone before heading to Lafayette's room to lay his magenta coat on the bed.

As he approached the door, it opened and someone bumped into him. He noticed the person falling and gripped their wrist while their hand landed on his arm. "Sorry! That was stupid!" the voice said and Jefferson's arm began to tingle. "Excuse me, darlin'," he replied, causing the person's head to shoot up to look at him. A pair of (e/c) eyes gazed at him in wonder. "It's you," you whispered as tears sprang into your eyes.

Jefferson pulled you up gently so you were upright again. You put a little distance between you, making him frown. "What is it, darlin'?" Your brows furrowed a bit and you licked your lips. Jefferson couldn't help but glance down at them. "I-I was really hoping it was you. Now that I know it is, I have no idea what to say," you admitted with a laugh.

Jefferson chuckled and slowly placed his hand over your cheek. He waited to be sure you weren't going to reject his touch before placing the hand on your face. "It's funny, I don't either." You snorted then looked horrified at the noise, but Jefferson smiled at you. "I don't believe that. You always know what to say. I've seen you in court. Y-You're amazing. Better than Alex even."

"I heard that. I thought we agreed that Jefferson was bad news." Jefferson dropped his hand to turn and glare at Alexander. He and the others had come to see what was taking so long. "Do you mind, Hamilton? I was having a moment with my soul mate." The house went still and quiet.

"You've got to be kidding," Alexander broke the silence after a few minutes. You shook your head and showed him your words, now a much darker color than before. "You're not kidding." You gave your friends a smile before grabbing Jefferson's hand in yours. He could feel you shaking like you were nervous, but he let you lead him outside.

Once you were alone with him, you let out a deep breath. "Are you sure okay with this, Y/N?" You flashed him a dazzling smile. "I am. I didn't think I'd get so lucky with my soul mate. I just don't want to rush this." Jefferson beamed and took a step closer to you. "I feel the same. And we can go as fast or as slow as you want. Okay?" You nodded.

"May I kiss your cheek?" After only a second of hesitation, you agreed. Jefferson leaned in and placed a soft kiss to your cheek. You swore you almost melted into a puddle right then and there. You probably would have if not for a voice calling out, "Alright, alright! That's what I'm talking about!" You put your hands over your face and hid in Jefferson's chest.

(a/n: I hope you like it! Tag lists for all fandoms & characters are open, by the way!)

#hamilton: an american musical #thomas jefferson #thomas jefferson x reader #jefferson x reader #soulmate au

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a-small-batch-of-dragons · 4 years ago

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Tactical Retreat

Prompts: averykedavra: could i request,,,logince? maybe an imagination fic? roman retreating to the imagination and logan finding and comforting him? no pressure, but thank u regardless, and your stories are incredible!

Anon: So I’m I adore your writing and like I’ve read your stuff on ao3 and I just wanted to ask if you ever thought of that conversation between Roman and Remus and stuff that they mentioned in that story about Logan relapsing...? I just, I love the way you write your characters and dive into their head and manners so well- it’s incredible. (I’m shy to say but I also write a bit and I saw you’d left a comment on my story and I kind of died cause you’re incredible and I’m majorly inspired by you-)

Thanks for the prompts, babes! they fit so well that I did them together, I hope that's okay ^_^also: GUYS PLEASE VIEW THIS AS A

C H E C K P O I N T

if you've been scrolling for a while (and you probably have) pause here! drink water! get food! walk around the room for a little bit! stretch! do something please! you are very important to me and I care about you very deeply!

Read on Ao3

Warnings: explicit discussion of self-harm. I’m not kidding. I fucked myself up writing this a little please take care of yourselves. sympathetic remus

Pairings: logince, creativitwins, implied LAMP, can be platonic or romantic you decide

Word Count: 5131

Retreat: an act or process of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous, or disagreeable.

Retreat: a place of privacy or safety: REFUGE.

* * *

“We are so not done with this conversation,” Remus had said.

That would certainly explain why Remus barges into Roman’s room at absolutely-unreasonable-do-you-have-any-idea-what-time-it-is o’clock.

Roman just looks at them all and raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, please. It’s not all long sleeves and pants all summer for no reason.”

“R-Roman, you—you—?”

“Yeah, Specs,” Roman murmurs when Logan can’t find his words, “me too.”

“Oh, we are not done with this conversation.”

…

“Will you let us help you clean them?”

Unbidden, Logan’s face flares bright red.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed, sweetie…”

Roman gently nudges Remus’s arm. “Let me. You two go check on Patton and Virgil.”

“What?”

“Roman—“

“Come on,” Roman coaxes, “it’s not like I don’t have the practice.”

“We are so not done with this conversation.”

That would certainly explain why Remus barges into Roman’s room at absolutely-unreasonable-do-you-have-any-idea-what-time-it-is o’clock.

“Remus,” Roman sighs, sitting up and covering his eyes, “I know it might not seem like it, but I do need my beauty sleep too.”

He frowns when Remus doesn’t say anything.

“I can look at whatever you’ve made tomorrow,” he promises, “I just—I don’t really want to—not that I don’t want to!—but can I…sleep, first, please?”

Remus still doesn’t say anything. Roman peeks out from behind his hand to see Remus…is still humanoid. The door isn’t…off its hinges, it’s just been slammed open. His morningstar isn’t in his hands. His brother is just staring at him.

Shit.

“Re?” Roman sits up slowly, his eyes adjusting to the light. “Re, are you—can you come here please?”

Remus walks into the room. Roman pulls back the covers, making room for his brother, already running through the checklist in his head. No blood, no guts, first aid kit is in the corner, he can get the shower running if need be…

It’s only when Remus actually stops next to his bed that he realizes what’s going on.

Remus is wearing his soft things. Remus has opened Roman’s door. And now he’s getting into the bed and just staring at him.

“…Re?”

“Ro,” Remus whispers, and oh no, “Ro, you…you didn’t have anybody?”

Roman’s heart clenches in his chest and an emptiness oozes into his throat. He should’ve known that Remus was serious when he said they weren’t done with that conversation.

“…Re, I—“

“Don’t bullshit me, Roman,” Remus hisses, the desperation bleeding into Roman’s lungs, “I know you, Ro-bro, and you—you—I’m gonna kick their asses.”

Roman sighs, his head falling back to the pillow. Now that the worry over his brother has dissipated, he really just wants to go back to sleep.

“You don’t have to do that, Re,” he mumbles.

“The hell I do!” Roman winces and he hushes. “You—Ro, you know what my job is. You know I—“

“Yeah, Re, I do know what your job is.” He stifles a yawn. “I…sorry, I just…I’m really tired right now.”

A sharp poke to his belly makes him squeak.

“Remus!”

“I told you, Ro, you can’t bullshit me.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Something, anything, Ro, you—“ Remus chokes— “Ro, you’re my brother. You’re fucking important to me.”

“I know, Re, I…well, I would say I’m sorry, but you told me not to bullshit.”

“So you’re not sorry.”

“Sorry for worrying you, yeah. But not for…” Roman sighs. “I would just be apologizing for how it makes you guys react and not because I’m sorry for what I’ve actually been doing.”

Remus is quiet for a moment. The bed dips under his weight as he slides under the blankets. Then he shifts a little closer until his hair brushes Roman’s nose.

“…when you said you knew what my job is,” he mutters after a moment, “you didn’t just mean the intrusive thoughts, did you?”

Roman shakes his head. “Thomas…I’m the…safe Creativity. I’m the fluffy, dreamy, Disney side.”

Remus moves to look up at him, encouraging him to continue.

“So I…I tend to romanticize things. I get the pretty, artsy, palatable version of things.” The emptiness bubbles up lazily into his throat. “Of everything. You…you get the real version of them.”

Even in the dim light, he can see Remus visibly pale.

“You get all the messy consequences, the realities of…a lot of the things that I wouldn’t.” Roman swallows. “So…”

“Oh, Ro…”

“Do we have to have this conversation now?”

Remus props himself up on his elbow, the blanket sliding a little off his shoulders. “Do you wanna have it in broad daylight, then? Plan it all out, sit down with a drink and a notebook? Have one of your lists to work down?”

“…can you at least close the door, please?”

A weight leaves Roman’s chest as the door closes and the light vanishes, leaving them in near darkness. His eyes close.

Damn it.

The mattress sinks as Remus gets back into the bed. He’s too far away for Roman to feel him. But he can feel his gaze on him.

“What do you want from me?”

“The truth?”

Roman huffs. “Is that all?”

“I dunno, Ro-bro, you’ve gotten pretty good at misleading everyone else.”

“I’m an actor.”

“Yeah, which means you’re really not good at turning it off.”

A mirthless laugh bursts out of one of the bubbles in his throat.

“Haven’t exactly had much of an incentive to do that.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Come on, you think any of them have actually wanted the real me for…ever?”

Remus scrambles up. “Roman, that’s—fuck, you’re one of the core Sides. You’re—you’re so fucking important, Ro, they—they love you.”

Something darker than darkness shears through the emptiness.

“No,” Roman growls, turning his head into the pillow, “no, they don’t.”

Did they ever? Or was that just an easy way to string along their favorite little puppet?

Before the anger can fully take hold of his throat, the emptiness oozes back into place and his jaw slackens, prompting another sigh as Remus freezes above him.

“What’re you talking about, Ro,” comes his voice from somewhere, “they—you—aren’t you…?”

“They say it,” Roman manages, “but I don’t think they mean it. Or if they do, it’s not—it’s not like that.”

“Well, then what the fuck is it?”

“They don’t want to listen to me, not really, they just…well, they need someone else to be there.”

“It’s funny because I’m pretty sure we just had this conversation with Lolo.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” Remus pokes Roman’s shoulder until he rolls onto his back. He glares. “I don’t care what anyone else says, Ro, you’re fucking important. You’re not replaceable. And you’re sure as hell not unlovable.”

Roman flinches.

Remus tilts his head, eyes widening.

“You don’t believe me.”

Roman shakes his head.

Remus lets out a shaky breath and lies back down, still staring at Roman. “Ro-Bro, what did they do to you?”

“What, you want the list alphabetically or in chronological order?”

“Roman, please.”

Roman’s eyes snap open in shock. Remus stares back at him, pleading. His brother is begging, he realizes in a panic. He wasn’t sure Remus knew how to do that.

“I’m—“

“If you dare say you’re sorry, I’m gonna rip your testicles out through your mouth.”

Roman swallows. “They just…they won’t listen to me,” he repeats lamely, “they don’t want me.”

“What do you mean, they don’t want you?”

Conveniently, Roman’s brain is now entirely empty. He knows stuff has happened to him…doesn’t he? Things…stuff’s been bad now. For a while. He’s been…doing whatever this is for a while.

So why can’t he remember?

“Every time I come up with an idea, it’s—they always want to change it.” But that’s just part of the editing process. He needs the others to help him edit.

“They think I’m too loud.” He is, though.

“I’m—they think I’m—“

Arrogant? Overbearing? Stuck in a fantasy world?

All of the above?

“Nothing,” he whispers finally, “they didn’t do anything to me.”

He buries his face in his hands.

“They didn’t do anything to me. I’m just—I’m just being overdramatic. It’s fine.”

“It’s clearly not fine.”

“Isn’t it?” He flaps a hand at Remus. “You’re the one that gets the real version of all this. I get the romanticized version. No consequences. Just pretty words and sentiments that don’t make sense.”

“You think Thomas is okay with a self-harming Ego?”

“Well, maybe Thomas deserves a better Ego!”

The room freezes.

Roman squeezes his eyes shut. “Thomas deserves an Ego that knows what he’s doing. That believes in himself. That can do all the things it’s supposed to do.”

He lets his hands fall limply away from his face.

“But all he’s got is me.”

I’m not enough.

“I can’t—I can’t do my job without being able to…” He sighs. “I’m the opposite of Logan.”

“…how so?”

“Logan does it to make things go away so he can work. I do it make things come so I can work.”

He feels Remus tense on the bed.

“Romanticized, remember? That’s my job. Fantasy, dreams, romance, not real. I…” He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”

A wave of exhaustion threatens to snatch his words from his mouth. God, talking about this is so draining. Can he be done now?

“How,” Remus says after a moment, “can you possibly say it doesn’t matter?”

“Can’t I just go to sleep now, Remus?”

“No,” comes the snarl, “you can’t fucking go to sleep, because you’ve just told me it doesn’t fucking matter if you self-harm and that you think you aren’t good enough without it.”

Roman shrinks into himself. “Don’t yell at me.”

“Give me one good reason why not!”

“Because you’re making me want to do it again.”

Remus’s breath leaves him in a rush.

“Oh, Roman…”

Roman just curls up tighter.

“I’m doing this all wrong,” he hears Remus mutter faintly before something ruffles his hair and the bed dips further, “Ro-Bro, hey, look at me.”

“Are you going to yell at me again?”

“No, Roman, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make things worse. I’m just really upset for you right now. I promise I won’t yell.”

Roman looks up. Remus smiles back at him, still not touching him. If he wanted to, he could reach out and tug Remus closer, but…that’s hard.

“Hey,” Remus says quietly, “you here with me?”

Roman nods.

“I’m sorry, really,” he continues, “we can…if you really want to stop, we can stop.”

“…no.” Roman shakes himself a little. “You’re right. I’d rather…I think I’d rather do it now, like this. So I don’t have to do it later.”

“Okay.” Remus shifts a little. “Can I ask you some questions or do you just want to talk and I’ll listen?”

“I don’t know if I can just talk.”

“That’s okay, Ro. How about this: I’m gonna ask you stuff and when you wanna say something, you just say it.”

“Okay.”

“How long has this been happening?”

Roman shuffles. “Long enough. Um…at least a few years.”

“Do you have the medical supplies you need to take care of it afterward so they don’t get infected?”

“Yeah.”

“If you run out, can you easily get more?”

“Yeah.”

Remus lets out a long, slow, breath. “Okay. Okay, that’s…that’s good.”

“Is that it?”

“Do you want it to be?”

Roman falters, looking at Remus’s face. The room is still dark. It’s still the middle of the night. The world is paused, breathing softly. He…he has time.

“…no.”

“Okay.” Remus shifts to lay on his side. “Can I ask you more stuff?”

“Sure.”

“It’s not just cutting, is it?”

Roman’s face burns. “No.”

“Will you tell me what else it is?”

“I don’t let myself eat. I read things I know are gonna be bad for me. I put myself in situations that I know are gonna be bad for me.”

“Can you give me an example of one?”

“…I submit an idea I know they’ll hate.”

Remus lets out another breath. Something tingles on the tip of Roman’s tongue, pressing up against his lips.

“…why didn’t you come to any of us?”

He swallows it down. “I didn’t think you’d listen.”

“I will,” Remus promises, “I always will.”

“How can you promise that?”

“Because you’re my brother,” he answers like it’s the easiest thing in the world, “and you’re important to me.”

Oh.

“So if you wanna talk,” he continues like he hasn’t just shattered Roman’s worldview, “I’m here to listen.”

The tingle is back. He stares at Remus, stuck. He can talk. He should talk. They just had a conversation with Logan about that. He should know this. This shouldn’t be happening to him.

He squeezes his eyes shut.

“You have to promise me something.”

“What?”

“Don’t touch me until I’m done.”

He can tell he’s startled Remus by the way the covers jerk back.

“…I promise.”

Here goes nothing.

“It’s not that I want this,” he starts, the words aching on his tongue, “that I want to feel bad, or upset, or—or…hurt. I just…sometimes it’s easier to work that way.”

He scuffs a hand over his nose.

“If I’m upset, I can…I know what kind of thing would make me feel better. Or I know how I am feeling and I can make an idea feel it instead. I know—I need—we—I—“

He sighs.

“I hate this.”

“You’re doing great.”

Doubt that. “They don’t want me. They tell me I’m too loud, I don’t make enough sense, I’m too rash, I’m too selfish.” He swallows. “That I spend too much time dreaming.”

His face twitches.

“They think they know what I dream about.”

“…and what do you dream about?”

Roman sinks his head into the pillow, the soft material cool against his cheek. The bed is warm, the room slightly chilled, the air a comforting weight. The emptiness froths in his chest.

“It’s not important.”

“Bullshit,” and only Remus could make that sound affectionate, “they’re your dreams, Ro.”

“Not Thomas’s.”

“So?” Remus reaches out to poke him but freezes halfway. The sight of his hand retreating makes Roman ache. “We just figured out that we’re allowed to not just depend on that, right?”

“Not at the expense of Thomas.” Roman huddles tighter. “And they wouldn’t care about it anyway.”

“Why do you think they don’t care about you?”

“Isn’t that what I just said,” he growls, scrubbing his hands over his face, “that they don’t want to listen to me? That they only ask for my opinion when they think I’ll be easily manipulated enough to agree with them? That when I’m not they reject me and everything I try to do for them?”

He takes a deep breath and draws his hands away. The sight of Remus, just out of reach, just there, hurts. It hurts. The urge to bury his nose in the crook of his brother’s neck hurts.

“No,” comes Remus’s voice quietly.

Roman blinks. His hands freeze, halfway to Remus.

Right. He asked for this.

He wraps his arms tightly around himself and squeezes.

“I can’t play the role all the time,” he murmurs, “so I have to…remind myself.”

“And that’s why you…?”

“Yeah.”

Remus is quiet for a moment. The room hurts. Roman is cold.

“Ro,” his brother says after a minute, “is you asking me to reject you if you look for physical comfort self-harm too?”

“…perhaps.”

“‘Cause you know self-denial is self-harm too.”

“Perhaps.”

He looks up to see Remus’s eyes…glistening?

“I hope you know I’m gonna hug you really hard now.”

“…please?”

Remus all but throws himself at Roman, rucking up the covers something awful as he bowls them over onto the pillows, his arms around his brother. Remus is big and warm and solid and soft and perfect, squeezing Roman so tightly he worries for a minute that he won’t be able to breathe. He buries his nose in Remus’s neck and oh, it’s everything he ever wanted. This is—

This is dangerous.

This is warm and solid and fire burning in his stomach. This is being able to eat and eat and eat until his tongue turns black and falls out of his skull. This is standing in front of a hurricane and the winds whipping around his immovable body.

This is opening that pit in his chest and giving himself to the need to devour.

Remus must feel the way he tenses in his arms and nuzzles into his hair.

“Ro-Bro?”

“Re?”

“Hey, what’s going on? You went weird there for a second.”

“This…this is okay, right?”

Remus squeezes him again. “Yes, Roman, this is okay. You’re allowed to hug me, I’m allowed to hug you.”

“It’s okay that I…want this?”

Remus stills and Roman panics.

He’s messed it up. He’s told Remus that he wants something. He’s told Remus that he wants something. He’s told Remus that he wants something. Remus is going to think he never wants to hug him. Remus is going to tell the others he’s being selfish. He’s let them know he still wants. He’s ruined everything.

Then Remus tightens his grip so much Roman gasps.

“Yes, Roman. This is perfectly fucking okay. You’re allowed to want, Ro. You’re supposed to want.”

“But I—Re—“

“Sorry.”

Roman pants as Remus loosens his grip. Just a little.

“But I—that’s never a good thing. Anytime I want something, we—they—I—I’m supposed to give it up.”

“One of these days,” Remus grumbles, mostly to himself, “we’re gonna sit down with Patton and have a conversation.”

“…like, this kind of conversation?”

Remus grumbles something inaudible.

“But every time I want something it goes wrong.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to want, Roman.” Remus tucks his face back into Roman’s neck. “You’re allowed to make yourself satisfied.”

Roman shakes his head. He’s learned this time. He got it right this time. There’s no sainthood in satisfaction. Selfless is safe. He’s figured out how to hide his appetite and put them into his work and not ask for more. He knows not to take up too much space. And when he doesn’t, well…

He knows how to remind himself.

When he says that to Remus, Remus pulls back to look at him.

“You don’t think you deserve to make yourself happy?”

He tries to busy himself with fiddling with Remus’s shirt. “I’m what Thomas wants. Or I’m supposed to be. Who cares about me?”

“I do.”

Roman huffs sadly. “I don’t—yes, thank you, Remus, I—I care a lot about you too.”

“You can say you love me.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. Now, what were you going to say?”

Roman sighs, his eyes falling closed. “I want to be happy. I can’t be happy until Thomas is happy. And Thomas isn’t happy with what I want.”

“Oh, Ro…”

“I’m just—why can’t it be okay for me to just be happy?”

“It is, Ro, you can be happy.” Remus gives him another squeeze. “It’s…you can be you, Roman. That’s okay.”

“But it isn’t. It never is. And I can’t—I can’t be happy. Not yet. I have work to do.”

Remus shifts until his chin is tucked over Roman’s shoulder.

“…thought you were the hero, Ro-Bro?”

As the words plunge deep into Roman’s chest, he smiles.

“Name me one hero who was happy.”

When Roman really doesn’t want to be found, he goes deep into the Imagination.

Remus knows, now. Remus came and found him. Remus talked to him. Remus listens. Remus knows.

He was fine with telling Logan. Logan is different. They want Logan. Logan is wonderful and amazing and deserves the world. Or the stars. Or both!

…Janus also knows now.

He’s not sure how he feels about that.

But they’re going to want to talk to him. They’re going to want to know things. And Roman.

Roman can’t. Not today. It’s too much. It hurts too much.

“‘Cause you know self-denial is self-harm too.”

“Go away,” Roman mutters to the ghost of Remus’s voice as he pushes through the tangled brush.

This is different. This is avoiding an overload. This is when he’s already packaged up his appetites so they’re acceptable. This is when he’s already been stripped of what he wants and he has to leave before he gets stripped of who he is.

And it’s so, so stupid.

The others haven’t even done anything today.

Have they ever?

It’s just…sometimes it’s hard, okay? Roman knows he has to do it—no, he doesn’t—yes, he does—but sometimes he just wants everything to stop for two fucking seconds.

There’s a dark patch of woods on Roman’s side of the Imagination. When he brings the others in, they spot it and think that it’s the gateway to Remus’s side.

That’s actually at the bottom of the lake. The gravity flips as you enter this brine pool with a dense methane atmosphere over it. It’s pretty cool, actually.

But not this forest. This forest is Roman.

It’s the last part of Roman that lets himself want.

Deep between the trees, if you can find your way through, there’s a clearing. It’s very small, just large enough for a massive tree with white petals, almost brushing the ground. The petals sway gently in the little bit of breeze that manages to get through the thick walls of the other forest. Underneath is a little bench swing, just large enough for Roman to sit or lie down if he wants to. It smells gently of the blossoms. It’s quiet.

It’s his.

As he slogs through the last part of the foliage, he almost drops to his knees in relief. He made it. He can stop now.

The swing creaks welcomingly as he sits down, the tree reaching to ruffle his hair. He closes his eyes and lets his head tip back. It’s safe here. There’s nothing that can hurt him. It’s his place, his haven. He doesn’t have to pretend here. His eyes flutter open as he watches the petals fall from the branches. They twist and turn until they land on his red sash.

He picks it up. It’s so small. And soft. It’s pretty. It looks so white against the red of his sash. Why isn’t the rest of his shirt that white?

And the sash is so…so…red…

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the sunlight gleam off of the blade of his sword.

A wounded noise escapes Roman’s throat and echoes around and around the still glade. His hands clutch at his sash as he tumbles gracelessly from the swing.

How could he be so selfish?

Logan is hurting. Logan is struggling right now. The others should be focused on Logan. Not him.

Is this what he thinks he needs to stoop to now? To—to—to get attention now? He hasn’t learned his lesson about asking for attention? Hasn’t he learned that asking for anything hurts?

Is that why he wants to do it so badly?

Because it doesn’t matter that Roman self-harms. It doesn’t matter that telling Logan that he cared, that telling the others that he could help felt like selfishly turning Logan’s problem into something about him. It doesn’t matter that Roman’s wildest dream is to have someone care for him the way he desperately wants to be able to care for them.

Roman wants.

Roman’s not supposed to want something Thomas doesn’t want.

So Roman will be selfish here, in this glade, all by himself, where no one can see it, so that he doesn’t hurt anyone else.

Then he hears something.

“Roman? Roman, where are you?”

