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spider6oy · 5 years ago

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This is on you || JJ Maybank

summary: y/n and jj had been best friends for many years and had always been there for each other. but what happens when jj gets a new girlfriend and y/n finally comes to realise what has been happening between her and jj all these years. based on the song ‘this is on you’ by maisie peters because i am an absolute slut for her

Warnings: swearing, bad writing

word count: 3.2k

Your sleep was currently being disturbed by an incessant tapping at your bedroom window. At first, you had only thought it to be a tree branch raking against the window from the wind – you honestly didn’t think much of it. Living in North Carolina, you were used to the strong winds making things bash into the side of your house (or in this case; your bedroom window). With that thought in mind; you gripped the duvet cover, rolled over, and went back to sleep almost instantly.

Almost.

The tapping quickly became much more constant, almost never-ending, which lead you to assume that this in fact was not a tree branch in the wind but was something else. You let out a frustrated groan as you threw the covers away from your body and swung your legs over the side of the bed. You felt a scowl set upon your features as you marched over towards your bedroom window, feeling goose bumps rise on your skin as you walked across the cold wooden floor.

You couldn’t really think who would be knocking at your bedroom window at 3 o’clock in the morning – 3 in the morning?! Everyone you knew would either be asleep right now or at their own homes, there was no real reason for anyone to be at your bedroom window. You huffed lightly as you gripped the chord for the shade and yanked it; revealing who was outside your window.

Your eyes widened slightly, and your lips parted as you watched JJ, who you now realised was responsible for the tapping, wave at you through the glass and send you a dopey smile. You remained stunned, your hand hadn’t even let go of the shade chord, as you simply stared down at JJ.

You couldn’t believe it, quite honestly. You simply could not believe that he was stood outside of your window right now – at 3am, did I mention?

You hadn’t actually seen JJ for just over a month. At first, it had felt like your entire world was falling apart. What were you supposed to do without him? He was one of the most important people in your life; if not the most important person. Everything you had ever done; JJ had always been by your side – and you had thought that that would never change. Not in a million years did you expect him to be missing from your life. But it happened. He was in your life one day and gone the next.

It had all started when he had met this random touron at a kegger. Her name was Amber. She was pretty with her blonde hair and blue eyes. When you had first noticed her, you could have sworn that she was a real-life Barbie doll. She looked perfect (you could understand why JJ had started speaking to her).

But honestly, you didn’t even bat an eyelash at the pair. Why would you? This was typical JJ behaviour. Find an attractive girl, woo her with his good looks and dazzling charm, have sex with her, and then move on to the next poor unfortunate soul. It was practically like clockwork.

So, you could imagine how surprised you were to see the blonde girl sitting on John B’s couch (with a beer in her hand, laughing at something JJ had said) when you had arrived that afternoon. You had shot questioning glances at your fellow Pogues and received just as confused expressions from them back. You were all entirely perplexed and couldn’t help but wonder; what had this girl done to JJ?

Anyway, it quickly became apparent that Amber was not going anywhere anytime soon (much to your disdain) because for the next week and-a-half; everywhere JJ went so did Amber. It was as if they couldn’t live without each other. They had practically become joined at the hip. Every single boat trip, dinner at The Wreck, kegger, or whatever the group had planned to do for that day; Amber was always there. It quickly became impossible to separate the two.

And of course, you didn’t like it. You absolutely fucking hated it. You had basically lost your best friend overnight without so much as a warning. A quick ‘Hey, can I borrow JJ and. . . never give him back?’ would have been much appreciated on your end. But you hadn’t lost him entirely.

No, you still got to see him. . . and Amber. And, you still got to talk to him. . . and Amber. So, could you really complain?

(I mean, yes. Yes, you could complain. And you would complain. But only to the Pogues, and only when JJ wasn’t around (which was becoming more and more of a regular thing)).

Yet, you couldn’t help but feel guilty. You felt guilty for the fact that your best friend, who barely got a chance at happiness in his shitty life, had finally found someone that made him feel happy. You felt guilty that you couldn’t just be happy for him too. You felt guilty that you couldn’t push your own selfish opinions and emotions to the side, at the benefit of your best friend. You felt guilty for not being a good friend.

So that’s what you did. You pushed those thoughts and feelings to the side and replaced them with only the happiness you felt for JJ. And it worked. You no longer felt irritation and anger when you looked over at the pair, wishing that Amber would somehow just disappear and never return. Instead, you could only smile softly at the couple now, loving how JJ’s eyes seemed to be filled with pure joy and his smile never seemed to drop.

Only that didn’t last long. It was maybe two days later when JJ was knocking at your front door. You remember your smile widening as you noticed he was alone (for the first time in forever), wondering if maybe your JJ had finally returned, and if Amber had gone back to whatever hovel she had come from. But your smile quickly faltered as you noticed his nervous demeanour. He was constantly nibbling at the corner of his lip, fingers fiddling with his rings, and his eyes couldn’t seem to meet yours.

You had quickly questioned what was wrong with him. Your own nerves were beginning to get the better of you, your grip on your front door tightening as you waited for his response. Your heartbeat began to quicken, and you could feel your palms becoming clammy as he awkwardly stuttered out what he had to say. You remembered tears welling in the corners of your eyes and your throat becoming impossibly tight as you couldn’t believe what he was telling you.

He didn’t want to see you anymore.

He didn’t want to be your friend anymore.

He didn’t want you anymore.

You had thought he was lying. You nervously laughed it off (holding back the tears) and shook your head, claiming that he must have been joking. Your lip quivered as you watched him shake his head and repeat his words, stating how he didn’t want to see you again and that you shouldn’t try to call him or talk to him from now on. He awkwardly turned on his foot, sending you one last pitiful glance, and walked back towards where you noticed John B’s van was parked.

And guess who was sat in the front seat?

Your sadness and despair at the loss of your best friend quickly transformed into anger and hatred towards him. How could he just dump you like that? Like you didn’t mean anything? How could he act as if your friendship meant nothing to him? As if 10 years of friendship equivalated to fucking zilch?! How could he choose her over you? How could he choose some blonde touron that he didn’t even know last month over his closest friend and ally?!

You were utterly destroyed by the whole thing. Honestly you were. You had never quite felt a pain like it before. It was as if someone had plunged their hand into your chest and physically ripped your heart straight out from within your body, squeezing it in their palm until all of the life had drained from it. This left you feeling empty and hollow. This left you feeling as though you had lost your sense of identity within the world. Who were you without JJ?

The next couple of weeks were quite possibly some of the worst weeks you had ever experienced in your life. The Pogues would visit almost every day; which made the passing time a little bit easier. All of them were completely enraged by what JJ had done. He hadn’t decided to cut them out of his life as of yet, but that didn’t mean that they wanted to be a part of it. They would always cuss JJ out for what he did, cursing him under their breath.

But you all knew who the sole culprit for JJ’s actions was – and this is what angered you the most.

Because you had given her a chance. You had started to put your own feelings aside and respect the relationship that JJ was developing. . . but, she obviously couldn’t do the same for you.

With all of this newfound time on your hands, you couldn’t help but think. What else was there to do? So, you thought. You thought back to all of the times you had spent with JJ; talking over your feelings together, helping and comforting each other through tough times in your lives, making each other laugh when all either of you had wanted to do was cry.

But, as you continued to think over all of those times, you suddenly came upon a thought. It was like some sort of fucking epiphany. You felt like someone had literally just smacked you right across the face and had woken you up from a sort of mad-daze because, when you actually thought back to all of those times you had spent with JJ, consoling and empathizing, he had never actually done the same for you.

Not once.

You couldn’t help but let out a laugh (the first sign of positivity you had shown in a few days). Your hands reached up to cup your cheeks as more and more dumfounded chuckles and giggles seemed to leave your lips, laughing at your own blindness and stupidity. You fell backwards onto your bed and stared up at the ceiling above you, finally feeling a sense of clarity. You finally felt like the fog that had inhabited your mind for so long had finally been cleared away.

Because you quickly came to realise that you did not need JJ. JJ needed you.

“Uh, hey Y/N.”

You couldn’t deny that your heart ached slightly at the sight before you. His eyes were puffy, his nose running slightly, and his cheeks seemed flushed whilst the rest of his face seemed to blanch in comparison. You couldn’t help but internally curse yourself for pitying him upon one single glance. You had been pitying the boy for so long that it was practically second nature at this point.

“JJ.” You greeted, but it came out as more of statement. As if you were confirming to yourself that JJ was actually outside of your bedroom right now.

He bit his lip as his eyes looked past you and into your bedroom, “Can I come in? I just. . . I just really need to talk to you right now.” His eyes travelled back towards you and captured your own in a pleading gaze.

You looked away from his stare, boring holes into the windowsill below you. You knew what he was trying to do – it was obvious for anyone to see. He was trying to pick up from where he had left off with you. Where he would show up at your house, teary-eyed and a blubbering mess, expect you to listen to his struggles and calm him down with your warm embrace. Because that was what you had always done.

People had always told you that you were caring, that you had the kind of loving touch that would make even the most hysterical and rowdiest of people settled with a single glance. And you had always thought that it was a good thing. You had always had a sense of pride when it came to your empathy because you liked helping people, and you wanted to help people. But you had come to learn that people could (and would) take advantage of your kindness and use it to their own advantage, and you didn’t want that anymore.

“No.”

You looked up from your windowsill and stared straight into JJ’s widened and shocked eyes. You could instantly tell that he hadn’t been expecting that from you (neither had you in all honesty).

His mouth bobbed open and closed whilst his eyebrows furrowed, eyes flickering all over your face as if he were trying to find an ounce deceit. “N-No? What-What do you mean, no? Like. . . like, no?”

You gripped at your windowsill, your heart hammering in your chest. You had never been one for confrontation or telling people exactly how you felt. You had always been too wary and scared of hurting anyone’s feelings; you were a proper softy at heart. Your worst nightmare had always been the thought of hurting someone, or worse; hurting those closest to you.

But, honestly, enough was enough.

“Yes, ‘No’ JJ. No, you can’t come in. I’m sorry.” You voice came out with a slight waver to it; you were not feeling confident in that moment at all and all you wanted to do was shut your bedroom window and hide under the blankets on your bed.

JJ, still utterly perplexed, stepped forward until he was directly beneath your window. He stretched up onto the tips of his toes and held onto the window edge for some form of support. “But I really need you right now, Y/N. Amber, she-um. . . she, uh, she broke up with me. And I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go because I always come to you in situations like these, you know?”

You nodded your head. Of course, you knew.

You wet your lips as you pushed a hand through your hair, trying to think of the words to say. You knew that you didn’t want to hurt JJ, after all he had just broken up with Amber. But you also knew that you couldn’t keep doing this to yourself, you had already been drained of so much.

“Listen, JJ, I am really sorry that Amber broke up with you. I really am because I knew how much you liked her. But, I can’t help you right now and. . . I don’t think I ever will.”

That really made him start to panic. You could see it all over his face; his eyes had widened, his face paled even more, and you could see him start to become much more jittery.

