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givemea-dam-break · 1 year ago

Note

okay so, consider this: jealous George

hasn't been done much, and jealousy is one of my favourite tropes. I'm thinking friends to lovers (obv) and you're free to make it as angsty as possible, as long as we get a happy ending :))) and you know what would probably hurt him most? When he's jealous of Lockwood bc he gets along so well with reader, maybe they just have a borderline-flirty dynamic (all platonic ofc) and George just has to watch and know he's never gonna be able to be like this (angst angst angst)

AND to make it MORE angsty maybe reader is really reserved around george but only bc she is so nervous (he doesn't know that ofc!!)

AND how about George confides in Lucy at some point that he thinks lockwood and reader might be into each other and she's like "uh yeah no, lockwood and I are dating"

Just throw in whatever cliché trope you can think of in there, i love them all

a/n: I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS IDEA OMFG YES THANK YOU!!!!!! jealousy is also one of my favourite tropes it’s great but i haven't actually written it all that much so i hope you enjoy! this isn't very angsty because i actually struggled with the plot for this, but hopefully you still like it lol

warnings: mild language words: 3.9K female reader taglist: @flashbackwhenyoumetme @irisesforyoureyes @aayeroace @waitingforthesunrise @ettadear @mirrorballdickinson @ella23116 (let me know if you want added to my taglist!)

Touch - George Karim

George had a habit of staying up late on nights where it was unnecessary.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t sleep, but rather the fact that he didn’t want to until he was sure that everything was all right. When the agents of Lockwood and Co. returned to 35 Portland Row, safe and – mostly – unharmed, he could relax.

Well, he frankly could care less what ego-fulfilling stories Lockwood had to tell upon his returns or the colourful and new swear words Lucy had learned from Skull. It was (name) he waited up for.

Out of the three of his friends, (name) was the one who understood him most. She never pushed for him to speak when he didn’t feel comfortable. She always listened to him ramble on, whether it be for a case or purely out of interest in something, with her full attention, letting him speak for as long as he wanted, smiling and nodding as he did so. He felt most like himself with her around.

So, there he sat in the living room, glancing between the book in his lap and the front door, waiting for the familiar rattle of the doorhandle. It was cast in shadow, with only a thin streak of light cutting across it from the flickering crystal skull lamp in the hallway. Lockwood really needed to swap out the bulb.

When the tell-tale jingle of keys and the quiet clatter of the handle sounded, he sat up slightly and watched as she crept in as silently as she could. That was another thing George liked and appreciated about (name) – the fact that she was considerate for the other people in the house late at night. After a case, Lockwood would come in noisily, shutting the door behind him a little too loudly, and Lucy would be stomping around on too-creaky floorboards in her clunky boots. But (name) was always quiet.

It felt like George’s heart skipped a beat when she flashed him one of her enchanting smiles, paired with a little wave. Although the smiles were always reserved, edging on shy and nothing more than a curve of the lips and a sparkle in her eyes, it made his insides feel all warm and fluttery. The sensation had been new to him in the beginning, those first few times she’d smiled at him after she had been hired, but now it was something he yearned for. His days didn’t feel complete without it.

He opened his mouth to speak, but footsteps shook the stairs and, all of a sudden, Lockwood was there, arm draped over (name)’s shoulders.

“How was the case?” he asked, grinning.

(name) leaned against him as she tugged off her ectoplasm-spotted boots. “Couldn’t even call it that. Mrs Tilden, as sweet as she is, forgets that she can’t actually hear ghosts, and that the neighbour’s cat yowls whenever it gets too cold. I would’ve been back sooner, but all the night cabs were taken, and I didn’t feel like riding back with Kipps and his lot.”

“Well, you’re here now. Fancy some tea? Boiled the kettle not long ago.”

“That’d be great,” she said. When her eyes, sparkling in the dim light, turned on George, he found himself stuck to the spot. “Do you want some, George? I got some of that tea you really like this morning.”

And, as much as George wanted to agree, he couldn’t help but look at Lockwood and the way he so easily stood with her, holding her close and grinning. It should be George there. It should be him she leaned on after a case, him that made her tea and asked her how it went.

No, no. His feelings didn’t entitle him to her or her time. Besides, she and Lockwood had been friends since childhood, separated for a few years for educational reasons, so it was a given that they’d be close. He just wished it didn’t make his throat ache every time he saw them like they were now, standing close and laughing. Something he so longed to do, but didn’t know if he could.

So, he simply said, “No, thanks, I’m about to head up to bed.”

She smiled at him once more, the shadow of a grin hiding in the corners, and nodded before following Lockwood down to the kitchen, joking about the infamous Cat of Mead Place. Her voice seemed to reverberate through the walls and into George’s very being as he stared down at the book in his lap, the page long since lost in his distraction.

Heaving a sigh, he gently closed it and set it upon the coffee table, then trudged up the stairs to his room.

“So, you think that our ghost is the killer? That’s interesting. From the description, I would’ve figured it’d be the victim. Makes sense, though.”

George nodded, trying not to focus on the soft scent of lavender and something flowery as (name) leaned closer to him, studying his notes and findings. He really hoped she couldn’t hear the furious pounding of his heart.

“Well, it was the murderer’s house,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose a little. “It’s very likely that, even if it’s the old remains of the victim, it’s the killer’s source. Remember that bit in Hackney? Old teeth in a jar, but it was the source for that murderer.”

(name) shivered. “Don’t remind me. Still have nightmares about that guy.” She shuffled her chair slightly closer, casting George a short glance, before pulling one of the newspaper copies over. “Natalie Greymouth tried and imprisoned for the murder of her six children, later to – Wait, six children? So, in between all these other murders she committed, she was also popping out babies and killing them?”

Huffing a laugh, George said, “Suppose the kids distracted people from the fact that she was a cold-blooded killer.”

At that, (name) snickered, and a spark travelled down George’s spine as he watched her. The way she grinned as she covered her mouth with the back of her hand, how her cheeks flushed for only a moment. It wasn’t until she turned her head to look at him, much closer than she had been before, that George felt stuck for breath.

Her smile slowly softened into something shyer, more private, as she became aware of the small space between them, but as quick as thought she turned away again, focusing back on the documents in front of them.

Hope had begun to form in that short moment, and it had tasted sweet, but it became bitter as Lockwood and Lucy burst through the kitchen door with bags of goods from Satchell’s. Lucy slid behind George’s seat, dumping an additional shopping bag filled with food on the kitchen counter.

“Hard at work I see,” Lockwood said with a grin. He leaned down over (name)’s shoulder, scanning the notes sprawled everywhere. “Makes no sense to me. I trust you guys have a lead on what we’re walking into later?”

George could feel his throat burn at the sight of them, but he swallowed the feeling down and looked away. “Yeah. We’ll give you the run down on the way.”

He tried his best not to look when Lockwood squeezed (name)’s arm. He tried even harder to ignore the grin she sent his way, so unlike anything she’d ever shown George, but it was impossible. It felt like trying to pretend that Skull wasn’t on the countertop making the most horrid faces ever. The action only ever drew his eye.

Her smile lit up any room she was in, and he hated that it wasn’t directed at him but instead Lockwood. Lockwood, who everyone attached themselves to – (name), Lucy, Flo Bones, the public. Everyone. Well, except for Quill Kipps and his Fittes lot, but George didn’t want them. He only wanted her.

“We’re splitting up.”

“Worst idea ever. I don’t like the look of this place.”

Lockwood snorted. “You never like the look of any of the places we’re hired out to.”

“Lie,” (name) said. She looked up at the towering house before them. “There was that one bit in Camden, remember? With the really nice, frosted glass windows in the door.”

“Before Lucy crashed into it and smashed the glass.”

Lucy went bright pink. “I don’t think that’s our focus for today.”

George watched as Lockwood nudged (name) with his elbow, eliciting a laugh from her, and tightly said, “Lucy’s right. We need to get this case over with. And pairs sound good – too much room to cover as one group. (name), I’ll go with you.”

For a moment, the rush of blood in his ears was all he could hear. What if she said no; that she wanted to pair up with Lockwood instead? George didn’t have anything against Lucy, but it got unnerving hearing her one-sided conversations with Skull. He was never sure if she was insulting him or the glowing ghost in the jar. And they’d probably end up bickering as they often did which wouldn’t help this case run smoothly at all.

But (name) nodded and offered him that delicate smile. “Sounds good. Think I’ve got some ideas of where we might find our source.”

“Care to share?” Lockwood asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“No.”

“I’m your boss. You’ve got to tell me.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Yes, you –“

“Let’s go,” George interrupted. His fingers were beginning to twitch. “Before it gets dark.”

And so, they did. While Lucy and Lockwood trudged inside and up the looming staircase in the centre of the house, George and (name) crept through the ground floor, taking temperatures and using their Talents. He did try, really he did, to not linger on thoughts of her and Lockwood, of their lingering laughs and smiles, but it became increasingly harder the quieter they stayed.

“So, what are your ideas for finding the source?” he asked, trying to break the silence that had grown between them.

Usually, George would’ve preferred the quiet, but this was choking. Every moment his mind strayed from the task at hand, it drifted over to the horrible ache in his chest and the twitching of his fingers caused by what could only be described as jealousy. Jealousy! God, even thinking it made him mad.

Why was he jealous? Because someone he had never explicitly admitted to liking was showing an interest in someone else? Because someone else would squeeze her arm or nudge her, when even tapping her shoulder to get her attention felt like it would make George implode?

(name)’s fingers brushed over an old vase, and she lifted it up, turning it in her hands. “Going to use my Touch on very specific things. This lady died, what, five years ago? And her nephew took this house, so he likely would’ve thrown out most, if not all, of the things belonging to her. So, we need to find the obscure things.”

“Like that restaurant with the porcelain egg cup as a source?”

“Exactly like that. The stuff no one would expect a ghost to connect to.” Her grin then was unlike the ones she shared with Lockwood, and though it was rather self-approving, George found himself drawn to it. It was something he experienced that Lockwood might not have. “Georgie, you’re going to find the strangest things in this room, and I’ll have a feel. This was one of our theories for the primary haunting, right?”

The words clogged in his throat. Georgie. It repeated over and over and over in his head as he swallowed the feelings that were building up. “Yeah.”

He glanced around the office they had ended up in and took the temperature, finding it as the lowest on the ground floor. It was a moderately sized room with a massive desk cutting through the centre with chairs either side. The desk itself was neatly organised with folders and pens all gathered in holders. An expensive-looking computer had gathered dust since the owner’s rushed departure a few days ago. Rather unassuming, on the whole, but that was exactly what she wanted.

“We’ve got an hour until sundown,” he said, peeking out of the large window. “I’ll watch your back.”

Together, they picked out a selection of seemingly strange things from around the office. An envelope rack; a rather rusty metal pen; a little glass horse ornament plucked from a display case, among many other things. But (name)’s hands lingered over a photo frame. It was a simple thing made from light-coloured wood, and the picture inside showed the owner of the house and his partner, so it was the last thing George would’ve suspected. This was what she was for, though, he remembered. Her gut instinct was much better than the rest of Lockwood and Co.’s.

“Be careful,” George murmured. “We don’t want another repeat of Lucy and Annabelle Ward.”

There was that delicate smile again, and his heart skipped a beat.

With a firm grip, (name) took the frame in her hands and shut her eyes. George could only watch in silence as she used her Talent, unused to having nothing to do in the meantime, and found himself staring. She was wearing the jumper Lockwood had gotten her for her birthday a few months ago, which had George chewing the inside of his cheek, but it was hardly his main focus. Not when the sunlight peeking through the curtains was highlighting her skin just so, emphasising little details he had only ever seen when they would research together, and he’d get distracted and stare. The implication of another smile in the corners of her lips, the curl of her lashes against slightly rosy cheeks.

After a few moments of frowning in such a way that left George with a smile tugging on his lips, her eyes fluttered open, and a proud grin split her mouth. George’s knees felt a little weak.

“Bingo. This used to have a photo of our ghost Natalie with her six kids before she killed them inside. Who’d have thought?”

It took George a minute to reply. His brain felt muddled, what with the brightness of her smile and the feeling in his chest. “I’ll go get the silver net. Our bags are still in the hall.”

“Lockwood will be well chuffed we found the source so quick.”

A moment of hesitation. One George hoped she hadn’t caught, but as he stepped towards the door, (name)’s smile melted into something more concerned.

“Are you all right?”

“Hmm? I’m fine.”

“George, what’s wrong? You were fine literally ten seconds ago and now you, well, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

George shook his head. “(name), honestly, I’m fine.”

“Did I say something? God, what have I said in the last, what, two minutes? Um…”

She muttered under her breath as she tried to think, and George really did try to push the burning feeling in his throat down. The embarrassment that, even though it was the two of them working down there on the case, she immediately thought of Lockwood. What more did he expect? He was nothing more than the second choice to most people – no, third. Fourth even. Hell, he was the last choice, and he should’ve realised that (name) would see him that way, too.

“It’s you and Lockwood,” he blurted.

And he regretted it immediately.

(name) looked over at him then, eyes slightly widened, and mouth parted. “What?”

He could only shrug as he looked away from her. “I just – I don’t know. Lockwood is the one everyone finds the most interesting, and I’d hoped that for once that someone might choose me.”

“You thought I would…”

She didn’t need to finish the sentence for him to know what she meant. George didn’t know how to explain the feeling that encompassed his very soul at that moment. It felt like drowning, in a way. Like these feelings he’d fought so hard to keep at bay were filling his lungs rapidly and stopping him from breathing. His head was submerged, and he couldn’t think clearly. He couldn’t do anything but feel these horrible emotions so acutely that it was painful.

“I’m sorry. I get that you and Lockwood are close. Well, you’re probably together and I’ve just never realised!”

He didn’t realise how much saying the words out loud could hurt. But he was right, wasn’t he? With all of their shared smiles and jokes and how they always stood close, there was no way they weren’t… a thing. George had just been too blind to see it.

“George.”

“Don’t. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“George! Shut. Up,” she hissed.

Words caught in his throat, shocked by the harsh tone and the expression on her face. Brows furrowed; eyes narrowed – she was angry at him!

“Look, I am sorry, but I don’t get why you’re mad at –“

She stormed over and slapped her hand over his mouth. The touch made him jump, and the close proximity of their faces had his treacherous heart pounding in his chest. Why? Why did it have to do that?

“Listen,” she whispered, and she gestured to the side with her head.

George slowly turned his gaze to the large table where he could now hear a faint click, click, click. When he looked, his heart lurched for a moment, and he saw one of the pens in the holder move slightly. The button at the end, the one that would bring the nib out, clicked open, then shut, then open. A few papers in one of the many folders fluttered despite the absence of a draft.

“Poltergeist,” he uttered beneath her hand. He tried not to focus on how soft it was, or how the soap she’d used smelled very different from the one Lockwood had bought for him.

She nodded soundlessly, and her hand lingered for a moment before moving back to her side. “Move quietly to the door.”

It was a good plan. If they moved silently and slowly, they’d be able to make it out to their kitbags and secure the source seeing as poltergeists were essentially blind. But George could feel its invisible presence hovering over them like a horribly cold and scratchy blanket, and the house was an old one. As soon as he took a step back, a floorboard creaked.

He and (name) froze and, for a minute nothing happened. Then the clicking stopped and the pen rattled in the holder. The temperature of the room felt like it had dropped five degrees within a mere second and, although George’s Listening was nowhere near the standard of Lucy’s, he swore he could hear a faint voice calling out some names.

Another step back, and the mistake was made. The door to the office slammed shut, rattling the bones of the house. Lockwood’s voice echoed from somewhere above, calling their names.

Shit.

He should’ve paid attention to the room growing colder or the sun setting outside instead of watching (name) when she’d used her Talent. Maybe then they wouldn’t be stuck in this position, facing off with a ghost that they couldn’t see nor could they harm without securing the source. And, well, they had no way of doing that now with their bags stashed outside.

(name) was the first to move. Light-footed on the floorboards, she tugged on the door handle, but it didn’t budge. George could feel her panic as strongly as he felt his own, and he realised with dread that they were only feeding into the ghost.

The clicking resumed, and (name) shuffled over to George again, hand on her rapier. It would prove useless in this situation.

“For your information,” she whispered. “Me and Lockwood aren’t a thing. He and Lucy are.”