No.

“Roman! Roman, answer me!”

“No,” he whimpers, scrambling back against the tree.

Logan can’t be here right now. Logan—Logan has enough of his own to worry about, he can’t make Logan worry about him too.

“Roman?” Logan’s voice takes on a note of panic. “Roman!”

He should tell Logan it’s nothing to worry about. He should come out of the woods and smile, say he’s fine. He should ask Logan if he’s okay.

He doesn’t want Logan to see this place.

He doesn’t want Logan to see him like this.

He doesn’t want Logan to ask him if he’s okay.

Because he isn’t, and he’ll want to tell Logan that.

He staggers to his feet and starts to try and make it out of the glade before Logan gets too close. But the flowers are too soft, too warm, too safe. He can’t make himself get up, can’t make himself stop relentlessly taking comfort. He can’t stop wanting.

“Roman?” The leaves crinkle together. “Roman, are you back here?”

No, he should say, don’t come in here, it’s dangerous, I’ll come to you!

Yes, he wants to scream, yes, come find me, come help me, I want you.

The glade holds its breath as Logan bursts through the trees.

“Roman!”

Before he can blink, Logan’s crouching in front of him. He adjusts his glasses and reaches out for Roman’s shoulders, smoothing over the gold trim and examining his face anxiously.

“You’ve got scratches all across you,” he says worriedly, “did you have a hard time getting through? Are you alright? Were you with Remus?”

“No,” Roman mumbles, cheeks burning, “not…not Remus’s fault. Mine.”

“Roman,” he tuts, “you getting injured during a fight isn’t the fault you make it out to be.”

“…not a fight.”

Logan frowns. He glances over his shoulder. “The branches? I managed to get through with barely any scratches, perhaps if we go back through together, we can—“

“Wasn’t the branches, Logan,” Roman interrupts softly.

“Then…” He can almost feel the minute Logan’s eyes land on his hands lying limply at his sides. “…Roman, did you…?”

He nods, shame burning in his gut.

“…this may be a redundant question,” Logan says quietly after a moment, “but…are you alright?”

He can’t help the huff. “Would you like the honest answer or the acceptable one?”

Logan blinks. “Roman, you…you can always be honest with me. I apologize if I have ever given you the impression that you can’t.”

He must be able to see the disbelief on Roman’s face.

“…I do apologize for making you think your honesty was not wanted,” he says, shifting forward to kneel in front of Roman, “and…if it helps, I do believe I owe you.”

“No,” Roman says quickly, shaking his head, “no, Logan you don’t—you don’t owe me anything.”

“You cared for me.”

“That’s what anyone would do,” Roman argues, “what they should do. You shouldn’t owe me for basic decency. If anything, I owed you that.”

“Why would you owe me that?”

He laughs sadly. “Because I’m me? Because I’m loud and obnoxious and never want to listen to you?”

“And what about me? I’m cold and callous and dismissive of you.”

Roman shakes his head. “No, you’re not.”

Logan reaches up to push his hair out of his face. “And you’re not either.”

The wind ruffles through the petals. Logan looks up and smiles.

“It’s beautiful.”

Roman ducks his head. “…thanks.”

“So this is…yours?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s wonderful, Roman.”

“Thanks.”

“You don’t believe me,” Logan says softly, “do you?”

Roman just shrugs.

“Talk to me,” he coaxes, cupping Roman’s face in his hands, “come on, now.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Now, I don’t believe that for a second.”

It hurts. He wants and it hurts and it’s not supposed to hurt and of course it’s supposed to hurt. Everything hurts. Logan scoots a little closer and waits patiently.

“…it used to be easy,” Roman whispers finally, “I used to be able to…to make this work. And now…now I don’t know how to anymore.”

“How what works?”

“I’m not supposed to want,” Roman confesses, “I’m supposed to want for Thomas. And I…I don’t know what that is anymore. Maybe I never did. But I—it used to be easy for me to make myself stay where I was supposed to be. And how to remind myself to be safe in—in—“

“Pain,” Logan finishes.

Roman’s head throbs.

“Oh, my dear,” he murmurs, pulling Roman forward into a burning hug, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Roman slurs, drunk off of Logan’s arms around him, “don’t…don’t stress about it.”

“I’m worried about you, little star,” Logan says against his temple, “you’re hurting.”

“We all hurt.”

“Yes, and recently, someone very smart said that something like this isn’t necessary for us to love you.”

Roman looks up slowly, his eyes brimming with hope. Logan smiles down at him, head tilted in silent question.

“…you think I’m smart?”

“I think you’re quite intelligent, yes.” He catches a tear on the edge of his thumb. “And I think you’re hurting yourself, little star.”

“I…I am, Logan.”

“I know,” Logan whispers, “I know you are.”

“I’m sorry—“

“Shh, shh,” he soothes, “don’t apologize, little star, it’s okay. I’m not angry. I understand.”

Of course he does. He’s Logan.

“It’s not easy, is it? It never is, it’s just…we have to unlearn things, now.” Logan strokes a hand through his hair. “Sometimes it’s going to be a little harder.”

And Roman is here, in his glade, under his tree, protected by the eyes of the world by the thick forest wall, and he wants.

He wants to throw his arms around Logan and hang on for dear life. He wants this pit in his stomach to fill to bursting and disappear forever. He wants everything to stop, right here, so he can live here forever.

What comes out instead is: “…can you hold onto me?”

Logan nods instantly. “How much?”

“…like I might fall off the face of the earth if you let go?”

“Can that happen,” Logan asks even though he’s already moving.

“Not if you hold on.”

A chuckle rumbles through the warm chest as Roman’s cheek comes to rest against the soft fabric. “Then I’d better hold on tightly.”

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#dragonbabbles #fic #sanders sides #roman sanders #roman angst #roman sanders angst #logan sanders #remus sanders #sympathetic remus #self harm #tw self harm #tw: self harm #logince

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musicallisto · 4 years ago

Text

☣ — 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐞; (newt x gn!reader)

@swanimagines requested: Okay I'm doing it since you requested too :D Hopefully I'm early. But may I request song 7 with TMR Newt? c: (People made me go crazy about him so I'm spamming him everywhere, sorry XD) song: dani martín & juanes - los huesos | 𝄞

summary: “But he looked so agitated, just an arm’s length away from you... And you were so very cold... Almost as if your body didn’t belong to you anymore, you silently disrobed of your sleeping bag and crouched over to Newt’s.”

author notes: Juanes is both my dad and my mom. he birthed me himself along with the rest of the hispanic community. if you do not like Juanes I am sorry to say that my religion forbids I talk to you word count: 1.3k warnings: none I think. gender neutral reader. a bit similar to my blue light piece but cuddly newt is *heart eyes*. this could’ve been much angstier given the song but I respectfully looked at that idea and said this ain’t it chief

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒 of Northern American geography were foggy, stored somewhere in an unreachable part of your brain. Perhaps you weren’t even a particularly diligent student - if you had been one at all someday.

But you were absolutely positive your group of fugitives must have trekked halfway across one state, at least.

Well, if the immense expanse of sand and charred ruins you’ve heard called the Scorch may be considered a state at all.

“We’re stopping here for the night, shanks. Set up camp.”

“Camp?”

“... Set up whatever you can set up.”

Thomas could have rolled his eyes all he wanted, Minho was right to scoff; your group’s meager possessions, stolen in the confusion of your escape, were almost a downgrade from what you used to build in the Glade - certainly not a camp. But little occupied the group’s collective mind more than exhaustion, dehydration, and fear... and exhausted, thirsty and afraid you were. So much so that you barely felt the burn of the blazing sand on your clammy skin when you collapsed on your back, arms outstretched like a panting martyr.

The world spun for a few seconds, sky-blue and piercing... until your nausea subsided, the spinning stars disappeared, and Newt’s amicable voice rang out.

“Up you go, Y/N. We can’t have you faltering just yet.”

His outstretched hand, fresh like a gulp of water, and his clean white shirt, and his pale hair tousled in the hot wind, and bright and kind eyes... were the first and most beautiful colors you’d seen since you’d broken away from the WICKED compound, a truce from the constant aggression of orange dunes and red skin.

You caught his hand but didn’t even feel yourself smile.

You only saw it reflected in his own.

This so-called Scorch got stupidly cold stupidly fast, come nightfall.

The thought of building a fire had lingered at first, but you collectively shut it down, shuddering at the idea of more warmth on your withered skin; so after sharing what little food you had found in your stolen backpacks — a can of synthesized beans that almost made you miss Frypan’s stew and laying your sleeping bags on the bare soil, you resolved to go to sleep with no light and no heat other than the dying day and your friends’ exhausted eyes.

Before the world fell utterly silent, Minho took out his flashlight, cleared his throat, and as though you were kids on a field trip and not fugitives in an unknown and infinite desert, he awkwardly recalled some distant ghost story. None of you scolded him for wasting the batteries away, not even Thomas, laying on his back with a preoccupied frown on his face. Perhaps he was the one who needed to hear of ghosts the most.

You had laughed and shuddered at Minho and the other boys’ stories, almost forgetting the world around you. But now you were shivering in your sleeping bag, and the biting cold was much harder to forget than a bad dream.

You weren’t the only one fighting the night, apparently. A rustling of fabric and sand on your right indicated that one of your friends was locked in battle — against the cold or a nightmare, that you didn’t know. What you did know, however, was the shivering silhouette, in spite of the dark night, and how your heart revolted at the thought of him suffering...

“Newt?” you called out, barely above a whisper.

Some part of you felt awful for disturbing him in whatever peace he had found — heaven knew how scarce quiet could be these days, and often it proved much more terrifying than screams and gunshots. But he looked so agitated, just an arm’s length away from you... And you were so very cold...

Almost as if your body didn’t belong to you anymore, you silently disrobed of your sleeping bag and crouched over to Newt’s.

“Newt, are you asleep?”

A silence. Full and absolute. He stopped shuddering for a second, and it hit you just then that he might have been shaking from something other than the cold.

“No.”

“Can I...”

And your voice trailed off, sentence going nowhere, because it seemed ridiculous enough on its own inside your brain, but for some reason, mayhaps softened by the mayhem of your last day, Newt understood the unspoken, and acquiesced in a breath.

“Yes.”

You sat down next to him; he pressed himself as far as he could against the fabric of the sleeping bag, making room for you. It took you a few tries, some squeaking and groaning, and an unfortunate elbow in the rib before you found a position that suited the both of you; but as soon as you felt the heat of his strong chest radiating off your back in comforting waves, you knew there was no place in the world you’d rather be.

"You’re freezing,” he murmured, not exactly a grunt, and as if to prove his point he took your hands in his and held them like a frozen treasure.

You remained silent for some long moments, his breath fanning over your neck, his arms secure around your waist. You expected the ordeal to be more awkward, especially since you weren’t exactly friends with Newt, so to speak, but weren’t anything more either; but his breathing lulled you to sleep like a familiar song, and you were too far gone to think of anything other than the exhaustion and soreness in each of your muscles. It was like falling asleep like a log after a long day of running in the Maze; all that was missing was the dulcet smell of myrrh...

“Hey, Y/N. Are you asleep?”

You blinked a few times with difficulty. You weren’t in the Maze. You would never go back to the Maze.

“Almost.”

“Do you think we’ll find that Safe Haven?”

From your position, you couldn’t see the stars, or rather what remained of them — only the dunes stretching as far as your eyes could see, and the sleeping forms of your other friends. Maybe that view dampened your answer.

“I have no idea, Newt. It’s like a mirage. But... for what it’s worth... I think you’re doing an excellent job at getting us all ahead.”

“Thomas is the one doing all the leading,” he murmured, his raspy voice sending pleasant chills down your back. “I just want everyone to be safe. That’s my job.”

“And I want you to be safe too, Newt. You deserve to be looked after too...”

Though they were strained, his words carried a wide smile, genuine and heartfelt.

“Good thing I have you for that then.”

As he spoke, he took a strand of your hair between his fingers and absent-mindedly played with it. Outside of your cocoon, a breeze had picked up, colder than the rest of the night, but it was powerless before you.

“Are you warmer now?”

“Yeah.”

You closed your eyes. He was still twirling your hair, and you noticed his breathing slow down and deepen.

“Happy to be of service, love.”

Or maybe it was fatigue that made you hear what you wanted to hear. Newt had never been one for pet names, nor for sly and coy remarks.

Then again, Newt had never been one for holding you close to his heart as you both fell asleep, and you relished in that soft side of him he almost accidentally unraveled that night.

“Thank you for... giving me a hand... when I fell earlier,” you muttered, fighting your own droopy eyes.

“You deserve to be looked after too, Y/N. That’s what I’m here for.”

He gulped, and even through the veil of slumber that progressively covered your mind, you sensed his words held a deeper truth you would never entirely grasp.

“I’ll look after you if it’s the bloody last thing I do.”

Your hands were still in his when you submitted to sleep completely, although you were no longer cold.

Neither of you remembered their nightmares when you woke up in the morning.

tagging; @fives-cup-of-coffee @softeninglooks (all my writing) ; @lxncelot @swanimagines (the maze runner)

#mywriting #the maze runner #the maze runner imagine #tmr #tmr imagine #tmr one shot #the maze runner one shot #newt #tmr newt #newt imagine #newt x reader #newt x you #swanimagines

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royalswille · 4 years ago

Text

@ace-bookworm said Button House gets a cat and I said yes and then I wrote this, enjoy.

Buttons’ House

Alison and Mike Cooper had never intended to adopt a cat. After all, Button House was already full to bursting, what with the both of them, eight ghosts living in the main house, an entire village of plague victims in the basement, and the ghost of a pesky pigeon courtesy of their neighbour’s dog. Simply put, there was not enough space to add any more family members to Button House.

So the cat had taken it upon itself to move in.

It had started one morning while Button House was going through its usual morning routine. Alison had woken up, checked the bathroom for ghosts so that Mike could use it without fear, then started the stopwatch for the Captain’s run before putting on a record for Thomas to do his morning dance to. She had filled in a few words on Robin’s crossword, set up Pong for Julian, and put on a classic football match for Pat. In the next room, she had helped Mary with her phonics work, turned to the next page in Kitty and Fanny’s book, and then done the same for Humphrey (or rather, Humphrey’s head – god only knew where his body was). She had arrived downstairs in two minutes and thirty seconds to open the door for the Captain to run in, perfectly timed.

Everything was the same as usual.

“Two minutes thirty, Cap,” Alison said, stopping the timer. “Same as always.”

“Blast,” the Captain said frustratedly. “Are you quite certain of it, Alison? I could have sworn I shaved off a second or two, I really pushed myself on that last corner.”

She shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. I’m just going by what the timer says.”

The Captain harrumphed and peered out the door, beckoning Alison to join him. She did, looking out across the driveway to where he pointed at the gate.

“That’s my problem,” he said, waggling his finger. “The terrain switches from concrete to gravel. If you could just pave over the driveway then I’m quite sure I c– hello.”

The Captain’s tone changed abruptly and Alison raised an eyebrow. “Hello?” she replied, bewildered.

“No, no, not you,” Cap replied, pointing down the driveway again. “Look, over there. It’s a cat.”

Alison squinted and saw that the Captain was quite right. Trotting up the driveway towards the open door, mewing quietly, was a little cat. It was jet black with bright yellow eyes and looked a little tatty with its scraggly fur. As it got closer, Alison could see that its ribs jutted out from under its skin slightly. The cat looked happy enough, but it was very clearly a stray, or badly neglected at the very least.

It stopped just in front of the Captain and sat primly, looking up at him with its eyes squinted serenely.

“Can cats see ghosts?” Alison asked him.

“It would appear so,” he returned. With a painful-sounding cracking of his knees, the Captain crouched down in front of the cat and regarded it. The cat stared back, blinking happily up into the Captain’s face. It attempted to bat at the Captain’s swagger stick, which was hanging from his hands, but its paw went straight through.

“Yep,” Alison said, “it can see you.”

It didn’t appear the Captain was listening to her, because a moment later he pointed his stick at the cat and said, “Now you listen here. It is improper to try and touch a Commanding Officer’s person or belongings. Had you been a soldier – or indeed able to touch me – I should have you punished.”

“Captain, it’s a cat, it can’t understand you,” Alison told him.

He stood up again, knees creaking audibly. “Yes, well. That hardly matters – I am a senior officer and I– oh dear, good Lord, what is it doing now?”

The cat was purring, attempting to rub itself against the Captain’s legs lovingly, but simply passing right through, which only seemed to make it more determined to show the Captain its love. The Captain began to gag, reminding Alison of the ghosts’ inability to touch living things without feeling sick. Quickly, she scooped the cat into her arms and held it close – the Captain stopped his gagging, but the cat continued to purr, nuzzling at Alison’s face.

“It’s very affectionate,” she said through all the fur blocking her face.

“Quite,” returned the Captain, voice a touch more gentle than usual. “Do you think it has a home of its own?”

Alison stroked the cat and frowned. “If it does then it’s not a very good one. Look, you can see all its bones, the poor thing hasn’t eaten in ages. And look at its fur, it’s disgusting. And it stinks.” The cat stopped purring momentarily as if offended. “Sorry.”

“Well,” the Captain said, assuming his usual military-man stance, bouncing once on the balls of his feet, back straight, stick tucked under his arm. “If this creature is in need then perhaps we should provide a home for it.”

“What? No, we can’t do that. Captain, the house is more than full already, we can’t add a cat to the mix.”

“During the war we never left a soldier behind!”

“This is a cat, not a soldier. I’m sure it’ll find a home eventually, just not here.”

As she said it, the cat laid its head upon her shoulder, purring again, eyes closed. It appeared it had decided that in Alison’s arms was the perfect place to go to sleep. Alison had always been a cat person and wanted nothing more than to cuddle the cat, even though it was probably riddled with disease and it stank like rot, but she knew if she did that then the cat would start thinking that Button House was its home. It would start coming back and they couldn’t have that. So with a heavy heart, she gently placed it down on the floor.

“Sorry,” she said to it as it looked up at her sadly. “I’ll feed you just this once because you look like you need it, but that’s it. Right, Captain?”

The Captain muttered something under his breath as he often did when he felt put out, then turned on his heel and left, stretching the way he liked to after his morning run. Alison went the opposite direction, leading the cat to the kitchen to find it something to eat.

It was halfway through the plate of tuna she had laid down for it when Mike came in. He looked down at it, then to Alison, then back at the cat before saying bewilderedly, “I don’t remember getting one of those.”

“That’s because we don’t have one,” Alison told him. She watched fondly as it ate its food – it clearly hadn’t eaten in months judging by the way it wolfed the fish down. “This is a stray, it followed the Captain in this morning after his run.”

“Uh huh,” Mike said slowly, sitting down to watch the cat too. “So why is it in our kitchen?”

“I’m feeding it.”

“Yes, I can see that. Why though?”

“Because,” Alison said emphatically, picking the cat up as it wandered absently towards her, then turning it to face Mike. She held its paws in her hands and wiggled them back and forth like a bad puppeteer. “Look at it! It needed some sort of food otherwise the poor thing would probably die. It’s not like we’re going to keep it, I just wanted to make sure it lived.”

“You remember what happened to my Auntie Barbara,” Mike replied. “She accidentally adopted so many neighbourhood strays that her house was practically overrun with them. And then what happened to her? She died. Because she was allergic to cats and there was so many that it killed her.”

“I never understood why she fed them and stroked them in the first place if she was so allergic,” Alison returned, to which Mike shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. We aren’t keeping it.”

“We don’t get to decide that,” Mike said, “the cat does.”

The cat, from its place nestled on Alison’s lap, meowed in agreement.

“Well, if it shows up again, we just won’t let it in. Agreed?”

“Agreed. We can’t afford another mouth to feed. It is cute though,” he admitted.

“It is, isn’t it?”

Despite how adorable the cat was, Alison let it out the front door. She watched as it obediently walked away, tail a little higher than it had been before, looking healthier and perkier. She knew she shouldn’t have been hoping it would come back, but a little part of her didn’t want to say goodbye.

Luckily, she didn’t have to. The very next morning, she opened the door to let the Captain in from his run (“Two minutes and thirty seconds, Captain, but I think you knew that already.”) and hot on his tail came the cat, smiling as obviously as a cat could.

In spite of her better judgement, Alison took the cat into the kitchen again and fed it once more. She knew she shouldn’t have been, but she was already growing very attached to it. Despite its awful smell and awful condition, she felt a soft spot for it. Absently, she wondered if she should take it to a vet, just to get it checked over and see if it had a home. But she was snapped out of her thoughts by one of the loudest things known to mankind – Lady Fanny Button.

“What on Earth is that disgusting creature doing in my house?!” she shrieked, pointing wildly at the cat, which kept eating its food just as peacefully as before.

“Relax, Fanny, I’m just feeding it,” Alison explained.

“Whyever are you doing that? That creature is clearly a stray, probably riddled with fleas, and you’ve brought it into this house like it’s nothing! It’s going to defile this beautiful house and you shall be the one to blame for it, Alison. I want it gone at once!”

“Fanny, it’s not doing anything, okay? Calm down, look, it’s just having something to eat, it needs it.”

“It is a very small step from eating to… to defecating, young lady!” Lady Button retorted. “I shall not have that thing in my house, ruining everything! Take it away.”

“I thought you liked animals,” Alison tried. “You had Dante when you were alive.”

“Dante was a well-behaved, loving, healthy, clean dog. He was not some stray we just picked up off the street one day because we felt like it!”

“Well,” Alison said, “to be fair, we haven’t picked up the cat because we feel like it, it kind of invited itself in.”

“If anything that makes it worse,” Fanny yelled, sounding appalled. “Not only does it smell ghastly and look unseemly, but it is rude as well. It clearly has no manners. I will not ask again, Alison, take the cat out of this house!”

At that moment, the cat finished eating and turned around to try and bat at the hem of Lady Button’s dress. Though it couldn’t touch it (for obvious ghostly reasons), Fanny screamed and took a few paces back. She started yelling more nonsense at Alison, something along the lines of ��get it out’ and then ran straight through the wall, out of the kitchen.

Sighing, Alison heaved the cat into her arms, took it through the house again and let it out through the front door just like the previous day. She watched it wander away once more, though this time it stopped in the middle of the driveway to wash its leg briefly. She shut the door behind it and got on with the rest of her day.

It wasn’t until the next day, day three, that Alison realised that the cat situation was likely going to become permanent. When she opened the door for the Captain, he did not run in as usual, so she peered out of the door and saw him crouched in the middle of the driveway, attempting to pet the cat but failing miserably because each time his hand passed right through and he gagged.

She watched for a minute, stifling her laughs so that the Captain didn’t hear her and realise she was watching which would likely make him stop. Soon she was joined by someone else.

“Good morning, Alison,” Kitty said, bounding up to her, smiling as brightly as ever. “How are you today? Oh look – the Captain has made a friend!”

Alison chuckled. “He has. It looks like they’re getting on very well.”

Kitty gasped excitedly then said, “It’s a cat. That means it’s a kitty, just like me!” And without further ado, she skipped over to join the Captain and the cat. The Captain looked mildly disgruntled, their moment having been interrupted, but he smiled as soon as the cat started purring, trying to bat at his swagger stick again and jumping at the bows on Kitty’s dress.

A moment later, Mike joined Alison. He looked out at the cat, watching as it jumped and played with what would seem like nothing to him.

“Are there ghosts out there with it?” he asked Alison.

“Yep,” she returned, popping the ‘p’. “Cap and Kitty. They’ve really taken a shine to it.”

“Well, like I said,” Mike replied, “it is really cute, I don’t blame them. Have any of the others met it yet?”

“Only Lady B,” Alison told him. He raised an eyebrow and she continued, “She wasn’t a fan.”

Mike hummed and a silence fell between them. Alison had been thinking more frequently that they really should take it to a vet. Even though it was happy and eating properly when she fed it, getting it checked over wasn’t a bad idea. It didn’t mean they had to adopt it – it just meant that they could have peace of mind knowing it was alright.

She was just about to say this to Mike, but he got in first and said, “I think we should keep it.”

“What?” she replied, shocked. “Why? Two days ago you were worried it was going to kill you.”

