#greasy grungy ass man I love you

[moodyvoid]

New Horikoshi sketch!!!

[pallasperilous]

Funny Bone

The other day Supernatural9917 threw out this meme as a cracky Halloween Dean/Cas prompt and I was SO MAD, because I then had to write it:

And so here it is. Goddammit.

Funny Bone

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761150 Words: 4930 Castiel/Dean Winchester Fluff and Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Skeletons, Bad Pick-Up Lines, No Angels AU, Men of Letters Bunker, Mild Gore Mature (mentions of lewd acts, canon-typical violence, and some truly horrible pickup lines)

It wasn’t even a particularly creepy skeleton; it was in kind of a “just chillin’” pose on the floor. One ankle was still locked up in a heavy iron cuff, at the end of a short chain leading back to the wall. Snoresville, as dead stuff goes; Dean’s seen worse at Disneyland. It was the skeleton’s comment about Dean’s ass that really livened things up.

Discovering the bunker in the first place was a helluva surprise. The whole facility is legitimately batshit; Dead Guys of Letters knew how to live (and, apparently, die. All at once.).

But after plowing through a dozen rooms worth of priceless treasures and crusty boobytraps, even Sam was looking kinda full up on shock and awe.

“We can hit the basement tomorrow,” he said. There was a big smudge of dust across his nose and some cobwebs in his hair.

“Nuh uh,” Dean answered, kicking the door shut with the toe of his boot. “If there’s shit still kicking down there, we gotta clean it out before it cleans us out. It’s that or we’re sleepin’ in the car.”

“Ugh,” Sam said, as if twenty minutes ago he hadn’t been losing his mind over a rare book about werewolf hemorrhoids.

So discovering that the basement included a no-shit actual dungeon felt more like an unanticipated bonus, and stumbling across a skeleton while exploring it barely even registered. Skeletons and dungeons! They go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.

It wasn’t even a particularly creepy skeleton; it was in kind of a “just chillin’” pose on the floor, inside a big circle of greasy black ash.  It looked a little mildewy in in places. One ankle was still locked up in a heavy iron cuff, at the end of a short chain leading back to the wall. Snoresville, as dead stuff goes; Dean’s seen worse at Disneyland.

It was the skeleton’s comment about Dean’s ass that really livened things up.

“Welp,” Dean had said, holstering his gun and wiping his hands on his jeans. “We’re all clear. Let’s head back upstairs, salt the shit out of everything, and then we can pick up some groceries.”

“Do I get to buy a vegetable that doesn’t fit in a bun, or are we still in the refractory period?” Sam snarked from the corridor.

“I don’t see you cookin’, “ Dean started, shuffling back towards the hall, and that’s when the skeleton butted in.

“Are those astronaut pants?” it asked. “Because your ass is outta this world!”

Dean absolutely did not scream, but it’s possible there was a yelp. 

He almost unloaded a clip into it – unclear what that would’ve possibly done, but it’s good to start with the simple, available solutions. Next he nabbed the lighter fluid off of Sam and dumped out half a pound of kosher salt as a chaser and set the fucker alight.

This does not have the intended effect.

“Baby, I’d like to put my meat on your grill,” the skeleton says, greenish flames dancing between its ribs, “because you’re hot, and I’m smokin’.” Then it sits up a little, just enough to shoot Dean some finger guns.

“What the fuck,” Dean says.

Sam makes a little evaluatory noise. “Sexually harassed by a skeleton,” he chuckles. “I think that’s a new one. Even for you. Is that a new one? I know a lot of strange shit went down in Purgatory.”

The skeleton perks up even more at that, grungy eye sockets sweeping up and down Dean’s body. “Are you a time traveler?” it asks. (Maybe he asks, because the voice is pretty deep and dude-ish, although possibly just on account of its vocal cords being leather shoelaces.)

“Wh…no, I’m not a time traveler,” Dean fibs. He’s more of a time trafficking victim, anyway. “Oh, wait, god,” he says. “Please don’t tell me you’re asking that because –“

“– I can see you in my future,” the skeleton finishes, eagerly, and Dean really wishes this thing had eyebrows so he could tell if they’re waggling.

“Yeah, okay. That’s enough for today,” Dean groans. “I need a drink.” He starts to back out of the room as a pre-emptive strike against Bones commenting on how he hates to see Dean leave, but loves to watch him go. Dean’s working on stumbling back again Sam’s left shoe when the skeleton pipes up one last time, this time with a husky, anxious edge.

“I realize that Purgatory isn’t accessible through a simple chronological shift,” it says, teeth chattering. “But it does require travel between modalities, and if you’re capable of that, I would very much like to speak with you again.”

Dean and Sam’s heads slowly swivel back towards the skeleton, like two little pizzas on the same Lazy Susan.

 An hour later, they’re still in the dungeon, working on dousing the skeleton with every possible anti-bad-stuff solution they’ve got, just in case he’s a vampire skeleton or a ghoul skeleton or a witch skeleton or maybe just a wendigo that’s incredibly bad at its job. In between progress reports, he’s still hitting on Dean.

“Dude, don’t you have an off switch somewhere?” Dean asks him.

“Well, Dean, you certainly make me feel like a light switch,–“

“– because you turn me on,” all three of them say in unison.

The skeleton looks a little embarrassed, which is kind of impressive when you think about it. “You’ve…heard that one before?” he asks.

“I spend a lot of time in bars,” Dean deadpans. “Okay, sage is a no-go.”

Sam strikes a line off on the clipboard he found upstairs. “Is this part of a curse or something?” he asks, glancing up at Bones. “Like on top of being a sentient skeleton, you can only speak in horrible pickup lines?”

The skeleton shakes his head, which produces a sound Dean recognizes from his kneecaps on cold mornings. “No, the spellwork allows me to speak freely on most subjects; except who I am, or how to free me. But it’s helpful to use language modern humans can easily understand.”

“Huh. Well, in a way, it is Dean’s native tongue,” Sam says, smirking.

“You shut your face,” Dean hisses.

“When I first saw you, I lost my tongue. Can I try yours on for size?” Bones asks Dean.

“Buddy, I don’t know where you get your information from, but nobody actually talks that way,” Dean tells him. “Nobody sober, anyway. Who isn’t a virgin.”

The skeleton slumps. “I learned from my last visitor. He tried to release me on several occasions, but he either died or abandoned the project.”

Dean arches a brow. “The project being…you?”

“I would be very valuable under the right circumstances.” The skeleton shrugs and casually holds out an arm for Dean to scrape at with the demon blade. “He gave me lessons in modern vernacular as a way to pass our time together.”

“Sounds like a peach,” Dean says, before he can catch himself. “If you have a peach-related pickup line in there, man, you’d better just sit on it.”

“That’s what-“

“I will smash you with a hammer,” Dean barks.

The skeleton relents, but with obvious reluctance.

 They call it quits before Kansas rolls up the sidewalk for the night and leaves them stranded with nothing but two Clif bars and a gross of septuagenarian cans of franks ’n beans. Bones shifts nervously when Dean leaves – “Which is better, pancakes or waffles?” he asks.

“Pancakes,” Dean says, with a sense of grim duty.

“Because I’d like to know what you’re making me for breakfast,” says Bones, his voice trailing off as Dean books it down the stony corridor.

  By lunch the next day (bologna sandwiches, so sue him, he’ll make something good later) they’re pretty sure that Bones doesn’t pose any known, immediate threat – other than to Dean’s sanity – so they switch gears to springing him. Maybe he will be worth something, or maybe he’ll crumble into dust and Be Free, or maybe he’ll just stop being chained to the basement wall, in which case he can become their skeleton butler or something.

There are weird runes on the ankle cuff, so Sam snaps some quick photos and heads upstairs to feel up the library. This leaves Dean in the basement with Bones, some good old-fashioned power tools, and Bones’s ex-suitor’s gross sense of humor.

“You know I can understand you just fine when you’re talking normally,” Dean says. “You’re just reciting some prehistoric shit that idiots say to girls to get a pity-laugh, hoping it leads to a pity-fuck.”

“What’s a pity-fuck?” Bones asks, all mildewy innocence. Dean’s pretty sure the grunge in his eyeball sockets is dried eyeball.

“Pretty much what it says on the tin, my guy,” Dean answers, and reaches for the acetylene torch.

 “Enochian,” Sam says, when Dean surfaces for another sandwich and possibly a beer. He’s really disappointed about the torch.

“Gesundheit?” Dean replies, around a mouthful of bologna. Like everything else here, the kitchen is pretty schwa, although the inside of the fridge required three exorcisms and half a jug of bleach.

Sam paws around the smelly old book in a way that makes Dean feel sorry for the girls Sam dated in high school. “The symbols on the cuff. I think they’re Enochian. It’s a fake celestial language made up by some sixteenth century con artists.”

Dean coughs up a bit of Wonder Bread. “I respect the hustle, but what’s it doing on an ankle cuff in a dungeon younger than Mickey Mouse?”

Sam frowns. “Well, it could be for show. But just because some nutbars made it up doesn’t mean it’s totally powerless. Maybe it does have some kind of…heavenly mojo.”

“Liwl probbem,” Dean observes, finishing off his sandwich. “Def nuh heggen.”

“Huh?”

Dean takes a swallow of beer. “I said: there’s no heaven.”

Sam shrugs. “We didn’t think there was a Purgatory, either.”

“Okay, but if we find out angels are real,” Dean snorts, “then Bones can fuck me in the ass.”

 Sam reports his findings to Bones, who sits placidly on the back of his pelvis, carpals splayed out on his kneecaps. What’s even holding him together? Dean can see what’s left of his ligaments, but they look like petrified gas station jerky.

