#lewis get your hair out god knows your scalp needs it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

inkykeiji · 4 years ago

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beautiful when the damage is done

part one | part two

characters: todoroki touya | dabi, todoroki natsuo

genre: smut laced with angst and a pinch of fluff

notes: part two of getting naughty with natsuo!! please please heed the warnings!! | title cred: sick thoughts by lewis blissett

warnings: 18+ minors dni, dubcon/noncon, sadism, punishment via overstimulation, pseudo-incest (stepcest), vaguely implied incest, emotional manipulation, a hint of degradation, toxic relationships, poly relationship, dom/sub dynamics, a LOT of crying (dacryphilia), slight size kink/size difference, rough sex

words: 4.6k

synopsis:

And you’re both reminded of how privileged you are, being the only two who ever get to witness this side of him, the only two who are fortunate enough to see the person he might’ve been if you stripped away years upon years of trauma and abuse, the person he truly is at the core of his soul, the person he was born as before he was forced to layer himself with thick, protective walls of aggression coated in indifference—and the person who he becomes as he sheds that armor, in the middle of the night when it’s just the three of you, the whole world having fallen away outside the bedroom door.

It’s musty, air thick with the haze of sweat and sex, saturated the smell of tears and cum, so potent you swear you can almost see it in the atmosphere of Touya’s room. Uncontrollable quivers course through your entire body, never-ending chills erupting across bare, damp skin that shines every time it catches in the dim beams coming from Touya’s desk lamp.

Your scalp is still sore from where Touya yanked you off of Natsuo—back in the living room, how many hours ago? It feels as though it’s been forever since then, memory murky and swimming as you try to think—one strong hand wrapped in your hair jerking you up with such force you nearly stumbled. The pain is dull, a throbbing ache that radiates fading waves of hurt along your skull.

It’s constant, though, brewing a headache that is equal parts agony and dehydration, and you wish to rub at the spot, to place your palm over it in a futile attempt to soothe the discomfort at least a little, but you can’t.

Because it feels as if your blood has been replaced with sand, dense and heavy as it clogs your veins, weighing your arms down and keeping them firmly locked around Natsuo’s neck, steadying you in his lap.

But the ache in your scalp is nothing compared to the burn between your legs.

You can feel it, your third orgasm, churning in the depths of your stomach as it builds, a blistering warmth furling into a tight, concentrated ball of fire. It’s almost sickening, now, the heat roiling inside of you as heavy as lead, wracking destruction on your body as tender muscles, already quaking from exhaustion, begin to tense once more, to coil and wind up the way a lithe tiger does right before it strikes.

“Nat-Natsuo, I can’t,” the words wobble as they spill from between clattering teeth, you head shaking sluggishly as fresh tears sting your eyes.

“Yes, you can,” he murmurs softly to you, gentler than he’s ever been before but refusing to slow his movements as he bounces you on his cock, concerned stone eyes searching your face while his fingers flex on your hips, readjusting their grip on the slippery skin.

“You better,” Touya spits from his place on his bed, peering down at the two of you with something akin to disgust, to derision, saturating his features. And it stings, blazing sapphire searing his glare into your skin much like how he had carved his name into you, years ago.

A wet sob hitches in time with Natsuo’s rough thrusts, has you choking on it, concentrated with thick saliva that sticks in your throat and forces your breaths to escape in wheezes, hands clasping tighter behind Natsuo’s neck.

Yet, despite the pain, there are still sparks of pleasure that accompany each catch of your puffy clit on Natsuo’s slick skin, flickers of lust interspersed with those excruciating spikes that shoot through your abdomen.

It hits suddenly, that third orgasm—you’re halfway through your punishment now, Touya reminds you—has your tightly shut eyelids springing open with a gasp, entire body freezing up in Natsuo’s strong grasp, a grunt falling from his chapped lips as he drives his hips to piston into your rigid body.

He follows only a few moments later with a deep groan that rumbles in his chest, body vibrating with the force of it as his thick cock throbs, filling your little cunt with spurt after spurt of cum that feels almost cool in comparison to your scalding insides.

Touya allows half hour breaks between each orgasm—a short refraction period for you and Natsuo to regain infinitesimal amounts of strength—and not a second more, he had spit after the second orgasm, cutting off your plea for just a few more moments of rest, because this is plenty of time, more than you need, really and you should be grateful he’s so generous.

By the time you’re due for your fourth orgasm, you can barely move, and Natsuo doesn’t have the arm strength to hold you up anymore, to force your hips to keep gyrating or to bounce you on his cock, his entire upper half spent.

“Lay her on the floor, then,” Touya instructs coldly, voice firm and void of any compassion, though it’s hard to miss the sadistic glint in his eyes, hard to ignore the way the corners of his lips quirk up in an ill-concealed smile.

The look Natsuo gives him is almost heartbreaking, a puppy looking up at its owner with its tail tucked between its legs, eyebrows knitted together so tightly they crease his forehead, a deep frown—no, pout—etched into his face as he gazes at his big brother, glazed stone eyes pleading.

“Nii-san, can’t we use—”

“No,” Touya cuts him off harshly, sapphire eyes flashing, and Natsuo flinches. “You’re fucking her on the Goddamn floor for all five—it’s part of your punishment,”

Natuso doesn’t argue, but his lips twitch, and his eyes blur, and his nose sniffles, and he gives his brother a curt little nod of understanding, head bowed in submission.

The hardwood is cold against your heated skin, and you exhale a hiss through gritted teeth as Natsuo positions you as gently as he can, one large palm cradling your head, the other positioned on your back, slight tremors running through his exhausted muscles as he reclines you.

A wrecked little whine pries its way past your lips as Natsuo pushes in again, face scrunching up as sharp, needle-like pinpricks shoot through your gut, your raw, sensitive cunt stinging as Natsuo’s cock reopens previous sutures, skin split further, wounds dug deeper.

The sound your skin makes as it scrapes against the hardwood from Natsuo’s clumsy bucks has all three of you cringing, a piercing squeal that only adds to the symphony of your sobs and Natsuo’s grunts, flesh inflamed and chaffed from being repeated rubbed against the surface.

It’s getting harder and harder for you to cum, even with the generous breaks Touya allows, sparks of pleasure faded to mere cinders now, each shallow drag of Natsuo’s cock causing both of your bodies to recoil, and it’s too much, too much.

“Please, nii-chan,” you beg in a tiny whimper, teary eyes flying to Touya’s face, partially shrouded in shadows as glowing sapphire gazes down at you in scrutiny. “S’enough now,”

“We’ve learned our lesson, p-promise,” Natsuo adds, nodding frenetically.

“P-Pinky promise, nii-chan, please, stop,”

Touya scoffs. “You wanted to cum, didn’t you?” he pauses, cobalt eyes darting between your faces, an eyebrow raising in question. “Well, now I’m allowing you to. Now you have my permission; the permission you knew you needed so bad, but refused to request,”

And it’s then that it dawns on each of you that he had heard the both of you, had heard the entire fucking conversation, while he was doing his work in the kitchen.

How could either of you thought that he wouldn’t? How could either of you been so fucking stupid? Nii-san knows everything—nii-san always knows everything.

“Please, please, we’re sorry, nii-san, we’re sorry,”

“We won’t ever do it again!”

The laugh that claws its way up Touya’s throat is soaked with ridicule, and he shakes his head, a gleeful little grin present on his lips, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing, as if it’s so ludicrous it’s funny.

“Wait, wait, wait—let me get this straight…you two wanted it so bad, and now you have the balls to complain when nii-chan complies?”

His voice is painfully apathetic, almost nonchalant in a way, as if it makes no difference to him even though it so clearly does, or you and Natsuo wouldn’t be shivering messes of tangled limbs on the floor.

Excuses begin tumbling from two pairs of lips, words stuttered and choked on and sandwiched between pleads and apologies, jumbling together in a mess of garbled, wet, desperate sounds.

“Enough,” Touya growls, and both voices cut off in an instant. “I don’t want to fucking hear it anymore! Keep acting like ungrateful little brats and I’ll make this punishment longer, I swear to God,”

But you can’t halt the words bubbling up past your lips, regardless of Touya’s threat, regardless of the fact that you know he’s deadly serious. They’re compulsive, automatic, almost instinctual in nature as you seek out comfort, hunt for solace and fragments of relief in the hulking man blanketing you.

“I-I don’t wanna anymore, Natsuo,” you’re weeping into his chest, hot tears leaking from the corners of tightly shut eyes, streaming down the sides of your head and into your hair. “I don’t wanna,”

“I know, baby, I know,” Natsuo murmurs, though his bottom lip is beginning to tremble.

“Make him stop, Natsuo, make nii-chan stop,”

“I can’t,” his voice breaks on the word, facial features saturated in concern, in fear, wincing as if it physically pains him to deny you. “You know I would if I could,” he nearly whimpers, and his eyes search yours almost frantically, as if he’s begging you to understand. “But I can’t,”

But your head is shaking as you wail louder, fingers weakly curling against his skin, nails pressing into the flesh of his shoulders and clinging to him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Natsuo’s saying, the words cracking in his throat, voice hoarse. He pauses, clearing it twice, eyes closing briefly as he sighs out a slow, deep, stammering breath, gathering his strength. “One more after this, princess,” he begins as his hips start to speed up their rutting, procuring a yelp from you. “That’s it, jus’ one more after this one. C’mon, we can do it,”

“No, no, no,” you chant as pretty, gleaming tears roll down your face. And you can see it, the potent guilt swirling in his gunmetal eyes, from the way his pupils expand as they focus on the salt water sullying your cheeks, from the way his cock twitches despite it all. “I don’wanna, I don’wanna, stop, Natsuo, stop,”

His motions pause immediately, the moment the word falls from your lips, but he starts up just as quickly as Touya dictates from his spot on the mattress above.

“Stop, and I’ll add another two,” he promises, ruthless and unforgiving. Chills skitter along your glistening skin, erupting across your damp body at his tone. Both of you know he isn’t bluffing, that he’ll add as many orgasms as he wants to, and that he’ll continue to pull them from your fatigued and worn-out bodies one way or another, even if he has to do it completely by himself.

“Focus on me,” Natsuo instructs gently, though there’s a sense of urgency in his voice, a frenzied need to calm you down before Touya loses his patience completely. “I’ll take care of it, okay? Just focus on me, look at me,”

So you do, blinking the bleariness from your gaze as you direct all of your attention to him. And although there’s that ever-present guilt still swimming in his irises, in his unshed tears, there’s also love in his stare, so much love it’s nearly overflowing, overpowering the remorse and instilling a deep sense of comfort in your stammering chest.

Because at least you’re not alone in this; at least you have each other—each other to find comfort in, to cry and whine and beg with, to protect.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he’s whispering over your wails like a broken mantra, those tears that have been glazing his eyes, that have been collecting behind his lashline, finally beginning to fall.

His hips speed up, as fast as he possibly can as he gathers every last ounce of power and manages to wring another one out of you, another one out of himself, sore cunt clenching painfully around him, your fourth orgasm feeling as if it’s been punched out of you, despite the fact that Natsuo’s thrusts have been shallow.

And by the time your fifth orgasm rolls around, you’re nothing more than Jell-o in the shape of a human, though Natsuo’s not much better, barely able to move other than the uneven rutting of his hips, a crushing deadweight on top of you as his weary hips give pitiful little thrusts, pubic bone dragging across your hypersensitive clit, every tug against it ripping another ragged cry from your throat.

But you’re having trouble, both of you struggling to do anything other than feebly hump against each other, unable to secure enough strength to pump—to milk—that final orgasm out of yourselves, sniveling little protests punctuated by wrecked sobs leaking from your mouths.

Touya’s pissed—beyond pissed—sharp jaw clenching while seething insults burn his tongue and slice your skin, berating the both of you for being so fucking weak, so fucking pathetic, because he’s forced more orgasms out of the both of you before, so why is this so fucking difficult?

Touya’s too stubborn, and he refuses to end the punishment early irrespective of the fact that you’re both entirely drained, reminding you in a callous voice that you each must cum five times before it’s over while he aggressively roots through one of his desk drawers, snickering to himself when he finds what he’s looking for, hooking his index finger in it and pulling it out.

And the look on his face when he turns back to face you and Natsuo is positively petrifying, idly swinging the cockring around on his finger as his head tilts slightly, observing the both of you with that sharp smile you’ve come to know so well on his lips, eyes glittering with pure delight, features lit up with his own personal brand of sadistic excitement.

Natsuo starts to say something, voice forming around a word that sounds suspiciously similar to no, but he catches himself before it fully leaves his mouth, pressing quivering lips together tightly as he stares up at his brother with wet eyes.

Touya chuckles, raising an eyebrow with that trademark lopsided smirk, as if he’s challenging Natsuo to dispute him, to resist.

He doesn’t, of course, because he never would, but he does finally allow full shuddery sobs to escape his chest, Touya’s condescending shh’s and hush, now’s doing nothing to calm them as he slides the cockring on.

Natsuo nearly howls when Touya turns the tiny, pretty pink device on, his entire body jerking with that initial vibration.

“The faster you cum, the faster I’ll take it off,” Touya says calmly over the stifled little shrieks Natsuo’s continulously trying to swallow back down, nodding his understanding as he repositions himself between your thighs, holding his vibrating cock in one massive palm as he guides himself back into you.

And you want to tell him no!, don’t!, stop!, you want to shove him off, to kick and scream and beg and cry, but your heavy head sluggishly lolling from side to side seems to be all you can manage, words snagging in your throat, nothing more than incoherent babbling leaving your lips.

Because you can barely speak, barely think, barely breathe, vision fading in and out of focus as Natsuo rocks stuttering hips against yours, warm salt water rolling down the bridge of his nose, dripping onto your cheeks and mixing with yours. You’re both more each other, more one than two separate entities now, spit and cum and tears so interspersed you can’t tell which belongs to who anymore, limbs and fluids, thoughts and sounds, endlessly flowing into one another.

“Tell her to behave, Natsuo,” Touya barks, though there’s twisted amusement dancing in his eyes as he observes. “Tell her to finish the fucking punishment,”

And Natsuo, ever the perfectly trained pet, does as he says immediately.

“We can—We can do it,” Natsuo keens from above you, full body shudders wracking his hulking form, alabaster hair clinging to his forehead in uneven clumps, drenched in sweat as he forces words through his own bawling, hips grinding into yours. “We can do it, let’s be good for nii-san, yeah? L-Let’s make nii-san proud—c’mon, you wanna make him proud, don’t you?”

You do—of course you do. You never want anything else. But…But you’re not entirely sure you can, hiccupped sobs peppering your slurred words. Unconsciousness tugs at the edges of your hazy mind, whispers enticing promises of repose and relaxation as weighted eyelids begin to sag.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Natsuo cuts you off gently, shaky knuckles brushing against your cheek in a poor imitation of a caress. “I’ll do it, baby, I’ll do it,”

You don’t even remember cumming a fifth time, only a feeling of hot coals smoldering in the pit of your stomach, but you must have, because then Touya’s hooking his arms under Natsuo’s and dragging him off of you, propping him up against the side of the bed and kneeling as lithe fingers remove the toy from his cock.

And the sense of relief that seeps into your body and floods your veins is so intense it almost feels like a rush of adrenaline instead. You did it. You both did it. Finally, it is over.

Or so you and Natsuo thought.

—

Spikes of fear piece through his heart as Natsuo blearily watches Touya gather your limp body in his arms, hauling you up with a soft grunt.

And it’s astounding, the way you still curl into him, still seek that familiarity, that solace, in his chest, mumbled out honorific padded by hitched half-sobs as you cling to him. It’s astounding, because even after all he’s done to you, after everything he just put the two of you through, you will crawl back to him each and every time, over shards of glass on your hands and knees with his name on your lips—his name in devotion, in submission, in love—without a single question asked.

And Natsuo realizes that he would, too.

The thought inspires a bittersweet taste to settle on his tongue, like sticky toffee and black coffee, alien feelings swirling in his chest, clashes of consoling blooms of warmth and spiky shards of ice.

But Natsuo doesn’t have time to meditate on his newfound emotions, your faint pleas recapturing his attention.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Touya murmurs, large hands repositioning you.

And he really does sound sorry, even though Natsuo knows he isn’t.

“Wh-What are you…”

“It isn’t over yet,” Touya says simply, though the smile stretched taut across his face is severe, terrifying, azure eyes sparkling in merciless amusement at the horror that shows on Natsuo’s face when he realizes, eyes widening as they fill with thick tears again, bottom lip jutting out into an involuntary pout as panic surges through his veins.

His heart palpitates violently against his ribcage, tongue turned to cotton as worry signs itself in the creases of his forehead.