“No,” he said, “I just suggested that it’s a possibility we can’t rule out. But you clearly like it, and I think it’s cute, and if the ghosts like it then maybe it’ll – I don’t know – like, placate them a little.”

“They’re not dangerous, they don’t need placating,” Alison said. “Is this just the same as when you said we should get Netflix to ‘appease’ them after they’d finished watching every DVD we own?”

“No,” he said, sounding too affronted to be telling the truth. “Plus, we won’t be caring for it on our own, will we? We’ve got eight extra pairs of eyes to keep a lookout for it. So we can all look after it, it won’t be just us.”

“Only one of those ghosts can touch anything,” Alison told him. “We’ll still have to clean up its poo and stuff like that. And you’re terrible with poo.”

“Yeah, that’s why you’ll be on poo duty.”

“No. If we’re adopting this cat then we’re sharing poo duty. That’s the price you have to pay.”

The both of them turned to watch the Captain and Kitty playing with the cat again. It jumped up to try and grab the feathers in Kitty’s hair and she giggled delightedly.

“Alison,” she called, “it’s so lovely! Come and play with us, please!”

She turned to Mike. “Okay. We’re keeping it then.”

He tore his gaze away from the cat and smiled. “Yeah. Why not? Let’s do it.”

“Great,” Alison said, clapping her hands. “I’ll call the vet, see if they can get us an appointment to make sure it’s all healthy and see if it’s microchipped. I hope it doesn’t already have a home.”

“If it does then we can just get another one,” Mike said, slipping an arm around Alison’s shoulders. “There’s a shelter not too far away.”

“I like this cat, though. I want this one.”

“Well, we’d better get that vet appointment to see if we can have it then, hm?”

And so, not four hours later, Alison and Mike made their way back to Button House from the vets, the kitten nestled comfortably in the back seat. Their appointment had gone very well – the cat was in surprisingly good health for a stray, they had got it up to date on its vaccinations, and they had determined the cat didn’t have a home. So, to the couple’s delight, it was allowed to stay at Button House.

The house was unusually quiet when they arrived back. That normally meant that all the ghosts were assembled upstairs partaking in one of Pat’s clubs or another. There was the faint sound of scattered applause as Alison walked through the front door – one of them had probably finished giving a speech.

She gently put the cat down on the floor as Mike shut the front door behind them.

“Right, missy,” she said. The vet had also confirmed that the cat was a girl and about six months old. “Welcome home!”

The cat meowed and trotted off down the hallway, seemingly in search of the source of the clapping. Alison wandered after it, and the cat led her upstairs to the common room. She found the ghosts all gathered around together, most of them on the sofa, Julian and Robin by the chess board, and Thomas in full view of all of them, bowing even though their half-hearted applause had long since ceased.

Lady Button was the first to notice the new arrival and she didn’t seem best pleased.

“Alison,” she shouted, standing up and pointing at the cat furiously. “I told you to get rid of that vermin, that vile creature, I do not want it in this house!”

“Now listen here,” interrupted the Captain, brandishing his swagger stick. “That cat happens to be in dire need of our assistance. I think it only right that Alison has brought it inside.”

“And it really is a sweetheart, too, Lady Button,” Kitty gushed.

“You’d probably think a grizzly bear was a sweetheart,” Fanny retorted.

Robin shook his head, saying, “Grizzly bear never sweetheart. Grizzly bear kill my uncle. Was very funny actually.”

“Excuse me,” interjected Thomas, “I still have four more poems I want to perform!”

As happened far too often to be endearing anymore, the ghosts all started yelling over each other, some insisting they get rid of the cat, some insisting it stayed, and Thomas insisting he be allowed to finish his recital. Alison watched them fight, the cat sat at her feet, watching bemusedly too, before finally stepping in after Julian and Thomas started squaring up to one another.

“Alright, alright, enough!” she shouted.

Shouting only worked about half the time, sometimes the ghosts’ arguing would be so loud that Alison couldn’t even hear herself over it – luckily, this time around the ghosts fell silent and looked towards her expectantly.

“Okay,” she said, “everyone just listen to me. Mike and I decided that we’re going to adopt this cat–”

“Outrageous,” interrupted Lady Button. Alison ignored her.

“We’ve taken her to the vets. She’s in perfectly good shape and she doesn’t seem to have a home, so we’re taking her in. She might need a little TLC before she starts looking…”

“Less like a toilet brush?” suggested Julian, eyeing the cat.

Alison frowned. “Before she starts looking herself. But we’re keeping her, no objections. Okay? She really is lovely, I promise you all.”

“No, no, no,” shrieked Mary, standing up and joining Lady Button as far away from the cat as they could get. “Al’son, you can’t keeps the pussycat.”

“Why is that, Mary?” Alison asked, trying not to sigh.

“Because you’ll’s be branded a witch!” Mary explained, sounding as if it should have been obvious. “If a woman have a cat then she be a witch! They’ll burns you at the stake! I’d know.”

“Mary, lots of people have cats now and they don’t get burned to death. Alright? And you know I’m not a witch.”

“Oh,” Mary said. “Right. Okay then.”

Without further hesitation she crouched down and smiled at the little cat. It purred and tried to bat at her apron. But it appeared Mary took that as an attempt at attack, so she yelped and ran, hiding behind Kitty.

“You can keeps the pussycat, Al’son, but please keeps it aways from me.”

“If you’re quite finished with the witchcraft nonsense,” said the Captain, stepping forward, “then might I ask if this cat has a name?”

“Oh,” Alison said, “well, Mike and I were going to brainstorm later this evening–”

“That seems hardly fair,” Cap returned. “We all live here, we should all name it.”

“Yes,” said Kitty, bouncing up and down. “I think we should call her Princess Snuggles.”

The Captain laughed. “No, thank you, Katherine, that’s a silly name. I was thinking something more like Major Fuzzyboots.”

“And how, pray tell, is that any less silly than Princess Snuggles?” asked Thomas flatly.

“Well, I don’t see what’s wrong with any classic cat names,” Pat said, peering down at the cat. He stretched his hand out to scratch her head, then looked as if he had to hold back vomit, and withdrew his hand. “Something like Luna or Shadow. Something simple, like.”

“Boring,” Robin remarked. “Should call it Cat. Save trouble.”

“No offense, guys, but I think I’m just going to talk it over with Mike,” Alison decided – the ‘all these names are terrible’ wasn’t spoken aloud but was heavily implied and she was sure they got the picture. “We’ll come up with something. Come on, missy.”

Alison hoisted the cat into her arms and was about to head back downstairs with her, when Julian’s voice piped up from behind and said, “Why not call her Buttons?”

The other ghosts made noises of agreement, which was rare.

“Buttons?” Alison said, looking at the cat. “Well, I suppose she does look like a Buttons. And it’s like Button House! Oh, I love it, nice one, Julian.”

He straightened his tie and suit jacket. “Yes, well, if anyone was going to be the one to solve this – uh – cat naming crisis, well then, I suppose it only makes sense that it were me. It’s not the first crisis I’ve solved, not by any stretch of the imagination. Did I ever tell you all about the time, back in eighty-three, when I…”

Alison didn’t stick around to hear the rest of whatever godawful story Julian was planning on telling. She left the room and headed back downstairs to get Buttons some food and tell Mike they’d decided on a name.

Over the next few weeks, Buttons’ presence in Button House seemed to be almost completely accepted by everyone living there. There had been a few unfortunate incidents and teething problems, but nothing that wasn’t fixable.

The first real problem came two days after Buttons’ adoption. Nobody had been able to find Humphrey’s head, which was predictably detached from his body. Kitty remembered placing it down on the kitchen table, but all they found there was Buttons. Everyone had been searching the house (including Mike, though he couldn’t see Humphrey, and Humphrey’s body, which couldn’t see anything at all) but it hadn’t been until Alison had picked Buttons up that the head had been discovered.

It turned out that Buttons had taken quite a liking to Humphrey and decided to sit on him. The problems arose when Buttons obviously couldn’t sit on Humphrey and instead ended up in him, which obscured the head from view completely. And it didn’t help that Humphrey was allergic, something that apparently hadn’t changed in death. His face was red and his eyes were watering when Alison finally picked up Buttons and freed him.

“Oh, thank goodness for that,” Humphrey breathed. “I’ve been shouting for hours, couldn’t anyone hear me?”

“You must’ve been muffled by Buttons’ fur,” Alison suggested. “Sorry Humphrey, I’ll try to stop that from happening again.”

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself, Alison. It’s alright, really. Well, apart from the allergy, and the sick feeling from having something living touch me. But really, no need to go out of your way.”

Another issue was that Robin just didn’t seem to get on with Buttons. She loved him, clearly – in fact, Buttons seemed to adore everyone in Button House (except Mike, for reasons unknown to anybody) – but one day Alison had walked into the common room to see Robin yelling at the cat.

“Oh, you think you so big, so clever. I kill mammoth. I can easy kill little cat!”

“Woah, hey,” Alison said, approaching the two. Buttons was stood on the chess table, gazing up at Robin with nothing short of adoration in her eyes. “Why are you threatening to kill my cat?”

“Ruin chess game,” Robin huffed, jabbing a finger in Buttons’ direction. She tried to pat it and he grumbled, “Go away.”

“She’s just a cat, I’m sure she didn’t mean to.”

“She did. She jump on table and hit all pieces off. Little guy and horsey on floor, me no pick them up!”

Alison did it for him, picking up the chess pieces and placing them on the squares Robin instructed her to. Buttons quickly lost interest, hopped off the table and left the room.

“And stay out!” Robin called after her.

Thomas didn’t seem to be the cat’s biggest fan either. Alison had a sneaking suspicion that his hatred towards her stemmed from the fact that he had been trying to recite yet another unwarranted love poem to Alison but she’d not been paying attention, instead playing with Buttons. She had caught him seeking his revenge later that day, leaning over Buttons as she slept on the sofa, and whispering what sounded like a demand for her to duel him. Alison had decided to avoid that situation altogether and quickly backed out the room.

The only other ghost who wasn’t totally enamoured with Buttons was Julian, who seemed very indifferent on the whole subject. Though Alison did once catch him practising one of his speeches on the cat, who seemed surprisingly attentive.

But for the most part, Buttons was adored. Many a time, Alison came across the Captain or Pat pretending to stroke her or sitting by her as she slept. Kitty and Mary would play with her (though Mary was still a little wary and periodically asked Buttons if she was a witch in disguise). Even the plague ghosts adored her – she had managed to sneak down to the basement when Mike left the door open once, and the ghosts had tried their hardest to adopt her for themselves. They were happy with the agreement they reached with Alison though, that she would let Buttons down there once a week to visit them all.

The biggest surprise of all came one lazy evening when Alison had been on her way to bed, a sleepy Mike in tow. They had passed through the common room where a fire was dwindling in the fireplace. Buttons was curled up in front of it, sleeping soundly, and watching her with a fond expression on her face was Fanny.

Alison smiled and cleared her throat. Fanny looked round, looking a little startled and embarrassed to be caught gazing at the cat she had been so against.

“Alison,” she said, but didn’t seem to have any words to follow it up with.

“Is she growing on you, then, Fanny?” Alison asked, stifling a yawn.

Fanny turned away, facing Buttons again, and said, “Well. She’s certainly no Dante. But I can admit now that she is rather sweet. I suppose it’s alright that she stays here.”

Alison watched as a small smile grew on Fanny’s face, watching the gentle rise and fall of Buttons’ chest.

“Goodnight, Lady B,” she said.

“Goodnight, Alison.”

From then on, all the residents of Button House treated Buttons as if she were all that mattered, even Robin and Thomas, whose grudges quickly wore off. It seemed that despite the fact that Button House was already full to the brim, adding little Buttons made the house a home.

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ninnodesu · 4 years ago

Text

The New Matriarch, ch 4.

Tw: - Fou language, I guess? - Thomas swears and trashes the basement

You

Squeal, growl, stomp. And you turn around to look in the direction of the sounds, there he is. The man your brain has decided to remember. You silently step up to him and look at him with a small discrete smile on your lips until he turns to look at you. “It’s you!” , your smile falters as he appears to flinch at your words, like you had stabbed him with something, and then he turns to leave. “Wait!”, you follow him a short distance before you start thinking that it might be a bad idea and are left standing in the hallway when you hear a door slam. You're yet again alone, looking toward where the man left in a hurry

"O… oh…" Unsure of what to do, you keep standing there, slightly swaying, listening to the snuffle of the pigs. "I'm so sorry!", you yell out in hopes of it reaching his ears before heading back up to the room you woke up in.

You slump down on the bed again, listening to the silence that once again occupies the house and finger a piece of fabric on your dress to occupy your brain. You let your body just fall to the side to lay down on your pillow, still fiddling and fingering a piece of fabric. All you do is just… exist. From time to time a small groan from the house can be heard, a wind might whistle somewhere.

After you’ve been existing, rolling around the bed to wake up limbs that have fallen asleep, you start hearing voices, footsteps and doors opening and closing and you perk up.

People!

Footsteps up the stairs makes you sit up and tuck your knees to your chest just staring at the door before deciding to walk over to the door to take a peek outside, but before you have time to reach it, a knocking emits from it. “C-come in.”, you reply in a small voice. “Oh, you’re awake, good.”, an older lady with glasses hung around her neck enters your room “How are you feelin’, girl?”

She looks expectantly at you, waiting for a reply. “O-oh. I’m, uhm… I’m good, I think.”, you smile awkwardly at her. Scratching a bit of skin off your arm that your dress bites into, the fabric is uncomfortable as all hell.

The old lady looks quizzically at you, eyebrows raised. “You think?” “Uhm… Yes. I’m a bit… confused, truth be told.”, you look sheepishly at her, suddenly feeling really embarrassed. “What’s your name, darlin’?”, she puts her hands on her hips as she asks you the simplest of questions to any human being out there. “M-my name?”, you stutter slightly, a familiar lump forming in your throat that you desperately try to swallow. “I-I… uhm…”, you take a deep breath to try and resist the urge to cry as you quietly whisper out “I can’t remember…”.

And it’s when those words leave your mouth that the flood gates that are your eyes open up and you can’t help but to cry. It’s all you do at that moment. You don’t even try to get them to stop. It’s an ugly, hulking cry. The one that’s felt in every part of your body, the kind where you want to scream out your sadness, the one that almost makes you want to vomit. You raise your hands to hide behind, to cry behind, and soon after you feel a pair of arms wrap around you in an embrace. A soft cooing into your scalp, and a hand smoothing over your hair. No words are spoken, it’s just you in the old lady’s embrace and the sounds of your crying.

When you finally feel your tears starting to let up, and you let yourself relax, the lady releases you from her grip, but cups your cheeks and lifts your head to let your eyes meet hers. “My name is Luda Mae, darlin’.” Her smile is warm, and you can tell she’s a mother just by the way she smiles at you. You smile back and nod slightly, rubbing one eye with the heel of your hand. “Come on. You’ll feel better after havin’ a shower.”, she takes your hand in a light grip and leads you towards the bathroom. “I’m gonna see if I can’t find you a proper piece of clothing too, can’t have you walkin’ ‘round the house in those rags.”, she chuckles a bit and you can’t help but to do the same.

All you manage to do is nod and gently squeeze her hand in appreciation.

Even if the bathroom is dirty too, it’s not as bad as the kitchen and you are thankful for that fact. Your whole body starts to itch where the fabric of your makeshift dress drags due to how rough it is. You peel the bandage off carefully to make sure you don’t disturb your wound, examining it when you see you’ve gotten stitches. A small “hm” when you silently appreciate the work someone here has done to you.

You wince slightly when the water hits the wound, but after the worst pain has subsided, you relax. You hang your head and watch as dark, murky water run down your legs and down the drain. The lighter the shower water becomes, the better you feel. For a few minutes, the only thing you do is stand there with water running down your back and hair. It feels so good to take a shower.

I don’t think I can remember when I took a shower alone last… , you sigh in relief. Picking under your nails to get grime out, scrubbing to get dirt away from your nail beds. It feels So. Damn. Good. to be clean again.

A knock on the door wakes you up from your shower dreaming. “Yes?”, you call out. “It’s Luda, darlin’. Just wanted to give ya’ somethin’ else to wear.” You smile to yourself at those words. “Oh, come in.”, even though the curtain is covering your form up you can’t help but to put your arms around you covering you up more out of instinct.

You look at the darkened figure of Luda Mae as she puts some clothing down on the toilet seat. “Pick whichever ya’ like, darlin’, and come downstairs when you’re ready. Supper will be on the table.”, and just like that, you’re left alone. You’re not entirely used to this level of free time. You knew there was always someone watching over you some way or another, but not here.

You dry yourself off and take a look at the items of clothing. One simple dress, nothing fancy or spectacular. And two types of shirts - which for you looked big enough to become dresses anyway. “Hm…”. You tried both the dress and one shirt, but in the end decided to pick the shirt. Mostly because you liked the fabric and how it felt on your skin, it was looser than the dress, which helped a lot with the wound on your shoulder since it didn’t dig into it.

And as suspected, it was way too big. You giggled at how the long sleeves reached out and over your fingertips, and the length of it reached down to your mid thighs, making you wonder if maybe you should ask for a pair of pants, but shrugging that thought away. The top button covered your chest just barely and you knew if you leaned forward too much everyone would get a clear cut view of your breasts.

On your way down to the main floor you heard the sound of what you guessed was a TV. You made your way through the house to find where the smell of food came from, your stomach rumbling and mouth starting to drool. When you finally found the dining room, you suddenly felt very small at the sight of the entire family.

Your eyes met with an older man that looked grumpy and you hid behind the door frame. “That girl ‘o yours is here, mama.”, his voice is gruff and you see the lady turn around to look at you, beckoning you to enter the dining room. “Stop hidin’ behind doors and get in here! Supper’s getting cold.”, you nod shyly and walk around the corner to sit down at an empty chair that seems to be distant enough from the old man, but sadly making you end up in direct line of sight of him. His gaze is burning your soul and you feel really naked and exposed by it, especially when you notice where his gaze is making its way.

You jump high and drop your fork when there is one loud stomp at the floor. “THOMAS! It’s DINNER TIME!”, you curl up into the chair and tuck your knees up to your chest when you get the chance while the old man isn’t looking at you, his eyes seemingly searching for any kind of sound. It takes a few minutes before you hear footsteps coming for the dining room, heavy ones.

“Where the fuck have ya’ been, ya’ bastard? Haven’t seen ya’ since we got home, boy.”, something in his voice makes a shiver run down your back, it sounds venomous. His question was just replied with an annoyed grunt. You keep your eyes on your food that you’re simply just poking around with your fork, despite the hunger aching in you. “Oh, stop bein’ a baby, Tommy. Just sit somewhere else, and let the girl eat.”, Luda Mae tells the man you’re starting to piece together is named Thomas.

Oh I took his seat… , you keep your eyes down in embarrassment.

It’s by the time the big man sits down next to you that you decide you need to do something, say something. Something!

“I-I… Uhm… I just wanted to say…”, all eyes on you. Even Thomas, you see him in the corner of your eye, but you honestly don’t dare to look at him. Not after you apparently offended him earlier. You're scared he’s mad at you for offending him, scared he’s mad at you for unknowingly taking his seat. And your voice goes from loud and clear to a whisper. “T...hank you.”, you take a mouth full of the food and feel tears pricking at your eyes again. You take another. And another. And suddenly you’re shoving food into your mouth almost faster than you have time to chew. The sight is apparently comical, as you start hearing chuckling and giggles around the table. “Easy there, darlin’.”, a hand lands on your own and a thumb rubs back and forth. You look up at Luda with happy tears streaming down your cheeks. “Don’t choke on your food! It’s enough you almost up and died when Tommy brought you in, no need to scare us again.”

You slow down enough to finish what you’ve already started chewing. “I just haven’t eaten such good food in so long, it’s amazing!”, for the first time since you got here, your smile reaches up to your eyes making them squint in happiness. Your smile is real, and genuine.

Making at least one's heart at the dinner table to jump.

Thomas B. Hewitt

The basement is dim and damp. And the moment he reaches the floor he kicks a bucket that richoces at a nearby wooden banister and lands in some far corner. Anger has taken a hold of him again. Frustration.

God DAMN IT! , he growls and plants his hands flat on one of the tables, head slumped. Shoulders tense.

"I'm so sorry!", it's faint, but he still hears her voice calling out for him.

Shut the fuck up.

He's breathing heavily. When he heard her voice before, it was like honey, soft and warm in his ears, but now? It stung like daggers.

It was the way she said "you" that set him off. It's how everyone else always talks to or about him. He was never viewed as a person, a human being. He was almost always a venomous “you”, a whispering “him” between friends followed by snicker and giggles. Sometimes he was even an “it”. His family were the only people who viewed him like a proper human being, well except for Charlie but that was just because he was an asshole in general. “You”, “it’s him” , “that thing”. All of them negative. He grits his teeth, his fingers digging into the table, knuckles turning white.

He lets out a frustrated roar that’s silenced by the crash of the table he decides to flip over makes. His tools fly all through the basements and clank all over the space.

After the worst of his tantrum has subsided, he’s just standing there, looking at the mess he’s made before stomping over to a small secluded area of the basement. His area of the basement, the one he made during his early teenage years when the bullying became worse and he felt he needed a place where his family didn’t go. He needed something more hidden. A place where he could curl into when he didn’t want the world to know he even existed. He’d put a bed in there once, an old one. A creaky, dingy bed. Mostly just springs and a mattress, but a bed nonetheless. He flopped down on it, face first, ignoring the uncomfortable way the edges of his mask dug into his face and scars as he let his eyes fall halfway. He just sighed, one foot hanging off the bed, arms folded under his pillow.

She’s pretty, the adrenaline started to pour out of his body and tiredness hit him. He usually gets either straight up sleepy or just tired after an adrenaline rush, no matter how small. Closing his eyes, his mind drifts off to that one sentence when her voice was still honey.

And I like her voice…

“-MAS!”, he slowly opens his eyes listening for something that sounded like a voice.

“THOMAS!”

Oh, it’s Charlie. , he groaned when he realized who it was, and drags himself up from the creaky bed.

“It’s DINNER TIME!"

Yeah, yeah. I’m coming. He yawns as he climbs the stairs up to the dining room. The whole family is gathered as he enters, looking at his seat he sees her. In one of HIS shirts.

Mama, that’s MY shirt!

“Where the fuck have ya’ been, ya’ bastard? Haven’t seen ya’ since we got home, boy.”, Thomas just grunts in annoyance to Charlie’s question, or to her sitting in his seat… or the fact that his mother gave her one of his favorite shirts. He’s not sure. He throws his mother an annoyed glance before huffing. “Oh, stop bein’ a baby, Tommy. Just sit somewhere else, and let the girl eat.”, his mother tells him. He gives a defeated whine, trudges over and plants himself on an empty chair next to her. As he picks his own utensil up to start digging into the food in front of him, she decides to speak again.

“I-I… Uhm… I just wanted to say…”, he slowly turns his head towards her, his eyes piercing into her. He’s confused as to what feelings to feel right now. Annoyance because it’s his shirt and his seat? Flustered because it’s his shirt and she actually looks adorable in it? Angry because she’s most likely just like everyone else, or at the fact that he has to think about what kind of feelings he’s supposed to have? It’s just one big confused concoction of emotions and feelings rumbling around inside of him right now.

“T...hank you.”, her voice is low, but he shrugs slightly. He takes a bite of food before turning to look at her again in utter shock. She’s shoveling food into her like a ravenous animal. Like she hasn’t eaten in god knows how long. It looks like she doesn’t even have time to chew properly, he stifles a chuckle at the sight and signals his mother with a chuckle disguised as a grunt. “Easy there, darlin’.”, he just spectates as his mother places a hand on hers before turning to look at his brother and uncle who’s both chuckling at the starving animal at the table before he himself can’t help but to release a silent chuckle, his shoulder bouncing slightly. “Don’t choke on your food! It’s enough you almost up and died when Tommy brought you in, no need to scare us again.”

