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kitchenscene · 4 years ago

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four chambers buck/eddie (minor), eddie centric, an analysis of the diaz house, (home is about the people, not the space), 1.6k ______________

Eddie holds his heart in physical spaces. Frames, photo albums, ticket stubs. It’s less about the sentiment and more about the proof, evidence of the better moments, and a tangible reminder that they won’t be the last. He carries an old photo of Chris in his wallet and a yellow sticky note from Buck in the back of his phone case, scratchy, all caps writing — “Had to leave early, didn’t want to wake you up. There’s coffee on the counter for you. See you tonight.” — with a heart scribbled at the bottom. He carries his love outside his chest, but hides it in his pockets, under his shirt, and around his neck.

It’s scattered throughout the living room, his heart is in a comfortable place. The warm brown coffee table and throw pillows on the couch. Soft lights, lamps in every corner. An ash filled fireplace and charred brick, as if to say, “yes, there is life here, believe me when I say there’s life.”

[ao3 link]

Out in the living room, his love is most evident on the bookshelf. Loved ones held not by the hand, but by mahogany frames and canvas wrapped photo albums. Two albums, to be exact. The first is from Texas, from his childhood. Family photos year by year, some members disappearing, new ones flooding in, staying whether they want to or not. Some people who only continue to exist in these four-by-six slots, neatly encased in plastic, notes and dates scribbled over the back.

There’s photos of young Eddie cradling a baby Sophia, photos of Sophia and Eddie with Adriana spread across their laps, and a particularly memorable one of Eddie spoon feeding baby Adri ice cream when a baby her age definitely should not have been eating ice cream. First days of school, weekend trips, and middle school phases he’d rather forget. Newspaper cutouts of his baseball stats, team photos with trophies in hand, and senior pictures of him in his jersey. Team captain. He never really wanted it, but he accepted the offer all the same.

Shannon starts to appear around this time, prom photos together, though she wasn’t his date, just a friend of a friend with some sort of connection. Selfies taken on an old film camera from her mother, candid shots of Eddie, smiling, laughing, free, a side of him kept hidden from everyone but her. A few more photos strangers were kind enough to take for them, some strangers proving to be better photographers than others.

Another family photo, this time with Shannon in frame. Off to the side, attached only by Eddie’s arm around her waist, but in frame all the same.

A sonogram of Christopher before they had a name, engagement photos because that’s what they were supposed to do, and a single wedding picture taken from a courthouse bench.

Shannon still makes herself known in the last few pages, though her and Eddie no longer exist in the same frame. Her and Chris. Him and Chris. Chris alone. He’s off to Afghanistan.

Blank pages, accidentally skipped. A photo of him accepting the Silver Star he never wanted, added to the album despite his better wishes, alongside a handful of army memories he’d rather not look back on.

It’s in his heart, all the same.

The last few pages are filled with the only pictures Eddie took himself. Every one, every single one is of Chris. The time lost in those skipped pages finding its way back into the album, one day at a time. First days of school, weekend trips, and all his childhood interests coming and going in phases.

The second photo album carries his second chances. It’s not a memento from Texas or a gift he’d rather not receive, no. This one he chose all on his own. He chose Los Angeles, he chose Chris, he chose the 118, and with them, he chose a fresh start, a blank page. Family photos of a different kind.

Second page, third slot down, Buck makes himself known. He first exists in Eddie’s heart somewhere along the bottom shelf. Three, four, five pages in, Buck never disappears. In the firehouse, after work, trips to the zoo, he never disappears. Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, he never disappears. The couch, dining room, and kitchen, Buck never disappears.

It always comes back to the kitchen. Before there was a home, there was a kitchen and dirty dishes. Eddie washes the dishes by hand, one by one. Buck sits on the countertop, stacking dried plates, sorting cutlery in the drawers. He leaves every cabinet open — “it’s way more efficient, Eddie,” — and carries three mugs in each hand.

His heart skips in the kitchen. Flinging soap bubbles while rinsing plates, stealing from simmering saucepans on the stove, his breath hitches when Buck swipes a thumb across Eddie’s cheek, brushing away the suds. His breathing stops altogether when his hand lingers a moment too long.

New beginnings are also found in the kitchen, heavy palpitations bleeding from the sink onto the dining table. Anticipation exists between the tiles, melting the glue he’s used to desperately hold himself together. Buck plays music while he cooks, varying from swing to classic rock. On the good days he sings, out of key, but he sings. He whistles along with the guitar or the saxophone or velvety voices he doesn’t dare to replicate. Buck dances too, waiting for songs to end and timers to ring.

Anticipation flooded the room when he asked Eddie to dance along, a soft blues tune playing over the speaker. Hand to the waist, to the shoulder, hand draped in gentle hand. It was an easy choice; Buck leaned in and he leaned back, holding Eddie like he would never have the chance to do it again, kissing him like there was no sweeter air in the world. The first, “I love you,” was breathed against the counter, just above a whisper. “I always have,” followed shortly behind.

The brightest piece of his heart is held in Christopher’s hands. Rainbow carpets and terrariums, posters plastered on every wall, solar systems and galaxies hanging above. Buck pinned the mobile to the ceiling, Earth, Venus, and Mars dancing around each other, glowing as the room fades to black. The planets spin and spin just above his bed. It makes sense, really, that Buck would hang the stars for Chris.

Eddie didn’t decorate his room, unlike the rest of the house. No, the color, the light, the books lining every shelf, all chosen by Chris, constantly shifting as his interest wean and wane. He’s more than willing to provide, because who is he to deny an action figure on the dresser or plant on the windowsill?

His heart is full with Chris. His heart is empty in his bedroom. Everything Eddie has he gives to Chris. (Where else would it go?)

Barren walls and flat sheets. Empty walls, empty frames. Clock on the nightstand, a lamp on either side, nothing more. A dresser, a closet, it’s a bedroom, nothing more. Most days the curtains are drawn. Most days the door is kept shut. It’s best to keep this hidden, best to leave it bare. He had a rug once. Never managed to unroll it.

It functions as a space, that’s all he needs. Eddie sleeps, and sometimes he dreams. Sometimes he wakes in a sweat, sometimes his hands shake until he’s too exhausted to shake anymore. He resorts to self soothing then; counting ceiling tiles that don’t exist and pacing about the room until holes bleed through his socks.

Buck moved from the apartment to the couch, and eventually made his way to the bedroom. They started out two feet apart but always woke together, somehow making contact and swearing it meant nothing. Even in his sleep, he finds his way to Buck. (Of course it means something).

He first kisses Buck in the kitchen. He kisses him again in the bed. His bed, their bed. He sleeps with his head against Buck’s chest, this time with intent, counting beats instead of ceiling tiles as he sleeps, no sweeter lullaby to be heard. He sleeps through the night, no dreams at all. Buck opens the curtain when he wakes up. Eddie leaves it that way.

The changes are subtle at first, and Buck plays it off like it’s all accidental. “Your room has the best sunlight,” he says, moving plants from the kitchen to the dresser. The ivy cascades down the sides and the cactuses bloom in the new light. In the silence, his heart begins to beat again.

Buck covers his own nightstand with receipts and chargers and photos and reminders. “Printed this for myself,” he claims, filling a picture frame with him and Eddie and Chris, “but I made an extra copy.” He leaves it on Eddie’s side of the bed. It’s less and less barren each day.

The rug under the bed is a welcomed addition. Soft and full, Eddie doesn’t question where it came from. A mirror makes its way to the wall. He can count his scars in the reflection; two in the shoulders, one on the hip. Wrist and thigh, hand and head. With each day the sight is more bearable.

Buck ripped off the sheets, the dark navy sheets, and swapped them out for something brighter. He claims they’re softer, claims they’re more breathable, though Eddie knows the truth, the truth being that they’re lighter on his chest and make his heart beat even. One, two, three, he can climb out of bed each morning a little easier.

“Good morning,” Buck whispers, and Eddie, half awake, half dreaming, feels his lips brush against his temple before moving to the kitchen. One beat, two beats, three, he can climb out of bed each morning a little easier.

#nonsense plotless words but hey they're words !!#911 fox #911 #911 fics #911 fic #eddie diaz #the diaz house #evan buckley #christopher diaz #mine:911 #texas.fic

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after-witch · 4 years ago

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Yandere Ransom Imagine

“That's some heavy-duty conjecture.”

Word Count: 2700ish

notes: unhealthy relationships, emotional and physical abuse, financial abuse, yandere

Imagine being a struggling adult working a full time job plus freelancing gigs just to get by in your one-bedroom apartment where the ceiling always leaks when it rains and you have to perform a complicated maneuver to make sure the door doesn’t jam up on you and you’re constantly worried about your landlord raising the rent.

Maybe a well-meaning friend gets you a gift card to an upscale bookstore because they know you haven’t had a new book on your shelves in years, or maybe you find $20 on the street like a veritable Charlie Bucket but instead of buying a Wonka Bar you head into a this fantastic artisan coffee shop on the rich side of town, a place that everyone always raves about on Instagram, just so you can try an expensive latte with hand-ground beans and flavors you’ve never heard of before--because don’t you deserve a treat, for once?

Whatever it is, wherever it is, Hugh Ransom Drysdale is waiting inside and sees you there.

And oh my God is it obvious that you’re out of place right off the bat. I mean, what the hell is someone like you doing in this part of town?

With your worn out clothes that are worn from necessity and not from being fashionably thrifted and your ratty purse stuffed with papers and candy wrappers that spill out when you dig in for your card or cash and your winter boots that you’ve probably worn 5 years in a row, ripped in the hell and patched with black tape that you hope people don’t notice.

It becomes even more obvious that you’re out of your element when something goes wrong. The gift card isn’t activated. The $20? A fake, probably a movie prop that blew in the wind. Whatever goes wrong, it means that you’re suddenly at the register, impatient people with real money tapping their expensive shoes behind you, unable to pay. You’re left standing there like a deer in headlights, unsure of what to do or say.

Normally he might just roll his eyes and remind himself that people like you ought to stick to your own shops, your own place. But something about the way your eyes go all downcast and you seem to shrink down in embarrassment makes him take pity on you. Like a stray cat in the alley hoping someone will toss it some scraps.

So he strides up and flicks out a card and hands it to the cashier, dropping a friendly greeting to them because he spends like crazy and they probably know him by name at this place, and he’s the one who hands you your coffee or your bag and your hands touch ever so briefly during the exchange.

He leads you away from the register--don’t want to piss off the spoiled debutantes and assistants on lunchtime coffee runs--and you stammer out a thank-you-thank-you and you promise you’ll pay him back as soon as you can and Jesus Christ, isn’t that just adorable? Someone like you, some lost kicked puppy who can’t even afford new boots, promising to pay him back?

He doesn’t care if you pay him back, but he finds that he would like something out of this exchange, so he says that instead of paying him back you can do him the honor of going to lunch with him. His treat.

He insists. And you can’t really say no, can you? You are hungry and he did just pay for your things and it’s the least you can do to oblige his request.

He’s not stupid. He doesn’t take you to some razzle dazzle fancy restaurant where you’ll feel embarrassed and out of place. Instead he takes you to a quiet diner, classy not greasy, where you can have an easy conversation and tell him all about yourself.

It’s funny. Normally he brings up his family name, his grandfather’s books, to women he picks up, to get them impressed and hooked and pliable. Something about you, though. Something about you is making him want to turn this into more than a lunch date and pressure for a quickie in the car to repay him.

So he holds back to see what he can do with you on his own. No quickie in the car, but instead before he drops you off--at a bus station, you insisted--he brushes his hand over yours. Can he get your number? He swears he can feel the heat coming off your cheeks as you fumble for your phone and let him put his number in your contacts.

He waits a day, then asks you out again. Dinner, this time. He asks you if you know any good places and you recommend a dive bar that you can go to after work (because 1) schedule and 2) cheap) and shit, he’s all for it. There will be time in the future to impress you with restaurants that have dress codes instead of sticky floors. You sit close on the stools and you buy him a drink (real cute, real real cute) and just for you he keeps the baggie in his pocket there all night instead of heading to the bathroom to liven things up.

Your relationship develops with an almost shocking speed. He knows just how to reel you in. I mean--look at you. Working your ass off at some dead end job, living in an apartment so shitty it takes you almost a month before you reluctantly agree to let him see it.

He can understand, though. Because you’re not that stupid and you know he’s wealthy, even before he casually brings up his family in a “it’s no big deal but I don’t want to keep things from you because we’re getting serious” sort of way.

You pretend to be casual about it all, but he can tell you’re suddenly wondering: why the hell would someone from this wealthy family want anything to do with me?

It’s a question Ransom asks himself a lot. He asks himself this when he’s snorting coke off another woman’s stomach (hey, you’re dating, but he’s got needs and they aren’t met with hand-holding) or when he’s eating another greasy burger at a shitty bar because you refuse to let him buy you a nice dress to wear so he can take you out somewhere fancy.

You’re not the type of person he normally goes for, not at all. He has strings of girlfriends and flings, but they all tend to fit that same cookie cutter mold: wealthy do-nothings with their parent’s credit card who want someone else to spoil them for a while, without caring who it is or what they’re like. They’re easy pickings that Ransom can burn through and then toss aside when he’s bored of them. Some of them cry but a few days later he’ll see them on someone else’s arm, it’s the circle of life.

With you, though, there’s more. You don’t expect him to pay for dates or anything at all (even when he wants to spoil you a bit) and you have actual conversations and you seem to actually give a shit about what he says and does. You argue with him, too, when he wants you to do something (just let him take you shopping, for Christ’s sake!) or he asks you to move in (again) and you say no (again). I mean, you really fight with him, spitting words and all.

And unlike his previous girlfriends, you don’t come crawling back a few hours later because you want to buy a new purse with his shiny credit card. Instead, you make him apologize first. Fuck, that’s hot. It’s also something he tucks away in the back of his mind to work on later--but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t admit that he sometimes has the overwhelming urge to push you against the wall and fuck you for the first time right after a good argument.

But he knows that would destroy your image of him entirely, so he holds back. He’s good at crafting a version of himself that appeals to others when he has to, and you’re maybe the first person that’s been worth all the effort he’s put into you so far.

But you need a push, a push that makes it so you can’t go running back to your shithole apartment when you fight or when you question whether or no you two have a future. You do, you’re just too naive--too inexperienced with money, to say it charitably--to realize it.

So he tips off the fire marshal about your apartment building’s shoddy fire escapes and well, damn, in the process of the investigation all the little corners that your landlord has cut come crashing down. At least they were discovered before it was the building that came crashing down.

But the evacuation of the building leaves you--and countless others--high and dry. You don’t have any family in the area, and your only half ass-decent friend in the city lives in the same building but her parent’s aren’t going to let a stranger move in.

When you finally realize you have no options and call him, voice tentative and embarrassed, he knows just what to say to get you to pack your meager belongings and wait for him to pick you up. He’s no-nonsense about it.

He knows how to avoid deflating your pride, how to keep you from deciding you’d rather stay in a shelter than take his charity. You’ll pay him back, he says, you’ll figure out a rental plan or whatever. He even teases--he’s not the best landlord, but he won’t take 2 weeks to change the toilet if you submit a maintenance request. It makes you crack a smile and bam, just like that, he knows he’s gotten in.

That night, after takeout and wine and a Netflix movie neither of you paid attention to, you fuck for the first time on his expensive sheets on his expensive bed and afterwards, when you’re both sweating and cuddling and reveling in the afterglow, he makes a note to buy you some new lingerie.

It’s all very homey, for a while. He could do without you leaving for work and working your ass off, with your freelance shit, sometimes staying on the computer until two, three in the morning. But it’s nice to have you close all the time, available to him whenever (almost whenever) he wants. He brings home takeout and you snuggle on the couch and he finally even convinces you to go out with him to a nice restaurant wearing something he’s bought and hot damn, do you look good, head-to-toe in the clothing he’s chosen for you. Especially, later that night, in private, in the lingerie.

Does he love you? The word hasn’t left his lips yet, hasn’t crossed yours either, but he can feel it underneath the surface. No. It’s more than love. He wants you. He wants to have you. And not just for the afternoon or the summer, but forever.

He spins daydreams about how he’ll clean you up nice and introduce you to the family. Probably to Harlan, first, because everyone knows that’s whose opinion really matters. Harlan will like you--he would probably like you without any primping or fixing, actually, which is more than he could say for his parents or anyone else in the family. Then once you’re in, you’re in--you’ll come to family dinners and vacation retreats where people always end up in ridiculous arguments, and you two can exchange snarky comments about the family on the ride home.

And yeah, sure. You fight sometimes.

He throws out your old clothes and buys you a wardrobe befitting someone he wants to integrate into his family. You fight about that.

He makes comments about you how you should quit your job or at least try to get a degree--he’ll pay, as long as you agree to go to a university within driving distance--to work somewhere more respectable than a chain restaurant. You fight about that.

He gets pissed when you want to meet some “friends” at a bar without him, because why would you need to go anywhere without your loving boyfriend in tow, unless you were trying to flirt with someone else? You definitely fight about that.

And, okay. Maybe he’s hypocritical.

Maybe he goes out late at night when you’re stuck doing your “freelancing work” and he’s in a rotten mood about it, and he ends up on the floor of a swanky club with drugs in his system and lipstick on his neck. He doesn’t come home until the next morning and you’re pissed and red-eyed and arguing with him, accusing him even, but you have no shitty apartment to stomp back to anymore so you’re stuck.

Until you’re not stuck. Until he casually snoops through your phone and sees that you’re looking up cheap-ass apartments and hey, you’ve already booked a few interviews already. The thought of you slipping through his fingers makes him more sober than he’s been in a while. He’s got to do something. Not to himself, of course. But to you. To keep you with him.

It’s easy enough to get you fired. He’s a ‘Thrombey’ after all, and some nice crisp bills anonymously sent to the right hands is all it takes for you to come home one night, cheap mascara (he notes: buy you some better quality makeup soon) running down your cheeks. Your freelancing isn’t nearly enough to get you into an apartment.

He assumes that you’ll give up on the idea after losing your job, but you’re nothing if not stubborn (one of the reasons why he likes you) so you start the job hunt the next morning, fresh mascara in place.

Damn, do you keep him busy. Anonymous calls. Cash in nice white envelopes. Rejection after rejection. You get so sad, so depressed. You don’t even want to go out to restaurants, so he orders in and you snuggle in his lap while he feeds you bites of orange chicken and rubs your back. It almost brings you two closer again, starts to mend the rifts that began when you refused to get over his occasional late night out.

But then you break the uneasy mending by snooping and woah, you don’t like what you find on his phone.

You fight.

Damn, do you fight. This time there’s no pretense of potential forgiveness as you begin wildly throwing your clothes into your ratty duffel bag from the back of the closet, telling him to fuck off fuck off fuck off, telling him he’s crazy, telling him that what he’s doing is fucking illegal and--

It’s the shock that hurts you the most.

The shock you feel when he grips your wrist hard and pushes back on your shoulder when you try to yank away, pushing you against the wall with a hard thud. It’s like having a rug pulled out from underneath your feet when you feel a slight ache in your back, on your shoulders, when you tell him to Let go, goddamn it and he only pushes back harder to keep you in place. It’s Ransom. It’s Ransom who’s doing this.

His voice feels unrecognizably cold when he leans in and hisses in your ear.

“You think you can just leave me? After all I’ve done for you? Let me tell you something--you won’t get another job within one hundred miles of here, within one thousand miles of here, unless I say you can. So just put your clothes back in the closet, chill the fuck out, and stop being such an ungrateful bitch.”

It’s the shock that makes you numbly hang your clothes back up in the closet, fold them again with shaking hands, and sit on the bed until the dam breaks and you cry.

And oh fuck, he’s sorry. Really. He wraps his arm around your shoulders and then he’s the one who’s crying and confessing that he didn’t want you leave him because yeah, he knows he’s a fuck up, he knows he’s got a drug problem, but he loves you.

It’s the first time he’s ever said it out loud. He loves you. “I love you,” he says, again and again, half-laughing. And he tells you you’re the only person he’s ever dated that made him want to be a better person but he doesn’t know how.

You don’t know what to say because maybe you do love him--but he hurt you and got you fired, but the tears on his face seem so genuine and he tells you he’ll never, ever hurt you like that again and fuck, he says, if you want to go get a job he’ll drive you to the interview right now just-let-him-blow-his-nose-first-please.

You make him sit down and then you’re the one apologizing and the rest of the afternoon is a shaky truce between you two as you drink hot chocolate and order in takeout and watch a movie together.

It’s not until you’re both under the sheets, satisfied and then showered, that you think about what he did to you in a clearer light. The thoughts weigh heavy on your mind, pulling and tugging. You think you might love him. He hurt you. He took care of you when no one else would. He cheated on you.

I love you, he tells you, when your mind is starting to tug itself into sleep.

He hit you. He said he was sorry.

He hit you.

#ransom drysdale #ransom x reader #yandere x reader #afterwitch headcanons #afterwitch writes #I'm not sure what to callt this because it's not a normal fic but it's not headcanons either #just #word vomit about ransom after i watched this movie every day for a week straight

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cappsikle · 4 years ago

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backfired // fred weasley

Pairing: fred weasley x reader

Summary: after a prank gone wrong, fred seeks warmth within your arms

Warnings: not that I can think of! - except that the ending is trash I’m so sorry. Also I can’t tell if I accidentally wrote Fred ooc so I apologise if I did.

Word Count: 1.1k

A/N: this piece is for @weasleysflowr‘s follower celebration!! thank you so much for letting me participating! This is actually my first time joining a celebration or writing event, so I was so stoked to do this! Congratilations on getting 300 followers, you deserve it <3

This took so long that Ayli is actually now at 400 followers!! So another celebration is in order! Congratulations 🥳

Prompts: “i’m not moving, your lap is comfortable” and “is that my sweater (jumper) you’re wearing?”

tags: @ryeryemilani @a-little-too-much just ask to be added!

Please reblog and comment!

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If there was one thing that could put a dampen on Fred’s day, it would be a prank gone wrong, and that’s exactly what happened. It was quite a shame, really, as both Fred and George had worked really hard on this particular prank. Everything was set perfectly, all the ingredients had been gathered, and everyone was in their proper place. That was, until Snape came looking for Filch claiming there to be an emergency. By the time the twins realised that Snape was in the place the prank was set to place, it was too late, leaving the seething professor covered in a sticky green goo, smelling like a dung bomb. They would’ve laughed, as the sight was quite humorous, but that victory was very short lived when Snape caught sight of them, immediately appointing them two months of detention.

Usually, the twins weren’t ones to care if they got detentions, but they had received two months, with Snape, no less. Yeah, Fred was in a foul mood. That's how he found himself trudging his way back the common room with hunched shoulders, a frown set deep on his face. George broken off the path to go find Lee to explain how badly the prank backfired. Fred was ready to just collapse on the couch and sulk for the rest of the day, not having any energy to keep up with the evening activities. That was his plan, but all thoughts of brooding left his mind when he walked through the portrait hole and saw you there, sitting curled up on the couch with a book in your hands.

Fred stopped at the entrance and took a moment to admire you, and the way the fire reflected off your face to the point where you looked like you were glowing. He took notice of the way your eyes skimmed across the pages, practically being able to see as the words you were so invested in sunk into your brain. He watched as you bit your plump lips in anticipation at a particularly exciting part of the story. And lastly, he took notice of the knitted jumper sat upon your shoulders, his knitted jumper. Suddenly, all feelings of frustration and defeat left his body, replaced with a more happier and lighter feeling. His heart thudded against his chest as butterflies swarmed in his stomach. Fred loved seeing you wearing his clothing.

You still hadn’t noticed Fred watching from the side, too engrossed in the story playing out in your mind. You were just getting up to the climax of the story, your heart racing as you impatiently read over the words. But you were interrupted when you heard someone clear their throat, followed by, “is that my jumper you’re wearing?” your head snapped up in alert at the source of the voice, your heart chattering for a different reason. Your cheeks filled with warmth at Fred’s words, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear in embarrassment.

Fred smirked at your flustered state watching your movements closely as you close your book and smile sheepishly at him. “Uhm... no...?”

“Are you lying to me?”

You hesitated for a second, finally coming clean with a sigh, “...yes”. you looked down at your lap sheepishly. In all honesty, you knew he wouldn’t mind, claiming on various occasions that he preferred to see you in his clothing. However, you took it upon yourself to sneak into his dormitory and steal this jumper right from his trunk.

Fred smiled to himself at your confession, opting to tease you more because, well, that’s who he is. But before he could get another word in, you perked up again, a glint of mischief present in your eyes as you asked, “So? How did the prank on Filch go?” And just like that, his sour mood had returned at the remembrance of the failed prank. Fred’s smile dropped from his face, carrying himself to the couch and practically flinging himself to sit.

