#drafts cleanout fic marathon 2022

[electricbluebutterflies]

Garcy + possessive hand-holding

Or, fake relationships are fun. Usual canon-divergence, PG-ish, and also on ao3.

No good thing has ever come out of a mission in the Victorian era, Lucy is convinced.

Fine, being a petite woman is not an advantage at any point in history, she is well aware of this issue, but there is just something about the late 1800s in particular that ends in disaster for her. Maybe it’s the particular low point of fashion that era represents – corsets have their purposes, she can admit that and deal, but add in a skirt fitted enough that she can barely move and that there is a problem. She has to be restrained, and she is learning that she is not actually a restrained person, and she-

They are in New York, which is thoroughly unhelpful because there are literally thousands of things that could be about to get derailed, and the usual interplay of personalities means she gets to spend the next few days pretending to be married. This has become normal enough, and what had started as okay let’s just accept that assumption has turned into more of an intentional move. She’s safer this way, and in return she’s still about the only person who can even occasionally make Flynn understand the word no, and-

She wonders, sometimes, if this routine might be messing with his version of a healing process.

They’ve done this enough times under similar enough circumstances – there’s about a hundred year stretch where this works – to have a practiced and coherent cover story. Recent immigrant and his native-born wife whose family wildly disapproves of her life choices. All of that is true enough, though not the implications of it, not the idea that she might’ve been corrupted or-

There is a familiarity in the way her companion’s fingers tighten around hers, the unspoken protectiveness she gets in return for playing this role she does not want. A reminder, as they go on, that he has killed for her honor before and probably will do so again. They are tethers, they are so many things, they are-

“Are you alright?” she asks. They have a distance to clear, and they might as well talk, and she worries, and she-

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ve introduced me as your wife… how many times so far today?”

“Four, maybe?”

“Isn’t that weird for you?”

Flynn glances away and she can almost feel him trying to find a tactful but evasive answer, and she hates how he won’t actually say what he means whenever she brings up the fact that they do have some kind of emotional bond even if it is years from becoming anything a less damaged person would describe as mutually romantic. There is something between them, dammit, there is something between them and-

“It works,” he says after a moment too long.

“I know I’m not whatever your wife was but-“

“That does not make you any less magnificent.”

“I don’t want-“

“I am not an open wound, Lucy. You do not need to worry about-“

“What if I want to worry about you?” she says just a little too quickly and oh god, she had never planned on admitting that but-

“It would make you even more unique than you already are.”

She is sure there are more things unsaid, but she has caused enough distraction as it is and she decides she’ll pick it up later. When they are home, where they belong, when she’s in comfortable clothes again and curled up in that awful thrift-store abomination of an armchair she practically lives in and-

She holds his hand just a little tighter, and the adoring looks she claims are an attempt at making them invisible are actually real, and at the very least no one is going to have questions about her fake marriage.

[electricbluebutterflies]

Garcy + I cannot kiss you and I want to.

Usual canon-divergence, pre-relationship, PG-ish, and also on ao3.

The timing is never right.

The timing is never right, and it’s tearing him apart, and to know that there is light at the end of this should be powerful enough but not anymore. Not as the time gets closer, not as she gets closer.

He had memorized the ending portions of her journal before he met the version of her that exists in his timeline – the possibility of parallel universes has occurred to him as a certain explanation, but the version he thinks of as his Lucy has some differences from the alternate version of herself who stopped him from committing a desperate act. She’s more fragile, for one. Has not yet become all that she will be.

And he loves her anyways, and he cannot do a damn thing about it, and perhaps this is some kind of purgatory and he deserves every moment.

A memorized timeline and he still has a year to go, and the waiting gets worse with every passing day, every step closer to this woman who still does not see her power. She has plenty of people on her about her abilities and potential, yes, but it’s more… the inner strength of her, the patience on the long days and bad nights, the fact that she has never given up on him even when he was unforgivably terrible to her and still she-

Flynn has never been a great believer in the idea of soulmates, and fate as a more general concept didn’t make sense to him until his previous life was torn away, but there is something deeply comforting in knowing that there is still a future ahead of him and every bit of it is wrapped up in this tiny damaged woman who in turn will go supernova because of his faith in her. They save each other. That was the last part of the journal, followed only by a set of words no version of her would understand the significance of unless he had loved her and-

The timing isn’t right yet, but he still looks at her and wants to know what she feels like in his arms for purely emotional reasons, what she tastes like, how she would move over him and-

He is brought out of his distracted state with her hand on his shoulder, and he realizes that he cannot remember what he is trying to read or anything else around him but her.