“Wha-What? Ever..huh, um, ever? Y/N, you’re not making any sense right now? What do you mean ever? Do you. . . do you now want to help me, or something?” His words were leaving his mouth in a rush and it all just seemed to scream fear and dread. He knew that he was losing you, and he couldn’t have that.

What was he supposed to do without his shoulder to cry on?

You sighed lightly, kneeling down on your floor so that you were much closer to JJ now. “I do want to help you JJ. I have always wanted to help you and be there for you when you needed me most.” You could see a spark of hope glisten in the corner of his bright blue eyes, most likely thinking you were reconsidering his invitation into your bedroom. “But I’ve been doing that for the past ten years, and honestly? I can’t do it anymore.”

You watched as JJ slowly reclined back onto the balls of his feet, snatching his hands away from the sill; obviously not wanting to be anywhere near you.

You couldn’t deny that that had hurt.

“This is such bullshit, Y/N! You’re supposed to be my best friend, and best friends are meant to be there for each other! We’re supposed to help each other through these types of things!” JJ’s voice had raised a couple of notches, making you reel back slightly from the harsh tone.

You couldn’t help but feel a sense of anger at his words. Was he being serious right now? His accusations were entirely hypocritical. He was straight up accusing you of not being a good friend, of not supporting him through the toughest of times, when all this time he had been doing exactly that.

Frankly, it was all a major piss-take in your opinion.

You scoffed, your eyes narrowing into slits as you felt the built-up anger and frustration finally break through to the surface. “And I have! I have helped you through everything, for so fucking long, JJ. I have always been there for you. When the Kooks would rile you up, I was the one who would calm you down. When your father would beat the living shit out of you, I was the one who would patch up your wounds. And when the anniversary of your mom came around, I would always be the one who’s shoulder you would cry on. You cannot call me a bad friend, JJ. I will not let you call me a bad friend, no fucking way, because the only person who has been a bad friend this entire time; is you.”

Your chest heaved as you took a deep inhale of breath. You couldn’t help but feel like weight was being lifted from your shoulders. It was as if this is what you had been waiting to say all these years but had never truly been able to grasp at the idea. These words had been buried deep inside of you for so long and your break from JJ had finally allowed for them to come to the surface.

“You dumped me JJ. You left me, your supposed best friend of ten years, for some random touron girl who you had barely even known for two weeks! Who fucking does that, JJ?!”

You leant forward, your head slightly protruding out of your window. You wanted JJ to hear every word that you had to say. You wanted him to understand what you had gone through. You wanted him to understand what he had put you through.

“So, when you need someone to cry to and you can’t think of anyone because you fucked up what you had with me; just know that this is all on you, JJ. All of this, everything that has happened, is on your shoulders.”

You noticed how JJ’s jaw seemed to clench as your words left your lips. You could tell that he was trying to hold himself together. He was trying not to fall apart right there in front of you because for the first time ever, he knew you would not pick up the pieces.

“This is your bed JJ, you made it,” You leant back from the sill, standing up and grasping onto the window as you readied yourself to finally close it and put an end to everything between you and JJ – this was it. “Now, lie in it.”

tagged: @5am-cigarette thank you for giving me the idea 💖

#jj maybank #jj maybank fanfiction #jj maybank fic #jj maybank imagines #jj maybank one shot #jj maybank x fem!reader #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank x y/n #jj x fem!reader #outer banks #jj maybank x platonic reader

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hufflepuffhollander · 4 years ago

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fire and gasoline (mob!tom series) ch. 1: new vendetta

a/n | wooo buckle in this is a wild ride 😼 and pls share w the world! i’m proud of this one!

synopsis | Your family runs a sect of the british mafia. Tom Holland is the son of the mob leader in your rival gang. You’ve been groomed to be at each other’s throats for as long as you can remember, and a chance run-in after over a decade of feuding and secrecy has you questioning everything you thought you knew.

cw | mob!tom au. enemies to lovers. language, angst, death threats, objectification, sexual tension, and lots of spit. 3.1k words.

read the prologue, join the taglist :)

Roxy’s was your spot- it always had been. The dark alleyway entrance, the smoky air inside that concealed who you truly were, the faceless regulars that just knew to leave you be- it was everything you could want in a local bar. So, instead of somewhere a little cheerier, you chose here; instead of a glimmering club with strobe effects to blind you and music loud enough to burst your eardrums, you decided to spend your birthday where you knew you could melt into the blackness of the night and live mess-free, even if it was just for a few hours.

You had just gotten your second round of drinks with a few friends, your heels clicking from across the room as you wandered over to your table with freshly topped off shot glasses. A brand new, skin-tight black dress paired with electric blue heels adorned you, and the birthday glow radiating across your skin had you looking and feeling like absolutely nothing could bring you down. You were celebrating, you had just landed a major deal with a supplier to your casino; and better yet, you hadn’t heard from the Hollands in weeks. Since their failed attempt at taking out your father during a high-profile event, they had been lying low, full of shame. A recent victory for your family in the never-ending turf war with the Hollands? Not a single mention of Dom or Nikki thwarting your plans in days? Well, that was the best birthday present a girl could ask for.

You barely had time to feel the gin roll down your throat before the bar door was shoved open, bells tied in a knot overhead chiming ominously as it felt like a tornado had blown in. The room fell quiet, the punkish music on repeat seeming to mute itself. Even the smoke moving through the air was put on pause. Everyone was eyeballing the doorway, where two heavily armed young men stood rigidly; right behind them, a pale, muscular boy with the scent of his own ego radiating off him, a slick smile painted across his face. Every part of your body suddenly felt ice cold.

The boy took off his glasses, the sheer notion that he was wearing wayfarers at night making you groan, and coated the room with his gaze until it landed—and stayed—on you. You tried to avert your attention but couldn’t, as a wave of realization fell over you when he made eye contact. You knew this fuckwad. It was Tom Holland- the son of your rival mob, the boy your father always told you to imagine a target was when learning to sharpshoot...the one who had orchestrated the failed assassination of your dad. Your belly filled with a white-hot fire at the audacity he had to show his face here. Who did he think he was? What the hell was he doing on the East side? And did he know he had just walked into his own execution?

You would’ve seen it through, too, had he not been about to strike you square in the face with a curveball.

“We’re closed.” you heard Roxy spit out, not even bothering to look at the boys as she dried a glass.

“Doesn’t seem like it, babe,” Tom sneered, flashing her an insincere smile and focusing his attention back on you. “And anyway, we aren’t staying; I just came here with a message for the birthday girl.”

You fantasized about a knife appearing on the table in front of you so you could slice the little bitch to shreds for even daring to acknowledge you. But no such luck.

Tom whisked past the bar front, taking his time to saunter over towards your booth. You had bribed your security guard to let you take the night off- he was only there because of your dad’s doing, so he could breathe easier when you were out of his sight. But you hated feeling like a little kid needing to be babysat, especially tonight, when you were turning a year older, and paid him off to get doped up with a friend instead of coming with you. You were kicking yourself for that decision now, watching Tom come up to you without a hint of fear in his dark, shimmering eyes.

You hadn’t seen him since you were kids, when you had told everyone you were getting married to the cute boy you played with and exchanged candy rings with him in your backyard.

“My my, what an impressive array of barbies,” Tom laughed as he stopped in front of your table, swiping his tongue across his teeth. “any of you pretty things looking to blow this joint?”

Your few friends looked simultaneously revolted and terrified, and you knew they lived their lives too sugarcoated to witness the interaction you were about to have.

“Girls, you should leave,” you said, giving them a concerned stare, and it took them less than a second to get up and bolt. Some real friends you had.

You tried to remain composed as you turned your attention to Tom, syllables seething through your gritted teeth. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?”

“Aww, baby, that’s no way to greet an old friend, is it? ‘Coulda least let me wish you a happy birthday,” he sat down on the bench across from you, making you recoil into your seat. “I even have a candle you can blow, if you like.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, asshole.”

“Well someone just isn’t feeling very sentimental, hmm? You remember all those years ago, playing hide and go seek in your mansion, holding hands under the dinner table...I think I remember you having it pretty bad for me back then-”

“You must have a death wish, huh?” you cut him off, standing up and advancing towards him, but taking a step back as he stood up to meet you and towered over you menacingly. He smelled like cigar smoke and cherry aftershave and it clouded your thoughts. You’d always said you’d kill him if he ever got this close to you. Why were you faltering now when it mattered most? Your heart couldn’t keep up with your head.

“No, doll. Not tonight, and definitely not in a place like this. But I gotta admit, I was not expecting you to look so fucking good after all these years. Pop had me believing you were some kind of ugly recluse. Makes it extra difficult for me to tell you to give daddy a call before your birthday is over,” his eyes hungrily flicked over you in your dress, making your blood boil. “y’know, tell him you love him.”

“The hell are you talking about?” you reached for your purse where your pistol was lodged, but felt a cold piece of metal touch the back of your head, halting your movements.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said minion #1, standing behind you with the barrel of his gun nestled into your curled hair. You swallowed nervously and felt your heart rate skyrocket. The bar seemed to have emptied out; it was just you, Tom, and the promise of death caressing your scalp, and you had nowhere to go.

“Hey, now, Harrison, there’s no need for that! y/n and I go way back,” Tom said, motioning for his friend to lower the weapon. Deeply buried flashbacks of child you linked arm in arm with child Tom flicked through your mind, memories you had suppressed long ago.

“Love,” Tom started, advancing towards you again, leaving you nowhere to go if you didn’t want gun grease staining your head. “I’m simply hinting that you may want to get out any last sentiments before we bleed him out on his crisp white sheets tonight.”

Your eyes widened in panic, and your words came out stuttered. “Y-you’re bluffing-”

“You so sure of that, baby?” He clicked his tongue against his teeth, leaning his head in so his face was only inches from yours. “You tellin’ me you know he’s safe and sound right now? Or does an itty, bitty part of you think that maybe, when his baby girl and best insurance policy went out for drinks, it left his ass dangling out in the open, just begging to get capped?”

Your nostrils flared and your teeth were clenched so hard together that you were sure they’d break, but you couldn’t move, couldn’t fight. You were stuck in the space of Tom as his cool breath violated your cheeks, suddenly picturing violent images of your family in a pool of blood.

Your eyebrows raised with each syllable you spoke, trying your best to conceal the incredible stress eating at you from the inside. “Get...the fuck...out of my face.”

Tom did something that almost made you combust then, swiping his thumb across the bottom of your chin, grinning, and blowing a smooch at you before finally drawing back. The sound of his lips smacking together lingered in your ears, like he not only had total control of you, but of all the soundwaves in the air.

“Look, I thought I was doing you a favor, giving you the heads up and all...I definitely didn’t have to. So if you wanna be an ungrateful little bitch about it, fine,” he stepped back, sitting down in the booth again and casually propping his feet up on the seat opposite. “don’t call him. I don’t fucking care.”