“Nii-san,” Natsuo begins cautiously, trying in vain to keep his voice steady. “I don’t think—I-I mean, is that really necessary?”

“Of course it is,” his big brother responds without looking at him, preoccupied with folding your lifeless limbs up, knees bent and pressed to your chest.

“Why?” the word slips out without Natsuo’s permission, grey eyes widening in shock as he swallows thickly, shaking his head a little as if to say I didn’t mean to!, though Touya doesn’t seem to mind.

“Because the overstimulation was her punishment,” Touya glances over at him, the amusement dancing in his eyes turned vicious as his smile stretches wider—so wide Natsuo’s surprised it doesn’t split his face clean in two—cruel and brutal. “This is yours,”

Natsuo isn’t quite sure he understands, brain doused in a thick fog and having difficulty grasping the concept, the knowledge of what his nii-san truly means turning to dense, ashy smoke any time he tries to grasp it, metaphorically slipping through his fingers.

But then you’re speaking again, and Natsuo’s head whips towards you, chest tightening at how completely wrecked you sound.

“No, please, no more,” the words gurgle in your throat, escaping as nothing more but jumbled, spit-soaked whines that have Touya chuckling as he shoves his cock into your aching little hole.

“You’re in no position to be making demands, princess,” he speaks through a patronizing pout, a mockery of your own expression, voice syrupy and supercilious. “If you weren’t such a needy little whore always desperate for a hard cock to grind on, this wouldn’t be happening,”

The words are spit in the same demeaning tone Touya had been using earlier, the same demeaning tone he always uses, and Natsuo’s powerless to stop the words flowing from his mouth.

“It’s not your fault, sweetheart,” he reassures you, though his voice cracks under the emotion, words wavering as his chin trembles.

“You’re right,” Touya muses, slight breathlessness the only indication that he’s railing the absolute life out of you. “It’s yours,”

And suddenly, Natsuo understands what nii-san had meant when he said this was his punishment.

Because he’s right.

It’s got to be the harshest punishment Touya’s ever bestowed on him.

Because it’s hard to watch the way your lax, abused body is forced to just take it, Touya’s thrusts so rough they jostle you up the mattress; even harder to hear as you bawl and beg and scream, and Natsuo’s nose twitches as the threat of new tears climbs up his throat, lodging in the column as he fights against them.

He feels sick, like some sort of depraved pervert, for the weak twitches his cock gives, for the faint embers that flicker in the pit of his stomach, igniting a dull blaze as he watches, almost entranced by the grotesque situation unfolding in front of him. He feels sicker, knowing that both of those would be stronger, much stronger, had Touya not forced him to fuck his entire soul into you.

And Touya—Well, Touya’s been hard from it all—high from it all—the whole time, and Natsuo can almost see the sheer power flowing through his veins, an aura that envelopes him, that radiates off of him in intoxicating waves, that licks at his skin like flames of blue fire. Natsuo bets—no, knows— it’s better than any drug Touya’s ever taken.

Protests marinate on his tongue, bitter and acidic, pleads of stop and enough scraping against the walls of his throat as he forcefully swallows them back down, emitting pathetic little whimpers in their place.

Because he knows if he starts, Touya will only make it worse for you, so he suffers in silence, readily agreeing with Touya every time he reminds Natsuo that this is all his fault and neither of you would be in pain if Natsuo could’ve just kept it in his fucking pants for a few minutes longer.

It hurts, because it’s true, nii-san’s words sending thick, piercing stakes spearing through Natsuo’s heart, through Natsuo’s very soul, straight to the core of his body. Acrid bile climbs up his throat as Touya’s moans mingle with your sobs, so exhausted that they’re barely more than little wheezes at this point. It’s abundantly clear that Touya doesn’t feel a shred of remorse, and that makes Natsuo feel even worse—if only he had said no, if only he had waited and asked, if only he had been stronger, you wouldn’t be suffering.

The tears collecting in the column of his throat sprout talons and claw their way up, past his steadily weaking resolve, prying their way through his lips in the form of jagged sobs.

It’s magnificent, really, the way Touya can render Natsuo a snotty, shivering mess with only a few choice words. And Natsuo—Natsuo only ever cries in front of his big brother, only ever cries for his big brother, full-on weeping that slashes through his sputtering chest, coughing around and choking on his own sobs of nii-san, I’m sorry!

But it ends eventually, finally, Touya tearing one last orgasm from you, gentle words contradicting his cruel, ruthless actions, murmurs of come on baby, just one more, one more for nii-chan. You can do this for nii-chan, can’t you? You can be a good little girl for me and cum one more time, right? lingering on his lips

And somehow, you find the strength to obey, to be his good baby, because you always do, entire body convulsing with a raspy shriek of the honorific, Touya praising you only moments later as his hips still and his cock pumps you full.

—

It’s cute, really, how fucked out the two of you are. Touya thinks you’re both so beautiful when you’re like this, with glassy eyes and tearstained cheeks, lashes clumped together with residual water and swollen faces stained with streaks of salt, all dazed and fucked and stupid for him, from him.

Natsuo’s doing better than you are, of course—Natsuo wasn’t subjected to being fucked again. But Natsuo still needs to rest, Touya softly tutting his tongue with a disapproving shake of his head as Natsuo attempts to aid him with your aftercare, movements clumsy as he stumbles to his feet, inept and awkward as he blunders towards you.

“No,” Touya’s large hands wrap around his younger brother’s shoulders, halting him, steadying him, forcing Natsuo to look at him. “You rest,” he instructs sternly, guiding Natsuo back to his previous spot and delicately depositing him onto the desk chair. “I’ll get to you in a minute, okay, Natsuo-kun?”

Natsuo hums out an affirmation, eyes closing briefly as Touya’s fingertips affectionately trace the curve of his cheek, palm patting it once.

It’s in moments such as these, nights after hours and hours of extreme punishment, that Touya automatically, perhaps unknowingly, slips into Big Brother mode, and you’re reminded of the age gap between them.

Because even though Natsuo’s bigger than Touya, taller than Touya, beefier than Touya, he looks so tiny under his older brother’s protective gaze.

You both must reek terribly, covered in drool and sweat and cum, must look like hot messes, strands of tangled hair saturated with salt and sticking to your cheeks, but your Touya-nii is still right there regardless, whispering the sweetest affirmations and the tenderest praises to the both of you as he wipes each of you down with a damp cloth infused with lavender, telling the both of you how good you did, how proud you made nii-san, how pretty both of you are.

Nimble fingers spend a decent amount of time rubbing soothing circles of moisturizing cream into each of you, your most sensitive skin rubbed raw, aching and puffy from such intense maltreatment, before Touya-nii dresses each of you in his softest, comfiest clothes, steady stream of pure, unadulterated love never stopping as it pours from his lips.

You’re all each other need, after all; because he loves you both more than he could ever put into words—and you each love him back just the same—and that will always be more than enough.

Touya reaches across your body, arm a pleasant, heavy weight as it rests on you, and runs slender fingers through Natsuo’s sweaty hair as you snuggle into your nii-chan’s chest, and Natsuo nearly mewls, nuzzling into his nii-san’s touch as Touya instructs the both of you to sleep, now, a film playing softly in the background as the three of you drift into unconsciousness together.

#todoroki touya x reader #dabi x reader #dabi smut #natsuo smut #todoroki natsuo x reader #AAAAAAAH jesus finally #this is A Lot lol #tw:incest #tw noncon

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royallyprincesslilly · 4 years ago

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Title: All Eyes On You {One-Shot}***

Lewis Tan x Reader

Warning: Cursing, NSFW AT ALL, SMUTTT, DO NOT READ AT WORK!!

Words: 4.1k

Summary: Hmmmm, Naaaaah! 🙃

Note: You all have Brandie, @night-of-the-living-shred to thank for this oh and Lewis’ thirst trappin’ ass.

***Loosely Edited/Proofread***

***Mildly Interactive***

You couldn’t believe it had been three months. Three freaking months since you’d physically been able to touch him. Three months since you’d felt his fingertips graze your skin. Three months since you’d felt his lips on yours. Three months since you’d tasted the delicate mix of sea salt, vanilla, and spice, that was his skin. Three months since you’d felt his arms around you as you came awake every morning. Three months since you’d smelled him. Three months too long.

You loved that he had a career he enjoyed and took pride in. Loved that this career was finally beginning to show him the same love and attention he’d shown it for years, but that also meant you spent a lot more time without him in your bed and a lot more time being your own company and best friend, outside of the company and friends you had. It was often lonely, but you’d been together for almost two years now and had developed a working regiment that combated the loneliness.

Staring at the message exchange between you and Lewis had your belly filling with butterflies all over again.

MSG My Heart: Guess who’s coming home a whole week early?

MSG: Don’t play with me, Lewis.

MSG My Heart: I don’t play about coming home to my queen.

MSG: Oh my god. Really? Babe? When? Oh my god.

MSG My Heart: LOL. I love that you’re so excited.

MSG: You’re kidding. Do you know how long it’s been?

MSG My Heart: Three months, fourteen days, ten hours, eighteen minutes, and thirty seconds. I know just how long it’s been.

MSG: Melt my heart.

MSG My Heart: That’s not all I plan on melting.

The row of emojis was what sent you to the grave. You were practically still quivering from anticipation, and this was yesterday.

“All finished.”

You sat up and thanked Lucy, your wax lady who’d just made you a completely smooth again. When Lewis was away, you kept things tidy, but there was no need to get all extravagant. Today, you went all out, and that included a little surprise below the belt.

“Thank you, Lucy. Same card on file, please.”

“You got the full special. Does this mean boyfriend is back in town?”

You giggled. It was a shame she knew the drill. As she ran your credit card, you endured her teasing and salacious suggestions on how to properly welcome Lewis home so he wouldn’t dare think of leaving again. By the time you walked out of the salon, your face was red hot from embarrassment. As you got into your car, you ran down the to-do list you’d made at five this morning.

Hair, Eyebrow Threading, nails, feet, wax, shop.

Somehow you’d managed to get through all of the list, except the shopping part, and it wasn’t even three in the afternoon. Lewis’s flight didn’t come in until five. The plan was for him to come home, and the two of you would go to dinner, but you planned on surprising him at the airport. You were that anxious to see him.

As you were in the midst of getting ready to go to surprise him at the airport, your phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Guess who is officially in the same state as you?”

“Baby?”

“That’s right. I landed forty minutes ago.”

Your head snapped to the clock. It wasn’t even five o’clock.

“Baby, you said five.”

“I know, look, I thought it would be too but looks like even time and space wanted us to be together.”

You remembered the first time he said those words to you. They did the same thing now as they did almost two years ago—made your heart skip a beat.

“I just wanted to give you a heads up before I walked in the door,” Lewis added. That was when you heard a car door shut.

“Thank you, have a good one.”

Sensing something was going on, you perked up. As you walked to the window of your bedroom, your phone chime for the Ring went off, indicating someone had tripped the sensor.

“Lew, baby, is that--.”

“Honey, I’m home. Come to daddy.”

A scream escaped you before you dropped your phone and ran out of the bedroom.

“Slow down.”

Ignoring his warning, you barreled down the stairs and through your home. For the first time, you regretted signing the contract on this mammoth of a house. You should have stuck to your guns when Lewis said it was perfect, and you mentioned it was only going to be the two of you in a house meant for six people. His rebuttal—then we’ll fill it up with some kids. Once he said that you happily signed the contract right beside his name.

After way too long, you found him in the foyer at the front door, and that was when you picked up speed.

“Baby!”

Lewis opened his arms and waited for you to leap into them. Once you did, you wrapped your legs around his back and crashed your lips to his. It had been three months since you’d been kissed, and it was long overdue. Eagerly you dipped your tongue into his mouth, hoping to show him just how excited you were to see him. Lewis moaned then turned your body to press you onto the dark wooden door.

“I missed you so much,” you panted out in between kisses.

“I missed you more.”

Feeling as if there were too many barriers between you, you began peeling them off one by one. His jacket dropped to the floor within seconds. Then came his polo that you peeled off of him. with him bare chest, you allowed your fingers to reacquaint with his skin. Lewis must have felt the same way because the tee-shirt you wore, his tee-shirt was gone a few seconds after your nails scraped his back. Realizing you didn’t have on a bra, his eyes feasted on your flesh.

“Welcome home to me, indeed.”

You snorted and shook your head before wrapping your arms around his neck to kiss him some more. Lewis carried you through your home until he’d laid you onto the extra-large sectional couch. On lazy days this was where the two of you always ended up just cuddling, watching TV, or just chatting. Lewis pressed kiss after kiss onto your neck, collar, and chest before he rested his head in between your breasts and moaned.

“Mmmm, I missed your skin,” he muttered.

You lazily played with his midnight locks taking your time to graze his scalp with your nail tips.

“I missed your smell,” you replied, inhaling deeply, allowing the scent that was all him to envelope you.

Lewis turned his head and kissed your sternum before trailing down your belly. When he kissed your pelvis over your leggings, he moaned.

“I canceled that dinner.”

“What?”

“I know it was supposed to be a surprise, but when my mom texted me to confirm she kind of let it slip,” he admitted.

You snorted, then laughed. It echoed through the first floor of your home.

“Okay, so dinner is canceled. What’s planned in its place?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean nothing? Baby, I’m sure everyone who was supposed to come to this dinner tonight wanted to see you. It has been months,” you stressed.

“Oh, I know it’s been months. That is why I canceled with my mom’s blessing. She even had a message for you.”

You piqued up, straining your neck so you could gaze down at him. Making eye contact without angling his head up, Lewis smirked but didn’t speak.

“What message?”

“She’s not getting any younger and would like to be able to do Tik Tok dances with her grandchild without worry about her knees.”

Your jaw dropped to which Lewis busted out laughing.

“Wait, wait. What!?”

“You heard me.” He kissed your belly again and dipped his tongue into your belly button. Moaning softly, you bit into your bottom lip.

“So you’re saying your mother not so specifically but specifically is suggesting that--.”

“—I put a baby in you? Yeah,” Lewis filled in.

Your jaw was again ajar from your state of shock.

“Wow.”

You’d always known his mother wanted grandkids, but it was always one of those once a year at family dinners passing comment. She’d graduated now. Before you knew it, Lewis had lifted you into his arms again and was now carrying you through the halls, up the stairs.

“You’re walking away from the door. What exactly are we supposed to do with the rest of the day?”

“I think I have plenty of ideas,” Lewis answered as he carried you into your bedroom.

From walking into the bedroom, he walked on into the bathroom. Once inside, Lewis plopped you onto the sink. As soon as you were seated, he began pulling off your leggings.

“What’s happening right now?”

“I’m getting you naked. I want to wash off the airplane and travel off of me before I smother myself with you, and you’re going to help me.”

“Oh, am I?” Lewis then yanked off your pants and dropped them onto the floor, leaving you in your high waisted bikini-style thong. Lewis lowly growled as he peeped peeks of your ass in the mirror behind you.

“You were ready for me to come home, you know how much I love these,” he grunted out, snapping the elastic against your skin, leaving a subtle stinging sensation that slowly dulled. Though it dulled, it awoke and intensified another sensation—arousal.

He pulled back and began working on his jeans. Once he dropped them and pulled his boxer-briefs off, your teeth once again sank into your bottom lip. Your eyes traveled along his body, taking in the sleek muscles that decorated his torso down to his well defined oblique muscles that slanted inward, tempting you with that under bellybutton tattoo. He was even more ripped than he was three months ago. He was also a lot more bruised and scraped up.

“Jeez, what have they done to you?”

Glancing over his body, Lewis shrugged nonchalantly. “Eh, occupational hazard.”

You hopped off the sink and closed the space between you trailing your hand from his hip, over his ribs, and up to his chest. Once you reached his jaw, you gently cupped it.

“Let’s get you cleaned so I can take care of you.”

Walking behind him, you led the way to the shower, turned on the water, and allowed the moisture to rain over you. It was hard not to smirk when you heard Lewis’s guttural groan. As soon as he let it out to bounce off the tiled walls, his arms were wrapping around you, pulling you into him.

Lewis’s lips latched onto your neck and sucked. The force of that suck had you remembering everything that mouth had ever done to you. As if he remembered as well, his grip tightened as his hand roamed to your backside to cup it. It felt like he moved his hands everywhere all at once as if he couldn’t be happy with one location.

“It’s been so long, baby. I need you so much,” Lewis whispered in your ear, sending a violent shiver through you that awakened so much in you that you nearly overpowered him and took control. Almost.

Before you could, Lewis pressed you to the wall, stretching your hands out along the tile. His mouth moved from your neck to your lips to suck the air right from your lungs. The man was meant for kissing. Once he was sure you wouldn’t be able to function, you felt his knee nudge your legs apart. Within seconds you felt his hand cup your sex, making you loudly gasp.