“Do you know what they mean?” Sam asks him, pointing at the sigils.

Bones’s jaw creaks open a little, then closes again, and then he shakes his skull (something rattles inside.) Finally he makes a little frustrated noise and replies – “Baby, are you a book? Because I’d like to check you out.”

“Hey!” says Dean. “Keep it in your pants, man, I’m right here.”

Sam squints. “I think…Dean, I think he’s trying to tell us something, but the spell on him means he can’t say it directly.”

Bones clenches his fists, releases them, clenches them again.

“Yeah. Keep him talking. Let’s see how close he can get.”

Clack clack clack.

“Uh,” Dean says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Okay. Do I need to, like. Give you some kinda opening?” he asks Bones.

“Sweetheart, I’d like nothing better,” Bones answers, then clacks his knuckles on his brow with exasperation.

“Sorry, Christ. Hit me with your best shot, buddy. Dealer’s choice.”

Bones clears his…ghost throat? and tries: “Tell me, Dean…did it hurt?”

Dean blinks. “When I…fell from heaven?”

Sam claps his hands. “Fucking knew it. It is Enochian, and it does have something to do with this. I think he wants me to check the library for another book. Maybe there’s one misshelved or something that I can actually use to translate. Or I can Google around, maybe there’s a subreddit.”

Dean’s pretty sure Bones has never heard of a Google or a subreddit (for that matter, does Dean actually know what a subreddit is?), but it seems like there’s a glimmer of hope deep in those scum-holes.

 Sam gets translations for a few of the words – “obedience” and something he’s fifty percent sure means “millstone” – but the rest is still gobbledygook, and he hasn’t come down with another update in hours. The dungeon is pretty roomy, but it’s not like there’s a foosball table or a cable TV pickup down there, so Dean and Bones wind up lying on the cold-ass ground, staring up into the dark reaches of the ceiling together and, like. Chatting.

Occasionally Bones goes quiet and Dean glances over at him. He really could just be a totally normal, completely dead dungeon skeleton. A good power washing and the right mounting hardware and he’d be ready for a high school biology classroom.

“So if these runes are a celestial thing, does that mean you’re some kinda demonic...thing?” Dean asks. “Cause I gotta say, you’re a much less of a douche than the demons I’ve met.” He snorts. “I know you probably can’t say.”

Bones sighs (how? With what lungs?). “The last person who tried to free me was a demon.” He shifts a little, maybe surprised that he can say this out loud. “It had been so long since somebody had spoken to me…I’m afraid I came close to actually enjoying his company. But he was no better than his kind usually are.”

“Don’t suppose you caught his name? Maybe Sam or me killed him for you already.”

“He called himself—no, I can’t say it.” He makes a sound resembling a harumph.

Then his skull creaks over to look at Dean. “Does your name start with ‘C’?” he says, very deliberately.

Dean is momentarily puzzled, but he works it out by the time Bones wincingly adds “…because I’ve got a D that wants to come behind you.”

There aren’t too many demons under the “C” tab in Dean’s blood-stained mental rolodex, and when he says the name out loud, Bones makes a sound like an entire set of dominos being thrown down a spiral staircase.

  Crowley is pretty pissed, which is fun.

It’s nice that the dungeon floor already has a perfect trap on the floor; they don’t even have to hit up Ace Hardware for paint. A damp shop cloth and a little nail polish (Wet ’n Wild in “Red Red,” don’t leave home without it) brings it right up to working order.

“Why does it smell like a nail salon fucked a bloody wine cellar?” Crowley says, after he’s settled down a bit. He manifested right in the creepy torture chair (in the shackles, even! What service!) and he made some escape attempts followed by angry noises about rust stains. Now he’s recovered his dignity and has kicked back a bit, legs crossed, fingers steepled, oozing maximum levels of 2 cool 4 school.

“How do you know what a nail salon smells like?” Dean retorts.

“I get a monthly mani-pedi. There’s no shame in a little self-care, boys.” Crowley’s eyes trickle down to their feet. “Imagine what fungal horrors those work boots must conceal.” Then he squints, and looks up, finally taking in the whole room. “Could swear I’ve been here before. Little upscale for you, isn’t it? Did we splurge for a vacation rental?”

“Crowley, why don’t we roleplay Titanic?” Bones growls from the wall behind him, and Crowley’s face goes slack. “I’ll be the iceberg, and you can go down.”

Crowley swallows and slowly twists back, as far as the shackles let him. “Feathers, is that you? Well, as I live and breathe.”

“You do neither,” says Bones, with so much gravelly contempt that Dean suppresses a little shiver.

“Oh, I still breathe now and then, when the mood takes me. I’m a sentimentalist.” Crowley cranes his neck a little harder and squints into the dim. “Goodness, you’ve dropped some weight since we last spoke, haven’t you. Finally let go of all that pesky soft tissue?”

Bones tilts forward and kind of clatters onto hands and knees, then tipsily begins to rise up to standing. Dean’s a little concerned he’s gonna topple right over and they’re gonna spend the next two hours collecting him in a basket, but when he moves to help out, Bones waves him off. After a couple false starts he makes it up onto his feet bones and then shuffles out to the end of his chain, right under one of the overhead lights. He’s still a good couple feet off from Crowley, but Crowley looks like he wouldn’t mind a few extra acres.

Bones sways a little bit, just enough for Crowley to wince. “You didn’t come back.”

“I got busy.”

Sam shifts impatiently. “What is he?” he snaps, gesturing at Bones.

“Exceedingly dull,” Crowley says. “I should’ve guessed you were friends.”

Dean uncorks a fresh bottle of holy water.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Crowley amends, quickly. “And even if you did, you wouldn’t know what to do with him. It’d be like giving a laptop to a pair of howler monkeys.”

Dean puts his thumb over the mouth of the water bottle and holds it over Crowley’s head. “Try me.”

Crowley scoffs, rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t matter what he is, since he’s useless as long as he’s chained up. And I wouldn’t have left him down here if I had a single clue how to smuggle him out.  I haven’t even been in here since the Bay of Pigs; I’d worked a loophole in one of the defense spells here that let me in. When it broke down, I lost my exploit. Wasn’t worth the bother after that.”

Dean slides his thumb a millimeter north of a perfect seal, and a fat drop of water busts its ass open on Crowley’s forehead and sends up a thin line of steam. “Good thing I’ve got a limitless supply of bother,” Dean notes. “Sam, we still got those syringes in the trunk?”

Crowley snarls. “Go ahead and melt me like the cartoon shoe in Roger Rabbit, it’s not going magically make me come up with a solution.”

Bones grunts and rattles his leg chain. “Do you speak Spanish, Crowley? Because you look like the Juan for me.”

“Did I teach you that one? You absolute xylophone.” Crowley glances back at Dean. “Do your worst, Squirrel, I deserve it.”

Sam frowns. “He uses the lines to get around the spell’s speech restrictions. This is something about speaking languages…were you able translate the Enochian symbols on his cuff?”

Crowley blinks. “What symbols?”

 After a whole lot of faffing around with mirrors and terrible cellphone photography, they confirm that Crowley can’t see the symbols at all.

“More demon-proofing. Clever little buggers, those Men of Letters,” Crowley sighs. “A real shame they were peeled and eaten like bananas.”

Finally Sam just hunkers down with a pencil and pad to transcribe the entire ankle cuff, and Dean awkwardly holds up Bones’s ankle, like he’s being sized for a glass slipper. When they shove the results in Crowley’s face, Dean watches his eyes dart along the words.

“Well, it’s your lucky day, boys. Along with the usual wankery, there are instructions on how to release the cuff. I can translate it,” he finally says, with an unusually low inflection of bullshit, “but I’ll thank you to release me, first.”

Dean is flummoxed. “What, you’re not gonna haggle for a cut of the profits or anything?”

“Activating the release mechanism will free him completely, and restore his…restore him. I’d rather be at a safe distance.” He glances back at Bones, looming in the shadows. “A continent or three should do the trick.”

“If it doesn’t work–“

“I’d be more worried about what happens if it does,” Crowley sighs.  “But feel free to summon me back for tea and sympathy. Here, I’ll even give you my number. But please, no personal photography. I pity you enough as it is.”

  Crowley finally smokes out, and Dean has a beer to celebrate while Sam looks over the list of what they need and Bones clatters his fingertips like castanets. The ingredients are (as always) larded with shit that’s exotic and expensive; Sam is looking crestfallen at some of the items. “I’ve heard of all of this, but I’ve only seen maybe half of it for sale anywhere.”

“Baby, are you a yard sale? Because you’ve got some serious junk in that trunk,” Bones monotones. He’s back to lying on the floor.

At least it’s getting easier to translate this shit. “They’ve got all the ingredients here somewhere,” Dean says. Sam looks skeptical. “C’mon, Sam, no way these dudes would use a lock when they didn’t have the key.”

The ensuing scavenger hunt takes a few pints of elbow grease, but at least by the end they’re both familiar with the Bunker’s floor plan, document filing system, and inventory records. They find virtually everything in-house, though they do end up driving to the nearest farm stand for some hen’s eggs and rosemary (and heirloom tomatoes, because they look bomb).

Dean christens – or maybe exorcises – the kitchen range with some red meat, and they fuel up with burgers before taking the plunge. Dean’s still licking the ketchup off his fingers when Bones pipes up one last time. “Can I ask you something?” he says.

Dean and Sam brace for impact.

Bones sighs. “That’s not the start of a pickup line. I genuinely have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why are you so intent on freeing me? You could have just left me down here. I’m not a threat this way. You only have Crowley’s word that you might profit - or suffer - from my release.”