With a path to the door finally freed, you began to calculate your next move in your head, but Tom seemed to have violated your thoughts, too.

“Nuh-uh,” he tsked, looking off to the door and giving a nod as minion #2 locked it into place and stood with his arms crossed in front of it like the world’s least intimidating bouncer. “You really think we’d come all this way to tell you we’re about to kill daddy and then just let you, what, leave? Run home to his rescue?” he scoffed at the mere thought, and his worker bees in black laughed along with him. Tom gave you an infinitely objectifying once-over. “Like you’d make it that far in those heels.”

“I’d like to see them off,” one of his men said, prompting Tom to violently curse at him.

“Don’t you fucking dare talk about her like that, Harry. She’s not yours.” He was acting like some protective owner of you, which only made you angrier as you felt a dull electricity appear in your stomach.

The alcohol already in your system mixed with the adrenaline coursing through your veins made you feel fiery, out of control, erratic. You weren’t sure if you wanted to lunge at him or cry, the sting of worry pinpricking your eyelids as Tom’s smirk stayed put.

“What do you want?” you resigned, looking down and away from him, leaning against the wall behind you for support. You didn’t want to cave, but you couldn’t help it- you were paralyzed, fight or flight response warring with itself.

Tom shrugged, remaining nonchalant. “Just bragging rights, really,” he picked up an arm and ran his fingers through his tousled hair, his oversized platinum watch catching the light as he did it.

You were able to regain some composure as you responded, remembering who you were, knowing that your family could hold its own. You took a few paces forward in an attempt reclaim your pride. “Slim chance. You’d never be able kill him anyway, you pathetic excuse of a television criminal,” you spat out, seeing Tom’s expression falter just enough to spur you on. “You’re not the only one who knows things, y’know, I’ve learned all about you, too. All bark and no bite. A puppy who acts tough until he gets a paper cut and cowers under the bed.” you could feel your confidence refueling your words, and narrowed your eyes. “Maybe you were intimidating as a kid, but you don’t fucking scare me now, Holland.”

Upon the callout, Tom bolted up from his seat, swiftly pulling a handheld gun out of his belt and backing you up against the wall, barrel aimed at the perfect angle to blaze a clean hole through your head. “You little-”

Thankfully, you had friends on this side of town, and Roxy always had your back.

She tore out of the back with an assault rifle twice the size of her, firing a round of warning shots into the rickety ceiling. It shook Tom’s focus enough for you to make a break for it, running and ducking behind the safety of the bar.

“You better get to leaving before I have to mop you greasy motherfuckers off my floor,” Roxy said in her thick cockney accent, looking as intimidating as you’d ever seen her. Tom sniggered and stayed put.

“You think I’m joking?” she said, aiming at the wooden boards and landing a shot barely an inch from one of his friends’ feet.

“Jesus-!” they yelped, forcing you to stifle a laugh as you watched the scene unfold.

Three very oversized men walked out from the back of the room with their own weapons of choice to back Roxy up. Seeing they’d been outnumbered, Tom retracted his gun and looked warily at his friends, grouping up to leave the bar. He saw you backed in the corner and took an extra moment to let that cocky sneer find its way back to his face, making sure to remind you why you ran in the first place.

The group walked out unscathed, leaving behind a deafening silence until Roxy looked back at you and shook you from your trance.

“Go home, babes, and make sure your family is okay.”

As you ran outside against your better judgement, eyes locked on your car parked in the alley, an abraisive pair of hands grabbed you from behind and pushed you up against the side of the building. You recognized the sickly sweet smell of cherries and knew Tom wasn’t finished with you.

He had his arm up over your head and the other on your shoulder, evidently taking in all of your features for the first time in years.

“Time did you well, didn’t it? My god, can’t believe my little kid wife grew up to be so pretty,” his eyes sparkled with a twisted, deep desire. “We’d look good together in different circumstances, hm?” His words prompted you to spit in his face.

“In your fucking dreams.”

“Ooh, a feisty little thing. I’d watch that temper of yours, y/n, you’ll make a lot of enemies talking like that,” he said in a low voice, collecting your spit from his cheek and sucking it off of his finger.

“We’re friends forever, darling. I’ll find my way back to you.” he winked at you and sauntered away into the dark. “Say hi to daddy for me.”

Your foot on the gas pedal made an indentation on the floor of the car as you sped home, tears almost blinding you from the road, making every streetlight overhead look like an abstract explosion of color. You left the ignition on as you careened into the gated entrance of your house, kicking your blue heels into the grass and sprinting inside, yelling. “Dad? Mum? Hello???”

You almost ran head first into your parents as they rushed out of the den after hearing your exasperated calls.

“y/n? What the bloody hell is going on?” your mother saw you standing shell-shocked, taking in the fact that they weren’t chopped into pieces, and pulled you into a hug as you broke out into uncontrollable sobs.

“T-they locked me in and told me they were- that you’d be dead when I got home-” you choked out in between tears, unable to calm your breathing.

Your dad gripped his tumbler of scotch with so much sudden anger that it shattered into his hand. You could see fire in his eyes. “Who? Who told you that?”

You looked up at him and said exactly what he was expecting. “The Hollands. Tom. He- he came into Roxy’s.”

“I’m going to hang that chav from his wimpy little fucking-”

“Hon, please.” your mom said sternly while motioning to you in your sorry state, making your dad’s face a little less violently red. He took a deep, ragged breath.

“Hey, sweet pea, look,” he said, tucking away a strand of hair that had fallen in your face and was clinging to your tear-streaked cheeks. “We’re okay, alright? Tonight is an ordinary night, and our security detail is the best in the city. You stop worrying and go get yourself cleaned up, mum and I have something special we want to give you.” He smiled only to steam off and slam the door to his office, most likely to make a call to get someone, anyone, that may have had a hand in tonight’s events drawn and quartered by dawn.

You came downstairs after a long, boiling hot shower that only made you seethe more at the fact that Tom had been bluffing the whole time. It had clearly just been a fear tactic, probably done for no other reason than to fuck with you on your birthday and ruin your night. He loved crafting little games like that, this being the first time he’d come to play in person—and what made you angriest is that it had worked.

“Honey, we have a gift for you,” your mom said, handing you a silver box that was much heavier than it looked. She and your dad sat on the big sofa in the den, looking at you expectantly.

“Well, open it!” she smiled.

You undid the box, hands still shaking from earlier, and found a shiny, pitch black glock with a silver inscription in its body reading “sweet pea”, the nickname your dad had given you forever ago.

“Uh, wow, I don't know what to say...” you trailed off, picking it up and turning it over in your hand. It became surprisingly weightless, feeling like it was made to fit in your palm.

“It was mine, back in the day,” your dad spoke, seeming wistful. “Had it rebuilt and shined up for my baby girl.”

“Thank you, daddy, I love it,” you said, leaning over to hug your parents. You smiled blankly as they talked to you about the gift and how special it was, nodding at their comments...but you weren’t really listening.

All you could think about was a pair of flushed lips inches from your own, an intoxicating smell lingering in your brain; and just how amazing this gun would feel in your hand right after it had burned a bullet-sized cavity into Tom Holland’s chest.

#fire and gasoline #new series #mob!tom #tom holland #tom holland imagine #tom holland blurb #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland one shot #tom holland fanfic #tom holland smut #tom holland x reader #tom holland x you #mob!tom x you #mob! tom x reader

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xxisxxisxxis · 5 years ago

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Gateway Drug | Part Forty-Five

Table of Content or Part Forty-Four

Read HERE on Wattpad

Words: 3.1K

Warning(s): Explicit language, sexual situations, mentions of drug abuse

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Five days detoxing at Doc's house+rehab+therapy=road to recovery=out of the woods. It's the magical equation I swore up and down wouldn't end in "Error."

The few dishes on the counter shatter into the floor once Nikki roughly sits me on it, his fingers digging into my thighs that wrap securely around him, our tongues twisting as we tug and pull at each other's clothes.

I get his pants undone as he pulls the towel from around my body, taking a handful of my soaking wet hair in his hand and tugging my head back to leave bites and bruises up and down my neck, causing me to hum in pleasure while my core pulses with anticipation to be filled by him.

Moving myself to the edge of the counter, spreading my legs as he runs his fist up and down his length a few times, I take heavy breaths, a wash of shame coming over me for a moment because this is the complete opposite of what we were instructed to do.

But fuck the "no contact" rule.

I've barely had any contact with him the past few months because he's been stoned or drunk. Telling me to practically ignore and avoid him for 30 days straight is like waving a loaded syringe in an addict's face before sitting it down in front of them and leaving them alone after telling them "okay I know it's right there and it's the one thing you struggle most to control yourself around, but don't even look at it."

Fuck that, and Nikki. And I refuse to walk around my own house anymore and not do the latter of those two.

The indescribable feeling of him pushing into me has my head tipping back , and my eyes closing as the both of us let out content sighs.

I put my weight on one of my hands that rests on the counter beside me, the other hand wrapped around the back of Nikki's neck, as he moves in and out of me ferociously and I meet him thrust for thrust.

Let's take a step back and catch up on how he and I had gotten to that point.

Eight Days Earlier

"You two can detox at my place, check into rehab, come out when you're better and we'll go from there." Doc explains to Nikki and Tansy as they both sit on our couch.

"W-What about the press? Or my mom?" Tansy asks him nervously, fumbling with the tag on the throw blanket she's enveloped in.

"You let me deal with your mom and the media, alright?" Doc assures her.

"Surely your mom won't be pissed at you for getting help, Tans." I try to tell her and she rubs her lips together.

"People will know I have a problem if I got to rehab." She points out. "It'll make me look bad."

"Having to cover your entire body with makeup to hide the discoloration of your skin and the track marks, looks bad, Tansy. Screw what people think. At least you're admitting you need help." I say and she doesn't reply, just looking at Nikki to gauge his reaction to all of this.

He looks pissed, but too tired and defeated to give a shit enough to argue with me anymore about it.

"What's the point of rehab if I'm just gonna end up kicking it at Doc's place?" Nikki asks me and I let out a breath.

"Because rehab will teach you coping mechanisms that Doc can't, Nikki. It won't take that long for you to get out if you just try your best at it." I reply and he scoffs.

"So, what, you're babysitting me at Doc's until I'm done throwing up, shitting myself, and having hot and cold flashes and then shipping me off for a few weeks?" He cuts his dead eyes at me and Doc and I exchange looks.

"Well, it depends on how quickly you adjust to rehab and make a turn around, as to how soon you can get out...so it might be more than a few weeks." Doc informs him. "And Bob has already scheduled you and Viv an appointment with a marriage therapist."

"Well if I'm spending more than three weeks in rehab there's no point in working on our marriage."

"The program you'll be in includes this particular therapist who's currently working on creating a schedule for Vivian to come visit you often and you two have your sessions bi-weekly." Doc states and Nikki rolls his jaw, looking at me.

"Is this what you really want? Your husband gone for weeks on end until some quack gives me a certificate and a gold star because I went 'X' amount of time without shooting up?" He harshly questions me and I rub my lips together.