He glanced at your lap, moving his arm to take one of your hands in his, just wanting to feel the comfort he usually felt when holding your hand. He took a moment to just admire how small and soft your hand was compared to his. You linked your fingers together, sensing that something wasn’t quite right. A look of concern passed your features briefly as Fred let out a groan, whining in frustration. “It didn’t go well. Snape came out of nowhere and told Filch he was needed elsewhere, which ended up in the prank going off on him. We’ve got two months detention now!”

You nod in understanding, lifting your free arm to run your fingers through his soft hair. In front of the fire, it was almost like his red locks had lit aflame. “I’m sorry your plan backfired, love. But two months detention isn’t that bad compared to what it could’ve been!” You tried to sound hopeful, wondering if your words had any effect on his mood, but you realised that probably wasn’t the best thing to say as Fred gave you an incredulous look.

“Please, enlighten me! How could have this ended any worse?”

You sat and pondered for a moment, not actually being able to come up with another option. “Ok, you’re right. It couldn’t have.”

“Seriously?!” you giggled at Fred as he bent down to lean his head on your lap, pressing his face into your knees. “You’re no help, you know that?”

You knew he was joking, and you couldn’t help but laugh at his behaviour. “Just think, both you and George will come up with an equally as good prank, one that won’t fail on you, and you’ll be out of detention in no time.” you brought your hand down to his head again, raking your fingers through his locks, lightly scratching his scalp with your nails as you do so.

Fred sighed deeply at the sensation, your fingers causing delightful shivers to run down his body. His favourite thing ever was when you played with his hair, and while he’s never admitted that he gathered you already knew. He didn’t respond to your last statement, preferring to just sit in silence, the only sound that could be heard was the cackling of the fire and each of your slow and steady breaths. After a moment or two of Fred laying in your lap and you opening your book again, he broke the silence, “oh, and by the way, I’m not moving, your lap is comfortable.”

You smiled to yourself as you turned a page, returning your hand to his head, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Fred shifted his body, so the back of his head was against your legs, and his face was facing towards the ceiling. He brought the hand in his hair to his lips, kissing your knuckles as you put your book down. “You know I love you, right, love?”

You smiled again and leaned down to connect your lips with his before mumbling against them, “and I love you too.”

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I hope you all enjoyed this! Don’t forget to like, reblog and comment!

- Mills <3

#fred weasley x reader #fred weasley x you #fred weasley imagine #fred weasley #soft fred #fred weasley fanfiction #harry potter #harry potter imagine #harry potter fanfic #weasley twins #weasleysflowr300wc #writing challenge #weasleysflowr

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dailydaydreamings · 4 years ago

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Best in the Worst Way, Chapter 10

Okay, I might have taken out some inner rage on this one. It mentions some pretty heavy stuff, like trauma and violence. There’s a big argument about sexuality. This one flips back and forth between the night the reader sleeps with the boys (chapter 5) and their mission. I’m seriously gonna try to lighten things up, pinky swear. Please enjoy ;) —K

The Reader has been having a love affair with two Avengers and gets caught in a sticky situation. She’s suddenly faced with life decisions she’s not prepared for, including who to love, what she wants, and is this all worth it?

1 Year Ago

“What the hell happened last night,” you demanded, pacing back and forth in Steve’s room.

After waking up beside a very naked Steve and Bucky after last nights party, you sprung from bed, starling both boys awake. Bucky was now sitting on the lounge next to Steve bed, his head in his hands. Steve laid against his headboard looking perplexed.

“I’m pretty sure you asked us to have sex with you,” Bucky said, running his hand down his face. He looked like he had the world worst hangover. “I remember thinking, yeah that’s a great idea. But I don’t remember when it turned into a threesome.”

You frowned, “I thought you couldn’t get drunk.”

Steve shook his head, “We were drinking that stuff that Thor brings. I think we drank a lot of it.”

Bucky suddenly lurched forward, looking very green, “This is my first hangover since the 40s’, I might hurl. Don’t bring that stuff up again.”

You closed your eyes, they were useless. “Just to confirm, we had sex? I don’t remember anything after the gala.”

Steve nodded, “Yeah we definitely did...”

You groaned, “For shit’s sake, I’ve wanted to have sex with the two of you for a year and I can’t even remember it! Was it good?”

Bucky turned his head to look at you sideways, “First of all, how are you not hungover? You were pounding them back faster than us without enhancements. Second, YOU wanted to have sex with BOTH of US?”

You purged your lips, poor choice of words, but you would stand behind it. “I have excellent genes, first of all. To your second question, I really didn’t apcare which of you I had sex with last night, as long as it was one of you. I really wasn’t expecting sex with TWO of you!” And honestly, it was relieving to know you had had sex with both of them and you still didn’t have to choose.

Bucky nodded, almost like he respected what you were saying. Like he too had had a couple of nights waking up in a predicament like this. But now that you thought about it, for all of the male Avengers, there were only four you had never had to get their one nightstands to sign non-disclosure: Tony, Bruce, Scott, and Bucky. You’d even had to escort out one of Steve’s flings three months ago. You remembered a particular feeling of joy watching her sign the document, knowing she would never be returning.

But not Bucky, everyone else was having sex or had a reason not to be. There was no way he was a virgin, was there?

“You’re being awfully quiet,” Bucky interrupted your musing, directing his comment at Steve. “Nothing to say?”

Steve was looking both confused and pissed. Totally conflicted as to which emotion should take precedent. You watched his hands twisting in the sheets uncomfortably, “Its just that I’d never...you know...”

You and and Bucky exchanged a quick glance. “No,” you said. “We don’t?”

Steve rolled his eyes, and then whispered, “Never had sex with...” and then he coughed pointedly.

Frowning you asked, “More than one person at a time?”

Steve started to say something when Bucky stood, crossed his arms, and said, “No, he means he’s never had sex with a guy before.”

Steve’s sheepish look downward said enough.

Attempting to resolve some of the tension, you waved a hand, “It’s so not big deal, Steve. I’ve had sex with women. Sometimes it just happens, you know?”

Steve’s eyes snapped up to you, his jaw locking, “I’m not that guy. I’m not gay.”

“You weren’t exactly straight last night either,” Bucky snapped. You looked between the two of them, what happened last night. There was history here too, something you were missing.

You held up your hands defensively, “I never called you gay, Steve. I mean, there was still a woman involved last night, I’m assuming.” You looked at Bucky for clarity, he nodded. “I’m just saying, it’s okay. You don’t need to feel ashamed.”

Steve glared at the two of you, “Yeah, well, it’s never happening again.”

———

Bucky hated to admit it, but going on a mission with Steve was easy.

After the plane ride north, very far north, full of glares and silence, it was like slipping into a glove. No matter how angry they were with each other, they still worked well together. They had to when danger was involved. They were professional, afterall.

Even spare time in the safe house, at first it was cold and awkward, but the very first night, Bucky had a nightmare. He woke screaming to find Steve upstanding over him, shaking him gently. Before Bucky could say anything, Steve climbed into bed beside him, and wrapped an arm around Bucky, like how Bucky needed after a bad nightmare.

And so, things went back to how they used to be, slowly. Bucky made breakfast in the morning and Steve said, “Did you really love Bridgerton or was it just me?”

Bucky smirked, crisping up the bacon, and said, “We watched the whole season in one weekend.”

The thing about this mission, it was boring. There wasn’t a lot of action, just waiting in case it happened on the basis of a really good tip, apparently. Bucky was seriously beginning to think it was a load of crap.

So, during the days they did recon, and when they could, they hung out and caught up at the safe house. At first, it was like old times, pre-relationship. Your name didn’t come up once, they didn’t talk about the babies. Bucky terrified to bring it up and burst whatever bubble they had created.

Then, Bucky was making dinner one night, and Steve walked up behind him and kissed the back of his neck...one thing led to another and they found themselves wrapped in sheets, lazing a couple of hours later. Bucky had an arm over his head, watching the still ceiling fan and he muttered, “What the hell, Steve?”

Steve propped himself up on his elbow to observe Bucky, “What do you mean?”

Bucky glared at him, “You know what I mean. Y/n tells us she’s pregnant. You go awol. You ask her to leave me and get an abortion. You see the babies, you want back into our lives. You spend weeks wooing her and ignoring me. And now what?”

Steve sighed, “I just, I can’t see her being part of my life any more, Buck. She doesn’t want me. And I don’t want to lose you, you’re my best friend and I love you. And I want these babies, and I don’t know, I guess the last couple of days, playing house...I just got thinking, we could raise these kids, together.”

Bucky sat up in bed, quickly at that. Was Steve really asking what Bucky was thinking, for him to leave you and raise the twins without you?

“First of all, that’s never going to fucking happen,” Bucky snapped, reaching for his shirt on the floor. “I’d never leave her and you’d never play the part of the gay guy, I know you. You can’t be who you are.”

Steve rolled his eyes, “And you’d be okay playing the throuple game? You really think people would be okay with that? Captain America and the Winter Soldier in, what did y/n call it? The super secret super soldier threesome?”

Bucky shook his head, reaching for his pants now. “Captain America,” he mused. “How far you’ve come, huh? Rather by the gay guy than a throuple? Do you know how shitty that would make y/n feel? Or how that makes me feel? You only wanted her back so you two could be the good American couple and you could have the babies in peace. Am I right?”

Bucky stood and saw Steve lowering his eyes. “Un-fucking-believable.”

Steve’s eyes snapped up to meet Bucky’s. “The two of you were always preaching to me it was my journey with how I wanted to come out as bi. Or if I wanted to come out. Maybe I don’t want to. It’s not up to you to shame me for my choices.”

Bucky just shook his head, “I’m just disappointed you don’t love us enough to try.”

———

1 Year Ago

The compound had a Starbucks, it was honestly a godsend. You got coffee there most of the time and it was the best place to get someone talking. Which is why, when you got a text from Bucky asking you to talk, you suggested it.

“What did you want to talk about?” You broached, sipping at your chai tea latte.

Bucky looked down at his plain, black coffee. “You’re the only one who knows what happened with Steve...and I just figured you might be the person to talk about...sex with?” He looked up at that, an eyebrow quirked slightly.

Steve had been avoiding the two of you in the week since the gala. It was just awesome, you loved the silent treatment.

To Bucky, you answered, “I’m more than comfortable talking about sex.” And you were probably a little too comfortable, if you were being honest with yourself, but Bucky didn’t need your detailed kill list.

Bucky nodded, “I figured, no offence.” You shrugged it off. “It’s just, I wanted to have sex with you ever since I met you. Honestly, I wanted more than sex, but this is where we are. Sex is not an easy thing for me...ever since, you know..everything.”

You reached across the table and gently took his hand. He cleared his throat, pointedly looking around. “The thing is, I’ve been in love with Steve since we were kids.”

Oh, you thought. That wasn’t what you were expecting him to say at all. You were totally expecting some speak about being a virgin.

“Oh,” was all you managed to say aloud too, apparently. You kicked yourself internally for your awkwardness. “Okay...Bucky, I’m so sorry then.” You suddenly started to remember Steve’s reaction. He was pissed about having sex with another guy when he’d woken up beside them.

Bucky ducked his head, “I wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction from him. I hoped, that maybe, finally, he would...”

You placed a hand on your breaking heart, “He would feel the same,” you finished and Bucky nodded.

You looked down at your own drink, trying to think of the best thing to say. “I don’t know anything about being in love with another girl. I’m attracted to both but I’ve always loved men. I do know what it’s like to love someone so much it hurts, and to desperately want them to see you. I once kissed a guy I loved so much in front of everyone we knew, thinking it was some big romantic gesture, only to find out he had a girlfriend and I was the last to know.”

Bucky cracked a smile at that.

“Love sucks,” you concluded.

Bucky leaned back, running a hand through his hair. “I hate feeling like I’m losing my best friend.”

You nodded, “He’ll come around. Either to accept you as first friend again, or to see things from your point of view.”

Bucky fiddled with his fingers slightly as he said, “Steve’s always been the more proper one. He follows the rules. I think he can accept me, but I can’t see him ever loving me like I love him.”

You reached across the table, one more time to wrap both your hands around his, “How do you know if you don’t talk to him?”

———

“Fuck you, Bucky!” Steve shouted, following Bucky out of the bedroom. “I’m offering you everything you’ve ever wanted.”

Bucky stormed into the kitchen, he wasn’t quite sure where he was going, but it couldn’t involve Steve. He started searching for his cost as he snapped, “What I want has changed. I want her and you, this isn’t an either or situation.”

Steve slammed a hand into the counter, “You just want her because she’s having your baby. Admit it, if I’d offered you this before she got pregnant you would have jumped ship in a heartbeat.”

Bucky paused, sending a death glare at Steve. “What the fuck. I love her, Steve,” he said it almost calmly now. “Baby or not, I love her. She is the best part of my day, my biggest supporter, and takes my breath away every time I see her. I wouldn’t have jumped ship because the terms of our relationship involved three of us, not just you and me. She wasn’t my way to get to you, she as an independent part of this relationship.”

Steve’s face crumpled, as he leaned forward to press his face against the counter. “I don’t know how to do this, Buck. I thought I had everything when I went back to Peggy. I thought this life was over. I didn’t expect everything to just get harder.”

Bucky placed his hands in his hips. “Why do you make it so much harder than it has to be? My god, Steve, you were the skinny kid dying to go to war. You fought Hydra almost singlehandedly. You stood up to Tony Stark for me. And you’re afraid to let the world know you’re in a relationship with a man and a woman.” Steve flinched at those words. “Steve, babe, do you know how much joy you are keeping from yourself by being so afraid?”

Steve looked up, there were tears shinning in his eyes.

But Bucky wasn’t done, “You’re right Steve, this is your journey. If you don’t want to come out, that’s fine. You can be the cool uncle who hangs out all the time, or you can have shared custody and we’ll tell everyone I started sleeping with her later. But we could have a truly amazing life together, if you were just willing to give this thing a try.”

Steve clapped his hand together, a pained look on his face as he said, “Do you know what keeps me up at night, Buck? Any and every single story on the news about people getting beat to death for being gay or trans or different. It keeps me awake, I can see their faces. I can see their pain. Big old Captain America doesn’t have nightmares about Thanos or Ultron, but that. We as a species are so terrible to each other that we kill people because they choose to love.”

Bucky had tears running down his face. Steve’s jaw was clenched so tight he thought it might shatter. Bucky finally said quietly, “I didn’t know that, Steve.”

Steve reached up and aggressively wiped a tear away. “I just want to hide away and be happy together. I know we’re safe at the compound, I know we can defend ourselves. But what if some guy just decided to shoot you or y/n because you’re in some “abnormal” relationship?

Bucky reached for him then, “Babe, we can’t stop any of that from happening. But we can trust that we are well equipped to handle ourselves and take care of y/n and the babies. We can be okay. We can have a happy life, I promise.”

Steve let loose a long sigh and reached for Bucky. Their embrace was short lived, but for a second it was everything they needed. It said more than a thousand words could. It healed.

And then the explosion rocked the house.

———

After what could only be described as the world’s longest day of work, you hobbled towards your bedroom. You were so ready to get out of this stupid work dress and put on some sweats.

In your closet, you stripped down to nothing, and caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. At 18 weeks, with twin super soldiers babies, you looked huge. You remembered when your friends had started getting pregnant, they hadn’t been nearly as big, and you were only going to get bigger.

You flattened your hand against your stomach, bringing it to cradle your bump. “Hello, little ones,” you mused, “you’ll be here soon enough. I guess that means mommy needs to stop waiting for daddy to make up your nursery, huh?”

You looked yourself in the mirror, suddenly feeling rediculous. It wasn’t like you were really expecting an answer, were you? You were getting way too used to silence.

As you were pulling on your seats though, you felt a slight flutter. You paused. You’d felt some movement, but this was definitely a kick.

Shaking in disbelief, you hobbled towards your bed, sitting down on the white bedspread, spreading your hands on either side of your belly.

“Okay, guys, I know you can hear me. Give mommy another kick, please.”

Nothing.

You gave your stomach a poke, “Come on, guys. Just one little kick for your mommy.”

Then you felt a nice, sharp kick by your ribs. Letting go a sharp breath, you smiled, “Nice one. Oh my god, your daddy is going to be so upset he missed this.”

You laughed. Because your babies were kicking, and they were kicking hard. And suddenly your bedroom seemed so much bigger and lonelier. And it wasn’t just Bucky who was missing this, it was also Steve. Who had just as much a right to feel these babies kick.

You wrapped an arm around your middle, solemnly, “When your daddies get home,” you emphasized the plural, “you’re gonna kick up a storm for them, okay? No matter how mad mommy is.”

So you started your nightly routine, you made dinner and watched a show and read your book. You were washing your face when your phone rang. Tony’s name flashed across the top.

You answered it on speaker, “Hey, what’s up?” You reached for your serum and started rubbing it in.

“You’re gonna need to come into the compound, right now.” Tony said from the other end.

You raised an eyebrow. No fucking way. You were going to bed, you were dressed for bed. You had a rough day already, anything else could wait till morning.

“Tony, you have given me scrap about taking it easy and sleeping and nothing working rediculous hours. It is ten o’clock on a Wednesday. I am going to bed.”

“Y/n,” Tony’s voice softened and you paused. “I need you to come in right now.”

You picked up your phone, pressing the FaceTime button. Suddenly you were face to face with a sheepish looking Tony Stark. You took a second to observe his face before saying, “Which one of them is dead?”

Tony let out a long breath and your heart constricted.

No, no, no. This could not be happening. Not on such a good night.

Tony finally said, “They’re not dead. Either of them.”

Suddenly you were on the floor, on a sob bubbling in your throat. Oh, thank god. Nothing else matter, they weren’t dead.

“Y/n, they’re in bad shape though,” Tony’s voice now sounded very, very far away. You tried to focus in on what’s he was saying, but all you could think was, they’re not fucking dead. “Y/n, they’re hurt and being transferred here and they’re asking for you.”

Tags

@booktease21 @sexyvixen7 @just-the-hiddles @fading-mentality-bouquet @a--1--1--3 @broco8 @yougottalovefandoms @hailqueenconquer @tazzi-baby @imaginebeinlovedbyme @amiets2 @prettyblueskylark

#steve x pregnant!reader #bucky x steve x reader #steve x reader #bucky x pregnant!reader #bucky x reader #stucky x pregnant!reader #stucky x reader #stucky #pregnant reader

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kaiparker-avengerssmut · 4 years ago

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CURSED: CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“‘Cuz Parents aren’t always right”

Kai Parker x OC!Mack Grace

Series synopsis: "We're both cursed, in a way."

We all know the story of Kai Parker, but he once lived in a very different life. Do you ever wonder what that life looked like?

Chapter summary: not ever ending is good o guess

Warnings: violence, so much fuckin’ violence, blood, use of spells for torture, swearing I think, death

A/n: last chapter! Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed this fanfic!!

Masterlist | series Masterlist

Paralysed, aching, vulnerable, crushed, tormented, dejected. Kai stood frozen in place, unable to move from the spot - feeling as heavy as lead, as empty as a dead man's eyes, as broken as the promises he had made. Time seemed to stand still as the boy watched the little red car drive away, it's silhouette only getting smaller and smaller as it drove further and further down the tarmac rode.

Then reality hit him. A sound of anguish tore from Kai, a heart-clenching sound that bounced menacingly off the street, filling the once-silent area with the noise of his sadness. It's stung is vocal chords, strained his mouth and rattle off his teeth.

Then it went quiet again.

His solemn footsteps filled the quiet night with a melancholy vibration as he paced quickly to his scratched-up car. He'd need to fix that - the damage could become suspicious. Getting inside, he started up the engine and drove off with little hesitation, desperate to get home and possibly hit something.

Kai bit back a wince at the sight of the crumpled up empty packet of pork rinds lazing on the passenger's seat, his mind flashback to every time Mack would make a sound of disgust whenever he'd start chewing obnoxiously on one. He quickly swiped his tears from his damp cheeks before focusing back on the road, gravel crunching meticulously under his tyres, the wet sound of the sticky tarmac the only noise accompanying the purr of the Jeep's engine.

Suddenly, Kai slammed the brakes so hard he was jerked forward in his seat, chest aching against the tight strain of his seatbelt. Kai gathered himself quickly, unbuckling himself and getting out of his car. With fast paces, he walked towards Ian's car that was laying abandoned at the side of the road - empty.

Kai walked around the car, vexing down to peer inside the windows yet he saw nothing. He stood back up, hands fisting his hair as he let out a frustrated groan. That's when he noticed the car keys strewn carelessly in the glistening grass. Kai's eyes blew wide, he picked them up and clicked the button.

Yellow-orange lights flashed from the red car.

"No no no." Kai muttered, yanking the driver's door open and rooting through the glovebox, the pouches on the back of seats, the boot, anything - not really knowing what he was looking for. A small, silver glint caught his eyes from the grass again - next to where the keys had been. Kai was quick to investigate, picking up the silver watch crested with the unmistakably Gemini symbol beneath the ticking hands.

Kai threw the piece of jewellery roughly at a nearby tree, letting out a shout of rage before he was running back to his car and jumping in - not even bothering to put on his seatbelt before he was driving at 100 miles an hour towards his house.

...

A groggy state filled Mack's clouded mind, a metallic rattling noise colliding with her ears like nails on a chalk board - jolting her sore body awake. Her head was hung low, toes dancing precariously on the gritty stone floor and arms strung up above her by long, thick chains. She was acutely aware of the persistent throbbing on the left side of her head, along with the stabbing pain echoing across her cheek. What she couldn't figure out was what caused them.

The second one was answered quickly.

"Wake up, girl!" A sharp voice boomed. "Fucking spells." The same voice muttered quietly after, the sound of footsteps fading away caressing Mack's ears painfully. A drawn-out groan tumbled from her lips, the sound of footsteps getting louder again. A pointed gasp escaped her as rough, strong fingers dug into her jaw, tilting her head upwards until she was looking into dark brown eyes.

"J-Joshua?" She croaked, voice shattered from her drowsy state. The man's lips curled into a menacing smirk, a dangerous flame flicking in his eyes. "What am I doing here?"

"All in good time, sweetheart. We just need to wait for my abomination of a son to arrive and the party can get started." Joshua spoke, a malevolent glint in his tone that made Mack sick to her stomach. He wasn't the good guy in this situation, and she definitely wasn't safe.

"W-what do you mean 'get started'" she stuttered out, eyes blown wide with fear as the man stalked around her - like a predator hunting its prey. A dark chuckled filled the tiny shed.

"You'll soon find out, my dear. No need to worry yourself, yet." Joshua cooed sinisterly in her ear, body looming behind Mack's and sending a crawling shiver up her spine that made the girl's entire body quake with terror.

"Joshua!" Mack gasped at the loud shout of Kai's voice, muffled by the creaky walls of the little shed. "Joshua get out here!" Kai bellowed and the feeling of Joshua's breath on the back of Mack's neck as he let out another deep, dark chuckled made the werewolf want to vomit.

"Show time." The witch murmured, an evil smirk gracing his thin lips.

A shrill scream ripped from Mack's throat, right knee buckling slightly but her hanging frame was kept up high but the ever-rattling manacles, causing a burning pain to spark in her upper torso where her body stretched. Mack didn't dare look, her eyes clenched shut as the pain climbed up her leg and through her body, head pounding.

"KENZ!" Kai boomed, the little, flimsy door of the shed flinging open, crashing into the weak wood behind it and shaking some of the shelves lining the walls. There he stood, panting and shaking with anger, eyes dark with an unreadable cloud as he stared at Mack's tear-stained face and the sight of his father stood with a smug smirk behind her.

"Nice of you to join us, Malachai." Joshua finned malevolently, another pained scream echoing from Mack as she felt a searing, sharp pain stabbing through her left arm. The burn didn't leave, the bones being torn apart by the harsh binding.

"Stop!" Kai shouted. "Leave her alone!"

"I don't think I will." Joshua smirked. "You see, I think you need to be taught a lesson. Ever since this girl has come into your life it's been nothing but trouble - mixing with werewolves, steeling magic...I might just have to lock you up." Joshua said, almost sing-songy towards the end. "But I'll start with getting rid of her." Joshua spat, just as three bones broke in Mack's body.

Her ear-piercing screams and pleas brought a siege of tears to Kai's eyes, but an amused glint to his father's.

"Why are you doing this to her." Kai demanded.

"To show you the monster she really is." Joshua said sternly, muttering a spell under his breath to speed up her transition.

