#literally half of my life the past three days has been behind a bar making drinks. leave me alone | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

creativeashproductions · 4 years ago

Text

Lost Time // Luke Patterson

Summary: Things changed since Sunset Curve fell apart literally as three out of four members died before a gig. Leaving a sad girl behind Luke by chance runs into the reader with someone else. Death tore the couple apart, and time can’t fix this.

Warning: Talk of death, depression, angst and fluff

Words: 2.2k

Might as well join the Julie and the Phantoms fan club!

*For the sake of the story the time frame has been altered, it takes place in the mid-2000s. Also! I tried to make the reader as generalized as I could to make sure that everyone can relate. The reader is Alex’s sister, for inclusion that can be biological, adopted, half or stepsiblings. I want to make sure all people can be the reader.

Masterlist

THIS IS FROM MY SECONDARY BLOG! REPOST!!

The 1990s was definitely some of the best years of your life watching your brother grow more comfortable in his identity. Alex had kept his sexuality secret, taking the frustration of the secret by learning how to play the drums. You would often be found curled on the chair listening to his growing talent; Alex was a great brother.

Alex found friends in three local boys Reggie, Bobby and Luke, even a little more than friends with Luke briefly. By 1991 the boys had formed a band Sunset Curve with each other and a loyal fan in you. By mid-1994 the band had a fanbase and some gigs, but playing The Orpheum was the goal.

Luke had admitted to Alex, he had feelings for you, and with a lot of encouragement from Alex, he approached you. Luke had been focused on music since his parents gave him his first guitar, so relationships weren’t even on the backburner.

“Hey.” Luke spoke, pressing a kiss to your cheek backstage, “Missed you.”

His hair tickled your skin, bringing a bright smile from the teenage boy and a deep blush from you, private time wasn’t as often as it once had been. After Luke’s fallout with his parents a few months back, he had couch surfed between Reggie and Alex’s rooms; he wasn’t allowed in yours.

“You saw me last night.”

“A monumental time.” Luke bent his bend to place a lingering kiss on your bare shoulder, his jacket having fallen down, “Three years together and a bright future ahead.”

Last night had been the third anniversary of your relationship and hopefully the previous night worrying on parents walking in, cheap dates Luke often felt guilty about. Luke knew in his bones playing The Orpheum tonight would open the door to a legendary future. A future where money wasn’t tight and he could you on dates he deemed acceptable for the love of his life.

Bobby voiced brought Sunset Curve’s lead singer back to that moment, you dropped from the stage to settle in the empty audience to watch the soundcheck. With a wink from Alex, he started making the beat to Now or Never, you beamed as they poured their souls into the song. The four were talented and made to be in a band together even if you didn’t really like Bobby.

Cringing at the awkward wink Bobby sent you turned on your converse to head to the bar for a glass of water. Thanking the bartender, you tuned out the conversation with the waitress and the band only jumping when arms wrapped around your waist.

“We’re getting street dogs.” Luke spoke, bringing your body to rest on his chest, “Do you want one?”

The thought of those street dogs honestly horrifying given they were cooked in some random guys car. The one time you tried, it had permanently tattooed the taste in your memories forever, and just remembering was vomit-inducing.

“I’ll pass.” You wrinkled your nose, turning to wrap your arms around his neck, “I don’t know how you guys like those.”

“Tradition.” Luke shrugged caressing your cheekbone with the pad of this thumb. Gazing at features he wanted to wake up to for the rest of his life, “Still down with the plan?”

“The minute I’m eighteen, we go to the nearest chapel.” You grinned playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, “I’ll be waiting Rockstar.”

Luke pressed a long passionate kiss on your lips, pulling away to jog over to Alex and Reggie waiting at the door. Bobby having declined the street dog invitation to flirt with the waitress Rose. Alex waved before the door closed. Little did you know that would be the last time you saw them alive.

1995 was the worst year of your life. 1996 was the hardest, especially with the forever reminder of your love. You wouldn’t trade 1996 for the world however, only wishing for one change.

Los Angeles, 2004

Alex, Reggie and Luke had learnt a mere few days away from that life had drastically changed forever. Firstly, the three boys had died from eating the street dogs mere hours before performing on the stage of The Orpheum. Secondly, it was no longer 1995 but instead nearly ten years had past bringing the three ghosts into 2004.

The most jarring wasn’t being able to be heard playing music with a random girl named Julie but that the most constant part of the band no longer was there. You hadn’t died that night, and Alex was pretty sure you were still alive. Luke felt lost waking up without you beside him and the deep regret of not reconciling with his parents.

It would be a week before Luke would swallow his pride enough to orb himself into his unchanged childhood home. Emily, Luke’s mom, was in the well-worn chair knitting a scarf Luke recognized as his favourite colours. Mitch was in the kitchen, putting the groceries away. It was heartbreaking being invisible to his aged parents.

“Hey, Mom.” Luke sniffled sitting on the couch nearby staring at his silent mother, “Sorry for not visiting sooner.”

Tears welled up in the boy’s eyes feeling hopeless, not being able to ease his parents’ pain, the regret and guilt bubbling to the surface.

“How is Y/N? I bet she’s living in New York of London now. We promised to travel the world together. Part of me is guilty of wishing she had eaten a street dog that night so we could be together.” Luke sobbed, wrapping his arms around his midsection reminiscing on the beautiful girl he had unwillingly left.

“Hey.” Mitch spoke, kissing his wife’s forehead. Her eyes closing in contentment.

“I wonder if you know where Reg and Alex’s parents are. Reggie’s neighbourhood was torn down who knows when. It makes me scared to see if Alex and Y/N’s parents still have their place. I don’t think so. They lost their son.”

“Hey Luke.”

Luke glanced over his shoulder to see Alex at the door, reluctant to impose of Luke’s privacy.

“Yeah.”

“We’re rehearsing.” Alex spoke, smiling as the other teenager took one more wistful look at his parents before orbing out of his house to the Molina family’s garage. Minutes later, the front door opening and feet thudding brought the noise to the Patterson home.

“Grandma!”

A four-foot blue of green and black blur covered the room in seconds nearly sprawling Mitch to the floor. Why was that 1996 year difficult? Well, ’95 was when Sunset Curve tragically died, and a stick changed your life. ’96 was spent going through the last five months of pregnancy without Luke.

October 1995

You kept your lips pressed tightly together, unable to look at the smooth, shiny mahogany rectangle surrounded by flowers. Looking up meant the reality kicking in. Funerals sucked. Especially the third funeral in the last handful of days. It was surreal thinking that one week ago you had kissed your boyfriend and hugged your brother and now they were dead. Gone. Not even a goodbye.

“Are you okay?” The broke voice asked, gaining your attention. Swollen red eyes matching yours held unimaginable pain. While the last few months had been icy with your parents, it didn’t mean losing one of their kids didn’t sting.

“I will be.” You whispered clasping your hands over the scratchy black velvet dress, one you had worn three times too many.

The sobs broke out seeing the best picture Alex had taken in his life, it encapsulated his best features; his beaming smile and kind, caring eyes. Alex was gone. Your brother was gone because he ate a bad hot dog with his friends. You would never see your boys again. Never feel Luke’s skin or share a laugh with Alex or complain about things with Reggie. You wouldn’t get to meet in the chapel with Luke wearing second hand ‘fancy’ clothing. In one night, your life changed.

It changed further seeing the two lines on the test later that night. The heartache growing. The baby you carried would never meet his uncles and his Dad. Would never hear them play or learn to play. ’95 and ’96 sucked ass.

You sighed, closing the door to follow the rambunctious ball of energy into the living room where he entertained Mitch and Emily. Some days it was difficult to stare into the green eyes he inherited from his father.

“Benjamin Lucas.” You spoke crossing your arms, meeting the gaze of the eight-year-old boy, “What did I say?”

“To not runoff.” Ben quietly replied, playing with his hands. His messy brown hair, in need of a trim, falling into his eyes, “Sorry Mom.”

“Please don’t do it again.” You gently told the little boy elated as he quickly found the toy box in the corner of the room.

Ben was loved deeply by Mitch and Emily, who had stepped up when your parents made the decision to sell your childhood home. Wanting Ben to know his paternal grandparents, you had struggled to find an apartment and job to say in the neighbourhood. Since the baby was the last part of their son, the Patterson parents’ had welcomed you into the home where you stayed until Ben was two.

“Do you want us to come around for Luke’s birthday?” You questioned sitting on the love seat, the same love seat you had made out on with Luke many times during movies.

The room turned sad at the question and reminded that for the ninth year, you would celebrate Luke’s birthday without him. A day where Ben wouldn’t fully understand. Emily simply nodded her head.

“Have you met anyone?” Mitch asked, leaning over to clasp his hands together. For the last few years, they had been pushing you to date. They wanted your happiness and for Ben to have a father even if Luke couldn’t be it.

“Mama can we stay here tonight?” Ben’s innocent voice cut the tension, saving you from answering the question again. Mitch and Emily each nodded their heads at the question, unable to tell the young boy no.

“Have you ate?” Emily asked, turning to look at you in concern. The chuckle left your mouth at the question she frequently requested, she missed cooking for more than two.

“We had pasta before we came.” You replied, turning to gaze out the window to the dark sky, “I should put Ben to bed.”

The soft whine from your son and denial was a nightly routine and very much a mirror image to Luke’s character as well. With a smile, Emily held out her hand to her grandchild, she was notoriously the only one able to get Ben to sleep fast.

“Come on Bug.”

It seemed the universe was keeping Luke from seeing you and discovering Ben, but when that night came, he was shocked. Emily was curled up on the patio couch, watching Ben in the newly bought sandbox. The patio doors opened. Inside, Mitch had invited a stranger who knew his son into the house.

“I think I heard the doorbell. I’ll be right back.” Emily called out to you. You had found shade under the tree reading a new book.

The soft cry had you up and running to Ben before you even realized, on his knee was a bleeding wound. You had already scooped the boy into your arms to quickly get into the kitchen. The moment your foot stepped into the home, the sound of a familiar voice and song filled the house.

Gently placing Ben on his feet, you followed the sound to the living room. Across the room behind a young girl stood a boy.

“Luke.” You breathed floored at the sight of the teenager who looked exactly like he did back in ’95. The ghost singing widened his eyes at yours, taking in the mature features and change of fashion.

He continued to sing the song Unsaid Emily he had written as an apology to his mom following the last big fight. The song he never got to show her. His voice faded as the ending of the song came around.

“Mama!” Your attention broke from Luke’s when a tiny hand reached for yours. The pain in his voice bringing you back to the most important part of your life, “It hurts Mama.”

Despite being sad, Mitch was the one to cross the room to lift the little boy into his arms. Placing the little boy on the counter, the man gently wet a paper towel to wash the area.

“I think he needs stitches.” Mitch sighed, furrowing his brows.

“Who is that?” Luke asked the Molina girl. The girl shrugged taking in the features she could recognize. Julie asked Emily.

“That’s Ben.” Emily beamed, looking over her shoulder at the little boy that filled the void of Luke’s death. It didn’t fix the wound or erase the pain, but Ben’s existence helped with the loss as he was a precious gift, “When Luke passed away his girlfriend Y/N found out she was pregnant with Luke’s baby.”

The choked sob fell from Luke’s mouth echoed by the thud of his knees, hitting the floor in the pure shock. The heartbreak painted so clear Julie was sure she could feel Luke’s agony.

God, why did Luke have to eat that fucking street dog. Fuck his band dreams. Nothing hurt as bad as finding out about Ben and Y/N having to be a single parent.

“I have a son?” Luke cried, orbing himself as far as he could from the Patterson home and his most tremendous loss.

Part Two

ASK TO BE TAGGED!

SEND IN REQUESTS!

#luke patterson imagines #julie and the phantoms imagines #jatp luke #luke patterson x reader #angst #agentsofsupernaturalmarvel #caitsy and ash productions

832 notes · View notes

the-iceni-bitch · 4 years ago

Text

My Body Aches to Breathe Your Breath

Pairing: serial killer!Charles Blackwood

Words: another mobile guess, ~2k

Summary: Charles is sick of you upsetting his plans, and now he has to spend Valentines Day with you.

Warnings: explicit language, explicit sexual content (oral sex (f receiving), unprotected vaginal sex), mentions of murder and descriptions of side effects from long term poisoning, SMUT, 18+ ONLY!!!!

A/N: my second gift for @drabblewithfrannybarnes @chrissquares and @amythedvdhoarder’s Happy Hoelentines Day 2021 challenge!! My giftee was @literate-lamb and she requested a Valentines Day themed serial killer fic, so I figure Charles Blackwood would be a perfect fit. There’s nothing too dark in this one, just mentions of death and descriptions of poisoning symptoms, but please be mindful anyways! I hope you all enjoy, and have a happy holentines!!!

Check out my masterlist and join my taglist if you want!

Charles watched you like a hawk from the giant window in the bedroom.

You’d just come back from your afternoon ride, your hair tousled and your breath coming in shallow pants as you dismounted. You removed your riding gloves and tucked them into your belt as you handed the reins to the stable hand, giving your mare an affectionate pat on the nose before turning to head inside.

He’d been obsessed with you ever since you came to stay with your aunt, his wife, six months ago. Your easy grace and poise cut by a wicked tongue that endeared you to him immediately.

It was worrisome. He would have typically moved on by now; your aunt had already changed her will, and he’d started slipping the thallium into her evening drinks ever since then. But every time he got close to administering that final dose, the dose that would finally free him from his seventh false marriage, the thought of leaving you staid his hand.

He was determined to finish it tonight. Finally put the old bitch out of her misery, and on Valentines Day no less. She let out a pained groan from the bed behind him and he rolled his eyes before turning to give her a sickeningly sweet smile, full of false sympathy.

“Do you want me to call the doctor back here, my love?” Charles murmured, doing his best to look lovingly at the creature in front of him.

“No darling, he’s no help. Just, help me to the bathroom please.”

He felt his stomach churn at the thought, but bent to help her stand anyways. Your aunt wasn’t beautiful by any means when Charles first met her, but now she looked ghastly; a rattling mess of skin and bones whose hair was falling out in clumps. Charles couldn’t believe his luck that the doctor hadn’t thought to do any tests for poisoning or he would’ve been fucked.

“Oh no, Auntie!” You cried as you flowed into the room. “Is it your stomach again?”

“Yes dear.” She let out in a pained sigh, leaning heavily on Charles’ arm as she hobbled through the bathroom door, collapsing in front of the toilet and heaving.

It was all he could do not to run out of the room. His own stomach was roiling as he did his best to ignore your aunt, turning his gaze to you instead.

You moved from where you were leaning on the wall to come help; not rushing, but gliding past Charles at a smooth pace. Your hand brushed his arm as you moved past him and made him suck in a breath.

He watched you kneel beside the pathetic creature and you gave him a sad smile as you held back the little hair she had left and stroked her back soothingly. You were the embodiment of life and vigor next to your dying aunt, and all he wanted to do was shove her aside and fuck you senseless.

You’d been teasing him for weeks, and he couldn’t tell if you were doing it on purpose or not. Whether it was just a lingering look with a wicked grin or tracing your fingers absentmindedly on his thigh while you chatted, it seemed like every action you took was specifically geared to drive him crazy.

Now you were bent over your aunt making soft cooing noises, but the angle you were at gave Charles a view right down the front of your blouse. He felt his cock twitch in his slacks as he stared at the valley between your breasts, and fought to swallow a moan.

“Charles, dear, I don’t think I’ll be able to join you for the lovely dinner you have planned for us. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that I’m forcing you to spend Valentines Day on your own, but you can see that I’m in no shape for romance.”

“Darling, I don’t care about Valentines Day, I’d much rather take care of you.” He said through gritted teeth, trying to move his thoughts away from all the filthy things he wanted to do to you.

“I’ll be fine, I just need to rest. Darla can bring me my tea this evening, you should take some time for yourself. You’ve done so much for me. I just wish you didn’t have to be by yourself.”

“Aww, don’t worry, Auntie. My date canceled and I’d be happy to keep Charles company for the evening.” You murmured as you helped her back to the bed, giving Charles a grin and a wink over your shoulder.

“Oh, that’s wonderful! Not about your date but I’m so glad my two favorite people will at least have each other.” Your aunt sighed as you pulled the blankets over her. “Please have Darla bring me my tea darling, then I’ll sleep.”

Charles’ jaw clenched as he bent to give her a soft peck in the forehead before moving to the doorway.

“Just give me a few minutes to wash up and I’ll be right down.” You said, still beaming at him as you sauntered away, your hips swinging suggestively in your riding boots.

He swallowed a groan before turning towards the kitchen running a hand over his face as he did his best to school his thoughts.

He set the kettle on the stove and chewed his lip in frustration. He should’ve been long gone by now, living off your aunt’s fortune on some tiny Greek island. But here he was, thinking of nothing but going up to your room and tearing all your clothes off then fucking you until you were begging him to let you cum.

The tea kettle let out a high whistle and he removed it quickly, pulling your aunt’s favorite tea off the shelf and placing a sachet in a cup before pouring boiling water over it. He pulled the amber vial out of his pocket and gazed at it before pulling the stopper and emptying it into the cup.

He placed the cup on a tray along with a single rose and called Darla into the kitchen, instructing her to bring the cup to your aunt before moving to the dining room and pouring himself a drink. He downed his first glass of bourbon in one shot, bringing the bottle with him as he sank into the chair at the head of the table.

He had already finished three drinks by the time you swept into the dining room, and he swallowed a moan when he saw you. You were wearing a burgundy dress that billowed behind you, its slit going almost up to your hip.

“Hope you don’t mind me dressing up.” You beamed at him. “Figured I should get some use out of this dress.”

“It’s fine.” He said, wincing at the crack in his voice that he hoped you didn’t notice before taking another gulp of bourbon.

You gave a light laugh before moving to the bar and pouring yourself a glass of rose. He watched you as you turned back to him, giving him a wink as you sat down in the seat beside him.

“So, what’re we eating?” You said after taking a sip of wine, watching him squirm under your gaze as the staff brought out the appetizers. “Ooh, oysters.”

He had to pour himself another drink as he watched you reach across the table to serve yourself. He almost choked as he watched you swallow your hors d’ouevres in one gulp, humming your satisfaction as you reached for another.

“Good?” He asked as he watched you swallow again, his cock twitching as he thought about your lips wrapped around him.

“So good. You gonna eat or just watch me?” You teased as you leaned back in your chair, taking a swig of wine.

He chuckled before taking an oyster for himself. His eyes never left yours as he scooped the meat from the shell with his tongue and swallowed thickly.

You tittered into your drink before looking over your shoulder as the staff brought in the next course.

“Jesus Christ, lamb? You trying to get in my pants, Charles?” You teased before taking a bite. “Fuck me, that’s fantastic.”

“That language typically work for you, darling?” He said, shaking his head as he tucked into his own meal.

“You tell me, sweetheart. You’re the one who can’t stop staring at me.” You teased, laughing as he spluttered around his food.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said after taking a drink of water, trying his best to avoid making eye contact with you now.

“Sure you don’t.” You said with an eye roll, moving your focus back to your food.

The two of you finished the meal without any more conversation. Charles did his best to ignore the small sounds of pleasure you kept making, little hums and sighs escaping from you as you enjoyed your food. He had drunk almost half of the bottle of bourbon by the time the staff came to clear the table.

He was about to stand up to leave when they came back into the room with the dessert and he cursed under his breath.

“Well, well. You sure know how to treat a lady, Mr. Blackwood.” You teased as you accepted a champagne cocktail, taking a sip as you winked at him suggestively. “Look at all this chocolate.”

You popped a truffle into your mouth and let out a moan that was almost pornographic, your eyes rolling back into your skull dramatically.

“You need to try some of these Charles.” You said as you wrapped your lips around a strawberry.

“I don’t have that much of a sweet tooth.” He said as he watched you slurp the juices from your lips.

“Aww, c’mon, just a taste.”

He didn’t have a chance to respond before you had moved to sit on the table in front of him, grabbing another strawberry and holding it in front of his mouth. He parted his lips and gazed up at you through his lashes as you pressed the strawberry against his tongue. You bit your lip as he took a bite and moved your foot to rest between his thighs.

“What’re you doing?” He asked as his gaze ran over your leg where it had escaped from the slit of your skirt.

“I think you know.” You murmured, scooting even closer to him. “I’ve seen you watching me.” You moved your foot to hook under the armrest of his chair and dragged him towards you. “I’m gonna tell you a secret. I never even had a date tonight.”

He tried to stand up to leave and you pressed your stilettoed foot to his chest, pinning him to his seat as his breath started coming in ragged gasps. You tutted you’re disappointment at him as you leaned back on your hands.

“You need to stop fighting it, baby.” You murmured as you twisted your toe into his shirt. “I know there’s no way my poor sick aunt has been taking care of your needs. When’s the last time anyone aside from you touched that cock?”

“Fuck.” He hissed as your foot moved to press into the bulge that was forming at the front of his slacks. “We shouldn’t.”

“Oh, I think we should.” You moaned as you tossed your skirt over your other leg and spread your thighs, bringing a hand to run over the soaked lace that covered your core. “I’m so fucking wet for you, baby. Don’t you want a taste?”

He growled at you before digging his fingers into your hips and running his teeth over the inside of your thigh. You let out a whine as his fingers moved under the straps of your panties and ripped them off you before diving between your legs.

You wrapped your fingers in his hair as he ran his tongue over your slit in a heavy stripe, moaning against your entrance as he finally tasted you. He lapped at your greedily, slurping up your arousal with a series of obscene sounds. His hands dug into the soft skin of your thighs as he ate you out, drawing bruises.

Your arms collapsed when he thrust his tongue inside you, massaging your canal with the thick muscle as you writhed against his face and whimpered. His lips brushed against your clit as he tongue fucked you and you tugged on his hair until it was almost painful.

“Shit, don’t stop.” You muttered as his lips wrapped around your clit and you felt your pussy clench around nothing. “I’m right there.”

He held your hips down as he sucked your pearl into his mouth and you let out a shriek. Your back tried to arch back on itself as the wave of your orgasm crashed over you, your release flowing over Charles’ mouth as your thighs clamped around his head.

You were panting heavily when you finally released him, your muscles still occasionally spasming with aftershocks as he undid the fly of his slacks before yanking you off the table until you were straddling his lap and leaned against his shoulder, your legs spread wide over his thighs as he ran his teeth over the curve of your neck.

“I’m sick of you teasing me darlin’.” He growled into your hair as he ripped the sleeves of your dress down your shoulders, exposing your breasts and bringing his hands up to tweak your nipples to the point of pain. “I’m gonna fucking ruin you. Thinking there’s no consequences to your actions.”

You yelped as he slipped a hand between your legs and slapped your pussy, making you throb with with need before letting out a low moan. His teeth sank into your shoulder as he drew his cock from his slacks and teased it against your entrance before spearing into you, sheathing himself to the hilt in one quick motion.

“Jesus, you’re so fucking tight.” He murmured before he started to move his hips, driving up into you in slow, fluid thrusts that had him dragging against every angle of your canal. “God, you feel even better than I imagined.”

You rested your hands on his knees and tossed your head back as his mouth moved down to your breasts and wrapped his lips around one of your nipples, rolling it between his tongue and teeth as his hands dug into your waist. Your back arched into his mouth as you sighed, your cunt clenching around him as he moved to your other nipple and rolled it through his teeth.

He groaned against your chest as your breath hitched, a coil starting to tighten in your abdomen as heat spread from your core. You squeezed him with your thighs as he brought you closer and closer, your nails digging into his knees.

“C’mon pretty girl, give it to me.” He ordered you, gazing up at you through his lashes as you let out a thin whine. “This pussy’s squeezing me so good. I wanna feel you cum.”

You swallowed a scream as your torso rolled against his as the coil in your abdomen snapped violently. He wrapped his arms around you to hold you in place as your vibrated against him, your pussy fluttering around him as your released flowed out of you and soaked the front of his slacks.

Charles hooked his hands under your knees and drew them over his shoulders, his cock hitting you at an even deeper angle that made you whine. He brought a hand between you and started to strum his thumb against your clit.

Your arms almost collapsed as he wrapped an arm around your waist to steady you. You moved your hands to grip his forearms desperately as another orgasm threatened to rip through you. His cock twitched inside you as you clenched around him sporadically, making him groan.

“Fuck, are you cumming again already?” He asked as your fingers gripped him painfully, striving for something to anchor you as he pushed you over the edge with a final drive of his hips and a press of his thumb against you.

You let out a wordless cry as a wave of pleasure wracked you, your body trying to fold in on itself as you fluttered around him. He let out a hiss as his hips stuttered and his cock twitched inside you before his spend filled you up, mixing with your release and leaking out of you in a thick mess.