“Do you need me as much as I need you?” Knowing you had no words to express how much you needed him, you nodded.

“Words, babygirl.”

You already saw what mood he was setting. Gathering your composure, you pushed off the wall and walked over to your bath products then lathered your bath gloves. Turning back to Lewis, you gently rubbed along his body taking care not to hurt him anywhere accidentally. As your gloved hands slowly traveled across his skin, your eyes followed where they went. The white lather of the soap was a nice contrast with his tanned and tattooed skin.

Once you made it to his back, you relished the feel of his muscles dancing underneath your fingers, showing you again just how hard he pushed his body. Seductively you swirled your finger down his spine until you made it to the top of his taunt ass. There was nothing but trust from him as your hand rubbed his derriere, a trust you’d mirrored every day since nearly the day you’d met.

After several long minutes of cleaning and teasing every inch of him, Lewis again pushed you against the shower wall. This time your abdomen and face rested against its cool surface while he pressed his body against your back and ass. Instead of speaking, Lewis kissed your jaw, brought his mouth to your ear, and bit down as he pulled the shower glove off of your hand. He knew damn well it wouldn’t fit his much larger one.

It didn’t matter if they fit perfectly to him; a few moments later, you felt his gloved hand rub against your backside.

Up—down—up—down.

Lewis released a deep groan right beside your ear. Bringing his hand up your back, he gently rubbed your skin, applying enough pressure and force to clean but not enough to give you any sort of pleasure. He was an expert tease. Once his hand made it to your shoulder, he massaged it, applying more pressure dragging a satisfying moan from your lips.

“You’re tense, love.”

“I wonder why,” you whispered.

Quickly, Lewis had you flipped around staring into your eyes. As he distracted you with his golden chestnut orbs, pulling you even more under his spell, his hand wreaked havoc on your breast. He rubbed, circled, pinched, and repeated the process. Bringing his ungloved hand to join in on the pleasure, he cupped and massaged them until he brought both hands to your throat to gently but forcefully hold you there.

His lips crashed to yours soon after. His tongue was a work of art and spelled by a sorcerer and was proving to you just how well he knew how to use it. Your moans matched his, but when you felt his gloved hand against your folds, your moans increased.

“Oh, baby.”

“I can feel that tension increasing,” Lewis taunted as he turned you, placing you under one of the two overhead shower fixtures.

Once the soap from your bodies was washed away, Lewis was carrying you once again into the bedroom. With you rested across it with your legs spread, Lewis’s head and mouth licked, nibbled, and sucked a path down your body until you felt his tongue flick across your needy bud. With the arch of your back, you gasped again.

“Fuck, baby!”

“Mmm.”

In seconds his mouth was fastened over your sex, feasting as if his last meal was right between your thighs. There was an urgency to how his tongue flicked your clit and then delved between your folds only to nibble against your labia. After a few short minutes, you were a whimpering, writhing mess. Needing something to touch, your hands raked along his head. Every time you tried to snap your thighs together, he used his strength on you prying them apart and holding them to the bed so he could do as he wished.

“Fuck Lewis, yes!”

His moans were the only reply he gave. Just as you felt yourself nearing the threshold of absolute ecstasy, he pulled away and stood at the foot of the bed. As if he had a tether from him to you, your body yanked to a half-sitting position.

“What!? What’s wrong? What’re you doing?”

Lewis didn’t answer. He just stood there licking his lips before he used his thumb to swipe at the corner of his mouth. The look in his eyes told you he had no intention of coming back to finish the job.

“Lew---,” you cautiously began watching him. He couldn’t tell you that he no longer wanted you; the uterus destroying lightsaber that Kylo Ren wished he possessed said otherwise. Biting your bottom lip, you moaned.

“Come here, baby, let me help.”

Lewis walked away to the leather armchair that was in the nearest corner to the bed. He then pulled it across the room to place it at the foot of the bed. By that time, you thought he meant for you to straddle him on it. So when Lewis sat, you began to move.

“Stop!”

Pausing, you gave him a questioning look.

“How long have I been gone?”

Crinkling your brow, you sighed. “Months.”

“How many?”

“Lewis--,” you began.

“—Y/N. be a good girl and answer me.”

Like a brat, you kissed your teeth and sighed out exaggeratedly. “Three months.”

“Have you touched yourself since I’ve been gone?”

Your eyes bugged. He knew the answer to that. Lewis’s eyes flicked to the right bedside table, where he knew you had your toys.

“Lewis, I don’t want to play this game,” you whined.

“Are you sure? Your nipples are telling a different story.”

Narrowing your eyes, you ended on an eye-roll. “Yes.”

With your answer, Lewis stroked his cock, bringing your attention to the massive erection just standing tall as if it knew there was none like it. Lewis groaned and sucked in a breath.

“Though I’ve tried not to, I’ve done this several times. I’ve lost track of how many.”

You could hear his voice speaking, but you were too focused on his actions to really allow any words to resonate. Watching his large, veiny hand stroke his need had your mouth watering. It was so damn sexy. The sighed, coupled with his moans, was enough to make fresh wetness pool between your legs.

When his hand stopped, you followed it to rest on the arm of the chair. A few seconds passed before you realized he wasn’t going to bring it back to continue. Locking eyes with him, you recognized the look.

“Show me how you’ve done it.”

You could have choked from the shock. You knew he wasn’t joking, and you knew better than to toy with him when he got like this. Bringing your hand down your body, you cupped your own sex and groaned. It was insane how wet you were.

“Show me,” Lewis said in his impossibly deep voice. It had been months since you’d heard it this clearly. Facetime sex was great, and all, but there was nothing like his voice in person.

Using your two fingers, you spread yourself so he could see. Lewis’s grunt was loud, and the jerk of his member was a substantial one. As if in a trance, your fingers found your opening and swirled around, coating themselves before circling your clit. The second you began, you had to steady yourself. You knew you wouldn’t last long with him sitting there, but you wanted to give him a good show. Your fingers sped despite your best efforts to slow them. Once your back arched, you had to pull your hand away. The action had your back arched more as you dropped your head back.

“Fuck!”

“Such a beautiful pussy baby,” Lewis huskily whispered.

Bringing your head back to resume eye contact, you took a deep breath then continued. Starting slowly, you sucked your bottom lip and focused on his eyes rather than how you were making yourself feel. Dipping two digits inside your heat, you squirmed, jutting your breasts into the air. Lewis groaned from across the room and brought his hand back to his cock. After a few strokes, he groaned and put his hand back on the arm of the chair.

“How’s it feel, baby?”

As you plunged your fingers in and out of your body, you spoke, “So good, but I want your hand. Your fingers. Your mouth.”

You gasped then brought your soaking fingers to your clit, intent on one thing. Release. Your fingers moved quickly, racing you toward your release. Lewis must have sensed it too because he was now at the edge of the chair observing.

“Come for me, Y/N!”

“Mmm, fuck Lewis, I’m gonna—gonna--.”

Your back arched again, and your fingers sped, and within seconds you screamed out and shook from the sheer power of your release. While you were lost in your pleasure, you didn’t hear anything else but the pounding of your heart. When you felt his cock fill you to the hilt, you screamed and came again and clenched around him. Lewis growled, pinned your thighs to the bed, and plowed into you in a way that you knew you’d feel even tomorrow.

His strokes were not meant to tease you or reacquaint his body with yours. They were meant to please, meant to mark, meant to ruin you for any other separations. He wanted to erase months, show you how he alone could make you feel this way, and how only he could give you what you needed. When he shifted your body to hoist it a few inches off the bed to give you long, deep strokes, it was over. another orgasm claimed you, and your nails claimed his skin—marking him as yours as much as he marked you as his.

“Fuck, you’re so tight. I’ve missed you so much.”

With those words, Lewis pulled you up to him, so he was holding you as he was sitting back on his legs, and you were straddling him with your legs wrapped around his back. He controlled your body with ease and skill, lifting you only to drop you on his protruding heat.

“I missed you.” Your lips crashed to his and took control of this. You nibbled his lips and sucked his tongue.

It was such a beautiful mix of submission and dominance that the sheer intimacy of it had your belly fluttering.

“This won’t be long, babe, I want too much,” Lewis warned.

“Fuck me!”

Dropping you back to the bed, Lewis held your legs like a pair of scissors and began throwing pummeling thrusts into you. You were thankful you’d chosen a home that had no neighbors for miles and in the middle of plenty of greenery. As he gave you everything he had the next few minutes, you took it all.

Once you felt his move from thoughtful calculation to no order or rhythm, you knew it was a matter of seconds. Sure enough, you felt him release into you as he grunted and groaned loud enough to compete with your shrieks and shouts in between his utterance of how much he loved you. Lewis buried himself inside of you and pulled your final orgasm free.

The two of you laid there for long minutes, composing yourselves while trying to catch tour breaths. When he rolled off of you onto the bed beside you, he groaned.

“Mmm, I love you so much,” Lewis repeated.

You rolled to his side and rested your head on his chest as he wrapped his arm around you.

“I love you more, baby.”

“Although I think that was the one that did it, we have all night.”

“Did what?”

Lewis rolled on top of you and plastered his hands on your belly. “Put a baby in here.”

You couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh, so you were trying to get me pregnant?”

His smile was wide, cheesy, and completely charming.

“Do you have any objections? According to my calendar, you’re fertile.”

Lewis thrust forward, joining your bodies again. Completely shocked, you gasped.

“Lewis.”

“Mmmm, god you feel like mine. Let me give you something else that’s mine.”

“You’re serious?”

You’d talked about starting a family together before, but you’d never made a decision. It was still something sweet to think about. Lewis stroked forward, then retreated and did it again and again.

“I am, but I want you to be my wife first.”

Your heart stopped.

“Are you breathing?”

As if for emphasis, he rotated his hips, making you feel his depth and breadth completely. Clenching around him, you shivered.

“Mrs. Tan has a nice ring to it, as does wife, mother of my children.” With every word he spoke, he circled some more.

“Love of my life,” he finished before he picked up his pace making your eyes roll to the back of your head.

You knew that there would be no rest for the wicked, and it was evident Lewis was in a wicked mood.

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

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seanhtaylor · 4 years ago

Text

Cherry Hill

“Ain't never been a day like it," the old man said, "and ain't never gonna be one."

He sat rocking in a rickety chair while a calm November wind whistled through the chimes that hung above his paint chipped steps. Nearly eighty six, his hair was grayed and thin, and his scalp showed through in frequent, scattered patches. He spoke clearly and thoughtfully, a trait common to the Southern elderly I'd interviewed.

"You sure you want to hear 'bout this? 'Cuz it might take a while. I still get really choked up when I think on it even though it happened sixty some odd years ago."

I nodded. "Take all the time you need, sir."

"Alright..." he said, and shifted in the rocker, bringing it to a stop. The quiet squeaking died, and all was silent save the whistle of the breeze through the wind chimes. "Suppose it's best. This old county's got its ghosts lying around, and this one's probably due for a resurrection."

* * * * * *

William Emmett Johnson was sheriff then...Will, all us deputies called him. He was a real card, not a lick like the old sheriff. Will always used to win the Liar's Club's gold cup every Saturday night. That man could tell the most outrageous, but just barely believable untruths out of the whole Liar's Club. Heck, even at the jailhouse, we weren't ever really sure when he was giving it to us straight or just pulling our legs.

And he had this old confederate shirt he used to wear all the time. He said his grandmother gave it to him, and that it was sent back to her from General Lee with a letter saying how his granddaddy had been killed by a Yankee Negro. I guess because of that, you could say old Will had his teeth sorta set on edge toward colored people. He wasn't mean outright to them, but he sure didn't take a liking to them either. Will, Joseph, and I were the only ones at the jail, usually, so it was just the three of us who were there when it all happened. July twenty third, nineteen hundred and twenty six, I marked that day on a calendar in my head, and I'll never forget it. Jimmie Baker from the drug store came running into the jailhouse, shouting like Gabriel's trumpet was blowing outside and the good Lord was coming back.

"They gonna string him, Will."

"Who they gonna string up, Jimmie?"

"That little Jenkins boy, the youngest one."

"Albert Jenkins..." Joseph always did his thinking out loud. "Why, he ain't never been in no kind of trouble before."

"Well, he's gone and done it now. Lee Dunsten says he's the one what raped his little girl, Winnie."

Will just stared like he always did when he was thinking. "They got any proof, witnesses or personal things found at the site?"

"I don't think so, Will, but I don't think the lack's gonna slow 'em down any."

Joseph and I had already got our gun belts on, and were getting ready to go arrest the Jenkins boy, when Will gave us the call to arms, "Well boys, negro or no, ain't nobody getting lynched in Cherry Hill without Will Johnson looking it over first."

So we all packed into the new car the town had just bought for us, and rode out to the Dunstens' farm.

That Lee Dunsten and his boys done had the Jenkins boy down and bleeding all over God's green earth. They had a rope 'round his neck, and were jerking him here and there like a wild dog on a first leash. Cussing and whipping out his arms and legs, the boy was fighting the rope for all he was worth, but he just wasn't a match for Lee Dunsten mounted on his horse holding the other end. He never could get more than two or three steps before the rope would yank him to the ground and drag him 'round the farm some more. The Dunstens were making darn sure the boy didn't have any fight in him for when they got ready to dangle him in the wind.

Sheriff Will just stepped out of the car, and walked right up to Lee Dunsten's horse. He jerked the reins right out of Lee's hands, and brought the animal to a stop.

"What's going on here, Lee?"

"Now sherf, this here ain't none of the law's business. This boy's the one raped Winnie, and I'm gonna see he pays for it. You boys can get back in your fancy automobile the good people done bought for you, and go back to the jailhouse. There ain't no kinda trouble here for you to pay a mind to."

"Rape's a right strong accusation, Lee. I sure hope you got some proof the boy's guilty."

"Proof! What in Hell! Will? Since when do you need proof to string up a nigger boy?"

"Since we lost the war, Lee." Will was a lawman through and through.

"Well, Sherf Johnson," Lee said to him, "I don't see that it's so all fired important, but if it'll get you off my farm, we found the boy in the back of the house, half in and half out of Winnie's window, just like he hadda do the other night to get to her."

"Now Lee, you know there ain't no love lost 'tween me and colored folks, but laws are laws, and I got to enforce them. If this boy's the one what did that vile sin against the Lord and your girl, he'll pay for it...but through the courts, not s winging from a rafter in your barn."

About then, one of Lee's boys spoke up, "Sheriff Will, I ain't no fancy lawyer or nothing, but laws or no laws, there ain't nobody gonna tell me that courts are for anybody but white folks."

Will just ignored the boy, and walked over to Albert Jenkins. He was scared, that boy, half to death, and shaking like he was freezing in the summer. I guess being on the wrong end of a hanging rope will do it to a fella. Blood was everywhere he wasn't nothing but a dark open sore by this time, a sixteen year old blood and puss sore. His clothes were torn into rags from being drug over the farm, and he might as well have been stark naked for all the covering they gave him.

"Boy."

"Yessir."

"Tell me the truth, boy. What was you doing coming out of Miss Winnie's window like you was?"

"I didn't do nothing to Miss Winnie, sir. She always been good to me, treatin' me nice and all.

"What was you doing coming out of the window, boy?

"I weren't coming out her window, sheriff. I was jes' pokin' my head in to smell the chocolates she's been getting."

Dunsten's oldest boy blurted out then, "You calling me a liar, boy? Sheriff, you ain't gonna take no word of a dark boy over me, are you?"

"Shut up, Lewis," his daddy told him, then back handed him hard across the jaw.

"Will, my boy said he found him coming out Winnie's window, and I believe that's what happened. My boy's word's all the proof I need."

"You ain't the court, Lee."

"You know what the court'll say, Will. There ain't never been a negro jury in this county yet, and ain't no white jury gonna listen to this malarky you've been giving me about laws."

"Maybe so, but you folks pay me to do a job, and by the good Lord, I'm gonna do it the best I can."

Joseph and I got Albert Jenkins, and put him in the car. Will told Dunsten and his boys to get back to the house and stop fooling with the "little nigra boy," and they went, but not without the last word.

"This ain't the end, Will," Dunsten yelled, as he let the screen door slam shut behind him.

You know how some folks just can't leave well enough alone. Well, Lee Dunsten was one of them folks. The whole time we had Albert locked up, Lee and his friends were out raising all kinds of cain 'round and 'round the courthouse and the jail. I still think to this day that old Will put the boy in jail as much to protect him from the Dunstens as for the accusation of rape.

Lee was a deacon down at the Baptist church, but you wouldn't have ever known it by the way he was cussing and carrying on outside. "It's a right fine day for a hanging, sherf," he'd shout 'bout every half hour or so.