"P-please! Make it stop! I can't take it anymore, please stop!" Mack cried, voice shattered with exhaustion and pain.

"Stop it! Just- take me instead! Punish me! Not her," Kai pleaded, eyes pooling with tears once again.

"Boy, don't you see that I already am? By hurting her I am hurting you much more." Joshua confirmed. When Mack looked up again, her eyes were rimmed with gold.

"Stop it!" Kai shouted. Joshua laughed darkly.

And then Mack was truly changing.

Joshua used his powers to disconnect the thick chains from the ceiling, instead rooting them to the concrete floor. And when he was finished, a wolf stood in Mack's place.

"Time for the grand finale." Joshua smirked, hand raising. "Phasmatos superous em animi..."

The pained whimpers of the wolf made Kai wince and Joshua laughed mockingly at him.

"Don't tell me you feel bad for it, Malachai?" Kai raised his head with anger storming in his eyes, yet he was helpless. The whimpering had stopped, the wolf's body still. A shift happened in Mack, her shaking body reverting back.

Kai was quick to rush to her side, arms wrapping around her and cradling Mack's body to his.

"I've got you, I'm here, Kenz. Please- please just come back to me, please." Tears dropped onto her cheeks, a salting sheen over her sweat covered skin and she slowly blinked awake.

A smile broke out on Kai's face, but it was soon replaced by a fearful grimace as her strained voice filled his ears.

"I love you, Kai. With all me heart. Remember that." Mack's lifeless eyes bore into the ceiling, shining with a gloss of tears, but lacking the glint of life they usually held.

Kai's lip trembled uncontrollably, wobbling as his grip on her body slowly loosened. He didn't even get to tell her he loved her one last time...

"I'm done!" Kai's voice bellowed, his tear stained face ripping away from Mack's limp body, rolling lifelessly from his lap and dropping to the stone-cold floor. Kai slowly raised to his feet, head raising. He looked straight into Joshua's eyes as he spoke, clearly. "Do you hear me!?" He continued, noting the way Joshua's throat bobbed as he sealed thickly, trying to contain the fear he suddenly felt for his son. "I lost everything! You made me lose everything!" Kai boomed, rage written over his features as he spun to face his father, face red.

Kai advanced on Joshua, hands fisting the older man's shirt collar tightly as he pushed him up against the gritty stone wall. Kai looked into his father's eyes as he spoke, heavy breaths panted between them as Joshua cracked - showing his first sign of fear towards his son since the first time he saw Kai siphon.

"And you will regret everything you ever did to me."

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delimeful · 5 years ago

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to taste your beating heart (3)

Ao3 Link | chapter 1 | chapter 2 |

warnings: blood, hypnosis, tragic backstories, tension, arguing

The oven’s beeping was what alerted him.

They’d installed a safety feature in the little panel of knobs and buttons that would chirp loudly if the oven was left on past an hour. It had been Virgil’s idea, after Patton’s forgetfulness caused one too many close calls.

“I’d like our house to stay not burned down, thanks,” he’d said in that wry tone of his. Patton had been too busy delighting in the fact that he’d referred to them all as a unit, a team, to be offended about the jab at his absentminded nature.

Logan snapped the cover of the book he was holding shut, feeling hot irritation run through him as he forced the memory away. Did Patton really think it was appropriate to burn a batch of cookies now, of all times?

Of course, when he strode into the room and found the oven empty but for a tray of cooling cookies with a sticky note atop it, he changed his tune rather abruptly.

Went to go feed V! Don’t panic, have a cookie! - Pat <3

Logan muttered profanity under his breath as he retrieved one of his crossbows from the closet and hurried down the stairs. They had to be stuck down there, Virgil— the vampire likely free of the chair but locked in the room, now with the advantage of a hostage.

He got to the bottom of the stairs and stopped dead, staring at Patton sitting in the chair casually, no vampire in sight.

Unless Patton hadn’t bothered to lock the door behind him, because of course he didn’t. Logan growled, checking once more to make sure Patton was the only one in the room before flinging the bolt free and the door open.

“Patton, you cardigan-clad clod—”

He pulled up short at the haze in his partner’s eyes. The blood splattered on the floor. Thralled.

Immediately, he stepped back, holding the crossbow in a guard position. He desperately didn't want to have to hurt Patton, but with the man’s already considerable strength enhanced by thrall magic, he’d have to use a weapon to stand a chance.

Patton didn’t move, head tilted just slightly. “It’s... okay, Lo. M— he didn’t order me to attack you guys.”

Logan carefully lowered his bow, remembering the vampire’s earlier facade, but… this was Patton. Of all of them, he was the most experienced with thralls, and the fact that he was speaking was a good sign. His mental strength was enough that if he was commanded to deceive them, he would simply stay silent instead.

He rushed over, placing a hand on Patton’s shoulder to ground him. He floundered for words for a moment, throat clogged. Logically, he knew the vampire did not have Virgil’s memories and couldn’t have known. Illogically, his body still felt the betrayal like a physical blow.

“It’s okay, Lo,” Patton offered again, leaning his head into the hand on his shoulder. “It’s a really gentle one. I still feel… all-me. Promise.”

The reassurance meant more than it would coming from any other vamp victim. When they had first met Patton, he’d been under thrall on and off for long enough that he had learned how to function almost-normally, enough that he was able to give them vital hints to the truth of the case they’d been working on.

He’d almost died for his disobedience, and it was only through severing the thrall bond that they were able to save him. Even then, the mental backlash had been severe. Patton had been dazed and blank for weeks afterwards, sometimes unable to function unless one of them was right there with him, guiding him step by step.

Virgil had been so protective of him. And now…

Logan nodded, clearing his throat once, and then again. “Can you stand?” he asked when he was sure his voice wouldn’t do anything strange.

“Mmmhm.” Patton kicked his feet out and hopped up from the chair, nearly falling over before Logan steadied him. He was still holding one hand over the other wrist tightly.

“Your artery—“ he started, alarmed.

“No veins, he only took a little bite of blood,” Patton reassured him, a pleased grin on his face at the pun. “Can’t move my hand… he said to pressurize it.”

“Ah,” Logan said, a bit taken aback. “Very good. Not the pun, that was very bad. Follow me?”

Patton paused at the threshold of the room, before stepping carefully over without any twitching or other indicators of pain. “Told me to stay first, buuut then he tried to summon me, so... it cancels out, I think.”

Such circular logic was Patton’s main tool for subverting thrall orders. If the vamp had gotten out and then called Patton… Logan felt a bit smug. “The hawthorn must have caught him unawares.”

Patton chuckled. “Silly.”

Logan paused briefly to turn off the oven before cautiously making his way to the front door, sending Patton a curious glance. He screwed his face up in concentration for a moment, and then pointed a finger up towards the ceiling slightly to their left. The roof, then.

Taking a deep breath, he strode out onto the lawn and did an about-face to scan the roof. Sure enough, he quickly spotted those eerie eyes glowing in the shadow of their chimney.

Virgil— the vampire stiffened, body coiling like a spring set to snap before stilling at the sight of Patton trailing behind Logan. He glanced between the two of them incredulously, and then focused on Patton, jerking his head to where their lawn met the road purposefully. Issuing a mental command.

Logan’s worried gaze turned on Patton immediately, but all the man did was twist to look over at the hawthorn bushes and then back at the vampire with a pleading frown. His movements weren’t even stilted, a testament to how easily he had shaken off the command.

“I don’t wanna ruin all your hard work, kiddo!” he called up, making the vampire’s face twitch into an expression Logan only saw on Virgil when he was trying to calculate the tip or a woman hit on him: bewilderment.

Attempting to distract the vampire from increasing the intensity of the order, he stepped forwards. “Get off the roof, Virgil.”

A flash of pain on the vamp’s face, gone as soon as it appeared. “Not gonna happen,” he replied, the edge of a snarl in his voice.

“Are you planning on taking up residence there, then?” Logan raised an eyebrow, glancing up at the grey sky. “I imagine that cloud cover won’t last forever.”

“I imagine you’ll have fun watching your friend’s body burn to a crisp,” the vampire shot back mockingly, his clawed hands digging into the roof’s shingles.

Before Logan could respond, the front door was slammed open with excessive force, the sound making the vampire flatten himself further against the roof.

“Logan! The vamp’s out, have you seen—“ Roman cut off at the sight of Patton behind him, lowering his katana slightly. “Oh, thank the muses.”

Logan resisted the urge to rub at his temples. Roman strode over, and then stopped dead at the sight of Patton’s half-glazed eyes, his expression instantly darkening. He gripped his sword handle, knuckles turning white as he spoke with false calm. “Where is he?”

“Roman—,” Logan tried, but he was already following Patton’s line of sight up to the blob of shadow on the roof. The vamp looked like he was attempting to merge with the tiles, though he bristled as soon as Roman met his eyes.

“How could you?” he shouted, fists clenched at his sides. “You know what he’s been through, you asshole!”

The vampire drew himself up, and Logan opened his mouth to correct Roman, but Patton reached him first, bumping him gently from the side.

“Easy, Ro,” he said, tilting his head to rest on his shoulder. “He doesn’t remember, and I’m okay. It’s a real soft one, doesn’t hurt a bite.”

“Reusing puns, really?” Logan snipped, relief flooding through him at the way some tension eased from the air. Roman was looking at Patton with unguarded shock.

Logan understood. There had been a few instances where Patton had been thralled again, seeing as he was their best close-range fighter, and each and every time he had been shaky, drained, and upset both during the thrall and after. To see him still maintaining his cheer now was surprising, to say the least. Perhaps Patton’s insistence that Virgil’s memories remained intact had some merit, if the thrall was this… ‘soft,’ as Patton put it.

He glanced up at the vampire in question, noting the way he was watching Patton with his own barely-hidden shock. It vanished as soon as Roman turned back to him, a practiced mask of indifference settling on his face.

“Release Patton from your thrall, bloodsucker,” Roman commanded, breathing deeply through his nose.

“... You’re going to shoot me off this roof if I do,” the vamp responded, which frankly was much better than another ‘not a chance’. Roman glowered harder, and Logan cleared his throat pointedly.

“Virgil—,” he started.

“It’s Anx,” the vamp and Patton corrected at the same time, in wildly different tones. They proceeded to look at each other with wildly different expressions. Roman whipped his head between them with indignation. Logan rolled his eyes.

“Anx, then. You cannot remain up there forever, and you cannot escape.” The vamp snorted derisively, and Logan remained unruffled. “I trust the security of our base greatly. Our friend was the one who reinforced it, and you’ll find there are very few more thorough than him.”

“Great, so he fucked himself over retroactively,” Anx muttered viciously. “As if I needed more reasons to hate myself.”

“Mno, fight you…,” Patton mumbled absently on reflex. Roman slung an arm around him for support.

“Perhaps we could strike a deal,” Logan offered, seeing that his other teammates were going to be no help in convincing him. “You will release the thrall on Patton, and refrain from biting any of us or attempting to escape again. In exchange—“

“How about in exchange, we won’t shoot you off our roof,” Roman snapped, glaring at everyone but Patton indiscriminately. Logan glared back.

“In exchange,” he repeated emphatically, “you will be fed and we will attempt more civil methods of negotiation rather than locking you up. Does that sound agreeable?”

“How about instead, he digs up those stupid bushes and then I leave without bleeding any of you dry? Does that sound agreeable?” Anx snapped. He flicked his gaze back to Patton sharply, making them all stiffen in unison.

However, it was the vampire who ended up clutching at his head and letting out a choked scream, not Patton. He staggered a few steps forward before collapsing bonelessly into a dead faint on the roof.

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jj-scottsbee · 4 years ago

Text

Prompt: “I fucking died”

Warnings: blood, death, and language

Your lungs gasped for air as you woke. Your eyes flew open, your lungs taking in all the air they could grab. Your breathing was heavy but slowly calmed as you obtained the oxygen you were craving so dearly only moments earlier. As you calmed yourself, a shot of pain flew through your torso. Sighing in pain, you brought your hand to your abdomen naturally, wanting to hold the area that hurt. As you brought your hand to touch the area where the pain had sprung from, a warm, sticky liquid covered your right hand. Confused, you slowly brought turned your palm to face the ceiling, curious as to what you had dipped your hand in.

Your eyes widened in horror as you saw your hand was covered in your blood. Immediately your head flew downwards, and both your hand searched for the open wound that all the blood had come from. You found no open wound, and the pain that you had woken up with had slowly begun to die down. As you observed your surroundings, you realized quickly that you were sitting on a metal table in the middle of Tony's lab in the tower. You noticed the pools of drying blood that sat around the table, what seemed like hundreds of gauges sitting around the floor, and the bloody medical instruments that sat on a small tray next to you. You then noticed the heavy white sheet that was draped over your legs, hiding the ripped pants of your suit. You pulled the sheet to one side, wanting to make sure you had pants on. You currently sat in nothing but a sport-bra and your leather suit pants, only one of your boots hugging your left foot.

"Jarvis, what happened? Where is everyone?" You asked, swinging your legs to one side of the table.

"Miss Y/n, you died ma'am,"

Your heart dropped as Jarvis answered your first question. What he said next was a blur to you, as the memories quickly came shooting back into your head.

"Y/n, get out of here!" Steve yelled as he threw multiple blows at the advancing HYDRA soldiers.

"Stevie, you really think I'm leaving without America's ass?" You breathed out, putting a bullet in the closest soldier you could. Your chest heaved as your body begged you to stop fighting, as it told you that there were too many soldiers for you to take on by yourself.

"Dammit Y/n fucking leave!" Steve yelled across the field, his reaction catching you off guard. It wasn't long before you realized why he was so determined on getting you to leave, Rumlow had arrived. You smiled deviously as you put several bullets into the last remaining soldiers, stalking towards the newly made man. Rumlow had his eyes set on Steve, but you weren't about to let him take Steve so easily.

"Hey, buddy! How many metal-plates you got stuck in your head?" You mocked, throwing your empty gun at the man. His attention was ripped from Steve, who still struggled to fend off several other HYDRA soldiers. You could hear the protests of Steve and the others through your coms, as you taunted the enemy. You were defenseless, you may not be able to beat him, but you could stall him.

"I'm gonna put a bullet in you bitch." Rumlow growled as he marched towards you. You stood your ground, just long enough to get him about 6 feet in front of you. Suddenly you rushed the man, sliding between his legs only to fling yourself up behind him, just in time to grab Cap's shield he had thrown trying his best to protect you. You and Rumlow spun around, your eyes meeting for merely a second before you brought the shield to protect yourself from the bullets he shot.

"You're fucking shit at this whole assassin thing, huh?" You grunted as you smacked him over the head using the shield. There was a loud clang that came from the contact. "Holy shit, you actually got metal plates in your head!"

You laughed shocked as you slowly ran towards Steve, who was struggling to defend himself still. Before you could make it to him, you heard the loud cock of what sounded like a rather large gun. You turned around to see Rumlow, a gun-type machine coming from his arm. He pointed it at Steve, who had finally begun to lessen the number of soldiers who had been attacking him. You watched in horror as Steve's eyes met yours, a look of farewell covering his face.

"I'll see you when you fall asleep," You called, smiling at Steve. You rushed Rumlow, pulling his attention from Steve to you. You were able to reach him, to distract him, but you were unable to stop the dagger that he plunged into your stomach. He towered over you as stood, both hands gripping his large wrist. You stared him dead in the eye, a mischievous, clenched smile crossing your face as you saw the rest of the team burst into the room.

"We'll finish this in hell," You softly growled.

You felt Rumlow rip the dagger from your abdomen. You heard the cries and screams of the team as they watched you fall to the floor. Before anyone could reach you, your vision blurred and went black. You fell into nothingness.

As the memories hit you like a truck, you limped toward the elevator as quickly as you could. There may be no visible injuries that laid on your body, but there were still aches and pains. You reached the elevator, the sheet soaked in your blood, hung around your shoulders. Impatiently you watched as the floor labels changed, needing to find the team.

After what seemed like hours, the elevator finally reached the floor that held the living room and kitchen. By this time, your body was dwindling with strength. You had leaned against the right wall of the small box, using it to help your legs support your weight. The small ding was what forced you to push yourself off the wall, trying to walk sturdily. The elevator doors open to a silent living room, but the team filled the space of it. They sat with either their head in their hands, their tearful eyes on the floor, or staring in a daze into an empty direction. It was Peter who noticed you first.

"HOLY FUCK," He called, as you stumbled out of the elevator. In an instant, everyone was looking your direction, all of their eyes red and puffy. All of their eyes widened in shock and happiness, as they saw the life in your eyes and breath in your chest.

"You're all crying? I deserve a better goodbye, other than a fucking sob party." You breathed tiredly, Tony and Peter were quick to grab hold of your arms as you began to sway. Everyone laughed, happiness overtaking them.

"We thought you were dead, let us have our moment," Tony teased gently, as he and Peter led you to the couch. "Now, can you explain what happened?"

"I fucking died, but I didn't at the same time. And no, I didn't have some fucking meeting with Jesus or any shit like that. I felt nothing, I saw, heard nothing. Everything was just dark." You said tiredly, as you leaned back against the couch.

No one could explain how you had lived. But no one complained.

#The Avengers #marvel #marvel imagine #Marvel Avengers #brock rumlow #hydra #first avengers #avengers imagine #Steve Rogers #tony stark #Thor Odinson #bruce banner #peter parker #natasha romanov #clint barton #mcu imagine #mcu #mcufic

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dopescotlandwarrior · 4 years ago

Text

Sinners & Saints-Chapter 17

A special thanks to @statell for all your help

Previous chapters at AO3

Chapter 17

Sebastian Meyer spun his desk chair around in time to see his secretary drop a newspaper onto his desk. She had the paper folded back to the society section where Danny’s face was beaming as she shook hands with Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of England. He felt like someone punched him in the stomach and lowered the receiver to its cradle without warning to the caller. “What in God’s name is she doing?” He looked up in time to appreciate the swinging ass of his secretary before the door closed behind her. Sebastian read every word associated with the story and decided his mother was having a last fling before she surrendered the reigns to him this year. Let her have some fun, he thought, a nostalgic party to remember her glory days when she was the seat of power and reigning queen of the socialites. He could give a shit because nothing could stop him now. The purchase of a sizeable chunk of stock was in the bag after his manufactured bromance with a major investor. Sebastian did his best to undermine his mother’s stronghold and convince the man she was suffering from dementia. He was sure this sale would put him close to majority shareholder, so his take over was within reach. Still, the picture gave him an unsettled feeling because she had not surfaced in almost a year. Why now? The crew had worked all night to put the boat right after the party, with orders from Darius not to report for duty until noon the following day. Jamie took advantage of the quiet morning and trained Danny and himself in the gym before swimming laps to cool off. He hated the weather in London. Hot, sticky, and draining.