He smiles to himself as he takes a drink of water. “I just haven’t eaten such good food in so long, it’s amazing!” He glances at her at first, but can’t help to fully turn his head when he sees her smile.

It’s a genuine smile. A smile that reaches her eyes. He remembers something his mother told him at a young age; “Remember, Tommy. If a person whose smile makes their eye smaller, that person is giving you their truest of smiles.”, it isn't until now that he fully understands what she meant by that.

If he spoke; he would’ve been speechless. Something even his thoughts are at this moment. He’s not sure what to say, or even think when he sees her smile. It makes his heart jump and he’s more thankful than ever that he has his mask on as he can basically feel his cheek start to burn red.

#The New Matriarch #TNM #thomas hewitt #thomas hewitt fanfictiom #tcm: the beginning #tcm #tcm fanfiction #fanfiction

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imherongraystairstrash · 5 years ago

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Anna & Christopher

A/N: This one’s for one of the many iconic sibling duos in tsc!! It’s not entirely centralized on Anna and Kit, but I tried my best. Oh, and there are Chog Spoilers so make sure you’ve read the book. Also, thank you guys so much for your kind comments and for liking and reblogging my last fic! It really makes my day!! Next up: Gabrily Wedding! (you guys really love Gabrily haha!! It’s a good thing they’re one of my favorites as well!) -Ana

Anna had come back from patrolling with Thomas when she heard the news: Christopher was attacked by a demon and is now lying sick in the Silent City. Anna had been laughing mere minutes before she entered her parent’s house. Laughing, while Kit was dying. Anna closed her eyes.

When she and Thomas had opened the door to her parent’s house, Anna felt a chill go through her. Cecily sitting was on the floor. Both of her hands were clutching on the telephone she was holding close to her chest. There were tears streaming down her eyes. Her father had been pacing; he was grabbing fistfuls of his hair. Alex was staring at them from behind a door with his eyes wide open. When Gabriel looked up, he walked over to Anna and Thomas and embraced them tightly. Anna knew that something terrible had happened.

Cecily had desperately tried to get permission to enter the Silent City so that she could see her oldest son, possibly for the last time. Gabriel was trying to look composed for the sake of Anna’s younger brother Alex, but he wasn’t able to manage it. Thomas was standing, though Anna could see him slightly swaying. Thomas has lost so much already in the hands of this stupid disease.

Anna still couldn’t believe it. Her brother, her sweet innocent brother, was in agony and dying in the Silent City and there was nothing she could do. The thought of him made her eyes sting and her breath come shallow. She tried to swallow the bile coming up her throat. Anna didn’t want this. They had already lost someone dear not so long ago, she couldn’t bare lose her sweet brother too.

Anna walked into her old room. It felt strange going in there after so long. The walls were still that pastel color Anna had dreaded when she was living there. Perhaps it was because Anna had more important things to worry about, but the color didn’t seem to bother her anymore. Not that she would ever chose that color to paint anything hers, but it felt nostalgic. It reminded her of a time when she would sneak into her brother’s room and wear his terrible clothes. Anna smiled to herself as she sat down in the bed.

“Anna?”

She looked up and saw Alex, her younger brother, staring back at her. When he was born, he had very dark blue eyes, like her’s, her mother’s and Will’s. But as time progressed, Anna noticed the color changing to a more greenish blue; a mix between her Father and Mother's.

“Alex, bach, are you alright?”

“I’m scared.”

“Come here, cariad.”

Alex walked up to her and she hoisted him up, setting him down on her lap. He wrapped his arms around her.

“What frightened you, Alex?” she said softly.

“Mam got a phone call and begun screaming and crying. I thought she was dying.” Alex told her. Anna could see the fear in his eyes. He had never seen his parents in such despair. Anna planted a kiss on his head.

“Alex, do you know what happened to Christopher?”

Alex nodded, “He’s sick.”

“Yes. Mam and Papa are frightened because they don’t want to lose him.” Anna heard her voice crack slightly.

“Will Kit die?” Alex asked. The tears in his eyes made Anna’s heart break. She held him closer.

“I do not know, Bach. Hopefully, a cure is found.”

“I don’t want Kit to die. He always makes me laugh.”

Alex was clinging on to Anna, his face was pressed to her shirt. Anna stroked his soft hair.

“Kit is silly, isn’t he?”

Alex wiped his eyes and nodded.

“Do you remember when he blew up his closet?”

Alex laughed softly.

Anna’s throat began to hurt. She was not ready to lose Kit. She would never be ready.

All of a sudden, the phone rang. Anna set Alex down, and held his hand as they walked down the hall to where Cecily was answering the phone. Gabriel bent down to pick up Alex and put a hand around Anna, holding her close. Cecily’s eyes opened wide as she dropped the phone. Gabriel let go of Anna.

“Cec?” Her father sounded as though he was dreading the news.

“That was Will.” Cecily looked surprised, “Christopher made a cure before he got sick and Thomas has manufactured it. They’re taking it to the Silent City right now.”

It seemed as though the entire house sighed in relief.

“Wait,” Anna said as her parents were hugging, “Who’s ‘they’?”

“Oh, Alastair Carstairs, Cordelia’s brother.”

Interesting, thought Anna.

“Are we going to see Kit now?” Alex asked.

“Oh no, honey. You are going to stay with Uncle Gideon and Aunt Sophie for a while.” Cecily said, planting a kiss on his head. Alex frowned.

“You can see him tomorrow, bach.” Gabriel said softly.

Alex nodded. Anna felt bad for Alex, but she knew it would be better he didn’t see Kit in the state he was. She did not know what the injuries looked like, but she could only assume they were not pretty.

Anna kissed Alex’s head before he walked through the portal. Gideon and Henry were waiting on the other side. Her father’s brother looked older after the untimely death of his oldest daughter, Barbara. Nonetheless, he was smiling sadly as he watched Alex walk through, and took he hand.

Cecily was kissing Christopher forehead over and over while holding his face in her hands, repeating loving words in Welsh. She had practically flung herself at him, and didn’t seem to be letting go anytime soon. Christopher (who was dazed from the antidote) was confused when he saw his Mam with tears in her eyes, caressing his face (which was burning up) with her cold hands. Gabriel appeared behind her and put his hand on Kit’s head, stroking his hair softly. Christopher had suffered greatly when the poison was in his body. All he wanted was to have his father hold him close in his arms, like he used to do when he was younger. He wanted Mam to kiss him on the forehead like she does whenever he leaves the house. He wanted Anna to ruffle his hair and to tell him to stop ruining his clothes. He wanted to see Alex smile and Thomas’ company Uncle Henry’s lab. These happy memories ran through his head, as though to show how lonely he was.

He didn’t want to die alone.

“Kit,” Thomas had said, his voice hoarse as he gave him the antibody, “Kit, you did it, your antidote worked. Some Shadowhunters are already recovering.” Behind him Alastair stood there, watching. Kit did not understand why he was there, but he was not here anymore. Maybe hallucinations were a side effect; he had to write that down.

Now, his Mam had moved to embrace Thomas and then Matthew, who was taken by surprise. His Papa had moved to the side to make space for Anna, who was smiling widely at him.

“What happened, Kit?”

“Oh,” Christopher was confused. He turned to his father. “Did you not inform Anna that I was attacked by a demon?”

Gabriel and Anna laughed. Christopher was even more confused.

“Only you could find a cure for a disease, be on your deathbed while it’s being made and not understand something as simple as sarcasm.” Anna said.

Sarcasm. “I don’t like that word. It always confuses me.”

Anna and Gabriel laughed again. Cecily scolded them for confusing Christopher while he had been so close to death, not even an hour ago. Anna took his hand and laughed through her apology, which got Gabriel smiling. Christopher blinked. He was very confused.

Uncle Will and Aunt Tessa later came with Lucie. Though he enjoyed their company, Christopher didn’t exactly know why they were here. It felt like a reunion. Maybe he had died and this was heaven. Or hell. He couldn’t really tell without his glasses on.

“Am I dead?”

“Yes.” Anna said

Gabriel and Will both burst out laughing. Cecily elbowed Gabriel as he covered his mouth. Will looked at the ceiling, a wide smile across his face, trying to contain a laugh. Cecily had a murderous look on her face, before turning to Kit sweetly.

“No, Bach. Thankfully,” She turned and shot a look at Gabriel, “You are alive. Unfortunately, both your father and your Uncle Will act like children.”

“What about Anna? She was the reason we began laughing.” said Will.

“I thought you were the Cool Uncle, Will.” Anna said

“I would rather be Mean Uncle Will than have Cecily beat me up.”

“More like the Cowardly Uncle.” Tessa said.

Although everybody laughed, Will looked betrayed. Christopher patted his hand, which was resting on the bed frame, with his own.

Anna watched as Gabriel helped Kit walk up the stairs back to ground level. When they got there, James was still propped up against the tree, talking with Matthew. James Herondale looked as if he had fallen off of a tree on his face, onto pavement, and slid three blocks. And that was an understatement.

“Time to get up, Jamie bach.” Will said cheerfully as Jamie groaned.

“We probably should have gotten a carriage instead of coming by foot.” said Will.

James, who had his eyes closed until then, opened them wide. “Is that a joke?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

James looked over at Tessa.

“Sorry, Jamie.”

James winced as Will tried to get him on his feet.

“Don’t hurt him.” Tessa said.

Will threw a fake punch at James’ face causing Tessa to shake her head. Anna couldn’t help but notice how every time James winced, Will did as well, as though it caused him physical pain to watch his son struggle. Anna thought back at how Cecily had acted when Kit was dying. She couldn’t imagine how broken Sophie and Gideon were. To know that they will never see Barbara again. The thought felt like a dagger piercing Anna’s heart.

They all departed at the same time. Towards the back, Will was making terrible jokes, which induced several groans from James, Lucie and Matthew. Each step James took was labored and heavy, almost painfully to watch.

Christopher walked along side Anna as they headed towards the house. The antidote worked perfectly, and her brother was soon walking without difficulty, though his chest must still be in pain.

“You scared us, Kit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Anna’s heart broke, “It was not your fault.”

“Oh,”

They were silent for a while. From a distance they could hear Will.

“You know Jamie, when you were a baby, I used to be afraid to drop you because you looked like me and was therefore so beautiful. But since your face is ugly and messed up, now I can drop you all I want! It won’t make a difference!” he said, swaying James slightly.

“Will, if you drop Jamie, I will divorce you.” said Tessa.

“I will approve of that divorce.” James said, wincing through each step.

Anna turned her attention back to Kit. “Alex really wanted to see you.”

Christopher looked around. “Where is he?”

“He’s with Uncle Gideon.”

“Oh.”

Anna looked around. Gabriel had an arm over Cecily and was holding her close to him as they walked. Thomas was talking with Lucie. Matthew was beside Will and James, there to help if they needed it, but as always, he seemed a bit distant. Tessa was looking worriedly as Will helped James walk. Despite all of his joking around, Will was supporting James with all of the care in the world.

“I’m glad you are here, Kit.”

“Me too. I was afraid I was going to die alone in the dark.”

Anna wrapped her arms around her brother.

“As long as I live, you will never die alone, Kit.”

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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 4 years ago

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Magnolia

I don’t know much about Magnolia or Paul Thomas Anderson, but I do know that it takes someone paying me to get me to watch a 3-hr+ drama that doesn’t star Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a really big boat. This is one of my mom’s favorite movies which is why she requested it for me to review. It’s packed with a balls-to-the-wall star-studded cast (Tom Cruise! Julianne Moore! Phillip Seymour Hoffman! John C. Reilly! William H. Macy! Felicity Huffman!) and I’m genuinely excited to see how they all fit together. Cause they have to all fit together in some coherent way, right? Well...

Do you remember in Sorry to Bother You when the Equisapiens came out and things just took like...a real turn? That’s kind of what this was like. Whereas StBY pushed a thought to its most extreme, but logical, conclusion, what Paul Thomas Anderson has done here feels like a magician doing a lot of impressive illusions - sawing a lady in half, making a motorcycle disappear, pulling smaller things out of bigger things - and then for his final trick, walking onstage amidst a grand plume of smoke, dropping his pants, taking a gigantic shit, and then saying, “You’ve been a great audience, thanks a lot and goodnight!” It’s not like you can say the experience was BAD. Everything up to the finale was a really great time! But when you’re left on a note that is that bafflingly odd, it kinda colors the way you’ll remember the whole thing.

Magnolia is the story of one long day in the life of 12 people living in Los Angeles who are all connected via an extensive web from acquaintances to married couples to parents and children to paid caregivers and beyond. It’s a day that has the same kind of ups and downs as any other day until it, well, turns into something else entirely. I’m not sure how else to explain it, but if you want to know more, spoilers will be spoiled below.

Some thoughts:

Patton Oswalt cameo! I am a massive fan and thought I knew his whole filmography and OMG how did I not know that he was in this!!

Ok, in spite of my skepticism this entire opening sequence about coincidence had me hooked IMMEDIATELY. Like, this is some damn good storytelling, if this were a novel, I would not be able to put it down - that pull, that’s what it feels like.

Am I the only person whose encyclopedic memory of character actors/roles gets distracted when they see someone from something that is wildly disparate compared to the role you’re currently watching? For example, I had to pause the movie and confirm via IMDB that I did just see Professor Sprout from HP scream “Shut the fuck up!” at her husband while brandishing a shotgun.

Would people really recognize a grown ass man from being a successful child game show contestant? I’ll tell you the answer, no they wouldn’t, because no one realizes that Peter Billingsley (aka Ralphie from A Christmas Story) is the head of the elf production line in Elf.

I knew this was a stacked cast, but holy SHIT this is a stacked cast. If I had $1 for every fantastic character actor I recognize in this, I would have at least $37, and these are people in the film who have maybe 2-3 lines each. It’s a deep bench is what I’m saying.

This makes me miss Phillip Seymour Hoffman so, so very much.

Watching PSH care for and be so compassionate and gentle with his hospice patient, Earl (Jason Robards),makes my heart ache terribly. All of the people who have been unable to perform this kindness, this type of compassionate care for their closest loved ones as they lie dying in isolation of Covid...it’s overwhelming.

OMG I’m counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Very Good Dogs in the old man’s house!

I know Scientology is evil and he’s undeniably a complicated and morally grey person. I know all that. But goddamn I just love watching Tom Cruise COMMIT. Particularly when he commits to just absolute fucking sleazebag slimeballs. And boy oh boy is Frank Mackey an absolute fucking sleazebag slimeball.

Related - I know Frank looks like Tom Cruise, so he could get people to sleep with him no matter what, but I honestly feel like as a human being, this flesh suit is WAY more attractive balding and fat in Tropic Thunder than he is in this shiny brown shirt/leather vest/long hair combo.

I’m getting an uncomfortable vibe about these black characters being written by an artsy white dude, because I don’t know any young black kids who want to hang around with cops and offer up information about who committed a murder in their building. In fact, the way all of the black characters are treated in this film - as liars, criminals, the disingenuous “main stream media,” and thieves - feels rooted in some racist ass bullshit. We see a lot of nuance in our white characters, but even in a film that has, shockingly, more than one key black role, we don’t get that spectrum or nuance.

There is nothing I would love more than to learn that Frank Mackey is 1) gay 2) impotent or 3) both. He’s so disgustingly over-the-top misogynistic, it honestly feels like it should all be a complete act.

I confess I am on the edge of my seat trying to figure out how all these narrative threads tie together. It’s compelling as hell, even though half the time I don’t know why these people are having these long, meandering conversations. The pacing feels so deliberate, like a puzzle coming together. There’s real craftsmanship in how every scene is plotted to feel connected rather than manic or disjointed.

This pharmacist is being unprofessional as hell. Judgy McJudgerson, mind your fucking business, Julianne Moore’s father is dying! [ETA: ope, that’s embarrassing, Earl is actually her husband.]

NO THE DOG IS EATING THE PILLS OH NO VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE DOG.

I think I knew this, but this soundtrack is fantastic. All Aimee Mann and Supertramp, and Jon Brion’s score is this thrumming, anxious thing full of strings that underscore all these nervous conversations, and then it shifts into these low, mournful horns when things start to take a turn and everyone is reaching their lowest points.

I love this interviewer (April Grace) who is taking Frank (Tom Cruise) to task. I think it’s particularly noteworthy that she is a black woman, because the kind of misogyny Frank peddles is rooted in white supremacy.

Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is breaking my goddamn heart here. I think he and Phil (PSH) are my favorite characters.

Jim (John C Reilly) is the perfect example of how even a cop with the best intentions, with absolute kindness and love is in heart, is abusing his power and sexually harassing a woman he encountered in the line of duty, who is eager to appease him because she doesn’t want to be charged with a crime. This movie reads a LOT differently than it did in 1999.

I normally really love Julianne Moore, but she is a screeching mess in this. I can’t stop staring at her mouth and all the contortions it makes as she delivers every line in hysterics. She’s one of the few weak spots for me here.

Listening to Frank go on his whole diatribe about what society does to little boys to break them and victimize them HAS to be the source of where Keith Raniere got at least half of his NXIVM bullshit. Like, some of these points are word-for-word.

Also if Frank makes as much money as he seems to, there’s no way he would drive a shitty Saturn sedan.

It feels like the common thread of this movie is everyone is terrible and cheats on their spouses, and you should come clean when you get cancer so you can die peacefully. Weird moral, but ok.

If Jim is a cop, how does he not see that this woman he’s interested in (Melora Walters) is coked out of her mind?

Y’know for being a quiz kid, Donnie (William H. Macy) sure is kinda stupid.

I confess I’m not taking many notes throughout this because I’m just kind of sitting breathlessly still watching all these conversations unfold because I am on the edge of my fucking seat to find out how all this is gonna come together.

Secret MVP of this movie is the mom from A Christmas Story (Melinda Dillon) who is giving the performance of her goddamn life as Jimmy Gator’s wife.

Did I Cry? On the surface it appears ridiculous, but when Tom Cruise is having his breakdown at his dying father’s bedside, I admit, that really got me. If you’ve ever been faced with that kind of hysterical, I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening, it feels like the whole world is ending kind of shock and hurt and anger, that’s what the crying looks like.

Are those......frogs?? That landed on Jim’s car? It’s raining fucking frogs???? OK for those of you sensitive to frog harm, this movie is going to take a real hard left turn for you, because I swear that came out of NOWHERE.

Um.

What.

Pray tell.

The fuck.

The climax of this movie - is when literal frogs rain from the sky.

And we finally got resolution about the dog, and the dog DID die, and I’m pissed about it. It’s offscreen but still.

I'm sorry - I know I’m fixating. But how is it possible that I knew about all the characters performing a sing-along to Aimee Mann’s (excellent) song “Wise Up” but I did NOT know that the climax of the film involves literally thousands of frogs falling to their death from the sky? How is that something that escapes entry into the cultural zeitgeist? I’m with it, you guys. I have been Very Online for over a decade, and before that, I read a lot of Entertainment Weekly, and like it just seems that this is something that pop culture really should have told me.

I think the funniest moment of this movie might be the credits in which I discovered that not only is Luis Guzman playing a man named Luis, he’s actually playing himself. I don’t know why, but I can’t stop laughing about it. That was a 189-minute setup to one dumb punchline.

I think I loved this movie but I don’t quite know. The frog thing really threw me. What I’m taking away from it is that even when it doesn’t feel like it or seem like it, we are all connected to each other, always, in ways we can’t see or know. As Wife astutely pointed out, it’s reminiscent of the pandemic - we’re all in the same storm, but we each have our own boats and our own experiences within that storm. And it’s kind of nice to remember that right now, that connection still exists even when it feels so far away. Just not if you’re a frog I guess, cause they really got the short end of the stick here.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

#121in2021 #magnolia #magnolia review #paul thomas anderson #tom cruise #julianne moore #phillip seymour hoffman #John C Reilly #william h macy #movie reviews #film reviews #patreon review

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ahtohallan-calling · 5 years ago

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chapter 3 of promises to keep is here!

[kristanna / 5 part 18th c scotland au / love and angst and kiltstoff in equal measure / rated t / 3.3k words this chapter / big cw for violence and death this chapter]

masterpost

“Are you still angry with me?”

“Terribly.”

“What’ll I have to do to earn my place in your good graces again?”

She leaned back and raised her hands to cup his jaw, running her thumbs gently over the stubble there. “Come home to me safe and whole, and then swear to never leave my side again.”

chapter 3: a plea for forgiveness

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep out here.

Well, really, she hadn’t meant to be out here long enough to. In her mind, by now they would be halfway to Glenfinnan, maybe further if he’d managed to get hold of a horse, and then they’d keep going until they were out of Scotland entirely, and then maybe they could built a little cottage or find a port city and cross to Ireland or further even to the colonies, and there’d be no war nor uncle nor anything else to keep them apart.

But he hadn’t come, and now the sun had already risen, and fear swallowed the anger in her heart when she looked down from the top of the hill into the village and saw the crowd that had already gathered in the square.

Anna ran as fast as she could, the breath tearing from her lungs as she raced over the moor. The toe of her boot caught on her skirt, and she fell with a cry, skidding halfway down the hill and making a bloody, dirty mess of her shins. The second she came to a halt she was on her feet again, panting for air and praying let me make it, Jesus and Mary and God and anyone else who’s listening, let me get there in time.

She skidded to a halt next to the tailor’s shop, scanning wildly for him.It seemed the whole village was there crowding the streets, mothers straightening their son’s collars for the last time and wives clinging to their husband’s necks and little siblings enviously eyeing their brothers’ gleaming weapons. At last she laid eyes upon him where he hung back from the rest of them, his eyes cast downward as he fiddled with something in his hand, as if he wasn’t expecting a single soul to come and bid him farewell.

“Kristoff!” she gasped, already reaching for him as she started to run once more, and immediately he looked up, eyes filling with hope as he closed the gap between them.

He caught her around the waist, lifting her slightly off her feet as she flung her arms around him. “I didn’t think you were going to come,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion.

“Of course I came. I love you,” she choked out, her fingers knotting in the back of his shirt.

“It’s alright, my Anna,” he said softly, cradling the back of her head as she wept against his shoulder. “Don’t cry.”

“I thought– I thought you would come last night. I waited for you.”

He pressed a kiss into her tangled hair. “I knew you would. And I knew that if I came that I’d go with you and spend the rest of my life feeling guilty for it.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and closed her eyes, memorizing the warmth of his skin and the feel of his arms around her. “I know. But I…I was still hopeful, anyway.”

“Are you still angry with me?”

“Terribly.”

“What’ll I have to do to earn my place in your good graces again?”

She leaned back and raised her hands to cup his jaw, running her thumbs gently over the stubble there. “Come home to me safe and whole, and then swear to never leave my side again.”

“I will, I promise,” he said, and let go of her for a moment to fumble in his pocket. “And I– here, I wanted you to have this, so you can look at it, and…well.” His cheeks reddened. “I’m not good with words, but I guess you know why I want you to have it.”

He opened his palm to show her an iron ring. “Not gold yet, like I promised,” he said sheepishly, “but I made it myself, if that makes up for it.”

Anna set her fingers lightly on his palm. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered, and he smiled and slid it carefully onto the ring finger of her left hand. “How did you get it just the right size?”

“I learned how your hand fit against mine long ago, and so I…well. Wasn’t hard, really,” he said, sounding almost shy, and she couldn’t help but kiss him then, twining her arms around his neck as she rose up onto the tips of her toes.

From somewhere at the other end of the square, the pipes started playing, a marching song, and panic began to rise in her chest. She pulled back to meet his eyes and found them sadder than she had seen them since the first day they had met, when he had been a lost little boy and she was his only anchor, and she realized that somewhere along the way they had changed places.

“Don’t go,” she pleaded, feeling like a child. “Please, don’t leave me.”

“I have to, my love,” he said, leaning down to press his forehead against hers. “But I’ll come home to you, I swear it. You won’t even have time to miss me.”

“I already do,” she whispered, and he kissed her one last time and pulled regretfully away, catching her hand and giving it a squeeze before letting go.

