#her and my dad just went into a bunch of new debt to start a business
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kakashihasibs · 2 months ago
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I can't sleep x_x
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lukaherehelp · 1 year ago
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I immediately need a little bit more info on Nont and Nant and how come Nont effortlessly started investigation without hindrance. There are certain things that are going around my head:
Did Nont and Nant live apart? Did Nant never mention his twin Infront of the group? 'cause how come they have no idea about him having a brother. They also brushed off the possibility of twins interchanging positions (which is what it is), "this is not a thriller fiction movie" huh? Also they never even mentioned about Nant's family other than his politician mom to the police. Is this their birth mom? Or a step mom? Or did their parents separated and the dad took in Nont and mom took in Nant?
Who is the dad? Is he in the police department? Who asked Nont to do this? Or is helping Nont to do this? 'cause how come the police is not going after him asking for information? We didn't get a single scene where he gets interrogated. How come a politician's son going missing and coming back not a big news to them? Did they never investigate about Nant having a twin? How come an information like that stays hidden? Or the police is involved in this? I mean helping Nont carry out investigation without anyone getting alerted. Makes sense. Also he is pretty much documenting everything. So is the dad in the police ??
What debt was Prom referring to? Who were chasing Nant? Did THEY kill him? If not will they go after Nont thinking he is Nant? Why was he sending clips to captain? Just for the money? Why did he delete the chats completely?
I have so many questions and almost zero answers lol. Also, imagine Nont falls for Prom, like head over heels, and later finds out he is very much involved in the disappearance of his brother. Oh God.
Let me answer your questions the best I can, my fellow investigator 😌
THE TWINS
This hasn't being mention in the show but it was mentioned in their character descriptions, Nont and Nant got separate as kids due to their parents divorcing. Nant stayed in Thailand with their mother while Nont was forced to go overseas with their dad. Them being separated could explain why no one in the group knew about Nont.
During their interrogation, the Baddie Bunch comments that they all met during freshman year, so merely two years ago. They knew he had a brother tho. They didn't get surprised about it when Nont (faking being Nant) in EP1 told them that "I went to see my dad and brother".
So Nant trusted them with the information of what his family was like, but brushed over the twin info.
THE DAD
We have 0 info about this man. He's important enough to be able to move himself and one of his kids out of the country, but that's about it.
Their dad, for what Nont has revealed to us, is in fact whom send him to investigate.
Mind you, the police interrogated the Baddie Bunch BEFORE Nont made his entrance through the glass door, they comment about it on EP1. We just got to see it in EP2. So probably, once the Nont came around, the police dismissed the case. They probably ask Nont a few questions, to the father too, and due to them working together, got the police to back off. The police probably dismissed the case as a runaway whom came back.
I'm sus about the dad's intentions tho. He already knows something fishy is going on and he prefers to send his other son to investigate. Maybe he doesn't want an scandal... But why? And why risk your other son investigating this? Is it that damaging?
THE DEBT
For what I could understand due to the circumstances, after Nant's mom became ill, they fastly went into debt.
This puts more sus on their father for me. Why not help your ex-wife even if is only to make sure your other son is doing okey? You clearly "care" for him now.
I need to go see the message with Captain about the clips and if there's any timestamp on the transfers Prom gave Nant to have a timeline, but all this was going on most probably when the twins' mom was ill. Remember, Nant went missing AFTER her death. Is the time frame Nont had to make an excuse.
Medical bills can get expensive (thank you Spain for free healthcare at all levels u_u), so that being the reason of the debt wouldn't surprise me. But I also think there's more going on.
Maybe Nant got money first from creditors and then was using Prom and Captain's money to pay said creditors. We still don't know for sure.
I'm 75% conceive that Nant is dead, I just don't know if it was accidental, homicide, murder or suicide. The four possibilities exist.
He indeed was sending the clips for money, but looks like he was finding himself as well as he delved deeper into kink and creating content.
The chat deletion could have being Nant desperate to erase his path escaping from someone... Or the culprit trying to erase their involvement. Nont only looked into the clean chat with Captain, but there's more info he didn't check.
MAY I ADD HERE: there's a drug storyline that hasn't started yet, but I'm more than certain that Nant also began experimenting with drugs, so that could be another reason.
I hope that answered your questions, dear ✨
Luka ou!
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superheroandcodlover · 19 days ago
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So this is the chapter 1 pretty much explaining the reader's situation next chapter there would be more tf141 but it will take a while see ya all
The sentence
You were scared...and well sad it was normal when you were just told you were going to be taken to jail because your father died in there.....
Your name is (reader's name) your eight years old, you never met your mother and not that you cared about her, dad used to say that she was busy traveling the world and one day she would come back, but you knew it was a lie, the other children knew it was a lie.
So when your father went to jail because of some debts you were left alone for a few days in your house till you were taken to the orphanage and you expected it to be horrible but it wasn't...not so much at least, most of the kids were nice! (There was other bunch that makes fun of you calling you ugly,fat and things like that) And there was this teacher that was super nice to you
you were in the orphanage playing with your friends in the playground until the guard came, they talked with the caretaker who seem frighthened and sad you didn't had a single idea of what was going on but you just knew it was bad, for a while they talked there was a point where all the children were watching them and then...it happened they took you away....you could only cry you tried to resist...you kicked and screamed but it was to no avail they were stronger and taller after all, the other kids only gasped your friends tried to help you but the guards push them away and then...was the others kids they laughed and whisper.
After that they took you to some car, you were in the backseat terrified as you cried and hugged your knees the guards only rolled their eyes and turned the volume higher, you couldn't see how they rolled their eyes though
You knew you wouldn't be the only kid in there for sure and that provides you some comfort....in a way but it was still terrifying as you watch from the window of the car that you were getting closer to the jail they help (push) you out of the car making you stumble and almost fall you were scared as they guide you inside of the jail you were trembling but also had a major question in your head.
"is it bad?" You asked the only thing you were wondering right now
The young guards turn to look at each other and nodded with a grin in it's faces
"you have no idea" They answered with malice dripping from their voice as they again guide (push) you inside leaving you with a old woman who seemed to be the one that checks in new prisoners
"h-hi?" Your voice trembled as you speak
"hi...you're the new prisoner right?" She questioned without even bothering to look up at you
"y-yes..." You answer again with a trembling voice but less nervous, something about her voice calms you down slightly since well the fact that she is referring to you like a prisoner make you nervous again
After the little chat she would give you your uniform and let the guards guide you to your cell in which you changed and sit in the 'bed' if that could be called a bed and the small moment of soothing you started to cry and sob trying to be silent but to no avail for what the lady told you you were going to be here five years....five years....you were only eight! You didn't want to miss your childhood....!
You were too focused on crying and thinking about what would happen when you got out, that you didn't notice a group of four men entering in the cell next to you until a gruff voice wake you up from that meltdown "are you okay?" The British accent heavy as he speak
"w-what? Who is speaking?" You asked confused your voice shaky and weak as you clean your tears and look around your cell
"my name is price.... I'm in the next cell..."
He spoke you look around and peek your head through the bars your eyes widening at the sigh of four men standing in the next cell looking at you
Who were they?
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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 4 years ago
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A Miraculous TikTok Account
Part 13
First
Previous
Next
Chloe sat on the bridge overlooking the river, her feet swinging absently as she watched bubbles streaming to the surface.
She’d love to help.
No, really. On top of just being bored out of her mind, she could also rub it in the other miraculous holders’ faces. That would be fun.
But, alas, things never worked out for her. Master Fu hadn’t whipped up a new batch of powerups quite yet, and even if he had she doubted that he would have given it to her of all people.
(Well, in all technicality they could go underwater and not die. The suits gave them some protection. But have you ever tried punching someone underwater? It’s quite the disadvantage.)
So, she settled for eating some ice cream and watching.
It was kind of fun, if she was being honest. She watched with bated breath, waiting for the occasional moments where Carapace would be thrown out of the water and hit a wall so hard it collapsed on him. He noticed her the third time this happened and now made a point to throw chunks of building at her every time.
Someone was in a bad mood. Who knows why. Couldn’t have anything to do with her, surely.
After about twenty minutes of fighting the buildings started mending themselves and she smiled as her ice cream reappeared in her hand.
Carapace jumped out of the water, a young woman in his arms. Once they were safely on land he detached her from the oxygen tank hidden in the shell on his back. If some of the water on her face wasn’t from the river, neither of them were going to say anything about it.
He walked over. Chloe thought he was just giving her some space to cry (the person looked foreign, if their confused frown was anything to go by), but then she saw the annoyance in the slight set of his jaw and she groaned mentally. Great. She was going to get chewed out again.
“Thanks so much for your help, Chloe --”
“Queenie or Queen Bee when we’re on the job, remember?”
He raised his eyebrows before shrugging and continuing on like he hadn’t heard her: “-- were you here to just watch and laugh?”
She scoffed. “No, that was just a fun little bonus.” She handed him the newly reformed ice cream. “I came here to take the akuma home. Didn’t know she was foreign, though.”
That made him pause, his previously annoyed expression quickly changing to a more confused one. “Wait, really?”
“Yeah?”
“You wanted to help me? You?”
“... yeah?” Said Chloe, crossing her arms over her chest. He was clearly looking for some sort of ulterior motive in her eyes, and she figured she’d give him one because she didn’t know how long she could stand to have him look stunned about her doing something mildly nice. “I feel like I owe everyone one for getting us all into this mess.”
He didn’t seem fully convinced (was he really that surprised that she was a decent person? She was a hero! It was her job!), but he let the subject go.
“Thanks, Queenie.”
She smiled a little. “Your ice cream is melting.”
“Damn it --!”
She snickered and walked over to the foreigner, who was just now coming out of their shock.
“Hey!”
The foreigner stared at her for a few minutes before whispering a: “What happened?”
“Um...”
What was the official spiel? Dang. She wracked her brain, trying to remember anything from the many hour long session where Master Fu had drilled it into all of them. Maybe she shouldn’t have slept through it.
“You got turned into a monster by an evil butterfly because we have a magical super terrorist.”
The lady stared at her for a few seconds before laughing and shaking her head. “Okay, what actually happened?”
Chloe gave her a shrug. “I don’t know. You fell in the water and my friend got you out.”
She jerked her head towards Carapace, who was casually eating the ice cream on a nearby bench and not going to class like she’d expected but whatever.
The foreigner nodded. “Yeah, I am a bit clumsy. Why’re you dressed like that?”
Chloe looked down at herself and hesitated. Usually her dad wanted them to say that they were filming a movie so they would still get tourists, but Nadja Chamack wasn’t there to make it sound realistic (no one wants to watch still water on the news for 10+ minutes), so…
“My friend and I cosplay.”
“Oh! Cool!” Said the foreigner. “Thanks for helping me! Hope your outfit didn’t get too damaged!”
After Carapace assured her that it was fine, she relaxed. They gave her directions to her hotel and watched her leave.
He cracked a grin once he was sure the foreigner was gone. “Maybe there’s something in the Paris air that makes people stupid. I still can’t believe anyone actually falls for that.”
“The alternative is believing there's a guy who’s going around with evil butterflies. I’d believe anything over that.”
“America has superheroes and stuff, too, y’know.”
“Yeah, but the heroes are adults and the villains actually show up.”
He sighed. “Lucky them.”
Chloe couldn’t help but agree.
He polished off his ice cream. When asked, she turned away so he could detransform and put his mask on. She didn’t know why he bothered detransforming when he was still wearing a green hoodie as a civilian. What was the point? Did he really want the sleeves back that badly?
Whatever. She detransformed as well.
“Ready to head home?”
“For someone who was so annoyed about leaving class, you don’t seem all that eager to go back to it,” said Chloe, crossing her arms over her chest as they started on their way.
He raised an eyebrow at her, unimpressed. “The excuse I used isn’t one that would let me go back. Or, at least, if I did everyone in class would think I was a terrible friend.”
She nodded her understanding.
“Thanks for trying, though.”
She chanced a look back and scoffed a little at the soft smile on his face. “Don’t expect anything like that again. I just owed you.”
The look melted into a cheeky grin. “Well, actually, you didn’t actually do anything to help, so don’t you still owe me?”
“... no? I gave you ice cream. Debt gone. That's how it works.”
“Okay, but it was previously eaten ice cream.”
“Like you can tell the difference.”
He rested a hand over his heart. “I happen to have a very refined palette, thank you very much.”
“I’ve seen you eat pickles with peanut butter.”
“You’ve dipped a burger in honey!”
“I have an excuse,” she reminded him. “What’s yours?”
He was silent for a moment. There was no excuse for pickles and peanut butter.
“... you still owe me.”
“No, I don’t!”
Would you believe me if I said that they continued debating this the entire twenty minute walk home?
And maybe even a little bit afterwards?
~
Chloe glanced out the window. It was nearing October, and…
“Hey, guys, we need to use these vegetables before they go out of season.”
Chat looked up from where he was watching a cartoon. Rena stopped doing pushups.
(Ladybug was on patrol and Carapace was doing homework in his room. Unfortunate, because now both of the people assigned the role of ‘group impulse control’ were absent.)
“What even uses a lot of vegetables?” Rena said.
“Salad,” said Chat with a knowing nod.
“Ew,” said Chloe, shaking her head. She stared at everything they had, a tiny frown playing on her lips, then snapped her fingers. “Salsa uses vegetables, right? Let’s just make a bunch of that.”
There were a lot of vegetables, but hey! More for them.
Rena went back to doing pushups. “Sure. Just make sure it isn’t white people stuff. Try asking for the recipe in Spanish.”
“Smart. Chat, can you look it up? I have dirt on my hands.”
Chat groaned as if she were asking him to do some great task and then stretched for his phone on the coffee table. He refused to leave the couch, so he ended up with his feet hooked over the arm of the couch for support as he stretched himself to the phone. He broke into a wide grin when he finally managed to grab it and then pulled himself back onto the couch.
It was probably more effort than just getting up a bit to grab it then sitting back down, but whatever.
He started typing, then he paused. “You guys know the Spanish word for salsa?”
Silence stretched between them as the two women looked at each other, trying to gauge whether or not he’d actually just asked that. Chat was steadily sinking into the couch as if hoping it would swallow him whole.
“The… the spanish word for salsa?” Repeated Rena.
“It -- I -- shut up!” He said. “Do you want salsa or not?”
Chloe snickered. “Sure. Can I see the recipe?”
He showed it to her and she squinted for a minute at all the words. Were some of them similar to French words? Yes. Was she completely sure about anything? Not at all.
She briefly considered asking Chat to translate everything for her, but she couldn’t. Not after she’d laughed at him for temporarily forgetting that salsa is salsa. He’d at least known the word for ‘recipe’ in Spanish, he had that over her.
Whatever. She’d guess. She’d had salsa before, surely that was enough to figure it out.
She started picking vegetables and after making sure to wash them off properly, they were set to start cooking.
Rena raised her eyebrows at the sink full of vegetables, opened her mouth to say something, snapped it shut. Her lips curved into a fox-like grin.
“What is it? I don’t like that smile,” said Chloe. She could feel that Rena was getting mischievous, she just couldn’t figure out why.
“Ah, don’t worry,” said Rena, waving her off as she pulled on an apron.
This worried Chloe more, but whatever.
“We don’t have a food processor or a blender, what do we do?” Said Chat, his eyes scanning the recipe.
“Just cut them real thin. It’ll be fine,” said Chloe with a vague wave of her hand.
She had a lot of confidence for someone who had never been in a kitchen in her life.
… It went great. Obviously.
The resident rich kids actually had been trying to be helpful, which kind of makes their failures worse in a way.
Chloe had been cutting tomatoes with the dull end of the knife for ten minutes before Rena had thought to look over and turn it around.
Chat had thought that it would be a good idea to chop jalapenos before onions and had rubbed jalapeno juice in his eye while trying to stop crying, which had not helped.
While Chat was attempting to get that out of his eyes without actually touching them, Chloe had taken up cutting onions. It was harder than she’d thought it’d be. The onion kept falling apart no matter how hard she tried to hold it together.
Chat had come back, eyes irritated and red, and started trying to cut tomatoes. This would have been fine if he could actually see the seeds enough to get them out.
… it was at this point that Rena had made them go sit down so she could just cook without a disaster happening every few seconds. She may have liked mayhem, but she actually wanted to eat some of the food they were working so hard for, so it was in her best interest to get them to just sit down at the kitchen table and watch.
A good while later Rena walked over. “I finished. Want to see?” She asked, her voice a little wobbly, as if she was on the verge of laughter.
Chloe squinted suspiciously at her before looking at the counter.
Ah. So that was what Rena’s mischievous smile had meant earlier.
They might have made about seven mixing bowls full of salsa (actually, it was more pico de gallo if you consider consistency, but that’s neither here nor there).
Chat groaned quietly. “Well, I hope Ladybug and Carapace really like salsa.”
“We don’t.”
The three problem children looked up to see Ladybug and Carapace leaning in the doorframe. Ladybug looked like she was fighting back her amusement, Carapace just looked tired.
Ladybug managed to pull herself back to her normal formalness as she crossed her arms over her chest. “According to the internet, salsa goes bad in about a week. I do expect that you won’t waste any.”
“Please help,” said a slightly distressed Rena. Their diets were SCREWED.
“Nope. This was your mistake,” said Carapace.
Oh, so NOW he has a backbone?
Ladybug gave Rena a cold look. “You should have told them.”
“... it was my miraculous’s fault.”
“Unfortunate,” said Carapace, unamused. He looked at the bowls on the counter and shook his head with a sigh. “Guess I need to go buy some tortilla chips for everyone.”
~~~
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bloodyshadow1 · 3 years ago
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Beauyashaweek 2021 day 2 Classical Art: Birthed from Stone
Beauyashaweek 2021 day 2 Classical Painting Art
Technically, the prompt is Classical Painting, but I couldn't really think of anything to write for that so I decided to do Classical Art as the prompt and thought of this. There's more to it, but I decided to cut it short because it was getting too long and not ending. I hope you enjoy my story, if you do please leave a comment, they help more than you know.
It was Saturday, there were a million things Beau would have preferred to be doing on her Saturday, one of the few days off she had, than going to the Zadash Museum of Art. That wasn’t fair, she liked the Museum, she liked the artwork, but she hated that she was here on an assignment for school rather than because she wanted to which meant she hated the Museum currently.
Beau had only taken Art Appreciation 110 on her best friend Jester’s suggestion. The blue tiefling art major thought it would be fun to have her best friend in the class she was TAing and assured Beau that it was an easy class being a 100 level. Beau didn’t mind an easy A, she was a double major history and sports medicine in her senior year, she figured she might as well since the rest of her course load was killer.
Unfortunately, unlike most of the classes Beau had taken though her time at Z.U. Art Appreciation 110 wasn’t a blow off class that she could just take the tests and write papers to pass with an A. The teacher Mr. Artagan was more eccentric than most of the faculty at Z.U. full of new age ideas how to run his class. No tests at all and only a few papers, which would be fine for most people, but the fact that participation was worth 60% of her grade made the class a living hell for Beau. He thought that children (despite them all being college students) should be rewarded for showing initiative, not just memorizing facts, something that Beau relied on. She was a smart girl who read the assigned reading before the class had even started hoping it would mean she didn’t have to show up for class only to have Jester’s hippy mentor ruin that dream the first day.
Artagan, as he liked them to call him, no mister for him, was one of those ‘cool’ teachers who thought they were changing the world in their 100 level course that contained mostly freshmen trying to get their gen ed credits out of the way. The teacher who wore an actual green cloak to class everyday that clashed horribly with his tangle of reddish orange hair, but went well with his inhuman green eye, knew he was put on this earth to reach the kids. Beau hated him instantly and thought if not for his laziness, his biggest weakness other than a wicked case of ADHD that no amount of Adderall would fix, he would probably be a cult leader. Luckily for the class, Jester took her job as his TA seriously, or at least as serious as Jester could leading a class taught by Mr. Artagan about appreciating art, so she was at least a competent teacher when the actual teacher decided to take a nap in the middle of a lecture or jump out the window to chase a bird. She would call on Beau whenever she could because she knew her best friend at least knew the information even though she wouldn’t volunteer the information willingly. It saved Beau’s average from tanking in class, but by the time the semester came to a close it didn’t look good, Beau was sitting at a low C which again, wouldn’t be bad for most people in their blow off class, but was horrible for Beauregard Lionett, the disgraced daughter of the Lionett wine family in Kamordah.
Without getting into it, Beau’s relationship with her family, especially her dad Thoreau, was horrible to be kind. She was only at Z.U. due to both academic and athletic scholarships, and losing one would mean she wouldn’t have enough money for her final semester, and she needed at least a B in all her classes if she wanted to graduate. Technically she would still be able to graduate, but her diploma would remain as property of the school until her debts were paid up, which meant she couldn’t get a job with her diploma unless she lied on her resume. And while, no one could say Beauregard Lionett was against lying, she wasn’t a self destructive teenager anymore she knew it would only hurt her in the long run.
Luckily, having her best friend as her T.A. meant Jester begging Mr. Artagan to let Beau have some extra credit so she could pass. Artagan agreed and told her to write a paper on how a piece of art makes you feel. If Beau didn’t desperately need to pass this stupid class she would have thrown it in his face, but instead as a self destructive adult who at least was aware of her money problems, she gritted her teeth and took the extra credit assignment.
Beau had been to the museum at their school a bunch of times, she had given tours for a bit as a work study gig until the people in charge realized how bad she was with people. But there was something about being forced to go there for an assignment that soured the whole thing for her.
“Let's check out the Emon exhibit first Beau,” Jester said taking her and dragging her to the Tal’Dori section. Beau didn’t mind it, but there was too much…, cleanness in the artwork of their neighbors to the West. Tal’Dori was really similar to Wildemount in a lot of ways, without the whole equally large enemy neighbor country that you’ve been in a Cold War with forever. Emon had its own set of problems, but propaganda or not, whatever Beau read made the other continent sound like a less shitty version of the Dwendalian Empire.
Still, the paintings and sculptures were nice enough to look at even if she didn’t have Jester’s excitement. There were a lot of paintings of naked people in some of the exhibits, which Beau enjoyed since there weren’t a lot of men as the subject. She had to hand it to the old masters, they might have been a bunch of old pervs, but they painted a pretty dame without her clothes. Even if they did give their works pretentious names like, “the Sin of Sarenrae,” or “the Seducer of Nations,” as if the women who were the subjects were at fault for being beautiful enough for men to want to paint them naked.
Eventually Jester got bored, it didn't take long, and they moved on to the other wings of the museum. “I’m gonna check out the Xhorhasian exhibit for a bit Jester,” Beau said, needing some alone time. She loved her best friend, but the girl could talk forever on her worst day, a day surrounded by hundreds of years of artwork around her meant she hadn’t stopped since Beau mentioned her paper.
The Xhorhasian exhibit was small and quiet, they were technically at peace, legally and all that, but two powerful countries can’t be neighbors without a lot of animosity. With only the Ashkeeper Peaks between them, there had been a long cycle of wars and ceasefires between the two nations that could break at any moment. That meant not a lot of people congregated in this out of the way exhibit. Most of the artwork and relics were probably technically stolen. Beau wasn’t happy about that despite being a citizen of the Empire, born and raised in Kamordah, less than a day from Zadash.
