#floundering on the inside. all three leads are very strong‚ and there is more to enjoy here than I remembered. but alas it is still | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sp00kworm · 4 years ago

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White Lillies (Asa Emory/The Collector x Reader)

Pairing: Asa Emory/The Collector x Gender Neutral Reader

Warnings: Stalking, Claustrophobia, Manipulation, Violence and Gore mention.

A/N: I like Doctor Emory Professor hours so I wrote this. It was more of an exploration of what Asa is like outside of his persona, but tell me what you think. This is me diving head long back into the slasher fandom so ENJOY. Gif is by me.

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The burn on his chest hurt. It bubbled with searing pain in his nerves as Asa twisted again to reach for the next paper he had to read. He wasn’t usually on much teaching duty, but now the focus this year was on one of his preferred creatures. Arachnids. They had their own choice of what species but had to turn in a paper focusing on its habitat and feeding, its evolutionary adaptations included. Some had chosen interesting ones. One student had even written about the common house spider. He cracked a smile over his coffee as he read something about a scorpion. He was quick to write a zero in the corner. It wasn’t the subject given. Asa looked at the current paper and sighed through his nose as it was another paper on the Theraphosa blondi, the Giant birdeater, a Tarantula that most of his students had seen fit to write about. So far, it was better than the rest, but Asa was still awarding the highest grade to the paper about house spiders. It had amused him. It wasn’t often his students managed to make him crack a smile. The last time he had, a particularly arrogant male student had cut his arm while raving to him, and Asa had smiled as the blood drenched his new shirt. The boy deserved it more than anyone at that moment. He’d simply grinned with white teeth and sent him away to the nurse’s office, dark thoughts of what he could put into the wound crossing his mind.

Asa snatched his mind back before it could wander into such dark territory. Wounds, blood, and gore tended to lead him into a very dark path. He looked at the clock and sighed. It was almost nine o’clock at night and he still had another thirty student’s papers to mark. The Entomologist sighed at the clock before he rolled the sleeves of his shirt up and pushed his glasses into his dark hair. He was approaching forty-eight hours awake. The ache to sleep wasn’t there. He could probably go another day or two before collapsing at home into his bed. Asa tapped his pen before stretching, his mind wandering back to his latest prize. Men always made for better pieces for his art. Strong arms and flat chests. The best fights always came from the men. Something about being the prey for once made them so fun to catch. Men didn’t like being bossed around. Asa stood to refill his coffee as he remembered what he had done two nights ago. Flowers looked much better than guts. Arranged in the form of a butterfly bursting free of the man’s abdomen. It was gorgeous. He licked at his bottom lip before he looked in the small mirror and tended to his messy hair, sighing at the grease now clinging to it. He needed a shower. The coffee machine hissed as it finished dispensing his americano. He took the handle of the mug and took another sip of coffee, regretting the sheer volume of caffeine he had already consumed.

A growl from his stomach was followed by a churn. An unhappy gurgle made him cringe as he sat back down in his desk chair. The papers stared at him as he replaced the square frames of his glasses on his face. The coffee mocked him with curls of hot steam, and he relented, giving it another long drink before continuing in the red pen. His mind churned as he wrote his suggestions on the back and picked up the next paper. Grammostola rosea, the Rose Hair Tarantula. A more interesting subject. He thought on the pink soft hairs of his own specimen as he marked, quick and efficient. The pass boundary was high for this piece of work. They were final years after all. His finger twitched as he paused marking again, three more papers in, thinking about the artwork he still had sat on the bench. Asa’s left eye twitched at the corner. He wondered if he’d remembered to pin it properly. The flowers needed to be wired in correctly as not to float in the alcohol and rot away. Worry churned his gut. He couldn’t have another piece ruined. Not again. He marked three more and the worry ate at his gut again. He needed sleep. The Doctor reached for the final few papers with another gut-wrenching gurgle and finished as quickly as he could. Eleven pm. Asa stacked the papers back together and tucked them into the tray for Thursday. Finished. He looked at his watch before exiting his office, his empty coffee cup in hand.

It was late for anyone to be in the office still. Asa froze by the door to the staff room as he heard someone messing with the dishwasher. He reached into his pocket. His fingers grazed the cold handle of the pocketknife, thumbing at the runner for the blade as he knocked open the door with his hip. “Oh gosh!” You jumped out of your skin as the door opened with a snap behind you. A dark haired man glared at you from the entrance to the staff room, “I didn’t realise there would still be anyone here!” You clasped at your chest as the man looked you up and down. His lanyard was fixed with his ID badge. Doctor Asa Emory. The entomology specialist was a Tarantula fanatic, well known in the department, despite his lack of engagement with the staff get togethers. You’d seen him once, at Christmas, and even then he’d disappeared past ten o’clock. “Well, you thought wrong.” His voice rumbled, cold and on the verge of pissed off. It was far too late to still be working. His dark, black eyes were ringed with deep rings, showing nothing but sleep deprivation. His cold remark made you half-smirk, but you ignored his lingering presence as you wrestled open the drawer for the dishwasher open once more and placed your own cup inside. “Sorry about hijacking your washer, but the one in our department is broken. Last time I used it it decided to spray water all over the floor.” You smiled at the man, taking your time to take in his frame. He was bulky, reaching just the six-foot mark as he moved from the doorway, his boots moving quietly against the lino before he leaned over to place his cup away as well.

“No problem.” He grunted before he placed a capsule in the door and closed it. It hummed to life as he looked you over with his dark eyes. He pushed his hair out of his face, “You’re not in this department, are you?”

“Ah, no.” You floundered a little, “I’m…Well I just work sorting a lot of the archive stuff.” You were vague, smiling at the Doctor as he frowned, thinking if he had ever seen you before, “I work more with animal side of things.” You promised, “I used to help with the animal experiments sometimes, but never with anything related to bugs.”

“Explains a lot.” He mumbled as he nodded his head, “Asa Emory.” He introduced himself. He moved his hand in his pocket but didn’t offer you a handshake.

“Nice to meet you, Asa.” You introduced yourself by name and the man nodded, once more, before heading back to the door.

“Try not to stay too late.” Asa said as he headed out of the door and into the corridor. “You too.” You offered lamely as the man disappeared down the hall, his footsteps nearly silent as he left.

Asa wondered why he didn’t recognise them. He knew everyone in his department. He was anti-social, but he made sure to knew all about the people at his workplace. He had to. The man was meticulous by nature. Sleep itched at his eyelids as he opened the door to his car. Spots swam over his eyes as he turned on the engine. His left fingers twitched before his eye followed. The artwork. He needed to check in on the little pets he had too. Water. Food. Asa looked in his rear-view window at the bag of supplies and wondered if starving his new pieces might make them more cooperative with his desires. Still, he needed to feed the insects he had. The man sighed as he reversed out of the carpark and headed towards the garage that he stored the van in. He needed that to make sure he had enough room for the trunks. As he headed down the road, he wondered how nice of a trophy your skin would make, or maybe how nice your eyes would look with butterfly wings framing the whites. Maybe he could take them out? Asa shook his head as his eyes twitched, painfully desperate for sleep.

Asa felt better as he walked in late the next day. He had a lecture at lunch, and he’d taken the liberty of having the morning off, considering he had clocked more than enough hours for the month by staying late marking. The papers were still stacked neatly where he left them. He slid his key from the door and dropped his bag on the floor next to his desk. Someone had been in. Asa reached for the pocketknife in his pocket as he stepped around his desk. A coffee was sat conspicuously on top of his desk, the lid on firmly. He reached for the cup, with his winter gloves still on, and looked at the name on the cup. Your name. You’d brought him a coffee. He took off his gloves and felt the cup between his hands. It was lukewarm. You must have purchased it for him that morning, along with a drink for yourself. He could easily reheat the drink. Asa took the lid off the drink and sniffed it curiously. Black coffee. Nothing smelt off about it. He took a sip and hoped to god that his stomach had recovered a little. He was still running on a bare minimum amount of sleep.

A knock at the door made him turn his head towards you, “No sleep again?” You asked from the door as you peered inside, “Or are you just late today?”

Dark, piercing eyes looked at you critically before he answered you, “Good morning. Thank you, for this.” He raised the paper cup.

“I figured you need it more than me.” You smiled at him, “I actually need to ask you for something.” You stepped into his office. Asa watched you as he placed down the coffee.

“And what is it?” He plucked his glasses case from his satchel and placed them on his face with a squint and a rub to his nose.

“I need your keys for the entomology storage, if that’s alright? I have some archiving and cataloguing to do in there today with your specimens.”

Asa looked at your smile and reached for his belt. He unclipped the university keys and offered them on the palm of his hand.

“Could you show me where it is?” You asked.

Asa knew this game. He watched your eyes wander before he recoiled his hand and fastened the keys back to the belt loop of his jeans, “Give me a minute. I’ll show you where it is.” He shooed you away with a flick of his fingers. Asa listened to the door click and played with the keys in his hand before he set to work, microwaving the coffee in his mug before he exited his office.

Asa exited his office with a hum, his coat off and his shirt tucked into his jeans. The sleeves were rolled up, revealing his forearms. You smiled as he took a drink of coffee and gestured his head towards the corridor. You both walked in a comfortable quiet, while you filled the space with mild small talk. Asa hummed and uttered small replies until you reached the storage room. He pulled his keys tight on the elastic runner before he opened the door with a clunk. The man gestured for you to go in. Curious, you opened the door and peered inside.

“I’ll leave it unlocked, but don’t go too far. A lot of what is in there is sensitive.” He grumbled as you nodded.

“Sure thing. Will you be in your office today?” You asked as you reached for a box. It was heavy and you grunted as you picked it up.

Asa nodded, “After two I’ll be in my office.” He gave you a wave, “Good luck.” He grunted as he disappeared down the corridor. You peered around the doorframe and sighed as you watched the man’s backside disappear around the corner. You shook the thoughts from your head as you opened the box and cringed at the pin boards full of beetle species.

It was an hour later when the door slammed shut. You didn’t pay it any mind as you sorted the documents into years. After finishing piling the documents, you looked at the clock. It was just past one o’clock. With a hum you went to the door, intending to go and eat your lunch before continuing. The handle sat still as you pushed your hand against it. It shook as you pulled and pushed. The lock was firmly in place. With a shaky sigh, you reached underneath the handle and met against a flat surface. There wasn’t a safety lock. You were stuck. You pulled it again and felt fear creep into your gut as you looked around at the massive number of pinned bugs in the room. There was a vent. It was small, in the corner of the room, humming with the air rushing through it. You took a steadying breath and looked at the documents again. Asa knew you were in here. He’d be back to check if you hadn’t been to get the keys. You nodded and went back to work, quietly trying to calm yourself as you worked.

Asa smiled as the handle shook. Good. He moved the deep cleaning signs into place and peered down the corridors before leaving you, locked in the room, upset and ready to be saved when he saw fit to unlock the door.

You looked at your watch. It was five o’clock. You were hungry and reaching a level of panic you’d never been at before. You were stuck. The lock clunked in the background and you looked up from your knees, your face wet from sniffling. A ring of keys jingled before two boots stepped inside. You looked up Asa’s legs and gave a shaky sigh of relief before standing up. Asa peered at you with one eyebrow quirked. Curious. He offered his hands to you and tried not to flinch as you grabbed his arms and pulled yourself up.

“Did you get locked in? I wondered where you had gotten to.” Asa gave you a half smile as you stood up.

“Thank god, Asa. I was so worried. I thought I was…” You jumped as the man ran the back of his hand over your cheek. He sneered at the snot and tears before pulling out a handkerchief and wiping you free of grime, “Shall we go for dinner?” He asked, out of the blue, his fingers holding your cheeks tightly, keeping you in place as he cleaned your face.

“What? Now?” You asked as Asa’s finger stroked under your eye, critical eyes watching your pupils dilate, “Uhm. Sure. Thank you.”

Asa smiled with white teeth as you agreed, “Good.”

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littlelovelyspiderling · 4 years ago

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Unmasked

Spider-Man is forced to fight the Sinister Six while he’s sick, which leads to his enemies making unexpected discoveries about their arch nemesis.

Chapter 3

Ow.

That was the first coherent thought that registered in Peter’s brain.

Pain. He was in pain. A lot of it.

It started with the sunlight shining directly in his eyes through the ceiling-high windows. Then there was the sharp ache in his left leg. Then a sting in his shoulder. A cramp in his stomach. A throb in his skull.

And then, everywhere.

Peter was hurting all over. And yet, it was dull, distant, hazy hurt, like he was a ghost floating above his body after it had been run over by a dump truck.

Ugh…

His eyes scrunched into angry lines before fluttering open. His vision was fuzzy, unfocused, and no amount of blinking seemed to fix it. His brain felt like it had been replaced by three tons of bricks.

What…where…

He was…inside someplace. It was bright—way too bright. The ceiling overhead was tall and white. He was lying on a couch that felt like it had never been sat on before.

Am I…dead…?

His muscles were stiff as stone. He feared for a moment he was paralyzed, until he felt his fingers twitch, followed by his toes. It hurt—a lot—but hurt was better than numbness.

Okay. Not paralyzed. Hopefully not dead.

“Mmmgh,” he moaned. Slowly, he slid his hands back and pushed off the couch, lifting himself into a sitting position. “Oh, god…”

His skin was hot and sticky. Every bone, organ, and cell ached. He still felt sick, but now with about seventy extra ailments piled on top of that, which meant he was probably still alive.

Probably.

But how?

The last he remembered, he was getting his ass handed to him by the Sinister Six. For as long as he’d operated as the masked vigilante Spider-Man, he’d never gotten thrashed that badly. How did he get away? Did someone rescue him? Had the Avengers swooped in and saved his dumb, in-over-his-head ass right after he’d blacked out? But how could they have gotten there in time?

And where the hell was he?

Now that he was no longer lying down, the room had started listing a little. Peter reached up to rub his temple and felt something crinkly stuck to his head. He grabbed hold of it and started peeling it off his skin, wincing from the pain. Once he’d torn it free, Peter held the unknown object in front of his eyes. It was a large, bloody bandage.

Huh.

Peter’s eyes dropped to his lap. A thin blanket was draped over his body. When he lifted it away, he cringed.

His torso was a gruesome patchwork of Frankenstein-style stitches and bandages. He counted three sets of sutures on his upper body alone, plus four other cuts and scrapes held together with butterfly tape. His entire chest looked like one gigantic bruise. Plus, the burns—some from scraping across coarse concrete, others from actual fire. Every small movement sent waves of pain rippling across his body.

Yeesh, he thought, poking gingerly at the bandages on his shoulder. Well, someone friendly had to patch me up. But who?

Peter let the blanket slip from his fingers. Grimacing, he swung his legs off the couch and carefully placed his feet on the floor. Sweat slipped off his brow and dripped onto his knee.

“Okay,” he breathed. Peter inhaled sharply, then threw his weight forward, standing upright for an instant. Then he collapsed, gasping. Dizzying agony blossomed in his left leg and thumped like a second heartbeat.

“Shit,” he hissed through his teeth. He glanced back and saw his shin had been fashioned with a makeshift splint: two metal rods and ass-load of packing tape.

Right. Broken leg. The sound of the bone cracking in half reignited in his memories, sending a shudder down his spine.

Peter used the sofa to pull himself off the ground. This time, he placed all his weight on his right foot, using his left only for balance. His body ached and trembled with the effort it took to stand, but he managed to stay on his feet.

Ouch. Ugh. Okay. Yeah. That’s a start. The fuzz in his vision was starting to dissipate, but the fog in his brain clung like fungus. It felt like he’d been inhaling a bunch of that laughing gas stuff his dentist had given him back in the 6th grade when he had to get a tooth pulled. His head was heavy and light at the same time.

The room was a lounge area with stiff furniture and minimal decor. A wilted fern sat in the corner alongside a weird, tall block with a piece of metal sticking out of the top that Peter assumed was some form of modern art. The walls were entirely bare except for a small landscape painting that looked like it belonged in a motel bathroom. There were two other chairs across from the couch, a coffee table, a gray rug, and that was basically it.

Beside the fern, a pair of double doors stood wide and closed. When Peter strained his sensitive ears, muffled voices could be heard conversing in the other room. Curiosity plucked at his chest.

“Um…hello?” he called, voice raspy. He approached the doors, hopping more than walking, gritting his teeth as his injuries burned and throbbed, heat radiating feverishly off his skin. By the time he transversed the room, he was out of breath, lightheaded. He leaned against the wall for a minute and cycled slow gulps of oxygen through his lungs.

Once he’d somewhat recovered, Peter limped in front of the large doors. The voices were louder now, but not loud enough to be recognizable. They sounded mostly male. Peter took a deep breath, reached out his arm, and cracked the door open just a hair to peek inside.

It was a kitchen—that was the first thing he saw. A man stood at the island with his back to the doors. Across from him was a round dining table with a bowl of fruit in the middle.

“How is he?” the man asked, biting into an apple. His voice was definitely familiar.

“Still hasn’t woken up, right?” another responded.

Maybe this is another one of Clint’s safe houses, Peter thought. Or an Avengers’ base I’ve never been to before. Or a secret sitting room in some tragically decorated S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. Or—

Seconds before Peter opened his mouth to say hello again, the man eating the apple turned around. When Peter saw his face, his heart jumped out of his chest and splattered at his feet.

“I don’t know,” Herman Shultz said over a mouthful of fruit. “Has he?”

The oxygen around Peter vanished in an instant. It’s Shocker! The guy who broke my leg! W-what the hell? What is he doing here?

“Not from what I’ve heard,” the second voice continued. Another man entered his narrow line of vision, this one lit up like a neon sign, and Peter’s throat seized.

“You’re not being very helpful, Maxwell.”

“I told you not to call me that! I’m Electro!”

Shocker held up his hands. “Right, right, sorry. Electro, then. You’re not being helpful.”

What the shit, what the shit, what the actual, living shi—

“Don’t ask me about these things. Ask the doc.” He lifted his head and grinned. “Look—here he comes now.”

Clank, clank, clank. Heavy, metallic footsteps rang in Peter’s ears and shook the floor beneath him. Horror and disbelief flooded his veins as the eight-limbed scientist stepped in front of him, hardly three feet away, pushing a pair of glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Ask me about what?” Doctor Octopus said.

Peter leapt back from the door, clamping both hands over his mouth.

Oh…my god. It’s them.

“I just wanted to know how he was doing.”

They’re here. They found me. They came to finish the job.

Half of the super villains that had just wrecked his shit were standing in the neighboring room. Hell, maybe all of them were. They’d probably taken whoever had helped him hostage, or perhaps the poor soul was already dead. He wouldn’t stand a chance like this. He didn’t have his suit, his webs, nothing. He’d tried his best to fight them when he was just sick with the stomach bug, and look how well that had turned out for him. If they attacked him now, one solid hit was all it would take to knock him out. Or, if he was being fully honest, kill him.

Peter’s eyes darted frantically around the room. I have to get out of here! He hobbled toward the wall of windows and placed his hands against the glass. It was at least four inches thick; probably bulletproof. But it was his only option. With a shivery grunt, Peter hoisted himself off the floor and crawled toward the ceiling, every step piercing him with flashes of pain.

Okay. Launch off the ceiling, kick through the glass, make a run for it. In his loopy, concussed mind, the plan sounded foolproof. The voices of his enemies were growing louder; Doc Oc’s footsteps were approaching rapidly. It was now or never.

Hanging off the upside-down surface, balancing on his good foot, heart racing, head dizzy and faint, Peter threw himself at the window. He hit the glass with a loud thunk, bouncing off like a bug on a windshield, then crashed on top of the weird modern art piece, shattering the mahogany box into wood chips.

Peter lay sprawled in a heap in the wake of his failure, groaning and dazed. As he forced himself upright, gripping his head in his hand, the doors behind him burst open.

“What the hell?” Doc Oc exclaimed, alarm caked across his expression. When his gaze landed on the young superhero floundering in the splintered remains of his college art project, stunned and disheveled but now awake and wide-eyed, his muscles relaxed slightly. “Spider-Man?”

“Holy shit, he’s awake,” Electro said.

“And he destroyed your favorite sculpture,” Shocker added.

Peter’s eyes dashed between the three men, wild and afraid. He’d been unmasked by his absolute worst enemies—but that seemed the least of his troubles. I’m toast, he thought. Tiny pieces of wood clung to his hair, face, and back. Seeing him conscious for the first time sent a spark of relief through Doc Oc, though he hadn’t expected him to wake up for at least another day; the combination of pain meds he’d given him was pretty strong. When Octavius moved an inch closer to him, Peter scrambled to his feet and backed away, tripping over himself in the process and heavily favoring his right leg.

“Spider-Man—” he began, trying to keep his voice level. Spider-Man picked up a chunk of the destroyed box and chucked it at him.

“S-stay back!” he shouted. His voice was shrill and cracked at the end of the demand. Damn, Otto thought. The evidence of Spider-Man’s youthfulness was clear as day to him now—how had none of them noticed it before? Perhaps they had simply chosen not to notice.

Doc Oc dodged the projectile with ease. “Spider-Man, listen to me—”

Peter made a break for it, gunning for the opposite side of the room. He’d hardly made it two uncoordinated strides before three more figures emerged from a door behind the couch, blocking his escape path: Scorpion, Sandman, and Rhino. He skidded to a stop with a gasp.

“Whoa,” Rhino exclaimed, towering over the half-naked hero. “Would you look at that. Tiny spider is alive.”

Shit! Peter screamed internally. He whipped his gaze in every direction and realized he was surrounded.

“He needs to stop moving,” Otto said, knowing there was no way to accomplish that with words. He raised his tentacles above his head, the pincers snapping hungrily. “Grab him.”

Rhino made the first move, reaching out with his meaty hands to snag the kid by the arm. But Spider-Man ducked and rolled out of the way, moving surprisingly fast despite all of his injuries, though it was obvious the exertion was hurting him. Scorpion and Sandman tried next, lunging for his legs, but Peter hopped right over them and flipped backwards, wincing and staggering once his feet hit the floor and banging into the window.

“You’re going to reopen your wounds,” Octavius warned him. He thrust two tentacles at his torso, but Spider-Man flinched out of their grasp. Otto launched the other two arms at him, and Peter skirted between them, springing on to the wall. The exhaustion and terror in his face were evident. Otto felt bad for scaring him so much, but this was for his own good.

“Spider-Man—please,” he groused. His mechanical arms grabbed and snapped at the air, barely missing the slippery little hero every time. “Just—stay—still!”

Peter wasn’t listening to a word he said. All he knew was that he couldn’t let himself be caught. Every inch of him was screaming in agony. When the tentacles pounced on him all at once, Spider-Man shrunk small and dove underneath them, somersaulting past Doc Oc’s legs and popping up behind him. Peter bolted blindly for the double doors, only to ram straight into Rhino’s giant leg and fall flat on his ass. Three metal prongs clamped around his midsection before he could regather himself, pinning him to the floor.

“Agh!” Peter yelped, tugging uselessly at the claw’s strong teeth. “Let me go!”

Otto lifted Spider-Man off the ground. He continued to strain and squirm, kicking his legs and grappling with the mechanical pincers gripping his waist. The rest of the Sinister Six gathered around the frightened hero, forming a circle with him in the middle. He looked so small against the looming backdrop of super villains. His young face beamed with all the emotions his mask typically concealed—most prominently, fear.

“Spider-Man,” Octavius repeated, holding his hands out tentatively. “Calm down.”

“I’ll pass, thanks!” Peter quipped, betrayed by the tremble in his voice.

“Okay, it’s definitely him,” Electro groaned amusedly.

“I know you’re scared,” Doc Oc continued. “And you have every right to be. But if you don’t stop moving, you’re going to injure yourself further.”

“And if I don’t keep moving, you’re going to injure me further!” He thrashed and twisted valiantly, but it was evident he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. His movements were slowing down, his attempts to escape growing more and more pathetic. Otto waited for him to burn himself out, crossing his arms against his chest. It didn’t take long.

“Are you quite done now?”

Peter hung his head, breathless and shivery, gripping the prongs around his torso less to try to escape and more to hold himself upright. Perhaps his impromptu acrobatics display hadn’t been his smartest idea. All that leaping and flipping and bouncing around had sapped the last whispers of energy from his bones.

“Ugh…room’s…s-spinning,” he murmured. Otto took that as a “yes.” He held Spider-Man closer and frowned at a red spot on his ribs.

“And now look what you’ve done, you idiot. You’ve torn your stitches. I tried to warn you. Half an hour’s worth of sewing, down the drain because of your recklessness.”

“What are you…what…what’s…?” Spider-Man slurred. He was suddenly seeing double of everything. He dropped his gaze to his midriff and watched two blurry lines of blood slip down his side.

“I sutured you up, and you ruined it,” Octavius explained. Peter slowly lifted his head and wrinkled his brow.

“You…” he said, blinking repeatedly. “What?”

“Told you we gave him brain damage,” Rhino whispered. Peter looked at him over his shoulder, then swept his gaze around the circle, making eye contact with every member of the Sinister Six. They saw him. After all this time, his face was finally exposed to his enemies. No disguise, no secret identity, no mask. He felt so naked without it. Not having a shirt or pants on didn’t help either. Strangely, their expressions lacked their typical thirst for spider blood. It dawned on him that over a minute had passed, and none of them had tried to kill him. And so far, they still weren’t trying.

“I’m…confusion,” he stammered. “What—what’s happening right now?”

It was somewhat amusing to see Spider-Man so delirious and out of his element. Doctor Octopus lowered him to the ground but didn’t let go of his torso. Peter was almost glad he didn’t; he doubted he could stand on his own right now.

“I tended to your wounds while you were unconscious,” Octavius said. “It’s not a perfect patch job, but I did the best I could.”

Peter shook his head slowly, his big, brown Bambi eyes wide and puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

“I also gave you some pain killers, which might be making your head a bit fuzzy.”

“But…why?” he scoffed. “You did this to me. You’re the ones who…beat me up. You love beating me up. You—you hate me. You want me dead. You’ve tried to make me dead a million times.” Peter jolted suddenly, a cramp shooting through his broken leg. If he was on painkillers, they were doing a pretty piss-poor job. Everything hurt and was too confusing to comprehend. He closed his eyes and dropped his face into his hands, moaning. “Oh god…I’ve gotta be trapped in some crazy fever dream right now. Or maybe…I’m dead. Am I dead? None of this makes any sense…”

“You’re not dead, Peter,” Otto said, stifling a chuckle.

A shudder rippled through the teenager. He lowered his hands, revealing the colorless face behind them.

“How…how do you know my…?”

Shit, Doc Oc thought. It was a careless slip of the tongue. He had meant to keep his knowledge of Spider-Man’s alter ego a secret so as to not frighten him further, but it looked like the cat was out of the bag.

Peter’s gaze shifted anxiously between the six super villains again. Fresh fear clouded over his glassy eyes, and he went back to squirming against Octavius’ hold.

“Now what are you trying to do?” Otto asked, exasperated.

“G-get the hell out of here,” Peter answered. He yanked at the claw around his torso, grunting with effort. “I know what this is. This is—one of those—hrgg—P-Princess Bride situations, isn’t it?”

The team of villains exchanged bemused glances with each other. “What are you talking about?”

“You know—mmneh—when the bad guys—c-catch Wesley, then heal him—just so the life-sucky torture machine thing is—m-more torturous? That’s what this is, right?” His face was flushing red, and more of his sutures were starting to leach blood.

Scorpion threw up his hands. “What’s the brat trying to say?”

“I think he’s saying we only doctored his wounds so that when we kill him, it’ll be all the more slow and painful,” Electro clarified with a shrug. “Which honestly sounds pretty in character for most of us.”

“See? This guy gets it.” Peter pushed at the prongs with all his might. Even as a half-dead, half-conscious mess, the kid couldn’t stop himself from being a smartass.

“I’m just impressed he made a reference to a movie that came out before he was a concept,” Rhino said. “You know, instead of, like, Finding Nemo?”

Otto could see the strain Spider-Man was putting himself through in his pitiful attempts to escape, so he decided to see what would happen if he succeeded. When Spider-Man shoved at his metal pincers again, he let them snap open. Surprise flashed across Peter’s face as he dropped to the ground and wobbled on his feet, followed by weary triumph.

“Ha! See? T-told you I would…I could…”

He faltered and swayed, staggering backwards. Sandman enlarged his hand and caught him before he could hit the floor. Peter sat limply in his palm, breathing heavy, frail and febrile and injured and exhausted. He looked down at the sand-hand that had stopped him from falling, then back up at the surrounding circle of villains, fear and confusion stinging in the corners of his eyes.

“W-why aren’t you...trying to kill me?”

The room dipped into nervous silence. Spider-Man’s gaze continued to jump between them, searching for answers.

“Why did you treat the wounds you gave me?” he continued weakly. With every word that passed his lips, the shake in his voice increased. “W-what do you want from me? Are you trying to…turn me to the dark side or something?”

Shocker stroked his chin. “Wouldn’t be a bad idea…”

“No,” Sandman answered pointedly, shooting Shocker a sideways glare.

“Then what?” Peter snapped. “What’s going on? Why am I here? Why aren’t I dead yet?” Spider-Man dragged himself back to his feet, grimacing harshly. “T-tell me what you’re planning to do with me, or I’ll—I’ll…”

His scowl dropped suddenly, replaced by a look of panic. His eyes went wide and his jaw clenched.

“Or you’ll what?” Scorpion asked in a mocking tone.

When Peter didn’t answer him, Octavius took a step closer. “Spider-Man? What’s wrong?”

Gradually, the terror in his face gave way to dread. Peter sucked in a gasp and cupped his hand over his mouth.

“I think…I’m gonna puke.”

Otto blinked. “Oh,” he said. That was not the response he was expecting, but it didn’t look like the kid was joking. He lurched forward, stifling a gag, making everyone exclaim and leap back. His pale face hinted a sickly shade of green.

“Oh,” Octavius repeated, animated by a new sense of urgency. He glanced around frantically until he spotted the fern in the corner of the room. He seized it with one of his tentacles, dumped the plant and the soil onto the floor, then slid the empty pot in front of Spider-Man. “Uh, here.”

Peter moaned in defeat before doubling over the pot and retching violently. The Sinister Six turned away in disgust, fighting to keep their own lunches down. There was hardly anything inside him to upchuck in the first place, but his body continued to dry heave for another half-minute. Once the bout passed, Peter was left wheezing and trembling with his head held low. His throat burned and tears were slipping from his eyes faster than he could wipe them away.

“Forgot about the stomach flu,” Electro said, sticking out his tongue. “Blech.”

Peter wanted to ask how the hell they knew he had a stomach bug, among many other things, but he was too fatigued to form words.

Octavius turned back to him squeamishly. The poor kid looked so small, hurt, and sick. It amazed him how quickly his hate for Spider-Man had transformed into a tentative fondness. He felt the need to comfort him somehow, the way adults were supposed to comfort young ones when they weren’t feeling well. But he had no idea how.

Instead, he grabbed a roll of paper towels and a cup of water from the kitchen and placed them both by his side. “Here,” he said awkwardly.

Peter eyed the items and whimpered softly. With miserable, lethargic movements, Peter washed out his mouth and wiped his face, every breath aching in his chest. Shame and fever radiated off him in waves. When he was finished, he just sat there, panting and shivery. Too weak to move.

“I think you ought to lay back down, Spidey,” Sandman said, plucking the hero off the floor between two massive fingers. He returned him to the couch with delicate care, guiding his head to the pillow and draping the blanket over his body.

“No…” Peter mumbled languidly, trying to sit up. When he closed his eyes, he couldn’t get them to open again. “Just…tell me…why…”

Something cold and wet pressed against his forehead, gently pushing him back down. Octavius had grabbed a hand towel from the kitchen and soaked it in ice water. The cool touch against his skin was soothing and unexpectedly soporific. Slowly, his muscles went lax. His tumultuous thoughts faded into sleepy nothingness.

“We will,” Otto lied. “But for now, rest.”

It was almost endearing how quickly Spider-Man drifted back to sleep. Octavius left the towel on his forehead and watched as his breathing eased to a steady rhythm.

“Damn,” Shocker sighed. “Poor kid.”

“We really beat him senseless,” Rhino said.

Electro stood over the slumbering hero with his hands on his hips, tilting his head to the side. “Is it just me, or is Spider-Man, like…kind of adorable?”

Scorpion snorted. “Adorable?”

“You know! In that, like, puppy-dog, dumb little kid kind of way. I mean, look at him! Does no one else think so?”

Sandman shrugged, fighting back a smile. “I mean, maybe. Sorta.” His expression gradually hardened, and he looked at Doc Oc. “So…is what you said before true? Is he really, like, an orphan?”

Otto lowered his gaze. “Not exactly. His parents died when he was a toddler, and he was adopted by his aunt and uncle, who became like parents to him. But then his uncle was killed last year, so now it’s just him and his aunt. He hasn’t had a particularly easy life.”

“And we certainly haven’t helped on that front,” Rhino added.

“It’s insane to me that at his age, this is what he chose to do with his powers. If I’d gotten his abilities when I was fifteen and gone through all that loss, I’d have been robbing every store on 5th Avenue.”