“Jesus fuck.” You muttered as you unfolded yourself, resting your head against his shoulder as he panted into your hair. He drew your face to his and brushed his lips against yours before pressing them to you desperately, his tongue slipping between your teeth and tangling with yours.

“Run away with me.” He said, his eyes gazing into yours as he pleaded with you, his tongue running over his kiss swollen bottom lip.

“Did you finally use that little vial you’ve been carrying around, babe?” You asked as you gave him a wicked grin. “Cuz I don’t really feel like having my aunt chase after us.”

“It’s done.” He said, not fully registering the fact that you not only knew what he had been planning, but that you had done nothing to stop him. He was too intoxicated with you.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him deeply, stealing the breath from his lungs as he dug his hands into your waist. He groaned when you pulled away from him, drawing the sleeves of your dress back over your shoulders to cover your breasts.

“I’ll go pack.” You said bending to give him a quick peck before leaving to head back to your room. You left Charles on his own to tuck himself back into his slacks, and dream about starting a new life with you.

Tags!

@buckysnumberonegirl

@slothspaghettiwrites

@captain-asguard

@starlightcrystalline

@harrysthiccthighss

@quxxnxfhxll

@bonkywobble

@chubbybuckydumpling

@StanAllStarks

@blackestpinkworld

@fistmebuckyskywalker

@wandering-spiritash

@shutupstevie

@slytheriin2002

@isysen

@babyb3ar

@WanderingAlice00

@kaleeelizabeth58

@unsaltedalmonds

@amerikakapitanyy

@lizette50

@drabblewithfrannybarnes

@stargazingfangirl18

@starlightcrystalline

@jack-skellingtons-stuff

@chrissquares

372 notes · View notes

wayward-mikaelson · 4 years ago

Text

I Still Want You, I Still Need You- I. Civil War

Word Count: 2576

About: You are on Steve’s side of things and that upsets your brother,Tony. Showing that you and Tony are two different versions of your guys father, Howard.

Characters: Reader, Bucky, Tony, Steve, Natasha, Sam, Clint, Wanda, Zemo, and T’Challa

Pairing: None

Warnings/Trigger Warnings: Language, Blood, Injury, Mention of past death

A/N: This has been in my head forever. So while I write both this mini series and Winter’s Doll, please bare with me.

*This contains content made for the 18 and up crowd. Read at your own discrestion

**Please do not copy and paste this work anywhere. I work too hard on all of my stuff and would hate for it to stolen. You may, of course, reblog and copy the link to share other places.

***This work is posted on other sights. Links can be found on the pinned post in my profile

****Go follow my other accounts. Links can be found on the pinned post in my profile

*****Currently NOT taking any Requests

******Feedback is welcomed

Forever Tags: @hobby27 @donnaintx @myinconnelly1 @elansaidaris @magssteenkamp @440mxs-wife

Marvel Tags: OPEN

Bucky/Sebastian Tags: OPEN

Story Tags: @mysticalfestivalkoala @cspr-2 @tanyaherondale @lilithknight1111 @lpzallana @snlsamantha

Masterlist

Marvel Masterlist

Story Masterlist

Favorite Fic List

The two sides were lined up like the soldiers in during war time way back in the day. You couldn’t see it, but you knew that your brothers face was upset and disappointed in you. He knew that the two of you were similar but, yet, so much more different than each other. There was nothing he could say or do to make you change your mind. He was wrong and you knew it. He was just too blind to see it.

“Really, Y/N, you too? You’re on the wrong side of the line, dear.” Your brother said shaking his head. “I thought you were smarter than this? Dad would be so disappointed in you.”

You couldn’t help but let out a fake laugh. “You’re right, Tony,” You gave him the look that you knew pierced through his mask. The look that many people have said to have been a look that Howard Stark gave, to make himself so intimidating. “I’m smart. I’m smart enough to make decisions for myself and darling, this one is the right one. And bringing Dad into this isn’t going to change anything. You Know that.”

“Is that what Cap told you?” Tony pressed. “That his way is right and mine wrong?”

From the corner of your eye, you saw Steve shift his feet around. “He didn’t have to,” your voice grew cold. The way it always did when you and Tony bickered. “I came to that conclusion myself.”

“Well, then, that’s make you a criminal like the rest of them,” Tony stepped back with both his hands up. “It’s not too late to change your mind, Y/N/N.”

You could hear it in his voice when Tony called you by the nickname he gave you when you were little. He was trying everything he could to get you to step out of this and join his side. He didn’t want to fight his little sister. You didn’t want to fight your brother.

But yet, here the two of you are.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” you pulled out your retractable bow staff and opened it.

“I’m sorry too,” Tony said.

“What do we do?” Scott asked Steve.

“We fight,” Steve answered starting to lead the way. “Y/N, make sure you guard Bucky. Everyone knows that if they hurt you too bad, Tony will not hesitate to return the favor. Doesn’t matter what side you’re on.”

“Got it Cap,” you said. You knew that Steve was right. Didn’t matter what side you were on, if someone on Tony’s side hurt you to the point that you were hospitalized or near death, he would not hesitate and return the favor. He was still your big brother after all. You had your differences and disagreements. The two of you wouldn’t let the other get seriously injured.

You guessed the new kid didn’t get that memo.

While both teams were fighting, you and Bucky were weaving in and out of the fighting. The new kid, who shot out webs and talked way too much, threw something very large at you. But Bucky tackled you out of the way. The kid came at you again but when you swung your bow staff at him, he caught it and tossed you off it a good ten feet away. You were sure that you were going to wake up sore in the morning. You stood up and then saw red surrounding the new kid who as tossed into a giant pile of boxes. Your bow staff breaking in half.

You nodded your head towards Wanda who nodded back. She ran back towards the fighting.

“You okay?” Bucky asked.

“I’m fine, let’s keep moving.”

The two of you weaved in and out of the fighting again until Steve caught up with you. The three of you crunched out of the line of fire. You looked back to see your friends fighting. One side to be regulated by the government despite what happened to SHEILD a few years back and to bring Bucky in for something he didn’t even do. The other side, to help you and Steve get Bucky to safety, because you, too, believed he was innocent.

“We’re not going to be able to get everyone to that jet,” You told Steve. “It’s going to be impossible with everything thing going on.”

“Some of us are going to have to loose this for us to win it,” Clint’s voice is heard in your coms.

You knew he was right. You hated it too. The three of you ran towards the hanger. A few tiny missiles whizzed passed you guys from above and hit the hanger. That didn’t stop you guys from running, Wanda managed to stop the debris from the building long enough for the three of you to slide right under it.

“He’s innocent, Nat,” Steve said.

You turned around to see Natasha, your best friend, who was almost like a sister to you, standing there. A firm and disappointed look in her face. Natasha rose up her arm and you knew what was coming. You were prepared to tackle the female Russian assassin. “I’m going to regret this,” she said and slightly moved her arm to the side and shot out a taser. It whizzed passed your head.

You looked to see that Natasha’s taser hit T’Challa. “Go,” she yelled and shot another at the Wankadan king. Making him hit the ground once again.

You guys board the quinjet. You strapped into the pilot seat and started to press all the buttons you need. Even disabling the tracker. Steve and Bucky strapped in and soon, you had the aircraft in the air and flew through whatever you could. Looking down at the airport below, you saw law enforcement showing up. You still knew that you made the right choice in taking Steve’s side.

While you flew to Serbia, Steve and Bucky talked. You drowned them out and thought about your brother. A brother you knew all to well. You’d be on his radar until he found you. Until he had Bucky in his clutches. Until you and Steve were behind bars. Unless something there was something that gave him a reason to stop looking. You just hoped that you can get the information you needed before that ever happened.

Bucky needed his name cleared.

“We should be coming up on the base here soon,” Bucky’s voice brought you back to reality.

You looked a head and saw a snow covered mountain. At first you didn’t see anything but after the fog lifted you saw what looked like a bunker. As you landed the aircraft, from the corner of your eye you saw Bucky’s body stiffen up. You could only imagine what was going through the super soldiers head.

“You got this, Bucky,” You turned to him once the quinjet was landed and secured.

Bucky gave a small smile before he and Steve left the aircraft.

Then you were alone.

With your thoughts.

Time passed slowly as you literally twirled around in the pilot chair. You thought about your only memories of your father, Howard. You were really young when he took you in after your mothers death. Gave you the Stark name and all but that didn’t stop people from calling you his bastard child from one of his flings. Even after his and Maria’s death. But Tony had put a stop to that when he was asked what he thought about having a bastard sister. Let’s just say that night, Tony almost ended the night in handcuffs.

Some movement made you stop turning in your chair. You squinted your eyes to getting a better look through the snow being blown around the wind. The movement seemed to be black and upon a clearer look you saw that it was the King of Wakanda himself.

You gathered whatever weapons you could find in the quinjet and ran outside. The cool brisk air hit your face and tingled your nose. You didn’t let that stop you, you slowly followed T’challa to the door.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Your Highness,” you snapped open one of Clint’s bows.

The Wakandan king turned around slowly. “And why is that?” The thick accent came out slow and firm. You didn’t want to go up against this man at all but you would if you had to.

“Barnes isn’t who you want,” You noticed your voice started to shake. “All the answers we are looking for, it’s in that building.”

“I’m sorry, but I have to do what I must do,” T’challa started to open the door.

You reached behind you and pulled out a random arrow. You loaded it on the bow string and shot it. Luckily, for you, it had been one of those electric arrows. It shocked the Wakandan king and he fell to the ground. “I’m sorry too,” you ran passed him and into the building.

You wandered around looking for Steve and Bucky. Abandoned or not, the place gave you the creeps. You didn’t want to think about what this place did to Bucky. Then you turned a corner and saw a huge contraption that looked like the thing that Steve and Bucky talked about.

That thing that shocked the shit out of Bucky when he was under Hydra control. Suddenly your heart fell a million feet when you thought about the constant pain Bucky had been put through.

“Poor Bucky,” you whispered as your hand touched the torture device. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

You moved on and began to hear voices. You slowly followed the voices until you found them. The voice that spoke had an accent. He talked about the Battle of Sokovia, a battle which almost took your life. Then he spoke about the Vienna bombing and how that was all his doing.

“I told you it wasn’t him,” you spoke as you approached the group. “But you didn’t believe me or trust me.”

Tony turned to you. “I know and I’m sorry.”

“Oh good, the whole family is here,” the strange voice said. “Now the show can really begin.”

There was soft click and hum somewhere in the room. Everyone looked around and spotted an old television set. You guys approached it and when the screen popped up of an old road, you heard Tony suck in his breath.

“I know that street,” he said.

You watch the events unfold on the screen before. Your father dying at the hand of Bucky. You shot a look at Bucky whose entire face had fallen. Your eyes shifted to Tony who looked like he was about to either snap or pass out. You turned to the tv and stopped the video.

“Tony,” you turned back him.

“Don’t you dare say anything,” Tony snapped at you.

“Tony,” Steve cut in.

“Give him to me, Rogers,” Tony’s mask flew back on and turned toward Bucky. You knew he meant business.

You jumped in front of your brother. Bow loaded with an arrow. “Tony, no,” you rose your voice. “It wasn’t really him. He was brainwashed.”

“Stand aside, Y/N,” Tony started to fire up his suit.

“It wasn’t him,” you yelled as you rose the bow up and aim it at him.

“I don’t fucking care,” Tony yelled back. “He killed our parents. No move or so help me.”

You let the arrow go and it hit Tony’s armor and stuck to it. Before he even had time to grab it and toss it, the arrow exploded, sending Tony back into the television set.

“Go,” you told Bucky and Steve. “I’ll be able to hold him off.” You loaded another arrow and pointed it at your brother who slowly got up.

“Are you sure about that?’ Steve asked.

“He won’t hurt me too much,” you stayed focused on Tony who stood and stared at you. You could only imagine that thoughts of anger and surprise he had. “Just go!”

“You don’t want to do this, Y/N/N,” Tony held up his hand again. “You’re giving me absolutely no fucking choice.”

“Then don’t fucking make one,” you kept your weapon in place. “Drop all of this and let us go. No one has to get hurt anymore.”

Without warning or any other word said, Tony hit you. With what, you weren’t sure since he upgrades his suits whenever he’s bored. You flew back into something hard and smacked your head hard enough to put you out.

***

When you came to, your sight was fuzzy and your side was killing you. You were still in the old Hydra base so that was good, Tony hadn’t thought about taking you back. You looked down and as you saw a piece of metal poking out of your side. Biting your lip as hard as you could until you tasted blood, you pulled the metal out of your side.

You placed your hand over the wound to clot the small blood flow. You stood up and swayed some. It felt like your brain was rolling around in your head. Tony must have used some force and it pissed you off.

In the distance you heard the clanging around and yelling. You knew that Tony cornered Steve and Bucky. You followed the the sound and when you found them you saw Bucky on the ground. His metal arm blown off. Blood flood from his head and nose.

“Bucky,” you ran and slide over to him. You checked his pulse and pressed an ear to his chest. “Thank God,” you breathed when the soft sound of his heart reached your ear. “We’ll get you fixed you up.” You swore you saw a small smile on his face when you said that.

Then you looked up.

Steve had Tony in the air and threw him into a wall. You gasped and stood up only to fall to your knees when the pain in your side ran sharp through your body. Steve straddled Tony and grabbed his shield and started to hit his mask with the edge of it. The shield managed to break the mask. You saw fear in Tony’s face as Steve rose the shield once again.

“Steve, no!” You screamed as Steve brought the shield down. But it didn’t hit Tony’s face. It his the arc reactor in the suit. Making the suit shut down.

Steve looked back at you and got up. Pulling the shield out of Tony’s suit. Steve walked over to where you and Bucky were. He pulled Bucky up and looked at you. “Are you okay?” He asked softly.

You nodded as you stared at Tony. Tony stared back at you. His eyes on your bloodied hand that covered your wound. His shifted to Steve who started to walk away. “He gave you that shield,” he yelled. “You don’t deserve it.”

You turned to Steve, who stopped and drop the shield where he stood. You slowly and painfully got up and began to follow Steve you.

“Y/N!” Tony yelled after you. You turned to him. “You leave with them, you won’t have a home to come back to. You’d be forced to be on the run. A criminal. Dad would be embarrassed by your actions.”

You stared Tony in the eyes. “No, Tony,” your voice firm and full of anger. “Dad would be embarrassed by you.”

You turned on your heel and walked away with tears threatening your eyes.

167 notes · View notes

goldentournesol · 4 years ago

Text

Unwanted Matchmaker

(Spencer Reid x Reader)

The one where Spencer and Y/N get kidnapped by an unsub who wants to set them up.

Length: 2.5k

Read Part 2!

masterlist

It was no exaggeration to call Spencer a coffee addict. He, like the rest of his team, needed it so he could function properly. Imagine his disappointment when his favorite coffee shop closed temporarily for remodeling. He compromised and visited a different coffee shop, one that he had never been to before seeing as Spencer was very much a creature of habit. He entered the small shop, the aroma of the sweet beans stimulating all of his senses. He took in the rustic design of the shop and decided that he liked the vaguely familiar homey vibe he got from it. He strolled up to the counter and ordered his coffee the way he liked it: way too sweet. A few minutes later, he got his coffee and took a seat in the corner of the shop, just beside a window. There he was, sipping his coffee, unsurprisingly nose-deep in a book about quantum physics when he heard the soft bell of the door sounding, his eyes landing on her.

You know how in the movies, time slows for a second? That was what it felt like the second she walked in. It was exceedingly rare for Spencer to lose focus of whatever he was doing, but he couldn’t help it. Her gravitational pull was much too strong. He immediately soaked her in, from her bright eyes to her bright smile to...everything! Everything was bright about her. Spencer’s brain had never in his life stopped whirring like it did in that moment. She carried herself with such grace as she approached the counter and gleefully greeted the woman who took her order. He couldn’t hear her voice but he knew if he did, he would never want to forget it, not that he could anyway. The woman on the other side of the counter reacted with warmth, he realized that she was a regular at the shop. Spencer was not one to stare, but he found it to be a real challenge to take his eyes off of her. She had on a flowy patterned dress with short sleeves, one that Spencer could not have imagined on anyone else. She had music on in her earbuds and he could tell because she was tapping her foot along to the beat that only she heard. Her hair flowed effortlessly behind her shoulders in a way that seemed eerily perfect. He watched as she absentmindedly toyed with her phone as she waited for her coffee.

A noise from his phone ripped him out of his reverie as he realized he was going to be late for work, he had relished in his reverie longer than he had intended to. He hurriedly closed his book and packed it away. He picked up his coffee and made a quick turn to exit. He passed by her quickly, she hadn’t even looked up from her phone which somewhat put Spencer at ease, because there was no way of knowing just how late he would have been if she happened to actually look at him.

An entire month had gone by and his old favorite coffee shop hadn’t even crossed his mind. He made a habit of waking up a half hour early to make sure he had enough time to see her in the shop. His nervousness was growing each and every day, hoping that one day it wouldn’t grow past the previous day’s. He wished he had an ounce of Morgan’s courage just so he could talk to her. Spencer learned her name from hearing it being called out to her order every day. He couldn’t think of a name that could have suited her more.

It was strange when one day he received an envelope with his name on it at work. There was no return address and inside it contained a threatening letter written by what seemed to be someone’s wrong hand as a forensic countermeasure and a photo of him on his way to work from last week. An unsettling realization hit him and he felt his blood run cold.

Someone was stalking him.

He received a different letter every day with a new photo of him for a week. He had no idea how long this person had been watching him. Hotch and the team had been informed of all the ominous letters and photos he had been receiving and the reaction was just as he had expected it to be.

“Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt you?” Emily asked as soon as she found out, seated at the conference room table with the entire team.

Spencer gave her a look as he reminded her, “We put away criminals for a living, Emily.” She sighed and nodded, accepting his answer.

“Okay, we need to retrace your steps as well as a detailed description of what you do from the second you wake up to the second you step foot into the office.” Hotch reasoned.

“Alright, I wake up and get ready for work. I leave my house and head to the coffee shop three streets down. I get my coffee, sit down and read for a bit, then walk to the Metro to get to work.” Spencer recites.

“Do you interact with anyone on the way?” Morgan inquires. Spencer shakes his head.

JJ sighs, “Well at least his threats have all been non-violent thus far.” She hoped she wasn’t speaking too soon.

That night, after work, he took his usual route back home. As he was unlocking his door, a man came up from behind him and stuffed a rag drenched with chloroform up to his nose and mouth. Spencer was out like a light before he could even react.

------

Spencer awoke later to the smell of smoke coming from a lit cigarette. He immediately coughed and looked around. He was sitting at a metal table in a dimly lit room with concrete walls. Anger overtook him as he realized he was handcuffed to a metal bar on the table much like a police precinct’s interrogation table, with another chair on the other side. He saw cigarette smoke out of the corner of his eye and realized that there was someone behind him standing in the dark.

“Ah, finally. Good morning, Dr. Reid.” A man’s voice echoed both in the room and in Spencer’s bones.

“Come out of the shadows, you coward.” Spencer found himself uttering before he had the chance to think about it.

A short, stocky man emerged and Spencer immediately recognized him from the coffee shop. He would sit at the opposite side of the shop, with his cup of tea, surveying everyone. Now that he thought about it, Spencer should have been suspicious of his actions, but it was safe to say that Spencer’s mind was always on something else when he was there. Suddenly, he froze, silently hoping and praying that this unsub would leave her out of this.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time, Dr. Reid.” he said, “You know who else I’ve been watching? Hm?” He egged him on, “oh-I’m sorry, maybe I should say we’ve been watching.” He let out a chuckle. The man placed an old laptop in front of Spencer with photos of her on it and stood behind him as he shuffled through them.

Spencer felt his heart literally shatter at the sight of the various photos. She had no idea someone was following her, and it was all his fault.

“Quite gorgeous if I do say so myself.” The man mumbled into Spencer’s ear.

“She has nothing to do with this. Leave her out of it.” Spencer stated with an exasperation he’d come to know too well.

The man let out a hot, foul smelling breath on Spencer’s neck, “I guess they’re calling just anyone geniuses these days...you’re wrong, Dr., she has everything to do with this.” He straightened his back and Spencer’s eyes followed him as he left the room.

Spencer knew his team would get this guy as soon as they’d realized he’d gone missing.

Spencer heard a soft whimpering noise and a few yells from the man down what seemed like a hallway.

“Please, please don’t hurt me!” The desperate voice of a woman called. He wished he hadn’t recognized it the way that he did. Spencer saw two figures appear in the doorway. The man reappeared and he was holding a trembling woman by her hair. He recognized the flowy patterned dress immediately.

“Sit down, princess.” He shoved her into the seat on the opposite side of Spencer. His calm eyes met with her teary wide ones. He saw a flash of recognition in them. He knew she recognized him from the coffee shop. Her cuffed hands flew to his in a desperate search for comfort. Spencer squeezed her trembling hands gently, hoping to ease her nerves. Her ragged breathing was interrupted as she tried to speak.

“Help me, please.” She whispered, barely audible, but Spencer heard her.

“My name is Dr. Spencer Reid, I’m with the FBI. Don’t worry, we’re going to get out of here.” He said hurriedly to her, squeezing her hands again to reassure her. She breathed a sigh of relief, “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” She shook her head, but the tears never stopped spilling out.

The unsub laughed, “Ugh, how romantic!”

Spencer was unsure of what the unsub’s true intentions were and found that his brows knitted together in confusion as he lit two candles and placed them onto the table between Spencer and Y/N. Spencer’s heart sank to his stomach as he came to the realization that this was his sick, twisted way of setting them up. She mirrored his confusion as the unsub poured some wine in two glasses.

“I’m sure you’re both wondering what the hell is going on. Welcome to your first date.” He smiled with an evil glint. He was an organized psycho-pathological unsub with a fantasy that Spencer was sure would end distastefully. Y/N began to tremble again as the man inched towards her. He placed his hands on her shoulders and they roamed around in a hungry fashion. She whimpered softly, terrified and quite honestly disgusted.

“Don’t touch her!” Spencer croaked, hopefully more menacingly than he heard it. He held a strong facade in order to calm her.

“Hm, oh, why not? You were too slow...you see, my beautiful Y/N, Dr. Reid here has had his eye on you for a while. But he was too much of a coward to do anything about it.” Spencer looked away momentarily, he knew he shouldn’t let the unsub’s words get to him but he knew he was right.

Spencer found himself rolling his eyes and scoffing, allowing his facade to return and not falter any longer, “You’re quite the matchmaker, aren’t you, then?”

“The longer you speak to me, the faster she dies.” The man’s hands quickly moved around her neck and squeezed tightly at Spencer’s challenge. She panicked, her breath escaping her, nails digging into Spencer’s hands.

“Stop! Don’t hurt her!”

“That’s what I thought.” The man’s grip loosened but instead caressed her face and hair.

Spencer’s eyes looked into hers apologetically. Her tears resumed. He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles and cleared his throat, going along with the unsub’s plan. He tried to stall as much as he could so that his team would get there before it was too late.

“So, Y/N, what do you do?” Spencer asked her, glancing at the unsub as he nodded in approval. He ignored the nod. Spencer squeezed her sweaty hand to encourage her to play along with him.

A sob left her lips and she took another ragged breath, “I-I’m an art teacher at the um...elementary s-school down the street.” She said softly, her voice barely above a whisper. The man pushed her chair in an explosive manner, “Louder!” he demanded. She winced at his voice and cried.

“I’m an art teacher!” She sniffled. Spencer couldn’t understand how she managed to still look so beautiful while crying. Spencer smiled a little and nodded encouragingly. Her expression softened.

“That’s really neat. How long have you been teaching?”

“Almost 4 years.” She couldn’t understand how he remained calm.

“This is so boring! Get into the good stuff!” The unsub exclaimed with a maniacal look in his eye.

Spencer glared at him behind her, “What else do you want?”

The unsub didn’t like his challenging tone, so he grabbed a handful of hair and yanked it as hard as he could, until he pulled her out of the chair and onto the floor forcefully. She screamed in pain and Spencer stood up in anger, wanting to charge towards him but he was chained to the table.

“I told you to leave her alone! If you’re going to hurt anyone, hurt me, not her.” He yelled.

The unsub laughed, “Sit down, Dr.”

When Spencer refused, he felt the man’s fist collide with the left side of his face. Although it hurt like a bitch, he was glad he punched him and not her.

Just as the man was about to swing again, the door was kicked down by none other than Derek Morgan.

“FBI! Freeze!” Spencer was so happy to see his teammates rush in to their aid.