Maybe after she graduated she could break into the museum and somehow send the stolen goods back home where they belonged. Jester would probably be into it, and Veth wasn’t exactly opposed to petty theft or grand larceny. But that was for Future Beau with her bachelor’s degree to think about. For now, since they were here, Beau was going to enjoy the things from the Empire’s oldest enemy and learning about them, despite how they were procured.
Technically, the Empire wasn’t enemies with Xhorhas, they were enemies with the Krynn Dynasty, the country that had been the dominant power in the Wastes of Xhorhas for thousands of years. There were other people living in Xhorhas that were roped into the conflict, or so Beau heard, most of the stories from the East were about the Cricks or Krynn and the rest were hardly mentioned at all.
As Beau walked around the empty exhibit, for the most part it was bleaker than the other exhibits. Xhorhas seemed like a dreary place, all their artwork lacked the color of other nations artwork. Most of the paintings, few of them as there were, tended to be battle scenes of Drow soldiers in their dark insect like armor tearing through Empire soldiers like paper, it's a wonder citizens of the Empire never come to look at this exhibit. The rest was mostly pottery or weapons, the placards said they were souvenirs from survivors of perilous expeditions into enemy territory. Beau had read them all before.
But surprising her, there was something new in the exhibit. In the center of the exhibit, in a place of honor was a statue with lights pointing down on it. It was made of white marble and depicted the most beautiful woman Beau had ever seen. She was large, tall and wide, if she wasn’t made of stone she would tower over Beauregard, with arm muscles larger than Beau’s head. Long wild hair that the sculpture had managed to get across in the marble. She wasn’t just standing still either, she was swinging a sword like some goddess of battle. The massive feathery wings exploding from her back, that almost looked soft to the touch despite being made out of rock, made her seem even more divine. But even more than the wings, Beau was drawn to her eyes, they were perfect. Despite being just another part of the woman carved from the white stone, they seemed so dark, holding so much anger and sadness that it made Beau’s chest hurt to look into them, but she didn't have the willpower to look away.
The only flaw Beau could find in the sculpture of the beautiful woman, was the smile. Unlike the rest of the statue, the smile was just off. It was just too plain. The rest of the work from the woman, from the way the marble simulated how her arm muscles tensed like a real person would when swing a sword to fight, to her large soulful eyes, to the massive two-handed sword that looked like it was a real metal blade turned to stone, was the work of a master. Yet the smile was clearly the work of an armature, it looked like the smiles Beau had drawn on posters to look extra goofy to passersby. It didn’t fit such a beautiful woman, especially when the rest of her was clearly ready for battle.
It looked so off Beau immediately looked at the placard to find out if it had been damaged in shipping and the archeologist or smuggler did their best to fix it with a smile. The sign didn’t say anything about the smile, just that the sculpture had been found 3 years ago in an ‘expedition’ in the south of Xhorhas. The title of the piece was ‘Angel of Beauty,�� which made Beau gag. Sure the woma-, the sculpture was beautiful, but it was such a boring shitty title for such an awesome bitch. She was wielding a sword ready to chop someone to bits and ready to take on a whole army, Angel of Beauty was such a generic title for a real work of art. Skimming the rest of the paragraph for any more info, Beau learned the locals called the work ‘The Orphanmaker,’ before the archeologist procured the work.
Beau thought it was a bit better, at least more metal and fitting for such a bad bitch, but it still didn’t fit the woman or the sculpture in Beau’s unasked for opinion. Still, Beau couldn’t let her dumb lesbian brain that made her have a crush on the only more unattainable woman in the world than Jester, stop her from getting her paper done. She took a picture of the placard to get a reference and took a few more of the statue itself from as many angles as she could. You weren’t technically supposed to take pictures of the artwork, but no one was around and Beau needed the pictures for her project…, and nothing else.
Still, the more time she spent with the statue the more Beau was enthralled. The more she stared at it, from every angle it felt like the woman was ready to come alive at any second. That one second Beau would be staring into eyes of white marble and then she would blink alive the next. The skill of the sculptor had practically tricked Beau into thinking the woman would have a pulse if she touched her, like she wasn’t carved out of stone.
It got to the point where Beau, who would never break the law, especially when it came to stolen art, got so fed up she decided to touch the statue just to prove to herself it wasn’t a real live person. Just a quick tap on the arm to prove to herself that the woman wasn’t alive, that’s all it would take to make her crazy thoughts quiet for a bit.
Unfortunately, or perhaps very fortunate given the outcome, Beau was wrong, very wrong. The moment she touched what would be the flesh of the woman, not her sword, or hair, or clothes, the moment her finger touched the skin on the woman’s arm, it felt warm. So warm that Beau couldn’t believe it, until the woman’s pulse woke her up. She tore her hand away like the statue was made of fire, but even as she did, she could see cracks forming in the sculpture starting from where she touched the woman on the arm.
“Shit,” Beau yelled, as she slammed her back into the wall, she didn’t even know she had backed away that far. She desperately tried to search for glue or anything that she could use to fix the crack she made, but the cracks only got bigger. By the time Beau looked back, they had shot down the woman’s arm and were coming down her body, and Beau only had time to swear every curse she knew in the five languages she spoke fluently (which you would think would take a while, but Beau had always been quick with her mouth and was well practiced with it and cursing) before the statue exploded.
The room was full of dust clouds and the only sound other than the hammering of Beau’s heart was the sound of a large woman breathing heavily. It only took a moment for the dust to clear and give Beau a good look at the Orphan Maker. On a whole, she was pretty much the same as the statue, same massive frame, same gorgeous face that Beau had gone gaga for, same strong arms holding the now sharp steel blade, and older Xhorhasian garb, not from the Krynn Dynasty. Now that she wasn’t a statue anymore though, there was a big change, even if she was mostly the same, there was a big difference between a beautiful woman carved out of white marble and a real gorgeous flesh and blood woman.
Her skin was pale, almost as pale as the white marble, but the rest of her and her clothes had splashes of color, mostly black, but not white stone. The biggest change though, other than being a living person of course, was her wings. When she was a statue the wings on her back had been white and feathery, now, they were black and skeletal. As if they had been burnt to cinder’s but still attached to her. She has heterochromatic eyes, one is light green, the other is violet, they are filled with rage, but it’s not directed at Beau, the woman who burst from the marble is just angry.
“Where am I,” the strange woman demanded once the dust cleared enough to see Beau.
“The Zadash University Museum,” Beau said trying to stay on the good side of this strange Amazonian goddess that just flexed out of a statue.
“Zadash,” the woman said slowly, like it was a foreign word. “That is a is a name from beyond the mountains,” she asked more than said.
“Yeah,” Beau nodded, “or I mean I suppose. We’re on the other side of the mountains from Xhorhas if that’s what you mean.”
“Then I am a long way from home,” the strange woman said seeming to calm down.
“Are you a spy from Xhorhas,” Beau asked, immediately realizing how stupid that sounded. Beau could handle herself in a fight, but this woman was massive and had a sword almost the size of her. It would be really hot if it was in a movie or a book instead of real life.
“No,” the woman shouted, “I am from Xhorhas, but I am no spy.”
“Alright,” Beau said, throwing her hands up to show she meant no harm, “I believe you.”
“I think…, I am lost,” the woman said calming down, her voice was a lot softer than Beau would have guessed when she wasn’t angry. “I was in my homeland, I was fighting something and then…, nothing.”
“Well, maybe you could start with something you do remember,” Beau asked, trying to keep things calm. “Do you remember your name?”
“Yasha,” Yasha apparently answered after a moment, “Yasha Nydoorin. And I think I need your help.”
It probably wasn’t a great idea to agree to this, she didn’t know Yasha much other than she was big, gorgeous, and popped out of a marble statue. But despite her well above average intelligence, she was also a lesbian with a dumb lesbian brain sometimes, and all she could say was “sure.” Maybe she’ll let Jester drag her off to the museum if this happens all the time.
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whirlybirdwhat · 5 years ago
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Accidental Family Man Au
remember that one ask where I talked about some projects? This is one of them. Enjoy dad franky!
So it begins with Franky – a back alley repair in the illustrious mechanic city of Water 7 – a miracle engineering city, they call it, with intertwining roads of cars and rivers. Venice, if Venice was made of concrete and had a road system above its water system, twisting above houses and everything.
Franky used to be one of those engineers that created those miracles, but an accident later, and he’s the scourge of the city and half bionic, making his living in back alley repair shops where you either pay with cash or your life.
He never said he was a good guy, did he Ice Burg?
 He still has connections though – and these connections lead to Iceburg, and to the Straw Hats.
 Iceburg’s the mayor, of course, and while he doesn’t care much for his public image, he knows that if he starts accepting money from shady kids who showed up to his doorstep possibly covered in blood with a woman who he swears he’s seen before beside him, that maybe Water 7’s people will take a hit for harboring criminals.
But hey, He knows a guy already doesn’t he?
So he sends these kids and their broken van down to the Franky House to see if he would fix their beloved, broken, van.
The Straw Hats never reach it, because the woman (Robin) gets kidnapped and a fight breaks out, leading to the separation of the group,
So the story really begins with Franky and the little broken down RV called The Going Merry, previously belonging to the kid who’s standing in front of him, begging him to fix it.
More Hcs Below cut including actual dad Franky stuff lol
That kid is Usopp, and he’s asking because Franky’s the only repair man in the illustrious city of Water 7 that will possibly accept the cash that Usopp has to offer.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he attempts to kick the kid out and gets kidnapped in return.
Oops
 So, Franky’s introduced to Ennies Lobby one of the worst places this side of the country – where people go and never come back, and hey, whats this kid doing kicking down the door?
Safe to say, Franky is rescued, and learns a little more of their story.
And Safe to say, Franky sees the woman they are going to save (him, and a bunch of teenagers and some 12 year old brat) and he near damn falls in love with her on sight and definitely does when he actually talks to her.
They save Robin, and start running – of course, Merry the van is just barely struggling to save all their added weight but they make it but also merry’s totaled.
So Franky shows them his pet project, The Thousand Sunny, supposed to be his super get away, home a way from home rv but with a few modifcations… the Straw Hat Gang has a new home. And a new crew member.
Franky learns everyone’s stories and about all the absolutely shady shit they are into. He learns he fits right in.
 And then… then the moments start happening.
He helps Usopp fix up the Sunny, and teachers him about cars and such. 
He and Chopper start bonding over bionics and medical shit that went into building his body. 
Zoro and him geek out over comic heroes (this, at least in zoro’s part, is canon the big nerd.) 
He helps Nami out with some headings and listens to her troubles. 
Sanji and him go fishing one day and it’s the most surreal experience of Franky’s life because this teen is in a three-piece suit and catching giant fish out on the shore of some lake? What? 
Franky gives Luffy advice and pulls him out of fights and shows him cool robot things.
 And its two months in when Franky realizes – here is it actually typed out lmao
“In all honesty, Franky doesn’t know how it happens.
Well.
He has a vague idea.
(Can you save her? Please? Merry’s the best.)
But still – tracing the events that led up to him frantically calling Ice-for-brains at one am in the morning at a near abandoned gas station on the west coast was a hard task.
“Hello?”
Finally.
“Ice-for-brains,” He starts using the familiar name.
“Flunky? The hell? What are you calling me now?”
“Iceberg.” The use of his real name quiets him. He knows this is serious. Franky takes a deep breath, and exhales, saying the next words in a single breath. “I accidently became a dad to six crazy teenagers. Help.”
“Goddamnit bastard-berg this is no time to laugh!””
AND THEN HE GOES ON TO HAVE MORE DAD ADVENTURES INCLUDING:
Organizing the kids at Sabaody Park
being emotional support for all these kids trauma please world, give them a break
doing his best to say no to allowing luffy to swim with sharks but giving in anyway
being a component (aka fierce menacing bodyguard) in his daughter’s nami’s schemes
breaking up fights
 Attempting to ground known criminals who may or may not be stronger than him
Modifying the RV so that they can have Brook and Jimbe on it as well
“MCDONALDS! MCDONALDS! MCDONALDS!”
Overthrowing the government in at least three different countries because his kids wanted to
Doing experiments with illegal fireworks on Usopp’s behest
“Do you want to play catch” “Franky that’s dynamite that we found in the stach what the fuck- “Do you want to play catch” “…Yes.”
Explaining Safe Sex to teenagers who have biggers worries such as the government
Teaching them all how to drive. He thinks hius heart has popped out of his chest.
Snoring loudly on their tiny couch and everyone just dogpiling on him
Also I had this in my notes
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So that’s a thing that’s going to happen!
Uh anyway uh PART TWO – THE OTHER FCKING STRAWHATS
Note: Everyone is aged down three years from pre TS ages  to enforce the fact that 1) the government is fucking nuts for assigning bounties to these kids in this au 2) give more dad moments as while we all need a dad in our lives at any age it gives me more plausible reason here 3) plot related issues and the fact that this story takes place over several years and 4) the image of a 14 year old taking down the government is hilarious to me.
So.
Moving on.
Luffy – 14 years old and an absolute bastard
Luffy grew up in the port city of Fuusha as a way for Garp to keep an eye on him because of his family connections and make sure nothing bad happened to him -  didn’t quite work out.
dads a terrorist, his brothers a world class criminal, his gramps is an abusive piece of shit but also weirdly protective marine officer, his family’s complicated. 
 he grew up in the seedy underbelly of the city and made friends with a lot of criminals (who helped him get out because hey that five year old who used to steal our food is a brat and maybe we should help him get out before he becomes to chaotic (too late) and becomes our friend (also too late) )
Among these criminals are Shanks, who wanders through once in a while, Buggy, begrudging friend,  Jimbe, because he has connections, Crocodile, because this brats a bastard, and Rayleigh, among others.
Annoys them to make him his friend, continues annoying them afterwards.
 He just thinks they’re neat.
Luffy leaves two months after Ace, his brother under Dadan’s, the local gang leaders, roof, leaves because Ace can’t tell him to stay behind anymore
but the govt got word now he’s on the run – Coby helps him escape
As such, Luffy grows up with a very very skewed moral compass as in canon but a bit more, and now literally is almost ten times more feral as he should be.
  His goal is now to do whatever he wants, without people telling him what to do or that he can’t do that – He’s going to be free, damnit.
Franky understands and learns over time to adjust his Parenting Skills accordingly
Zoro – 16 and illegally owning a motorcycle because he thought the best way to improve his skill was to go out and hunt down people to fight, and of course he needs a motorcycle to do that, doesn’t he?
 He was pulled over for speeding then taken in for being underage
 He is also caught up in some bad stuff (fight circles, bounty’s, etc. this kids 16 and breaking grown men’s spines.)
Then comes Luffy who was also arrested for dine and dashing and is in the back seat.
 Luffy, who after the police car pulls over, punches out the police officer, unlocks Zoros cuffs and tells him “Drive”
 So they drive
“Hey, hey Zoro. Join my crew. It’ll be fun.”
 “Anything you say captain”
 knows Luffy for three seconds and is immediately down to murder with him
 Its great
He wants to become the greatest sword fighter still, which is still a thing in my fantasy modern world, so anyway, picture this 16 year old going up to you and tell you to fight but he has a sword in his mouth and in both hands and the most dangerous look in his eye.
 He and Luffy immediately rob a sword shop to find him new swords after they meet, it becomes a thing later on where they will steal (horribly, they literally crash in through the window every time because they have no subtly) something small from each city they visit. 
Nami - 15 year old pick pocket in the city where luffy and zoro stop, just trying to scrap up some money to pay off her family’s debt.
 Bellmere’s still alive damnit.
Nami thought Zoro and Luffy were police originally (because they are driving around in stolen police car) and tried to pull the ‘oh officer help me’ card when the people she stole from chased after her
 To her surprise, it was two kids her age in the front seat.
Luffy: “get in”
 she gets in
they dont talk about it
The people who were chasing her was Buggy’s gang who Luffy waves at as he goes by
 Buggy sends a message to Shanks which is essentially “hey that brat u liked is still alive”
And Shanks is like “oh thank god” not knowing the terror he has unleashed upon the world
A month later Arlong has mysteriously disappeared and the Bell-mere farm is flourishing while the second daughter becomes a world class criminal.
 Bell’meres never been prouder and it gives Nojiko a great conversation starter.
Usopp’s 14 and lives in a trailer park called syrup alone
Has a business where he sells odd herbs and such, passing them off as anything that will get him some money – think of it as Toad Oil from Wano but with some popgreens and such mixed in.
His goal is get enough money to stand on his own and leave the park but its slow going. And then…
 Luffy punches the heck outta the creep that was creeping on the owner of the park, kaya, and think’s Usopp’s stories are super cool.
Usopp wants to go with them, to explore the world With Luffy.
At this point, the Straw Hats have realized that driving a stolen police car around is a bad idea
so they take the huge van - a gift from Kaya named The Going Merry, and set off, using Nami’s stolen funds to get them by.
Sanji - 16 year old who longs to be a chef with the best food and just wants to feed people who need it
He hates government cause they don’t feed people and has a lot of petty grudges and helps Zeff run a lot of kitchens to help people.
 He’s still the Sous chef of the Baratie and still has a penchant for kicking unruly customers around. Baratie has a less then stellar reputation for service but the food? The best in the land.
 He feeds Luffy the food.
  Luffy likes the food.
Luffy kidnaps Sanji
Zeff worries about it but he can’t do jack since he actually is not Sanjis legal guardian (he kidnapped the kid first on accident after they both were stranded. He still tries to call anyway, and is proud of the change his son is making in the world. He’s currently working to get suspicious government people off his back about his missing Sous chef with the unique curly eyebrow…
Anyway, Sanji becomes the cook for the strawhats and is really happy because everyone likes his food and he can help anyone along the way and send business to the baratie
Its a good deal for him, and with all the places he visits his skill grows as a chef.
Chopper - 12 year old prodigy who really wants to be a doctor but both his legal guardians are out of the way
Hiruluks dead and Kureha, against her will because she’s still beautiful at 100 dammnit, is in a nursing home trying to break out
 Chopper has nowhere to go but still tries to pursue his medical career, and this fucking twelve year old does so by patching up people from bar and gang fights.
The Straw Hats pick him up and Usopp hacks into a govt control thing to sign him up for online medical course
Kureha’s proud and gives him a book of pressed cherry blossoms that was Hiruluk’s
  He cries
Chopper gets lots of practice for medical stuff with Luffy and Zoro who like to fight in fighting rings just for the heck of it, and for the money that Nami wants.
Robin – 25 year old depressed archeologist (and assassin) they found in a mafia in the next country over (Vivi’s)
Crocodile’s running it, aka Luffy’s criminal uncle number 500
 Luffy’s pissed about it and smacks him into the dust because it’s his friends country, and then drags Robin along because she needs to have some adventure, and hey, they are checking out the ruin’s next, wont that be cool?
 So robin comes along as the ‘adult super vision’, at least in Nami and Usopp and Chopper’s mind.
She learns that these kids have some how been able to dodge school, and starts teaching them the basics of what they would need to know, and then any thing else they want to know. (Zoro, she finds, is extremely good at math while Sanji enjoys chemistry. Nami and Usopp catch on quick, while Chopper has his own studies already but enjoys talking to her. Luffy dislikes learning, but if the promise of pirates or foods or letters that wont spin in his head is involved, he’ll gladly sit down for a bit. He especially loves the stories however.)
Robin finds herself inching dangerously into mom territory, and accepts it whole heartedly after meeting Franky, who she finds handsomely hilarious.
She has a shady past but is slowly opening up about it, and knows she will watch the world burn for this crew.
Y’all know about Franky already so im gonna move on.
Brook – super fucking Old musician they found on the street looking for his dog Laboon
 He used to be a star but lost his fame but doesn’t care – he  only wants to make people happy with his music.
Luffy just straight up just drags him into the sunny, its becoming a habit of him kidnapping people, that’s not how you make friends Luffy (or at least it shouldn’t be – he always seems to make it work.)
 Everyone just goes with it at this point while Franky sighs and triie sto figure out how to make a giant RV even bigger
The Crew find out his dog is living in luffy’s home town and used to play with Luffy when his friends weren’t around. They vow to go back once everything dies down, but in the mean time Dadan gets a new guard dog in her house hold
Usopp posts one (1) video of Brook (on Halloween in skeleton make up) and he instantly becomes a revived star, thriving on the mytery of the Skeleton Soul King.
He now posts videos from around the world of him singing but its impossible to predict where he will be next, and he’s invisible with out his make up to the internet, so its good for the whole criminal thing.
Jimbe
(best) Criminal uncle 501
 No one knows exactly how he knows luffy beyond luffy himself but they are 90% sure its something to do with the underground warlord system that Luffy has connections too
 He gives the best hugs, Uncle Iroh but without the well-meaning manipulation.
 He’s tired of responsibility that he has in his underground position and kinda wants to fuck off to the Caribbean but then he meets luffy again and is like this is better
He Leaves the fishman gang behind with subordinate in charge and joins strawhats
He becomes stressed - “Why did you choose an archeologist and a man who wears speedos for adult supervision, how are you alive, do you need a hug, do you know basic math, have you even gone to school, oh thank god Robin is here - ”
Two minutes later
“Do you have code names, can I have one,”
 He’s a big faker the dummy everyone can see right through you, you’re aren’t on this crew if you have common sense
Between dad moments, essentially its just the Straw hats breaking in and causing havoc where ever they go, building their bounties and being a found family.
That’s it for now, but please ask questions! Sorry this was so long lmao, ill also add something for Vivi later!
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swcctdark · 4 years ago
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"How do you think I built this firm, son? Your grandfather was in debt from his gambling and his loans, our stock was failing -- your grandfather was running our fortune into the ground! I had to save my family's good name however I could!" It was the last conversation had between Eric Dawes II and his son, third in the name, affectionately called "Trip". He hadn't really wanted to argue that night, especially after the news he got that his father was very, very sick. The last thing wanted to was to be the cause of a heart attack for the old man, but when he was called to his father's office that faithful night, the secrets he was told were too much to not be shocked by. "The Mafia?!" Trip yelled louder than he meant to, which prompted the old man to move at speeds Trip didn't know he still had in him, to clasp his hand over his son's mouth. "Will you keep your damn mouth shut!" The aging attorney had whisper-yelled. Eric Jr. could only sink into a chair to process the news as his father perched on the desk and explained it all, the story sounding a bit too much like a deleted scene from The Godfather to believe, but Trip knew deep down that it wasn't a prank -- his father had never been on to have a sense of humor, but at least now he knew why. The mob at the helm probably didn't leave much room for jokes. "I'm telling you this now because the outcome of my surgery isn't looking promising." His father somberly admitted. "Dad--" Trip tried to interject, but never could overpower his old man. "I know it isn't what you want to hear, but if I don't make it... Well, we always knew you would take over the firm, but there's going to be more on your plate than you expected, and I thought I owed it to you to tell you rather than just have it dropped on you. " You're a good son; you've always made me proud. Now you have to be the man in the family and take care of your mother and sisters..."