George’s gaze snapped over to her, and she offered a soft albeit nervous smile. “I don’t think now is the time for that conversation.”

“Oh, come on, admit you’re relieved. Also, you didn’t happen to stash a silver net in your pocket did you?”

Yes, he was relieved. He didn’t think he’d ever been more relieved in his life than he was in that moment, knowing that she wasn’t with Lockwood. He was confused for a moment, wondering how he hadn’t ever seen the connection between Lockwood and Lucy, but it was overtaken by the sheer happiness that (name) wasn’t in a relationship with their best friend. And, no, he hadn’t thought to stuff a net in his pocket.

The jealousy that had reared its ugly head in his chest dissipated entirely when her hand slipped into his, warm in the horrid freezing temperature in the office.

“How are we getting out of here?”

George wasn’t sure. He wasn’t Lockwood. He didn’t come up with reckless plans that saved their lives while inadvertently endangering them at the same time. He didn’t destroy houses in the process.

Well…

“You any good at throwing chairs?”

Hours later, George was still shaking glass out of his hair over the kitchen bin at 35 Portland Row.

Lockwood was standing over the kettle as water boiled, waiting to make cups of tea for everyone as Lucy slapped a plaster on a cut on his forehead. Apparently, after hearing the office door slam, the two of them had rushed down the stairs, only for the carpet the ran down the centre of them – for whatever posh, middle-class Londoner reason – slipped out of place, presumably because of the Poltergeist, sending Lockwood toppling. He whacked his head off the corner of the wall, earning a pretty nasty cut and a possible concussion. Lucy had come off scott-free, but Skull’s silverglass jar had a dent in the top.

(name) and George on the other hand were covered in little shards of glass that nicked them every now and then after sending a chair through the office window and leaping out into the flower bushes right outside. Thank god they’d been on the first floor.

Ever since that moment in the office, that one where (name) had told him about Lockwood and Lucy, the one where she held his hand, it had become blatantly obvious how wrong George had been about everything. Even now, he could tell that the energy that she and Lockwood shared was nothing like the one Lockwood had with Lucy. How hadn’t he noticed sooner?

Frankly, he didn’t really care about that now. He was too caught up on the phantom touch of her hand in his and the smiles she kept sending his way.

She’d held his hand in the taxi on the way home, claiming it was just because the poltergeist had freaked her out, but he had a feeling that wasn’t the entire truth. (name) was one of the bravest people he had ever met, so a poltergeist wasn’t going to be the thing to shake her out of the norm. But George didn’t mind.

He hadn’t ever been big on being touched, disliking the way it made his skin feel, but he found himself staying close to her, aching to hold her hand again. And, judging from the twitch of her fingers, the way they inched closer to his when he sat next to her, he figured she felt much the same.

And, with a smile, he wrapped his hand around hers, enjoying the feeling of her skin against his.

#george karim x reader #lockwood and co x reader #lockwood and co fanfiction #lockwood and co #lockwood and co netflix #george karim fanfiction #george karim #anthony lockwood #lucy carlyle #x reader #fanfiction #givemea-dam-break

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maraschinomerry · 2 years ago

Text

You Are My Sunshine

Pairings: George Karim x gn!reader

Summary: sunshine x grumpy, based off this tiktok audio (the sunshine character needs comfort and surprises everyone when they go to the grump, who is equally surprised when they find themself hugging back)

Content: not-quite-enemies to friends, heavily implied previous non-con from another character and a non-graphic second attempt, emotional hurt/comfort

A/N: cheesiest title ever but the second I heard that tiktok audio I knew I wanted to write this for George, it reminded me so much of the way he seemed with Lucy until they bonded over pizza (but maybe a little played up to fully fit the grump persona)

Word count: 3.3k

Taglist: @neewtmas @marinalor (taglist is open if anyone wants to be added!)

George knew you were going to be infuriating from the moment you set foot on the doorstep of 35 Portland Row.

He opened the door after the shrill bell echoed down the hall, to be met by your beaming face. Had he not been taken aback by how cute you were, he'd have closed it straight away.

"Hello!" you greeted him cheerily. "I'm here about the job - I'm (name), what's your name?"

Good grief, you were lively. One of the only perks of agent work was that everyone else was as sharp-tongued and hardened as he was, yet here you were with all the enthusiasm and energy of a puppy in a park. Still, no point being rude until you'd proven how unprepared you were. Then he could be smug about it too. "George."

"Nice to meet you, George. May I come in?" You'd noted his surliness, but it didn't phase you. Having tried everywhere else, you really needed this interview to go well. Normally by now you'd be thoroughly fed up with the rejection, it was bad enough the first time but the fourth was just upsetting, but you forced yourself to remain positive for a good first impression.

George led you silently into a cosy living room, where a boy and girl were chatting away in hushed voices on one of the sofas.

"Another candidate," George muttered as he sank into an armchair and buried his head in a comic. The other boy rose from the sofa and offered his hand. You shook it gratefully. "Anthony Lockwood," he introduced himself before gesturing to the girl, who waved briefly. "Lucy Carlyle, and I hope George had the good sense to give you his name."

You nodded and introduced yourself in return. They seemed an odd bunch - younger than you'd expected, with no sign of adult supervision, and simultaneously welcoming and closed off. Especially George, who hadn't so much as looked at you since you'd entered the room.

"I'm afraid I don't have any references to show, I had to leave my previous agency rather quickly after an incident, but I have a CV and my grade certificates to look over if you'd like," you explained, holding out a plain white folder to Lockwood. He rifled through it, noting aloud that you'd just finished at Rotwell, and you could have sworn George rolled his eyes over the top of his comic.

Lockwood laid the folder on the table. "Interesting stuff, but if you don't mind I'd like to give you a couple of tests." Hold on. The advert didn't say anything about that. Lucy must have sensed your alarm and been through something similar, as she offered you a reassuring smile. You wondered how long she'd been with the agency, how recently she'd done these 'tests'.

The tests came in the form of objects, covered by tea towels and unveiled one by one with dramatic flair. You were particularly intrigued by a jar of swampy green liquid containing a skull. Excitement crept into your voice when you realised it was a ghost jar, something you'd longed to see for years with no success, but it abruptly jolted to shock when the skull developed an almost-face and shot you a chilling grin. You struggled to regain your composure. George had lowered his comic now, watching you disdainfully, so you relaxed out of spite and resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow in challenge. No, it wasn't necessary, you were in a good mood and being polite. You needed the job.

The rest of the tests were a breeze. The taller boy, Lockwood, certainly seemed pleased with your results. As he opened his mouth to congratulate you, however, George finally spoke.

"Lockwood. A word."

The rest of you looked at him, and he glowered back. Lucy stood, smiling at you again. "Why don't I take you through to the kitchen, (name), since George appears to have neglected to offer you any tea." You followed her out of the room, the atmosphere behind you souring by the second.

As soon as you were out of earshot, George rounded on his friend. "You're not seriously thinking of hiring them." It was a statement, not a question.

"Why not? They did well, don't you think?"

"Sure, but try and tell me you're not going to get sick to death of them spewing sunshine everywhere they go within the first two weeks." Lockwood chuckled, mentally filing 'spewing sunshine' away with 'braying gallery for bellends' on the list of his favourite George-isms. George misinterpreted the laughter as denial, and threw up his hands in defeat. "Fine, go ahead, but I'm calling it now. Two. Weeks."

—

You settled into Lockwood & Co. remarkably quickly, flying through the first two weeks. Lucy had bonded with you immediately, your cheerful demeanour bringing back her softer side, and even Lockwood found himself warming to you. The only person who steadfastly kept you at arms length was George. He was civil enough, having gradually come to terms with the fact that you were probably there to stay, but he never initiated conversations and ended the ones you started as soon as possible. Even in group moments round the dining table, he seemed immune where your presence began to make the others more animated. He had your back on cases as much as the other two, you couldn't deny that, but you were still wary around him. As the weeks went on and he was forced to acknowledge you more, he took to calling you 'sunshine' - never in a fun, playful way though, always "hold on, sunshine" when he was shooting down your optimism or "come on, sunshine" when you were forced to pair up and he automatically took the lead. If it had been anyone else calling you that it would have been sweet, but from him it left a bitter taste in your mouth.

—

"I think George hates me," you announced.

It was well over a month, nearly two in fact, into your employment, and you were sprawled on Lucy's floor as she lay above you on the bed painting her nails. She leaned over at your words, hair falling all around and casting a web of shadows across her face.

"What makes you say that?" she frowned.

"Oh, come off it, Luce, it's obvious. He still treats me like an interloper, barely registers my existence and when he does he never treats me like a real person, just calls me 'sunshine' like it's some horrible thing. If anything it's him that's the problem for being such a…" you trailed off as you struggled to think of the right analogy. "A storm cloud!"

Lucy giggled. "It's the hair, isn't it?" You laughed too, picturing his black curls as a dark cloud ready to burst.

The bedframe creaked as Lucy got up, moving to join you on the floor. Her nails, half finished, had been abandoned. "He doesn't hate you though, he's just not a people person at the best of times and I think he's got so used to being on the same page as me and Lockwood that not being able to figure you out has blown his little puzzle-loving mind. Not that that's any excuse."

You nodded. It made sense, but still didn't make you feel any better.

"Do you want me to talk to him?" she asked. You appreciated the offer, but it was better if you did it yourself. More mature, for one, and a chance to prove you weren't as one-dimensional as he must think.

—

As you expected, you found George in the library. He was curled up in his favourite armchair, one book open in his lap and another on the table beside him alongside a mug of tea. The gentle glow of the lamplight washed him in golden hues, emphasising his curls and the smattering of freckles across his cheeks. He glanced up behind his glasses at the creak of the door to see you lingering on the threshold, shifting uncomfortably. Although you were fully dressed, your anxious demeanour and lack of pretense made you seem more exposed than he'd seen you before.

"Mind if I join you?"

"Not exactly like I can stop you."

"Well no, but I still wanted to be decent and ask. I'm not a dick."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

You sighed. You couldn't resist having a jab at him, fed up with the way he'd been treating you, but getting him on the offensive wasn't particularly conducive to making him like you.

"It means you've been resentful or outright horrible to me since the second you set eyes on me and I don't understand what I could possibly have done to make you hate me so much."

George frowned, putting the book down and giving you his full attention for perhaps the first time ever. "I don't hate you." Lucy had said as much too, but that didn't mean you believed him. "And it's not anything you've done. I just…" His fingers played absent-mindedly with a small tear in the fabric of the armchair as he tried to find the words. You waited patiently. "I don't get how you can be in a job like this and still be so naive."

Something in you twitched, and you felt your blood start to boil. "I am not naive."

"Oh really?" His voice grew sharper. "So it's not naive to live a life in which any one of us could die or get permanently ghost-locked any given night, and still act like everything's rosy and we'll be saved through the power of friendship and happy thoughts? How can you think like that?"

"Because I have to!" The words exploded out of you, startling yourself almost as much as they did George, whose eyes widened as his mouth closed. You tried desperately to claw the words, the feelings, back in, but it was too late. Resigned, you sank into the other armchair, George's eyes on you the whole time.

"I've always been quite cheerful," you began, voice barely above a whisper like the outburst had drained all your energy. "When I was going through my training at Rotwell, it was my optimism that kept the rest of the team sane, because we all knew that if even I gave up then there was no hope for any of us. But my team leader, Miles, he thought I was naive too. Innocent. He… he took advantage." Your breath hitched, and you fought the urge to cry. Across from you, George unknowingly shifted forward in his chair, closing the gap between you a little. "After a while I could barely be in the same building as him without being afraid of what he was going to try. So I left. That's how I ended up here."

"I still don't understand, though," George said quietly. "How do you go through that and come out more upbeat than ever?"

You gave him a wobbly smile that didn't quite reach your eyes. "Because if I don't, that means he wins. And I refuse to let him take that away from me."

George was silent, but he nodded a little in understanding. Naivety he couldn't abide, doing it to be annoying was, well, annoying, but spiteful positivity he couldn't help but respect. Plus, it occurred to him that this was possibly the first time you'd opened up to anyone about your experience, to him of all people despite how he'd treated you. He watched you intently, grappling with the fact that you had suddenly become a much more complex person than he'd first believed.

You squirmed under George's intense gaze. It felt good to get that awful memory off your chest, but weird that of the whole agency it had been him you'd told first. He was utterly unreadable in that moment, face unexpectedly soft and yet with a hardness behind his eyes that you couldn't be sure wasn't still directed at you. You cleared your throat nervously, wiping a stray tear away with the side of your hand.

"Anyway, um, I should probably get to bed. Prepare for the case tomorrow. Good night, George." You got up hastily, moving to the door.

"Good night, sunshine." You froze. There was no malice in the word at all this time. When you turned in shock, you saw he had picked up his book again. It almost covered the lower half of his face, but just over the top of it you could see the corners of his lips turned up in a smile as he watched you leave.

—

The case was going well, you thought. It was an incredibly old house, all wood panelling and decorative columns, huge oil paintings and plush velvet upholstery. Lockwood and Lucy had ventured up the grand spiral staircase, leaving you alone downstairs with George, and after last night you felt a little more confident being around him, though he was still difficult to read at times.

"How about I head through to the kitchen and you handle the lounge?" he suggested. That was new; normally it would be an instruction with no room for input. You nodded, taking the door on your left.

The room was large but stuffy, a thick layer of dust coating what would once have been an opulent social area. Faded leaf print paper covered the top half of the walls, separated from the ornate oak panels below by a picture rail. At the far end of the room, the empty fireplace was surrounded by marble and a metal grate. The navy blue sofas were almost grey now, having not been covered to defend against the cruel onslaught of time, and likewise for the long oval coffee table in the centre. You scanned the room with your torch, looking for anything that could be a source. A rustle came from the hallway behind you; you were surprised George had finished so quickly.

"Fancy seeing you here, sweetheart."

The deep voice behind you sent a shiver down your spine. You turned on legs of jelly, one hand drifting to your rapier as you willed your expression to remain as neutral as possible.

"Miles. What are you doing here?"

The older boy stepped into the room with a lecherous grin. He looked exactly as he did two months ago. Just seeing him made your stomach turn. "My team is on a case up the road, and when I heard your little agency," he said the words with a sneer, "was in town, I felt it would be rude not to pay you a visit. You left me without saying goodbye, after all."

Everything you'd been through with him flashed across your mind, and you struggled to keep your voice from shaking. You glanced at where he blocked the doorway, your only exit. "You didn't deserve a goodbye," you said as confidently as you could.

"Oh come on now, baby, after everything I did for you?" He was moving closer, and you found yourself gripping your rapier tighter as you stumbled away.

"Don't come any closer, Miles, or I swear-"

He laughed, a wicked sound that rattled from his chest. He didn't stop moving. "Or what?" You felt the backs of your knees collide with the table, the impact buckling them and tipping you backwards until your shoulder blades collided painfully with the wood and a cloud of dust billowed around you. Still Miles advanced, pinning you down with a hand across your throat. You scrabbled feebly at his sides. He pressed down harder, spots dancing across your eyes as you gasped for air that wouldn't come. His other hand snaked down your body, unaffected by the way you clawed at it. "Look at you, silly little thing. You couldn't do anything then, what's going to stop me now?"

"I am," came a familiar voice from the doorway.

The hand left your throat and breath rushed back into your lungs. You sat up, coughing. As the room swam back into focus, you were met by George, backing Miles into the wall with his rapier brandished and a dark look on his face.

Despite being at the end of a very sharp blade, Miles still managed to look smug. "You their new boyfriend? Good luck with that."

"No," George almost snarled. "I'm their friend, which is far more than you can say. You're nothing more than a trespasser."

By this point Lockwood and Lucy had heard the kerfuffle and made their way downstairs, having located the source in record time; as soon as they saw George with his rapier drawn, they burst into the room with their own in hand. Wordlessly, Lucy positioned herself a little further back, her body between you and Miles, while Lockwood went shoulder to shoulder with George. A flash of recognition crossed his face (he did know the higher-ups from most agencies in the area, after all) and his jaw set.

"You need to leave," he stated dryly. "This isn't your case, and you aren't welcome here." While George was more than competent with a rapier, Lockwood's reputation preceded him, and his added confidence and unwavering blade made Miles gulp. He moved cautiously to the door, George on his heels to make sure he left. The older boy shot you one final glance, a vicious wink, before he disappeared. You collapsed against the table with relief.