Shocker smirked. “I hate to say it, but...he’s kind of a good kid. Even if he is an obnoxious little dumbass.”

Amidst the conversation, Octavius’ face remained stoic, unreadable. He waited a while before clearing his throat. “I…wanted to let you all know. I, um, spoke to Tombstone this morning.”

All eyes turned to him, alarmed.

“He saw footage of us capturing Spider-Man on the news,” he explained. “He’s offering us two million each in exchange for the kid.”

Rhino’s jaw dropped. “Two million dollars? For each of us?”

“Holy shit,” Sandman breathed.

“What the hell?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“And he just wants the kid?” Shocker exclaimed. "That’s it?”

Otto nodded slowly. “Alive, but yes. That’s all he wants.” He swallowed and looked at the floor. “He’s given us until the end of the week to accept his offer.”

Excitement and dismay swept across everyone’s expressions. Each person waited for someone to speak up, for someone else to say no, we can’t. But it was just too tempting a proposition to dismiss out of hand. They could finally be free to do what they wanted. Free to live as they pleased, villainous or otherwise. Free to punish this city the way it had punished them, if they so choose. Turning over the kid was all it would take. One quick transaction. Hand over their nemesis, their sworn enemy, and it was done. They’d be rich.

“What the hell does he plan to do with him?” Sandman whispered uneasily.

“We don’t have to decide right now,” Doc Oc clarified. “I just wanted to make you aware of the opportunity. We can discuss it more later.”

An air of tentative relief settled over the room. Electro puffed out his cheeks and crossed his arms against his chest.

“In that case, what are we going to tell him when he wakes up again? That we want to sell him to some psychopath so we can all be millionaires? That we think he’s cute and want to keep him as a pet?”

Doctor Octopus shook his head. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said. He turned back to his team. “I’ll keep monitoring him and re-treat the wounds he opened. I think it’s best we always have a pair of eyes on him to prevent another incident involving the destruction of my art pieces.”

The rest of the Sinister Six agreed, scattering throughout the complex, the proposition weighing heavily on all of their minds. Otto put on some classical music and began mopping the fresh blood off Peter’s torso.

#spiderman #spider-man #spiderman fanfiction #spiderman homecoming #Spider-Man: Homecoming #spider-man: far from home #sick fic #marvel #mcu #peter parker #spiderman ffh

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concussed-to-pieces · 4 years ago

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Whether It Works Out Or Not: Winter’s Cold, Part Two

Fandom: Red Dead Redemption 2

Pairing: High Honor!Arthur Morgan/Named OFC

Rating: Holy shit T.

AN: Thank you all so much for being here! Enjoy!

[Spoiler warning for the epilogue!]

Tag List: @huliabitch @cookiethewriter @pedrosbigdorkenergy @thirstworldproblemss @anonymouscosmos @culturalrebel @karmezii @teaofpeach @crookedmoonsaultpunk @wrestlingfae @zombiexbody @nelba @scribblenotes76 @toxiicpop @mstgsmy @misty-possum @gallowsjoker @midnightbeauty35 @lackofhonor @renegademustelid @missfronkensteen @newplanetshine

Part One: Strangers

Part Two: Friends

Part Three: More

Bonus One: A Brief Diversion

Bonus Two: Back In The Cage

Winter’s Cold, Part One

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains emotional distress and self-loathing. Stay safe!]

The first time Arthur really felt...aware, like he was actually inhabiting his body instead of floating above and slightly to the right of it, he realized that he could hear chirping birds. A breeze stirred his hair; there must be a window open nearby.

It dawned on him after several moments that he could breathe. It still hurt, it pained him, but he wasn't hacking and wheezing every second. Dread flooded his soul then; either he was dead, or the law was in the process of meting out the rope for his noose. Bit of a raw deal for all those hellfire preachers if eternal damnation was only some downright mild discomfort (at least after everything else) and a lazy little breeze.

His whole body still felt like it weighed too much to move. The idea of opening his eyes was a distant, faint notion; barely a fledgling consideration in the back of his mind. Arthur was more than content to lay just wherever it was that he had fallen, sunshine wavering in dappled patches across the insides of his eyelids.

He dimly noticed that fabric was covering his mouth and nose. A bandanna, or some kind of mask? To keep him from spreading the infection, he surmised pragmatically. Through the material wafted a scent from his childhood, the alive smell of freshly-cured hay. Beneath it was the ever-present odor of manure, the crisp tingle of pine. So he must be in the mountains somewhere.

Odd. Last he knew, he was being shipped off to the city to be read his last rites. Had they decided to let him convalesce in the wilderness, drag him back from the clutches of death and then set his backside afore the law?

Very odd indeed. But then again, justice had always been more of a performance than a true enforcement of moral integrity.

I sound like Dutch.

He drifted off again. Just thinking was exhausting, like wading through swamp mud.

More medicine. Balm for his chest. A stew, lip of the bowl pressed to his mouth so he could slowly slurp it up. Rich, meaty broth, soothing his throat. How many days had it been?

He couldn't even bring himself to move when he felt the familiar press of a flat blade against his neck. Hot water soaking into his skin, a warm cloth moving in circles to scrub away whatever grime was around his nose and mouth. The person was meticulous, sure strokes carefully ridding the man of the stubble he harbored on his face. How long had it been since he shaved?

Christ alive, Arthur was tired. He couldn't decide whether he wanted to live or not. This caretaker, whoever they were, clearly wasn't letting him go without a fight. But he was so tired.

He wavered for what felt like a lifetime, hovering at the edge of eternity in the green fragrance of curing hay. It was safe here, at any rate. Nothing would harm him in this peaceful tomb. He could rest until he began to feel like he was in control of his body again, and one fateful day, Arthur Morgan finally realized that he wanted to see how much worse living could manage to be.

His eyes opened slowly, squinting against the near-blinding illumination of sunset that played pink against the unfinished beams over his head. Lord, just doing that much had taken the wind out of his sails. Maybe he was already dead.

His eyes rolled shut wearily, blinking open again what felt like moments later to find the place dark. Night had fallen. Time was slipping past him, it would seem. There was a faint taste in his mouth: venison stew with wild carrots, if he had to guess. He didn't even remember eating.

He squinted in the blackness, trying to force his eyes to adjust so he could at least take in his surroundings before he lost consciousness again.

Hay. Everywhere. He appeared to be in a loft of some kind, bales stacked neatly all around the tick he laid on. Night sounds filtered in through the open window, bats squeaking and the booming call of an owl telling him that the hour must indeed be late.

Arthur lapsed back into senselessness once more. He dreamed of hearing violin music and catching sight of a massive, pale buck through the window. It watched him from a far-off hillside, ears flicking back and forth to catch every sound.

He dreamed of Irene. Her smile, her eyes, the kisses in the tent that they had shared...

Maybe, maybe sat like a block of lead in his gut. 'Maybe' was all he had ever had. A chance, a mirage. Pretty words from men and women who had made him feel useful, needed.

So he had poured from himself until he was empty and it still hadn't been enough.

He was a fool. What was it that Irene had said to Jamie? "I'm not letting anyone else dig my grave and usher me into it."

Arthur, in contrast, had practically handed Dutch the shovel on a silver platter.

I gave you all I had.

…

He was aware that someone was nearby, and he managed to open his eyes again for a brief moment. Long enough for him to hallucinate that it was Irene tending to him, Irene giving him whatever horrendous medicine it was and washing away the bitter taste with hot soup and small sips of tea. He must truly be long gone, mad with delirium or fever or the consumption that had wracked his chest until he felt paper-thin.

How would she even be here? How would that have even happened? There was no way.

Arthur almost loathed himself for choosing to live at that moment, because he was clearly missing a few more screws. He knew that some agues raged so strong they could burn the brain right out of a man and he feared that was the case with him.

Not that he'd had much brain to lose in the first place.

Christ, he did wish she was here. He wished he could take her hand and never let her go again.

Allowing her leave that final time was a regret that had haunted him even more prominently than his bitter failure with Mary, for all that he knew there was nothing he could have done to make her stay with him. Irene had been on her own too long, flown too far and high to ever be tied down to some old, miserable bastard again.

Mary had come to know him under false pretenses, and she had never truly reconciled herself with it. In a way, Arthur hadn't either. He had known she wasn't his from the very beginning, had known that he was playing a part or living a lie whenever he was with her. It never would have worked out, and it never did.

But Irene, despite their deceptive start, came to him with a certain honesty. The haphazard performance of masculinity had done little to hide her true nature, the kindness that she claimed to see in him so freely displayed in her as well. It also didn't hide the burdens she carried, though he hadn't understood the sadness in 'Frank's' eyes when they had spoken.

The trials she had gone through...he at least had the gang, but she was wholly alone. She had endured, like a pine tree rooted on a crumbling and wind-whipped bluff. Storms of life howling all around and yet…

And yet, when he had last seen her, she had held herself proudly in Lemieux's mansion, unshaken. The guts and wherewithal that had seen her thus far would continue, and Arthur had wished her nothing but the finest of luck even as he had sent her on her way.

…

There were folded clothes on the floor beside him when next he stirred, and on top of them was a note. Arthur had no idea how long it took him to sit up, never mind move his arm, manipulate his fingers into picking the note up, unfold the note to read it…

Lord, living certainly seemed to require a lot of steps.

Arthur,

Not sure if you'll really be awake today, but I've noticed you moving around a bit of your own volition. Left the clothes in case you feel up to getting dressed. I am uncertain if you'll recall, so I'll remind you that the waste bucket is in the far corner.

The note was unsigned.

Arthur huffed out a breath, clearing his throat experimentally. He reached for the union suit on the top of the pile, planting his face in the article of clothing with a groan as his head suddenly felt too heavy to support. "C'mon Morgan." He encouraged himself, the words thick in his mouth. Shit, how long had he been out for? It was like he had forgotten how to speak.

Just pulling the suit up and over his legs was a task of Herculean proportions. Arthur doggedly kept fighting the urge to pass out, the desire to lay back down and let time zip by again. He had made the choice to live and by God, he would follow through with it even if it killed him.

The longer he worked at getting dressed, the easier it became to keep his eyes open. Socks on over the suit, shirt, pants. His suspenders hung limp at his sides, but he did tuck in his shirt as best as he could after he relieved himself.

Boots. Boots, one tipped over on the space beside the ladder, the other within reach of the bed.

Next, climbing down the ladder. Mercifully the loft was not particularly high. The whole barn seemed rather small as far as barns went, obviously originally built with one stall. A second one appeared to have been hastily grafted onto the building at a later time.

Arthur had to take a breather at the base of the ladder, clinging to it just to keep his balance. His knees felt like they were made out of jelly. Had his boots always been this damn heavy?!

He floundered onward after a moment, grateful for his hat as he emerged into the blinding sunlight of the outside world.

Arthur rubbed his eyes, nearly losing his footing as he did so. He had already been uncertain of the reality of his current situation, and this idyllic scene in front of him wasn't helping matters!

A small paddock stretched out on the left, and a cozy-looking cabin was nestled into the green, flower-dappled glen alongside the barn he had just emerged from. Arthur staggered to the paddock fence for support, draping himself over it. From the shadow by the barn, a shape stirred. He forced himself to focus on it, his eyes widening when the horse meandered lazily out into the sunlight to graze.

"Chase!" Arthur rasped, his voice rough and cracking from disuse. The mare's head jerked up and she looked around. His heart leaped in his chest when she whinnied excitedly at him, trotting across the paddock and bumping her nose against his chest. Arthur held her tightly, cupping her muzzle and scratching beneath her jaw. "That's my sweet girl, my good girl." He murmured, feeling foolish for getting choked up.

There was an explosive snort to his right and a familiar pink nose snuffled over his shoulder. Arthur squinted, turning his head to the side and realizing that it was Bluster. The horse whickered, mouthing at the sleeve of his shirt.

Arthur Morgan was speechless. He must be dead. How else could he have his horse, and Irene's horse besides? He sat there mutely for God only knew how long, just petting Chase with his eyes closed to luxuriate in the sensation of sun on his skin.

Behind him, the wind carried faint sounds to his ears, and he flinched when he caught a child's high-pitched squeal of laughter. Just where the hell was he, if he was indeed alive? What buffoon would nurse someone like him back to health, yet leave him unbound and unguarded? Something was very odd about this whole scenario.

Arthur turned and leaned back on the fence, narrowing his eyes against the glare of the sun as he looked up at the ridge of the glen. There was an abrupt flash of motion to the left on the edge of the gully, and he watched a woman that he desperately wanted to recognize chase after a child. The little one was fairly shrieking with mirth, scurrying away from their pursuer until they flopped down dramatically and allowed themselves to be caught.

It felt like his heart had left his body, the damn thing soaring and shattering all at once. A girl, it was a little girl, her hair the color of a pale buck. Irene scooped the child up, laughing breathlessly and tossing her into the air before spinning the two of them in a dizzying circle.

Irene.

Arthur swallowed hard. Fate was indeed a cruel mistress if this was the vision he was greeted with upon making his decision to live! He continued to just slouch against the fence, silently observing the duo as they frolicked at the top of the ridge. Irene had flowers in her hair just like she had at the Mayor's little soiree, and he realized dimly that her dark brown curls were much longer. Just how much time had he lost?

He finally mustered up the strength to wave at them and he liked to think that Irene went still out of happiness. In a moment she caught the child up and fairly bolted down the hillside, her skirt hiked around her knees as she ran.

"Arthur!"

Christ, Christ he wasn't ready for this. He wasn't ready for the sight of her with a babe on her hip, the agony of maybe, maybe that ripped at his insides. In another life, it might have been his child that she had been playing with. In another life, this might have been the home that they had built together.

But instead, she had gone on and made a fruitful existence without him. He couldn't, wouldn't blame her for it. He had cut her loose, after all.

Irene came to a halt inches away, her chest rising and falling from the effort of her sprint. "Y-You--you're up!" She panted, her smile burying itself in his ribs like a blade. Christ, his heart was too weak for this.

The child in Irene's arms gawked up at him with crystal blue eyes and he tried to muster up a smile, startled when Irene embraced him tightly. He felt her fingers dig into his back, and then her shoulders quivered while she buried her face in his chest. "Oh no, c'mon now Miss Irene." Arthur said hoarsely. "I ain't worth all that fuss, it's okay."

...

"Mama?" Anna asked tentatively. "Mama okay?"

"Mama's fine, love." Irene managed to say, kissing her child's forehead. "Just very happy is all. You remember my friend Mister Arthur, right?"

"Sick." Anna replied, her attempt at a fake cough making Arthur chuckle. "Better now?"

"I'd reckon so, little miss." The man drawled hoarsely. God, that voice. Irene hadn't realized just how much she had missed him. She had seen him every day, of course, nursing him back to health, but he hadn't been conscious for most of it. "S'pose I have your mama to thank for that."

Irene noticed him glancing over her shoulder, like he was expecting someone else to show up. "Your friend, Mister Trelawny--"

Arthur chuffed out a breath through his nose, making Anna giggle. "Friend? Man's a cockroach in a waistcoat." He groused.

"Yes, he mentioned that the two of you may not be as close as he posited. Nonetheless, it's thanks to him that you're here now, alive."

"Really. Huh. So I am alive, then. I wasn't shoah. This place is…" Arthur gestured vaguely around. "S'beautiful, Miss Irene." His tone was melancholy. "Like a dream."

"I'd like to think I chose well, Mister Arthur. It hasn't been easy, but the two of us have made it work." Irene said proudly, nuzzling her nose against Anna's. "My tough little frontierwoman."

"Just...what, you an' the baby?" Arthur asked, his confusion evident.

"Yes. Who else would there be?" Irene replied with her own question, brow furrowed. Arthur blinked down at her. His eyes darted momentarily to Anna, and Irene bit her lip, wondering whether he would put it together immediately.

"I-I jus'...I figured there might be a third person, is all." Arthur stammered.

Irene couldn't help her sad smile, shaking her head at him and extending an arm. "Come inside, Arthur. It's nearly suppertime anyways."

It was so strange, finally having him in the main room of her little house. She had thought about this scenario more times than she could count. Just the walk across the front yard thoroughly tired him out, and the man seemed more than content to doze in one of the kitchen chairs while she put the finishing touches on the evening meal. Obviously it would take time and care for him to regain even a fraction of his former strength. He had been bedridden, or something close to it, for nearly five months!

Anna played noisily on the floor with a few carved horses that Irene had made for her when she was teething, their forms scored with scrapes and marks from the event. The child didn't seem apprehensive about the large man currently nodding off in the chair by the table, which had Irene feeling hopeful. Maybe, just maybe…

"Dinnertime." She said softly, "put away your toys, love."

Anna pouted, holding up a finger. "One?" She bargained, clutching her 'favorite' horse to her chest. "One for Art'ur."

"Oh it's for Arthur now, is it?" Irene teased, wiping her hands off on her apron. "Go on then, you scallywag."

The little girl fairly beamed, placing the horse with a laughable amount of care alongside Arthur's arm. Then, she impatiently bounced in place as Irene fetched the riser for her chair so she would be level with the table when she sat.

"Ah ah, go wash up! You know the rules." Irene instructed the eager child, sending her on her way to the porch.

"She is just the cutest damn thing." Arthur mumbled, almost like he was talking to himself. His fingers idly played along the curves of the little horse by his fork. "How old is she?"

"A touch over two. She was born during the winter." Irene watched Arthur nod absently, and what she was about to say got caught in her throat as Anna toddled back inside.

Arthur accepted the coffee Irene poured him with all the gratitude in the world, his eyes closing in enjoyment as he took his first sip. "Ah, that's good," he sighed. "Ain't nothin' like a decent cup of coffee. Feel like life is comin' back to me."

"Well, don't forget to save room for dinner." Irene buttered Anna a little piece of bread and scooted it across the table to keep her occupied while she loaded two plates with corn, mashed potatoes and a spoonful of precious pork gravy from tomorrow's slow-cooking dinner. "Corn is Anna's favorite, right love?"

Anna nodded, blue eyes wide as she munched on her bread. "Mine!" She announced sharply, scrunching up her nose when Arthur chuckled at her.

"Sweeting, be polite. There's more than enough for all of us, you know that!" Irene chided her daughter, rumpling the little girl's hair fondly after she placed Arthur's plate in front of him. "Always enough here."

Anna's plate, as usual, required a bit more preparing, so she brought it along with her own to her chair beside the child. Anna immediately started digging into the mashed potatoes as her mother carefully shucked the kernels off the cob in neat rows. "Th'nk y'Mama." Anna said through a mouthful of food.

"You're welcome Anna, but slow down. No one will take it from you." With a touch of amusement Irene noticed Arthur visibly slow his pace in response, the man obviously used to wolfing his food. "Drink your water, Anna."

Arthur ate mainly in silence, aside from a few appreciative grunts. He couldn't contain his laughter when Anna started to imitate his sounds, the man apologizing for his poor table manners. "Forgive me, Miss Irene, I've always been awful at eatin' in the presence of polite company."

"Mama says I'm a little piggy." Anna informed Arthur, seeming confused when he burst out laughing again.

"If you're a li'l piggy, Miss Anna, then I must be the biggest boar alive." He said once he managed to rein himself in.

…

Arthur lingered on the front steps, the lantern in his hand ready to light his way back across the yard. He felt exhausted, stuffed with good food and more than ready to get a full night's rest.

So what was he waiting for?

Many thoughts had gone through his head during dinner. How beautiful Irene still looked, how good of a mother she clearly was. Anna was a precocious little thing, those blue eyes bright with the possibility of mischief.

Her eyes…

Arthur didn't dare to hope that one of he and Irene's little diversions had borne fruit, if only because it would throw into question his oh-so-noble attempts at prevention. Had he truly tried as hard as he could to be safe, or was there always that selfish desire in the back of his mind waiting to be acted upon?

He jumped guiltily when the door opened and Irene stepped out, half-turning to face her with a brittle grin. "Howdy ma'am. Little one safely abed, I take it?"

"After a bit of deliberation, yes." Irene sighed, her posture weary. "She's very opinionated for someone who cannot manage eating a carrot unless it has been sliced into wheels. I do fear for the future, Arthur."

The future.

Arthur cleared his throat. "Irene, is...did we…?"

She put a hand on his shoulder, silencing his stammering with a sad little smile. "Later, Arthur. Right now, rest is what you need."

He wanted to deny that, but it was fairly impossible to do so. He was nearly asleep standing up as it was. "Tomorrow?" He bargained through a yawn.

"Tomorrow. I promise."

Summer’s Warmth, Part One

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan x original female character #high honor arthur #arthur morgan imagine #red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption 2 epilogue #rdr2 fandom #rdr2 spoilers #rdr2 fanfic #rdr2 epilogue #rdr2

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overheardatthecontinental · 4 years ago

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Talk Chapter 8

AO3

John drove nearly thirty miles more out of the way before he stopped for gas. He used one of his actual credit cards, under his actual name, so that anybody digitally tracking him would think they were heading west.

Then he turned around and started east. From then on, any stops made would be under a fake name.

What should have been a four-hour drive turned into ten with John’s convoluted path, followed by a refusal to take any interstate that used cameras to track plates. Which meant that most of their trip was spent on smaller routes and unknown roads.

Helen reads on-and-off, shaking her head whenever he stops to look at a map and find a new path.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to plan a route and write it down?” She asks after four hours of his strange driving.

“It’ll be harder for people to track us if I don’t have a plan.”

She takes that with a large eye roll before burying herself back in a book for a little while. They stop again for dinner, this time taking sandwiches to-go.

By the time they reach the Vermont border, Helen looks exhausted, though she doesn’t say anything. “How much further?” She asks softly.

“An hour.”

Exhaustion is starting to consume him as well and it occurs to John that he hadn’t had a full night of sleep since before the fiasco. He had managed to catch a few hours in the chair, waiting for her to wake up, and a few more when he fell asleep by her side.

He’d gone on less but not in a damn long time.

John pulls off the road and down onto the long driveway. “We’re here.” He tells her and Helen sits up a little straighter.

She tries to peer out over the property but it’s cloaked under darkness. She can make out the outline of a house and a window appears lit.

“Whose car is that?” She asks as his headlights glint off another vehicle.

“Marcus.” John answers looking sheepish, like he just remembered, “I probably should have mentioned that.”

She rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Probably. Extra security?”

John pulls up to the spot next to Marcus and puts the car in park before turning to her, “I’m not going to be able to do some of the things I need to do remotely.”

“Ah.” Helen nods, “Baby-sitting.”

“I know you’re capable of handling yourself…” he tries to appease but Helen waves him off.

“But Marcus has training. Marcus knows the system.” She shoots him a look, “I know you need me to be safe for you to do whatever it is you have to do. I’m not upset; I’m not offended.”

He really doesn’t deserve her understanding.

In fact, it continues to throw him that she’s still so fucking calm. But he’s not going to question it anymore. If she needs to break down, he’ll be there. And if she doesn’t… well, he’s always known she was the strong one.

Helen grabs her stack of books, piling them back up as John gets out of the car. He grabs the duffle with clothes from the backseat, then goes around to the trunk. Helen comes up and takes a case that, he doesn’t have the heart to tell her, has handguns.

A light flashes on just above the door and Marcus steps out.

“Took you long enough.” The older assassin says, coming down the short set of stairs that lead up to John’s cottage.

“John managed to find the longest, most convoluted route to get here.”

“Lucky I didn’t drag your ass to Canada.” John mutters.

She smirks in response.

“I’m Marcus.” Marcus introduces himself, coming around to the trunk.

“Helen.” She replies.

Marcus looks over her head to John, “Went grocery shopping since I wasn’t sure when you were going to get here. Hit up the liquor store on the way, too. Your bar was lacking.”

“Thank fuck.” Helen says, going up the stairs, “I need a drink.”

John concurred but called out to her, “You have a concussion!”

Helen snorts, “Like you’ve never drank with a concussion!” She calls back as she enters the house.

True enough, John thinks, handing Marcus a bag filled with rifles. Marcus glances back, checking that Helen is inside before he says, “Sofia sends her regards. As well as a congratulations for finally getting laid.”

“For the record,” John says, not wanting Marcus to get the wrong idea or end up saying the wrong thing to Helen, “We’re not sleeping together.”

“No? She’s just staying at your place and wearing your clothes for the hell of it?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Ain’t it ever.”

John sighs, also looking up at the doorway where Helen had disappeared, before looking back, “How bad is it looking?”

Marcus grimaces, “It isn’t good, John. You know how rumors go. Nobody knows what’s going on, so everyone is talking about it. Speculating. Coming to their own conclusions. Your name is enough to scare off a few. I talked Perkins down from pursuing it, Ernest too. Harry isn’t going to touch it out of respect and I’m sure he’s not the only one.”

“But that’s not even a handful of people backing down.”

Marcus nods in agreement, “I reached out to Winston. He’s reminding some of the younger crowd exactly what you’re capable of but for some of them, that’s the charm. Kill Baba Yaga’s girl and you make a name for yourself overnight.”

John exhales, “I get it. I was that kid, too. And four million on an open contract is going to be hard to resist.”

“She’s out of the city.” Marcus says, “Anybody else know about this place?”

“No one. Bought it under an unconnected alias.”

Marcus nods again, “You got a plan?”

John lifts one last bag before closing the trunk, “It’s all fucking political. I’m out of my depth. Right now,” he glances up at the house, “It’s all about keeping her safe.”

It’s been years since John had been to the property but that was a good thing. It meant there would be no tracks leading him this way, to a small town in the middle of the mountains.

The house itself was one of John’s smaller properties.

The front door leads straight into the kitchen and John sets down the first load of food on the counter as they pass through to the living room. There’s a sofa with a pullout couch across from a stone fireplace that John has enjoyed reading by on more than one occasion.

It occurs to John, suddenly that he hadn’t done the math.

One pullout couch and one bedroom. Three people.

He thinks, for a moment, that he should have chosen the safehouse in Maine. It was further away from the city, but that served as a double-edged sword.

Too far away from the city would make commuting impossible and John wasn’t sure he could be away from Helen for very long. Not after having her so easily ripped away from him.

There’s a door, just off the living room, that leads to the basement.

The case Helen had taken is sitting on the couch and Marcus picks it up and grabs the other bag with weapons from John. Wordlessly, the older assassin takes them downstairs.

John walks down the end of the hall. There’s a bathroom on one side and the bedroom on the other. Helen is arranging the books the nightstand by the bed.

She glances up at his presence, “I’ve claimed this side of the bed.” She tells him, nodding to where her books are placed and…

Well, that simultaneously solves the problem and gives him a whole slue of other ones to worry about. Like having to resist every urge to touch her, to hold her like he had that morning. The fact that waking up next to Helen was bound to give him a morning situation that he really didn’t want to have to deal with.

But it was probably the best option.

No, he thinks, it is the best option. Because god forbid anybody make it past Marcus, they sure as hell weren’t getting past John.

He swallows, and just says, “Yes, ma’am.”

She smiles at him, “Now where the fuck is the alcohol?”

Dealing with Helen in a professional setting verse the real world, John has discovered, isn’t really that different. She swears a bit more than she ever did in session and she’s more likely to tell him something than to let him flounder around and find answer for himself. That, he supposes, was probably due to their dire circumstances.

But all in all, it wasn’t much different. She still had the same no bullshit policy; still pushed him to his limits. Helen was still more than willing to push him around. Challenge him like no one else would ever dare.

“I don’t suppose I can get you to hold off on drinking for another couple of days?” He tries, half-heartedly. He knows he’s being a hypocrite.

“Not a chance.” She replies.

“Liquor cabinet is in the living room.”

She looks him over once, eyes assessing, “You okay?”

John nods, his lips twitching in response. “Yeah.”

Helen walks over and loops her arm through his, “Come on. Think you could probably use a drink, too.”

That he could.

Marcus is back upstairs, sipping on what John assumes is Cognac, sitting in the armchair by the fire.

Helen releases John’s arm as she moves towards the liquor cabinet, squatting down to get a better look inside. Marcus truly had filled it up, John notes. Before, it had just been several bottles of his expensive bourbon. Marcus had added a few wines and two bottles of Cognac.

“There’s vodka in the freezer.” He adds.

Helen grabs a bottle of the red wine and an opener. Forgoing the glasses perched above, she makes her way back to the couch. Expertly, she screws in the mechanism as John pours himself a large glass of Blantons.

He hears the pop of the wine and looks over, ready to offer to bring her a glass but Helen is already drinking from the bottle.

He barely withholds a smile as he caps the bourbon and sets it away.

“That kind of day, huh?” Marcus asks, not unkindly.

She smirks, “Ever spend ten hours in a car with John?”

John shoots her a look as he joins her on the other end of the couch.

“Done about that on stakeouts. Never would have made it through without a flask.”

John flips Marcus off, making the other assassin grin.

Helen sinks back into the couch, taking the bottle with her. He knows Helen well enough to know that she’s not oblivious to the fact that she is under Marcus’ scrutiny. She clearly just doesn’t give a fuck.

He can’t blame her. Especially considering the days she had leading up to all this.

Marcus looks over to him, an eyebrow raised. He gestures with his head to Helen, who is sitting with her eyes closed at the moment, and mouths Does she know?

He nods before taking a sip of his whiskey and he doesn’t miss the look of incredulity on Marcus’s face as he looks back to Helen.

John gets it. He really fucking does.

She’s sitting there joking about the hardest part of her day being putting up with John when there’s a world of assassins currently hunting her down. And Marcus doesn’t even know the half of it.

Helen opens her eyes and takes another long drink from the bottle before looking at Marcus, “So you’re my new babysitter.”

“Is that what John said?” Marcus asks with a pensive smile. He seems to be trying to figure Helen out. John wishes him luck. An impossible task if ever there was one.

Helen rolls her eyes, “Please. John forgot to mention you were here until we literally pulled into the driveway.”

Marcus nods in understanding, “He’s kind of a disaster.”

“Aren’t we all?” She sips from the bottle again.

Marcus salutes her with his glass and drinks. True enough.

“Still,” He says, “I got to wonder—did grad school prepare you for that level of fucked up?”

Helen snorts, “I interned at a mental hospital. Among my clientele were a grown man convinced he was a werewolf, a housewife who thought she was Jesus Christ, and an old army vet who came down with apotemnophilia.”

“I’m not familiar with that.”

“It’s when you have an overwhelming desire to amputate parts of the body, regardless of their health. He used to tell me I’d look much better without my arms. Trust me, John’s not that crazy.”

Even John looks at her with shock at that revelation. She'd joked to him before, in moments of his self-deprecation, that he was nothing compared to some of the cases she had in grad school. But crazy or not, John had the urge to track down the man who had threatened her and-- no. No.

Priorities.

“Maybe not,” Says Marcus after digesting her words, “But I know for a fact John’s severed limbs before.”

“Marcus.” John warns lowly but Helen only laughs.

“As long as it’s not mine, I don’t give a shit.” She rubs at her eyes. She’s tired, John can tell. Emotionally and physically exhausted.

“You should get some rest.” His voice softens of its own accord.

“Pretty sure I’ve slept more than you have during this ordeal.”

“Sedation doesn’t count.”

He ignores the raised eyebrows from Marcus.

“Doesn’t have too.” Helen argues, “Even without it, I’m sure I’ve slept more than you.” But even as she says it, she sighs softly. “Fuck, I didn’t reach out to my clients for today! Is my laptop still in your car?”

John winces. He had hoped, in the confusion of finding out somebody had put a hit on her, she would forget about work. At least for a few days.

He opens his mouth to explain to her that, while yes, he had her laptop, she couldn’t power it on.

She seems to get the picture on her own and her shoulders drop ever so slightly. Guilt clutches him, making his stomach turn.

“I can’t use it, can I?”

John shakes his head, “Your laptop can be turned on, but if we connect it to the internet, the IP address can be traced to our location.”

“What if I use a different computer? My client’s information is all stored online.”

“Any account you have, personal or work,” John feels his self-loathing growing as he answers, “Will have been breached and trapped by now. Any remote access could lead them here.”

“The system we use for client information is encrypted.”

“It won’t matter. The hackers of the Underworld are relentless.” Marcus adds, not unkindly, “And as of right now, you’re the largest monetary hit in the country. And you’re a civilian, which means the people of our world are going to assume you won’t have the skills to defend yourself. John’s name will protect you from some of the smarter, more established killers. But not from everyone.”

She nods, taking it in.

She’s still calm but paired with the exhaustion, John can see it weighing on her.

“My clients are just going to keep showing up at my office, even thought I’m not there.” She says and her voice is strained.

Is this what breaks her? John thinks. Not the kidnapping, not the bounty on her head, but not being able to be there for her clients?

He wants to reach out and take her into his arms. To hold her and to promise her that everything will be okay. That he’ll fix this.

But he doesn’t have that right.

This is still his fault.

“I’m sorry,” John says, forcing himself not to touch her, “And I know this is frustrating. But I’d rather have your clients minorly inconvenienced than have you put yourself at risk.”

She lets out a breath and nods, “You’re right.”

Helen takes another long swig from the bottle of wine before she sets it down on the coffee table.