Sam gives Dean a look; it’s the look that says I sure hope you have an answer, because I think this entire thing has been dumb as shit and half as necessary. It’s a look Sam uses pretty regularly.

“Uh. It’s the right thing to do? As far as I can tell, you haven’t hurt anybody or done anything else to deserve being down here. We went through all those records upstairs, and there’s no note that says ‘by the way, that skeleton downstairs eats babies for breakfast.’ This place is cool, but the dudes who built it were obviously shady as fuck.”

“I see.” Bones sounds a little disappointed.

Sam fake-coughs into his hand, and Dean sets down his paper napkin. “Also, you seem cool. Like, you’re easy to hang out with. Other than the stinky one-liners, and we’re gonna wean you off of those.”

Bones straightens himself out a little. “Thank you, Dean. You know, on a scale of one to ten, I’d rate you a nine.”

“Okay, okay. Why not a ten?”

Bones sets his chin on his knuckle bones with a tidy little clack. “Because I’m the one you’re missing.”

Dean groans, but he thinks the guy might be smiling, somewhere behind that skeletal grin.

 By hour two, Sam’s pretty tuckered out from pulverizing a billion and three mummified dove livers while reciting nonsense syllables, and Dean’s right arm is about to fall off from holding up this giant silver swizzle stick that’s either a really weird short sword or a decorative javelin, but Bones has never looked perkier. He’s lying on a nice white bedsheet and looking fresh as a recently exhumed daisy.

“Okay,” Sam rasps. “Light the candle and we should be good to go. Any last words, Bones?”

“Are either of you religious?” He crosses his arm bones over each other.

“Fuck no,” Dean answers, before Sam gets a chance to launch into it.

Bones shakes his skull fondly. “You should reconsider. Because you’re the answer to my prayers.”

Dean makes a gagging noise and lights the candle.

 What happens next (well, after the cuff pops open) is some of the freakiest shit that Dean has ever seen, and his Freaky CV is pretty fucking impressive, thanks. Bones tells them to avert their eyes, “just in case”, but he takes a peek between his fingers anyway, because he’s an idiot.

For a second Bones is just lying there, and Dean has a second of real disappointment that maybe he’s Moved On Past The Veil or something, but then he starts…foaming. It starts out kind of uniform and colorless, but then it really picks up speed and volume and starts to separate into swaths of distinct and horrible colors and textures. He closes his eyes again for a second to give his stomach a chance to reboot, and when he looks again the foam is gone, and instead there’s a whole lot of angry jelly trying to form into organs.

Just as the jelly is really getting its shit together and looking more like lungs and intestines and stuff, the heart-jelly pulses once and sends out a fistful of big squishy vines…veins? and a fat white worm of nerve scrambles down the spinal column and starts putting out franchises. This is followed by some disturbingly tasty-looking red sheets of muscle that swiftly sheathe over all the whole scene, and then the muscles start sweating out fat and cartilage and this is the point where Dean decides that looking away is actually definitely one hundred percent for the best. Even then, the sounds are tough to handle.

Kinda wild: he’s seen people taken apart, but watching one get put back together is somehow gnarlier. Well, if this guy is even a person. It’s a human skeleton, sure, but god knows even Mickey Rourke has one under there.

Finally everything seems to have quieted down.

“How you doin’ over there, Bones?” Dean asks, and dares to take a peek.

Bones is crouched down in front of them, fists balled up in the bedsheets (it’s a relief that the bedsheets didn’t get accidentally sucked into the muscle layer or something, like one of those surgeons who leaves a sponge behind). Dean sees white guy skin and some dark messy hair and gets the gist of a decent build.

The face slowly cranes upwards, and Dean is really truly ready for anything here; tusks, fangs, Klingon forehead ridges, gingivitis. Instead he gets a faceful of hot math teacher. Bones’s eyes are still closed, but he’s frowning like he’s mentally reviewing his strategy to explain the quadratic equation to a roomful of horny teens.

He slowly rises to standing (yikes! Naked! Dean is a Moderately Bad Man, so he glances, but just long enough to register “nice), uncurling slowly and carefully.

Then he’s all the way up. Bones squares his shoulders and straightens the last kink in his spine, and the frown resolves. Dean’s about to say something, when his eyes snap open, and this cold white light absolutely blasts out of them, and fuck, Crowley wasn’t kidding: this guy is definitely A Thing. The whole room flattens and distorts in the light. Shadows race up the walls like they’re looking for a way out, then snap together into the shape of enormous ragged wings, stretching thirty feet higher than the actual ceiling clearance.

Then the light dies down; the wings fade into regular-grade shadows. Instead of a terrifying unearthly avatar of Oh Shit, Dean’s looking at a buck naked thirty-something math teacher. Who happens to be an unearthly avatar of Oh Shit. And has nice eyes.

“My name is Castiel, angel of the Lord, Seraph of the First Shield,” the avatar says, in a piss-shakingly resonant version of Bones’s voice.

Then: “Do you speak English, Dean?”

“Yes?” Dean fumbles.

“So do I,” says Castiel, and smiles.

Then he makes finger-guns.

  Castiel sticks around for a grand total of five minutes before he’s suddenly gone again, because angels are (a) real and they can (b) teleport? at (c) any moment because (d) fuck you, then he reappears six hours later (clothed) standing over Dean’s bed, having apparently forgotten that humans like to sleep; this time Dean does shoot him, but luckily he doesn’t seem to take it personally.   

“I located Crowley,” Bo- Castiel says. The silver sword-javelin thing is sitting on the kitchen counter in front of him; apparently it’s an Angel Blade and it lives in Castiel’s coat sleeve and can vaporize demons. It doesn’t look like it has any Crowley on it, but maybe it’s self-cleaning.

“Did you kill him?” Dean asks, now that he’s semi-coherent and wrapped around a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

“Not this time,” Cas answers. “He did help, after all.”

“Sure,” says Dean.

“You don’t need to let me fuck you in the ass, either,” Castiel says, and Dean honks some coffee up the back of his nose.

“Oh,” he gasps. “Okay. Cool. Thanks. Didn’t realize you could hear that convo all the way down there.”

“Angels have excellent hearing. Mine wasn’t impacted by the spell.”

Dean can think of at least three very private moments Castiel almost definitely could hear every instant of, and longs for death. Or maybe not, since apparently this guy lives in Heaven and could hear him there, too. “Great. Good to know. Noted.”

“But…” Castiel looks wistful.

“What?” Dean nudges him. Dean Winchester: angel nudger.

Castiel frowns. “If I said…” he stops himself. “This is…what I want to say is very irregular, at least between angels and humans.”

“Jesus christ on a goddamn pogo stick, man. It’s three in the morning, some of us have a circadian rhythm and a limited lifespan. Say whatever it is you gotta say.”

Castiel looks up and drowns Dean in his swimming pool eyes, which Dean has learned belong to a radio ad salesman in Illinois, who Castiel possessed a few years back before jumping several decades into the past to run some errands and getting rope-a-doped by the Men of Letters and then warehoused in their basement; after they all spontaneously bought the farm, he just slowly ran out of the power reserves needed to keep his vessel from turning to mush and hey presto, talking skeleton.

Classic story, really.

“If I said you had a beautiful body, Dean,” Castiel says, solemnly, “Would you hold it against m-“

Dean doesn’t let him finish. {AO3 version}

[skittles1229]

Community Fanfiction (self insert/x reader)

 "Personally I don't see the appeal" you say under your breathe as you pick at the disgusting slop in front of you. Greendale's lunch left much to be desired, but I don't think they got famous for their lunches. From what I've read Greendale has seen it all, from campus wide paintball wars to a Dean that thinks Halloween is all year round. It's no lie the Greendale's reputation has been questionable for a while but the one thing I can say is that I haven't met many stuck up assholes since I've been here, granted I try to stay clear of that side of the hall. As I pick away at my phone, that's resting on the corner of the table, someone sits in the chair in front of me and I look up with my usual nonchalant face. There was an older guy, about thirty or forty, and he was quiet unusual. He reeked of an over bearing cologne and his hair was long and black with kinky curls, thought his hair was too greasy to even begin to look puffy. He has two large stars shaved onto his cheeks that connect to his sideburns. "I noticed you from Subway's shop. I've never seen you here before. You must be the city college girl." City college girl? Do I already have a rep here, of course they said that nobody would know and OF COURSE they were lying. "Yes, I came from City college but how'd you know that?" He smiled sheepishly and looked away scratching the back of his neck, when he finally looked back his cheeks were a slighter red shade. "Sorry, got excited. I'm Alex." He holds his large hands out to me, after a moment of my continued silence he brought his hand back down and coughed nervously. I propped my hand up on my elbow that rested on the table, at this point I had abandoned picking at my food and focused on Alex. "Let me guess this is how it went. The Dean got excited and told everyone and you were all curious to meet me today because everyone expected me to be some stuck up dumb blonde right?" Alex seemed astounded which means I was right. There is no secrets kept in Greendale and frankly I was hoping I could go here with a new name, background, and maybe I could just make up some person I've always wanted to be but.. I guess since my past followed me here I might as well live with it. I look back at Alex who has been staring at me since I last spoke, I stick my hand out across the table and give him the brightest smile I can. "My name's (y/n)." I say taking his hand, they were twice the size of mine, grungy and rough.