Immediately, Lucy and Lockwood sheathed their rapiers. "Are you okay?" they asked in near unison. You weren't sure you could give an honest answer: blood was thundering in your ears, your lungs were still frantically trying to replace the air that had been pushed out, your knees and shoulders hurt and your neck was definitely going to bruise. Your vision began to blur with tears, but through them you registered the vibrant orange of George's outfit as he returned. The dam of emotions broke. You surged forward. Lucy opened her arms for a hug. Lockwood held out a hand for you to settle into his shoulder. George dropped his arms to his side in statuesque shock as you barrelled into him.

The others snapped their attention to George, and he blinked back in surprise. He glanced down to where your hair merged into his shirt, face buried in his chest as sobs wracked your body, arms wrapped around his waist under his open plaid shirt. He threw Lucy a panicked look - she was your best friend, shouldn't you have gone to her for comfort? Lucy simply nodded pointedly to you. Slowly, slowly, George brought his arms up and placed them delicately around your injured shoulders. The second you felt the contact, you melted further into him and he tightened the embrace. Lockwood and Lucy continued to stare, dumbfounded, and George felt something blossom in his chest. He was secretly honoured that you'd gone to him - maybe it was just because you'd told him exactly what had happened between you and Miles, but he hadn't expected that to be enough to change your frustration overnight. Whatever the reason, it had certainly changed how he felt about you. In that moment, as he brought a hand up to stroke your hair, he knew that he'd do anything it took to protect you, to prove to you that he was glad to have you on the team, to work to be worthy of being the person you trusted with all your emotions and secrets the way you had with this. And he was never, ever, going to let anyone make you feel the way Miles had, vulnerable and afraid, or the way he had, like you had to justify the way you chose to be brave and be yourself. He pressed a kiss to the top of your head as he reached around his back to tangle his fingers in yours.

"Come on sunshine, let's get you home."

He didn't let you go the entire way back to Portland Row.

#lockwood & co x reader #george karim x reader #gn!reader #george karim #sunshine x grumpy #lockwood & co #lockwood & co fanfic

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spurgie-cousin · 24 days ago

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Her voiceover in one of the videos I saw on instagram said that their landlord knows how many people are in the apartment so she’s either lying (since that many people in a 1BR probably violates several laws and codes) or she has one of those slumlord landlords that doesn’t give a shit how many people are crammed in as long as they keep getting the money every month

My guess is it's something like the latter, or maybe it's just a space someone she knows is lending to them. Growing up we had a little apartment over our detached garage where several relatives or friends lived over the years, sometimes for free or just cheap just depending on their situation, and based on what they've said about their financial situation that's kind of the vibe I get tbh.

I only say that bc I did doordash on and off just as a little side gig when I first started working from home (I got cabin fever SOOO bad). And I just did it in my area for the most part, so I'm sure there are differences conpared to bigger areas, but one of the things that really sticks out in my mind about it was how inconsistent it was money-wise; between promos and tips and just the saturation of drivers, it was rarely possible to make a consistent amount every month/week/day. So if that's their only regular income for nearly 7 people, I wouldn't be shocked if normal rent prices were out of their budget, even in a busier market; it sounds like even though he works pretty long hours, the social media is an attempt to make ends meet.

Anyway all that to say, I would be kind of surprised if they were paying like, the amount you usually would to a rental company or professional landlord y'know? Especially in Portland. But even if the landlord knows, it doesn't mean they still can't get in trouble with CPS or other entities by blasting their situation all over the internet (not saying I necessarily want that to happen just that it can).

#the resilient jenkins

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gaintsnowflake · 1 year ago

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Hey, would you do Anthony Lockwood x reader,in which the reader (is in Rotwell) is George's twin sister and from the beginning of the first meeting with Lockwood hates him for the fact that he uses her brother for dirty work and one day got into such an argument,that George and Lucy had to leave the house (threw a vase at Lockwood and it crashed next to his head), and when they return, they find them kissing on the couch. Thanks

𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒 𝐈𝐓 𝐎𝐔𝐓

PAIRING : Anthony Lockwood x fem!reader ( George Karim x sibling!reader )

ONESHOT : in which you do not like lockwood, at all.

TRIGGERS : fighting, throwing objects

A/N : I hope you enjoy this, if this isn't what you were hoping for, please dm me and I will do write it again or if you want an extention. I couldn't figure out how to write this well without turning it into a miniseries (which crossed my mind more than once), but it was still fun to write all the same, thank you so much for this request! Please ignore any spelling and grammar errors, I am my own editor, so I will not be able to catch everything!

WORD COUNT : 1.2k

masterlist

IT WASN'T common for you to get a letter from George. Although your twin status, your relationship sometime faltered. There would be months where you wouldn't here a word from the boy, but it didn't mean you didn't love him. You loved George more than most can imagine.

You constantly looked after the boy when you were younger, making sure your parents were never to harsh on the little researcher. Although you were technically twins, you took on your role as an older sister, even though you were older by one minute and fifty seven seconds.

Because of your bond, it was quite heartbreaking to hear that he quit working at Fittes but you supported his decision. Until you heard he was working for a small agency, run by a teen boy. This news, was quiet aggravating, especially the more you found out about this agency. It was unsafe and George did most of the work. This caused a hatred for the owner.

George knows of this dislike, which is probably why he has yet to invite you to meet the company, his friends. Until yesterday, that was the letter you had received. A invite to dinner with him and his team.

Although you don't know this, it wasn't George's idea to invite you, rather his coworker Lucy, who found out that you were also an agent who lived so close. Lucy wanted to meet you, saying something about how the two of you should be close. Much to George's dislike, he sent the letter inviting you. He thought you would decline, but, to his surprise, you had arrived at the door of 35 Portland Row.

You knocked three time, before you were greeted by your lovely brother. His eyes widened when he opened the door to see you. It had been only a couple of months, but so much has changed. You were dressed nicer, but still sporting a rapier and a Rotwell jacket.

"Hi," his words were quiet, as if he was going to scare you away being any louder, but that was probably just the shock. "Here, come in."

He moved out of your way, letting you step into the homey environment. You were careful to take in every detail, of the home. You were quick to give George's shoulder a slight squeeze, knowing he wouldn't appreciate a hug.

"George who is it?" You heard a voice call out, you assumed it was the infamous Anthony Lockwood.

Before George could respond, a tall boy came into view, his ebony hair slightly out of place. He had on a blue tie over a white button up. You took in his appearance as he stood in front of you. You hated to say that he was relatively attractive, but if you didn't it would be a lie. Especially with the way his lips pulled into a smile as he seen you.

He reached his hand out, you just looked at him, giving him a dead stare. You took a step forward before taking his hand. You shook it with an aggressive nature, making sure to let him know with you looks that you did not like him. When you let go, you were quick to step back and turn to give George your full attention, ignoring the smell of what you could recognize as your favorite meal, most likely George's cooking.

"How have you been, Georgie?" You asked him, ignoring Lockwood who was looking between the two of you.

You and George made small talk, catching up and what not, until Lucy came out to get the three of you, saying something about the food burning. George was quick to rush into the kitchen, attempting to save dinner. You walked past Lockwood, shoving him a bit with your shoulder before introducing yourself to Lucy.

The dinner went well, you and Lucy bonding almost immediately. George also enjoyed your company. Although you did ignore Lockwood, most of dinner, which is something he later questioned George about.

This few hour interaction was soon to be turned into a tradition, where every Tuesday, you would show for dinner or breakfast.

It had been weeks of you coming, often times you would get into fights with Lockwood, telling him all the things he does wrong. It was more or less you scolding him for putting your brother in danger. These fights never really escalated too far, George or Lucy would normally step in, or you would leave. It also didn't help that you were using this anger to completely suppress your growing liking for the boy.

You could already tell today was going to be different. It was about eleven in the morning. You had woken up after a long shift last night, to get donuts from Arif's and head over to the now familiar house. Even though you wouldn't admit it, you got everyone's favorite donuts, even Lockwood's.

You knocked on the door, only to be greeted by Lockwood, which was the first noticeable difference in the morning. Normally you were greeted by Lucy, as George was most likely asleep when you came in the mornings.

The next noticeable difference, was how Lockwood rolled his eyes before letting you in. Which instantly got your blood boiling.

For the next hour you were there, everything Lockwood did seemed to piss you off in some way. Almost as if he was trying to get under your skin. And if that was his plan, it worked. Because here you are, standing in the Library screaming at Lockwood, George and Lucy looking on with horror.

"Should we go?" Lucy whispered to George watching the other two fight.

"Wait, a few more minutes... I wanna see how bad this is."

George knew you better than anyone, he also knew that fights like this were quick and done with as long as you didn't get physically aggressive. Although you would never hurt anyone, it would never stop you from throwing and kicking objects near a target. But the second he seen you reach for the closest thing next to you, he knew he was better off leaving with Lucy, giving the two of you space, as they would not want to be next on the list.

Your movement's were quick when you reached for the closest thing. A vase. The vase that was then sent flying across the room, shattering behind Lockwood, right next to his head as you screamed out a string of curses.

That is when George ushered Lucy out of the room, knowing that there was no stopping the fighting now. He left the two of you to fight, as they went out, of the house. A short shopping trip to go get some tea's was good.

But when they returned nearly an hour later, they were not expecting what they seen. They walked into a quiet house, which was already a red flag. But for all they know, you stormed out. But that was quickly proven not true as they seen your jacket on the kitchen chair, where you left it when you dropped off the donuts.

Quickly they searched the house, only to find the two of you kissing on Lockwood's chair in the library. You straddling his lap as he held onto your waist, leaning back in the chair slightly. The two of you continued to kiss passionately and aggressively, as the two stopped and stared with utter shock.

The next few moments were defiantly going to be a long lived inside joke between the four. No one would have thought that leaving the two of you in a house for such a long time alone would lead you to stop fighting, making you 'KISS IT OUT'.

#lockwood and co fanfiction #lockwood and co #fanfic #anthony lockwood x reader #anthony lockwood #george karim x reader

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emiplayzmc · 2 months ago

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Aghjh I can't be arsed to finish Cassidy and Samuel and Page and Gabriel and Cooper at the moment so *yeets only two of my Paranormal AU characters at you*

The main characters of the Paranormal AU! Tourmaline 'T' Addison and Benjamin Ignacia ^-^

And their monster forms - a siren and a presagillo (or 'moth-person'), respectively!

T and Benjamin are paranormal investigators living in the odd little town of Elderwood in Northern Maine, United States. It isn't their MAIN jobs (diner waiter and tailor / small-time designer, respectively), but they're quite good at what they do. Even though they're an unlikely pair - an easily distracted omen of disaster and a luring spirit - they're the best of friends, living together in their shared house. :D

Base information about the AU under the cut :>

-Elderwood, Maine, is a HUGE hotspot for paranormal activity. Think Portland, Oregon in the Grimm TV show mixed with Gravity Falls. The human residents there know about this, but it's not really a problem for anyone as long as they're not causing issues.

-The town has its own unique flora and geological materials in it, making up a huge amount of interest for Benjamin's habit of journaling and studying everything they spot as well as T's jewellery side-gig.

-Benjamin Ignacia is a presagillo - aka, the species I made up for this AU that gives Mothman an entire species! It comes from the Spanish words 'presagio,' or 'omen,' and 'polilla/polillo,' or 'moth.' They're omens of disaster that get messages about major events and are sent to warn other people at the site and save people if they're able to.

-Ben... does not like getting summoned to these events. They get very quiet and tense before and after going to them.

-Presagillo can have two types of lifespans - one more akin to a cryptid, so close to 200, 300 years, or one where they can only live to 16, closer to the short lifespan of a moth. Technically, Benjamin was supposed to be the latter lifespan, if it weren't for the fact that T ended up saving their life. As of now, they're 33 years old.

-Signs of a presgillo's impending death include dreaming of Will o' the Wisps, being compelled to chase after them like a moth to a flame even though they're always just out of reach. If / When they ever catch up to one, then it's lights out.

-Moth-people are also very easily entranced by light sources - Benjamin, specifically, loves fires and Christmas decorations.

-Benjamin likes to use little bits and piece of magic to hide their wings and antennae when they're out in a public area where it'd be a disruption, or when they just don't want to deal with accommodating for their moth-like features in general.

-Benjamin's always been very perceptive to textures and sizes in their clothes, so they got into tailoring and designing young so they could make their own clothes more comfortable. When they got older, they started making that their primary job and source of income when they and T moved to Elderwood - tailoring clothes and making clothes for people. Including cosplay outfits, their favourites to make besides Victorian era clothing ^-^

-Aside from a clothing nerd, Benjamin's also a HUGE fan of nature, and frequently spends a lot of their time out in the woods collecting flowers and mushrooms and plants that they find around the town, making medicinal things out of the herbs that they find, and just generally exploring. There's a large tree outside of town that's connected to a mycelium network of mushrooms surrounding it that emit a lot of unsavory gasses (ones that WILL literally knock a person out, as Benjamin has learned), but it also sprouts a LOT of different types of plants on and around the area, so Benjamin wears a mask whenever they go into that area to keep from passing out.

-There are different regions of proper sirens over the globe, five regions around America - northwest, southwest, Gulf of Mexico, northeast, and southeast - T is a siren of the northeast, which typically have longer hair and more grayish skin-tones in their cryptid forms.

-Technically, T - or Tourmaline, as was his birth name, T is just a nickname - is a half-siren, born to a human father and siren mother. However, he inherited most of his mom's siren heritage rather than human heritage, and since his dad wasn't the greatest anyway... he considers himself just full siren.

-T and Benjamin both grew up in the same area (which wasn't Elderwood, closer to Connecticut) - they met when T was 12 and Ben was 10 on the way to the zoo / aquarium in their town in the summer! At first, Ben's parents didn't trust T nor his mother because they were sirens (aka luring spirits - and moths are very, VERY wary of those), but Ben and T kept hanging out anyway - T's mom was kind of indifferent to it since she didn't think anything would really HAPPEN if she kept her already in a rebellious stage kid from wanting to be friends with Ben when the latter was clearly harmless. Ben's parents only trusted T after he went out of his way to save Benjamin's life.

-T works as a waiter at a diner in downtown Elderwood that he will CONSTANTLY sing his praises about... for their quality of food and cleanliness of course, not just because he's biased and his manager is attractive (cough cough HUMAN AU VERSION OF SWATCH NAMED SWANN cough cough). His secondary job is jewellery just like his Addison counterpart, using gems and stones that he cleans and cuts himself from around town and whenever he, Benjamin, and their third roommate Cassidy go on road trips. He and Benjamin both sell their clothes and jewellery at a market every Sunday in the town center!

#art #digital art #drawing #artists on tumblr #illustration #digital artwork #do I maintag this as addisons since theyre basically my addisons just as humans / cryptids..... idk 🤷‍♂️#also only T has the lsst name of Addison in this AU lol #benjamin ignacia you are my favourite moth buddy tho ^-^#human au [2]#human au: benjamin ignacia #human au: tourmaline addison #cryptid #siren oc #moth oc #oc monster

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themultifandomgal · 1 year ago

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Matt Casey x reader

What if Casey is dating Andy Dardens little sister who comes back to Chicago to replace gabby Dawson when she left Chicago.

Y/n had to leave Chicago to take care of her two nephews Griffin and Ben. She and Casey decided to have a long distance relationship but he visit his girlfriend as much as he can do.

It is the Stellaride wedding and y/n are coming back to Chicago to be there for her best friend and for Severide who is like a brother to her. Y/n has some news for everyone that she tells them about before the wedding.

Y/n is moving back to Chicago with her two nephews and she can finally take care of them in there home city.

Casey is gonna propose to his girlfriend in the evening of the wedding when they are alone. But there is one problem.

Gabby shows up at the firehouse the day before the wedding. Casey doesn’t care that his ex wife is in town and that she will be at the wedding.

But y/n feels uncomfortable when gabby is in Chicago seven if they used to be best friends and partners on Ambo 61 before Leslie Shay started at firehouse 51.

Y/n are best friend with Sylvie Brett and they where partners on Ambo 61 before she moved to Portland.