“I’m going to try and get some sleep.”

John nods, “That’s probably a good idea.”

Standing, she looks back to John, “Don’t stay up too late, okay?”

His heart clenches at the gentleness of her voice.

“I won’t.” He promises.

She says a quick good night to Marcus before she heads down the hall. Marcus waits until the door has closed behind her before quietly saying, “She took that better than I expected.”

“She’s tough as hell.” John tells him.

“Did you say she was sedated?”

He huffs a breath, “It was a rough weekend.”

“Oh?”

John nods once, tipping back what was left of his bourbon. It burns down his throat as John explains, “Friday night, Helen was kidnapped from her bed.” Marcus’ mouth opens but John continues, needing to get it out before he loses the ability. “I got a call not long after saying if I wanted her back, unharmed, I had to kill the D’Antonio family.”

Marcus inclines his head, “And given that Senor D’Antonio still lives and the High Table didn’t rain down on your ass, I take it you didn’t do that.”

“I was going to.” John admits, “I didn’t know who took her, only what they wanted. Had no idea where she was or if she was okay. Didn’t have any other leads. But Winston talked me down. Asked me to give him a chance to find who took her before I assassinated an incumbent member of the High Table and his heirs.

“But we had nothing. Not a trace, not a clue. Not a name or an organization. She was held hostage for nearly forty hours. I was ready to go after the D’Antonio’s, consequences be damned. But Helen managed to get her hands on a phone. Long enough to get me a name. Mateo DeLuca.”

“Not familiar.”

John shakes his head, “Nobody is. He’s Dante DeLuca’s son.”

“The heir of the Syndicate?”

John nods once. “It seems that Dante left his heir with a bit of wealth and not a lot of guidance.” John stands, walking back over to the liquor cabinet. He needs the burn in his belly to get him through this. “With his name, the Technician was able to trace down his properties and find out where she was being held. I got her out, got her home.”

John pours another couple fingers and immediately gulps down a mouthful.

He revels in the temporary pain that shoots down his throat, followed by the warming of his stomach. Shaking his head, he says, “I should have gone after DeLuca then. I should have tracked him down and ended this.”

“But you walked away with the girl and the D’Antonio’s are still alive.” Marcus finishes as John knocks back whiskey he would usually savor. “So, he put the hit out on Helen.”

John nods, staring at the bottle of Blanton’s. He wants to drink more but it was too much, too fast. He’d already let his guard down and Helen had been the one to suffer. He needed to keep his head in the game.

“And now I can’t touch him.” John confirms, “Because he’s the only one who can remove the hit. But,” John shakes his head in disgust, “And DeLuca just broadcasted my biggest weakness to the entire Underworld, so even if the hit is removed, she’ll still have people gunning for her.”

It’s so much worse to say it all out loud. To hear himself admit just how badly he fucked this one up. All those months ago, when she gave him her card and he should have chucked it in the trash. Burned it to avoid the temptation to hear her voice again.

But he didn’t.

He knew better.

He knew so much better than to become involved with a person outside the Underworld. He knew how it always ended.

Heartbreak, at best.

Mourning, at worst.

John thought he could manage it. They weren’t together, so why would anyone care?

But they were still emotionally involved, and he hadn’t covered it up well enough.

“I fucked up.” John says, leaving his now empty glass on top of the cabinet and moving back over to the couch. He sits down, feeling defeated, “I fucked up and I don’t know how to fix this.”

Marcus leans forward, thoughtfully. “Does she know how bad it is?”

“I’ve tried to explain it to her. She knows about the bounty, she knows that literally hundreds of assassins are looking for her right now. But she’s eerily calm about the whole thing.”

“Eerily calm in general,” Marcus points out, “I’d think she was in shock from it all if she wasn’t so put together.”

John had to agree and nodded. Helen had said that she processed the possibility of being used against John long before she was kidnapped, and he was sure that helped her to keep her head. But it was going to take a toll on her, as was the bounty.

“I’m afraid it’s going to hit her all at once.” John admits, “God knows she’s tough, but it’s a lot to handle.”

“If it happens, it happens.” Marcus waves a hand, “Deal with it then. Right now, you need to focus on how you’re going to keep her safe.”

“I need to get the bounty removed.”

“Then you’ll need to find DeLuca.”

John huffs, “Not sure I can track him down and not rip him limb from limb.”

“Apparently, some people are into that.” Marcus sits up straighter, “But you know you can’t do that. And DeLuca knows you can’t do that. You’re going to have to choose between revenge and your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

Marcus rolls his eyes and clarifies, “The woman that you’re clearly in love with.”

He’s too tired to argue and, besides, Marcus is right.

“It’s not a choice.” John replies. He could crave revenge all he liked but nothing would matter if Helen was gone.

“No shit.” Marcus seems deep in thought, “I don’t know much about Mateo. Or Syndicate, for that matter. Didn’t even know they had an active branch in the States.”

“Only one at all, from what I hear. They have their base in Rome and a smaller branch in New York. But everyone seems to have a foot in New York these days.”

Marcus nods in agreement, “You think DeLuca’s will be willing to cut a deal?”

That was another matter entirely, one that nagged John in the back of his head. DeLuca was smarter than John had initially given him credit for. He might not have a good grip on the Syndicate and was clearly overestimating his power as heir, but he was clever.

He’d made his moves wisely in relation to John. Finding his weakness, exploiting it. And when John fought back, he exploited it harder.

“DeLuca wants Rome.” John synthesizes, “And Rome belongs to the Camorra. Fuck, Italy belongs to the Camorra.”

“You think he’ll stick with his original deal, then? Helen’s life in exchange for killing D’Antonio?”

John inclines his head, “If I were in his position, it’s what I’d do. He’s holding all the cards right now.”

“Bluff.”

“With Helen?” John shakes his head, “He wouldn’t believe me. And he’d be right not to.”

“Then make him believe you.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t.” He sighs, “I think about her, and I get tense. I hear her name, and I lose the ability to think straight. I’ve never been a great liar, but I don’t need to be if I just don’t talk. So I don’t talk. But that’s all politics seems to be. Talking and lying and bullshitting each other. I can’t do that shit.”

“You can’t lie?” Marcus asks, momentarily taken aback.

“Not well. I overthink and I know I overthink.”

“You’re an assassin and you can’t lie.” Marcus says again.

John rolls his eyes, “I don’t do the subterfuge bullshit that you and Sofia pull. If I want someone dead, I walk up to them and I kill them.”

“I’ve known you for twenty plus years and I didn’t know you couldn’t lie?”

“Doesn’t come up. You ask me a question I don’t want to answer, I just don’t answer it.”

“Huh.”

“Can we focus on the matter at hand, please?”

Marcus shakes his head, as if he’s clearing it. “Okay. So you can’t bluff to DeLuca. But you also can’t kill Lorenzo D’Antonio without severe consequences.”

“Consequences be damned if DeLuca lifts the bounty.”

Marcus shakes his head vigorously, “It’s suicide by High Table.”

“But she’ll be safe.” He insists, “And with me out of the equation, there would be no reason for anybody else to target her either.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Right now, it looks like the best opt--”

“Shut up.” Marcus interrupts, “Keep talking like that and I’ll go knock on her door and tell her what you’re planning to do.”

“You think she could stop me?”

Marcus gives him a look and John glances away.

It was a shot in the dark. John wasn’t entirely sure that Helen could stop him. He’d eagerly give up his life to keep her safe. A single noble act out of a lifetime of paving a path to Hell.

But Helen was good at getting into his head. And she wouldn’t be happy if she knew that he was considering putting himself in the line of fire over her. Worse, she would be disappointed. Upset. And while he would rather have Helen upset and alive, he wasn’t sure he could stand knowing that he disappointed her.

John feels his shoulders sink in defeat, “So what do I do, then? I kill the D’Antonio’s, Helen gets out alive and my life is forfeit. I don’t kill the D’Antonio’s, and the contract for her life remains open.”

“You’re still guessing at this point.” Says Marcus, “DeLuca hasn’t offered you a deal yet. And maybe you’re right, maybe it’s exactly what he asks for. But maybe he doesn’t offer you shit. Maybe he just wants to see you both suffer after you saved her without giving in to his demands.”

John considers it. Helen mentioned that she told DeLuca, to his face, that he had mommy issues he needed to work on. So, DeLuca definitely was not on Team Helen. And John had killed eight of his men. So, he clearly wasn’t Team John either.

But, if John followed that line of thinking, there was no saving her. If DeLuca had no intentions of dropping the hit, then John was stuck yet again.

Only the patron or the High Table could cancel an open contract and the High Table didn’t do anything that didn’t directly benefit themselves.

If DeLuca refused to drop the contract, then the only way to keep her safe would be to keep her in hiding.

And Helen wouldn’t do that. For now, she would stay at the safe house because John had asked and because she thought it was only temporary. If this went on too long… she’d leave. Or she’d try to. And John would stop her because he’d rather have her safe than dead.

But she would resent him and the thought, alone, made him think that death was a far better option. He would rather be dead than have her look at him with hatred.

Marcus interrupts his line of thought, “Or maybe you can beat him to the punch. Alert the High Table that someone has come to you, pressuring you to kill Lorenzo D’Antonio in exchange for your girlfriend’s life—I know she’s not your girlfriend. But they High Table doesn’t need to know that.” Marcus says, appeasing John before he can correct him.

John considers it, briefly, but shakes his head. “It’s too dangerous. If the High Table decides to make an example out of him, he could wind up dead with the contract still open.”

“He’s not a prominent player. He might just get a slap on the wrist.”

“I’m not playing chicken with Helen’s life.”

“No, just with your own.”

Marcus doesn’t understand, John thinks. He doesn’t get it.

“You don’t need to be a martyr.” The older assassin continues.

John looks to his ally, his friend. “Give me another way.” He says, “Tell me how I save her and get out of this alive. Please.”

“There has to be a way.”

“I can’t find it.” John tells him.

“You got her out of the city and out of harm’s way.” Marcus reminds him, emphasizing the fact, “She’s safe. There’s no reason you need to figure this all out tonight.”

John shakes his head, “She’s putting her entire life on hold fo—”

“And I guarantee you if I asked her right now if she would rather keep her life on hold or go back tomorrow at the cost of your life, she won’t fucking hesitate to tell you to stop being an idiot. Hopefully give you a good smack, too.”

“Because she’s selfless.”

“Or maybe, because she cares about you.”

“She cares about everyone.”

Marcus looks at him, shaking his head, “Yeah. That woman, who was making jokes about you dismembering people cares about everyone.”

“It was the context of the situation!”

“Or,” Marcus argues, “She’s not as perfect as you think she is.”

John opens his mouth, ready to argue back but Marcus beats him to the punch.

“And that’s okay. It’s more than okay that she’s human and imperfect, just like the rest of us. And maybe, just maybe, she’s not being a good sport about this because she’s selfless and kind but because she cares about you.”

“That’s not what this is!”

“Jesus, John.” Marcus shakes his head in utter disbelief, “Is it really that hard to believe that somebody could love you?”

It’s a low blow that leaves John speechless. He looks away, wondering if he could get away with another glass of whiskey without becoming liable to say or do something stupid. He decides against it and when he looks back, Marcus is still looking at him like he’s never seen him before.

“Fuck all.” Marcus mutters, “Learned more about you in the last half hour than I have in twenty years of friendship, John.”

John’s not sure what to say to that so he says nothing.

Finally, Marcus’ tone softens, “I get it. If you need to die to keep her safe, then that’s what you’re going to do. But don’t go into this thinking that’s your only path. At least let us try to figure something out before you decide to try a turn at being noble, okay?”

John nods in agreement, “Okay. Fuck, I’m not trying to die here, Marcus. I just don’t see another way at getting DeLuca to drop the contract.”

“We have time.” Marcus reminds him. “We’ll find a way.”

John nods again but he’s not as hopeful as his friend. He’d gambled with Helen’s life once already, thinking he was saving her. But not complying with the demands of DeLuca was what got him into this fucking mess in the first place.

“Blankets for the pull-out are in the hall closet.” John tells him, rising to his feet. He can’t… he can’t talk about it anymore. Not Helen or Syndicate or any of it.

He needs to sleep.

Really sleep, in a bed, uninterrupted.

Maybe then, John thinks, he’ll be able to make sense of it all.

He makes his way down the hall, stopping briefly to use the bathroom. It’s been years since he’d been to the property and while Marcus had stocked up on food and alcohol, they would need other things tomorrow.

Toothpaste and brushes. Soap. Shampoo.

He stares in the mirror over the sink.

He looks like a fucking mess, but he can’t bring himself to care.

John swallows as he leaves the bathroom, gazing across the hall.

“I’ve claimed this side of the bed.” She’d told him earlier.

He really should have chosen the safehouse in Maine he thinks as he quietly opens the door to the bedroom.

The light from the hall shines down on her sleeping form. She’s curled on her side, facing the door, with one hand under the pillow.

How many times, John wonders, had he watched her sleep like this?

From afar. Dreaming of what it would be like to hold her.

Now he knew.

It felt better than he imagined heaven.

Of course, he thinks, he isn’t going to hold her now. They’re just sharing a bed. This isn’t love, like he imagined. Or comfort, like he had given her earlier. This was… convenience.

There was one bed.

He could, John considers, sleep on the floor. Give her the space without intruding. Perhaps that would be the best thing to do.

“Get in the bed, John.” Helen says, not opening her eyes.

He nearly startles at her tired voice… had thought her asleep.

Apparently, he doesn’t move fast enough because she adds, “I can feel you thinking from here. Get in the damn bed.”

John swallows down the lump in his throat. He toes off his shoes and socks, leaving them by the door.

His bag is still at the foot of his bed and carefully, quietly, unzips it and finds the pair of sweatpants he had packed.

While he preferred to sleep in boxers, he was grateful he packed with the foresight of going for a run. He’d much prefer to sleep in sweats than in jeans. He wonders if he should go back to the bathroom but, instead, he goes to what must be his side of the bed.

Her back is turned, and he quickly strips off the jeans and exchanges them for the sweatpants.

John is getting in bed with Helen, not for comfort, but to sleep. And somehow, he thinks, that’s worse. The pseudo-domesticity of it has his head spinning as he pulls back the cover and slips under on his side of the bed.

Helen lets out a soft sigh as the bed dips and rolls to her other side. Her eyes are still closed, he notes.

He longs to reach out and push back her hair but he resists. John closes his eyes and lets himself be lulled by the steady rise and fall of her breathing.

#john wick talk #john wick fanfic #john wick #helen wick #marcus (john wick)#john x helen wick #marcus x john brotp

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ciestessde · 4 years ago

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NOT My Hero Academia: Part 1 – Ch.5

It was the next day, and the students were back in their homeroom. "Good work with yesterday’s battle training," Aizawa addressed the class.

"I’ve looked over your grades and evaluations, and I only have a few notes. Bakugo…" Izuku saw him shift slightly in his chair. "Work on your awareness of enemies during battle -- even minor threats can take you out if they surprise you." Bakugo grimaced. "... Got it," he muttered.

"Midoriya, Uraraka, Iida." Each of them sat straighter when their names were called. "… Well done." Their expressions shifted from surprised to pleased, and Iida stammered out a "Ah -- Thank you, sir!"

"Now, on to homeroom business… Sorry for the sudden announcement, but today… you’ll pick a class president."

The feel of the room shifted. Everyone started shouting, clamouring to be picked for the position. ‘Oh yeah,’ Izuku realized after a moment, ‘It’s not just a bunch of mundane tasks at U.A. To be the leader of a group… It’s the kind of position suited for a top hero in the making.’

After only a few moments of this, Iida, ever the voice of reason, cut through the noise with a suggestion. "I put forward the motion… that our true leader must be chosen by election!" "But Iida," countered Tsuyu, "we haven’t known each other long enough to build any trust." "And everyone’ll just vote for themselves!" added Kirishima.

"That’s precisely why anyone who manages to earn multiple votes will be the best-suited individual for the job!!" Iida turned to Aizawa, who had already zipped himself up inside his sleeping bag, "Will you allow this Sensei?!" "However you do it, just make it quick."

As expected, most people came out with only a single vote. Although there were a few exceptions, as some people actually had none.

Momo Yaoyorozu won with only three votes. And the vice president, with only two, was-

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sitting with Iida and Uraraka at lunch, Izuku said, "I admit, I’m a little worried about being vice president…" "Worry not," said Iida, "Midoriya, although I personally felt someone with a quirk to be a more fitting vote, your ingenuity and decisiveness in a pinch make you a perfectly acceptable leader." Uraraka said, "Didn’t you want to be president, Iida? You’ve got glasses and everything!" Iida, looking a bit nervous, set his drink down. He avoided eye-contact with both of the other students. "Ambition and suitability are different matters… I humbly made the choice I thought was correct."

Noticing his speech pattern, Uraraka excitedly asked, "The way you talk… Iida, are you… A rich kid?!" Iida responded hesitantly. "... I don’t like people to know, so I try to hide it, but… Yes. Mine is a renowned hero family. And I am the second son."

Izuku went into fanboy-mode after realization hit him. "Of course!! Ingenium!! He employs 65 sidekicks at his office in Tokyo!! So you’re…!" Finally looking up -- and even looking a bit cheered -- Iida responded, "How very informed… Yes, he is my brother." Now filled with pride for his family, Iida went on, "He leads the people with his unwavering adherence to rules and regulations. A truly beloved hero!! It’s my admiration for my brother that’s inspired my own desire to become a hero."

He deflated slightly, smiling with admiration. "Though I realize I’m not yet ready to lead anyone. As the superior candidate, it was right that the role should go to Yaoyorozu."

Uraraka and Izuku paused in their eating. "Never seen you smile before, Iida," Uraraka observed. "Eh?! Is that so?! I smile on occasion!!"

‘Iida has Ingenium to look up to, huh…?’ No longer eating, Izuku watched his classmates banter in front of him. ’I guess I have Master and Kurogiri-sensei, but… It- doesn’t feel the same. I don’t want to be a vigilante like they are.’ He looked down at the bowl in his hands. ‘But… do I… still want to be like All Might…?’

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He was taking a break, drinking some water in the middle of training, when Kurogiri asked him, "Tell me, Midoriya…" He stopped drinking. "What kind of hero do you want to be?"

"I-…" Izuku looked away, thinking. Every time he thought about becoming a hero, Izuku couldn’t help but remember that video. The one of All Might rescuing so many people with a smile on his face! But, at the thought of All Might… Izuku’s mind turned to that moment on the rooftop. Yet still… Izuku’s fist clenched, and he replied, "I want… to be the Greatest Hero, who smiles as he saves people!"

"So… You want to be like All Might, correct?" Izuku’s gaze shot up to Kurogiri. "It’s not an unusual assumption. But… Do you really believe society will allow someone who’s quirkless… to become the Number One Hero?" Kurogiri’s wispy, mist-like face was unreadable, but his tone was full of pity. "After all… It is a popularity pole more than anything, isn’t it?"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

…

While riding the bus with his class on their way to "Rescue Training" the next day, Izuku was still contemplating that question. But his thoughts were interrupted by Tsuyu, "I generally say what’s on my mind, Midoriya."

"Oh?!" Izuku’s head snapped to face the frog-like girl. "What is it, Asui?" "Call me Tsuyu," she corrected him automatically, "Without a quirk, hero training seems kinda pointless. Why not just become a police officer?" "Ah! Well!" he floundered, "See, I considered it and all, but-!"

"Hold up, Tsuyu," Kirishima said from the seat on the other side of her, "Police officers and heroes are totally different! Heroes can patrol and help people completely independently, and can even have part-time jobs, if they want! Not to mention those support items Midoriya has. You can’t have those as a police officer, and they’re awesome! You can do a lot of cool stuff with them!"

Kirishima struck a pose, activating his quirk. "Not like my hardening. I’m good in a fight, but it’s real boring." "I think that’s pretty neat, though. Your quirk’s more than enough if you wanna go pro," said Izuku. "Pro!" Aoyama exclaimed from across the aisle, "But don’t forget that heroes also have to worry about popular appeal!!"

Izuku flinched, just slightly.

Aoyama didn’t notice. "My navel laser is both strong and cool. Perfect for a pro." "As long as you don’t blow up your own stomach!" said Mina. Aoyama didn’t seem to like that comment.

The conversation was cut short when All Might wooshed by the bus, and everyone realised how close they already were to their destination.

Thirteen, their instructor for the day, greeted them by talking about how a lot of quirks could easily be used to kill. How "one wrong move with an uncontrollable quirk" could defeat society’s restrictions and monitoring of quirks… "During Aizawa’s physical fitness test, you came to learn of your own hidden potential. Through All Might’s battle training, you experienced the danger that your respective quirks can pose to others. This class…"

Thirteen’s previously grim demeanor did a 180.

"... will show you a new perspective! You will learn how to utilize your quirks to save lives. Your powers are not meant to inflict harm. I hope you leave here today with the understanding that you’re meant to help people." Izuku thought to himself, ‘I can’t help thinking that… somehow… that doesn’t apply to me.’

Thirteen bowed to the students, the unwilling audience to his speech. "That is all! I thank you for listening." "Great." Aizawa stepped forward, away from Thirteen, All Might -- and Mirio. "First off… Midoriya."

Izuku felt his stomach drop. ‘Please, let me be wrong…’

The teacher’s words were cold. "Without a quirk, these exercises will be pointless for you. Honestly, you should just leave the rescuing to professionals in these situations." It wasn’t an attack. His tone made it clear: He was -- or he believed he was -- stating facts. Which just made it worse. "But still… we’ll teach you the basics, for now. Everyone else will be divided into groups and rotate through the different sites. Listen for your name."

While Aizawa listed off names, Mirio approached Izuku. "Hey… That’s a bummer. But don’t let it get to you!"

Mirio practically shined with optimism, "There’s plenty of awesome things you’ll get to do here at U.A.! And that strategy you used yesterday -- not to mention getting into U.A. without a quirk in the first place…!" Mirio’s eyes sparkled, and he practically shouted, "That is SO Plus Ultra!! I’m actually kinda jealous!" At the older student’s support… Izuku couldn’t help smiling.

All Might called Mirio back over; it was time to start the lessons. Before leaving, Mirio said, "Hey, if you ever want some pointers -- or just to train -- give me a call, ok?!"

After that, the rest of the day wasn’t too bad.

But still… Aizawa’s tone… Izuku wasn’t sure what to call the teacher’s tone, actually.

Except maybe… pity?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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stereksecretsanta · 5 years ago

Text

Merry Christmas, @Froggydarren!

To Jen: Merry Christmas! In this story I hope you find a few of your favorite things. May your holidays be filled with love and joy, great food, relaxation, and GREAT FIC!

Title: stepping out of body

Rating: T

Word Count: 7K

Tags: Hypothermia, Hurt/comfort, Bed sharing, Accidental baby acquisition, alternate reality, parallel universe, dreams, hallucinations, Hobrien, Tyler Hoechlin/Dylan O’Brien, swearing, sexual innuendo, kissing

Read on AO3

❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄

steppin out of body

Stiles is ninety-seven percent sure he’s going to die out here.

The violent shivers and chattering teeth ceased ten minutes ago, and not even the line of Derek’s werewolf heat down his right side makes any difference. It turns out the discount boots he bought last year from Bob’s Bargain Bin aren’t such a bargain; frigid water seeps through the seams, turning his toes to ice, to fire. He wiggles them regularly as they trudge through the thickening carpet of heavy snow, fearing the numbness he could easily succumb to.

Stiles isn’t stupid. He can decipher the messages his very-human body broadcasts loud and clear.

“No,” Derek commands, slapping at his cheek with a gloved hand, the impact dull and muted against his frozen skin. “Eyes open, Stiles. Stay with me. Stay with…”

Damn the Nemeton, screaming out to every worthless supernatural pain-in-Stiles’-ass. This time it called down a Chenoo, a man-eating ice giant from the Great White North. The demon slid down the west coast like an avalanche, bashing through the border, ushering in plummeting temperatures, a torrent of wind-driven snow and sleet slashing Stiles’ face like werewolf claws. Vicious gusts of icy wind followed, slithering inside Stiles’ thin jacket to coil around his heart and crush his lungs. Stiles would have preferred it brought Kraft dinner and Molson Canadian, like a typical tourist.

A California boy born and bred, his genetic makeup lacks an adoration of arctic temperatures. He’s ill-equipped for a blizzard in November.

Even Derek’s nose glows Rudolph-red from the chill.

“You can kill a Cheeno by melting its heart with salt,” Deaton supplied earlier that afternoon, “but a few legends claim you can save the man within the monster.”

“Save a cannibal? Yeah, fuck that noise,” Stiles had said, tossing down the magazine he’d been reading and grabbing the cannister of Morton’s Iodized, slipping his feet into his crappy boots. It seemed like a good idea at the time, he and Derek against the latest monster of the week. Nothing new. But now a blanket of white makes it impossible to see ten feet in front of them, flakes floating down from the sky like errant feathers, dancing in front of his eyes like a whirl of stars. It blinds him, envelopes him. Every minute lasts an hour.

He should have taken the FBI assignment offered when he attended the academy. Memphis. It didn’t snow in Memphis. Why hadn’t he taken it? Oh yeah. Scott. His father. Derek.

The sun dips below the horizon, adding insult to injury.

Stiles can’t feel his nose anymore, or his toes. He inhales broken glass with each breath. The longer he stares into the white void, the more everything starts to feel peaceful and pointless. Stiles closes his eyes.

“Do you hear that?” Derek hisses. Stiles’ eyes snap open in time to see the breath billowing out of Derek’s windburned lips in rolling clouds of steam. “It sounds like…”

Stiles hears the violent wind rattling dry, bare branches of winter-dead trees, and the random song playing on repeat in his head. Going down with my wings on fire, guess I’ll see you in another life. He prays that in a few years, in a decidedly less stark and frozen landscape, the lyrics will blast through Roscoe’s shitty speakers, and Stiles will stop and listen, say “ah yes, that time I almost froze to death,” just another moment unfolding in the supernatural shitstorm of his life, and not the soundtrack to the end of it.

But Derek cocks his head, eyes narrowed into slits, frost clinging to his bushy black eyebrows, so Stiles tugs up the ear flaps on his hat, strains to hear past the snow’s white noise, so like a chorus of howling werewolves. Yowling, squalling, wailing…

“A baby,” Stiles gasps, voice rasping through blue-tinged lips, knees threatening to buckle in shock. Who would ever bring a baby out in this storm? He was tired, drained, and dispirited before, and now, a thin film of desperation stretches over it all like saran wrap. “I hear a baby crying.”

Derek pulls Stiles impossibly closer, abruptly turning them to the left and floundering through calf-deep snow mounds and crushing darkness. Derek blunders toward the cries with steps as uncoordinated as a newborn foal, his confident gait lost to the storm. Stiles grits his teeth and slogs on.

Mother nature pummels him into a Popsicle.

“Oh,” Stiles says some indeterminable time later, “I see something.” Up ahead, a small cabin materializes, rising from the bleak isolation like a desert mirage, windows alight with a dim glow. Every blink of his heavy eyelids brings the cabin into better focus; green tin roof, stainless steel chimney pipe puffing out grey clouds of smoke, two rickety steps leading up to a narrow porch laid with red cedar planks.

Derek takes Stiles under the armpits and hauls him up over his left shoulder, heading toward shelter with Stiles bouncing clumsily into Derek’s back with each step. He pauses at the bottom of the stairs, going statue-still.

“Wha?” Stiles mumbles toward Derek’s ass.

A moment of hesitation. “I only hear one heartbeat.”

The desperate mewling raises in pitch. “Derek, can we please go inside? If the damn Cheeno has somehow lured us here, at least I’ll be warm when I die.”

Derek drags them both through the front door, leaving a track of icy puddles and slushy clumps of snow as they stumble over the threshold. Stiles finds himself dumped unceremoniously onto an oriental rug in front of a slowly dying fire. “Get your clothes off!” Derek barks at him as he kneels in front of the weak flames, pulling off his gloves and reaching for the stack of wood next to the stone fireplace.

Stiles always wanted to hear Derek say those words, and he’s honestly a little pissed they’re wasted on a life-or-death situation.

Stiles isn’t capable of finesse on his best days, but his numb fingers fumble pathetically at the snaps and zippers of his clothes. Each new piece of blue and purple dappled bare skin he uncovers sets alarm bells peeling inside his skull. “Wh-wh-where is the b-b-baby?” The chattering teeth return, his neck swollen and stiff as he turns it this way and that until his gaze lands on a bassinet in the corner.

“Fire first, then I’ll get the baby,” Derek says, blowing on the growing blaze. “Take everything off. All your wet clothes.” He closes the wire mesh curtain across the hearth and stands, shedding his own clothes piece by piece as he crosses the small living space. Derek blows warm breath into his cupped hands before he reaches into the bassinet, pulling out a wiggling red blanket and clutching it gently to his bare chest. It’s a sight to behold, but Stiles can barely keep his eyes open.

Unable to stand, Stiles reaches for the corner of a quilt thrown haphazardly over a worn plaid couch, dragging it down and pulling it across the floor. Derek keeps the baby in one strong arm and hoists Stiles’ limp body onto the quilt with the other, settling down next to him on the carpet.

“Come here,” Derek says, reclining with one arm around Stiles’ shoulders, maneuvering him, so Stiles’ backside faces the fire, and Derek’s werewolf body heat blazing down Stiles’ front, the baby a warm weight on Derek’s ribs.

“The parents?” Stiles slurs, imagining the bloodbath that will ensue when an unsuspecting mother and father find two butt-naked grown men cuddling their kid.

“I can’t detect any other scents. It’s just us.”

“Hmmm.” The heat of the fire and the safety of Derek’s body make Stiles’ eyelids very heavy.

“Don’t go, Stiles,” Derek orders. “Stay with me. Please.” For a brief moment, a white halo frames Derek’s beautiful face. He cups Stiles’ jaw, and Stiles could swear his fingers feel like scratchy wool mittens.

“I’m always with you, dumbass,” Stiles replies and promptly falls asleep.

❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄

Stiles wakes with the luxurious Saturday morning feeling of having slept in with no alarm, despite early dawn light seeping into the room through sheer curtains, casting everything in soft dream-like shades of gray. He’s so warm and content he buries his face back into the plush pillow under his head, determined to retreat once again into sweet oblivion.

“You know I adore your mom, but she was wrong about this co-sleeping thing. Best decision we ever made,” murmurs a tender voice behind him. The words get emphasized with some semblance of a kiss, all hot, soft lips and tongue leaving goosebumps in their wake as they travel lazily down the back of Stiles’ neck. The easy-going morning disperses like mist as Stiles blinks open his eyes to see the tiny, angelic face of a baby–presumably the same one from the cabin–wrapped in a thin red muslin blanket and sleeping next to him. It lies in a strange contraption attached to the bed with three breathable mesh sides, atop a fitted sheet adorned with fluffy dancing sheep wearing nightcaps. As Stiles watches, the baby’s tiny bow mouth makes adorable little sucking motions.

Wait a minute.

Stiles knows he’s in trouble when the baby makes sense, but the king-sized bed he’s woken up in doesn’t.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Stiles has run with wolves since age sixteen and can keep a tight lid on a furiously beating heart. “Pretty sure this place did not look like this last night,” he says, words falling from his mouth in a smooth line as his stomach ties itself in knots.

A huffed laugh. “I’ll do the laundry today, I promise. Who knew a baby could go through so many clothes?”

Not me, Stiles thinks, sitting up in bed and kicking away a blue sheet. He’s wearing unfamiliar light-gray sweatpants and a maroon t-shirt. The man next to him grunts at the loss of body heat, and Stiles glances over. Yup, it’s Derek, black hair sticking up every which way like he stuck his head in a blender.

Stiles crawls to the foot of the bed, tip-toes to the sliding glass doors leading to a balcony, and parts the curtains an inch. Pre-dawn light paints the curving facade of the U.S. Bank Tower mellow orange. Stiles has only ever seen it in movies. Free from alien encounters and earthquake damage, the staggering architecture looks like a staircase up into the pink morning clouds. He puts his hand up to the cold glass. “We’re in L.A.”

Another grunt behind him. Stiles’ head pivots back and forth between the skyline and the majestic view of Derek sprawled on his stomach, broad shoulders tapering down a smooth, naked back. He follows the line of Derek’s spine to his boxer-brief clad backside on full display. The cotton clings to every dip and curve of Derek’s perfect ass.

“How did we get to L.A.?”

Derek’s head rises from the pillow. “Huh? Come back to bed before you wake Conor.”

“Yeah, that’s another thing.” He scrubs a hand down his face, huffs out a breath. “The bed. That wasn’t here before. Or the fancy baby crib, or your underwear, or the god-damn city of Los Angeles.”

Derek twists, sitting up in bed and rubbing crust from his eyes. “Are you feeling okay?” He asks. Then he does something so crazy Stiles thinks he just may have died out in the snow.

Derek smiles.

Not just any smile. Stiles’ has seen Derek produce some mean ones, some faux-flirtatious ones, some blood-thirsty ones, but he’s never seen one like this: huge, happy, full of white teeth. It lights up Derek’s whole face, makes his green eyes go adorably squinty.