Little scrawny Albert was still scared half to death sitting in the cell where we'd put him. So, I'd gone over to help the boy calm down while Will was outside trying to get rid of the Dunstens and their hundred or so friends that had gathered.

"Mr. Deputy, sir."

"Yeah."

"I ain't ready to be no merter yet."

"A merter?"

"Yessir...One of them folks that gets killed for doing nothin' wrong, just mindin' they own business, then right out of the blue somebody wants to kill them for one fool reason or another."

"There's a lot of good company with the martyrs, Albert, but don't you worry none...you ain't gonna die today."

"He's right, that Mr. Dunsten. Ain't no jury gonna believe me over a white boy."

All I could do was nod in agreement with him. Albert Jenkins' eyes were as brown as his skin, maybe browner, and big as baseballs, but when he looked at me full in the face, I saw how pretty they gleamed when they glazed over with the starting of a little tear.

"How come you and the sheriff trying to keep me from 'em, if I'm gonna die anyhow?"

"Boy," I said, "There ain't nobody on God's earth deserves to go out like them Dunstens want to send you."

By now 'bout half the town was outside shouting for the boy to hang. Lee Dunsten had almost started himself an all out riot. Will came back in sometime 'round then wearing a big look of misery.

"Joseph...Get the boy."

"Excuse me, sheriff?"

"Get the boy."

"But they gonna kill him, and he ain't even gone to trial yet."

"I ain't got no time for this, Joseph. Get the boy, now!" Will looked like a man whose whole family had just passed on all at once.

Joseph got up and fetched Albert from the cell, and brought him right up to where Will was.

"Albert, I got something to say to you, and I want you to be a man about it."

"Yessir."

"I don't know if you was the one what raped the girl or no, but out there they say you did. They want you to hang."

"Yessir, I know."

"I tried my best, good Lord have mercy, to keep you safe 'til you could get a trial and a chance."

"Yessir."

"But Heaven above, boy, they just threatened to burn down my jailhouse to get you, even if it means they have to kill me and all my deputies."

Albert didn't say "yessir" then. No, he didn't say nothing. All he did was to spit right in Will Johnson's face. I wanted to spit in Will's face, too.

We tried to talk him out of it, Joseph and I, but in the end, he had his mind all made up. He told us not to get in the way none, else the town would fire us both as deputies.

I ain't never felt so small in all my life, as I did looking on as Albert Jenkins stood there all by himself, 'bout to be strung up an untried man. He didn't cry, but he sure cussed and hollered and kicked and punched and bit when the two oldest Dunsten boys, Lewis and Vincent, came in to fetch him out. They fought with him a good five minutes or so before they could wrestle him to the ground for a chance to tie up his hands and feet. For a scrawny sixteen year old kid, that boy could throw his fist like a trained fighter, and none of us interfered while Lewis and Vincent got a few bruises to carry out with them. But Albert knew he couldn't fight them all day long, and even if he did, there were more than a hundred others waiting outside to come in all at once, so he quit. He just gave up licking them Dunsten boys, and lay there on the floor gawking for breath. Lewis Dunsten came up then and kicked him hard in the stomach. Albert Jenkins coughed and spit blood, then fainted dead away.

The crowd had their fun with the boy, slapping and kicking at him, and taunting with no end of horrible names. I guess they just wanted to make sure he was good and awake before they killed him.

"Devil boy," somebody yelled out, "Black as soot from the Hell pits."

"Ain't never known nothing but stealin' and hurtin' good people."

"Primitive heathens."

Lee Dunsten just took up on that, and sounded like he was making church out of it. "We know, all of us here, that this little Negro had every opportunity to do right." He took care to drag the word Negro out real clear and loud. "He knows what the rules have always been: Don't no black folks associate with no white folks. He was born knowing it, even if we never hadda told 'em. It's inborn, the natural order." People were whooping and hollering like they were at a tent meeting, all stirred up by what Lee was saying. "But now this boy done stepped way over the dividing line. He's gone and done the unthinkable. No self respecting nigger with a brain in his head would force his affection on a tender, young white girl. But let me tell you...this ain't no self respecting boy."

You could have heard that crowd three towns away. Lee's accusation was all the proof they needed that the boy was Winnie's attacker, and they got thirsty for blood. It made you wonder who was really primitive, hearing a whole town yelling out a death chant like they were.

Next thing I knew, they had Albert standing under the oak tree across from the courthouse, and Lewis Dunsten was slipping the rope 'round his neck one more time. It was happening too far away to know for sure, but I swear that the Dunsten boy was grinning from ear to ear as he tightened the rope.

Then, "Crack!" The explosion of gunpowder stood everybody as still as if death had frozen all of them right where they were standing. Sheriff William Emmett Johnson was standing on the front steps of the courthouse with his rifle pointing up at the clouds.

"This ain't court," he shouted to the crowd, "and you ain't the jury what's gonna decide whether or not the boy hangs."

That yelling and screaming lynch mob got quiet right quick, waiting on Lee Dunsten's reaction.

"Sherf, me and all the good folks here aim to see this boy hang, and ain't you or nobody gonna stop us."

"I can't let that happen, Lee."

"Since when have you gone out of your way to protect a..."

Will cut him off with another rifle blast. "Since I believed in the boy's innocence."

"You ain't callin' my boy a liar, are ya, Will?"

"Nope. Just saying he misunderstood the situation as he saw it. It just ain't evidence enough for a hanging."

"We think it is, sherf."

"I'm right sorry to hear that, but I don't reckon it matters much since the police from Pineville are waiting on him to show up at their big, new jailhouse. I just called them, and they said they had plenty of room to hold him 'til his trial."

Lee turned every shade of red in the book, and stormed right up to Will on the front steps. "Will, the boy ain't gonna make it to Pineville..."

"That's obstructing justice, Lee, and that's against the law."

"Fine." He turned and yelled out to Lewis, "Go ahead, boy. This fine lawman of ours wouldn't shoot no white man for giving out justice to a Negro."

Lewis once again tightened the rope, and got ready to dangle Albert. A bullet whizzed by about two feet above his head, and he flinched, but only for a moment.

"You almost scared me, sheriff. I almost thought you were really gunning for me."

He put on a smirk, stepped off of the box, and raised his foot to send Albert swinging out into the air, when the rifle thundered one last time, and Lewis Dunsten fell to the ground like a dove over a hunter's field.

About half the mob screamed while the other half ran off in all different directions. Lee Dunsten didn't do nothing but drop to his knees crying like a newborn. In the confusion, Will picked up the shaken Lee Dunsten, and took him into the jailhouse for being a public nuisance.

Joseph and I made over to where Albert was still standing on the box, terrified. We took the rope off from his neck, and cut it down from the tree as a safeguard. Albert was bleeding pretty bad from the licking he'd taken, and his wrists were cut deep and rubbed raw down to the muscle from the coarse rope. After we cut his wrists loose, and he tried to bring his arms 'round front again, there was a loud scraping noise like bone rubbing bone. The boy was a sore mess with his body covered in blood and bruises and his right arm broken, but he was still breathing, and he wasn't swinging from an oak tree in front of the Cherry Hill Court House.

That, at least, was something.

We carried the poor kid over to the new police car, and then Will Johnson did something I'll never forget. He took off his granddaddy's old confederate shirt, and standing there before God and everybody all bare chested and sweaty, he tore it into three long strips to make a sling for Albert Jenkins' broken right arm. As soon as we'd put him in the car, it wasn't forty seconds before the boy fell straight off to sleep, right peaceful even, all things considered.

Will told us to get in the car, and drive him up to Charleston.

"Charleston, sheriff?"

"Yeah, Charleston. Even if a jury was to find him innocent, folks 'round here wouldn't care a bit. He'd still be in as much danger of hanging as he was before the trial. But in Charleston, he can live...land a job on a ship...sail off a few years. Nobody ever recognizes a man after the sea gets a hold of him. Heck! He don't even have to come back. No, he can make a whole new life. Anything's better than what he'll have waiting here."

"Sheriff, what about them folks up at Pineville? Ain't they gonna be sorely put out when he don't show up?"

"Naw," Will drawled, and started laughing himself sick to tears. "I lied." And he kept on laughing 'til long after we'd headed on up to Charleston.

* * * * * *

"We got Albert a job two days later, broken right arm and all. We waved good bye from the dock as he sailed off to be a cook's assistant aboard Elizabeth's Dream. It was a right odd name for a boat, so we just called it Jenkin's Dream, because of the chance it meant for Albert `cept he wasn't Albert Jenkins no more. Start over, we told him, fresh and clean. And he did. Grover Calvert Williams was the signature he left on the ship's work list.

"He even wrote once or twice, and said he'd married a little French girl, and that they'd moved back to the States...somewhere up North with lots of land and room for a family.

"You know, the Dunstens moved on right after the sheriff let Lee out of Jail. Rumor said they'd moved up to Pineville for a few weeks, then just moved on from there to nobody knows where. Old Will Johnson never got a gold cup for that one, but he sure should've."

I chuckled, and began packing my recorder and notebook away, all the while fighting November's breath as it sought to close the flap of my pack. "Thanks for your time and the story."

"Anytime, anytime at all."

He turned and entered the big screen door going from his porch to the inside of the small house, and I headed for my VW. But before either of us made it to our destinations, he stopped, the door half open, and looked over toward me again.

"Say...Nobody much cares for the old stories anymore. How come you're so interested?"

"Research for my doctorate...race relations in the rural South," I partially lied, and traced the G, C, and W of my grandfather's pocketwatch inside my windbreaker's front pocket.

#Sean Taylor #Gomer and other Early Works #Cherry Hill #short story #southern fiction #southern gothic

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sunmoonandeddie · 5 years ago

Text

happy

pairing: bucky barnes x reader

word count: 4,008

summary: You realize you were wrong.

prompt: ‘someone you loved’ by lewis capaldi

warnings: swearing, cheating (but it’s not what you think)

a/n: This was written for @propertyofpoeandbucky‘s writing challenge! I had so much fun with this and I hope you enjoy! Let me know what y’all think! (Also, I stared at the word ‘happy’ for so long that I started to think it was wrong and I had to google it.) (Also, I’m sorry this is literally right on the deadline.)

Bucky knew he had been asking too much. The universe had already granted him more miracles than any normal person gets. Steve, surviving the fall from the train, escaping HYDRA, being pardoned by the United Nations.

And then the universe had brought him to you. You, his brilliant girl. You weren’t an Avenger, or anything close to it. No, you were a writer. You created entire worlds out of just twenty-six letters, took words that were ordinary coming from other people’s mouths and turned them into magic.

God, he loved to watch you write. He loved to watch the way you’d bite your lower lip as you stared at your laptop, sinking down into the cushions of his couch. He loved the way you refused to write at a table. Sometimes he’d catch you staring out the window and he’d snap a photo on his new phone, a soft smile on his lips as he looked back through his photo album more than what was probably considered normal.

That was one thing he loved about the twenty-first century. Phones made it so much easier to snap photos of things he thought were important. Namely Steve, his cat, and you. Mostly you, though. The cameras back in the forties had been so bulky and getting them out was just too much of a hassle.

The clock on the wall struck ten and he knew that your husband had probably just gotten home.

Your husband.

The man who had everything he wanted.

The man who’d gotten to you first, before Bucky had even met you. Before he even knew someone as miraculous as you existed.

The man who’d gotten to see you as an eighteen-year-old coed, who’d gotten to see you in a wedding dress. He got to wake up to you every day for almost ten years, and he didn’t appreciate it. Didn’t see it for how wonderful it was. Didn’t see how miraculous you were.

The thought of him left a vile taste in his mouth that made him reach for the bottle of whiskey sitting on the floor beside him. It had been unopened just three hours before, but he can’t quite remember drinking all of it.

Maybe the universe had taken you from him as some sick sort of karma. It was pay back for all the horrific things he did while under HYDRA’s control. Maybe this was the proof that he was the monster that everyone said he was.

Because why else would you walk into his life only to be yanked from it as suddenly as you came?

He felt another surge of tears coming on and emptied the bottle in two long gulps.

And he still didn’t feel anything other than the searing pain in his chest. All because of that stupid fucking serum HYDRA had injected him with.

As he pulled himself off the floor, he wiped his running nose with the sleeve of his hoodie. It was already covered in snot and tears and was more than a little disgusting. If you were there, you would make him get in the shower and throw the piece of clothing into the wash before you joined him. You’d wash his hair as he relaxed with the feeling of your fingers on his scalp. He’d emerge smelling like whatever that nice organic stuff you bought for him was.

But you weren’t here to do that.

He yanked another bottle of whiskey from the shelf, determined to drink until the pain in his chest numbed.

The thing that amazed him the most was the fact that this was the thing that broke him. If he had to choose what hurt him the most, between everything else that happened in his life and you walking out on him, he’d choose you leaving.

Bucky couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across his face as he heard the knock. The four soft, quick raps against the door that let him know it was you.

He had dinner waiting in the kitchen. Your favorite that he spent the past two days planning.

Tonight was special. He had a little black box resting on the island, a necklace that he had picked out last week just for you.

It was the closest thing to a ring he could get to at the current moment. Granted, he hoped that he’d be able to one day, after you’d left your husband. After you were his completely.

God, he couldn’t wait for that day. He couldn’t wait to be able to walk down the street while proudly holding your hand, pulling you in for sweet kisses just because he could. He’d wrap his arms around you while you waited in line at the movies. He wanted to take you to those stupid parties Stark was always throwing and show you off as his date. He wouldn’t have to hide his identity on the off chance that a fan—or worse, paparazzi—saw him. The two of you wouldn’t have to go to an entirely different borough just to go on a coffee date.

And even then, you were cautious enough to not be caught doing anything that might be seen as crossing a line.

You’d written a piece on him for the magazine you worked for, in an effort to get the rest of the world to see him as something more than a blood thirsty assassin.

In the eyes of the rest of the world, you two were just best friends that had clicked during that short time.

If only they knew just how much you meant to each other.

He wiped his hands off on his jeans, desperately praying for them to stop sweating, before heading for the door. He was more than a little confused as to why you hadn’t just used the key he’d given you months ago, but maybe you’d forgotten it. It was something that happened a little more than you liked to admit, and he wouldn’t put it past you to have forgotten your key for the second time this week.

There was another knock and he called out, “I’m coming, sugar!”

But his grin quickly fell from his lips when he opened the door.

“Can we… Can we talk?” You asked, more serious than he’d seen you in a while. He didn’t miss the fact that your eyes were red and puffy, or that your lip was busted—probably from biting it so much. It was a nervous habit of yours that you never could break.

“Yeah, of course,” he said, opening the door to let you in. His hands shook with anxiety as you stood off to the side of the couch instead of sitting down or heading for the kitchen like you usually did. There was a new tension in the air that hadn’t ever been between the two of you, and when you didn’t speak, he rushed to fill the silence. “I have dinner ready in the kitchen, and I picked up a bottle of your favorite wine. I thought we could eat in the living room and watch movies. Or we could watch that new series you were wanting—”

“James,” you said, effectively silencing him. You bit your knuckles as you squeezed your eyes shut, willing yourself to continue, to say the words you had come to say. You took in a deep breath as you let your hand fall back to your side. Your head was pounding from trying to hold in your tears. “I can’t do this anymore.”

And just like that, his world came crashing down around him.

He shook his head, taking a step towards you. “What are you talking about?”

“I can’t—” You swallowed around the lump in your throat. “I have to give my marriage a chance. It’s not fair to Ma—”

Disbelief washed over him. “’Not fair?’” He scoffed. “He fucks his secretary and doesn’t come home to you until ten every night after you get done fucking me. There’s not much that’s fair about it, sweetheart.”

And yeah, he knew that was a low blow. A really, really low blow. And it wasn’t fair of him to lash out at you, but he was hurt.

“James, please don’t make this harder than it is,” you said as you rubbed at your eyes. Anything to hide the tears. “I’m sorry, okay? I really, really am.”

Bucky rolled his eyes as he felt the anger and frustration boiling in his veins. Over a year together, and this is what he gets? Some slapped together, half-assed goodbye before you went back to the man who treated you like shit? Who didn’t appreciate you? Who didn’t see you as you should be seen?

The anger would leave as soon as you were gone, and the tears would take over, but the front at least gave him some dignity.

He just needed to ignore the pain in his chest until you were out of his townhouse.

“James? Please, don’t ignore me,” you said, your voice cracking. “I… This… This isn’t how I wanted this to go. I’m sorry.”

Bucky didn’t respond. He just clenched his jaw and stared at the wall. His hands were balled into fists at his sides.

You took in a shaky breath as you realized you weren’t going to get anything from him. You held back a sob as you took the key to his place off of your key ring and set it on the entryway table, before walking out.