She fell back into the crowd, tears streaming down her face, as he joined the rest of the men. They were a ragged bunch, farmers and bakers and smiths, not a soldier among them, but she knew they’d be meeting up with the rest of the MacLeod clansmen as soon as they got to Lochailort, and somehow from there they’d find the rest of the army and march south to face the English head-on.

How many are there like me, she wondered, watching them go and wondering which of them will come home again?

Her uncle glanced back then, his eyes meeting hers. She lifted her chin defiantly, expecting a scowl, but instead, he bowed his head, sorrow flooding his face, and it occurred to her for the first time that perhaps he, too, had never wanted it to come to this. Beside him, Callum looked just as grim, though he had eyes only for his wife, cradling his son. I’ll look after them for you, Anna thought, wishing she’d thought to tell him as much aloud. You take care of what’s mine, and I’ll take care of yours.

He glanced at her then, and she gave him a firm nod. A grin broke across his face, and he saluted her before turning away again to face the road that led them all away from her.

—

Every day there was a new kind of ache in him. He was used to hard work, to be sure, perhaps more used to it than many of the other men he marched with. But the endless miles of walking, the hours of drilling, the way he caught himself tensing his jaw near-constantly, all of it meant that at night he laid awake aching for hours on his bedroll, trying not to think of how he could have been home in a bed with a wife next to him if only he’d given less of a damn about honor.

He wasn’t the only one. Many of the men had joined the army for glory and pride and love of country, while others– the ones who seemed never to stop smiling– joined for the satisfaction of sinking a blade into its target and the pleasure of warm blood running through their fingers.

But the rest of them– most of them, actually, he was coming to realize– had come because their lairds demanded it of them, or because they had mouths to feed back home, or some combination of the two, all of them burdened a sense of duty that outweighed anything else, no matter how dear it was to their hearts. At night they would sit somehow alone and together all at once, and he would see Callum running his fingers over a little portrait of his wife, and there would be Thomas who’d come all the way from Peterhead reading a faded letter for the thousandth time, and gray-haired Duncan who never stopped fiddling with his wedding band, and Kristoff would wish desperately that he’d thought to take something, anything, that he could hold onto and think of Anna, some little piece of her that reminded him why he was sitting here in the drizzling rain with a rifle beside him that still felt strange in his hands.

They had, by sheer geographic coincidence, joined up straightaway with the Bonnie Prince himself and his army. Sometimes he caught sight of him talking with the officers or joking around with his private guard or making the rounds to meet the men who were ready to die to give him back a crown. Kristoff always avoided him when he came his way; all he could think when he saw the man’s bright smile was what is it, then, that you’ve had to leave behind?

—

The forge was empty now; smith and apprentice alike had marched off together. And the miller’s wife did the best she could to keep them all fed, and the carpenter’s boy used all of his fourteen year old fury at being left behind to give him stamina though he lacked much skill, and there was no one to replace the butcher so they made do with what was left in the larder and what they could manage to pull from the river.

Aunt Nellie shut herself up the same day the men left, and Elsa was better suited to helping keep books and sorting out the mind-numbing tasks of governance, and so it fell upon Anna to go from house to house each day, doing whatever little she could to raise their occupants’ spirits.

News came so rarely that most days they just rehashed the same conversations over and over, I remember when he was knee high to a lamb and I hope his blanket’s holding up and have I ever told you how we met? And she would say yes, and now he’s the size of a bear! and I’m sure it is, yours are always of the strongest weave and no, but I’d love to hear, and it was enough, at least, to fill the silence. She felt sometimes like a rag shoved into the cracks around a door, doing whatever she could to fill the gap and stop the cold from getting too far in.

And the softer hearts among them would ask after Kristoff, too; they had all seen her say goodbye to him, and before that had seen the years they spent side by side, and she would show them the ring he’d made and tell how he’d known just how to make it without even taking the measure of her hand, and they would smile and sigh and say you hold on to that one when he comes home.

I will, she would promise, and then before long she would have to take her leave and go out somewhere that none of them could see her and catch her breath before she went on to the next house and did it all again.

And then one day real news did come, that they’d taken Edinburgh and a town next to it, and she practically ran from door to door bringing word of it. “Maybe they really will be home by Christmas,” she said breathlessly to Callum’s wife, and then suddenly they were both laughing and weeping and holding on tightly to one another for dear life.

—

It had been six hours, and his hands were still shaking.

“You’re alright, lad,” Anna’s uncle was saying, grasping his shoulder to try and ground him, but it wasn’t enough; all he could hear was the man’s gasp when the musket ball had hit him and the solid thwack of the body hitting the earth and the cry that had escaped his own lips when he’d realized what he had done.

“You saved my son’s life,” the older man said then, his voice becoming strained, “and I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

“He was someone’s son, too,” Kristoff said, feeling faraway from it all somehow, like he was still on the battlefield, watching as tiny drifting snowflakes fell and melted when they landed on a slack face that was still warm.

“Aye, he was,” Lachlan said softly, “and that’s why we’ve got to keep fighting as best we can, so this madness can end before there’s none of us left to go home.”

Kristoff closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “I told Anna I’d be home before the first snow fell.”

“It can’t be helped now, lad. But I’ll do all that’s in my power to get you back to her as soon as I can.”

He nodded, grateful, knowing it was as close to a blessing as he was likely to get. He half expected the other man to get up and leave, go back to his officer’s tent, but instead he stretched out his legs and leaned back on his hands, staring up in silence at the vast expanse of sky, and still he was there when at last the trembling stopped and, overcome with exhaustion, Kristoff fell into an uneasy sleep and dreams of Anna clinging to him with tears streaming down her cheeks and whispering it’s alright, all of it, so long as you come home.

—

The winter was long and dark, devoid of any news except word that a battle had been half-won in January, that a siege had been attempted but both sides had instead retreated partway through. “Why?” Anna asked the man who brought the message, but the only answer was a shrug as the man mounted his horse and turned towards the next village.

There was no news of who yet lived or died, and with the animals kept indoors and no crops to harvest and the moors too frigid to wander, there was little to do but sit at home and wait.

The days were bad enough, sitting by firesides and rehashing the same memories and thoughts and questions over and over for the thousandth time, but the nights were what hollowed her, left her staring up at the ceiling drowning in a tide of dread. This was supposed to have been a fast war, an easy victory for the mighty highlanders and the rightful king against the bastardly interlopers, harking back to the days of Bannockburn and wicked King Edward and the heroes of the Scotsmen charging into battle just as ferociously as they still did today.

She couldn’t help but wonder now what it had been like for the ones left behind back then, if they, too, had paced from room to room and trembled for fear and joy alike over every scrap of news, if they traded the same stories a thousand times over and told each other “this will be it, they’ll be home before you know it and the English will let us alone at last”.

One evening in February as she made her way home after spending an hour smiling and clapping at Callum’s little boy as he made his first hesitant steps across the floor, she found herself walking by the blacksmith’s shop and peering through the window out of habit, as if by some miracle she might catch a glimpse of Kristoff there, the light of the forge gilding him around the edges as he swung his hammer high, all warmth and strength and life.

She blinked and realized she had somehow drawn close enough to flatten her palm against the window, her nose pressing against the glass as she peered in through the gloom at the dust-ensconced anvil and bare table, and suddenly a wild thing overtook her, a desperate need to see some kind of light in the hearth, and before she knew it she was through the backdoor that had been left mercifully unlocked and kneeling before the fireplace.

It took a few tries, but she had seen Kristoff do it enough times that before long she had a fire going, and she sat back on her heels willing the warmth of it to melt the slick, icy dread in her heart that was turning her blood to sludge in her veins.

Anna closed her eyes as tight as she could, twisting the ring around her finger out of habit as she remembered the way his arms had circled around her, the way he’d pressed his lips to her cheek and promised such pretty things to her, the way the sunlight had glinted on his hair as he disappeared from view. If that was the last she saw of him, if that had been goodbye–

She screwed up her face, willing herself not to cry, but the tears came anyway, burning as they rolled down her cold cheeks. She had told him she was angry with him, that she wouldn’t forgive him until he came home, but her fury had faded away the second she had lost sight of him, and now she was the one who wanted to beg for mercy, to tell him over and over again how sorry she was for spending the night on the moor waiting for him to betray himself when she could have spent hours in his arms, holding him and telling him how she loved him until the dawn.

If you come home to me, she thought then, as if it were a prayer, I’ll spend the rest of my life doing just that to make it up to you.

—

It wasn’t supposed to be happening like this. There were thousands of them, highlanders and lowlanders alike, drilled in rushing forward with a battle cry and startling the enemy into a retreat, the same way they had that had carried them through the fall, but somehow this time it had failed, and now half the army was back at Inverness, and the rest of them were here fighting as best they could through the mud and melting snow as the struggle quickly turned into a slaughter.

He was half out of bullets already, trying not to choke on smoke as he charged towards where Callum was trapped beneath a fallen horse, ignoring the pitched battle all around him as he sprinted forward, thinking only of the woman with curly hair and the blue-eyed babe in her arms standing straight-backed beside Anna and refusing to give in to tears, and then there was a scream and a sword and a burst of red and he was too late.

He stumbled back in horror, a cry bubbling out of his throat as he raised his gun to his shoulder, taking aim, but suddenly there was a shout behind him. On instinct, he turned, the musket ball firing uselessly into the air, and came face to face with a snarling man on horseback, his sword extended, and then there was a blinding pain tearing from his hip to his knee.

He blinked, too stunned to cry out, and suddenly he was lying in the mud, his vision already going gray around the edges. He clenched his eyes shut, willing himself to stay conscious, to stand again and keep fighting, to avenge Callum and the rest of his clansmen and fight his way through the entire army if he had to, if that was what it took to keep his promise.

He opened his eyes with a gasp of pain, and somehow there she was leaning over him, as solid and real as the earth beneath his back, grace in her eyes as she smiled at him, the ring on her hand glinting as she reached down to caress his cheek.

“Forgive me,” he said hoarsely, and she opened her mouth to reply, and then he blinked and she was gone, and in her place there was a soldier in a red coat with his rifle raised high, and he swung it down hard as if it were a hammer, and Kristoff saw no more.

—

a/n: thank you @kristoffbjorg and @ronnieiswriting for the idea of how he would know how to make her ring the right size

#sorry LOL #but theres two more chapters So #ptk #my fics #old scotland au

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amintyworld · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter One: Ex-Kings - Sanders Sides Six AU

A/N: Finally, after three weeks of valiant effort, it’s FINALLY HERE! The first chapter of the amazing Six AU! I’m sorry it didn’t come out sooner, school and personal stuff got in the way, but I hope you enjoy it! Love ya, and as always, stay sweet! - Minty

First (You’re Here!) - Last - Next

Summary: Prince Remy has a decision to make, and receives an unlikely gift.

TW: Death mention. (Please tell me if I missed anything!)

Prince Remy walked down the halls of his castle, deep in thought. He had a week, if not more, to decide the biggest decision of his life - he was relieved of his regular duties to think, not like he really did much anyway. His father, King Thomas, handled ruling the Sanders Empire just fine without him - he had for over 10 years before Remy came along.

The Sanders Family was secretive in their pasts, and not much was known to the public of their personal lives, so not much was really known in the family, nor outside it.

Remy turned down a long hallway full of tapestries of merry kings and queens, of powerful monarchs that conquered kingdoms and waged wars. Remy paused in his hurry to scan along the line.

King Daniel to King Logan, their stories of what the public saw paved in thread and silk.

Would he ever be the strong leader his people needed? Remy doubted himself. It was hard to believe he was related to any of them at all - he walked down slowly, his hands drifting over the soft stitching.

Divorced. Beheaded. Died.

Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.

A part of Remy wondered what they were really like behind closed doors. Were they ever scared? Did they have struggles like him?

He stopped at his grandfather Logan’s tapestry, reading the label - ‘King Logan the Wise, The One Who Survived’ - and looked up. There was his grandfather on the throne, his father behind him, with a hand on the head of the chair, both with blank expressions.

Remy stared at the tapestries. There must be something behind the riches and crowns, something human. He can’t be a descendant of… of brutal kings and ruthless killers.

It can’t be so cut and dry.

Can it…?

“Remy!” A servant yelled, snapping the Prince out of his daze. Remy’s gaze snapped to the servant, smiling as he rushed and enveloped the Prince in a much needed hug. “Thank god you’re here. I haven’t seen you in weeks!”

“Boy, they’ve got you really busy, haven’t they?” Remy said, smiling down at his best friend, then looking down at his suit stained in flour. Emile turned pink.

“S-sorry! I didn’t have time to wash up…” Emile said, trying desperately to clean off the white streaks on Remy’s black jacket. “Oh, I’ve ruined your suit…!”

Remy smiled, sighing at his best friend. “Oh, don’t worry about that, Emi. It’s just a little flour.” He giggled as some flour built up on top of Emile’s puffy white hat fell to the floor, dusting nearly Emile’s entire face in the powdery white substance.

Emile groaned. “I never thought I’d ever hate flour.”

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up…”

After a rather funny exchange with the cook staff, Remy and Emile were sitting in the garden as Remy slowly wiped flour off Emile’s face. Emile’s eyes searched his own as Remy cleaned, an awkward smile on his face. “I really made a mess this time, huh?”

Prince Remy smiled. “Lucky for you, I’m always here to clean it up.” He scooted closer to Emile to get some caked sugary and floury goo off Emile’s forehead. As Remy was focused on the mess, Emile looked up at Remy, a growing blush spreading on his cheeks.

——————–

High above them, a bright red spirit dressed fancily sporting a crown of his own giggled giddily, to which the two down below were deaf to hear. “Ooooooh, they’re so cute! Look at Emile, he’s blushing!” The spirit sighed. “Why can’t they just get together already, Dad?!”

A dark purple spirit, wearing a crown as well, floated next to the bright red one. “Do you not remember, Roman? Remy’s already promised to Princess Adene of Farwood.”

The red spirit, Roman, sighed, crossing his arms like a child. “She’s so boring though! Plus, Remy loves Emile!” A smirk passed his features. “If I could just-”

“No, Roman!” The dark spirit, Virgil, scolded his son. “No more messing with the mortal realm! You’ve done quite enough damage to the poor housemaids and chefs, haven’t you? Now everyone thinks there’s a rodent problem in the castle!” The spirit yelled, grabbing Roman’s hand before he could do anything foolish.

“Fine, fine.” The red spirit said, yanking his hand away from his father’s grip and sighing, looking at the two down below. “I just wish Remy could be happy.”

“I know,” Virgil sighed. “Me too…”

——————

“You know,” Remy chuckled. “Keep this up and the chefs will run out of flour and sugar in the blink of an eye. They’ll have to scoop some off you!”

Emile giggled, holding out his arm. “Oh sir, did you need some extra flour? Why, I have some right here!”

Without noticing, their hands inched closer.

——————–

“You promise me you’re not gonna do something stupid?” Virgil warned Roman as he turned toward the castle.

“Please, Dad. What am I gonna do? I’ve already scared all the cooks!” Roman said with a laugh.

“Alright. I’m going to check on Logan.” Virgil said. “Poor guy hasn’t been able to leave his room for days.”

The air suddenly seemed thick at the mention of Logan. Roman looked solemn.

“Dad?”

“Yes, Roman?”

“Please tell me if-” Roman said, his expression turning serious, and somewhat scared.

“Of course, Roman,” Virgil said. “You’ll be the first to know.”

With that, he was gone.

Roman’s son, Logan, was 97 and still living. The One Who Survived. Everyone knew his time was coming, but Roman didn’t want him to die.

Not yet.

Roman sighed.

His attention turned back to the lovebirds below him and smiled at how close they were, and the flush on their faces. Of course, the two were too shy to make a move on their own. Surely, all they needed to set the mood was a bit of…

Roman smirked as his hand lit up bright pink.

…assistance…

Roman’s eyes caught a loose branch in the brush behind them, and smiled mischievously, rubbing his hands together as it began to move.

Perfect.

———————–

High above the gardens, the night began to show the twinkling stars in the sky, and Remy’s heart began to beat faster at the closeness of him and his best friend. Emile’s eyes looked up at him, sparkling, and Remy could feel a hot, deep blush spreading across his face. Neither had said a word for at least ten minutes now, just staring at each other.

Remy’s breathing became rapid. When did their lips get so close?!

“…It's… uh, getting late.” Emile said, turning his attention toward the stairs to the kitchens, and hiding a blush. “I should really be getting back to work-”

“-Woah-!”

Something pushed the two forward, and they were flying, flying-

Then suddenly, much, MUCH closer than they were before.

Remy fell on his back, looking up at Emile who landed on his stomach. Emile’s breath blew a strand of Remy’s hair out of his face, which made Remy’s blush deepen, and Emile’s blush to come out of hiding.

Roman giggled from above, squealing at their predicament with his head in his hands, his glowing red body getting brighter with each laugh.

With murmured flustered apologies, they tried standing back up.

Emile slipping on the floury mess they made on the floor cleaning up, falling backward. His arms flailed, and Remy acted quickly, grabbing his arms and steadying him in an awkward dip pose, lips inches apart.

Remy tried to clear his dry throat. “Are… are you o-okay, Emile?”

So…Close.

“Of… of c-course, I-”

“Remy?” A deep voice boomed from the doorway after clearing his throat. Remy looked up to see his father, the ruler of the Sanders Empire.

King Thomas.

The King wore a blood-red cape with golden tassels, a grand golden crown atop his brown windswept hair. His eyes looked powerful and playful at the same time. He leaned against the stone doorframe, boasting a smile. “Am I… interrupting anything?”

Remy’s cheeks were dusted bright red as he stood up quickly. “NO- no… Dad, you aren’t interrupting-”

Emile awkwardly looked to the King, standing. “I…uh… I should be heading back to the kitchens… dinner should be soon, my king.”

“Of course. Lovely to see you, Emile.”

“Thank you, my king.” Emile ran off quickly.

————————-

The red spirit sighed. “Ugh, talk about buzzkill-!"

Suddenly a small glint coming from the King’s satchel caught his eye. "Wait, is that-!?” Roman looked closer in shock - that crest…

"I have to go tell the others-!“

The red spirit rushed off inside the stone castle, phasing through the walls with a sense of newfound urgency.

—————————-

King Thomas walked over to his son with a knowing smile. "So… you two have been… busy…”

“We were just catching up.”

“You’re turning 20 soon…” Thomas graced his hands down Remy’s arms. “Just look at you. Where’s that chocolate sneaking little boy I knew?” Thomas smiled fondly at his son, and Remy couldn’t help but look to the ground.

“I’m… going to be a King.” Remy said. With every word, the room filled with tension. “Just like grandfather, and the others before. I’m going to live on the legacy of our great ancestors. I’m going to rule the Sanders Empire.”

“Remy.” His father’s tone was more serious. “You don’t have to if you don’t want-”

“What damn choice do I have, Dad?!” Remy yelled, making the King step back a few feet. Remy’s fists were clenched at his sides so tight that they began to leave bright red marks. “If I don’t become King, we’ll be a disgrace, and I’m not letting 80 years of rule go down the toilet just because I’m selfish!”

Thomas sighed. “You remind me too much of me when I was your age - So full of hopes and dreams, and a true fighting spirit.” The king sat down on the stone bench and motioned for his son to do the same. Remy hesitantly sat down. “You know, there’s so much about our family you don’t know, Remy. Secrets and stories that even the public couldn’t get a hold of.”

Remy looked at his father in awe. “What…?” He breathed, his anger dispersing from his father’s calm demeanor and voice. “How…?”

“It’s a tradition, son - a book passed down generation through generation of the Sanders Empire.” Thomas pulled out a dusty brown leather book with frayed edges and pages sticking out, a crest carved into the leather at the center - the castle of the great King Daniel, who freed the people from the tyrannical rule of his husband, King Benjamin the Third of Salkenshire. Two swords clashed at the top of the crest, deep rivers and valleys below. Remy slowly traced the crest with his finger. “All our entire family’s history is in this book, Remy. Your grandfather gave it to me when I was about your age, and it’s about time I give it to you.”

“W-wait… really?” Remy asked, broken from his trance on the cover to look up to his father. “But, you know how I feel about being king, I don’t deserve this-”

“You deserve to know where you come from, and what it’s like to be a Sanders.” His father said, tucking some stray brown hair behind his son’s ears. “God, you look just like your mother…”

Remy smiled slightly, remembering her. The King stood quickly. “Well then, I should be off - after all, you have a book to read.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Of course. I’ll see you at dinner, alright?”

“Alright,” Remy said, holding the book to his chest. Thomas placed his hand on his son’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry about the whole King thing. You’ll make the right decision when the time comes - after all, it’s in your blood.”

#sanders sides #sander sides #sanders sides six au #six au #sanders sides fic #remy x emile

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peachyteabuck · 5 years ago

Text

eating a heart in a marketplace

summary: "[C]ommunion doesn’t need to be holy. Or even decent." - THOMAS C. FOSTER

After one of Tony’s men injures one of yours, he must present a peace offering in order to keep his black market distributor business afloat.

Good news: you accept the gift.

Bad news: the gift is Thor.

pairing: Thor Odinson x Reader

words: 5,863

trigger warnings: dubcon ig, humiliation, heavy d/s dynamics, mentions of canon-level violence, use of gags, collars, basically kidnapping, dehumanization (sexual and nonsexual)

notes/other: this fic is entirely self-indulgent and i am anticipating sequels bc i .... love it. enjoy!

sk box / masterlist / commission info / ko-fi

The obnoxiously long, dark oak table lays mostly bare, the only places set are the ones at each end of the exquisitely made piece of furniture.

The pink, sheer robe you’re wearing does nothing to hide the matching baby pink lace lingerie, just as the equally feminine heels donned with a strip of pink puff across the base of the toes would do nothing to protect your perfectly manicured feet from the harm of the eerie storm raging outside. Still, the garments and accessories are not meant to be something that cover you up, keep you warm, help you run from danger; they’re tools, tools you’ll hopefully use to get your way as the final meal of the evening approaches.

The entire event is set up just the way you want, with your makeup setting just as expected; the pig roasted to perfection, the pasta firm to the touch, the carrots and broccoli steamed until palatable, the champagne chilled. Most important, though, was the arrival of your guest. At exactly 6:05, your head butler comes in to notify you of the car pulling in front of your expansive home. With the wave of your hand she’s instructed to let the man come in, allow your rival to step into the palace you’d constructed for yourself when you’d risen to the top of your organization.

Well, maybe “rival” is the wrong word. “Rival” implies an active dislike or struggle, when in reality you two operate in separate spheres of influence.

“Companion,” though, seems too friendly.

As the distinct sounds of footsteps filter through the grand hall and into your study, the man you’ve decided to call “fellow leader” steps into sight. His fine pressed suit, dry as the Sahara desert, smiles as you come into his view.

“Ah, my favorite mob woman.” His eyes seems more sinister than you expected. You attribute it more to the dark tones of the evening rather than actual malice.

“Stark,” you say with a curt nod. You go up to exchange a kiss on each cheek, heart racing with the anticipation of what’s to come, excitement increasing with each step. “Come, we have a wonderful meal prepared for you.”

Anthony doesn’t protest, simply accepts a glass of Scotch a maid hands to him and follows you into the dining room. He chuckles a bit at the display you’ve put on, but doesn’t say anything outright. You two have enough respect for the other not deny their counterpart the joy of a dramatic display. He simply sits, the pig placed in the middle of the table large enough to be an obvious sign of wealth but not too big as to deny the two of you eye contact.

Small talk is exchanged as the meal is served, biscuits placed, and pork cut into thick slabs. Vegetables placed delicately on plates and napkins placed on laps. You ask how Pepper is doing, he asks if the dress you had handmade from some extravagant designer turned out how you wanted. Half your plates are clear before either of you truly start to converse.

You’re the first to break the silence as Anthony begins on his mashed potatoes. “I appreciate your understanding of the deal. I’m not a fan of bloodshed, and the demonstration at the club that night are something I wish to forgive and forget as soon as possible.”

Anthony nods, speaking around a bite of the creamy starch. “I agree. Odinson’s actions were inappropriate, wildly and unpredictably so. In truth, I’ve thought he was a liability since he joined, but I never thought he’d lash out like that.”