Adso’s loud purring cut through the fog of Claire’s dream and she felt him head-butting her face. He stretched out beside her and kept his paws on her face until she opened her eyes. Claire rolled to her side and with a finger under his chin pulled his head up to look at her. “Ok my darling, I’m up. Is it food you want?” The door to their deck slid open for some fresh air and was closed immediately to keep humid air from filling the room. Tonight they will weigh anchor, set a course for Paris, and her intimate time with Jamie would be on hold again. She stretched and smiled at their glutenous sexual pursuits over the past week and figured she would survive the three days apart. She couldn’t wait to get to Paris and see Javier and Joseph again. They were invited to the party and would stay on board to Athens and then fly home. It felt like an eternity since they were together. Darius called a meeting of the crew and ran down the teams, shifts, and duties on their three-day trip to Paris. Maia was the last one onto the bridge and noticed Cici did not move away from Darius when she came in. She stood across from them and quietly listened to the meeting, however she remembered not a word. When the crew muttered “aye, captain,” Maia was deep in her memory, adding up the lingering looks and odd behaviors observed in Cici. “Maia? You’re a million miles away.” Maia looked around at the empty bridge and blushed. “I’m closer than you think. I gotta go.” Black Rolls Royce automobiles pulled up to the offices of the Harbor Master all day long so someone in the employ of a party guest could deliver a handwritten message thanking Danny for a lovely evening. When Darius requested permission to make way, he was told a boat was coming to deliver mail. Eighty-five guests sent a thank you note, and Danny read every one of them. The anchors were raised just as a thunderstorm ripped open to soak Ethan and Steven, who gripped the slippery hull ladder with one hand while they guided the chain with the other. Darius watched the CCTV monitors closely until they were back on deck. The other crew members were pulling furniture and lounge chairs under the deck ceiling and snapping waterproof covers over everything. When all of them were back inside, Darius and Jamie turned the yacht away from London toward open water. Danny looked out the expansive windows at the squall coming in on the port side and told Claire and Maia to close all the windows. Claire ran to her rooms and called for Adso, usually on her lap at this time of the day, getting more frantic by the second. She ran around her room calling for him and spun around to see him sitting on her bed yawning. She picked him up and carried him out to the table where they were working. Darius looked at the color of Jamie’s face and decided he finally found his friend's weakness. “You look a bit green around the edges, friend. The trash can is empty if you need …” Jamie ran for the head and over the next two hours, purged his system, in one way or another. Darius was waiting to give him a patch for seasickness, but Jamie couldn’t spend more than a couple of minutes on the bridge before dashing back to the head. On one of his brief visits, Darius pressed something sticky behind his ear. Jamie made a run for the bathroom again and Darius chuckled. After four hours of being tossed around on an angry sea, Darius could see the margin of the storm and pushed their speed to get out from under it. When Maia and Steven arrived to take their shift, Jamie almost crawled out of the elevator and got to their rooms to lie down. Claire was reading and jumped off the bed when she saw her green-faced love stagger in. She pulled his clothes off and propped him up on pillows, then went to the galley for soup and water. The chef was preparing food for the next day when she told him how sick Jamie was. He smiled and fixed up a remedy for seasickness and suggested broth to restore him. “He won’t like the taste of the remedy, so tell him to pinch his nose and swallow. Best to have a bucket nearby, just in case.” Claire carried the tray to their room and Jamie did whatever she told him to. Then he laid down and passed out. Jamie reported to the bridge the next morning feeling much better except for sore stomach muscles. He kissed Claire as they exchanged places and the familiar rotation was back in full swing. Claire worked with Danny during the day, getting her to remember the faces that would board in Paris, and Maia did research on the guests. When they dropped anchor in Paris, it felt like they had hardly moved. The night of the party, Claire and Maia flanked Danny again at the entrance to the grand saloon and fed her information about guests who were approaching. When Claire saw Javier and Joseph in the greeting line, she broke away to throw her arms around them. Javier held her at arm’s length and smiled at her gown and hair. He was bursting with pride, as was Joseph. Claire introduced them to Danny and Maia and walked them into the saloon to find Jamie. Jamie’s smile was brilliant as he shook hands with the men. Claire promised to catch up in a bit and went back to Danny greeting guests. It was a stifling evening and even with the air conditioners blowing Danny was perspiring in her jacket, so she took it off to reveal the sleeveless gown underneath. Jamie caught sight of her and beamed with pride at her smooth and shapely arms. Danny looked in his direction and smiled back. At one o’clock in the morning, Claire dropped onto the couch between Javier and Joseph and sighed. Danny smiled her gratitude at the three of them. “I owe you a big thank you for talking with the French-speaking guests. I never saw any of you sit down all night and you were all so charming!” “I left you to fly solo tonight and you knocked it out of the park Danny.” “I wasn’t alone, I had the darling Maia with me much of the night.” Claire put her hand on her heart and lipped ‘thank you’ to Maia. She noticed Ethan and Steven had changed into their day uniforms and were standing by. “It would appear we are moving the boat to our mooring so it’s time to change and be useful.” She kissed Javier and Joseph goodnight and then Danny, telling her to rest well. Danny looked up at Maia and tapped her other cheek for a goodnight kiss and they all went to their rooms. Claire clipped the radio to her shorts and heard the crew members give their location and readiness to the bridge. She pulled a t-shirt over her head and pushed her hair into a ponytail. “Claire, are you close? You’re on the aft deck to catch the stern ropes.” “Yes, had a devil of a time getting that dress off, but I’m almost there.” “Thank you for the visual now move your ass, we’re ready.” Claire rolled her eyes and jogged to the aft deck to catch the enormous ropes used to tie the yacht to the dock. When the anchor chains were quiet again, Steven popped up on the ladder and helped with the remaining ropes before descending again when they dropped anchor at the mooring. Claire was grateful for the hard-working crew who would put the boat in order before morning. She was exhausted. “Good job everybody, captain out.” Maia came to the bridge in her pajamas, eating dry cereal out of the box. Darius was writing in his log and kept looking over at her soft pants riding her hips four inches below her belly button. When she lifted the box above her mouth, he watched her breasts bounce under her pj top. “Done!” Darius picked her up as she threw the empty box into the trash on the way to their rooms. As before, Danny held a brunch the next day for Javier, Joseph, Danny, and the four friends. It was a beautiful afternoon in sunny Paris, and Darius did the unthinkable. He gave the crew the day off, postponing their departure until the next day. In New York, Sebastian took the folded paper from his secretary and his eyes bugged out at the picture of Danny in a sleeveless gown toasting a major stockholder and oil investor. “What the bloody hell is going on?” “Get Marvin on the phone, interrupt him, tell him it’s an emergency!” “Marvin! Tell me Johnson is ready to sell before I lose my mind! My mother is up to something and I don’t like it.” Sebastian listened for two minutes, heard his financial manager say Johnson had taken his shares off the table, and the phone slammed into the cradle so hard it shattered. “Goddammit!” He unplugged the phone base and threw it against the wall. The next morning, Jamie and Darius prepared to weigh anchor as the crew covered deck furniture and stowed planters in the plant garage. Ethan and Steven raised the anchors and the mighty engines came to life. Javier and Joseph sipped cold champagne on the deck and marveled at the teamwork required to get them underway. Claire, Danny, and Maia joined them to watch the historic sights and beautiful buildings glide by on their way down the Seine. Claire had mixed feelings about anchoring off Greece again because so much had happened there. Thankfully, there was no party to prepare for and they could act like tourists for the three days Darius and Maia would be onshore visiting family. She told herself to relax and enjoy the time with her godfather. The third night at sea, Danny planned a special dinner on the upper deck for Claire and her family, Jamie, Darius, and Maia. They were served by the crew, and the chef prepared a glorious meal for them to enjoy. Many stories were shared after dinner, and Claire watched Danny talk animatedly with the others. Her jawline was still defined and her neck showed no drooping skin, in fact, she was aging quite well but no one would know it because her shoulder-length hair kept her best parts hidden. She decided it was time for Danny to emerge and wished she had thought of this while still in Paris. She would talk to Danny at her first opportunity, which was later that evening when she was reading in the saloon along with Javier and Joseph. “Danny, I would love to treat you to a new hairstyle. What do you say to a girl’s day out in Athens?” “I am quite comfortable with my hair, as awful as it is. I’m not comfortable risking a bad haircut. How about facials and pedicures?” “Okay, that would be fine, I guess. I’m on shift in the wheel room in two hours, so I’m going to lie down for a bit. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Claire needed Jamie’s help for this and found him watching a rerecorded game in their room. She snuggled up to him and whispered she needed a favor. The game flicked off before her sentence was finished. “I am trying to talk Danny into a new hairstyle, something more modern, but she’s afraid of having a bad haircut until it grows out. You could draw her face and put different hairstyles on her, right?” “There is a very high price for such a service Sassenach, but I’d be happy to break it down into installments if you like.” He pulled her down on the mattress and kissed her until she forgot who Danny was. Through the night, while Claire was on shift, Jamie sat in his studio and rendered Danny’s face with three hairstyles he found on the internet. He jogged to their bed to grab four hours of sleep before his last shift of this leg. Darius was getting more uptight by the minute as they cruised toward Athens. He and Maia would visit their family for three days, so Jamie assumed this mood was family-related. “I’ve been wanting to ask you, it’s none of my business, but I’ll ask anyway. When we were at the jewelry store in Jamaica buying the necklace for Maia, you said you had two grand to your name, remember?” Darius shot him a dark look. “What did you do with your earnings then?” “You couldn’t be more right, it’s none of your business.” “I think I know the answer, but I’d like to hear it from you.” “Me and Maia have all we need while on the yacht, so I send the bulk of my pay home, to my family and hers. The economy is poor, very few good jobs, low pay, no assistance. My two brothers live in the same house as my sister, her husband, and their baby. They need every penny.” “I always knew you were a good man, Darius. What are you forty, forty-five years old?” “I’m twenty-seven asshole, and I don’t need a lecture about robbing Maia from the cradle. ” Jamie ducked as wadded paper was launched at his head and the bantering took the edge off of Darius’s mood. The anchors hit the seabed close to Athens, where the fishing was good for both pole and speargun. Darius and Maia said goodbye and got into a boat brought by Darius’s brother and it sped away. Javier and Joseph were gleefully setting up their fishing lines and sipping beer in chilled glasses. They now had a partner in crime. The chef was crazy about fishing and kept the men within arms reach of food and beer while they enjoyed the day. Jamie felt soft arms come around his waist from behind and twisted his body to put Claire under the shower water. He kissed her under the stream and felt a ravenous hunger ignite in his groin. They could take their time today, he realized, and broke his kiss to wash her hair. “It’s time for a whisky, love. Be a good girl and stay here, I have some things to discuss with you.” When Jamie left to fetch the whisky bottle, Claire went out to the deck with her nail kit and put a fresh coat of polish on her fingernails. Jamie set a whisky in front of her and watched the process with mild interest. He stood behind her and pulled the string holding her bikini top on, letting it fall to the deck, then he carried her to a lounge. Claire kept her hands in the air so he wouldn’t smudge the polish, and Jamie smiled wickedly at her. “Let me pamper you, love. Give me your foot.” He found all kinds of creams and scrubs in her caddy and settled on a soothing gel that he applied to her feet, calves, and thighs, covering an inch at a time very slowly. He massaged her inner thighs until she was panting, taking care not to touch her most intimate places. This was about seduction, and that required a soft touch. Pulling her foot into his lap, he sat down on the deck and held up bottles of polish until she picked one. The hours he had watched her manicure her toes paid off when he brought out each tool for cuticles, filing, and smoothing. When the paint rolled onto her toenails, he could see her thighs quivering slightly and smiled with his bowed head. When the first foot was done, he licked from her knee to her core, pulling her bikini bottom to the side and pulling his soft, wet tongue up her fold. The fabric was returned to normal and he grabbed the other foot for the same treatment while she panted and tried to slow her heart rate. It took an excruciatingly long time to paint five toenails and drink two shots of whisky. Claire was growling with need and gave her love a warning look to finish what he started. It took another hour but finish he did and they curled up on the lounge for a happy siesta. By mid-afternoon, Claire found Javier, Joseph, and the chef, drunk, sunburned, and deliriously happy. To her surprise, Danny had joined them and was holding two of their poles with lines in the water. She greeted Claire with a happy smile, so excited to be fishing. “Claire! Look, I am fishing for my supper, isn’t that fantastic? I haven’t caught a single fish yet, but I am determined.” Javier looked at Joseph and asked if he baited the hooks to which Joseph raised his shoulders and giggled. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Give me a pole Danny so I can check your hook.” Soon there was a spinning lure attached to the line and cast far into the water. Claire handed the pole back to Danny with a warning that the fish were large and might pull the pole out of her hands if she wasn’t ready. Danny squealed with delight and watched the water with anticipation. Claire baited the other hook and sat next to Danny, trying to ignore the loud snoring of the three men who were now sleeping in the shade. Claire’s pole jerked violently, and she heard the line running out as the fish dove deep to get away from the hook. She counted five seconds and pushed the lock on the reel, almost losing the pole when it jerked back hard. Danny dropped her pole in her excitement to help Claire, and it jerked on the deck when another fish swallowed her hook and then tried to get away. Fortunately, the pole was pulled along the deck sideways and got caught by rail mountings so they didn’t lose it. Both women were screaming and laughing, trying to reel in the first fish. Jamie’s head jerked up hearing the chaos outside. His book forgotten, he ran to the deck and watched Claire and Danny pull the same pole, losing themselves in laughter. He grabbed the other pole and demonstrated how to reel and pull the fish, but they were hopelessly lost in their fun. He felt the fish release his line and swim to freedom while he reeled in the hook and set the pole aside to help Claire. From behind Claire, he moved her hands, holding them still while the fish ran the line out again, and then pulling up sharply to set the hook deeper. Danny held onto the pole like it was a lifeline while she bent over laughing. When the fish was exhausted, Jamie had them walk the pole and fish along the side deck where he could net the beautiful sunfish that would feed them that night. Claire and Danny jumped around the aft deck, lost in their celebration. Jamie made quick work of gutting the fish and cutting away the parts that were unusable. The chef roared from the side deck to stop as Jamie was about to throw the head far from the boat. “That head will make the best fish head soup!” The chef took command of the fillets and head and left them for the galley, very excited at their catch. Danny showed Claire how to wash with soap and then cut lemon sections to rid the skin of the fishy smell. Danny went to lie down until dinner and the crew was cleaning the main saloon, so Claire went outside to fetch her godfather and Joseph off the deck. They went down to their rooms to tend their sunburned skin and nap. Jamie pulled Claire to their rooms and closed the door before pushing a button that pulled the blackout shades down the massive windows. He pulled Claire to the bed and suggested a movie to which she happily agreed. “This is a classic that I found in the video library upstairs. I think you will really like it.” Claire cuddled up to Jamie when the movie started and was well into the story before it suddenly heated up with erotic scenes between two lovers. She couldn’t pull her eyes away as the characters showed body parts she didn’t expect to see. Jamie watched her face flush as the scenes became more erotic and he chuckled, suggesting they watch something else. “No! I mean, don’t you want to see how it ends?” “As you say, love.” Claire lost herself in the beautiful actors and for the first time, watched a woman making love as her breasts bounced with the pounding. The woman’s inner thighs looked so soft as she spread them for the man’s mouth moving toward her core. When the sex got rough, Claire’s panting was giving her arousal away. “Should we find another, sweetheart?” Jamie pulled her in front of him, between his legs, and pressed her back against his chest in a relaxed posture. Claire was hypnotized by the sex scenes and hardly noticed Jamie pulling her feet to the sides to open her legs. When he touched her, it was like a firebomb to kindling and he gave her all the thrills she had just seen. When they collapsed, gasping for breath, Claire was panting out “how” and “why” and certain unintelligible words making Jamie chuckle. “It takes a bit of work the second time in the same day, love.” “Wow, that was… wow.” After another shower, they finally stumbled to the table for dinner and Jamie was still chuckling at her deer in the headlight eyes. She needed help to come back to the here and now, even though he loved her expression and blush. “Sassenach, how do you like the fish you girls caught today?” “Hmm?” “The fish, how do you like it?” Claire looked at her plate like she just realized she was chewing food. “It’s wonderful! I really love it.” She and Danny started talking about the next party, and Jamie knew she was back on earth. He missed his starry-eyed wife instantly. They shared a closeness for the rest of the evening and he cuddled her in their bed that night wanting to hold her close all night long, but that was not going to happen. Jamie’s eyes would not close, his breathing would not deepen, and his mind felt like a pinball game in play. He rolled quietly out of bed and made his way to the studio. A painting was clamoring to get out, and he felt the crushing responsibility to get it right. Sunrise filled the studio with light as the third canvas was sent to the failure-closet, so named that very night because it had not happened to him before. He went to his sketch pad to work out the dimensional issues and used colored pencils to test the color differences. If he couldn’t find the skill to paint it accurately, he wouldn’t do it. It was that important. Jamie knew Claire would be up soon and he wasn’t ready to share this picture yet, so he put his drawings away and put the five-lads on the easel, then he went to snuggle with his wife. Claire hugged Javier for a full minute, and then Joseph. She wiped a tear off her cheek and smiled bravely wishing them a good flight back to Paris. They both turned in their seat and waved as the taxi pulled away. “Darius and Maia return tomorrow and then we weigh anchor for strange places Sassenach. Perhaps the three of us sit on the deck today and fish. What do you say?” Danny jumped to fetch whatever Claire needed that afternoon. She could feel her melancholy, and her maternal instincts took over. At least until the first pole nearly bent in half from a monster fish that latched onto Jamie’s hook. The women abandoned their poles to render aid that was not needed, and Jamie tried to reach his pocket when he felt his phone vibrate. It was hopeless reaching through the women’s glee, so he held his pole out to the side with one hand and clicked to answer the call. “What the hell is going on over there?” “Two excited women helping me boat a fish, but it could be long gone by now because I can’t feel the pole move anymore. What’s up?” Jamie listened to the instructions given, “on my way.” Handing the pole to Claire, he excused himself to tender Darius back to the yacht, and Claire looked confused when the pole was no longer bouncing. It was obvious Darius was hurt and Jamie helped him into the tender without commenting on his bulging eye that was swollen shut, his bloody mouth, or his arm held tightly to his side. “Hospital?” Darius shook his head, “boat.” Darius crept into the saloon hoping to make it upstairs before anyone saw him but the stairs were impossible. He turned around to use the elevator and heard Claire’s voice as he winced from his broken ribs. “Don’t you fucking move, Darius.” She led him to the galley by his good hand and pulled his sunglasses off while he voiced his complaint. Claire grabbed the emergency kit, a frozen steak, and led him up to his rooms. He couldn’t lay down because the position drove the broken ribs into his lungs so Claire cleaned the wounds as best she could. “I didn’t know you had such a crush on me, Claire.” “Shut up, you idiot. What happened to you?” “I don’t want to talk about it.” Jamie found Danny cleaning up the fishing gear and looking worried. “He probably told you to leave him alone, and while that works most of the time, it will not work today. Maia knows what to do so get her back here so she can help him. Jamie, please do this.” Jamie was naturally resistant to Danny’s gift, but he heard the edge in her voice and reached for his phone. Twenty minutes later, a wide-eyed Maia was climbing into the tender asking how bad the injuries were. She interrupted his explanation saying she could swim faster than he was going so he pushed the tender to its limit and soon they were flying across the water. Maia could hear Claire arguing with Darius as she approached their rooms and kindly asked Claire to wait downstairs. She glanced at Darius and saw his tears of pain and frustration. So she helped Claire exit the room and locked the door behind her. Claire could hear them talking and ripping packages of emergency supplies. She was terrified and crying, having never seen anyone fresh from a brutal fight. Jamie put his arm around her and led her downstairs where the three of them waited in the saloon to hear more about his injuries. Maia cleaned the wounds, wrapped his ribcage, and slapped his good hand when he tried to loosen the ace bandage constricting his breath. She pushed a pain pill into his mouth and moved her finger along the base of his teeth searching for a loose wiggle. Ten minutes later he could lie down, gingerly. She knelt next to the bed and put her head down, fighting the tears she didn’t want Darius to see. His good hand stroked her hair, and he whispered to her that everything was alright. When she gave in to the sobs, he held her as best he could and reminded her he was the captain with a job to do and she was expected to help him for a little while. “Darius, of course I will. I’ll pull the boat with my bare hands if you ask me to!” She held his hand against her cheek and searched his face, feeling relief when he smiled at her. “It’s alright,” he said, stroking her hair. “My face scared you, but you patched me up with a steady hand, and now you need to cry a bit. It’s okay to cry, and then I wonder if you might tell the others what happened so we can all shake it off and depart in two days.” Maia could see he was asleep and covered him before going downstairs. Her eyes were puffy from crying and nothing would change that, so she walked into the saloon and told them what happened. “Darius sends most of his pay to his family and mine. His sister lives in a small house with her baby and husband, and Darius’s two brothers moved in a year ago because they were homeless. Darius said the house was a horrible mess. The front door had been kicked in, glass was missing from windows, the baby was crawling through filth. His sister is afraid of the brothers who spent all the money Darius has sent. Her husband leaves on Monday to work on Mykonos and he is gone all week. Darius ordered them out of the house and called the husband, telling him to walk off the job and come home to protect his family. Darius said he would cover his pay. They jumped him and beat the shit out of him.” Maia looked up, “sorry for my language. He has a job to do and I will help him. We leave in two days, nothing has changed.” Danny held her hand up to stop Maia and seemed to struggle with the right words. “I know it’s hard for the four of you to accept my gift, and I don’t talk about it much, but I have to tell you something. Darius suffered an impact to his abdomen, a kick I think, and his spleen is bleeding. I can see it bleeding and it might have to come out. If I could get close to him I will know for sure. This could threaten his life, so we shouldn’t wait. Please wake him and ask if I can see him, Maia.” “C’mon.” When Darius didn’t wake up right away, Maia got scared and shouted at him. She squeezed his hand and apologized. “Is the boat on fire, sweets?” “No. Darius, were you kicked in the stomach?” “No.” He closed his eyes again and Maia muttered about Danny being wrong as she walked to the door. “Maia, yes, I was kicked in the stomach, several times. Why?” “Danny needs to see you. Something about your spleen is bleeding. Can I let her in, please?” “Yes.” Danny entered and reached for his hand, looking concerned. He watched her. “I can’t tell if it’s going to stop. We can go to the hospital now or I can check you later.” “Check later if you would, I don’t like hospitals.” “Alright, dear Darius.” Danny left and Maia sat on the floor and put her head near his on the mattress. She stroked his arm until she was sure he was asleep again. “I love you so much, Darius.” “I love you too, sweet one.” Jamie and Claire finally said goodnight and Danny went to the elevator and her rooms. All through the night, she monitored Darius, sneaking into their room to lay her hand on his foot. On one visit, she put a blanket around Maia and pulled the covers around Darius. Her last visit was at five o’clock in the morning. She kept her hand on his foot because she wanted to be sure. “You did it, young man,” she whispered, “no splenectomy for you, so kindly put your cape back on, and save the day… when you’re ready.” Danny was exhausted and desperately wanted to lie down on her bed. She rode the elevator down to her floor and held the wall as she walked. She was proud of Darius for his decision to heal. Later, Jamie spent some time with Darius and he was particularly sarcastic and funny because Darius begged him to stop making him laugh. Jamie decided that was enough painful levity for one day and left, grabbing Maia in the hall. “Maia, I have spent too much time with Darius and I don’t want to wake him up. He asked me to alert the authorities that his sister should be alone in the house waiting for her husband, but he didn’t give me the address.” Jamie pulled a notepad out of his pocket and had a pen poised to write it down. He started to move down the hall like he was in a hurry and raised his eyebrows at her. She gushed the address out and then went into their rooms. Jamie pushed the pad into his pocket and went downstairs with a face that could murder a man just looking at it. After dinner, Jamie pulled Claire into their rooms and made passionate love to her. She mumbled something about her jello legs as she slipped into her dreams. He waited until she was deep enough not to feel him roll out of bed or hear him dress. He jumped in the tender and paddled halfway to shore to avoid waking anyone. He had a mission to complete before they left in the morning. Danny stood in the dark saloon and watched Jamie paddle the tender. She was conflicted about raising the alarm or letting it happen. She whispered, “forgive me, Jamie,” and went back to bed. Jamie leaned against a large tree and dozed for half the night, waiting for the brothers. He would bet his last dollar they hadn’t left and Jamie knew the husband would not be back until the next day. His head jerked up hearing the drunken laughter of two men approaching. They staggered toward the sister’s house and Jamie cleared his throat to make them turn around. One of them addressed him in what sounded like gutter slang and Jamie smiled like an altar boy and pulled his wallet out. The men approached so Jamie lowered the wallet so they would see the large bills he thumbed through as he talked about paying them off to stay away from the sister. He was not getting through to them so he said, “Darius,” and waited. One of them shoved a fist in Jamie’s face. “We take your money and drop you in the deep ocean. No worry, you be dead.” Jamie’s eyes were wide with fright and he backed into the tree with his hands in a defensive position. They were smiling at each other coming toward him when Jamie suddenly stood upright and laughed, stopping them in their tracks. “Oh! I.. I know who you two are, you beat the shit out of my friend, your own brother!” He was still laughing while the men shot glances at each other. “You know, Darius said you guys fight dirty.” More laughter. “What a relief! Because so do I.” Jamie jumped up and grabbed a tree limb, driving his feet into one man’s face. He dropped to the ground and pulled his jacket off showing the second man his sleeveless t-shirt and the bulging muscles in his arms. Before the man could run, he grabbed his long greasy hair, and drove his knee into his back, flipped him around and pummeled his face until the man collapsed on the ground. Jamie grabbed the last of the rope he brought and wound it around the man’s legs. Both of them were tied to different trees with no possibility of escape. Jamie hoped the husband would be the first to find them. He pushed a note under the ropes and put his jacket back on. He had a naked wife waiting for him in a big warm bed. He headed for the tender. Danny thrashed in her bed, having one hell of a nightmare. She saw men fighting and one of them run away. Suddenly, the man stopped and looked directly at her, “it’s alright Danny, I won, rest now,” came the echo of his disembodied voice. Her eyes flew open and she sat up in her bed, gasping for air. She felt the presence of Jamie above her and sighed her relief as she dropped back to her pillows, feeling much better.

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cockasinthebird · 5 years ago

Text

Stuck? Stuck.

This year for the senior weekend trip, Hawkins High students gets to enjoy a lovely stay at a hotel so cheap it's a risky gamble to even set foot there, and a Saturday trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, to which absolutely everyone is equally excited about.

Which is not at all.

Steve groans and sits up in the hard bed he has to sleep in for two whole nights, sharing his room with three other guys from his year that he swears he has never ever seen before, despite them all knowing his name and history quite well.

The drive here hadn't been that long, although it felt like hours, nerve ridden and anxious to not sleep in the safety of his own haunted mansion. Sure it's nice to be surrounded by people on all sides if he were to tell the truth, but...

Billy fucking Hargrove had been staring at him all day, sat two rows behind on the bus, and whenever Steve turned to look, he was met with an icy stare and suspicious grin. Billy had even actively gone out of his way to bump into Steve, push him around and kick his bags away, to which Tommy had laughed and patted Billy on the back, that fucking traitor. Sure they hadn't talked since after the fight with Jonathan, but Steve didn't know their friendship had been so fragile.

With an exhausted sigh and jittery hands, Steve carefully closes the door to his room, then heads down the hallway to find the elevator. He can never sleep when he's away from home, yet Dustin had convinced him that this is a great idea! Get out and have some fun! People always hook up on those senior trips! And then he did that Chewbacca wanna purr of a sound, prompting Steve to push his cap down his face.

The elevator climbs slowly up to his floor as he thumbs his lighter, on and off, on and off. Who here would he even hook up with that he hasn't already before he got together with Nancy? And now that they're over and Billy is running the school instead, Steve's odds had fallen even farther into the pits of hell.

He just needs to get out for a smoke, and maybe flirt his way to a drink or two at the sleazy bar; this place doesn't look like it cares about serving minors alcohol, what with the water stained ceiling and floor, the peeling tape, and the creaky as shit elevator, as it barely can manage a ding once it reaches the 4th level.

It whines just the same as he steps inside and feels it bounce dangerously underneath his weight. It requires several attempts and hard jabs from Steve before the ground floor button registers his attempts, and starts closing.

When just in the last second, strong fingers curl around the rusty metal and pries open the doors again.

That grin, those curls, the sun-kissed skin.

Billy fucking Hargrove.

“Where you off to, Harrington?” he asks with a flash of predatory teeth and steps into the limited space.

Suddenly Steve is feeling hot and claustrophobic, heart racing both from the presence of his enemy, and from the fear that the elevator might not be able to support both their weights.

“Why the fuck should I tell you?” he snaps and does his best not to meet those blue skies that just won't give him the same courtesy of pretending the other doesn't exist.

“Could be you wanted some company,” Billy says with a low tone that hints at something secret and suggestive.

“And why are you up?” Steve doesn't really care to know, but thoughts of why Billy might be up and about this late flows freely. There would only be one reason, and maybe it's the second floor where all the girls are located.

But he doesn't press the 2nd floor button. Simply puts his hands in his denim jacket and leans with his back against the wall.

“Oh you know exactly why I'm awake this late, princess,” Billy drawls out and licks his lips.

Which Steve doesn't notice, if anyone were to ask. He pulls up a cigarette from the back he has stashed in his back pocket, and slips it between his lips to save time once they're able to get away from each other again.

Yet it's gone just as quick, as Billy reaches out and snags it away, just to place it beneath his mustache. And Steve stares daggers at him, all too quickly he's angry, but really it takes no time with Hargrove around, as his mere presence in Steve's life in a constant source of pain and fury.

“What the fuck you asshole, give it back!” Steve frowns and clenches his fist with a strong urge to punch. It's been too long since he's felt the bliss of nicotine, and he can feel it in his blood. “Get your own shitty cigarettes.”

“Why don't you come over here and take it, then?” Billy muses with a cocky grin that goes from ear to ear.

“Yeah yeah, very mature, give me my fucking cigarette back, Hargrove. I'm almost out of smokes and patience with you.” Steve turns to stare at him now, a few feet apart filled with air so tense you could cut it with a fucking butter knife.

“Well that was quick,” comes the response as a mean spirited chuckle.

“Oh don't be like that; you've been harassing me all fucking day you shit!” And Steve steps closer, up to where he can feel Hargrove's breathing. “What is your deal with me?”