“No, nope, uh uh.” Stiles tries to take a step back, but his shoulders collide with the slider. What imposter wears Derek’s flawless butt and happy face? Stiles has a mini heart attack.

“Who are you?”

Now the smile falls away, leaving behind comically-wide green eyes and an arched brow. His Derek would never show this level of befuddlement. He’d school his face into an impossibly hard mask.

“Dylan,” he answers, very slowly, “I’m your husband.”

———-

Imposter-Derek’s name is Tyler, and he remains unfailingly patient and positive in the face of his husband’s epic freak out and insistence that a mythological creature in an alternative universe cursed him. ”I should have paid more attention to Deaton when he talked about annihilating the Chenoo, but there was a fascinating article in Entertainment Weekly.”

“This better not be a ploy to get out of diaper duty,” Derek-Tyler says with a smile. Honestly, the guy’s demeanor baffles Stiles. This level of sweetness doesn’t exist outside a candy store.

Baby Conor wakes up with a chortling wail, demanding food and a clean butt, which Tyler supplies as Stiles does a convincing imitation of a lost puppy and follows him around. “You’re good at this whole thing. At parenthood,” Stiles praises. The sight of Derek–or a Derek look-a-like–gently cradling a tiny infant in his massive beefcake arms, holding a warm bottle of formula in his meaty fist, makes Stiles want to swoon. Even the greedy pig-like noises Conor makes causes a strange effervescent bubbling behind Stiles’ ribs. What in the world is happening to him? Gas? Or did he show up in this parallel universe with a uterus and a biological clock? He pulls the waistband of his sweatpants away from his torso. Well, at least the equipment on the outside remains the same.

Stiles and Tyler get dressed, and migrate into the kitchen through a narrow hallway and spacious living room; walls painted the color of buttery suede. Books and baby toys litter the floor, framed family photographs, and baseball paraphernalia hanging on nearly every wall of their home. Upon closer inspection, Stiles finds one of the pictures is of Tyler in a Sacramento River Cats uniform, mid-run, right arm slung back, ready to throw.

“Dude, do you play professional ball?” Stiles asks, impressed, fingertips tracing the edges of the black wooden frame.

Tyler blushes, becomingly, one muscular arm cuddling the baby closer to his broad chest. “Yeah. I played baseball in college and got drafted, but I injured my hamstring a few years ago. I doubt I’ll ever get called up to the major leagues. Want some water? Juice?”

The seamless transition of conversation, the quick, subtle deflection onto Stiles and away from himself is such a Derek move it leaves Stiles dizzy, struggling for balance as he straddles two worlds.

“Water,” Stiles croaks.

Tyler opens the refrigerator, reaches for the Brita with his free hand, and at least twenty glass bottles stacked on the door shelves clink together like Christmas bells. “Uh, why do we own so much root beer?”

Tyler shrugs. “You’re a big root beer guy.”

Huh. Stiles can’t remember the last time he had root beer, but his mother adored root beer floats “Actually, I’ll take one of those.”

At the kitchen table, Tyler leaned his chin into his hand, gazing at Stiles while he sips his carbonated sugar. A shaft of late-morning light catches the fizzing bubbles surging up the neck of the bottle, sending little sun sparks dancing across the wood between them.

“I don’t know how you can remain so calm in the face of all this,” Stiles says for the millionth time in the few short hours they’ve been awake. “Does your husband typically try to convince you that he’s someone else?”

Tyler props Conor on his shoulder, gently rubbing and patting his back. “Only when we role-play.”

Root beer sprays from Stiles’ mouth in an inelegant arc, splattering all over the tabletop. Fantastic, now his overactive brain supplies him with enough jerk-off material to last a century. It’s just his luck to land in a universe where Derek smiles and laughs and is kinky to boot.

“But seriously, Dylan, we’ve been through worse than a little memory lapse.” Stiles lays his head down on the wet surface, resolutely refusing to ask. He doesn’t want to know. Knowing would mean caring. “Though I do wish you’d reconsider going to the hospital. They could run some tests and-”

Stiles holds up a hand. “No. No tests. At least, not today. If we wake up tomorrow and nothing has changed, then yes, I promise I’ll go to the doctor. Just…” He remembers having an MRI, the fear and panic before rolling into the claustrophobic tube, the loud clunks and bangs, of what bad news the results will bring. Because it’s doubtful skipping universes like a pebble on a lake produces anything positive. “Not today.”

Tyler nods. “Okay. I have an idea. Here, hold Conor.” He passes Stiles the baby and walks into the living room, opening the doors on a TV stand and pulling out an old DVD player. Stiles watches as he fiddles around behind the flat-screen television, plugging it in and powering it up. “I’m going to grab our wedding DVD,” Tyler says, heading toward the bedroom.

Stiles is left alone with Conor for the first time. “Hi, little man,” Stiles whispers into the crook of the baby’s warm neck. He smells sweet and powdery, and the unique scent kind of makes Stiles feel high. He’s adorable and small, and fragile, and now that Stiles thinks about it for half a second, completely panic-inducing. Who in their right mind would leave Stiles in charge of a baby?! He breaks everything. Hopefully, this Dylan guy is a bit less accident-prone than Stiles.

Tyler pops in the video, and they lay the baby on a blanket in the living room with a few toys, and Stiles gets to watch two hours of footage of himself marrying Derek.

Half-way through the reception Erica and Boyd waltz by, and Stiles sees Isaac in profile, standing at the bar laughing at something Jackson says. He desperately wants to ask, but doesn’t think he could handle it if these pack members, lost to lies and danger and that merciless bitch the Grim Reaper, are just phantom faces with different names.

“That was sweet and kind of funny,” Stiles says after listening to himself recite his vows.

“Yeah,” Tyler agrees. “You’re pretty amazing.”

Is this who Derek would be if there’d been no Kate? No Jennifer? No Paige? Seriously, it’s like a case of the body snatchers. Fuck Stiles’ life (but not this one! This one’s pretty perfect).

“Did it jog any memories?” Tyler asks when the TV goes black.

Stiles hates letting down someone so earnest. “Sorry, man.”

“It’s all right.” Tyler squeezes one of Stiles’ shoulders in a firm grip. “I have one more idea if it’s okay with you. Then we can give it a rest until tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay. But first, do you mind if I shower?” A phantom layer of dried sweat from his trek through the snow yesterday still sticks to Stiles’ skin.

Dylan and Tyler’s shower has soapstone walls, duel jets, a rain massage showerhead, recessed lighting, and a cedar plank ceiling. If he ever gets home, he’s convincing Derek to build a replica of this shower, and let Stiles use it any time he wants. Derek’s trust fund should go to something other than tight pants and dark colored shirts. Something that benefits Stiles directly (since the clothes benefit his eyeballs indirectly).

After he’s dressed, Stiles leans against the sink, wiping the fog from the mirror with the corner of his damp towel. He studies his reflection—same number of moles on his cheeks, same wide amber eyes. Fingertips poke at his cheeks, eyebrows, forehead. A hand rubs between his eyes. Why do you get to keep him in this universe, but not your own? his reflection asks.

Hushed voices filter in from the living room, and he sneaks a peek around the door jamb. A pretty middle-aged woman stands by the front door, shooting a frown at Tyler, her head tilted. “What do you think it is?” She asks, shrugging out of her cardigan sweater and draping it over the oversized recliner. “Stress? PTSD?”

“I don’t know,” Tyler replies. Wait, PTSD over what? “If the memory loss persists, we’ll go to the doctor tomorrow. I thought maybe seeing you would help him.”

Stiles steps into the living room, capturing their attention. The woman isn’t familiar, he’s never seen her in his life, but he knows her face the minute she looks at him. Stiles’ father has filled his life with love, but there’s no substitute for a mother. And that’s who this woman is, his mother. No one’s looked at Siles this way since he was eight years old. A razor edge of pain cuts into his heart.

His eyesight blurs, and red, blotchy heat creeps up his cheeks. Stiles swipes a thumb under one eye and tries to make it look like he’s scratching his cheek.

“Oh, Dylan, sweetheart,” she says. “I’m your mom, Lisa.”

—————

Halfway through Lisa filling him in on Dylan’s early life growing up in New Jersey, their move to California when he was twelve, and his stint in a band, Stiles’ stomach lets out a growl loud enough to rival a werewolf.

“We haven’t eaten anything all day,” Tyler says. “Root beer doesn’t count.”

“Why don’t you both go out for dinner,” Lisa offers. “I’ll watch Conor.” She makes kissy faces at their son, who yanks at her brown hair, and warmth swells in Stiles’ chest. He’s missed being part of a family, and this one sits gift-wrapped like a present just for him.

They walk outside, shoulders bumping. “We could drive into downtown,” Tyler offers, “but the traffic will be terrible, even at this time.”

Stiles shoves his hands into the pockets of his borrowed jeans, scoping out the view of the city skyline in the distance. “Whatever, dude. I’m game for somewhere local.”

Tyler eyes him, weighing the options, then graces him with another one of those megawatt smiles. “I think this day calls for The Coop.”

Stiles finds himself at a hole-in-the-wall, family-run pizzeria, scarfing down the best-tasting pizza ever. They split a large pie, ordered off a red menu adorned in green and white writing that makes Stiles think of Christmas.

Tyler wipes the grease off his lips with a paper napkin and leans back, resting his elbows on his chair arms. “You love eating here,” he tells Stiles. “We don’t often come here because I’m usually trying to stay in decent shape for baseball, but when we get here, we always order the works, hold the pineapple. You’re known to demolish an entire pie by yourself.”

At least this Dylan guy has good taste in pizza. Slow roasted tomato sauce and melted cheese punched him in the nose as soon as he walked in.

Stiles throws down his napkin, a white flag signaling his defeat to the single slice left on the pizza pan. He picks up the red plastic cup half-filled with root beer–turns out this stuff is pretty addicting– and gnaws on the cardboard straw between sips. “So, how’d we meet? Did I accidentally traipse across your yard, and you tell me I was trespassing?”

Tyler blinks. “That’s weirdly specific.” He picks up his beer bottle, takes a swig. “No. You’re a sports broadcaster, and you came to one of my games to interview me.”

“Love at first sight?” Stiles inquiries, tongue chasing his straw across his lips.

Tyler raises a brow, gesture a mirror-image of Stiles’ Derek. “That’s very distracting. Who taught you to use a straw?”

Stiles places the cup back down on the lacquered tabletop. “Sorry. D-” he pauses. “My friend back home complains about that too.”

“This friend who looks suspiciously like me?”

“Yeah. Him.”

Tyler laughs. “I’m sure he finds it distracting, too. Give the poor guy a break.”

“Anyway…” Stiles doubts he’s ever the person to steer a conversation back on track, but today is a day of firsts. First time I woke up in bed with Derek. There’s more, but his brain keeps getting stuck on that one. “Was it love at first sight for you and your husband?”

Tyler’s eyes go soft, unfocused. “We clicked right away, but no. Every date we went on just got better and better until we eventually moved in together.”

“When did you know he was the one?” Stiles asks, trying to imagine a world where he and Derek didn’t immediately clash like oil and water.

Tyler’s cheeks bloom apple-red. Oh, there’s a story here, and I want it. “I knew the first Christmas we spent together when I watched you hump an artificial tree. I said to myself, ‘Tyler, you’ve gotta keep this one.’”

Laughter bursts out of Stiles’ mouth. “Please,” he wheezes, “tell me more.”

Tyler does.

“How’d we end up an old married couple with a kid?” Stiles asks as they push through the doors of the restaurant, spilling out onto the warm pavement. Stiles thinks of the freezing temperatures of the blizzard he trudged through with Derek the day prior and shivers despite the sun’s heat.

Here Tyler hesitates, shoulders pulling high and back, spine lengthening. It’s Derek’s ’going into battle’ pose. Stiles has seen it enough times to know it by heart, his own body reacting on instinct, stepping closer to Tyler, creating a united front.

“We were going along great,” Tyler says, “having a good time. We both figured we’d get married, eventually. Our careers kept us busy; we didn’t rush into things. But one day, I’m in Sacramento, practicing at Raley Field, and my manager calls me off second base to tell me I’ve got to get home; you’d been in an accident.”

“What kind of accident?” Stiles asks. Just as disaster-prone, I see.

Tyler’s hands clench at his sides. “A car hit you at work.”

“Huh,” Stiles says, stupidly. I’m usually the one running over people.

“You had a terrible concussion, the doctors worried about brain damage, and pretty much the entire right side of your face needed reconstructive surgery.”

“Jeez.” Stiles presses fingertips to his right cheekbone. “I can’t imagine your terror.” Derek’s reactions every time Stiles gets hurt is bad enough; he can’t imagine what Tyler must have gone through watching the man he loves lay injured in a hospital bed.

“All of a sudden, things didn’t seem so carefree. The thought of losing you was-” Tyler stops, takes a deep breath. Before he registers the movement, Stiles grabs Tyler’s hand, entwining their fingers and squeezing reassuringly. Tyler smiles shyly, presses back, and air stalls in Stiles’ lungs. Quicksand paves the road they’re walking down; the more Stiles flails around in memories of a life that isn’t his own, the deeper he sinks.

“We got married a year later after you’d recovered from surgery. We know we’re lucky to have this nearly stolen life, and we wanted to share that with someone. Now, we have Conor.”

Tyler stops walking, turns to face Stiles—to face Dylan. “It took us a long time to get here.” He pulls Stiles into a tight hug, and Stiles willingly goes, lets himself get wrapped up in arms he never thought he’d feel around him. “But we got here.”

———-

They dismiss Lisa with a round of hugs and promises to call in the morning if nothing has changed. Conor gets a bath in a tub they place in the ample kitchen sink, gurgling happily over the plastic bath toys Stiles flies around his bald head while Tyler scrubs him down. “My mom used to wash the Thanksgiving turkey in the sink,” Stiles tells them.

“Are you comparing our son to overstuffed poultry?” Tyler honest-to-god giggles. Did Derek ever giggle? Could Stiles help him find that much joy?

Stiles pokes at one of Conor’s adorably chubby legs, earning a gummy smile. “The resemblance is striking.”

Tyler does the bedtime routine, and they eat a quiet, amicable dinner of grilled chicken and baked potatoes at the kitchen table.

“I don’t know about you,” Stiles says around a yawn, “but I’m freaking beat, man. This day has been an emotional rollercoaster.”

“Agreed,’ Tyler replies, rolling his shoulders. “Sleep?”

“Totally.”

“I can take the couch?” Tyler offers when they walk into the darkened bedroom. Stiles eyes the bed between them, bathed in the milk-light of the moon streaming through the curtains. Conor is a tiny lump in his bassinet, soft snores echoing around the room.

Stiles shakes his head. “No. It’s totally fine. Married people sleep in the same bed.”

Tyler smiles, shoulders dropping from where they’d migrated to his ears. Stiles has stared at that smile all day, but he’s still not immune. It’s a flash of lightning, bright and dazzling, rolling through him like thunder. He’s shaken. “I’m glad. Honestly, I always sleep better when you’re with me.”

I’m always with you, dumbass.

Stiles can see why. As soon as they slide under the covers—Stiles in the sweatpants and T-shirt ensemble from the morning, and Tyler in his boxer-briefs and nothing else—Tyler cuddles up next to him, sighing deeply. He’s a comforting line of heat and weight, and Stiles turns toward him, instinctually. Tyler’s already drifting off, blinking sleepy half-lidded eyes at him.

“Goodnight,” Stiles whispers.

“Mmm, goodnight,” Tyler replies. He leans forward, rubs the tip of his nose against Stiles’, and brushes his mouth against Stiles’ lips, tongue lazily surging, tasting like mint, fresh and sharp. Is this wrong? It doesn’t feel wrong. It feels right. Tyler threads his fingers into Stiles’ hair, pulling him closer, cradling the back of his head like he’s something precious, beloved. Large, strong hands skim across Stiles’ skull, cup his face, thumbs brushing featherlight over his cheekbones. Stiles hums contentedly into the kiss.

“I’m sorry,” Tyler slurs, pulling away just far enough to look into Stiles’ eyes. “I know you don’t remember, and I-”

“Tyler, kiss me again.” The next few moments simmer between them, threatening to boil over, but they dial back the heat, let it cool until their foreheads pressed together, lips and noses gently rubbing.

Stiles closes his eyes and lets himself believe that Derek Hale, the king of drawing lines in the sand and chasing Stiles back to the other side, cards long, gentle fingers through Stiles’ hair as he falls asleep. Stiles could get used to this; he wants this. And because Stiles lies to himself on the daily, he refuses to acknowledge that he has desired this for as long as he can remember knowing Derek.

Would it be so wrong to stay here and keep this life? It’s a luxury he hasn’t dared to allow himself to ponder since he woke up in this alternate reality.

Conor lets out a couple of guttural, cranky sounds. Tyler grumbles and starts to stir, jerky, half-asleep movements, “Shh,” Stiles says, running a long-fingered hand down Tyler’s back. “I’ve got this. You sleep.”

He carries Conor—his son—to the changing pad atop their dresser, and flicks on the lamp. It casts the little corner of their world in a soft golden glow. “We got this, buddy,” he tells Conor in a sing-song voice. “I’ll be a diaper changing expert in no time.” Conor blows spit bubbles at him. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Stiles answers. “We’re both doomed.”

Changing diapers is a little more involved than Stiles realized, and he ends up with baby pee all over his shirt and Conor’s onesie. He divests Conor of his wet suit and takes a moment to plant a few raspberries against the soft soles of the baby’s feet, earning delighted squeals and flailing limbs. “This little piggy went to the market, and this little piggy stayed home,” Stiles recites, wiggling Conor’s tiny toes. “This little piggy ate roast beef, and this little piggy had none. And this little p—”

Stiles rubs his eyes frantically, blinks hard a few times. Counts. Counts again. One, two, three, four, five…

Six.

He studies the other foot. Six toes. Heart in his throat, he takes Conor’s grasping little hands in his and counts. No, no, no. Six fingers on each side.

How do you tell if you’re awake or dreaming?

Your fingers. You count your fingers. “You have extra fingers in dreams,” Stiles tells Conor, and then he wakes up.

❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄

Stiles wakes in a panicky stupor, faces of nurses, doctors, and the Sheriff, who looks like he’s aged ten years, staring down at him, blurring together like paint on a canvas.

He flings out one hundred-pound arm, reaching for his child, for Tyler, for a world where his pack is alive and well and happy. I’ve only had the perfect life for a day and a half, but if anything happened to it I’d kill everyone in this room and then myself. A giggle hiccups out of his dry throat.

“…nerve damage…dead tissue,” the surgeon explains, but some morphine-derivative courses through his system and he listens to it all from the deep end of a warm tunnel. “The bad news is, you lost the one toe to frostbite, but I saved the others. And the loss of a pinky toe doesn’t impede balance at all.”

Stiles nods. The conversation hangs around him like a dense fog. “That sucks,” he croaks out, words lengthening as the drugs pull his tongue like taffy. “But…where is my husband?”

Behind the doctor, two nurses exchange glances, eyes wide over their surgical masks. His father shakes his head back and forth. “Stiles… you’re not married.”

”I am, ” he insists. ”And my baby. I have a baby.”

“Completely normal,” the doctor consoles. “Nothing to worry about. Some patients experience hallucinations and dreams as the anesthesia wears off.”

Oh yeah. Conor’s happy squeals, Tyler’s glorious smile, having a mom again. None of it was real.

“Recovery time typically takes between two and six weeks. You’ll have to keep the incision clean diligently and the stitches covered, but before you know it, you’ll walk again,” the doctor tells him. “You’ll run.”

Laughter gallops up his throat like a wild horse. He’s shaking again as he did in the snow, bones rattling and teeth clicking audibly together even as he desperately tries to clench his jaw and keep them still.

I’ve been running since I was sixteen. I don’t want to run anymore.

His father plucks a Kleenex from the box on his hospital tray, hands it to him. The thin tissue is sandpaper between Stiles’ raw fingertips. “Wh-why are you g-giving me this?” Stiles asks between gasps of air.

“Son,” his father says softly, “you’re crying.”

———-

His hospital room smells like a funeral parlor. Lily of the valley, morning glory, and peony. Scott charges in the moment Stiles can receive visitors outside the pathetic roster of family members, carrying a vase of blue dicks. “Get it?! Because you had hypothermia! You were freezing your-”

“Yeah, buddy. I get it.”

Get Well Soon the generic message on the flower card commands, but the problem is, Stiles isn’t sick. He’s grieving. But how can I mourn a life I never had?

By lunchtime, the snow stops, the sun shines, and Derek saunters into his hospital room as if he owns it. He looks stoically handsome in his black leather jacket and signature scowl, calm and composed, and smells like fresh air. Stiles’ emotional state soars dangerously from elation to despair, settling somewhere in the realm of weary acceptance.

“They obliterated my toe,” Stiles tells Derek when he approaches the bedside, pulling back the sheet to reveal his foot wrapped up in a mountain of gauze.

“I know,” Derek replies, pulling up a folding chair and falling gracefully into it. He props his sneakers up on top of the room’s air-conditioning unit. “I brought you here and stayed until your Dad could come. The doctor said he’d try his best, but…” Derek shrugs. He knows all about good intentions.

“Scott told me you went back out after I got out of surgery, killed the Chenoo.”

Derek grimaces. “I have salt in crevices where salt should never go.”

“I’m ah, I’m sorry I was wea-”

Derek holds up a hand. “Stiles, stop. Never apologize for your humanity.”

But it’s more than physical feebleness. It’s the mental weakness that settles on Stiles’ shoulders like a villains cloak—stitched with shame, edged in anger, dyed red because he looks damn good in red, and no one can tell him otherwise.

Stiles pulls a flat hospital pillow into his arms, holding it across his chest like armor, curling tighter around it with each word. ”Scott said you know about the hallucinations.” Might as well get this over with now, when the wound is still fresh enough to heal with a minimal amount of scarring.

”I do, ” Derek replies. ”Did Scott tell you I stayed the entire time? I only left this morning to kill the Chenoo.”

”He may have mentioned something along that line.” It’s the sole reason Stiles is brave enough to tackle this conversation now. Dude, Scott had said, Derek stood outside the ICU for hours. Your dad totally thinks you’re boning him.

“Derek?” Stiles fidgets with the sheet covering his leg. “I need to ask you something.”

Gold-flecked green eyes bore into him. Lacking Tyler’s delicate laugh lines, they feel sharper than a knife. “You can ask me anything, Stiles.”

He already grilled his father in every detail, but he needs to hear it from Derek’s mouth. “Did we find shelter from the storm in a cabin in the preserve? Was there a…” He stumbles; Conor’s face flashes before his eyes. “Was there a baby there? A baby boy in a red blanket?”

Derek’s punctuates his gentle but firm statement with a shake of his head. “No, Stiles. You passed out, and I carried you here.”

“From the preserve? Dude. That’s like… Miles.”

Derek nods. He doesn’t say it, but somehow Stiles can hear the unspoken And I’d do it again because he’d do the same for Derek. Sadness surges like a wave, sudden and powerful, the words pulled from his mouth in the tide. “I dreamt we were a family.”

“We are family, Stiles. Pack is family.”

“No.” Stiles bites his lip. “I imagined it all, made it up in my head, but it felt so damn real. We were a family; you, me, and our son.”

Derek’s feet drop back to the floor, his spine a tautly pulled string. “Okay,” he says. “Tell me more.”

Stiles tells him everything.

“Wait,” Derek says after Stiles finally stops speaking. “This sounds vaguely familiar.” Derek unfolds from the chair and moves toward the hospital room door.

“It does?” Stiles asks, hope igniting inside his chest. Maybe Derek’s dreamed about this before too.

“Stay right there,” Derek commands, eyebrows furrowed as he walks out of the room.

“Where do you imagine I’m going to go?” Stiles calls. “My foot is—”

“Yeah. I thought it sounded familiar!” Derek declares as he rushes back into the room, waving a magazine in front of Stiles’ face.

“What the heck, man?” Stiles struggles to sit up. “Did the nurses at the desk see you using werewolf speed?”

“Look,” Derek says, ignoring Stiles as usual. “Your surgery took two hours, and your father was scrambling for coverage so he could get over here. I sat in the waiting room, reading every magazine they had. I read this one.” He flips open an Entertainment Weekly and holds it under Stiles’ nose. There’s a handsome, dark-haired man in profile on the cover, looking down at a baby in a red blanket nestled in his arms. Another man flanks the infant; a smiling face turned toward the camera. The cover line reads, Tyler and Dylan may have ended their run on Teen Wolf, but their story is far from over.

Oh my god, you are such an idiot.

“Oh my god, I am such an idiot!” Stiles squeals, snatching them magazine out of Derek’s hand. No. No, it can’t be. Stiles did not almost die of hypothermia just to imagine he Freaky Friday-ed with a couple of actors.

“I knew Tyler and Dylan sounded familiar. They’re those actors who got married in real life, the ones on that stupid teenage werewolf soap opera you and Scott loved. And then they—”

“Adopted a baby last month,” Stiles finishes, flipping through the familiar pages. He’d perused the same magazine in Deaton’s clinic while they discussed how best to destroy the Chenoo.

“It makes perfect sense, Stiles,” Derek says, laying a hand down next to him on the bed. “Your brain latched onto the last thing you focused on before we left to hunt the Chenoo. It’s almost like that one episode of the show where Dylan’s character ends up in the Phantom Train Station between dimensions.”

“Hey,” Stiles gives Derek the stink eye. “You swore you never watched the show.”

An overly exaggerated eye roll. “I may have caught a couple of episodes.”

Stiles’ eyebrows smugly say, I told you so, and Derek’s answer, shut the fuck up, Stiles.

“Which one were you again?” Derek asks. “Which guy?”

Stiles looks at the happy face of the actor. “Dylan.”

“So I was Tyler?” Derek grimaces. “That guy looks like he’s thirty-five.”

“Yeah, but in the best way,” Stiles insists.

He huffs, but Stiles sees the tips of his ears burning bright pink. Derek looks down, rubs the back of his neck and sighs. “You know I’m not him, right?” Derek asks, pointing to the handsome, besotted face on the magazine cover. “I’m not some happy-go-lucky ray of sunshine.”

Stiles tosses the magazine to the window ledge, where it falls between two flower vases. “Yeah, I know,” Stiles softly replies. Butterflies flutter in his stomach; they tingle at the ends of his ten fingers and nine toes. “Doesn’t stop me from loving you, though.”

Derek climbs into Stiles’ hospital bed, presses his face into Stiles’ throat and sighs, warm breath fanning over Stiles’ skin, words vibrating. “The entire trek to the hospital, I was terrified.” Derek brushes an errant lock of hair from Stiles’ forehead. “Then we got here, and they wrapped you up in this insulation, trying to raise your body temperature. It took hours, and I spent every minute thinking I might never get the chance to tell you…I don’t know for sure what’ll happen; marriage, kids, all of the above, none of the above. But I know I never want to lose you.”

And he remembers Tyler, standing on the busy streets of Los Angeles, looking like a lost little boy when he talked about almost losing his husband. It’s the same face Derek wears now.

“I’m always with you, dumbass,” Stiles answers. Why did he think this would be hard? It’s as natural as breathing. “Important question, though. This might make or break everything, so think hard before you answer. How do you feel about bathroom makeovers? I have some ideas.”

“I feel strong to very strong about dual shower jets.”

“Dude,” Stiles says. “There’s a definite possibility we’re soulmates.” And then, Derek smiles. It’s not as big or as bright as Tyler’s, not nearly as all-consuming as his subconscious conjured, but Stiles thinks, with time and love, it will get there.

They’ll get there.

#froggydarren #stereksanta19 #*fics19 #*gifts19

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ahomeganeyatsu · 6 years ago

Text

I just thought of a PJO AU where Lucas is a son of Poseidon and Eliott is a son of Apollo. So here’s some headcanons (I think). It got longer than I expected.

Lucas hated that his powers responded to his emotions. He learned how to keep them in check because weird stuff just kept happening around him when his emotions were too high. It wasn't until he got into Camp Half-Blood and Poseidon claimed him that things started making sense. He learned to control it but sometimes things still happen, especially when one son of Apollo was around.

He didn't know how to describe Eliott other than that his parentage was fitting. The guy was the literal sun in Lucas opinion. He radiated warmth and energy and every time he smiled at him, Lucas worried he’d go blind from how bright it was.

It was just unfair that Lucas had to be careful not to have any form of water near him whenever he talked to Eliott. The boys still hadn’t stopped teasing him about the whole soda fiasco. Really, it was all Eliott’s fault with the whole “not necessarily a girl” comment and giving him that loaded look he dared not to interpret in fear of getting his hopes up.

Then the Arthur thought it brilliant to leave one of his magical spheres lying around in the Hecate Cabin and Eliott was suddenly a raccoon. None of the Hecate kids wanted to revert the spell arguing Eliott would turn back on his own in three days. All of Eliott’s siblings were suddenly busy and Lucas was the only one left to raccoon-sit him. He wouldn’t have minded to be honest. It was nice having company in the Poseidon Cabin. Except it was kind of hard not to let his feelings spill over when Eliott was being such an adorable dork and over all sweet and affectionate in this form. And well, waking up cuddled next to him, albeit a raccoon, wasn’t helping matters either.

He tried not to read in too much on Eliott wanting to spend time with him during those three days. Or the little snacks he manages to steal from the Hermes Cabin to give to Lucas.

He did tease him about the Hermes Cabin claiming him to be an unofficial mascot though. It really did say something about Eliott when they didn’t retaliate when he stole from them.

From there, things started to get a little weird.

Lucas found himself in situations that stuck him with Eliott with increasing frequency.

Dish duty. Training the younger kids. Capture the flag. Three-legged races in the Labyrinth. Rock climbing the lava wall. Even arts and crafts, which Lucas didn’t mind much to be honest. Then, there was the Hephaestus kids testing the new net trap on them, the handcuffs from the Aphrodite kids, the renga curse from the Apollo kids, and that hedgehog spell from the Hecate kids.

He had a suspicion what they were up to. It wasn’t until he heard the Hermes kids collecting bets that he realized the whole camp had been trying to set them up.

Lucas didn’t understand. It wasn’t like Eliott like liked him. Lucas was well, Lucas. The only thing impressive about himself was his being a son of Poseidon and his knack of bursting the pipes in the bathrooms when he got anxious. He wasn’t beautiful and kind and great and talented like Eliott. Why in the world would Eliott like him? It just didn’t compute in Lucas’ mind.

The only thing that made sense was that they were playing with his own feelings. That they thought it was fun to see Lucas floundering and keeping his powers in control. He didn’t like this one bit. He wasn’t going to serve as the camp’s entertainment. They had no right getting into his business, making bets about his damned feelings and dragging Eliott into this when he didn’t even have feelings for Lucas. Eliott was with that Roman kid. A daughter of Venus, Lucy-something-or-whatever? They were pretty close from what he remembered. So, yeah, the camp should just leave him alone.

As a son of Poseidon, Lucas had a reputation not to be messed with. Everyone knew not to get on his bad side. He was as unforgiving and unpredictable as the sea. Despite his small frame, Lucas was strong enough to take on the Ares Cabin, even the Athena kids found him difficult to deal with on the battlefield. When the latest scheme was in motion, this time from the Demeter Cabin, and Eliott got hurt, Lucas made it very clear that he wanted them to stop. That he wasn’t some puppet they can tug the threads and serve as a show for everyone to watch. He didn’t exist to amuse them, to have them meddle with his life. That Eliott didn’t deserve any of this mess. The lake’s water rising above him and just waiting to crash on all of them was an obvious enough sign for everyone to back off and quit it.

After Lucas had gotten Eliott to the infirmary. He spent the night somewhere in Long Island Sound, hanging out with the fishes and a herd of hippocampi that decided to visit, not wanting to face the camp in the dining pavilion that dinner. Or see Eliott, too ridden with guilt that he wouldn’t have been hurt if not for Lucas.

When he finally comes back after four days, the whole camp just about celebrated and lined up to apologize to him.

He was grumpy about it, but forgave them provided they don’t do it again.

He didn’t see Eliott and the next days, Lucas came to notice that the past few weeks, he had spent more time with Eliott than the last three summers he spent in camp. Now that the whole camp had ceased their meddling, Lucas barely saw the older teen at all. They pass by each other, say hi, but other than that, nothing.

The summer was ending and everyone was going back to their homes the next day. They have their usual bonfire with the Apollo kids leading the campfire songs and the others requesting. There was dancing and as usual the Hermes kids managed to smuggle in some real alcohol and spiked the drinks. It was a larger event with their Roman guests visiting. Lucas enjoyed his time with the boys and the girls. They were laughing at Basile and his latest failure at asking out Daphne, a daughter of Demeter.

Yann was regaling them with a story of his budding relationship with a daughter Hebe when the crowd shushed all of a sudden.

Lucas turned to look at what held everyone’s attention. He found his eyes being led to the center of the amphitheater where the bonfire was and so were most of the Apollo kids. Lucas blinked when he finally saw what had everyone quieting.