Based on last episode of season 10 and the first episode of season 11

Matt Casey- Home Pt1

Things were obviously tuff after my brother Andy's death. Heather my sister in law got a DUI and ended up in prison for 15 months. During that time I looked after hers and my brothers kids, when she was released Heather took Griffin and Ben to live away in Florida. She suddenly stoped phoning me and anytime I would phone her I was cut off. Eventually I was blocked. This was heard on me because all I wanted was to speak to my nephews. Matt and Gabby got divorced then I started dating Matt.

Then one day Griffin appeared on mine and Matts doorstep telling us how his mom keeps moving him around and now is in prison again. Of course after a lengthy conversation Matt and I made the decision that I'd moved in with Griffin, Ben and Heather until I know that she can cope again.

I was gone for a long time, but Matt and I made it work doing long distance. He would also come and visit me any time he could, but it's tough. And unfortunately Heather kept getting into trouble, so Matt suggests that the kids just move in with him and I, that way Heather can sort herself out and the kids would have a stable environment. Plus with Gabby leaving I was offered to become PIC of ambo 61. I'm not just coming home because of that, it's also my best friend Kelly's wedding.

I walk into the fire house holding on to my nephews hands hoping to surprise everyone. Of course Matt and Kelly know I'm coming home, but they think my flight gets in later

"Geeze, thought I'd at least get some banners for my return"

"Babe?" Matt looks over a little shocked "thought I was picking you and the kids up later"

"Eh flight changed"

"No it didn't you said you wanted to surprise everyone"

"Thanks Ben"

"YN. It's good to have you back" Herrmann pulls me into a hug which is followed by everyone else

"YN thank you for coming back for the wedding"

"Well that's not the only reason I'm back" I say replying to Kelly

"Well don't leave us all waiting" Brett encourages

"Well I'm coming back permanently, Ben, Griffin and I. I'm gonna be the PIC of ambo 61 again"

"Yes!" Gallo fist bumps the air

"Bless our saviour"

"Oh thank god" Brett hugs me again

"What did I miss?" I chuckle

"The person who replaced you temporarily, well she's not the nicest"

"Emma just creates a lot of drama" Gallo replies for Capp

"She's been after the PIC job since you left"

"Oh well don't worry about her anymore. I'm back next shift"

"Perfect" Brett once again hugs me tight

"Right we best get you guys fed. You hungry?" Kelly asks me and the kids

"I'm starving" I reply chuckling. The kids follow Kelly to the kitchen while I get stopped by my very handsome boyfriend

"Hey"

"Hi" I smile up at him "don't be to mad at me for trying to surprise you"

"Just glad your here and staying" he places his hands on either side of my face and presses a kiss against my lips

"Oh Errm sorry to interrupt" we break apart and see Emma "was just coming to collect my things"

"No hard feelings right?"

"No course not" she smiles but I can see how fake it is

"Come on let's grab something to eat" Matt wraps his arm around my shoulders and we head to the kitchen

"If we had known you were coming back we would have made a nice spread"

"It's ok. Don't worry about it"

"Engine 51, Truck 81, Squad 3 , ambo 61. Structure fire 336 Arlington"

"I'll see you guys later. Matt I'll see you at home"

"Home. I like the sound of that" I give him a peck before he shoots off

"Ok let's get you guys home hey?"

On the way home the taxi driver starts to drive passed where the fire. I notice Emma outside getting shouted at, but no Matt, Stella or Sylvie

"Hey can you stop a minute?" I ask and get out

"Hey. Boden things ok? Where's Brett?"

"Inside. Woman's giving birth and Jacobs left her"

"Chief send me in?"

"What. You don't start till...."

"I know but if someone's giving birth up there Brett's gonna need help, please?"

"Ok go"

"Ok boys I want you to stand over there with Chief Boden. Ok don't leave his side"

"Ok" the boys leave the car while I run into the burning building

"Brett? Kidd? Casey?" I shout running up some stairs

"YN?" I hear Brett yell and follow her voice

"Holy shit" I notice the room on fire

"She's crowning" Brett tells me "YN give me the bulb suction" I hand her what she needs while I tend to her wound on her shoulder "ok big push" Brett says. Thankfully we hear crying from the baby

"Ok Kidd Casey carry her out. Brett you got the baby?"

"Yeah"

"Ok when we have them in the ambo I want to put oxygen on the baby just in case as well as the mother. Let's go" I grab the bag and follow the others out. When we get outside to safety I hear Emma getting told to clean out her locker

"Welcome home YN" Brett smiles giving me a side hug once the baby was in the ambo having oxygen thanks to other paramedics that just arrived.

We arrive back at the firehouse, everyone excited for my return when I see Gabby. My old best friend

"Hey" she smiles and Matt and I

"Hi Gabby"

"Well this is awkward" Mouch mumbles earning a nudge from Gallo

"I'm not here to cause drama. Just here for the wedding"

"Errm it's good to see you Gabby. Matt I'm gonna take the kids home. I'll see you later" I give him a kiss and leave the firehouse feeling a little uncomfortable about Matts ex being here. Yes we were once friends and yes ok I'm the bitch that dated her best friends ex husband, but doesn't mean that I'm not a little worried.

#one chicago imagine #one chicago #chicago fire #chicago fire imagine #matt casey x oc #matt casey imagine #matt casey x reader #matt casey #Matt casey x wife

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countrymusiclover · 9 months ago

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18 - The Lehnsherr Family

Part 19

Battle of Heart and Mind

Tag list - ask to be added (in my ask box please) @aintinacage @hiraethrhapsody @mostlymarvelgirl @importantgalaxyrunaway

Five years ago

Shutting the car door Erik went behind me opening the backseat door getting our two kids out. I was wearing a red jacket over a black jacket, some dark blue jeans and some black combat boots. We hadn’t heard anything from Logan from the future in a few years so we had to assume that everything had been changed. “Daddy! Piggy back.”

“I won’t be able to do this if you keep getting bigger, Astraea.” Erik told our daughter who had my bright blonde hair and the same eye color. He scooped her up and carried her on his shoulders.

Shaking my head I felt a hand touch mine meaning it was little Ryder. He looked exactly like a mini version of his father no doubt about it. “Why are we going to see Uncle Charles, mommy?”

“Because you’re father and I have some business to take care of and Charles said he didn’t mind getting a visit from his favorite Lehnsherr twins.” I answered his question by pushing the front door open with our family walking through the entrance.

Charles and I had pushed to get the school back up and running again. Since we had changed the future it felt right to try it for a second time. Some kids ran past us before I paused in the doorway eyeing the professor sitting behind his desk still in his wheelchair. “Uncle Charles!” Our daughter cheered climbing down from her father’s shoulder rushing past us and towards him directly.

“There's my favorite twins. Ohh!” Charles sat the book down in his lap.

Ryder ran past his sister since he was given his father's height jumping up into his lap first. “Dad and mom says we are spending a few days here.”

“Can you give me a ride around on your chair?” Astraea asked, sitting on his other leg showing the same excitement level.

Standing in the doorway I leaned against the wood with Erik coming to stand beside me. He looped his hand through mine looking at his friend. “I have a favor to ask of you, old friend. Can you watch the kids for a few hours. I have a date planned for us tonight?”

“Of course I can watch them. I'll have Hank cancel my classes for the evening.” Charles agreed, entering his friends mind chuckling at what he saw. Even though he would never get a chance to be with Addi now, He still had found a way to appreciate when his friend made her happy.

Bending down on my knees I instructed our kids forward. “Alright you two come give us hugs before we go.”

“And you be good for Uncle Charles.” Erik warned them, wrapping his arms around each of them. I hugged and kissed their heads before we made our way out of the school doors.

Erik and I got back in the car and we just drove in silence until we reached the airport that was closest to us. We had decided to make a trip out to DC and get married there out on my mothers backyard porch. We had both been busy raising the kids and trying to find somewhere where we were comfortable living and we had settled on Portland. Changing into a short white dress that reached past my knees but above my ankles. “Don’t get angry at me for asking this but you aren’t thinking of backing out are you?”

“Charles already gave me a pep talk about our relationship. So I am not backing away from you, Addison. Not anymore.” Erik shrugged his shoulders with his arms down at his sides. He was in a black leather jacket and one of his old dark brown turtlenecks he wore when we first were training with his friend.

Clasping my hands together in front of me I just chuckled back at him knowing Charles was very persuasive. “That is very reassuring, Lehnsherr. Oh here comes my mom.”

“Alright you two I am officially a wedding preacher.” My mother walks up to stand in front of us. She glanced between us knowing we probably wanted to get this thing out with and just say I do. “Do you two have vows prepared or are we skipping that?”

I cleared my throat by unfolding a piece of paper from inside one of my boots. “I have something to say…Erik the day we met wasn't the most romantic and we certainly aren't like one of those couples in the romantic films. But I can't imagine spending my life with anyone except you. I love you and our kids and I am excited to say it's going to be us against the world, always.”

“Addison, I know that I haven't been the easier person to get along with. Especially when you get so frustrated I won't call you Addi like you wished I would. But getting through all that you found out that there are still good parts of me. That I am just looking for love that I now get to have in you until the end of our days.” Erik reached down intertwining our hands together sending me a smile that was rare to see still to this moment in time.

My mother grinned, holding out one ring to me and the other for my soon to be husband. “Now we can get to the super romantic part. Do you Addi take this man to be your husband?”

“I do.” I responded by slipping the ring on his left hand.

She looks at her son in law. “Erik, do you take this woman to be your wife?”

“I do.” He answered her question by putting the ring on my left hand.

My mother Angela clasped her hands together. “By the power vested in me I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss my daughter.” She backed away before he cupped my face in his hands, kissing me deeply. Wrapping my arms around his neck I deepened the kiss feeling like we were now going to remain a family.

I heard Erik's truck pulling up in the driveway where I ran from our bedroom downstairs knowing he'd drop his keys in the kitchen. Peaking around the corner he was standing there for a few minutes before I ran up behind him throwing my arms around his neck from behind. “I was wondering when you were coming home.”

“Addi.” He chuckled, twirling me underneath his arm so that we were now facing one another.

Running my hands up his chest I smiled, kissing him. “How was your day?”

“Better now that's for sure. Where are the twins?” Erik asked me wrapping his arms around my waist, holding me as close as possible.

“Out back. I'll show you.” Gesturing my head towards the backdoor I led him outside by the hand. We had set up a wooden playset outside the back of our house.

Astraea was running around in the grass with her brother chasing after her until she gave him a look before she looked in our direction. “Daddy!” She ran forward jumping up into his arms and he caught her in his arms grunting a little bit since she was getting bigger being ten years old now.

“Mommy, when can we see Uncle Charles again?” Ryder asked me with his messy hair falling in front of his eyes. He had always adored Charles Xavier and the way he was able to run a school.

Putting my hands in the pockets of my jeans. “Maybe sometime soon if your father can take off for a few days.”

“Does my brother have powers like me?” Erik and I shifted our attention to one another hearing our daughter's voice inside of our minds. It was so clear that she had gotten the same ability as our old friend. But the sad truth was that Ryder didn’t seem to have any or had yet to unlock his abilities. We weren't really sure which one was true.

Erik bounced our daughter in his arms changing the conversation. “I’m hungry. Are you kiddos hungry, let’s go eat.” The four of us had gone back inside the house sitting down and having the chicken and potatoes we had from the night before.

Erik and I had been patiently waiting for his powers to come through but it was beginning to look like he was simply born human even though he had two mutant born parents. The sun had finally set on our small house when we went to put the kids to bed. “Where did you learn that song, daddy?” Astraea asked, settling herself down underneath the covers of her bed.

Erik answered by brushing hair out of her eyes. “I learned it from my parents and they learned it from their parents. Then one day you and your brother will sing it to your children too.”

“What happened to them, your parents?” Ryder asked, laying on his side in his bed, seeing me standing in the doorway just silently watching.

Silence fell in the room when my husband’s eyes lowered to the numbers on his arm. “They were taken from me when I was a little boy. But they’re still here inside watching over you both.”

“Is someone going to take you and mom away?” Young Astraea, always so curious just couldn’t stop asking questions even when she needed to go to sleep.

Entering the room I put a hand on Erik’s shoulder before he rose from the bed turning off the light telling them to get some sleep. “Never, my sweet twins. Now get some sleep.”

“So when are we going to have the conversation with them about him not being like us?” I questioned once we had left their room and were in the living room sitting on the couch. Moving one hand over my stomach it wasn’t visible yet that I was certainly pregnant. “I feel like it should be before they start asking about me having a third baby.”

Erik draped his arm over my shoulder tugging me into his embrace. “I think the idea of them having a sibling will be easier to understand.”

“What aren't you telling me, Erik. Is it about Ryder not being a mutant?” I could sense that he was holding something back from me. I knew that he wished his son was a mutant just as much as I did.

He shifted his gaze down to mine reading my facial expression. “Don't think that I hate him for not being like you and me. I can't ever hate my own son.”

“I know that, honey. I just know we need to explain it to them before they get any older. Especially if we feel like our daughter should be taught at Charles school.” Intertwining my hand with his I laid my head on his chest. Erik wrapped his arms around my waist holding me close just enjoying the little family we had created.

Comments really appreciated ❤️

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gigawatt-smile · 2 years ago

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Here's the Foreword from the Lockwood & Co Netflix Tie-in Edition. It's basically just The Screaming Staircase but this was also here from Mr Shroud Himself (under the cut):

'A girl and a boy knock at the door of a house in south-west London. It is a fairly modern house and they are wearing modern clothes, but they each have a rapier at their belt, and kitbags full of salt bombs and iron chains. They have come on professional business. They are there to destroy a ghost.

And that, when I sat down and wrote the first three pages of what became The Screaming Staircase, was pretty much all I knew. Who was this pair? Why were there no adults accompanying them? What was the horror that waited for them beyond the door? I didn't have a clue (most of my books start like this, with a single, improvised, scene). What I did know was that I wanted to write a ghost story, that children were going to be my heroes and that, when they came face to face with something nasty, I wanted it to be a fair fight.

The trouble with ghosts, traditionally, is that they hold all the cards. They are nebulous, ectoplasmic and difficult to destroy. They exert great powers of terror over the living. In most ghost stories they also hang out in remote and eerie locations, preying on solitary individuals - people whose greed, curiosity or plain bad luck makes them vulnerable to supernatural attention. In the classic tales of M. R. James, for instance, the victim is usually a bookish gentleman who has been poking his nose into old manuscripts or artefacts that don't concern him. Is it going to be an equal contest when the malevolent spirit shows up? No. You'd put your money on the phantom every time.

I love these traditions, and I certainly intended my ghosts to be scary - that was why I was writing the story in the first place. But I also wanted to shake things up a bit and give my characters a chance.

And so I decided to tweak the rules.

For starters, we'd have an epidemic of hauntings in Britain. Ghosts aren't just to be found lurking far off in creepy man- sions. They're everywhere, threatening death to anyone they touch, and adults can't see or hear them before it's too late. Only certain young people - like my two protagonists, Lucy Carlyle and Anthony Lockwood - have the psychic talents to deal with them. This is vital, but it's not enough to keep them alive.

So I gave them some proper equipment too. The spectral plague has spurred an industrial revolution in ghost-hunting techniques, and each agent goes into the night armed with decent weapons: salt bombs, silver nets, magnesium flares and rapiers of cold, sharp iron. That evens the score a little.

Next, and most importantly, I gave my heroes each other. From the moment I began this first scene, I knew that the relationship between Lucy and Lockwood (along with their friend George Cubbins) was going to be the beating heart of the story. I could hear the energy in their voices - I sensed their personalities, their rapport, their shared jokes. As I wrote my way into the book, I learned more about Lucy's courage, faithfulness and determination. Lockwood's self-conscious charisma was there from the start, as was his air of mystery (he would keep his deeper secrets a while longer). But their skills were complementary. Far from being isolated, they would pool their resources, and so make Lockwood & Co. a match for any Phantasm or Raw-bones that floated across their path.

Finally, I gave them 35 Portland Row: Lockwood's rambling townhouse in Marylebone. It's their home and headquarters. It's where they train, it's where they sleep; it's where they can sit around eating cakes at midnight without a Wraith creeping up to give them ghost-touch. In other words, it's a place of sanctuary - the vital counterpoint to all the haunted buildings they encounter, and in some ways almost a character in its own right.