“Jack Johnson, you’re under arrest. Anything you say can and will be held against you in the court of law.” Spencer heard Hotch recite the Miranda rights to him. JJ rushed to Y/N’s aid on the floor. Before he knew it, they were being led out of the place they were being kept at. Spencer didn’t get the chance to talk to Y/N again until all the commotion died down with the paramedics and cop cars. He approached her as she was seated at the back of an ambulance. She had a blanket wrapped around herself and seemed to have calmed down quite a bit. The paramedic tended to a cut she must have gotten when she hit the floor. She spotted him and smiled. Even in that moment, her smile made him weak at the knees despite the adrenaline rushing through his brain.

“Hey.” She said.

“Hi, are you alright?”

“I will be,” she nodded, “listen, I really want to thank you for keeping me sane in there.” She looked at him with an endearing shyness.

Spencer smiled, “You can thank me by letting me take you out on a date. A proper date, not--whatever the hell that was in there.” he laughed slightly. She found herself laughing as well.

“Honestly, I thought you’d never ask.” she replied, “If I had known I had to get kidnapped for you to finally ask me out, I would’ve just asked you a long time ago!” She laughed and the sound literally made his heart flutter.

He felt a blush creep up to his ears and smiled sheepishly, “I’m so sorry, really. Next Friday, I’ll take you out.”

She smiled and they exchanged information, “Next Friday.” She repeated in confirmation.

Spencer grinned and hoped more than anything that Friday came around as fast as it could.

Part 2!

#spencer x reader #spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid angst #criminal minds #spencer reid fanfic #dr spencer reid #mgg #criminal minds fic #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid one shot #derek morgan #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #fanfic #cm #matthew gray gubler

1K notes · View notes

captainsimagines · 3 years ago

Text

To Topple A Giant || Finale

Summary: You had made it your mission to destroy even the smallest evils. When the opportunity arises to finally take down your own family after years of gaining their trust, you reach for it. And so does Steve, the man who represents a symbol of everything you hate.

Pairing(s): Steve Rogers x Reader || Avengers x Reader

Part 10 of 10 ~ Mini-Series

Warnings in this Chapter: strong language; slight reference to past sexual abuse; fluff

Word Count: 6,700+

Author’s Note: Guys... the finale! I’m crying actual tears lmao. Thank you for reading my words. It means the world.

The New Compound, July 2025, 7:09pm

The extra hour of sunlight this time of year was the easiest excuse to use for lounging on the roof to watch the sun set slowly. The compound no longer touches the clouds, but it still provides a rich view of the landscape across. There is no blowing of horns or shouts of the road hecklers; it’s a simple hour of solace to rest your chin against your arms, eat your snacks, and watch the sky change colors until nothing remains but the possibility of counting the stars.

“Hey… can I sit here?”

Your heart does a little jump at the sound of his voice. Traitor, you want to say to the pesky organ, but remain quiet as Steve wanders over to stand by you. He’s close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from his body.

“Do what you will, Captain.” It’s simple enough of a response, you figure. You look down at the granola bar in your hand, turning it over a few times before rolling your eyes at the silly gesture. “Granola bar?”

He nods, watching as you snap it in half, and grabs the piece. “Thanks.”

You eat in cooperative silence. You take small bites, saving the granola bar so you have something to focus on during the length of time Steve decides to stay up here. He seems to be doing the same. “So what brings you out here? Another depressive episode?”

“I happen to have the perfect amount of depressive episodes, thank you very much.”

You snort, “Ditto.”

He takes a small bite and rolls the granola over his tongue. “No, I uh… I actually came out here to watch the sunset.”

“That’s sweet.” You shrug and admit your reason to him without a second thought. “I came out here to be sad, so.”

“Thor’s visit isn’t doing you any good?”

Thor is genuinely looking better. He’s started braiding his hair again, exercising with the help of Quill and Bruce, and participating in conversation without being addressed first. Seeing him makes you happy, but there’s still a glint in his eyes that reminds you of the lowest point of his life. And his lowest point was also yours. Sometimes you just want to forget. “He looks better. Healthier, got some light back in his eyes. It’s just whenever we look at each other we think of the same thing, I guess.”

Steve hums low and his shoulder brushes yours. “Loki.”

“It’s good to reminisce and all but I’ve got my limits,” you say.

“What was the special connection between you and Loki anyway?”

You grin at such an innocent question. Steve had never been close to Loki, didn’t really like him much, but he tolerated the God wandering about. You figure he genuinely wants to know. “I met him a little bit before I was assaulted. Everyone in the compound had their suspicions but no one asked. It was like they were avoiding me but also trying to help, I don’t really know. It was a weird time. And Loki, after we caught that dragon thing and really, really properly met, just straight up asked me why I was so distant all of a sudden.” Your chest warms at the memory. “I told him. And you know what the first thing he said to me was?”

Steve shakes his head a little and his eyes follow the tilt of your mouth. “‘What a cunt’.”

He startles himself into a laugh, the rough word not expected. You continue, “It was the first time I laughed in four months.”

Steve follows your gaze out to the sunset. He suddenly feels guilty, out of the loop, sad. You had only mentioned your assault to him once when you discovered Tony’s afterlife gifts, and he never brought it up again. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice you were-”

“Bucky had just moved into the tower and all of your attention was on him. I don’t blame you for not seeing me.”

It’s true, but Steve doesn’t forgive himself. He’s had two years to check up on you and because of his own selfish choice, he’s let you slip from his fingers. A question bubbles from the back of his mind — one that he doesn’t think twice about finally asking. If he does, he won’t ask. “Do you miss… me?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

“Sam put the idea in my head and—”

You sigh, “Steve, it’s the fact that he had to put the idea in your head. I can lie and say I’ve been all fine and dandy, or I can tell the truth and say I’ve been all fine and dandy. Take your pick.”

Steve stares at you for a long moment, mouth parting around invisible words. You’re staring at the sunset, avoiding his gaze but aware of his eyes on you, and he misses you. He truly, terribly, misses you. He decides he’s got nothing more to lose — he’s already lost you. “Well, I miss you. Do with that what you will.”

The two of you sit in silence for a few minutes: wind in your ears, legs shifting when too much weight has been applied, tiny sniffs of the nose. You don’t really know what to do with that information. Steve misses you. And you miss him. But he doesn’t deserve to know that. There’s been no apology from him, just things he’ll do to appease Sam.

At the three minute mark, you groan quietly and turn to him. “Are you seriously still going to watch the sunset up here?”

Steve smirks and watches you from his peripheral. He really has missed being on the receiving end of your various tones of voices. “I have been told that I’m impossible to get rid of, so yeah.”

His company isn’t all that bad.

Present Day, 2025, 9:07am

Perhaps there were good things that came from being locked up for over two weeks, alone. Last time you were locked up with the team and there was absolutely no special treatment after that. Now you’re resisting the urge to burst out laughing as Steve piles on the seventh massive pancake on your plate; or rolling your eyes as Sam keeps asking if you want more maple syrup — ‘What flavor? We’ve got six!’ — and Peter’s drowning Bucky with questions about who he encountered at the wedding.

“Is it the same as Netflix Narcos?”

“No,” you say bluntly.

“Is the Amazon series legit? Like, did Omar really kill the DEA agent?”

“No.”

“Is Omar as evil as they say?”

“No.”

“Damn,” Peter groans, piling a forkful of pancakes into his mouth. “Nothing’s as exciting as it seems, huh?”

Everyone looks to him, then to each other.

Steve clears his throat, “I was literally shot.”

Mouth full, you follow. “And I was abused for years.”

“And I had to deal with them while with HYDRA,” Bucky says with his mouth full too.

“Man, they shot at me. That counts,” Sam adds.

“And I finally got to use the shield. While being shot at,” Scott says.

You interject, “Technically I was being shot at.”

Even with such a cloud of violence, with gruesome memories — memories that would just be shoveled into the pile of things that no one is ever going to talk about again — you all begin laughing. Poor Peter missed out on a lot, but he can put two and two together. He knows this is his only chance to ask before you all lock it away and call it just another mission. It doesn’t hurt to humor him.

And even though you won’t mention it to any one else unless they ask — this wasn’t just another mission for you or Steve. Things have changed and the both of you know it. The aches within your chest are no longer negative or a bother, but instead are blooming flowers that have laid dormant for years. You’ve been plucking petals for as long as the two of you can remember, and it’s about damn time you both end up on the same page.

Everything has been quiet. Sure, there are bounties on everyone’s head but when is there not? You’ve pissed off more cartel leaders and gang leaders and political enemies than you can count on two hands, so this enemy territory is not all that foreign. You recognize the high trees, the gray skies, the mud beneath your boots. But you’ve got friends on your team that know how to climb those trees; friends on your team that know how to move the clouds and make the sky the talk; friends on your team that would hump through mud and snow watching your six.

You can’t believe you even thought about leaving after the mission in the first place. This is where you belong, where all of you belong, because you’re the only ones with good hearts who qualify for the job.

As breakfast winds down, Steve takes the opportunity to sprinkle in moments of long-awaited public displays of affection. When you go to refill your orange juice, he sneaks a kiss on your cheek. When you go to wash your plate, he makes sure Peter is looking the other way before patting your ass. And when you’re the one to envelope his slim waist from behind, he melts in your combined warmth.

“So, about our date,” Steve inquires, cheeks turning pink but voice unwavering. He looks brand new, refreshed, and there’s a shine in his eyes that you haven’t seen since forever. You can’t remember the last time you have, but you figure it must have been back when the world hadn’t yet swallowed him whole. Now, he’s burning bright with the youth his soul has missed.

You jump up and down, “Ooo, exciting!”

Steve takes you by the waist, swinging you in every direction. It’s uncoordinated, messy, and not exactly dancing but it’s pure. “Chinese? Pizza? Just fries?”

“¿Por qué no los tres?” Pursing your lips, you wait for his answer.

“That can be arranged.”

You gasp dramatically, “You’re spoiling me.”

“Well I have two years to make up for it.”

That startles a laugh from deep inside your chest. “That’s gonna be our inside joke now, huh? Two of the worst years of our lives and we’re joking about it.”

He blushes along with you. “I think that describes our relationship perfectly.”

“Our relationship…” Your voice comes out like a melodic whisper and Steve feels it in his bones.

He grins down at you but before he can respond, someone enters the common room rather cautiously.

“Oh, now what the hell are you doing here?” Steve demands, pushing you to stand behind him. The gesture is nice, but completely unnecessary. Friday would have alerted the team if someone entered the grounds armed.

Agent Kavert raises his hands, “Relax. I’m not here to arrest you or anything.”

Steve tries to move his shoulders in a way where Agent Kavert can’t see your head. But you maneuver around him, somehow ending up peeking your head through Steve’s underarm. “If I know the law, and I think I do, you can’t really arrest someone in their own house anyway, right?” You pat Steve repeatedly on his side. “Right?”

Before Steve can respond, Agent Kavert speaks. With Steve guarding you, it seems the only thing Agent Kavert wants to do is get in and get out as fast as he can. “I just came to apologize. Ballistics came back and the evidence does show that you didn’t kill Ernesto Vega. It was Ramirez’s issued gun.”

Yeah, you think. The gun Seda stole.

“Oh, what a breath of relief! I almost forgot I was there.”

He sighs and his lips pull into a small smile. “You’re not gonna tell me where Ramirez is, huh?”

Steve takes this as his cue to leave you two alone, but not before squeezing your hand on his way out. He nods over to Peter, who’s still crouching in the kitchen, unseen by Kavert. Peter gives him an enthusiastic thumbs up, happy to spy for his Captain. But you know he’s really asking Peter to take care of you while he’s gone.

You let out a heavy sigh. Omar has been wanted for years for another murder he didn’t even commit. And now, he’s wanted for another. He may be a giant with morals, but even he can’t escape the gruesome reality that plagues the wicked.

“I don’t even know where he is. If you came looking for answers—”

“No, I just… Everything’s been so fucked up since half the universe came back. And the possibility of an Avenger being bad, having played us for years — I think it just scared a lot of people.” Agent Kavert actually looks sincere. He adjusts his footing and chuckles a little under his breath. There’s a fine line creasing his forehead, but it isn’t formed from stress. He’s smiling, an honest look, and his eyebrows pull inward. “And Shakespeare? Really?”

Rolling your eyes, you shrug and lean back against the counter. “When half the world disappears and takes your family and friends with it, there’s really not much else to do.”

And besides, Loki was really into Shakespeare.

You continue, deciding at the last second to throw Agent Kavert a bone about your past. “Shield didn’t know but Nick Fury did. So did Pierce. And when Shield fell, Fury just hid it even more.” You give him a half smile. “We weren’t helping the cartel. We were slowly taking it apart.”

Agent Kavert nods, thinking it over. “The deal Jackeline made with us was pretty simple. She’d tell us all the inside secrets that she knew and in exchange, no charges against her and none so serious for you.”

Your shoulders slump and you shoot him a blank stare. “Was it really that simple? Like, I could have just used her as my one free call?”

“Joke all you want. You should have called us when Shield fell. The double agent thing was risky and everyone needs help taking down a giant like that.”

“I did have help. Involving more people was never planned.”

“He was just as much our mission as he was yours.”

Agent Kavert, as sorry as he looks, still doesn’t seem to get it. But that’s fine, you think. Not everyone can. And you’re not in the mood to argue anymore. “No… he wasn’t.”

He seems to read your mind because he simply accepts your answer. “I really am sorry for accusing you. And for the government arresting you alone and letting the white man go free.”

A tiny snort tickles your nostrils. Agent Kavert is white, and it’s even more amusing considering he’s being serious. “Thanks… I guess.”

He turns to leave, seemingly normal, until he spins on his heel and claps his hands. “Oh! And by the way — don’t leave the country. The charges of conspiracy and murder have all been dropped. But there’s evidence of drug smuggling. So, you’re on house arrest.”

Your eyes widen and you reply with a sarcastic yell. “Thanks!” He turns to leave again. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

He glances over his shoulder, “Could not have let you just get away with it. Some of that smuggling was under no order from Shield at all.”

“You know I can easily disable that ugly ass ankle bracelet you’re about to give me?”

He chuckles low, and finally waves goodbye. “Goodbye, Agent Y/LN.”

You stand dumbfounded, slightly annoyed, but you figure it’s better than actual jail time. Peter rises from his hiding spot and walks over to you, blowing air from his mouth. “Friend of yours?”

You whip around to point a finger, scream and laugh mixing into one. “No friend!”

Peter finally hears that accent Steve can’t stop talking about.

It’s a tiny portrait, sealed in a tiny frame and hidden in a tiny room. The frame is black with professional wooden carvings that make the sides look like perfectly detailed tree trunks. It’s in between the portrait of Tony and Natasha’s bracelet. Tony wears the same AC/DC shirt Steve has somehow stolen and claimed as his own. He’s got this sarcastic grin, some type of wrench in one hand while his other rests on his hip. He stands in his lab, glasses pushed up onto his head and black soot smudged on his cheek. You think Peter snapped the photo back in 2017.

But the middle portrait is your favorite. It’s the only photo he ever allowed to be taken of him. Brushing your index finger against the glass, you trace the small outlines of Loki’s jawline, to his thin pink lips, to the bulb of his nose, to the waves of his hair. He sits caught off guard, book in his hand and in regular human clothing. He shoots a rather annoyed but joyful look over his shoulder as the camera was shoved in his face. You know for sure Wanda took that photo.

“You’re not dead,” you say as you study the blue of his frozen eyes. A God doesn’t die, you remember him saying. Loki was wrong about a lot of things, but you pray he wasn’t wrong about this. There’s a small part of you that wants to speak the same words to Tony and Natasha, but there’s only so many times the world’s axis can shift for a miracle. You tap the glass, sighing a breath of acceptance, and finally let go. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Smiling up at the ceiling, you think you’re right about this one.

It’s quiet. The only sounds are the mild ripping of wrapping paper and small ‘thank you’s’ from the team. Everyone got each other something — granted, everyone got something small for everyone. No matter how much Tony joked about still splurging on Christmas shopping, his promises weren’t exactly kept. He’s gotten everyone things they actually need or wanted. Steve, a new drawing pad; Natasha, a bright pink knit sweater; Rhodey, a new watch; Bruce, a pair of sunglasses; Nebula, a dark blue knitted sweater that she immediately presses against her cheek, eyes focused on the ground as she savors the soft brush; you, the full collection of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. And he finally presents the baby’s crib to Pepper, constructed three weeks after she originally asked him to.

“I know how much you like to reenact A Midsummer Night’s Dream in your room,” Tony grins at you. Biting your bottom lip, you throw yourself at him and hug him tight. He returns the hug with just as much strength, if not more.

As the night goes on and midnight rings, your small group exchanges tight-lipped merry Christmas’s and happy holidays. Natasha retires to her room, a distant look in her eyes as she says goodnight. No one knows where Clint is.

Steve nudges your elbow with his once the room empties. He holds out a box with festive wrapping — snowmen with carrots for noses and a variety of pebbled smiles. “From me and Okoye.”

“You got me a gift?”

Steve’s brow furrows as he nods like it’s obvious. “Of course. You’re my friend.”

“Well, now I feel inadequate,” you laugh. It comes out wet and it’s then that you realize you’re tearing up. “I promise to reenact Midsummer for you, okay?”

Steve chuckles, “You got it.”

You unwrap it slowly, half wondering why Steve and Okoye teamed up to get you a present. You. Your stomach churns an innocent whirl.

It’s a long sleeved vest… or sweater. You can’t really tell until you pull it from the box. It’s intricately designed and it takes a moment for you to finally see it, to finally understand, and the moment you do you exhale a wracked breath.

It’s not Wakandan fashion. It’s threaded with the colors and swirls of a place you haven’t called home in years. It has red flowers down the vest portion and multicolored rows down the sleeves and back. It’s made from a thick fabric that’s rarely used this century. Vintage — home.

“Steve…”

Steve clears his throat, “Now, I only did the flower parts. Okoye found it unfinished in… um…”

And there, where tags from brands would usually be, is a small threaded engraving.

‘From Bucky, To our muñeca.’

“He didn’t get to finish it so I thought I would — you know, help? — so it’s really from Buck. Probably an apology for not letting you visit him in Wakanda.”

Steve tries to push out a laugh at his poor joke, but you can see how he’s faltering. You reach up and wrap your arms around his neck, dragging him down so his knees bend, and pour as much nonverbal thank you’s into the hug. He hesitates at first, arms floating awkwardly, until he swallows his fear and wraps his arms around your waist. He holds you to him tightly and breathes in the sweet scent of your vanilla shampoo.

“Thank you.” Your voice is small, but Steve regards the delivery as powerful.

You wear it once, that Christmas night, enveloped in its warmth as you slept. In the morning, you hang it in the back of your closet.

A knock on your bedroom door sounds through your headphones. Bucky peeks his head in, “Is now a bad time?”

Sitting up, you pull the headphones from your ears. “Nope. Just thinking about how I’ve lived several years in the span of one week.”

Bucky lugs in a sports bag in one hand and a manila file in the other. He places them at the edge of your bed and proceeds to bounce in the available space near you. “Yeah, that can be annoying.”

You attempt to shove him away as he tries to steal your blanket. “Did you need anything?”

“Yeah.” He lets you take it, and simply turns on his side to face you. “What’s gonna happen between you and Steve?”

It’s an innocent question, but you know Bucky well enough to notice when he’s stressed. Steve probably told him to mind his business. “We’re good.”

He inspects your face with squinted eyes, “I know what you’re thinking so cut that shit out. This isn’t one of those missions where the feelings will just go away.”

“Funny thing is, I believe you,” you admit, watching as his face does something unexpected. His smile drops suddenly, like he didn’t expect you to agree with him, and then it’s immediately back full force.

“Peggy and Steve - right person, wrong time. You and Loki - right person, wrong time. You and Steve, all those years ago — right person, wrong time.” A weird thing happens: you agree with him again. “But now, after everything — right person, right time.”

“It’s just weird feeling like it’ll actually work.”

“That makes us seem like we’re all broken, doll. We’re not.”

You turn so you’re facing him; two mismatched parentheses. “We’re just tired.”

“We’re just tired,” Bucky agrees, smiling. “I’m not saying don’t look over your shoulder whenever you feel like it. Hell, I still look over mine.”

Snorting, you roll closer to hug him. He pulls you into his chest. “You give amazing pep talks.”

“Yeah, I don’t know why they gave that trophy to Steve.” Bucky shares the intimate moment for as long as it takes before the blanket starts overheating. He groans as he sits up to retrieve the things he brought with him. “By the way, our mutual friend sends one last warm regards.”

Bucky throws the sports bag onto your lap. “What’s this?”

“Your shit.”

You don’t even want to ask him how he packed your things without your knowledge. “Kicking me out, Barnes?”

“Clothes, toothbrush, shampoo and conditioner, pads, the quilt I just finished knitting thank you very much,” Bucky lists and hands you the file. “Maribel found him.”

“Ramirez?”

“Your dad.”

You snap your head up to look at him. Bucky expects to see anger, hurt, maybe even betrayal. He was prepared for it. But you just look confused, lost for words, maybe even scared. “Goes by Richard these days. Lives with his wife in Wisconsin, no kids, keeps to himself.”

You flip through the files, holding your breath. The file is small, Richard’s information only covering the first page, the rest just drabble. He seems relatively normal, looks normal even; normal job, normal credit score, normal upbringing. It doesn’t even seem real. You close the file and set it aside. “So you are sending me away?”

Bucky smirks, “It’s a suggestion. But I took the liberty of doing the hard part for you.”

“Yeah, because packing my lady products is the climax of this story.”

It didn’t go unnoticed that Bucky called Richard your ‘dad’. Everyone either referred to Ernesto as ‘your father’ or by his name. Steve had said ‘dad’ a few times before he met him, then he never said it again. Hell, even you did sometimes.

It’s a sweet distinction and you’re certain Bucky said it on purpose. Bucky takes your hands in his, “It’s been a long time coming. But at least we can both say that the people who hurt us can’t hurt us any longer.”

You can. You really can.

Bucky’s already packed Steve’s shit as well. Steve’s just shoving extra socks into his bag when someone knocks on the door. He expects Bucky or Sam, final words of encouragement, but it’s Scott. And he’s standing there grinning like a mad man.

“So, what’s the verdict, Rogers? You going after her or not?”

Steve huffs a laugh, “Think you already know the answer to that, Lang.”

Scott closes the door behind him and leans back against it. He shoves his hands in his sweater pockets, “Not that it should matter, shut me up if I cross any line, but everyone supports this.”

“Weirdly, I think it does matter. We’ve had you guys picking sides for two years. Selfishly. Like we were having a fucking civil war after everything.”

“Yeah, well.”

Steve huffs a laugh. It’s always going to surprise him just how comfortable Scott is around him now. Not afraid to tease him or call him out on something he doesn’t agree with. It’s refreshing.

“I’m not giving up on her, Scott. Not again.”

Scott nods. Perhaps breaking the mission ethic code wasn’t a bad thing after all, Scott thinks. He gives Steve a proud smile, genuine. “Then I hereby declare our hanging conversation officially closed.”

Steve wanders from his bedroom, to the conference room, to the main living room without an end destination in mind, seeming to just follow his quick feet as they lead him around the halls of the compound. He’s proud of himself, really, because he truly believes he’s learned to swallow his pride, has opened himself up to the possibility of being happy, and accepted that the world has changed and will continue to alter whether he likes it or not. He was, is, and will always be a man out of time — he’ll never fit but goddamn does he feel settled. He hasn’t felt this sane since before the war — which one? — so he relishes in the feeling for a few calm seconds.

He feels tears well-up on his water line and feels the pressure in his temples. He’s at a crossroads — both proud of himself for finally choosing the path he wants and relieved that this week, this mission he has dreaded for almost ten years, is over. He doesn’t know if he should sleep for a month or occupy his time with other things awaiting repair. A build up of five years, grief and loss and happiness all weirdly mixed into one pot, and Steve simply hasn’t noticed the improper portions of each ingredient.

It’s too much.

He thinks about his mental health. Shot to Hell, he jokes with himself. He’s already got the virtual therapy appointments scheduled. He figures he’ll get better with time and if Steve knows one thing for sure, it’s that he’s got a whole lot of that.

He thinks about Sam and Bucky and Scott — his three best friends that have gone to the ends of the Earth and back for him, and who would proudly do it all over again. He thinks about their kind words, their gentle touch, their devotion that Steve still sometimes feels he doesn’t deserve.

And he thinks about you. To anyone else, this was written in the damn stars. No, there wasn’t anything extremely obvious in the first few years. You were friends. Friends that grew to consider each other teammates. Teammates that drew a drop of blood while fighting on opposite sides. Teammates that recognized the true endgame, teammates that helped each other escape, teammates that went silent for two years. Two years of no contact, no signal of survival. Then again, teammates who stood by as their world crumbled around them. Teammates who grew to be friends again, leaning on free shoulders and seeking help through happy conversations and long nights. Friends that brought the world together again, only to rip each other from their own. Friends into the most bizarre of enemies. And enemies back to teammates.