The door shut with a click and Bucky fell to the hardwood floor as a heartbreaking cry resounded through the silent townhouse.

You wiped at your eyes for what felt like the millionth time that night as you stood at the island in your kitchen. Your keys were hung up on the hook of one of those cute little doorway hangers that you’d gotten when you and your husband had first moved in.

It felt weird, looking at them and not seeing the little gold key with 4/27 engraved on top that you knew unlocked Bucky’s front door.

It was the date of your first kiss, over a year ago.

And yeah, it was a little bit cheesy, but you loved it. It was something so small yet so important. Something for just the two of you to know.

Your husband had never done something as sweet as that, even before everything went to shit.

You hit the home button on your phone, your heart sinking as you saw the time. It was already past ten, and Matthew wasn’t home. Bucky’s words from earlier rang in your head.

He was right. As much as you hated to admit it, your husband was definitely fucking his secretary right now or was just finishing up.

But what freaked you out was the realization that you didn’t care whether or not he fucked his secretary—Stacy, or whatever her name was. Nice girl. You’d met her a few times when you stopped by his office. She had a heart-shaped face and a brilliant smile.

They’d look good together.

And you realized that you should probably care about the fact that less than a day after your husband and you had a talk about how you were both going to give up your affairs to give your marriage a try, he was fucking her again.

But you didn’t.

Because your eyes had caught on one of the reusable shopping bags that was half-hanging out of the cabinet, and you felt like you had been glued to the floor.

“Okay. Crossing bread off,” you said, half to yourself. You scratched the item off the list as Bucky tossed a loaf of bread into the cart.

It was almost two in the morning, but both of you were still a little wired from the night’s earlier activities. There was a pleasant ache between your thighs and a hickey was poking out from Bucky’s collar. It had been your first time together, and it was so much better than you’d ever imagined.

“What’s next?” He asked as he started to slowly inch the cart along.

“Popcorn,” you said as you walked along beside him. The supermarket was almost completely empty. There weren’t even any employees around to see the two of you. Feeling a rush at the thought of being able to touch your lover in public, you pressed yourself into his side as he came to a stop in the popcorn aisle.

He looked down at you in surprise, but his arm slid around your waist as though this was completely normal for the two of you.

“Hi,” you said, giddiness rising in your chest and erupting in a soft giggle.

Bucky’s cheeks went a soft pink as he leaned a little closer. Not close enough to kiss, but almost. “Hello.”

He looked beautiful even in the harsh fluorescent lights. His face was dusted with a few freckles from your day trip to the beach a few weeks ago. His hand was warm against your hip.

“What’s got you all excited?” He was definitely a little surprised at how affectionate you were being, considering you were out in public, but he wasn’t going to stop you. He’d take whatever you would give him—a fact that his friends hated. But they hadn’t met you yet. Didn’t know that you felt just as trapped by your situation as he did.

You felt a rush of affection for the man in front of you. The man you’d only been seeing for about four months. But your heart felt so warm and you knew. “I love you,” you blurted suddenly.

Bucky’s heart felt like it was about to burst. “I love you, too,” he breathed as he felt a wave of emotion crash over him.

And for just a second, the world stopped.

The world stopped moving and there was nothing except for the two of you. For just a second, it was easy to forget that your husband was coming back from his business trip in four days, or that you couldn’t go out in public during daylight because the paparazzi would catch you.

None of it existed for just a few moments in that little supermarket at two in the morning. He was just a boy, and you were just a girl.

And you loved each other.

You didn’t realize you were crying until you felt the tears dripping onto your hands. You stared down at them in surprise as they laid flat on the counter. Your eyes flickered around you as a feeling of despair settled over you.

You were all alone.

The only light on in the house was the one hanging over the island, illuminating just you and the almost empty glass of wine on the counter. The bottle it had come from was almost completely gone.

Your heels had been kicked off at the door, leaving you barefoot in your pencil skirt and blouse. It was past ten at night and usually you’d be starting to get ready for bed, but you weren’t tired. There was a restless energy in your veins.

There was no way you’d be able to sleep in the house you shared with your husband. It was too big, too cold.

Your glass of wine rested in your hand as you wandered over to the living room, flicking on the front entryway light. The walls were decorated with frames that you had picked out when you and Jason first moved in together, about six months before you got married.

None of them had changed in over four years. In fact, you couldn’t remember the last time you took a picture with each other just because. Just because you wanted to cement a memory.

And even back when you had moved in together, you had been the one that chose everything. You were the one that kept trying to make it a home for the both of you.

Matthew had never really given a shit.

Speaking of the devil, you felt the air around you changed as you heard his key in the lock, jiggling it a little before the door swung open.

Your husband stood in the doorway, clearly surprised to see you so close. His button-down shirt was rumpled, his usually carefully done hair mussed.

“Your shirt is buttoned wrong,” you said calmly as you turned your head to glance over at him. “How’s Stacy?”

His eyes widened as he realized that he was caught. There was no hiding the fact that he’d already gone back on your agreement. “Shit, baby, I’m—”

“Please, don’t,” you said, cutting him off as your eyes continued to flick over the pictures. You both stood there in tense silence. You took your time in looking at snapshots of a younger you, a you that thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with the man in those photos.

The man standing a few feet from you was a completely different person. Hell, you weren’t even sure you knew who he was anymore.

Which, to be fair, so were you. The both of you had grown and changed. You weren’t twenty-one anymore, fresh out of college and believing that the love that had held you two together through shitty professors and late nights working at the local bar and hangovers after frat parties and finals would last forever.

But that was six years ago.

“Does she make you happy?” You asked shakily.

Matthew nodded after a moment of hesitation. “She does,” he admitted, and you could see his hands shaking by his sides. “She’s more than my secretary. I know you probably see her as a sleaze for sleeping with her boss, but she’s more than that. And I know that I said we should try this again, but—”

“I get it.”

He looked at you in surprise. “You do?”

A fresh onslaught of tears threatened to overwhelm you as you nodded, pressing your lips together in a thin line. “I didn’t mean to fall for him. But I did. And he—” You took in a deep breath. “He saw me. He saw me with all of my flaws and mistakes and he still wanted me.” A teary smile stretched across your face. “He makes me so happy, Matthew. He pushes me to be brave and to take risks. When I’m with him, I feel like I’m the best version of myself I can be.”

“I’m sorry,” he said slowly, his own eyes watering. Even if the two of you weren’t in love anymore, there was still fondness there, a companionship that came from spending almost a decade together. “I’m sorry that this didn’t go how we wanted it to.”

“Me, too,” you said, wrapping your arms around yourself. “But I need to be happy.”

Bucky felt like he was going to pass out.

He never should’ve agreed to this. What did a magazine need to know about him anyway? It wasn’t like he was Steve or Tony, or even Natasha. He wasn’t ever going to be the face of the Avengers—not after everything he’d done.

But Steve had insisted that he knew you, that you weren’t a vulture like some of the journalists he’d met. You’d done two interviews with the super soldier and he absolutely raved about how comfortable you’d made him. You’d asked him more about Steve Rogers than you did Captain America, and that had made a difference.

He tried to keep his expression neutral as he pushed open the door to the conference room. It was better than the frown he had been sporting on the way down.

His heart caught in his throat as you turned around.

He had always thought that love at first sight wasn’t real. That all those stories of seeing someone and immediately knowing they were The One were just fairy tales.

After all, it wasn’t like he could ever deserve something so wonderful.

But there you were.

You appeared like a vision, an oasis in a desert. A guardian angel that he was sure was sent just for him.

“Hello. I’m Y/N L/N,” you said as you walked over, holding out your hand for him to shake.

He had a dazed look in his eyes as he shook your hand for much longer than what was considered appropriate. “H-Hi,” he said, jumping as he realized that you had been waiting for his response. “I’m… I’m Bu-Buck—"

“James Buchanan Barnes. I know,” you said with a soft giggle. “I’m a big admirer.”

An admirer. He had an admirer. It was a shock to know that you didn’t see him as blood thirsty murderer. And you went even further than that.

You admired him.

You look down, and he jerked away as he realized that he was still shaking your hand. His cheeks rivaled the red in Steve’s shield. “Uh, s-sorry,” he said. He rubbed the back of his neck as he turned away from you, cursing under his breath.

“It’s alright,” you said, voice sweet as honey as you stared up at him with something that he couldn’t name, but it made a shiver run down his spine.

He’d give anything to have you stare at him like that forever.

An awkward laugh cut through the silence as you realized you were staring at each other. “Uh, we should get out of here.”

“What?” He blinked at you in surprise. “I thought we were doing an interview or… whatever.”

“Yeah, we are,” you said as you began to lead him towards the door. “But no one feels comfortable talking about themselves in a stuffy conference room.” You hit him with another dazzling smile and he swore his heart skipped a bit. “So. James. Where to?”

A small meow rang through the air and Bucky turned to see Alpine on the couch. He was sitting on the green blanket you always curled up with whenever you were over.

“She’s gone, Al,” he said with a huff, taking a swig from the newly opened bottle. He had been leaning against the kitchen counter for what must’ve been ages, according to the slight cramp in his back, just working away at the bottle of whiskey. When the cat just stared up at him with piercing blue eyes, he rolled his eyes. “She’s gone. Don’t you get it? She’s not coming back.”

Alpine just blinked at him.

“Stupid cat.” The super soldier stormed over to the couch, carefully nudging the cat off the blanket and yanking it up. It was completely threadbare and covered in snow white hair.

It smelled like you. It smelled like the mornings after you were able to spend with him when your husband was out of town, like the afternoons he spent with his nose pressed into your hair, or the nights he’d spend rolling around in bed with you, the smell of sweat and you acting as an aphrodisiac.

Something inside him broke yet again and he crumbled to his knees. Sobs tore from his chest as he clung onto the blanket, holding onto a piece of the love of his life. He knew more of your things were littered around the apartment, but none of them were so you.

He was startled out of his sorrow by a knock on the door.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

Four quick raps.

You.

Wiping at his eyes, he rushed to the door before taking a moment. He took a deep breath in a poor attempt to calm himself down and appear more put together. He desperately wiped his clammy hands on his sweats.

Bucky threw open the door and his heart caught in his throat.

You were standing there in the doorway with tear-stained cheeks and a duffel bag in your hand. Your left ring finger was bare.

You were just as beautiful as the day he’d first met you.

“Hi.”

“What are you doing here?” He breathed.

You sniffled, smiling weakly. “You’re my happy.”

#bucky x you #bucky barnes x you #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes imagine #lanis2ndmysteriouswritingchallenge

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madpanda75 · 5 years ago

Text

“Santa Surprise” Part of the Hostage Series

A little holiday story featuring my Barba family for @thefanficfaerie‘s Christmas OTP challenge. There’s domestic fluffiness mixed with a hint of smut. ❤️

Prompt 16: Santa

Slightly NSFW (Santa kink, anyone??)

Rafael finished wiping down the counters after dinner when something odd struck him. It was quiet—too quiet. You offered to host the SVU holiday party and were currently out shopping with Liv, leaving Rafael alone with a five year old and two toddlers. Creeping into the living room where his children were, he expected total chaos, but instead was greeted with a picture perfect moment.

There was Mila sitting in front of the fireplace flanked by her two siblings while she showed them her pop-up book of The Night Before Christmas. “On Christmas Eve, Santa Claus comes down the chimney and then he leaves you presents under the tree,” she explained, pointing to the fat, jolly man dressed in red. “But if you’re bad, then you get coal.”

“No one is going to get coal this year,” Rafael said. “Santa just texted me and he said you all have been very good.”

Mila gasped and looked up at her father in awe. “Papi, you know Santa!”

“Of course I do,” he replied and picked up Rory and Ben, kissing them both on the cheek. “Ok, my little reindeer. Bath and bedtime."

Ben giggled and pointed to Rafael. “Santa!”

Rafael shook his head. “No, I’m not Santa. I’m Papi.”

“No, you Santa,” Ben replied.

“Santa!” Rory chimed in, grabbing at her father’s beard.

Rafael let out an exasperated sigh. Ever since he had decided to grow a beard that winter, the twins had taken to calling him Santa. It was beginning to get old. He walked up the stairs, balancing the twins in his arms with Mila following close behind.

“Papi, is Santa going to be at the Christmas party?” Mila asked while Rafael was wrangling Rory and Ben into the bathtub.

“Maybe, but remember muñequita, Santa is very busy this time of year. He may not be able to make it,” Rafael replied. Just then Rory escaped from the bathtub and ran down the hall, screaming and leaving a soapy trail.

“Oh God, we have a runaway. Rory, come back!” Rafael got up and chased after the naked toddler.

Mila grabbed the rubber ducky from the sink and handed it to her little brother. “Looks like someone is getting coal in their stocking,” she said in a sing-song voice, making Ben laugh.

*****

Rafael was utterly exhausted by the time you came home. After getting Rory back in the tub, Ben decided to make a run for it, escaping down the hallway. Once the twins were finally bathed and put to bed, Rafael then had to negotiate bedtime with Mila. He sang. He danced. He read stories. He was beginning to feel like a one man show on Broadway.

Staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, Rafael tilted his head from side to side, noticing the grey that streaked his hair and beard before looking down at his soft belly. No wonder the twins kept calling him Santa.

With a sigh, he shut off the bathroom lights and walked into the bedroom where you were waiting. Taking one look at your poor husband, you held out your arms to him. Rafael collapsed onto the bed and into your warm embrace.

“Rough night?” You asked.

“Mmhmm.” He nodded, his head practically buried in your chest.

You softly laughed, having experienced bedtime with Mila and the twins when Rafael was working late. “Thanks for watching them. I really appreciate it. There was no way I could’ve gone shopping with those three running around the store.”

“Anytime,” Rafael replied, his voice muffled against your skin.

You ran your fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp. A groan escaped Rafael’s lips as his body began to relax. He nuzzled against your chest making you giggle and squirm. “Your beard tickles.”

Rafael raised his head and saw the red mark he had made on your sensitive skin. “Sorry,” he sheepishly said.

“Don’t be. I love it,” you purred.

“You do?”

You smirked and stroked his scuff. “You look so sexy with a beard. It drives me crazy.”

Rafael wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Good to know,” he whispered and pushed up your flimsy silk nightgown, exposing more of your bare flesh. He lay open-mouth kisses on your stomach, dragging his tongue across your skin while spreading your thighs with his large hands.

You bit back a moan and tried to focus, knowing that if he kept this up you would forget all about what you had planned to ask him all evening. “So Liv and I were talking,” you abruptly said.

“Uh-oh, never a good sign,” Rafael murmured against you.

“And we were thinking what if you dressed up as Santa for the holiday party?”

Rafael stopped and met your gaze. “Santa? Really? I don’t know,” he groaned. “The squad would never let me live it down. I already dress up for Halloween, now I gotta be Santa too?”

“Everyone would love it! Besides don’t pretend you don’t love dressing up for Halloween every year.” You sat up and playfully narrowed your eyes. “I see how excited you get when we pick our family costumes.”

You had him there. Over the years, Rafael had grown to love Halloween. Being married to you, it was hard not to be. This past Halloween you were characters from Alice in Wonderland. You dressed up as the Red Queen. Rafael was the White Rabbit. Mila was Alice, and Rory and Ben were Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. It was becoming a sweet family tradition.

“Fine, I’ll think about it,” he said and gently pushed you back down onto the bed before going back to his previous task of leaving a trail of kisses down your body.

“Liv and I found a really nice Santa suit,” you said.

“Mmmhmm,” Rafael mumbled while nibbling on your inner thigh. You gasped and arched your hips towards him.

Rafael was playing dirty, trying to distract you from your mission. But your husband underestimated you. You were determined to get him to play Santa. “The guy at the store is keeping it on hold for us. I have to let him know tomorrow if we’re going to take it,” you continued. “We thought you could dress up and pass out treats to the kids.”

Rafael huffed out a breath. “Mi amor, can we talk about this later. I’m a little preoccupied at the moment,” he said, gesturing to your open legs.

“I just think it would add such a great touch to our party and the kids are so excited for Santa this year. Mila even made him an invitation.” You scrambled out from under Rafael and grabbed Mila’s invitation from the top of the dresser, handing it over to him.

The invitation was a picture Mila had drawn of herself and the twins with Santa. The little five year old even signed her name along with a few scribbles in red and green crayon which he suspected were Rory and Ben’s signatures. The drawing tugged at his heart strings. He felt like the Grinch whose heart grew three sizes. If he could be a Lewis Carroll character for his family, he could certainly be good ol’ Saint Nick.

“You promise it’s not some cheesy polyester suit?” Rafael asked.

“Actually I think it’s a cotton-poly blend. A light breathable fabric.”

Rafael gave you a warning look. “Y/N.”