I think of the reasons Nikki didn't spend more than three days in rehab the first time he went, was because A.) He refused to believe in a higher power, and B.) He didn't go to rehab because he knew he had a problem and wanted to get better, he went to rehab to appease the people around him because he felt we were twisting his arm until he gave up and cried "mercy" a.k.a "fine I'll go, just as long as you shut the fuck up and get off my back about it."

I look at him for a moment, studying his knotted hair, his yellow skin, his shot eyes, his weak appearance, before saying:

"I'd rather you hate me for a little while for getting you help, instead of waking up and trying to convince myself to continue to live in a world with no Nikki Sixx in it."

"We're not indestructible, Nikki." Tansy adds softly, knowing very well she and he both need help.

He doesn't say anything else.

She had Doc and I convinced she wanted help...but truth be told Nikki actually went to rehab while Tansy had Duff come get her from Doc's house.

She knew she had a severe problem, but the only time Tansy would "clean up" was when she gave her veins a break, out of fear of completely losing them, and was muscling smack. She would fall back on pills and lots of booze, then when some of her veins would start reviving themselves back from their smaller size, she would start up again.

I can't even say how much money she and her mother were paying people to keep quiet to the media.

Nobody could know perfect Tansy Lyn, Playboy's Barbie Doll, was so broken inside that she repeatedly destroyed her body, let it rebuild, and wrecked it again.

It must have been a punch in the face to her mom when Tansy came clean in '88 and admitted she had struggled with addiction and was going into rehab...and an even harder punch in the face when she came back in into the spotlight in 1989, dropping her stage name "Tansy Lyn" and dawning "Tansalyn Rose" after marrying Axl, and practically confessed every grimy detail of her obsession with hard drugs and alcohol since 1981, and why she started them to cope with what was happening behind the scenes of the brutal modeling industry.

In 1990, her vision-come-to-life, "I Won't Just Smile", was born. It started as a campaign to raise awareness against sexual abuse, exploitation, and coercion in all corners of the modelling industry, then stemmed into an organization that offered free services to victims of addiction and abuse, from rehab to post-assault counseling and everything in between.

Years of Diane's hard work to create her daughter's untouchable persona, completely shattered.

I was just thrilled Tansy had turned her struggles around and used them to help others, but first, she would have to face a handful of overdoses, one of which nearly killed her, have a section of her liver cut out, and have a temporary pace-maker.

All of it just made Axl more strict about drugs. Not just for the sake of the band and the fans, but he was afraid some members of Guns in particular would pull Tansy back into the merry-go-round of addiction after she got clean.

"You're telling me I can't stay with him and Tansy?" I ask Doc harshly in a whisper once the four of us get to his house.

"You won't want to stay, Viv. I'm telling you, they're gonna pull out all the stops to get you to cave and get them some smack because they'll be in so much pain. I don't want you to see them like that and I don't want you to compromise their recovery." He explains.

"You think I would do that?!"

"I know you would if it came down to it." He states and I roll my jaw. "This isn't just little flu symptoms and some body aches. They will feel like they are going to die, they will look like they are going to die and I cannot trust you not to give in." His brutal honesty. "You'll be able to see them in about a week, they'll be better by then and then we can look at the next step. Got it?"

I just glare at him.

"Go kiss 'em 'bye' and fuck off." He says next, waving his hand at me dismissively as he goes to my car to grab Nikki's bag and his car to grab Tansy's.

I step back into the living room to tell them 'bye' but stop myself, deciding it's better to let Doc deal with Nikki's pissed off temper when he discovers I won't be staying with them.

Grabbing my car keys from the table by the door, I head the house.

When I get back to our house, I check the machine that's blinking a light to signal a missed call.

I go to the kitchen and get a glass of water as Slash's voice slurs through the speaker.

"H-Hey, Viv, um...uh...we..." I chuckle at his incoherent mumbling and step to the phone to call him back as another message starts playing where his left off.

"Viv," It's Duff. "Call us back as soon as you can."

I furrow my brows a little, about to dial them back until yet another message comes on.

"Viv, we got signed!" Steven's screaming has me dropping my water and the phone, joy coursing through the soles of my feet up to my hair, and I'm running around and screaming along with his recorded message loudly blaring his own excitement.

I run back to the phone and pick it up, dialing their apartment.

"We got signed!" Steven's voice is shouting at me before the phone even rings a single ring.

"When?! How?! By who?!" I say back.

"We'll tell you over dinner because guess who got $7,500 cash advances?! The same mother fuckers who've been stealing from strippers to get by, that's who!" He exclaims.

"Yeah, don't ever tell people you guys did that!" I say in the same tone. "Lemme change and I'll be over there, okay?"

"Okay." He replies, and I can just hear his smile through the phone.

I hang up and give one last scream of happiness before sprinting to get changed and leave.

Tom Zutaut, the same man responsible for giving Mötley Crüe their shot, had given the same shot to Guns N' Roses.

They had signed to Geffen Records, and although that was their second goal--the first was getting a band together--they knew the main goal was to release their first album, and hopefully, have it a success.

Before I can even knock on the door, it's swinging open and Steven's like a puppy, jumping around, waiting on me by the door.

I hug him tightly, trying to keep myself from crying with immense relief that they're one step closer--a giant step closer--to their dream.

When we pull away from each other, Duff holds his hand up for me to give him a high-five and I do, his fingers locking with my hand to pull me into a hug and I'm sandwiched between him and Steven momentarily.

A flash catches my eye and we pull away from each other to see a girl with short, blonde hair, that I've never seen before, holding a camera.

"That's gonna be a good one." She tells us, smiling at Duff as the Polaroid deposits.

Mandy Brixx, member of the punk band, Lotus Lame and The Lame Flames, was a cute girl with bleach blonde hair, beautiful brown eyes and a captivating smile...and was also Duff's first wife.

Mandy wasn't perfect, but she didn't disown Duff after he told her he had gotten me pregnant.

Even though he didn't cheat on her with me, and they had been broken up for about six months when he and I got involved, I know it hurt her knowing he had hooked up with the woman she was sure she didn't have to worry about when they dated. They ended up getting back together in 1988 and got married the same year.

They divorced two years later because something just "changed" and neither of them were happy, but I've always respected her because she was really good to Monroe.

His second wife, however, was crazier than a run over dog because she was always on something.

The last time I saw her in 1993, she had said something crass and rude to Tansy and before Tansy could reply, I was asking Linda, "were you born a cunt or does the crack just bring it out of you?"

She swung on me and I swung back. Except when I throw a punch, I make sure it lands.

Maybe she would've actually hit me if her equilibrium weren't as fried as her brain.

I would've kicked her ass if Duff and Matt Sorum hadn't pulled me off of her.

I hope she got her shit together after they divorced in 1995.

I guess bass players and crack-head models go hand-in-hand...

"Viv, this is my girlfriend, Mandy." Duff introduces me. "Mandy, this is my best friend, Viv."

"Hi, it's good to finally meet you." Mandy tells me with a gentle smile and I extend my hand to her.

"You, too." I reply as she takes my hand in her's, my eyes subtly flickering to Duff now that he's standing beside her, silently asking him when the hell he was going to tell me about his girlfriend.

"I'll tell you later." He mouths to me where she can't see and I just keep smiling as she strikes up conversation with me.

Once we get to the Rainbow, Steven and I are a few steps in front of Duff and Mandy, the blonde drummer letting out a little sigh.

"What is it?" I ask, nudging him.

"Just worried about Tansy." He admits, and I raise my brows. "It's not like that, Viv, I swear." He promises. "She's a cool person, is all. I wish she was here to celebrate this with us."

"I'm sure she'll be thrilled to hear about it when you're allowed to go visit her in rehab." I remind him. "Where's the guys?" I ask next as we step into the Rainbow.

"Slash is hanging out with this chick he met a couple weeks ago, Izzy's with his girl friend and I don't know where Axl is." He tells me and I nod. "So it's just a double date for us tonight." He grins widely, winking at me slickly.

After hours of just goofing off, talking, eating and demonstrating our celebration of Guns' stepping stone, Mandy's calling it a night.

"I'll call you later, Duff." She says to him as she grabs her jacket and he stands up to let her scoot out of the booth.

"Sounds good, babe." He replies, kissing her cheek.

"It was really nice to meet you." She tells me.

"It was nice to meet you, too." I reply.

"Bye." She smiles one last time at Duff, waving to Steven before leaving.

"When did you me--"

"Viv, lemme out." Steven interrupts me and I furrow my brows.

"What?"

"Lemme out, there's a hot girl at the bar and she just waved me over. I wanna get laid. Lemme out." He pleads and I roll my eyes and scoot out so he can stand up.

He does so, heading straight to the bar to try his luck with a beautiful brunette.

And then there were two.

"You were saying?" Duff chuckles out when Steven's gone and I smile a little.

"When did you and Mandy meet?" I ask him and he lets out a breath of cigarette smoke.

"Uh, a month ago, maybe? She gave me her number and I went back and forth with myself until I convinced myself to call her." He explains. "We spent the weekend together so I guess we get along pretty good. She's a great girl."

"She seems nice." I tell him, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear.

"Yeah, she is." He agrees, taking another drag of his cigarette.

I take a sip of my water and sit in the silence that falls over us before noticing he's staring at me.

"What?" I ask him.

"You wanna go somewhere with me?" He offers, putting his cigarette out.

"Where?"

"C'mon." He stands up, nodding to the door.

"But Steven--"

"--Is about to go mess around with that girl in the bathroom. He's not gonna be mad if we leave him." He adds. "C'mon, you'll like where we go."

"If you say so." I shrug.

He pays the bill and the two of us head back to their apartment so he can get his car.

I know I should have been at home by the phone, waiting for a call from Doc or Nikki or Tansy, but it was pointless to sit at home and worry when I couldn't do anything about it anyway.

When we get to where we're going, Duff is parking his car in the lot of an abandoned building, and I glance around to see there's not much traffic around us.

"Is this the part where you murder me?" I ask him and he busts out in laughter, shaking his head.

"This is where Mandy and her band rehearses." He explains.

"Why're we here?"

"I picked her up here the other day and noticed something you might like." He gets out the car and opens his trunk, pulling out a shopping bag.

"Duff..." I say, uneasy as we approach the rusted door.

"Shh, I got it." He digs in his jacket pocket and plucks out a worn key, unlocking the dead bolt and the door knob.

I follow him inside, and he switches on a light switch, only one light beam in the ceiling comes on, and in the large, dim room, I see a large mirrored wall, sleek but worn out wood floors, and I turn to see Duff holding out a brand new pair of pointe shoes to me.

I wasn't going to tell him I'd gone so long without dancing that I'd have to work my way back up to dancing on pointe, because he'd spent money for the shoes and they looked to be around my size and I didn't want to know how observant he had to be to estimate my shoe size in terms of ballet...so I did something I was really good at doing at that time in my life.

I kept myself from crying.