Steve wipes a hand down his face as he fixes the strap over his shoulder. The common room is empty — he likes it this way. That means everyone is either napping, getting food, visiting friends or family, simply living life. The silence is therapeutic.

His eyes fall on a crooked picture frame near the television. He tries to ignore it, almost to the door and ready for another road trip, but he steps back. Then forward, then back again. He groans in frustration of himself and moves to turn the frame back in place, holding it for a few seconds until it stays. But as he lets go, it tilts once more. He tries again — it tilts back.

He pulls the frame from the hook and turns it over. He rightly freezes, the presence of a small pink paper airplane taped near the edge knocking the wind from his constricting lungs. He pulls it off, careful to not tear the delicate post-it.

He never found it. Natasha probably placed it behind this very picture frame in the other compound for him to find. Surely the explosion should have destroyed it — but it didn’t. It’s right here, perfectly intact, just a smudge of dirt on one of its wings. The frame hadn’t been damaged either. It’s real.

He holds the thin piece of paper like it’s the most precious thing in the world.

Steve turns it over between his fingers a few more times, before he carefully folds it back in half and puts it in his wallet. “You’ve got some nerve, Nat. But I hear ya.”

Steve decides to write you back. He hides the letter in that sweater he knows you don’t wear anymore, in the far back of your closet, and marvels at the intricate stitching while he can. He poured his heart out, even if it’s not guaranteed you’ll ever see it.

‘Yes, I found your letter. I found it when I was looking for perfume in your suitcase. The tape was loose and I violated your privacy. I’m truly sorry for that.

But I felt compelled to write you back, in case the reverse happened and I died instead of you. I didn’t write it then, when you were drying your hair in front of that impossibly small mirror you so weirdly called ‘a stupid little bitch’. And you looked so beautiful. But I’m writing it now and maybe I’ll share it with you in person when we’re both ready.

When the world turned to dust, I held on to you. I know exactly why. Natasha bugged me about it also, teasing me whenever I would glance at you too long, or give you the last remaining Oreos I was planning on eating, or whenever I would leave your room in the mornings after a nightmare. She knew nothing was happening between us, but she had this smile whenever she caught me. Like she was happy I was comforting you, and in turn seeking comfort for myself.

You remember how her smile would tilt up more on the left side?

There isn’t a proper way to truly apologize for hurting you. But I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it. You at least deserve that.

I returned a different man. And I think that was for the better.

Yes, I wanted the quiet life. I still think I do. And I think you know this — you have always seen right through me.

I now know what Natasha saw. You irritate me, you damn near make me want to choke myself out, but I care for you. We hold each other up, and I’m always rooting for you, and I’m always by your side. No matter how annoying and smart-mouthed you may be.

You’re my best friend — I hope I’m one of yours.

Steve.’

There’s no one currently in the compound who really knows how to change the battery in your car. Bucky tries, does a rather good job too, but he claims he’s winging it and that you should call a mechanic just in case. He leaves you there with two random batteries on the ground, hood of your car open, and without any idea of what to do next. So you chill and wait for the mechanic you hope isn’t going to jack up the price just because he knows who you are.

But he doesn’t seem fazed by you at all — or at the fact he just had to drive through countless checkpoints and security checks just to get on Avengers property. He changes the battery and changes the oil, hooking you up with as many upgrades he can. He even offers to wash it until you thank him repeatedly and that Really, really, you don’t have to do that. Thank you so much!

“Quite a garage you got here.”

There are unfinished projects and random wires falling from the ceiling and enough tools to supply five garages. It’s messy, but it was Tony’s. You accept the compliment and see him out.

“Eh, make sure those windshield wipers work. I hear it’s gonna rain tomorrow.”

You thank him again. The clouds to the west are gray, getting darker as the expanse stretches, but from where you’re standing everything’s blue. You figure the mechanic was right: it’s gonna rain, and it’s gonna rain hard.

The mechanic did good, all things considered. You never thought your old, beat-up Honda could look a few years younger. You flick one of the wipers lightly, testing its strength. It holds, as does the other, but when you go to lift it up it stops halfway. Without wanting to break it, you don’t force it. There’s something blocking the switch.

You grab it before it can accidentally fall into a deep slot; the figurehead of a man, curly hair and beard that matches Steve’s, who also has a prominent and strong nose. You turn the coin over a few times before looking around the garage, down the street, at the remote area where the mechanic has just left. Standing there, mouth agape, you wonder just how in the world you missed the mechanic placing it there.

You were lacking in the spy department nowadays. Oops.

You know you’re not going to find Ramirez. But him giving this back to you? It was his way of saying he’s alright and that he owes you many thanks.

You pocket the coin and accept the fact you just got bested.

It should take a few hours before you hit the first motel. Wisconsin isn’t that far, but you do have to pass through about hundred “middle of nowhere’s”. You pull out of the garage and check your mirrors — completely unaware of the super soldier running full speed to the passenger door. Steve carefully throws it open, somewhat aware of his strength, and lands into the seat beside you.

You hit the brakes hard. “Oh my! Rogers!”

Steve sucks in a few heavy breaths, like he literally ran across the compound to make it. “What? I startle you?”

“What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing? Aren’t you on house arrest?”

You squint at him, “Touche.” Putting the car in park, you turn your whole body to face him. “Answer my question.”

“Thought you were just gonna leave without saying goodbye?” Steve asks, expression much more teasing than serious.

“I’ll be gone for three days tops,” you say, waving your hand in the air. Steve smiles at you, seemingly waiting for you to speak again. You roll your eyes, “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?”

Steve lifts up the small duffel bag you hadn’t seen when he first got into the car. He throws it into the backseat and smiles lovingly at you. “I’ve been told that I’m impossible to get rid of, so yeah.”

“Rhodey said that the ankle bracelet they gave me wasn’t a trusted model. Easy to break off, like they did it on purpose.” You lean toward him, holding your chin up with the palm of your hand. “Should be able to drive free for a few weeks before they suspect anything.”

“Already booked us a cabin for Thanksgiving.”

“What makes you think that I even want you to accompany me on this road trip? Did you like the first one?”

Steve clears his throat and mimes like he’s writing on paper. The next words out of his mouth make your legs turn cold. “No matter how annoying and smart-mouthed you may be, there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be than here, there, and everywhere with you.”

You blink multiple times, as if that would fix your ears. “...You. Fucking. Didn’t.” Steve reaches over to try and hug you. “No, don’t.” He squeezes harder, smooshing your face in his chest. “Steeeeve!”

“It fell out of your suitcase during the mission and I just… looked,” Steve reasons. He allows you to escape his grip.

“You just looked?”

Steve sighs. He really does look guilty. He pushes a strand of your hair behind your ear, letting his fingers tickle your skin. “I’m sorry I read it. I’ll get out of this car for real if you want me to.”

You arch an eyebrow, “You’re a little shit, but I’m not mad. No one understands privacy these days.”

Steve smiles wide enough for his dimples to pop and his eyes to crinkle. “I’d follow you anywhere, doll.”

“Anywhere?”

“Just name it.”

Humming low, you lean forward. He follows your direction like you’re a lighthouse beaming with light, capturing your lips with his in a sweet kiss. He hooks a large hand behind your head to press you to him harder. You smell like that vanilla scented shampoo he loves so much and feels his heart constrict with a pleasant pulse.

You pull back for air and smile against Steve’s soft lips.

“Well, I’m headed for the middle of buttfuck Wisconsin—”

“Just drive!”

Bursts of laughter fill the car until you’re past the checkpoints and well onto the long roads. The clouds continue to turn darker but they’re inviting, alluring, and it’s not insane that both of you desire thunderstorms because they remind you of family.

Steve watches you from the passenger seat, memorizing the contours and edges of your profile. The roots in his heart begin spreading again; the meat of his heart filling with a soothing promise that his time on earth is no longer rootless. He’s dug his feet in, he’s watered all he’s needed to water, and he feels it spreading within him like newly blossomed flowers in the spring. He has a sudden urge to take out his drawing pad to immortalize the way your mouth tilts higher up on the right side when you smile, to record it forever.

But he’ll remember it. He’ll remember well into this timeline, several years down the road, and even when he’s resting in his grave. So he leans his head back against the seat and chooses to watch the curves of every expression you grace him with. He immortalizes the sound of your voice, the taps of your fingers against the steering wheel, and the accented way you say his name.

There’s a long drive ahead, but he’s excited for it. He’s excited for you. Steve promises himself that he’ll ask you a million questions, and give you a million answers, and share a million more stories.

Right now, he just needs to sleep.

THE END.

Taglist: @dumb-ass-3 @justab-eautifulmess @supraveng @mycosmicparadise @missnighttigress

#captainsimagines #Steve Rogers #steve rogers fanfic #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers x reader #reader x steve rogers #avengers fanfic #avengers x reader #marvel fanfiction #chapter ten #to topple a giant #to topple a giant finale #avengers mob fanfic #by Moni

26 notes · View notes

bookshelf-in-progress · 3 years ago

Text

Beneath the Surface: A Retelling of “The Frog Prince”

If I’d had any choice, I never would have taken the underground train. I had accompanied Roger to a political summit in the city of Roshen, but spouses leave after the opening speeches, and since I couldn’t leave Roger without the hovercar, I had to use public transportation. The train--built by the natives decades before humanity absorbed Arateph into the Interplanetary Coalition--was a horrible excuse for technology. It rattled me to my destination, jolted me into an underground station, and left me so shaken that I could feel my bones clattering as I climbed up the stairs to the street.

The crowd surged around me as I emerged onto the sidewalk. There were far too many tephans. You know what Arateph’s natives look like—almost like humans, but it’s an unsettling almost. Their eyes just slightly too high on their heads, their ears just slightly too far back, and hands (ugh) split into only three fingers and a thumb. Like a person shaped by a sculptor with a hazy memory of how humans look. I can take them in small doses, but in groups? My skin was crawling. I powered through the crowd as quickly as possible and tried not to let any of them touch me.

I sped several blocks away from the train station before I realized I was nowhere near my hotel. The buildings in this neighborhood were old, made of crumbling stone bricks that had been stacked by physical labor rather than printed by machine. Half the windows were made of colored glass, and half of those were broken. Garbage rustled in the gutters, holes marred the concrete sidewalks, and all the signs were written in an unfamiliar alphabet. I was, somehow, lost in a tephan neighborhood. And not a nice one.

I turned in circles, trying to figure out which way I’d come. Tephans watched me from storefronts and doorsteps and alleyways, and I kept walking to prevent them from figuring out just how lost I was. I was Priscilla Overton, wife of a Coalition finance minister, pillar of this planet’s elite—and human. Some groups violently opposed human rule, and tephan attacks against humans were on the rise. Who knew what these savages would do if they knew how helpless I was?

I rushed through narrow, dark streets until I reached a wider thoroughfare--a residential area with slightly less grimy apartment buildings. Still not a nice neighborhood, but not a place where I suspected otherworldly rats would tear the flesh from my bones or criminals would murder me for my technology.

I pulled my datapad out of my purse to look for directions. Dead.

I unfolded my wristcomm and tried to call for help. No signal.

I put my fist to my mouth to stifle a frustrated scream. Why did these things happen to me?

I stormed further down the street, cursing Roger for ever bringing us to this planet. We’d been happy on Earth. Comfortable. Respected. With no chance of wandering into streets where aliens stared at you with their off-kilter eyes. The rewards we got for helping to civilize this backward planet weren’t nearly enough to make up for this torture.

I turned a corner and found myself in front of a long, low yellow-brick building with dozens of small windows. The window boxes had flowers in them—fist-sized bundles of tiny red and gold petals. Not something you’d find on Earth, but...nice. Nice enough to pull me down from my fury and make me think I could give my wristcomm another try.

I powered down the wristcomm and stood next to a pink metal lamp post (Arateph has strange color trends) while I waited for it to restart. A metal grate was below my feet. These primitives still used storm drains! I shouldn’t have been surprised, since the road clearly wasn’t made of Draincrete, but it was still jarring. Living on Arateph was a strange combination of living on another world and living in the backward past.

My wristcomm buzzed, still powering up. I was ready to explode with anxiety. There were tephans straggling by—not many of them, but too many and too poorly dressed for my taste. To calm myself, I played with my wedding ring—a gold band with a spray of amethysts and pearls. The ring had been in Roger’s family for centuries. Some days, it felt like my last tie to a familiar world.

I kept my life on Arateph as Earth-like as possible, but it could never be the same as living on Earth. Alien things always lingered at the edges. Trees that turned purple in autumn instead of familiar orange. Toothy red-and-purple-feathered birds that rooted through the trash and woke me with their awful screeching. And around every corner, people who looked like grotesque parodies of my own kind. An entire world conspiring to make me constantly aware of how far I was from home.

My sisters were going about their own lives on Earth, and the few times we could afford appointments at synced comms stations, we found little to talk about--we literally came from different worlds. If Roger and I ever had children--doubtful but possible at our age--our families would only know them as data-images.

This was why I hated being alone on this wretched planet. Gave me far too much time to think about these things.

My wristcomm chimed—finally awake. I unfolded the screen and attempted to bring up my list of contact codes. I found Roger’s; he’d be in the middle of a meeting, but I couldn’t help that. I pressed the code and waited.

A discordant note sounded. No signal. I threw down my hand in frustration. My ring flew down with it. The golden band slipped off my finger, tumbled toward the ground, bounced off the edges of the grate, and fell into the drain.

I gasped in horror and fell to my knees. It couldn’t be, not now.

The ring sparkled in the sunlight, caught on a lip where the structure of the drain met the tube of the deeper pipe. I put my purse on the ground and slid my arm through the grate, but my arm got stuck just above the elbow. The ring was still a foot beyond my reach.

I burst into tears. I couldn’t help it. After the day I’d had—lost among tephans, fighting faulty technology, no hope of help from people who looked like me—this was the last straw. This planet had taken me from my home, my family, my friends, everything familiar, and now it was taking my one reminder of it all. Anybody would have cried.

Long before I felt any relief, a harsh voice broke through my sobs. “Are you finished yet?”

I looked up, furious at whoever was rude enough to interrupt my misery.

A tephan girl sat in the stairwell of the long yellow-brick building next to the gutter. I yelped and reeled back, tears still flowing. Have you ever seen a tephan child? They’re ten times worse than the adults; all their slightly-wrong features stretched even further out of shape, their eyes big and bulging in their heads. This girl was gangly. Her skinny limbs dangled out of baggy green clothes, and a wild brown bush of curls frizzed around her face and over her eyes. By human standards, I’d have judged her to be about twelve years old (though I have no idea if these creatures age like humans). By any race’s standards, she looked positively feral.

I couldn’t believe the creature had spoken to me. “Did you say something?” I asked.

She held up a thick book, bound human-style but with blocky tephan letters on the cover. “Can you cry somewhere else? I’m trying to read.”

She spoke Anglese with only a lightly slurring tephan accent. Somehow, this child spoke the Coalition’s language better than most of the tephan diplomats at Roger’s interminable meetings.

In my shock, I blurted, “How do you know Anglese?”

The creature rolled her eyes. “I go to school. With humans and everything.”

Roger hadn’t been in favor of the integration policy, but it apparently had some benefits. Or would have, had I any interest in talking to the child. Before I could decide if I wanted to reply, I glimpsed the ring again and burst into another involuntary round of tears.

The girl closed her book with a sigh. “What are you crying about anyway?”

I couldn’t tell her that I was crying because of her terrible, technologically backward planet and all its inhabitants, but I had to talk to someone and it was so good to hear human words, even from an alien’s throat. I pointed to the drain. “My ring,” I gasped. “It fell...”

She picked up her book, scrambled down the stairs, and peered in the drain. She huffed and rolled her eyes. “You’re making that much noise over that?”

I drew back my shoulders and snapped, “It’s an irreplaceable heirloom! Centuries of human history! You can’t get those stones anywhere but Earth!”

“Then you should have been more careful with it.”

That made me want to scream, but before I could gather enough breath, the child gathered the book to her chest and turned away. “Can you at least try to keep it down?”

As the girl sat on the building’s stone stairs, the wind tore a scrap of paper out of her book and sent it fluttering. She reached up and snatched it out of the air. My gaze fell on the girl’s arms—long, lanky things that were thinner than human arms. With four-fingered hands that could easily slip between the bars of the grate.

“Wait!” I shouted. “Little tephan girl! What’s your name?”

The girl cast me a dark, distrustful expression, but she finally intoned, “Tanza.”

Not bad, as far as tephan names went. I could pronounce this one. “Tanza,” I said, “Do you think you could reach it?”

The girl shifted her hand behind her back, her face becoming a hard mask. “What do you mean?”

I pointed to her, rambling in my excitement. “Your arms are thinner than mine. Just as long. You could probably reach...”

Her brow furrowed. “You want me to dig in a sewer?”

“Not a sewer,” I said. “A storm drain.”

“Still dirty.” She looked at the storm drain with narrowed eyes.“If I get it for you, will you go away?”

I wanted nothing more. “Immediately.”

"What'll you pay me for it?"

I felt like I'd been hit by a train. "What? Who said I'd pay you?"

The child pointed one long finger at the storm drain. “If I get dirty digging in there, it’ll be my tenth laundry demerit and I don’t get supper. I’m not doing it for nothing!”

The building behind her held one of the few signs I’d seen with Anglese translations beneath the tephan words: Alogath Charity Home for Unwanted Children. I could see why this child was unwanted.

“I don’t carry cash,” I told her.

“Do you have a credit stick?”

I put a protective arm over my purse. “It’ll be deactivated the moment you touch it.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t need the whole stick. Just buy me something with it.”

A truck—a noisy, clanking tephan thing that actually rolled on the ground—roared past us. The glimmer on the ring shifted closer to the drain pipe. If I didn’t act fast…

“What do you want?” I asked her.

“A lot of things.” Her eyes went blank as she stared at imaginings only she could see. Finally, she declared, “A meal at the High Palace.”

She really said that! As if it were a reasonable request! I don’t know how this urchin even knew about human restaurants, much less the finest of fine dining establishments.

“That’s ridiculous!”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I lose a meal, you buy me a replacement. That’s fair.”

“Do you know how much a High Palace meal costs?”

“A lot less than it’ll cost you to replace that ring.”

I growled in frustration. The child had me backed into a corner and she knew it. I shuddered at the thought of taking this…thing into the sparkling society of a High Palace dining room.

I pointed a fierce finger at the child. “Only if you give me the ring immediately. Understand? There’s not a place on the planet a creature like you could sell it without suspicion.”

“I don’t want your ring. I’ll live up to my end of the bargain. And you’ll live up to yours, or that ring’s staying where it is.”

Of course I couldn’t really take her to the High Palace, but one more street-rattling truck could take the ring forever out of anyone’s reach. I’d have agreed if she’d asked for a hovercar.

“Fine!” I shouted. “I’ll buy you the meal. Just save my ring!”

The child placed her book on a clean patch of sidewalk and returned to the edge of the street. I snatched up my purse and stepped aside while the girl laid face down in the gutter. She slid her arm through the grate, all the way up to the shoulder. I held my breath for an eternal moment and didn’t release it until the girl emerged with a ring of gold and amethyst in her hands.

The ring sparkled merrily at me, grimy but whole. I snatched it from Tanza's hands and tucked it into an inner pocket of my gray blazer. I wouldn’t wear it again without resizing it—and not until I was in a neighborhood where I didn’t have to worry about it being stolen from my finger.

The child picked up her book and looked at me expectantly. Demandingly.

I couldn’t give her what she wanted. She was a complete stranger. I’d made the promise under duress. Not a court in the universe would hold me to it. What right did a tephan child have to make such ridiculous demands of a woman of my stature?

“Thank you,” I said. “You did a very good thing.” Then I sped down the street.

The creature was right at my heels. “The High Palace is the other way.”

I didn’t know if she was telling the truth. It didn’t matter. I walked faster.

She yanked at my arm. “You promised me a meal!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I couldn’t get you into the High Palace.”

“A human lady dressed like you? You could get me in if you wanted to.”

I yanked my arm away from her. “What a pity I don’t want to.”

She gave a feral yowl. I started sprinting—or as near as I could manage in the heels I was wearing. The girl kept pace with me. I was a foot taller than her; why couldn’t I outrun her? Could I lose her in her own streets when I was lost myself?

Just when I thought I’d never be able to escape, I rounded a corner and saw the green-and-silver uniform of a Coalition policeman. My heart soared as I raced toward him. Help, protection, guidance, all only a few steps away. Something wonderfully human in this alien world.

“Officer!” I shouted to his retreating back. “Please, I need help!”

The officer stopped and raised a hand. A four-fingered hand. When he turned around, his face had the skewed proportions of a tephan face.

I nearly screamed. I’d stumbled into a nightmare.

The officer said, with the crisp diction of a tephan overcompensating for an accent, “Have you a problem, morik—madam?”

I’d heard that a few tephans had been admitted into the police forces, but I’d never thought I’d meet one. This tephan was young. Wiry and blond. Almost insignificant-looking if it weren’t for the uniform and the stolen sense of authority. Would he help a human?

Tephan or not, he had an obligation to assist the public. “Officer,” I gasped. “I need directions to the nearest train station. I’m trying to get home and this child is harassing me.”

The girl stormed up to him and shrieked, “She’s a liar!”

She shouted a stream of gibberish, and it wasn’t until the officer responded with similar sounds that I realized they were speaking the tephan language. Flowing, musical vowels were interrupted by harsh consonants, like rocks in a river. The sounds sent chills down my spine that only grew fiercer as the officer’s expression grew darker.

When the girl finished, the officer looked at me, not like an innocent victim needing help, but like a criminal who needed hauling to one of their barbaric tephan jails. “You have wronged this girl.”

I lifted my chin. “She’s lying! I’ve done nothing to her!”

“She claims she rescued your ring in exchange for a meal at the High Palace, and you are attempting to break your word.”

“I owe her nothing!”

“Did you promise her a meal?”

I threw out my hands in frustration. “It’s not like we had a contract or anything!”

He raised an eyebrow. “Your promise means nothing without a legal document?”

“She had no right to hold me to a promise. I was desperate!”

He put a brotherly hand on the girl’s shoulder. “And she was kind enough to help you.”

I scoffed. “For a heavy price.”

The child shouted, “It’s one meal!”

The officer examined my face carefully. “You are Priscilla Overton, are you not? The wife of the finance minister?”

My jaw dropped. I’m prominent enough in human circles, but I’d never dared to consider that my face was known among tephans. It terrified me, but I knew it could be my ticket out of this. “I am, and when my husband finds out about how I’ve been treated—”

“Your husband is not a popular man. Not among tephans.”

I had never cared about Roger's reputation among the tephans. These primitives didn’t know what was best for their planet. But that wasn’t something I could say when I was alone in a strange neighborhood with two of them.

The officer continued, “It will not help his reputation if his wife is known as a promise-breaker.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Are you threatening me?”

He leaned toward me and said in low tones, “I am helping you.” He gestured to the street around us. “Do you think I’m the only one who heard the girl’s story?”

I shuddered to see a handful of tephans staring at us from among the crumbling buildings.

The officer said, “The Coalition doesn’t care much for tephan opinion, but if there is enough outcry against one man, even a human representative can be released from his job.”

At first, the thought lifted my spirits. Sent home! To Earth! It was what I’d wanted from the moment we’d stepped foot on this planet. But sent home in disgrace? Roger would have no future in government after such a public failure. It would mean everything we suffered here would be for nothing.

I asked the officer, “You really think they’d protest? Just because I didn’t bow to a child’s ridiculous demands?”

“If a person can’t keep a promise made to a child, how can anything they say be trusted?” His tephan gaze raked over me, like he was dissecting my inner thoughts. “Your people may have different ideas, but tephans still value virtue.”

How dare he—this puffed-up primitive in a human position of power—accuse humanity of being inferior?

My opinion didn’t matter. These creatures thought it a matter of morality that I feed this ragged brat finer cuisine than their planet had ever produced, and nothing I could say would change their minds. Now it seems ridiculous to think that those tephans could ruin us, but in that moment, alone in those unfamiliar streets, seeing how these two strange aliens teamed up against me, I could believe their kind capable of anything.

I looked down at the child. Her big eyes. Her frizzy curls. Her long limbs clutching the book to her chest. The grimy, bog-green clothes that fell short of the wrists and ankles. The smug smirk of a spoiled child who knew she was about to get her way. I had never loathed anyone more in my life.

“Do you have a name?” I asked her. “I’ll need a full name for the restaurant register.”

“I told you,” she said, as though she’d expected me to remember. “It’s Tanza.”

“What’s the rest of your name?” Most tephans I’d met had at least three or four names and were obnoxiously eager to explain them.

The girl's face darkened like I’d offended her. “Just Tanza.”