It was Eliott. If it had been anyone else, people wouldn't have gone silent. But this was Eliott and he was holding a guitar. Lucas had learned early on that Eliott was the only Apollo kid that didn't sing or play an instrument. He didn’t remember him ever joining his siblings during bonfires to sing and play for the other campers. So seeing him, standing with his siblings and holding a guitar was more than just a shock.

He addressed the crowd, saying hello and introducing himself, as if everyone didn’t already know who he was. Then, his stormy-grey eyes zeroed in on Lucas and the son of Poseidon’s cheeks burnt at that intense gaze on him. “I wrote this song for a certain someone,” Eliott said, hand rubbing nervously on his nape, and the crowd hoots with cheers for him. “I’m hoping it’s obvious enough he’ll notice this is for him.” There was a scattering of laughs in the audience and Lucas felt his friends’ gazes on him.

The son of Apollo cleared his throat and his fingers strum the strings of his guitar experimentally, testing it out. Lucas watched as Eliott seemed to psyche himself up. He took a breath and lifted his head once again. His eyes found Lucas and he didn’t break eye contact as he started to play earnestly.

Hearing Eliott sing, it was an experience. Lucas couldn’t put it into words. Everything seemed to fade away. There was just the song and Eliott. His voice carried power and it was filled with so much emotion and you couldn’t help but feel them too.

It took him the whole first verse, but Lucas knew the song was about him. As it progressed he caught multiple references to times they spent together, inside jokes between the two of them and that one whispered confession when he thought Eliott had been asleep.

At the end of the song, Lucas heart was beating so fast and hard he feared it would crack his ribcage and burst forth from this chest. His face was flushed and his cheeks wet from the tears he didn’t realize had escaped from his eyes. He had a tight grip on his control, not wanting to have any of the drinks bursting like geysers on his fellow campers. Eliott was still staring at him and he shot him a nervous but genuine smile. Lucas returned it shakily, mind still reeling from what Eliott had just done. The applause from the crowd went ignored between the two of them. Their eyes only broke away from each other when one of Eliott’s siblings had thrown an arm over his shoulder and ruffled his hair and soon the others had followed, showering the teen with praises. Lucas allowed himself to watch for just a few more beats before finally tearing his eyes away from them. He stood up and excused himself from his friends. He needed time to process what the hell had just happened. It was a testament to their friendship that they didn’t ask, just patted him on the back and told him not to stay out too late so the cleaning harpies won’t get him.

He sat at the lake shore, staring at the moon’s reflection on the waters. If the song was anything to go by, it meant that Eliott did hold feelings for him. He still can’t wrap his mind around it. Still can’t reconcile the two things together. Just how?

He didn’t know how long he had been there, but he heard the sound of footsteps and sensed the air being displaced. He didn’t need to look to know who had sat right next to him. Eliott bumped their arms and Lucas turned his head a bit to look at him.

“You left the party,” Eliott said. It’s a statement but Lucas could hear the why the older teen didn’t voice.

“I needed a bit of quiet,” Lucas told him. “Needed to think.”

Eliott bit his lip, swallowed and let out quiet sigh. His tongue darted to wet his chapped lips. Lucas blue eyes traced every movement. “About what?” he finally asked.

Lucas had always been impulsive when it came around Eliott. He had always been careful with what he says, turning the words round and round in his head before voicing them. With Eliott, Lucas sometimes loses his control. He was blunter. Eliott had grown used to it but when the words “I like you” pass through Lucas’ lips in that hushed voice, he looked surprised. “Quite a lot,” the shorter teen added. “So, if that song wasn’t what I think it was, you honestly have to work on that ambiguity of yours or else that’s going to get you in a lot of trouble. Also, I’m going to shove you into that lake. Tread very carefully, Demaury.”

Eliott let out a surprised laugh. Lucas can’t help the way the sound tugged a smile at the corner of his lips. “I’m being serious here!” Lucas shoved him without much strength but he was snickering now too.

“I know! I know!” Eliott giggled. His eyes were nearly invisible with how much he was smiling, his teeth visible and the corner of his eyes etched with crow’s feet. “It is, you know,” he slid closer to the younger boy and bumped his shoulder against Lucas’. “The song.”

The soft “Okay” was Lucas’ only reply.

Eliott’s face softened and he returned it. An equally soft, “Okay” that sounded more of a breath than anything.

They smile at each other and Lucas was the first to look away, choosing to stare at the lake surface instead. Eliott took after his lead and turned to it as well. They exchange no other words. They sat there, the distant sound of their fellow campers in the amphitheater and the various sounds of nature serving as their background. When Eliott reached for his hand, Lucas didn’t move away. He relished the feeling of Eliott’s warm palm and their twined fingers. The perfectness of how Eliott’s larger hand cradling his slighter hand didn’t go unnoticed. It felt like two puzzle pieces slotting into place. He squeezed Eliott’s hand and let his head fall onto taller teen’s shoulder. And in that moment, everything was right.

#elu pjo au #i did a thing #elu headcanons #elu fic #i guess #i'm stressed i needed to write this #lucas lallemant #eliott demaury #elu

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miraclejune · 6 years ago

Text

HERO’S SOUP: Chapter 8

Coffee

“I thought you had class until 5pm, Seungs?” Hyunjin latches on his seatbelt, pulling on it a little to see if it was secure. He stares at Seungmin seated beside Woojin through the rearview mirror. But waited in vain when his question was not answered.

Hyunjin huffed out air, throwing a fit. He got more pissed off when Seungmin answered when Woojin asked him. “You asshole.”

“Thanks, Jinnie, you dickhead.”

“Why I!” Hyunjin crossed his arms and puffed his cheeks. He looked out the window mumbling incoherent words underneath his breath. The car was filled with soft chuckles. “Your class got canceled huh?” Seungmin shrugged at Woojin’s words, opting to reach out for the AUX Cord. Vague answer, again. “You can just use bluetooth.” Seungmin nodded, connecting his phone to the car’s speakers.

“Whose shop are we gonna go to?”

“Not the antique shop, sorry.” Jeongin glowed red in embarrassment from Woojin’s words. Seungmin gave the boy a careful appraising eye through the mirror.

The lack of acquaintances affected Jeongin's behavior while growing up, not in a negative way though. And being in a relationship was part of the question. He liked multiple people before, but gazing from afar was the only option he had. He didn’t even have enough courage to say hi to his classmates, what more if it was a confession?

“We’re going to my café!” Woojin enthusiastically answered.

“You have a café?!” Jeongin gasped. He looked at Hyunjin who scooted over to his side.

Hyunjin rested his head on his shoulder, at the same time letting his arms snake around the boy’s waist, filling in the space between them. Jeongin could feel the vibrations from Hyunjin’s voice as he spoke softly. “Yeah, their cheesecake is amazing. Jisung's always chattering about how good it is.” his mouth watered. Jeongin loves sweets.

“Jeongin, you’re drooling.”

He almost slapped himself as he tried to wipe off his saliva. But before he could react, Seungmin let out a howl of laughter.

Hyunjin can’t help but giggle as he watches the boy beside him, writhe in embarrassment. “And yes, I do have a café .” Hyunjin detached himself from Jeongin, looking out the window as cars drove past them. “We really need to know each other more.”

“No thanks, I don’t like opening up to idiots.”

“HEY!” Seungmin was joking, of course. But that didn’t stop Hyunjin from acting like a kid. Pouting and stomping his feet on the car floor. "But, that doesn’t sound so bad.” Seungmin's voice trailed off vaguely. He focused his eyes on the road, obviously ignoring the searing stares from the others.

Seungmin held his breath in silence. He went from hot to cold, the 2 pairs of eyes bearing holes on his skin, and the other one stealing constant glances. He flushed crimson as he adjusted his seat and cleared his throat.

“Woojin,”

The alpha hummed, glancing at the witch’s face before his eyes fell on his fidgeting fingers. Seungmin heaved a deep sigh, it was weird. He never felt nervous around anyone, however, after hearing about Woojin's past… his heart asserted itself again, thunderously beating against his chest. “About the barrier…”

Woojin mused a little while in grave thought. His smile was linked with a sigh. “We’ll go over everything later, Seungmin. Don’t worry.” Seungmin murmured a vague acceptance. He wanted to brood over the matter immediately. But an air of uncanny familiarity hung over.

Noticing the sudden shift of mood, Hyunjin croaked “I thought you’re gonna drop some beats, Seungmin.” Even though the witch snickered, he can’t help but thank Hyunjin for saving his ass out there.

“Yes, boss.” The muffled sounds of an electric guitar resonated within the car.

As they ventured further down the road, the chorus of the song neared. Someone was definitely whispering, no. He was singing.

A soft-sounding voice softly muttered the lyrics, getting every melody right. His voice was far from different from the singer, but it definitely had its own color. Woojin gingerly pressed on the brakes, the car came to a halt as the red light shines above them. “You sing, Jeongin?” the boy flinched, hastily covering his mouth, exchanging glances with Hyunjin, and Seungmin and Woojin, who were looking over their shoulders.

“No need to be shy about it.”

“Yeah, Woojin is right! You sound amazing!”

“He’s a music major for a reason, you nitwit.”

Hyunjin ignored Seungmin's snarky comment and looked at Jeongin eagerly as if he was waiting for the boy to continue singing. The boy warily put his hand down, he gulped loudly.

Woojin turns back to the wheel, tapping his fingers against it. “Don’t pressure the kid, Jinnie.” Seungmin had to admit he also paused for a while to see if Jeongin would continue singing. He turned back to the front, the song ended and he waited for the next one to play.

“Sorry, Jeongin.” the boy floundered.

“It’s okay, Hyunjin! Well,”

“I can sing one song if you guys want.” the wolf beside him beamed. “Hey, giggles. Your tail’s wagging so hard.” the wolf glared at Seungmin's shoulder. But immediately turned his attention back to Jeongin. “We’re not forcing you to do so, okay?” the boy could hear the sincerity behind Woojin's voice even though he was facing the road. He smiled.

“I want to do it.”

Seungmin stopped his thumb from scrolling through his playlist. Woojin saw how the witch bit his lips, trying to hold back a smile.

Seungmin caught Woojin glancing at him, he cleared his throat “So what song would you like, Jeongin?” As the boy fell into thought, Seungmin couldn't help but finally let a smile form, a frown coming up later when Woojin nudged his elbow, wiggling his thick brows.

Finally making up his mind, Jeongin mumbled the title.

Soon enough, the melody started. It was awkward at first, he didn’t dare to raise the volume of his voice. But with Hyunjin's encouragement, Jeongin took a deep breath. Letting his voice be heard within the confinements of the car.

By the time they arrived at the café, Hyunjin was fast asleep on Jeongin's lap. The wolf had been nodding his head out of drowsiness. Seungmin waited for him to bang his head on the car window, but Jeongin prevented it from happening. Pulling the wolf towards him, before the incident happened.

“Hyunjin, wake up.”

Woojin chuckled, pulling into a parking space in front of his café.

“Jeongin, that idiot would not wake up with just that.”

He turned the engine off, removing his seatbelt as he slid his upper body through the seat gap. Jeongin and Seungmin waited for his actions.

They both expected him to tap Hyunjin's face with just enough strength to wake him up. But they were caught off guard when Woojin leaned in more, reaching out his hand to Hyunjin's… left ear?

“OW OW OW OW!!!!” Seungmin let out a howl of laughter, wiping a few tears from the corner of his eye. Jeongin, who was biting down his lower lip, trying his best to stifle his laughter, felt a bit sorry for the wolf.

He patted the wolf’s head, cooing at him like a kid. “Woojin, you jerk.” the alpha laughed, whispering a soft sorry as he kissed the wolf’s forehead. They emptied the car, Woojin made sure the doors were all locked before leading the rest inside the café.

Unlike Woojin's awful taste in interior design. His shop was not half bad. It was aesthetically pleasing, to be honest.

The tiny café huddled among the huge city buildings. It had a simple vintage exterior, not so overly decorated so it was very warm and welcoming, especially this winter weather.

Just like the outside, the interior was warm and cheery, with bright lights and vintage photographs placed around the walls of the café. Delectable pastries are tidily placed on the transparent glass cabinet, lining up and waiting to be eaten. The strong bitter aroma of ground coffee beans drifted in the air, the scent almost soaking into your clothes.

The usual gentle murmur of voices could be heard above the harsh occasional stomach-churning sound of the coffee machine.

An ‘eye-catching’ barista waved in their direction. Woojin walked past the three of them, a warm smile evident on his face as he headed towards the counter.

A guy with ghost-white skin circled the counter, giving Woojin a brief hug. His soft brown locks tousled a little as he rested his chin on Woojin's shoulder. After pulling away, his soft voice can be heard and the little dimple that played at the corners of his mouth appeared when Woojin teased him, he was… breathtaking.

His mellow eyes glanced over to their position and again the dimples made an appearance.

Woojin noticed, turning his head and signaling the three of them to approach him. “Jaehyun! Long time no see.” Hyunjin babbled, circling his arms around the older man.

“It’s been a while, Hyunjin.” Jaehyun replied, creeping his arms on the wolf’s back.

Drawing back from the embrace, he curiously looked at Seungmin and Jeongin. Woojin pulled the two on each of his sides. “This is Seungmin.” the witch nodded, eyes falling briefly on the guy’s outstretched hand.

His eyes went back up to the guy’s face, a small smile forming on his lips as he reached out to shake it. “So, you’re a hand shaker. Interesting.” Seungmin was caught a bit off guard when Jaehyun chuckled, honestly speaking, he expected the guy to give him a weird look of disdain. But instead, the guy laughed, running his hand through his hair.

“I’m really a hugger but, I think it would be weird to hug someone you just met. Ruins the idea of a great first impression.”

Woojin held off a chuckle. It looks like someone has met his match.

“And this adorable little guy is Jeongin.” Jeongin shut his eyes, craning his neck a little bit as Woojin’s large, heavy hand ruffled his hair. He let out a whine and pouted, fixing up his tousled hair.

A faintly quizzical look came into Jaehyun’s eyes, scanning the boy up and down. Jeongin looked up as Woojin nudged his side, reminding the boy about what Jaehyun said. “It means a hug, Jeongin.” not quite getting the point, Jeongin stepped forward nuzzling his head onto Jaehyun's chest. “It’s nice to meet you.”

The guy stiffened a bit as he felt warm hands snake around his back. Jaehyun couldn’t help but blush, wrapping his arms around the boy’s structure.

“Jeongin! Let’s sit there!” Jaehyun watched as Hyunjin pulled the boy away from his grasp, leading him and Seungmin towards the back end of the café.

He can’t help but find the situation a bit irksome. Woojin threw a measuring eye at Jaehyun, who seemed to be utterly detached from life. “Jaehyun.”

“Huh, what?” Woojin smiled, another victim of Jeongin's irresistible cuteness. “Can you give us,” Woojin paused, waiting for Hyunjin's voice inside his head as he asked Seungmin and Jeongin what they wanted.

“One hot chocolate, with extra whipped cream. 2 americanos, a café latte, and 2 cheesecakes.” Jaehyun nodded his head, quite impressed. How did he know about what the others wanted?

It wasn’t really his business so he went back to the counter. “Johnny. Order up.” A tall chiseled man with medium brown hair, a very prominent cupid’s bow, and soft eyes appeared from the kitchen area. “Woojin, wassup man!” he ignored Jaehyun, making his way towards Woojin. “Hey, Johnny.” bro-fist was more of a Johnny style. Considering he grew up in the US.

“Johnny, the orders!” the man frowned, glaring at Jaehyun before turning his eyes back to Woojin. “Catch ya later.”

Woojin proceeded to their seats. Pulling a chair beside Jeongin who was fiddling with his phone. The corners of Woojin's lips rose as he, not intentionally, read the contents of the screen.

‘Chan, where are you?’

‘I’ll be a bit late, Jeongin.’

‘Okay~’

The alpha shakes his head. His eyes danced around the café. Everything is familiar to him, well, even the distant stares coming from the female customers. He thought to himself again, maybe it was not such a good idea to bring the boys here. Jaehyun and Johnny bring enough clout to the shop. Hiring handsome full-timers was a really really bad idea.

Hyunjin stood up from his seat, excusing himself as he headed towards the restroom. The number one gullible person. He doesn’t know his effect on the people around him. Which kinda makes him more attractive, more or less.

Sometimes they have trouble walking around the city with that wolf. He gets scouted so much on the streets, Changbin starts grumbling about how they spend 90% of their time shaking off the scouts. Woojin leans back in his chair, fishing out his phone from his pocket.

After sending a brief text to Changbin, he placed it down on the table. A few seconds later, the screen lit up. Woojin leaned forward, reading the preview of the message.

“Changbin's with Jisung and Felix. They’ll be here in 20 minutes.” The sound of plates being placed on the table made Woojin look up to the server. His bright pink hair screams ‘KPOP Idol’.

He was overwhelmingly handsome, he looked like he came straight out of a comic book. His face was a cheat. Was he new?

“Hey, boss! This is our new guy, Taeyong, Jungwoo's boyfriend.” Taeyong bowed his head, his big doe eyes nervously danced around the room, trying hard not to make eye contact with the owner.

Johnny didn’t have to tell the boss about his relationship. “I’ll work hard, sir!” Johnny cackled, patting him on the shoulder as he turned to walk back to the kitchen.

Woojin gave him a warm smile, telling him to just drop the formalities and call him by his name. Taeyong fervently nodded, bowing his head before heading back to the counter.

The alpha eyed the new guy as he carried a few drinks towards a group of what seemed to be high school girls. All of them giggling and trying their best to make the guy stay a bit longer.

Woojin drew his attention back to his friends when Hyunjin came back. “What took you so long?” Seungmin questioned.

“Had to take selfies! My outfit looks great!”

Seungmin sneered, making Hyunjin hit his shoulder lightly.

Jeongin observed in silence, occasionally glancing at his phone to see if Chan had messaged him. Much to his dismay, Chan was probably busy. His eyes fluttered back up when Seungmin threw Hyunjin a question, “How did you become a model?” Hyunjin fell into thought, running a hand through his hair as he delved into his memories.

“I think, when I posted my OOTD on Instagram. A local shop sent me a DM, asking if I could model for them.” Hyunjin reached out for his phone, typing down the name of the shop, scrolling through their recent photos until he found his first ever photoshoot.

“I grew bored of hanging out here at the cafe and coming with Changbin and Jisung to their workplace only consisted of me playing with my phone at the sofa of their studio, while they buried their faces onto the screen and paper. And, well, I wouldn’t say much about Chan. He’s an old guy. I usually just sleep in his room. So, I guess modeling was a nice opportunity. I asked Woojin first, and he told me to give it a shot.” he continued, handing his phone to Seungmin.

Jeongin craned his neck over to their side. Seungmin handed him the phone, giving Hyunjin a smug look. “You looked a bit awkward.” Hyunjin chuckled. “Yeah, it was my first time. The photographer was very understanding, the staff were also nice. They fed me and even gave me more than the price we agreed on.” a soft smile formed on his lips as he recalled his memories.

“I promised them that they could call me up any time if they needed a model. I left them my number and email.” Jeongin held his breath in admiring silence, returning Hyunjin's phone to him.

“So, yeah. They posted the photos on their page. Printed posters of me and glued them to the glass walls of their shop. Soon enough, I received a lot of emails and calls. They said they wanted to collaborate with me. They wanted me to model for them. Most of them found me through that shop’s page. They messaged the owner and asked for my information. Kinda felt a bit mad because they released my contacts without notifying me, but I let it slide. Since they were a huge help to my impending modeling career.”

Hyunjin's story ended with him shoving half the cheesecake down his throat. Seungmin reached out for his bag, rummaging for his wallet. “How much do we owe you? I’ll pay for Jeongin’s too.”

“Seungmin, I can pay for my own food.”

“Stop, both of you. No need to pay. It’s my treat. Now, eat!” The owner of the cafe said.

Seungmin was disappointed he backed down easily. Jeongin too. They nodded in silence, picking up their forks.

Jeongin's face lit up, he turned to Woojin with a mouthful of cake. “This is amazing!” the owner smiled, relieved that everyone liked the food and drinks.

“Are you ever behind the counter?” Seungmin asked, sipping on his drink. Woojin hummed in response, looking out the window for answers. “Hhe ushed touew.”

“Don’t bark with your mouth full, you stupid dog.” Hyunjin choked, glaring at Seungmin while Woojin stood up to get some water. “Seungmin, play nice.” Jeongin whispered. He knows the witch was just kidding and Hyunjin probably doesn’t give a damn. But still, it was offensive to say such stuff.

Woojin sat back down, sliding the cup of water to Hyunjin. Seungmin looked at Jeongin dead in the eye, bringing up his fist. Jeongin sighed in defeat when Hyunjin, almost consciously, bumped his fist on Seungmin's.

He didn’t expect those two to become close, they’re always bickering and hitting each other.

“So you used to?”

“You understood that?” Seungmin snorted. Giving Jeongin a thumbs up. “I’m fluent in idiot.” Hyunjin laughed, clearly forgetting the fact that Seungmin called him an idiot. Their high five echoed across the café, earning the attention of a few customers, a few tables away from them.

Hyunjin covered his mouth with his hands, wide-eyed. Woojin stood up and bowed in the direction of the customers. Hyunjin composed himself and walked towards their table. Bowing his head multiple times as he gives them an embarrassed smile. The girls swooned over the fine man in front of them. “He really has no idea?”

Woojin shook his head, eyes glancing at Hyunjin. “None at all.” Jeongin knew they were talking about how clueless Hyunjin is about his effect on women and sometimes men.

“What an idiot.” Woojin and Jeongin chuckled.

“Can’t argue with that.”

After a half an hour, Changbin, Jisung, and Felix arrive. All three of them looked like death. Jisung's heavy footsteps led him to Jeongin’s side. He pulled the chair and almost instantly fell into the younger’s lap.

“I’m so fucking drained.” his voice turned into a hum as Jeongin ran a soothing hand through his hair. Jisung fought the urge to sleep, enjoying the feeling for a bit longer before Felix kicked his chair to the side, replacing it with his own. “I want head scratches too.”

They argued loudly, earning a warning growl from Woojin. In the end, Jeongin sat in between them, their heads on each of his shoulders, as both his hands scratched their heads. Seungmin scowled at the scene.

“What a bunch of dogs.”

“Hey!

“Fact check: I’m a fox, mate.” Felix pouted.

Woojin called up Taeyong, asking the newly arrived people to tell him what they wanted. He mumbled a soft thanks to Taeyong before turning his head at Changbin. “What took you so long?”

Changbin groaned as he leaned back in his seat, hands massaging his temples, being reminded by the hell they went through earlier was draining him more. “Ugh. After shopping with Chan, he dropped me and Felix off at the studio. Jisung was already there when we went in. We had to come up with melodies from scratch for a mini-album,” glaring at Jisung, he continued. “Jisung said they need it by next week. But when Felix checked in with their representative, they said 3 weeks.”

Bolting upright, Jisung whined.

“I said I was sorry!” Changbin groaned, nodding his head. He had no choice. What’s done is done. “I almost lost my remaining 3 brain cells for coming up with lyrics.” Felix nuzzled further onto Jeongin's shoulder, his breath tickling the boy’s neck. The confused look on Jeongin’s face came unnoticed.

Album? Melodies? Who are these people?

“You have a studio? Felix writes? You guys are producers? What?” Jeongin threw around a measuring eye. Gaze lingering slightly at Hyunjin before settling on Changbin.

His head whipped back to Woojin on his right when the man spoke, “We’ll tell everything later. Okay?” All he could do was nod, still baffled by the facts he had discovered in a span of a day.

“Chan's here.” the wolves stated in unison. And as in cue, the bell chimed. “We can smell him. Although Chan rarely smells. He has a slight scent when he comes from the antique shop.” Jeongin's question was answered even before it was asked.

All their heads whipped towards the direction of the entrance, it was definitely Chan followed by Minho.

After confirming it was them, Seungmin's eyes fell on Jeongin. The boy’s face was beaming more than ever. Seungmin smiled. “Hey, Woojin.''

The rest of them didn’t notice Changbin moving to Woojin's side. He pulled out a file folder from his backpack, placing it into the table before sliding it to Woojin.

Changbin pulled his seat closer to him, flipping through the folder before speaking. “Can you sing this one verse for me, I can’t figure out the melody that well.” Felix and Jisung stood behind the two, peering over the paper.

“This one?” Changbin nodded, mumbling a short ‘thanks’ to Jisung who lent him the laptop.

As the four of them were busy in their own world. Chan and Minho settled down. The vampire slyly taking the ‘empty’ seat beside Jeongin, they both smiled at each other.

“What’s the delay?” Hyunjin asked with a mouthful of his 3rd slice of cheesecake. Chan glared slightly at Minho before leaning back on his chair. “After dropping off Changbin and Lix at their studio. Minho called, his voice was so panicky, I worried and rushed to him.” Minho stood up, saying he wanted to check out the pastries and drinks. But clearly, he was just trying to avoid being scolded by Chan.

“He dragged me to his busking gig. I was annoyed at first but I let it slide since the shop’s closed for a week,” Jeongin yelped, eyes wide as he looked at Chan. “The shop’s closed?” he couldn’t hide the hint of sadness in his voice. Chan's lip hardened, looking away from the boy’s pouty face.

He took a deep breath, swallowing the lump on his throat.

“Y-yeah, but just for a week.” Chan smiled. He forced himself to look at the boy’s eyes, failing miserably, his eyes settled on the boy’s forehead. “Anyway, I thought it would only be quick like his former busking sessions. But that dumbass took forever.” Hyunjin chuckled, sipping on his drinks as he eyes Jeongin.

Jeongin's attention was caught by the 4 people on his side, he was immersed by Chan's rant but Woojin's voice startled him.

Wide-eyed, mouth agape, he gazed at Woojin. Effortlessly belting the bridge part of the song. Changbin nods his head, muttering multiple ‘OK’ as he writes down notes.

Felix, on the other hand, tilted his head, grabbing a piece of paper from the table. He wasn’t quite satisfied with how the wording sounds. He walked towards Chan's side,

“Hey, mate. Can you run over this part? It sounds awkward.” Chan nodded, gently grabbing the paper from Felix. He focused on reading the lyrics, a bit bothered by the amount of staring the boy beside him was doing. He cleared his throat and beckoned Felix to pull a chair beside him, and he did.

“Jeongin.” the boy’s eyes found the owner of the voice. “Sit beside me.” Seungmin pulled out the seat from his right. He quietly stood up from his current seat. Plopping down beside Seungmin. As soon as Seungmin's hand fell on his left thigh, he felt relaxed, giving the witch a small smile as thanks.

Mostly everyone had their own business. Minho and Hyunjin were pigging out on Seungmin's left side. And the rest were busy helping Changbin with music production. As soon as they finished, all attention was focused on the alpha.

The number of customers dwindled over time, but there were still a few once it hit 10pm.

Ah, right. They were at the center of Seoul. People barely sleep. Most shops are open 24 hours. Woojin's café used to be like that. But as more and more people visit them, his employees had a hard time adjusting to the hectic schedule.

So he decided to be open from 10AM until 3AM, and just to be fair, he hired more part-timers, so that the full-timers can have the night shift off.

Chan peered cautiously over the group of college students 2 tables away from them.

“They’re definitely gonna hear us.”

Seungmin and Jeongin giggled, garnering 7 pairs of eyes. “What?” Chan asked, a bit irritated.

“College students don’t give a damn” Jeongin nodded, crossing his arms as a cheeky smile grew on his face.

The confused 7 pairs of eyes went back and forth from Seungmin to Jeongin, before Minho yelled a loud “WHAT DO YOU MEAN”. Covering his mouth, the rest of them carefully looked back at the student, stunned by their lack of care with those

around them. They weren’t fully rowdy, the boys talked quietly with each other as they buried their faces on thick textbooks, and the girls were busy typing down on their laptops. “That’s what I mean.”

“But for safety precautions,” Seungmin snapped his fingers, Jeongin felt a gust of cold wind for a second. “I put up a spell. Every time someone talks, the words they say are different on the outside.”

After Hyunjin and Felix had their fun with the ‘spell’. Woojin started the meeting. “Okay, first of all, our jobs.” Jeongin listened attentively, Seungmin almost laughed when the boy pulled out his phone, launching the notes app, getting ready to jot down the details.

“I have had this café for 10 years now. The pack used to work here before too.” Woojin pointed at Hyunjin. “And you’re knowledgeable about Hyunjin's modeling career.”

Jeongin nodded, still quite shocked by Hyunjin's career. But well, it did suit the good looking man.

Woojin took a sip of his coffee before nodding at Minho, “When I moved here, it wasn’t that crowded yet. But a few years ago, Felix and I moved in together. And we saw someone dancing in the streets of Hongdae. We had nothing else to do, so we gave it a try. And well, it was fun! We weren’t in it for the money at all. It was quite amazing to perform in front of other people.”

“Do you guys get scouted a lot?” Jeongin questioned, fully aware of how the entertainment industry works in South Korea.

Minho and Felix looked at each other before snorting. “Yeah, but not much.” Chan on the other hand snickered. “Not much? Dude, every time I go to one of your busking sessions, scouts swarm you guys with their numbers. Some even had contracts on hand. And that’s ‘least’? Get the fuck out of here.” Felix hid his reddening face with his hands, while Minho, who was known to be a bit egotistical, chuckled quite proudly. “But yeah, after moving in with the wolves. It’s kinda hard to go back and forth. Still, I will try.”

“Jisung and Changbin are music producers slash composers. They work with big and small companies. Felix, who just joined them after moving into the mansion, now works as a composer also. Their studio is near here.” Woojin said, smiling softly as he patted Changbin's head.

The wolf whined, lightly slapping away Woojin's heavy hand.

After fixing his hair, Changbin turned to Jeongin, giving him an encouraging smile, “You can drop by anytime.” Jisung eagerly nodded his head, agreeing with Changbin.

Jeongin gave them an open mouth smile, adorably clapping his excited hands. “Oh yeah! Jeongin's a great singer too!” the boy ordered Hyunjin to stop while trying to hide his embarrassed face.

He looked up at Seungmin, clearly asking for help. But was betrayed when the witch fueled the fire. “Giggles is correct. Jeongin's amazing.”

“Cool! You definitely should drop by!”

Jisung blurted enthusiastically. “Yeah. You can sing demos for us.” Changbin added. All Jeongin could do was nod his head and pray to the lords for them to move on with the topic.

Thankfully, Woojin saved him.

“And you know well that Chan owns a shop. And Seungmin's your senior in university.'' After the brief, they let him take everything in. Opening up some small talk as Jeongin got comfortable.

“Alright, about the barrier at Jeongin’s house and University,” Chan's face grew serious. Giving his full attention to the alpha.

“Hyunjin and I felt it as soon as we entered the compound. But, we both thought it was a precautionary measure made by Seungmin, and we were wrong.”

Seungmin shifted from his seat before he spoke. “I didn’t put any spell around the campus. You do know, beings like us live amongst humans without their knowledge.” the rest of them nodded, while Jeongin was a bit taken aback by the information. ‘So it wasn’t just them?’

“I did not want to be discovered because they might,” Carefully choosing his words, he paused for a second. Of course, it did not go unnoticed by a very observant vampire. “It might fuel their desire to seek who put the spell.” His eyes momentarily flickered from Woojin to Chan. The only people who knew about him.

“So I was shocked when Woojin and Giggles asked me about the barrier.” Hyunjin frowned and glared at Seungmin, he still was not pleased by the pet name.

“I really don’t know how you guys discovered it, so please tell me you were just messing around.”

Woojin sighed nodding at Hyunjin who was waiting for his approval to speak. “It was not subtle at all.'' The witch whipped his head in Hyunjin's direction, his face evident of confusion.

“Even a newborn wolf can sense it. The rest of you can sense it.” Hyunjin pointed at everyone using his fork, eyes going back to meet Seungmin's furious ones. “So you’re saying I’m weak?”

“I’m saying the one who did it made sure to make it non-existent solely for you.” and it hit him. Seungmin's eyes flickered downwards. Embarrassed by his own outburst, his eyes focused on the floor, only to be taken away by Jeongin who touched his thigh.

Dark sparkly orbs stared right through him, soft words followed by a soft smile calmed him down. “Life becomes easier when you learn to give the apology you never got.''

The boy’s words were spoken in a hushed tone, which was pretty useless because everyone heard it.

Seungmin heaved a sigh. “Sorry, giggles.” Although the pet name was present, Hyunjin could sense the sincerity even behind the smug look Seungmin was giving him.

“And my hunch is that professor.” Jeongin flinched, remembering the terrifying scenario earlier. Seungmin could feel the boy tense on his side, he gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Professor?” Jisung asked. “Jeongin's professor.”

Woojin turns to Seungmin, “You can find her information right?” the witch nodded, giving Jeongin a fleeting smile before retrieving his hand.

He cracked his knuckles, and with a snap of his fingers. A thick, vintage book appeared. Floating in front of him. “Hang on,” the book flipped through the pages itself. “W-wait, they might… see?” Felix’s voice trailed off as he looked around the café. It was only them. “I had Jaehyun close the shop early today. It’s 1AM.”