That was how he was standing today-- well, sitting -- in the office of the Italian Mob. Trip still couldn't believe it. The Dawes and Associates firm , one of the most respected in New York, hell, the country, was built on mob money? And yet, it was true. They weren't as scary as he imagined, however -- one of them, the Don-to-be, he had even met several times before, but never though this was how they knew his father. Still, he sat and listened, his father warning them that they knew how to spot a lie and would never believe, even though it was true, that Trip knew nothing. No...he had to be there. The meeting went fairly well, in spite of the drilling , interrogation, intimidation, and subtle threats about what would happen if he didn't comply the way his father had. Accepting, as he had no choice, Trip left the room about three hours and a bunch of new information later. The woman -- Andrea -- had invited him to stay for dinner, which he politely declined, desperate to get out of there, but it seemed to offend her greatly. That was the reason why he was now standing in the kitchen of their large house clutching a glass of water in his shaking, sweaty palm. Having sweat through his expensive shirt visibly, he was ordered to go get a drink (they probably meant booze) and wait for dinner to start. Only he wasn't drinking the water. He was never once in his life irrational, but was now paranoid that the water was poisoned, even though he got it himself, or that "Dinner" was just some kind of mob term for him being kept in a basement with a spotlight on him as they kept him hostage. Whatever it was, Trip was terrified and desperate to make an exit. He noted a few burly men lurking near the door -- thugs for hire, no doubt -- but wondered if there were another exit he could take. With a gulp, Trip held onto the shaking glass as he moved towards the opposite doorway of the kitchen to try to see what was on the other side, but the moment he turned the corner, he almost collided with a woman. Gasped hard, he closed his eyes and caught himself from the fright before calmly opening his eyes, relived it wasn't some goon. " What -- who the hell are you? Wha-what are you doing here?"
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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years ago
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Survey #309
“show me how to lie - you’re getting better all the time  /  and turning all against one is an art that’s hard to teach.”
Have you ever played Jackbox Games? If so, which ones of their party games are your favorites? No, but I looooove watching Mark and The Boys play them on charity streams. They can make up the funniest shit. I can't recall the name of the specific one I'm thinking of... but I enjoy watching most of them. I do think one or two are boring, though. Do you have artistic friends? If so, have you got their artwork displayed? I have some very talented friends, but I don't have anything of theirs displayed somewhere. Have you ever considered pole dancing? Why/why not? No. It takes an incredible amount of strength, plus confidence I don't have. That and I'm just not into it. What's the last thing you fixed yourself? Uhhhhhhh bitch I couldn't tell ya. Are there any CDs you've held onto for sentimental reasons? No. Did you read the Barbie magazines with comics made with the actual dolls? "I didn’t know that was a real thing." <<<< Me either. What's the last thing you knitted? I've never knitted before. Who was your first online friend? Emma. :') She was the first person who joined my RP mob back in the Animal Planet forum days. Why do you take surveys? Be honest. Boredom, distraction, and sometimes I just wanna ramble about whatever. Does mail get delivered to your door or do you have a mailbox outside? Our mailbox is by the side of the road at the end of our driveway. Your doorbell rings out of the blue. What's your reaction? Let Mom answer it. I don't answer the door ever if I don't expect someone or can peek outside and don't recognize them. Are all the lamps in your home LED or other energy saving lights? I don't know. Do you prefer writing by hand or typing? Typing. I can't write very long at all before my carpal tunnel flares up. Think of one of the biggest decisions you've had to make in your life...If you made a different choice, how different would your life be now? I'd be dead, that simple. Have you ever taken a course on CPR? No. What makes you laugh most effortlessly? You can guess it pretty easily. What makes you cry most effortlessly? I make it a rule that I "can't" listen to "Eternally Yours" by Motionless In White because there hasn't been even ONE occasion where it hasn't made me cry, even when I was stupid enough to binge it because it's just a good song. I've broken that "rule" before because I do just genuinely enjoy the song, but I know the pain truly isn't worth it, so I haven't heard it in a decently long time. What is the best smell in the whole world? Cinnamon rolls, probably. My body wash is currently that kind of smell, and Jesus Christ it's the best part of showering. Do you wear a watch? No. Can you tell time from an analog clock? Yes. What a time it'll be when kids can't anymore... Is there a number or a combination of numbers that feels important to you? Only dates, but not numbers themselves. What is the most socially awkward thing you've done? *gestures at my life as a whole* Is your computer decorated in any way? No. If your old class was to have a reunion, would you attend it? No. No. I don't want to relive my high school experience; it would be too painful for me to willingly walk into. What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you? I would say "the breakup," but technically it was letting him basically own me and my every neuron of joy. Not by his will of course, but my own. I was stupid and just... handed those rights over without really realizing it. I can harp forever and ever and EVER about the importance of making sure you own yourself and your emotions. Do you ever donate money to charity? If so, which charity and why? Blah blah blah, I don't get an income, you know this. Whenever I do, I 100% plan on donating to every charity stream Mark ever hosts again, as well as some other people's. I'd love to donate to a lot of places. Would you ever want to get married? If so, why? Yes, because society has made it too instilled in me that it's just like... this ultimate validation of "forever" with your partner, even though I know you can be just as or even far more invested in your relationship without marriage. The only *true* benefit of marriage imo is for legal and financial reasons, but yeah, I still want it. Like I said, it's too deeply embedded in that brain of mine that it's a relationship goal. Why do you live the way you do? I'm not even living the way I want to, so... Have you ever abused an animal? No, and I say "fuck you" with every ounce of sincerity and loathing if you have. Do you think animals are less important than humans? If so, why? Nope. We share this earth and grew from the same roots, so what *really* makes us better? We might be smarter (generally) and more developed as the apex predator, but that does not equate to being more important than, say, even a gnat. That creature has the exact same level of rights to be here as the human species does. I could go on and on and on about this topic. How close was the last person close to you who has died? Not extremely, but she was still important to and loved by me. Grandma and I were very, very different and butted heads more than once, but her love was unconditional, and she showed boundless kindness to others. She showed a courage I see as unmatched in the face of death. I truly, deeply, in the very core of my heart hope she is at peace and experiencing all joys she ever wished for. How does death in general make you feel? Well, it depends on how I'm looking at it. I fully accept it is an inevitable phase in simply existing that none of us will ever evade, so it's not exactly terrifying to me, though of course I don't want it anytime soon. If I'm thinking about people I love dying, I definitely get sad about it and scared of that possibly eternal separation. Is there a person you absolutely loathe? If so, why do you loathe them? Not that I know personally, no. Has anyone ever told you that you're rude? If so, what caused it? No; I think I'm very mannerly, honestly. Have you ever seen a therapist? I've regularly seen therapists since I started middle school. I advocate for everyone to have one, honestly, whether you have a mental illness or not. Have you ever been homeless? In technical terms, yes, but a friend let me stay with her until Mom and I settled into a new place. Have you ever been completely broke? That's the actual story of my life. Well, not me personally considering I've never had to take care of myself financially, but my mom struggles very, very badly with this, and mind you, she's frugal. Just disgustingly underpaid when she worked, and her current status with disability isn't exactly incredibly generous. I live under her roof, so. Have you ever had a steady job? No. Have you ever needed a loan? If so, what for? Have you paid it back? Yes, for school, and no. I do NOT want to know how in debt I am with schools. Have you ever wanted to go to space? Not seriously, no. What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen or heard? I am 99.99% sure mine and Jason's old roommates were having some ~kinky~ sex once while I was alone on the couch against their bedroom. Preeeetty sure the girl was making meowing sounds. They were furries (who I want to emphasize have zero judgment from me; I actually think they're very brave and creative), so that was... something I definitely wasn't used to hearing, haha. What has been the most exciting moment of your life thus far? Probably when Mark N O T I C E D me on Tumblr by reblogging a gif I made of him and his pupper, and I LITERALLY struggled to sleep for three days lmfaoooo. How many birds can you name just by looking at them? Uhhhh a pretty decent amount, I'd say. Which birds are most common around your neighborhood? Crows, sparrows, cardinals and bluejays if you're lucky, robins... pretty basic stuff like that. What do you think is the most interesting sea creature? Octopi are absolutely fascinating with their intelligence. How do you reset your head to zero, so to speak? Take a nap. That usually works. Have you ever gone exploring an abandoned building? Yeah, I love that shit and really wish I could do it more. Bring my camera, too. Are there any foreign television shows you enjoy watching? Some animes. Do you have any clocks in your house that chime when the hour changes? Do those types of clocks annoy you? No. I actually quite like them, though. Has anyone ever let you borrow some of their music, promising you'd love it, but you really didn't? Did you lie to the person and agree, or tell the truth, that you hated it? My dad lent me his Shinedown CD once clearly without thinking I could just look up the album online, haha... He's an old clueless man, leave 'im be. But anyway, of course I listened to it for him and I enjoyed it; I especially loved "The Human Radio," "Kill Your Conscience" and "Pyro." Have you had the same doctor pretty much your whole life, or have you went to a bunch of different ones over the years? Have you ever been to the doctor thinking something was horribly wrong with you, but it turned out to be something minor? Mine has changed a few times, but I haven't had "a bunch." As for the second question, not to my recollection. Is the background on your phone a default picture, or a picture you took? What is the picture of? The lock screen is a pastel-styled list of mental health reminders: "i am strong, i am loved, i am enough." My home screen has been some adorable meerkat pups for a while, which I didn't take. What is your favorite type of print (ex: zebra, stripes, argyle)? Do you have a lot of things with this print on it? Ummmm maybe plaid? No. Are there any stores you feel uncomfortable going into (ex: if you dress girly, do you feel uncomfortable going into Hot Topic)? Are there any stores that you refuse, or just never go in to? The only situation I could think of would be a sex shop. That'd be so fuckin uncomfortable. What is your favorite brand of clothing? Is this a brand that is sort of expensive, or is it pretty affordable? I'm heavily biased towards Cloak, haha. I just support anything and everything Mark takes part it, and it's his and jacksepticeye's business. I have one shirt and it's genuinely great quality and reall comfy. I wouldn't call its products expensive, but they're not cheap, either. What person do you text the most? My mom or Sara, depending on the day. Do you have any pictures that always make you laugh, or cry? Are they digital pictures, or printed pictures? What is the significance? No. Not pictures I have anymore, at least. Have you ever eaten raw pumpkin? Omg I would never. I hate the flavor of any sort of pumpkin food. Does your car have a name? I don't have my own car, but Mom jokingly calls hers "Olivia." Who was the last person you made plans with? One of my sister's in-laws that's actually the mother of one of my closest friends contacted me to plan some family pictures. What is the rudest thing someone has done recently towards you? I can't think of anything recent. How do you feel about your hair right now? It needs to be trimmed and dyed. How fast have you driven a car? I think accidentally leaning towards 80 on a highway. When you're hanging out with friends + you become bored, do you just leave or endure the boredom? Given I can't leave without a car, I deal with it. What did you last plug into your computer? What were you doing with this? The charger for obvious reasons. What color(s) have you dyed your hair? Red, purple, black, then red, purple, and lighter brown highlights. I really wish I could dye it more and actually have the color stick... Was your first kiss perfect? It was to me. What song did you hear last? I have "Over The Mountain" by Ozzy on now. (: Does anyone have any blackmail on you? No. Have you ever walked into the guys' bathroom? HA, once during a teacher work day (my mom was an assistant) at my elementary school. My sisters and friends went in there to be little "rebels." I remember being mega confused with urinals, haha. Then as a teen and adult, I've been in the dance studio's boy's restroom as well as a church's to help Mom clean. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with? My therapist. Are you shy? I am VERY shy. Are you talkative? Generally, no, but when I'm in a very good mood, I tend to be. Has your most recent ex ever seen you cry? Oh jeez, she saw me wail once. When was the last time you were called "cute"? I'm not sure. Would you rather be called "hot", "cute" or "beautiful"? "Beautiful." Do you have a little sister? Yep. Definitely not "little" anymore, though. About to have her Master's in social work... How many arguments have you had with the last person you kissed? Given our childhood, we've fought a lot, but mostly just as kids over very, very stupid things. As adults, we've had a serious argument once or twice and then just some very minor disagreements sprinkled in there. Do you know anyone who's been arrested? Oh yes. What're you planning on doing after this? Another survey. What time did you go to sleep last night? Damn, it wasn't even 8:00. I was EXHAUSTED and actually slept decently for once in my life. Do you like waking up to good morning texts in the morning? I mean, I'd think most people would. It's a sweet, easy way of someone showing they care and think about you. Have you left some things unsaid with a certain person? Yeah. What was the last thing that made you happy? We had syrup to add to my breakfast, haha. I don't know if these are a thing everywhere, but I looove what we just call "pancakes on a stick," which is like a corndog, but with sausage and pancake batter. Dipping it in syrup is amaaaaaaziiiiiiing. Do you like the smell of rain? I don't love it, but it's refreshing sometimes. It's mostly just associated with a bittersweet memory, so it can be triggering to smell. I know, that sounds immensely stupid. What was the last thing you took a picture of? A very, very relatable meme to show Sara, haha. She doesn't have a Facebook, so that'll do. When you go to McDonald's, what drink do you usually get? I always get a Coke. What’s the nickname of your home state? Tar Heel State, from discovering tar in the since aptly-named Tar River. Have you ever thought about your wedding? I mean duh. What’s the worse type of weather in your opinion? Hot and humid, ugh. Especially right after a summer afternoon thunderstorm. It's unbearable. You can't fucking breathe outside, and you set one foot out of the door and it's soaked. Do you have a Kindle or iPad or neither? Neither. Would you rather read or write? Write. When was the last time someone took a picture of you? The time Misty visited last month and we were taking family pictures. Would you rather see Taylor Swift or Carrie Underwood in concert? I wouldn't pay for either or even willingly go to one or the other, but if I had to go for whatever reason, Carrie. She has a beautiful voice as well as a good handful of songs I actually like. I'm not a Taylor fan; there are only like, two old songs by her I enjoy. When someone screws you over, do you get back with revenge? No. I may not be the best at adulting, but damn, I'm not that bad. Name something negative that you hate about yourself? I overthink like a motherfucker. About everything. Is there a dead end road near where you live? I live on one. Huh, that's actually been the case three times... wow. Four if you count the apartment. Who are you tired of seeing in the news a lot (celebrities)? I don't care. I don't even pay attention to the news, other than Covid updates. Have you ever had to call and complain about a product you bought? No. Name something positive you love about yourself: I care a lot about people. Can you smell anything right now? No, besides however my house naturally smells that I'm numb to. Have you spoken to a relative on the phone today? No. How does alcohol affect you? I flush in my face very obviously, and I become more outgoing and talkative. Have you ever eaten tofu and if so, did you enjoy it? I've never tried it, but I very much doubt I'd enjoy it. What was the last type of meat you ate? Pork. What colour is your toothpaste? Blue and white. Have you ever been suspended from school? No. Have you ever inhaled helium? Once, I believe. Are you a fan of Adam Sandler? Yeah, I think he's pretty funny and a talented actor. What was the last fruit you ate? An apple. A candied apple for Valentine's Day, but still an apple, haha. Have you ever watched Parks and Recreation? With Sara's family, yeah. It was fine. Have you watched a movie this week? I haven't watched a movie in many months. Have you set an alarm today? Yeah, just to ensure I was up for group therapy today. Have you asked someone for advice today? No. What was the last website you were on, other than this one? YouTube. Have you ever been to Hawaii? No, but it'd be cool. Well, thinking about the humidity... Have you watched more than an hour of TV today? No; I haven't watched television in a long time. Do you keep magazines by your toilet? No. The last time you got dressed up, where did you go? I got my makeup done and put on a dress for a Halloween "witch" shoot with my friend and some other people. The pictures pretty much don't exist because they're blurry as shit and way too dark because we left too late. I don't know why we even left the house to do it by the time everyone figured their shit out. I was really disappointed because I thought Summer made me look really, really pretty. ;_; Did the one person who hurt you the most in your life apologize? Yes, but I don't know if he really meant it. He might have just wanted me off his back, but I kinda feel now that he meant it, at least regarding how it happened. Are you proud of who you are? Only in the sense that I think I have a good heart. Otherwise, no. I've accomplished so little. Have you ever been to Costco? We don't have those here, so no. Do/did you have to wear a uniform to your high school? No, thank Christ. Only in middle school. How many video games do you own? A whole lot. Have you ever been to a casino? If so, which one(s)? No. Have you ever visited a sex shop? No. How many sets of keys do you have for your house? One. Do you give spare keys to your place to your friends and family? Our landlord/family friend has one. Then obviously my sisters do, too. Have you ever ridden a bicycle through a busy city? Oh hell no. Do you use Instagram? How often do you post there? Yes, two for each of my photography "styles." I don't post a lot myself, but I react to stuff. When was the last time you high-fived someone? I believe the last time I was at my sister's and my nephew caught a Pokemon on his first throw in Pokemon GO. He and his sister LOVE that game; that's the first thing they ask to do when I come over, haha. Their dad doesn't like it because it's "evil" (which he finds most things, really...), and it's something I could roll my eyes into the back of my head about, but I still have to respect his parenting and ask if they can play it first. He let's 'em, just not long. He also took away the Pikachu plushy I gave Aubree because it's her favorite one. :^) Guess who doesn't fuckin like him lmao. Do you like writing? How often do you write? I love writing! I don't do it very much nowadays except through surveys, though. RP is kinda on pause, so surveys is really how I just get stuff out, even if it isn't creative. Are there any posters or artworks hanging in your living room? Artwork and family photos, yes. What's your favourite place to get pizza? I'm a basic bitch that loves her some Domino's. How many times have you been to the beach? Quite a few times. We live only like two hours away, and considering Myrtle Beach is a common dance competition location, we've been a couple handfuls of instances. Has there ever been a fire inside your house? Tell me the story. No. After we moved out of my childhood house though that we actually owned, the fucking idiots who were moving in completely roasted it to pitch by setting boxes on the goddamn stove and accidentally turning it on. The house had to be entirely rebuilt. My parents were livid considering it was THEIR house. Have you ever had a scary encounter with a wild animal? No. What was the best school project you remember doing? I actually really enjoyed the huge essay I did on toxic masculinity the last time I tried college. I've always been very firm about letting men be humans and not emotionless robots, but I learned a lot more while researching and writing. Name a video game you can play over and over again: Shadow of the Colossus is #1. I've beaten it at least 30 times, maybe even 40+; it's been too long since I've seen the save files. It's a relatively short game (you can beat it in less than like, four hours if you know what you're doing) and just very relaxing yet simultaneously absolutely epic to me. God, I want a PS4 to play the remaster, like beyond words. It looks incredible, and I want to try to get white Agro. Have you ever petted a cow, a sheep, or a pig? A pig, yes. I love pigs.
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stereksecretsanta · 5 years ago
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Merry Christmas, @beerwolves!
Read on AO3
*****
The Prisoner
Beacon Hills, capital city of the Kingdom of Beacon, 2004
Stiles stuck close to his dad, barely looking up from his feet as they toured the Beacon Hills Sheriff's Hall. He wasn’t really sure what his dad’s new job was. Maybe he was in charge of all the other deputies in the kingdom of Beacon now? There had been a letter from the King, but Stiles hadn’t really been paying attention to anything since his mom-
“What’s down here? Storage?” his dad asked.
“It’s mostly unused cells,” their guide, one of his dad’s new deputies, said. “For long-term prisoners. But yes, there’s also some storage down here. Outdated equipment, old files, anything we don’t need on a regular basis.”
His dad hmm’ed thoughtfully. Not too long ago, Stiles would have laughed at that and maybe tried to warn this deputy what that thoughtful hmm meant, but now he just looked up and finally paid attention to the hallway they were in. They were standing next to a door with a sliding panel set in the middle and a slit of a window so narrow that Stiles’s dad would have had to lift him up and hold him right next to it if he wanted to look through it. He might be a kid, but he recognized a solitary confinement cell door when he saw one. He sidled closer to his dad and leaned against his leg.
“Is there anything else I need to see today?” his dad said. He put his hand on Stiles’s shoulder and squeezed.
The deputy looked between them and visibly changed his answer. “No, I’d say we’re all done for now.”
His dad nodded, and they headed for the stairs. Stiles thought he saw a gleam of light in the cell door window, but there was nothing when he looked again.
~
Beacon Hills, capital city of the Kingdom of Beacon, 2006
His dad had a dungeon.
Not a dark and damp stone one lit with torches - which would have been way cooler - but there were prison cells in the basement of the Sheriff’s Hall and that counted as a dungeon and there was someone in one of them . Probably a murderer.
His dad had the best job.
Stiles approached the door of the occupied cell and slowly slid the panel open. He darted back, out of arm’s reach; he wasn’t stupid. He tried to look inside, but it was too dark to see anything without getting closer. He squinted; was that movement? He took a step forward.
“Stiles,” his dad said from the top of the stairs. “I told you not to go down there.”
That was his dad’s ‘I mean business’ voice, so Stiles ran back upstairs.
Next time he was going to talk to the murderer in the dungeon.
~
Beacon Hills, capital city of the Kingdom of Beacon, 2007
Stiles waited until the nearby deputies were distracted, then slipped downstairs. If his dad was really serious about keeping him away from the basement cells, the door would be locked, right?
He didn’t bother to turn on the lights - there was just enough sunlight coming through the tiny window set high on the wall at the end of the hallway for him to see by. He could probably find his way to the Prisoner’s cell blindfolded anyway.
He slid open the panel and peeked through the opening. The room was dim; the Prisoner was to be kept in darkness, no matter how much his dad didn’t like it.  “Hi,” he whispered. “Got you something.” He placed an apple on the ledge that jutted out from the opening.
There was a deep sigh from one corner of the room. “Why?”
“Prison food sucks. Dad says so.”
“Why do you keep coming back? Talking to me?”
Stiles shrugged. He didn’t know why himself. “Because.”
There was a pause.“...thank you.”
Stiles moved away and after a moment the apple disappeared from the ledge. The Prisoner didn’t like for Stiles to get too close or try to see him.
When Stiles had first started bringing outside food for the Prisoner, he had worried about things like apple cores and orange peels. Apparently the orange peels could be flushed if they were broken up into tiny pieces, but the Prisoner ate the apple core, seeds and all. Ew. Stiles didn’t like to think about it, so he started doing what he did best: chatter.
“So my buddy Scott has a crush on the Little Princess and Lydia is all ‘Don’t be stupid, you don’t have a chance’ and it’s not like Scott actually thinks he does, but he can still like her, right? It’s like having a crush on a movie star. I mean, I have a better shot with Lydia than Scott does with a freakin’ princess, and Lydia is like, unattainable. Plus she’s going steady with Jackson, just because his dad is Lord Mayor. She has a genius brain, but I guess even smart people do stupid things.
“Anyway, Scott’s got her picture in his wallet and he looks at it and sighs a lot, which is kinda lame. I don’t do that with Lydia, and I’m an expert at having a crush. I-”
“Someone’s coming,” the Prisoner said suddenly. “Close the panel and hide.”
“What?”
“Stiles, hurry,” the Prisoner hissed, and Stiles did as he was told.
Just as he finished sliding the panel shut, the overhead lights came on. Stiles whirled and ran for the storage closet, which was always unlocked despite his dad’s efforts. He dashed inside and shut the door as quietly as he could. There was less than half an inch of space at the bottom of the door; Stiles lay down and pressed his face as close to the crack as he could. He wouldn’t be able to see anything, but he could probably hear enough to learn something interesting.
A clatter of footsteps marched down the hallway, echoing off the bare cement walls. Stiles had learned early on to be quiet while visiting the Prisoner, who had really sensitive hearing - these people either didn’t know or didn’t care.
“Open the door and leave us.” A woman’s voice, very commanding. Nobility for sure.