The officer looked at her with new pity, and even I understood why. You know how important names are to tephans. One name was a badge of dishonor--forever marking her as a child who’d never been claimed by any family, who’d never been given anything beyond the minimum necessary label. Tanza would have felt the shame of that, and I wasn’t quite so surprised that she’d turned into such an irritating little brat.

But I had no room for pity. “Do you have anything better to wear?”

She tugged at the cuffs, trying to stretch them over her arms. “Just more green. And all in the wash. Laundry demerits."

The officer said, "It'll do." He knelt in front of the girl, then looked at me and held out a hand. "I'll bet a fine lady like you carries all kinds of cleaning tools."

I sighed and handed him the nanocleanser from my purse. I showed him the power button, then he waved the metal wand over the stains on Tanza’s clothes. After a few seconds, the stains evaporated and the dirt from the gutter fell away as dry sand.

“Good as new,” the officer said, while Tanza gaped at her freshly-cleaned clothes. These primitives were astounded by the simplest things.

The child brushed through her wild curls with her fingers, swept them back over her shoulders, then stood with her hands at her side and feet apart, as if presenting herself for inspection.

I sighed. “I guess it’s as good as we’ll get. Let’s get this over with.”

Tanza tucked her book beneath her arm and her eyes sparkled with victory.

I looked balefully at the tome. “The book’s coming with?”

“Well, I can’t leave it here.”

I considered insisting that she take it back to the home, but I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.

“Fine,” I sighed. “Bring the book.”

I was seriously planning on entering the dining room of the High Palace with an alien who thought the proper attire included a set of green work clothes and a giant book. I had gone insane.

The officer stepped aside and gestured for both of us to walk past him. “I’ll escort you there.”

And there went my last hope of escape.

The officer escorted us through winding streets, side alleys and dried up canals until we finally crossed a bridge into a civilized portion of the city with human-designed buildings. One sprawling building of white stone-print bore a black sign with elegant script that proclaimed it The High Palace.

As we approached the building, Tanza suddenly skittered across my path. I almost tripped over her feet.

I glared at her as she fell into step on my right side. “What are you doing?”

She glanced warily to the street corner. “Kids from school.”

I glanced back and saw a pre-teen human boy with short black hair and immaculate clothing. He leaned against the corner of a building while he spoke with a handful of human friends. Well-groomed, friendly, human—why couldn’t that child have rescued my ring? I’d have been glad to take him as a guest to the High Palace.

As I engaged in fruitless wishes, the human children disappeared, and I arrived with my tephan escorts at the entrance doors of the High Palace. Wide glass windows showed a sparkling three-dimensional display of Old Paris in springtime. Tanza studied the images of bakeries and floral shops and fluttering Earth songbirds, as if attempting to dissect the technology. The few people passing by looked askance at the tephan pair with me.

Tanza asked, “Are we going in?”

I looked back at the officer. He just smiled at me and waved us toward the door.

I took a deep breath, put a hand behind the girl’s shoulders and pushed her inside.

The interior was a vision of white and cream: pale artwork on the walls, a glass fountain trickling crystal-clear water, rugs in intricate shades of vanilla, beige and ivory upon white marble floors.

The street sounds disappeared when the door closed behind us. No foot traffic, no rumbling vehicles, no screeching of alien animals. Just the hush of quiet voices, the gentle strings of a European symphony and the trickle of the fountain. It was like we'd stepped into a different world. My world. Except for the alien next to me.

The host standing guard at the dining room entrance stared at Tanza, then looked at me with the horrified compassion of someone trying to tell you there’s a wasp on your shoulder. “Madam, are you aware…?”

The only way to get through this with any dignity was to brazen my way through it. “I’d like a table, please. Two seats. For Priscilla Overton and guest.”

I thought his eyes would pop out of his head. “Your guest? You mean she—?”

“Is my guest. Is that a problem?”

He stared as if incredulous that I didn’t know the problem. I didn’t even blink.

Finally, he put a stylus to his datapad. “Does this guest have a name?”

The girl stood as straight and dignified as I did. “Tanza.”

He poised his stylus over the datapad. “Anythin—”

“Just Tanza.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he set his stylus aside. “Two seats for Priscilla Overton and…Tanza.”

The host led us into a blindingly beautiful dining room. A full wall of windows overlooked a river that glittered in the afternoon sun. The other walls were meshed with holonet that made the room look like a small nook in a formal European garden, with the tables and chairs surrounded by roses, tulips, lilies, and a thousand other flowers whose names I’d forgotten in my years away from Earth. Real potted plants scattered among the tables added to the reality of the image and the string quartet played some of the finest music from Earth's history. The room was a bastion of civilization in this barbaric world. A taste of home. It was more filling than any food could be.

The host led us to windowside tables with an excellent view of the river. My heart lifted. Prime seating—a sign of my place on this planet, which not even a tephan could take away. And it was flanked by two potted gardenia plants that would screen my guest from the handful of other diners.

I took the right-hand seat and motioned for Tanza to take the chair that sat closest to the shrub. Its branches brushed her as she sat down.

The host left us as a waiter handed us our menus. As Tanza sat down, she reached toward the branch above her head, plucked a single white gardenia blossom, shoved it in her mouth, and began to chew.

I froze in terror, then glanced at the waiter. Had he noticed?

If he had, he’d been well trained. He didn’t even stumble in his recitation of the day’s lunch specials.

“Would you like a few minutes to make a selection?” the waiter asked.

“Yes, yes,” I said, waving him away before my guest could decide to take another nibble of the greenery.

He bowed and vanished toward the kitchen.

When he was gone, Tanza spit the flower into a gold-embroidered napkin and wiped her tongue on the far corner. While her mouth contorted in the most disturbing shape, those tephan eyes glared at me. “That’s not a spiceblossom bush.”

“No,” I said, my tone stretched with scorn. “It’s a gardenia. And the blossoms aren’t for eating.”

She wiped her tongue on another corner of the napkin. “Why do they put flowers by the table if you’re not supposed to eat them?”

“For decoration,” I hissed. “And if you can’t behave in a civilized manner, we’ll leave this restaurant, promise or no promise.”

“Well, I’m sorry I don’t know all the fancy human rules of eating.”

Her sarcasm made my blood boil—until I saw her blush. She was prickly, yes, but unless I was very much mistaken, she was embarrassed. Now she was lost in an alien world, and I’d experienced that sensation too recently not to feel a little sorry for her.

But only a little. She had demanded this, after all, at great expense to me. Let her suffer the consequences.

“Rule one,” I said. “Don’t put anything in your mouth unless I tell you to.” I tugged her napkin out of her four-fingered hands before she could run it across her tongue again. “That includes napkins.”

With the napkin gone, Tanza's tongue was on full display in front of her chin as she kept the taste as far out of her mouth as possible. I don’t know if you know this, but tephan tongues can stretch further and thinner than human tongues, and this child made hers come almost to a point. I couldn’t look at that for the entire meal, but I couldn’t have the child destroying all the table linens either.

I waved over a waiter carrying a carafe of water, and I pointed him to our empty glasses. He leaned over our table and filled my glass almost to the brim. Then he turned and saw my guest—her pale skin, green clothes, those big eyes and that long, thin tephan tongue. He yelped, recoiled, dropped the carafe, and knocked over my glass. Water flooded the table and spilled onto my lap.

The child yelped, shouted something in her alien language and scrambled to pull her book out of the path of the water. An old man at the next table dropped his fork and stared at her. Fortunately, the few other diners in the room were too far away to see.

I hushed the child and found myself in the strange position of apologizing to the waiter while I was the one standing drenched. I didn’t know what reznat meant, but I was sure it wasn’t a nice thing for a tephan to say to her waiter.

“Could we...” I asked as I ran the nanocleanser over my clothes, “have another table?”

“C...certainly, madam,” he said, looking at Tanza as if waiting for her to pounce. I half-expected it myself, from the fierce way she curled around that book.

Once my clothes were dry, the waiter brought us to an empty table nearer the center of the room. No window view. No shielding plants. But it was further from the kitchen—where I was certain all the servers would be gossiping about us as soon as this klutz left us.

Once we were settled with new water glasses and dry menus, the server scurried away as if the girl were a poison frog. Tanza muttered alien words while she brushed water from the edges of her book, and gulped water until she got the taste of the flower out of her mouth. Then she glared at me and reverted back to Anglese. “He almost wrecked my book.”

After watching her lug that book around for an hour, my curiosity—and frustration—were mounting. “What’s that book about, anyway? And why are you willing to curse out waiters over it?”

“It’s a biography of Queen Marastel.” She set the book deliberately on the table, and looked around the room as if daring waiters to spill more water on it. “And it’s mine. I finally have a book of my own, and I don’t want it wrecked by an idiot with a water pitcher.”

The book was thick. What I’d seen of the print was small. It was not a children’s history book. I hadn’t expected this grimy alien child to be the biography type. Was there a developmental disorder that gave children irrational attachments to academic texts?

“Who is Queen Marastel?” I asked.

Tanza showed me the book’s cover. It had a picture of a young tephan woman—in her mid-twenties, to my human eyes—with a pale, narrow face, and deep eyes. The woman's dark hair was covered with an elaborate system of veils, and she wore a dress covered in so many white jewels and so much gray and white beadwork that I almost couldn’t see the ivory fabric underneath.

“Her,” Tanza said. “The last queen of Arateph.”

“Arateph had queens?” I asked in surprise. They hadn’t had queens when humanity had found them. It must have been part of their history.

I’d never thought of this planet as having a history. If I’d considered it at all, I suppose I’d assumed that they’d been muddling along the way we’d found them for the last few centuries, waiting for us to show up and drag them into modern civilization.

Tanza said, “The planet was ruled by a monarchy until about forty years before the Coalition showed up.”

“The whole planet?”

Tanza sat straighter and her diction became crisper—she looked like a little lecturer at one of those cultural symposiums that Roger and I always had to make appearances at. “After Kepha joined the other eleven kingdoms, the entire planet was united under the monarchy for three hundred and fifty-eight years.”

Not just a monarchy, but a planet-spanning monarchy. Such a thing hadn’t happened in all of human civilization, and these people had accomplished it when they were still on their home planet, believing themselves alone in the universe. I hadn’t thought such an archaic form of government could rule an entire continent without overextending itself, yet it had ruled their world for centuries. For the first time, I found myself wanting to learn something from the tephan people. How had such a government come about? How had they managed it?

Why did the woman on the cover look so sad?

I didn’t ask any of these questions because just then, a waiter appeared—not the water-spilling one, thank goodness. (I didn’t trust my guest to look at that one without throwing something at him.) This one was older, with crisp lines in his clothes and face. He looked like he could have won a staring contest with a statue—perfect unshakable professionalism.

“Are you ready to order, Madam Overton?” He didn’t even look at my guest.

Tanza’s eyes brightened as she picked up the menu, flipping through the pages to examine the options.

I asked her, “What you want to eat?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had human food.”

My jaw fell. “You wanted to come here and you didn’t even know what you wanted to eat?”

She gave me a withering stare, as though I was the stupid one. “I wanted to try it.” She closed the menu. “Besides, you said I can only eat what you tell me to eat. So what am I allowed to eat, Priscilla?”

I picked up the menu and realized with horror that I didn’t know the answer. What could tephans eat? Were there foods that were delicacies to us and poison to them?

I asked the waiter, “Do you have any suggestions?” I doubted these people served many tephans, but food was their area of expertise, and we were on Arateph.

The waiter looked at Tanza for the first time. “I’ve heard that people of her...race...are rather fond of the amphibian.” He pointed to an entry on my appetizer list. “The frog legs are popular. And a specialty of the chef.”

I hadn’t eaten frog in years. But if I could choke it down for Roger’s political dinners, I could manage it to satisfy a petulant tephan child. “We’ll have that.”

“Excellent. Is there anything else?”

I didn’t want to give Tanza any more chances to upset the wait staff. “No. Just get us our food as soon as possible.”

As the waiter walked away with our menus, an afternoon crowd filled the dining room; within a few minutes, we went from being nearly alone to being surrounded by other diners. I could tell by the sideways glances that most of them noticed my tephan guest. And I could tell that Tanza noticed them. She sat silently at first, growing more and more tense as we all tried to ignore each other, but when a bald man at the next table stared at her for several long moments, she finally snapped.

“Can you stop it?” she barked at him. “You’re giving me the shivers.” The man, red-faced, studied his menu as if his life depended on it.

Tanza turned back to the table, muttering, “You humans look so creepy when you stare.”

I was too stunned to scold her. I’d never considered that the distaste for the other race’s looks went both ways. If she’d lived her life in a mostly-tephan neighborhood, a human face would look just as slightly wrong to her as a tephan face did to me. It sounds strange, but the idea that she found us ugly made me like her more. It certainly made her more relatable.

But I couldn’t have her making a spectacle. “Please, don’t bother the other diners.”

She seemed ready to protest, but I spoke before she could argue. “That woman in your book. You said she was the last queen of Arateph. What happened?”

Her eyes lit up, rude diners forgotten, as she flipped open the book. “Revolution. The People’s House took over and had her and the king executed.”

I shivered. “So violent. And so young to die.”

Tanza gave me a confused look, then glanced at the cover and understood. “Oh, that’s from her first years as queen. She was almost seventy when she died.”

I pictured the woman on the cover with hair turned gray, but the same dark, sad eyes, facing an angry mob as they led her to the scaffold or the firing squad or however these people killed their leaders. It was brutal, but humanity had often been equally brutal, so I couldn’t dismiss it as their backward alien culture.

Tanza flipped through the pages. “They say she was weak and self-absorbed, but this book gives her more depth.” She looked at a page near the cover. “Verai’s a good scholar. Uses lots of primary sources. Very readable.”

Now that her interest was unleashed, Tanza talked on and on, taking me through an alien history, the tale of a queen beset by tragedy upon tragedy as she helped her husband rule a crumbling planet and struggled to produce an heir. All the scholars at those Coalition events were nowhere near as enthralling as this alien child sharing her favorite book.

As fascinating as the story was, I was even more entranced by the pictures—dozens were embedded through the text. Tanza condescended to turn the book around so I could see. It was grandeur like I’d never seen, buildings in alien colors and shapes and patterns, but bringing to mind the grandest palaces in human history, from Versailles to the Forbidden City to the red spires of the North Martian Emperor's summer home. The people in the pictures wore elaborate, brightly-colored clothes, and feasted upon vast tables full of unfamiliar food—including blossoms from the potted trees next to the tables. No primitive civilization could have created such a culture. No wonder this alien urchin was enthralled, and no wonder she’d seized the chance to attend the closest modern equivalent to such feasts that she knew of.

The return of the stone-faced waiter snapped me back to reality. He planted himself next to the table, passing blank-faced judgement by how thoroughly he didn’t look at the book or the way we bent over it. Face burning, I sat back in my chair and felt ashamed to be caught hanging upon an alien’s story like a dim-witted child.

Tanza swept the book under the table and sat primly as the waiters placed the food in front of us. First a gold charger, then the crystal plates bearing the food—ten frog legs, crisply fried in butter and lemon, dotted with parsley and surrounded by a handful of greens.

Half a dozen nearby heads surreptitiously craned in our direction.

The waiters set a similar platter in front of me, and after I’d arranged my napkin on my lap, I thanked the waiter, picked up the silverware, and began to cut the meat.

Tanza watched me carefully as the waiters left. She picked up her silverware, examined it closely—did tephans even have silverware?—and tried to imitate me, but when she touched the food, the prim little professor became the feral street child again. She still used the silverware, but that was her only concession to decency as she gobbled her foot, downing the frog legs almost whole. The butter sauce ringed her mouth and splattered on her clothing. She made the most inhuman snorting noises as she swallowed.

Now everyone was staring—the red-faced man at the next table, his three dining companions, the ten people sitting at the other nearby tables, the waiters who'd halted on their way to the kitchen. People murmured to their companions. Diners flagged down waiters and asked discreetly if there was something that could be done.

My face burned in embarrassment, but I couldn’t stop the girl. With all these eyes watching me—watching me, Priscilla Overton, entertaining an animal at the finest restaurant in Roshen—I couldn’t even speak. I wanted to sink into the carpet. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to run from the restaurant, flee from this planet, and return to comfortable, civilized Earth. But mortification left me paralyzed. I just sat and did nothing as Tanza devoured her food and licked every last drop of sauce from the plate.

Finally, she dropped her plate back on the charger and leaned back with satisfaction. Her big tephan eyes were bright. “That was amazing.” She licked all eight of her fingers, so lost in the euphoria of her food that she was unaware of the horrified crowd surrounding us. She looked at my plate with confusion. “You’ve barely touched yours.”

I let my fork drop to the tablecloth. “I’m not very hungry.”

Her eyes brightened. “Can I have it?”

“No.”

She gave me a disapproving look. “You can’t waste food. At least try to eat it.”

After that display, I’d never be able to stomach another frog leg. “It doesn’t appeal to me.”

“Then I’ll eat it.” Before I could react, she leaned across the table, speared a frog leg with her fork, and was chewing it before she settled back in her chair.

I wanted to scream. I could have tried to correct her, but I had no idea where to begin, and by now, it was far too late.

The stone-faced waiter leaned over my shoulder. He was pale and his eyes were wide—apparently there were some things that could rattle him. “Madam, if you cannot eat your food here, we can send it home with you.”

He was offering me a doggy bag. The finest restaurant in the city, which usually recoiled in horror from such vulgar practices, was so desperate for me to leave that the staff were sending me home with leftovers. I was, in effect, being kicked out.

I didn’t even care. “Yes, thank you.”

In seconds, another waiter appeared, carrying a green box that had probably held some kind of produce in the kitchen, repurposed into this restaurant’s first take-home container. I sat in silence as they poured the frog legs into the container, then I handed them my credit stick, and when I examined the payment screen of their datapad, I added on a gratuity that cost twice as much as the food did. Perhaps with a tip like that, they’d let me show my face here again. At the moment, I doubted I’d ever want to.

I gathered my purse and stood. That creature gathered her ridiculous book and followed me, smiling, out of the dining room.

When we reached the lobby, I thrust the box into the child's hands. “Take it. I don’t want it.”

The girl's eyebrows rose. “You don’t? Are you sure? It’s really good.”

“I think it appeals more to tephan tastes.”

She thanked me as though I’d given her all the jewels that the queen on her book was wearing, then tucked the box under one arm and the book under the other.

I put a hand behind her shoulders and pushed her out the door. When we emerged onto the sunlit sidewalk, all my frustration exploded.

“There!” I snapped, giving her one last push beyond the awning of the restaurant. “You’ve had your meal. Take your food and go!”

She stumbled forward, then stared at me in bewilderment. “What set you off?”

My laugh was tinged with hysteria. “What set me off? Maybe I’m just a little peeved at being disgraced in front of some of the richest people in the city by a tephan who gobbles her food like an animal.”

She stood with her mouth open, struck speechless. Those big green eyes showed surprisingly human-looking hurt. “Was it that bad? I know I’m not fancy, but...”

“You can’t tell me you didn’t notice all those people staring.”

The creature turned red. She stammered, “I thought it was because I’m tephan. You told me not to bother them.”

I couldn’t bear to have that creature looking up at me with those big, sad eyes. I didn’t want to feel sorry for her. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Maybe in a few years they’ll let me dine there again.” I pushed her steadily but firmly away from the restaurant. “I have more than paid you in full. Thank you for saving my ring. Goodbye.”

Still looking baffled, the girl trudged away from the restaurant. I walked in the other direction.

My anger started fading the moment the child was out of my line of sight. Each step away from the restaurant felt like a step back into a normal world. There were humans around me. I could read the signs. I even knew how to find my way to the train station. I’d be back at the hotel within the hour and I could pretend that this whole horrible afternoon had been a bad dream.

Light footsteps skittered behind me. A green-clad tephan child with a book and a box appeared to my left.

I yelped and reeled back. “What are you—?”

Tanza fell into step beside me. “I’m really very sorry for embarrassing you. I need to make it up to you. Let me show you the way to the train station—”

My previous anger felt like a candle flame compared to the volcano that those words set off within me. “Leave me alone!” I towered over her in my fury. “I gave you your meal! I fulfilled the promise! Now leave!” I stormed away, but at the first sound of footsteps behind me, I whirled around. “I swear, if you take another step toward me, I will see you arrested!”

The child’s face hardened into the petulant mask that I recognized from my first sight of her from the gutter. “Sorry for helping.”

“Helping,” I mocked. “Your help comes at too high a price.” I gave a short, cynical laugh. “I see through your plan. You think you can trail after me demanding handouts all day. Well, I have had enough.” I secured my purse over my shoulder like I was holstering a weapon. “Get out of here!”

Face white and lips tight with anger, Tanza bowed her head and turned away. I strode away in triumph.

An old man looked at me sideways, shaking his head. I made it to the end of the block before the guilt hit me. The old man had reason to disapprove. Tanza had made an offer of help, and I’d responded by screaming at her in a public street. Perhaps she had felt remorse. As embarrassing as it had been to be seen with a girl who ate like an animal, how much worse would it feel to be the one who’d done it? I thought of those pictures in that book of hers. Would I have fared any better at a tephan feast?

I turned around. “Tanza, wait—“

“Hey, Tanza!”

The voice, coming from the other end of the block, was louder, harsher, and younger than mine. A crowd of boys stampeded down the sidewalk—all humans, about twelve years old, and led by a boy with slick black hair and gray and white clothes in the latest crisply-cut fashions. The children Tanza had noticed when we’d first arrived at the restaurant.

Tanza—standing near where I’d left her—tried to move away from them, but hesitated when she saw me standing at the other end of the block. In seconds, the boys had her surrounded.

The ringleader prodded her shoulder. “Escaped from your cage, Tanza? What are you doing among civilized people?”

His yellow-haired friend poked at the box of frog legs. “Looks like she’s looting houses.”

Tanza yanked the box away. “I’m not a thief!”

The ringleader tugged at the book under her other arm. “That’s a big book. Still playing at being smart, small-brain?”

Tanza pulled it back. “Don’t touch that!”

One boy pried up her arm while two others slid the book away from her. “Ooh, it’s a small-brain book!” the ringleader said in mock delight. He flipped through the pages with dirt-stained fingers. “It’s even written in their pretend letters.”

Tanza snarled, “Give that back!”

He slammed it shut and pulled it toward his chest. “Why? Scared it’s too complicated for me?”

“It’s mine!”

He looked at it thoughtfully. “Is it, though? I don’t think a charity case like you can afford a big book like this.”

“It’s mine!” she repeated, nearly shrieking now. “Teacher gave it to me!”

“Bet she stole it,” said a voice from the crowd. “She’s just a grubby little nameless charity house thief.”

Tanza, driven past the breaking point as the ringleader held the book just beyond her reach, shrieked in outrage and pounced. She tore at the book while the boys yanked it away from her. The individuals disappeared into a storm of arms and legs and paper. Five against one. I watched in terror for a few moments before thinking to call for help. I had my wristcomm. I could hit the emergency button….

It was over before I could lift my wrist. Tanza was sprawled across the sidewalk, surrounded by the shredded, dirty pages of her book. Her box had been torn open. Fleshy frog legs were scattered on the ground as though the animals had been thrown against the wall.

The boys, barely scuffed, loomed over her, mocking. They lifted the empty binding of the book like a trophy, cheering over it and slapping each other on the back. Then, satisfied with their destruction, they ran off the way they came, leaving their victim on the ground.

Numbly, I shuffled toward her, feeling lost in a different sort of nightmare--one where I was one of the monsters. Those boys had been waiting for her. If she’d had an ulterior motive for coming after me to apologize, she had been hoping for protection, not handouts. And I’d thrown her to the wolves.

Tanza pushed herself onto her knees and pulled the pages toward her, like a mother hen gathering up chicks. She looked more vulnerable than I’d ever seen her, eyes wide and glistening, her face slack with horror. Her emotionless mask was gone. She pressed an armload of shredded pages to her chest, curled into a fetal position, and cried.

Curled up like that, face and hands hidden, she didn’t look like a tephan. Not like the rude negotiator at the gutter. Not like the little professor or even the animal at the table. She was just a friendless little girl, surrounded by the wreckage of her most prized possession.

I thought of the last time I’d seen her lying in the street, arm threaded through a storm drain while she reached for my ring. The ring was in my pocket, safe and whole. How had I thanked her for her service? Tried to duck out of the promise, treated her like a savage, screamed at her in the streets, and left her at the mercy of bullies.

The ring I loved so much was one of dozens that I’d brought from Earth, and my day had been destroyed at the thought of losing it. This book was the only one she owned, and it was gone forever. I couldn’t imagine her distress.

How had I thought her the savage?

My stomach twisted with loathing, and for the first time all day, it was directed toward myself. I could fool myself no longer; I’d done nothing to be proud of today.