Alex seemed like a pretty awesome guy and after lunch he walked with me down the hall to Mr. Chang's Spanish class. We talked on and on and yes, he is very weird. Never would have pegged him for a meth head because they are usually more aggressive and like to give out those opinions that nobody asked for but Alex? Alex was pretty great. We walk into the class room and it's only us and four other people in the class so far, then again we still had 30 minutes before class. I sat in front of Alex and met his friends Garrett, Viki, and Magnitude. We talked for a while about D&D and about all the teachers but Alex kept mentioning someone name Jeff and the Greendale seven. From the way he talks about them I'm beginning to wonder just how normal this school was. There were less seats open and the only ones left were seven seats centered towards the middle of the room. Chang had already made his big chaotic entrance and nothing he said made any sense. Greendale definitely should do better in picking their staff because putting a mentally ill Chinese man as a professor was a less then good idea. That's when the Greendale seven arrived, Alex grabbed my shoulder and pointed to the group giving me everyone's names as the waltz in. Tall dark and weirdly antisocial was Abed the movie guru. He'll draw connections to real life situations through pop culture and meta references gained after years of watching TV and movies. Short large and carrying a purse that could fit everything but the kitchen sink was Shirley, the divorced mother of two who loves to bake. Very tall, old, and wrinkled was the jackass name Pierce. Alex says that he is worse then Jeff and is relentlessly mean just because he thinks it makes him look 'rad', how old.is this guy like 90? Then the small brunette who wore a silly school girl outfit and she hugged her books close to her chest as if she was in high school, Annie or little Annie Adderall. Alex will have to give me the details behind that later. Then came the last three, Jeff, Troy, and Brita. Brita seemed to be a very big female activist, if the fliers and stickers in and on her binder said anything. Troy was taller then me and he seemed attached to the hip with Abed, he almost had the same demeanor and smile as Abed as well. Then there was the infamous Jeff, if his looks alone said anything, he was a stuck up, sweater wearing, pompous ass and from the look everyone was giving him as he walked into the class I'd say I was right. 

They all sat down pierce sitting closest to us, Jeff next to him and Abed on the other side of Jeff. Britta sat in front of Jeff and Troy sat in the farthest seat to the left on that row, with Sherly sitting in front of Britta and Annie sitting in the front like the good little wanna be Senpai that she is, but once Chang began his intro duction to the class i got a feeling she would start regretting not sitting in the back or at least out of chang’s monkey finger reach. “Every once in a while,” Chang began, “A student will come up to me and ask Senior Chang why do you teach Spanish?” He chuckles while bending down holding himself up by propping his hands on the front two student desk. He continues, “Why do you teach Spanish...” Suddenly his smile fades from his face and it turns into an ugly scowl. “Why You?..”  He then leans into the boy who sits in the desk on the left  “Why not Math?” He asks scrunching his face up making the boy recoil in fear.  Suddenly whipping his head around and removing his hand from the boy I presume is named Matt desk’s all together. Leaning even closer into Annie's face as he begins to speak again. “why not Photography?” Chang walks forward still slightly crouched so that he can remain in his students line of sight. He then puts both his hands on Sherly’s desk, The smile she gives him is kind but her eyes say she might smack him with her purse at any moment. He then speaks once more in the hushed emotionless tone as before, “Why not.. Martial Arts?” He leans up standing straight and tall, as he begins to gesture his words with his hands in the over dramatic way I’m sure I’ll come to learn as distinctly Chang. “I mean surely it must be in my nature to instruct you in something that ancient like, Oh like building a wall that you can see from outer space.” Everyone in the room begins to look at each other with quizzical looks as the monkey like man continued his odd irrelevant speech. “Well, I’ll tell you why i teach Spanish, it is none of your business. M’kay” At this point his hands are making the classic Italian hand gesture where your thumb is meeting the rest of your fingers and you shake your hands vigorously as he starts to walk backwards towards the front his voice gradually getting louder as he got further away. “Now I don't want to have ANY conversations about what a mysterious and inscrutable man I am.” He then proceeded to stroke long imaginary beard hair as he laughed light a little Irishman in a cereal commercial. As he starts to walk back towards the front he then looks to Sherly and yells “I AM A SPANISH GENIUS!” while pointing at his face with his long twig like fingers. Chang continues his rant while making odd hand gestures like he’s having some kind of a mild stroke, “In Spanish they call me El’ Tigre’ Chino!” Followed by raptor sounds and Chang as he pretend eats Sherly’s neck “Cause my knowledge will bite her face off.” He says as he backs up away from everyone still wearing the same disturbing face as before. Everyone nodded their heads scared to upset the monkey man in the middle of his rant. “so don't question senior Chang or you'll get bit.” He continues to yell ‘ya bit’ for the next few minutes. 

He stood in silence for a minute with his hands clamped together as he studied the room waiting for a response from anyone. it startles everyone when he claps his hands together speaking in Spanish gesturing towards the white board behind him. “We’ll be having conversations in Spanish using the phrases we learned this week and you’ll be partnering up for this project.” He smiles at the boy who was sitting to his left earlier caressing his face with the back of his hand making the boy physically pull away almost tumbling out of his chair. “Now if you’ll look under your desk at the card i placed there, it should either have a picture or a word on it.” He picks up Britta’s and holds it up to the class showing everyone a small white house on the card. “Now anyone with the card that says casa on it will be Britta’s partner.”  Alex seemed to shrink in his seat as Chang made eye contact with him. “Got it, Starburns.”  i turn to look at Alex with a smile mixed with a questionable glare. He looks at me begging for mercy as if those words stung him. “Starburns huh?” I whisper over to him. He slumps his shoulders in defeat and slides deeper into his seat wearing a silly pout on his face. I lay my hand on his desk getting his attention back on me, “Don’t worry Alex I think that name is dehumanizing.” His smile crawled back onto his face and his chipper spirit seemed to return just as soon as it left. Chang claps his hands loudly to get everyone's attention, "Okay! See you Friday, find your partners, and what do we say at the end of class?" Everyone around me very dully grumbles 'Hasta la wago' at Chang while he twirls his arms around like a conductor. "Oh come on hands! Hands Gestures are Ninety percent of Spanish!" This time everyone says it again with a little more pep and they all throw there arms around copying Professor Chang's movements. He tells the class that they did excellent and they all clap as everyone shifts in their seats grabbing cards and talking amongst themselves. I grab mine from under my seat pulling it out to see a horse on my card. "Horse SOOO..?

 "A/N: Hey guys hope you enjoyed this so far but this is where you guys as the fans have to help me out. I want for this character to spend some time with everyone from the show but I'm not sure who to start us off with? Who do you think we should be partners with?

[essieeeeeeeee]

FUCK IT, i’m posting part 1. no title yet, so it’s just “bad touch villain fic” for now until I can get my act together enough to come up with one.

may I just start by saying that I love how we all as a fandom have collectively taken one look at our guy Shaw and thought: this boy needs to get fucked.

on a separate but equally important note, Transporter 2 may have been an absolute train wreck of a movie, but it gave me the gift of some quarter-dressed villain chick licking up the side of Jason Statham's face while he exudes such gay "I'd rather be literally anywhere else than here in this moment" energy, so there's that.

i’m fucking wheezing, man. his face.

anyways, in case it’s not obvious, I’ve stolen the T2 villain couple and threw them into here instead, so if you’re curious about what they look like, feel free to look them up (Gianni Chellini and Lola). this isn’t a crossover, it’s just me being lazy and stealing characters from other movies and playing with them.

a’ight, here we go with part 1. will get part 2 out relatively soon, I think. hopefully. god, I’m so slow at writing, guys.

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The bell above the door chimes merrily as Shaw pushes it open and steps into the diner, breathing in the homey scent of grease and caffeine that wafts out at him the moment he crosses the threshold. He lingers in the entryway - tucking his sunglasses carefully into his front left suit pocket, and letting his eyes drag over the establishment in a quick, practiced once-over.

American, is the first thought that comes to mind. Tacky, the second, though he supposes that’s a given, considering the first.

To be fair, it isn’t the worst diner he’s ever stepped foot in - that dubious honor went to a crusty hole in the wall in New Jersey, the name of which he couldn’t and didn’t really care to recall - but even so, the place isn’t exactly what he’d expected from a meet and greet with the CIA.

It's… lively, for starters. 

Shaw skims his gaze over the laminate red and white booths, the worn looking tabletops sticky from dots of leftover syrup. Bright sunlight peeks through the big windows, now that the storm clouds are dissipating in the frankly oven-like California weather.  Patrons chat loudly from each corner of the room. It's open and cheery and packed with parents and their tiny screaming sprogs, and all of it's already giving him a very sleep-deprived headache.

Shaw can pinpoint every word of the conversation that’s happening six booths to his left, too, which means privacy won't be much of a concept here either.

Strange choice in location, he thinks, for a debrief with top secret government information regarding a world-ending cyber death cult.

Deckard shrugs off the discomfort of it all, though. Partly because he honestly can't muster up enough of a fuck to give, and partly due to the fact that the smell of freshly brewed coffee has been relentlessly beckoning him forward since the initial whiff of it hit him from the doorway. He takes a quick moment to map out the visible exits, more habit than anything - front door, side door, likely a back one through the kitchen if needs must - and, once satisfied with his perusal, makes his way towards the bulky figure in the back right corner that’s stuck out like a mountain among mole hills since Shaw first walked into the place.

“Hobbs,” he mutters wearily, and spares a grimace at the grungy empty seat across the table. He resignedly lowers himself into it anyways.

The lawman’s eyes flick up from the plate in front of him, and he doesn’t look all that surprised; but Shaw knows it’s because he caught Hobbs’ gaze since the moment he stepped out of the rental car in the lot outside.

They’re both just a couple of paranoid bastards like that, he supposes.