One of the many triumphs of the Netflix series is its flawless recreation of Number 35, complete with its rapier racks, rows of masks and dusty tables piled with unpaid bills. It was an extraordinary feeling to visit the house on set in Ealing Studios, to walk up the steps, cross the iron line and step straight into Lockwood's hall.

For sheer impact, though, this was nothing compared to that breathless moment when I saw Ruby Stokes, Cameron Chapman and Ali Haji-Heshmati acting together for the first time. All at once, Lockwood, Lucy and George were standing there before me, living, breathing, showing precisely the right rackety camaraderie and charm. Seeing them gave me the same electric charge as when I wrote that initial scene, all those years before.

And, sure enough, this was a fabulous new beginning. together. Since then, I've watched a stunning TV series come Presided over by Joe Cornish and the brilliant production team at Complete Fiction, Lockwood & Co. conjures Lucy and Lockwood's world in all its horror, and its light. It's certainly got plenty of terrifying ghosts in it. But it's also got a lot of friendship, humour, love and loyalty - and these things more than match the darkness. It's why I was drawn to these heroes in the first place - and why I think you'll be happy to walk with them into the shadows too, no matter what is waiting for you there.'

Jonathan Shroud, June 2022

#this is so heartfelt man #worth the money just for that #lockwood and co #lockwood & co #l&co #anthony lockwood #lucy carlyle #george cubbins #george karim

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ihavetoomanythoughts3 · 1 year ago

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Okay, since it has come to my attention that it has been 10 years of Lockwood and Co., (Thank you @wellgoslowly) I want to talk about the effect Lockwood & Co. has had on me.

I did not find Lockwood & Co. until a few months after the show’s release, but that did not stop me from quickly becoming obsessed with this world. Well. Obsessed conjures up a more negative image.

I fell in love with Lockwood & Co.

Very quickly, I found that 35 Portland Row would bring a sense of home that my house, no matter how full, could not generate. Every little detail was perfect, and I can not honestly tell you of a more homey house. I want to live, if not in the world of Lockwood & Co., then at least in their house. The little things in 35 Portland Row brought the house to life. The house itself had so much character, there was a feeling that it was not just lived in but lived in, you know? It felt like our characters weren’t just on a set, or in a museum, but a place where they could relax and just be kids in a world where that wasn’t allowed.

Now, the only thing better than living in a home like 35 Portland Row, in my opinion, would be to have people like our Iron Trio. Everything, and I mean everything, about Lockwood & Co. makes me feel a bigger sense of belonging, just being a reader, than I feel in my own life. But I’ll talk about that later. What I want to talk about now is Lockwood, Lucy, and George.

Each of them are perfect, beautifully flawed, and human. I work so hard at being a “perfect” person that seeing these people be flawed and broken, and be accepted, not despite of, but regardless? Seeing these teenagers mess up, ruin something (admittedly to a much larger scale than mine) but still have friends to turn to? It felt like a wake up call. A reminder that I don’t have to be some society-defined standard for what is “normal” or “perfect”. More than anything, the Iron Trio more or less looked me in the eye and told me that I can be myself, and my true friends, my true family, will accept me for me.

I see a bit of myself in each of the Iron Trio. I have Lucy’s insecurity, her anger. I have Lockwood’s need to win, because who will pick up the pieces for me if I fail? I have George’s social awkwardness, his tendency to prefer books over people. That might be why these characters are so beloved. Whether it be their strengths or their weaknesses, almost everyone can find something to relate to in them.

I think Netflix did an amazing job with the Lockwood & Co. adaptation. I am not saying that because I found the show first. I have read the books as well. The casting is top-tier, especially for our beloved Iron Trio. But it’s not just the actors I am praising here, although they deserve all the praise in the world and more. Everyone behind the scenes, from the big names in the intro to the assistant to the assistant of somebody, made this masterpiece of a book-to-screen adaptation possible. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to all involved in the slightest in the transition from beloved book to screen.

Back to what I was saying earlier, I genuinely feel like I belong more in Lockwood & Co. than in my own life. I’m not saying “I’m too good for this world” or “I hate my life” or anything like that. Maybe it’s not that I belong more in Lockwood & Co. but that I want to belong in something like Lockwood & Co. I want the found family. I want the people who care for me, not because they’re supposed to, but because they chose to. Reading from Lucy’s perspective, it is evident that Lucy feels as if she belongs, thus bringing the reader (at least in my case) along with her. Watching the show, I think Ruby, Cameron, and Ali did a phenomenal job of portraying this. This little family at 35 Portland Row will always be in my heart, getting me through even more than they already have.

To end this rant, I just want to say thank you. Thank you to Jonathan Stroud, for creating Lockwood & Co. and all that it has brought along with it. Thank you to Joe Cornish, for putting his all into the Lockwood & Co. tv show. Thank you to Ruby Stokes, Cameron Chapman, and Ali Hadji-Heshmati. All the actors were amazing, but these three truly brought the Iron Trio to life on screen in the best way possible. And thank you to everyone in between, who I didn’t name, but who were a part nonetheless in giving us this wonderful, wonderful world, Lockwood & Co. Thank you, thank you, thank you all for giving me, for giving us, a world to fall in love with. ❤️

#Soooooo that was a little longer than I intended #I didn’t mean to start rambling but #I’m still so mad about the show being canceled #It’s not right #lockwood and co #lockwood & co #happy 10 years lockwood & co #anthony lockwood #lucy carlyle #george cubbins #george karim #locklyle #cameron chapman #ruby stokes #ali hadji heshmati #joe cornish #jonathan stroud #fuck netflix

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player1064 · 9 months ago

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I love your drabbles. How about this this time it is Phil's turn to walk in on them during some heavy petting (on a sofa, under a duvet?) but unlike the others he is totally oblivious for the longest time, until he's basically going "haha lads why are you acting so strange, are you not wearing any pants haha :).... :) .... :) ... :l lads?"

YESSSS I love this honestly. Phil Neville voted most annoying younger brother in the world for the 47th year running.........

---

The beauty of living alone, Gary’s always liked to think, is that – well, that you’re left alone. And that if, hypothetically, you wanted some adult company then, hypothetically, you could invite your colleague/maybe best friend/maybe boyfriend over and would be free to enjoy his adult company on any surface you liked, because there’s nobody who could stop you because, crucially, you live alone.

The trouble with hypotheticals is that they don’t often factor in annoying little brothers.

So, Gary’s lying back on his giant sofa, enjoying some adult company with the Scouse bastard/definite bane of his existence/maybe love of his life, when they hear the front door click open and both freeze.

“Fucking Phillip,” Gary mutters, extracting himself out from under Jamie with a sigh.

“Thought you said his flight only got in later?”

Gary glances at his watch, swipes away the ‘high heart rate’ warning to check the time, and groans. “Seems we lost track of time.” He straightens his jumper and turns his head towards the open living room door. “Din’t anyone ever teach you to knock,” he calls out to where he hears his brother still shuffling around in the entryway.

“What’ve I got a key for, then, if I ‘ave to knock,” Phil calls back. There’s a couple of seconds silence while he pads in his socks down the hall, which Jamie and Gary use to frantically check they’re both presentable, and then he’s sticking his head round the doorway with a smile. “’sides, I thought you were probably workin’, since you didn’t answer my text when I landed. Oh! Hiya, Carra, I weren’t expectin’ to see you today.”

He wanders over, uninvited, to flop down on the couch next to them. “What a flight, I tell ya I’m knackered. And I couldn’t even get direct, neither. Absolute nightmare, but it’s good to be home. Julie and the kids send their love, they’re already asking when you’re comin’ over to visit. New house is pretty nice, an’ all.”

When he finally stops for breath, Jamie slaps his thighs and goes to stand up, saying “how’s about I leave you two to catch up, ‘s a long drive home for me, maybe I can beat the traffic.”

Gary shoots him a glare that he hopes says ‘if you leave this room I will kill you.’

Jamie sits back down.

“We were gonna order somethin’ for dinner, Carra, weren’t we?” he asks, inching his hand across to pinch Jamie in the side to make sure he behaves. “What’d’you fancy, Phil, you’re my guest of honour.”

“Ooh, I could go for a fish and chips, to be fair. And mushy peas, y’don’t get those in Portland…”

“Sounds great! D’you want to go collect, then, and me ‘n James can tidy up a bit round here.”

Phil tilts his head back against the back of the couch. “I only just got in!” he whines, “give us a break, just order it on one of the apps.”

There doesn’t seem much use in trying to argue, so Gary gets out his phone and hands it to Phil once he’s got the local chippie’s deliveroo page open. Phil takes his sweet time to pick out what to get, which seems an uneccessary kind of torture when his whole life he’s literally never ordered anything but a medium cod and chips with gravy and mushy peas.

When he hands the phone back to Gary, he pauses, tilts his head with a frown.

“Oh, Gaz, y’ve got somethin’ on your neck there, lemme just –”

Jamie displays the kind of quick reaction time that he barely even managed in his playing days and grabs Gary by the chin, tilting his head with force so that his neck is angled towards him and away from Phillip.

“No need,” he says breezily, lifting his thumb to his mouth to wet it like he’s an anxious mother trying to get a speck of dirt, “here, lemme see…”

He rubs his thumb against what he knows damn well is not a speck of dirt, which he knows is a fresh bruise by virtue of the fact that he’s the one who just put it there, and when Gary’s breath hitches at the pressure against it he shoots him a wicked grin because he is evil, he is sick and twisted and Gary is going to kill him.

“Aw, no,” says Phil, leaning in closer to peer at the mark, “it’s not budging, must be a skin thing. Are you getting stress hives again, Gaz, I thought you said you were takin’ it easy for a bit?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Gary says tightly. Jamie releases his neck and Gary shakes his head around a bit to get it feeling normal again.

When Jamie lowers his hand back down, however, it lands to rest lightly on Gary’s thigh, fingers curled just above his knee, because he is a fucking bastard.

Phil shrugs and flops back to where he was on the sofa, idly picking up the TV remote. “Anythin’ good on TV lately?” he asks, pulling up the channel guide, “I tell ya what, me ‘n Julie’ve been watchin’ this –”

“—Why don’t you go unpack, Phillip?” Gary interrupts quickly, because he feels Jamie’s hand slowly tracing up his thigh and he doesn’t need for there to be any witnesses when he murders him in a few seconds. “Freshen up before food comes, maybe, you were just sayin’ what a long flight you’ve had.”

“Ooh, you’re right, maybe I’ll even run a bath if there’s time.”

Gary nods encouragingly, maybe a bit frantically, and sits tense until Phil wanders back out, humming the tune of some silly little pop song.

When he’s safely out of earshot, Gary hisses “you fucking bastard”, and slams his mouth against Jamie’s, pushes him backwards and swings a leg over him to straddle his hips.

Jamie just grins against his lips, slips a hand under his jumper. “How long d’you think that’s bought us?” he mutters, “ten minutes? Can get a lot done, w’that.”

“Y’better make it at least fifteen or I’m not invitin’ you back.”

“Bossy, bossy,” Jamie says, still grinning, then he scrapes his teeth over Gary’s bottom lip and Gary forgets that he's meant to be annoyed with him.

“Was gonna call Julie but I left me phone in ‘ere, silly me,” comes Phil’s voice from just outside. Gary freezes. Jamie does too, but it’s much too late for either of them to do anything besides that, because by then Phil is already stood in the doorway flushed a bright red.

“Oh!” he says. He blinks a few times. “Oh! Oh, alright then, I’ll just – food’s in half an hour, yeah? I’ll just – I were gonna call Julie, and the kids…” he says, before practically sprinting out the room and back down the corridor.

Jamie just laughs, pulls Gary back down to kiss him again. “Look at that, lad,” he murmurs, “half an hour, eh? Could get a lot done twice, w’that.”

Gary’s torn, momentarily, about what he should do with this idiot he’s got underneath him. Killing him does seem tempting. He rolls his eyes. “Not on yer life,” he says, and kisses him back.

#WHO WILL WIN: gary's need to get dicked down or phillip's need to annoy gary #thanks for the prompt!!!#carraville #drabbles

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nostradamus0 · 1 year ago

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your voice is the splinter inside me

read on ao3

Nothing about Storybrooke, Maine makes sense, and no one seems to notice. It doesn’t take long for Henry to come to this conclusion, and it doesn’t take much longer for him to realize that everyone he meets is lying to him.

Not maliciously, he thinks, but lying all the same. He feels like the only person left out of something important, and it’s an ugly feeling that makes him want to run back to New York, where his ma wasn’t hiding anything and nobody looked at him like they were afraid of saying something they weren’t supposed to.

Sure, New York was loud and lonely and life there felt like a picture torn in half, but it had been better than staying in Maine. And now they’re back in Maine and everywhere he goes he wants to leave. Every corner he turns, it’s like he’s expecting she’ll be there.

Which is stupid, because they lived in Portland, not Storybrooke, but maybe the entire state is just haunted. Or maybe he’s just going insane, because he can barely remember her but it’s like the moment they drove into town, he could see a flicker of her in the passenger seat of the bug she hated so much. A glimpse of a smile so clear and warm it was like she was there with them in the car. And now he thinks he’s been waiting like it’s possible he’ll hear her voice call him down for dinner or feel her kiss on his forehead in the dark after turning off the bedside lamp and whispering:

Goodnight, my little prince.

He sits on a lumpy couch in the cramped, low-ceilinged apartment of his ma’s ‘old friends,’ and he turns when someone drops down beside him like he’s expecting to see her there, book in hand and reading glasses slipping down her nose, but it’s just Ma, and she’s alone.

She’s not leaning over the back of the couch to nudge Mom’s glasses back into place, or grin when Mom swats her hand away. She just sighs, and they’re alone.

(And in the memory, his mom has no face. His therapist says this is normal. Trauma affects the memory in complex ways, Henry.

Whatever.

What kind of person forgets what their mom looked like?)

“I thought you were done taking cases.”

“This is different,” Ma says, looking at him through the corner of her eye as she scrunches a t-shirt into a ball and shoves it in her suitcase. He’s cross-legged at the edge of her bed, his own suitcase empty on the floor of his room. If he refuses to pack, maybe she won’t make him go. He doesn’t want to meet her old friends. It’s bad enough that there’s one perched on the couch in the living room like he has a right to be in their apartment, dripping from his flask onto the cushions and calling Henry a ‘lad.’

“Doesn’t sound different,” he mutters. Louder, he adds: “I don’t want to go to Maine—I don’t like Maine. I don’t like your friends, either.”

“You don’t have to like it, but you’re still going. They need my help, and you’ve never even met them—you might like them.”

Henry tips backward until he hits the mattress, sinking into the memory foam that always hurts his spine if he lies on it too long. He stares at the cracks in the white paint on the ceiling and furrows his brow, tapping his fingers like a heartbeat on his stomach.

“They abandoned you. I won’t like them.”

Ma stops tossing things into the suitcase and sighs. For a long moment she just looks at him, head tilted and eyes conflicted. He tries to read her, but her expression that’s usually an open book to him is closed and buried in the back of the shelf. She reaches out and runs the tips of her fingers through his bangs.

“You need a haircut,” she says, her voice quiet and hollow; she’s miles away. She brushes his dark hair away from his eyes, lets it part down the middle and flop off to the sides, then turns away, her shoulders rising and falling like she’s taking a deep, shaky breath.

The air changes and she resumes packing. The conversation ends, and he trudges to his room to fill his suitcase. In protest, he packs almost nothing but comics and his favorite notebook and an extra memory card for his camera.

Anyway, something is not right about Storybrooke, and everyone there is lying to him. Especially Ma. He’s not sure she’s told him the truth about anything since they left New York. In fact, he thinks the only person who might not be lying to him is the mayor. Regina Mills.

Regina Mills, who’s connected to Ma in a way she won’t explain, but that Henry can nearly see when he catches her staring. It almost reminds him of how she looked at Mom, and he doesn’t know how to feel about that. He would be . . . okay, if she wanted to fall in love again, but three days ago they were trudging through monotony in New York, still soaked in grief.

Then they drove through the overhanging trees, over the town line into Storybrooke and she pulled off the road, and he watched her twist off her ring from the backseat, where he was pretending to still be asleep. She held it in the hollow of her palm, staring at it like she was losing something. The pirate man—and Henry’s fine with people expressing themselves how they wish, but the hook, he thought, was taking it a little far—had looked at her like he understood that kind of grief, and said, his voice low: “You could leave it on. I reckon she’d be alright with it.”