“I’m just kidding. It’s a nice suit. Way better than any Santa costume you’d find at the mall.”

“Alright,” he conceded and set Mila’s invitation on the nightstand. “I’ll be Santa.”

You squealed with excitement and wrapped your arms around Rafael. “You are the most incredible husband and father. Have I ever told you that?”

“You have, but it doesn’t hurt to say it again,” he teased and planted a searing hot kiss to your lips. “Now that we got all that sorted,” he purred, kissing down the gentle slope of your neck. “May I please—” His mouth moved lower, kissing the swells of your breasts. “Continue what I was doing earlier.” He pulled your nightgown off and kissed a path from your right hip to your left hip.

You softly moaned, your eyes slipping close. “Whatever you say, Santa,” you breathed with a hint of a smile on your lips.

Rafael’s eyes darkened. In an instant, he had you flipped onto your back. “Oh you’re asking for it now, cariño.”

*****

It was the night of the party. Rafael and Sonny stood outside on the front stoop. When you stopped by the store to pick up the Santa outfit, you spied a beautiful lime green and red elf costume. It even came with pointy shoes. You rented the outfit and miraculously had managed to talk Sonny into being an elf. “I still don’t see why you get to be Santa,” he grumbled. “Whoever heard of a 6 foot elf.”

Rafael rolled his eyes. He was beginning to sweat within the red jumpsuit. His face itched and he silently cursed himself for not shaving before placing the fake white beard on top of his real beard. “For the last time, it’s my house and Y/N asked me to be Santa.”

“I’m just sayin’ I’m always Santa at the Carisi house.”

Rafael gave Sonny a dead-pan stare before knocking on the door.

“I got it,” he heard Fin say. Fin opened the door to see Rafael and Sonny dressed in their Christmas regalia and took out his phone to snap a picture. “I got my Christmas gift right here,” he laughed.

Rafael and Sonny walked past a still laughing Fin and into the house. “Hey everyone! Look who’s here,” you announced when you saw your husband and partner.

“Santa!” All the kids exclaimed and ran towards Rafael and Sonny. Rafael smiled and said hello to everyone in his best booming Santa voice. He had to admit seeing the children’s faces light up with joy made it worth dressing up in a ridiculous costume.

“Ok, kids. Santa is going to sit by the Christmas tree. You can each go see him and get a treat from his elf.” You looked back and winked at Rafael and Sonny.

Rafael sat down in a big armchair while the kids lined up. Fin’s grandson, Jaden, was first. He wanted Transformers.

When Noah asked for a puppy. Rafael glanced up to see Liv vehemently shaking her head at her son’s request. “Uhhh….you may need to ask the Easter Bunny for that one,” he told the little boy.

As soon as Amanda place Billie and Jesse on Rafael’s lap, they screamed and cried. Amanda laughed and took a few pictures. “They’ll love these pics when they’re older,” she teased.

It was Mila’s turn after that. With a shy smile, she hopped up on Rafael, then the inquisition started. The little girl was relentless, asking question after question.

“Santa, did you bring Rudolph with you tonight?” She sweetly asked.

Just as Rafael was about to answer Sonny interjected. “He’s back at the North Pole,” he said with a mouthful of cookies. “Santa only takes Rudolph with him when the weather is bad.”

“Oh, ok. What about the fireplace? What do kids do when they don’t have fireplaces. Do you still give them gifts?” Mila looked up at Rafael with big green innocent eyes.

“Well….I…you know fireplaces…” Rafael’s voice trailed off, trying to come up with a plausible answer.

“I know what Santa does. He uses Christmas magic,” Sonny answered before chugging a glass of milk.

“Actually my elves also freelance as chimney contractors,” Rafael replied, not wanting Sonny to outshine him. After all, he was Santa.

Sonny snorted a laugh. “Really, Santa? Chimney contractors.”

Rafael glared at Sonny and flicked a bell dangling from his hat. “Why don’t you go and pass out the candy to the kids.”

“Tough gig,” Sonny mumbled and went to pass out treats.

You watched Mila’s interaction with Rafael and had to bite your lip to keep from laughing. She was definitely her father’s daughter. “Baby, why don’t you tell Santa what you want for Christmas,” you said, deciding to save your husband from Mila’s line of questioning.

When Mila was finished, you brought over the twins. Rory and Ben held hands and warily eyed the man in red. “This must be Rory and Ben.” Rafael picked up the twins and set them on his lap. “What would you two like for Christmas?”

Rory smiled and pointed at him. “Papi!”

“No, Rory. I’m Santa,” Rafael said with a nervous laugh. “Unbelievable,” he thought to himself. The first time in weeks the twins call him Papi and its when he’s in a Santa costume.

Ben shook his head and giggled. “No, you Papi!” The tiny toddler yanked off Rafael’s fake white beard in front of everyone.

There was a collective gasp in the living room. You and Rafael locked eyes. His panic-stricken expression matched your own. “Papi? You’re Santa?!” Mila exclaimed.

All the children began to cry, asking their parents if Santa was real. It was amazing how in the blink of an eye, your party turned into a total disaster.

“Remind me again why we decided to do this?” Rafael shouted to you above the pandemonium.

It took a while, but the adults were finally able to calm everyone down and tell the children that there was indeed a real Santa. With some quick thinking on your part, you explained that Santa and Rafael were friends and Santa sometimes asked Rafael to help out when he couldn’t attend parties due to prior engagements. Rafael agreed, saying it was a little job he had on the side during the holidays.

The older children were a little skeptical of your story, but after bribing them with a few more chocolates and some additional questions from Mila, they seemed to be appeased and the party went off without a hitch.

*****

Later on that evening, you checked on Mila and the twins. They had passed out as soon as the party was over. You walked back to your bedroom, expecting Rafael to be fast asleep only to find him sitting in a chair in your bedroom with a mischievous grin on his face. He was shirtless, wearing only the red pants and suspenders along with the Santa hat, having forgone the fake white beard and red jacket.

A tingle shot straight to your core. You never had a Santa kink...until now. “Santa, what are you still doing in here?”

“Well, I was about to leave, but then I realized I never asked you what you wanted for Christmas,” Rafael said.

“Give me one second.” You held up your finger and ran to your dresser.

Rafael spied a flash of red when you pulled something out of your drawer before you made a beeline to the bathroom. He twiddled his thumbs and whistled a Christmas song while patiently waiting for you.

Just then he heard a crash coming from the bathroom. “Ow, fuck!” You muttered.

“Everything ok in there?”

“Yep,” you called out, slightly out of breath. “Be right out.” A minute later, you opened the door dressed in a sheer red lace baby doll teddy lined with white faux fur and a matching red lace thong.

Rafael audibly gulped, drinking you in from head to toe, all the blood in his body pooling in his groin.

“Well, what do you think.” You blushed and slowly twirled to show off the lingerie before sauntering over to Rafael.

“I love it, he softly groaned and ran his large hands up your thighs and around to your backside, giving your ass a firm squeeze. “Wait, you didn’t get this while out shopping with Liv, did you?”

“No,” you giggled. “I picked this up a while ago. Finally thought of an opportunity to use it.”

Rafael looked up at you, his green eyes half-hooded with lust. “Why don’t you come sit on Santa’s lap,” he purred and patted his knee.

You straddled his lap and ran your fingers through the smattering of hair across his chest, playfully snapping one of his red suspender straps. “I have to tell you, Santa. I’ve been really naughty this year,” you softly said, grinding against his growing erection.

“Well let’s see what we can do about getting you back on the nice list,” Rafael growled, kissing down the slope of your neck. You gasped and dug your nails into his biceps, feeling his scruff scratch against your soft skin. Rafael smirked, nibbling and sucking until a bruise formed right above your clavicle. Inhaling deeply, he could smell the Christmas cookie body spray you had spritzed on earlier. You smelled good enough to eat.

It may have been a crazy chaotic evening, but one thing was for sure—playing Santa certainly had its perks.

@glimmerglittergirl @southern-magnolia @sweetcannolicarisi @delia26 @obfuscateyummy @sass-and-suspenders @eclecticminded @thatesqcrush @katmstanton @amirightcounsellor @beltzboys2015-blog @letty-o @sonnysdoll @lyssa1385 @sweetsummertime99 @burningsorr0ws @gibbs274 @izzythefanfreak @riodallas @babypink224221 @livxrafa @esparza-army @obsessionprofessional @ottosuricato @melsquared79 @dreila03 @frenchiefoxy @tropes-and-tales @thecraziestcrayon @goodluckfindingone

#rafael barba #rafael barba fanfic #rafael barba imagine #rafael barba x reader #barba #barba fic #barba imagine #Rafael Barba x Reader x Mila #Mila Barba #aurora barba #benjamin barba #hostage series #law and order svu fic #barba fanfic #law and order svu imagine #christmas otp challenge #Christmas with the Barbas

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drowninginyoureyes95 · 6 years ago

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In Your Bright Blue Eyes

So I got stuck in my head a little the last few weeks, and uni hasn’t helped. I was watching Vickings and instantly loved how Alex Hogh Anderson portrayed Ivar. Me being me, I found some fanfics, and came across @squirrelacorngliterfarts ‘s fanfic See You Tomorrow (which is really sweet and heartwarming and you should definitely read, and she has full credit for the idea of this fic) and this happened... so. Yeah. Let me know what you think! It might not be the best, but it did help with some writer’s block

pairing: Alex Hogh Anderson x OC

warnings: none in this bit, just pure fluffiness :)

summary: Claire doesn’t think much of helping a man and his daughter when she hears the little girl crying in the grocery store, however, their chance encounter will lead to something that neither Alex or Claire ever expected.

Part 1

It was the piercing sound of a cry that drew her attention from two aisles over, the desperate hiccups of the baby sitting in the padded seat of the stroller. Her face was red from the exertion, tears streaming down her little face. Her father, a phone cradled between his shoulder and ear, had his hands plunged into a large bag, hurriedly trying to find something to soothe her.

“I’m sorry… I know… just give me a second. No, don’t hang up. Just give me a moment,” he said breathlessly. His forehead was beaded with sweat and she saw how his eyebrows were drawn in frustration. Without thinking, Claire looked through her bag, withdrawing the dummy she had on her at all times, just in case her godson needed it. She checked to make sure it was clean, then reached towards the man to tap him on the shoulder. He spun on his heel, his blue eyes blazing in anger, but once Claire held the dummy between her thumb and forefinger right in front of his eyes he immediately nodded. Claire reached around him towards the bawling infant, and slipped the dummy into her mouth. Instantly, the little human settled, bright blue eyes now becoming heavy lidded as she sucked. The man sighed in relief at the sight, holding his phone just away from his face as he stared at his daughter, a small smile curling his lips.

A buzzing sound from the phone drew his attention away. “Yes. No, I heard you. Just forward the plans to me and I will see what we can do. Yes, thank you. Good bye.” He placed his phone in his back pocket, and Claire couldn’t help but notice the broadness of his shoulders, or how his tailored suit showed off the muscles in his arms. He was attractive, more than any man had any right to be. His dark hair was shaved close to his scalp on the sides, the top tied in a bun at his crown. He stared at his daughter a moment longer, then flicked his mesmerising eyes to Claire. “Thank you,” he said, his voice soft. “I couldn’t find hers and I really needed to take that call.”

“It’s no problem at all,” Claire replied just as softly. She blushed under his gaze, looking at her hands which were fiddling with her messenger bag before glancing back up again. “What’s her name?”

“Lily,” his mouth curled up in that small smile again, and his hands shifted to rest in his trouser pockets.

“She’s beautiful,” Claire whispered after a moment, watching as Lily’s eyes drooped shut and her mouth went slack around the blue plastic pacifier. After a moment of awkward silence, Claire cleared her throat and shifted her weight. “Well… I better get going. I hope you have a good night,” she said as she backed away, watching the man bite the inside of his cheek, causing his full lips to purse. She turned on her heel and went to the checkout, leaving the grocery store with her heart still pounding in her throat, striking blue eyes etched in her mind.

________________________________________________________________

It was two weeks since she had met Lily and the blue eyed man, and she still got goosebumps every time she thought of his smile and the way he watched his daughter with so much love. She was at her weekly playdate with Mel, her best friend, and Charlie, her godson, the only time she could really see them these days. Charlie was crawling, and Claire was reminiscing about the time when he could barely hold his head up when a little body pushed itself into her lap.

“Hello, little one,” she said brightly and smiled down at the dark head of hair that had made itself comfortable on her stomach. At the sound of her voice, the baby looked up at her, and Claire’s heart stuttered for a moment. Those were the same pair of eyes that had haunted her for two weeks, only surrounded by thick lashes and a cute button nose. Claire’s arms wrapped around the small body of their own accord, causing a gummy grin to appear on Lily’s small face.

“I’m sorry, she’s never done that befo-” at the sound of his voice, Claire peered up to see the same eyes looking down at her. His apologetic smile faded to one of surprise. “Oh, hi there,” he said, coming to sit cross legged on the padded floor. He was sitting so close, Claire could swear she could feel the heat of his leg against hers. He was wearing beige chinos and a white shirt that pulled tight across his muscled chest, a cap back to front covering his hair. Claire tried, and failed, to keep from staring at him. It only caused a smirk to break across his face.

“Oh, Claire, this is Alex,” Mel said, trying to man handle Charlie to try and get him to let go of her ebony hair, not noticing the tension between the two people next to her.

“Nice to meet you, Claire,” Alex continued to smirk at her, his large hand held out to her in the space between them.

“Nice to meet you,” she breathed, her small hand cradled gently in his. He glanced down, holding onto her hand for a moment longer than strictly necessary, a slight flush coming to his cheeks. He cleared his throat, peering down at Lily who was more than content on Claire’s lap.

“Hello, my little elsker, do you remember Claire, do you?” He smiled when she clapped her hands in his face, her grin lighting up her face.

“Is she usually this friendly?” Claire asked, struggling to think of anything to say with him so close. He laughed, the sound making her heart leap.

“No, no definitely not. She’s usually so shy, I usually have to sit with her while she watches others play. She seems to like you, though.”

“Oh God, Claire, I forgot I have to go to the doctor at two and then Lewis and I have a date night tonight.” Mel clasped her hand around Claire’s forearm, interrupting what Claire was about to say to Alex, her face a picture of guilt. “I’m so so sorry to drop this on you but do you mind looking after Charlie until tomorrow morning?” Claire glanced at her rambunctious godson now playing with a large truck and babbling to himself. She smiled softly, thinking of the bottle of wine and Netflix that had awaited her at home but shrugged and nodded to Mel.

“Of course, I couldn't think of anything better than having a date night with my little man.” Mel’s face split into a delighted grin. She quickly stood and kissed Claire on the cheek before picking up her son and bouncing him on her hip before kissing his head and placing him back on the ground on his tummy.

“Thank you so much. I owe you one,” she said as she grabbed her handbag from Charlie's stroller and ran out the door of the children's play area.

Alex watched the exchange with a keen eye before glancing down at his daughter, seeing that she had fallen asleep with her head cradled against Claire’s chest. His heart clenched at the sight. Noticing the same, Claire shifted herself to sit with her back against the wall, making sure not to jostle Lily in the process.

She watched as Charlie started to crawl towards her, his forehead crinkling in concentration and his bottom lip jutting out. He stared at Claire with a look akin to betrayal and babbled at her. Claire laughed at him, seeing his jealous eyes taking Lily in.

“I think someone wants some attention too.”

“He’s an only child. And I can't help but to spoil him,” Claire sighed, adjusting Lily gently to make enough room for Charlie. “Do you mind sitting him on my lap, too? I've kind of got my hands full.” She giggled as Charlie watched Alex with large brown eyes, placing him in Claire’s free arm. Once he was settled he grinned up at Claire. She touched her nose to his, whispering “man, the things I do for you, kiddo.”

Alex and Claire sat for some time more. He told her that he was an architect and that he had opened a business up with his friends a few years before, that he had moved just down the road when Lily was born. Claire hesitantly told him about her art. Before they knew it, an hour had passed and the playground was cleared of children, both Charlie and Lily still fast asleep in Claire's arms. Alex cleared his throat.

“I should probably wake her up or she won't sleep tonight,” he said, a hesitant smile in his face as he reached for Lily. His hand brushed Claire's arm, causing goosebumps to raise. He lifted Lily, who mewled at the sudden movement and being woken up.

“I should probably get this one home so that he can have some fun before bed time.”

“I'll hopefully see you around sometime, Claire.” Alex smiled as he settled Lily and started walking out the door.

“It was good to see you again, Alex,” Claire replied shyly, strapping a grumpy Charlie into his stroller before walking back to her apartment, thinking of painting just with the colour blue.