And Hobbs looks - good. Better than the last time Deckard's seen him, awkwardly parting ways at a terminal in LAX, the both of them littered with bruises and scrapes that were only a small testament to the absolute shitshow they'd somehow just survived. Now it seems the bigger man's nicks are less than scabs, and the large bruise Hobbs had been sporting across his left temple at the time is nearly gone.

Shaw grudgingly notes that he's also been nursing his own wounds, and steadily healing, if slowly. His right shoulder still twinges when he moves it the wrong way, paracetamol continues to be a three times a day affair, and the spastic tick in his left hand hasn't quite let up since Brixton's electroshock therapy session, but overall - things are better.

His ribs still ache something fierce, though. Fractured, likely. Not that he's about to whine about it.

“Tinkerbell,” Hobbs greets, and then blithely stuffs another bite of the fried monstrosity that sits on his plate into his mouth. Shaw’s grimace deepens. “You’re late.”

“Blame your shitty weather. Flight delay.” Deckard ignores the insult; he's too fucking tired to pick up Hobbs' volley today. Instead, he leans forward, careful to avoid the greasy stain at the edge of the table, and gets straight to the point. “Where’s your contact?”

Because that was the obvious missing piece here, wasn’t it? Shaw didn’t come traipsing all the way to Los Angeles just to witness the Hulk stuff his oversized mug with substandard diner fare.

Two weeks out from Samoa - two weeks of very different, yet equally consequential family reunions, of settling affairs that only a forty-eight hour hotseat on every major news channel in the world can cause - and now it was time to get down to business. Hobbs’ CIA friend had promised intel. Shaw may be reluctant to forego his solo status for another team-up with Ms. America here, but he wasn’t an idiot. Information on Eteon didn’t exactly just rain from the sky.

Nine years of hunting the bastards down on his lonesome taught him that much.

Besides: the fact that Hattie’s life wasn’t on the line with this one left Deckard feeling a mite less prickly. Hobbs may be an annoyance, but he's at least a tolerable one.

“Also late,” Hobbs says, glancing down at his watch. Then the man sighs, and rubs at his temples in a way that makes Shaw wonder exactly what he’s getting into, here. “But he’ll probably show up -”

“- fashionably late and with Starbucks? You bet your perky muscled ass I will, Rebecca.”

Deckard startles a little in his seat, because where the fuck did this arsehole just come from, and his hand reflexively slides over the utensils on the table in front of him, but he smothers the instinctive urge to lodge one into the meat of the thigh that's suddenly appeared at his side. The scruffy, grinning man it's attached to seems to catch the movement, from the way his eyes dart down to the table. He shifts, just slightly, away from Shaw.

Smart fucker.

And no sensible shoes, either. That was interesting.

"Locke," Hobbs says, resigned, scooting in to make a little room as Scruffy slides himself into the seat left behind.

"Aw, don't be like that, Becky," the man whines, and Shaw can't help but mouth a bewildered 'Becky?' at Hobbs with raised brows. Hobbs only drops his head and rubs at his temples a little harder. "You know my delicate emotions can't handle the strain."

"You brought Starbucks. Into a diner."

"Never judge a man for his grande quad nonfat one-pump no-whip mocha habit, Lukas. Gosh, have I taught you nothing?"

"I can sincerely say," Hobbs grinds out, and Shaw is somewhat delighted by the disgruntled twist in the other man's features, "that the only thing you've ever taught me is the true meaning of patience."

"Don't you sass your father like this in front of company, young man. Already in the rebellious teenage phase, Christ, they grow up so fast, don't they?"

"Like mold," Deckard drawls. The disgruntlement on Hobbs' face grows deeper.

"Ha," he says, flatly. "What'aya got for us, Locke?"

"Don't rush me, sweetums, I'm famished," CIA titters, enthusiastically waving down one of the bustling waitresses. Deckard's somewhat grateful for it; he'd murder for a coffee, and that wasn't a metaphor. "And, what, no introduction? The manners on you today."

Hobbs sighs. Shaw honestly can't help but be somewhat amused by the balls this bloke must have, riling up the lawman like this. He's not sure quite yet what to think about Chatterbox - intriguing or just downright irritating - but he can at the very least admit that anyone who can put that level of utter frustration into Hobbs' eyes was worth looking into.

"Shaw, meet Locke," Hobbs says, waving impatiently at the agent beside him, who wriggles his fingers at Shaw in greeting while slurping loudly around his straw. "Locke, meet Harry Potter's uglier cousin."

Deckard scowls.

"Well fuck me sideways, but Dudley sure grew up nice, didn't he?" Locke says, and - Shaw’s actually a bit flattered to see the agent’s eyes flick over him lasciviously.

But before he can quite unravel that one, a server appears at the table edge, shooting a wide, familiar smile in Hobbs' general direction. "Can I get you boys anything?"

Locke straightens in his seat. "I'll take one of everything."

"No he won't," Hobbs snaps, smacking the idiot’s shoulder with the back of his hand.

"You're so right, snookums, gotta watch that girlish figure." Locke rubs his arm with a wince, beaming at the woman, who's started to look a bit flustered at this point, poor dove. "I'll take a number two, extra syrup, extra mayo."

She nods slowly, and turns to Deckard, as though hoping to re-establish some sort of normality.

He takes pity on her. "Coffee, thank you. Black.”

"To match his soul," Hobbs mutters around a sip from his own cup.

"To match my shoe," Shaw corrects with a tight smile. "Going up your arse."

Hobbs snorts. "Think you got that one twisted, son."

"Think you might want to start ponderin' the merits of a wing-tipped enema. Son."

"Jesus, you two are adorable," Locke interjects, resting his chin in his hands as the waitress pours out the coffee and shuffles nervously away. "Like some sort of walking, talking, opposites-attract, enemies-to-lovers, sixty-nine kay slow-burn. Is there a kudos button hiding around here somewhere?"

Shaw can't interpret even half of that. He has a strong inkling that he should probably just shoot the man for it anyway.

"You wanna get to the point, chuckles, before I put your head through this table?" Deckard says. He drums his fingers casually against said tabletop, just to make his own point that much clearer.

Entertaining as Hobbs’ little motormouth of a friend has been, Shaw has just spent the better of his last twenty-four hours on a transatlantic red eye: he's exhausted. Even a verbal spar with Hobbs isn't quite giving him the usual spike of adrenaline it deserves. The only thing he wants more right now than the coffee in his hand is his head on the pillow of a hotel room bed, and CIA here was the last obstacle standing in the way of that particular goal.

Not a safe place to be, generally speaking.

"And oddly in sync with your threats, too," Locke muses. He shifts back in his seat, though, and quickly raises his hands in surrender when Shaw leans forward menacingly. "Right, yes, ok, the point! I, ah. I definitely have one of those."

Finally, he digs into the bag at his side, hastily pulling out a few manila files. He slides them across the table towards the two of them. Shaw lets the murder in his eyes simmer down a bit as he snatches up his own.

“So, the Snowflake,” Locke starts. “Turns out the late professor wasn’t the only one with his hands in that diabolical cookie jar - ”

Scruffy keeps talking, but Shaw stops listening the moment he opens up the folder and skims his eyes down the first page.

Oh, shit, he thinks.

His stomach makes a very abrupt descent to his knees.

Because there, tucked under a paperclip in the top right corner, is a set of photographs. Generic, really. Black and whites, likely mugshots from the look of them. A man and a woman - staring straight towards the camera, little smirks nestled in the corners of their mouths like poorly hidden secrets. Shaw’s gaze traces over the sharp curve of a cheekbone, an aristocratic nose.

The faces staring up at him are jarringly familiar, in the worst possible ways.

The kinds of ways, in fact, that suddenly makes it very tempting to get up from the table and walk away, as quickly as possible.

“-ellini and Lilian Nuata,” Locke says, pointedly tapping the photos in his own file, and it’s as though the world’s volume has abruptly turned back up again. Shaw blinks, then snaps his eyes back up to the two men across the table from him. He blanks his face to cool disinterest when he finds Hobbs staring back at him.

Deckard’s not sure what kind of expression worked its way across his face while he took in the literal goddamn nightmare in his hands, but the perplexed look Hobbs shoots him makes Shaw think it wasn’t as subtle as he would have hoped.

"You know 'em?" Hobbs asks.

And fuck, but that's a loaded question. Shaw can feel his face twist like he’s sucked a lemon. It's completely involuntary, and he hates himself for the tell.

“We’ve… met,” he answers, somewhat honestly.

As if 'met' could ever sum up the amount of sheer overwhelming fuckery their run-ins entailed. Shaw covers his discomfort with a fortifying sip of his coffee.

It curdles in his stomach.

"Oh, good," Locke says, almost obliviously cheerful. "Then you probably know just how pants shittingly insane our Harley Quinn and Joker duo here are."

Bit more than you'd think, Shaw muses with faint dread. 

"Nuata's the big brain behind our little Snowflake," Locke continues. "Andreiko may have invented the capsules that carried it, but the whole organ-melting, blood-spitting, eugenics genocidal virus shebang? That's her bouncing bundle of joy." The man takes another flippant slurp of his latte. The sound grates on Deckard's nerves, but he's feeling a bit too numb to give much of a shit about it.

"And Chellini?" Hobbs asks. The lawman's still shooting curious glances Deckard's way, and Shaw figures that's his cue to stop acting the part of nervous wallflower.

"Muscle," he finally speaks up. The word somehow comes out normally, despite the fact that Shaw's throat is feeling drier than the Sahara. "But also happens to have a brain, unlike someone else I know."

Hobbs' semi-concerned expression falls back into an irritated scowl. That’s good. Deckard doesn't need the man's cautious hovering. 