I knew Duff was going to be a constant encourager in my life when he held those shoes out to me and so easily, so confidently, said:

"You've supported and helped me get into my groove of things to start accomplishing my dream. Now, I'm helping you get back into your's."

#nikki sixx #tommy lee #vince neil #mötley crüe #gateway drug

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fanficimagery · 6 years ago

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The Lost Magician

#289 "Oh, fuck off."

Summary: When Darcy, Pepper and Natasha are overpowered, and Natasha's badly injured while Pepper's been knocked unconscious, Darcy must call upon an old friend and expose a part of herself that she's tried to put behind her.

Shit. Shit. Double shit.

Darcy anxiously paces the stone cell that she, Pepper and Natasha have just been tossed in, she regretting ever staying in touch with superheroes after Jane had unofficially let her go when Thor whisked her away to Asgard. She had planned to learn how to stand on her own two feet, and she had for a while, but then Clint came back into her life one night while drinking at a bar and then soon followed Natasha, Steve, Pepper and Tony.

Natasha had been rather intimidating at first, so Pepper made it her mission to get the two females comfortable with each other. It worked, and Darcy and Nat had soon become better friends than either of them had anticipated.

So with Avengers back in her life, it was only a matter of time before their enemies found the one weakness they all had in common. Darcy herself.

Normally, Natasha could take care of herself and another individual. And since Darcy had been taking self-defense lessons from her friends, she could briefly hold her own in a fight. But swarm after swarm of thugs in tactical gear ambushed the three ladies while enjoying a relaxing week at the Banyan Tree Samui in Thailand, and not only did Natasha try protecting herself but she also tried to protect Darcy and Pepper simultaneously. For her troubles Natasha took a bullet to the knee and another to the shoulder, Pepper was knocked unconscious as she tried calling in back-up, and Darcy got smacked around a bit after taking down two thugs with her trusty taser.

"Save your energy," Natasha says quietly, holding Darcy's torn plaid button-up to the wound on her shoulder. "You and Pepper are going to have to help me if we want to get out of here alive."

Darcy scoffs. "Nat, we're in the middle of nowhere. That little window up there," she says, pointing to a bar covered window that could barely fit a toddler, "shows nothing but jungle. And I swear I heard some large cat on the prowl outside."

"We couldn't have gone far," Natasha tiredly muses. "I wasn't out for long and you said they drove us by vehicle, so we're still in Thailand."

"No shit." Natasha blandly stares at Darcy, the brunette then cringing at her words. "I'm sorry. I just- I don't like cells and I want out."

"Get it together, Lewis. You're no good to us if you have a panic attack."

"Oh, fuck off." She can feel her chest tightening and if she was uncomfortable before, she’s 10X more uncomfortable now. But then Pepper groans as she groggily comes to and Darcy has something else to focus on. "Hey. Hey, take it slow," she says as Pepper tries to sit up.

"T-Tony?"

"Darcy," she regrettably admits. "We couldn't get a SOS out before they brought us in. They also stripped of us everything but our clothes, so our panic buttons were taken, too."

Pepper whimpers. "Where are we?"

"We're not sure." After Darcy helps Pepper get situated so she's sitting up against the wall, she then stands and heads over to check on Natasha and make sure the makeshift bandage around her knee is not loosening. "But I think- God, I'm so sorry- I think I can get us out of here."

Natasha's bloody hand falls atop of Darcy's trembling ones as they tighten the bandage, she frowning. "Unless you've got some hidden abilities that we don't know about, it's best we sit tight and gather our strength to fight it out later." She smiles to try and lighten the mood, but at Darcy's crestfallen expression her brow pulls together in confusion. "Darcy, you don't actually have abilities, do you? I've read your file front to-"

"It's- it's new," she stammers and then stands to put some space between her and Natasha. "I only did about a year and a half of schooling before it all became too much. It's- it was a lot like Harry Potter, actually, only it was college for the magical adept. There were no wands, it was a lot more terrifying, and not at all whimsical and fun like the fantasy books make you believe."

"Darcy," Pepper says sadly. "Why didn't you-"

"Tell anyone?" She guesses, scoffing. "I didn't want to be on SHIELD's radar. I didn't want Clint acting weird around me and I didn't- I'm not cut out for this stuff! If people found out- if Steve found out- he'd push for me to train and join the superhero club, but I can't. I can't, Pepper," she sniffles.

Though her expression is carefully put together, Darcy can tell Natasha doesn't exactly know how to handle this news. Ever since Loki, any talk of magic put a lot of people on edge. "When did you start?" She asks.

"A-As soon as I got back into the States," she mumbles. "After Jane, I thought I could go back to school. And I did, only it wasn't normal school like I thought it'd be." The two women don't exactly know what to say to her admission and Darcy suddenly thinks that this was a mistake. But now that the cat's out of the bag, there's no shoving it back in.

"Darce, can you get us out of here?" Natasha asks, gulping as she straightens up. Pepper suddenly looks a bit hopeful and Darcy feels terrible about letting them down.

"I can't. I couldn't even finish magic school," she sighs dejectedly. Natasha sighs as well and Pepper slumps in defeat. "But.. I think I know someone who can." Darcy rushes to the other side of their cell, she sitting with her back to the wall and crosses her legs as if she were about to meditate. "You just- you have to trust me. Trust us. We're not bad people, I swear."

"Darcy," Pepper softly speaks. "We adore you. I can't speak for Natasha, but I trust your judgement."

Darcy looks to Natasha. "I wish you would have told me," she says. "But I understand why you kept your secret under wraps." Natasha then grimaces as she shifts her position on the ground again. "So if you didn't finish school, how does your lack of magic help us?"

Darcy takes a couple of deep breaths and closes her eyes. "The other Magicians that were assigned to my Discipline specific house, a house for those who are focused on one particular brand of magic, were like stoners. Entertaining for sure, but just not my cup of tea. Not anymore, at least. But then Penny came around, a Psychic and Traveler, and we were.. good friends."

Natasha faintly smirks. "Which is code for fuck buddies. You slept with her."

"I slept with him," Darcy admits. "It was fun, but that's all. His heart belonged to someone else and I- I just needed someone to ground me at Brakebill's. Penny and his friends did that for a while."

"Okay, so how can this Penny guy help us?" Pepper wonders.

"Like I said, he's a Psychic and Traveler. Travelers can travel anywhere in just the blink of an eye, so if I mentally or verbally call out to him he might be able to hear me and come find us. Maybe. I'm not sure how his magic actually works."

Neither Pepper or Natasha say another word, so Darcy settles in to calm her racing heart and mind. Taking a few more deep breathes, she mentally calls out, [Penny, I really hope you can hear me right now because I'm in deep shit and I need your help. It's Darcy, by the way. Penny. Penny! Please, hear me. I'm afraid they're going to kill us very soon. Please find me.]

Blinking open her eyes, she's met with one hopeful expression and one bland. "So what now?" Natasha asks.

"I dunno." Darcy takes a gulp before casting her gaze around the room and in a last ditch effort, she says aloud, "Penny! Penny, help me. They're going to kill us if you don't find me. Please, Pen. Please," she pleads.

"Darcy," Pepper smiles sadly, shaking her head. "It's okay. Calm down."

Darcy blinks at her, suddenly aware that she's crying. She quickly wipes the tears from her face, sniffling and then coming up with another idea. "What's the most annoying song you two know?"

Pepper takes a moment to think on it, but Natasha already has a song in mind. "Barbie Girl. I played it on loop for Stark after he pissed me off one day and he cracked after the third loop."

Despite their predicament, Pepper snorts a laugh and Darcy grins. "Weakling." Then settling in, Darcy starts humming the rather catchy tune to will the lyrics to pop up in her mind. [I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world. Life in plastic, it's fantastic. You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere. Imagination, life is your creation.] "Come on, Pen. Come find me. Follow the annoying song. Just.. hear me, goddammit." [I'm a blond bimbo girl, in a fantasy world. Dress me up, make it tight, I'm your dolly. You're my doll, rock'n'roll, feel the glamour in pink. Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky panky].

"This was a bad idea," Natasha grumbles.

For hours Darcy hums the song, ignoring the pitying looks as she curls up in a corner and eventually dozes off.

Darcy's strapped down to a table, her head the only part of her body that she's able to move. To her left lays Natasha and to her right is Pepper, but something's.. something's wrong. Pepper's whimpering and struggling against her own bindings, but Natasha.. Natasha's eerily quiet and staring rather lifeless up at the stone ceiling.

"N-Nat?" She mumbles. "Nat!"

"She's dead. She's dead," Pepper cries. "She was too much of a threat. She was the only one who could fight back and that they were afraid of."

Tears well up in Darcy's already puffy eyes, they falling a moment later. She struggles even harder against her bindings, screaming her throat raw. She doesn't want to die. She can't! She still has so much to accomplish in life and if she dies now-

"D? What the hell kind of dream is this?"

"I don't wanna die, Pep. I don't wanna die. There's still so much-"

"Darcy. Look at me." Hands cradle her face, tilting her face to stare up at a familiar brown face, concern etched in his expression. It's Penny. "You're dreaming, D. You need to wake up."

She's tired. Oh so tired. Weakly shaking her head, she says, "This isn't a dream. This is going to be my reality soon enough."

His brow furrows. "What are you talking about?"

"This room isn't that different from where I currently am. I think," she frowns and pulls on her bindings. "Tables are new though."

"Focus, Darcy. Where are you? I can find you, you know I can. I just need-"

"T-Thailand. We're in Thailand." The door to the room opens and several men enter the room, rolling along a cart that holds some terrifying pieces of machinery. Darcy whimpers as she realizes what they're carting along, and not even Penny trying to grab her attention works.

"It's not real. It's not real, Darcy. Your dream, your control. Just will it away."

But the men keep coming closer until they're settled by the end of the table by her head. They shove a rubber mouth piece in her mouth, and at Darcy's muffled screaming Penny starts to rush at the men. But since it's a dream, he merely passes right through them.

"Darcy! It's. Not. Real!" Some type of oil is massaged on her temples and then the cold metal of round shock paddles are pressed there. Over her screaming and muffled pleading, she can hear the swearing of her friend. "It's not fucking real, D! Think of something else. Come on, Darce. Anything else."

But her mind is stuck on her current situation and a moment after the ominous click of a dial, Darcy arches up in pain as electricity courses through her brain.

Darcy screams awake, drenched in ice cold water. Her chest heaves as she tries to catch her breath, the door to their cell slams shut, and Darcy realizes a moment later that she had fallen asleep. "What- what-"

"You were screaming," Pepper tells her. "We couldn't wake you up and the guards didn't like the screaming. They brought us food, though."

"First rule of being kidnapped," Natasha mumbles. "Don't eat the food. It's most likely laced with sedatives."

Darcy looks at her, frowning that her friend is on the verge of needing some medical attention as soon as possible. "Hang on," she tells her. "I think- I had a visit from Penny. He'll be looking now. I'll just have to mentally call out to him every now and again."