“Something wrong?” she asks, and he has made progress as a person these past few months in particular but there is still a unique purity to her worries and he-

“You shouldn’t be so close.”

She glances away for a moment and he can feel the unspoken thought of here-we-go-again and yes he knows it is a certain kind of improper to inflict his wayward emotions on a woman with no real obligation to handle them but is it truly wrong if they are in balance on this, if she does the same in return as often as she does, if she-

“What did I do now?” and oh the sadness in her voice, her wide eyes, this tragic woman who has been treated like a mistake too many times and-

“The timing isn’t…”

“Timing for what, exactly?”

Hell with this, he’s never been one for holding back and this feels like a strange enough exception and time to end it.

“I cannot kiss you. And I want to.”

“Because of the journal,” she finishes.

“Yes.”

“Things have already happened that weren’t how you memorized them,” she reminds him. “We don’t have to follow some script because-“

“I am trying to protect you.”

“What you’re actually doing is frustrating the hell out of me. What you say and what you want… shouldn’t be different things.”

But they have to be, he wants to say. They have to be or else he will hurt her, they have to be or else-

She closes the distance before he can stop it from happening, and it is the lightest most innocent breath of a first kiss, and he is unraveled.

“There. Technically, you didn’t kiss me.”

“Still…”

“There is no right time. Maybe there has never been and will never be. Be in this moment with me.”

He is not ready, and he knows that will be respected clearly enough, but for a moment he can almost let her be right. Maybe there is no right time, he repeats. Maybe there is only this.

Every instinct in him says this is still not quite enough, but he memorizes the taste of her, lemon lip balm and sweet-sadness, and not now but soon.

[electricbluebutterflies]

Charloe + shielding the other one with their body

Post-whatever, PG-ish, also on ao3.

She’s not actually sure how they got into this situation, so… normal enough day, really.

It would be nice, Charlie thinks, if they could make it a week without incidents. But with personalities as they are, and herself the unexpected handler of someone with occasionally problematic ambitions, who she has followed across the continent because someone has to save that man from himself and she could do worse things with her mid-twenties, that feels decidedly unlikely.

So, it’s about the line between afternoon and evening, they’re in a place that could loosely be described as a bar, and the wrong person looked at her too long and all hell broke loose. Totally normal.

She can defend herself fine, and her companion is all too aware of that – the fact that he’s lost track of how many times she’s tried to pull a gun on him does help matters, as does that time she bit him when he tried to wake her up during a nightmare, and-

Honestly, if they are fated to spend the rest of their lives driving each other crazy and never doing anything about the tension between them, she’s fine with that. There have been a few distraction kisses because it’s generally easier to fake a different dynamic around people they don’t know, and she’s gotten used to his hands over certain covered places for about the same reason, but it ain’t going anywhere and they both know it. Timing and desperation are never right. She’s thought about it, and she knows he has too, and-

The fact that she can hold her own in a fight does not cancel out the fact that her favorite person in the world right now, and she can at least admit that even if she’s still having trouble with how much she wants to climb him, is a dumbass with recurrent anger issues and a particular sense of honor that appears to have developed as a consequence of spending too much time with her. She’s no delicate flower, she hopes he at least gets that much, but she’s still small by comparison and-

Normal enough for him to maneuver her, normal enough for her body to end up behind his before she’s even sure who threw the first punch.

“The hell did you do?” she asks, trying to channel an expression and tone of this asshole better maim you or else I’m going to when it’s over.

“The idea that you might not be interested did not go over well.”

Yeah, so, the honor issue. Great.

Again, Charlie would love to know how she got stuck with all of this. Monroe is… not exactly reformed, and may not be capable of that and the longer they travel together the more she tries to accept that some edges can’t be sanded off, but at least his concept of loyalty veers existent, and for some strange reason that may be the weirdest mix of lust and atonement ever experienced, he’s protective of her. Normally she’ll take it, but normally he’s not bleeding for it, and-

“I could’ve said that myself.”

“Too late now.”

And oh if that statement doesn’t sum up how things always seem to go for them. There’s a quote she remembers hearing when she was little, something like ‘ask forgiveness not permission’, and damned if that doesn’t describe him. Or both of them, really, she can be just as bad and-

They win, which is to say they do not die or get shot, so it ends up on the good end of normal.