They may have a somewhat decent, if not entirely amicable working relationship now, but Shaw wasn't about to dump his sordid histories into Hobbs' lap. They weren't friends. 

Deckard didn't really know what they were at this point, actually, but it certainly wasn't that. 

"Nuata can take care of herself, but they're… formidable, together," Deckard continues, before Hobbs can open his mouth. "They're sadists. Like to play with their food before eating it."

"And you've… met, huh?"

Something about Shaw's voice must have been slightly off, because the concern is creeping its way back into Hobbs' eyes. It makes Shaw's skin itch in irritation; he's not some child to be coddled and fretted over. Best to cut that nonsense off right here and now.

"Worked with 'em on a job once." Deckard shrugs, nonchalant, and leans back in his seat. "Briefly. Didn't quite appreciate their methods, so we parted ways."

It's the truth, if a heavily edited one. Either way, the mission is accomplished: the concern vanishes immediately.

"Of course you worked with them," Hobbs snorts bitterly. "Looney tunes here sound just your speed. What kind of job they end up luring you in with, anyway? Selling poison to toddlers? Murdering puppies in Tokyo?"

Ah. Well - ouch.

That one hit somewhat closer to home than likely intended, going by the expression of mild regret on Hobbs' face moments after the words leave his mouth. The sting of it is sudden, surprisingly unexpected, and altogether earned, really. It’s an abrupt reminder that even in the wake of Samoa, there’s still a decent amount of unpacked baggage between the two of them. The kind of baggage that comes with literal skeletons in closets 

Or in fiery, crumpled sports cars, smoldering vengefully on a busy street in Tokyo.

Shaw considers himself a reasonably self-aware person; he already knows he's a piece of shit. Doesn't mean he'll tolerate Hobbs shoving his nose into the fact like some misbehaving dog.

"Fucking hilarious," he snaps, narrowing his eyes. "Don't think that's any of your business, is it?" 

He leans forward, and suddenly Deckard finds that he's angry. The irrational kind: no specific target, no specific cause. Angry at Hobbs - angry at Locke - angry at every little shout and laugh in the air of the diner around him. Absolutely, completely, furiously angry that this file, with those pictures, has been dropped into his lap like a fucking grenade when he least expected it.

"You sure seem real interested though, Tiny. Maybe you get off on that kind of thing, huh? Puppy murder? Kiddy killing?" Hobbs' mouth twists, as though he knows he deserves the retort, but that it's pissing him off nonetheless. Shaw smiles grimly. Good. "'Cause I know a few people who could give you some details -"

“Yeah, I’m sure you know plenty of people -”

"Maybe we could table that steaming pile of inhumanity for another day," Locke interrupts suddenly. "Fascinating as getting in touch with our inner Cruella de Vils sounds, we're on a bit of a time crunch, darlings. Your flight to Spain to bag us Bellatrix Lestrang and her boytoy is in five hours, and we’ve still got some ground to cover here."

Shaw cuts himself off, and reigns in the bright spark of rage still flickering in his head. Closes his eyes for a moment.

What is he even doing?

He opens his eyes again, lets them flick back down to the photographs in front of him with the morbid helplessness of watching an imminent disaster just waiting to occur. Knows, with swift clarity, exactly where the anger is coming from.

Tired or not, Shaw’s aware that the abrupt flare of resentment is an unreasonable reaction to what was meant to be an innocuous comment. He attempts to tamp it back down a bit; difficult, with Hobbs’ narrowed-eyed gaze staring at him from across the table, but do-able.

Professional, he thinks. You’re a fucking professional.

"Spain, huh? Always liked Spain. Good memories," Hobbs says suddenly, voice far too innocent to be anything but deadly. Shaw watches with sharp eyes as Hobbs takes a very pointed sip of his coffee, staring Deckard down. The bigger man places the cup back on the table with a quiet thud, and smiles. "Like when we blew up your brother’s plane, for instance."

On second thought, fuck professional.

"Whoa now,” Locke says, hastily grabbing at Shaw’s wrist with a nervous laugh as the Brit's fingers spasm hard around the cutlery on the table in front of him. Lucky timing - Deckard had half a mind to jab the butterknife in his grip straight into Hobbs' hand, crowded diner be damned. “Let’s just take it easy there, Scarier Spice. We’re all friends here.”

Shaw very deliberately glances down at the hand on his arm, before letting his eyes drag back up to the agent’s.

“You’re gonna want to let go of me,” he says, slowly. “Friend.”

The hand is instantly snatched away, with frankly satisfying speed.

“So aggressive,” Locke says with another nervous little chuckle, fanning himself. “I gotta say, the fearboner I’m getting right now? I’m kinda into it.”

The ache in Shaw's temples gives another sudden, violent throb, and - yeah, no.

He wasn’t throwing himself back into the wreckage that was Chellini and Nuata for the sake of the two men in front of him.

Deckard rises from his seat. "Have fun with your little mission, Hobbs. You go enjoy knocking a couple of pissant nobodies' heads together in Spain like a good dog, while I go find some useful intel to work with."

"Yup," Locke mutters quietly. "Definitely aroused in this moment."

"Locke, shut your goddamn mouth," Hobbs snaps. "Shaw, just - sit down."

And oh, but that's rich. "In case you haven't noticed, steroids," Shaw sneers, leaning forward on the table, "you ain't the boss of me."

Hobbs just rolls his eyes. "Don't be stupid, jackass. This is our best shot at getting these bastards, and you damn well know it."

The DSS agent leans forward himself, hardly backing down from the challenge in Shaw's eyes. And usually, that would get Deckard going - really throw some fuel on the fire - but now it just makes him hesitate.

"Besides," Hobbs adds, and his mouth quirks up into the beginnings of a wry grin. "Can't knock some pissant nobodies' heads together without my sidekick tagging along."

… goddamnit.

Shaw didn’t feel guilt very often, but Hobbs’ playful, friendly little smile was causing an avalanche of it. He falters; stands at the edge of the booth, half-turned towards the doorway, towards freedom, towards his ticket out and away from not-so-old wounds he’d rather take a bullet to the head for than let Hobbs be an audience to.

But. But.

He also wasn’t quite monster enough to allow Hobbs to wander into that horror show on his lonesome.

Slowly, grudgingly, Shaw sits back down.

He does not flush when Hobbs beams at him like the giant fucking golden retriever he is.

“Wonderful!” Locke says, clapping his hands together cheerfully. “Gosh, isn’t this exciting? It’s like we’re a team. Like the X-men or something. Ooooh, I call Wolverine.”

“Locke,” Hobbs says forlornly.

“Yeah, no, you’re right, Shaw definitely pulls off the brooding loner better. I think I’m more of a Jean Grey myself, too.”

“What’s the plan?” Shaw asks brusquely, flipping open the file again. He slides his gaze past the photos this time, and further on to the information on the page beneath.

The pictures still manage to haunt him out of the corner of his eye.

“They’re holed up in Chellini’s private chalet in Almeria. Real fancy stuff,” Locke says. “These two may be balls to the fucking walls bonkers, but they're not stupid. Guards and security out the ass, I’m tellin’ ya. We’ll need you two to go in, extract them, and maybe not destroy half the city in the process, because Big Daddy Government isn’t thrilled at the thought of covering your usual laundry bill.”

“Get in, get the marks, get out. Simple,” Hobbs says, leaning back in his seat.

“You’re simple. This is not,” Shaw snaps, tapping at the folder. “We need an actual plan, not your usual smash-and-grab theatrics.”

“Pretty sure my ‘theatrics’ are what threw your ass in jail.”

“Pretty sure your incompetence is what got me out of it -”

Somehow, an hour later, the smallest semblance of a strategy comes together. The stability of it helps soothe the tension buzzing at the edges of Shaw’s mind, but even so, it lingers, like a bad taste on the back of his tongue. He traces his fingers along the black and white images in front of him for a brief moment as CIA pays the food bill, before forcefully flipping the folder shut.

"Still one thing I need to get straight,” Deckard says, gaze suddenly pinning Locke to his seat. “You had me fly to Los Angeles, from London - just to fly back to Spain?"

The murder must be back in his eyes, Shaw thinks, because there's certainly a new hint of fear in Locke's.

"Ok, to be fair," Locke starts, edging back in his seat slightly, "one: I didn't actually know you were in London, because two: you're a very naughty, sneaky boy who happens to be incredibly difficult to track down, and did I mention I have a very delicate bone structure?"

Locke's voice climbs increasingly higher as he presses further back into the booth - likely because Shaw was leaning across the table with the intent of strangling him.

“Shaw, stop scaring the rabbit,” Hobbs says, shoving at Locke’s shoulder as the man pushes himself into Hobbs’ space. “Locke, let me the hell out of this booth.”

Shaw slips out of the booth himself, but not without a withering glare in Scruffy’s direction.

They make their way out of the diner, Locke scurrying off with rambling goodbyes that Shaw doesn’t bother listening to, and the sudden wave of heat as he steps out of the doors with another chime of bells above them is almost nauseating. Deckard grimaces at the bright blue sky as Hobbs siddles up next to him.

"You good?" Hobbs says, and bumps his shoulder awkwardly against Shaw's own.

And the move is just - so fucking Hobbs, so endearing (though Shaw would commit a fantastic amount of homicide before admitting that fact), that Deckard slowly, reluctantly deflates. The still-smoldering anger finally winks quietly out of existence, and just leaves him feeling exhausted in its stead. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Fine," Deckard mutters, glancing away with an irritated little sniff. "Just -"

He looks down at the file in his hand. Thinks of the photographs.