________________________________________________________________

She was sitting on a red painted iron bench in the park, the cold seeping through her jeans to leave goosebumps on her skin. The wind blew a strand of hair into her face, and she quickly raised a hand to remove it, brushing away a tear from her cheek at the same time. She was staring at her fingers, deep in the recesses of her own mind when his voice stirred her from her thoughts.

“Claire?” She looked up to see Alex’s blue eyes look down at her with concern, his grip firm on the stroller. He wore a warm looking woolen jacket, his hair loose and flowing to his shoulders. She quickly dashed the tears from her cheeks, sniffling and trying to muster a smile.

“Alex, hi… I'm sorry, I didn't see you. How are you?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“May I?” he gestured to the space on the bench next to her. At her nod, he settled himself on the bench, turning the stroller so he could let Claire peer in to see Lily fast asleep. “I think the better question is how are you?” He said, lowering his head to peer into Claire’s hazel eyes. She immediately looked down at her hands, the tips having gone blue from the cold. She scrunched up her brows, trying to stave off the next litany of tears from falling.

“Oh me? I'm fine,” she let out a small chuckle, sniffling again and wiping the last of her tears from her face. She bit her lip, trying to contain the bubble of sadness lodged in her throat

He hummed, cocking his head to the side with a crooked smile. “I don't know... Do you want to talk about it?” Claire shrugged. He didn't need to know her problems, did he? He probably had his own to worry about. “Come on, Claire. I wouldn't ask if I didn't care.”

Claire huffed out another small chuckle at his cajoling smile, his eyes watching every small move she made. “I just recently lost my job waitressing at this place that closed down. And Jonathan, my boyfriend, he can't help pay rent. Which, I mean, is fine. He said he can barely get by at the moment. So I'm just a bit stuck… I guess.” at the mention of Claire's boyfriend, Alex’s face fell, but he instantly was indignant to the fact that this Jonathon couldn't at least help for a few days, or even ask her to move in with him if it stressed this girl out so much. He watched how she chewed on her bottom lip, wishing so badly he could reach over and save it from its rough treatment that he had to put his hands in his pockets. He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment before making his decision.

“Okay. So feel free to say no. But. I've been looking for a nanny to look after Lily, but I've never found someone that felt…. Right, I guess. I want the best for her but they've never matched up to that and she's never acted around someone she doesn't know well like how she's acted around you and -" he took a breath when Claire placed her hand on his forearm, looking at him with wide hazel eyes. Gods, she’s beautiful, he thought. Her smile caused dimples to appear in her cheeks.

“I’d love that,” she said brightly, glancing at the pram suddenly to make sure she didn't wake Lily up. “When do I start?”

Read Part 2 here

#alex hogh andersen #alex høgh #alex hogh imagine #ivar's heathen army #vikings ivar

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the-headbop-wraith · 4 years ago

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5 _ Regrets

Behind the door was nothing but shelves, some blankets folded neatly and some books. It was a barrier that Arthur doubted he could dig his way through if he was inclined, but he didn’t waste his time with the thought. Arthur spun away from the open closet and snatched at the door on the nearby wall and rattled the handle, the panel was jammed in the doorframe or held in place by other forces. Arthur became frantic, jerking the knob and kicking at the doorframe with one foot. He made a thunderous ruckus until the low pulse of that gold locket cut into his panic. With a small sound Arthur whipped away and pressed his back into the corner of the room. The spirit watched his feral behavior.

“Not my fault,” Arthur gasped. He crouched into the corner more as the spirit narrowed the dark pits of its eye sockets. “No. I swear, I’m telling the truth,” Arthur babbled. The sharp howl peeled through his mind, the shrill cry that woke him at night if the fall didn’t. “The cave! In the cave there was— Please, you have to believe me!”

“I do.”

Arthur blinked. Thick sobs gurgled in his chest as his heart throbbed, matching the tempo of the spirits shimmering locket. In the dim room there was little of the its shape he could identify clearly, but for the ribs protruding from its black suit, and the vibrant style of magenta hair it sported. The flames of its eyes bore into Arthur, and he was terrified to take even the shallowest of breath as it gazed down on him with icy malice.

“But you were weak,” the spirit hissed through its jaw. “You allowed what dwelled in that place to take you over. You entertained the idea of a conspiracy at work against you. Friend.”

Arthur patted the wall behind him as his mind raced, until his thoughts crashed into a long broken ache. “Vivi.” He feared to look, feared to confirm what he knew but refused to believe.

Both Vivi and Mystery were gone. They had left him.

For the moment the specter distracted itself by stroking the pulsating locket pinned to its chest. “Hm.” Its head swiveled as Arthur dropped to his knees, the floorboards beneath them gave a hollow clatter when Arthur came down.

“Do it then,” Arthur said, bowing his head. If he looked into the spirits eye sockets now, his soul would vacate his body in that instant. “You’re right. I was weak, I was…. I didn’t— I… utterly fucked up. I shouldn’t of….” Arthur took a moment to get his breathing under control, and smooth out his broken voice. No one would see. No one would ever have to know. He would take the truth to his grave, even if he wasn’t sure what that truth entailed. Vivi would mourn, sure, but she would never have to know. He had the strength to do that. Or, was it cowardice?

“I tried to make it up to her. I tried to fix it, but she doesn’t need me. I’m a—” He gagged when the spirit snared his prosthetic arm. A piercing squeal tore from Arthur’s throat as he was swung upward by the compromised limb and flung across the room. The prime connectors in his arm didn’t have a chance to recover from the exertion, before he smashed into the wall and dropped upon a desk. The desk crumbled and Arthur tumbled to the floor, scrambling to find his footing.

“I don’t want your sniveling.” The spirits voice became low, harsh. “I don’t want your tears, or your apology,” it went on, tilting its head until the moonlight flashed through its eye sockets. “And I don’t want your death.”

Arthur managed to get onto his feet before he pitched over into the wall, vision swirling and unfocused on the approaching specter.

“I want you to suffer,” the spirit snarled. The locket flashed quicker as the flames in its eye sockets brightened. “I want you to feel the terror and emptiness I felt. I want you to experience the fury and isolation that scalded my soul when I was KILLED!” It advanced on Arthur, gliding its lower half through a table as the moonlight fluttered across its bleached ribs. “You won’t—” The spirit glides backwards as a dark shape cut between it and Arthur.

Arthur choked, “Don’t!” He tried to move to his feet, but faltered as pain burned through his agonized shoulder. “B-back, Vi.” Vivi stood between Arthur and the spirit, arms open wide.

“I,” Vivi began, and took a breath. Her shoulders trembled as she stared the spirit directly in its eye sockets. “Won’t let you hurt him.”

The spirit’s hostility melted from its skull completely as it slid backwards, the table it had slipped through effortlessly before skid over the hard wood floor and tipped over. It stares at Vivi’s eyes through the bright lenses of her glasses, its bleached skull contemplative and uncertain. “Vivi,” he spoke. “You— you’re not meant to be here.”

Vivi let her arms drop a few inches as she gazed at the spirit. The strangest sense of deja’vu came over her, as if the voice was someone’s she’d known so well but the name… she didn’t have a name. She blinked, but no scrap of memory entered her mind. A ghost haunting a house out in the woods. She could connect nothing to this distinct apparition. “I… know you,” she said.

The sound played back in her mind. A breeze cutting over a fast moving obstruction, then the soggy crack that echoed off the walls. A terrible sound that delivered horror and panic. The urgency to move somewhere, to take some sort of action gripped her tightly, but there was nothing to do. She couldn’t fathom what to do, how to fix it.

“No, you don’t,” the spirit whispered. “You were there, but you shouldn’t have seen that.” The spirit drifted backwards when she took a step in its direction. “I made sure….” Its voice faded off.

“What did you do?” Vivi and raised her hand up, as if to touch him. The spirit looked upon her, flames dimming in its eye sockets, but made no move to retreat further. “You need to tell me.” Her eyes moved to the shimmering heart as its movement quickened.

“I won’t do that,” the spirit hissed. “Not to you— Don’t touch that.” The specter reached out to take back the flashing heirloom as it drifted away from his chest, carried by some powerful inner suggestion the locket acted upon. But Vivi had already reached her hands out carefully and placed her fingers around the glimmering locket; his most protected and cherished possession. The only possession Lewis had not yet lost. “Vivi, please.”

Captivated by the rapid flashes of the heart-locket, Vivi only heeded the wounded tone of the spirits voice as she slowly wrapped her fingers around the golden heart. Then they were gone. Vivi and the locket were gone.

The spirit tugged its skull up to the open doorway as amber flashed into the light shining from the hall, followed by a streak of blue. Vivi’s face was grief stricken as she was dragged through the door by Arthur, she reached back to the spirit before she disappeared around the doorframe. The spirit reached out for her hand, completely missing the glimmer of the locket as it fell fast to the hardwood floor.

And cracked.

“You….” He hissed. The magenta flames of his scalp swelled down his backside as he swoops out of the study and into the hall where the three retreated. “Abandon me.” The fire ignited outward from his coat and skull, shredding through timber and wallpaper. And for a brief span of its existence, the specter thought of nothing but making everything it ever knew vanish entirely.

When Vivi saw the eruption of fire heading towards them, she shoved Arthur on ahead as they ran. “Don’t look back!”

While the spirit was distracted by its devastation it must’ve lost some of its hold on the homes enchanted architect, for the hall ended after several long strides and wasn’t the infinite tunnel that had trapped them before. Arthur tore from the halls opening and diverted to the side, where the lower lounge was beneath the upper floors balcony. There was a long table basking in the glow of the candles, and hopefully as solid as he it appeared.

“Table, Mystery. Under the table!” Arthur called. He wrapped his arms around Vivi and forced her to fall with him as he dropped to his knees and skid between the table’s legs. “Trust me! Trust me,” he chanted. Once under the table he released Vivi, and punched the underside of the heavy oak with his mechanical arm and knocked it over, moments before the fire erupted out into the main foyer and flooded every inch of the atmosphere.

Mystery watched as Arthur folded himself over Vivi, and Vivi curled up into a tight ball shielded by the lapels of his amber vest. The room ceased to exist as it was consumed by hot white light-tinged pink, and the rolling bellow of sizzling heat. As Vivi and Arthur buckled under the driving force, Mystery leapt up over the table and turned his body to face the blaze.

The cold wind rushed through his clothing and skin as he fell through the dark forever. A yellow flame followed, fatalistic fire of a brief life swept up in a metaphorical orb, banished by the glittering emerald. An end was inconceivable, a conclusion was insufferable. He reached up gripping at open air, futile as it was. Where was he going? And what would happen when he arrived?

Cloth tore and his body was dislocated. He lay staring upward as the green haze thickened throughout the ceiling, wrapping around gagged teeth directed down on him. When would the nightmare end?

“Lewis?” a sick voice yelped. “Lewis!” The voice cackled wildly and sobbed in the same breath, a sick and twisted resonance on the cave walls. “For god’s sake Lewis, answer me! I said ANSWER—”

The voice cut off and what followed was a symphony of panic and shrieking.

“Don’t let this… Don’t let—”

The tsunami of fire crashed over Mystery as he held his ground, snout directed into the path of the onslaught. The shadow cast by the dog rose over the polished table and up along the wall behind his companions, then faded as the fuchsia swell dissolved completely. Mystery’s legs quivered as he raised his head to glare up at the suspended ghost poised on the other side of the foyer. It was just the death suit and the skull watching him with no outward countenance, held in its palm was an aqua heart locket, and even from his distance Mystery could make out the spider web fractures in its surface.

Without a word the specter faded, skull first followed by its suit, leaving only a scorched room and sizzling masonry. The mansion still stood but its stability could be tested.

Mystery didn’t know if he was up to the task. He sat down and turned his head as shuffling sounds came from behind the table. The first up was Arthur, peeking over the tables side and examining the ruble that had been dislodged from the walls and ceiling. Arthur had his good arm on Vivi’s arm and helped her up.

“Look’s clear,” Arthur says.

Vivi adjusted her glasses as she looked to the front side of the table. “Mystery, did you protect us?” she asked. To her question the dog merely wags his tail. Vivi steps over the table to kneel by Mystery and smoothed out his fur. “Don’t be like Arthur and overexert yourself.”

Mystery whined at her. He didn’t try, honestly. Mystery watched the dawning recognition flash in Vivi’s eyes before she whirled to Arthur and shoved him roughly with her palms. Mystery winced.

“Why did you do that?” she yelled. Vivi watched as Arthur stumbled backwards into the wall and the window behind him.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Arthur said. He pushed himself onto his feet and moved back further as Vivi leaned towards him. “What was I supposed to do?” Arthur recalled the room’s state and began shuffling along the wall, towards the front of the room. Without meeting Vivi’s eyes, he gestured her and Mystery to follow as he slunk beside the wall.

“You know that ghost,” Vivi said. She closed the distance between her and Arthur and took the sleeve of his shirt as she followed. It wasn’t a bad idea to start moving now, but she was angry and she wanted answers first. “And it knows me. What is going on? I need to know why it wants to kill you.”

The three moved silently across the room, to where they abandoned their bags in the front hall. Vivi released the sleeve when Arthur crouched and began to rummage through the sack. The thick cotton material was singed lightly but not roasted through, some miracle or selective maiming. “This isn’t the time for that,” Arthur said, pulling open pockets and moving bottles around in what little candlelight still fluttered in the hall.

“When will it be the time?” Vivi crossed her arms and glared at him. “Well?”

They had a wide assortment of charms, holy effects – items tested and proven to weaken or ward off spiritual activity, by whatever mysticism governed the paranormal dimension. Arthur didn’t know what to select so he settled on sliding the bag onto his back. “Vivi.” He stood and gently set his hands on her shoulders and met her eyes. “You deserve answers. Yes. I—” His voice died as he looked away choking back tears. “Trust me. Please. I want to talk to you, after this. But first, I have to make sure we are safe.” Arthur slid the backpack over his arm and pulled out a container of salt from the open top, and a bundle of sage. “It will hurt, what I have to tell you,” he said, and squeezed her shoulders. “We’ll share the pain together.”

Vivi looked from the container and herb he had given her, then to the stony expression in Arthur’s face. She nodded.

Arthur held her stare for a few more minutes, before he turned to Mystery. “Can you find,” Arthur hesitated and squeezed his eyes shut. It didn’t feel right not to use a name, but it would feel far worse if he did, he knew. “Find the spirit?”

Mystery sat on the carpet gazing up at Arthur and tilts his head, as if to inquire about his companion’s mindset.

“We’ll do it,” Arthur said, and turned to Vivi. “You’re right,” he says. “We have to lay him to rest. I think that’s why we’re here.” He cast his eyes down as Vivi took his bad shoulder. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Don’t leave me, for a start?” Vivi asked. “I can’t lose you too.”

Arthur turned his head to see her with his eyes and nodded, faintly. He adjusted the bag on his back and led their way along the wall, rows of flickering candles lined their path. The foyer still smoldered, but the air was chilled in an unnatural way and the scent of wood fire was completely absent. Illusion, came to Arthur’s mind. He couldn’t deduce which was real, why they should see the damage wrought by spiritual outburst.

“Can you find him, Mystery?” Arthur asked. He watched as Mystery padded forward, head high as the dog began scanning the walls and upper floors bathed in the chandeliers fluttering candle light. As Mystery went on ahead, Arthur looked back to Vivi and held out his good hand. Vivi took his hand and looked to Arthur without a word. “If… nothing goes right,” he says, “take Mystery and leave. Never look back. Promise?” He went limp when Vivi wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hugged him, Vivi’s grip tightening. Arthur tried not to make a sound. He didn’t deserve this.

Mystery had reached the bottom of the large stairs and turned back to watch as his companions caught up. Wherever the spirit was Mystery couldn’t decide definitely, but he sensed simply being was enough to draw it out. Arthur was just walking bait at this point, but it would be best to find a location that gave the group an advantage if they became overwhelmed. They hadn’t explored the upstairs.

In fact when the upstairs had become their only safe route, the specter had intervened.

The carpet was charred and singed, and crackled under Mystery’s feet as he padded up the steps. Mystery exercised great caution, though he judged that the spirit would be unwilling to emerge at this time. He felt that the magenta spirits would be happy enough to follow a mild suggestion, if they trespassed into unwelcome territory. It wasn’t that the spirits were unintelligent, Mystery knew, it was due to time. In time even the most resolute could lose focus, and shed their sense of identity.

“Maybe not step under the chandelier,” Arthur said, as he guides Vivi to the side of the stairs.

Mystery didn’t pay them mind. He bounced up the remaining steps and stood on the foremost landing, head turned to watch as Vivi and Arthur joined his position. Mystery’s short tail wagged when they neared, and the dog resumed up the next set of steps to the left.