But that could change.

Approaching Tanza with soft, careful steps, I crouched next to her. “Tanza?” I brushed a finger across her shoulder.

The girl recoiled from my touch and turned away. She came up on her feet, but stayed scrunched into a ball, protecting her pages and hiding her red eyes.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

Her voice was thick with tears. “Go away.”

I grabbed one of the pages. “I can help—“

She whirled her head toward me and snapped, “I said go away!”

I stumbled back, and for a moment I was ready to do as she wanted. This was not my problem and she didn’t want my help.

Then my good sense returned, and I barked, “Don’t be stupid. I’m not going to leave a child in the street.” I started gathering pages. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

I looked around for help. The crowd had merely started taking a wider berth around us, but after a moment, I saw the green and silver flash of a Coalition policeman’s uniform—on a policeman with tephan hands.

I’d never thought I’d be glad to see that officer again. I waved toward him, shouting, “Officer! Please, can you help?”

My voice startled the officer, and his surprise turned to concern as he neared and saw the devastation. He crouched next to us and asked me, “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing,” I said. The twist in my stomach reminded me that those words weren’t the complete truth, so I amended, “I didn’t destroy the book. There was a group of boys...”

The officer had already turned his attention to Tanza, speaking low-toned words in their tephan language. When they finished, his demeanor toward me was less hostile but more disappointed.

“Now you want to help her?” he asked.

That now was an accusation that cut like a knife. I deserved it, but I met his gaze boldly. “Yes,” I said, daring him to deny me.

He spoke a few more words to Tanza, then told me, “Gather pages.”

He helped Tanza to her feet while I gathered what I could of the paper. Torn edges, smeared alien words, and pictures of long-dead royals who stared at me with accusing eyes. The queen providing food to the poor, shelter to the homeless, clothes to shivering orphans. She’d done all that and wound up executed; looking at Tanza and the tephan officer, I couldn’t help wondering how much worse they thought I deserved.

When I’d gathered all the pages I could into a crinkling, crunching mess, I followed in silence as the officer led us along the route we’d taken, every block seeming as long as a mile. When we reached the familiar yellow building where everything had started, I gave the pages to the officer, and he motioned for Tanza to go toward the stair of the building.

“Is there anything else I can do?” I asked Tanza, almost desperate.

Tanza just turned her head away.

“I think you’ve done enough,” the officer said. The words were soft, but I heard the condemnation in them.

I shouldered my purse more firmly, avoided Tanza’s eyes, then asked the officer, “Can you tell me where to find a train station?”

The officer pointed down the street in the opposite direction from where I’d originally approached the building. “The nearest one is just beyond the Killing Square.”

The words shocked me out of the numbness I’d been feeling. “The what?”

But the officer was already rattling off directions, and I was too busy memorizing the steps—left, then right, past the purple tower, turn two blocks after the bridge—to ask what exactly a Killing Square was. I didn’t think a uniformed police officer would purposely send me to my death, so I assumed something had been lost in the translation.

“Thank you, officer,” I said when he finished. Then I looked at the girl and added, “Thank you, Tanza.”

Tanza's green clothes—now scuffed from battle—hung loosely off her slumped shoulders. After a long moment, she raised her head and looked at me from beneath lowered lids. “Goodbye,” she said.

Her tone meant, “Good riddance.”

My pride flared at that. I thought I'd been rather compassionate--helping her gather the pages, hailing the officer, even trailing her all the way to her home to make sure that she arrived safely. Surely she could show a little gratitude.

But as I walked through the narrow, battered streets, it was my own rudeness that haunted me. Snatching the ring from her fingers as though afraid she'd contaminate it. Fleeing from her rather than fulfilling the promise. Leaving her to fight five against one when a moment's action on my part could have saved her. All day, I'd thought myself better than her because I was human, but my actions had been inhumane.

I tried to put it behind me. There was nothing else I could do. The book was gone, beyond repair. Tanza probably never wanted to see me again. It was best to move on and forget all about the tephan girl and the dark-eyed queen that so fascinated her.

Then I turned the corner and came face to face with Queen Marastel. A picture on the gray stone wall, larger than life, showed the woman whose face I’d seen a hundred times in Tanza’s book. I stopped in my tracks, mesmerized. The image was a photo, more or less, but not like any photo or holo-image I’d ever seen from human technology. The colors were more muted than reality, while a strange vibrant shimmer added depth to the image, so it looked as though I could walk inside the pictured scene with a little effort.

The queen’s hair had gone completely gray, her jewels were gone, and her vividly colored gowns had been replaced by a white fabric sheath. What I noticed most were her eyes—they were striking in most of the book photos, but here, her gaze knocked the breath from me. Surely no human gaze could show that much sorrow.

How was she here? Would this queen haunt me wherever I went on this planet, reminding me of my sins against the child?

I noticed a small plaque next to the picture, with a tiny Anglese translation at the bottom, which explained that the image showed Queen Marastel in front of this very building, moments before she was led to death in the center of the square. “Oh,” I said aloud, turning slowly to examine the streets and buildings around me as understanding struck. “The Killing Square.”

This was the center of the revolution that had ended this planet’s monarchy. It was a hauntingly bland neighborhood; no sign of the violent destruction that Tanza had told me of, not after more than eighty years’ worth of repairs. But pictures and plaques decorated almost every building I saw, telling the story that time had erased. Seven brothers from Kepha stood scarred but proud before a jeering band of executioners. A red-haired older woman tried to cheer up three children as armed rebels escorted them all to prison. The king himself stood tall and white-haired, every line of his face showing his fierce love for his planet even as his people tried to kill him.

I could list examples all day, but I could never make you understand the feeling of being there, gazing at these people in the moments before their deaths. They were young and old, tall and short, had hair and skin in every imaginable shade. They came from regions I hadn’t known existed--desert wastes and mountain ranges and snow-covered tundras. These people had families they’d hated to lose, homes that were as familiar to them as the cottage by the Atlantic had once been to me. They’d made mistakes and suffered for it. They, too, had regrets.

Fear, anger, hatred, love, bravery, cowardice--every possible human emotion filled those alien faces, and it didn’t take long for me to stop seeing them as alien at all. They were people, who’d lived on this planet just as I did, who had loved it the way I’d loved Earth.

I’d never even wanted to know about this world before, but now I was desperate to understand every story these pictures presented. Without Tanza’s book providing context, would I even have paused to look at these pictures? Would I have cared about these people? I doubted I would have. Tanza's childish enthusiasm for a book had upended my world--as I’d upended hers.

With that thought, I found myself back before the picture of the queen. Her sorrowful eyes pinned me in place. It seemed, to my overworked imagination, that she was disappointed in me.

I glared at her. “What else do you want me to do?” I demanded. “What’s done is done. I can’t fix it. I don’t even know what book it was.”

In that hall of death, it seemed a pitiful excuse.

I tore my eyes away from the picture, and my gaze landed upon a door I’d wandered past in my history-induced daze. It was brown and wide, with a sign above proclaiming it the entrance to the Museum of the Alogath Execution Center. I wandered toward it, then froze in my tracks only a few steps away. Next to the entrance was a window—and through the window, I saw books.

This was a museum! Museums—even tephan ones—had gift shops! If there was one place in this world that sold books about Queen Marastel, it was likely the museum that displayed her face on a public street.

I raced into the building, almost giddy, and found the shop just beyond the main entrance. The tiny nook held pamphlets and trinkets, and at the front of the room, a big, silver BookVend machine printed and bound volumes with lightning speed.

I raced through the door. The tephan woman behind the counter dropped her book in surprise as I leaned, panting, against her counter.

The woman asked in smooth Anglese, “Can I help you?”

I stood up and tried to look less like a maniac. “Yes,” I said, in my best politician’s-wife voice. “I need you to help me find a book.”

The door to the charity home loomed large in front of me. I hesitated with my hand before the door. Was I doing something stupid? The freshly-printed book under my arm might not change the fact that the child would want nothing to do with me.

This wasn't about me. I had to try.

My knock was answered by a pale, knobby tephan woman with wisps of blond hair hanging around her face. She stared when she saw my face and clothes. “Madam?”

“Excuse me," I asked, "but does a girl named Tanza live here?”

The woman's eyes glazed over as she struggled to translate my Anglese.

I tried again, speaking more slowly. “Is Tanza here?”

“Tanza…” She trailed off in confusion before her eyes lit with understanding. “Oh!” Gently, she corrected, “It’s pronounced Tanza.”

It sounded exactly the same to me. I was starting to believe those people who said tephans could speak and hear sounds that humans couldn't.

The woman called into the building, and after a storm of voices and footsteps, a slight tephan girl in green clothes came to the door, her curls making a curtain over her still-puffy eyes.

Tanza scowled when she saw me. “What do you want?”

I took a deep breath and stepped forward. “I wanted to apologize,” I said. “For what happened. How I treated you. You saved my ring and I treated you like an animal. That was wrong.”

Tanza crossed her arms. “Glad you noticed.”

This child kept finding ways to irritate me, but I swallowed my words before I snapped back in response.

I pulled a book from under my arm. “I know this doesn’t erase what you went through, but I wanted to undo some of the harm that I’ve done today.” I handed her the book, which had the same cover as the book she’d brought to the restaurant. “This is for you.”

Warily, Tanza examined the queen on the cover. “It looks the same.” She flipped through the pages, and her eyes brightened. “It is the same!”

“I printed a new copy. There’s a BookVend down the street. You rescued my ring; it was only fair that I replace your book.”

"Yes, but I didn't think..." She examined the book in amazement before turning that astonished gaze upon me. "This is really mine? To keep?"

“Yes, of course,” I said.

Tanza clutched the book to her chest and smiled at me, positively radiant. That smile transformed her from a feral orphan into a polite little princess.

I couldn’t keep from smiling back.

“Thank you,” Tanza said. Then she saw the other book under my arm. “What’s that one?” she asked, as though hoping it was for her and not daring to ask.

I pulled it out and showed her the cover. It showed the same image of the queen, but this time above an Anglese title—The Queen of Sorrow. “The Anglese edition,” I explained. “This one’s for me.”

If I’d thought she was happy before, it was nothing compared to her radiance now. “You’re going to read it?”

I shrugged. "I couldn't resist. You made it sound so interesting."

She bounced on the balls of her feet. “Wait until you get to Chapter Five. That’s when she first meets the king, and you would not believe the uproar it causes."

She set down her book, grabbed mine, and started flipping through the pages, desperate to show me the start of the story.

From down the hall, an adult voice barked, “Tanza! Don’t bother the woman. I’m sure she’s busy.”

Embarrassed, Tanza closed the book. She pushed it back into my hands. “Sorry. I don’t get to talk about it much.”

“I don’t mind. You’re an excellent instructor.”

Her eyes brightened with hesitant hope. “I could show you more. If you want.”

“I’d be grateful.”

Tanza called over her shoulder. “Garsa! Can I have a visitor in the study room?”

The tephan woman appeared in the entryway. She blinked, taken aback. “As long as she leaves before supper."

Tanza looked up at me. “Do you want to stay?”

No tephan had ever asked me that question before. In all my time here, I’d been an outsider. An invader. I’d never had the desire to be anything more. But those words, coming from Tanza, felt like a welcome.

I was glad to receive it.

I put a hand on Tanza’s shoulder and smiled. “I’d love to.”

#arateph #fairy tale retelling #sci-fi

49 notes · View notes

alecmagnuslwb · 3 years ago

Text

Marriage is a Contract and My Signature is Unreadable

Read on AO3

John’s never seen a bride wear fishnets with their stunning white dress, but Dinah Lance is pulling it off somehow. Admittedly though John hasn’t seen that many brides that weren’t ghosts or the earthly demonic embodiment of some sort of hell beastie so maybe his experience in weddings and bridal wear is a bit skewed.

Of course he’s also a bit skewed because in his eyes no one at this wedding, not even the bride no disrespect to the woman who’s by far one of the few supers he can truly say he likes, is as stunning as his date. Zatanna sits beside him at their table, the reception in full swing now, her legs crossed the deep navy-blue asymmetrical dress she’s wearing showing off a tantalizing bit of her leg. Her tattoo, the twin to his peeks out from the front of the dress right next to the silver lining at the edges where the dress straps around her neck. She’s a fucking vision his Zatanna.

“I can’t believe they finally did it,” Zatanna says gliding her silver French tipped nails with little crescent moons on them along her glass of champagne. “I really thought Lois and Clark would be the only ones to take the plunge.”

Supers aren’t known for tying the knot, their world is so complicated and their relationships so wild they never find the time to actually get around to it. The fact that Dinah and Oliver managed to not only successfully get engaged, but plan a real wedding and have the ceremony without any major incidents happening in the middle is a miracle if John’s ever actually seen one.

“Who do you think’ll be next?” John says surveying the room. Every hero he’s ever met and ever butted heads with is here out of costume and all dressed up to the nines. There’s a congregation of Green Lantern’s by the bar, Superman is on the dance floor poorly attempting to floss as Nightwing laughs his fine ass off at him, the Flash is somehow dancing with his girlfriend and eating every item on the buffet simultaneously. “Seems like two in a row will make a domino effect, yeah?”

Zatanna hums in thought her piercing blue eyes with the glittery navy blue and silver eyeliner around them shimmering in the light as she tilts her head in thought. She carefully scratches at the space beside the cluster of tiny rhinestones artfully placed around her right eyebrow and settles her eyes to a table across the room with a smile.

“Wally and Linda for sure,” she says tilting her head their direction. John swivels to look at them. Unlike Barry who’s still zooming back and forth from Iris to the buffet, Wally is wholly engrossed in every movement Linda makes as she talks rapidly her hands moving all about as she speaks to Mia Dearden on the other side of the table. That is a man wholly in love, enraptured by the woman he gets to call his own. John understands the sentiment as he looks back to Zatanna her dark blue painted lips still resting in a beautiful smile.

“What if it was us?” John asks leaning in closer to her a wicked smile on his face.

Zatanna snorts, a harsh indelicate thing that on anyone else would be unattractive.

“Aww, love you too, Zee,” John says faux offended falling back against his chair. He knew it was an absurd suggestion the moment he said it.

“I’m sorry, you know I love you,” she says holding up a hand attempting to hide her laughter. “It’s just look at us, we’re coming up on our first and only three-year anniversary. We’re not exactly known for being good at this.”

It’s a valid point. Despite the fact they have technically been together for over a decade they’ve gone through their fair share of ups and downs, break ups and make ups and even a few trips to hell and literal deaths. John has screwed up more times than he can count and even Zatanna has bungled it once or twice. Complicated has at almost all times been their relationship status, but the past three years, ever since John got his head out of his ass and finally decided to sort out this one particular aspect of his life they’ve been good, solid.

“Okay, true, but you’re stuck with me and we can’t act like there aren’t benefits to the whole marriage sham,” he says stretching his arms behind his head.

“It’s extremely comforting you called it a sham,” Zatanna says giving him a fondly exasperated look. “But you know maybe you’re right the tax incentives alone are a real benefit.”

“Now, the tax incentives would be appealing if I had ever in my life filed my taxes,” John says with a laugh.

“You’ve never filed taxes?” Zatanna says with a slightly startled look.

John just shrugs tossing back the remainder of his champagne. “It’s not like I’ve ever had any real upstanding type of job that would require me to fill out a W4 or whatever.”

“It’s a W2,” Zatanna corrects. “And John you live with me, our landlord made me put your name on the lease because he saw you there so much. You could totally get caught.”

“Eh, it’ll be fine,” John says with an unconcerned wave of his hand. “The fact that I’m not technically a citizen of this country is probably a bigger issue than the tax thing anyway.”

“John!” Zatanna exclaims with a laugh.

“What? You can’t have thought I actually went to a baseball park and held my hands up and did the national anthem or whatever,” he says kicking his feet up on the empty chair next to him.

“Clearly you haven’t considering that’s not at all how citizenship works,” Zatanna chuckles. “But hey there’s a potential benefit of marriage for us, citizenship.”

“Ah the romance of marrying not for love, but so the government pricks don’t send your ass packing,” John reaches out a hand tangling his fingers with Zatanna’s on the table his thumb running small circles into her hand.

Zatanna hums. “I guess lack of romance aside it wouldn’t matter since I can always just portal you back into the country on a whim anyways.”

John nods in agreement trying to come up with another benefit they might be able to actually take advantage of. “You couldn’t testify against me in court, that could be incredibly useful down the line.”

Zatanna raises one jeweled eyebrow, “Is there a crime you’ve committed lately you’ve neglected to tell me about?”

John thinks for a moment genuinely scanning his memories in case there is something he forgot to tell her about. “No,” he settles on confidently. He’s pretty sure at least. “I’m just thinking in general considering my track record in the past.”

Zatanna pats the top of his hand with a smile. “As if any prison could hold you long enough for me to even be asked a single question.”

John just laughs again, “Alright so maybe there aren’t that many marital benefits for us to take advantage of then.”

“No parents to satisfy,” Zatanna sighs. “And of course making medical decisions for one another doesn’t really matter when you use magic and superhero doctors that definitely don’t accept any sort of co-pay,” she adds on with a contemplative bite of her lip.

“Half your friends hate me,” John says thoughtfully with a chuckle.

“And half your friends are dead,” Zatanna says ruefully tapping a nail to her chin. “The wedding party would be abysmally uneven.”

“I haven’t bought a new tie in years,” John says tugging at the red thing around his neck. He looks hilariously basic compared to Zatanna’s ensemble essentially wearing what he wears any given day of the week the only difference being Zatanna had forced him into a subtly lace patterned black jacket for a change and repainted his chipped nails for the first time in two weeks. “It’d make the pictures look horribly out of place.”

“Plus let’s be real I’m a show woman, I’d probably hate having to share the spotlight with you for one day,” Zatanna smiles teasingly. John smiles back shifting so that he’s scooting his chair closer to hers. He lifts a hand to her face twisting a long dark hair that’s slipped from her twisty updo held in place by two sharp silver hair pins with crescent moons at the end to match her nails and tucking it back behind her ear.

“So, basically there’s not a benefit in this world or a thing that would change if we got married,” John says letting the silky hair go.

“The only thing I can think of is that I like shiny jewelry and you look hot when you wear silver rings,” Zatanna says reaching back and pulling the two pins from her hair letting it all fall across her shoulders, the one stand out streak of navy blue appearing as it falls.

“And we can buy each other jewelry anytime without a reason,” he says brushing the bit of hair that’s fallen into her eyes away.

Zatanna smiles at him once before standing holding out a hand that he instantly takes. She guides him to the dance floor twining her fingers behind his head slowly.

They sway slowly to some sappy love song John vaguely recognizes their eyes locked on one another.

“You know,” she says after a while her fingers pulling through the hair that’s getting a bit too long at the base of his neck. “Just because I don’t want to get married doesn’t mean I don’t want you for as long as I can have you, right?”

He does know that. It’s inexplicable to him why someone as bright and vibrant and good as her wants him, but she does and he intends to keep it that way till the demons or the cigarettes kill him.

“I know. I’m happy how we are, knowing us, and by us I mean me, marriage would end up mucking everything up anyways,” he says pulling her in closer his hands moving from their grip on her waist to the exposed small of her back. “We can just keep going to everyone else’s weddings and raiding their open bars.”

Zatanna laughs then leans up kissing him once soft and slow not even smudging her lipstick in the slightest. She stays close when she pulls back resting her head on his chest as they continue to sway.

“We really need to get your name off of my lease though, I don’t need the government showing up and trying to audit me,” she says softly. “I’d be a nightmare for Mistress of Magic brand.”

John laughs loud and bright leaning his head down to kiss her once atop the head already planning a minor break in to the landlord’s apartment. It’ll be okay if he gets caught, married or not he knows she won’t testify against him.

#my fic #johnzee #john constantine #zatanna zatara #writersmonth2021

26 notes · View notes

iriel3000 · 3 years ago

Text

Natasha's Blind Date - Clint POV

written for the be-compromised Summer Promptathon 2021. kiss_me_cassie's prompt "you were so hot that when you asked if I was the blind date you were looking for, I lied and said yes, but before i can make a bigger mess, your actual date comes up and introduces themselves and I'm so embarrassed"

It was a busy Saturday night at Lucky’s Bar and Pizza. Clint stood by the waitress station for the beers he ordered for him and Kate. While the bartender grabbed the bottles, he looked around and watched a group of girls walk-in.

Cute, Clint thought as the blonde and brunette walked by. But when the redhead followed, Clint's stomach dropped. She was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen.

A mane of wild red hair framed her heart shaped face and hung past her shoulders down to a figure that had been carved into statues.

When she looked around the bar, Clint quickly ducked his head and fiddled with a napkin. Glancing to the side, he noticed half the men at the bar staring at her. When he dared to look over, she seemed to be looking at him and gave a little wave.

Clint whipped his head left then right and behind him but didn't see anyone waving back at her. He turned and suddenly she was standing right in front of him, bright green eyes shining with the most brilliant smile. Clint almost forgot how to breathe.

“Hi, I'm Natasha, are you Steve?”

His heart sank, she was here to meet someone.

“Sam said to find the cute guy who looked like he could be in the Olympics.”

Did she mean him? And was he imagining it or did her cheeks turn pink?

It took Clint way too long to realize he was staring at her and hadn't answered.

“Steve, I'm Steve.” He said rather unconvincingly.

Her smile brightened and Clint now planned to propose.

However, 'real' Steve ruined it.

“Natasha?” They both turned.

When Natasha said she was expecting someone that looked like they could be in the Olympics, she wasn't kidding. Real Steve was a perfect example of a supreme athlete.

He was taller than Clint with blonde hair, blue eyes, dazzling white teeth and a broad chest that had muscles on muscles. Clint suddenly hated life.

“Hi.” She said with a head tilt.

“Sam told me you were beautiful but, wow. I’m Steve, Steve Rogers.”

Clint really wanted to punch his face, but he kind of found him charming at the same time. It was annoying.

“Thank you.'' Natasha said politely and shook his hand.

Her smile definitely wasn’t as bright this time, Clint thought. Then he remembered he lied and tried to sneak away, but the stupid barstool blocked his path.

Natasha spoke before he could escape.

“You said you were playing pool in the back, right?”

Clint’s eyes widened. She wasn’t mad? He wished he wasn't so smitten right now because he swore there was hope in her eyes. He played along praying he read it correctly.

“Yeah...I know you said you wanted to play but I don't want to interrupt your evening or anything.” He gave her date a pointed look.

“Oh no I'm sure Steve would love to play, we'll be back in a little bit after we get our drinks.”

She turned and gave the tall blonde a winning smile. If she were his date Clint would have easily caved but Steve seemed put out.

“Of course, sounds fun.” He said tightly.

Clint grabbed his beers, flashed Natasha a quick smile and walked back to the pool room to find Kate.

He probably looked like an idiot almost running to the back but damn if that beautiful woman didn't wink at him making his adrenaline surge.

“Drink your beer and get the hell out.”

He shoved the bottle in Kate’s hand.

“What the hell got into you up there?”

“You have to go now. I'll explain later. Just go.”

“What? No! You said I could finish my beer. Thought we were playing another game?”

Clint looked back at the bar anxiously.

Real Steve and Natasha were headed their way. Kate made an understanding noise.

“Hi. Ready to play? Is this your partner? Hi, I’m Natasha.” She introduced herself to Kate.

“Yes, this is my friend Kate.” Clint overemphasized the word ‘friend’ and Kate rolled her eyes. “Kate, this is Natasha’s friend Steve. Oh, sorry, forgot to introduce myself earlier. My name’s Clint.”

He shook Steve’s hand and looked at Natasha. She rewarded him with that little smile.

Kate gave him a what's going on look but Clint just wagged his eyebrows.

Of course, Mr. Olympian was good at pool. He was probably good at everything. Clint tried not to scowl. He also tried not to stare as Natasha bent over to make her next shot.

Halfway through the game, one of the waitstaff came to him with a problem.

“Clint, a couple of the keg lines are down.”

Clint handed his pool stick to Kate and apologized to Natasha.

“I'll be back in 10 minutes.”

As he hustled to the cooler room, Clint overheard Steve comment.

“He works here? That’s nice.”

“He owns here. It is nice.” Kate defended.

Thirty five minutes and three clogged lines later, Clint came out to find Kate alone.

“Her boyfriend wanted to leave.”

“He wasn’t her boyfriend, he was a blind date.”

“Ah.”

“I’m sure Mr. Perfect probably whisked her off somewhere fabulous.” Clint grumbled.

“Where is more fabulous than Lucky’s Bar and Pizza?” Kate nudged his arm.

“Thanks, Katie Kate.” He half smiled. “Come on, you can kick my ass in darts.”

The next day Clint sat at the bar and worked on the previous night's receipts.