Natasha sighs. "That's good. Our captives don't appear to be in any hurry. No one knows we're missing yet and the morons are talking about ransoming us. They're not super villains, they're just money hungry assholes who got lucky."

Darcy scoffs. "Typical." Her stomach grumbles and she casts the food and water a yearning look, but Natasha upends the water and tray with a grunt. "You suck, Tash."

"You'll thank me when you actually have the energy to fight back should someone try anything with you."

The women all go quiet, Natasha because her energy levels are already low and Pepper because being kidnapped is exhausting. As she gives them a reprieve of quiet, Darcy bends her knees and hugs them to her chest. Then laying her head atop her knees, she starts mentally singing 'Barbie Girl' again.

- X - X - X -

"Jesus fuckin' Christ, Penny!" Darcy suddenly yells, staring up at the ceiling. "Can you just find us already?!"

Natasha’s head lolls to the side and Pepper snorts awake. Aggravated at getting nowhere, Darcy pushes herself up to her feet and angrily paces the room while mumbling beneath her breath.

After giving her a moment to vent her frustrations, Pepper says to her, "Maybe you should get your mind off of everything going on. Why don't you show us some magic?"

Her irritated glare lands on Pepper before softening, she throwing out one last mental threat/plead to Penny before sliding down against the wall opposite Pepper and Nat. Taking a deep breath because her friends don't deserve any of her attitude, Darcy lightly shakes out her arms. Hands in her lap, she then says, "I'm not sure what to show you. I didn't finish my schooling."

"Show us what you can." Natasha then mumbles.

Darcy feebly nods, and then concentrating briefly she brings her hands together, palm to palm an inch apart. "Funny little thing they don't tell you," she says, hands and fingers already moving in an intricate dance. "Magic doesn't come from talent. It comes from pain." Then as she slowly pulls her hands further apart, a dark blue energy crackles before a small dark storm cloud manifests between her hands. "My discipline was natural magic. I can manipulate natural elements."

"It's beautiful," Pepper breathes as the rolling clouds fade away.

- X - X - X -

Darcy spends the next couple of hours making it rain outside, holding onto her anger and pain to fuel her concentration on spell casting. Pepper holds the cup between the bars, filling the cup up enough to rinse out any lingering traces of drugs and then refilling it with clean water to drink.

It's when the sun's setting yet again that something new happens, shouting and gunfire making the three women perk up. When it goes momentarily quiet, two voices can be heard arguing. One seems rather agitated and running on adrenaline, and the other- feminine- blandly, yet amusingly talks about not having seen this much excitement in a while.

"Margo?" Darcy mumbles quietly. But Pepper and Natasha hear her, and as the voices continue talking, she's even more sure she knows those voices. "PENNY! MARGO! We're in here!"

The voices cease and then..

"Darcy?"

"Yes! We're in here," she yells, running up to the metal door and pounding on it with her fists. "We're in here!"

"Hold tight, D. We're going to get you out." Margo had always been Darcy's favorite, after Penny of course, what with her blunt and sassy attitude.

Several runic designs start to glow on the door and Darcy quickly jumps aside. The hinges on the door explode and the door is knocked down just before two figures rush in. Penny and Margo.

In the next second Darcy finds herself wrapped in a pair of strong, brown arms, her face pressed into the neck of her ex-lover. "Jesus Christ, D. Never fucking again, you hear me? This is not how I imagined our little reunion going."

Darcy snorts and when she has a moment to pull back she finds Margo slowly pacing the room with a wrinkled nose. "Ew," her friend mutters, fluffing her hair as if preparing to get down to work. "This place is not fit for a Queen. Couldn't they have at least given you a bed?"

Darcy huffs a laugh. "Margo," she says, shaking her head. "Rescue now, bitch later. I'm sure our kidnappers heard your little explosion. They'll be coming."

"On the contrary, my friend," Margo grins. "Penny and I warded up both ends of the hallway after taking care of a few.. pests. No one's getting in until we pop out of here." Margo continues to pace the small cell, dragging a finger along the walls. "Seriously, these people have no imagination. You'd think that with a Queen in their midst they'd have asked for so much more than what we overheard them asking for."

"Q-Queen?" Pepper stammers.

Darcy groans and hides her face in Penny's chest. "Not now, Pep. Later, I promise."

"Now sounds like a perfectly good time," Natasha says, grimacing as she tries to stand. She does, but her weight is on one leg only and her palm is pressing to the wound on her shoulder. "Apparently no one's getting in, so what else haven't you told us?"

Darcy feels Penny tense against her, his chin resting atop her head, content on not letting her go. And huh. That's a new development. She could have sworn Penny was all about Kady. He was never the cuddly type with her. "An Avenger, Lewis? Seriously? You really know how to pick your friends, don't you?"

"If it makes you feel any better," she mumbles, "I knew about half of the Avengers before I attended Brakebills."

"Oh, gross," Margo suddenly groans. "That's a lot of blood."

"You think?" Natasha deadpans.

Margo looks offended for exactly two seconds before she's smirking at Natasha. "Oh, I like you. Darcy should have introduced us sooner." Darcy turns her head to look at her other magically adept friend, she finally leaving the safety of Penny to help Natasha stand. "I brought some healing potions for Darcy since Penny was freaking out after he transported into her dream, but you seem like you need them more."

Margo holds a few vials out to Natasha, but the redhead merely stares at them. It takes Darcy grabbing them and uncorking a couple, she then holding them out for Natasha to take when she's ready. "I trust them," she tells Nat. "If I needed these more than you, I'd swallow them in a heartbeat. But seeing as you can barely stand and look paler than normal, you need to take them."

Natasha reluctantly takes the vials, drinking the potions while staring blandly at the two newcomers. The potions kick in, in less than a minute, Natasha then standing straighter with a healthy flush to her cheeks. She nods tersely to Margo in thanks and then stumbles over to Pepper to check her over herself.

"So if we're all ready now, can we go?" Darcy asks. "I really need a shower, food and like.. a bed so I can sleep for a couple days straight."

"Yeah," Penny says. "Lets get out of here." Margo immediately takes up his right hand and Darcy takes up his left. Then looking to Natasha and Pepper, he says, "Just clasp hands and interlock your fingers with each other. Then take up Margo and Darcy's hands to close the circle. I'll transport us to a place I'm familiar with and then you can tell me where to go from there."

Darcy takes Pepper hand with a smile, but the blonde's knowing smirk unsettles her. "Queen Darcy, huh? I can't wait to hear all about this."

"You would," she sighs. "Don't get too excited. Being one of the Queen's of Fillory isn't as grand as it sounds."

Penny snorts. "You got that right." And then within the blink of an eye, the group is whisked away to safety.

#fanficimagery #blurred lines #crossover #avengers #marvel #the magicians #darcy lewis #natasha romanoff #pepper potts #margo hanson #penny adiyodi #kidnapping #friendship #magician!darcy #magical!darcy

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clarketomylexa · 6 years ago

Text

That’s What Best Friends Do

“I love you,” she tells Lexa in earnest.

Lexa cocks her head, nose scrunched and finger curled into the spine of her book, marking the page. “Why.”

Clarke is taken back. Her and Octavia have been exchanging cheesy ‘I love yous’ since the second grade and there isn’t any real reason for it other than ‘that’s just what friends do’. She shrugs and purses her lips. “I don’t know,” she says plainly, and amends the words Octavia tells her, “that’s just what best friends do.”

read on ao3

They meet in the first grade.

Lexa is sweet and Clarke thinks she is cool in her own quirky way.

She moves in on a Sunday and she stands on the other side of the picket fence as they talk, in a green sweatshirt with tiny, little pugs on it and one leg of her denim overalls rolled an inch higher than the other, rainbow piñata socks on show underneath scuffed up sneakers. Her hair is braided into a crown around her head—a style that Clarke files away among what Octavia likes to call a ‘fishtail braid’ and how to tie her shoelaces for later—and she has a scar above her top lip that Clarke imagines she got doing something exotic.

She’s so much cooler than the kids in her grade that Clarke almost wants to yell out how unfair it is that she won’t be going to her school in the Spring.

“But Oakside is so far away,” she laments, hands fidgeting with the Barbie doll tucked beneath her arm. Most of the kids her age in their cul-de-sac go to Ridgeview. Privately Clarke thinks Octavia is the only one worth talking to though, because she has it on good authority that Miller picks his nose and Bellamy just tries too hard.

She isn’t allowed to tell people that though so she watches Lexa shrug.

“My cousin goes there.”

Abby calls her from the porch a moment later and Clarke is forced to say goodbye to her new friend to wash up for sinner. She thrusts the topless Barbie over the fence in a form of peace offering—Lexa’s eyes bulge out of her head and Clarke wonders if she’s never seen a Barbie before so she makes a mental note to invite Lexa over to play with them—and tells Lexa with the utmost importance that she will talk to her tomorrow.

“I made a new friend today,” she tells Abby and Jake from her stool by the kitchen sink as she methodically washes her hands like the chart tacked to the wall tells her to. Jake says she’s a ‘sociable child’ which Clarke thinks is adult speak for ‘will talk to anything that moves’ because once she made friends with a duck in the park that had one leg and an eye that didn’t open. But if being ‘sociable’ means she can talk to Lexa again Clarke will accept the title gladly.

When she closes her eyes she can see Lexa’s pretty braid and the way her eyes aren’t quite one colour but not two either. Like what would happen in art class when Clarke mixed turquoise and forest green together on her plastic pallet because she was using what Miss Henry called ‘artistic license’. Maybe God or whatever Bellamy’s new theory on who created the universe used their ‘artistic license’ when they were making Lexa too.

It makes an awful lot of sense when she thinks about it.

“Clarke you’re wasting water,” Abby reminds her, ferrying pasta bake and green salad from the island to the table and Clarke dries her hands obediently and tucks her stool into the scullery to claim her chair.

“Her name is Lexa,” she continues. “She has piñatas on her socks. She lives next door.”

“The Shepard house sold?” Jake asks.

Abby nods. “I met the new owners at the open house last month. She’s a lawyer,” she looks at Jake in the way Clarke has noticed her parents do when they are talking about ‘parent things’. “I don’t think he’s in the picture anymore.”

“What picture?” Clarke pipes up, distracted as she uses the spoon to scrape the cheesy, bread crumb topping from the side of the dish. She likes drawing. Her favourite is when they finish their worksheets quickly on Friday afternoons and her teacher tells them to bring a piece of paper and a book to lean on, and takes them to the playground to draw the plants and the bugs. The boys in her class spend the time throwing sticks at each other but Clarke always finds a corner to tuck herself into and a lady bug to examine.

She likes the colours.

“Your Mom means that Lexa’s Dad doesn’t live with her anymore,” Jake explains. He takes the spoon from Clarke and scoops the stuck piece of pasta bake onto her plate before topping it up with salad and ignoring the way she frowns at the limp lettuce leaves.

Thinking on it, Clarke nods without ceremony. “If Lexa’s Mom’s a lawyer,” she posits, “can she arrest Nate for stealing my gel pens?”