“My lady-” A man, probably a personal guard. The nobility always had personal guards.
“He wouldn’t dare try to harm me. He knows what will happen if he does. Open the door and wait by the stairs.”
“Yes, my lady.” There was a metallic groan - the cell door opening? - and then a bunch of footsteps clomping away.
“Der-ek,” the woman sing-songed. “Come out, come out wherever you are.”
Stiles didn’t like her.
“Then I’ll have to come to you.”
A muted step and then all he could hear was the muffled sound of her voice, no matter how he adjusted his position. He waited an eternity, with only her unintelligible words and the occasional sound of her mocking laughter audible from the Prisoner’s cell.
She finally emerged. “I’m finished,” she called. The guards came back and as the door was groaning shut, she said mockingly, “Until next year, sweetie.”
Stiles really didn’t like her.
Their footsteps marched away and then up the stairs. Then the lights went out and there was a faint sound of a door closing. Stiles waited.
After another eternity, Stiles got up and opened the door. He stepped out into the darkened hallway - the sun had set at some point - and quietly closed it again. He made his way to the Prisoner’s cell - hey, he really could find his way blind - and slid the panel open.
“Hello?” he whispered.
No answer.
“Derek?”
“Forget you heard that name.” Derek’s voice was low and sad.
“I’m sorry she was mean to you.”
“Just go away.”
“Oh. Okay. Um, I’ll talk to you later?”
No answer.
Reluctantly, Stiles slid the panel closed and left him alone, creeping down the hallway toward the stairs, not only because it was dark.
At the top of the stairs, he opened the door a crack and peeked out. It didn’t look like anyone was around, so he opened it a little more and squeezed out. Then he closed it again and heaved a sigh of relief.
A heavy hand came down on his shoulder. Stiles yelped.
“How long were you down there?” his dad whispered, furious.
“Um-”
“Were you down there when Princess Katherine arrived?”
Stiles’s eyes went wide. “Princess Katherine?”
“Do you know what she would have done if she’d found you down there? We would both be spending the rest of our lives in one of those cells.”
“Dad-”
“Don’t, Stiles. You can’t talk your way out of this one. We’re going home. I’ll figure out your punishment for this once I’ve calmed down.”
His dad let go of his shoulder. “We’re leaving.” He strode away and Stiles hurried after him. He’d never seen his dad so angry, not at him.
The drive home was silent. Stiles felt bad, but he couldn’t think of anything he might have done differently. Not get caught?
When they got home, his dad sent him to his room. Neither of them mentioned supper.
“Dad?” Stiles asked hesitantly from the staircase. “Who is he?”
“Stiles-” His dad sighed and rubbed his forehead. “His name is Adrian Harris. He plotted against the royal family and now he’ll be in prison for the rest of his life. Stay away from him.”
Why would Princess Katherine call the Prisoner Derek if his name was Adrian Harris? Something wasn’t right. Something that might be dangerous for his dad to know. “Okay.”
Stiles trudged up to his room. He had some research to do.
~
Beacon Hills, capital city of the Kingdom of Beacon, 2011
Stiles burst into the kitchen of the Sheriff’s Hall, carrying a small bag of apples. “I’m here! I brought them! It’s not too late, is it?”
Stiles had been helping out in the kitchen since he was eleven, although at first it had been part of his punishment for going places he wasn’t supposed to go. Prison food really did suck. Stiles wasn’t sure if the bad food was part of the criminals paying their debt to society, but he did know that prisoners were supposed to be fed nutritious meals. His dad had agreed and at Stiles’s suggestion, they had added fresh fruit to the prisoner’s meals to go with their otherwise nutritionally adequate slop. For years, Stiles had been allowed to place said fresh fruit on the lunch trays before they were served (because he definitely was not allowed to cook anything or handle sharp objects) and today he had been sent to buy more apples because the ones in the kitchen had gone bad.
“I’d swear you were still eleven years old,” Brenda, the kitchen manager, said fondly. “You aren’t too late. Go on, we’re about to load everything on the carts.”
Stiles rinsed the apples and started putting them on the trays, moving as fast as he could without dropping anything or knocking anything over.
“Sooo, Brenda,” Stiles said as soon as the kitchen workers started loading the trays on carts. “Do you think I could…” He gestured vaguely with hands and smiled, his eyes wide and innocent.
“No,” Brenda scolded with a laugh. “You can’t help deliver the meals. I don’t know why you keep asking.”
“Because one day you might say yes,” Stiles said with a charming smile.
Brenda shooed him away and Stiles went.
As soon as he was out of sight, he hurried down the hallway toward a place he was definitely not supposed to be. He ducked into an unused office and hurried over to the vent, mentally thanking the fates that the Sheriff’s Hall was new enough to have central heating and old enough to have a ventilation system that required repair people to actually enter the vents to fix shit when it broke.
He pulled the grate away and crawled inside. He carefully replaced the grate behind him and began to make his way along the route he’d mapped out from building schematics. Hopefully they had been accurate. He moved as quickly as he could, cursing every thump and scrape he caused. If his luck held, the noise would be dismissed as the random sounds of an old HVAC system.
There were a few heart-stopping moments when he had to climb down to the basement level vents - the maintenance ladder needed maintenance - but soon he was letting himself down into the supply closet where he had hidden from Princess Katherine all those years ago. The door was still being kept unlocked - another uncontrollable variable working out in his favor - and he crept out into the hallway.
The sliding panel on Derek’s cell door barely made a scraping sound as he pulled it aside. “Derek?” he whispered. “It’s me, Stiles.”
“Stiles?” Suddenly a face loomed in front of him in the darkness. Derek was pale, and his dark, unkempt hair and beard were shot through with silver, but he still looked like the pictures Stiles had found on the internet. “What are you doing here?”
“I snuck in. Listen, there’s no time. I need you to promise to eat your apple today, okay?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“It’s going to taste funny. Maybe smell funny. Just eat it, all of it, okay?”
Derek’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
Stiles pulled a chain out from under his shirt. The attached pendant was etched with a swirling symbol. “The sun, the moon, the truth. Your mother sent me, Prince Derek. Please, just trust me.”
Derek stared at him, then nodded. Stiles placed his hand in the opening, palm up, and waited to see if Derek would take it. After a moment, Derek did.
When Stiles started to pull away, Derek tightened his grip. “Stiles,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
Stiles nodded. “Good luck.” Then he closed the panel and hurried away. Getting back out would be just as tricky as getting in had been.
He was almost back to the unused office when his phone buzzed with an incoming text. Shit, he was behind schedule. He sped up, muttering ‘Don’t notice me, don’t notice me’ under his breath as his progress made more noise than could be explained by it being old. He almost crashed through the vent grate, still muttering, and quickly got out and replaced it. He stopped at the door, closed his eyes and placed one hand on the knob and the other on the wall. “Don’t notice me,” he said one more time, and opened the door.
There was a deputy in the hall when he stepped out of the office, but she only looked at Stiles with uninterested eyes and continued on her way.
“Holy shit, it worked,” he whispered, then he started running. No one tried to stop him. When he reached his dad’s office, he stopped, let out a slow, deliberate breath, and said, “All done.”
He was panting with exertion when he burst into his dad’s office.
“Stiles, what’s wrong?” his dad asked, halfway out of his seat.
“Dad,” he gasped. “Can I… stay… with Scott… tonight?”
His dad sat back down. “And you rushed in here to ask because…?”
“Scott’s waiting,” Stiles answered, still catching his breath.
“And you couldn’t have called? Texted?” His dad raised a ‘my son is an idiot’ brow at him.
“I… could have done that, yes. But then I wouldn’t have seen you at all today, dad-dad-daddy-o.” Stiles shuffled his feet. “Sooo, can I?”
“How does Melissa feel about this?”
“She’s working the night shift all weekend. She told us not to set anything on fire and not to eat all of the Oreos.”
His dad gave him a piercing look, then nodded. “Fine, you can stay at Scott’s. But if I find out you didn’t clear this with Melissa…”
“Yeah, yeah, grounded for life, no driving until I’m thirty-five, bread and water diet, all that good stuff.”
The phone rang and his dad waved him out. “Don’t cause any mayhem,” he said and answered the phone.
Stiles hurried outside, where Scott was waiting for him in Stiles’s jeep. “Did you do it?” Scott asked while Stiles was buckling his seatbelt.
“All done. Now we live normal teenage boy lives for a while.”
“Awesome. Call of Duty tonight?”
“Scotty, you are going down,” Stiles said as he started the jeep.
The next morning, his dad told him the Prisoner had died in his sleep. The day after that, the news stations reported that the Prisoner’s body had disappeared from the morgue. His name was not given. Princess Katherine was seen storming in and out of the Sheriff’s Hall every day for a week. Stiles stayed far away.
~
Beacon Preserve, neutral territory between the kingdoms of Beacon and Triskele, 2016
Princess Allison Argent, formerly known as the Little Princess, now heir-apparent to the throne of Beacon, waited at the edge of Wolf’s Glade with her honor guard, which counted her secret fiance Scott McCall among its number. On the other side, Princess Laura Hale, heir-apparent to the throne of Triskele, waited with several of her brothers and sisters, including Prince Derek, formerly a prisoner of Princess Allison’s aunt, Princess Katherine. His escape had led to a brutal war, and now, five years later, both sides agreed that the cost of the war was too high. Stiles privately thought Princess Katherine’s death in battle, followed by King Gerard’s fatal heart attack upon hearing the news, had helped the end of the war along.
Stiles, as someone with ties to both sides, stood in the middle of the Glade with Emissary Deaton. Nobody was leaving until they hammered out a treaty, not if he had anything to say about it. He wanted to date his new boyfriend in peace. He looked over at Derek and winked.
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therainroguefanfiction · 4 years ago
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❉ 139 Dreams (Marui Family) Hell Bent
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📑 Table of Contents
Genre: Angst, Family, Fluff ☁
Word Count: 2,595 ☁
Pairing: None ☁
World: Mitsudomoe ☁
☾ ⋆*・゚:⋆*・゚: *⋆.*:・゚ .: ⋆*・゚: . ☁
When you were growing up, you spent a lot of time alone, but not by choice. Your mom worked two jobs, so the only time you saw her was when she came home to sleep or when she woke up to go back to work. You missed a lot of school because you had to pick up odd jobs to help her pay off the massive debt she had. This further isolated you until finally, you became caged inside your own loneliness.
When you were seventeen-years-old, your mother started to date a younger man named David – a twenty-five-year-old pretty boy that went through more women than he did pairs of underwear. You didn’t like him at all, but when you brought this up to your mother, she got angry at you.
“I’ve thrown away years of my life on you,” she had spat. “I deserve to be happy!”
You had tried to tell her that you were just worried about her getting hurt, but she called you selfish. After that fight, she stopped going to work and ended up spending all her time out partying with him. You worked your ass off to make enough money to cover the bills in her stead, but you always fell short. Finally, the power was shut off.
You tried calling your mother to let her know and to ask when she would finally be coming home, but she didn’t answer, no matter how many times you called. Desperate and on the verge of a breakdown, you called your father instead.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he answered cheerfully. “How are yo –”
“Dad,” you sobbed, struggling to keep yourself together as you slid down the living room wall.
“Y/N?” His voice was soft but full of alarm and worry. “What’s wrong?!”
You tried to speak, to explain what had been going on, but the words died in your throat. Sobs wracked your body and you covered your mouth with your hand so you didn’t disturb the neighbors; the walls were paper-thin and the last thing you needed was the nosey old woman from next door attacking you with a bunch of questions.
“I’m on my way!” He cried out and you could hear hurried footsteps. You could hear your half-sister in the background and, though you couldn’t make out what she was saying, you could hear the worry in her voice as she called out to her father.
‘What the hell am I doing?’ The phone slipped from your hand as you tossed it across the room, watching it hit the opposite wall before falling to the ground in pieces. Your father, Soujirou Marui, was a single father raising eleven-year-old triplet girls while still working hard to provide for them. He was doing his best and he didn’t need another mouth to feed or another child to worry over. ‘I shouldn’t have called him… I’m such an idiot…’
A fresh round of tears slid down your cheeks as you cursed yourself. You felt so overwhelmed, so sad and alone, and you didn’t know what to do with yourself anymore.
☾ ⋆*・゚:⋆*・゚: *⋆.*:・゚ .: ⋆*・゚: . ☁
It was just after midnight when your father arrived at the apartment complex, his large fist banging on the door. The noise not only startled you awake, but it woke up the nosey old woman, as well. She peeked out her window and felt a shiver go down her spine as her eyes fell on the large man banging on the door. Scrambling back away from the window, she grabbed her phone with shaking hands.
Meanwhile, you rubbed at your sore eyes, slowly dragging yourself off the floor, pulling the door open. As soon as he saw the state you were in, his anger dissipated and he threw his arms around you, bringing you to his broad chest.
“Papa…” you muttered, clutching the white t-shirt he wore.
He frowned. You hadn’t called him that since you were a little kid and, even then, it was usually only when you had a nightmare. He gently pushed you back so he could step inside, closing the door behind him. Soujirou led you over to the couch and tried to turn on the lamp sitting on the table, but it refused to come on. He then tried the light switch, flicking it a couple times before realizing that there was no power in the apartment.
It was pitch black and mind-numbingly silent.
Shaking his head, he plopped down beside you and placed his arm over your shoulder. “Tell me what happened, Y/N.”
You leaned into him, thankful for the warmth and comfort only a father could provide, and you explained everything – from dropping out of school all the way to your mom’s new beau and partying lifestyle. It took everything you had not to start sobbing again, but you managed it because you hated your father seeing you cry – it made you feel weak, like you were still a child.
Soujirou’s anger had returned, boiling inside him like a roaring flame. You had been suffering in silence this whole time and he never realized that anything was amiss. You hid it so well, but as your father, he should have seen the signs that something was wrong. It made him feel like a failure. No, more than feel, he knew he had failed. As a father, it was his sole job to raise and protect his children from any and all harm, but he hadn’t.
He breathed out heavily through his nose, taking you by the shoulders and lightly pushing you away. “Go pack your things, you’re not staying here.”
That was what you were afraid he would say. You took a breath of your own before shaking your head. “No,”
“No?” he echoed, wondering if he had heard you wrong, but your face was set. “I’m not giving you a choice here, YN. I am your father, now do as I say.”
You met his eyes and he smiled warmly, patting your head with his large hand. Feeling tears sting your eyes once again, you rushed down the hall and into your room to pack.
Loud banging echoed throughout the apartment, followed closely by a male voice shouting, “Police! Open up!”
Soujirou sweatdropped, quite used to dealing with the police. Heaving a sigh, he got to his feet and approached the door, pulling it open and trying to appear as unsuspicious as possible, which was nearly impossible given his large size and mean-seeming demeanor.
The police officer eyed him warily, hand on his hip over the stun gun. “We got a call from next door saying a suspicious-looking man was banging loudly on the door.” He tried to peer around Soujirou, but the little bit that wasn’t covered by his large stature was covered in darkness. “Do you live here, sir?”
“Ah, no, I don’t…” he rubbed the back of his neck, trying to find the right words to use. “But my child does. They called me crying and I freaked out a bit…”
“I see. May I speak to them?” He added as an afterthought, “Just to be on the safe side.”
“Sure…” Soujirou stepped aside to allow the officer entrance.
“Why are there no lights?”
“Power is off…”
“Right,” he eyed the larger man as he pulled out his flashlight and clicked it on.
You stepped out of your room, backpack resting on your right shoulder. You didn’t have too many items, so everything you needed fit into just one bag. As you stepped through the doorway into the living room, a beam of bright light landed on your face and you winced, hand shooting up to cover your eyes.
“Oh sorry,” The officer smiled warmly, lowering the light and stepping forward. “Hello, I’m officer Matsuda. We got a call from your neighbor and we wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
You sweatdropped, cursing the neighbor for not minding her own business. Though, in a way, you felt a bit relieved knowing she would call the police if she ever thought you were in danger. “Ah… my boyfriend broke up with me.” You lied smoothly. “I called my dad crying and freaked him out. I’m really sorry for the trouble, sir.”
He set his hand on your shoulder. “It’s no bother. We would rather be safe than sorry!” He then turned to Ssoujirou with a wary, apologetic smile. “Sorry to intrude, sir.”
Soujirou blinked in surprised, eyes following the officer as he left the apartment. He wasn’t used to not getting arrested. It was a nice pace for once!
“Dad?” you called out, snapping him from his trance. “I’m ready to go,”
“Right, let’s go!” He smiled brightly, holding his arm out to you. You slid your arm through his, allowing him to pull you from the apartment.
☾ ⋆*・゚:⋆*・゚: *⋆.*:・゚ .: ⋆*・゚: . ☁
To say you felt anxious as you followed your father up to his house would be a major understatement. In the past, you had visited the house many times and you loved your half-sisters dearly, but you were suddenly moving in to their territory with no warning or discussion. Would they accept the change? Would they hate it? Would they hate you for taking their father’s attention away from them?
Soujirou unlocked the door and stepped inside with you close behind. You quietly removed your shoes, standing awkwardly in the doorway. He noticed your frown and rested his hand atop your head. “Don’t be nervous, Y/N, this is your home.”
Tears stung at your eyes but you held them back, tired of crying. Instead, you smiled up at him. “Thank you, dad.”
“You can sleep in my room tonight and I’ll sleep in the living room. Tomorrow, I’ll -”
“Please, don’t.” You interrupted. “You have work in the morning, I don’t. Please don’t fuss over me. Tomorrow, I’m going to look for a job so I can pull my weight!”
His smile was full of pride. “You’ve grown into a fine young adult, Y/N. Let me grab some blankets from the closet.”
You nodded, watching him head up the stairs before you entered the living room, sitting down at the table with a sigh. Your new life was only just beginning.
☾ ⋆*・゚:⋆*・゚: *⋆.*:・゚ .: ⋆*・゚: . ☁
Morning arrived quicker than you would have liked, mostly because you had gotten very little sleep that night. Even so, you forced yourself up and headed to the bathroom to empty your bladder before returning to the kitchen. If you were going to live in the Marui household, you were hell bent on being useful and making life easier for your family.
Since it was your first day, you decided to start with something simple – an omelet and toast. You cracked the eggs, careful not to get the shell into the bowl before whisking it together with some milk, salt, and pepper.
Feeling a presence behind you, you turned around expecting to see your dad but, instead, it was the youngest of the triplets, Hitoha. She was staring at you with slightly wide eyes.
You gave her an awkward but friendly smile. “Good morning, Hitoha. Do you… know who I am?”
Rather than answering, she launched herself at you, burying her face in your stomach. “You’re home,”
You smiled warmly, wrapping your arms around her small body. “Yeah… I’m home, sis. I’m home.” Though you didn’t want to release her, you knew the food would burn, so you gently pulled back. “Can you make sure dad is up please?”
She nodded before running from the room, her arms held out behind her.
While the eggs cooked, you heated up another pan, laying strips of bacon into the pan after it heated up. It wasn’t long before the smell of bacon filled the home, teasing your stomach. You wanted to eat a few pieces so bad, but you knew your family came first.
“Bacon!!” Futaba came running into the room at full speed, crashing into your legs. The impact pushed you forward, causing your hand to brush against the pan. You yelped in pain, quickly pulling your hand back, inspecting the reddening skin.
“Futaba!” Mitsuba yelled, coming to a stop in the doorway. “What did you do -” Her eyes landed on you, but she didn’t have time to feel excited about seeing you. She noticed the pained expression you were and the way you held your hand to your chest. She noticed the food sizzling on the stove and, finally, she noticed her sister on the ground beside you, rubbing your red forehead. “Futaba, you idiot! You hurt Y/N!”
“Y/N?” Futaba repeated, looking up at you. Her eyes slowly widened and she shot up, grabbing at your shirt. “Y/N! Y/N! Y/N is home~!”
“Idiot!” Mitsuba put her foot on the back of her sister’s head and pushed hard, sending the girl to the ground.
Hitoha, who had just returned to the kitchen after waking her father, rushed over to the counter, climbing up so she could reach the cabinet.
A bead of sweat rolled down your cheek and you swallowed, having forgotten how much of a handful the three girls could be. “Mitsuba, don’t attack your sister, it was an accident. Futaba, please stop pulling on my shirt, I’m okay, really. Hitoha, get down before you fall and get hurt!”
“I’m sorry, Y/N!” Futaba lifted her head, her eyes watery as she sniffled.
“She deserves to be punished!” Mitsuba cried out, shoving her sister’s head down again.
“I’m sorry, Mitsuba!”
Hitoha pulled a first aid kit from the cabinet before jumping down, bypassing her arguing sisters and gently taking your un-injured hand. You allowed her to lead you to the living room, sitting down at the table and watching as she removed the items from the kit, looking for burn cream and a cloth bandage.
You smiled warmly as you watched her. ‘She may be the youngest of the triplets, but she’s easily the most mature. They’ve grown up so much since I last saw them,’
“Something smells good!” Soujirou boomed loudly as he came down the stairs. He paused, first looking at you and Hitoha before turning his attention to the other two, still fighting on the kitchen floor. He sighed heavily, “I was hoping your first day home would go smoothly…”
“Me too,” you chuckled, “Can you check the food, please? I don’t want it to burn.”
He nodded, stepping around his children to check the food.
“Girls, enough!” You cried out with a scowl. “If you don’t stop fighting, you won’t get any bacon.”
“No fair!!” Futaba cried, shoving her sister out of the way as she came running over to you, throwing her arms around your neck in a vice grip. “Please let me have bacon! I’m sorry for fighting! I’m sorry for hurting you! Please~!”
“Can’t… breathe…”
“Idiot!” Mitsuba cried, grabbing her sister and attempting to pull her away. “You’re gonna kill Y/N!”
You smacked the girl’s arm repeatedly, trying to tap out, but her grip did not loosen. Not until Hitoha took a needle from the first aid kid and jabbed it into the girl’s hand, causing her to cry out in pain, finally releasing her grip. You gasped for air, clutching your throat. ‘It’s only my first day home… these girls are gonna be the death of me!’
“Why did you stab me, too?!” Mitsuba cried, glaring at the youngest sister.
“You’re both annoying, Y/N.”
“We are not!” Futaba pouted. “You can’t keep Y/N to yourself, Hitoha!”
As the three started to argue, you exchanged a look with your father and smiled. ‘Well, at least it’ll be a death full of love and warmth. I can accept that~’
☾ ⋆*・゚:⋆*・゚: *⋆.*:・゚ .: ⋆*・゚: . ☁
📜 Read more by checking out my masterlist 📜
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hellas-himself · 5 years ago
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@sorry-im-an-aries​ asked for a Mob Au. And I PROMISE I am not abandoning my fics, but I welcomed the mental break from everything else. It probably doesn’t make sense, but when I’m working on a bunch of stuff at once, I can focus better? Anyway. This was super fun and it’ll probably be a few chapters long (because why not). With my kid back to school, I’ll probably be able to going back to updating stuff frequently. Y’all know how terrible I am at titles so it’s free game if anyone wants to name it lol
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The Present
I did this for you...
 The first gun shot made me jump, and I hoped to god no one noticed. To my luck, everyone- even Luce- was focused on Tamlin and the lifeless body on the floor. 
 I did this...