Trepidation hits him like a roundhouse kick to the gut. 

"- tired," he finishes dully.

Hobbs pats him on the shoulder with a big hand, and then just. Leaves it there. Like they're pals, or something. Shaw hesitates, but decides not to shrug it off.

It's ridiculous that it helps his nerves somewhat.

"Yeah, well. I've got a guest room, if you need to crash for a couple hours before the flight."

The offer is unexpected - possibly for both of them, going by the slight discomfort Shaw can pick out of Hobbs' posture, and the way he won't quite meet Shaw's eyes after - but Deckard honestly considers it for a moment. 

Only a moment, though. "Already booked a place," he lies through his teeth.

Fat fucking chance he'd be able to get any sembleance of sleep, with images of mugshots seared into his mind. Shaw knows himself; in all likelihood he'll find a place to kip out, with enough caffeine to hotwire an elephant, and drown himself in research for the next three hours.

Preparation never really helped when it came to Chellini and Nuata, but it sure as hell would make him feel less like he was throwing himself into the lion's den. Again.

"Right," Hobbs says. He gives a little squeeze to the shoulder under his hand, before letting it fall back to his side. Shaw refuses to let himself acknowledge that the sudden lack of pressure there is a disappointment, because he's not a fucking child. "I should head out. Gotta find someone to watch Sam while I'm gone."

Ah. The daughter. Strange, to suddenly remember that Hobbs was a man in charge of nurturing something. "Wheels up in four, then," Shaw says, slipping his sunglasses back onto his face in the California sunshine. "Just don't bitch to me about your leg room this time, Gigantor."

"Not all of us suffer from being vertically challenged, short stop."

"Just mentally, in your case," Shaw says, and can't help the corner of his mouth from ticking up slightly at Hobbs' snort of laughter.

“Sure,” the big man says with a huff. “Guess I’ll see you in España, tonto.”

And with that Hobbs walks off with cheery little wave, Shaw following him with his eyes as the lawman hefts himself onto the motorbike and departs with a roar of the engine. Shaw just shakes his head, and sighs.

Chellini and Nuata. Jesus fucking Christ, he thinks.

Well.

If nothing else, at least he'll have back-up this time.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

my heart is hitting the ground (Chapter One)

An urban fantasy/college Widomauk AU! Many many many thanks to the wonderful @minky-for-short for getting me into this podcast in the first place and workshopping this fic with me. Also enormous thanks to the amazingly talented @rabdoidal whose fantastic art this fic is based on but I could honestly write a multi-chapter fic on every bit of fan art he’s ever done, it’s all that great. 

Please consider reblogging and leaving me some feedback!

Ao3 | Ko-fi

Caleb Widoghast isn't the kind of guy who blows off studying and goes out a lot. He isn't the kind of guy to get too drunk at the gig for some college band he's never heard of. He isn't the kind of guy to fall hopelessly in love with the tiefling singer of said band and flirt with him after way too much whiskey.

Caleb Widoghast wakes up to find that, last night, he did exactly that. And now he has to deal with the fallout.

The night before came back to Caleb in pieces, each one worse than the last.

The dry mouth. The pounding headache. The fact that he was still wearing jeans under the covers but no shirt at all. The ringing ears.

He moaned and pushed the hair back from his forehead, wrinkling his nose at the almost immediate reek of whiskey. Why the hell was he drinking whiskey, he never…

And then the last piece fell into place. And Caleb seriously considered diving back down underneath his blankets and never emerging again.

“Good morning!”

Of course, no knock preceded his bedroom door flinging open with a bang that made his eardrums throb, the only person it could be was Nott and courtesy wasn’t her strong suit. They’d known each other too long for that.

“I am…struggling to see what’s good about it,” Caleb groaned, pulling a face as the sound that came out of him sounded more like the last gasps of a dying squeaky toy.

Nott smirked at him from the cavernous hood of her sweatshirt, “M’kay, before you ask, let’s just do this all in one. Yes, you did get horrendously drunk. Yes, it was bad. And yes, Beau has video.”

Caleb slumped back into the tangled mess of his bedding, whimpering pathetically, “That’s it. I’m done with civilisation. I’m going to live in the woods and be a hermit and never speak to another person ever again. They will tell tales of me…”

Nott snorted, scrambling up on the end of his bed, “Aw, don’t be so dramatic. Beau had a few herself, it’s all shaky, you can barely see anything,” she took a sip of her tea, “Jester’s the one that got the really good shot…”

Caleb moaned again, louder as if making a point, dragging one of the pillows over his head.

His roommate couldn’t contain her giggles, though she tried to discreetly direct it into her mug, “The night wasn’t a total waste. You really seemed like you were having fun after about the third whiskey and coke. And you were really digging the band…”

Caleb threw his arm from his protective nest of blankets, accusatorily, “No! No, we are not talking about that!”

Nott held up her hands, “Hey, we all thought it was adorable! The way you kept ordering drinks so you could stand closer to the stage, I don’t think you ever heard a word anyone said…we knew you liked that kinda grungy, indie shit but we didn’t know you liked it that much!”

“Nott, I swear, I will kick you off this bed,” Caleb tried to snarl but it came out as more of a whimper, “Can you please take pity on me and make me some coffee?”

“Wish I could, big guy, but we’re all out,” the young goblin shrugged regretfully, “I think you used the last of it to get you through your last deadline.”

Caleb gave another miserable, frustrated groan, now at the world at large rather than Nott. That was just typical.

“Fine…fine, I’ll go get some,” he mumbled, trying to make his head stop throbbing long enough for him to tell up from down and roll out of bed, “Fresh air. it’ll be good for me. I think.”  

“There ya go, positive attitude,” Nott grinned her ear to ear smile, hopping lightly back to the floor, somehow not spilling a single drop of tea to the carpet or, at least, what of it was visible beneath the piles of clothes and notebooks.

Her large ears pricked up as Caleb’s phone gave an annoyingly bright chirp, her smile turning playful and crooked, “If you need a refresher on what happened that night, I bet that’s it.”

Caleb frowned, pawing on his dresser until he found his phone, squinting blearily at it. Sure enough, there was a flurry of messages from his friends, a few pictures that seemed to show nothing but blurs and vague shapes that maybe could be him twirling around lampposts and trying to climb up onto a table. And a video. A few videos actually.

He felt his heart twist with that familiar and unpleasant acid of embarrassment as he studied the thumbnail of the first one. The purple tiefling, the singer, in all his colourful and coiffed glory, somehow still looking as drop dead gorgeous as he had the night before, even when recreated in blocky pixels. He was leaning against a large stacked speaker, an unmistakeably bemused expression on his face while some bedraggled, stooped hobo looking guy clung to a table for balance beside him. Caleb pinched the bridge of his nose and tossed the phone over his shoulder (though he was tempted to aim for the window) as it sunk in that it was him.

He hadn’t meant to go over and actually talk to the guy. He’d been perfectly content staying squeezed in between Fjord and Beau, subtly drooling and moony eyed over the front man who alternated between yelling his expletive filled song titles over the clamour of the close, smoky darkness of the bar and singing in a rough, low growl that had done things to Caleb that he really wasn’t ready to admit to. That would have been a perfect plan, maybe he’d daydream about him for a few weeks and months after before accepting that the tiefling was so far out of his league that it wasn’t even funny and sinking back into school work and vague loneliness.

But Caleb had found himself drifting back to the bar, where the view of the singer (Mollymauk, that was his name, Caleb wasn’t likely to forget it any time soon) with the spotlight hitting his exquisitely tattooed chest just right, looked like something from a goddamn renaissance painting. Instead of his usual half pints of what his friends insisted were pretentious hipster beers, Caleb had found himself ordering jack and cokes, eventually graduating to straight whiskeys after a while, hoping that the singer might notice and think him some cool cowboy type rather than the nervous exchange student in rumpled flannel that he was, who could launch into a full-on lecture about the benefits of different brewing techniques if given the slightest nudge.

Caleb blamed the whiskeys and the urging of his friends for the incredibly bad decision that followed the end of the set. He didn’t remember his words exactly, he just remembered a powerful need to go and tell this Mollymauk of the beautiful voice and extravagant dress sense just how much he’d loved his music. And he really had. He’d loved the rawness of it, the clever twists in the lyrics that sent the song suddenly careening in a direction no one would have guessed. He loved its simplicity, just that voice echoing through the underground bar and a simple guitar accompaniment from a very tall woman who’d had Beau staring in a very similar way to Caleb (he wondered why she wasn’t getting any shit for that…and then quickly realised it was probably because she hadn’t made a colossal ass of herself afterwards and because Beau getting heart eyes over a woman she’d only just met was nothing new). Caleb had never, ever found any music that had spoken to him like this stuff did; it make him feel less alone, less broken, less of an outsider. It had been a stronger magic to him than anything he read about in his schoolbooks and he’d fallen for it, hard and devastatingly.

All that would have been a great thing to tell Mollymauk, when Caleb had come staggering over from his table to where the tiefling was packing away his microphone. Unfortunately, what had come tumbling out of his mouth, as far as he could remember, was something about his music being so good that it had ‘given him a boner in his heart’.

Caleb thanked every god he’d ever heard of that he didn’t remember Mollymauk’s reaction, feeling a sickness in his stomach that had nothing to do with his hangover.

“Did you get the one of you doing Singing in the Rain in German?” Nott chirped happily, still in the doorway, swaying in her sweatshirt so long it brushed her knees, the one she always wore, “I never knew you had such a good voice.”

Caleb grumbled at her, glaring with bleary eyes, waving his hand dismissively, “Go. I need to shower…why do I need to shower so bad?”