As you slice through a particularly thick cut of meat, your fork slips and scraps against the china. Both of your winkles your noses at the grating sound.

“Yes,” You pause to chew. “cutting off Barnes’ arm during a bar fight does seem a little…” The bite of biscuit you had gotten was just perfect, the equal amount of butter and brown sugary, apple flavor from the pork together. God, you really do love a good meal. “Rash.”

Your guest hums in agreement. He then clears his throat, preparing to talk. “To symbolize my apologies, I have brought you the gift we spoke of earlier,” he pauses, raising his left hand just above his elbow and bending his first two fingers forward. You sit up, intrigued.

As the large French doors behind him open, from the dark depths of your hallway comes the man who scarred your oldest friend for life, cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills, and has put your best hitman out of commission. He’s tall, fills the doorway like a key in a lock. His scruff thick and dark, bags under his eyes from lack of sleep.

Something deep in you stirs, and squeezing your thighs together does nothing to stop it.

Thor Odinson is clad in a suit, as most of Stark’s enforcers are. Though, the handcuffs keeping his hands behind his back are new.

“Interesting addition,” you note, staring at his straining arms in the expensive fabric.

Anthony doesn’t give any indication that he hears, let alone cares, about your sarcastic comment. “I’m assuming this” he gestures to the man. “Will put me back in good spirits with you and the rest of your crew?”

Odinson walks to your side, head hung in shame and hair tied in a tight bun as his former employer speaks. He knows what he’s in for now, has been told in so many words he is now something less of a person – and it’s obvious this has put him to shame.

You consider it – think about letting all that happened go with a simple olive branch. Before you can do that, though, you must make sure that the merchandise lives up to the promises on the box.

“Down,” you command. Immediately, he drops to his knees. You smirk, dragging your baby pink nails down his stubbled jaw.

“Oh, yes. This will do just fine, Stark. Just…fine.” The last two words are long, almost forgetting to finish them as your mind travels to all the things you could do with him.

Anthony smirks. “Perfect. I’m assuming business with resume as usual?”

Your fingers stroke at the sides of Thor’s face and trace around the shell of his ear. “Of course. I’ll call the appropriate people later. Everything should be up and running by midnight.”

Suddenly Anthony tenses, his fingers moving to fidget with his tie. “If I may-”

“You may,” you tell him, not meeting his eyes.

Anthony audibly gulps, fidgeting in his seat and with his tie. “That’s quite late, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars that we’ll miss out on if we-”

You hold up your hand flat while your gaze remains locked on your new toy. “That’s the earliest I can assure you. Whether or not it happens before that is,” you stop to try and feed Thor a small bite of carrot from your hand. He hesitates but accepts after a few moments, plucking the orange vegetable with beautiful teeth and a gentle bite. He doesn’t make eye contact like you originally wanted, but this is a good start. “Not guaranteed.”

Anthony knows that you’re stubborn, much too stubborn to be moved away from your current stance. He’s done all that he can do to sway you, and now whatever income he hopes to make between now and the end of the day depends on Thor.

In short, Anthony Stark Junior (and his bank account) are royally, utterly fucked.

As he leaves your home he can hear you call to your head servant to tell Customs and Border Patrol to let his packages in (an assured start to him not losing a fortune), but he still wrings his hands as he slides into the backseat of his solid black Escalade. As the partition opens to reveal the man at the wheel, the thought of angry text messages from smugglers trying to get their goods into the States flash in front of Stark’s bloodshot eyes.

His driver, Happy, notices the fellow man’s anxiety as he looks at his boss through the rearview mirror.

“You think Odinson is gonna be okay, boss?” He asks, sort-of worried but mostly focused on filling the deafening silence in the expensive car. Money can buy a lot of things, but it can’t fill the awkward spaces in conversation that always come post-transaction.

Tony just laughs, typing something into his watch. “Of course not. That woman is going to chew him up and spit him out by the end of the fiscal year.”

Happy chews at his bottom lip. That’s two weeks from now. “You really think it’s gonna be that quick?”

“Probably,” Tony shrugs. “She’s never been known for mercy.”

The other man nods, quiet as he makes his way to the Stark residence. The quiet, cold night air strikes the mobster as he steps out of the car; the sharp grass smells fills his sense and bloodstream, calming him as he steps into his home. Pepper’s at the counter, stirring something in a pot. She doesn’t turn around when she hears his footsteps, but knows he’s somber nonetheless.

“Hard day at the office?” She asks, giving him a small taste of the homemade alfredo sauce.

Tony snorts, moving to lick at the wooden spoon. “Oh yeah,” he mumbles, wrapping his arms around her waist. She’s in one of his t-shirts and sleep shorts, the soft material comforting him. “You could say that.”

You only make good decisions when you’re in a good mood, and right now said mood depends on Thor Odinson - a man so insecure he once got himself tortured just because his captors told him he couldn’t take it. The man is a stubborn, uncontrollable mess with an anger issue to rival that of Lyssa, or a lighting on a field of dried grass.

He was feared within the Nest and by the lower Excidium members, but he didn’t make palms sweat and hands shake and hearts beat faster quite like you do.

No one fucks with you because you’ve very appropriately placed yourself on a pedestal based on madness, control, and desire for power. Thor’s just feared because he’s a dumbass with a short fuse. It’s the difference between a forest fire and a crazy, drunken uncle holding a lighter; one you can try and prevent, coax it into submission and run away if necessary. The other? More unstable than Francium.

(At least you know that thing’s only going to last twenty-two minutes, though. At least it’s predictable in its instability.)

Back inside, you’re more than ecstatic to have a new plaything. You were fully prepared to let the kid’s behavior slide, especially since the Nest brings in a hefty amount of revenue. But if Tony wants to give up a weak link, you’ll gratefully treasure the broken piece of steel you picked up from the gravel.

Thor stays like that, on his knees and eating out of your hand, for so long his legs fall asleep. You spend the rest of the night chatting at nobody, talk to him like he’s an old, deaf cat who just remains in your favor because he’s soft to pet and is cute. You sign some deals, check the language of some proposed treaties, write your to-do list for the next day all at the dinner table. Thor only dares to look at you when you’re too busy conversing with maids or chastising someone who works under you or any time your head is turned enough that he can make out the scar that runs from behind your left ear to the back of your neck.

Your form, the way you speak, he’s obsessed with his chance finally take it all in.

He hasn’t seen you in person before, just heard rumors and conspiracy theories and whatever else people spend their time making up about you. Thor always passed it off as fiction, simply inflating the higher-ups to pass the time. Everything about you, though, seems exceptionally true. Maybe even underestimations. It’s true you walk around your house in matching lingerie sets, possibly a robe if it’s breezy. The East Coast heat can be unexpectedly warm, but as the sun sets on the July day he can see goosebumps rise across your soft skin and the shivers that sometimes shake your spine. Your house fits all the descriptions he’s heard, too. The decor seems almost welcoming, faded oranges and pastel pinks and dull whites and baby blues and mustard yellows. Plush, velvet furniture the same deep magenta, mirrors trimmed in what Thor can assume is real gold.

It’s like a scene from Mean Chicks or whatever those 2000s teen movies are. If one of those movies took place in the home of an incredibly powerful mobster, it’d look like this.

“What do you think, pet?”

Oh shit. Thor was supposed to be listening, wasn’t he? When he looks up, Bucky Barnes (the man who called him a pussy and “Stark’s whore,” prompting him to grab one of the decorative - but still fully functional - swords from the wall of the bar they were in and just...slice away at his tormentor), Steve Rogers (who looks like the human version of a sugar cookie while specializing in torture) , and Sam Wilson (a sarcastic little shit who knows exactly how to get anything past the feds) are all staring down at him. Barnes’ left arm (stub? It’s mostly just stub now) is still bandaged, but he’s at least walking now. Thor was told he might die from blood loss, but no. Thor Odinson would never be that lucky.

“They never listen, do they?” You sigh, rolling your eyes as you shift to face them. None of the men sit, knowing they won’t be there long. Plus, they get a much better angle of Thor’s tortuous position while standing.

“You don’t think that deserves punishment?” Steve asks, a smile curling at the sides of his mouth that speaks volumes.

You shrug, not looking at him. “Later. Now I want you to donate fifty thousand to the Vermont special elections. I need that entry point into Canada or else there’s no way we can get out shipments into that garbage country in a timely manner. Also,” you turn to Sam, whose eyes are caught staring between Thor’s left upper ribs. “Call CBP. Stark held up his end of the deal, I have to hold up mine.”

All three of them huff, both at the large sum of cash you’re about to give to a twenty-something know-nothing frat guy who knows nothing about politics but everything about being open to bribes and about them not being able to watch the man they hate become the most embarrassed version of himself in front of the man he tried to kill and his two best friends.

Whatever. The trio’s time for revenge will come, you promised them that - promised Bucky when he was in the ICU that you would find the man that did this and would make them pay.

Bucky has never known you to break a promise.

When the three leave you and Thor, you raise your left arm high flick your wrist towards the large doors. Understanding the cue, your maids wordlessly close them to seclude you from whatever responsibilities you were intending on dealing with tonight. Whatever it is, was, can wait until tomorrow, can wait until you’ve begun Thor’s assimilation into your home.

There’s a moment of quiet, of stillness in the house before Thor hears the sounds of several pairs of footsteps – maybe four, he counts – that enter the large dining room with haste. He’s quickly escorted down a long hallway and up a winding set of stairs. Thor can’t see much as he’s rushed away, and the little he can make out is a baby blue wallpaper with gold patterns etched into it, and fine paintings that appear sporadically on the walls. Some are black and white with abstract patterns, others depictions of angels, a few featuring intricate designs that resemble the sky and sea.

It feels like a forever before Thor is slammed down onto the floor of your bedroom, his knees hitting the wood with a painful smack. Despite the earsplitting sound, he doesn’t wince, doesn’t even flinch as his hair is pulled back by one of the maids so he’s forced to look at you. As you gaze upon him he bares his teeth; you can see fire behind his eyes. What a cutie, you muse to yourself.

“Wrists,” you instruct. Another maid moves behind him with dusty pink rope, securing his wrists together behind his back. “Legs,” you tell them next. Thor is easily flipped onto his back, arched at an uncomfortable angle because of his arms. Just as quickly as before, his legs are tied so that his calves and the backs of his thighs meet. When he’s flipped back up, all he can see is you smiling devilishly. “I’ll do the rest myself ladies. Go ahead and take the night off, I want him all to myself.”

“Yes ma’am” they respond in unison, Thor unable to see their hurried steps but understanding that when he hears the door closing behind them, he’s completely and utterly alone.

For a moment you two just stare at each in silence, his nostrils flaring and chest rising from anger and adrenaline. He heaves as you calmly gaze upon him, pissing off your captive even more. All Thor can do is react while you stand there, stationary and speechless.

Within a few moments, he’s lashing out to break the painful quiet. “This fucking sucks,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “That Barnes fucking deserved that shit, you know? He’s a whiny bitch that gets into shit he doesn’t belong in. I bet he’s fucking compensating for something, ya know? He’s not even a big enough man to come at me himself, needs his master to do his bidding ‘n shit. Why the fuck am I ever here anyway, do you go through boytoys so fucking often you just steal them so that you don’t have to pa-“

You roll your eyes, shoving three fingers into his mouth. Thor looks more confused than anything else, but he does immediately stop talking. Good, exactly what you wanted.

You two stay like that, your jaw tightened with one eyebrow raised – daring him to defy you - and him looking up at you like a puppy who’s just pissed on the carpet in defiance. “Listen, you little brat. I used to babysit for twenty dollars an hour. I put myself through grad school twice on money from too-rich white-ass parents who couldn’t control their kids so they pawned them off to underpaid college kids. I got here because I worked for it, dealing with men much more powerful than you acting like children. If you think for a fucking second that I will tolerate this behavior in my house, under my roof, then you are wrong. Very wrong. Do you understand me?”

Thor’s eyes narrow, and though he doesn’t bite, he does press his teeth into the skin of your first knuckle. It’s enough to keep your attention entirely on him, eyes locked on his as you throw your phone onto the bed next to you. You know this game, and you know breaking first would mean he has some sort of holding over you. Unblinking, you stay silent as he swallows around your fingers.

The tension in the air is thick; it’s nothing you can’t handle, nothing you aren’t used to. Thor is the first one to surrender, looking down at your baby pink stilettos. “Good boy,” you huff, moving to open a drawer that conveniently sits just within arm’s reach. You withdraw you hand from his mouth but don’t move to wipe his spit from your fingers. Thor can’t see anything you’re doing, but does hear a smaller (and less used, judging by the squeaking noise it makes as you open it) drawer open, the sound of a little bell, and then the loud scraping of both drawers closing on top of each other and hitting the back of the structure that holds it.

“Head up,” you command. “Look at me.” Thor’s hesitant but ultimately obeys. His eyes widen as he sees the items in your hand. The first is a simple, black ball gag and the other a frilly, pink collar with a small bow and equally tiny bell at the front center. In the back, an adjustable metal clip.

The gag is slipped on first, the uncomfortably large sphere blocking any searing remarks from leaving his lips. As spit pools below his tongue and from the corners of his mouth, all he can do is growl low in his throat.

Despite your long, pointed nails you open the clasp of the collar with ease, flashing it close to your captive’s face like an owner showing a dog his new restraint. Thor may be your pet, and you may be his rightful owner, but the move isn’t one that builds trust. It’s one that makes his insides curl, because it’s a demonstration of how much power you have over him. Look at this thing, the gesture conveys. Do you understand now? You’re mine. Everyone will know that. Everyone will know what you did. This is your retribution.

“Are you gonna shut up now?” Thor doesn’t move, but he also doesn’t make any disgruntled noises. “Good. Now, let me make myself clear, since it appears you do not know the terms of Stark’s and my agreement; Stark settled to give me the man who permanently injured one of my best men in exchange for my forgiveness of the entire event. That means two things. First, Stark gets the money he needs from my business in order to remain powerful. Second, I get to do whatever I want to you. Understand?”

Thor’s eyebrows furrow. What do you want to do to him?

“For now, though, I am going to untie you and go to bed, because I am tired, and it has been an exhausting day. Got it?”

Thor nods.

“Good.”

He flinches as you kneel down to his level and begin to untie him from the complicated binds. Your fingers move with purpose, your nails occasionally scraping across his electrified skin. With his body uninhibited, he flexes his fingers as to examine the indents in his flesh.

“Don’t worry,” you tell him. “Those will go away by morning.”

Somehow, he doesn’t believe you.

He spends the night on the cold wooden floor, occasionally making a desperate attempt to fit himself on the tiny plush pink carpet that the dresser rests on. Thor doesn’t get much shut-eye, time either spent shivering or trying to plan for survival. He can’t escape, it’s been made very clear that both Excidium and the Nest will both be hunting him down if he so much as pisses where he’s not supposed to. It seems keeping his mouth shut, following orders, and taking whatever it is you want to put him through with whatever tiny amount of dignity he has left.

(As the night progresses, he realizes the last part will be the hardest).

When the world comes alive again, Thor remains mostly ignored. As the sun comes up and you awaken with your alarm, he barely gets so much as a brush of fabric as you pull off your white nightgown and slip into a pale-yellow sundress with a long, white cardigan. It’s much different than what you were wearing last night, but as you readjust the strap of your lacey white bra from its improper place on your shoulder, he guesses that was more show(wo)manship and a reiteration of hierarchies than an honest exchange between business partners.

As the first full day under your whim progresses, he’s left behind as you move to your office. You feel some time apart may be good for his insolence, even if his fierceness amuses you so.

You like a challenge, especially one you know you can win; a little tussle didn’t hurt anybody, has it?

You instruct one of the new recruits to buy you a dog bed – the largest one they can find – and you have it placed on the floor next to your bed so you can keep an easy eye on him throughout the day. Thor’s kept on a leash attached to the collar on his neck; the piece of leather is flimsy at best, but the man still refuses to break out of it for fear of punishment.

There, on a large, baby pink pet meant for some Doberman or Pitbull or other bigass dog, he waits, ears perking up whenever someone, anyone steps into the room. But, while he craves human contact, the hushed voices of the maids that clean up the dirty clothes and make your bed make the hairs on the back of Thor’s neck stand in fear.

Natasha, lover, retribution.

Bucky, money, revenge.

Loki, trip, return.

He can’t tell which name fills him more with dread. Barnes is barely healed and full of rage at his injury, desperate for vengeance against the man that hurt him so. Natasha Romanoff is a woman that Thor has never truly met, only seen when Stark and you have business that requires some back up. Even so, the stories of her apathy and brutality need no introduction; once, she cut a dude’s dick off, made a wallet from the foreskin, and sent it to him while he was recovering in the hospital. She carries a switchblade in the inside of her bra. She only has red hair because the blood crusted onto it permanently stains the follicles.

And Loki…

Well, Loki and him have been estranged since they were both late teens. They’ve both had daddy issues since birth, and Loki’s so happened to manifest in a weird mix of picking up mercenary work, becoming a serial sugar baby, and wearing a lot of black. The last thing Thor would expect is for Loki to settle down for someone like you, a woman who requires loyalty of heart, mind, soul.

His thumping heart and terrifying internal monologue are interrupted by a maid, one he hadn’t yet seen, whose face scrunches up when she notices your absence from the room. She then sighs, and beckons two other maids – one pushing a cart filled with a small buffet of food, one carrying a cart with cutlery and dinnerware – through the threshold. The three of them stop at a bone-white desk, fretting about as they set up what Thor can only assume is a late lunch.

As you step into the bedroom – pushed through the doorway by the maid from before – Thor can tell you are less than happy.

You’re annoyed, to say the least. Can’t even tell why, really, can’t find an even barely comprehendible reason for you to be tearing through financial documents as if they were important family heirlooms that were on fire. No reason for you to snap at a recent recruit for misspelling the code name of a spy you had placed in the Nevada Supreme Court three courts back. Some madness bites at your skin as you nibble on small sandwiches and drink a large glass of cold sun tea, and Thor can tell it’s tearing you apart.

Thor can’t see much from the floor, but he can feel the electricity in the air as you scribble in a notebook that he guesses is where you plan all of your mob’s heinous activities. He wonders what your handwriting looks like, how you keep all the people you’re blackmailing straight, what kind of code you use. Stark keeps everything on paper as well, in a locked room inside of a secret room inside of his basement (well, maybe. Thor’s never been there, he’d never gotten high enough in the Nest to warrant being given access to such a space, but he’s heard the rumors).

It's about an hour later when the head butler from before, the one who led him, his (former) boss, and his (former) bosses men through your maze of a home, steps just into view of your tired eyes.

“Miss, you need a break,” she says simply.

You sigh, rubbing at the bridge of your nose and then your temples. Resting your head in one hand, you use the other to grant her permission to grab your paperwork. It’s only when she’s gather your things and left the room that you speak.

“She’s right,” you let out a small chuckle before sauntering over to the white dresser in the far corner of the room. “I do need a stress reliever.”

The man on your floor can’t see what you’re doing, his eyes only widening when you place the thickest, blackest dildo he’s ever seen into his view.

“Wh-“he starts to speak, trying but failing to push himself away from you. “What are you doing to do with that?”

You shrug, eyeing it up and down. “I don’t know. Could fuck myself with it…could fuck you with it…”

Thor’s stubbled face is beet red from embarrassment, even more so than when you made him kneel in the dining room or gagged him with your fingers.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, you little slut,” you hiss. When he doesn’t look up at you, you grab his chin and force his head back. He doesn’t want to admit it, but it wouldn’t be fun if he just gave in the second you put the tiniest bit of pressure on his overly-tough facade. “Tell me you love sucking my cock.”

But all Thor does is open his mouth wide as it can go and pushes his flattened tongue as far out of his mouth as it’ll go. He’s got this glimmer in his eyes and a smirk on his lips that tells you Thor knows what he’s doing, he knows he’s pushing every button he can think to push.

You’ve danced this routine before, though this time Thor’s much more confident, willing to push further, push harder.

“You want to be a brat?” You ask, begging him to give you a smartass response. “Then take it like one.”

With swift movements of your right leg he’s pushed flat on the ground, his back hitting the hardwood with a low thud. “Flip over,” you tell him. With an unfortunate lack of protest, he does, toned stomach settling onto the floor barely warmed by his back.

You climb over him, leg on each side and core pressed into him as you gather his hair in your first. “You’re such a fucking tease,” you hiss through grit teeth. Thor makes a similar – but more pained noise – as you wretch his head back. “Such a little tease, begging me to put him in his fucking place. If you wanted me to fuck you like you deserve, you should fucking ask for it next time.”

Smack, the deep sound of your callous hand hitting the soft flesh of his ass almost makes him flinch more than the pain. Smacksmack, two more, quicker this time.

“I’ve met little fucking brats before, but never like you,” you pull the rest of his clothes off with minimal protest. “Gotta get you cock drunk before you’ll figure out how arrangement of ours works, don’t I?”

Thor, with his eyes scrunched shut and mouth lax, says nothing in return.

Your hand reaches under him, hips lifting to provide a small space between him and the floor. He’s already hard, aching, leaking, and he moans brokenly when you wrap your hand around him.

It’s rough, hurts more than it pleasures, but it still feels so, so good all the same. Thor almost wants to say so, too, but can’t make himself push the words from his throat.

“So easy to get you all fucked out isn’t it?” You whisper low in his ear. “So easy to break brats like you, makes me wanna make you cum and then leave you here for the rest of the night…”

The subsequent whine from Thor makes you laugh and push him harder into the floor. “But I won’t do that, can’t leave little things like you all alone, would be like leaving a baby bunny to a bunch of wolves.”

Thor doesn’t disagree, doesn’t try to build his demolished ego back up.

“Doesn’t that feel good, sweetheart?” you purr, hand keeping a slow, torturous pace. “Doesn’t it feel good to be good?”

All Thor can do is squeak and push his face into the floor, trying to hide the deep redness in his cheeks.

For once, you don’t punish him. You want to, want to stop and make him beg for forgiveness for his nonanswer. Maybe tie him up and fuck him with your fingers until he’s ready for your biggest strap, pounding into him.

Oh, Babyboy, you’re being so good taking this whole cock inside of you, aren’t you? So good for your owner. I bet nobody’s ever fucked you this good.

Maybe you’ll tie him up, edge him until he’s sobbing. Wait until he’s just about to cum and pull a vibrator or your hand away – make him whine and tease him as his whole body twitches.

Are you not enjoying yourself, baby? Because it looks to me like you are. Look at those glassy eyes, do I need to slap you to make you pay attention?

Thor screams as he cums all over your floor, whole body tense then completely lax within the span of seconds. His breathing is loud enough to be heard across nations, each exhale laced with a small moan.

He cries, deep and low, when you climb off of him, tries to arch his spine into the nothingness that once held you.

“Shh,” you tell him. “Mommy’ll be back in a second.”

Thor seems to calm with that, heart still racing but head and body slumped.

When you come back, you hold a bit of salmon - small grains of buttery jasmine rice and cranberry sauce stuck to the pink meat. You’ve grasped it with three fingers – thumb, middle, point – and have it nearly pressed to Thor’s plush, pink lips. It’s still warm, dinner having been served by the maids despite your absence from the dining room.

“C’mon baby,” you tell him. “You gotta eat sometime.”

Thor glares at you but knows you’re right – his already flat stomach howling in pain from lack of sustenance. Reluctantly, meekly, he pulls your fingers between his lips and swallows the soft food.

“Good boy,” you tell him. “See? Following directions isn’t that bad.”

Thor, for the first time in days, says nothing to the contrary.

#thor odinson x reader #thor odinson smut #thor smut #lukis writes stuff #thor x reader #thor odinson imagine #avengers smut #avengers imagine #sub!thor #sub thor #thor x reader lemons

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pancakebutton · 5 years ago

Text

Teacher X Reader Part III

Summary: In the midst of the hockey season, you learn how to ice skate and play hockey because of Matt and Mr. (T/C). You get a new English teacher who ends up absolutely hating you. And because of certain circumstances, Matt ends up being a big help to Mr. (T/C).