Billy lifts up his chin, looking all brash and smug. “Do I have to one?”

“Why else would you be making my life a living hell?” Steve's fists clench tighter. “Isn't it bad enough you stole my best friend and 'knocked me off my throne'?” he says with possibly the most infuriated air-quotes anyone could ever manage.

“Nope.” Short and crude, the p popping loudly despite the cigarette caught between teeth.

“Then what the fuck do you want?!”

And as Billy's grin somehow grows more sinister, he doesn't get to answer before there's an abrupt jump of the elevator and a nerve wrecking screech.

The loud whir of cogs and mechanics silent. The elevator has stopped.

“Are... are we...” Steve dares not say, as if that would make it real and not just his imagination.

Billy shoves Steve away and steps over to press a button, any button, and when there's no response, tries a second button, then a third, then every other option there. Punches the keys over and over and over-

“Fucking stop that! You're just making it all worse!” Steve shouts and grabs on to Billy's sleeve to tear him away.

“Oh like you know how a fucking elevator works!” Billy snarls back and pushes Steve hard for having even dared to touch him. “I know your grades, I've heard the questions you ask in class, I bet even Max could answer half the shit you can't!”

Steve doesn't even have time to think before he flings his fist after Billy, who catches it perfectly on the nose. Cigarette flies from his mouth, blood drips onto the sticky floor, onto Billy's dirty boots and his clean, white tee. And he continues being unable to think, as Billy fucking laughs.

“God damn Harrington, I can't believe you had the guts to do that,” he sounds near insane as he talks, swipes his tongue up to lick his upper lip clean of dark red. “You know you're gonna regret that now, right?”

“According to you I don't know shit.” Steve stands with his feet too far apart, shoulders raised and fists aching for more. As much as he would prefer not to fight, since he always gets his ass kicked, the rush of seeing blood flow from Billy's nose is invigorating.

No matter how prepared he thinks he is, Billy's fist still feels like a goddamn boulder against his eye, and barely has Steve staggered backwards at the brute force, before Billy grabs him by the collar of his striped polo and shoves him into a corner; caging him there with his own broad, muscular shape.

“You punch like a girl, Stevie,” his voice low and... oddly sensuous?

He reeks of cologne, teeth sharp and perfect like a wolf, body sturdy and thick, pressed into Steve with such intent that he can feel every inch of power.

“What are you gonna do now, Harrington?” Billy's chuckles like thunder in his chest as they stay flush together.

Steve feels his heart beat in his swelling eye, lumping in his throat, beating against his ribs like xylophones, and somewhere between his legs. Red really is a great color on Billy's lips.

“What are my options?” he groans out and wants to move away from the insufferable heat that's gathering too far down.

Eyes jump around every one of Billy's strong features, looking like a damn model from afar and up close like this. Jaw square and stubbly, an ocean's view in his eyes, a thousand eyelashes that he doesn't deserve to have, freckles like a starry night that he didn't even know existed on Billy's perfect skin, lips so hopelessly inviting despite the wicked grin.

And maybe Billy catches how he's being admired right now, because his smile falters to a slightly slack jaw. “Doesn't seem like you have any,” he mumbles out, tone uncertain of something.

“I fucking hate you, Billy.” Steve can't move his head away, can't tear his gaze from where that tongue peeks out to lick his lips clean once more.

With a timid whisper, barely more than a breath, Billy utters out, “I hate me, too.”

Lips meet with obscene force, Billy pushing against Steve's mouth as if it's his only source of life, and immediately Steve opens up; tastes the metallic blood that still drips slowly down from Billy's wounded nose, and feels that captivating tongue intrude deep as it urgently memorizes every inch of wet heat.

It's as if they've both been starving for years, and now they're all too worried it'll end in the blink of an eye.

Billy bites and pulls at Steve's lower lip with a guttural groan.

“Fuck, Billy-” Steve nearly moans out and tries to buck out his hips.

“Shut the fuck up, Harrington, or I'll punch you again,” Billy growls and dives back in to lick where his teeth had just tortured sensitive skin.

“Mmh- ah-” and Steve pulls away to say, “Do it.”

“What?” Billy has never looked more dumbfounded.

“Fucking hit me again.” Steve licks his lips clean of Billy's blood and stares intensely down at him. “Slap me in the face.”

And Billy grins like the devil, bites down on his tongue, breathing staggered as he contemplates on whether or not Steve is serious. Then brings a flat hand across a pale cheek.

It stings and burns throughout his entire body, anger and lust confusingly mixing and making his blood pump faster, his cock growing harder. He pokes at the inside of that cheek where he can practically feel the red hand print form.

“God you're a freak, pretty boy.” Billy wags his tongue and stares with a confident brow. “This why Nancy Wheeler left you, huh? She couldn't keep up with your perverted desires.”

Steve doesn't speak, simply digs a hand in between them, and oh what an exciting bulge he finds there, one that forces out an “Arrh,” from stained lips and feels the hips below urge closer.

“Like you're one to talk.” Now Steve is the one to smirk, crooked and looking like the cat that got the cream.

Which Billy fucking hates. All he can do is press their lips together again and grind his full dick against Steve's hand caught between them. His movement irrepressible as he rolls his hips and swallows every single moan that spills from Steve's puffy lips, pleased and turned on by every syllable, irritated that Harrington can't just shut the fuck up.

It would be all too easy to get caught like this. But isn't that just exciting?

That thought strikes both of them at the same time it seems, because just as Steve moves his hand out of the way, Billy's flies down tear away at their belts, all the while maintaining the rhythmic dance of their ever so insatiable tongues.

Neither dares to utter a single word, because the wrong one could stop it all too soon, so they settle on hushed grunts and groans, barely a cursed word till Billy's hand shoves into Steve's trunks once his fly is down.

“A-ah- shit, Billy-” Steve moans out and closes both his hands in the denim jacket.

“Be fucking quiet, Harrington, I swear to God,” Billy hisses out with his gaze low.

Attention caught on how fucking long and hairy Steve is, the head of his flushed cock wet with pre. He doesn't waste any time with getting himself out as well, his own leaking erection girthy with clear veins snaking around. Not as long as King Steve's magnificent dick, but definitely wider.

“Fuck,” Steve breathes out hard at the sight of them both out in the open like that, shiny and standing at full size.

A moan cuts through him as Billy brings his free hand up to muffle every sound, with such force that it knocks Steve's head into the wall. The pure display of dominance that that move is, makes Steve leak even worse and struggles to keep his eyes open.

“I said shut the fuck up,” Billy's voice deep and threatening.

Steve feels as if he's staring death in the eyes, and all he can do is whine and thrust his hips into the iron grip around both their throbbing cocks. It's dry and uncomfortable, but fuck if it doesn't get him to where he needs to go.

And once again their minds must be in perfect sync, because Billy brings up his hand, and Steve watches intently as Billy spits into his palm, clear blue eyes never looking up to catch how burning amber stares.

Finally he gives in, when that slick hand twists around the two of them, and Steve's eyes roll back between fluttering lids as his mind goes blank with searing pleasure. A calloused hand, thick veins, hoarse groans, all of it the only things to matter in his world now, as every practiced jerk of his all too hard prick tears away at his self control and shoves him into the deep end of urges he never realized he had.

Urges he doesn't care to ignore.

Never before has he heard Billy go this long without insulting him, and he kinda misses it. He fights to open his eyes again, and catches how Billy's brows are raised high up and pinched together, his mouth wide as he barely manages to choke his own moans before they grow too loud, stare locked down where he's fisting them together with such fervor he could light a fire with it.

Steve is aching to hear Billy call him names, throw around abuse like it's nothing and shame him for something, anything. Perhaps tonight will give him new material finally, call him a queer or gay, just to then overpower him as he always does when they fight, now maybe followed by... a handjob? A blowjob? As long as his hands are on him, Steve won't complain anymore.

Can't complain when he's so close. He hadn't realized how badly he needed release at all till Billy had started pushing into him just minutes ago. Had their constant struggle just been pent up sexual tensions? Was this what it was all leading up to? An inevitability? Billy pumping his closed hand around them in a gross as all hell elevator, feeling every single inch of Steve's painfully intense erection?

“Fuck, ah shit, lift up your shirt,” Billy's quick to groan out with labored breathing that stutters as he speeds up his hand as fast as he can go.

And Steve doesn't hesitate to do as told, brings both hands from Billy's jean jacket to his own striped polo and lifts it up as high as he can, what with the way they're crammed together in a corner.

Feels the heat gather, the coil in his gut tightening till it's seconds away from springing, the vice grip around him doing wonders in pulling him to the edge, then shoves him off as he cums, hips shoving into Billy's rough hand with short bursts as he moans against the one stealing away his air, feels how he ejects wet heat all over his abs in a toe-curling feat.

Shortly followed by Billy as he empties all he's worth onto Steve's stomach, forehead pressed on top of the hand covering Steve's mouth, eyes still unblinking as he watches what a gorgeous mess they're making. He squeezes their spent dicks till the last drop drips down his broad fingers, and then lifts up his hand.

Ensures that Steve is watching, as Billy sticks out his whole tongue and licks his hand clean, sucking on the digits till there's not a trace left.

Steve moans into his hand at that, and despite the fact that he's been depleted of all his energy, still feels it jolt through him and burn into his memory for forever.

Finally Billy pulls his hand from Steve's mouth, and wipes the spit off in his jeans as he steps away.

And Steve nearly collapses without the support of thick muscles to keep him up, boneless in the afterglow of the best orgasm he's had in months. But... what's he going to do with the way they've painted his abdomen? There's no fucking towels or paper here, and he can't just take off his expensive polo shit and use that! He stares down in slight panic and gestures with his hands as if he's just going to, what, wipe it off?

When his sight gets blinded by something soft that reeks of musky sweat, and he catches Billy's shirt before it would fall to the floor. He looks up to see Billy put his jacket on again.

“Use that to uh...” He points to the cum that slowly runs down Steve's exposed skin.

Although hesitant for very good reasons, Steve does eventually wipe himself dry with Billy's tee, and awkwardly hands it back, as if he can really use it for anything now.

And a prolonged silence fills the air between them, as Steve remains in the corner and Billy struggles a bit with the doors; no clue what floor they're on anymore, and the counter above probably hasn't worked in years.

“What happens now?” Steve asks cautiously from where he's sitting in the same corner, a spot that he dares not leave.

Billy groans out a complaint and shakes his head at the immovable steel doors. Then goes to sit next to Steve with only slight space between their bodies.

“You mean if we make it out of here alive?” he laughs, and hears Steve give a tired chuckle as well. “That depends...” his tone grows wary and serious. “Harrington... if you tell anyone about this, I will fucking kill you, you understand?”

Their eyes meet, and in Billy's there's a storm of mixed feelings. Fear of getting hurt, premature anger of being found out about, and maybe hope? But that could just be Steve projecting his own thoughts and feelings onto the other.

“And what if I don't?” Steve swallows hard around the anxiety that clumps together in his throat. “What if I don't tell anyone about... us?”

One corner of Billy's rather stern grimace quirks up. “Then I'll see you tomorrow night.”

#Harringrove #Billy Hargrove #steve harrington #Lemon #My writing #TW blood #CW blood #Mmmm wrote this almost in one sitting yesterday #I had a tonne of fun!!!#I WANT to write more like this #with the two of them fighting n shit #but man #what do people even fight about #I've used fuck 26 times in this one document #damn

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lady-of-the-lotus · 4 years ago

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Xue Yang whisks a solipsistic Lan Xichen off on a murder roadtrip to raise Xiao Xingchen and Meng Yao from the grave. Because that will solve all of their problems, right? AU where Wei Wuxian never came to Yi City and Xue Yang is still running around post-canon disguised as Xiao Xingchen.

Lan Xichen can’t remember most of the day, spent pacing the Chang manor in a state of increasing desperation.

A-Yao had been back.

A-Yao had been in his arms.

A-Yao had been warm. Alive.

Whole.

And now, A-Yao is gone.

XueXiao & XiYao - Rated M - Read on AO3! Tumblr: Ch. 1 Ch. 2 Ch. 3 Ch. 4 Ch. 5 Ch. 6

a bit of blood here but the violence itself isn’t incredibly graphic...I mean, it’s still rated M!

Chapter 7: bigger than my bones

A-Yao sits up.

“A-Yao!” Lan Xichen falls to his knees beside him, staining his robes with blood from the array. “A-Yao!”

A-Yao stares up at him, dazed. He looks as if he’d just been struck over the head after having been abruptly woken from a drugged sleep.

“Er…Er-ge?” His voice is thick. “Lan Xichen?”

Lan Xichen grips his bare white shoulders. They’re warm. Solid. Real. Two arms— two. Both warm.

Solid.

Real.

A-Yao swallows hard. He’s shaking all over. “Er-ge?”

Lan Xichen whips off his outer robe and drapes it around A-Yao. “It’s me, it’s me, I’ve brought you back, I’ve brought you back—”

Xue Yang clears his throat. “Actually, you just stood there and goggled at me and passed out.”

Lan Xichen ignores him. All he can hear is A-Yao’s breathing, all he can see is A-Yao’s face. “You’re back, you’re back—”

A-Yao slumps forward, pitching against Lan Xichen’s chest. His face is warm against Lan Xichen’s throat, body completely limp against his own.

Lan Xichen turns to Xue Yang in panic. “What happened?! What happened?!”

“How should I know? The last time I did this I killed the man as soon as I confirmed I could do it. Was just trying to see if I was doing something wrong and that’s why it wasn’t working on Xiao Xingchen.”

Lan Xichen feels A-Yao’s throat. There’s a steady pulse, and the skin is warm. “Perhaps he's simply exhausted. It must take a lot out of one, being dead—”

Xue Yang laughs. It’s not a particularly nice sound. "I don't think anyone else has ever spoken those words."

Gently, Lan Xichen scoops A-Yao up into his arms and carries him to the first bedchamber he can find, laying A-Yao under the covers as if putting a newborn to sleep for the first time. He seats himself at the bedside, eyes fixed on A-Yao’s face.

“How many days will it take for those servants you let escape to reach Cloud Recesses?”

Lan Xichen barely hears Xue Yang, too intently focused on A-Yao. He’s too overwhelmed to know how to feel. Elated? Worried? Overjoyed? Terrified?

Xue Yang snaps his fingers in his ear. “Are you in there? How long do we have until those servants tell the Lan where we are?”

Lan Xichen looks up. “With no detours, on foot, two weeks.”

“Then we have that long until anyone comes after us on their swords. Unless they meet Lan cultivators on the road—”

“I told them not to speak to anyone.”

“As if they’d follow your orders if it were convenient not to?”

“I’m the clan leader.”

“Not of their clan.” Xue Yang loses interest. “Doesn’t matter. We need to get moving anyway. As soon as your dimpled little friend is on his feet, we’re out of here.” He stretches, yawning, and gives Lan Xichen a look he can't decipher. “Wake me if anything important happens.”

Lan Xichen sits at A-Yao’s bedside all night, longing to reach under the covers for his hand, hold it, feel its reassuring warmth and weight in his, but he’s too afraid that if he moves, if he touches A-Yao, A-Yao will dissipate in the moonlight pouring in through the open window.

Shortly before daybreak A-Yao stirs.

“Er-ge?”

A-Yao! Lan Xichen wants to say, but his mouth is suddenly too dry.

A-Yao sits up. “Where am I?”

“Chang Manor. Yueyang.” Lan Xichen runs his bone-dry tongue over his equally dry lips. It’s like rubbing sandpaper with sandpaper. “Xue Yang helped bring you back.”

A-Yao looks alarmed. “Xue Yang is here?”

“He helped get you back.”

“Have I any clothes?”

Lan Xichen points to Chang Ping’s clothes and goes to wait outside. His heart is beating fast again, a sick feeling in his stomach.

A-Yao doesn’t want to be back.

Or rather, if he does, he doesn’t care that Lan Xichen was the one to bring him back.

Or else—or else how could he speak so—so mundanely —

A-Yao steps out of the room. His hair is in a simple half-knot, and he’s wearing Chang Ping’s simple, if well-made, clothes and shoes. They’re too large on him, and he looks even smaller than he had when naked, almost frail.

Nothing like Jin Guangyao. Nothing like the man in Guanyin Temple. Hatless, unassuming, with no poisonous red dot between his eyes. Younger, too, as if the years of crushing responsibility, paranoia, and dread have been erased.

He looks , Lan Xichen thinks despite how illogical he knows it is, like Meng Yao.

A-Yao heads straight for the main hall, as if he remembers the manor’s layout from his one visit over fifteen years ago. He stops short when he sees Chang Ping’s body hanging from the hall's rafters, a sticky brown mass of dried blood with dozens of bloated flies feasting on its flesh. There’s far less of that flesh than Lan Xichen remembers, the body whittled down to a mere floppy, fat-coated skeleton, as if most of his flesh and bone and muscle had gone into remaking A-Yao’s fragile new body.

A-Yao looks down at the array on the floor, at the bucket, at the blood still staining Lan Xichen’s knees.

“Oh, Er-ge ,” he says.

Lan Xichen peers at him anxiously. “What is it? What happened?”

There’s sorrow in A-Yao’s large black eyes. “Did you help him do this?”

Blood pumps through Lan Xichen’s head with such force he’s afraid he might pass out again. “I—I—”

“Oh, Er-ge ,” says A-Yao again, and, his beautiful face twisted in agony, he begins to fade, rapidly growing fainter as the first touches of pink sunlight creep in through the front door.

“A-Yao!” Lan Xichen leaps forward, snatching at him, but it’s too late.

A-Yao is gone.

“Well, that didn’t go as planned.” Xue Yang stands leaning against the doorpost. He’s in his green inner robe, collar wet, as if he missed his face when splashing it with water. His glossy black hair is in a messy bun at the nape of his neck, feet bare, dark circles under his eyes. Maskless. He yawns, stretching like a sleepy cat. “He say anything interesting?”

Lan Xichen flies across the room and grabs him by the throat. “You little rat, what did you do, you promised me A-Yao back—”

Face turning purple, Xue Yang desperately tries to pry Lan Xichen’s fingers from his throat, but Lan Xichen is too strong.

“U—gh—uhg—”

Lan Xichen flings him out the door so hard he bounces twice and rolls down the discussion hall steps.

Xue Yang stands slowly, coughing raggedly. He’s a resilient little cockroach, Lan Xichen will give him that.

Lan Xichen flies down beside him. “What did you do, you repugnant little liar—”

Jiangzai appears in Xue Yang’s hand. “I brought him back!” he chokes through bared teeth. He’s bleeding from his tongue, face red with white splotches. “I swear!”

“You bastard, you lied to me—”

“I told you, I’ve never done this before! I swear I did my best! Do you think I wanted this? I need that dimpled little madman too!”

Lan Xichen hits him so hard that the delinquent cultivator is knocked flat on his back, Jiangzai falling with clang. He draws Shuoyue, but Xue Yang has Jiangzai back up, a new light in his eyes.

“Lay one more finger on me,” Xue Yang says, his voice a chilling rasp, “and it will be the last thing you ever do.”

“As if I care—”

Xue Yang spits blood. “I’m the only one who can get him back, and you know it!"

Lan Xichen freezes, then slowly sheaths his sword. “You have until tonight,” he says.

Rubbing at his bruised throat, Xue Yang grins. It’s a grin full of teeth. “Anything for you, my friend.”

* * * *

Lan Xichen can’t remember most of the day, spent pacing the manor in a state of increasing desperation.

A-Yao had been back.

A-Yao had been in his arms.

A-Yao had been warm. Alive. Whole.

And now, A-Yao is gone.

He avoids the main hall, where Xue Yang is holed up with Chang Ping's body. The ground is mere air beneath his feet, the walls and grass and trees and ceilings misty nothings. He tries to meditate but can’t. Can’t eat, can’t drink, can’t rest, can’t think of anything but A-Yao.

The way A-Yao had looked at him.

“Did you help him do this?”

And—

“Er-ge.”

That soft, sorrowful, disappointed, “Er-ge.”

Without giving Lan Xichen time to explain, without letting him explain how Chang Ping had deserved it, and how even had he not deserved it, nothing truly mattered, nothing mattered except getting A-Yao back. A-Yao, the only real thing in a world held together by spider-silk and starlight—

The moon is high in the sky when Xue Yang flings open the doors to the main hall. The day had been unseasonably warm, and a blast of rotting meat and stale blood comes gusting out around him.

“Your little friend is back,” he says shortly. “I’ll be packing. We need to leave this place.” He turns and strides off without so much as a smart remark.

A-Yao steps out of the hall, takes a few steps, and collapses heavily on the steps.

Lan Xichen opens his mouth to speak, then closes it and sits beside him.

“What did he do?” he finally asks.

A-Yao’s head jerks up as if startled. “Nothing, as far as I could make out,” he says, and his voice is the same old voice Lan Xichen remembers, the same…not casual, A-Yao was never casual, not even with him, but what passed as casual for him, the voice he had used while they lived together after he fled the Cloud Recesses. “I…I believe I will disappear every morning, to reappear at night.” He glances down at his hands. They’re lying like baby birds in his lap, shaking despite the night’s unseasonable warmth. Lan Xichen wants to reach out, cover them with both of his, but he’s too afraid to move, to do anything that might result in A-Yao drawing away with a hiss of disgust. “It...it hurts.”

Lan Xichen is crushed by a sudden wave of guilt. “My fault,” he says. “I never should have brought you back…”

“No, no, Er-ge, I—I thank you.” A-Yao darts a nervous glance around at the utter stillness of the courtyard, as if afraid his words might manifest a demon out of thin air to drag him back to his coffin with Nie Mingjue. He takes a deep breath, shudderingly, as if it’s difficult for him to fill his lungs.

On a sudden impulse Lan Xichen reaches out to brush his shoulder with the back of his hand, make sure A-Yao is in fact there, that he’s not a figment of his imagination, and A-Yao flinches at his touch, face blanching.

So Lan Xichen was right. A-Yao does not want to be here. At least not be here with—with him.

He forces himself to speak, say something, anything. To sound friendly, light, casual.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asks A-Yao.

A-Yao closes his eyes and tilts his head back as if to catch the moonlight, painfully, eerily beautiful in its otherworldly silver rays. “I remember everything,” he says quietly. “I wish I didn’t, but I do. But I—I feel—I feel different. Feel like…”

“You look like Meng Yao,” Lan Xichen blurts, then blushes.

A-Yao opens his eyes. “You’ve changed too, Er-ge.”

“Lan Huan,” Lan Xichen hears himself saying. He needs to hear it from A-Yao’s lips just once, just once in case he loses him again, just one time he can look back on and remember. “Lan Huan.”

“Lan Huan,” says A-Yao, and Lan Xichen wants to reach out again, grab his hand, press it to his cheek, feel his warmth as he speaks his birth name, but is too afraid that A-Yao will pull away again. “A-Huan.”

Lan Xichen clasps his hands together in his lap so that A-Yao won’t see how badly they’re trembling. Perhaps if he thinks Lan Xichen is his old calm self then he won’t realize how different Lan Xichen has become, won’t think he’s changed any more than he already knows he has, won’t be disgusted.

Won’t leave him again.

“I am sorry, A-Yao,” he hears himself saying. It sounds woefully inadequate. “I’ve spent the past year trying to…” He trails off. Trying to forget? Trying to bring him back? Moving on? Mourning?

A-Yao doesn’t seem to hear the first half. “A year?” He looks almost anxious. “Is Jin Ling well? Koi Tower is a pit of vipers… Are the Jin prospering?”

“They’re doing well.”

“He must hate me.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t hate you.”

“I would, if I were him.”

“Jin Ling is fine.” Lan Xichen doesn’t know how true that is, but lying is nothing compared to the things he’s done. “Jiang Cheng supports him. He’s doing fine…”

A-Yao stares fixedly at the ground. He really does look younger. Almost most fragile, in a way that he never fully had in the past. “And you?”

“I’ve been…fine.” He hates the sound of that word. Fine.

A-Yao bites his lip. His voice is very low, almost inaudible. “I spoke to Xue Yang.”

Lan Xichen doesn’t ask him what exactly Xue Yang told him. Better not to know. Suddenly he’s having trouble breathing, anyway, and isn’t sure he can speak at all. He feels himself drifting, and he reaches down and squeezes the stone of the steps, but it’s soft and formless beneath his palms—

“Hey. Lovebirds.” Someone nudges him from behind. Xue Yang, prodding him with Jiangzai’s scabbard. Shuanghua and its scabbard have been safely tucked away in his qiankun sleeve since he used the blade to carve up Chang Ping. He’s wearing dark blue robes he must have found in the manor. “Time to hit the road.”