The top most floor encircled the grand foyer, high above in the ceiling large windows faced the sky dazzled with trillions of stars and misty galaxies. There were numerous doors along the upper pathway, decorations such as desks and suits of armor filled some of the empty wall space between the doors. Though there were candelabras fixed to the walls at intervals they offered no light, leaving the chandelier suspended at the center of the room as their only reliable light source. Some of the carpet and the banisters had received scorches from the frenzied inferno, but there was no greater damage.

“Where are you taking us?” Arthur asked, as he turned to Mystery. “Just a hunch, but I don’t think that ghost’ll be up here.”

Mystery turned to Arthur and tilt his head. Was Arthur really that desperate to meet his maker?

Apparently not. Arthur sighed and adjusted the backpack strap over his bad shoulder. “Maybe you’re right.”

Vivi tried the nearest door in their path but it was locked. “You said you fell into a crypt?” she asked.

Arthur tensed and turned to her. “I woke up there,” he muttered. “But I don’t know how to get there, or if there is an actual way in. I have a feeling I was brought there by some force.” Arthur looked to Vivi when she looked over her shoulder back at him. He anticipated her questions and prying, but Vivi only looked away and resumed trying the doors.

The icy chill that lingered in the halls returned to the foyer, and Arthur shivered. The fire had been unnatural, not feeling hot to his skin but scorching to his nerves and thoughts. As if the flames were not tuned to the air itself, but instead to his skin.

Vivi reached for the next door they came upon, but didn’t take the handle before a fuchsia spirit had melted from the wood and chattered at her with sharp teeth. Arthur gave a small cry and leapt back against the banister, nearly falling if Mystery hadn’t snatched the ankle of Arthur’s pants in his teeth and dragged him back.

The magenta ghost pulled its vague shape from the door and twisted over itself playfully, but its teeth remained sharp and its yellow eyes slid curiously over each member of the group. Vivi plucked up the bundle of sage and held it for the spirit to view. Before she could request a light from Arthur the spirit faded, its last cackle echoed off the walls.

Arthur crept up behind Vivi and peered over her shoulder. “Think it’s safe?” he asked. Vivi watched the door expecting something dramatic, maybe screaming, but the room was silent. Vivi sprang forward and snapped her hand to the doorknob. Arthur gave a low squeak as she flung the door open.

Behind the door a set of steps curled up into the dark upper floors, with no light but a pale blue spilling from somewhere. Mystery moved forward sniffing at the cold musty draft that flittered down. Satisfied by some conclusion or lack of interest, Mystery began padding up the wood steps and Vivi followed. Arthur lingered, casting a last scan over the large scorched walls of the lower room, before he entered after them and shut the door.

Vivi now held the sage before her like a torch. The steps creaked as their collection of weight and movement tussled the old floor boards. Another door awaited at the end of the winding steps, a crease of blue light swirled in the dust at the floor. Vivi inched toward it cautiously, fearful another spirit would lunge out.

“Where do you think we are?” Vivi asked. The sudden stab of her voice caused Arthur to jerk, the contents of his backpack clinking to his movement.

“An attic,” Arthur said. “Maybe. Mystery, what are we doing here?”

No answer came from Mystery. Instead, the dog sniffed at the door that Vivi contemplated. Vivi took the handle, and still holding the sage out like a shield, she twisted the doorknob. The door opened easily into a large, frigid room. It was not remarkable, the same tatters of paper peeled from the walls and there was very little furniture aside from scattered chairs and a table left beside the walls. Unlit candles stood upon the tables, and at the far side of the room where the ceiling peaked was a large window overlooking the front yard. The walls at the back of the room, away from the moonlight and sun, sported numerous pictures of varied sizes dotting up and down the walls and cobwebs covered the carved wood frames.

The wind skipped over the eaves and the slates, and a branch tapped outside the window. The atmosphere of the room was weary and forlorn, waiting only for days with sunlight and losing more each night that passed. Vivi lowered her hand with the sage as she wandered closer to the large window. Through the glass, on the moon washed gravel below she could pick out the details of the van waiting for them beside the road.

“He must’ve seen us arrive,” Vivi said, as Arthur joined her side. “The van breaking down was his doing.”

Arthur frowned. Yeah. And he probably enjoyed watching Arthur struggle. “I kind of don’t want to hang around here anymore,” Arthur admitted. “Charms or not.”

“What are you doing?” Vivi spun around as Arthur trotted off, headed towards Mystery on the far side of the room.

Arthur selected the sturdiest chair and struggled to lift it, but the wood was thick and heavy and his prosthetic arm felt loosened in its connectors. “I’ll smash the window and we can climb out,” he said, grunting with the effort of raising the chair. The chair clattered to the floor when Vivi hurried to his side and grabbed it from him. “Look! I’m thankful that thing harbors you no ill will, but I dunno how long that’s gonna last! This might be our only….” He noticed that Vivi was no longer looking at him, her attention had snapped to the walls behind him.

“Do you have your lighter?” Vivi held out her hand, and Arthur obliged. She took one of the tall candles sitting on the desk and lit it, the small yellow flame pulsed and dimmed in the accusing glare of the dark fog. Vivi held her hand beside the candle as the flame sputtered, until its light began seeping over the rough walls and surface of the desk. Vivi kept her attention fixed to the portraits on the wall – some large, others small and filled with crooked brambles growing in tangles around the skull effigy of the specter.

What had her captivated were the picture frames along the highest wall, descending with images of figures resembling she, Arthur, and Mystery… and someone else. A cave looming in the woods. She concluded they were always together. Inside the cave the group separates, and something had followed. One stays above, one falls low, and one to witness. A figure staring into a mirror and his reflection is the spirit. There were portraits of eyes and tails and an arm.

Vivi took a quavering breath as she reached out to touch the nearest picture and rubbed away some of the dust, revealing a heart. Mystery gave a soft whine to her as he watched.

“Vivi?” Arthur hummed. He looked again across the images detailing that day, the day that was a blur in the back of his nightmares. “Do you—” Arthur silenced himself when a low sob came from Vivi, as she slipped against the table and to the floor.

“No.” Vivi shook her head slowly. “But I can feel a sense of him. This someone who was so important that their absence is devastating. It doesn’t feel right. I should know everything about him – his voice, the color of his eyes, his name -but… there’s nothing. Just a dark cloud swirling, getting thicker when I concentrate.” She listens to the soft tapping on the window, her face buried in the thick scarf as tears warmed it. She turned to Arthur. “What happened? Tell me now.”

Arthur’s face became pained as he turned to Mystery. In response Mystery whined and glanced to Vivi. “You remember that Christmas, you gave me a pocket watch?” he asked, and produced the chainless, scratched timepiece from his pocket.

Vivi took it from his flesh hand and examined it, as though this was her first time viewing it. “I… do.” She handed the clock back to Arthur as he knelt beside her.

“There was someone else,” Arthur continued, still studying the portraits in the feeble candlelight. “And you gave him—”

“A locket!” Vivi pressed her hands into the front of her sweater. Arthur’s face fell.

“Mmm.” Arthur put an arm around Mystery when the dog leaned into his side. “I think you hit it off with him. You… and I—” Arthur shut his mouth and heaved a sigh. “I don’t know what happened. We went to this cave… there was an accident.” He reached out his metal prosthetic for Vivi to see fully and to collect on the gravity of its symbolism. Arthur swayed when she slumped against his side and began sobbing into his vest. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m so-so sorry.”

“I don’t even remember his name. How could I forget?” Vivi whispered. “How?”

“Lewis,” Arthur said. He tightened his arms around her shoulder and set his cheek on her head. “Sometimes you called him Lew-Lew. Or Bara Lew.”

“Shut up,” Vivi muttered. Arthur smirked, it wasn’t a hateful command. “We should have stayed in the van. We should have stayed….”

“Yeah?” Arthur said, gently. “But who can resist a creepy cave?” Vivi sobbed harder, her tears soaked right through his shirt. “He’d have done anything for you. Anything. You did nothing wrong.” He met Mystery’s eyes, and the dog had that same look on his face as all those nights ago. “I’m the one that resented him,” Arthur said. “I pushed him. It was me.” Arthur drew back when Vivi swung up and punched him square in the face. Arthur collapsed on his side as Mystery padded around his face barking.

“Is that why he hates you?” Vivi snarled, fists braced onto the dusty boards at her knees.

Arthur moaned as he rolled to his good side. “Yes.”

When Vivi rose to her feet, Mystery dashed from the group barking at the window on the far side of the room. Arthur recognized the tone Mystery used, it was alarm and urgency. He flopped onto his back and tilts his head back the furthest that he could managed. In his shock he missed Vivi’s approach; she knotted her fingers into his shirt front and leaned over him. “Wha—wait!” Vivi paused long enough to follow Arthur’s gaze and froze, her knuckles turn white enough to rival Arthur’s shirt.

Mystery bristled up the fur between his shoulder blades and his barks had subsided into throaty snarls. Across the room pressed into the large balcony window was a dark shape with green eyes, tapping at the glass and grinning at those on the other side.

#mystery skulls #mystery skulls fanfic #msa fanfic #msa #mystery skulls animated #msa arthur #msa vivi #msa lewis #mystery skulls ghost #arthur #vivi #lewis

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amusewithaview · 7 years ago

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the sorcerer’s apprentice (interning with a different doctor)

I know I don’t know you, but I want you so bad. Everyone has a secret but can they keep it - oh no, they can’t...

“Fuck you, Levine,” Darcy muttered under her breath as she viciously beat her alarm clock into silence. By the time she was done, the red lights were flickering in and out and there was a suspicious rattling noise coming from the the white plastic body of the device every time it shifted.

She slumped back down awkwardly, hissing as her hair got caught under her elbow and pulled painfully on her scalp. The day was off to a rollicking good start. First there had been the Dream - Warmth along her side, a crooked smile, tousled hair and quiet. Hand rubbing along her spine, slow even strokes from scalp to tailbone, soft kisses across her shoulders, slight tickles from five o’clock shadow. Stillness, silence, peace, resting with the one she loved, heart beating fast from so much joy... - then the song. It was only half past seven and she already wanted to call the day off.

Darcy rolled to her side and got out of bed. The Dreams, and these were entirely deserving of the distinctive capitalization, had been coming off and on since she was a teenager. She would have liked to have blamed propaganda, or her mother’s weird WW2 obsession, but she didn’t think that was adequate. She didn’t even want to speculate on what a therapist would say if she ever told them that she’d been having dreams of domestic bliss starring a dead war hero for as long as she could remember. Add to that that two years prior, said war hero had miraculously come back to life and...

She didn’t know what to make of it. It wasn’t as if she thought it meant anything. The dreams were just that, dreams. It was the way that they made her feel, though. They made her long for something she didn’t have, someone she didn’t really know. It had been easier before Steve Rogers was found, when she could just shrug off her subconscious use of his face in her fantasies as just One of Those Things. It was weirder now, she was uncomfortable with how it made her feel to know that the man of her quite literal dreams was... out there. It wasn’t as if him being alive and walking around made it any more likely she’d ever see him, but somehow it made the not-having of the dream domestic life hurt more.

Darcy firmly shook herself, stretching just so, and headed for the shower. She had a busy day of waiting tables and studying ahead of her. Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she’d taken that internship with the crazy astrophysicist, but really she’d been better off staying at Culver and finishing out her degree. She’d lucked into a secondary scholarship that was covering most of her tuition for her Masters, and sure sometimes she wondered what could have been - but the Masters would open more doors for her than that internship would have. Of this she was certain.

She’d showered, dressed, and was halfway through brushing her teeth when there was a strange sound in her kitchen. She tiptoed down the hall, one hand still holding her toothbrush in her mouth, and stepped around the corner to find a dude in a red cape standing in front of a golden sigil that was floating in midair just about where her fridge should be.

“Wha da fu?” Darcy mumbled around her toothbrush.

The strange man pivoted to face her, a threatening scowl on his face which swiftly melted into a look of amusement once he saw her. “Pardon my intrusion, madam,” he said smoothly. “I am seeking someone, could you-”

She waved him aside and took two steps forward to spit out her toothpaste in the kitchen sink. That done, she carefully set her toothbrush down and turned to the golden portal. She stared at it, blinking rapidly once she realized that she could sort of, dimly, make out the edges of her fridge at the top and bottom of the golden swirly thing. “That’s temporary, right?”

“What? Oh, yes.”

“Good, I don’t want to lose my deposit. Okay, so, who are you looking for?”

The stranger was staring at her speculatively. “I was sent to find a... hmm. How long have you lived here?”

“Like a year and a half. Not sure who lived here before me.”

“Hmm,” he said again, still staring. “And you are...?”

She folded her arms and attempted to stare him down, a feat made exponentially more difficult because she had left her glasses in the bathroom. “Nuh-uh, dude. No dice. You’re the one who barged into my apartment, you can introduce yourself first.”

“I am Stephen Strange,” he said, giving her a small nod.

“You’re a wizard named Strange?”

He grimaced. “Ir could be worse, I could be named ‘Harry.’”

“Ooh, yeah, that would be worse. I’m Darcy Lewis. Why are you here?”

Stephen straightened to his full height, towering over her. “I was sent to locate a disturbance, it seems that there was a magical upheaval here sometime in the recent past. It’s sending ripples up and down through the universe, and some of those ripples are making waves.”

“I followed that, but your analogies could use some work.”

“I’m not a poet,” he muttered, “and that’s beside the point. Something went wrong, and I’m here to help the universe fix it.”

“Why does the universe need your help?” she asked dubiously.

“When the universe course-corrects, it tends to do so rather violently. If I can assist, then I can smooth the transition.”

It was vaguely reasonable, so Darcy nodded. “Okay, so there’s a disturbance in the Force-” he winced, she ignored him and went on, “-and you’re here to fix it. Why here, though. Specifically, why are you in my apartment?”

“Because you are the disturbance, Ms. Lewis. Something must have gone awry in the last few years, something that could have disastrous consequences.”

“Nothing has gone wrong, though,” she said. “Actually, things have been pretty great. I finished my undergrad, I’m working on my Masters, I have a steady job and yeah, it kind of sucks, but it pays the bills. I don’t even have a lot of loans to pay off, so I’ve really just been focusing on my studies. The last couple years have been kind of uneventful for me, personally.”

“Hmm,” he said again. “How close are you to finishing your degree?”

“Technically I’m done,” she said. “I turned in my thesis a few weeks ago. I’m just finishing out my contract with the university now.”

“And after? What do you intend to do?”

This was feeling more and more like the kind of interrogation she got every time she went home, plus a little mysticism, minus a little ‘and when will you bring home a man.’ “I have a couple offers,” she said, pointing listlessly to a small stack of papers on her kitchen table. “They’re not too exciting, but they’ll get me started.”

“Hmm-”

“Will you stop that!”

He slanted her a bright smile. “My apologies, Ms. Lewis, I was just thinking. I’m not sure what has gone wrong, per se, but I can tell you with certainty that something has. This isn’t where you’re supposed to be and that,” he waved a hand at the aforementioned offers, “isn’t what you’re meant to do.”

Darcy shook her head, taking a step back. Something deep inside of her agreed with what he said, a little voice whispered, ‘He’s right, this is wrong, something is missing-’ but she shoved that voice down. “What are you, my fairy godfather? Come to fix what’s wrong? Nothing is wrong. I’m sorry my life isn’t interesting enough for you, but it’s my life. Who are you to tell me-”

Suddenly he wasn’t a distinguished-looking man in a red cloak. Suddenly he was floating six inches off her floor, golden light pouring from his eyes and mouth, spiraling through her apartment and encircling her in silk-soft, glass-sharp tendrils, binding her so tightly she could barely breathe.

“I am the Sorcerer Supreme,” he said in a voice that echoed through her bones.

“Yeah, okay, then,” she whispered.

Like somebody had flicked a switch, the lights went out and he settled back on her floor with a thump. His genial expression had gone, replaced by something a lot more authoritative and a little sad. “This life you have may not be wrong,” he told her gently, “but it isn’t right, either. Let me help you, Ms. Lewis, and in so doing, you can help me help the universe.”

Stephen held out his hand.

Darcy slowly reached out to take it. “Swear to god,” she warned, “if you even think of asking me to sign something in blood, I’ll-”

There was a flash of golden light, and suddenly the apartment was empty.

#amuse writes stuff #darcy lewis #stephen strange #steve rogers #darcy x steve #this took a left turn #not what i originally intended like at all #dude i don't even know #so darcy becomes stephen's apprentice #and she lives in the new york sanctum #and she Does Not Interact With the Avengers #right up until she has to #and she is conspicuously awkward around steve rogers #and he is similarly struck by her #and stephen figures out what went wrong #kind of #natasha honestly figures it out first #but she lets him think he did it #because she's good at managing egos

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