Nate sits across from her in art class and has a habit of stealing her stationary when he thinks she isn’t looking because he likes colouring his notebooks with sparkles. It’s annoying because she refuses to tell on him and Abby says she doesn’t want to buy her more if they are going to continue to go missing so she has to resort to using Octavia’s ones without the good smelling scents.

“I don’t think that’s how it works, honey,” Abby laughs.

“That’s prob’ly for the best,” Clarke smacks her lips in thought, “he sticks them up his nose.”

Clarke invites Lexa over two days later to play with her Barbies and Lexa sits on her lawn in a bright pink long-sleeve with patches shaped like fried eggs on the elbows and socks that have milk and cookies on them.

When she jokes that Lexa is wearing her breakfast, Lexa smiles so wide Clarke thinks the world will split in two.

She invites Lexa to the lake three months later.

It’s a five hour drive to the house that has been in Jake’s family since he was Clarke’s age but it’s one that they take every twenty-second of June when Abby has cover at the surgery. The house is big and old, with a deck and a new paint job and big windows that overlook the lake. If you squint on a clear day, you can see the proud, white facades of the houses on the other side with their boat sheds, trellises and peaked roofs.

A jetty sits in the water and a tree clings to the bank with a tire-swing Jake had fastened to the middle-most branch—against Abby’s better judgement but she never can stop her husband when he has one of his ideas—so that when you stand as far as you can up the bank and let go you can fly out far enough not to touch the bottom of the lake. It’s Clarke’s favourite thing since she learnt how to do a handstand on the side of the garage.

Not that Clarke has to sell it really, because after three months of Barbie Dream house in the front yard Lexa is nodding as soon as she mentions it would mean spending the summer with her. She explains diligently that there is a double bed in the room Clarke usually stays in—because Abby said that sometimes people don’t like sleeping in the same bed as other people—but that they can sleep in the bunk room instead, or Jake can pull the trundle bed out.

Lexa just nods.

She is fairly sure that is she asked Lexa to jump off a cliff, she would walk straight off it, piñata socks and all but then Clarke would miss her too much.

She stands on the Griffin’s porch on the morning of the twenty-second, in cactus socks and second-hand short-alls—the pants cut down to her size—with funky patches sewn into the bib, thumbs working their way under the straps of her backpack as her mom thanks Abby profusely.

She’s a pretty lady, with Lexa’s smile and round glasses who looks both flustered and relieved as she sweeps a hand over her daughter’s forehead and admits in a way Clarke knows she is supposed to pretend not to listen to that Lexa is having trouble making friends. Which Clarke thinks is ridiculous because Lexa is sweet and funny. She wears her hair like a crown and has been rolling the legs of her pants up at different lengths for three months because Clarke said she thought it was cool.

Clarke’s chest aches when Lexa won’t look up from the tips of her shoes and she thinks that Lexa’s mom mustn’t know what she’s talking about.

Clarke has been doing multiplication in math.

She knows that two and two is four, and three and three is six.

And if that’s true then she thinks Lexa and summer must equal something like ‘better than good’—but not ‘bestest’ because Lexa says ‘best’ is already a superlative.

Clarke doesn’t know what a superlative is, but Lexa can define words like ‘diversification’ so she thinks Lexa must be right.

They swim until water rattles in their ears and Jake teaches them to fish off the jetty after they stand on stools to help him pull the rods down from a shelf in the boat house, carefully showing them how to thread the bait onto the hook and cast the line into the water. When Lexa can’t get her hands around the line, face contorting unhappily, Jake heaves her onto his lap and repeats the process patiently until her frumpy frown straightens out.

They go out on the boat on hot days; Jake makes the boat corkscrew so that the water froths out in a V behind them, and when Clarke begs, he flings them writhing and giggling into the water by the strap of their life-jackets and fishes them out again while Abby rolls her eyes.

It’s in the quiet moments though, when the lie on the grass in damp swim suits and sunscreen-sticky skin, that Clarke discovers two very important things.

The first: Lexa does this thing when she is happy where she scrunches her eyes and throws her head back to laugh and it’s so ‘positively lovely’—which is another thing that Lexa says a lot—that Clarke makes it her mission to make her happy every day of her life.

The second: every time Lexa is happy, it makes Clarke feel ten feet tall. It’s a feeling that starts in her toes, ticking the soles of her feet and shooting like growing pains up her legs until her stomach is hot and her cheeks are pink and she feels stronger than before. She is pretty sure that if she were to climb the tallest tree on the bank and let go, she would fly and not fall.

She thinks about it as she sits, chin sticky with lemonade popsicle on the jetty.

Lexa lays sprawled on her back, legs akimbo and arms stretched out into the sky. Her fingers are splayed and her whole face is contorted so that she can squint up at the sky and trap the sun in the circle of her fingers. She has freckles peeking out shyly from the bridge of her nose and when she notices Clarke staring, she drops her hand and smiles. It’s lopsided—like her pant legs and her socks—but it’s whole in a way that makes Clarke’s stomach flip-flop.

“Want to see something cool?” she pokes Lexa in the soft of her ribs with her pointer finger.

Lexa nods, pushing herself up onto her elbows, intrigued, “uh huh.”

She folds her legs and cocks her head. Clarke makes sure she is watching before she picks her way up the jetty, where the grassy verge tangles with the roots and rocks.

The tire swing is tucked over a low branch—at her mom’s request because technically Clarke isn’t supposed to use it without ‘adult supervision’ but Lexa talks like an adult sometimes with her ‘therefore’ and ‘henceforth’, so she thinks it will be okay—and stands on a rock that juts out into the water with one leg, reaching out with the other until she can feel the tire under her fingers. Grinning, she pulls it into her hands and hooks a leg over the rope, taking three steps back and launching herself off the bank.

She lets go when the tire is just about to swing back like Jake taught her and surfaces just out of the shallows, hair in her eyes and heart thumping against the cage of her chest. When her ears unclog, Lexa is whooping and the jetty bends and gives beneath her uncoordinated victory dance.

“I can go higher,” Clarke garbles, mouth full of water.

Lexa’s whole face shoots upwards in disbelief. “Cannot,” she says.

“Can to,” Clarke insists, arms flailing as she doggy-paddles inelegantly to the shore.

Their life jackets are hooked over the railing of the deck and it crosses Clarke’s mind that maybe she should go and get hers, but if she does Abby will see her through the kitchen window and she gave them instructions not to go in the water when she went in to put lunch together.

She fishes the tire swing towards her and steps back as far as the rope will go this time, rooting her toes firmly in the soggy grass. Lexa is staring at her in wide-eyed apprehension but Clarke sets her brow until it furrows above her eyes and her stomach whooshes out from under her as she kicks off the bank, mud stuck between her toes.

It dawns on her when the air is whining in her ears that maybe this isn’t such a good idea.

Her foot catches and before she understand what is happening she is careening back towards the bank, heart stuck in her mouth.

Lexa lets out a sharp yelp, as Clarke’s hand slips. She lands face down in the dirt, the air punched out of her chest, still for a moment until pain blooms across her right cheek and a cry escapes her mouth before she can recognise it as hers. She hears a shout when her ears stop ringing, and rolls with a hard gasp onto her back as Lexa’s head and shoulders swim into her vision, awful worry crunching her face. She pets Clarke’s hair as Clarke blinks up at the sky, voice trembling as she coos ‘it’s okay, Clarke’ and ‘I’m here, Clarke’ in a high, thin voice that Clarke can’t help but think is less soothing and more unsettling, until the thick goo that seems to be sitting on her lungs seeps away and she can breathe.

But then her mom appears—all grumpy line in the place of her mouth—wiping her hands on her pants as she squats on the grass and Clarke thinks she is going to puke all over again.

“Mom,” she squeaks, whining as the right side of her face throbs hotly.

Abby takes one look at her—wet swimsuit and lank hair, blood pooling beneath her eye and Lexa’s hand squeezed tightly in a balled fist—and tsks, tucking a hand under her to sit her up and Clarke sways before falling into her chest, whining ‘it hurts’ into the soft neckline of her shirt.

The first-aid kit is found and Abby asserts that it won’t need stitches.

She gets a talking to about not doing what she’s told—which Lexa stands through too, fingers wound through Clarke’s in a way that makes it hard to focus on why ‘insubordination’ is a bad thing—and she wears a hulk band-aid on the bony jut of her cheek for a week.

Lexa traces it with a feather-light finger as the lie, side-by-side in the double bed beneath the lazy turn of the ceiling fan in the room that has been Clarke’s since she was three years old. She wears llama pyjamas and is unapologetic about not wanting to sleep on the trundle bed Jake offers to make up for her, instead, pressing herself into Clarke to feel for the bump of the scab forming under the band-aid with a frown in the way that makes warmth curl under Clarke’s ribs.

“I did it on purpose,” Clarke says, eager for anything to get rid of the crunch between Lexa’s eyebrows. She wants to reach out and touch it but her hands shake so she doesn’t.

Lexa blinks slowly, “nuh uh,” she says without heat.

“Did to,” Clarke fists her hand under her chin and nudges Lexa’s nose with her own. She smells like bubble-gum toothpaste and the Griffin’s shower-gel and the wonderful notion that Lexa is hers wafts in her mind until she can’t help but smile. “Now I match you.”

Lexa reaches up to touch the shallow half-circle above her top lip like she’s forgotten about it, fingers tapping her teeth for a minute before she shakes her head. “Yours is cooler,” she says definitively, “I got mine falling off my bike,” she explains, “you got yours flying.”

Lexa smiles her world-splitting smile and Clarke thinks that while swimming and the fireworks Jake sets off for the Fourth of July are all well and good, bedtime might be better. It’s a secret she will take to the grave along with how she only pretends not to like broccoli but the stripy wallpaper and floral sheets of the room feel impenetrable and Clarke builds them a fortress out of cotton sheets and shadows cast from soft lamp-light; a place where Lexa is hers.

She wraps her fist around the top of the sheet and pull sit over their heads until they are breathing the same hot air.

“You’re my best friend,” she says wondering why her throat gets hot and tight as she does so. The words have been sitting on her chest since the day they met—a secret locked tight like the acorns she keeps in the sticker decorated box beneath her bed that is so true she feels it in her bones every time Lexa talks.

Lexa’s eyes go big. For a horrible second, Clarke thinks that it was the wrong thing to say and her stomach flip-flops but not in the way she has come accustomed to it doing when she is around Lexa—this flip-flop feels like the warning kind that comes before Clarke has to go in search for her mom in the middle of the night because she ate too much ice-cream in one go and it winds itself into a knot so tight the only way out is up. But then, Lexa mumbles ‘best friend’ under her breath like she wants to taste it and nods, smiling so warmly Clarke wants to wrap herself up in it like a blanket and never crawl out.

“I’ve never had a best friend,” she admits, cowering behind the words like they will change Clarke’s mind. When Clarke doesn’t reply, she peers at her intently and Clarke recognises the look that she gets when she is helping Clarke with her addition and subtraction worksheets. “Is it different from just being a friend?”