 The second gunshot forced me to stand up a little straighter, schooling my features into that of cool indifference. They looked up to Tam for his strength, his fearlessness. If I wanted to keep my place at his side, I had to be just as strong. Just as fearless. 
I…
The third gunshot sounded and I was no longer in the abandoned warehouse, but in a mansion in the suburbs. Overturned tables and broken glass. Two dead at my feet, my gun pointed at her even as she laughed and called me nobody. Worthless. And maybe she was right. But it was her or Tamlin. 
 Bronn and Hart were ordered to get rid of the bodies, the sound bringing me back to the present. Before I could speak Tamlin was already telling Lucien to take me home. As Luce placed a hand to the small of my back, I turned to find Tamlin leading Ianthe out another way. Once, this would have broken me. I would have made a scene. But I knew better now. 
 Lucien was quiet on the drive home, but I noticed him looking back at me through the mirror. It was silly to look for decency in a world of mobsters and crooked men. But Lucien was decent. 
“Hey, are you alright?” he asked quietly. 
“I just want to go to sleep,” I replied. A blatant lie, one I used far too often. But Lucien had been there, he knew what I had done just to keep Tamlin safe. Lucien said nothing else until he parked the car outside of the house. Two guards stood out front and greeted us before Lucien unlocked the door. We walked inside. I started to go up the stairs and stopped when Lucien called my name.
 “He just wants to keep you safe,” he said and I scoffed.
 “Yeah, the way he’s keeping Ianthe safe every night.”
 “It’s not like that.”
 “He wouldn’t have you defending him if it wasn’t.”
 I continued on and I made my way upstairs to my room. Because Tamlin still refused to share his with me. But that didn’t matter anymore. 
 I pulled my jacket off and tossed it on the dresser. I took my time untying the laces of my boots, the buttons of my shirt. Tamlin didn’t come to my room anymore, and that was alright. It didn’t matter anymore, either. 
 “You’re slacking,” I said in a teasing voice as I heard my bedroom door open and close. The lock click. I looked at Lucien through the mirror, my heart near aching at the way he smiled at me. 
 “That was quite the performance,” Lucien said and I rolled my eyes.
 “You forgot to promise to talk to him on my behalf,” I said in jest.
“Well, Tamlin isn’t coming home tonight and he asked me to make sure you didn’t notice.”
I laughed, a sound reserved solely for him. For him and-
 “Rhys called,” Lucien said as he approached me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “It’s as if he knew, somehow, that tonight had been… trying.” 
“How? When?” 
“Just right after Tamlin hung up on me. Don’t worry, we were both careful.”
 I nodded, unable to fight the tears that stung my eyes. Lucien’s hands trailed down the sides of my arms until he held my hands. 
 “Soon,” he whispered. “I promise.”
He kissed away the tears, a gesture that reminded me so much of Rhys I wasted no time in guiding Lucien towards the bed. 
 “Come on. You have to make sure I don’t notice Tamlin isn’t home,” I teased.
“I can think of a few things,” Lucien said, pulling me into his arms. 
 ***
 One Year Ago 
 I hated closing the bar and having to walk home alone at night. Truth be told, it didn’t matter what time of day it was. This godforsaken town was a nightmare. It was full of naïve man children who liked to play at mafia, as if the great families of Prythian would resort to robbing old ladies in pure daylight, breaking into peoples’ cars and coming to the bar every night to get shit faced and talk about all the stupid things they did. But it was enough for me to keep a knife on me everywhere I went.
 I fumbled with the keys to the house, cursing the outside light that had blown out once again. I lived here long enough to know all that could go wrong in the dark. I reminded myself that I would get paid on Thursday and if I didn’t buy any coffee this week, I could get a new lightbulb and that set of paints I saw at the store. 
 All the lights were off save for the television my father was asleep in front of, his TV dinner mostly untouched. His medicine still where I’d left it before I went to work. A noise from upstairs made me roll my eyes- Elain probably had Grayson over which meant Nesta wasn’t home. With our shared bedroom occupied, I put my wallet and keys in the pantry closet, a habit I picked up after one of our dad’s friends went through my purse and helped himself to all he found. 
I shut off the tv and dropped myself unceremoniously on the sofa and closed my eyes… and was startled awake by someone banging on our front door. My dad was yelling for me to answer it and with a mumbled curse I got up. 
“I swear to god, Nesta-” I began but froze when I was met with green eyes, not icy blue. The man outside my door seemed surprised to see me as well but quickly scowled. Great. He practically shoved me aside as he stormed into my house, shouting my father’s name. 
“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” I snapped, following after him. I had to fight the urge to cry when my dad told me to shut up. 
 “I had another month,” my dad said to the man who had reached behind his back.
“A month for what?” I asked and my dad made to speak but the man stopped him.
“Your dad owes me money. Lots of it.”
“How?” I asked. “I’m responsible for everything here. And I don’t remember asking you for shit.”
 The man chuckled and I wanted to smack that smirk off his face. He was far too sure of himself to be another boy playing make believe. He dressed too fine to even be from this part of town.
 “When your father gambled everything away, how do you think he moved you all to this lovely little apartment?”
The tone in his voice made me look at my dad who was in tears. How long had he been doing this? I wanted to strangle him, I wanted to scream but then there was a gun pointed at his face and without thinking I was standing in front of it, arms outstretched. 
 “If you kill him, how are you getting your money back?”
“There are three of you. I’ll make it happen.”
 “Nesta would slit your throat first,” I said and he laughed. 
 “Feyre, you don’t know who you’re talking to,” my dad said but I paid him no mind.
 “Feisty, are we?” the man asked, as if my father weren’t even there.
 “How much?” I asked and he raised a brow. “How much does he owe you?” 
 He stepped forward, pressing the gun to my chest. 
“Far too much for a barmaid to pay back.”
“So let me work for you,” I blurted out. 
“What?” 
“I can’t pay you with the job I currently have. Let me work for you. Pay off his debts and I’ll make sure he never asks you for another goddamn thing.”
 “Feyre-” my father began but I turned to look at him.
 “You’ve done enough,” I said. “This is the last mess I clean up for you.”
When I turned back around, Elain and Grayson were standing at the foot of the stairs. She was crying and he had an arm around her. 
 “How can I trust you? You could all disappear in the night?” the man said, and I dared to put my hand over his.
 “My sisters are more important than saving my own skin,” I replied, even though I knew if roles were reversed, our father would be dead. My sisters would have run.
 No one would fight for me.
 “Then you’re coming with me,” he said.
 “Where?”
 “Where I can make sure you stay true to your word.”
 “You’ll leave my family alone?”
 “Yes.”
 “Fine.”
 When my sister began to protest, the man stepped back and I let out a sigh of relief. 
“Get your shit.” 
 Up in our room, Elain was begging me to reconsider, to let her go instead. I grabbed my bag and put my wallet and phone in and what little clothes I had. 
 “Nesta needs this,” I said as I walked to the dresser and pushed it back. I knelt down and lifted the wooden panel, retrieving the envelope full of money. “Give this to her. Don’t tell dad you have it.”
“Fey…”
“I’m doing exactly what I’ve been doing since mom died. Where I lay my head at night doesn’t change that.”
 I gave her a hug and hurried back downstairs to where the man waited. The gun was no longer in sight despite my father on the floor kneeling, begging. Grayson seemed to have left. 
“That’s it?” the man asked. 
 “That’s it.”
 I looked down at my dad and sighed.
“Clean up before Nesta gets here. She’s got exams this week and doesn’t need any more stress.”
The green eyed man opened the door and I followed him out. I said nothing as he led me away and towards a black car. When he opened the door for me, I didn’t move.
 “Having second thoughts?” he asked with a knowing smile.
“You seem to know every goddamn thing about us. I think I should know who you are before I get in the car… even if I’m going to end up in a ditch by the end of the night.”
 He laughed, running a hand through his long, blonde hair.
“Tamlin,” he said as he held out a hand. “Tamlin Moran.”
Moran… 
“You’re Wes Moran’s son.”
“So you do know me.”
I shook his hand, ignoring him. Tamlin helped me into his car and I wondered just how much shit I’d just put myself in. The Moran’s were one of the oldest, most powerful families in Prythian. And now I was working for them. 
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emdythewriter · 5 years ago
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Scars of our lives | chapter two (acotar)
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“I never thought I’d see that again.”
“See what?” Rhys was still sitting at the bar even though it was almost closing time. Feyre was busy cleaning glasses as people left and the few employees she had working tonight cleaned up the tables. He wasn’t drinking anymore, just staying to talk to her.
“My sister letting a guy she just met walk her home,” Feyre answered Rhys’s question. She nodded to the back door where they had watched Nesta and Cassian exit a few moments ago.
“I never thought Cassian offered to walk women home,” he joked causing her to smile. Rhys smiled back admiring the way she tried not to smile but couldn’t help it in the end. It was like Feyre had spent her life avoiding the sign of emotion, or never feeling that she didn’t know what it meant when her muscles lifted her lips.
“How many siblings do you have?” Feyre asked changing the subject after a silence had fallen between the two. She had told Rhys some stories about her family throughout the night. He knew that she had two older sisters, one she got along with and the other she didn’t. He knew both her parents had passed away and that some of the money her father left behind helped her open the bar. Yet the whole she hadn’t asked about his family, though he hadn’t offered any of that information either.
“Just Cassian and Azriel though they’re not by blood,” Rhys answered as he circled the rim of his glass with a finger. “We grew up together though so they’re the closest thing I have to family now. My mom and dad died in a car crash when I was a teenager. I have a little sister, but we didn’t grow up together. After my parents died she got put into the system and eventually was adopted.”
“Where did you go?” Feyre asked even though she was starting to feel guilty for making him talk about his family in the first place.
“Cassian’s family took me in and they tried to fight for my sister as well but it was no use,” Rhys sighed before taking a sip of the water she had given him. “They could barely afford to take me in but they did. Cassian has a big family, he’s the youngest of three brothers and then has two younger sisters. His family had money but they also had a lot of debt and spent most of my childhood trying to pay it off.”
“Sounds like they were great people for doing that for you,” Feyre said setting a glass to the side as she finished drying it.
“Yeah, especially considering they had taken Az in a few years before when he got kicked out of his house,” Rhys added.
“What for?” she asked hoping she wasn’t crossing a line.
“Az had a problem with getting caught for things he never did, mostly because of this kid in high school that believed he was better than Azriel and felt a need to prove it every waking moment. He also got into fights provoked by his brothers that hated his guts. Eventually his dad and stepmom got tired of taking care of his messes and threw him out.”
“What about his biological mom?”
“She lives in a different city and Az didn’t want to leave Velaris so Cassian’s parents gave him a home. His mom sent money every month for him which helped out the Sterling family a bunch.”
“I haven’t met him tonight have I?” Feyre asked wondering about this man that seemed to have one to many fascinating and heartbreaking stories to tell.
“He’s most likely hiding in the shadows, he tends to do that,” Rhys informed her before finishing his glass of water. Feyre furrowed her eyebrows now having more questions than before, and some of them she wasn’t sure he would be okay with her asking like he was the others she had asked.
___
Azriel was in the corner, hidden by shadows. It was the only place he ever felt comfortable, especially when crowds were as big as they had been tonight. Now that the night was winding down, and he figured the bar would be closing soon he knew he could move. He stayed though because something had caught his eye, or rather someone.
In a booth against the opposite wall of where Az currently hid was a woman, and she was mesmerizing. Her hair was down in loose honey brown waves and her eyes seemed to shine from every angle he looked at her in. She was wearing a royal blue sundress that had a deep v-neck cut to it, slowing the side of her breasts. Her skin was a creamy color and he suspected it would be the smoothest surface he ever touched. He wanted to talk to her, but the only issue was she was sitting next to another guy.
The guy with his long red hair, russet colored eyes, and a charm of a snake, Lucien Vanserra. Azriel had grown up with him, and never liked him nor his family. They had been rivals growing up but Lucien was always favored over him, always coming out on top even when he didn’t deserve it. Now that they were no longer in school their days of going head to head should’ve been however, if it wasn’t for Lucien’s father.
His biological father that is who just so happened to own the rival hotel business to Rhys’s. This meant Azriel had to see Lucien on more than one occasion and every time all he wanted to do was pop the red heads head off his shoulders. They were forced to mingle in meetings or on business excursions. They were forced to keep in contact when deals were being made and to keep up with each others lawyers and offices. Az hated every single waking moment when his job crossed over into Lucien’s path.
He knew Rhys was trying to find ways around it even if Az hadn’t personally asked him to do so. His brother just knew him too well and knew all the feelings he had toward Lucien.
Now those feelings arose as he hated the other male for finding this beautiful woman before he did and making a move. She was laughing at whatever stupid thing he just said, and he was moving closer to her. Azriel swore he was going to explode if Lucien actually managed to kiss her before the night was done.
A vein was going to pop in his forehead, Azriel needed to find a distraction. He pushed himself off the wall, ignoring the looks shot his way by the women as he made his way to the bar. Rhys was still there like he had been the whole night chatting with the bartender. He took up the stool next to his brother.
“Whatever is the strongest liquor you have I’ll take the bottle,” Azriel said as he rubbed his hands through his hair and then down his face.
“Speak of the devil,” Rhys said as he clapped a hand onto Az’s shoulder. “Feyre this is Azriel, Az this is Feyre she owns the place.”
He looked up and the woman smiled at him before setting a bottle of whisky in front of him and a glass. He poured himself a helping and then took a long sip, letting the amber liquid burn his throat. Feyre was beautiful as well with her long brown hair that was pulled back for the night. Her eyes were a blue-gray that blended with the background of the bar. Her skin was light but darkening due to days in the sun, and her body had small curves though not really noticeable at first glance.
“Nice to meet you,” Azriel finally said before taking another drink. His voice had sounded rough from the first sip, now it had to be gravel. The whiskey would work perfectly.
“Bad night?” Rhys asked as he watched his brother. Azriel wasn’t surprised he had picked up on his mood so fast. Even if he had bothered to hide his annoyance his brother still would’ve seen right through the mask.
“Look over there and tell me what you think?” Az said as he nodded in the direction of where Lucien sat with the woman.
“What’s he doing here?” Rhys asked.
“You guys know Lucien?” Feyre asked causing both males to look up at her in surprise with wide eyes. “What?”
“How do you know Lucien?” Azriel asked.
“You know Lucien?” Rhys asked.
“He’s best friends with my ex,” Feyre answered giving them both a confused look. She seemed more curious about their relationship with Lucien then they were about hers.
“You dated Tamlin?” this time they had asked the same question at the same time. Feyre jumped a little bit having been startled by their combined raised voices. A few people looked in their direction, sending the trio looks as if to suggest they were crazy.
“When I went to college for a couple of years,” Feyre answered calmly, brushing off the stares. “It wasn’t my proudest moment.” At least she could admit it, thought Azriel.”Now how do you two know Lucien?”
“He was my high school rival.” Azriel answered.
“You dated Tamlin?” Rhys repeated. Az couldn’t blame him for being shocked. While he was getting in trouble for fighting with Lucien Rhys was getting suspended for causing fights with Tamlin.
“Lucien was the guy you were telling me about?” Feyre asked but the question was directed at Rhys, who still looked baffled.
“Yes, now how could you date Tamlin?” He asked leaning forward on the counter. Feyre huffed a breath and crossed her arms over her chest.
“His family helped out mine after my mother passed,” she said but Az had a feeling there was more to it that she wasn’t comfortable sharing. “We got close.”
“Tamlin was my worst enemy growing up but I had no clue he knew you,” Rhys said seemingly puzzled at the thought.
“We didn’t really talk until college and that’s when I found out he was part of the family that helped mine stay above water.” Feyre said, there was a small pause in conversation before she broke it. “Lucien was your rival?
“Rhys told you about that?” Azriel asked as he poured a new glass.
“He told me about how you ended up being raised by Cassian’s parents,” Feyre informed him. Az stopped pouring to look at his brother who just shrugged. He didn’t mind people knowing his story but he was always surprised when Rhys decided to open up. Feyre must be special for him to do that so willingly.
“That was the only good thing Lucien ever did for me,” Azriel commented before taking a sip of the whisky, nursing it more now that he had to focus on a conversation. “My brothers were worse than that asshole over there.” he nodded in Lucien’s direction.
“Should I be worried considering that’s my sister he’s talking to?” Feyre asked looking over her shoulder at the woman Az had been admiring all night. Eyes wide he looked up at the bartender, setting his drink down in the process.
She’s your sister?” He asked trying to keep his voice neutral but it came out sounding as if he was mesmerized, which he supposed he was.
“Yeah, that’s Elain,” Feyre answered. “She’s the gentlest person I’ve ever known.”
“The complete opposite of Azriel here,” Rhys joked causing the other male to elbow him in his ribs, hard. “What? I can’t joke anymore?”
“Your teasing instead of joking,” Azriel retorted as he sent his brother a glare. Rhys smirked knowing by Az’s reaction that he was forming a crush on the woman that was currently chatting up his arch nemesis.
“I wonder what he’s saying to her,” Feyre said bringing their attention back to her. Her back was pressed against the counter, arms crossed over her chest and eyes intently focused on her sister. “I’ve never seen her fake a laugh before.”
___
Elain was getting tired. Her face hurt from all the fake smiles and laughs she was carrying out through this conversation. She knew Lucien from the time Feyre had dated his best friend, but she had never really cared for him. At the time they had met Elain had been dating someone else, Graysen who was now her ex-fiance.
Lucien had tried getting close to her and he was always sweet, but something about him always made Elain want to keep some distance between them. She was fine talking to him but now she wanted a reason to end the conversation. He had told her about his time in college, about finding out the man he grew up believing was his father wasn’t, and about working with his real father these past couple of years.
In return Elain had told him about her college days, her parents’s passing, and the business she had started close to a year ago. She told him about Feyre being the owner of this bar and how she seemed to be patching things up with Nesta lately. That was all fine until Lucien had a few drinks and started flirting.
“I think I’m going to head out,” Elain said. It was passed the time she usually went to bed and the only reason she was still here was because she hadn’t found an opportunity to leave the conversation. Yawning, she began to stand up and make her exit but Lucien followed.
“Let me walk you home,” he said and though she would usually accept the offer she didn’t see the need to.
“Thanks for the offer but I’ll be fine,” She grabbed her bag and wrapped the strap around her shoulder before taking a few steps towards the bar Feyre had been manning the whole night. She would be closing soon and Elain planned on using that as her scapegoat. “Feyre and I live close to each other so we plan on walking together.”
“Your tired and she still has to close the place doesn’t she?” Elain expected that as well, and luckily she planned for it.
“I can help her clean up and make it go by faster,” she started walking away again but Lucien reached out and grabbed her wrist.
“Really I don’t mind walking you home.”
“I appreciate the offer but I’m alright.” Shrugging him off she smiled and turned to go.
“Let me at least give you my number,” Lucien said reaching his hand out for her phone. “Just so I know you got home alright, it would make me feel better.” He added when he saw the hesitation written in her brown eyes.
“Alright,” Elain handed him her phone and once it was programmed into her contacts she made her escape.
There were two guys sitting at the bar still, one nursing a glass of whisky while the other had an empty glass he was stroking the rim of. She took up the stool next to the one with whiskey and reached out for the bottle, drinking straight from it.
“Guess I have nothing to worry about between you and Lucien,” Feyre said as she grabbed a fresh glass for her sister to pour the liquor into.
“I think most of the conversation was about him,” Elain said pouring a hefty glass before handing the bottle back to the man next to her. His hazel eyes were focused on her and she found her cheeks warm at his gaze. “I’m Elain.”
He took the hand she held out for him to shake. It was covered with callouses on one side and tiny scars on the other. She couldn’t help but to admire the beauty of them, even if she was sure he went through hell to get those scars.
“Azriel,” he answered before pulling his hand back slowly like he wasn’t used to people staring at them with admiration.
“They’re beautiful,” she said, nodding to his hands that he was trying to hide between his legs. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of them no matter how the scars got there.”
“You weren’t lying,” the other male said to her sister.” I’m Rhys and your sister was telling us how you have a gentle soul.”
“Most people tell me that,” Elain said blushing softly.”
“They’re telling the truth,” he sent her a smile that caused her to blush more. She wasn’t used to compliments, most of the time Feyre and Nesta received them. Elain looked back up at Azriel who was watching her. He was looking her over so she thought to do the same. His hair was dark and falling into the hazel eyes she had first noticed. His skin was browning from exposure to the sun and his body was all muscles.
“Ready to head out?” Feyre asked breaking her out of the staring contest she seemed to have unintentionally started. Her sister was grabbing her bag from behind the bar and hefting it onto her shoulder. “You can tell me all about your new love interest.”
Elain groaned as her sister laughed before standing up to follow her out. Both Rhys and Azriel followed their lead. The couple of employees left were heading out the back and locking it up while their small group went for the main entrance. Feyre turned off the neon signs before locking the doors.
“You know he tried to walk me home,” Elain said starting a new conversation after the old one had been left at the bar. “I had to let him give me his number just to get him to stop offering.”
Feyre laughed causing her sister to glare at her. Rhys couldn’t help the laugh that bubble in his throat though he had at least made an effort. When she looked at Az he gave her a look as if to say he would’ve done the same thing, the difference was she would’ve let him walk her home.
“Poor guy,” her sister started to say as she wrapped her arm around Elain’s shoulders. “You’re finally single and he still can’t get you to fall for him.”
“He’s tried to ask you out before?” Azriel asked curiously.
“Yeah, when we first met he asked me on a date but I was engaged at the time so I turned him down,” Elain explained. She could tell Az wanted to asked what happened between her and her ex, but he decided not to considering their present company, it made her smile.
“You know if you ever date Elain,” Rhys said wrapping his own arm around his brother’s shoulders, much like Feyre with her sister. “It would be the perfect way to make him jealous and mad.”
“I think I piss him off enough by existing,” Azriel retorted, shrugging his brother off.
“You don’t get along with Lucien,” Elain asked turning back to look at them.
“High school rivalry turned work rivalry,” Az explained.
“Lucien and Tamlin have caused a lot of trouble for me and my family over the years,” Rhys added and Elain nodded in thought. She was curious what the two had done to these new friends she was making, but she wasn’t sure they would answer her if she asked, so she didn’t.
“This is us,” Feyre said turning to face the two males that had walked them home without even asking. Elain hadn’t even realized how close they had gotten to their apartment building, and she found herself sad that they hadn’t walked slower, or lived further. The two sisters lived two floors apart from each other, which was nice.
“I’ll see you next time I need a drink,” Rhys said talking to Feyre. They were both smirking at each other clearly waiting for the other to make the first move.
“Or you could call me,” Feyre said taking a step forward and slipping a piece of paper into the front pocket of his jeans. She kissed his cheek before turning and walking up the stairs to her apartment. Rhys watched her go, smiling the whole time.
“Hopefully I’ll see you around,” Elain said wishing she had talked to Azriel the whole night that way it wouldn’t be awkward for her to hand over her number.
“I’ll be around when that happens, “ he smiled at her before turning to catch up with his brother that had started to walk away. She waited until he was out of view before walking up to her apartment as well.
Unlocking the front door, Elain kicked her shoes off and hung up her bag and keys on the hook. Her cat, Jessie rubbed against her ankle as the lights flicked on. She smiled down at her cat before walking to the bedroom to get ready for bed. When that was done she plopped down on the mattress and under the covers.