Mom scoffed almost inaudibly, and he continued: “She gave you that life, Swan.”

“She meant to give me happiness. Not memories of a life with her.”

“Maybe that’s the same thing.”

They were quiet for a long time. Then, Ma seemed to snap herself out of a trance and pushed the ring into her pocket. (He assumes it’s still there, because he hasn’t seen her wear it since.)

She took the car out of park and pulled back onto the road, and as the first buildings of town faded into view, Killian said, in a voice that sounded unnaturally kind, “If you don’t go after your happiness, Emma, you will never get it.”

Ma introduces him to Regina Mills when they’ve already been in Storybrooke for two days. It’s the end of a drizzling, misty morning, and she’s cautious and careful about it like it’s very important that the two of them get along.

He gives her an awkward wave as he says hi, standing in his socks in David and Mary Margaret’s living room, and she waves back, but it’s weak.

“Hello, Henry,” she says, and her voice is faint. She stares at him and he stares back, and her hands shake, white-knuckled and clasped over her stomach. (He hears the echo of shattering ceramic on the diner floor and eyes too haunted for looking at a stranger.

He remembers the way Ma had jumped up and dragged her out the back door into the hall, and how she’d returned a few minutes later, alone.)

“So,” he starts, offering her a smile. Henry’s not sure why she’s so nervous, because something—perhaps everything—about her suggests that she could take the world apart and put it back together in an afternoon. “You’re the mayor—that’s pretty cool.”

Her shoulders relax somewhat, and an inexplicable jolt of pride shoots through his chest at her small smile. “It’s quite a lot of paperwork, honestly.”

Ma seems offended at this, turning sharply to stare, incredulous, at the mayor—

(“Mayor Mills,” he tries to address her later that afternoon, but the words struggle on the way out like muscle memory wants to call her something else, but he can’t imagine what.

“You can call me Regina, Henry,” she tells him, but that feels wrong, too.)

—who purses her lips as though she’s trying not to find Ma’s extreme reaction amusing. Ma turns to him, eyes indignant and determined, and says, matter-of-fact: “Don’t listen to that, Henry. She’s practically the Queen of Storybrooke, but with democracy.”

The corners of Regina’s mouth twitch and she stabs her elbow into Mom’s ribs. The result is a loud, undignified squeak from Ma and a distinct feeling within Henry that he’s missed something important.

“We were about to get lunch at Granny’s,” he blurts out, lying. Ma squints her eyes at him and he silently begs her not to blow his cover.

Of course, she blows his cover. “We were? I don’t remember—”

“You should join us.”

“—Oh, right, of course we were,” she says, scoffing as she attempts to backtrack. Smooth, Ma, he thinks, and it’s clear by the way Regina looks between them, her eyebrows raised and her eyes sparkling with amusement, that she knows they’re lying. He wonders if she’ll call them on it, but she doesn’t.

“I’d love to.”

It doesn’t take long for Henry to realize that Regina is someone who must have been very close with his ma, when she lived here. About five minutes, actually. He observes them on the walk to Granny’s.

They interact like half the things they’re saying are unsaid. They bicker and tease and toss words between them but it’s like things are missing and it doesn’t make sense, like he’s only hearing half a conversation. Like the other half is silent, taking place in the looks they share, which vary from amusement to mock annoyance to something he can’t pinpoint, almost akin to affection. If he didn’t know better, he’d suggest telepathy.

If he didn’t know better, he’d say they don’t seem like people who haven’t seen each other in years. He’d say it hasn’t been long at all.

Except it has, because Ma’s barely left his side since they moved to New York, and before New York there was Portland, which Ma never strayed far from without him and Mom. And no matter how familiar Regina may seem, Henry is sure they’ve never met and he’s sure he’s never been to Storybrooke before. ( . . . Except when Ma is rambling about nothing and Regina turns her head to meet his eyes, sparkling and fond and there’s a look in them that he recognizes, and for a minute, he’s completely certain that he’s known her for a long, long time.

Of course, that’s impossible.)

The bell over the door rings in his ears; Ma is holding the door open for Regina, and he darts through after her before it swings shut. He tries to ignore how everyone looks over at them, but the nagging feeling of being watched never quite fades, even after they turn back to their meals.

“You two grab a table—I’ll order,” Ma says, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at the counter, where the waitress is leaning against it with a notepad already in hand.

“Hey, guys!” She says, grinning. “What can I getcha?”

“Hey, Ruby. We’ll get two grilled cheeses and—” Ma pauses, glancing back at Regina. “You want your usual?”

Your usual.

“Yes, thank you,” Regina says, and Henry absently trails after her as she starts toward a booth by the window. Behind him, he hears Ma say: “And a kale salad, please.”

Your usual.

If it’s been years, Henry thinks, his heart a little too fast, why would Ma assume her usual order at one specific diner would be the same?

He sinks into the booth, sliding over to the window, and watches Regina sit down across from him. For a moment, there is silence contained within their table. Around them, everyone is talking and eating, clinking silverware against plates and cups against tabletops. Regina just looks at him. His ma is still at the counter. (How long does it take to order lunch?)

“So, Henry,” Regina starts, clearing her throat almost like she’s nervous. “New York. What’s it like there?”

Sad, he could say. New York is sad and loud and lonely, and we’re only there because we’re running away. Instead, he pulls a napkin out of the dispenser and starts to pick it apart, tearing pieces off the corner into a pile like paper snow on the tabletop. “It’s alright, I guess.”

She nods, shifting in her seat and tapping her fingers silently against the table, one at a time from pinkie to thumb, and back again. He watches the movement, steady and rhythmic, until he feels words building in the back of his mouth, stringing together and growing until there’s no room left to hold them in: “Kind of lonely. It feels fake, sometimes. Like something isn’t right. My therapist says that’s normal, though.”

The napkin is gone—nothing left but a fragile pile of shreds. If he even exhaled too close, it would blow apart. When he looks up, Regina’s hands have stopped moving and she’s looking at him like there’s something inside her that’s haunting her, but he doesn’t know what it could be. He almost asks if she’s alright, but a glass of water hits the table in front of him, unsettling his napkin pile. The water sloshes around the edge of the cup but doesn’t spill, and two more glasses are set down before Ma drops into the booth across from him, next to Regina.

“Lunch is on the way,” she says, smiling at him like everything is normal. If she’s noticed that something in the air turned pale, ghostly, while she was gone, then she doesn’t say. She just mentions the picture he took last month that’s on the cover of his school’s newspaper, and the mood lifts. Regina straightens in her seat, congratulates him, and pride unfurls in his chest.

For a moment, everything feels almost normal.

They’ve been in Storybrooke almost a week and he’s starting to regret packing so little out of spite: he’s done laundry twice already. He thinks they’re here because one of his ma’s old friends is in trouble. Or sick. Maybe. It’s unclear, and no matter who he asks or how he asks them, no one will give him a straight answer. Ma mentioned something about a doctor’s appointment, but she’d avoided looking him in the eye so she was probably making it up.

On day six she asks him to spend the afternoon with David and Mary Margaret and he says no. They had seemed alright when he met them on day two, but he can’t forget how they abandoned her. She went to prison and they weren’t there. She got out, but she was afraid and penniless and they weren’t there. Mom died, and they weren’t there. She suffered, and they left her in it, alone.

She stares at him across the diner table, tapping her fingers against her glass as he drags the pad of his thumb across the streaks of dry cleaning spray on the tabletop. They don’t even smudge, and she just sighs.

“I want you to get to know them, Henry,” she says. “They want to get to know you.”

“They could’ve twelve years ago.”

Ma runs a hand across her face, over her eyes, like she’s trying to wipe something away but there’s nothing there. “Please, Henry.”

Anger builds like a heavy stone in his chest. Ribs tight and hands pulsing like he wants to curl them into fists, Henry gathers his colored pencils from where they were scattered on the table and closes his notebook. He stands on shaky legs and says, voice quiet and hard:

“I said no.”

“Where are you going?”

Ma stops. For a moment she stands completely still, one arm in a jacket sleeve and the other out, frozen in the doorway. Henry knows that face—she’s trying to figure out what to say that will appease him without saying much of anything at all. He hates that face.

“I’m taking Mary Margaret to an appointment,” she says, but she’s lying. She slips her other arm into her jacket and grabs her keys off the table by the door. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“I’m going to the park; I wanna show Regina some of my pictures.” He holds up his camera by the strap, which was sitting next to him on the bed with a large, drugstore photo envelope with a tear at the bottom corner, held shut with masking tape.

Ma blinks. There’s a beat where he wonders if she’s going to tell him not to, but instead she just smiles—close-lipped but not unhappy. (She seems to like it when he spends time with Regina. That means something, he’s sure, but he doesn’t know what.)

“Great idea,” she says, and just looks at him, her hand curled around the doorframe and her head tilted, eyes more honest than her words have been since they got here. In a jolting movement, she pats the doorframe and straightens up: “Okay, I’ve gotta go. Wouldn’t want to make Mary Margaret late.”

There’s no appointment. He’s sure there isn’t. She keeps lying; this entire town is lying to him. Except Regina, he thinks. Regina isn’t lying.

Regina doesn’t lie to him, but sometimes it’s like she’s trying to evade having to. He’ll ask her something and she won’t answer or she’ll change the subject, sudden and abrupt and a bit like there’s a rock lodged in her throat.

They’re sitting on a bench in the park and she’s flipping through his pictures, holding them delicately by the edges and listening carefully to everything he tells her about them, and he thinks about how it’s been an hour and his ma probably isn’t back at the hotel room yet. She’s probably still out somewhere that isn’t the doctor’s office, doing something she doesn’t want him to know about.

He’s got no idea where she is, but Regina is right here with him in the park, looking at him like she’s proud of him for every picture he shows her, and he doesn’t really know why, but he blurts out: “Everyone keeps lying to me, like they all know something I don’t, and I don’t get why. Especially Ma.”

“I will not lie to you, Henry,” she says, her voice careful and quiet, almost shaking, and she’s looking at him so seriously that he wonders if there’s something about that statement that runs deeper for her. “I can’t always promise you the truth—not all secrets are mine to tell, but I will never lie to you.”

And he thinks she meant it, because he likes to think he’s inherited at least a bit of Ma’s superpower, and not once has he felt like Regina is lying to him. He taps his fingers on his thigh and bites at the inside of his cheek.

“Did you know my mom?” He asks. Briefly, the thought flickers through his mind that he doesn’t know what answer he’s hoping to hear. She turns away from him to look forward, out at the small pond by the edge of the park, the outer curve of which follows the treeline of the woods that climbs up into the mountains. A shaky hand rises to tuck a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear, the shine of her deep blue nail polish catching the light, and he’s launched headfirst into a memory—

He’s five years old, knees folded under him on the couch, bare-chested, fluffy pajama pants, hair damp from the bath and sticking out in every direction, dripping down the back of his neck. Mom’s hand is soft like flower petals as she holds his, her thumb rubbing circles on his palm as she paints his nails a sparkling shade of violet. The beads of her bracelet spin easily under his fingertips as he plays with it, watching her work. Her own nails are the same purple—already dry.

Morning sun glowing through the window, Phil Collins on the radio; it’s that song from Tarzan and she’s humming along, he’s rocking his head back and forth to the beat—he could recite that movie line by line in his sleep. Ma’s singing off-key from the kitchen and he can smell pancakes and bacon, and he looks up at Mom and her eyes are bright and warm warm warm, and she almost looks like—

Regina clears her throat, and he’s jolted back to the park bench in Storybrooke, early March and soft grass from a recent, cold rain. He’s not five years old, his nails are clear, his mom is dead.

“It’s been some time since I’ve seen her, but yes, we did know each other. It’s been . . . nice, catching up.”

“No,” he shakes his head, “not Ma.” He pauses to pick at a hangnail. “People here act like they know me, so we must’ve visited when I was really young because I don’t remember it. But we wouldn’t have come without Mom. I get why no one’s talking about her—nobody likes talking about dead people, it’s just. . . . Did you know her?”

There’s only silence. The biting breeze tears through his windbreaker and rustles the trees. A bird at the edge of the woods takes off from the grass with a loud flutter of its wings and the water is rippling, lapping against the muddy bank. Regina says nothing.

Henry turns to look at her and she’s frozen still, her hands clasped in her lap and her shoulders rigid, facing forward. She always looks at him when he’s talking, listening so attentively that he can’t help but feel incredibly valued. Now, she’s only staring out at the pond, her body so still it’s like she’s stopped breathing, stuck in a single frame of time like one of his photographs.

“Regina?” He says, hesitant, heart tightening in his chest, and she exhales heavily, her breath shuddering.

“That depends on your definition of knowing someone, I suppose,” she says, each word slow and careful, and the conversation ends there because she jolts into motion, standing suddenly and waving with a shaky hand, and he looks over to see Ma jogging toward them. She looks far too tired to have been taking Mary Margaret to a doctor’s appointment, but he just smiles a tight smile and asks how it went.

“Not bad,” she shrugs.

“Everything’s okay?” Regina asks. Ma nods, but her body is tense and Henry can tell she’s lying because of him. When he starts to gather up his pictures, she glances over at him, but quickly averts her eyes.

“Yeah, she’s fine. Nothing to worry about,” Ma says, and there she goes, lying again.

“We’re going to Regina’s house for dinner.”

Henry looks up from his notebook, the next panel of his comic half-drawn, and Ma is standing in the doorway, staring at him with something that’s almost anxiety in her eyes. He tries to keep his voice light to counter it as he says: “Okay. When’re we leaving?”

She makes a face. “Um. Now?”

He feels his neutral expression twitch, thrown off by her last-minute planning. But she’s worked that way forever and he should be more used to it than he is. Mom always planned things at least a few days in advance, and while sometimes it went overkill, he liked her way of planning. Their minds ticked with the same gears. You’re just like your mom, Henry, Ma used to say.

But he just nods and closes his book, and feels more nervous than he can fathom why at the prospect of going to Regina’s house.

He’s dizzy the moment he steps through the door.

Ma’s still far behind, getting out of the car, as he braces himself against the banister at the bottom of the stairs, eyes unfocusing and focusing again. He doesn’t mean to, but his gaze narrows in on the empty nails sticking out of the walls in a row down the hall, dark against the white paint, and he almost reaches out to touch them. But Regina starts talking, like she knew what he was wondering, and all his hands do is twitch at his sides.

“I have a son,” she says, and his heart climbs into his mouth, “but he is lost to me. Sometimes I have to take the pictures down.”

“Where is he?” Henry asks, but he’s not sure he really wants to know. Outside, the car door slams. Regina’s silent for so long that he doesn’t think she’s going to tell him, but then, as she reaches out to trace a circle on the wall around one of the nails with the tip of a finger, she says: “Far enough that I can’t be with him, but close enough that I can’t reconcile why.”

It’s not a real answer, but he can tell she’s not lying.

Her hand falls away, and she moves toward the still-open front door to greet Ma, whose footsteps are heavy on the porch, having answered his unasked question with nothing that actually answered anything. But even still: she’s the only person in Storybrooke who isn’t lying to him. (And she smoothes down the fabric of her slacks before she steps into the doorway like she’s nervous and getting rid of the nonexistent wrinkles in her clothes will make it better.)

“Hey, Regina,” Ma says, breathy like she’d jogged up to the house from the car, parked at the side of the road.

“Good afternoon,” Regina smiles, but she still looks anxious, and Ma shifts on her feet, bouncing on her toes awkwardly like she’s giving herself an internal pep talk. Then, she shrugs off her jacket and—uncharacteristically—hangs it on the coat rack. (At home, she’d just toss it over the back of the nearest chair. It drives Henry crazy. It drove Mom crazy, too.)

She pulls her boots off and lines them up on the mat as neatly as she can like she’s trying to make a good impression, which strikes Henry as being very weird. But he follows suit, setting his sneakers next to a pair of winter boots that look like they belong to a child, just slightly smaller than his own. (His hands shake as he stands sharply and turns away.)

Regina closes the door with a soft click. Then, she starts down the hall and he follows after her, counting the empty nails on the wall. One, two, three, four . . . eight, nine, ten . . .