“Don’t do that again,” she says later as she tries to bandage up a cut on his good arm. She’s a questionable field medic and they both know it, but at the moment she’s more coordinated so too bad.

“I’ll try not to.”

They both know, as she makes sure the cleaning alcohol gets real deep in that cut, that any effort will last a month at most. Ah well. At least they’ll try.

[electricbluebutterflies]

Bass/Charlie + 17

Oh man... I have Very Mixed Feelings about modern AU for these babes, but... this needed to be in that context so here we are. PG13ish (language!) and also on ao3.

the way you said “i love you”… when the broken glass litters the floor

So she thinks fights are hot. Blame her for this. Blame herfor a whole bunch of shit that was never her fault, same as everyone else does.

Charlie is not an angry person by nature, she’s pretty sure.She remembers when she was younger, before everything went to hell intriplicate, being relatively okay with the details of her life and-

Turned out most of those details were lies, and none of thevarious parental figures she survived had the same version of events, and whatshould’ve been a relatively mundane funeral turned into the biggest disasterher part of fuck-nowhere Wisconsin had ever seen and that was just thebeginning of the downward spiral.

Her current domestic troubles, such as they are, came out ofthat weekend a year ago. In the midst of that tornado of everything that couldgo wrong picking the exact same moment to go for it, she’d really thoughtscrewing someone twice her age was a great idea. And y’know, at the time, ithad been. She’s not sure it still is, but-

“I’m just asking you to fucking text me if something comesup! It would not take time you don’t have!”

So she has abandonment issues. She tries to go on like therest of the world is as fucked up as she is – and most people are, she’swilling to bet, rare is the person who makes it to twenty-three unscathed – butsometimes it hits the deep places that still bleed, sometimes-

“You can’t expect-“

“I absolutely fucking can. I thought you were better than this.”

She didn’t, though, not really.

The whole point, back when she was day-drunk and luckyenough the first pretty person she saw was both familiar enough and unattached,was that their levels of damaged matched well enough. Monroe, recurrentcatastrophe of a human being that he is, has known her family longer than she’sbeen alive. There was no need to explain the shitshow, and why she is no longeron speaking terms with her mother or apparent biological father, to someone whotried to physically separate a fight during those events. No need to beanything she isn’t, no need to-

She’d needed a place to stay, after that, and maybe thedomesticity was a little impulsive but at least she didn’t get married.God, no, she’d never do that, she’s not her mother, she’s not-

“I don’t have to explain every little thing I do to you.”

“I’m not asking for that! Just tell me if you’re gonna betwo hours late on a normal day, because that isn’t normal!”

The thing is, they’re not actually a bad combination. To hergreat surprise, Monroe is an acceptable roommate – a monthly kitchen fire issomething one can learn to accept, and the tradeoff is the man is organized ashell on a level that Charlie did not know actual human beings were capable ofand god fucking help her if she puts anything back in the wrong spot. The sexis good. They’re discussing whether to get a cat. It’s almost everything shecould ever want.

But god, she wants communication, she wants to know sheactually means something, she wants-

“I’m not used to anyone caring. This is still new, okay?Didn’t mean to hurt you.” More of an apology than she expected to get by a longshot, and still not quite enough.

“Still did.”

“I love you. I didn’t mean-“

“Tell me later. I’m not listening now.”

She walks away – she has things to do, things she would doin the spare bedroom anyways without distractions anyways – and it hits herthat she’s just heard the three little words every girl supposedly wants forthe first real time in her life and… she feels nothing. Not right now.

Maybe when the dust settles – and she knows this is not theend of them – she’ll process it. But right now, she’s tired and that fire isrunning through her and…

She wants what she wants. Hate her for it. She’s past a pointof caring.

[electricbluebutterflies]

little prompt: kabby having sex for the first time and marcus realizing that it is the first time in his life that he has made love to someone and understanding how different sex is when it actually means something

Another prompt that’s been in my drafts for years on end. This is in the mini-grayspace between 4x01 and 4x02, vaaaaaguely NSFW content (I cannot write anything graphic for the life of me but also y’know existential crisis during sex is a good time), and also on ao3.

He feels vulnerable and he hates it and he’s never wantedanything more.

To be comfortable enough with another human being to letthem touch him is strange enough. Marcus has learned these past few months thathe is a far more emotional person than he ever thought, but his physicalboundaries have been slower in coming down and-

Still, he has history there. Nothing worth regretting,nothing worth anything at all. To describe any of the various people he soughtout in moments of mutual and desire and desperation over the years as a loversounds like a bit of a stretch, but it did happen, and for what it all wasthose encounters and brief entanglements were good enough and-

This is different, and strange as all hell, and better forit.