Elain pulled her text messages up starting a new message. She knew she didn’t have to but she also was afraid Lucien would worry too much and she didn’t want that. Finding his number she entered a simple and to the point text.
It’s Elain, just letting you know I’m safe in my home.
Glad to hear it. See you soon ;)
Elain cringed at the winky face. She knew he was trying to suggest something she had never done, not even with Graysen. He wanted to flirt in a completely different way then she was comfortable with him, so she left Lucien on read.
Setting her alarm for the morning, she turned the lamp off once her phone was plugged up. Jessie curled up at her feet already starting to doze off. Elain tossed and turned slightly as she thought of that damned winky face. She almost gave up on falling asleep until hazel eyes appeared in her vision.
She thought of Azriel. Thought of his hazel eyes and the scars on his hands that had raised so many questions in her mind. Elain thought of the two most beautiful parts of the man that seemed to have been born of darkness. She thought of that darkness and pictured the light that rested in his soul.
As she pictured all this Elain began to fall asleep.
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wndamaximov · 5 years ago
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iron man[1]
Masterlist
Summary:  Joseph Rogers stole from The Iron Man, landing himself and his son in deep debt with the mobster. The only way to work off the debt is for Steve to start dealing for the crime lord. But what happens when he starts to fall in love with Tony Stark?
Words: 1, 513
Pairing: Tony Stark x Steve Rogers (stony)
Warnings: Mentions of (dealing) drugs, angst
Characters: Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, James Rhodes, Joseph Rogers, Pepper Potts(mentioned), Obediah Stane(mentioned), Sharon Carter(mentioned)
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Tony stood in the center of the corner cafe that never seemed out of the ordinary. It had started the morning mundane, a steady flow of customers streaming in for their morning coffee, not enough for the place to be considered popular, but just enough to pay the bills. Except it wasn’t enough to pay Stane’s debts.
The once pleasant ambiance was destroyed, several chairs knocked over, scuff marks all over the floor, booths on their bellies, and as the cherry on top of a bloodbath sundae, bodies strewn haphazardly throughout the room, their owners last pleads for mercy permanently plastered on their faces.
Once, such a scene would’ve made Tony feel something, anything, but now it meant absolutely nothing to him. Another day, another guy who couldn’t pay what he owed. The same routine over, and over. Tony used to feel sympathetic to his debtors’ plights, but now it all just seemed futile. If they missed one payment, they’d miss the next. No point in giving them a second chance.
“You want us to clean this dumpster, boss?”
“As usual, Colonel. You know the drill.”
“You ever think about getting a girlfriend, boss?” Tony grimaced. Rhodey had been pestering him to get a girlfriend ever since the love of his life had died. The memory of Pepper was still so fresh in his mind that he could still feel her sometimes. Her presence would hit him out of nowhere, and it made him wonder if life was truly over after death. Luckily for him, no one else from his tainted past had ever come back to haunt him.
“You know I haven’t, Rhodes,” he quipped, throwing up the facade of the most feared mobster in New York.
“I think it’d do you some good; I hate the thought of you prattling around that big, old mansion all by yourself. At least with a girlfriend, you won’t be lonely.” Rhodey clapped Tony on the back and walked past him to hoist one of the many fallen corpses onto his shoulders. Before walking away to do his job, he stopped in front of his boss. “It’s been a decade since Pepper died. You’re not doing her any favors by being unhappy, and you know it.”
Anyone else. Had anyone else dared to rack up the courage to ask him that, they would have been dead before the end of the sentence. But it was Rhodey, his best friend from childhood, the one person present for every up and down in his life. His right-hand man was his number one confidant- but only in his business. The one person that he could trust more than anything, and the one person he couldn’t trust at all- and he couldn’t care less. After all, they didn’t call him the “Iron Man” for nothing. He was cold, calculating, and ruthless. And he just couldn’t find it in himself to care.
━━━━‎⎊━━━━
Tony leaned back into his chair and stretched. It had been a fairly slow day for Stark Industries and its countless side-businesses. It was like this most days; not as many people dared to mess with the guy who was rumored to bite the heads of those who crossed him off, and not in the figurative way. Tony’d always wondered who had come up with that interesting myth. Just another thing to ponder as he struggled to keep his eyes open.
The weather outside didn’t help his boredom either. All he noticed about it was the bleak gray fog settling down on the traffic like a blanket of dread. Not good enough for rain, but Tony was high up enough that little droplets had formed on his window, fragmenting the world below him into pieces not nearly interesting enough to put together. New York- the city that teemed with life. No corner was occupied by just a single person, except for his little bubble. No one bothered to venture far enough inside, and why would they? Tony’d built a fortress around his corner, making it impenetrable. His reputation made him a god, a cruel, capricious god who was only to be worshiped, not loved. Only one person had ever taken the time to get to know the man underneath the beast.
Suddenly, the intercom buzzed, the piercing sound shaking Tony out from inside his head.
“Yeah?”
“Boss, we’ve got someone who stole something from you. Would you like to see him, or should I tell the War Machine to deal with him?”
“Send him up. I want to hear his story.” Not like Tony had anything better to do anyway.
━━━━‎⎊━━━━
The shaking man was deposited on his knees in front of the emotionless king. That’s what Tony realized he was. A king with his cowering subject awaiting judgement in front of him.
“Please sir,” he sobbed, “I only did it for my son.”
Tony laughed. Children. That was always their excuse. “What’s your name?”
“Joseph, Joseph Rogers, sir.”
“Tell me, what’d you take for your… son.”
“Just a packet of rush. I needed money, to buy my son a birthday gift,” the man said, his voice gradually raising in volume, “but I swear on my boy’s life, I had no idea the coke was yours! I thought it was a small time dealer’s, please sir, you have to believe me!”
Tony sat back down in his chair and undid the top button of his suit jacket. “Take him to my mansion and lock him up. Make sure he doesn’t see the light of day until he can find a way to pay me back. And get me the son too.” Maybe he’d order in some pizza when he went home. Yeah, pizza sounded good. Even a merciless king needed to eat.
━━━━‎⍟━━━━
It was Steve’s 30th birthday, and so far, not off to a great start. He’d been looking forward to seeing his dad soon, but it turned out that he was late- by 4 hours. Steve would’ve been worried, but this was a common experience. His deadbeat drunk of a dad was probably getting wasted at some random bar in New York- as per usual.
As Steve was about to settle on the couch to channel surf with his beer and pizza in hand, he heard a rapid knocking at the door. It was probably Mrs. Carter downstairs asking him to stop being so loud. The crazy woman hated even the slightest sound that he made.
He yanked the door open and was surprised to see a bunch of men in black suits and sunglasses standing around. The one in front looked down at the gun tucked into his waistband warning him to comply. They looked like mobsters.
“Sir, we need you to come with us.” What had his dad gotten him into now?
━━━━‎⎊━━━━
Tony ate his pizza into his mouth in a robotic way. Lift, put in mouth, chew. He couldn’t taste any of the flavors in his mouth. It was all bland in his mouth; like eating water. Eating wasn’t even the same anymore- he needed help.
His phone rang, and he knew that Rhodey had done what he had told him to. “You got the boy?”
“Man, sir. He’s somewhere around his late thirties.”
“Still living with his dad?” Tony wanted to get a feel for what this guy was like.
“Yeah. Dad’s an alcoholic- looks like he was there to take care of him.” Fathers. Nothing good ever came out of them.
“Hmm. A stealing alcoholic. What does the son look like?” Hopefully the son was a better person.
“Someone who’s trying to do his best in a bad situation.” Tony flash backed to his own childhood. It was a struggle shaking the past off of himself.
“I’ll see that for myself. How far are you?”
“15 minutes out.”
“Hurry. I want to see whether this son is worth all the trouble.”
━━━━‎⎊━━━━
He didn’t look like much, just your stereotypical blonde, tall, and muscular guy. “You know why you’re here?”
A guy who looked down with a set jaw and back up with contempt in his eyes. “What’d my dad do this time?” Not contempt for him, but his father.
“He stole something from me. But let’s talk about you. What’s your name?”
“Steve.” As if an afterthought, he added, “Rogers.”
“Well, Steve, I’m willing to let your father go. He’s an old man, and I don’t think he’d last long here.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Rogers started to get up.
“But.” Steve sat back down. “In exchange for his freedom, I’ll need your service.”
After a couple seconds of deliberation, he replied, “Fine. Just… let him go. What do you need?”
“One of my dealers got himself arrested.” Tony had that idiot shot by one of his men in the LAPD. “I need a replacement. You following?”
“Yes sir.” 
“So we have a deal?” They both rose and met hands like equals.
“It seems that we do.” And just like that, the smallest bit of color seeped back into Tony’s life.
━━━━‎⎊━━━━
next >>   
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ill-skillsgard · 6 years ago
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Sweet Demons, Part 1 - Zeitgeist/Axel Cluney
Title: Sweet Demons Description: It's the weekend of Friday the Thirteenth, the biggest motorcycle rally and festival in the Western Hemisphere but nothing is more enticingly chaotic to her than the mysterious new member of the famous Motor City Sweet Demons. Warning: 18+ Mentions of drugs/alcohol/violence, eventual smut/various kinks
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
"Angel? You don't mind hanging all of this up in the backyard would ya, sweetheart?"
Dad carried a big basket full of freshly washed towels and bedding. With a fake sour look I took the basket from his grip and sighed, "Well, I suppose if you're having me here for the Summer I might as well make myself useful, huh?"
"I've got to run out to grab provisions."
"That wouldn't happen to include a trip to the liquor store would it?" I asked him, faking innocence this time.
Dad tried to avoid my stare as he shoved his wallet, cigarettes and lighter into the inner pockets of his leather vest. "Remind me again how old you are?"
"Old enough to drink, old man," I leaned over and gave him a small peck on his stubbly cheek while giggling. "I'll take a bottle of red wine. Any kind will do. Oh! And some gin. And if you're going to the grocery store would you mind picking me up some ginger ale and lemonade?"
"Damn kid, can't you just drink beer like the rest of us simple folk?"
"Simple folk? Dad... These are your people."
"Ah, quiet you. Will you write me down a list?"
"I can text you just as easily."
"I hate my piece of shit phone. Just write it down or you'll get what I remember and the way my mind is going-"
"Yeah, yeah, okay. Give me a second."
I jotted down a list of items on the back of a liquor store receipt and handed it to my father, He jokingly snatched it from my hand and read it incredulously. After a wink and a promise to be back in an hour, I watched him make his way out of the house and down the driveway to his truck. I took notice of his worsening limp. It filled me with curious remorse to see him struggle to hoist himself up into his ridiculously over-sized truck like my lengthy absence had somehow made it worse since my visits had been infrequent over the years.
The distant drone of motorcycles soon drowned out my thoughts and I huffed, snatching the basket of laundry to go outside into the backyard clothesline. The July sun was ablaze and the sound of people hooting and hollering over blaring radio rock music sounded from all directions. Everyone was in their backyards barbecuing and drinking, enjoying the perfect weather.  Not only that, but leagues and leagues of motorcycles were already starting to make their way into town for Friday the Thirteenth- a tradition in my town that had been going on for longer than I had existed.
Every year and sometimes twice a year for the die-hards, hoards of bikers came to our little beach town in gathering to celebrate Friday the Thirteenth. It was a legendary motorcycle rally that drew hundreds of thousands of people into town. Given that the population hovered over six thousand, it tended to get crowded and downright overwhelming. Every single year since before I was born, thousands of bikes would come chugging into town from every direction to line the streets with metal. Biker gangs, clubs, racers, leisure riders, and tourists flocked into the streets, cutting off most of the normally lazy town's circulation for one day.
Friday the Thirteenth meant so much in my town that they had even attempted a world record but had failed due to a technicality. Each year it got bigger and bigger, and growing up among the bi-annual chaos had been equal parts amazing and terrifying. It helped shape me and exposed me to things that no young child shoulder ever bear witness to.
Besides the streets I played in being flanked by rows upon rows of motorcycles, there were hoards of bikers and the clashing of egos that usually came with being around a bunch of scary guys who may or may not have been in and out of jail cells. When I was young, I found it all very scary but as I grew up with it I also grew accustomed to the company of the less-than-civil. After all, my father owned a bike shop and had been fixing, building, buying and selling motorcycles his entire life. The smell of oil alone was something that could give me nightmares.
As I got older, there were a couple of years when Friday the Thirteenth was the most exciting time of my life. It was better than Christmas to me because I got to hang around people who had travelled the world and had unbelievable stories to tell. People came and went from my house regularly because of my father being so well-known in the community and as he would like to believe, all across North America. His bike shop was a haven for cyclists and served as the clubhouse every year when his old bike gang came into town.
His old gang was called the Motor City Sweet Demons because of the co-founder, Frank Sweet. He had passed away before I was born but I heard many stories about him from Dad. Frank Sweet and my father had grown up best friends and started working on dirt bikes together as young boys. Their bond and mutual interest solidified a pact that they would open their own shop and ride motorcycles until death. Unfortunately, an accident had claimed Frank Sweet's life, but the gang continued on and my father became the President for decades.
Once his health began to rapidly decline, he retired from the gang and called in Frank Sweet's son Max to take over the role of President. That gang had spent many nights under our roof and became somewhat of an extended family to me; A family that returned a couple times a year to drink excessive amounts of alcohol and smoke too many cigarettes while revving their engines loudly through the nights.
The older I got, the more I hated the tradition, and the more I wanted to escape my hometown. I began to hate bikers and the sound of motorcycles annoyed the hell out of me. It was no help when my dad tried to rope me in as an apprentice, claiming I was his only heir to his legacy. Respectfully enough, I declined the offer. He knew that bikes weren't my thing and, although deeply disappointed that I didn't share his affinity for bikes, he was also strangely understanding. He never over-pressured me to become anything besides what I wanted to be and for that, I was thankful.
I managed to get away for a few years on the premise of going to school. It was the only option I had after high school to make it so I never had to spend another shitty Friday in November or a freezing Thirteenth of February in my town ever again. Yet there I was, in my dad's backyard, hanging up clothes on the day before my first Friday the Thirteenth in almost four years. I had finished school and was forced to move again. Because of the squeezed job market, I couldn't find employment and certainly could not afford my own apartment with how much student debt I had accrued so I was left with no convenient choice but to move back in with my dad until I found another way out again.
The four years that had passed was enough for me to evolve from an apathetic teenager to a somewhat less apathetic adult with a taste for drinking and a love of partying. My dad didn't know that I had spent a giant portion of my time in school going to raging parties all the time and had procured a partiality to spending my nights wasted, dancing and fucking. The idea of a Friday the Thirteenth celebration actually sounded rather inviting now that I was of age to be taken seriously among the likes of the Sweet Demons and countless other famous bike gangs from across the country. 
I preemptively decided that I was going to have a really good time and woke up the morning of Friday the Thirteenth by the sounds of bikes ripping by my old man's house at nine in the morning with a smile on my face. 
I showered and put on a pair of black jeans that I had cut off at the knee and a black tank top before bouncing down the stairs to get the day started right. The kitchen fridge was just as stocked with beer as it had been the night before. Without a second thought, I opened one with a satisfying tssst and started drinking it before my dad found me because I knew he would have something to say about the fact that my first meal of the day had come out of a brown bottle.  
After I chugged it down, I brought the bottle to the garage where all of the empty ones were stored but found that somebody was already there and it wasn't my dad. It was Braun.
"What the fuck? Braun? What are you doing here?" I asked, shocked to see my old high school friend hard at work on a bike's skeleton that only had the front wheel on it.
"Oh... Hi Angel. I'm just working on my bike before the show today."
"Your bike?" I asked, incredulous and still taken aback that he was in my dad's garage.
"Y-yeah. I, uh, yeah. I kind of work for your dad now."
"He's my apprentice," my dad's gruff voice sounded from behind me.
I turned around, forgetting about the empty beer bottle I had clutched in my hand. His eyes automatically landed on it and he shook his head. "Little early to be catchin' a buzz, isn't it, Angel?"
"Can you guys stop fucking calling me Angel. You know I hate that shit."
"Well," Dad said, eyeing the bottle in my hand once more with only a tinge of disdain but mostly amusement. "She certainly don't act like it, does she?"
"So you finally found somebody worthy enough to work in the garage, huh?" I asked.
"Ah, he's as good as any apprentice. Aren't you, Braun?"
"I'd like to think so," Braun said quietly in that nervous way that reminded me instantly of how he was in my high school memories of him.
Not much had changed for Braun except for now he had the permanently stained hands of a mechanic, a nose that had been broken one too many times and had grown nearly another foot. He was easily six foot three and just as gawky as I remembered him. Braun stood out in my mind forever because I had famously rejected his prom proposal and he made a huge crying scene over it, earning him a very unflattering nickname for a guy that was just starting to experience full-throttle puberty. I toyed with the idea of reminding him that a couple of months proceeding our senior prom, kids all over school called him Sniffles.
Recalling that memory made my mouth twist as I tried to contain a giggle. Both of them looked at me until I shook my head, remembering that I had gone into the garage to dispose of the empty beer bottle but instead got caught red-handed.
"The Sweets will be here any minute so open that garage door and move that piece outta here, Braun. We'll need all the room we can get on the driveway and in here."
"Don't the bikes usually fit on the driveway?" I recalled inquisitively.
"Not since there have been new members."
"Oh, shit... Max recruited?"
"I don't know," Dad waved his hand dismissively. "The kid does whatever he wants. Any fuckin' kid with a bike and an attitude can join the Sweets now. When I was President, you had to be one of the meanest, baddest motherfuckers around to even ride with us. Max has gone all soft over the years. Lettin' girls into the gang and bragging about how he's all open-minded."
"Max let a girl in the club? Now that's awesome." I smiled and it was apparently infectious because Braun smiled too.
"He's a good kid but, shit, is that club miles and miles away from what Frank and I started."
"Welcome to the twenty-first century, Pops! Did you know they let women vote now?" I chimed, shoving the empty bottle into a box with several other musty bottles.
The real party didn't start until the Sweet Demons rolled up onto our normally quiet suburban street and started filing into the long driveway that led up to the open garage door. It was a noisy parade of shiny black bikes, blaring engines, glinting helmets, demonic face masks, aviator sunglasses and matching leather vests; assaulting to the senses and perhaps a bit frightening for anyone new to how we celebrated Friday the Thirteenth. I stood at the top of the driveway beside my dad as they all pulled in, Max first and the rest of them following behind like they had rehearsed it all before. My dad had been right, there were at least five more bikes than I remembered, bikes that I didn't recognize with unfamiliar people riding them.
Once Max rolled up on his 1985 Virago 1000, he killed the engine and the rest of the gang did the same one after the other, all lining up to park their bikes side by side on the cement. He pulled off his helmet and set it on the seat of his bike, yanked a glove off one hand and approached my father with it stretched out. Even though dad had just been ragging on him, he greeted Max with a hearty slap on the back that was returned just as enthusiastically if not more so.
"Fuck, be careful, kid, I'm frail these days," Dad said.
Max was a dashing young guy with a pretty face and just about everything about him reminded me of a Disney Prince from his blue eyes to his blond hair. If it hadn't been for his black leather vest with the word "President" embroidered in white and his gold tooth, he could have easily passed for a model.
Behind him, I recognized Jimmy and Bradley Fox, two brothers that had known me since I was born. Being away for over four years had aged them all from what was in my memory. Jimmy had much more gray hair and Bradley had become softer in the belly and had permanent crow's feet that branched out towards the old English-style tattoos on his face. When I was twelve, I had had a crush on Bradley Fox, a man twenty years older than me all because we knew him around town as Foxy Bradley or just Fox. He was known for being a lady killer but when I saw him then, it looked like he had been killing cases of beer, pizzas and cartons of Paul Malls.
Nevertheless, I greeted them with nothing but kindness. I was all swept up in the pleasantries of seeing people that had been a part of my life not all that long ago that I didn't notice somebody unfamiliar coming up the driveway. It must have been one of their recruits because I had never seen him before and he looked to be only slightly older than me.
He wore the most obnoxiously green boots as if the scattered tattoos on his arms weren't enough to draw attention. He had this way of sauntering that was noticeable mainly due to his height but also because his fashion choices were totally questionable. When I noticed the mesh tank top underneath his leather jacket I rose my eyebrow in his direction. He didn't quite notice me for a moment as he was taking in the scenery of the garage but when he did, fuck did our eyes ever meet.
His brown hair was all wind-swept backward, and he looked like he hadn't shaved in a week but the sharpness of his cheekbones drew my attention anyway. I started taking in the little details about him like the tattoo on his neck that said eat shit and die. 
Oh damn, I thought, we have a bad boy in our presence.
I could just tell from the first thirty seconds of him being around me that he was full of destruction and I couldn't look away. He was an accident waiting to happen and the adrenaline rush I got just from locking stares with him was enough to assure that. His eyes scanned me from head to toe and back up again like lasers and once we looked too long we both pretended like we didn't really see each other in the first place.
"So Max... Are you going to introduce us to your newcomers?" I asked, only giving a slight indication that I wanted to know more about the tower of a guy with the green boots and mystical eyes.
"Yeah, of course. Guys... This is Al and Angel. You all know about Al and this is his daughter."
"I was head of your club when you were still shitting your pants," Dad said loudly enough for everyone to hear and laugh too.
Out of the group, the woman was the first to approach us and offer her hand to shake. She was tall in her heavy leather riding boots and had a long shiny, tightly wound black braid that came down from the base of her skull and laid over one shoulder like a thick tail. She must have been in her thirties and looked just as forbidding as any biker I had ever met. She was friendly though and introduced herself as Janet Adams.
Then it was bad boy's turn to introduce himself. He gripped my dad's hand tightly and shook it with a nod. "Name's Axel. Nice to meet you and your daughter, sir."
"What, do you have to be over six feet to join the Demons now? I feel like I'm talking to a bunch of circus freaks!"
Axel laughed with my dad and they both expressed how great it was to meet. As much as Dad liked to give people the shit, he was one of the most welcoming people in the world. Despite his outlaw background, most anybody willing to share a beer and a conversation could do so pleasantly enough with him if they could take a roasting here and there. 
Axel then turned to me as more conversations took over in the garage. He nodded his head curtly but didn't offer his hand. Instead, he hooked his thumbs on his hips and stared at me as though he expected me to do something about it. I noticed the word "Zeitgeist" was embroidered on his jacket. I knew that meant something. Nobody in the Sweet Demons was allowed to have patches that weren't approved let alone having something embroidered into the coveted material that was the vest. I immediately wanted to know what it meant but before I could open my mouth, I decided to withhold all questioning.
"Uh, hi," I said as I cocked my head in his direction after noticing his eyes lingering with questions.
"Angel?" he verified.
"Yes?"
He simpered at me and dropped one square hip with attitude, "I guess we'll see about that."
The angles of his face shifted with his smile as mine must have in my surprised reaction.
"Alright, alright!" Dad piped up over the low crawl of the dozen people that had piled into the garage. "Between here and the clubhouse, you're all welcome to stay, come and go as you please but with respect. If I catch anyone touching my bikes, I'll break your fingers. Same goes for the daughter!"
They all hooted, clapped and cheered and just as quick as they came, they made short work of taking over the place. It was easy to get lost in the chaos and with more bikes pouring into town by the minute the more distractions there were. 