Actually, he wasn’t working. He was staring at the numbers not really concentrating. He wondered how Natasha's date went. How the hell was he going to find her? He only knew her first name.

Lucky’s didn't open for another hour but the front was unlocked. Clint didn't look up when he heard the door thinking it was Kate or one of the other employees.

“Hi.” A melodic voice greeted him.

Clint's heart literally stopped. He looked up and there she was, back in his bar with those big green eyes and killer curves.

“Hi.” He jumped up and pulled out a stool for her beside him.

“Thank you. Is it Clint? Or do you prefer Steve?” She teased.

He had the decency to look embarrassed.

“Uh, sorry about that. I don't think anyone has said I ever looked like an Olympian before, so you kinda had me floored there…”

She laughed.

The sound was addicting. He wanted to make her laugh again.

”I’m sorry we left so early last night. I felt rude not saying goodbye so I wanted to stop by today.”

Barton unclenched his hand so he wouldn't fist pump the air and embarrass himself. She had come back to see him!

“Sorry I took so long, it's bad enough when one line is clogged but three were down last night. Speaking of, can I get you something?”

Natasha looked down and played with her purse strap.

“No, thank you. I came here on my lunch break, I only have a few minutes.” She looked up nervously. “Are you busy tonight? I could come by after work and we could finish our game?”

Clint's eyebrows shot up.

“Yeah that would be great,” he paused and frowned, ”except Kate won't be here tonight.”

He was happy for one whole minute and then realized real Steve would be back too.

Natasha bit the corner of her bottom lip. Clint couldn't help but be mesmerized by the little tongue that darted out.

“Oh that's ok...Steve said he didn't like pool.”

She stood up and looked at Clint somewhat expectantly.

A big grin spread across his face.

“6:30? I'll have the cooks make their best pizza.”

Natasha smiled and scrunched her nose in the cutest way.

“No olives tho, ok?”

And Clint knew he was in love.

Thank you for reading!! Please feel free to stop by my page on AO3 to read other stories, plus the link to the promptathon is below.

#clintasha #clintasha fanfic #clint barton #natasha romanov #blind date #first meetings #kate bishop is a good wingman #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #love is for children

25 notes · View notes

ifuckinglovestvincent · 4 years ago

Text

THE FORTY-FIVE: ST. VINCENT

Sleazy, gritty, grimy – these are the words used to describe the latest iteration of St. Vincent, Annie Clark’s alter ego. As she teases the release of her upcoming new album, ‘Daddy’s Home’, Eve Barlow finds out who’s wearing the trousers now.

Photos: Zackery Michael

Yellow may be the colour of gold, the hue of a perfect blonde or the shade of the sun, but when it’s too garish, yellow denotes the stain of sickness and the luridness of sleaze. On ‘Pay Your Way In Pain’ – the first single from St. Vincent’s forthcoming sixth album ‘Daddy’s Home’ – Annie Clark basks in the palette of cheap 1970s yellows; a dirty, salacious yellow that even the most prudish of individuals find difficult to avert their gaze from. It’s a yellow that recalls the smell of cigarettes on fingers, the tape across tomorrow’s crime scene or the dull ache of bad penetration.

The video for the single, which dropped last Thursday, features Clark in a blonde wig and suit, channeling a John Cassavetes anti-heroine (think Gena Rowlands in Gloria) and ‘Fame’-era Bowie. She twists in front of too-bright disco lights. She roughs up her voice. She sings about the price we pay for searching for acceptance while being outcast from society. “So I went to the park just to watch the little children/ The mothers saw my heels and they said I wasn’t welcome,” she coos, and you immediately recognise the scene of a free woman threatening the post-nuclear families aspiring to innocence. Clark is here to pervert them.

She laughs. “That’s how I feel!” From her studio in Los Angeles, she begins quoting lyrics from Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Red House’. “It’s a blues song for 2021.” LA is a city Clark reluctantly only half calls home, and one that is opposed to her vastly preferred New York. “I don’t feel any romantic attachment to Los Angeles,” she says of the place she coined the song ‘Los Ageless’ about on 2017’s ‘Masseduction’ (“The Los Ageless hang out by the bar/ Burn the pages of unwritten memoirs��).“The best that could be said of LA is, ‘Yeah it’s nice.’ And it is! LA is easy and pleasant. But if you were a person the last thing you’d want someone to say about you is: ‘She’s nice!’”

On ‘Daddy’s Home’, Clark writes about a past derelict New York; a place Los Angeles would suffocate in. “The idea of New York, the art that came out of it, and my living there,” she says. “I’ve not given up my card. I don’t feel in any way ready to renounce my New York citizenship. I bought an apartment so I didn’t have to.” Her down-and-out New York is one a true masochist would love, and it’s sleazy in excess. Sleaze is usually the thing men flaunt at a woman’s expense. In 2021, the proverbial Daddy in the title is Clark. But there’s also a literal Daddy. He came home in the winter of 2019.

On the title track, Clark sings about “inmate 502”: her father. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his involvement in a $43m stock fraud scheme. He went away in May 2010. Clark reacted by writing her third breakthrough album ‘Strange Mercy’ in 2011; inspired not just by her father’s imprisonment but the effects it had on her life.“I mean it was rough stuff,” she says. “It was a fuck show. Absolutely terrible. Gut-wrenching. Like so many times in life, music saved me from all kinds of personal peril. I was angry. I was devastated. There’s a sort of dullness to incarceration where you don’t have any control. It’s like a thud at the basement of your being. So I wrote all about it,” she says.

Back then, she was aloof about meaning. In an interview we did that year, she called from a hotel rooftop in Phoenix and was fried from analytical questions. She excused her lack of desire to talk about ‘Strange Mercy’ as a means of protecting fans who could interpret it at will. Really she was protecting an audience closer to home. It’s clear now that the title track is about her father’s imprisonment (“Our father in exile/ For God only knows how many years”). Clark’s parents divorced when she was a child, and they have eight children in their mixed family, some of whom were very young when ‘Strange Mercy’ came out. She explains this discretion now as her method of sheltering them.

“I am protective of my family,” she says. “It didn’t feel safe to me. I disliked the fact that it was taken as malicious obfuscations. No.” Clark wanted to deal with the family drama in art but not in press. She managed to remain tight-lipped until she became the subject of a different intrusion. As St. Vincent’s star continued to rocket, Clark found herself in a relationship with British model Cara Delevingne from 2014 to 2016, and attracted celebrity tabloid attention. Details of her family’s past were exposed. The Daily Mail came knocking on her sister’s door in Texas, where Clark is from.

“Luckily I’m super tight with my family and the Daily Mail didn’t find anybody who was gonna sell me out,” she says. “They were looking for it. Clark girls are a fucking impenetrable force. We will cut a bitch.”

Four years later, Clark gets to own the narrative herself in the medium that’s most apt: music. “The story has evolved. I’ve evolved. People have grown up. I would rather be the one to tell my story,” she says, ruminating on the misfortune that this was robbed from her: a story that writes itself. “My father’s release from prison is a great starting point, right?” Between tours and whenever she could manage, Clark would go and visit him in prison and would be signing autographs in the visitation room for the inmates, who all followed her success with every album release, press clipping and late night TV spot. She joked to her sisters that she’d become the belle of the ball there. “I don’t have to make that up,” she says.

There’s an ease to Clark’s interview manner that hasn’t existed before. She seems ready not just to discuss her father’s story, but to own certain elements of herself. “Hell where can you run when the outlaw’s inside you,” she sings on the title track, alluding to her common traits with her father. “I’ve always had a relationship with my dad and a good one. We’re very similar,” she says. “The movies we like, the books, he liked fashion. He’s really funny, he’s a good time.” Her father’s release gave Clark and her brothers and sisters permission to joke. “The title, ‘Daddy’s Home’ makes me laugh. It sounds fucking pervy as hell. But it’s about a real father ten years later. I’m Daddy now!”

The question of who’s fathering who is a serious one, but it’s also not serious. Clark wears the idea of Daddy as a costume. She likes to play. She joins today’s Zoom in a pair of sunglasses wider than her face and a silk scarf framing her head. The sunglasses come off, and the scarf is a tool for distraction. She ties it above her forehead, attempts a neckerchief, eventually tosses it aside. Clark can only be earnest for so long before she seeks some mischief. She doesn’t like to stay in reality for extensive periods. “I like to create a world and then I get to live in it and be somebody new every two or three years,” she says. “Who wants to be themselves all the time?”

‘Daddy’s Home‘ began in New York at Electric Lady studios before COVID hit and was finished in her studio in LA. She worked on it with “my friend Jack” [Jack Antonoff, producer for Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Taylor Swift]. Antonoff and Clark worked on ‘Masseduction’ and found a winning formula, pushing Clark’s guitar-orientated electronic universe to its poppiest maximum, without compromising her idiosyncrasies. “We’re simpatico. He’s a dream,” she says. “He played the hell outta instruments on this record. He’s crushing it on drums, crushing it on Wurlitzer.” The pair let loose. They began with ‘The Holiday Party’, one of the warmest tracks Clark’s ever written. It’s as inviting as a winter fireplace, stoked by soulful horns, acoustic guitar and backing singers. “Every time they sang something I’d say, ‘Yeah but can you do it sleazier? Make your voice sound like you’ve been up for three days.” Clark speaks of an unspoken understanding with Antonoff as regards the vibe: “Familiar sounds. The opposite of my hands coming out of the speaker to choke you till you like it. This is not submission. Just inviting. I can tell a story in a different way.”

The entire record is familiar, giving the listener the satisfaction that they’ve heard the songs before but can’t quite place them. It’s a satisfying accompaniment to a pandemic that encouraged nostalgic listening. Clark was nostalgic too. She reverted to records she enjoyed with her father: Stevie Wonder’s catalogue from the 1970s (‘Songs In The Key Of Life’, ‘Innervisions’, ‘Talking Book’) and Steely Dan. “Not to be the dude at the record store but it’s specifically post-flower child idealism of the ’60s,” she explains. “It’s when it flipped into nihilism, which I much prefer. Pre disco, pre punk. That music is in me in a deep way. It’s in my ears.”

On ‘The Melting Of The Sun’ she has a delicious time creating a psychedelic Pink Floyd odyssey while exploring the path tread by her heroes Marilyn Monroe, Joni Mitchell, Joan Didion and Nina Simone. It’s a series of beautiful vignettes of brilliant women who were met with a hostile environment. Clark considers what they did to overcome that. “I’m thanking all these women for making it easier for me to do it. I hope I didn’t totally let them down.” Clark is often the only woman sharing a stage with rock luminaries such as Dave Grohl, Damon Albarn and David Byrne, and has appeared to have shattered a male-centric glass ceiling. She’s unsure she’s doing enough to redress the imbalance. “There are little things I can do and control,” she says of hiring women on her team. “God! Now I feel like I should do more. What should I do? It’s a big question. You know what I have seen a lot more from when I started to now? Girls playing guitar.”

If one woman reinvented the guitar in the past decade, it’s Clark. Behind her is a rack of them. The pandemic has taken her out of the wild in which she’s accustomed to tantalising audiences at night with her displays of riffing and heel-balancing. Instead, she’s chained to her desk. Her obsession with heels in the lyrics of ‘Daddy’s Home’ she reckons may be a reflection of her nights performing ‘Masseduction’ in thigh highs. “I made sure that nothing I wore was comfortable,” she recalls. “Everything was about stricture and structure and latex. I had to train all the time to make sure I could handle it.” Is she taking the heels off when live shows return? “Absofuckinglutely not.”

Clark is interested in the new generation. She’s recently tweeted about Arlo Parks and has become a big fan of Russian singer-songwriter Kate NV. “I’m obsessed with Russia,” she says. In a recent LA Times profile, she professed to a pandemic intellectual fixation on Stalin. “Yeah! I mean right now my computer is propped up on stuff. You are sitting on The Gulag Archipelago, The Best Short Stories Of Dostoyevsky andThe Plays Of Chekhov. I’m kinda in it.” The pop world interests Clark, too. She was credited with a co-write on Swift’s 2019 album ‘Lover’. At last year’s Grammys she performed a duet with Dua Lipa. It was one of the queerest performances the Grammys has ever aired. Clark interrupts.

“What about it seemed queer?!”

You know… The lip bite, for one!

“Wait. Did she bite her lip?”

No, you bit your lip.

“I did?!”

Everyone was talking about it. Come on, Annie.

“Serious? I…”

You both waltzed around each other with matching hairdos, making eyes…

“I have no memory of it.”

Frustrating as it may be in a world of too much information, Clark’s lack of willingness to overanalyse every creative decision she makes or participates in is something to treasure. “I want to be a writer who can write great songs,” she says. “I’m so glad I can play guitar and fuck around in the studio to my heart’s desire but it’s about what you can say. What’s a great song? What lyric is gonna rip your guts open. Just make great shit! That’s where I was with this record. That’s all I wanna do with my life.”

More than a decade into St. Vincent, Clark doesn’t reflect. She looks strictly forward. “I’m like a horse with blinders,” she says. She did make an exception to take stock lately when the phone rang. “I saw a +44 and that gets me excited,” she says. “Who could this be?” Well, who was it? “Paul McCartney,” she says, in disbelief. “Anything I’ve done, any mistake I’ve made, somehow it’s forgiven, assuaged. I did something right in my life if a fucking Beatle called me.”

Now there’s a get out of jail free card if ever she needed one.

Daddy’s Home by St. Vincent is out May 14, 2021.

#‘I HAVE NO MEMORY OF IT’#LOOOOOL #WHY ARE U LIKE THIS #st vincent #full of shit #annie clark #Annie Clark on beds #yellow is the color for dull ache of bad penetration?

68 notes · View notes

supernatural-jackles · 4 years ago

Text

Owe You One - Part 4

Title: Owe You One - Jefferson’s Starship

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 7,067

Warnings: Minor Angst, Sexual Harassment, Self-Loathing, Anxiety, Fluff, Smut, Friends with Benefits

Summary: Dean Winchester has been your best friend and neighbour for the last year. A year of finding comfort in random drop ins and casual conversations, but neither of you know the pasts that the other has. Not fully. Pasts that come back to haunt you, and ruin everything you want in life. Can you find what you’re seeking in a couple of favours and a good time between the sheets or is history doomed to repeat itself?

Owe You One - Masterlist

Squares Filled: Bartender!AU ( @spndeanbingo) FWB Relationship ( @spnfluffbingo)

A/N: Part 4!! I hope y’all enjoy this part!! As always, feedback is greatly appreciated!! Happy reading!!

You stirred away at the pot you had on the stove, getting dinner ready for yourself. It was Friday night, and you had just gotten home from work about half an hour ago. You changed into your comfortable pyjamas before deciding to cook yourself a nice dinner. You were going to curl up on the couch for a little while and maybe turn in early. You had nothing extensive planned. Nothing but your PVR and previous episodes of The Walking Dead to catch up on.

You reached for a bowl in the cupboard next to you, placing it on the counter before pouring your pasta into it. You heard three loud knocks at your door, pulling you from your meal for a moment. You placed it back down on the stove before heading over to the door, opening it up. You rolled your eyes with a smile when you found Dean standing there with a smile playing on his lips. You walked away from the door, letting him walk in without protest.

“You want something to eat? I made enough pasta for two,” you pointed out. “Four cheese.”

“Oh fuck yes,” he nodded, taking a seat at your counter. You reached in the cupboard, grabbing another bowl before pouring some into it. You took two forks out of the drawer, bringing Dean’s bowl over first before your own. You hopped on the chair next to him, looking forward to tasting your meal.

“Thank you for this,” he smiled, taking a forkful.

“You’re welcome,” you beamed, taking your own bite.

“So what are you up to tonight?” he asked nonchalantly.

“Stuff,” you answered smuggly. “What do you want?”

“How do you know I want something?” he claimed, his voice went up half an octave.

“Because you didn’t call or text before coming over tonight. You usually do if you just want to hang out for the night. So I’ll ask again, what do you want, Winchester?” you chuckled.

“Okay, I have a huge favour to ask and seen as how you’re wearing your cute comfy pyjamas, I know you aren’t doing anything tonight. I also know for a damn fact that you would never let any guy see you in those so you’re not getting laid tonight.”

“Thank you! I get the point,” you scoffed playfully, taking another bite.

“I need help at the bar tonight. Sammy’s gonna be late and all I’ve got is Benny. You’re the only one that I can trust,” he stated. “I’ll pay you, of course. And whatever tips you make are yours.”

“So you want me to bartend at Jefferson’s Starship tonight and I get paid?” you chuckled. “Actual money?”

“What, you think I’m going to pay you in sex again?” he laughed, shaking his head. “‘Cause I can if you want me to. A little touchy touchy-”

“Shut up, Dean,” you giggled, shoving him a little. “How late do I have to stay?”

“Just until Sam gets in,” he assured you. “Not all night.”

“Alright, let me eat. Then I’ll go get changed. You’re lucky I like you,” you side-eyed him.

“I owe you big time,” he breathed out in relief. “Like huge, sweetheart.”

“I’ll take you up on it at some point,” you winked. “Really though, you don’t owe me anything. Remember, you helped me out of a very low point. That isn’t easy.”

“I still owe you a little. You literally never go out to the bar,” he pointed out with a sad smile.

“You are more than right. Remember that,” you winked. “How was your day anyways?”

“Eh, it was okay. Pretty busy as usual. I kept to myself at my station. My dad worked on what he needed to do. I fixed up a couple of cars and got all my paperwork done so I don’t have to do any this weekend. Fresh start Monday morning,” he explained to you. “How was your day?”

“It was okay. Boring as hell, but that’s my job for you,” you shrugged.

“So you were going to use this time to unwind, huh?” he said sheepishly. You could see the guilt he felt sores across his features. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, De. I should probably try to get out more anyways. Sitting at home alone isn’t going to do me any good,” you breathed out.

“I mean, you’re not entirely wrong. Sometimes alone time is what you need. But in this case, you’re coming out. Not to mention, I own the bar,” he smirked.

“Yeah yeah,” you tried not to smile.

You managed to eat your pasta in record time. You figured you’d do the dishes in the morning after your breakfast. You knew Dean had to be there soon, and you didn’t want to leave him or Benny screwed. This was a job for you and you were going to work with professionalism.

You grabbed something comfortable and presentable to wear to the bar. A pair of dark skinny jeans with a rip in the knee. You pulled on one of your white shirts and threw one of your red flannels over it to keep with the Winchester look. After that, you grabbed your comfortable boots and your bag, heading out the door with Dean by your side.

Dean opened up your door for you and you slipped inside. There was a part of you that wondered if this was a good idea. After all, he and his brother owned this bar; his family. Last you knew, his family hated you. All but Dean. You didn’t want Sam to walk in and kick you out or worse, yell at you in front of everyone. You didn’t want to ruin their business. This was important to both of them because they started it together. You weren’t going to be the one to come between them. You were simply going to help your friend out and go on your way home. If Dean wanted to join you later, that was fine. But you weren’t supposed to mix business with pleasure.

Dean parked in his designated spot out the back of the bar. There was a spot for him and a spot for Sam. No one else had access to park back here. You kicked your door open, circling around the car to the front. Dean motioned for you to follow him to the doors around the front of the building.

The second you walked into the empty bar, you smiled to yourself. This bar wasn’t like any of the bars you had been in and you had been in many of them during your college days. They wanted their place to feel like home in some sense. There was a jukebox in the corner that played only classic rock. Lots of room for people to dance. Enough tables for people to sit. Booths for those who had bigger groups. Couches and chairs set up around the tv. By the actual bar, he had stools set up all around and a tv up on the wall so people could watch from there. He had all his liquor on display and coasters stacked, ready to go. All his glassware was branded with the bar's name, and a cowboy hat. This place was something to be really proud of, that was for certain.

“Well well, look who it is,” Benny smiled. “I’ll be damned if it isn’t miss Y/N walking in for the first time in forever.”

“Hi Benny,” you grinned

“Hiya darlin,” he beamed. “What can I get for you tonight?”

“I’m working tonight,” you told him, circling around the back of the bar. “Boss needed and extra set of hands.”

“If you need help with anything, Y/N, just let one of us know. I know you know what you’re doing,” Dean nodded.

“You’re damn right I do,” you said confidently. You grabbed an apron from the shelf beneath the cash register. You had a notepad, a pen and a cloth in there, ready to get to work. It had been a long time since you had stepped foot behind a bar, but you were sure you were going to snap right back into it pretty quickly. “Let’s do this.”

It wasn’t long before people flooded into the bar. Some people just getting off work, having a drink to wind down. Others coming in in groups. The three of you worked in a perfect sync with one another. Pouring and mixing drinks the fastest you could get them to the customers in a timely manner. In record time, you had about fifty dollars in tips. The night was just getting started.

You glanced around the room as soon as the first rush died out. Everyone was distracted in some way. A group of guys watching a game on the couch by the tv. A few women sitting at a table, gossiping about their week and their husbands. Then there was a few loners sitting at the bar, sipping away at a beer or a glass of whiskey. Trying to unwind after the week. You wiped down the counter top.

“Hey there,” a man greeted you, taking a seat at the counter right in front of you. His smile was wide as he placed his hands on the countertop.

“What can I get for you?” you asked, taking a deep breath as you tucked your cloth back in your apron.

“Your phone number for starters,” he smirked, wiggling his eyebrows twice. You wanted to scoff but you were working. You weren’t about to ruin Dean’s business because some guy decided to hit on you. Not to mention, he wasn’t that cute. A man like him would be just like the rest of them. They’d get off and you’d be left finishing yourself off in the shower. You weren’t doing that again.

“Your drink order, sir?” you corrected him, trying to keep your tone in check.

“Whiskey neat,” he stated. “And that phone number.”

“Whiskey it is,” you declared, putting the glass down on the napkin in front of him. You reached for the bottle of whiskey behind you, knowing full well he was staring at your ass. He was treating you like you were easy and that wasn’t okay with you. You weren’t doing that anymore. No more shitty guys.

“Don’t play hard to get, baby,” he frowned. “I saw you eyeing me the second I walked in here tonight.”

“Enjoy your drink,” you said, your voice void of all emotions. You walked away from him, taking your cloth once more before heading out to the customers area to begin cleaning up empty glasses and bottles. Dean and Benny were still working behind the counter, serving people. It had slowed down a little more. They still had the odd person come up to them.

You wiped down every table, gathering all the empties. You snapped back into bartender mode pretty quickly. It was something you had done for years during your college years. Dean ran a really nice bar. Everything was really clean, but you also had a feeling that his brother had something to do with it. You took note of what needed replenishing to bring it out during your next trip. You gathered up what you could, placing it on the bar to move to the back when you had the chance to. You wiped down your last table before heading to the back. You could feel the creepy guy’s eyes on you and that told you to move quicker.

“Baby c’mere,” he cooed, standing up. Your heart began to pound in your chest. You needed to move quickly.

“Not interested,” you stated clearly, backing away from him. He was a big guy now that you saw him compared to you. He was tall and had a strong build. His hand made its way down to your ass, tugging you into him against your will. You tried your hardest to shove him off of you, but he barely budged. “Get off of me!”

“Hey! Hey!” Dean shouted, making his way around the bar. “Hands off of her. Now!”

“We were just getting to know each other, right baby?” He smirked, tugging you in once more. Hearing him say those words only angered you more.

You pushed him once more, successfully getting him off of you, but not getting as far as you would have liked. “Get the fuck off of me.”

Dean stepped between you and the douchebag, getting in his face a little more. You could see it in the way his jaw clenched that he was pissed. When Dean was pissed, no one wanted to be near him.

“House rules. Respecting others, especially women is the second on that list. Sexual harassment is unacceptable. Get the fuck out of my bar,” he warned him, “I’m not going to ask you again.”

“Whatever, she’s a cheap piece of ass anyways,” he scoffed, throwing down a bill on the counter before grabbing his jacket, heading to the door.

“You okay, sweetheart?” Dean asked as he turned to face you. His hand came up to the side of your head.

“Yeah,” you nodded.

“You want a drink,” he offered you, smiling softly.

“No thank you. I’m good,” you smiled before heading around the back of the bar to finish cleaning up. You also knew you’d be safer behind the bar and that was where you wanted to be.

“You sure, darlin’?” Benny raised his eyebrow. “I can make you a mean drink.”

“I’m sure. I don’t drink,” you stated, placing the empty bottles in the bin.

“Since when?” Dean furrowed his brows. “We got drunk together a few months back.”

“Since whenever,” you shrugged.

“I feel like there is more behind this then you’re leading on,” Benny side-eyed you with a bit of concern.

“There is, but we’re dropping this now, okay?” you smiled, heading over to the counter to serve the next customer.

As you handed the customer their drink, Sam walked into the bar. His hair was a bit of a mess and he looked to be in a bit of a rush. You stiffened a little. After all, Sam had to know all about you now. His mom had to have said something to him. He had always been nice to you, but that was back then. There was a whole other side to you and your family now. Sure, Sam was nice, but he wasn’t going to be happy you were here if he knew anything.