Warnings: Foul Language & Sexual Content

Word Count: 3755

Genre: Romance, Slice of Life, Sexual, Series.

Pairing: Insert Teacher X Reader

A/N: (Y/NN) is your nickname

Masterlist

Everyone was still hyped up from the assembly including Mr. (T/C) who still has pieces of string confetti in his hair. After we finally settled, we hadn’t even gotten through half of the lecture done before Allen’s phone went off. He checked it of course, but his eyes went wide and without thinking of where he even was, he showed us his phone.

“Dude look at this! Thomas just got in a fight with Julien Castillo!”

“Thomas who?”

“Thomas (T/L/N)!”

I paused, “wait Mr. (T/C) has a son?”

“No his nephew.”

“Haha look at this! Damn Thomas really got em eh?”

I didn’t notice that Mr. (T/C) was listening the entire time, and he didn’t look pleased.

“Mr. Jones, mind if I take a look?”

Allen looked like he’d seen a ghost, “o-of course sir”.

Mr. (T/C) took Al’s phone and watched the video over, when it ended he sighed.

“That damn kid.”

I nervously tried helping the situation, “I didn’t know you had a sibling (T/C)”. His face of worry and anger dissolved and he seemed to have softened a little.

“Oh yeah, my older brother sure did teach a little fight in his two sons. They go here actually, thanks Allen, I’ll be sure to give him a stern talking to.”

“I didn’t mean to snitch on em sir, promise!”

“I know I know, I won’t tell him I found out through you. Now back to how bills are made.”

The bell rang and I stood to grab my stuff, before we all could leave however, Mr. (T/C) called out,

“Miss Maine, if you wouldn’t mind speaking with me for a few minutes?”

My friends “ooo’d” as they all smiled, Mo winked, and walked out of the classroom.

“Catch ya later (Your Nickname)” Brock teased, and I walked over to his desk.

“Yes sir?”

He leaned back in his chair and smiled.

“It seems I won our bet last night, oh and thanks for volunteering me for that contest so it seems you owe me double the payment in return.”

“What?! Haha that’s not fair Mr. (T/C) I didn't promise a prize for that silly contest.”

“Well a little bird told me you don’t know how to play hockey, my youngest nephew Zach is a goalie for the team and he plays tonight. Wanna stay after and play against me?”

I was taken aback, “I’d love to, but I think that match would be unfair, could I bring my friends with me, just you versus us? I’d love to see that skill of yours. I've heard you played college”. He then chuckled and nodded, “you’ve got yourself a deal then”.

The game was tied 3-3 with two minutes left in the third period. Zach had made countless saves and was doing fantastic, both teams seemed evenly matched. I was sitting next to Mo and Kaitlyn, but everyone else was there too, including Allen’s twin sister Ashley. Matt was on the ice, as it was a varsity game, and just slammed number thirty-eight into the boards and the crowd went ballistic. I had also found out that Matt had a younger brother who was a junior this year and was a defenseman like him.

“You got this boys!” I cheered. Since it was just a regular high school hockey game and not a championship, it would have ended in a tie. But with twenty seconds left, Matt’s wrist shot ended up in the back of the net. The crowd erupted in cheers stood for the last seconds of the game, us obviously winning. We waited for the boys to come back out of the locker room to congratulate them as they left. And slowly but surely, everyone left, leaving the empty rink all to ourselves.

“And did you see number nine’s slash on Smith? That should have been called, damn the refs are blind!”

As me and Mo were standing by the boards, waiting for everyone else to get skates, I heard a few new and familiar voices. I turned to see Mr. (T/C) walking towards us, followed by his two nephews.

“Haha I know Tommy it was right in front of me”.

“Sometimes I wish I did hockey just to be a total goon!”

“Okay settle down Thomas, boys these are my two students Morgan and (Y/n).”

Now that I’ve actually gotten to meet them, I noticed how Thomas, the older one, had the same hair color as (T/n) but he had deep blue eyes and was a bit slimmer. And Zach was adorable! He looked just like (T/n) but with much lighter hair.

“Nice to meet you,” Zach greeted. Thomas kinda just looked at me and smirked. He whispered something only (T/n) could hear and nudged him and Mr. (T/C)’s face immediately went red as he quickly shushed him.

“Aye (T/C)! We got some more skates for us, I see you brought your boys as backup?”

“Well, I know I could beat all of you, but it wouldn’t be too fair on my part and why not bring more company”. He then turned to me, “ready to start skating Miss Maine?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

I then made my way towards the ice, Matt was already on it, waiting to catch me in case I decide to fall.

“You got this (Y/n)!” He cheered and I took one step and immediately slipped, but fell into Matt’s arms. I laughed awkwardly, “he heh, thanks Williams”.

“Anytime (L/N).”

Mr. (T/C) coughed behind us, “next time keep your knees slightly bent and your legs shoulders width apart”. I laugh, “thanks (T/C) I’ll be sure to keep that in mind”. I let go of Matt and began trying to skate by myself, but I wasn’t expecting Mr. (T/C) to take my arm and help me as I was leaning a little to the left.

“Th-thanks. So (T/C) what made you like the leafs?”

He smiled as our arms linked and everyone warmed up by skating around or taking shots on Zach.

“I’ve never really had a favorite team, but I’ve always thought the leafs were a good team.”

“And I’m guessing you only like Matthews because he’s an idolized American on a Canadian team that doesn’t like Americans?”

“Bingo.”

I then felt my knees buckle as I hit a rough patch in the ice. But because I was still holding onto (T/C), I ended up bringing him down with me.

“Sorry Mr. (T/C)”. I then realized the position we were in. I was underneath him as his hands ended up on both sides of my head. Thomas, seeing the entire situation, then called out, “I know you’re a hands on teacher uncle (T/n), but you don’t need to be THIS handsy!”

Mr. (T/C)’s cheeks began to dust pink as he swiftly got us both back on our feet.

“It’s fine (Y/n) I should have caught you. Well on the bright side you’re getting the hang of it.”

“Yeah barely, I’m as fast as an old man!”

“Haha, well it will make playing against you even more fun.”

“At least I have teammates to pull through for me.”

We laughed and agreed to start the game. Of course I was slower than everyone else, but it was a lot of fun. I cross-checked (T/C) and slashed his stick, which I knew I wasn’t supposed to do but I was just having fun and (T/C) enjoyed my weak jabs.

“Gettin’ a little feisty huh Miss Maine?”

“Haha yep, I’d drop my gloves if I had some...and if I weren’t fighting you.”

“Why not me?”

“You’re like a brick wall! It’s literally impossible for such an inexperienced player like me to get the puck from the expert you!”

This made him laugh and my heart fluttered. I loved his laugh. I loved the way he teased me. God I need to get a grip. Theo then skated up to me and told me we were having a team huddle. Kaitlyn was our goalie, Theo and Matt were on my line and we had Beau, Allen, and Ashley on the bench. (T/C) took Brock and Matt’s brother Nick.

“We need to do the Flying V” Theo half whispered to the huddle. Matt then chuckled, “yeah like they won’t see that one coming”. I laughed too but agreed it would be a fun gesture and we decided to do it. Us three skate behind the net and slap our sticks down on the ice while chanting like they did in the movie. I looked over at (T/C) who was smiling ear to ear as he had already known what we were doing.

We then take off with me in the center with the puck, Theo to my left, and Matt to my right.

“The Flying V!!!” We all yell as we collide with (T/C)’s team. Matt takes his brother, leaving Theo with Brock and me with (T/C). But I anticipated him easily taking my puck, so I went to the left like I normally do, but I sneaked the puck to the right at the last minute and it passes between (T/C)’s legs. I decked around him and got back to the puck and shot and it went right past Zach into the net.

I then cheered, “It worked it worked!” thus causing Mr. (T/C) to laugh.

“You know you’re still losing 1-9 right?”

“Ugh, whatever! I still scored against you (T/C) and that’s all I need. Now I think it’s about time we went home, I’m pooped.”

Everyone agreed it was getting late and we should’ve gone home.

As we gathered all our stuff, Matt grumbled to himself.

“Forgot my damn phone in the locker room again! Ugh good thing they haven’t locked it yet, I’ll be right back guys.”

Then he ran off into the boys locker room.

“You guys go on ahead, I’ll wait for Matt” I offer followed by nods and goodbyes. I ended up standing around for about fifteen minutes before getting concerned.

What did he use the bathroom and fall in or something?

I knock on the locker room door with no response from the other side.

“Matt?...Matt come on I need to go home.”

Silence.

I huff and decide to just go in, it’s not like anyone else is in there and he was just looking for a phone not getting undressed. I look around and find him looking through a locker in the back.

“Jesus Matt are you deaf or something?”

Matt jumped, not expecting my arrival, “God (Y/n) don’t scare me like that! Haha sorry the walls are soundproof, don’t want the other team hearing our game plan”. I smile, letting it go.

“I hope you don’t mind me in here.”

“Not at all, I actually needed to talk to you-ah! Found it! Perfect timing too.”

I was taken aback, “what is it you needed to talk about?”

He paused, like he was contemplating telling me what was really on his mind.

“...you did really good for your first time skating.”

I was slightly disappointed, but still wanted to play along, “oh is that a compliment Williams?” He laughed, “yeah don’t get used to it (Y/L/N).” Then he grabbed his stuff and began walking out and I followed.

Once out, there by the bleachers was Mo who was at first smiling, but it slowly dropped.

“(Y/n)! You forgot your keys in my bag...what were you both doing in the men’s locker room?”

That’s what she was worried about.

“Thanks Mo, oh and I was just helping Matt look for his phone haha...Well I’m gonna go now, bye.”

I quickly sped off in hopes the shorter amount of time spent around her would keep me from looking like a threat to Mo. I knew she liked him and I didn’t wanna ruin that for them both.

I sat at my desk filing through the latest assignment as it was six-thirty in the morning. I got to (Y/n)’s paper and immediately regretted it. It was impossible to get her off of my mind, again. I then remember what Luke, one of my buddies, had told me about writing your thoughts and feelings about something to get it off of your chest. Might as well try it right?

Nothing.

I couldn’t find any words to describe her.

‘Dear (Y/N),

Words can’t even describe what you do to me. Your voice is like a gentle breeze that billows over the ocean tides. Your eyes twinkle in amazement and interest one like the stars in the sky or snow falling on a child’s nose. Being around you is like a drunk to alcohol, always wanting more and more until I feel like I can’t live without you. You’re smart, caring, loving, kind, I could go on and on like a senator giving a filibuster. I feel like I don’t deserve you in a way. When I was your age, I could barely hold a conversation with a girl, God I was such a dork. Even now, you’re still out of my league, out of my reach. Wishing you were mine to hold.’

And so it came.

I sighed and rub my eyes trying to ease my mile a minute thoughts. I decided taking a quick walk would clear my head, so I stood and walked out of the classroom.

Today is going to be terrible if this keeps up, I don’t know how much longer I can take her not being close to me.

I turned a corner to stop for a drink and kept going.

Maybe I should offer her extra credit so she can spend more time with me. Gah! No no that’s not fair to all the other capable students. What to do, what to do-

I reach back to my classroom, only to find Matt holding the key paper to the quiz we were supposed to take today.

“Matthieu Williams what in the hell do you think you’re doing young man?!”

He jumped and threw the papers back on the desk and stuttered, “N-nothing sir...Fuck you caught me Mr. (T/C), I’m sorry it won’t happen again.”

“I could get you kicked off the team for this you know.”

“And I could get you in some serious trouble with this letter you wrote about (Y/N).”

My eyes went wide and I stepped back a bit.

“...what are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb Mr. (T/C) it’s literally addressed to her.”

I glare at the kid and walk over towards him to take the papers back before he could use them against me, only for him to pull it away. Damn tall kids these days.

“And it seems you’ve caught me as well Mr. Williams. Now what will we do about that?”

“I’ve got a boon for you (T/C). You give me an A on this test and forget I was looking at the papers, and I’ll forget about seeing that letter.”

I pause and consider my situation. There was no other option, “fine. Now hand me the paper please.” Matt then finally returned my letter, so much for those. Matt’s face then went smug.

“You know (T/C) I feel the same way, what you wrote about (Y/N) that is.”

I could feel my face heat up with anger, causing me to grab Matt by the collar.

“Now you listen here you little-”

“Hey! Hey! Let me finish! I was going to say, I had liked her in the past, but it seemed she was a little distracted by you. I can tell she likes you (T/C) and I wanna help you.”

I let go of his shirt and step away, “and why would you help me?”

“Because even though I thought the same things you do about her and she obviously doesn’t return those feelings because of you, she’s still like a sister to me. And I really wanna see her happy.”

I raised my eyebrows in confusion, but it fades as I realized the answer.

“You like Morgan instead huh?”

He paused, “yeah, I didn’t notice it at first but the reason I’m letting (Y/n) go is because I found someone else I guess. But now to you, how long has this been going on?”

“What me favoring (Y/n)? Since she first walked in. I don’t know though, I’m not older than her by too much, but if I confess to her and she turns me down, she could tell someone and get me in trouble. And if she says yes, it’ll be hard to keep our relationship a secret.”

Matt leaned back against a desk and crossed his arms.

“And so what? If she is really worth all this to you, then tell her that. You’re her favorite teacher and she talks about you all the time and I’m sure she shares your feelings. If you don’t try then you’ll regret it I promise you that, and in all honesty I think you’re running out of time. Lots of guys are pursuing her and it’s only a matter of time before she caves because you took too long.”

I lowered my head knowing he was right and sighed.

“Fine then. Got any ideas as to how I can tell her correctly?”

Matt smiled and set his hand on my shoulder.

“I’ve asked tons of girls out before, you’re in good hands.”

Morgan had told me to meet her on the second floor classroom commons which was basically just a lounge around the counselor’s office. She didn’t tell me why or give any details so I was kinda rushing, causing me to turn a corner a little too sharply and bump into a teacher I didn’t know.

“Gosh I’m so sorry miss, here let me get that for you.”

“Oh thank you honey, where are you headed to in such a hurry?”

“Oh just worried for a friend.”

“Ah I see, what was your name again darling? I didn’t catch it, I'm Miss Crossland.”

“Oh I’m (Y/n), nice to meet you.”

I held out my hand but she just stared at it, looked up, and glared at me.

“You should watch where you’re going miss. Good day to you.” And then she walked off. I let my hand fall back into my pocket.

Rude ass bitch.

And I quickly walked towards Mo.

The second semester started tomorrow and here I was sitting in front of my computer screen staring at my schedule in awe. I had a new English teacher. Miss Crossland. Great. I groan and fall back onto my pillows as I try getting some sleep. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that my final semester as a senior was going to be hell because of her, and I don’t even know why she hates me.

Morning came and I walked into my first class which was math, and started counting down the minutes until I’d have to endure Miss stuck up. Finally the bell rang and I felt my feet drag as I got closer and closer to her classroom, which was surprisingly right across the hall from my next period with Mr. (T/C). Thank God I still had his class.

“Miss (Y/n) nice to see you not bumping into people this time. Your seat is at the front closest to my desk.”

I didn’t say anything back, too busy silently cursing her under my breath, and rolled my eyes after passing her. I looked over at my desk locked eyes with Matt in the desk right next to mine and immediately felt better.

“Thank our lord and savior Jesus Christ you’re here.”

Matt laughed, “what’s got you all worked up?”

“Oh nothing except for the fact that Miss Crossland already hates me and I have no clue as to why.”

Matt looked at me with concern.

“What did you do?”

“Absolutely nothing! I helped her pick up papers one day and told her my name and that’s all it took!”

He threw his head back and laughed, “maybe she knew someone she didn’t like who had your name too.”

“I guess, I don’t care just as long as I don’t have any problems with her.”

But of course we ended up with problems. She critiqued every little thing I did from my writing to my outfits. She was basically calling me a dumbass whore every day.

“What do you mean? This paragraph has no more clutter to get rid of Miss, this is the third time I’ve edited this particular section.”

I was currently fighting her over a damn essay that she decided to give a ‘C’ because of my terrible writing. I’ve edited everything she’s instructed, but to no avail, she keeps finding more things. I’m pretty sure she only tells me a quarter of the things wrong with my paper so I keep coming back more and more frustrated.

And damn was I getting frustrated.

“You can’t use infinitives and you forgot to delete all the conjunctions. Now get away from my desk, I don’t need your stench all over me.”

I clench my fist holding my paper reaching my limit.

“That would have been nice to know when you half-ass graded my paper Miss!”

“Watch your tone young lady! You will see me after class and that will be the end of it.”

I huff and sat down glaring a storm while endless curses spewed about my mind. The bell rang and I stayed seated, my gaze never leaving hers.

“Why do you hate me?”

She smirked and kicked her legs up on her desk.

“Oh don’t pretend like you don’t know you damn slut.”

My chair screeched behind me as I quickly stood. I despised people who called me or any women that.

“You’re one to talk.”

“I know you’re messing around with Mr. (T/C), I watch you basically throwing yourself onto him and I don’t appreciate whores messing with what’s mine!”

She also stood. Our eyes locked like we were in some sort of battle.

“How dare you assume such a thing! Mr. (T/C) is my favorite teacher and nothing more.” I couldn’t even comprehend what happened. All I remember is closing my eyes and reaching for my cheek that stung immensely.

She slapped me.

#teacher x reader #teacher x student #teacher #reader insert #fanfic

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trashforhockeyguys · 6 years ago

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Remember You Young- Jeff Skinner

A/N: 100% didn’t plan this, it just kind of happened. So enjoy. Basically inspired by Remember You Young by Thomas Rhett.

You watched him interact with the younger fans. It didn’t seem all that long ago that he was the kid begging for someone to sign his jersey. You couldn’t help but smile, he seemed so grown up now. But even still, you couldn’t help but see him as the kid you’d grown up with. You couldn’t help but remember what it had been like to be by his side and watch him grow.

Hadn’t it just been yesterday that you were causing hell on the Friday nights that he didn’t have hockey? Or having him sneak out after a coach set curfew so all of you could hang out? How many nights had he climbed the tree outside of your window, just so you could spend more time together? Or how many times had you stolen something out of your parent’s liquor cabinet before heading off to a party with him?

But this man before you wasn’t that little boy anymore. There was still traces of him of course. You could still see him in the dimpled smile, or whenever he had a mischievous gleam in his eyes. Sometimes even during a game after he’d gotten away with something.

You saw the boy you’d fallen in love with more behind closed doors. But even though he’d grown up, matured more than you’d thought he could, he was still your boy. He was still your best friend, the love of your life, your ride or die. He was still everything you’d ever wanted and more.

It’s funny how you’d both changed over the years, but you were still exactly what the other needed. When you were younger, you both needed someone to allow you to escape from the stress of high school and the impending doom that was the future. You both needed to have fun and blow off some steam. But now both of you needed stable. He needed someone to keep him grounded in the midst of his career, and you needed a stable man who was offering you a future.

You’d allowed each other to grow in your own ways. He’d given you the space you needed in college to finally feel independent, but you also knew that he’d call you every night after a game because he just needed to hear your voice. He knew that you’d come to see him, wherever he was, at least once a month, because you’d just miss being with him.

By your sophomore year of college, you were ready to transfer so you could be close to him. You missed him, you missed the fun boy you’d grown up with, but more importantly, you missed the man you knew he was becoming.

Watching him now, you couldn’t help but feel proud. You knew he’d become someone that he would’ve looked up to ten years ago. The thought almost moved you to tears. You’d been there every step of this long journey. All of the late nights that you spent assuring him that he deserved to be where he was, all of the times you listened to him talk about how uncertain his future with his team was. He’d sent care package after care package during every single one of your finals and exams. He was the first one there for your graduation, with a massive bouquet of roses. You were always there on the glass for every game you could make, proudly wearing his jersey.

It didn’t matter where the two of you went, and if you went together or not. You’d never not see him as that kid. He could go and change as much as he wanted, but you’d always be able to see little glimpses of him. Whether that meant seeing it on the ice, or during an interview, or simply while the two of you were on the couch watching tv. He’d always be the teenage boy that stole your heart without you realizing.

You were fifteen when you finally realized that you actually loved him. It was turning a hockey game, you were watching him just like you always did. Somewhere between the first puck drop and the final buzzer, you realized that you didn’t want to live without him. Maybe it was the way that he was always smiling, or how he skated right to you when he scored, or maybe it was just him. You weren’t sure. But after the game, while the two of you were at dinner, he made the first move and then it was full speed ahead after that.

“What’s that look for?” he asked after he was done.

“Just reminiscing, that’s all.”

He smiled at you and pulled you closer so he could kiss you. Even all these years later, you still felt the same way that you did when he first kissed you. You still felt the same spark when he touched you. You continued you fall further and further in love with him every single day.

“C’mon, let’s go home.”

He grabbed your hand, his fingers grazing the ring that he’d put on your finger the week before. You hadn’t imagined that you’d get this far when you were sixteen. But now you couldn’t see yourself with anyone else. He was your past, and now he’s your future too. You’d follow him to the ends of the world if you had to.

You leaned your head on his shoulder as he drove. You wished you could fully put into words how much you love him. But out of all of the words in the English language, you’d never be able to fully articulate everything.

You didn’t even have to think about saying yes the day he proposed. He didn’t make a huge deal of it, because he knew you would’ve hated it if he did. Instead, he just started talking about your lives together while you were walking through a park. Next thing you knew, he was stopping and dropping down on one knee. You started crying instantly, you never thought you’d be that one to cry, but you did. He launched into a long speech about how much you meant to him, and how he could never imagine his life without you. You’d had the hardest time letting him get through it all before you said yes. But you did say yes.

“I can’t wait to marry you,” You suddenly blurted out.

He raised your hand and kissed your knuckles, right over the ring, “I know baby, neither can I.”

Nearly a year later, in the early summer heat, you walked down the aisle. You did your best not to cry as you walked towards your fiancé, your future. You giggled when one of the other boys gave you a thumbs up, mouthing how beautiful you looked. Meanwhile, your soon to be husband had his hand over his mouth, but you could still see the dimpled smile and the tears that threatened to fall.

“For worse or for better,” You whispered to him.

“From now ‘till forever.”

He twirled you around the dance floor for hours. You couldn’t stop smiling the entire night. Eventually, you were able to slip away for a moment and enjoy a simple glass of wine. You watched your families all interact together. His sisters were all talking with your brothers and cousins, while his brother was off talking to some of your old friends. His teammates were all goofing off on the dance floor, having the time of their lives.

You eventually caught him looking at you with a big smile on his face. Once you locked eyes with each other, he made his way over to you. You could see a sort of reminiscent look in his eye. A look you knew very well.

“What?”

“Nothing, just thinking about how you used to hate wine.”

“When?”

“Back when all you liked was shots of tequila,” he replied, “Remember that summer where all we did was shut down bars?”

You laughed, the memories of that summer were foggy at best. But you remembered a few really good nights. You also remembered how happy the two of you had been that year. That was the last year that you’d spent apart before you transferred schools and moved in with him.

“I hardly remember, but I remember enough.”

You set your wine glass down and pulled him back towards the dance floor. They weren’t exactly playing a slow song, but all you wanted to do was sway in his arms. You just wanted him to hold you close and take in this night.

Eventually, the two of you started dancing with our childhood best friends, the group that had been there through it all. Then his teammates joined in, one life joined with another. You laughed so hard throughout the night that you could feel a headache coming on. But you felt nothing but pure joy and love.

You married your childhood best friend, your rock, the absolute love of your life. You were his wife, he was your husband. You wished you could go back and tell your teenage self, who was so worried about how he felt, that you’d end up marrying him.

He chose you. You chose him. And now you two got to spend the rest of your lives together. You could continue to grow together, and be on the wild ride that was life, together.

“I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you, Jeff.”

You’d known for years, that no matter how much time went by, you’d always love him like this. You didn’t think there was anything that would ever change that. No trade, no playoff record, not even the Stanley Cup. You’d love him until the day you died. You’d be at every game that you could because you loved seeing him play. You’d miss him every time he left for a road trip. You’d beg him to take you out for food at 2am because you wanted a burger.

“Here’s to forever, Mrs. Skinner,” He leaned down to kiss you.