Down by the beach all manner of people were clogging up the streets, overfilling the storefronts and restaurants and spilling out over the sand and the pier. Street vendors had already erected their tents and the town was in full swing by noon. Friday the Thirteenth mode was activated. It was the only time of the year when anybody could walk down the street in front of a cop with a beer in hand so people liked to take full advantage of it. 
I was no stranger to the hurricane of noise and the sweltering heat created by hundreds of engines growling in the summer air. It was such a hot day that even the beach was no refuge from it. The arcing bar of sand was so jam-packed with towels that it looked like a bustling mosaic from the pier.
I didn't spend much time outside, merely walked the main strip of the town where the majority of the attractions were set up. Once I had had enough of it I went back to the house and found it empty of people. I grabbed my bottle of wine and made my way to the clubhouse, which was really just a space above the garage that my dad had turned I to the ultimate hang out spot.
The clubhouse was a highly stylized, dimly lit cave with three small rooms and a row of couches for lounging and crashing on. Dad had put a pool table and a bar inside it too, of course. No biker clubhouse would be complete without the key attraction of billiards and alcohol consumption. The decor was exactly what you would expect to see in a biker flophouse; vintage road signs, Harley Davidson memorabilia and a couple nudie posters from the eighties. I used to never be allowed in the clubhouse but since I was an adult now, I walked through it proudly, like I owned it. 
The later it got the more people came up to experience the splendor that was the original Motor City Sweet Demon meet spot. All the Sweet Demons were perched at the bar and acted as a leather-clad human barrier between other visitors and the alcohol stores. Most people brought their own alcohol and weed anyway. It was all people that knew my dad and the drunker I got the more I realized that I hardly knew a soul besides the guys who had been coming around for decades.
Braun came up to me in the clubhouse and flashed a meek smile before approaching. I had been sitting at one of the tall bar tables next to a couple playing pool. He shoved his hands into his pockets in that nervous way that made me think about school and how long it had been since I had been home. 
"Hey, Ange-... I mean-"
"It's fine. I don't really care. I know it's out of habit."
"Sorry. I know you probably hate it."
"Don't worry about it... Mister Sniffles," I tittered.
"Oh, come on! You can't bring that up."
"Sorry, I thought we were calling each other by nicknames that we had in high school."
"Fair enough," Braun took his hands out of his pockets and held them up in surrender.
He was skinny and his long, thin arms made it even worse. Braun had these monstrously large hands with fingers like an arachnid. The sad part about it was that he hadn't been too bad looking before he broke his nose. It never did heal right and I remember thinking how shitty it was to see him walking the halls at school and the streets with a busted, swollen, purple nose.
I knew that he still liked me by the way his eyes kept sinking down from my face to my chest and then, catching himself, would shoot back up to my face. I didn't want to draw attention to it either because I knew that it could have an effect on his work with my dad and that was something I couldn't throw a wrench into. Luckily, my attention was pulled away when I saw a pair of acid green boots clunking up the stairs of the clubhouse.
Axel had this pout that existed whenever he wasn't paying much attention and watching the way he smiled when he was greeted by friends made something inside of my stomach begin to stir. His smile was something else, his eyes, devastating. I could not look away from him. My gaze followed him as he passed, took notice of the bar and approached it with his arms stretched out to wrap around the shoulders of Max Sweet and Jimmy.
He was just as tall as Braun and even had a similar body structure except Axel had lean muscles, legs that walked with purpose and a face that was hard to forget. I watched him lean over the bar and before it became too obvious I forced myself to rip my eyes away, though the image of him in his mesh tank and green boots was burned into the back of my brain.
Braun quirked the corner of his mouth. "I can't believe Max let that guy join the Demons."
"What makes you say that?"
"I don't know, look at the way he dresses. It's just... Weird."
"Have you seen half the people in this town right now? He fits right in."
"Not really. He kind of sticks out like a sore thumb."
"And the rest of them don't? I think you're just jealous that you don't get to ride with a crew... Yet."
"Big Al says he'll put in a good word for me with Max."
I hopped off the tall bar stool I had been sitting on for long enough to lose feeling in my legs and before I exited my conversation with Braun I looked him up and down and said, "if you want to get in with the Sweets you might want to start taking fashion advice from Axel then. Or better yet... Bradley Fox. He can fix you up with some nice face tattoos!"
"Yeah, right," Braun chortled as I walked away from him.
There was an opening at the end of the bar that I claimed and once I poked my head over I caught my dad's attention. He and I hadn't really seen much of each other that day as he was busy hosting and being revered for his legendary status and I was milling around town drinking red wine from a plastic cup, getting drunk on my drink of choice while almost everybody else did the exact same thing. I had stopped to talk to some folks that I knew from down the street and bumped into more old high school friends but I didn't have much of a chance to talk to any of the guys from Dad's old club.
When Dad saw me he cut his conversation with Jimmy off and approached, joking about needing to see an ID card before he opened me a beer that I didn't ask for. When he slid it over the bar top I took it in my hand and acted confused.
"This isn't the Jager I ordered."
"Quiet you and drink your beer!" Dad admonished. "I can't believe I'm saying that to my own daughter."
"Yeah, Angel," said Bradley Fox. "Last time I saw you, you had to have been four feet tall."
"Where does all the fucking time go?" Jimmy added.
Although everyone was talking to me, I couldn't help but stare at the opposite end of the bar where Axel was chugging a beer down, his larynx bobbing in his long throat, lips pursed around the neck. His hair was slick from the grease of having a helmet on but he still looked good and when he slammed the empty beer bottle down on the bar he said, "I agree with Angel. I think it's time for a shot of Jager."
"Listen here, newcomer, I'll decide when it's Jager time," Dad said, looking down at his watch and then back up again. "It's time."
Six shot glasses were lined up and filled with the thick, dark liquid that had been the culprit, or at the very least the accomplice of many booze-fueled shenanigans caused in town by the Motor City Sweet Demons. When we all raised our shots, Axel and I looked at each other but instead of looking away, we kept our eyes locked, threw back our shots and then put the glasses back down on the bar top.
I wanted to talk to him but I didn't know how to get him alone. Axel seemed to have made close friends with the rest of the Demons and was often enthralled in conversation with somebody else. I tried not to pine too much over him but every once in a while I would catch him staring and it would make me smile, causing him to smirk. 
It wasn't until they started singing karaoke that he and I solidified something, an intention for later.
The first person to start singing was Bradley Fox and he chose a Guns 'N Roses classic as he usually did. It was only amusing to me because I had watched him perform the same song nearly every year and each time it for worse and worse as his crowd grew bigger and bigger.
My dad got up on the little makeshift stage and sang Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd. Mostly everybody joined in for the gang vocals, even me. 
The alcohol was really starting to get to me and I figured if I was going to get up on stage to blow everyone away I might have to chug a glass of water and have a cigarette to center myself. It wasn't that I was nervous, it was just that I wasn't sure if I could still pull off the song I wanted to do. I had an idea and popped up off my stoop to find Braun.
"Braun!" I exclaimed when I found him in line for the bathroom.
"Hey, Angel, what's up?"
"I wanted to ask you something... Do you remember back when Olivia Gardiner used to have karaoke parties?"
Braun laughed, "yeah, of course, I do."
"Remember the song we did together?"
"You mean the song we learned all the lyrics to and then you chickened out?"
"Yeah... Do you want to like... See if we can give it a go?"
Braun's sunken cheeks turned a little pink with the thought of going up on stage in front of all the guests and the members of the Sweet Demons but with a little more gentle begging I got him to agree to do the female part of the song What's Your Fantasy by Ludacris.
It was a long and fast rap that I requested especially because it was so overly sexual to the point of comedy and anyone willing to learn the words was obviously not fucking around. 
When it was our turn it took a bit of tugging to get Braun on stage with me but when the music started it was hard not to let loose and go for it. I saw my dad behind the bar with his thick arms crossed over his chest, shaking his head with a smirk. 
Some of the girls in the clubhouse started dancing to our song and when Axel emerged from the clusters of laughing people he had an undeniable smile on his face and that's when I zeroed in on and started singing the lyrics right at him, forgetting Braun behind me on stage and all of the other people surrounding us. Axel crossed his arms too and watched on as we performed our song to completion much to the joy of everybody in the clubhouse. 
His eyes were stuck on me like a beam as I got off the stage and treated myself to one more drink. I had a feeling that I wouldn't have to go looking for him and I was right. He came up from behind where I was sitting on the bar stool and blinked profusely in a cartoonishly disbelieving way.
"Did that really just happen? Did you just perform Ludacris' hit song from eighteen years ago front to back without even looking at the lyrics on the screen?"
I tried not to laugh with liquid in my mouth but it was hard not to, as my plan seemed to have worked perfectly and I had impressed him with one of my limited amount of party tricks. Luckily for me, that seemed to take me far enough as to really snatch his attention.
"Are you going to do a song?"
"Me?" He laughed. "Fuck no."
"Why not? Everyone else is doing it."
"I might throw up."
"Aw, stage fright?"
"Something like that." He said with a hint of unease.
"That's alright, we can just watch Fox do a dozen Aerosmith songs for the rest of the night. He's so good at them."
Axel shook his head as we both watched Bradley Fox do his second song of the night.
"The man can sing but fuck his dance moves are bad."
"Something tells me you're not much of a dancer either."
"What gave that away?" He asked with a laugh. "My pale snow-white skin?"
"I have never seen a white man over six feet tall that was able to dance well."
"Oh yeah? Well, guess what? You're absolutely fucking right. I dance like someone's uncle."
I laughed maybe a bit too hard at what he said but when I saw him pull a pack of cigarettes out I settled down, mentally berating myself for being too giggly.
"Care to join me?" Axel asked, offering his elbow for me to hook my arm through.
I felt my heart jump up and punch me in the throat but I quickly slunk off the stool to take him up on it.
I don't think anyone saw me leaving with Axel but I also wasn't paying much attention to anything but how tall he was and the novelty of linking arms with him was made even more amusing by the length of his limbs. He pulled me closer, encouraging me to keep up with his step as we made our way down the steps to the backyard.
"You know..  You can smoke in the clubhouse," I told him.
"It's fine. I like the fresh air."
I looked up at the darkened sky but the beauty of the starscape was lost by the sound of engines revving and rubber burning against the pavement in the distance.
"So you're the heir of the Motor City Bike Shop? You don't seem like much of a rider." He mused as he opened his pack of cigarettes to offer me one.
I scoffed at him as I plucked one out from the pack and stuck it between my lips. "That's because I'm not and I don't know who you've been talking to but I'm not inheriting shit."
"You don't want to own this?" He motioned toward the clubhouse and garage.
"I don't care that much about bikes."
"Yeah," Axel agreed as he lit his cigarette and then mine. "I can tell you're more of an artsy type, anyway."
"Oh, you have me pinned already, do you?" I blinked profusely.
"I saw some textbooks when I went poking around in your underwear drawer," he admitted, a dastardly smile on his face despite his joking tone.
"Those could be anyone's books."
"But they're yours."
"You're right."
"I know I'm right."
"What about you? How did you become a member of the Sweet Demons? Last time I checked it was a pretty exclusive club."
"I guess I just found myself in the right place at the right time."
"And that?" I pointed at the embroidered word on his vest. "What's that?"
"That's me."
"Zeitgeist?"
"It's just a nickname."
"It can't be just a nickname if it's on your jacket."
"You and Al have this weird thing about club rules, don't you?"
"I just want to know the meaning."
"Join the Demons then if you want to know so badly," he said with a wink. 
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wisebrokenwallflower · 5 years ago
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bangtan fic rec
I can be kind of particular when it comes to what I’ll read and I hold a special appreciation for well-written fics with good plot and dynamic characters. I’ve started to accumulate a fair number of fics in my bookmarks, so I think it’s time I start sharing some gems with whoever cares. I highly recommend all of these since I think they are all beautiful in their own unique ways, but I will list the ships. I know certain things can be triggering to some people, so please read the fic tags in case.
the italics are my thoughts, the normal text is the official summary, bolded fics are the ones that had significant impacts on me and or I feel discuss something really important
(this may or may not kind of be an open love letter to all the authors on here lol)
same damn hunger by marienadine [Yoonseok]
When it comes to fucking around with his best friend, Yoongi follows two rules:
1. They must be inebriated.
2. They must not kiss.
okay this fic is heartbreaking? it’s really smutty, but it’s also super poetic and angsty. it’s just really good, I’ve read it a ton of times : ))
Let’s Not Hurt Anymore by exfatamorgana [Namjin]
They don’t talk about it, and usually no one thinks to ask. But if you did, Namjoon and Seokjin would tell. They aren’t keeping secrets, and if you asked them, they’d answer. It just so happens that on a Sunday, not much different from any other Sunday, the other boys think to ask.
So how do two people who are always together end up… together?
two things: 1) this fic is part of a larger series, but I have not read the other parts 2) you do need an ao3 account to read this fic.
besides that, this fic is so beautiful and holds an extra special place in my heart. this fic isn’t really about Jin and Namjoon, it’s more about everything else surrounding their romantic relationship; their friendship, their internal struggles, the other impactful people in their lives. it’s about their personal journeys, but the fic is also a platform to discuss some really important issues in a very thoughtful way. I’m not sure how to explain it well, but even though this fic is really sad at times, the parts that made me cry were the hopeful ones, the parts that made me feel like everything was going to be okay.
I Don't Regret a Thing by  HeavenlyHell [Yoonseok]
Hoseok is a host working in a shadier part of town, living in a small apartment complex just away from the main and busy buzz of the big city. All he really was planning to do was get some gross food and continue his gross life, but he also manages to spot a very gross (and bloody, which is gross) body on the ground. Except, the body is alive, and upon closer inspection, isn't as gross as it seems.
this fic is actually kind of funny and cute. if you want something lighter (especially compared to the previous two) this is a good option. also I want Yoongi’s hair.
Creating a Home by CheekyBrunette [Namjin]
(I didn’t put an official summary for this one because it’s actually a series)
Foster Care AU- it’s literally the softest, cutest, sweetest thing you will ever read oh my god I love kid fics so much they’re so cute. this one actually deals with some heavy stuff since it’s the foster care system, and so there’s tough situations that put them in the system, but many of the kids also find new difficulties once they’re in the system. but seriously, nothing will make your heart suffer more than little kid bangtan. btw, Namjin are the parents. IT’S SO FLUFFY. like, even when Jin is losing his mind and it feels like shit is falling apart, it is immediately fluffy after.
On Patrol by  Ragi [Jikook/Yoonseok/Namjin]
Officer Jeon has his eyes on Mr. Adorable.
Officer Min has a strange neighbor he can't seem to keep out of his life.
Captain Kim finds comfort in his son's homeroom teacher.
Well, cops need some loving too, right?
that’s the summary for part 1, but it’s actually a two-part series. the summary makes it sound super fluffy, but there’s actually a fair amount of violence and angst. it’s all happy in the end though, don’t worry. (I basically only read fics with happy endings) also, kid Tae is so cuteee.
i've been drinking, i've been drinking by decompositionbooks [Jikook]
Jungkook tries to figure Jimin out with Yoongi's trademarked "What Your Drink Says About You" alcohol psychoanalysis.
All he knows is that Jimin likes fruity little drinks.
this one is really cute and a little sad. the best part of this fic for me was the fact that it really improved my knowledge of drinks lol
doubt thou the stars are fire by iwillalwaysbelieve [Jikook/Yoonseok]
Jeon Jeongguk's got a Reputation™. Park Jimin learns how to not give a shit about it. 
this one is really short but really cute : )
White Chalk by g_odalisque13 [Taegi]
Yoongi had been aware of the shadow for as long as he could remember.
Sometimes he went months without feeling like it was just a few steps behind him or waiting around the next corner. But no matter how long he was able to avoid it, it always came back. Always.
It's 1993, and Yoongi is a music major starting his sophomore year in college. A bunch of stupid dares from his friends aren't supposed to turn his world upside down. Then again, maybe it's not the dares. Maybe it's just Taehyung.
I don’t know how to effectively describe how much I love this fic, but I love this fic so damn much. it’s just so well written and funny and genuine and it’s really honest and nice and it makes me happy
tie the knot by jivenchys (bareJinerals) [Jikook]
Either stay married to an arrogantly conceited billionaire for one year and get a million dollars in return, or drown in his father’s debt with the risk of ending up on the streets. Signing the prenup suddenly seems harder than it looks.
mate let me tell you, this is the slowest fucking slowburn you will ever read in the history or slowburn. every other fic on this list is complete except for this one, but even though this one is still in progress, it’s so fucking good that it’s definitely worth the wait. I have not felt excitement equivalent to that when I saw that this fic was updated recently. even though it’s still in progress, this is one of my all time favorites
hey, you never walk alone by deuxoiseaux [Yoonseok]
"Are you stalking me, or something?" Hoseok demands, more than loud enough for his voice to carry to the roof of the two-story building overhead. "This is seriously the fourth time I've seen you today alone! What is your deal? Why are you always everywhere I go lately?"
The man in the red and blue suit peeks down at Hoseok from the rooftop ledge. "...I thought I was being stealthy," he answers, and Hoseok can hear the pout in his voice even with his face hidden behind that mask. It's kind of endearing, even if it's still annoying.
(or: the spiderman au nobody asked for but exists now, i guess)
this is so cute! it’s a really short fic, but I love the characterizations a lot : )
a sugar coated pill and a pick me up by whomstisthis [Namjin]
As Namjoon stood slightly removed from the scene, bemusedly watching the six-year-olds swarm around his cooler (which he had borrowed from his mom), he didn’t even notice that someone had sidled up next to him until he heard the tiny, but undoubtedly exasperated, huff.
He followed the sound, turning his head to the right. A guy was standing there, arms crossed, lips pursed. He let out another huff, louder this time, but only slightly.
Namjoon refused to acknowledge him. What the fuck was this guy’s deal? Was he really that bitter that his six-year-old just lost a soccer game for six-year-olds?
One more huff from the guy.
He was beginning to think this guy’s lips were just perpetually pursed and would simply never, ever unpurse themselves, when he, the guy, finally unpursed his lips to speak.
“I just think it’s pretty irresponsible to bring Gatorade to a soccer game for first graders,” he said, huffily, “No offense.”
(or: namjin are soccer dads who fall in luv)
kid!tae and kid!kook are friends and it’s really cute and also I love Jin and Joon’s banter. also, this is explicitly set in new york, which makes for an interesting cultural cross. (and completely unrelated, this fic taught me about Richard Siken, who is a heart wrenching poet)
Of Lace Panties and Accidental Magic by jonghyunslisterine [Jikook]
In which a meddlesome teenage witch makes a considerable mistake mixing her potions.
(Or; Jungkook can't lie, Jimin's not looking like himself, and everyone knows Jungkook's in love with Jimin - except Jimin.)
this one of the few cisgirl!bangtan fics that I like (even though Jimin’s not technically a girl). often the whole “bangtan as girls au” thing feels kind of forced, but here Jimin’s gender thing is actually constructive to the fic rather than distracting. it’s really cute and jikook are a whole mess but it’s fine
hounds of love by fitzgarbage [Namjin]
Seokjin hasn't been back in a long time.
it’s kind of melancholy but it’s really well written. the last tag is “some characters are sad”. yeah. a large part of this fic is about growth and self discovery and I think that’s really why I like it.
girls just want to have fun by fitzgarbage [Yoonseok/Vmin/Namjin/Jinkook]
“Namjoon told me you’d probably be haunting a corner. I didn’t know what he meant, but I think I get it now.” He’s breathing hard. “I knew you right away. You look really good, by the way.”
transgender, intersex, and nb characters. I have a lot of things to say about this fic but my brain isn’t really working right now so I may end up having to make a separate post. I just have a lot of things to say about this fic. there are some fics that aren’t just enjoyable to read, they’re also important to read. that’s this. fair warning, you’re going to want to wrap everyone in blankets and protect them from the world forever after you’re done reading this.
Internecine by jawsbar (GryfoTheGreat) [Yoonseok]
Everyone gets a soulmate. You don't get a choice in the matter. Fate decides who you love, whether you like it or not, and to her credit, she usually gets it right.
This time, Fate fucks up. Like, majorly.
(Or: Failed idol Jung Hoseok is bonded to the very person who destroyed his dream.)
HOLY SHIT. SO FUCKING GOOD. READ THIS. JUST DO IT. I DON’T CARE IF IT TAKES YOU A WEEK. JUST DO IT. there’s a lot of real issues within the industry that the author talks about and it’s things that you might already know about and things that you may not know about. it’s really informative and beautiful and amazing and just go read it. (also the author is a sweetheart, super nice person : ))
harvest moon, recall your youth by blackranger (robpatFF)[Taegi/Namseok/Jikookjin]
“How drunk was I?” Yoongi asks. “Did I seriously tell you my whole life story before we hooked up?”
“No,” Taehyung giggles. “Silly Min Yoongi. You told me your life story before we got married. Then we fucked. Like a honeymoon, you know?”
Or, Yoongi and Taehyung get drunk married in Las Vegas.
the taegi is really sweet and the namseok is nice too
the waiting game by bonnia [Jikook]
It’s a waiting game. Jimin knows that Jungkook doesn’t have to come back, but with every little touch, every time Jungkook does, and every time Jungkook lies down right next to him, pressed up close, torturously warm and smelling like cigarette smoke and cologne, Jimin can’t help but feel like he could — would — wait years just for Jungkook to come back to him again.
(Or: In which Jimin is a prostitute and Jungkook is his favourite customer.)
it’s really sad and then it’s really sweet. Kookie is a sweetheart and Jimin needs a hug
boy, you got my heartbeat runnin' away by 777335
Summer before his third year, Hoseok says he wants to move out of the dorms and Yoongi replies easily, “My lease is almost up, wanna get a place together?”
Hoseok can’t speak for a second, just wants.
“Seok?” Yoongi says, pushing his glasses up with the heel of his hand, tongue poking into his cheek nervously. “We don’t— we don’t have to, never mind.”
“No,” Hoseok says, taking the half step to their table, sliding Yoongi’s beer toward him, settling on his stool with his caipirinha. He chews on the straw. “No, no,” he can feel the smile breaking across his face, “that sounds great, that sounds really nice. Holy shit, yeah, let’s do it.”
“Yeah?” A shy smile touches the corners of Yoongi’s mouth. “Yeah? Okay. We could get a couch for Holly.”