“Hey,” Dean greeted his brother. “How’d it go?”

“Good,” he smiled to himself. “Place is picked out and booked. We officially have a date.”

“Don’t leave me in suspense, Sammy. Wedding date now,” Dean chuckled, wiping down a glass.

“September 15th,” he grinned widely, reaching his hand up to the back of his head.

“I’ll save the date,” he nodded with a big smile. “Congratulations, little brother!”

“Thanks, De,” he shrugged, as if it wasn’t a big deal.

You stood behind the bar awkwardly, not knowing if you should say something, or go do something else. You didn’t want to be in the way of him. This was his business too. You pulled your cloth back out, and decided to head back out to the floor to wipe down the tables again.

“Dean, what is she doing here?” you heard Sam say.

“She’s helping us out because I asked her to,” Dean stated.

“Dean, you know-”

“Sam-”

“No Dean, if mom or dad was to walk in right now, you’d be in so much shit,” he stated. That was your queue. You weren’t welcomed and you weren’t going to ruin a family business. You had no idea why you even agreed to in the first place. Mary told you that you were never going to be good enough for her family. Why did you think you’d be good enough to work at her son’s bar?

“Sorry,” you breathed out, as you untied your apron. “I’m- I’m gonna go, Dean. I don’t want to ruin your business or your relationship with your family. You don’t have to pay me for tonight.”

“Y/N, wait,” Dean called out as you began to walk away.

“Dean, it’s cool,” you nodded, assuring him it was.

“No, it’s not cool, Y/N. I invited you here tonight,” Dean declared, walking over to you. “My mom and dad don’t own this bar. Sammy and I do. I’ll tell you again. I don’t care who your mom is or was to my parents. I care about you and who you are to me. If Sammy has a problem with it, then he can stow it for tonight. You are welcome in this bar.” His hands made their way to your arms, holding you in place.

“Dean, I’m not worth the trouble, okay?” you smiled weakly, pulling the few bills out of your pocket, handing them to him. “This is yours.”

“No, they are yours. You earned them tonight. All tips are yours,” he stated.

“Y/N, please stay,” Sam called out.

“Please, sweetheart,” Dean pleaded, holding his hand out for you to take. “You’re off the clock. Just hang out with us for a little while. You said you needed to get out more.”

“You want a drink Y/N?” Sam offered, grabbing a clean glass from beneath the counter.

“Okay,” you nodded. “Water would be great.”

“W-water?” Sam furrowed his brows.

“She doesn’t drink,” Benny added in.

“Ah, okay,” Sam nodded.

You walked around the bar, taking a seat on the stool behind the bar. Sam placed a glass of water with a few ice cubes on the counter in front of you, giving you a soft smile. You knew he was trying to keep a smile on his face to keep you around for the night. It was forced at best.

“So, no guy in your life right now, Y/N?” Benny questioned you. “You usually have someone-”

“Nope, I don’t. Not right now,” you smiled at him, bringing your water up to your lips. Great, even Benny knew you got around, you thought to yourself.

“You want someone? ‘Cause you know, I’m single and you’re-”

“Benny, knock it off,” Dean warned him. “She doesn’t need another guy hitting on her tonight. House rules.”

“What? ‘M I not good enough for you,” he teased playfully before serving the next customer.

“You’re not my type,” you giggled. “My track record states that I only go for dicks. You’re a nice guy.”

“So Y/N, I gotta ask,” Sam started, taking another stool, sitting close by. “I know you grew up with your mom-”

“Sam,” Dean called out, his voice laced with a bit of anger.

“It’s okay Dean,” you assured him.

“Was it just you and your mom or was your dad ever around?” he questioned. You knew he was curious, and he didn’t seem to want to cause any harm to you. It was a simple question. Nothing you hadn’t been asked a hundred times before.

“No. It was just me and my mom. I never knew my dad, in fact, I’ve never met him or know his name for that matter. My mom always told me he didn’t want anything to do with me and that was why he wasn’t around. He didn’t want me and that’s why it was the two of us. I have no idea who my dad is, or if he’s even alive at this point. I never knew anything about him,” you shared with him.

“Were you ever curious?” Dean added in, stepping closer to you and Sam.

“Yeah, of course I was. I grew up without a dad. The kids at school were terrible to me because I didn’t have one,” you began. “I mean, look at me now. I’m a mess ninety five percent of the time. I just wish my mom would’ve been straight with me. But at the same time, my mom slept around a lot. She had a new boyfriend every month. I doubt she even knew who my dad was.”

“Do you think she was hiding it from you?” Sam brought up.

“In some ways, yeah. I asked her when I was eighteen, before I left for college and she said there was no point. My dad was probably dead.”

“If you ever wanted to find out more, Y/N, I’m sure I could do a little digging for you,” Sam offered you. It was a kind gesture but it wasn’t worth it.

“I’m not worth that kind of trouble, Sam. I don’t want to cause any more issues with your family than I already have.”

“Your mom’s issues weren’t your fault, sweetheart,” Dean reminded you.

“Dean’s right, Y/N. What your mom did in the past has nothing to do with you. It bugs the hell out of my mom because you look like her. It’s still wrong that she treated you the way she did. You’re nothing like your mom,” Sam said with a sad smile. It was really nice to hear those words coming from Sam. Especially now that you were here. You didn’t want him to hate you like his family did.

“Okay,” you breathed out. “I’m giving you the okay to take a look. It can’t hurt to find out my family history. And I’m curious as to what my mom hid from me all my life. But I don’t want to make any contact if we find out who it is.” In reality, it was probably good to find out in case you had a family history of cancer or something like that. It was too late now to ever have a father daughter relationship like you dreamed about when you were ten.

“Deal. You are always welcome to change your mind later on, okay?”

“Thank you,” you smiled softly at him. “Means a lot to me that you want to do this.”

“Well well, look who decided to show up for work,” Dean greeted the two people as they walked in.

“I thought you were short tonight, De?” you furrowed your brows.

“Chuck and Cas work later so we can go home at a decent hour,” he told you. Both of them walked behind the bar, settling their stuff underneath the cash.

“Hey,” a man with curly-ish hair greeted you. “I’m Chuck.”

“Y/N,” you waved at him.

“So uh, how you doin’?” he wiggled his eyebrows.

“Chuck,” Dean warned him, shaking his head.

“Oh shit, sorry. Is she your-”

“No she’s not my girlfriend. She’s my best friend,” he stated, earning a chuckle from both you and Sam. Dean was very protective over you, and you actually kind of liked that he was.

“Oh god, that’s worse,” he breathed out sheepishly. “It was very nice to meet you, Y/N.”

“You ready to head out, Y/N?” Dean offered with a smile.

“God, yes please!” you beamed, hopping off your stool.

“I’ll grab your number from Dean,” Sam nodded, giving you a wink. Dean grabbed his jacket as you circled around the bar for the last time. You couldn’t wait to go home and change into your pyjamas. You couldn’t wait to be in the privacy of your apartment so you could finally unwind for the night.

Dean followed behind you as you lead the way to the impala. It was just after eleven when you looked at the clock in the impala as Dean started her up. It was a long night, and some parts of it sucked, but for the most part, you were glad you did it with Dean there. His friends were also nice people to be around so that certainly helped.

“You did good tonight,” he smiled at you as he turned out of the parking lot.

“What can I say, I’m an ex bartender,” you chuckled. “Thanks for asking me to come out tonight.”

“You’re welcome,” he nodded.

“If you’re up for it, you wanna hang out at my place for a bit?” you asked him. “Only if you want to.”

“Yeah, I’d love to,” he agreed.

It was almost eleven thirty by the time you arrived at your front door with the keys in your hand. Dean stood right behind you, keeping a close distance. You figured after that creepy guy at the bar tonight, he was keeping you close in case something was to happen. You really did enjoy how protective he was of you. He had been ever since that day the two of you made up. It was nice to have someone want to keep you safe from harms way.

You threw your keys on the counter as soon as you walked in. Dean locked the door behind him and kicked off his shoes on the front mat. You leaped onto the couch, flopping down on your back, earning a laugh from your best friend.

“Long night, huh?” he said as he sat down next to you.

“Very! I love being hit on by creepy guys. It’s my favourite,” you joked, moving up to a sitting position to give him more room on the couch. Your couch was big enough for two people to sleep on, but Dean just had to sit close to you.

“You used to enjoy guys like that,” he teased you.

“Eh, I wouldn’t say I enjoyed them. I prefer guys with a little more respect. Not guys that grope my ass in a crowded bar while I’m working,” you breathed out. “I don’t know. Lately I haven’t been interested.”

“In what?” he cocked his head to the side, looking over at you.

“Dating. Men in general,” you shrugged, leaning against the arm of the couch. “Too much to focus on and I’m a mess most days.”

“Not even sex for you?” he questioned.

“Eh,” you smirked. “I’ve got my own ways of handling things in that department. It’s not like any of the guys I slept with before knew what they were doing. I’m just not wasting my time.”

“Good,” he grinned. “You deserve better than that.”

“What about you, Winchester? You’re nearly as bad as I am for taking random people home,” you pointed out.

“Not as of recently,” he confessed, looking down at his hands. “Part of it is how busy I’ve been. No one has really caught my eye. Everyone these days are dating, and settling down. After Cassie, I don’t really want to date right now. Especially since she left things open for when she gets back.”

“I don’t blame you,” you nodded. “Would you get back together with her if she were to show up at your door right now?”

“Deep question there, sweetheart,” he chuckled. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her since we broke up. Not even an email. If she were to knock on my door, I don’t think I could just settle back in like nothing happened.”

“That’s understandable,” you nodded. “At least you’ve moved on a little. We slept together.”

“You’re the last person I slept with,” he admitted.

“You’re my last too,” you nodded. “We’re doing awesome. Although, I certainly can’t complain. You were damn good. You kept up your end of the bargain beautifully.”

“Well, technically I owe you one for tonight,” he joked with a smirk. “I know how to drive a good bargain.”

“I’m down if you are,” you wiggled your eyebrows with a soft smile.

“Actually?” he cocked his eyebrow.

“What’s the harm?” you shrugged. “Not like we haven’t before.”

“I’m definitely in if you are,” he nodded. “No pressure at all. Only if you want to.”

“You’re too nice to me, you know that?” you smiled at him as you moved over. You threw your leg over his legs, settling down over his lap. His hands instantly reached for your waist as his eyes went wide.

“I wouldn’t say nice,” he breathed out. “I just care ‘bout you is all.”

“Well, thank you. I really appreciate that you care,” you smiled. “I care ‘bout you too.”

“Alright, this is getting too chick flicky for my liking,” he stated, leaning forward. He captured your lips with his in a soft, heated kiss that had you instantly craving more. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders tugging yourself closer to him as your tongue slipped over his bottom lip.

His hands reached beneath your flannel, pushing the material over your shoulders in record time. You had a feeling this was going to happen fast. It was late after all, and you both had been working since nine this morning. It was going to be a quickie at best and that was more than okay with you. A quick fix to make you both feel good and that would be enough to put you to sleep right away.

“You’re sure about this?” Dean asked you, pulling away a little.

“Yes, more than sure,” you breathed out, pushing his flannel over his shoulders. “No foreplay this time.”

“Got it,” he nodded. “Just a quickie?”

“Quickie then bed,” you smile at him.

“Roger that,” he agreed, tugging the hem of your shirt up your body, throwing it to the floor. You did the exact same to his, tearing it off of him as quickly as you could. He bucked his hips up to yours, and you could feel the bulge of him already. The thought of having him once more sent heat pooling in your core.

You climbed off of his lap, toying with the button on your jeans before shoving them down your legs along with your panties. Dean unbuckled his belt, making quick work of removing his jeans and boxers, pushing them down his legs. His hard cock standing proud between his legs. Fuck, was he perfect.

“Condom?” you asked him.

“Wallet,” he nodded, reaching down to his jeans, pulling out the leather pouch. He opened it up, taking the foil packet from his wallet. You stepped forward, straddling him as he opened the packet with his teeth, taking the rubber out. You watched as he took his cock in his hand, rolling the condom down over himself. You reached behind your back, removing the final article of clothing from your body to reveal yourself to him once more.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” he smiled softly at you.

“Dean,” you grinned, shaking your head.

“You are,” he shrugged. “I like that I’m the one you went home with tonight after all the guys that hit on you.”

“Thank you,” you half smiled. “You’re sexy as hell.”

“Hell doesn’t sound all that sexy,” he teased you.

“Shut up, Winchester,” you giggled. “Do you want me to fuck you or not?”

“Please,” he chuckled.

“Then ask me nicely,” you played, wanting to test him just a little.

“Y/N, will you please let me put my dick inside you?” he let out a laugh, not able to keep a straight face through the entire sentence, making you laugh along with him.

“I can’t believe you actually asked,” you cackled.

“Shut up,” he shook his head, trying not to laugh more than he already had. “The things I do for you.”

“Hey, the way to a girl’s heart is through humor, Winchester,” you pointed out.

“Yeah yeah,” he scoffed. “Alright, I’m going to touch you now. Make sure you’re ready for me.”

“By all means,” you pulled your bottom lip between your teeth. His right hand came down between your legs, his middle finger brushing through your folds to see if you were ready enough for him. You knew you were more than ready to take him. The mere sight of him had you ready to go. The kissing certainly helped you get there too. He was a damn good kisser.

“Fuck, sweetheart,” he whispered. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” you nodded. “You’re sure?”

“I am,” he agreed. “Whenever you’re ready.”

You balanced yourself on his shoulders, moving up his body to get ready. You reached one of your hands down, taking his cock before lining it up with your entrance. Your eyes met with his as you positioned the tip in place. He nodded his head, not daring to break the eye contact you held. You let yourself sync down on him, slow and steady. His eyes fluttered shut as you surrounded him in your heat.

“Fuck, Y/N,” he breathed out as he bottomed out inside you. You could feel him twitching a little as your walls grew accustomed to him. He finally opened his eyes, meeting yours as a smile played on his lips. He slipped his hands around your back, ready to help you move on him.

“You feel amazing, De,” you told him, leaning forward, pressing your forehead to his.

You made yourself more comfortable before beginning to move on him. He repositioned himself beneath you, making it easier for you to ride him, and for him to meet you halfway. As you sank down on him, he thrusted upwards. His grip was tight on you, keeping you close to him. He felt amazing inside of you. Hell, almost better than he did the first time. From this angle, his cock brushed over all the sensitive spots, getting you there a little bit faster than you were expecting him to.

His lips trailed on your neck, making your fingers curl in his shoulders. Your walls fluttered around him at the sensation. You brought your hand up to his hair, carding through his soft locks as you continued to bounce on him.

“Shit Dean,” you cried out.

“Feels so good,” he muttered, pulling away from your neck. “So close.”

“Faster,” you urged him on.

His hands slipped down to your ass, pulling you closer to him. He shifted quickly, your back hitting the couch as he fit between your legs. He snapped his hips against yours, picking up the pace to get you both there. One of his hands reached between your bodies, toying with your clit to heighten your pleasure.

“Dean, Dean, Dean,” you moaned. Your grip tightened around his shoulders, desperate to grab onto something to keep you grounded. You were panting profusely. You felt the tightness growing in your abdomen. You were so damn close.

“Come for me, sweetheart,” he urged you on. “Let me feel you.”

Your walls came crashing down around him as you let out a wanton moan. Your eyes fluttered shut as you threw your head back, letting the pleasure course it’s way through your body. Your fingers curled into his back, trying to hold onto something to keep you from floating away. Your vision went white and your body began to shake just enough for you to notice.

“Atta girl,” he encouraged you as he bucked his hips into yours. You knew he was damn close to the edge. He just needed that final push.

“Feels so good, De,” you whispered, trailing your shaky hand up into his hair. “Come for me, Dean.”

“Shit-” he growled, picking up his pace just a little more. He gave three hard thrusts before his cock twitched. His seed filling the condom before he collapsed on top of you, letting out a breath.

Your hand carded through his hair, playing with his soft locks as you both came down from your highs. You turned your head, looking at the time on the clock above your tv. It was just after twelve fifteen. You knew you had to get up and get ready for bed.

“I just realized we did that with the curtains open,” you giggled, glancing over at the big open window.

“Well shit,” he let out a laugh. “I hope they enjoyed the show.”

“We should get up,” you told him. “Get ready for bed.”

“Yeah,” he breathed out, shifting himself up. He reached down, grabbing the base of his cock to remove himself with care.

You were the first one off the couch, leaving your clothes on the floor. You headed into your bedroom, going straight to the bathroom. Dean wasn’t far behind you, throwing the used condom into the trash in your bathroom.

“Uh, you’re welcome to stay if you want to,” you offered him. “Or you can go, whichever you want to do.”

“Whichever you’re more comfortable with. I don’t want to overstep,” he stated, taking a step back.

“We literally just had sex,” you reminded him. “I don’t know what would even be considered overstepping at this point.”

“True,” he chuckled.

“Well, if you’d like to stay, there is an extra toothbrush in my drawer and boxers in the top drawer in my bedroom,” you told him with a soft smile. “I’m going to shower to get the smell of sex and alcohol off of me. If you want to do the same, you know where the towels are.”

“Alright,” he nodded, turning towards the shower. You watched as he turned the nozzle, setting it on hot. “You shower first and I’ll clean up out there.

Dean was out of the bathroom, giving you a bit of privacy. You shut the door a little, giving yourself the comfort of being alone to do what you needed to do. You went to the bathroom before slipping into the shower.

The water was the perfect temperature for you to clean yourself up. You were just going to have a quick shower to wash your body. You could wash your hair in the morning. You just wanted to feel clean. You had the feeling Dean was staying with you tonight, and you weren’t against it persay. You didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. You weren’t looking for a relationship. You hoped it was just sex for him. That you could handle with ease. You didn’t want to do the whole ‘feelings’ thing. Not with your best friend. Sleepovers were normal for friends. Two friends could have sex without it being weird. There was nothing wrong with casual sex.

You washed your body quickly. You could feel yourself getting more and more tired the more you stood under the stream. You just wanted to get out, brush your teeth and head to bed. Nothing more.

The water shut off and you stepped out onto the mat you had set out. You wrapped your towel around yourself, making sure it was tight. The mirror was all steamy, and you could barely see. Not that it was going to stop you from brushing your teeth.

“Dean, you’re good,” you called out, reaching for your toothbrush. The bathroom door opened, revealing Dean in his boxers and nothing else. He was quiet as he went about, gathering what he needed to shower. You tried your hardest to keep your eyes off of him while he moved around.

He hopped in the shower as soon as you finished brushing your teeth. The mirror was just starting to clear when you turned away, giving Dean the privacy he deserved. You noticed as soon as you were in your bedroom that Dean had thrown your clothes in the laundry hamper. His clothes were set on the chair in the corner of your room, folded nicely.

You grabbed the first pair of panties from your drawer, and an oversized shirt to wear to bed. You could feel yourself starting to overthink this. You didn’t want anything to change between you and Dean. You didn’t see him as anything other than your best friend. You didn’t want to date him. You didn’t want a boyfriend or a serious relationship for that matter. You didn’t want him to get the wrong impression.

You got dressed quickly, throwing the comforter back, slipping beneath the sheets. You heard the water turn off, which meant it was only a matter of time before he was joining you in bed. You lay on your back, adjusting the covers over your chest.

Dean emerged from the bathroom in a pair of clean boxers, shutting the light out. He circled around the bed, following the same steps. He joined you in the bed, resting on his back, looking up at the ceiling.

“You tired?” he asked you.

“Now that the lights are out, not really,” you chuckled. “You?”

“No not really,” he let out a laugh. “That was fun.”

“It was. And I’m not usually for being on top,” you admitted with a half smile.

“Why this time?” he questioned, turning his head to look your direction.

“I don’t know. I guess I feel a little more comfortable around you. I’m not as nervous about some things, like the way I look for example,” you confessed.

“You’re beautiful,” he said with a laugh. “Hell, I wouldn’t mind doing it again.”

“What, like that?”

“That. And sex in general,” he shrugged. “I’ve got what is probably not a good idea. But you said that you’re not looking to date anyone. I’m not ready to date anyone. We’re best friends and speaking from previous experiences one and two, sex is great between us. You’re comfortable with me, and I’m comfortable with you. Why don’t we continue sleeping together? You know, get each other off, try some new things?”

“Like a friends with benefits kind of thing?” you inquired, furrowing your brows.

“Yeah I guess so,” he breathed out.

“How is that going to work, Dean?” you turned to face him. “It literally never works. There are too many rules, and someone always gets hurt in the end.”

“Not if we don’t let it,” he reminded you.

“Fair point. If we’re going this, and that’s a big if, Dean. I don’t want stupid rules and shit, okay? Friends who have sex, try new things; whatever. Nothing about our friendship changes,” you declared.

“Done deal. I can agree to those terms,” he nodded.

“Good. I’m all for sex, but as soon as something goes sideways, of gets complicated, I’m out, okay?” you breathed out.

“More than okay,” he smiled at you. “Now, are you going to deny me after sex cuddling?”

“We had sex like half an hour ago,” you scoffed playfully.

“Friends are allowed to cuddle, you know,” he reminded you. “It’s not going to hurt you.”

“Fine,” you shook your head. “You’re big spoon though.”

“Turn around then,” he smirked.

You turned over, trying to make yourself comfortable on your side of the bed. Dean slipped his arm around your middle, his chest pressing against your back. You let yourself melt into him, feeling safe in his hold. You knew for a fact that he was going to keep the nightmares away tonight.

Maybe after sex cuddling wasn’t so bad after all.

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

Part 5 coming Tuesday!

Did you like it? What was your favourite part? Any theories? Please share your thoughts with me via reblog, reply or send me an ask! Nothing is stupid! I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Your response is the ONLY thing keeping me sharing this story!

Dean Babes

@emoryhemsworth / @deans-baby-momma / @percussiongirl2017 / @gabavaldman / @a-distantdreamer / @clarewinchester / @feelmyroarrrr / @x-waywardaf-x / @ria132love / @whimsicalrobots / @gh0stgurl/ @tabrown2021 / @jayankles / @1000roughdrafts / @claitynroberts / @spn-dean-and-sam-winchester / @atc74 / @dolphincliffs / @shamelesslydean / @tailsoflightning / @spnwoman / @squirrelnotsam / @squirrel-moose-winchester / @mtngirlforever / @dean-winchesters-bacon / @maddiepants / @pandaheazen / @liberty01 / @deanscarlett / @sandlee44 / @idontknow-canyou / @imaginationisgrowth / @closetspngirl / @blacktithe7 / @dubuforeveralone / @theunofficialduke / @mersuperwholocked-lowlife / @winchester19-67 / @mogaruke / @midnightsilver16830 / @mrswhozeewhatsis / @its-not-a-tulpa / @akshi8278 / @im-a-light-child / @kcp15 / @mishapanicmeow / @whiskeywinter89 / @gallifreyansass / @flamencodiva / @ruprecht0420 / @xristina-gkika / @padamoosemakegirlmoosegowhaaa / @stellaa33 / @cookiechipdough / @deansgirl215 / @yoursmilemakesmeloveyou / @robfangirl / @mlovesstories / @spn-fan-girl-173 /

@imagefanfictionlover / @prettyinplaid94 / @luci-in-trenchcoats / @cpag7 / @wwecrazed2010 / @mamaredd123 / @fanfreak07 / @hhiggs / @kcp15 / @caseyrhodes / @severinsnape / @deanwinchesterswitch / @darklivingcenturies / @bloodwitch666 / @deansgirl-1968 / @waitwhatsrealityagain / @captainelkequinn / @missstrictlydickly / @alexwinchester23 / @spnbaby-67 / @one-little-anon / @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce / @tardis-is-mine / @keymology / @absolute-randomness-forever / @justanotherwinchester / @jadesupernatural / @anastacia-winchester / @team-free-will-you-idjiot / @idksupernatural / @deanwanddamons / @spnfamily-j2 / @majorcurious007 / @rhiannon79j / @pisces-cutie

Owe You One

@indecisive20something / @deanmonandnegansbitch / @rosiehayes / @allonsy-yesiwill / @onethirstyunicorn / @herscrunchiehairtie / @deanwinchesterinthedarktower / @badpvn / @akshi8278 / @invisiblexnobodyximportant / @roonyxx / @sucker-for-dean / @kakakatey / @ladyofmaidensandwine / @busy-bee-angel-misska / @hopefulmoonobject / @wayward-gypsy / @magssteenkamp / @matsumama / @compresshischest09 / @elliloumom / @noneedtoknow789 / @kalesrebellion / @starsandmidnightblue / @goddessofmischiefs

636 notes · View notes