“You’re so cheesy, oh my god.”

“Yeah, I know. But you’ve stayed with me all these years.”

“I don’t plan on going anywhere, don’t worry,” You promised, “You’re stuck with me,”

You held up your ring finger and grinned. You hoped this feeling never went away. You hoped he’d never stop looking at you the way he was in that moment, eyes full of love and adoration. You hoped you never stopped loving each other the way you had since you were teenagers.

“Until forever.”

#jeff skinner imagines #jeff skinner imagine #Jeff skinner oneshot #nhl imagines #nhl imagine #nhl one shot #nhl fanfiction #nhl fanfic #hockey imagines #hockey imagine #Hockey Fanfiction #hockey fanfic #hockey oneshot #nicolewritesthings

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the-duke-of-deodorant · 5 years ago

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Roceit Prompt

Part 1 | Part 2

Part 3/3 (aka Deceit being an awkward and nervous baby on a first date and Roman silently screaming for 1000+ words) oh the ending to this one... ah.

Warnings: past relationship abuse, Anxiety, angst, sympathetic Deceit, censored c*rsing one time (maybe hints of PTSD but not like super extreme?) hurt with comfort

Word count: 1325 words

POV: 1st- Roman

Every time I think about the upcoming “date” I shutter. It’s real, despite how many times I’ve tried convincing myself it’s pretend. Deceit only felt bad and asked me out as a friend, not because he actually loves me. That’s crazy.

Pushing thoughts of the date out of my mind every time they came had resulted in complete surprise when Deceit’s knock came on my bedroom door. I’m not sure how I knew it was his knock, but I did. Something about the pattern was different than the rest of the sides. The only thing I could think to do was panic as I slam my sketchbook closed after working in it for hours, turning off my music so I could go to open the door. Open it so suddenly I caught the snake jump at my slightly panicked state.

Something about Deceit seemed slightly different. He stood taller, more confident, with bolder makeup around his eyes and some of his scales hidden under matching foundation and brown color contacts. Deceit wearing eyeliner and no scales wasn’t as weird as seeing him almost an entire foot taller with his cape flowing to the ground in silky waves, and a few more yellow gems in his costume than usual. Enough to tell he was shapeshifting for the occasion, but not into another side. Just into a better-dressed Deceit.

Not me. I was still dressed in my normal red white and gold, matched with messy hair and grey stains on my hands and sleeves from the pencil I used for drawing.

“...One second.” I almost slam the door in his face, scanning the room for anything I can use for a quick fix. Shapeshifting. You can do that too. In front of the mirror, I saw grey stains vanish from my clothing, also turning my red sash into shiny silk instead of its normal fabric. Gold glitter replaces the yellow stripes on my shoulders and makes the shield patch on my arm sparkle in the lighting. After running my fingers through the newly purpled hair hanging over my face I was ready. Physically ready, anyway. Mentally ready is something we can work on on the way there.

Opening the door the second time was just as scary as the first, still taking the time to get used to Deceit’s cleaner look that surely would throw off anyone that looked at it, not just me. When I realize he’s looking at me as well I try to straighten myself as much as possible and fake confidence and a smile. Maybe I’m overreacting, but at the same time it’s hard to believe he really wants to be with me. Romantically. Maybe he just wants someone, and I happen to be the most romantic and gullible side he could get to. That thought seemed much calmer than the rest going through my head.

“You look… shiny.” Deceit was the one to break the silence. He clears his throat. “Are you ready?”

“I’m ready.” At my words he takes out whatever he was holding behind his back before. A dark red rose matching the ones in my memories from months ago. Why roses? It’s just a flower. It doesn’t mean anything.

“I thought it was nice… for a date. And romantic. Red is your color.” He smiles when I take it out of his hand.

Patton and Logan were sitting on living room couch when we came down. Logan, sitting working on a laptop, whatever was working on, and Patton sitting almost upside down on the couch scrolling through Tumblr on his phone. He looks up and smiles at Deceit when he sees him with me. Patton was the wingman, really? I’ve always thought Patton and Deceit didn’t get along, but a lot of things were surprising about Deceit today. So much I’ve decided to quit questioning everything and go with it. I don’t need more things added to the panic I already have.

______

As normal the city was filled with bright lights, cars, lots of sounds and colors. The thing about being real, you get to see more than what was inside the Mind Palace, which meant the big city outside Thomas’ apartment. As soon as we stepped outside I surround myself in all the exciting lights and sounds I didn’t see too often. Then it occured to me, Deceit never told me exactly where we were going.

“Just in the city. There’s a good restaurant downtown I thought you would like.” He holds out his hand next to me. An offer for me to take his hand, the same thing Adrain did while we were dating. Almost like Deceit was trying to copy him with the roses and the hand holding thing. Maybe it’s more of a common thing to do than I thought.

“You don’t have to,” Deceit says, probably judging the way I was looking at it. Hesitantly I lace my fingers through the soft fabric of his gloves, and the bittersweet panic takes over. A panic that made me want to stop walking and lean against him. Forgetting the date, just resting in silence with our hands locked together and thoughts numbing until the only thing I can feel is his arm resting on my shoulders in the quiet. I couldn’t help but notice him smile when I took his hand.

I push out the thoughts of anxiety during the hour we were out, trying to talk as often as I could to fill in the long silences. Whenever it got quiet I was there to tell about whatever story I could think of to pass the time and move the topic off past romance. Despite everything Deceit was amazing, and definitely didn’t deserve the way I closed myself off and refused to trust him. I wanted to trust him, but that voice stayed in my head. That voice that told me romance would be the thing to ruin our relationship and turn it into… that. What I had before and didn’t want to live again.

____

“Listen- I hate you! I hate you, okay? Just please-” I turn to storm out, only to have him stop and grab my shoulder. I freeze, shielding my face from what would happen next. His grip lightens when he sees my shallow breathing.

“Oh no. No. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not going to hurt you, okay? It’s okay.” His voice was soft, trying to comfort me. I wish it had worked. “Holy s**t, I didn’t realize it was that bad.” His hand lifts completely off my shoulder leaving me alone. Not alone. He was still there, watching me.

“I’m sorry I can’t do this.” At that moment I wanted to walk out but I stayed frozen. My hands stayed on my head to block him from seeing me. I didn’t have any reason to panic anymore, hopefully, but that didn’t change anything. I couldn’t control my emotions. Funny, that’s how everything started. I can’t control my heart. At that moment I couldn’t move.

“You want to talk?”

“No.” After taking a breath I move my hands down, mostly so he knew I trusted him, or wanted to anyway. I still stayed turned from him so he couldn’t see my face. “I wish I could change all of this so we could stay, but-”

“What are you saying?”

“No- not like that. I just need to stop. I just… don’t know if I can trust you. I do but...”

“We need a break.” I began to protest but he stopped me before I could say anything. “Listen, nothing will work if you force yourself to trust someone. You’ve gone through some serious crap and that takes a lot to move on from.” He reaches in his pocket, pulling out a pair of untangled headphones and handing them to me as he passed by. “Take your time, until then we’re friends. No one is going anywhere.”

Taglist: @cyraniadebergerac @winterrs-child @remusthedukeofdeodorant @thecatchat

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chrsitophwaltz · 5 years ago

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MICKEY MEETS FC BAYERN (PART 2/4)

for the entire houston clownery experience click here

psa: excuse my face and the pic qualities. up until this happened i haven’t really taken pictures of myself (less than 10 in the past two years for family and work purposes and NEVER selfies) and when you meet people you’ve only seen on TV in a very unexpected circumstance, then don’t expect your brain and motor functions to work 100%.

in the meantime, The Queen kathleen krüger showed up dragging a little carry on-sized bag. i really wanted a pic but i knew she always likes to be in the background so i just settled for a cheery greeting. she was shy-ish but super nice!

me: *trying to speak german again after 5 years* guten morgen!”

kathleen: *surprised that i recognized her but was super nice* morgen! wie geht’s?

me: sehr gut, danke. und dir? ( i used dir since she used informal and she didn’t look like it offended her or anything dsjfsdjf)

kathleen: oh, sehr gut auch. tschüss!

bless her heart! too bad she might lock niko up and issue a restraining order against me when we see each other next though sndmfbdsmnfbsnmdf

shortly after javi and kathleen left, thiago was next. it took a little while for him to get to me since other people also asked for pics and autographs. when he finally got to me and was signing my shirt, i really just had to tell him “hey thiago, you’re so good! you make it look so easy!” he laughed at that and said thanks. so nice and such a 🐐

i heard a distinct chuckle and Mr. Bayern himself came out. he was doing his usual thomas müller thing (it’s hard to describe but y’all prolly know what i mean) and was gamely eating a big banana when i asked for another autograph and picture (i got his autograph and picture at the hotel reception on friday already; this is the second time).

me: “hi thomas! could we take a picture again and have you sign my shirt?”

thomas: “ofhrjhf sjdjshfueh” (i’m positive he said “oh sure” or something, but with a mouth full of banana)

so nice! (and he didn’t show his usual cheeky müller grin, incisors and all, because, well........banana)

okay, here’s a tricky part. sven and leon came out almost simultaneously. sven was slightly first and i asked for the usual combo, and we were both already posed for the picture when i saw leon trying to zip by. greedy binch that i am, my intention was to get both of them in the frame. two birds, one stone. so i said “leon!” to call him over. B U T sven probably thought i was ignoring him and didn’t want his pic at all!!!!!!!!!! he mumbled “oh.....leon” and walked away (i think he probably meant “oh you wanted leon...”) NO SVEN!!!!! I WANTED YOU BOTH COME BACK!!!!! he was gone though and while i was excited to see leon and his beautiful curly hair again (idk if he recognized me but he had this look like “hmmmm...?” and he retweeted me just the night before sdbdmnbnd), i was panicking about the sven incident. it was bittersweet and i decided to really go to that t-mobile thing later on in the day so i could apologize to sven.

this is also prolly why i had this fugly half-assed smile (S VE N!!!!! ;__;)

(also note that leon is wearing lewy’s training shirt sjfbanmfbsahdfd idk why i didn’t ask)

O K A Y.

around this time was the part where i met niko. but since that whole shebang is a whole other experience in itself, i’m dedicating the entirety of part 4 to it. maybe it’s for the best too since it was just........g o d!!!!!! (kathleen krüger, i really hope you aren’t ever gonna see this blog, but in the off chance that you do, i’m sorry you had to see all that sdnfbndmfabnmfnd s o r r y)

anyway, that niko incident led me to run out of the hotel like it was on fire (told y’all, long story) so it was outside that i got to meet The Chef! he still looked kinda sleepy and was nursing a cup of coffee but was still nice enough to indulge me with a pic and autograph!

L M A O

okay. so, after serge got up on the bus, and while i was studiously avoiding kathleen’s stare (huehue s o r r y), manu came out. a lot of fans had already gathered behind the barriers outside and manu was a crowd favorite so everybody was screaming for him. i was still near the bus entrance and was standing in front of the barrier and two guys behind me were jumping and asking manu to autograph their replica world cup trophy. manu got to them first and stupid lil me was trying to take a pic with him while he was doing his thing. this giant man is about 6′4, and me a ruler and an inch shorter, so when he reached for the trophy, he nearly knocked me out gonzalo-higuain-in-the-2014-world-cup-final style.

(below is me before i nearly died a sweet, happy death c/o manu’s huge ass fists)

manu, teddy bear that he is, was like “oh no, sorry!” i didn’t mind at all sjdfhsdfsdj (i would’ve gladly let him knock me tf out lmao) so i said “it’s okay!” as an apology, he gamely signed my shirt and we finally took a decent, safe photo dsfbjksdfbsfnsbdns

*kill bill sirens* WEW! then The Polish Hitman, Mr. 5-in-9, The B O D Y himself, robert lewandowski came out. he was sporting that cursed beard again (sorry lewy, but in this very rare case, i say no stubble for you lmao). he still looked hot af tho and signed my shirt. and took this photo! (thank you to my phone for magically making this HDR)

there wasn’t anyone after him for a while and the team bus left already so i went back inside (thank you hotel A/C! it was hot as hell and i was shaking and overheating from being so close to them.... and embarrassing myself in front of all those people and Queen Kathleen lmao).

then, coco came out! i guess he’s gonna do individual training since he didn’t go with the team bus. he also did this lil massage thing on my left shoulder sdhbjdfsdn thanks for scoring our first goal the night before, coco! (he was hella cute too)

i think all the players were gone since the only ones left for the next 15 minutes were the entourage and media people. but one last parting gift! loddar himself came out. took a while for him to get out since he chatted with someone else for a few minutes so i settled for videoing him for my instagram story. then he finally got up and walked to the exit and that’s where i got him.

me: hi lothar, can we take a picture? (only a pic since he looked like he was in a hurry)

loddar: *with that perennial cranky look on his face but was still nice lmao* “ok sure!”

had to leave shortly after this to go to the mall since @simplyirenic messaged me that there were only 100 tickets for the adidas meet-and-greet, but hey! almost a full haul!

here’s 75% of the total spoils:

(i’ve maxed out my 10 photo per post limit again so stay tuned for part 3: the mall meet-and-greet with josh, sven (there’s a redemption arc! i’m not a total bitch!), benji (a surprise addition to the lineup), manu 2.0, and thomas 3.0!)

#HERE'S PART 2 KIDS!!!!!!! don't judge me!!!!! :(((((#manuel neuer #robert lewandowski #thomas müller #fc bayern #bayern munich #fcb #*my crappy shit #mickey meets fcb #thiago alcantara #leon goretzka #serge gnabry #corentin tolisso #lothar matthäus #💀💀💀#IM SO SORRY AGAIN KATHLEEN

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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How Batman Evolved During Tom King's Run

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Bruce Wayne's adoptive father is the key to Tom King's conclusion to his run on Batman.

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This Batman article contains spoilers.

Tom King did the impossible. In a comics industry founded on the bedrock principle that only the appearance of growth should ever be shown, he’s told a massive, three-year, 85-issue story that has Bruce Wayne actually develop as a character.

With Alfred’s death earlier in the final story arc, "City of Bane," many would have expected Bruce to shun his supporting cast and dedicate himself to revenge, leaving Gotham littered with shattered criminals as he pushed his grief through his fists and his enemies’ faces. But that’s not what happened.

We got a chance to talk with King about character growth, how his epic tale developed, and what’s next for Batman, Catwoman, and King himself in the DCU.

Den of Geek: You talk about Vision, Omega Men, and Sheriff of Babylon being a thematic trilogy, right?

Tom King: Yeah.

Can we look at Mister Miracle, Heroes in Crisis, and Batman the same way?

Oh yeah, 100% yeah. That's what I think of it. Yeah. I'm glad someone noticed.

It's about heroes managing trauma, right?

It is. I call it the Trauma Trilogy. That's just too easy, maybe. I feel like the first story about my war experience and [the main characters of each book] were all someone naively going into a situation and finding it much more complicated than they thought. And then these three were all about, I’ve said this publicly a billion times, about this nervous first-season-of-the-Sopranos breakdown I had in 2016 when I first started on Batman, and sort of how I recovered from that. And I sort of wrote it three different ways. Yeah, it's like some fancy dish, you know. The Trauma Trilogy.

Read More: How Batman Will Change in 2020

So the breakdown in 2016 happened after you had already started on Batman. How far is what ended up on the page drifted from what you initially conceived it to be?

I mean it's pretty close. There's some stuff that didn't quite pan out. Batman isn’t like a series like Mister Miracle or our upcoming Strange Adventures that we're doing. You have to write Batman with some degree of compromise because it's a much bigger platform and overlaps a lot of other books. You have a lot more eyes on it in terms of editorial control. And so yeah, it wasn't entirely a straight line, but considering it was 85 issues of DC's best-selling comic, I think it was a lot straighter than I thought it would be in terms of going from one spot to another.

It was always supposed to be about a love story and that was there from day one. I remember talking about that with my first editor, Mark Doyle...being like, “What is this book about?” And me literally just searching and searching until I found an old clip of the Batman ‘66 TV show. It was just like, “Oh man, I love this." The Catwoman, Batman dynamic.

And it hadn't been in the books in a long time. Not since, like, Judd Winnick, New 52 stuff. So that part about it, the fact that it was just one big love story. That was the same and Bane was supposed to be the main bad guy. But the stuff with Flashpoint, Batman evolved as we went along. I'd say that's the thing that's evolved the most.

We talked that second arc, I think, about Bane, Catwoman, and Batman being three sides of the same shitty coin. But now with Thomas included in there, it feels like it's kind of four points on a graph, labeling each axis. You've got like Batman who had privilege but lost everything at a young age. You have Thomas on the other end who had everything for most of his life and then lost everything. You've got Catwoman, who was born into nothing and kind of hangs on to everything but keeps it at arms length. And you've got Bane, who kind of grabs whatever he can and crushes it to death. As Thomas evolved into this, does that sound like what you were thinking at all?

Yeah, I do think they all represent this idea of who's top of the mountain in their own way. I guess you could say who does Gotham belong to? Bane sees Gotham as a prize that he has to win. Thomas sees Gotham as a burden. For Catwoman, Gotham is just who she is and she's sort of queen of that city. And then for Batman, it's ... I mean that's what the whole question is. What does he mean to Gotham?

With Alfred's death, was it kind of a backdoor way of you taking a look at Bruce's origins? You know, using the death of a father figure to kind of shock him out of being Batman the way that he was shocked into being Batman?

Yeah, but it was also a way to show what the difference is between Bruce losing his parents when he was young and connected to them, and Bruce losing Alfred having been raised by Alfred. To me that was a tribute to sort of Alfred's parentage of Bruce for all these years and him guiding him through that trauma. Because you expect Batman in that moment to bury himself in anger and go insane and do all the things that drove him to be Batman in the first place. But instead of that, he hears Alfred's voice and he composes himself. To me it's sort of about the maturing of the character and maturing of it through the love of Alfred. I know I said this in the book, there are no good deaths. There's a nobility to death if you've treated your children right.

Read More: Batman and Catwoman Face Thomas Wayne in Final Tom King Issue

Well, I would quibble with that only because I think you could have killed Batman at any point in the last 85 issues and whatever was happening would have been a hell of a way to go. Right? Like he has a heart attack on a ferris wheel with Superman. That's a pretty okay way to do it.

Wait I did kill Batman! I killed him in annual number two.

Oh yeah! Yeah.

I gave him my ideal death. He dies instead as an old man surrounded by his family.

And that's the good death.

That's a good one. That's as best as you can do with no other choices.

After 85, it feels like that's kind of the direction, right? Batman for so long has been that traumatized little boy, to the point where it's almost a parody, and many of your predecessors have done something interesting with that. But it always feels like the traumatized little boy has been the dominant perception of him, at least in my adult life. Is this your way of kind of trying to push him through it?

The story of Batman is unending conflict. I'm sure whoever comes after me will embrace the Batman of their own and I bless him for doing it. I know James [Tynion IV, the writer taking over Batman with #86]’s stuff is going to be, from what I've seen, amazing. Batman's not a story that I have the power to end. I just kind of come in and take the reins for a while and then pass it onto someone else as brilliant as James and Tony [Daniel, the artist on the first arc].

But I can sort of, I don't know, tell my story. I don’t know, maybe I'm too old to write Batman. Frank was 29 when he wrote The Dark Knight Returns. I'm 41. But it seems like as you get older and you actually see your parents pass, you see your loved ones pass, you realize that everyone has to go through that trauma. Right? You sort of realize that it can become part of you and something you're proud of as well. The grief never leaves you. It never leaves Batman. It's a wonderful metaphor. But also there's a certain joy to that grief because it sort of unites you with your lost ones.

So hopefully, as you go on, you sort of mature into that. I hate to say that the greatest hero America's ever created, which is Batman, never got a chance to mature into it like the rest of us hopefully get to do. Yeah, I mean that's what that's about. He says, when I was a child, I did childish things and now it's time to grow up a little bit.

Read More: Why Tom King Is Leaving Batman

So the action sequences have been phenomenal through the whole thing. There have been some stellar fight sequences, especially Jorge [Fornes'] last ten issues. Every time he comes in it's incredible.

He’s ridiculous.

They've been phenomenal. When I think back on the run, what I think is going to jump out at me are going to be the quiet moments. The double date, 12 Angry Batmen, Bruce and Selina grabbing a beer and watching football at a bar. What do you think was about those quiet moments that let you make them sing?

I mean, the first thing is the art. All three of those things you mentioned, you've got Lee Weeks...there's not a lot of people who can draw a dynamic room with just 12 people talking. Clay Mann doing the double date. Just him elevating himself and becoming the best artist in comics while I was watching. And then Mikel [Janin]. I've been with Mikel for five years now since Grayson. He did the first Batman I did and he’s doing the last.

It's really hard. I mean, as dumb as it sounds, it's probably easier to draw a dynamic fight scene than a dynamic quiet scene. So those guys are doing the heavy lifting.

As far as the other stuff goes. You know, it's ... DC Fontana died yesterday, right? The Star Trek author, and she's famous for saying, “Star Trek is not about objects. It's about characters.” Like, that's her thing. If you're writing an episode of Star Trek, don't make it about the thing. Make it about the people's relationships. So I think that that's what those moments are about is we've had a lot of conflicts. Fantastic, amazing conflicts about things. But I try to make my conflicts about the characters. Just trying to follow what she told me to do. What she said. Not that I ever met her but I remember what she said to do.

So looking back, is there an issue that stands out in your mind as something that you just absolutely nailed? Like, it's the Batman/Elmer Fudd issue, right?

No, I hate it. [laughs] I love that issue, but there's two typos in it. It still drives me crazy. I'll never manage to get them to fix those. When I first got the comp finished, I threw in the trash I was so pissed. "Oh, I ruined this one. Oh well. I'll try again next time." And then I won awards for it, it was ridiculous.

All three of the annuals I really like. I like the dog story that David Finch and I did in the first annual, which was suggested by my daughter when she was like five.

And I liked the second annual, which has sort of the first dates and the beginning of the end of the Catwoman/Batman relationship. That annual's the jumping off point for the whole Batman/Catwoman series. So that's how much I like it, I'm trying to copy it.

And I like the fourth annual I did with Jorge, which was just sort of like a chance for me to do a thesis statement on what Batman is. And there was seven days of Batman in seven different genres and then it continued sort of forever. I like those three.

Read More: Why Tom King's Batman #86-106 Would Have Been About

Similarly, is there an issue that you wish you could get another crack at?

Oh man, there's a ton of issues I wish I could ... I mean, I look at the dialogue and I’m like, "Oh, I could have done that better."

It took me a while to learn how to work with Joelle Jones, who's one of the most talented artists out there right now. And I think, I feel like I did a Wonder Woman issue with her and I feel like I wasted two of them first of all, because the story I wrote turned out to be very similar to a story that Joe Kelly had done. I hadn't read the story but I was very...I would have changed it if I had known. I sort of understood how to write for [Joelle] by Batman #44, which I think is really nice, but I think it's 39 and 40, the two Joelle Jones issues, I wish I could have another shot at doing well.

I really liked those.

TK: They're beautiful! They're drawn beautifully, but I don't know, we could have done something...it was really fine, but I feel like it could have transcended. I missed it.

I guess. The Justice League flirting between the two of them in the cartoon is high on my list of preferred pairings. So like the way that you played with that made me happy. Is there a character you feel particular ownership of now? Like if somebody comes in and changes Kite Man, are you going to throw the issue across the room and scream, "Fuck no, that's not how this is supposed to be done."

No, I think that's kind of silly. It's kind of like when you sign up for this gig, that's part of the agreement and coming into comics is realizing that this is a medium that extends to other people and no one has benefited more from that than me, who's twisted the work of Jack Kirby and Marv Wolfman and Bob Kane and Bill Finger for my own benefits. I feel like denying that to others would be hypocritical.

Gotham Girl's named after my daughter Claire. Claire Clover is her name. So I do like her. Like I have in my daughter's room a David Finch piece or a page that he did and a page that Clay Mann did they gave to me for her. So I like her because she's named after my daughter.

Wow. That's got to be pretty sweet.

I know. I try to tell her brag, brag to your friends! But does she brag?