The hall opens into a large dining room—a table that could seat a whole family, large windows facing the yard, an intricate china cabinet and a large entrance-way into a kitchen with an island counter and a ticking oven timer. Warm, natural light through the windows and a fridge with magnets that are spaced out like they held things that have since been taken down, just like the frames on the walls. The air is warm like she’s been cooking, and he can smell—

“Did you make lasagne?” Ma asks, unable to hide the excitement in her voice.

“I did,” Regina says, her smile warm as she moves across the kitchen, her movements smooth and graceful almost like she’s floating.

“Red pepper flakes?”

“Red pepper flakes,” she confirms with a soft laugh, eyes bright.

“You’re perfect,” Mom grins, and a memory strikes Henry like lightning, so clear in his mind that he feels like he’s there again, in their living room in Portland that he usually can’t quite remember, and it’s Friday Movie Night—

He’s on the carpet in front of the couch that Ma’s draped across, her head on the armrest, all their DVDs spread out on the coffee table and he’s rifling through them. She’s been vetoing most of his picks. In the kitchen, the popcorn maker is screeching and he can hear the hum of the microwave melting butter. The noise stops as Ma shoots down another movie.

“Nothing animated,” she tells him, which knocks about a third of their movies out of consideration. He’s pushing them off to the side as Mom returns, three bowls balanced in her two arms. Ma sits up straight, says: “Ooh, popcorn. You’re perfect; will you marry me?” and Mom just laughs, the lamp-light glinting off her wedding ring and everything is warm and she’s laughing, bright and happy and alive—

A pan clangs against the stove and the memory is gone. Henry is back in Regina’s kitchen. He looks at his ma, leaning with her elbows on the counter, and thinks about how she took her ring off when they got here, and hasn’t worn it since. Before Storybrooke, he never saw her without it.

The more time Henry spends with Regina, the more he remembers his mom.

It doesn’t make sense, but sometimes she’ll say something or look at him in a way that feels so familiar, and a memory will come to him as though it’s being yanked out of the furthest corner of his mind, almost violent as it tears him backwards in time. Some of the memories feel more real than others. They contradict each other. She wrings her hands when she’s nervous just like he does.

Regina asks him about his school in the city and jokes how different it must be from the small-town schools that are all she knows, and suddenly he’s five years old with a brand-new backpack and a Winnie the Pooh lunchbox, and Mom’s waving goodbye from the doorway of his kindergarten classroom, except Mom looks like Regina and his school in Portland didn’t look like that. (What did his school in Portland look like?

He can’t remember.)

It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense.

Henry wakes in the middle of the night, shaking in the aftermath of a dream so vivid it must have been real, but he was standing in the street and there was a suitcase in the backseat of Ma’s car and he was crying; Ma was crying and Mom was trying not to but her chin shook and the wind swept her hair across her cheeks and they were damp. Her hands shook and she said goodbye, said I love you—I love you I love you I love you, my little prince—over and over and over and then she was gone. He watched her disappear in the rearview mirror and she was alive. There was no fire and no funeral and she was not dead.

He wakes up crying. He stumbles down the stairs, out into the dark, and for a moment he swears he sees Ma standing on the sidewalk just outside the front door of Granny’s, a few years younger in a sweater he’s ever seen, his own face peering through the window as she calls after a woman walking away toward the street—Mom—but that doesn’t make sense.

No, it’s not Mom. It’s Regina. It’s Regina in the street like the ghost of a memory he doesn’t remember living. He blinks and she disappears. The pavement is lit by pinpricks of stars and one flickering street lamp, and there is no moon. He’s alone, wondering why a flash of a moment that never happened feels more real than years that did.

He borrows someone’s bike, left in the rack outside the hotel without a lock. The front wheel is low on air so the ride is slow and wobbly, and he dismounts to push it down the sidewalk until it runs out and he’s left walking in the street. The morning is frigid and his breath looks like smoke when it hits the air. It flurried in the night and his sneakers become snow-soaked and rock salt wedges between the tracks in the soles. His bare fingers are stiff from the cold and the tips of his ears sting in the quiet wind.

The yellow town line where the outskirts of Storybrooke meets the outside world is shrouded by curved, overhanging trees on each side of the road, colliding in the center like a tunnel of branches and leaves. It almost doesn’t look real. The morning is still navy-gray—tinged red at the edges—and he stands there, motionless, until he feels the echo of a kiss on his forehead, and the fog low in the hills looks almost purple.

He tries to remember the fire and all he sees is his mom, swallowed by smoke, shrinking in the rearview window ‘til she’s gone and he wonders, not for the first time, how they ever could’ve left her grave hundreds of miles away. He wonders, not for the first time, if he’d even find it if he went to Portland and looked. (He wonders why, in these glimpses of memory, she looks so much like Regina.)

“Have we been here before?” He asks Ma, later that day. They’re sitting in the corner booth at Granny’s, and he’s been picking at his lunch as she swallows hers whole.

“Granny’s?” She deflects. “We’ve been staying here a week, kid. You feeling alright?”

Henry flattens his straw wrapper and starts folding it like an accordion. Ma sighs.

“Yeah, we have. It was a long time ago, though. You wouldn’t remember.”

Truth. Lie. Truth. He wonders what she’s hiding that’s so terrible that he can’t know.

“Portland’s only 58 miles from here,” Henry says. He’s flat on his stomach on the lumpy hotel bed, flipping through the pictures on his camera. Ma’s leaned back against the headboard of hers, nose in the beginning of a book from the library on Main Street. It’s been at least fifteen minutes since she’s turned the page, but now, after a moment of ignoring him, he hears the rustle of paper and the flip of a page.

“Is it?” She asks, feigning disinterest. Henry puts his camera down and pulls himself up, turning to face her.

“I want to visit Mom’s grave. Bring flowers or something.”

She doesn’t say anything for the longest time, but he keeps staring and staring until finally, she sighs. “Why?”

Do I need a reason? he thinks, and almost says so. Easier to swallow back is the admission that: the harder I try to remember her funeral, the less sure I am that we had one. When I try to remember how we lost her, the smoke is a purple fog and there’s no fire. But he just shrugs and she flips another page, so soon after the last one that he can tell she’s only pretending to have read it.

“I’ve got too much going on right now, Henry. Maybe another time,” but her voice sounds pained and she’s lying.

(Later, he looks up Portland, Maine cemeteries and realizes there are twenty-three and he doesn’t know which one is hers. He clicks on Find A Grave and realizes he doesn’t know what to type in. He can’t remember her name.

His therapist’s voice echoes in his head: Trauma affects the memory in complex ways, Henry, and he wraps his pillow around his head and tries not to cry.)

“I’m running out of excuses, Regina.”

His ma’s voice stops Henry in his tracks where the banister meets the second floor. The bed and breakfast is a small building, with skinny halls and steep wooden stairs. The railing wobbles if you hold too tight. Peering around the corner, Henry sees his ma’s profile in the dim hall. She’s leaning against the closed door to their room, running a hand through her hair and refusing to look at Regina, who stands with her hands deep in her coat pockets. Henry presses his back flat against the wall, breathing as quietly as he can. He’s not sure why he’s hiding.

“And I’m running out of ideas to solve this whole mess,” Regina sighs. “I know this isn’t easy for you, but it’s not exactly easy for me, either.”

“I know. And we’ll figure it out. It’s just. . . . There’s only so many times I can claim a ‘doctor’s appointment’ before Henry stops pretending he believes me.”

Called it, Henry thinks, but the feeling of being right is bittersweet. It hurts far more than it feels like any shred of validation. Slowly, he slides down the wall, sinking until he hits the floor, knees pressed up against his chest.

“We could—”

“We can’t tell him. God, Regina, you know that. He’s already confused.” Ma’s voice is so frustrated, and as he hears the quiet creak of the old floorboards, he pictures her pacing the width of the hall, running a hand over her face. His heart pounds in his chest and he can feel the pressure against his sternum and in his throat. Anxiously, he twists his fingers together and squeezes his eyes shut.

“His memories are literally fighting each other, of course he’s confused. Telling him won’t erase that, but at least he’ll know what’s real.”

Ma says nothing in response, and for a moment, the hallway is silent. Outside the cracked windows, the wrens that don’t migrate for the winter are chittering among the branches of the young Ash trees behind the hotel. A breeze blows in through the windows and the curtains flutter. Then:

“Those memories,” Ma starts, her voice careful like she’s talking to an easily-spooked animal, “how were they . . . chosen?” (The way she says chosen makes him think she was looking for a better word, and couldn’t find one.)

There’s a pause, and he opens his eyes, dares to peer around the corner—Regina is looking at the floor, arms hugging her torso like she’s trying to hold herself together.

“I didn’t choose them, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says finally, and his ma averts her gaze as if she feels guilty. “Your subconscious wrote that life for you. It took the core of what we needed it to do and filled in the blanks with whatever would make you happiest. That way you’d be less likely to question the fact that sometimes, the memories didn’t feel real.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“No reason.”

“Are you sure? Henry mentioned he had a m—”

“Seriously, Regina, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it,” Ma says, and Henry thinks she sounds tired. (Sometimes he thinks she’s always tired.)

“I’m sorry,” Regina says, her voice soft and clear, and something about her tone sounds like an echo. Like she’s apologized for this before.

“It’s not your fault. Just . . . just don’t tell him, okay?”

Tell me what? Henry thinks, frustration coiling in his chest. A door opens and closes down that hall and he pushes himself to his feet on shaky legs, starting down the stairs as silently as possible. What aren’t they telling me?

(He remembers sitting on a park bench with Regina in the aftermath of fighting with his ma, the air damp and cold like the dirt, and remembers her promise: “I will not lie to you, Henry. I can’t always promise you the truth—not all secrets are mine to tell, but I will never lie to you.”

He wonders if lying and keeping secrets are the same.)

Henry wakes early the next morning, shivering and drenched in sweat.

For a moment, he wonders where he is. But then he remembers Storybrooke with a jolt in his stomach and rolls over to stare—eyes empty—at the framed print of a painting of a sunrise, hung slightly crooked next to the window. Outside, the horizon is still dark and there is nothing but night sky. His dream is already slipping away, but he stumbles out of bed and into his shoes, clinging to the fading feeling of loss he’d been fighting in his sleep. He opens the door by twisting the handle first so it doesn’t make a sound.

It’s quiet in the hall. There’s a light downstairs, and he traces it to a small room near the restaurant’s kitchen, where Ruby is crouched by a door he knows leads to the alley, untying a pair of worn running sneakers. Her ponytail is loose and sinking down the back of her head, and her face is shiny with sweat.

“Morning, Henry,” she says without looking up, and he starts, jolting backward into the wall like he’s almost startled by his own physical presence in the room.

“I’m sorry,” he says, quick and sincere, but she waves him off.

“No need to be.” She stands and shoots him a half-smile. “You’re up early. Couldn’t sleep?”

(Something nags in the back of his head about how everyone in Storybrooke talks to him like they know him. Sometimes, he forgets that it should feel weird.)

“Sort of.”

She nods like she understands what he means even though he doesn’t, and slips past him toward the kitchen. “Hot chocolate?” She asks.

“If it’s no trouble.”

“None at all.” Ruby sets a kettle on the stove and turns the dial; the burner ticks, the gas hisses and ignites. “What’s keeping you up?” She asks, dragging a stool into the kitchen from outside behind the register. After dropping it in front of him, she opens a cupboard and starts rifling through the mess.

Henry considers how honest to be. (Ironic, he thinks, since he’s been so frustrated with everyone lying to him.) Neither, he decides, and changes course: “You knew my ma, right? Before she left?”

Ruby pauses. With a box of hot chocolate mix in hand, she falls back on her heels from where she’d been stretched up on her toes to reach the top shelf.

“Yes,” she says slowly, like she’s worried about saying something she shouldn’t. (Everyone’s that way with him, these days.) “I did. We were good friends. Well, friends.”

“So you guys knew each other when you were young?”

She laughs: “She’s quite a bit older than me, Henry.” She drops the box of teabags onto the counter in front of him. “Milk chocolate okay? We’re out of semi-sweet—sorry.”

“That’s fine,” he says, pulling a packet out of the box. Ruby pulls a handful of big marshmallows out of a bag from the cupboard and slices one in half. (Apologizing for not having my favorite hot chocolate, he thinks. Another thing to add to the ‘Why Does Everyone Know Stuff About Me’ list.)

“Did you know my mom?”

The knife slides hard through the marshmallow and hits the cutting board with a sharp thump. Ruby stands perfectly still for a moment before she jolts back into motion, and she seems unsettled by his question, but she doesn’t step around it as Regina had, and she doesn’t lie.

“Yes, I did.”

Henry sits up straight, his fist clenching around the hot chocolate packet. For reasons he doesn’t understand, nerves shoot up his spine.

“Really?” He asks. It’s the first time he’s gotten a real, straight answer about his mom since they arrived in Storybrooke. “Did she live here?”

“Since forever, it seems.” Ruby sighs and turns around, leaning back against the counter and crossing her arms, looking at him like she’s trying to open up his brain and dig around, figure out what’s going on in his head. “What’s with the interrogation?”

Behind his sternum, Henry’s chest aches. He can barely breathe and his lungs burn. Ruby knew his mom. His mom lived here, in Storybrooke. (And Ma never said.)

“I miss her, that’s all,” he says. It’s his turn to lie, to evade a question with a half-truth. The words are bitter on his tongue, grating on his teeth like the gritty feeling of too much sour candy. He spits them out anyway. “I wanna learn more about her. It’s like I barely knew anything.”

The small smile Ruby offers him is sad. “I’m sorry.”

She turns back to her marshmallows, cutting the halves into quarters and pulling them apart before dropping them into a mug. The kettle whistles on the stove, and she fills two mugs, handing him one. The warmth seeps through the ceramic into his palm as he pours the powder inside. She shakes cinnamon into his mug and hands him a spoon to stir. (Cinnamon. Something else for the list.)

“Were you close? To my mom,” he asks. Ruby scratches the back of her neck and tightens her ponytail. She doesn’t speak until after she’s made her own drink: four marshmallow quarters (she pokes them under the surface with the tip of her spoon), hot chocolate powder, cinnamon, stir.

“Even in a town this small, you can’t be close with everyone.”

Sure, he thinks. That’s true—but completely useless.

“She was gone before I really got the chance to be, and that was a long time ago. She wouldn’t have been the same person you knew.”

And now, she’s lying.

“What kind of person was she, then?” He asks, desperation leaking into his tone. His cocoa is too hot to drink and the mug almost feels like it’s burning his hands, but he doesn’t set it down. Ruby blows over the top of hers, and takes a sip. “Anything you remember. Please.”

“She was complicated,” Ruby sighs. “Being a good mayor was so important to her. She knew this town and everything in it like the back of her hand, but no one really knew much about her. I don’t know why.”

Rubbing a hand over one eye and shaking her head, Ruby sighed. She took a long sip of her tea and Henry thought to himself that she suddenly looked incredibly tired.

“And then she was gone.” Lie.

It takes him a while to finish his hot chocolate. The sun is creeping up outside the windows as Ruby takes him back to his room, escorting him like she thinks he might wander off somewhere else if she doesn’t. When they reach his door, he stops and turns to face her, meeting her eyes. There’s one more question he needs to ask before the moment passes. “Why did she leave?”

She looks away, focusing her eyes on something distant out the window behind him. There’s probably nothing there.

“I don’t know, Henry,” she sighs, pushing her hands deep into her pockets. She shifts her weight, clearly uncomfortable with this question. “It was never my business, and Regina—”

“Regina?” A strange, unidentifiable emotion shoots up the center of his chest, stomach to spine and up into his throat. “She knew my mom back then?”

Scrunching her expression as though she’s said something she shouldn’t have, Ruby shakes her head. “No. Yes. I mean. . . . Your ma and Regina are a long and complicated story, Henry. Truth be told, I don’t know most of it.”

(Another terribly unhelpful answer, but it doesn’t sound like a lie.)

“Then how do you know it’s so long and complicated?”

She laughs—“You haven’t changed one bit.”

His heart seems to pause in his chest. “Changed?” He asks. Ruby’s jaw twitches. She shakes her head like she’s shaking something out of it, and purses her lips.

“I’ll see you later, Henry.”

Her footsteps echo down the hall as she leaves, and he’s left standing alone in the doorway of the hotel room, staring out the window at the red horizon, knowing less than he did before he asked. His real question, hidden behind all the wondering of what did Regina Mills mean to my ma? hangs heavy in the air around him like smoke from the fire he doesn’t remember.