“Barrier was gone like an hour ago, Lix. You dumdum.”

“Shut up, Changbin.”

Before they could engage in a fight. Woojin ordered them to stop.

“I do know who she is.” Seungmin blurted, eyes still scanning through the flipping pages. “I know everyone in school. She’s Jenny Yoo. The Music Department’s head. She’s very famous amongst her students.” Jeongin, who wanted to contribute, fumbled for his phone. Handing it to the rest to show her picture.

“Wow, she’s hot.” Jisung leered, earning a hard smack on the back of his head from Changbin.

“What? She is!”

Ignoring the wolf's last remarks, Seungmin continued, “She’s only been teaching there for 7 years, but she’s already the head.” With the help of Jeongin, he told them the basic biography of the professor.

The floating book rested on the table with a loud thud. “Found it.'' Once again, his hair turned ghost white, eyes were the shade of violet. “Huh, it looks like that’s the only info she has. Everything we just told you. Somehow, it felt like some of the information was removed. It's all blurry and… burned.” The book closed but remained still on the table.

“You actually told us a lot.” Felix stated. And for the first time, Chan spoke. “So you’re implying that it was Jenny Yoo who created that barrier? With what evidence?” Seungmin and Woojin's eyes met. Unlike the alpha, Seungmin could not hide his wariness. Woojin spoke on behalf of Jeongin. Going through the scene that happened earlier.

“She what?” Jisung's voice was laced with anger. The atmosphere suddenly became suffocating. Jeongin fidgeted on his seat. Feeling sorry for the mess he made. Felix, who was ready to kill, spoke, his voice even getting deeper. “Where is she?”

Woojin tried to calm them down, “Now now. It’s okay now, she didn’t hurt Jeongin. Right, sweetie?” the boy nodded. “I’m okay! It was a bit scary but Seungmin, Woojin, and Hyunjin were there.” a sigh of relief escaped their lungs. “She’s our prime suspect then.”

“She’s our only suspect.” Minho corrected Hyunjin.

“She knows Seungmin’s a witch. So she might be a witch.”

“Figure that out yourself, genius?” Hyunjin glared at Minho. “She might also be the one who put up the barriers at Jeongin's place. Seungmin, are you sure you don’t know her from your past or anything?” Seungmin frowned, shaking his head to answer Felix’s question. They argued for a while, coming up with possibilities of Seungmin being connected to Jenny Yoo.

Woojin then turned to Jeongin.

“Jeongin, did she visit your house?”

Jeongin smiled sadly, gaze lowering as Chan's question hung in the air. He sighed, looking up to them with somber eyes.

“I never had anyone over at my place.” a great pain shot through their hearts. They felt sorry for the boy. The room went still, Seungmin placed a hand on Jeongin’s shoulder, making him look up. The boy was welcomed by smiling faces, “Then we definitely should come over.'' Everyone agreed on Changbin's suggestion. Already planning what they would bring as gifts.

“Ah man, I want to taste your mom’s cooking!”

“You only think about food, Sung.”

“That’s bold to say, coming from you Hyunjin.”

Wide-eyed, Hyunjin retaliated. “What does that even mean?! And why are you laughing? WHY?” In the end, the café was filled with laughter and teasing.

“You guys are a bunch of meanies! I’m gonna get more cake!” the rest roared louder as Hyunjin stomped away towards the counter, not aware of what he just said. “We better apologize before he eats the whole pantry.” one by one they all stood up, heading towards the counter. Jeongin lingered a little, eyes solely focused on his friends.

Their hands naturally clinging to each other, smiles never fading on their lips. Even Seungmin was bright and happy, he had never seen him like that before. The school would probably be like headless chickens running around the field if they saw him in that state.

Slowly, his hand creeps up to his chest. It was beating so fast, in a non-scared way. The thought of having friends was a big thing for him when he was young, but after years and years of trying to make some, he lost the will to do so.

His imagination couldn’t fuel the desire anymore. So, he just let everything go. Seeing his classmates all happy with their own circle didn’t make sense to him anymore, it was like having friends wasn’t such a big deal. That it was far more disappointing and boring than it looks.

Jeongin was suddenly aware of his emotions, tears stained his vision. Lowering his gaze so that no one would see, he hurriedly wiped them, but they just won’t stop escaping his eyes.

He was so happy.

Fuck no, he was ecstatic.

He’s feeling so much at the moment, he can’t think straight. He doesn’t want this moment to end. He doesn’t want to let go of them. Letting out all his pent up sadness, Jeongin sobbed, loud enough for everyone to hear. 8 pairs of feet stood in front of him. Jeongin lifted his head up.

His sobs grew louder as he was pulled into a big, warm hug.

“It’s okay. We’re here now.” with just those words, he let loose of everything. Nuzzling his face to whoever’s chest it was.

“Idiot Hyunjin, why are you crying?”

“You’re crying too, Felix.”

“W-what? That’s not me. Jisung is the one who’s ugly sobbing.”

“Hey! I got something in my eye okay?”

“Mi… Minho is definitely not crying.”

“Please stop referring to yourself in 3rd person.”

“Changbin, are you crying?”

“Shut up, Woojin! You’re tearing up too, even Seungmin's crying---oh wait, he’s not.”

As they broke up, bickering. Chan's hand found Jeongin’s. Looking up to the owner of the hand, he flushed when his eyes found him. They exchanged silent smiles, already knowing each other’s words.

“Let’s take a polaroid!”

You could say it was fate. But there are too many idiots in their group to fully agree with that.

“Minho, you're stepping on my foot!"

If only he could hold on to this moment for a non-existent forever.

“Okay! Everyone ready? Say ‘dumbass’ in 1, 2, 3…” Jeongin smiled, forever does exist when you believe. And he does… he really does.

“DUMBASS!"

32 notes · View notes

runningonmarvel · 6 years ago

Text

be my valentine ch. 1

Happy Valentine’s Day!!! @you-get-to-exhale-now-cyrus For your valentine’s day gift I have written two chapters of a multi-chapter Valentine’s Day-centric fic (and I will of course be finishing and posting the rest of the chapters in due time, but, these two chapters are pretty long so I figured it works). Anyways, I hope you like it and happy Valentine’s day!!

A/N: takes place the two weeks before Valentine’s Day in their junior year. wonah. bandi. tyrus. a few curses. unedited but enjoy!!

Chapter 1: Put Your Hand in Mine

You know that I want to be with you all the time.

Jonah snaps the headphones over his ears and half closes his eyes, back against the bench. It’s a romantic song, too peppy for his current mood, but he can’t stop listening to it. He taps one foot against on the tiled floor while Grant students shove by each other.

Oh darling, darling, baby you're so very fine

You know that I won't stop until I make you mine

He’s so sick of love songs. Andi loves them: Taylor Swift and Meghan Trainor and Beyonce. So maybe there’s a reason behind his newfound annoyance with sappiness on the radio. But this one keeps sticking in his head. Jonah imagines reaching out his hand and taking someone else’s. And for the first time in a very, very long time, the person holding his hand in his imagination isn’t Andi. And it’s not Amber, or Natalie, or anyone else.

As half of Grant high school shoves by him, Jonah pushes the headphones down around his neck. He can hear his heart pounding way-too-loudly in his chest, and there’s a continuous beat and song inside his head.

Until I make you mine

And all he can think is: just in time for Valentine’s Day.

————

“Driscoll, catch!” Andi ducks out of the way just in time for Buffy to catch the miscellaneous basketball team member’s thrown shoe. She stares at it in confusion, but Buffy just shoves it into her backpack, gives a quick wave of thanks to the girl sprawled out on the bench, and turns back to Andi.

“Eleanor took my shoe on accident,” she explains, but Buffy’s eyes have already moved on from this conversation. They drift upwards to the large pink banner strung across Grant’s entrance, which is currently being pinned up and decorated with paper heart chains. Andi doesn’t stop to consider how an extra shoe can be taken accidentally and instead gapes up at the poster.

“Since when do we have a Valetine’s Day Dance?” Andi asks.

As if summoned by the deity of high school cheesiness, Student Council president Kip Warren steps into their path. “Since you juniors started sucking at raising money for our prom. We’re having a fundraiser dance—you buy candygrams and roses for people for three times the prices we bought them for. And we’re using that money to pay for a real prom, not one which you idiots scheduled in someone’s garage.” Kip storms away, and a lone senior—one of Amber’s friends—starts applauding.

“He’s way too salty. I heard that our student council planned a good prom but he’s just picky and annoying. Ugh,” Buffy says, glaring after him.

“And they’re probably spending more money on this dance then they’ll make from a few candygrams, honestly.” Andi bends over to grab a cardboard heart, which she reattaches to the wall.

“Cyrus is going to have a field day, though,” Buffy says. She looks curiously over at Andi. “Do you think you’ll go?”

Andi feels something rush through her: undeserved indignation, maybe, accompanied by an annoying blush she wishes would go away. “I mean… are you?”

“I would suggest the Good Hair Crew go, but you already know Cyrus is dedicating this night to his boy.” Buffy shrugs. “We could go together? Single and unattached?”

If Andi were eating cereal right now, she would choke. She hasn’t been to any date-requiring function since her year-long disaster of a breakup with Jonah. And now Buffy Driscoll had the audacity to stand in front of hear with her cheeks blushed dark and her eyelashes clipping her cheeks and ask her to the dance.

“I mean—sure! Maybe Amber could go with us too?”

“You don’t think Amber is going to ask Iris? I think she’ll finally get the nerve to do it. I should probably make a bet on it,” Buffy considers, digging for her wallet and frowning slightly.

“Maybe we should ask boys?” Andi counters, suddenly. Buffy glances up at her, and the look in her eyes could kill.

“Maybe I’ll ask Natalie. She’s cute.”

Andi can’t even respond to that. So she does what she learned best from her mother; she changes the subject.

“So, Buffy. What’d you think of the movie you and Cyrus saw?” Andi tilts her head, meeting Buffy’s eyes again. She thinks of the cheesy block letters glued to the Valentine’s Day Banner: Will you be our Valentine? February 14th at 7. Two weeks away.

Buffy knows this game, but Andi watches her play along. “Best Summer of My Life 2? It was alright. Not as good as the first one. The love story kind of sucked—classic girl meets bad boy trope.”

“Wish I could have seen it,” Andi says, adjusting the straps on her backpack.

“Yeah, well. How was Iris’s?”

Andi has a momentary flashback to Amber and Iris chucking Skyzone dodgeballs at her while shrieking filled the general vicinity. Somehow, Iris had been convinced to have a birthday at a trampoline place, and somehow, Amber had been coerced into going along with it.

“Horrifying.”

Buffy laughs uncomfortably, and Andi can hear the nonexistent joke fall flat. How long has it been like this? How long has the Good Hair Crew been out of sync, and the tension between Buffy and Andi unbreakable?

Almost a year. Too long.

“Well, I’ve got Lit. See you later?” Buffy doesn’t bother waiting around for an answer to the question. She strides away, and it’s all Andi can do to avoid staring directly at the back of her head as she leaves.

“Ask Natalie,” Andi scoffs to herself, kicking at a spot on the ground. Cyrus would call her pettiness levels off the chart, but Andi doesn’t have any other way to react to Buffy. It’s not just the ever-rotating list of new girls; it’s Buffy’s obvious annoyance with Amber, it’s Buffy’s piercing eyes and sharp, true smile she hasn’t worn in so long. It’s Buffy’s acceptance of whatever is between them, while Andi flounders, trying to pretend she’s still in the waters of freshman year, when Jonah was her only problem.

When did the thoughts in her head get so complicated? Don’t answer that, she tells herself, because she already knows the answer. Andi lifts her phone from her pocket and starts absentmindedly scrolling through her old photos. There’s Cyrus and TJ sharing a milkshake with Buffy’s arms around them. There’s Amber trying on a faded leather jacket and Andi wearing a worn suit at the Thrift Store. Andi and her mom attempting gardening while Bowie laughed in their general direction. Buffy, Cyrus, and Andi holding on for dear life while ice skating two winters ago. Further back, there’s Jonah kissing Andi on the cheek, and Marty with his arm around Buffy and Andi with her arm around Jonah on some ridiculous double date. There’s a couple miscellaneous photos of Cyrus in his costume from the musical. And then, from about a year ago—

Andi’s cheeks color red. Red, like the sauce on Bex’s homemade pizza she recently learned to cook. Red, like the color of the Space Otters’ failed sophomore year uniforms. And she shuts her phone.

This is why it’s so hard to talk to Buffy. More than the color of her eyes or the defiance in her words, it’s the specific memory every time Buffy smiles at her. It’s the memory that’s controlling her.

Andi glances back at the Valentine’s Day banner, and sticks her tongue out just for good measure. She won’t let a stupid dance run by stupid Kip Warren control her too.

Then, from behind, a hand grabs her by the shoulder and starts dragging her backwards. Andi yelps, already running through the list of eight things she learned in self-defense class with Bex this summer. Quote: if you’re not a strong athlete your best hope is to hit where it hurts. Anywhere.” Andi is about ready to swing when the arm drags her into a closet and reveals the body attached to it.

“Cyrus?”

“Sorry,” he pants, as if the physical effort to kidnap her from the hallway was exhausting. “Top secret… information.”

“Oh?” Andi says, suddenly interesting. “Another cult?”

“Heck no,” Cyrus says. “I’ve got a plan for Valentine’s Day, for TJ. But I wanted to run it by you and Buffy first. And probably Jonah too.”

Andi starts to smile, leaning back against the shelves on the wall. “Spill.”

“Well… since his big game is on Valentine’s Day…” Cyrus leads in, unable to contain his grin.

“Go on.”

“I was thinking… we could all go… and hold up signs—“

“Signs for TJ! Valentine’s Day signs?!” Andi puts a hand over her mouth. “Cyrus, that’s adorable. No, it’s perfect!”

“Yeah, and I’d ask him to the dance, and we’d go afterwards, and hopefully he won his big game, and then the dance would be super romantic, and he could take the signs home and hang them up on the walls of his room, and we’d take polaroids before the dance in our suits, and you guys would be there—“ “Thought about it much?” Andi cuts in, but her lips curl upwards with excitement. The mention of the dance is the only sour bit—Andi doesn’t need that subtle reminder that she’ll never know how to not be awkward with Buffy about it. She’ll never know how to articulate what she wants, so she’ll be stuck watching TJ and Cyrus and maybe Buffy and Natalie or some other random girl get their perfect Valentine’s Days.

“Well, maybe a little. Anyways, do you like?”

Andi breaks out of her thoughts. “I don’t like, I love. When do we make the signs?”

“This weekend maybe? To be ready by that Friday?”

“You got it, Cyrus. Text Buffy, she’ll be thrilled.”

Cyrus narrows his eyes. “She will not. I’m betting she doesn’t want to help with the signs, so it might just be you and me.”

“Aw, Buffy’ll help if you ask her.” TJ and Buffy don’t fight anymore, but it suffices to say that they’re not exactly best friends.

“I’m already asking her to hold up one of the signs. And especially if she ends up with a crucial word—for example, Valentine—I can’t risk losing her support. I’ll just ask her about that and see how it goes.”

Andi smiles. “You and TJ have been dating for a year now, Cyrus.” Strange. A lot happened a year ago. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to hold up a sign. She just might not cheer for him.”

Cyrus nods, laughing a little. He types out a text on his phone to Buffy, sends it, then looks back up at Andi, looking a little panicked. “Should I tell Jonah? I need him to hold up the sign that says TJ. I don’t think he’s busy that weekend, the Otters don’t have a game—“ “Text him,” Andi reassures Cyrus. He nods and types out the text while still looking up at her.

“I need Buffy, Jonah, you, and Amber. I’ll text Amber and Jonah tonight.”

“You’re asking TJ’s sister to help with his Valentine’s Day ask?” Cyrus and Amber have been friends since middle school, and it’s still hard for Andi to wrap her head around sometimes that Cyrus is dating the brother of one of Andi’s closest friends and is additionally friends with her. It’s the type of friendship that thrives off drama, and Andi has a feeling that even if Cyrus and TJ break up (which it seems like they never will), Amber and Cyrus will be close until the ends of the earth.

“Of course. Who else was I supposed to ask? Walker?” Cyrus asks, giving Andi a look. It’s a group-acknowledged truth that Andi drove Walker from the group, even if Buffy was the last one who dated him. Walker hasn’t hung out with them for a year and a half now, except maybe a few times with Jonah. Andi misses him and his lovely creativity, but she doesn’t miss the drama he brought; Buffy was happier with Marty than with him, but then she was happier by herself than with Marty. Andi blinks slowly, realizing how this topic has made its way back to her again.

“Amber will be fine,” Andi assures, her mind not really on Cyrus or TJ. “You think she’ll finally get the guts to ask out Iris?”

Cyrus shrugs. “I hope so. Who are you going with, anyways? Not Jonah—“

“No.”

A pause.

“Jonah is my friend, yes. But I’m done being romantic with him.” Andi stops, because the words sound harsh, even if they are true. “Buffy and I are just gonna go together, like old times.”

Cyrus smiles a half smile, because old times would include him too. And all three of them know that they’ve moved on from old times. Maybe Andi the most. And yet.

“I’m gonna go find TJ now. Keep the plan under wraps, ‘kay? Friday afternoon we can pick out supplies?” “Glitter glue!” Andi says, and she can’t stop it from coming out like a squeal. “Count me in.”

Cyrus steps out, the brightness of his phone lighting up the dim closet, and leaves Andi alone, still against the wall.

Alone.

In the closet.

Andi nearly throws her phone across the room.

————

There are three parks in downtown Shadyside: the tiny one off the elementary school, the Valley Park where legend says a swamp monster lives, and Agley Park. Agley is where coffee shop people go to be in nature; it’s also, incidentally, Walker’s favorite place in town. The Saturday morning is crisp, with light winter fog in the air, and Agley looks like the rolling fields and forests of some picturesque Scottish village. The only piece of color barring the serenity is the hunk of metal in the middle of one of the squares; that hunk of metal, though, is what has drawn Walker downtown this early on a Saturday.

“It’s kind of… underwhelming?”

Walker ignores the voice to his right and keeps reading the printed plaque beneath the statue. Installed four weeks ago, reads the monotone font, the Rest of Infinity display serves as a reminder to all viewers of the eternity of space and its never-ending mystery. The 20-foot tall sculpture contains seventeen rotating pieces and thousands of tiny gears. The reflective paints were mixed by the artist herself, and the glass portions were blown by her as well. Walker is aching to reach for a sketchbook and draw it, but he promised himself that this time he would just look. So he does.

After a while, the same voice cuts in. “So maybe I’m starting to see why Cyrus can be such a science nerd sometimes…”

Walker looks over his shoulder at Amber Kippen, who is wearing a faux leather skirt and carrying a latte. They were in the same studio class—much to Walker’s chagrin at first, who had found Amber’s eclectic, relaxed approach to art to be flighty. But when Amber’s realism came out looking like a photographic negative, and when her paints were soft pastels that fit perfectly into her nature theme, then Walker decided to give up on judging before he knew things.

And now, lo and behold, Walker and Amber were visiting an art exhibition outside of school. Together. For fun.

“I really like the colors on the back few layers,” Walker says finally, and his voice sounds gravelly from lack of use. “And the way the black pieces spiral to infinity first, with the smaller pieces following behind.”

Amber nods, and Walker notes that she’s not really listening. “Do yo know who would love this?”

“Yeah?” Walker does know, because there’s only ever one right answer. But he holds off.

“Iris.”

Amber’s eyes get dreamy when she’s talking about Iris, her crush of many a year. Walker recognizes the look because it’s the look he used to see on Andi’s face when talking about Jonah. Buffy’s face when talking about Marty. The faces of people in love with someone else, not him.

“I’m sure she would, Her photography project is so cool, maybe she could take pictures of the statue—“

“I think I need to ask her to the dance,” Amber says suddenly. “It’s now or never, right? Senior year will be too late. It’s got to be now.” “What dance?”

Amber looks shocked, offended, horrified, embarrassed—everything on the list—that Walker is unaware of said dance. “Uh, Grant’s Valentine’s Day Dance. On account of the fact that Kip Warren and the dance team girls want prom to not be in someone’s basement this year. But Iris!”

Walker considers this, as they start to walk away from the statue and back toward Amber’s car. He listens to Amber’s list of reasons: “We texted all last night, and she ended with a heart, not me. We’ve held hands twice and been to four movies alone together. Her eyes are the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen, and her bangs are so nice and her smile…”

In his head, Walker wants to make a comparison to something he’s feeling for another person. But he won’t let himself. Pretty eyes…hanging out alone together. His breath is catching, and Amber’s voice fades a little in the background. And that dance…

“Walker? Walker!” Startled out of a daydream, Walker feels Amber’s arm in front of his chest and suddenly sees the curb drop away in front of him. “Absent-minded much?”

“Call it an artist’s trait,” Walker says dizzily. He can’t stop thinking about the crush—shit, a crush—and it’s like the world is falling to pieces. It can’t be real, not over one movie and an air hockey game and a couple walks home from school. Maybe if he doesn’t think it, then it won’t be real.

“Walker.” Amber’s statement pulls him completely back to the surface, where he faces Amber’s scrutinizing gaze. “Are you going to ask anyone to the dance?”

Oh no. Walker opens his mouth to say something, and then doesn’t. They keep walking, but Amber’s eyes are staring him down with all the intensity she used to have as Grant’s resident mean girl. It’s the look she gets when she sees something she wants—or wants to know—and will do anything to get it.

“Um.”

“Um? Don’t give me that, Walker Brodsky. I spill my guts to you about Iris regularly. Now it’s your turn: who’s your crush?”

Walker blushes, reaching above his head to tug on a tree branch. “Amber, I—“

There’s a small voice in Walker’s head, and it’s trying to overcome the wave of anxiety he has about this situation. The voice is saying: Amber will understand.

Amber, who came out as lesbian when she was a freshman in high school. Amber, who goes to the LGBT alliance and activism meetings on a regular basis and cites it as her most important extracurricular, even more than dance or studio. Amber, who cries while listening to Heaven by Troye Sivan. Amber, who is staring at him right now with her Annabeth Chase-esque gray eyes and inquisitorial eyebrow raise. Amber, who has dated—

“Jonah.”

Amber doesn’t miss a beat, but Walker is already dizzy from the weight of the word.

“Jonah! Of all the people at school, you chose Mr. Heartbreak himself?”

“Um.”

Jonah is Mr. Heartbreak, isn’t he? Walker thinks of Andi, and the disaster that was the final six months of her and Jonah’s relationship. Jonah, who Andi always like more than him. Jonah Beck, who Walker first met at the art gallery, and then at the color factory, and then at canoeing. A couple months ago Walker ran into Jonah outside the skate shop, and they ended up making plans to see a movie in town they both wanted to see. Then, Walker started seeing Jonah more at school, and they were partners on a Bio assignment. The events keep spilling over themselves in his mind, and Walker feels two things: one, feelings. A crush. Like he had on Andi. The second thing is what has been washing over him for months and what kept him from telling Amber in the first place: he’s scared.

“Yeah,” Walker says, just to affirm it. “I like Jonah.” And there it is, again, the feeling in his chest of relief and anxiety all at once.

Amber nods as the rolling park ends and she clicks her key fob in the general direction of her station wagon. “Okay. Well, considering I’ve dated him, I’m probably authorized to give some advice—“

“No, Amber. He’s not even into guys; there’s no use thinking about it.” Walker slides into the passenger seat and takes out his phone from the glove box to start typing out notes about the statue.

“Walker, you never know. I mean, he’s never said that he does like boys, but he’s never said that he doesn’t—“

“That’s useless,” Walker says, keeping his eyes trained on his phone. “He’s straight, whatever. Let’s go home.” “Don’t play this card. You’re not the first person to fall for someone who you think is straight, and you won’t be the last, not by a long shot. Guess what? Jonah hasn’t said that he’s straight. So you have a chance. Don’t waste it.” Amber’s voice gets quiet at the end, as the grips the wheel of the still-parked car. Walker thinks of Iris, and he sees the pain of pining in Amber’s eyes.

“Hey,” he says softly. “You can’t give up either.”

She shakes her head. “Yeah, whatever.” She sounds just like Walker did moments ago, but Walker doesn’t push.

“So…do you still want to give me some advice on Jonah Beck?”

Amber starts to laugh, and she reaches across to give him a shove. “Of course, Walker Brodsky. Of course.”

————

“Heads up!”

Buffy runs in anyway and snags the rebound away from TJ. She brings the ball back to the top of the key, eyebrows poised in challenge, and checks the ball to him. Then she pounds it into the floor, slipping beside TJ to get in an easy layup.

“That’s 18 to 17,” Buffy pants as TJ sets it back up.

“Careful, Driscoll, don’t get too confident,” TJ warns, crossing the ball to take a shot from just inside the three-point line. The ball circles the rim, achingly close to the net, but rolls back out and sinks to the court.

“Missed me, missed me, now you got to—“ TJ interrupts Buffy’s taunt with a shove, and Buffy laughs as she grabs the ball and shoves it back into his hands.

“I will not,” TJ says, “allow you to complete that sentence.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Buffy laughs. “Don’t worry, I have no interest.”

“Good,” TJ asserts, and his next shot is nothing but net.

Three points later and Buffy has won the game, but they don’t keep score, shockingly. One-on-one has become a daily occurrence after their respective practices, because TJ has to wait for rehearsal to end to drive Cyrus home anyways. Cyrus tried to convince him that he could just go home on the late bus, but TJ has insisted.

“Ready for next Friday?” Buffy asks, once they’re done playing and are just dribbling around.

“I hope,” TJ says, chucking the ball up with zero regard. Buffy catches it and looks over at him.

“You better be ready for Valentine’s Day. I know Cyrus is excited.”

TJ does a double take, and Buffy laughs like she’s caught him unaware. “Well, yeah I’m ready for Valentine’s Day. Or I will be. But the game—“ “Screw the game,” Buffy says, and drives the basketball into the ground. “I mean—sorry. Screw my game, not yours.”

“What’s up? How’s the team doing?” TJ holds his hands out, and she throws it at him. He’s always tried to be somewhat lenient towards Buffy in her captaining, because he knows it must be hard carrying the girls basketball program on her shoulders. When they came to Grant, Buffy had to leave behind her newly-founded middle school team for a program that’s only improvement on Jefferson’s was the fact that it was school-mandated. The past few years Buffy has been constantly trying to mend a rivalry with Kira while simultaneously attempting to take the team to the next level.

“We’re doing alright. But we’ll be playing teams in the region tournament that have AAU girls and are state-ranked. I don’t want to get eliminated in the first round, but that looks like what we’ll be getting. And I’m trying to deal with Kira, but I really can’t—“ Buffy stops.

TJ shakes his head. “You can’t be so hard on yourself, Buffy. Regionals is a hard tournament, and it’s okay if you guys—“

“No! It’s not,” Buffy shouts, and her eyes flash. TJ steps back, because this is starting to feel too much like middle school. “I have to do well, and you don’t get to talk to me like that. Why don’t you talk to me like you would a teammate—“ Buffy stops.

TJ knows some people think Buffy can be harsh, but she’s harder on herself than she is on anyone else. The thing about being friends with her is never knowing exactly how to handle it. If Cyrus were here, he would know, but Cyrus is onstage pretending to be Lysander from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“If you were my teammate, I would tell you to stop worrying and play the game. It goes how it goes. And I’d tell you to get along with Kira. You have to,” TJ says.

“Yeah,” Buffy breathes. “Sorry. Now pass me the ball.”

TJ obliges, and she dribbles in for a layup. He doesn’t know if he handled it right; but, he did something. Which is better than nothing. Now back to the matter at hand.

“So, Driscoll,” he calls. “What else has Cyrus said about Valentine’s Day?”

“That’s not for me to tell,” Buffy shrugs, starting to smile. “But I hope you’re taking him to the dance.”

“Uh, what kind of boyfriend do you think I am? Of course we’re going.”

“Alright, good,” Buffy says, taking a jump shot.

“And,” TJ says, excitedly, “It’ll actually be fun. We’ve got the games, which everyone is coming to, and then the dance in the gym. Cyrus is coming over after, and we’re going to bake cookies and watch a movie—“ “Okayyy, I do not need to hear about your big date,” Buffy cuts in. TJ bites the insides of his cheeks so she won’t blush, because he had been planning a sort of date with Cyrus. But Buffy doesn’t need to know that. “But you’re right, it’ll be sweet. If your idea of romance is dancing in a sweaty gym in the dark.” TJ, who had been jogging back from the ball rack where he put away the basketball, stops to put his hands on his hips. “While you may be a cynical human being, Cyrus is a romantic—“

“So are you, TJ Kippen, don’t even try.”

“I refuse to acknowledge that statement. Buffy, you must come to the dance. It’s a part of the high school experience: the big game and then the sweaty prom.”

“Sweaty prom.”

“Sweaty prom!” TJ yells and does a spin around the gym. It’s exhilarating, he thinks, to have caring friends and a team he love to be on and a boyfriend who likes him back and has for over a year. And speaking of said boyfriend—

Cyrus enters the gym, and they both hear his hard-soled theater shoes from across the room.

“Cyrus!” Buffy shouts, and runs over to him. TJ follows. “Save me from TJ, he’s trying to force me to go to… wait for it… the dance!”

Cyrus snorts, and swings his drawstring bag over his shoulder. “TJ, are these accusations trustworthy?”

“Very,” TJ says, pulling in Cyrus under his arm.

“In that case, I support them. Buffy, we need you to go the dance! Who else will ridicule their music choices and teach Gus how to do the cha cha slide?” “First of all, the instructions are in the song. Second of all—“ Buffy’s phone dings from inside her pocket, and she stops immediately to check it. TJ raises his eyebrows at her as she frowns at the tiny screen, then stops frowning and smiles a tiny bit. TJ runs through in his mind who it could’ve been—not Marty, who Buffy parted with freshman year. He shrugs it off—a mystery for another time.

“Got to go,” Buffy says, and rushes off to the locker room.

“Buffy,” Cyrus calls, then shakes his head. “She’s been weird lately. I’m not sure what’s up.”

TJ nods absentmindedly, then turns to Cyrus. “How was rehearsal?”

Cyrus’s eyes go wide. “Some freshman dropped a set piece on Amber and she broke her pinky!”

“WHAT.” TJ feels his voice get quiet.

“Yeah, it’s okay though, it’ll be healed in two weeks. Show isn’t for another month. She said it feels fine.” “Fucking—sorry, fricking—freshman. Idiots, all of them,” TJ says, pulling Cyrus by the hand over to the bleachers so he can grab his bag.

“Can’t argue with that,” Cyrus shrugs, and they start to head to TJ’s car. “Oh, and Amber told me to tell you she’s staying out late tonight, so don’t wait up for her.”

“She’s going out with a broken pinky?”

“She’s got a tiny cast; she’ll be alright.” TJ squints, unconvinced. “Anyways, how was your practice?”

TJ pulls Cyrus against his side. “The usual, you know. You’re bringing the whole gang out to the games on the 14th, right?”

He nods and wraps his arm around TJ’s waist. “I can’t wait.” Then he does that Cyrus-smile: with his lips upturned to his cheeks, and his eyes intense. “It’s Valentine’s Day too, you know,” he says sweetly.

“Oh, trust me,” TJ says. He puts both his arms on Cyrus’s shoulders and pulls him into a kiss. “I know.” Cyrus blushes when he pulls away, and TJ spins him towards the car.

“Movie tonight?” Cyrus asks. TJ bites his lip, then shakes his head.

“I wish. I’ve got precalc homework which is going to take me approximately four hours,” TJ says, slipping into the drivers’ seat. “Ms. Walters is evil, I swear.”

“I’ll be sending good luck in your direction,” Cyrus says as he buckles his seatbelt. TJ drives to Cyrus’s house, and on the way they listen to Billie Eilish and discuss the day’s events, their feelings towards pineapples, and Degrassi, their show. By the time TJ pulls into Cyrus’s driveway, it’s gotten dark and Cyrus’s eyelids are slipping closed. TJ smiles over at him and bops his nose with his index finger. Cyrus blinks awake, focuses on the house, and smiles a sleepy smile. Struck, as he is daily, by how cute Cyrus is, TJ leans across the seat and kisses him. Cyrus takes TJ’s hand, squeezes it, and tumbles out the door with his bags.

“See you tomorrow, underdog!” Cyrus turns to wave back at him, and TJ can still see the soft smile on his face.

As he drives away, TJ stops at the intersection that breaks off back to the Kippen house, and he takes a left instead of a right. He thinks about Cyrus’s excitement over Valentine’s Day and the dance as he pulls into the Target parking lot. Cyrus Goodman, he thinks, his own smile filling his features, you deserve the world.

#andi mack #am gift exchange #friendom gift exchange #valentines exchange #wonah #bandi #tyrus #writing #fanfic

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not-a-perfect-metaphor · 7 years ago

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Wincest HCs, s.1,e.3

And one day leading up to the start of the episode.