“A-Yao is in no shape to travel.”

“Then maybe next time don’t let witnesses escape. I’ll bet you even gave them money. You self-righteous naive types are all alike.” With a curl of his lip, Xue Yang heads off.

A-Yao follows him with his eyes. “Perhaps you haven’t changed so much after all, Er-ge— A-Huan.”

Lan Xichen feels a surge of warmth. “Let me help you up—”

“I’m fine,” says A-Yao, struggling to his feet on his own.

The warmth fades.

Lan Xichen changes into simple rust-colored robes found in one of the manor’s rooms before following the strangely silent Xue Yang up the road to Yueyang. It’s the obvious place for anyone to look for them, but it’s the largest city for miles around and the best place to get lost in.

A-Yao stumbles once, and Lan Xichen reaches out to steady him, briefly gripping his arm before A-Yao pulls away.

He feels better after that. He hadn't been mistaken before. A-Yao is real. Is here.

But for the most part, A-Yao makes it all the way there under his own power, somehow. As resilient, in his own way, as Xue Yang.

He’s had to be.

Lan Xichen remembers A-Yao telling him about how his father had kicked him down the stairs on his fourteenth birthday, how his mother’s client had kicked him down the stairs as a child before flinging his half-naked mother out into the street, how he’d lain in bed for weeks with a concussion that almost killed him. How the client had eventually returned, had pointedly ignored his mother and started patronizing another prostitute. “Why pay for something the whole town’s already seen?” he’d laughed—

It was Meng Yao who had told him that, he remembers. Jin Guangyao had rarely spoken of his past, as if afraid speaking the words aloud, even when cloistered alone with Lan Xichen in the innermost room of his chambers, would remind the entire Koi Tower of his past, would make him less worthy of his position, would form a black stain on his forehead for all to see.

Yueyang isn’t far, but the going is slow. They reach the city at dawn.

A-Yao fades as soon as the sky begins to turn orange and pink, his face a mask of pain.

“It hurts him,” Lan Xichen says, turning to Xue Yang.

Xue Yang tosses a candied peanut in the air, catching it in his mouth. “So? What do you want me to do about it?”

Lan Xichen presses his lips into a thin line. “Anchor him here. Do something !”

“You’re the scholar. You’re the expert on ghosts.”

“On getting rid of them! You’re the one who knows how to—to work your wicked tricks—”

“Ah, the second they’re no longer working in your favor, they’re suddenly ‘wicked tricks.’ ” Xue Yang points to a dodgy-looking tavern on the street corner. “Shall we stop there for the day, rest up, and decide where to go from here? I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.” Whistling, he strolls off towards the tavern, where he orders four bottles of wine up to their room.

“I thought you don’t drink much,” says Lan Xichen. Aside from that one time outside of Qinghe, he’s yet to see Xue Yang drink more than a cup of wine with dinner.

“Everyone has to start sometime. Besides, if you think I can put up with you and that dimpled weasel making eyes at each while sober, you are gravely mistaken.” He takes a deep drink from the wine jar. “Just go and ask the little freak straight out.”

A-Yao is clearly not “making eyes at him” in any possible way—he won’t even let him brush his arm!—but Lan Xichen doesn’t dare follow up on this. “I beg your pardon,” he says instead. “Ask him what?”

“ ‘I beg your pardon’?” Xue Yang mimics. “Just ask the dimpled little freak what he needs done.”

“Needs done?”

“Are all of you Lans this dense? This is demonic cultivation. Everything is the opposite of what you know. The thing that would normally set his spirit at rest will instead bind him to this world. No more disappearing and reappearing.”

“No more pain?”

“I can’t answer that. But I’d guess not.” Xue Yang has already finished one jar of wine. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying it—it smells like dry wine from where Lan Xichen is sitting—but he unstops the second jar and takes a sip, which goes down the wrong pipe. “Not that we can fix what’s wrong with him up here,” he adds once he’s finished coughing, tapping his head. A splatter of blood comes out with the clear white wine, as if the bite on his tongue has reopened. He looks at the blood on the floor, then gives a little laugh. “Guess being locked up for a year with an angry ghost who hates your insides isn’t a lot of fun.”

“What do you mean?”

Xue Yang doesn’t answer, just heaves a long-suffering sigh, rolls his eyes, finishes the jar of wine, and passes out—pretends to pass out?—on his bed.

Lan Xichen would have liked to spend the day pacing, but he’s too tired to do more than nap on the other bed, which is larger than usual for these kinds of inns. His nap is more of a doze than anything else, but he feels stronger when he wakes that night.

A-Yao is kneeling beside his cot.

“Er-ge?” A-Yao whispers. His face is glowing white in the starlight coming in through the window. “Oh, you’re just asleep.” His shoulders relax. “I…” He swallows and looks over his shoulder. Xue Yang is lying sprawled in an uncomfortable-looking position, four empty jars of wine on the floor beside his cot. “You weren’t waiting for me.”

A wave of crushing guilt. Lan Xichen reaches out for A-Yao’s hand, manages to brush it, be reassured of his warmth, of his reality, before A-Yao jerks away.

He continues lying there, A-Yao kneeling beside the low cot with his one arm lightly resting beside Lan Xichen. Close enough to touch him, if he wanted.

Which he clearly doesn’t.

“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen says finally, “what is the one thing tying you to this world?”

A-Yao looks slightly startled, like a baby deer asked who it thought the next Chief Cultivator should be. “I—I don’t know.”

Not me. Of course not.

“I mean, if you were a ghost, and there was one thing you needed done to set you at peace, what would that one thing be?”

A-Yao’s eyes are wide. Lan Xichen has only seen that expression once before—in Nightless City, when he hid behind him from Nie Mingjue, and he feels a sudden twinge of uncertainty.

Not that he has any reason to doubt A-Yao, he reminds himself. This is just his paranoia speaking. A-Yao has made no promises to him. A-Yao is not trying to get out of anything or manipulate him into doing anything. He had been the one to ask A-Yao what it was A-Yao wanted.

Besides, that had not been manipulation back at Nightless City, he reminds himself, no matter what Nie Mingjue had claimed. A-Yao had been ready and willing to die for the terrible things he’d been forced to do to maintain his cover…

“You want to get rid of me?” A-Yao asks. He leans forward slightly, so close Lan Xichen imagines he can feel his breath on his skin.

“Xue Yang says that it would bind you to this world.”

A-Yao glances over at Xue Yang again. “He might be right.”

“You think so?”

“I think it’s worth a try.” He rests his cheek on the rough blanket, closing his eyes. “It’s worth a try…”

Lan Xichen inches over to the other edge of the bed, glancing over at A-Yao across what feels like a vast expanse of mattress. “Are you tired, A-Yao?”

A-Yao opens his eyes at the sound of his name. “In a strange kind of way.”

Lan Xichen takes the one pillow and lays it beside him as a kind of invitation. He doesn’t say anything. They’d shared a bed many times before while hopping from one run-down inn to the other after the destruction of the Cloud Recesses, always with a pillow between them. Does A-Yao remember? Or will he think Lan Xichen is being presumptuous—

A-Yao lies down beside him.

He lies on his back, rigid, like a corpse laid out in a coffin, straight and stiff and still until he finally relaxes into something almost human. Lan Xichen thinks he can feel his body heat, feel it radiating into him, warming him, making the dark shapes of the room come into sharper focus, the cool night air almost alive in his lungs.

“If I had to choose one thing,” A-Yao finally murmurs, in a voice very unlike his usual clear, almost over-enunciated tones, “it would be to kill him.”

Suddenly Lan Xichen knows that his having remembered A-Yao’s story the night before was no coincidence. He knows exactly whom A-Yao is talking about.

“I should have done it myself long ago,” continues A-Yao in that same low, uncharacteristically natural-sounding voice, “but his death would have raised too many questions back then, and after that I had too many things keeping me busy…I owe her this much. I should have long ago…”

“What’s his name?”

“Wu Shen. He’s a merchant in Yunping City.”

“Not…” Not Nie Huaisang?

A-Yao shakes his head. “I have been unfilial.”

“Then I’ll…I’ll go to Yunping.”

He hears A-Yao swallowing hard. Something brushes his hand, very briefly, and then A-Yao pulls away as if he can’t bear to touch the man who rammed a foot of ice-cold steel through his chest.

Lan Xichen doesn’t close his eyes the rest of the night. He lies very still, watching A-Yao sleep, memorizing every flutter of eyelash, every murmur, every twitch. A-Yao seems to be plagued by nightmares, but Lan Xichen doesn’t dare wake him.

“If I had to choose one thing, it would be to kill him.”

Lan Xichen thinks back to those idle days in the Cloud Recesses all those years ago. Lan Qiren’s interminable lectures, Wei Wuxian’s question about pacifying restless spirits: “But what if the wish was to kill many people in revenge?”

Deserving of death, is Wu Shen. As much as Chang Ping had been. And if Lan Xichen were to refuse now, then Chang Ping’s extrajudicial death, his torment, would have all been for nothing. Real or not, his pain had existed in some form.

Lan Xichen raises the hand A-Yao touched, stares at it in the moonlight, presses the spot A-Yao had brushed to this cheek. He has to do this. Prove he’ll do anything to bring A-Yao back fully.

Maybe then A-Yao would forgive Lan Xichen for killing him.

* * * *

The trip to Yunping City takes a week. Fourteen times Lan Xichen is forced to watch A-Yao suffer, fourteen times he’s forced to endure Xue Yang��s intense stare as it happens.

The sun is setting when they arrive in Yunping, bloody red streaks across a sky hung with thick gray clouds. A light early-season snow is beginning to fall as they check in at a reputable inn and hurry up to their room.

“Dinner first, I think,” says Xue Yang after A-Yao has appeared. “Can’t practice demonic cultivation on an empty stomach, now, can we?”

A-Yao gives his head a little shake. He hasn’t eaten anything since he’d been brought back.

“Zewu-jun? No? Suit yourself. Meet back here in an hour, and we’ll head out.” Humming, Xue Yang disappears down the stairs.

Without a word A-Yao follows him. Lan Xichen hurries after them. With every passing night A-Yao has become more and more detached from this world, not uttering a single sound on some nights. Lan Xichen sometimes thinks A-Yao’s skin has grown translucent, at least from certain angles, as if he has begun to fade as his connection to this world weakens.

Tonight will change that.

Lan Xichen wishes Xue Yang hadn’t insisted on eating. Every second, every minute is precious—

But he silently walks beside A-Yao, following him out of the inn all the way to Guanyin Temple. It’s no longer a temple, just a pile of rubble belonging to Jin Ling as A-Yao’s next of kin. He flies A-Yao over the wall into the courtyard, waits outside the temple as A-Yao disappears into the darkness.

Lan Xichen paces the courtyard as he waits. The last time he was here—

The last time he was here —

Don’t think about that. It doesn’t matter, not anymore—

The snow is falling faster now, thick eddies of white whirling around the courtyard, wet powder melting on his hair and robes, but he barely feels the cold.

Tonight—tonight—

There’s a smear of red on A-Yao’s face when he eventually emerges, as if a tear of blood had been clumsily wiped off. A-Yao notices him looking at, reaches up, scrubs the last of the blood from his face.

“I interred her,” Lan Xichen says, very quietly, “near the Cloud Recesses. With honor.”

A-Yao gives a brief nod. No need to tell him of the concessions he’d had to make to Nie Huaisang in order to get him to release A-Yao’s mother’s body.

There would be plenty of time after tonight.

They’re about to leave the temple courtyard when Xue Yang flies over the courtyard walls and lands in front of them, grinning.

“Figured you’d be here,” he says, dumping a man on the thin layer of snow blanketing the ground. A bound, mustached man with a face that it was a crime for him to inflict on the local populace without a license. Xue Yang has placed a Lan silencing spell on him, and the man’s face is bright red with anger as he struggles to tear his lips open.

Lan Xichen darts a glance at A-Yao. A-Yao’s eyes are wide, the rest of his face frozen.

Wu Shen.

“Let’s go inside,” Xue Yang suggests, shaking the snow from his skirts and hair. “Too many eyes out here.”

Lan Xichen glances around at the walls surrounding the courtyard.

Xue Yang sighs. “There are Lan cultivators flying around the area. I saw them on my way over. Besides, it's cold and wet."

They hurry inside the temple. The ceiling is half cratered, the entire place turned upside-down, but the damage isn’t as extensive as it could have been. Humming, Xue Yang moves around the temple, lighting the surviving candles with his Wen talismans.

There, right here, that was where Lan Xichen had stabbed A-Yao—his blood remains on the stone floor; shielded from rain and snow by fallen beams—

A-Yao’s breathing is shallow. Desperate for a distraction, Lan Xichen removes the silencing spell on Wu Shen.

“—sue you all! Unhand me at once! What is the meani—”

Lan Xichen replaces the silencing spell.

“ ‘Unhand me at once’?” Xue Yang snickers. “If you don’t kill him, I will.”

Lan Xichen glances back down at Wu Shen, who’s rolling quietly towards the front door.

Xue Yang places a foot on his shoulder and shoves him down to the floor. Jiangzai is out, slung casually across his shoulders.

“He’s all yours,” he says. He sighs at the look on Lan Xichen’s face. “Our dimpled friend can’t do it, or it would just create more resentful energy,” he explains, answering a question Lan Xichen didn’t realize he had. “You know about these things from your studies, don’t you, Lianfang-zun? Tell the man.”

A-Yao ducks his head in agreement, eyes still fixed on Wu Shen.

Xue Yang prods Wu Shen’s belly with the tip of his sword. Wu Shen gives a silent eep of indignation. Strangely, he seems more angry than scared. “Better hurry, Zewu-jun, before I give it a shot myself and nab all the credit. ‘Unhand me at once’—”

A-Yao looks up for the first time. “Er-ge?”

Shuoyue is quivering in Lan Xichen’s hand. He shoud let Xue Yang do it, he knows he should, but A-Yao had asked him, asked Lan Xichen—this is his one chance to prove himself to A-Yao, be the instrument of his salvation just as he had been the instrument of his destruction—

“Take my advice,” says Xue Yang, leaning on one of the surviving columns, “and get it over with quick. Don’t try to have fun with it this time. I mean, I did my first time, but—”

Lan Xichen plunges Shuoyue through Wu Shen’s heart.

A-Yao watches impassively, then spits on the man’s corpse, a vulgar gesture Lan Xichen would never have expected from him.

Lan Xichen releases Shuoyue’s hilt, leaving the sword stuck deep in Wu Shen’s chest. His hands are shaking, and he can’t take his eyes off the corpse.

He just murdered a man in cold blood, in almost the exact spot he had murdered A-Yao—

Two wrongs to make a right. A-Yao would be back now. A-Yao would have a second chance. Wipe away what had happened here a year ago—

A-Yao turns to Lan Xichen.

“I didn’t think you would actually do it,” he says, very softly. “Xichen, I…” He grips Lan Xichen’s sword hand. “Goodbye, Xichen,” he says. Lan Xichen feels a stinging spark where A-Yao is gripping his wrist. “Find m—”

He’s gone before he can finish, diffused light flowing outward to join the flickering candlelight, a thousand sparks of gold fading for the last time.

Gone. Gone, just like that.

For good this time.

Lan Xichen stares at the spot A-Yao had been standing, at the bleeding corpse at his feet, and drags his eyes up to look at Xue Yang.

Xue Yang glances up from where he’s using Wu Shen’s blood to draw an array on the floor.

He’s grinning.

“That went well,” he says.

“Did you know?” Lan Xichen grabs Xue Yang by the throat. “Did you know he’d disappear? You told me it was different for demonic cultivation; you told me it would bind him here—”

“Better question to ask is if he knew,” Xue Yang chokes out.

“If—if—”

Xue Yang pries Lan Xichen’s nerveless fingers from his throat. “It was a test. You failed it. Gave in right away, as I understand.”

“I—”

Xue Yang is laughing as he rubs the bruises forming on his throat. Lan Xichen has torn his Xiao Xingchen mask, but Xue Yang doesn’t seem to care. He peels it off and drops it to the floor, his disarmingly boyish face mottled with pink and white. “You were the better part of him,” he sneers. “Supposed to be the better part of him. Moonlight in the darkness and all that nonsense.”

“You—you lied to me!”

“I suppose all the beads were put in the looks bucket when you were made,” Xue Yang grins, “without a lot left over for brains.” He clicks his tongue. "What else did you expect from someone as repugnant as me?"

Lan Xichen falls to his knees, palms pressed to the spot A-Yao had been standing as if he can still feel his heat on the stone tiles. The room has faded, and the old weight is crushing his limbs again, keeping him pinned to the ground, barely able to breathe. Squeezing his lungs, threatening to crack his skull, a thousand times worse than it had ever been in the Cloud Recesses. There’s a dark red spot on his hand where A-Yao had been touching him—

“Aw, how nice,” Xue Yang clucks. “He marked you as his own. Can’t decide if it’s like a dog pissing on a tree or—no, I think I’ll go with ‘dog’ on this one.”

Lan Xichen stares at the red spot. Something is pricking at his half-melted brain—something familiar—but his blood is pumping too hard to think. He’s hot, so hot —

“To help find him in the afterlife,” explains Xue Yang. He bites his lip, hesitating, then shrugs. “Better not blow it again the next time, my friend.”

Lan Xichen is on his feet, swaying slightly. “Why did you do this?”

“About time you asked.” Xue Yang removes a folded sheet of paper from his qiankun sleeve. “You really should have asked more questions, my friend.”

The missing page from the book, the one that had supposedly been destroyed in a fire.

Lan Xichen grabs it.

“The ritual calls for the corruption of a soul of equal so-called purity in order to create a proper vessel for me to call the soul into before putting it back in his body,” Xue Yang explains as Lan Xichen stares at the paper, as if knowing Lan Xichen’s thoughts are too hot and flurried to be able to read, his vision blurred. “Not exactly easy to find a person like that in this fucked-up world. Not to mention access to the Lan library and Inquiry.” He shrugs. “You were the very obvious choice. Too bad you didn’t intentionally kill those Lan cultivators when we left the Cloud Recesses or those Nie guards, or I could have saved a lot of time.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Lan Xichen can barely hear his own voice over the blood roaring in his ears.

Twice. He’s killed A-Yao here, in this same temple, twice.

And A-Yao—

He has to find him. Has to explain. Has to be explained to. About why A-Yao would prefer death over life with him—

“Kill Zewu-jun?” Xue Yang twirls a strand of hair around his finger, eyes wide and innocent. He takes the pages back. “I can’t take you down on my own. But I figure they can, which is why I invited them. Right on time, too—”

With a squelching sound Lan Xichen draws Shuoyue from Wu Shen’s corpse and flies at Xue Yang. Laughing, the hooligan easily springs out the way, and Lan Xichen is about to pull out Liebing when he hears a familiar voice from behind him.

“Clan Leader!”

He whirls around. Six high-ranking Lan cultivators have dropped through the ceiling, swords in hand, snow gusting down around them. One has his guqin out and has begun to play the Song of Clarity—

Shuoyue arcs through the air, slicing the guqin in half.

And the cultivator.

Lan Xichen hadn’t meant to kill him but he, Lan Xichen, the top-ranked cultivator of his generation, is suddenly unable to govern his own spiritual energy.

But—

Is it really such a bad thing?

They’re trying to stop him from joining A-Yao. Stop him from killing the man responsible or A-Yao’s death. They're trying to bring him back to the Cloud Recesses—

Something echoes through the blood pounding in his ears.

“Too bad you didn’t intentionally kill those Lan cultivators when we left the Cloud Recesses—”

How many other Lan cultivators has he killed?

No. He couldn’t have killed them—

But he remembers the sound of the cultivator’s bones cracking against the stone as he fled the Cloud Recesses, and something bursts inside him.

A fistful of blood spatters out past his teeth, hot on his chin, speckling the floor with red.

A dozen more Lan cultivators have appeared, flickering around him, laughing, grinning, sneering. Despising him, ridiculing him for his desperation, his weakness, for his having fallen for Xue Yang's lies not once but twice—

Coming to take him home. Coming to lock him up again—

Something inside him snaps.

Blood burns his eyes, his vision half-obscured, but he hacks and slashes at the phantasms around him. There’s not a hint of his old elegance as he spins and whirls and lunges. He’s seized by Nie-like berserker rage as he rips them apart with Shuoyue—(they’re not real, anyway)—he knows they aren’t real—they’re just specters sent to haunt him, to taunt him, inventions of his overheated brain—

(Not that it matters, now. Nothing is real, nothing matters.)

The cultivators' bodies disappear. A dozen more men and women have appeared to take their places—

A face.

Wangji? No. Wangji couldn’t be here—nobody is here—

Sorrow on Wangji’s face— not Wangji’s face—not the real Wangji, anyway; if Wangji were truly here Lan Xichen wouldn’t stand a chance, not in his current condition—

A tear slips down Wangji’s face.

A hand on his shoulder, the first solid thing he’s felt other than Shuoyue’s hilt in—in how long—?

Where is he—

The temple. Still in the temple.

He scrubs the blood from his eyes, looks down. His blue robes are soaked with blood. Fresh blood dribbles from his eyes, his mouth, from the thousand ruptures in his flesh. Blood coats the snowy floor, taints the air, blossoms beautifully on the while robes of the six Lan corpses surrounding him.

Xue Yang looks down at him, watching him bleed out. Xiao Xingchen’s spirit-trapping pouch is in one hand, the Stygian Tiger Seal shard in the other.

For once there is no smile on Xue Yang’s face. “Shall I do it, my friend? The ritual will heal any damage to your body so that he will be whole when he returns—”

Lan Xichen stabs upward with Shuoyue.

Cursing, Xue Yang falls to his knees before the kneeling clan leader, blood spraying out past his teeth, eyes wide with shock. Lan Xichen must have struck an artery, because there’s a rapidly spreading pool of red around him, the hot crimson liquid surrounding the two of them.

Instead of using his spiritual energy to heal, Xue Yang instead begins to laugh, a laugh tinged with more than a touch of hysteria.

His knife is out.

Lan Xichen stares down at the mark A-Yao branded into his wrist, barely visible through the blood.

He looks up at Xue Yang again.

Waits.

“You’re welcome,” says Xue Yang, blood spurting over his chin, and he plunges his knife deep into Lan Xichen’s breast.

Lan Xichen hears a cry from the doorway, a familiar voice.

Or maybe he just imagines it.

The metal blade is cold as it pierces his skin, enters his muscle, scrapes bone. As cold as the mountain stream outside his mother’s house—

Lan Xichen wonders if the crane is still there.

He can almost see it now. Fluffing its wet feathers in greeting as Lan Xichen glides low over the Cloud Recesses—

The faint red light of an activated array comes from far away. Dimly-glowing symbols spin around him, as if someone is pouring the last of their life essence into the array as a soft new presence envelopes Lan Xichen—

The red light fades as he circles the mountain, flies higher into the crystal-clear sky. Frigid air is all around him, caressing his bare arms and legs, but he’s wrapped in warmth, in starlight.

A growing, glowing feeling, as if he’s bigger than himself, as if he’s become something more.

Something new.

He soars higher.

The Cloud Recesses looks so small from up here. So insignificant.

Like everything else.

He’s out among the stars now. Glowing, expanding, leaving a trail of green and purple stardust behind him.

Cosmic light envelopes him.

He melts into it.

* * * *

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. AO3

#The final chapter: Things come to a head #Or: The night sky sure is pretty and stars are cool #Fractured Ice #Lan Xichen #mdzsnet #Xue Yang #the untamed #mdzs #cql #check out Ao3 for the warnings

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softbiker · 5 years ago

Text

Agent 14 Oneshot

Warnings: maybe a couple bad words

Word count: 2.6k

A/N: While this is a continuation of the Steve x Agent 14 series, this particular installment has...almost no Steve lol. Just wanted to warn people before I get in trouble for that. It does, however, feature Agents 41 and 28 (from series written by @nacho-bucky and @kentuckybarnes )! Also, I plan on expanding and posting the full “menu” of custom drinks that 14 makes for her friends, so stay tuned for that! As always, enjoy and let me know what you think! :)

She squeals when the ad pops up as she’s scrolling through Instagram.

There it is, in all its glory, right between yet another engagement photo and a “no filter” celebrity selfie.

The S’mores Frappucino.

A towering frozen swirl of sweet vanilla and creamy milk chocolate, topped with the most mouth-watering promise of all: marshmallow whipped cream. And all of it dusted with a generous sprinkle of crushed graham cracker pieces. It’s enough to make 41 want to lick her phone screen.