“Oh,” Nott shrugged, “Probably because you climbed into the dumpster thinking it was the cab.”

Caleb dragged his hand through his long hair, which had taken on the consistency of a reddish brown, greasy birds nest, “Do us all a favour, Nott, and just leave me in the gutter next time. This was an absolute disaster.”

His roommate gave him a look he didn’t understand before disappearing around the corner, “Are you sure?” she called behind her.

That look and those words continued to confuse Caleb until he was in the bathroom, wondering if he should just burn his clothes and have done with it, when he caught sight of his own reflection above the sink. Not a pretty sight on any day and even less now in Caleb’s opinion, but his aching eyes were distracted. By the series of numbers written on his forehead in a flourishing hand, in thick black Sharpie.

Ah. Now Caleb remembered pressing the pen into Mollymauk’s hand, asking him to write his number on his head so he wouldn’t forget it. The wizard slumped, letting his head knock against the cold porcelain of the sink.

Being a forest hermit was sounding more and more tempting every second.

[srry-not-srry]

another skam fic yikes

i wrote a shameless au! for skam because i literally couldn’t stop myself. going to post on Ao3 soon, but had to unleash my ~shame~ on the tumblr world first. i hate me more than you hate me. 

Shameless Au!Skam 

Isak - 23

Noora -18

Jonas - 16

Eva - 11

Lea & Liam (twins) - 5

Chris Schistad is the neighborhood drug dealer shamelessly into Isak

William is his best friend and shamelessly into Noora

both are same age as Isak were in his class and were friendly but not friends all from same neighborhood

Isak was hot to trot in high school had big dreams to go to acting school in NYC but obvi has to take care of his fam

Sana & Eskild + Vilde are V and Kev but they aren’t in love or married they are just roommates and neighbors

Even has bored rich Steve/Jimmy who falls shamelessly in love with Isak

basically everyone is in love with Isak

Title: Tell Me You Love Me, Make It Hurt

“Isaaak, he’s back!” Magnus sings, voice bright and sunny and loud in Isak’s ear suddenly.

“Jesus fuck!” Isak hisses as the bacon grease spills over the side of the pan and singes his fingers. He drops it immediately on the hot stove, and brings his fingers to his mouth. Magnus laughs, hard and loud, from where he’s appeared, leaning against the wall. “Fuck you,” Isak says, rushing to run his hands under the cool water from the sink.

“Think he’ll ask you out again?”

Isak rolls his eyes. “I hope not.” 

“Whatever! If I had a fancy fucker slipping me hunnies every time I took his order I’d find out what else he wants.”

“Yeah?” Isak teases. “You’d go out with a dude just for some cash?”

“Gotta feed the children somehow.” Magnus grins.

Isak rolls his eyes again but he turns to watch the tall, lean man slink into the diner. He looks every inch like he doesn’t belong there. As if he’s gotten lost on the wrong side of town and has randomly decided to step in some shitty diner for a bite to eat. It’s been three weeks, and Even has come in religiously every Tuesday and Friday for bitter coffee, undercooked steak, and a slice of lemon meringue pie. Isak runs damp hands through his hair in an attempt to contain his wiry curls. He straightens his apron and grabs a notepad off the stack behind the counter before heading over.

“Go get em tiger,” Magnus whispers.

“Fuck you,” Isak replies.

Even doesn’t look up from examining the menu as Isak approaches, pulling the pen from where it’s been tucked behind his ear.

“Gonna try something new this week?” Isak asks. Even draws his eyes up and looks the boy up and down, a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. His eyes dance, almost as if Even is flirting with Isak, as if he finds him attractive. Isak curses himself in his head because he knows he isn’t. How could he be? Isak knows how he looks: greasy apron wrapped around his waist, stained with food spills and old, hair probably wild and gross from his eight hour shift with another two still on the clock. His jeans are hand-me-downs or something, he doesn’t remember, but he knows he paid less than ten dollars for them. His shoes worn sneakers, holes beginning to form where the cloth meets the rubber. Even doesn’t belong here, nor should he be looking at Isak like that: hands twitching and eyes hinting at thoughts of lust. Isak can see his car parked haphazardly on the curb through the window, a shiny black Porsche that reeks of money. He’s frankly surprised the thing hasn’t been stolen. Or that Even hasn’t been mugged at least. He isn’t subtle with his clearly designer jeans, flashy gold watch, and expensive sunglasses. Even looks like he belongs shirtless on some yacht in the Caribbean. Not here, flirting with Isak on the wrong side of Chicago.

“Hmm, don’t know if I’m feeling that adventurous just yet.”

“So the usual?” Isak asks, pen poised to write on his small notepad even though he already has Even’s order memorized.

“Do you have any suggestions?” Even asks coyly, flitting his eyes over Isak’s body. Honestly, Isak inwardly groans because Even’s voice can make anything sound sexy.

“The chocolate cake is my favorite.”

“So, I’ll have the usual except with the cake this time.” Even winks. Isak tries to control the nervousness pooling in his stomach and hopes he isn’t blushing. Though he knows that his cheeks and the tips of his ears are probably on fire. Isak turns to rush into the kitchen to avoid that heavy stare and hopefully get this stupid crush under control. “Isak?” Even calls to his quickly retreating figure.

“Yeah?”

“You look cute today.” Oh god.

——

Magnus won’t quit bugging him and it’s honestly starting to irritate Isak beyond words. He’s tempted to tell Madhi, who’s the main diner coo even though they all pitch in at times, about Magnus’ failed hookup attempt this past weekend just to throw him off his back. Though he swore would never mention cat-tongue girl again to anyone.

“Dude, honestly he so wants you. You need to say yes.”

“God, this again? He only asked that one time.”

“You rejected him so hardcore. I was sure he’d be scarred for life! He’s probably still working up the courage. No wonder he comes back every week!”

“Shut up,” Isak hisses. “Or I’ll tell every one of your tables what you say about them behind their back.”

Magnus goes white. “You wouldn’t.”

“I fucking would!”

“God, would you two quit,” Madhi groans at them. “You’re stinking up my kitchen with your annoying commentary. Magnus, leave Isak alone. He’s had enough on his plate this week. Isak, that Even dude stares at you with bedroom eyes and has watched your ass every time you walk through the room. Stop pretending like you don’t know.” He huffs, turning back to rotating the steaks on the grill. Isak and Magnus shut up.

Or rather, they move to the prep room. Isak attempting to finish some of his chore list and stock inventory so he’s not stuck here past shift end. He has to pick the kids up from school today because Noora has graduation practice, and Jonas has a soccer match. God, he can’t believe the year is almost over. Maybe when summer comes he’ll finally catch a break or a breath. Noora has been hinting to him about getting a GDE. Isak swears he finds one of those goddamn posters for the classes lying somewhere around the house at least once a day. He doesn’t want to tell her that he’s been saving up money on the side for it, because he knows she’ll get excited and it probably won’t work out. Jonas has needed to get his wisdom teeth out for months and the twins are growing out of their clothes faster than he can buy them from the second-hand shop on the corner. He doesn’t have the time or the money to enroll to get some dumb degree. But he can’t help the thrill of want that spikes through his body every time he doesn’t catch himself in time and he’s daydreaming of the future. Always the same: New York City, his siblings comfortable and happy and clean with endless food in their bellies, and him on stage, acting his fucking heart out. He always shakes himself before it can go further that that, no use dreaming of things that will never happen.

“You okay dude?” Magnus asks cautiously. “Didn’t know you had shit going on this week.”

Isak sighs, and rubs his forehead. He can feel the beginnings of a killer headache around the edges of his temples. “Yeah. I just, Liam’s been sick this week and my fucking dad showed up randomly on Tuesday night and crashed on the couch. Threw up all over the fucking rug. Jonas cleaned it up. But the kids were so happy to see him, so I couldn’t bring myself to yell at him or kick him out.”

“Shit. He still there?”

“Nah, Noora screamed at him soon as I took the kids to school and threw him out.”

“Sorry bro.”

“It’s fine. Just another typical week in the Valtersen show.”

Magnus bit out a laugh, though Isak could tell he was trying to lighten the mood for his sake. He’s not complaining, he’s not. It’s just sometimes he wishes his head wouldn’t ache so much or his feet or his back from these ten-hour shifts and he wishes he didn’t have to constantly worry about how they would find the money to pay for the washing machine that will inevitably fail them any day now. Magnus gets it though. He just bailed his brother out of jail last week for those cocaine charges. Fuck, he’s still doing community service hours the judge gave him instead of juvie for that stunt with the Lexus he pulled last year. They all get it, or they wouldn’t work here. Or live in dingy houses in some grungy neighborhood on the east side of the train tracks. Isak’s life isn’t any harder than the rest of theirs. So maybe he gets why Magnus is pushing the Even thing. Everybody has found some rich fucker to take them on a doubt once in their lives. It’s usually some cheap flirting, cheesy hookup lines, a nice dinner and then a long fuck, and then their fancy car peals out of the neighborhood so fast you’d think they were running from the cops. Point is, the bored rich dudes usually don’t stick around except for one small peak into the hard-knock life to ease their curiosity. Isak has tried being rude to Even. Indicating he’s not interested. Yet here he is every fucking Tuesday and Friday ordering his medium-rare steak and shitty coffee. Magnus thinks it’s more. Some Sugar Daddy bullshit scenario. Isak doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He wishes Magnus would give it up. He’s not going to be somebody’s fucking charity case.

Magnus cuts him another sly look. “You should give him your number.”

“Ugh.” Isak groans and goes to refill everyone’s water glass, even the customers that aren’t in his section.

((This is just a snippet of the first part))