This is ongoing and references past posts, so if you feel like it and have nothing better to do, you can find those and read them! The format is more a list of things and less a story, but I guess it’s also kind of a story.

Dean’s obsession with Sam is expanding alarmingly, and it frightens him, but he keeps it...almost...entirely to himself. Sam hasn’t shown any outward signs of being as “attached” (in a romantic, sexual way) as he was before leaving for Stanford, and Dean decides that’s a good thing, as much as he secretly hates it.

Sam jacks off to the thought of Dean in the motel bathroom and starts to feel sullen and hopeless again. His stomach has started to hurt every time they’re close, and he begins to veer again into doubt about whether or not he can keep this up.

At a cafe, Dean openly flirts with the waitress and feels guilty about the fact that he’s doing it to gage Sam’s reaction. Sam is stony-faced and doesn’t respond one way or the other, so Dean says, “you know, we are allowed to have fun...that’s fun.” Sam fixes him with a silent, penetrating stare that causes Dean to shift uncomfortably and avert his eyes.

They discuss a potential new case.

Sam mentally fumes about Dean flirting, despite his conclusion that he could deal with it. It’s just bad timing...

He confronts Dean about the trail for Dad getting colder by the day, and Dean feels angrier about it than he should, not wanting to admit the fact that he’s more hurt than angry...

He doesn’t want Sam to leave, and he doesn’t want Sam to WANT to leave, and he ends up snapping and telling Sam that he’s sick of his attitude.

They exchange a long look in the wake of it, and Sam recognizes something...the same agitated frustration he’s so familiar with because he himself has lived it all these years.

He softens, his stomach fluttering, simply saying, “okay” and continuing to watch Dean unblinkingly.

Dean feels like he can’t breathe and looks away, pretending to watch the waitress.

Sam sees through it, and his mouth twitches into an almost smile. He wonders what’s going on inside Dean’s head and plays around with the idea of asking him.

The drive to Lake Manitoc:

Dean talks about the waitress again, realizing as he’s doing it that it’s suspicious and too-much at that point to be believable. He ends up trailing off mid-sentence.

Sam is in the passenger seat and catches Dean glancing over at him. He blushes and hides his face behind his hair, wondering if he’s reading into all of it.

He takes a long time planning out a question that he’s scared to ask, not wanting to lose the brother-dynamic that they have again, even though it’s far from all he wants.

He also thinks about the fact that they’ve never once talked about what happened between them. They’ve never said it out loud, either of them. They’ve never even talked about the feelings shared between them, even though it became obvious more than seven years ago.

It’s not the first time he’s thought about it, and every time he does, it both blows him away and also somehow doesn’t seem surprising in the slightest.

He finally decides to do something he almost can’t believe he’s going to do and asks Dean, very quietly, if he ever thinks about the conversation they had before he left.

Dean’s heart is racing, and he doesn’t look over at Sam. He knows he needs to respond, but he doesn’t know what to say. He finally blurts out that he does, immediately regretting it, and doesn’t offer any additional details. He feels exposed and uncomfortable and doesn’t speak for the rest of the drive.

Dean doesn’t outright flirt with Andrea but tries to make a point of at least seeming interested.

He trots next to her as they walk to the hotel, making awkward small talk about kids, and Sam smiles privately, wishing Dean could see how transparent he’s being.

“Kids are the best?” he asks sarcastically but not angrily once Andrea leaves, “name three kids that you even know.”

Dean flounders, not even coming up with one.

At the playground, Dean heads over to chat with Lucas, and Andrea rolls her eyes at Sam, saying, “tell your friend this whole Jerry Maguire thing’s not going to work on me.”

Sam smiles again, his eyes briefly following Dean and his chest warming noticeably, finally responding with a vague, “I, uh, don’t think that’s what this is really about.”

Dean feels a connection with Lucas over a shared dysfunctional family and bonds with him.

In the car, as they pull back into the hotel parking lot, Sam blurts out that they should talk about it, not explaining the ‘what,’ but Dean knows and doesn’t respond.

He finally says in an almost whisper that it was all his fault, starting to add something else but trailing off.

Sam is amazed that Dean is saying anything at all and reaches for his shoulder instinctively, responding with, “how can you think that?”

He (Sam) starts to cry a little, hating that he’s crying, and then adds the closest-to-saying-it-outright thing by far that he’s ever said.

“I’ve loved you like that for my entire life.”

Dean turns to stare at him, feeling like he’s having an emotional break-down, but Sam continues before he can reply.

“Just…think about it. Please. I want to…talk. About…it. Please. I’ll, uh, I’ll go check out some…you stay here. I’ll be back.”

Alone in the hotel room, Dean cries too, again wondering what’s wrong with him, and he ends up lying on the bed and fantasizing heavily about Sam, ultimately jacking off to it and then taking a long time to regain his composure.

Sam rushes back into the room with news of another drowning, and everything else is immediately on the back-burner.

Sam silently watches Dean talking to Lucas about needing to be brave, about understanding how hard it can feel, and is flooded with a rush of emotion for his brother, a flurry of powerful love.

While searching for the church, Sam mentions that Dean has never told him that before, about mom, about feeling like he had to stay strong after her death, feeling like he had to be the brave one, the responsible one, and Dean shrugs it off, deflecting with, “we’re not gonna have to hug now, are we?”

But he smiles at Sam, and Sam smiles back.

The hunt consumes their full focus while they race against time to solve the mystery of the drownings, about what’s behind them, and neither brother lets himself think about what was said earlier in the car.

Andrea and Lucas bring them homemade sandwiches for the road after they’ve saved Lucas and lost Bill Carlton to his sacrifice for his grandson.

Dean teaches the newly-talking Lucas to say “Zeppelin rules,” and Sam smiles fondly.

Andrea kisses Dean on the lips as they’re getting ready to leave, and Dean doesn’t respond, backing toward the car and awkwardly saying, “Sam! Move your ass,” but Sam thinks it’s funny and just laughs as he climbs into the passenger seat.

He likes Andrea. She’s sweet…and soon to be in their rear-view which helps squash any potential jealousy.

Both brothers know that things have changed between them, that something has shifted.

The conversation Sam brought up earlier is coming, and they both understand now that it’s inevitable, but for a long stretch of highway, they simply enjoy each other’s company silently, listening to music, sneaking glances at each other, and feeling…for the moment…like maybe everything might, somehow and some way…be alright, after all.

#wincest #supernatural #sam and dean #dean and sam #dead in the water #recap #sam/dean #dean/sam #headcanon #fanfic #fan fic

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secretlystephaniebrown · 7 years ago

Text

The Sacrifice Part III: Revelations

One day I will be able to correctly outline so that I don't have to add an extra chapter at the end. This is not that time.

Thanks to everyone who stuck through the last chapter; we're back to a lot... nicer stuff now, I promise.

Anyways, TUCKER POINT OF VIEW TIME! What have the Reds and Blues been up to? Let's find out!

Warnings for: Off-screen torture, past character death, discussions thereof, and some mild horror.

Also on Ao3

The weeks after Sam Locus leaves are… difficult. Tucker’s not afraid to admit that.

They’re all jumpy, angry, and hurt. There’s… a lot to handle. There’s an absence where he should be and the complicated, twisted, hurt feelings that have been left in his wake.

And the feeling of violation, because they had let him into their home, they had trusted him, even after everything he’d done. They’d given him a place, and how had he repaid them?

He’d stolen Tucker’s sword out from under his pillow. And then he’d left.

They’re trying to pretend things are normal, but it’s… not quite right. They all fight more—Sarge has declared war on the Blues at least five times.

And to make matters worse, Grif and Caboose refuse to believe it.

Even with all the evidence, even with the missing pictures, the cleaned out room, the deleted messages, even with Tucker’s sword, they both keep insisting Locus wouldn’t have done that. Grif has even gone so far as to suggest they go after him.

Whatever. Tucker doesn’t care. He’s retired; it’s not like he really needs the sword.

Even though he feels off balance without it.

Months pass. Caboose stops looking for Locus in the showers and under the beds. They don’t hear anything, and they all kind of just… accept that the next time they hear from Locus, it’s gonna be because Kimball’s finally gotten her hands on him and put him on trial. Or they just won’t hear from him ever again.

It’s a nice, normal morning. Grif and Simmons are watching Grifball on the sofa, bickering about something that Tucker doesn’t care about. Wash and Sarge are arguing about the crossword puzzle, and Carolina is helping Tucker in the kitchen. Donut is braiding Caboose’s hair, while Lopez comments on his progress in Spanish, and honestly Tucker isn’t sure where Doc is—he thinks he remembers the guy saying something about frying tomatoes up for breakfast, so he might be in the garden.

And that’s when the TV fizzles and lets out a loud, horrible screech, like nails against a chalkboard. Tucker drops the spatula, clapping his hands over his ears. “What the fuck?”

The image of the players on the Grifball field is gone completely, replaced by an ominous looking black screen, with a single green horizontal line through it.

“What the Samhill is going on—”

Then it starts to speak.

“You could end this, you know.” The voice is artificial, strange, filtered. Absurdly, Tucker is reminded of the way that Locus’ voice sounds when speaking through the filter of his helmet.

“Simmons!” Wash barks.

“It’s not me! It’s some sort of… recording?” Simmons has gotten to the TV, and is fiddling with the wires attached to the receiver. “I don’t know what’s happening!”

“No.” Locus’ voice comes out next, and they all stop flat. The line on the screen jumps with his voice. His voice is unfiltered by his helmet, and there’s something off about it, but Tucker can’t figure out why…

“Let’s try this again,” the voice says, and suddenly, Locus screams.

“Tell me about how the Epsilon A.I. was destroyed.”

There’s a loud crashing noise, and he sees, out of the corner of his eye, that Carolina has broken a coffee mug.

Tucker’s stomach drops, and his head pounds, as Epsilon’s words pound in his head.

Not this time, buddy. He reaches out, and Wash is there, and he grabs onto his shoulder, not even looking at him, just… holding. He told Locus about that, he remembers. It had been a rough night, with Epsilon ripping himself to pieces inside his brain, over and over again, and he couldn’t go to Wash about this, because Wash gets it, but it’s... different.

So instead he had talked it over with Locus, in the kitchen, drinking coffee at three in the morning.

“No.” And Tucker knows why his voice sounds wrong now—he’s in pain, this is… this is…

There’s an awful, loud buzzing sounds, and Locus screams again—louder this time, and it goes on for longer.

“You can end this,” the voice says softly. “Just tell me what I want to know about the Reds and Blues, and this all stops.”

“I said no.”

“Turn it off!” Tucker yells at Simmons. “Jesus, turn it—”

“I can’t!” Simmons yells. “I can’t tell where it’s coming from, it’s too strong—”

Locus keeps screaming as they argue, and Caboose is just staring at the TV, the broken remains of a chair in front of him. Tucker can’t even be mad—he wants to break a chair too, wants to destroy everything in the fucking kitchen, because what is this, this is—

“Your loyalty is sweet. But we both know it won’t last.”

“It will,” Locus snarls, and his voice is ferocious and angry and protective and—

The recording ends abruptly.

Five seconds later, Grif throws a chair into the TV.

“Damn it!”

“We are going now, right?” Caboose says, his voice very flat and dangerous. It feels wrong to hear Caboose talk like that. “Sam is in trouble, and we need to help him.”

“Caboose…” Tucker says, floundering for words. He wants to puke. He wants to ask Wash if he knows what those noises were, what they were doing to Locus. He wants to pretend that the last few minutes haven’t even happened.

The eggs are burning on the stove, and Tucker can’t even start to make himself care.

“No, we’re not going to rescue him!” Simmons says, his voice high but uncertain. “I mean, he betrayed us… right?”

“He left, Caboose,” Wash says, his expression completely blank. “He made his choice.”

“But he’s our friend!”

“No, he’s not!” Tucker says. He’s rattled, rattled to his core, but he manages to pull himself together. Why the fuck should he care about Locus? The guy left, he fucking left, just like— “Look Caboose, didn’t you fucking pay attention? He left. He didn’t say goodbye! He burned the pictures! And he fucking stole my sword, so he could sell it on the alien black market!”

Caboose just sighs loudly, turning to face him. “Tucker, you are very bad at the finding game. I found your sword ages ago! Sam will be very sad that you could not find it.”

Tucker freezes.

“What?”

“Caboose,” Wash says in that strangled, careful way that he gets when things are very wrong but he doesn’t want them to know about it. “I think you should show us where you found Tucker’s sword.”

Caboose crosses his arms, looking extremely put out. “But that is not how the finding game goes!”

“Yeah,” Grif says, nodding, as if what Caboose said makes perfect sense, “but you see, Tucker’s already lost. So the game’s over, so you need to show us where it is now, so we can call Sam and tell him that he won.”

“Oh!” Caboose lights up. “Then he’ll come home, right?”

Grif hesitates, not looking at the others. “Maybe.”

That’s good enough for Caboose. He immediately charges out of the base, barreling towards the heart of the island.

“Maybe it’s his sword,” Tucker says as they follow Caboose out, after several reminders to him to slow down. “I mean it can’t be mine, right? Why would he just… move it? Maybe he lost his and thought mine would work for him, or he could sell it, or something.” There’s something unpleasantly heavy in his gut. He doesn’t know what to make of this, how to handle this.

Locus had used them to lay low, had gained their trust, used the time to heal, and then gone back to his mercenary life, burning all evidence that he had been there, and stealing Tucker’s sword to fence to shady collectors. That’s what they’d figured out, from reconstructing the remains that he had left behind.

He hadn’t really cared, or if he had, it didn’t mean anything. Tucker had told him where he kept his sword, and then Locus had taken it. And Tucker had been stupid and trusting and thought that he could open up to this guy, just because he also had nightmares about Felix.

“Or,” Grif says, “Maybe bad guys wanted his sword, and like, threatened Locus to get him to bring it to them so they could use it, but he didn’t want them to get it, so he took yours and hid his! To pull one over on the bad guys!”

“They’d have to kill him to get that to work,” Simmons says, and all of them flinch at that. The screams from the audio recording seems to bounce between all of them, louder every second. They’re all tense and upset. None of them have any idea how to handle this, not even Wash and Carolina, who know how to handle everything.

Grif visibly deflates. “Okay, so let’s hope it’s not that.”

Caboose leads them past the meth-shroom fields, past the dinosaur graveyard, and to a cave, tucked between two mountains, guarded by jagged looking rocks. It doesn’t look very big, but Caboose moves between the rocks and then turns a sharp right, and Tucker realizes it’s basically a full-on cavern, hidden in plain sight.

And sure enough, perched carefully on a flat, smooth grey rock that resembles a bench, is Tucker’s sword.

It’s definitely his, not Locus’. After all these years, Tucker knows his sword. He knows the nicks and imperfections of it and the way it sits in his hand just right. The weight of Locus’ sword is different; just a little off, the grip doesn’t fit in his hand correctly. Tucker had grabbed it from Locus a few times, as a joke or during sparring, and he knows, even before he flicks his wrist in just the right way… Locus stole Tucker’s sword from under his pillow, only to hide it in a cave.

The sword springs to life in his hand, and Tucker should feel relieved more than he is. But there’s a knot of something in his chest. Because now, he has even less understanding about why Locus left.

There had definitely been searches on his computer about the value of the swords. Simmons had shown the evidence to all of them, nervous and stuttering and not wanting to look at them.

It could have been an accident, but Tucker can’t think of how.

Had Locus… wanted Tucker to think he had stolen it? Why would he do such a thing?

“Wash,” Carolina says, her voice odd and distant. She’s down on one knee, one hand pressed against the dirt floor of the cave. “Someone’s been digging here.”

“Oh, the shovel is in the corner,” Caboose says, sitting on the rock. Looking closer, Tucker can see the lines are too clean, too artificial. Locus must have cut the stone with his sword to make a seat.

This was his place, Tucker realizes. This was… all of them had a little place on the island, just for them. He had a rock up on the cliffs, Wash had clearing that overlooked the sea, Simmons had a room in the basement of the Red Base…

And Locus had hidden his sword here.

It feels like a message; like there’s something that Tucker should know, that there are answers here, just outside of Tucker’s reach.

Tucker goes to get more shovels from Blue Base, because if Locus has buried anything, Tucker is going to help them find it.

It doesn’t take too long for them to excavate the floor of the cave. But what they find makes Tucker sick to his stomach, because it’s not what he expected at all.

Somehow, because it’s Locus, Tucker had expected… buried treasure, or maybe a body, or something dark and sinister. Maybe even a carved stone tablet with an explanation, because Locus is dramatic as fuck like that, and totally would.

But he didn’t expect this.

It’s everything that’s missing from the base, or at least most of it. Locus had buried his life, not destroyed it like Tucker and the others had assumed.

“Fuck,” Grif calls, stopping Tucker from finishing his thought. He’s standing on the edge of the hole. He hadn’t helped, of course, instead making digging noises with his mouth while sitting on Locus’ bench, but he’s been watching the whole thing with an expression that Tucker can’t quite place.

Grif jumps into the hole, which delights Donut inordinately, and grabs a large, heavy duty, black box. He pulls it towards him, and opens it.

“That was locked,” Carolina says, leaning against her shovel. She’s streaked with sweat like the rest of them, but her eyes are sharply focused on Grif.

“Locus’ code for everything is 2-4-1-1-0,” Grif says absently, and Tucker really wants to know that story. Grif and Locus’ friendship is something that he never quite managed to understand, but how the hell had Grif managed to learn Locus’ lock code? “Guys. He buried his guns.”

Tucker stops cold, as does everyone else. They all look at each other, trying to process what they’ve just heard, and Tucker has no idea where even to begin.

“So,” Carolina drawls, almost casually, but her spine is ramrod straight and her mouth is a thin, dangerous line. “I think we can safely say he didn’t leave to do mercenary work.”

“He didn’t take Tucker’s sword, or his other weapons,” Wash says. He opened one of the other containers and holds Locus’ old tea mug in his hands. “So why did he leave?”

“To protect us,” Grif snaps. “Didn’t you guys listen? They were asking him questions about us. He must have figured out that we were in trouble and was… fucking scared they’d use him or something, so he ran, so we wouldn’t get hurt.”

“We don’t know how long they’ve had him,” Simmons points out. “For all we know, they just randomly captured him.”

“And asked him questions about us? We haven’t exactly been telling people that he’s our friend!”

“He’s not,” Tucker mutters, but it’s half-hearted.

“Bullshit,” Grif snaps. “Don’t you guys get it? He didn’t betray us; he did this to protect us.”

“Oh come off it,” Tucker scoffs, walking over to Wash to look through the box where the mug had been in. In it is every weird flavor of tea that Doc had bought for him. Even the ones that Tucker knew Locus had hated, even the ones that had smelled like gasoline and tasted like ass. He had kept them all and buried them in this box. “If we were in danger, why wouldn’t he just tell us?”

“Fuck if I know! But he’s somewhere, being tortured for information about us. He’s our friend, and he’s being hurt, and we need to help him!” Grif can move quickly when he wants to, and he’s right up in Tucker’s space, arms crossed, something genuinely furious and righteous in Grif’s face. It’s rare to see Grif like this, and Tucker has no idea what to do.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Wash says, stepping between them and using a voice which totally means he thinks Grif is wrong, “But we have no idea where to start looking for him. They didn’t exactly give us an address.”

“Oh, don’t get your cerulean knickers in a twist about that, Agent Washington,” Sarge says. He’d left a while ago, but now he’s back, Donut on one side, Doc on the other. “I called that reporter lady, an’ she called someone who called a fellow who had a third cousin once removed who knows a gal whose roommate knows how to pinpoint the origin of a radio signal.”

Tucker stares at Sarge, and he’s not the only one.

“We can’t let a Red remain in enemy hands!” Sarge says proudly. “I’ve got the location!”

“He’s not a red,” Tucker says automatically. He should point out that Locus left, that he betrayed them, but God, he’s not sure if he believes that anymore, and that’s…

He doesn’t know what to do with that.

His fingers curl around the hilt of his sword.

“Yes,” Caboose agrees with him. “He is a blue.”

“He’s not either,” Wash interrupts.

“Yay neutral!”

“Shut up, Doc. Do we really want to do this?” Wash’s hand is unexpected on Tucker’s shoulder, but it’s not unwelcome. Tucker leans back into the touch, closing his eyes. “We could be walking into a trap.”

None of them say “again”, but they’re all thinking it. Tucker wants to turn to Wash, to put his hands all over Wash’s scars, to remind himself that he’s still there, but instead he does nothing, because the others are around, and Wash is alive…

Because of Locus.

“I want answers,” Tucker hears himself saying. “I don’t care about that guy—” Grif makes a cough that suspiciously sounds like bullshit “—but I want to know what the fuck is going on here.”

“Look,” Simmons says, looking nervous, glancing between Tucker and Grif. “No offense, but like… Locus is scary-good at this stuff. Like… fighting. And not getting caught by the proper authorities.” He clears his throat. “Whoever… this is, they either scared him enough into leaving—”

“To protect us,” Grif says. He’s holding Locus’ sniper rifle in his hands.

“Maybe,” Simmons says, doubtful. “Or at least, they caught him. Chorus couldn’t do that, and his armor isn’t here—”

“It’s not?” Tucker blinks, glancing at the other containers, which he had assumed would contain the infamous Locus armor. But Caboose and Donut have opened all of them. And instead of the familiar helmet, Tucker sees balls of string, glittering keychains, pressed flowers, and weirdly shaped rocks.

They have his weapons—the sniper rifle that Grif is holding, the shotgun he uses in close quarters combat, several combat knives, and a magnum which Tucker has never seen Locus use. But there’s no sword, and there’s no armor.

Tucker can’t figure out what this means.

It would be nice to believe Grif. To be able to put to rest months of hurt.

It would be nice, if he could pretend that the morning, when he’d reached under his pillow to hold his sword, only to find it missing, along with photos on the wall, and Sam Locus… it would be really nice if he could pretend that it had never happened.

It would be nice to pretend that Locus hadn’t wanted to leave.

But Tucker wasn’t sure that he was capable of that.

“It’s probably a trap,” Wash repeats. “Do we really want to walk into that?”

“Oh c’mon Wash!” Donut calls. “If we can’t deal with a whole roomful of guys—”

Wash lets out a small laugh and presses his forehead against the back of Tucker’s head briefly.

“Alright then,” he says. “Let’s go.”

Sarge’s coordinates take them to a civilized planet, in the middle of fucking suburbia.

“This is it?” Tucker says, incredulous. All the houses look identical. There are lawns.

“Oh! I know what to do!” Caboose gasps. “We need to knock on doors and ask them if they have seen Locus!”

“He’s not a dog, Caboose—”

But Caboose has already bounded up the steps to the door of the nearest house, and is ringing the doorbell excitedly.

“They might have seen something,” Carolina says, sounding vaguely amused. “This was probably a drop point, to throw us off the scent. But we might be able to pick up the trail here.”

Sighing, Tucker moves up the steps to join Caboose.

The door opens, and there is a woman on the other side.

Her hair is the color of steel, trimmed into a severe bob cut. Her face is lined and worn, and she holds herself like Wash does sometimes.

Tired, wary, but ready to fight if need be.

“What do you want?” It’s only then that Tucker realizes that they’re all in full armor, and how that must look to this woman, wearing a neat looking suit.

Wash recovers first, stepping forward. “Sorry to bother you, ma’am. But a friend of ours went missing around here.”

Her eyes soften slightly, and her arm drops down from behind her back, where she’s probably got a pistol tucked. “Do you have a picture? I can’t say I remember anything, but maybe I’ve seen him around.”

Just as Tucker is about to say no, because Locus destroyed their pictures of him, Grif produces one. “Here,” he says, and Tucker realizes with a jolt that Grif must have pilfered one of the pictures which Locus had buried.

Tucker wishes for a moment that he’d thought of it.

It’s a good picture. Caboose had taken it; Caboose has a shockingly good eye for photos. Even though half of his pictures are of weird shit that Tucker can’t understand, usually of random objects in strange focuses.

Caboose calls them his blue period.

The photo is of Sam, and only Sam, cradling his mug of tea, the corners of his eyes crinkled in a smile, although his mouth barely has twitched upwards, responding to some joke of Donut’s that Tucker can’t even remember. The light from the windows pours over him, rich and gold and soft. He looks peaceful, at home with himself for once, his eyes looking right at the camera, his long hair flowing over his shoulder, out of its ponytail.

Grif hands the photo over to her, and the woman immediately gasps. “Sam?”

The picture tumbles from her hands, falling to the ground, and she looks at them with wide, horrified eyes.

“You know him?” Grif demands.

“He was friends with my husband,” she whispers. “He’s—I didn’t even know he was alive.”

“Your husband?” The only friend Locus had that Tucker knows of is Felix. And this woman looks too… normal. And not dead. To be married to Felix.

“Yes. He went missing about ten years ago.” Her face is pale as a sheet. She bends over to pick up the picture of Locus, holding it like its something delicate and precious. “I got his head in the mail three months later.” Tucker flinches. God, he hopes they’re not dealing with the same people. She looks up at all of them. “I’m sorry, how do you know him?”

“We’re… friends,” Wash says. “I’m Washington, this is—”

“You’re the Reds and Blues,” she says, realization dawning on her face. “I’m Megan Wu. You better come inside.”

There are pictures on the walls as Megan leads them in, all of them self-conscious and awkward in their armor. The pictures show three kids, growing up slowly, going from babies to kids to teenagers to adults in the photos, with the newest looking ones showing them in their early twenties.

Megan is in most of these photos, and there’s a man in some of the older ones, but he vanishes once the oldest looking kid looks to be about high school age. There’s a military portrait, and at least one of the photos shows that he’s got a mechanical leg. He’s got an expressive face, with a scar going through one of his eyebrows.

She leads them into the living room, where she picks up one picture from above the mantelpiece, and wordlessly hands it to Tucker, who is standing closest to her. He nearly breaks the frame in shock.

Felix’s face stares out at him, smirking as he sits on the couch that’s in this room. One of his arms is tossed over Locus’ shoulder, while his other arm is around the man from the photos in the hallway, who must be Megan’s husband.

“I haven’t seen Sam in about… ten years or so?” Megan says, sitting down in one of the armchairs, and gestured for them all to do the same. “He didn’t come by often—he was shy. I don’t think he liked kids much. And when Mason left the life, he stopped calling.” She shakes her head. “Honestly, I thought he was dead.”

“The life?” Carolina takes the picture from Tucker, examining it.

“Bounty hunting,” she says wryly. “He went by Siris on that circuit—the three of them were so strange with their code names, especially Sam. Isaac was nearly as bad though.”

“Isaac?” Tucker says, feeling like there’s a blockage in his throat, trying to choke him. He hasn’t seen Felix’s face, outside of his nightmares at least, since before the betrayal. Seeing it now… he’s caught off guard. He feels dizzy, and sits down on another one of the chairs, only just reminding himself to be careful so his armor doesn’t crush it.

“Felix was what he called himself, when it was that sort of business,” she says, her expression strangely blanked. “He was… trouble. More so than Sam.”

“I’m sure,” Wash says. He passes the photo to Grif, barely sparing it a glance.

She looks up, something sharp in her eyes that reminds Tucker of the fact that she had brought a gun to the door. He had spotted the gun when she’d picked up the photo; military issue, and new enough that he doubts it’s her dead husband’s. There’s something dangerous about this woman. “Don’t tell me he’s missing too,” she says. “I’d hate to have to kick you out of here for trying to rescue that son of a bitch.”

“He’s dead,” Tucker says.

Her eyes flicker to him, and he sees a small smile. “Good. Did you do it?”

“Good?” Grif echoes. Doc is looking at the photo now. “I thought this guy was your friend.”

“He was Mason’s friend,” she says, her eyes flickering to Grif. “About three months after Mason left, before he went missing, Isaac came to visit. Without Sam, which was always odd. Those two were practically attached at the hip.” She accepted the photo back from Donut, and stood up to place it on the fireplace mantel again. “They… fought. I’m not sure what about. All I know is that I came home from work and my daughter was crying, because Uncle Isaac and Daddy had been yelling and calling each other names, and Mason wouldn’t talk to me about what had happened.”

Her mouth thins into a line. “He was… different, after that. Jumpy. He thought someone was following him, so one day, he got up and left. He left me a note. Said it was safer this way.” She sat down hard. “Later, I figure out that he’d gone to ground. He had a safehouse, in the city. But it didn’t matter. Whoever it was that killed him,” her voice left it perfectly clear that she didn’t consider that to be a great mystery, “they knew where it was. And three months after he walked out of that door, my oldest wakes up the entire house screaming because she opened a package on our doorstep, with Mason’s head inside.”

“… you think Felix killed him?” Tucker says. He looks up to the picture, and Felix’s grin.

“I know he did,” she snaps.

Tucker glances at Locus in the picture. He looks… young. There’s no hints of silver in his hair and fewer worry lines around his mouth and eyes. The smile on his face seems a bit wider, a bit less cautious, and he’s not flinching away from Felix’s arm like he almost always would when Tucker or the others would touch him. Felix is younger too, but there’s something almost ageless about the way he is. The smile is the same; smarmy and confident and charming.

He wonders why Megan kept the picture, if she thinks Felix killed her husband.

Simmons groans. “Great. If Locus isn’t here, this is a dead end!”

“No,” Wash says softly. “It’s not.” He takes off his helmet. “Ms. Wu. I’m sorry to have to ask you this but… do you know the address for that safe house?”

Her mouth is a thin line as she looks at Wash. Her expression is completely unreadable. “Why do you think he’d be there?”

“Because we were lead here for a reason,” Wash says. “We were sent a… recording, of Locus, and it supposedly originated just outside of your house. And I think they wanted us to hear this story. They wanted us to find you.”

“… it’s been three months since Locus left,” Tucker says, the pieces sliding into place. His stomach churns at the thought of it.

Her eyes turn to him, horrified, and her chin goes up. “He’s the one on the news, isn’t he? Wanted for war crimes on that planet?”

They all look at each other and don’t say anything.

“Who has him?”

Carolina is the one to speak this time. Her body is a stiff line, uncomfortable in this setting, sitting in one of the plush purple armchairs, her arms awkwardly folded in her lap. “We’re not sure.”

Megan gets to her feet, and crosses the room to a coffee table, with a pad of paper and a pen lying on it. She scribbles out an address and holds it out to Tucker. Her handwriting is clear, precise, and large, and the address is not too far from here.

“When you find him,” she says, her voice booking no argument. “Tell him Megan would like a word.”

“You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Tucker asks. He can see the pistol, tucked into the waistband of her skirt still, and the scars on her hands tell him that she’s an old soldier too, even if he hasn’t spotted a picture of her in her uniform yet.

She looks away, and she looks exhausted and old. “I’ve been there once. The things I saw… I’m not going back there. Never.” She sits back down, smoothing out the lines of her skirt. “You should hurry,” she says, her voice distant. “They’re probably keeping an eye on this house, whoever they are. And they might not wait until you’re there to finish things.”

“Yes! We need to go find him!” Caboose says, all excited now. He’s been uncharacteristically silent through all of this, but he grabs Tucker and pulls him towards the door. “Thank you, Missus Megan!”

They all file out of the house, lost in their thoughts.

“So,” Tucker finally says as they pile into the pelican. “Do we think that Locus helped Felix kill that guy?”

“Yes,” Grif says immediately.

“Oh duh.”

“No question.”

“I thought that went without saying.”

Something sour slides into his stomach at that. Tucker knows that Locus has done far worse things than killing an old friend, but…

It’s that old saying, isn’t it? A million is a statistic. Tucker can’t even begin to try to understand the scope of what happened on Chorus. He’s seen the reports, the estimates of damage, of lives lost, and he’s heard Kimball’s speeches about lost culture and progress, but it’s so big, that he can’t quite connect with it.

But there is something personal about this.

He touches his sword again, just to reassure himself that it is there, as Grif starts up the pelican and they fly towards the safehouse.

Tucker takes a deep breath, takes his sword into his hands, and tries to steel himself for whatever it is that he’s about to find, inside of that place.