With a flailing little backwards somersault, she rolls herself off the couch and bounds down the hallway towards Clint’s room, tie-dye socks slipping on the freshly polished floors.

“Guess what season it is?” She flings the door open with one hand, brandishing her phone in the other, her grin nearly splitting her face as she bounces up on her toes, eager to see his reaction - only to pull up short, a soft frown dragging her lips back down. The room is empty.

“Tweets?” 41 glances around the room, taking stock of the discarded socks and inside-out jeans littering the floor, a pair of her own boots flung to one corner, a plush sea turtle smiling at her from the bed. There’s a Sharing Size bag of peanut M&M’s on the nightstand, next to an open can of Red Bull, leaving a ring on the cover of last month’s Men’s Health which he’d permanently borrowed from Sam. She looks up at the ceiling - typically he leaves a vent open as a point of entry if he’s been…exploring up there. But no dice. Their vent remains screwed in place.

Shoving her phone in the front pocket of her hoodie, she backtracks towards the kitchen, rounding the corner from the hallway and sliding into the room Risky Business-style. A blazing mid-morning sun floods the room with light through the floor-to-ceiling windows, bouncing off of the metalwork backsplash and casting sparkles across the empty table. Hands on her hips, she huffs to herself, wondering where he’s run off to, before the clinking of glass bottles catches her attention.

Sticking up from the open door of the fridge is a vaguely familiar yoga-panted ass, waving in the air as its owner rummages through the shelves and drawers, muttering under her breath.

“Nat?” The red curls bounce in her ponytail as she stands at the sound of 41’s voice.

“Oh, hey, kid,” Nat smiles, propping a hand on her hip. If she’s at all bothered by the fact that her friend and coworker just got an eyeful of her backside, she hides it all with a poker face she probably mastered in super spy kindergarten. “What are you up to?”

“Just looking for Clint.” 41 pouts. She shifts her weight to one leg, scratching at her ankle with the toe of one sock. “You haven’t seen him have you?”

Natasha’s eyebrows flicker up as she closes the refrigerator with her hip.

“Oh - he didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“The boys are all out for the day,” she sighs, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “Some kind of belated bachelor party for Tony - even though he’s been married for a year, he said he missed out on the experience; so he kidnapped all of our male counterparts for the day.” Nat shrugs one shoulder, smirking. “Frankly the concept seems outdated - and sexist. But when has Tony ever listened to me?”

Nat notices the way her shoulders fall, the way her hands roll up inside the sleeves of her hoodie. Poor thing. And she’d come in here looking so excited, too; now her frown settles too deeply at the corners of her lips, eyes cast somewhere on the floor. Abandoning her search for a snack, Nat slides onto a bar stool at the island, propping her chin in one hand.

“You have any plans for today?” she prompts. She’ll deny it till her dying day, but the formerly made-of-marble assassin feels…soft at her core now. No, not her abs - her backflips are as tight as ever; but somewhere behind her ribs, deeper than her muscles, there’s a marshmallowy give to her now - the press of fingers could leave a dent on her.

And that’s why, God help her, she couldn’t stand the sight of 41’s frown. Couldn’t endure the downcast disappointment in her gaze. Couldn’t walk away from her halfhearted, sighing shrug.

“Not really,” 41 mumbles, licking her bottom lip. “I was just gonna see if Clint wanted to go get Starbucks with me. They’ve got the S’mores drink now.”

Pulling her phone from where it’s tucked into the waistband of her yoga pants, Nat quickly swipes through her messages and pulls up a group chat named ‘No Boys Allowed’.

I’m so gonna regret this, she thinks, but she types up her proposal anyway and taps send. Time to assemble.

***********

The bell over the door dings cheerfully, and 14 fights her inner groan long enough to yell over her shoulder, “Welcome to Starbucks!” She doesn’t turn from the drink in her hands, too afraid of spilling the milk (again) and having to remake this caramel macchiato. Gaze intent on the cup in her hands, she drizzles the sides with caramel, watching the sticky sweet goop glide down the walls of the cup. Satisfied that this should meet the customer’s request for “extra, extra caramel”, she reaches for her milk jug, glancing up from the machine where her espresso shots are queueing.

41 waves ecstatically when she meets her gaze over the espresso machine, a suspiciously casual Nat smirking over her shoulder. Wanda is following close behind them, hands shoved in the pockets of a denim jacket, despite the summer heat. Maria is already standing in front of the register, eyeing the menu, with 28 next to her, a pair of dark sunglasses pushed up on top of her head.

14 blinks.

With quick, nimble fingers, she finishes the drink in front of her and sets it up on the mobile order stand, awaiting the customer. Chase, the barista who should be covering front, is nowhere to be seen; but she doesn’t have any other drinks waiting, so she strides up to the register, tilting a curious brow at her friends.

“Ladies,” 14 smiles, tilting her head to one side. “This is…a nice surprise? A kidnapping? A mission?”

“Relax,” Maria says, punctuated with a good-natured eye roll. “We’re just here for the coffee.”

“Oh, sure,” 14 crosses her arms, leaning a hip against the front counter. “You guys are a little short-staffed, aren’t you? Where’s all the testosterone?”

“Looking for a certain star-spangled specimen?” Nat pipes up. Their group has clustered around the register in a close semicircle. “Boys’ day out. Some kind of adventure that will probably land Tony in the doghouse…but then again, he’s partying with a couple centenarians, so how bad could it be?”

“You’d be surprised,” 28 mutters with a quirk of her eyebrows.

In front of a group of super spies, superheroes, and super intelligent women, 14 fights to put on the best poker face she’s ever had in her life. At the mention of Steve - as well as the news he wouldn’t be joining them - Nat watches her closely; the only sign of her disappointment is the way she purses her lips, eyes flicking towards the door as though she might prove them wrong. And then it’s gone, her eyes turning back to her friends, a beaming, nose-scrunching smile fixed on her face.

“That sounds awful,” she giggles. “But very on-brand for Tony.”

A chorus of assent from the ladies, rolling their eyes and scoffing at the endless supply of evidence they have to that fact.

“Alright so…what can I get you?” 14 prompts. As much as she’d like to stand here, chatting with her friends, she’s still on the clock for another hour and a half - and there’s work to be done. Maybe it stings, chafes her heart a little, that this little outing doesn’t quite include her; that she’ll make their drinks and then they’ll leave, and then more drinks for more people for the rest of her shift. But these customers are more pleasant than most, and it’s not as though she won’t see them later, so she shoves down her insecurity and taps at the screen of the register, opening her till.

“Well we were thinking…” Wanda starts, glancing at Natasha. The two share an amused smirk that 14 doesn’t like at all. “…that maybe you could surprise us?”

“Except me!” 41 raises her hand, bouncing up on the balls of her feet. “I haven’t had a S’mores yet this year, I need one! Please?”

Stunned, 14 looks around the group, cocking one eyebrow.

“So…one S’mores, and then - you all want to be surprised?” What a request - she didn’t trust anyone to make a drink for her…that could really backfire.

“Well, you know us,” Nat shrugged. “You know what we like, what we hate, what we won’t drink…”

“Besides, it never hurts to try something new,” Maria smirks.

Teeth sinking into her bottom lip, a slow smile spreads across 14’s face.

“Alright, ladies, say no more-”

It takes her little more than a minute to line up her plan, squinting at each of her friends in concentration, a Sharpie poised to mark each cup, labeled with a name in her characteristic block-print scrawl. They crane their necks over the tops of the machines, trying to see behind the bar and guess what she’s whipping up back there. Ingredients flit through her hands, shaken into one cup, then exchanged for something else for the next. Syrups, cinnamon, juices, toppings. They try and fail to keep it all straight from one cup to the next, but she’s too fast, hands reaching between two drinks at once.

Finally, with a last look over her shoulder, goofily sticking her tongue from the corner of her mouth, she piles 41’s coveted marshmallow whip on top of her drink and sprinkles the graham cracker topping with a generous hand. 41 barely contains her squeal as she grabs 28’s elbow and points at it.

“That one’s mine! Doesn’t it look amazing?”

One by one, she lines up the drinks at the end of the bar, turning the cups so each name is properly shown.

“Alright, so what am I in for?” Maria cautiously waves her drink under her nose, letting the steam waft up from the small opening in the lid. Hers is a hot drink, its contents concealed in a thick paper cup proudly bearing the same green logo as its cardboard sleeve.

“I thought you wanted to be surprised?” 14 smirks, sliding 41’s frappucino across the bar into her glitter-nailed hands. 28 grabs hers as well, a refreshingly cold…something - she plunges in a straw and swirls the ice as she examines the pale pink color of the drink.

“Well, bottoms up girls,” Nat shrugs, inspecting the layer of foam on top of her drink before raising it to her lips. Wanda taps her cup with 41’s before tipping hers up as well. Standing behind the bar, a rag in her hands, 14 gnaws on her lip as she watches them sip her creations. She shifts her feet as she waits for the verdict.

“Wow.” Wanda’s brows shoot up, tongue flicking over her lip. “This is really good.”

“Yeah,” Maria agrees, going in for her second taste.

“Don’t know why you sound surprised,” 41 says around her straw and a mouthful of whipped cream. “Everything she makes is delicious.”

“Oh, thanks,” 14 brushes off the compliments with a one-shouldered shrug. “If you like it I’ll give you the recipe, so you can order it again?”

Various noises of agreement, all enthusiastic, all from full mouths. She smiles, grabs a blank receipt paper from the register and a pen from the pocket of her apron.

“Okay, so yours Wanda is a double dirty chai with cinnamon…”

***********

Folding her apron over one arm, 14 releases her hair from its butterfly clip and reaches for her backpack. She keeps a spare change of clothes folded neatly in the bottom, in case she has to run errands after work and can’t go out covered in coffee and syrup. The bathroom is empty and she ducks inside, slipping into a pair of cutoff shorts and and a tie-dye t-shirt; her faithful sneakers can make it through work and life, thankfully, so she wiggles her feet back into them, not bothering to untie the laces.

It’s been a long day. And a glance at her watch tells her it’s only…1:09 p.m.

Backpack on one shoulder, sunglasses perched on her head, she makes her way back out of the café, pausing at the end of the bar to get her drink.

“Here, girl.” Jade, the barista who made her drink, smiles as she hands her a straw. “You look like you need this.”

“I feel like I need this.” 14 smiles back as she jams her straw into the cup and takes the first sip. Iced blonde americano, 2 pumps toffee nut, a splash of sweet cream. She makes a small noise of pleasure - hits the spot every time.

“See you tomorrow!” she waves to her coworkers as she backs out the door, dropping her sunglasses down to her face as she steps into the unrelenting summer sun. Not two steps out the door, turning to the street, and she nearly bumps into-

“Nat?”

“Hey, long time no see.” Nat wiggles her fingers in a mocking little wave. The rest of their posse is clustered around a couple of bistro tables haphazardly shoved together outside the café.

“What…you guys are still here?” 14 cocks her head to the side. It’s been over an hour and a half at least, their drinks are sitting empty on the tables in front of them. She had assumed they’d be long gone.

“Well, duh,” 41 grins. “We’re going to lunch! And then - oh, we should get pedicures!”

“Oh, can we go to that new Thai place?” Wanda asks, leaning her elbows on the table. “It’s only a couple blocks down from here.”

“God, the things I would do for some egg rolls right about now-” Maria agrees, patting her stomach.

They start to stand from their tables, the metal chairs scraping loudly against concrete, and 28 gathers the empty cups to throw away in the trash cans next to the door. The group shuffles and chatters, eager at the prospect of lunch; purses and wallets are snatched up, phones tucked back into pockets. Wanda leads the way as they march off in pursuit of pad thai and egg rolls, the rest of the group falling in behind her on the sidewalk. Even in the early afternoon heat, they link arms and laugh and stand too close together, sharing giggles and gossip.

Nat lightly bumps 14 with her shoulder, her green eyes gone pale and glittering in the sun.

“You didn’t really think we’d eat and run on you?” she smirks. “Come on, I’m starving.”

14 ducks her head and grins.

“Just one second-” she says, sliding her phone from her back pocket. She snaps a picture of her drink, then smiles at Nat. “Okay, now we’re good.”

Nat rolls her eyes.

“Wow, that was so basic-”

“Shut up.”

A few minutes later, sitting in a blessedly air-conditioned Thai restaurant, she captions the photo ‘new drink for you to try next time - I highly recommend it’ and hits send.

Somewhere across town, shoved cheek by jowl with his buddies in the back of a stretch limo, the interior vibrating with music and lit with flashing LEDs, a super soldier smiles at his phone.

#agent 14 #steve rogers x agent 14 #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers fic

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bosspigeon · 4 years ago

Text

information’s just not going in

Pairing: Gen, with a side of Verda/Eric bein cute and married

Words: 1782

Summary: Verda catches wind of Bobby sniffing around the detective again, and, because he cares about his friend, he stages something of an intervention.

Don’t think too hard about timelines. I started this when I first started playing twc. Takes place in early book one. I also gave Wayhaven two more bars. Title from “Bulletproof” by La Roux

The Haven, Wayhaven’s premier bar (one of three in the entire town, to be quite fair) is surprisingly busy for a Tuesday night, but it’s still easy enough to find Verda and his husband tucked away in a booth in the corner. Busy or no, there’s plenty of room to make his way over, and he slides into opposite them and leans his elbows on the faintly sticky tabletop.

“Did you really have to bring Eric to read me the riot act, Verda?” he asks, giving the gently smiling blonde a weary look.

“Yes,” Verda responds simply. He steeples his fingers and levels Chase with a steady gaze. “The only reason I didn’t bring Tina as well is because I know you’d see us all, figure it was an intervention, and bolt.”

Chase groans up at the dark ceiling. “I don’t need an intervention! It’s just sex.”

“It’s not just sex!” Verda counters. “It’s never been just sex with Bobby! I’ve known you for too long to swallow that excuse, and honestly I refuse to believe you believe it yourself!”

Thankfully, Chase ordered a drink before he sought them out, and he takes a long, long pull. “I didn’t even do anything this time. He managed to make himself exceptionally repulsive, and I didn’t even talk to him. He just… It was a voicemail. That’s all.” He rubs his eyes. “I already have the mayor riding my ass, I don’t need Bobby grunting and slobbering on the back of my neck too.”

Verda’s face scrunches in disgust, and, adorably, his husband mimics his expression without even looking at him. Unluckily for Chase, Verda’s distaste with his crudeness doesn’t stop him from sighing, “It’s never just a voicemail. Or just a text. Or just a phone interview. That’s how Bobby works. His modus fucking operandi! He senses when you’re at your most vulnerable and he uses it to get a leg over. And if he can snoop for information for his tabloid nonsense, all the better!”

“That’s why I only go to his place now,” Chase mumbles, mostly to himself.

Verda gives him a sharp glare. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” the detective says, sitting up straighter and rolling his shoulders.

“When did you go to his place?” Verda asks, dangerously soft.

He knocks back another half of his drink, because god does he need it, and rubs his face. “It was weeks ago, Verda, please--”

“I’m sorry, weeks?” Verda’s voice hitches up a few octaves, and Chase only just realizes that there’s a tall, nearly-empty glass of something that was once brightly colored and likely full of several types of rather strong liquor on the table in front of Verda, and that he is very much in over his head. Verda’s normally a very sedate, put-together man, though he’s never been afraid to speak his mind, but when he’s had a few drinks…

Maybe Chase should have bolted after all.

“CHASE RAPHAEL KINGSTON, DID YOU SAY WEEKS?” Verda stands up, and his husband hurries to stand as well and push him gently back down into his seat. He goes without a fight, but he is still clearly fuming.

“Quiet down, would you?” the detective hisses. “You know how this town talks!” He glowers at a familiar face gawking a bit at their table (Frankie McGinnis, the groundskeeper at the local park and also one of Chase’s own graduating class) who clams up quickly, turns, and hurries off.

“Weeks, Detective? Weeks?” Verda all but snarls at him. Chase raises his eyebrows and looks to Eric, who just raises his hands and shakes his head.

“It’s not a big deal,” Chase defends weakly.

“When?” Bitten out through gritted teeth. Verda’s glaring daggers at him.

Chase rubs at his jaw, scratching his stubble and avoiding his friend’s eyes. “The night the Chief announced Liddel’s retirement. I knew I was being promoted. I told him I didn’t want it and he told me tough shit. I was tired, I was pissed, and Bobby heard through the grapevine and decided to have me over to congratulate me.”

Eric snorts at the choice of words. Verda just looks... Incensed. “Chase! You have to see that this is not healthy!”

"It doesn't matter if it's healthy or not!" he fires back, and he can't help but get worked up himself, with his coworker all but shouting him down like he's an unruly teenager. "It's not your decision! I'm an adult, and I can make my own decisions about who I fuck! Christ, d'you think you automatically get a say just 'cause I let you have at me too?"

Verda looks as if he's going to say something, but he snaps his mouth shut, his face scrunching, then collapsing. "Is that really what you think of me?" he asks softly.

Chase deflates very suddenly, spine bending, and rubs his face. "Fuck. No, Verda, of course not. I just… I'm sorry, that was awful of me to say. I just…"

"You're not used to people worrying about you," Eric offers, smiling a bit. "It can be overwhelming, right?"

Chase nods weakly. "I'm sorry," he says again. He finishes his drink in one good gulp, and it burns, but he needs the bolstering right now.

Of course, Eric knows he and Verda had their own little fling when they first met, just a sort of stress relief between friends and coworkers, that never progressed beyond that. They're good as friends, aces in bed together, but never really felt the need to take things to a level beyond that. It has, unfortunately, given Verda, and by extension Eric, far too much insight into Chase's habits, but sometimes it's... nice to be known.

At least he's got someone to tell him when he's being a tit.

"I need another drink," Chase groans.

Eric smiles and stands up, kissing the top of his husband's head. "I'll grab the next round. You lads behave."

Chase sighs. "I'm sorry," he repeats. "I… I know you're just worried. But I can take care of myself, Sol." He lifts his head and smiles crookedly. "Been doing it all my life, right?"

"Chase, you have so many tattoos our boss makes you wear turtlenecks in August, you had a criminal record before you turned 18, and you were bullied into the police academy immediately upon graduating college to avoid going to prison."

"Hey," Chase snaps defensively, "don't bring the tattoos into this. Everyone and their mum knows I'm covered in more ink than skin at this point, it's not my fault the chief clutches his pearls every time he sees them."

"My point is," Verda interrupts, "is that, perhaps, your life may have gone a bit more smoothly if you'd had someone to rely on other than yourself." He holds up his hand when Chase tries to protest, and presses on, "I'm in no way insulting you as you are now. You are an incredible man, Chase. Sharp as a tack, dedicated and proud, stubborn as all get out, but that's helped far more than it's hindered you. Wayhaven wouldn't be the same without you."

Chase squirms in his seat and looks away, "Verda…"

"I mean it, Chase. This town and the people in it owe you so much, and you deserve to be recognized for that. And you deserve to recognize it in yourself." He leans forward, bright-eyed and intense, "You deserve to feel like you matter to someone other Bobby Fucking Marks simply because he has an uncanny, sharklike ability to figure out exactly when you're at your lowest."

Eric chooses that moment to return with drinks, something fruity and ridiculous for his husband, and a simple rum and Coke for Chase. He sits down next to Verda and snuggles close. "So? How's it going?"

"Fine," Chase mutters. And he sighs gustily. "Verda's right, as usual. I just… Bobby's a prick, but we have history, and as much as I hate to admit it, he knows me too fucking well by now. I know better than to let him into my flat, of all things, but apparently not between my legs."

Verda splutters on his drink and laughs, Eric blushes a bit at the crudness, and just like that, the heaviness of the moment is gone. Verda fumbles for a napkin to wipe his nose, and Chase chuckles.

“If it makes you feel better, I’ve got more than enough to worry about right now with two murders and this Agency nonsense,” Chase mutters around the edge of his glass. “If Bobby decides to make more of a nuisance of himself than usual, I’m very likely to hogtie him and lock him in my trunk for a few hours.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to read his story about that,” Verda snickers. He’s begun to list heavily against Eric’s side, and the big blonde softens visibly.

“I think it’s time to get both of you home,” he says, smiling gently. “Chase, if you drove, I can bring you by in the morning to grab your car.”

Chase sighs and taps his knuckles against the table, but he smiles nonetheless, even if he can’t quite make eye contact. “That’d be aces, Eric. Thanks.”

Eric’s smile widens, warm and pleased, and he nods towards the door and helps his husband to his feet. Chase doesn’t move for a moment, just watching the two of them, Eric with his gentle fussing and Verda weakly protesting the attention, but at the same time visibly preening underneath it like it. Turning towards it like a flower towards the sun. Something in Chase’s gut twists.

He shakes his head, slams the dregs of his drink back, and climbs to his feet, slinging his jacket over his shoulders and following the happy couple to the door. He’s still a bit wrong-footed after their talk, but he stifles it down easily under three decades of practice repressing things like impulse control and feelings. If nothing else, he’s glad to have friends like Eric and Verda to look out for him, as much as he’ll let them.

“Hey, Verda?” he calls, his voice coming out a bit rough, softer than he intends.

Verda turns to look at him, wrapped around his husband’s arm and glasses a bit smudged. “Hm?”

Chase blows out a heavy breath that fogs in the air. “Don’t tell Tina about this, would you? I really don’t need another murder case once she decides to go after Bobby herself.”

Verda’s laugh is loud and delighted, echoing out into the otherwise quiet night. Chase stuffs his hands into his pockets and smiles to himself, allowing himself, for once, to take some quiet pleasure in what he’s got.

#pidge writes #the wayhaven chronicles #soloman verda #eric verda #oc: chase kingston #hfdjakshfldja i literally started writing this when i first started playing wayhaven #and i had a dream where chase and his coworkers get drunk and verda tells ub WAY TOO MUCH about chase's sex life #and i turned it into this bc i like that chase has people who care about him #eric is such a good husband #i love him so much #also pls ignore the dumb name i gave the bar #i know theres another bar thats actually named #but that gave me like #old man bar u kno #wayhaven fanfic

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set-phasers-to-whump · 4 years ago

Text

running out of time

Prompt: collapsed building

Whumpee: Nick Burkhardt

Fandom: Grimm

what’s up!! welcome to my 4th whumptober fic! i have no idea when in the show this is set but call it pre-season 2 finale i guess. i hope you enjoy!!!!!

The building shakes under Hank’s feet, making a slight rumbling noise which tells him that something bad is about to happen.

“You hear that?” he whispers to Nick, who is a few feet ahead of him with a flashlight in his hand, sweeping its beam across the floor.

Nick stops, and focuses his hearing, but of course, the second Hank had called attention to the noise, it had stopped.

“No,” he says, and keeps going. The floor shakes again, and Hank stops moving. No way in hell is he staying in here any longer. He eyes a support beam, half eaten away by some kind of creature. Yeah, he’s definitely getting out of here right now.

“Nick, I really think we need to go,” he says, not daring to raise his voice, in the unlikely event that a loud noise will hasten the building’s collapse (because that’s what’s going to happen, he’s sure of it). As if to confirm this theory, a piece of wood falls from the ceiling, narrowly missing him. He shouts, and jumps out of the way.

Nick spins around at the commotion. He opens his mouth to ask a question, but then the rumbling takes over, the building gives a terrible shudder, and everything falls apart.

Hank dives for cover, scarcely having time to shove his body under an old metal worktable before the ceiling comes crashing down atop him. He covers his head with his arms and tries not to breathe in the wood splinters raining down.

Nick is not so lucky. Hank, at least, had had the foresight to figure out what was happening, but Nick had been lost in thought, searching the building for any kind of clue, and hadn’t realized what was going on until it was too late. Something smacks into his chest, sending him stumbling backwards, something else grazes his leg, and then there’s a terrible thump on the back of his head, and the world goes dark.

Hank remains under the table until everything seems to be over. His ears are still ringing and he’s coughing in the dust, but he needs to see if Nick managed to escape the worst of it, too.

He stands up, surveying the wreckage grimly. Piles of broken wood and severed pipes and various assorted items litter the ground, and it feels like it should be dark, but it had only been noon when they’d arrived, and now that the roof is gone, it’s bright.

He doesn’t see Nick, but then again, there’s rubble covering everything. He could still be sheltering. Or maybe he’s trapped.

“Nick!”

No response. He shouts again, raising his voice as loud as he can.

Nothing.

“Shit,” Hank says to himself, and starts walking carefully across the wreckage to the place he’d last seen Nick - just a few steps ahead of him. How could he be perfectly fine (minus a few scrapes and bruises), and Nick be hurt, or even dead? He isn’t dead, Hank tells himself firmly, avoiding that line of thinking because it is absolutely not going to help him find Nick.