It had to be her, he thinks in the midst of their collision.Abby is the only person still alive who has never given up on him, and even inthe decades of sparring and occasional attempted murder he understood that. Shehas, if not always a good heart, at least a well-intentioned one. If she didn’tcare, she wouldn’t have been so… her. Always on him and convinced of thebetter version of him long before he realized that was something yet to bediscovered. No wonder she got along so well with his mother, and-

At least the mental wandering during physical activitiesfeels normal enough. Sex has always been an outlet for him, a means to someother end. No reason to think too much about the other body entwined with his,or the person who for whatever reason was bored or desperate enough to allowit.

This is neither boredom or desperation, he thinks as shetakes bitey kisses. The distraction makes sense enough like this, with herabove him, chasing her own desire and using his body as a conduit. He wondersif perhaps, in this situation, he may be the convenient one.

No. Not with her.

She has kept to herself in her widowhood, and he would knowif she’d chosen otherwise, if there were any lovers in that stretch of time nomatter how inconsequential they ended up being. Even in their loathing he wasat least protective of her. He would’ve known, and he would’ve made sure in hisway that they did right by her, and she likely never would’ve found out, and…none of that happened. She chose to mourn, and that is respectable enough, and…

The realization that he may only be the second person she’sever let touch her is damn near terrifying, makes him cold enough to pull herdown.

She keeps shifting her hips against him anyways, but she iswilling enough to cling, to cover as much of his body as she can with herwarmth. She has always been assertive but this is still a new level, a new perspectiveof her strength and he can’t-

“Is this good for you?” he asks, half-amazed that comes outcoherently.

“It’s been a while,” she replies, and she decides thatconversation is a good enough time to cover his face in soft kisses so shestays close. “But I think it’s good. I don’t… I’m not sure what to compare itto.”

“You were married.”

“And that was it. And it was niceto have that kind of baseline. I don’t... you know how long it’s been sinceI’ve let anyone new-“

“And you were desperate enough tochoose me.”

Her body clenches around him, andhe should know better than to try to provoke given their current state but somehabits don’t change.

“Wasn’t desperate. Thought morelike… how much time do we have left? How much regret do I want to die with?”

“And you would regret not…?”

He can’t process it, there is toomuch going on and he can’t…

She. Would. Regret. Him. This isthe part where his mind absolutely breaks, because the idea that anyone mightconsider not having done this a mistake is beyond comprehension and he-

“How do you think I’ve dealt withmy frustrations the past few months?”

More things well beyond his daydreams.“I tried not to think about that.”

“Well. You have good hands, and agood face, and a woman can hope…”

He would like to prove her so wrongright now. His hands feel near-useless – the choice of position here, her risingand falling above him and his relative and uncharacteristic passivity, was her ideaout of concern for his still-healing wrists. That had been how this started,however long ago it was and oh he has lost track of time and pacing. She was changingbandages, and then she kissed the other scar on his forearm from a different timehe’d done something unusually reckless half-motivated by an unrealized desirefor her respect and kindness, and then it escalated, and…

He loves her. This, far from thefirst time he’s done these acts with another human being but the first time it’smeant more than just collision and release, is an act of love.

“I can’t-“

“Don’t question me like this.”

And perhaps this is the power ofher, because he actually listens. No reason to try to fight her when instead hecan focus on everything else, her loose hair and subtle curves and comparativelack of damage and-

His body responds to this fasterthan he would like, and he hopes in that moment that he is not adisappointment.

She’s still more or less curledup on him when he comes down, still riding aftershocks and still looks pleasedwith herself, and it is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“You need anything?”

“That was enough for now. I didn’t…I got close, and that was weird enough. You can make it up to me later.”

And here he’d thought she’d be evenmore self-interested than he is on a mattress. “I’m offering. Really.”

“Let me deal with the newness ofthis on my terms. You can put your hands on me in a few minutes but not right thismoment.”

He’s not sure he believes her, astheir bodies separate but still she stays close. They are new and fragile andneither of them is at their best yet, and he knows how easily she ignoresherself and he-

This will be better than his past,he promises himself as they find comfort in each other in a different way. Thiswill be better than anything he’s ever done. There are no other options. Do rightby her or be destroyed.

Although, if destruction comes inthe fire of her… no better way to burn.