//
or hoseok and yoongi meet on the internet, become friends, both end up in seoul, become better friends, move in together, and then eat some pancakes. oh, also they make out.
it’s really cute! they’re so sweet and they actually communicate and it’s nice and they kind of remind me of my relationship with someone very close to me ; )
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I have some more recs, but I wanted to post these so that this didn’t sit in my drafts forever lol. happy reading! dm me if you love any of these a lot and we can gush together : )))
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dammitadolfnomorecake · 6 years ago
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🏰⚔️👑🐲- DMODT 67? Was it? Update... I don't know. Trying to make Eren have the worst possible birthday ever. I probably won't keep the fight scene... but it does show he's not a happy camper
Leaving the dining room, Eren returned to Levi's chambers. Despite his low mood he'd been proud to show off his son, even if it was to a bunch of rich idiots. He was proud to say Viren was his, proud of Luca's good behaviour during dinner, and he was proud of Armin as he'd settled into greeting everyone without forgetting to send them into the dining room. What he wasn't proud of was his own actions. He'd been blindsided by Willy's arrival in Eldia, knowing immediately that Levi hadn't know anything. Neither had Hanji or Armin. The alpha's sudden arrival had set him on edge, his smile not reaching his eyes despite his charismatic ways. Then... then he'd lost it when Willy spoke of Zeke and that Zeke had wanted to ensure his safety... and how fond he'd been of both he and what he thought to be their child. Viren needed a nappy change, the mess he'd made was disgustingly impressive, as it caused Eren to gag. He didn't even know where to begin, the mess up his sons back and down his legs, while he knew he only had limited time before Levi would come barging in and demanding to know if he was alright. He really wasn't. Willy had thrown him off completely, but for Levi's sake he wouldn't cry. Not on the day that was supposed to be his birthday. It didn't even feel like his birthday... Levi hadn't said anything about it, not that his mood had been overly receptive towards conversation. A restless night, and mind full of worry had seen to that. "Eren, can I come in?" Mikasa... he'd expected Levi... "Yes!" Stepping into the bathroom, Mikasa wrinkled her nose up. Her eyes widening at the mess Viren had made "All that came from him?" "Yeah. Can you grab a towel and wet it down? I was just standing here trying to think how to start cleaning this up. Another set of hands is something I'm not going to say no to" "Levi..." "Levi sent you because he's probably giving Willy death glares?" "You were rather upset. I didn't hear your conversation, only that you looked upset" "I'm still legally a Prince. According to Willy, that is" Mikasa found up a towel, moving to the bath to wet it "I thought you were leaving that behind, now that Zeke has passed" Bringing the towel over, Mikasa started helping him get Viren clean "So did I. Then Willy shows up from nowhere and starts telling me Zeke made all these plans for my safety and for Viren's... I really don't want to talk about it. Not right now" "Eren, if you don't want to return to Marley, you don't have to. Willy's here. You can say no. You don't have to let alphas keep dictating your life for you" "Marley is in chaos. I've seen the border towns Mikasa... you've seen what it's like for omegas... and now... I want to talk to Levi before doing anything else. I need... to know what he thinks I should do. I'm sorry" "He is your mate, and Viren's father... but Eren..." "I won't shackle him to a life as a puppet prince again. I don't want that for him, or for Viren and Luca. I don't want to be the prince of Marley. I don't want to be in the manor without Zeke there... Please, Mikasa, stop asking" "I understand. I'm just worried about you" "I know you are" Having cleaned Viren up enough for a bath, Mikasa gathered up the dirty towel, cloth nappy, and christening dress to wash in the shower as Eren carried Viren over to the bath "So, what are we going to talk about? What did Levi give your for birthday" "Nothing" "What?!" Mikasa's angry cry upset Viren, setting him to a fresh set of tears "Sorry, Viren. Aunty Mikasa is sorry. Your dad is just..." "Mikasa, really. I tell you I don't want to talk about Zeke and Marley, so the first thing you do is ask why Levi hadn't gifted me anything for my birthday. If you haven't noticed, I'm not in the best head space. He was probably trying to respect my wishes, or knew tonight would be hard enough as it is. I don't want to fight. I really... can we talk about something else?" "Your son does some pretty..." "Nope. Not the mess either. Tell me about Armin's combat training?" Mikasa laughed to herself "Combat training... I have more to fear from a snail with a fork. It's not like we've never swung a training sword at each other, but the one time he actually managed to strike me, he dropped it and apologised" That was so very Armin "I can imagine" "I had thought you might be there..." He had no real excuse to offer at that. All he wanted to do was to sleep, and cuddle with his two sons... "... in any case, I expect you there the next time. Levi was intending on teaching you combat, wasn't he?" "He tried once before. Years ago now, when our relationship was new. You should remember, you tried to teach me how to ride a horse" "I'm surprised you remember that" "What's that supposed to mean?" It was hard not to be offended. He knew he was... "flaky", shaky even when it came to recalling some things, but not so far gone he couldn't recall the days since he'd spent on the castle grounds when everything was so much simpler "I mean, with everything that happened. I don't seem to be making you feel better" "It's not your job to, Mikasa" "I know, but as your sister, it hurts me to see you upset" "If you're that upset, where's my birthday present from you?" Forcing his tone lighter, Mikasa took the out "I actually have a present for you. I had wanted to present it to you earlier, but Armin told me I wasn't allowed to help you get ready" "You didn't need to buy me a present" Not when he hadn't bought anything for Mikasa, nor Armin for that matter... he'd given them small gifts he'd crafted, yet that didn't feel enough. Mikasa and Armin had both done so much for him, leaving him with a debt he could never hope to repay in entirety "Nonsense, besides, it's a practical gift" "I don't know if that makes me feel better or not. You can leave those cloths in there. I need some help here with Viren. Normally we bath him in the sink, so it's easier to handle everything. I can't hold Viren and reach the soap" "I can help bath him?" "Of course you can?... you're his Aunty... who else will take care of him and Luca when my next heat comes again?" "You... mean it?" Eren was confused as to why Mikasa acting so out of character. He couldn't keep both children in the room. It felt awkward enough to have sex with Luca in the room, even thought he'd been a lusty slut in the last weeks of his pregnancy. With Viren in their room.. thinking about it made him uncomfortable. All he wanted was to be a good mother, yet unless he took suppressants, his heat would come and force their time apart "You're my sister. Who else would I possibly trust my children to? I trust you and Levi trusts you. You're the best choice" "I feel like the only choice" "Right, because I couldn't leave my children with Armin. Can you imagine him trying to juggle both of them, as well as his duties as prince?" Mikasa snorted, before pulling a funny face at Viren who wasn't at all impressed over the bathtub compared to the sink where he could lay and relax in the warm water "I think he'd crown both of them as prince's the moment he could" "I don't want them raised that way... Mikasa, Levi and I want to leave here" He kept saying he didn't want to be a damn prince, why would he force that upon his sons? "What do you mean you want to leave? Leave and go where? Back to Draecia? Or back to wherever to went with him before? And for long?" "Mikasa, not like that. Levi and I are thinking of getting our place. Out of Mitras" "Eren, it's not safe. We're at war, and now Willy is here... You're safer staying here where we can keep an eye on you" Eren hissed, literally hissed like an alley cat thrown into a bathtub of water "Keep an eye on me?! Mikasa, we're still simply talking about it. I don't want them raised here, neither does Levi. Until this prince thing came up again, I was hoping we'd be able to leave sooner rather than later" "Just like that?" "Like what? You had to know it would be on the cards after everything Levi and I went through. It's not like we're going to disappear forever" "Until Erwin heard from you last year, that's exactly what we thought" "That was different" "How?" "Levi went insane from carrying a dragon around in his mind... He wasn't himself, and it wasn't safe for him to be here" "You could have come to us for help!" "How?! This is dragon magic! Even I was out of my league here, as was Historia and Freya. Erwin knew what was going on with Levi. He knew things weren't right, and he trusted me to make the call when the time came. They both did" "You..." "I left because it was for the best" "And when you came back you were... How do you know the same thing won't happen? That Obsydin won't cause Levi to go crazy again?" "I don't. But Obsydin helped me with Levi for as long as he could" "Then you should stay..." "I never said we were leaving right away. Armin still needs to adjust to being prince, and Levi still has plenty he needs to teach him... Do you remember what it was like living with mum and dad? Because I don't Mikasa. I want that though. Levi finding some small job with Isabel and Farlan, the boys having space to play without having to worry someone's going to come after him for his scales. A life where we don't have to fear people coming after us thinking we're princes or anything other than parents. I want it. I want to be normal Mikasa" "You can have a good life here" "I don't want to have a good life here! I'm sick of everyone knowing my life! I'm sick of random people turning up and fucking things up further! I didn't tell you so lecture me! Leave" Mikasa stared at him, a fierce look on her face "Leave! Get out!" "Eren" "No! It was my fault for thinking maybe I could talk to you about something! I don't want to be a prince. I don't even want to work in the royal court. I don't want to be responsible for Marley. I just want a small house for Levi, my sons, and myself!" "Eren..." "Go!" It wasn't the first time he'd been reduced to tears on his birthday. The whole day hadn't been great and now Mikasa probably hated him. No... she was stupidly nice to him. At the very least, she'd be hurt by his anger and by him pushing her away. All he wanted was a little happiness for himself. A safe place, and place with no more lies. Hadn't he mentioned it to Mikasa before? Or at least in front of her? His mind was so filled with thoughts of everything that it was all a blur. His tears didn't exactly help him arrange his thoughts, nor did his distressed state over fighting with Mikasa. There were just so many things going on. The royal advisors hadn't told them anything at all. They'd known. They'd known Willy was in the country, and kept their mouths closed over it all. Carrying Viren to his cot, he settled his son down to sleep until he woke for his next feed. Everything felt far too much effort. Especially when it came to his robes. Having struggled with the tie to his robes, he'd lost his temper with them. Throwing a tantrum that rivalled Viren's cries, Eren found himself on the floor, sobbing against the stone where he'd fallen. He was still laying there when Levi finally returned to their room. His alpha rushing to his side, to lift him off the cold stone floor and carry him over to their bed "Fucking Mikasa... I knew something was wrong when she came in, in a shit mood. And your robes... I'm not even going to ask. Let's get you out of them" Even if Eren wasn't able to do much, Levi made things better. His alpha continually pausing to make sure he was still managing to breathe, kissing his forehead from moment to moment as he carefully removed his white robes and boots. Despite the fact it must have been killing his knees, Levi stayed squatted in front of him until he finally nodded to his alpha that he could find his words again "Do you want to take a bath or a shower? Or do you just want to go to sleep?" The bathroom was a mess. He hadn't had the energy to finish washing the things in the shower. Frustrated by his tears, he shook his head "Bathroom's a mess..." "Ok. I'll deal with it. It's not the birthday I planned for you, sweet boy" Sniffling, Eren frowned at his mate. Now Levi wanted to say something? "You planned something?" "Of course I did. It's your 21st. Your first birthday as a mother. This dinner ruined most of my plans, but there's still time for me to give your gifts" "I... don't want gifts" "Too bad. I want to give them to you. I'd give you every star in the sky if I could" Levi was too nice to him. He didn't want to drag him back into the lies and politics that being prince invited "I can see you thinking again. How bad is the bathroom?" "Viren... pooped... a lot" "And the mess is in the shower?" "I'm sorry" "Eren, it's just a bit of mess. Why don't I run us a bath? I had Isabel go shopping for us" What? When? Had he left him? "You were sleeping so I sent a message through the guards. I had her pick up some herbal powders to add. I think she said sage, and lemongrass... I have no idea. I don't know herbs like you do. I had her pick up some other herbs for you. The old man that ran the apothecary remembers you, so he packed them" "You did that for me?" "I want to be a good alpha for you" "Levi, you're the only alpha for me" "Which means I can't rest. I'd hoped to take you stargazing, but given we have the kids to think of, I think a bath and cuddles would make you feel better" Eren hadn't even seen Luca come in. Craning his neck, to look past Levi, he found Luca happily sprawled out in front of the fire "He was well behaved. He didn't like it when you left, nor does he like Willy that much. Willy offered him food, only for him to turn his nose up at it" "That's not like him" "No. We were all surprised by it. Nicollo's having something special delivered too. There was cake, and we can't have cake without you. At least, I couldn't. I had him keep two slices aside for us" "Why?" Levi's knees cracked as he stood up, kissing Eren's forehead again "Because it's your birthday. Let me get these swords off. I feel as if I'm about to take your eye out with one of them" "Please don't..." "Don't take out your eyes? I never intended to. I'll be right back" Eren phased out while waiting. He didn't even realise he was sitting there completely naked as he waited. Being embarrassed was far too much effort, and Levi was taking too long. He didn't feel like being alone. Slipping off the bed, the omega padded softly over to the bathroom to find Levi wiping down the bathroom counter top while the bath filled. Viren had made such a mess, and so had he. As the feeling of guilt started to well in the bottom of his stomach, Eren fled to Levi, wrapping his arms around his smaller mate as he hid his face against Levi's neck "Let's run away" Placing his hands on Eren's, Levi turned to nuzzle into his cheek "Run away?" "From all of it. You, me and the boys... I'm done, Levi" "You know I'd never deny you anything, but I know you won't be happy if we do" "We could be happy. I don't need anything but you and our boys... I don't want to be a prince and Mikasa doesn't want me leaving the castle to be with you" "We're not leaving the castle right away. Is that what upset you?" "I made her mad. I make everyone mad. I'm tired of it, Levi" "I know you're tired. I was just about finished here" "I don't want to be a prince" "I know, and we'll find a way to get you out of this" "Can we run away?" "No. We can take a bath, then I'll give you your gifts. But you need to let me go first" "I don't want to" Turning completely in his hold Levi left the cleaning rag on the counter in order to wrapped his arms around him "Eren" "I don't want to. I don't want to let you go" "I can see that. How can I say no?" "Don't?" "I've been defeated. Though it does mean I'm getting into the bath dressed" Nuzzling into Levi's neck, Eren was sure if he let Levi go, the man would run. Why wouldn't he? He'd come back from dinner to find Eren on the floor still crying from his tantrum... "Don't leave..." "I'm not going to. Clothes off, and into the bath. That's all" "I don't want you to leave" "I'm not going anywhere. I promise you. I might punch Mikasa though. It's your fucking birthday. No one should be making you so anxious and upset" "You really won't leave?" "I won't. Look, here, put your hand on my hip, right here. You can hold me as I undress" Now he was being a pain. Levi being infuriatingly patient with him, as he stripped for him. Guiding him over to the bath, Levi tested the water before stepping in with him. Settling down in the sage smelling water, Eren curled into Levi. Levi was more than happy to let him, kissing his hair and nuzzling him softly. After his craptastic birthday, this was exactly what he needed. Without even realising, his breathing evened into gentle purrs "Feeling better?" "Mmm, much. I feel like a fuckhead for all my shit moods" "A "fuckhead". You're definitely a good fuck, and great at giving head, but not a "fuckhead"" "You're not funny" "I'm hilarious. Seriously though, I know you're going through a lot" "I couldn't get my robes off and had a tantrum" "I don't even know how you get them on. There's so many layers and ties and that ribbony thing. You looked gorgeous in them, so you know" "I think Viren got shit on them... Mikasa was helping me until we got into a fight" "You don't need to explain, if you're not ready to. None of us expected Willy to appear. Armin's going to have a few choice words with the advisors for hiding his presence" "No... I do want to let you in. Sometimes my head and my mouth don't line up. And I can't stop my thoughts" "That's because you think too much" "I miss my magic. I miss being able to do simple things with it. I feel weird not having it" "It hasn't come back?" "No. I probably would have set the table on fire if I'd had my magic" "It would have been better than the conversation at dinner" "When we sat down, I started thinking about my last birthday. You laid me out on the dining table, not letting me go to the party until we'd had sex" "I remember that..." "Armin was sitting in the space you were in. It was hard to pay attention to him" "I don't know if I like the thought of you thinking about Armin while remembering having sex with me" "Trust me, I don't want sex with anyone but you. I told Mikasa all I wanted was to be with you. About moving together and having a family home... now I feel like that's going to be just a dream. I don't want to drag you into this prince thing... I don't..." Levi kissed his hair, sliding further down in the tub as he moved to lift him be his hips so he sat on his mate's lap "You're thinking too much. If you want to run, we can run. I'll take you anywhere in the world you want to go. I don't want you to continue to suffer with all these lies... Even though I know you won't be happy if we run" Sighing deeply, Eren repositioned himself in Levi's lap. His alpha hadn't made a move, but his dick was poking rather insistently into Eren's hip. Given what he'd become, it was still strange to him that his mate could want him. He didn't know why, but a mind melting orgasm actually sounded better than anything else the world had offered him today. Other than his bath, and his alpha. They weren't supposed to have sex for a month after birth, or at least not until his magic returned, but now he was thinking of Levi's dick, his own was lengthening and hardening "Want to share what you're thinking about? Your scent's shifted..." "I was thinking about not thinking..." "Oh? That would be a first for you" Eren didn't know why it stung, but Levi's words did. His alpha hadn't even said anything wrong. Was he embarrassed for thinking about sex with Levi? They'd always been open in the bedroom. He loved riding his mate and watching him fall apart beneath him. Or stealing 5 minutes in a castle broom closet where they'd end up trapped for the next half hour. He'd never felt so... weird about sex. Even after the birth of the clutch... He hadn't been this nervous since taking his vows... Zeke wasn't included as their nights together were to cement their marriage in stone "Eren, talk to me. Your scent's changed again" "I-was-thinking-about-you-fucking-me-and-how-good-your-knot-would-feel" The words tumbled out his mouth in a rushed reply. Levi letting out a small "oh" before slipping his hand down to Eren's crotch "I didn't think you were ready for proper sex. You're still healing. And you've had such a long day" Eren saw red... his omega taking it as a personal insult and a chance to remind him he still had a belly instead of his toned chest that came from being part dragon "I know I have. I was there. I was thinking how I'm so fucking tired of thinking and it would be nice to just to not for even an hour. Your dick is poking me in the hip, and now I'm all horny and you don't want me. I knew my body was fucking disgusting!" Neither of them expected him to snap, well, to snap that hard. With a miserably whine, Eren detached himself "Eren. Hey, no. I wouldn't be hard if I didn't want you. I simply meant I don't want you to regret having sex with me. I don't want to hurt you. Of course I want to touch you. I would love nothing more to fuck you completely senseless, until your swollen with my seed and pup, but I don't want to hurt you. You're my mate, and my equal, though at this juncture I'm sure we both know you're far too good for the likes of me. I lost you once and I brought unbearable pain to you. I never want to lose your heart again" "You're such a fucking sap. No other alpha would ever talk to their omega like that" "Then no other alpha is worthy of having an omega" "You used to be an arse, but sweet in your own way. Now you shower me with praise and compliments. You call me "sweet boy", or "sweet omega". It... I don't want to be praised. I want to be with Levi who's kind of an arsehole around the edges, not the one who feels he has to keep proving himself to me. I'm not over you leaving me. I'm not over what happened in the time we were apart. I'm not over a lot of things that happened when you started getting violent, even though they weren't you fault. I'm not even sure why you're choosing me over your own happiness, not when it looks like I have no say in my own life, or that of the children's. At this stage, I'm about ready to fake my own death and run away, but I can't do that to Armin. So excuse me when I snap because it feels like you're telling me what you think I have to hear on repeat to be with you. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of getting upset over a simple fucking conversation. I'm sick of people not listening to me when I say I don't want my kids raised here. I'm... cranky" Running out of steam midrant, his waving hand splashed water over the side, Levi jerking back and smacking his head in the process. Upset enough with himself, Eren tried to climb up from his mate's lap, only Levi prevented his escape, his hand still dipped down between Eren's thighs almost teasing him "You're allowed to be cranky. I didn't realise I was treating you differently, again. I can't seem to stop my mouth. You mean the world to me, and I don't want to risk fucking everything up again" "No... I'm cranky. Let's just go to bed" Levi kissed his temple, gently rubbing at his inner thigh. Why hadn't they just gone to bed instead of devolving back into conversation "I thought you were horny" "I don't know what I am. I'm horny. I'm tired. I'm frustrated and cranky. God. Can we just go to bed? Or fuck, or something?" Laughing softy, his mate released his hold "Sex would probably hurt, you're not healed" "I don't care. I want to feel something other than whatever all of this is" "You want me to take you to bed?" "You're frustrating me. I said I wanted to and you told me I was broken" "Not broken. Healing" "Then just... I don't know" Levi left him waiting a few moments before patting his side to tell him it was time to get out "Bed. We're going to take things slowly, and if your scent changes or you seem pained, we stop. I was going to give you a birthday blow job, but I guess it's not a surprise anymore" Birthday blow job sounded excellent... and definitely something he could get behind... or in front of. Preferably in front of then wrecked from behind... "I'm sick of surprises, just take me to bed" * Levi wasn't sure about having sex with his beautiful mate. Most of the wounds had settled, no longer covered in deep scabbing, yet Eren wanted him. Enjoying teasing him with his mouth and fingers, Levi drank him dry as Eren came hard. The alpha had barely pulled off, before Eren was rolling over to present his drenched opening to him. His omega's fingers awkwardly sliding up between his legs to tease himself, despite Levi having already lavished attention on his opening. Smacking his fingers aside, Eren let out a whine "You've got no patience. Let me enjoy the sight of this perfect arse of yours" Levi didn't have much either. His dick was throbbing painfully, demanding he mount his mate immediately. His balls heavy, ready to flood Eren completely... and maybe even repeatedly, if that was what Eren wanted. He'd taken his fingers with minimal pain, but fingers were hardly the same as when he'd swell to twelve inches and pop a thick knot "Levi... please. I'm not going to break" "I already said I'm enjoying the view" "Stop enjoying the view... and mount me" "Your body is truly marvellous. I drank you dry, now you're leaking all over again, hungry for more" "It's because you played with me too much... makes me want more of you" Rubbing Eren's opening with the pad of his thumb, the ring of muscle was already loose to touch, his thumb sinking in with ease. He'd opened Eren, played with sweet spot until he'd begged to come, yet Levi still wanted to make sure he wouldn't cause his love pain "Stop fucking teasing me" "Where's the fun in that? I watched you give birth through this soft pink hole of yours, and now you're tight enough that my dick is going to make you cry. It blows my mind" "Levi, I swear... if you keep testing me, I will deny you sex for the rest of my life. No heats. No ruts. No pup's or clutches. I will leave you here alone" So much for an orgasm making Eren less cranky "Alright. I understand. Let me know if it hurts" "How am I supposed to let you know, if you won't hurry up?" Resisting the urge to spank his omega for his insolent attitude, Levi slowly sank into Eren's hot heat. Moaning his name the omega's hands clutched at the furs of their nest. Pushing back against him, Eren was apparently not in the mood to wait, starting to try and fuck himself on Levi's dick while the alpha tried not to come as he watched his dick sliding in and out his lover with ease. Watching Eren take his dick was hot as hell. He didn't want the sensations to end, not to soon. He needed to take a breath, and not embarrass himself. The wanton moans and the squelch of slick. It was like Eren didn't even need him there... caught up in watching, he frowned as his omega slowed, his hands going to Eren's hips, only for Eren to slap his right hand away before raising himself on his knees to pull himself off Levi completely. With shaky legs, Eren climbed off the bed, stumbling away from him with his hand on his mouth. His arousal still evident by his bowed erection, yet his scent has changed "Eren?" "Don't..." "What?" "Stop laughing at me!" "Wha... I'm not" "I throw myself at you, and you... don't really don't actually want to touch me do you?" He'd literally just been balls deep in his mate, after sucking him off... what was Eren getting so pissy about now? "I don't know what you mean" He'd thought Eren was tearing up, instead he balled his fists up, looking ready to punch him in the face "I mean, I had to throw myself at you, for you to want to take me to bed. I ask you touch me, but don't even fucking move. You watch me stupidly try to ride you, thinking maybe you wanted me to!" "I..." "You were enjoying the view! What the fuck does that even mean?! You can't fuck me facing me? You need to fuck me from behind and watch me like they did? Watch me make a fool of myself, simply for you enjoyment?! Like the whore I am?! That's it, isn't it? You're thinking of how Zeke mounted me, how he held my hips down and fucked me in front of everyone. He might have treated me like a whore at the time, but that's because to him I was. I thought you fucking loved me..."
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