And why do I feel like I know her?

He goes to Regina’s home by himself for the first time because his ma’s off doing something he’s not invited along for, and she’s decided he needs a babysitter. (It’s been ages since the last time she thought that. Even since they’ve been here, she’s left him alone.)

It’s different being at Regina’s without Ma; the house feels bigger. Emptier. She drops him off and doesn’t even come inside, instead speaking quickly with Regina in hushed voices on the porch before she leaves, driving like she’s in a hurry. He lines his sneakers on the mat and hangs his coat on the rack, and when he turns to look at Regina, standing in the entrance to the hall, her smile is nervous.

For an awkward moment, they just stare at each other. Then, she straightens her shoulders and asks, voice no less anxious than her eyes: “Do you like to play board games, Henry?”

He nods, cracking a smile. He loves board games. “Yeah.”

Regina has more board games than he’s ever seen in one place before. They’re carefully and alphabetically organized in a cabinet under a bookshelf in the living room, and he thinks without having opened any of them that the boxes alone look too worn to be owned by someone who lives alone. In various states of wear and tear, some are simply softened around the edges, the cardboard at the edges scuffed and the colored paper shell peeling off. Others are torn and bent with tape wrapped around the corners to hold them together. Scanning the titles, he finds every favorite game he’s ever had, plus a wide collection of ones he’s never even heard of. (His favorites seem to be the boxes that are worn the most. Coincidence, he’s sure.)

“Pick any one you like,” Regina says, but it’s almost impossible to choose. Finally, he reaches for a beat-up box of Yahtzee and she smiles, tells him: “Great choice.”

Dropping into an armchair next to the coffee table, Henry lifts the lid off the box and peers inside. The blue cup lies on its side, several of the dice still inside and the others spilled out onto the scoring sheets, which have three pens strewn across them. Tons of loose sheets are already filled out, several different handwritings scrawled across them in a handful of colors.

“I’m sure there’s an empty one in there somewhere,” Regina says, her voice quick and breathy as she leans over his shoulder to pull the entire stack from the box. Before she can pull away, he catches a glimpse of two players listed for every game and a few with three, the letters at the top of every column: R, H. Sometimes: R, H, E.

Suddenly, his chest aches and his lungs burn like he’s breathing smoke instead of the clean air of Regina’s living room and the warm, sweet smell of something baking in the kitchen. He can’t breathe. In front of him, the room shifts out of focus, and the empty score sheets and the dots on the dice turn blurry.

“Henry? Are you alright?” Her voice is soft. Her palm, warm through his shirt and a light, gentle touch, grazes his shoulder. Henry glances up and she’s looking down at him, dark eyes wide with concern. The room around her is blurry, but she’s crystal clear. He nods and abruptly stands; she blinks, startled.

“Can I use your bathroom?” He asks, a hoarse quality to his tone. She nods, but there’s hesitance in the motion and she’s wringing her hands in front of her stomach—she’s worried. (About him? he wonders.)

“Of course, dear. It’s just upstairs—first door on the left.”

Nearly slamming his leg into the coffee table on his way out, Henry flees the room. He clings to the banister as he climbs, trips on the top step of the stairs as he reaches the second floor of Regina’s too-big house. All the doors along the hall are cracked open except one: the last door on the right, all the way at the end, shrouded in shadow. Dim, natural sunlight comes in through a window in the bathroom—first door on the left.

As he closes the door behind him, he leans a hand against the doorframe for support. There’s ink under his fingers, deep in the wood and not quite black anymore—fading into a dark gray like it’s been there for years.

I have a son, Regina had said, and a part of him had tried very hard to not believe her. (He’s been confused enough, lately.) But he drags a forefinger down the doorframe over the inked lines and numbers and he can’t ignore this. It’s a growth chart and he can almost picture it: a little boy, her little boy, year by year with his back pressed against the frame, stretching as tall as he can, chin up and shoulders back.

He sees himself standing there, a little boy with his mom marking how he’s grown, and he’s giggling and she’s smiling, writing his name and the date in flowing letters—except he doesn’t know what he looked like when he was young. The pictures all burned in the fire that he can’t remember, and he doesn't know if they had a doorframe like this in Portland. He doesn’t really remember Portland. (Trauma affects the memory in complex ways, Henry.

Bile rises in his throat and his eyes burn. He can’t remember if Mom ever marked his height on the wall. He can’t remember her death—the funeral or the fire she carried him out of before running back inside, choking on smoke. He’s been told the walls came down around her.)

His hand shakes as he drags the pad of a finger over the letters on the doorframe like he’s trying to see if they’ll smear under his touch, but they don’t. They just stare at him:

Henry Mills, age 3.

Henry Mills, age 4.

Henry Mills, age 5 6 7 8 9 10 11—

Her son was named Henry, too. Is named Henry. (“He is lost to me,” she’d said. Lost.)

Suddenly, he’s overwhelmed by the need to run away, to get to Portland, to search the graveyards until he finds his mom—to prove he’s not losing his mind. Instead, he washes the implications of the growth chart off his hands and heads back downstairs. He can still feel the letters—his name—under his fingertips, but checks his hands and they are not stained with ink.

Regina makes lunch and they play Yahtzee and Clue Jr. and he loses terribly at Scrabble until Ma finishes whatever it was she didn’t want him to know about, and Henry does not run away to Portland. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t think he would find her there, anyway.

Morning frost has frozen the damp earth by the pond. Sitting back on that bench at the edge of the park, staring out at the treeline and the mountains and the low-hanging fog, jacket zipped to his chin and scarf wrapped twice around his neck, Henry prods a clump of solid dirt and torn grass with the tip of his sneaker.

Ma left the hotel before the sun rose, claiming Mary Margaret had an appointment and telling him to go back to sleep. (Liar.) Instead, he got dressed and made the ten minute walk down Main Street to the park, where he sought out the bench he’d sat on with Regina that first week, when she promised to never lie to him. That feels like a lifetime ago; it hasn’t been more than a few weeks. Sometimes, he thinks about how time feels strange here, like it’s passing by so fast and yet not moving at all. There must be a stack of homework a mile high waiting for him at school. (He’s missed a math exam, but that’s probably for the best.)

He feels like a different person in Storybrooke. It’s becoming harder and harder to tell if his memories are real or if he’s made them up in his head. (Trauma affects the memory in complex ways, Henry. You’ve experienced something painful, and your mind is trying to protect you from that.)

“Henry?”

Regina is standing by his shoulder, her hands deep in the pockets of her coat. Her head is tilted to the side and down at him, her eyes questioning, but she’s got a warm smile on her face. It’s that same smile she always has for him: soft and familiar. It’s the smile from his memories of flipping through DVDs and her bright laughter, sparkling violet nail polish and breakfast on the stove—his mom holding his hands, skin like soft flowers, beaded bracelet spinning and spinning and spinning—

In his fleeting memories, Regina and his mom are the same.

“You remind me of her,” he says, because he cannot help it. She blinks, lowers herself onto the bench beside him, and folds her hands in her lap. She does not ask: who? like he expects her to. (Like anyone else would.) In fact, she says nothing at all, and he’s left with a tightness in his throat and the urge to reach up and pull his collar away from his neck. “I miss her.”

“I’m sorry.” There’s grief in her voice, and he wonders how much there is about her that he doesn’t know, about what his ma won’t let her say and what Ruby wouldn’t tell him. Her apology means something he cannot understand. He could ask about it, but it’s probably on the list of things she’s not allowed to tell him. So instead, he changes tracks completely, and asks:

“Do you love my ma?”

There’s a heartbeat of empty silence, then: “What?” Regina chokes out. She sounds like there’s a tightness in her throat, too, and maybe he shouldn’t have asked.

“My ma; do you love her?”

For a moment, Regina is silent, and all Henry can hear is his own heartbeat, pounding in his head, and the drill of a woodpecker somewhere beyond the treeline. (He wonders if she’ll tell him the truth. He wonders what he needs the truth to be, and thinks that maybe her silence is enough to know it.)

Briefly, her mouth opens, wavers, and closes. She purses her lips and he half expects she’s going to evade the question, give him some semantic answer like: that depends on what you mean by love, the way she did when he asked if she knew his mom. But she doesn’t. Instead, she sighs and her head shakes in such a small movement that he can barely see it. Finally, she says: “Please don’t ask me to answer that, Henry.”

The words are spoken before he knows he’s saying them—“Why not?”—and her jaw twitches. Her hands, still clenched in her lap, shift, and he glances at them to see her tracing a pattern at the base of her ring finger, a subtle side-to-side motion like she’s imagining twisting in circles something that isn’t there. (Ma does that sometimes. More and more now that she’s taken her ring off. He can still see faint lines from the time spent wearing it—little indents in the skin.)

“Because I promised to always be honest with you.”

They sit in the echo of that for a while. There’s a lone patch of snow under the bench that Henry kicks at during the silence; the water ripples on the pond, growing in size until it fades back into the glassy surface. For once, the air is motionless, and the water isn’t choppy in the wind. Regina shifts her weight and inhales deeply, and when she stands, she runs her palms down the front of her shirt and the top of her slacks even though there are no wrinkles in the fabric. He looks up at her, and she tries to smile.

“I haven’t had breakfast yet—are you hungry? I was thinking of making apple pancakes, but it seemed silly for just one person.”

The walk to Regina’s house is mostly silent. It’s the kind of silence one spends wanting to speak, but failing to find the right way to say anything. So they say nothing at all, and he thinks about how Mom always made apple pancakes on Sunday mornings. It’s been a year since he’s had them.

So it’s a quiet walk, filled only with the songs of the wrens, perched in the branches of every house’s front-yard trees. Little buds of green are sprouting leaves in many of them, pushing their way into a spring that hasn’t quite arrived. It hasn’t snowed in a few weeks, but the air is still chilly and brisk. In the early hours of each morning, the world is coated in frost that glitters under the rising sun. Compared to New York, this town looks like a fairytale.

The fairytale shatters when they arrive, and his ma is sitting on the porch steps, her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped in front of her. She does not look happy. Beside him, Regina sighs, heavy and slow like all of a sudden she’s incredibly tired. They stop several feet from the bottom of the stairs, and Ma looks at him, her expression blank and her eyes boring into him. She says nothing, and strangely enough, Henry wishes she’d just yell at him and get it over with instead of whatever this is.

His jaw tightens, and he speaks before he can stop himself: “Did you really take Mary Margaret to an appointment?”

Ma clenches her hands so hard they quiver. Her gaze breaks, settling somewhere behind his shoulder, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Of course,” she says, spitting the words out like they’re bitter in her mouth, like just saying them hurts. Good.

“You’re lying,” he says, stomach turning and voice on the verge of shaking, “I heard you tell Regina.”

She opens her mouth, but closes it without saying anything. She sighs briefly but heavily, as though the air is suddenly a hundred pounds and just breathing it in requires all her strength. Expression pinched, she finally speaks, and her tone is so, so tired: “I can’t do this right now, Henry. Not now.”

It happens fast—his frustration grows and grows and twists into something that wants to yell and scream and demand to know everything, and his chest burns and anger bubbles inside him like foaming poison—

“Why can’t you just tell me the truth!” He snaps, voice rising, cracking into a shout. She reaches out to touch his arm, but he jerks back, wrenching away from her. “I don’t understand why you keep lying to me!”

“Henry, please—” Her voice cuts off. Slightly wavering, her hands hover where they’d frozen after he pushed her away, hanging, uncertain, in the air.

“I don’t understand,” he breathes, the volume gone. Anger and grief harden and spin together inside him until they weigh heavy, choking him like a stone in his throat. He’s been beating a dead horse, pulling apart his own past like somewhere inside these mixed-up scraps of memories, he’ll find something that makes sense. His shoulders fall and his anger sinks from his mouth to his stomach, and down into the dirt below his feet. “We’re not here because your friend is sick, are we.”

The look on her face says no. Henry wonders if she’ll lie anyway. The rims of her eyes are damp; she looks so torn and pained that he almost feels bad.

“Why’d we come here?” His words beg her to tell him the truth. (And yet some small voice, deep inside, raises the question: are you ready to know?) “Why does everyone here seem like they know me? Why can’t I remember anything that makes sense? What about Mom?”

His face feels tight like he’s going to cry. Growing tears blur the bottom edge of his vision and his chest heaves, trying to catch enough air. Beside him, Regina stumbles back and when he looks at her, her eyes and expression break like he’s hit her in the face and he’s trapped in some sudden, suffocating urge to take it all back, but it’s too late. It’s too late, so he pushes and he keeps pushing.

“If you wanna move on, that’s okay, I promise,” he chokes, turning back to his ma, and she goes pale but he pushes. “But it’s like you knew you would because you took off your ring when we got here and every time I ask about Mom you run away. I wanted to visit her grave because I can’t remember the funeral or the fire or her name. Why can’t I remember her name?”

His last words fall out broken and quiet, not quite a whisper but hushed all the same like he isn’t even sure he wants her to hear them.

“It’s—it’s complicated, Henry . . .” she starts, trailing off helplessly, fixated on his wobbling chin and his arms wrapped tight around his torso. He hisses: “How is that complicated?”

“It just is.” She steps toward him, arms twitching up like she wants to hug him, but he flinches away again, tears slipping from the corners of his eyes.

“Don’t touch me,” he whispers, and the way she shrinks inward makes the anger in him simmer down, twisting into a terrible, sickening kind of remorse he can’t bring himself to voice. He won’t apologize, not like this, not when he doesn’t mean it and when she’s still not telling him anything—when nothing makes sense and he knows she could explain but she won’t.

“There are things I can't tell you yet, but I’m trying Henry, I just don’t know—” he wraps his arms around his head and pulls them tighter tighter tighter until he can see her mouth moving but he can’t hear her. Eventually, she stops. She presses her lips into a thin line and her shoulders slump. Slowly, he lets his arms fall until they’re looped around his neck, hands linked and palms pressed flat around the base of his skull, and he’s shaking. She doesn’t look away, but she doesn’t try to speak. Hesitant and careful, Henry turns his head to meet Regina’s eyes.

Her gaze is steady. Her body quivers like she might crumble any moment, like her body can barely keep her up, but her eyes are soft soft soft and he remembers the growth chart on the doorframe in her bathroom and her son who is lost but not dead, close but far away at the same time. He remembers the collection of games on the bookshelf in her living room with all of his favorites, all worn and loved, and he remembers empty nails where pictures came down, and beautiful, looping handwriting in black ink on white paint: Henry Mills Henry Mills Henry Mills—

Picture frames taken off the walls; his childhood photos burned in the fire he cannot remember. His mom has Regina’s face in the memories he clings to.

“You said you won’t lie to me,” he says. It’s not accusing, but desperate—a request for a truth no one else has been willing to give him.

“Yes,” she says. “I promise, I haven’t.”

“Everyone else is.”

She shakes her head, small and fast like she needs him to believe her. “I won’t.”

“If I ask you something, will you tell me the truth?”

“If it is mine to tell.”

Henry stops. This is where that little voice that says: Do you really want to know? gets louder, aggressive, pounds its fists in his head and demands he listen, but he doesn’t.

“My mom died in a fire.”

Regina’s knuckles are ashen. She’s clasped her hands together, pressing her palms against each other so hard they shake. There’s an ache behind his sternum that’s pressing on his ribs.

“That’s not a question,” she rasps.

“I was there, but I can’t remember. I barely remember her, and it was only last year.”

“Please, Henry.” The pain in her voice echoes inside him. She twists at her fingers, and her dark eyes are wide and glassy and something about the way they show emotion reminds him of himself. Head spinning, Henry studies the way she holds her body, the arch of her forehead and the curve of her jaw. His ma’s hair is pale, wheat field yellow. Unruly, a mess of curls she never even tries to wrangle. Regina’s is dark and brushed neat like his own, and he knows his mom wasn’t the one who gave birth to him but he always took after her more.

He glances down and she’s wringing her hands, held against her stomach, and he does that too, when he’s nervous. He looks up, meeting her eyes that glisten with tears that haven’t fallen, reflecting back at him his own heartbreak, and he knows the answer before he asks:

“Mom?”

#henry mills #regina mills #emma swan #regal believer #swanqueen #ouat #once upon a time #ouat fanfic #fanfiction

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