#Lavernius Tucker #Locus #Agent Washington #Michael J Caboose #Dexter Grif #Megan Wu #RvB: The Sacrifice #Steph Writes #Red vs Blue

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unforgivcblecurse · 4 years ago

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ʜᴇᴀᴅᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀ ʙʟᴏᴏᴍ, ᴘʀᴏғᴇssᴏʀ ᴘᴀʀᴋ • ʜᴇᴀᴅᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀ’s ᴄʜᴀᴍʙᴇʀs • 𝟷𝟷:𝟷𝟾 ᴘᴍ, ᴛʜᴜʀsᴅᴀʏ ᴇᴠᴇɴɪɴɢ

“kai, you don’t understand!” the headmaster laments as he frantically darts around his dark office, looking through drawers and boxes haphazardly until he opens one particular chest that lets out a burst of fire and singes the mostly-invisible stubble of his chin. after carefully closing and locking it once again, casey sheepishly looks up at kai and gives him an apologetic shrug, before returning to his frantic raid, the cape of his robes flowing gracefully around him while he un-gracefully fumbles. see, normally the headmaster would he remiss to be caught in such a state, he prefers that the world consider him a source of peace and wisdom— both of which he is overflowing with— but he fears that being seen floundering around with a panicked crease in his forehead is hardly the strong front that the hogwarts students need. however— the marauder’s map has been stolen once again. “if someone has that map, what are we going to do, kai?” casey stands from the cupboards he’s picking through to spin on his heels and face the man, his expression softening when he sees that handsome, strong face. a placated sigh leaves his lips, but the worried crease in his forehead remains. “if a student stole it, it won’t be long before someone puts together why the two of us are in each other’s dormitories nearly every night, or why you are in my office so late, or why we’re always together when we visit andrei, or why i am always waiting in your office during your last class—“ casey cuts himself off when he realizes that he’s begun to panic, something he truly hasn’t done since becoming the headmaster. see, being in a relationship with an inferior shouldn’t be that terrifying of a prospect, normally, as long as everyone kept it professional, the two of them could be on their merry way, not a dollop of concern for remaining hidden. however, the ministry has been breathing down casey’s neck since the start of the school year. november is nearly over, and yet, the ministry continues to send auditors and even spies, desperate to catch anyone moving so much as a toe out of line. they’ve always been suspicious of casey. the man was an auror, right out of hogwarts. one of the best that the ministry had seen since the order of the phoenix. but after one particularly sticky battle with a death eater and a couple of dementors took the life of casey’s closest friend, it was like a switch flipped. no one really knows everything that happened that day, only that casey expelled the death eaters, and that he was seen broken down, before taking finley’s body carefully back to headquarters. after this, he changed, completely. he moved back to hogwarts, to become a professor of potions, despite being constantly pushed to teach defense against the dark arts. he became peaceful, a pacifist, and told the order that he would only be available in very dire circumstances, and wanted nothing to do with the forces that took finley from him. of course, that part changed when casey was offered the job as headmaster. the ministry was not happy about it, still suspicious of casey’s sudden change and the unknown incidents of that day, but that only made casey want the job more. the auror that lived deep, deep down inside him still had a penchant need to piss off the ministry. however, taking the position meant that they needed to hire a new potions professor, and casey knew he’d be spending extra time caring for the course he loves so much, but he never anticipated that all of that time would lead to.... feelings. ones he hasn’t had since he was a student at hogwarts. and professor park was certainly handsome and charming and just fucking hot enough to send casey into a boy-like tizzy. he finds himself giggling and blushing when the man is around, and he’s been working harder to dress nicely at work. he’s even bought a whole slew of pastel silk gowns and robes, and has a standing appointment with logan later this week to learn how to apply glittery eyeshadow, something that casey has always admired from afar but insisted on learning to don in preparation for the yule ball.

kai park has brought something alive inside of him, and even though they have to hide until the ministry backs down, casey wants desperately to keep it alive. “will you help me find it? perhaps one of the other professors took it, you know, a-as a weird prank or something,” casey poorly suggests, closing the last possible place he could have hidden the map, and stands with his shoulders slouched in defeat. with big, green eyes, the headmaster looks up at professor park, the worry making him appear more as a scared boy than the powerful man that he is. “i don’t want to stop seeing you,” he whispers the words as if anyone could hear them from outside the thick, enchanted door or the three-foot stone walls, and swallows around the thick lump of concern in his throat, “but we have to find that map, kai, we have to find it. i-i don’t know how it went missing, i’ve only seen a handful of students, but even if it weren’t for us, in the wrong hands, it could get someone hurt. or worse.”

@pillpcpper

#i can come back and change the tags when we develop a tagging system i know this is a hasty post #ya girl wants to be a lil organized this time around ya know #anyway sorry if this is shite i diSKJDNVKEFJNR but i am EXCITEEEED #int | headmaster bloom #int | kaisey #thread | kaisey no. 1

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uk-news-talking-politics · 4 years ago

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The Corbyn-era autopsy proves that the 2019 election was a disaster waiting to happen

By Dorian Lynskey

On March 1st 2017, the week after Labour lost the Copeland by-election, Owen Jones published a column in the Guardian with the headline: 'Jeremy Corbyn says he's staying. That's not good enough.' More in sorrow than in anger, Jones voiced what he had been saying in private for months: if Corbyn could not turn the party's fortunes around, he should step down and allow a younger left-wing MP inherit what insiders called 'the Project'.

"If Labour loses the next election a rightwing Tory government, infused with an increasingly xenophobic and authoritarian brand of populism, will have a whopping, unassailable majority," Jones warned. "Corbyn will certainly resign. The left will be blamed for breaking the Labour party. Several leftwing MPs will lose their seats. The remaining MPs will certainly not nominate any candidate on the left. The party will hurtle off to the right."

That scenario was largely correct, but about 2019, not 2017. In the short-term, Corbyn defied received wisdom to lead Labour to 40% of the vote, a swing of historic proportions. The day after that result, Jones wrote a very different column, combining triumphalism with repentance and a dab of blame-shifting: "I wasn't a bit wrong, or slightly wrong, or mostly wrong, but totally wrong. Having one foot in the Labour movement and one in the mainstream media undoubtedly left me more susceptible to their groupthink. Never again." From now on, he would only err in the opposite direction.

Jones was not alone. Corbyn may have lost the election but he won a resounding victory over the media and Corbynsceptic Labour MPs, and he adopted the traditional victor’s attitude towards compromise. Talk of replacing him, whether from critical friends or sworn enemies, died the moment the exit poll came out.

He dismissed advice to tame his doubters by welcoming the more amenable back into the shadow Cabinet and rejected a plan to work on a soft(ish) Brexit deal with a humiliated Theresa May. At Glastonbury, he received a hero's welcome which felt bizarre to me at the time - although I was stuck behind a tree so perhaps I missed the full effect - and now looks like the definition of hubris.

Perhaps it's hindsight talking, but James Schneider, Corbyn’s director of strategic communications, claims to remember worrying about what the coming period of cultural polarisation and parliamentary trench warfare over Brexit would do to the leader's movement politics. "Fucking hell," he said, "we are done for."” The Project's doom was not averted, merely postponed.

Left Out and This Land are fundamentally the same story told from different angles. Though young, Pogrund and Maguire are impartial hacks of the old school (for the Sunday Times and Times respectively), who provide the same ultra-detailed, in-the-room storytelling as Tim Shipman. We learn perhaps too much, for instance, about the catering skills of Change UK's Gavin Shuker. Jones, a left-wing celebrity and lightning rod, was by his own admission both observer and participant: a Guardian columnist so close to the Project from day one that he was offered a job in Corbyn's office.

Perhaps surprisingly, and to the credit of all three authors, their accounts usually concur, often right down to specific sources and anecdotes. That's reassuring, though the story itself is traumatic. "I've never been involved in anything so unpleasant and bitter in my whole life," Corbyn ally Andy McDonald says of the parliamentary Labour party (PLP) meetings following Corbyn's ascent to the leadership. Four years later, Tom Watson was confiding to Peter Mandelson that his job as deputy leader felt like swimming through a "terrible swamp".

While it is hard to square some of Jones' columns at the time with what he clearly knew was happening behind the scenes, his candour is better late than never. Left Out, by opening with the 2017 election result, is all fall and no rise. Jones, on the other hand, starts by whizzing through the left's wilderness years, from the rise of neoliberalism in the late 1970s through the humbling of Tony Benn in 1981 and the triumph of New Labour in 1997, to the unexpected window of opportunity opened by the failure of Ed Miliband's vacillations and the swelling of protest movements such as UK Uncut. Even in his insider account of Corbyn’s 2015 leadership campaign, though, there are ominous signs: John McDonnell advises the candidate not to risk the left being "annihilated". Adviser Cat Smith asks him: "Do you want this?"

Now there's a question neither book can answer. Corbyn was the 200-1 longshot with no leadership experience and, it transpired, no capacity to grow into the role. If he did actually want to be prime minister, then he certainly didn't want to do what it took. The inherent problem with maverick anti-politicians, on both left and right, is that they tend to be bad at politics. Corbyn's myriad weaknesses came to include his strengths: personal loyalty and a distaste for confrontation are admirable in many jobs but not that of a party leader.

"His office was a shambles," a former shadow Cabinet member tells Jones. "And it was a shambles because of his personality: he just doesn't know how to say no." In one of Left Out's most tragicomic scenes, Seumas Milne, Karie Murphy and Andrew Fisher — described by Clive Lewis as Corbyn's "triumvirate" —fight over what exactly he means while the man himself sits there quietly, like a bad riddle.

Even Jones bemoans Corbyn's "mulish" intransigence, sloppiness, peevish impatience with the media, simplistic anti-imperialism and inability to strategise. The extreme hostility that greeted Corbyn in 2015 — from most of the media and the PLP, and a venomous clique of old-guard staffers — fostered a siege mentality that further guaranteed bad decision-making. He had innumerable enemies, for sure, but he gave them so much ammunition. It only got worse. By the summer of 2019, he was passive-aggressive, grumpy and exhausted. Aides feared that he was experiencing a nervous breakdown.

Lest you find Corbyn too pitiable, remember that the one issue on which he took a resolute stand was antisemitism, where his judgement was shamefully poor. When even loyalists were begging him to apologise, his wife Laura Alvarez and a "kitchen cabinet" of Jewish socialists in the safe space of Islington North convinced him to stand firm. He was always good at taking advice from people who agreed with him. In a long chapter on the crisis - a litany of missed opportunities which regrettably omits his own public inconsistencies - Jones reveals that Milne feared that if Labour adopted the IHRA guidelines in full, then Corbyn himself would be disciplined for antisemitism, which says more about Corbyn than it does about the guidelines.

Corbyn's passivity and indecision created a power vacuum which nobody could fill. Almost every key player turns out to have been weaker than was generally assumed. Tom Watson: the arch-plotter? Once one of Gordon Brown's most ruthless lieutenants, his appetite for political skulduggery was shrinking with his weight. The 'coup' of June 2016? A desperate convulsion born of "absolute panic". Seumas Milne, the Stalinist Svengali? A director of strategy and communications who could neither strategise nor communicate. An "absent father" figure, tardy, amateurish and remote. Jones writes damningly of his former mentor at the Guardian. "Not a single person who worked for Corbyn," he says, "is prepared to defend Milne's management abilities."

Even the more capable characters eventually floundered. Senior policy adviser Andrew Fisher was the brains behind the 2017 manifesto but quit during 2019, complaining of a "lack of professionalism, competence and human decency" in Corbyn's team. The force of will that enabled chief of staff Karie Murphy to professionalise the operation also made her an autocratic bully who fell out with Corbyn herself in late 2019 over her absurd attempt to abolish Tom Watson's job. "What I saw happen to her over the years made me think: this is how dictatorships happen," one former aide tells Jones.

The only figure of consistent substance and talent in Corbyn's inner circle was a tragic one. John McDonnell knew that he could have done the job better but also that he would never have been given the chance. Time and again in both books, he makes the right call, tactically and morally — on antisemitism, Brexit, the Salisbury poisonings, the treatment of opponents — only to be shoved to the sidelines. On all of these issues, Corbyn succumbed to the inevitable only after causing himself and his party unnecessary damage. During the summer of 2018, after falling out over disciplinary proceedings against Margaret Hodge - another unforced error - McDonnell barely spoke to the man his wife jokingly called his only friend in Westminster.

Jones, a former McDonnell staffer who calls his old boss "Labour's lost leader", reports that Momentum founder Jon Lansman approached the shadow chancellor, who was already transforming his public image from spiky socialist bruiser into amiable Uncle John, about replacing Corbyn in the spring of 2016 but was sent packing. Given that counterfactuals currently consume at least 50% of Labour Twitter, that's one worth chewing over. McDonnell's question to Tom Baldwin from People's Vote in 2018 is revealing: "Are you people who will help us win power? Or are you people who are going to stop us winning power?" Unlike Corbyn, he explicitly wanted power, because what was the Project worth without it?

Starting the story earlier than Pogrund and Maguire, Jones is strong on Labour's unexpectedly brilliant 2017 campaign (Milne lifted "the many not the few" from bad old Tony Blair) and the origins of Labour's Brexit mess. Remarkably, speechwriter Joss MacDonald admits: "Most people in LOTO [the leader of the opposition's office] did not take [the 2016 referendum] seriously at all. Most thought if we left, it wouldn't really cause us any political difficulties.” (Narrator: It did cause political difficulties.)

Even long after the result, the assumption was that it would hurt the Tories more than Labour. Corbyn himself was agnostic - he talked about Brexit "with the enthusiasm of someone reading a photocopying manual," according to Fisher - which explains both his tone-deaf response to the result and his inability to commit to a coherent stance. He was no longer, as Jones describes the 2015 version, "a plain speaker who stuck to his principles"” but a cynical triangulator with a Brexit position so slippery that Emily Thornberry was reprimanded for talking about membership of the customs union instead of a customs union. If your policy on the biggest issue of the day comes down to the difference between a definite and indefinite article, then it's probably a bad policy.

Jones was a reluctant Remainer who had previously argued for Lexit (a word he claims without pride to have invented) but he is probably right to compare Labour's Brexit quandary to the interactive Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch: every branch on the decision tree would have ended badly. Cultural polarisation wreaked havoc with Labour's coalition of metropolitan liberal Remainers and older smalltown Leavers, although it's worth noting that socially conservative northern voters were already deserting Labour in 2017 and they had many other reasons to distrust a man who couldn't even bring himself to sing the national anthem. It's not as if Brexit broke up an otherwise happy family.

Far from being the arch-Remainer, cunningly manipulating the party towards a second referendum, shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer emerges from both books as a dutiful pragmatist who would have been quite happy to get Brexit done if Corbyn and May could have come to an understanding, and only came around to the enterprise of preventing it at Labour's September 2018 conference.

Whatever the respect-the-vote crew say now, the simple fact is that a majority of Labour MPs, members and voters opposed Brexit and the push for a referendum from constituency Labour parties was a fine example of the party democracy that the Project claimed to champion. Yet Corbyn, instinctively hostile to the cross-party People's Vote campaign, even alienated socialist Remainers such as Michael Chessum of pro-Labour Another Europe Is Possible by accusing them of sabotage and collaboration with Blairites. Brexit created splits within splits, as shadow Cabinet meetings turned into brutal rows between Remainers and Leavers, with party chair Ian Lavery positively feral on the issue. When Corbyn intervened to cool down one clash with Starmer, Lavery apparently told him to "shut the fuck up".

Much though the current incumbents have lowered the bar, it is almost impossible to imagine how Corbyn's Labour party could have run the country when they couldn't even run a professional election campaign. In an August 2019 memo, Milne wrote that Labour's opponents would "seek to portray Jeremy and Labour as tired, stale, hopelessly divided, indecisive, toxic and extreme". Set aside "extreme" and that's an accurate self-diagnosis.

Now fully in control of the party machine, Corbyn's team combined incoherent messaging and an undeliverable manifesto with what Jones calls "operational collapse". The triumvirate had fallen, with Milne and Murphy demoted and Fisher halfway out the door. Even Corbyn felt disempowered. Witnesses to a dinner during the 2019 party conference tell Pogrund and Maguire that Alvarez cried: "You don't deserve Jeremy. He didn't even want to do this."

Despite all the protestations that Corbynism didn't really exist - only socialism - the left staked a once-in-a-generation opportunity on one man who, at least after 2017, clearly wasn't up to the task. For the Project, he was both genesis and nemesis. Even the succession planning was botched, with the inexperienced, overrated Durham MP Laura Pidcock the clear favourite until she lost her seat, and Rebecca Long-Bailey far from being the heir apparent.

The left would now be wise to make peace with Starmer in order to defend its most cherished policies but many Corbynites seem as wedded to surly impotence as the most incorrigible Corbynsceptics were, and where are most of them now? Not in the House of Commons.

So what is Corbyn's legacy? Despite Jones' fears in his post-Copeland column, Labour has inched, rather than hurtled, to the right under Starmer. The new leader's pledge to retain many of his predecessor's key positions suggests that Corbyn did succeed in shifting the party's centre of gravity after all. It's hard to imagine Labour abetting, say, benefit cuts in the foreseeable future. While both his opponents in 2015 and the mayfly-like Change UK lacked an inspiring vision, Corbyn did at least believe in something. But these two books amount to an irresistible argument for the unglamorous virtue of competence, without which all of the wonderful ideas that swirled around the Project were, to the country's detriment, so much hot air.

This explains both Starmer's walloping mandate from the membership and his extreme pragmatism. Like McDonnell, who provides Left Out's melancholy final image, he knows that the finest principles go nowhere without power. Unlike McDonnell, he's in the driving seat.

#jeremy corbyn

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cutsliceddiced · 4 years ago

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New top story from Time: A Revolution’s Evolution: Inside Extinction Rebellion’s Attempt to Reform its Climate Activism

The honeymoon for Extinction Rebellion, the hugely influential climate activist group, ended on Oct. 17, 2019.

From its launch, a year earlier, until that day, it seemed like the group might have cracked the formula for saving the planet: its strategy of shutting down city centers with disruptive, nonviolent civil disobedience had drawn ordinary people onto the streets to demand action on the climate crisis. It had also made the group, now present in 75 countries, the most radical of a wave of climate activist groups sweeping the world in recent years, including the youth-focused Sunrise Movement in the U.S. and the school strikers led by Greta Thunberg.

In the U.K., Extinction Rebellion (or XR) is a household name, able to generate enough pressure to reach milestones that traditional environmental campaigners spent decades chasing: within weeks of XR’s first two-week mass mobilization in London in April 2019, the U.K. government declared a climate emergency and announced a legally binding target for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Christiana Figueres, the former U.N. climate chief, compares XR’s potential impact to that of groups like the suffragists and the civil rights movement. “When you’re talking about a large systemic transformation, history shows us that civil disobedience is a very important component,” she says.

But on Oct. 17, as XR began a second two-week mass mobilization in London, one local branch staged an action in Canning Town, a predominantly Black and Asian working-class neighborhood, in which several XR members clambered onto a subway car, preventing the train from leaving. Commuters dragged the protesters down onto the platform and beat them. Video of the incident prompted a massive backlash. “Upsetting the general public travelling to work in an environmentally sound way is plain stupid,” tweeted David Lammy, a prominent Black lawmaker for the left-wing Labour Party.

Daze Aghaji, 20, a member of XR and a student in London, shudders remembering the feeling of dread when she heard about the action. “It was like, ‘Wait, are we the bad guys?'” she says a few months later. “It felt like a callout from the public saying, ‘We support your efforts. But this is just not the way.'”

The moment distilled three problems bubbling under XR’s surface: First, as a predominantly white movement, founded in a small, wealthy town in England, XR has faced persistent criticism for its failure to include people of color and working-class communities in its activism. Second, the group is fiercely resistant to hierarchy, and has no formal leader and no effective way of vetoing actions, even when they cause internal divisions. And third, its strategy of disrupting the public walks a fine line between pressuring the government to act and becoming villains easily dismissed by the British media.

Falling donations and stagnant membership over the six months after Canning Town forced reflection and a rethink of core parts of XR’s operations. But just as XR announced a new strategy for 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Nationwide quarantine measures disrupted public life more than any XR action ever could, and prompted the group to temporarily suspend its central tactic of mass mobilization. The health crisis has also shifted the climate crisis down the agenda for governments, the media and the public.

Scrambling to learn from its mistakes and avoid losing hard-won momentum, XR is now planning a large-scale action for September. If the group gets its next steps right, it could offer a blueprint for activists around the world. If it flounders, XR could join the chorus of ignored voices shouting as the climate breaks down.

Rodger Bosch—AFP/Getty ImagesYoung XR activists demonstrate outside South Africa’s Parliament in Cape Town on June 1.

Since January, XR has made its headquarters in a hollowed-out apartment building in a trendy area of East London. On a sunny afternoon earlier this year, Gail Bradbrook, 48, sat at the kitchen table of a startup-like office on the first floor, surrounded by fellow activists busily typing on laptops. She acknowledged that the movement she co-founded has had a bumpy ride as it amassed more than 200,000 members worldwide in less than two years. “It feels like 15 of us started off pedaling on this bike, and then we realized we needed a train, so we keep sticking bits on while we’re pedaling,” she said.

It was in Bradbrook’s home in Stroud, southwest England, that XR began on a spring weekend in 2018. Fifteen environmental activists gathered to discuss ways to overcome the inertia on carbon emissions despite decades of warnings by scientists and pressure from NGOs. Drawing on the work of Harvard social scientist Erica Chenoweth, they decided they needed numbers. Chenoweth’s 2011 study of nonviolent civil-disobedience movements that aim to overthrow authoritarian governments concluded that those that engage at least 3.5% of the population always succeed. XR’s critics point out that demanding drastic action on emissions in a democracy does not exactly map onto Chenoweth’s scenario. But the group’s founders believe that if they can get 3.5% of a country’s population to participate in the “rebellion”–either attending actions or assisting behind the scenes–and combine that with a small core of a few thousand people willing to be arrested, as well as the passive support of 50% of the population, they can force governments into a position where taking climate action is less painful than XR’s disruption.

Bradbrook and her fellow founders envisaged a decentralized structure for XR. That has proved to be both its driving force and its Achilles’ heel. There’s a national U.K. actions team, made up of about a dozen people, that plans mass mobilizations, and a finance team that responds to funding applications from local groups. But there are some 400 of these local groups, all of which lead their own actions, with no single body in charge of sign-off. Internationally, more than 1,100 groups across 75 countries are working in a similarly loose structure.

That grassroots strategy drew in people who had never previously gotten involved in activism. Among them are grandmothers like Hazel Mason, 71, who had “never been a rebel” but went from trying to recycle more to taking to the streets. “I thought, Why am I hoping ‘they’ do something? Why don’t I do something?” she says. It also resonated with parents like Andrew Medhurst, 54, who told his colleagues at a pension fund that he “couldn’t ignore the crisis anymore” and quit in 2018 to start voluntarily coordinating XR’s finances, getting arrested three times during actions. In April 2019, thousands of XR rebels shut down central London, dominating the British media’s attention for two weeks. Millions of dollars in donations rolled in from philanthropists, celebrities and crowdfunders. While school strikers were raising global momentum around the climate crisis, XR seemed on the verge of a revolution in the U.K.

“What [XR] achieved, in a short space of time with few resources, was pretty outstanding,” says veteran activist Kumi Naidoo. After participating in civil-disobedience actions challenging apartheid in South Africa as a teenager in the 1980s, Naidoo served as director of Greenpeace from 2009 to 2015, and then as secretary-general of Amnesty International, before stepping down in December 2019 for health reasons. He says there’s “no question” that XR contributed to a shift in public consciousness on climate change, reflected in opinion polls that are “unrecognizable” from his time at Greenpeace. Naidoo sees XR’s more disruptive disobedience as “one of the only really strong, convincing parental voices” answering youth activists’ appeal for adults to act.

Extinction RebellionXR activists climb onto a train at London’s Canning Town station, prompting a standoff with commuters, on Oct. 17.

The nonhierarchical structure seems, in theory, to be democratizing and in line with XR’s belief in equality. But in practice, it has meant there was no one to blame for decisions that many felt were insensitive to Black people and other people of color. The Canning Town stunt was highly controversial within XR when its planners began sharing details days ahead of it. A statement released by its U.K. team hours after the action read: “Very few people in XR wanted this to happen, but the ‘postconsensus’ organizational model which we currently employ is such that it happened all the same.”

That did little to dampen the anger of critics. “From the get-go, they were asked by environmental justice campaigners in London to consult with communities about how to not alienate people,” climate-justice campaigner Suzanne Dhaliwal wrote in a London newspaper after the Canning Town incident. “[XR] is not taking heed of the call to look at its class and privilege blind spots.”

These blind spots are particularly apparent in the movement’s interactions with British police forces, which have a history of discrimination against Black communities. In July 2019, many heard a dog-whistle message in XR’s call on Twitter for police in London to “concentrate on issues such as knife crime, and not nonviolent protesters who are trying to save our planet.” In October, one XR member delivered flowers and a note thanking officers for their “decency and professionalism” to the Brixton police station in London. It was the same police station where, during the 1990s and 2000s, three Black men had died in police custody, sparking large local protests at the time. Kevin Blowe, coordinator for the Network for Police Monitoring, a watchdog group, wrote that the incident displayed a total lack of “empathy for communities who experience racist policing” and “outright, blatant racism [in] choosing to not ‘see’ race.”

Critics also point to the visible dominance of white people at XR’s actions, even in ethnically diverse cities like London, and to the core importance of confrontations with police and arrests in XR’s strategy. Aghaji, who is Black and has led youth-outreach efforts for XR, says the initial “focus on the arrests” in media coverage put off young people of color from joining the movement. “Arrestability does lie in privilege, and not everyone needs to get arrested,” she says. “I never really identified as arrestable.”

XR’s international chapters have also been criticized for centering white perspectives. In Canada, members of the Scia’new First Nation accused XR of entering their lands without permission while protesting a gas pipeline in February of this year. Some members splintered off from XR U.S. in opposition to language on its platform calling for “reparations and remediation led by and for Black people, Indigenous people, people of color and poor communities for years of environmental injustice.” (The rival faction, dubbed XR America, stripped out the specific language on race and class.)

In the U.K., XR’s decentralized structure has led to incidents that alienated the wider public and contributed to a narrative of its activists as careless. In September 2019, a group of XR activists, including co-founder Roger Hallam, attempted to use drones to block flights taking off from Heathrow, the U.K.’s largest airport, to protest air-travel expansion. Though XR had released a pre-emptive statement saying the group had collectively decided not to back such an action, it still hurt the movement’s image, says Jackie Scollen, a member of XR from a working-class area of County Durham, in northern England. “When my friends heard about that, they said, ‘You can’t do that.’ People work and save all year long to go on two weeks’ holiday to Spain or somewhere.”

XR activists interviewed by TIME say such unpopular actions contributed to a leveling off in sign-ups and donations in late 2019 and early 2020. XR is burning through its savings. From November to January, XR U.K.’s income averaged around $120,000 a month, while it spent close to $240,000.

Aghaji believes XR will have to learn to weather these unpredictable controversies. Imposing a top-down structure, she argues, would undermine the reason that XR has been successful in the first place. “It’s people taking power into their hands, saying the social contract is broken and rebelling in a way that’s true to them. I think that’s beautiful.”

Jeremy Selwyn—Evening Standard/ReduxXR protesters dressed as dead polar bears in Westminster, London, on Feb. 17.

On a Saturday in February, before the pandemic put an end to in-person meetings, a dozen people sat in mismatched chairs in the half-painted lobby of XR headquarters, trying to learn from the group’s rocky ride. During an all-day “DNA training,” designed to teach new members the movement’s core values, a session leader taught attendees how “to tell XR’s story” to get others involved. Tips included holding meetings in “inclusive spaces” that didn’t feel exclusive to white people and asking people about their personal experiences with the environment. There were things to avoid: using phrases that implied overpopulation was a problem; focusing on individual lifestyle changes rather than systemic change; and using “lefty language” (no examples were given). Almost every point set off a fierce debate among attendees. Rolled out at the start of the year, the workshop was an effort to learn from XR’s missteps and unify a movement that has sometimes struggled to agree on its message to the world.

Aghaji says the movement has been through an ongoing learning process on both race and class since Canning Town. “It was a turning point for us. The perspectives of marginalized groups are now at the forefront rather than just an addition.” One result has been an effort to emphasize that you don’t need to get arrested to take part in actions, Aghaji says. In January, XR started a team looking at how race and class oppression intersects with the climate crisis and why members of some groups were less likely to join XR. The movement has also intensified its focus in messaging on climate justice–the idea that since climate change is hitting harder and earlier in communities in the Global South, responses must be geared toward addressing systemic inequalities.

Antiracism protests that have spread around the world after George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by police on May 25 in Minneapolis, have put further pressure on XR to address its failings on race. “We have made mistakes, and we’re now taking the time to listen, educate ourselves further and work out a plan for taking responsibility for these mistakes properly,” Alanna Byrne, a London-based member of XR’s media team, said in early June. “Racism is a key factor in the causes and continuation of the climate and ecological emergency, and tackling it needs to run through all aspects of our work.” The XR Internationalist Solidarity Network, a group formed in early 2019 and led by Black XR members from the Global South, would have a “much more” central role going forward, Byrne added.

George Cracknell Wright—LNP/ShutterstockCo-founder Gail Bradbrook speaks to activists blocking a road in Central London on Oct. 9.

XR organizers say they are more broadly shifting strategy toward a model that prioritizes the communities in which they operate. Co-founder Bradbrook says XR will ramp up outreach to local residents, getting members to knock on doors and talk with people one-on-one about how XR should organize locally, to avoid clashes. More surprisingly, the group will also move away from its focus on disrupting the public, which won it so much attention. Bradbrook says repeating the same tactic won’t sustain media interest. “We’ve made our point to the public. The public, frankly, are not the problem.”

Instead, XR will direct its actions at institutions, businesses and government bodies preventing climate action. “We can’t just be pissing people off,” agrees Scollen, the member from Durham. “We need to target the people with power.”

In late February, Scollen helped lead one of XR’s last major actions before the U.K. entered a lockdown, as 300 activists dressed as canaries blocked the entrance of an open-pit coal mine near Durham to protest its expansion. The action exemplified the new strategy, disrupting the mine owners, not the local area.

But not everyone is happy. Joel Scott-Halkes, 27, traveled up from London for the mine action. He describes a “mini civil war” inside XR over the decision to shift away from public disruption. A member of the U.K. actions circle, he spent two months working on the 2020 strategy. He argues that public disruption is what got the movement to where it is today, and that outweighs the risk of upsetting people. “The disruption is minimal and tiny compared to the disruption that’s going to come as the planet breaks down,” Scott-Halkes says.

In his view, the movement’s most powerful tactic is mass mobilization. When security forces can’t contain the protests, the argument goes, it will be easier for the government to take drastic action to cut emissions–what XR has been pushing for–than to do nothing and allow protests to continue. XR claims it came close to overwhelming authorities in October. London’s police force had to draft officers from elsewhere, and even resorted to issuing a ban on XR protests–a move England’s high court later ruled unlawful. “If we had even 3,000 or 4,000 more people, we would have done it,” Scott-Halkes says. “We would have broken something in history.”

Steve Bell—Camera Press/ReduxA die-in protest under the blue-whale skeleton at the Natural History Museum in London on April 22.

Events in 2020 have made that strategy much harder to execute. It was meant to be a landmark year for climate action. The U.K. was due to host this year’s U.N. climate conference in November, where international negotiators would gather to scale up emissions targets, five years after the Paris Agreement was signed. To ramp up pressure on lawmakers, XR had planned mass mobilizations for May and November.

But in May, the British government said it would postpone the summit by a full year because of the pandemic. Largely stuck at home since late March, XR activists have used their daily lockdown-sanctioned exercise periods to post posters or graffiti at oil companies and banks that invest in fossil fuels, urging the government not to give them bailout packages. In late June, a group of XR activists led a 125-mile march from Birmingham to London to protest ecological disruption by a planned high-speed rail link.

Fundraising has also gotten harder. Since March, XR’s monthly income has fallen to around $60,000, Medhurst, the finance coordinator, says. In mid-April, the group suspended payments to 150 activists who had been receiving small grants for living expenses. A recent $300,000 donation will help, but the pot is far smaller than in October 2019, when XR spent close to $1.2 million.

Kristian Buus—In Pictures via Getty ImagesThousands of Extinction Rebellion activists took over 5 bridges in Central London and blocked them for the day, November 17 2018, Central London, United Kingdom. The actvists believe that the government is not doing enough to avoid catastrophic climate change and they demand the government take radical action to save future generations and the planet.

COVID-19 has also threatened to sap the momentum of the climate movement as a whole. Some fear that in the rush to revive failing economies, countries will abandon their climate goals. Indigo Rumbelow, a 25-year-old member of the U.K. actions circle, says the pandemic has filled XR “with both hope and fear.” Governments could opt to prop up the fossil-fuel industry, she says. “But there’s also a sense that we can rebuild something new and create a more just society.”

To get there, though, effective organizing will be crucial. Naidoo says XR must “continue to do substantially better” on understanding race and class. For him, the convergence of COVID-19, the climate crisis and high-profile incidents of police brutality may create a “boiling point” for anger over inequality, making collaboration between environmentalism and other social movements essential. “It is critical that we have an approach that celebrates a million flowers blooming for the fights of justice,” he says.

XR appears to have embraced that philosophy. On July 3, it announced that it would stage its next large-scale action, starting Sept. 1. While following social-distancing guidelines, activists around the country will target institutions and businesses they accuse of blocking emission reductions, and “peacefully blockade” Parliament in London as it returns from a summer break. “There is growing frustration at government inaction, not just on climate but on our health, well-being, on racial injustice, inequality and more,” Byrne says. “It’s time to express that and come out on the streets again.”

Scollen, the organizer from the northeast, says XR’s future will be defined by its ability to make people from all parts of society feel empowered. “Most people, unless they’re highly educated and privileged, don’t feel like they can change anything,” she says. “But look around: it has started. People will see that you can be a part of this. You can do this.”

With reporting by Madeline Roache/London

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

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