He sifts through the rubble for a few minutes, until he sees an arm sticking out, wearing Nick’s jacket, the hand slightly scratched up but looking healthy otherwise. He frantically digs around the arm, until at last, he uncovers the rest of Nick.

The good news is he’s alive. That’s about it. The bad news is everything else.

He’s unconscious, for starters, the cause immediately obvious: a thick length of metal pipe laying next to him, spotted with his blood. There’s no obvious mark from it on his forehead, which means it hit the back or the top of his head, which means he hadn’t seen it coming. He wouldn’t have been able to get out of the way. Hank winces, and continues looking Nick over.

There’s a long scrape down the side of his face from the piece of wood lodged into it. Smaller scratches cover the rest of his exposed skin, from various debris. He’s coated in a layer of dust and assorted small pieces of wood and plastic and metal, and Hank is sure there are more injuries lurking beneath his clothes. He doesn’t see any blood seeping through them, though, and he decides that examining the rest of him can wait - the most important thing right now is to get him awake and get him help.

Hank taps Nick’s face with one hand, grabbing his phone with the other.

It’s dead. Of course. Hank sighs and puts the phone back into his pocket, reaching into Nick’s pockets instead. He pulls out his phone, unlocks it, and dials 911, explaining the situation as best as he can.

That done, he turns his full attention back to Nick, who still hasn’t woken up. “Nick, wake up. Nick. Get up.”

He gives him a slap, a bit harder than he’d really meant to, and that finally does the trick. Nick’s eyes flutter open, and he groans, looking around.

“What happened?”

“Building collapsed. An ambulance will be here in ten minutes.”

“Mm.” Nick lapses into silence, closing his eyes.

Hank taps his face. Nick’s eyes reluctantly open to meet his. “What?”

“You can’t fall asleep, okay? Not until the ambulance gets here. Just talk to me, okay?”

“Don’t wanna talk,” Nick replies. Everything hurts so much. His head is absolutely pounding, and it’s making spots appear and disappear in his vision. Everything is blurry, and Hank’s voice echoes in his ears. He feels sick. But he can’t dwell on that for too long, because his face is burning and he can feel blood dripping down it, hot and sticky and terrible, and something is digging into his back and his left arm feels like it’s been crushed, and so does his chest, and it hurts to breathe, and he’s coated in dust so that when he does breathe, it goes into his lungs, and makes him want to cough, but something in him tells him that coughing would be a really bad idea right now, so he forces the instinct aside.

All of this is manifested in a single word: “hurts.”

“Is there anywhere it doesn’t hurt?”

Nick thinks for a second. “This hand,” he decides, tapping the fingers of his right hand against the ground.

Hank’s hand finds Nick’s, and holds tightly to it. “That hurt?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Hank doesn’t say anything else, but moves his hand continually, tapping his fingers and squeezing Nick’s hand, to keep him awake.

Nick uses the silence to think about the only thing he can think about - pain. The pounding in his head is making him nauseous, and the taste of dust coats his tongue. His face is still bleeding and he can feel some of the blood drying and cracking on his skin. Breathing still hurts, and his chest feels worse after talking. He wishes distantly that he didn’t need to breathe.

And then there is a cracking sound, and Nick hears it this time, and so does Hank, and he flings himself across Nick without thinking. He hears Nick yelp underneath him, and mentally apologizes as he waits for something else to fall.

Which it does. But not on them. One of the few support beams that had managed to stay standing gives way, in the corner farthest from them. It falls harmlessly to the ground, sending up a plume of dust.

Hank waits for it to settle, listening intently for any more ominous noises. Unfortunately, he’s so focused on those potential sounds that he doesn’t hear Nick, still underneath him, for a few seconds.

The second Hank had thrown himself atop of Nick, everything in Nick’s world had gone white with pain. He’d made a noise, before he was overtaken nearly completely by the whiteness, but he hadn’t passed out. He couldn’t be so lucky.

Everything just hurts, worse than it did before, and he is being crushed and trapped and Hank is on top of him and not moving and he can’t tell if the ceiling is falling again or if nothing at all is happening but Hank is on top of him and he’s not moving.

Somehow, Nick pushes the blinding pain aside for just a second, long enough to say, “Hank,” and cough on the dust, which, yep, is a really, really bad idea - he really can’t breathe now, and Hank’s weight is still crushing down on him and his lungs are refusing to cooperate and everything is pain, pain, pain.

Hank shoves himself off of Nick as soon as he hears his friend’s voice and realizes that he’s been crushing him for the past several seconds in anticipation of something else falling down. He lets out a breath of relief when nothing else moves, and glances around briefly to make sure nothing else is going to move, and then looks at Nick.

As soon as Hank’s weight moves off of him, Nick sucks in a deep breath, which hurts, but hurts less than not breathing at all. He looks around for Hank, nearly frantic, needing to make sure he’s still okay.

Hank is looking right back at him, the second Nick’s eyes fall on him. “I’m so sorry, man,” he is saying. “I know that must have hurt, but something else was collapsing. I didn’t want it to hit you.”

“‘S okay,” Nick breathes. “Thanks.” Hank looks okay, but then again, his vision is fuzzy and blurring, so he can’t be sure. “You’re...okay?”

Hank stares, momentarily stunned. “I’m okay,” he says, thinking that that ought to be the least of Nick’s worries right now. “Are you okay?”

He’s not, obviously, but he’s pretty sure he’s not dying, so he says, “yeah,” and then Hank’s hand is back on his, and Hank is saying something like, “not much longer, just hold on,” and Nick thinks maybe he’s crying, or maybe it’s just the dust in his eyes, and everything hurts and he’s not dying but he half wishes he was, and then there is nothing, and the pain stops.

He wakes up and he is moving and he is somewhere else and he doesn’t see Hank and colors are swirling all around him and voices are overlapping and there’s something on him and everything feels fuzzy and he needs Hank but Hank isn’t there, and someone says something to him and he tries to ask them where Hank is but he can’t speak, and then he feels sick and he’s throwing up and that doesn’t feel fuzzy at all, it’s sharp and it hurts and he can barely breathe, again, and then Hank is there, blurry and fuzzy, but there, and Nick reaches out a hand and feels Hank take it before everything goes away again.

The next time he wakes up, he’s not moving. The world is a little fuzzy, but it’s not swirling around him, and his head doesn’t feel like it’s about to explode. In fact, he realizes, as he takes stock of the rest of himself, nothing hurts. I must be on drugs, he decides, and he wills his eyes to focus.

He’s in the hospital, hence the drugs and the relative lack of pain. He’s sitting up slightly, and he can feel bandages all over his body. There’s a slight pull in his cheek, which tells him it’s been stitched up. Something is wrapped around his ribs, and there’s an IV in his arm and a pulse monitor on his finger and a couple machines next to him - and Hank. Curled up in one of the uncomfortable hospital chairs and sleeping with his neck at an angle that is definitely going to hurt when he wakes up.

“Hey,” Nick says, deciding it’s best to not let Hank sleep in that position any longer. “You awake?”

Hank looks up, blinking sleepily, until he remembers where he is, and immediately shoots to his feet, bringing a hand to the back of his neck with a wince.

“Does it hurt?” Nick asks.

“Feels like I should be asking you that question,” Hank tells him, coming to stand next to him. “You need anything?”

“No,” Nick decides. “And it doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. It’s so nice to have nothing that hurts. What kind of drugs did they give me? They’re nice.”

Hank smiles at him. “That’d be morphine,” he says. “I’m glad it’s nice.”

Nick nods. “Like you,” he says. “You’re nice.”

Hank chuckles a little at that. “Maybe,” he decides.

“No,” Nick says, insistent. “You are. You saved me, and all. That’s nice. You’re nice.”

“I guess,” Hank replies, not sure how to feel about this drugged version of Nick. “You sure you don’t want anything? Water, maybe?”

Nick shakes his head. “I want you,” he says, clumsily tapping the bed next to him. “Sit.”

Hank sighs and relents, sitting carefully down next to Nick in the hospital bed, which is really too small for this.

“You don’t have to go to work, do you?” Nick asks, suddenly sounding worried.

“I told the Captain what happened as soon as I could. We both have the week off,” Hank tells him. He’d been surprised by that - he’d figured Renard would give him the rest of the day off, tops. But the Captain had insisted, said it was shaping up to be a slow week. Hank wasn’t sure if he believed that, but he’d elected not to press his luck.

Hank is jolted out of his brief reminiscence by Nick’s head dropping onto his shoulder. He looks at his friend and confirms that he’s fallen asleep. Hank carefully rolls out of the bed, shifting Nick so he’s lying at a more comfortable angle.

He’s about to return to his chair, or maybe step out and grab a snack, when Nick’s hand flings out and smacks across his torso. Hank grabs it reflexively, slightly startled when Nick’s fingers close around his own with surprising strength, considering his current condition. He gets the message, and reaches out behind him to drag his chair closer. He grabs the magazine he’d been idly flipping through earlier, and opens to the page he’d left off at.

A few hours pass. Hank has stopped reading the magazine and has switched to a book he’d convinced a nurse to get him from the gift shop. Nick is still sleeping, and the doctor has reassured Hank that he should be okay to leave tomorrow, provided he responds well to the periodic concussion checks throughout the night. Everything is quiet, save for the rhythmic beeping of various machines, and it’s almost peaceful, apart from the whole Nick-being-in-the-hospital thing. But they are both safe, and relatively okay, and their hands haven’t let go.

Thanks so so much for reading this!!! I had a whole lot of fun writing this fic and i know the ending sucked but i hope you liked the rest!!

#whumptober2020 #no.4 #collapsed building #grimm #fic #nick burkhardt #my writing #i say things #trapped #concussion #unconscious #vomiting #only slight but just in case #waking up

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turtlepated · 5 years ago

Text

The Handbook for the Recently Married (to the Deceased)

Chapter 7:

Tag list:

@sapphic-florals , @beetlejuicebeadoll , @do-ya-hear-that-sound , @imtherain , @imsuchahobbit , @pastelnacht , @tialanderrol , @sammyskip , @monsterlovinghours , @allmycrushesaredead , @missiheart23

------

It wasn’t the first time a Monday had seemed to stretch on forever. But this particular Monday, after the extremely unorthodox way I spent the weekend and the fact that there was a demon? man? something in my house while I was stuck at the office for the next… I paused halfway through the thought, checking the time again and utterly dismayed to see that it was still only mid-morning. Beetlejuice would have the house all to himself for the next 7 hours. It seemed like every time I looked at a clock, the hands stood still. Finally I pasted a sticky note over the bottom left corner of my computer monitor because I couldn’t stop glancing at it every few seconds.

I did my best not to dwell on it, since there was plenty of work to occupy my mind and my time, but I kept getting distracted by thoughts of Beetlejuice. He’d been docile enough this morning when I hurtled through the house getting ready to leave, but what might he be getting up to while I wasn’t there? I’d glimpsed the sort of mayhem he was capable of back in the Deetz house; morphing the Victorian home into a devilish fun house straight out of the seventh circle.

Early on I planned to run home during my lunch hour, just to check on things, but that plan fell through when an overwhelmed coworker asked if I’d be willing to help them out instead. Which I wasn’t, but I agreed to help them anyway even while my own stress level continued to climb. By the time I left for the day I was wound tight as a bowstring, both gunning to get home and anxious about what I mind find when I arrived. But I’d also realized that if he was going to be living with me, Beetlejuice was going to need some things. So I forced myself to drive at a normal speed and to make a stop at the chain department store in town, consulting the list I’d put together as items occurred to me throughout the day.

Once or twice I did think about the fact that I hadn’t told him when I would be back, but he hadn’t asked either. And I didn’t have any way of contacting him to let him know I’d be late. I could, perhaps, find the Deetz’s home number, but it might be…. awkward to ask them to drop in on the specter who had terrorized them. So I just did my shopping as quickly as I could, loaded it all back into my car, and booked it for home.

At first blush the outside looked perfectly normal when I pulled into the driveway and I let out a sigh at the rush of relief. Leaving all the bags in the car for the time being I mounted the steps, rifling through my keyring to unlock the back door only to find it standing slightly ajar. Intrigued but not yet alarmed, I stepped inside and shut it behind me, my eyes roving every square inch of the room for anything out of place but finding nothing of note. The kitchen was still messy from where Beetlejuice had made pancakes: the island countertop cluttered with dried spots of dripped batter, bits of eggshell, dusted with flour with the bag left sitting open. The dirty griddle still sat on the stove where I’d put it for him, the sink full of used dishes. Overall, I’d been braced for worse, but it was nothing a wipe down with a hot dish cloth and a load in the dishwasher wouldn’t take care of.

In the living room the coffee table had been shoved against the far wall and in the center of the room it looked as though he had gone through the whole house scrounging pillows and blankets which he had then constructed into some sort of enormous fort. The couch was bare of seat cushions, and I even recognized the pillows and blankets off my (our?) bed. At some point he must have gotten bored with it because the blankets and quilts and pillows were now strewn all over the room, as if he’d burst out from inside like some sort of larvae escaping its cocoon.

The signs of his habitation and how he’d spent the day were in plain sight, but I’d seen neither hide nor hair of the man/ghost/demon himself. “Beej?” I called, belatedly realizing he might be lying in wait to scare me in some way like he had when we first met. Going a little more warily now, I proceeded into the bedroom only to freeze in the doorway, dumbstruck.

It wasn’t quite pitch black in the room, but only because a ghastly greenish radiance seemed to be emanating out from under the bed, throwing long, twisting shadows over the floor and up the walls. The wallpaper had torn itself free, curling into ragged scrolls and exposing cracked drywall that looked like a stiff breeze would reduce it to dust. The skittering of many small things with many small legs made me flinch and recoil as I picked my way forward, unable to see the source of the skin-crawling sounds while I sidestepped puddles of viscous goo that seemed to be dripping from the ceiling in thick, foul-smelling ropes. Something dark was seeping down the full-length mirror by the closet door, and in the poor light I couldn’t tell if it was slime or paint or blood.

More of the spectral light was leaking out from the cracks around and under the door, along with drifts of thick mist and shadows that curled along the floor toward my feet like tentacles reaching out to grab me. This was so similar and also somehow so much worse than what I’d encountered in the Deetz house. My heart was hammering in my throat, but I did my best to keep my breathing calm and slowly reached for the knob to the closet door.

Steeling myself, I gave it a twist and pushed it carefully open.

Inside was much the same as outside. All my hanging clothes were coated in the same sticky residue dripping from the ceiling, a veritable swarm of small shiny insects scattered to the shadowy corners of the small room as I opened the door, and huddled at the rear wall, crouched on the floor and curled into a surprisingly tight ball, facing away from the door was Beetlejuice. His broad back was rising and falling rapidly, his hands clasped around the back of his neck, his head ducked low and out of sight. I opened my mouth to speak but found that I couldn’t make a sound, snapping it shut and taking a moment to collect myself before stepping fully into the closet.

“Beej?” I said tentatively, moving closer. He didn’t appear to hear me, utterly unresponsive except for his quick, shallow breathing. I took another step, reaching out a little apprehensively to give him a gentle prod in the back, softly repeating his name. At the touch, at my voice, slightly louder this time, he visibly flinched and gasped, uncurling with startling quickness and turning to look up at me.

His eyes were red rimmed and puffy as though he’d been crying but his cheeks were dry. His chin, on the other hand, was slick and shiny with drool that had dripped down his neck and onto his shirt front. His messy hair, which I had come to understand possessed some sort of mood-ring quality with its shifting colors, was a deep, dull burgundy. I had jumped back, surprised by his quick motion when he spun around, but the state of him was so worrying that I forgot all about the mounting dread I’d felt when I saw the bedroom, the messes left in other rooms of the house. I moved closer, his eyes riveted to my hand as I reached out again and laid it on his shoulder.

“Beetlejuice, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

For a long moment he didn’t respond, blinking at me with a look of acute confusion. Then he made a sudden sound, a gasping sob that seemed torn from deep in his chest and scrambled up onto his knees in front of me, flinging his arms around my legs and clutching them against his body while he buried his face into my stomach. Thrown off balance by the grabbing, I staggered and braced my hand against the sticky wall while my other hand bemusedly settled in his unkempt reddish-purple locks. It took me a few seconds to realize that the vibrations against my middle where muffled words, rendered incomprehensible by Beetlejuice’s face pressed tightly to the fabric of my shirt.

“Beej, I can’t understand you,” I said, chuckling as I brushed my hand through his tousled hair. “You wanna tell me what’s bothering you?”

His arms tightened around my upper thighs, his head shaking back and forth as if he were trying to burrow in even deeper and I grimaced at the thought of the saliva that would now be soaked into my clothes. Sighing, I peeled my hand off the wall, regarding the thin strands of muck strung between my fingers before wiping them off on my pants, which I would now have to wash anyway. When most of the mess was gone I laid my hand on his shoulder again, squeezing softly, rubbing soothing circles into his upper back while my other hand remained tucked in his hair.

“C’mon, Beej,” I coaxed gently. “Did something happen? I can’t help if you won’t tell me what’s the matter.”

I felt him sigh harshly, a blast of warm breath against my stomach as he finally pulled back enough to look me full in the face. His eyes were still red and swollen, ringed with bruise-like dark shadows, though I realized now that it wasn’t just from inflammation, his irises had actually shifted to a deep and very inhuman bloody red. His face looked haggard and drawn, like he hadn’t slept in weeks even though when I’d left this morning he had looked perfectly – well, not normal, perhaps, but certainly normal for his circumstances. Beetlejuice stared at me hard for another long moment before answering.

“You left,” he croaked, and my eyes darted from his to the roots of his hair where a fiercer scarlet color was bleeding slowly up the strands between my fingers, like spilled ink spreading over paper. I grew aware of his hands, gripping my hips, holding me against him, digging into the soft flesh through my pants in a way that was bordering on painful. “You left,” he repeated, his voice coming out stronger this time, gravelly as ever but with a much more bestial rumble than I’d heard before. Something primal in me tensed fearfully at that predatory growl, hair standing on end up my arms and at the nape of my neck.

With a gracefulness I wouldn’t have thought to expect from him, Beetlejuice rose smoothly to his feet, never blinking or releasing me from his burning gaze or his tight grasp as his arms unwound from my hips and his hands moved to grip my elbows, dragging my hands from him.

“You said you wanted me here but you still left!” Beetlejuice snarled between clenched teeth that were sharper than I remembered, flecks of spit flying from his lips. I couldn’t help flinching when some of the airborne saliva inevitably spattered my cheek, feeling the bite of his short nails gouging my arms.

“Beej, you’re hurting me,” I said, fighting valiantly to keep my voice even, a tiny tremor escaping.

“You left me!” he shouted, his voice harsh and accusatory in his anger but colored unmistakably with pain and despair.

I struggled to understand why it should trouble him so much, why my absence for one single day would cause him this much panic and distress. Slowly, I brought my arms up to press against the underside of his forearms, my hands curling around his elbows.

“I know,” I told him, not wanting to discredit his statement which was technically correct. “I went to work, Beej. We talked about it last night, remember?” I watched his brow furrow, could practically see him digging back through the recesses of his mind to recall our conversation.

“You… you left,” he nearly whimpered, the anger literally draining out of his countenance as every spec of hair I could see on him shifted to a dark plum.

Like a bolt from the blue, understanding struck me. In the house, when Lydia had gone upstairs to talk with the Maitlands, that was when Beetlejuice had apparently turned on her. He must have assumed that her departure meant she was choosing them over him, when all she had done was leave the room. I felt my fear evaporate, my chest aching at this realization, at the knowledge that he was so sure he would be abandoned and forgotten as soon as he was no longer in someone’s line of sight that it would reduce him to this. What sort of horrible experiences would instill such a fear in him?

“Beej,” I began hesitantly. “Did you… did you think that I would leave and not come back?”

A quiet, keening wail left him, involuntarily it seemed as he pressed his lips together to silence it and abruptly released me to sink his hands into his own hair, his eyes squeezing shut as he backed away. That seemed the closest I was going to get to an affirmative. It took everything in me not to rush right over and pull him into my arms, but I didn’t want to spook or stress him anymore than he already was so I went slowly, one step at a time.

“Who would do that?” I asked, mostly speaking to myself. I hadn’t been expecting an answer, but Beetlejuice gave one anyway, seemingly unable to stop himself.

“Everyone!” he burst out, his voice raw with hurt. “Friends, roommates, my dad, every girlfriend or boyfriend I ever had! When my mom wanted me to move out, she just stopped coming home!” With a small plaintive squeak he clapped a hand over his own mouth, his eyes wide and round and fearful as they searched my face. I sighed deeply and moved closer still, tugging his hand gently but insistently away from his face. It came away wet, strings of saliva trailing from his palm to his chin and bottom lip. I wondered if maybe Beetlejuice, as a ghost or demon or whatever he was, was incapable of producing tears even when he might want to and the excessive drooling was meant to be some sort of caricature of the very human act of crying.

Pulling my sleeve down over the heel of my palm, I dabbed at his wet chin to give him a moment to calm down while I thought of how to respond. “I’m sorry, Beetlejuice,” I repeated softly, tracing my fingertips across his cheek before I lowered my hand from his face. “I’m sorry that happened. I’m sorry you were upset today, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when I’d be home. I didn’t even think about it, I’m not used to having someone waiting for me.”

His eyes fluttered closed for a second when I touched him, and it didn’t escape my notice that he tilted his head to press his face into my hand, nor did I miss the oh-so-tiny mournful noise he made when I pulled away. I smiled warmly at him, though he didn’t see since he was avidly avoiding my gaze by staring at the floor, at his hands as they fidgeted with his clothes and with one another.

“Would you like a hug?” I asked, spreading my arms in invitation, wondering if I was setting myself up for another awkward physical moment with him. But he just looked so forlorn and forsaken that I couldn’t stand it. Beetlejuice nodded adamantly and stepped into my embrace without a word, his face tucking into the curve of my shoulder, his arms lax at his sides as mine wrapped around him. He was tense, but after a beat I felt him sigh and relax against me while I stroked the back of his head and rubbed up and down between his shoulder blades.

Gradually, tentatively, his arms came up as well and settled themselves around my waist. “It’ll be okay,” I assured him. “You’re going to be okay.” I said it that way very deliberately, since I was certain that at the moment he did not feel okay. His arms tightened around me, his fingers twitching against my back and fisting my shirt. I felt warm wetness against my collarbone, so he was probably drooling again but I muscled my way past the shudder that tried to crawl up my spine at the sensation. I noticed that, as Beetlejuice continued to calm down, the frightening transformation of my closet around us shimmered like a heat mirage and disappeared to reveal the small room exactly as I’d left it.

Beetlejuice made no move to pull away or loosen his hold, and in all likelihood he would have happily stood there in my closet all night long as long as I kept hugging him. But when his stomach gave a long, loud growl powerful enough that I could feel his round midsection rumbling against mine, I broke away but made sure to keep in contact with him since he seemed to draw so much solace from it.

“When’s the last time you ate anything?” I asked, and he have a lopsided shrug.

“Dunno. Prob’ly the pancakes, I guess.”

I shook my head and tutted at him with no real crossness. “Beej, you’re alive now. Not human, maybe, but alive. Which means your body needs things: like food, water, rest.” He shrugged again, rubbing his damp chin on the sleeve of his shirt. The violet tone had left his hair, which was green again but a pale, dull tone. I took that to mean he was feeling better, which was good.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Let’s get some food in you, that should help you feel a little better, and then I’ll show you what I brought you.” At those words he perked up like a puppy hearing someone said ‘car ride’ or ‘treat’.

“You brought me something?” he asked slowly, as if he was sure he’d misunderstood or heard wrong.

I nodded, turning to exit the closet, tugging him by the hand after me and quietly relieved to see that the supernatural makeover in the bedroom had likewise disappeared like mist burned off by sunlight. “Sure did.”

“Is it a bucket of spiders?”

I laughed. “Not quite, but good guess.”

“Two buckets of spiders?”

I laughed again, clearing a space at the kitchen island to make him a sandwich while Beetlejuice settled on a bar stood. “Tell you what,” I said. “After you eat something, you can come out to the car with me and help bring it in.”

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This was one of the very first parts I thought up when this story idea came to me and finally getting it out was so much fun!

I am so soft for a soft garbage man. Hopefully you all are now too!

No ETA for chapter 8 but I’ll do my best! Thanks for reading!!

Previous Chapters:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

#beetlejuice #beetlejuice the musical #beetlejuice broadway #beetlejuice x reader #beetlejuice x self insert #beetlejuice fic #my writing #Pate writes #The Handbook

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