Clarke thinks about it for a moment.

“Yes,” she eventually lands on, “and no.” Lexa nods. “It just means more,” Clarke whispers, “it just makes it more special.”

“Okay, then,” Lexa decides. “You’re my best friend too.”

Lexa is soft when she sleeps. With her admission she goes limp like pasta when you put it in the pot and Clarke manoeuvres her happily, all gangly limbs and knobbly joints, until she can tangle them together like a puzzle—the kind that isn’t meant to unravel—and when Abby comes to check on them, if it weren’t for the different colours of their pyjamas, she wouldn’t know where one started and the other ended.

They talk during the year but it isn’t the same.

Lexa gives Clarke a pair of socks for her birthday with tiny little sloths embroidered into them—Clarke knows they cost her whole allowance and for that it means the world. She presents them with as much importance as when she knighted Clarke in the woods behind the lake house with an old plank of timber they found in the shed and she hangs over the fence every day after school with her lopsided smile and embroidered overalls, telling Clarke about the books she reads and her nine-year-old cousins shenanigans until her mom calls her in.

Sometimes, when Lexa’s mom is working she stays at Clarke’s on Saturday nights and on those days, Clarke can almost pretend it’s summer. They stand on stools in the kitchen side-by-side as Jake stirs the pasta sauce and lie in Clarke’s twin bed at night, watching the glow-in-the-dark stars. But Lexa is all angles unfortunately—she looks forlorn whenever someone mentions it to her, but Abby insists that she will grow into her lankiness—and while in summer it provides places for Clarke to tuck herself into comfortably, during the year, the positions she has to contort them into to make them fit clench at her chest.

She presses sloppy kisses to Lexa’s forehead to tries and convince herself otherwise, but Clarke comes to the conclusion that Lexa isn’t hers during the year when Lexa regretfully turns down an invitation to go bowling when Jake offers to take her, Octavia and Bellamy one Friday night.

She stares at her toes when she tells Clarke that her mom said no and she looks so much like the snail that Clarke found on the back path without its shell one morning that she pester her for more information.

Two weeks later, Clarke has to say no to backyard pizza with Lexa and her mom because of Octavia’s seventh birthday party—a slumber party that ends at eight when they all inevitably fall from their sugar highs that Lexa isn’t invited to despite Clarke’s best efforts.

Octavia doesn’t like Lexa. She says she’s ‘too colourful’ with her stripy shirts and rainbow patches even after Clarke explains her theory about ‘artistic license’ and Clarke thinks it’s a horrible reason not to like someone. When she asks her mom Abby tells her that Octavia is probably feeling left out and Clarke thinks that maybe, she isn’t Lexa’s during the year either.

The thought is so distressing, she lies awake with it at night, raggedy Ann doll squeezed under her armpit as she stares at the spot where the wall meets the ceiling. She twists her finger over the woollen curls.

Summer is four months away but suddenly, it becomes the center of her universe.

Clarke is nine years old and Abby has set them loose to play in the thatch of trees beside the house.

They pick through the leaves in shorts and t-shirts while their bathing suits dry over the railing and play catch with the neighbour kids until they are flush faced and breathless. Lexa wears popcorn socks beneath her sneakers and Clarke slips a hand, fingers splayed, over her mouth to mask the sound of her heavy breathing as they crouch in a heavy crush of limbs behind a tree. They are pressed so close together Clarke can feel the rapid pat-pat of her heart and when the Monty and Jasper run past in a flurry of kicked-up leaves and pine needles, Lexa licks a wet stripe across Clarke’s cupped palm with a fierce brand of mischief in her eyes until Clarke squeals away.

They spend the rest of the afternoon as the taggers but Clarke can’t find it in herself to complain.

The next day tag becomes boring and they think of a new game.

Clarke remembers the story book that she packed in preparation for the lazy hours her and Lexa were sure to spend lounging on the grass—a thick tome her grandmother gifted her for Christmas completed with the words ‘For Clarke’ scrawled inside the front cover in her thin, looped writing that Clarke equated to the threads of the spiderwebs that hung from the beams in the shed. It contains everything from fairy tales to folklore.

She lays it on the picnic table and points to the characters illustrated in battle garb, assigning one to each of them.

Clarke is the sky princess, thrust from her cloud-top home—Olympus, Lexa corrects her quietly, pointing to the illustration of a tall, columned building gleaming atop the point of a high mountain. Her inspiration comes from a short story about a boy named Hercules that Clarke knows nothing about except for the fact that she dimly remembers watching a Disney movie about a boy who was half-god and half-human and had an angry goat instead of parents. She drapes a strip of gauzy fabric over her shoulders rummaged from the depths of the house, a dress-up left over from her aunts’ childhood summers, and threads flowers through her hair, feeling suitably wispy and ‘effervescent’, which Lexa tells her means ‘like air’.

Lexa is the warrior queen whose territory Clarke falls unwittingly into. Clarke thinks it suits her—she peers at the illustration of the woman with braids and leather armour, riding a horse with a sword in her hand and battle-paint on her skin and the slight downward turn in the corner of her lips is so similar to the way Lexa’s face contorts sometimes and she congratulates herself for putting two and two together. Ignoring the short yelps when she mistakenly tugs a stray curl, she clumsily threads Lexa’s hair into a braid the way Octavia taught her at recess. The outcome is less than good. Lexa bears more resemblance to the mangy cat that stalks the neighbourhood begging from scraps than a warrior-queen but she smudges wads of dirt over her eyes to fix it ignoring the way everything inside her goes warm and melty when she smiles—like the s’mores the make in the fire-pit at night in when Lexa is in pyjamas that smell like the Griffin’s detergent and socked feet.

Jasper and Monty grow restless, encroaching on the bubble Clarke has built for them with bored whines and Clarke thinks it’s lucky that Santa Claus never gave her a baby brother for Christmas two years ago because she got Lexa instead and Lexa smells much better than a boy. She assigns them characters anyway; the palace guards, and they search the ground for suitable ‘spears’ wielding gnarled sticks with as much menace as nine-year-olds can.

She kneels before Lexa’s throne—a fork in the twisted branches of a tree—with a circlet made from daisy chains in her hair, head bowed and launching into a wistful monologue of her harrowing journey to the ground, complete with fierce dragons, and a sea-witch who tried to barter unsuccessfully for her voice, while Monty and Jasper level their sticks at her in mock-fighting stances.

Back straight, Lexa blinks at her behind her crude war paint and Clarke thinks time stops.

Later—after they are called into lunch by Abby—they lie, sprawled out in the grass in the sticky heat of the day. Lexa has her bathing suit on beneath her shortalls instead of a t-shirt and her hair has dried in soft corkscrew curls around her hairline so that if she wasn’t peering so intently down at the book she has spread out before her, Clarke would reach out and wind one around her finger.

Instead, she feels like her body is humming with energy she doesn’t know what to do with.

Jake always likes to explain his work to her, he sits her on his lap and draws out maps of electrical circuits, explaining the mechanics of them and Clarke feels oddly similar to an overloaded circuit right now. Like she is plugged in to too many things and it’s making her unable to sit still.

Fingers splayed on the grass, she kicks up into a handstand, grinning at how Lexa looks upside down and the way she mouths the words she’s reading like it will help her remember them better. When she stands back up, the blood rushes back to her head and she peers over Lexa’s shoulder.

“What does ‘fealty’ mean?”

The word sits on the top line of the page in neat, Times New Roman font and it tastes so elegant rolling over Clarke’s tongue she can’t help but ask.

Lexa cranes her neck to look up at her, squinting one eye against the glare of the sun. A swathe of sunburn tints her cheeks red. “It’s like a promise,” she poses like a question, grappling for the right explanation, “or a vow.” Clarke cocks her head. “It’s like when you make a promise to someone,” she tries again, pushing herself up onto her knees so that from her angle, Clarke blocks the sun, “like, ‘I’ll love you ‘till the end of time’.”

Clarke has to rally herself against the sudden burst of dizziness that hits her in the chest with the force of the tee-ball bat in gym class. Lexa kneels in front of her, freckled-nose and braided hair, and if Clarke thought time had stopped before, now it ceases to exist entirely. The world has become just them; this sticky-sweet moment that has wound itself so eagerly around her chest.

Fourth grade science class has brought rudimentary explanations of the universe—how everything they touch is made up of things called ‘atoms’ and how when she looks up at the sky, she has to imagine the biggest thing she can possibly comprehend and then quadruple it and it won’t be nearly a one billionth of what is really out there. To Clarke it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, the vastness of it all makes her head spin but the one thing she does understand is how the earth rotates around the sun because it’s similar to the way she thinks she rotates around Lexa.

“I love you,” she tells Lexa in earnest.

Lexa cocks her head, nose scrunched and finger curled into the spine of her book, marking the page. “Why.”

Lexa doesn’t come with them in the summer between sixth and seventh grade.

With help from a contact at work her mom gets her to the top of the waiting list for a sleep away camp in the Maine and Lexa pulls up the website on the Griffin’s computer in the kitchen on Saturday night, scrolling through page after page of girls in tennis whites and soffe shorts, playing field hockey and toasting marshmallows around a campfire.

“I don’t really want to go,” Lexa says quietly, nose wrinkling at Clarke’s silence. Behind them Jake dices vegetables for tacos and a bespectacled Abby checks through Clarke’s book report for spelling eras but the comforting familiarity does nothing to stop Clarke souring at the blindside. “My mom thinks it will be good for me.”

Clarke is getting tired of what Lexa’s mom thinks will be good for her.

The woman is sweet and kind. She has heard her parents talking about how she ‘does her best’ for Lexa which she knows is what adults say when they are commiserating the hardships of single-parenthood but in her worst moments Clarke wants to shake the woman until she understands that Lexa’s quirks don’t make her ‘unique’ in the way that people talk about people who are different, they make her special.

So what if Lexa likes books better than people? Clarke likes girls better than boys and nobody is up in arms about it.

Sometimes it feels like Lexa’s mom aches for her to fit in more than Lexa does.

She can’t stop Lexa from going though, and the morning before they would usually leave for the lake sees her standing on Lexa’s front porch instead, with a horribly permanent pout on her mouth that she can’t shake. Lexa stands before her in sneakers, navy shorts and a tee with her camps logo printed on the front in bold white letters, her hair in two, tight braids and she looks so startlingly un Lexa-like stripped of her embroidered socks and circle of braids that when Clarke winds her arms around her neck in a dramatic goodbye, she finds herself mouthing a silent prayer to whomever is watching to put her best-friend back together again.

Hooking her chin over Lexa’s shoulder Clarke makes her promise to write weekly, hating the tears that seem to be squeezing their way out from beneath her eye-lids, and Lexa swears a solemn vow to do so, nose tucked into the crook of Clarke’s neck.

When it’s time to let go Clarke reluctantly untangles herself and retreats back to her own front yard, pressing herself against the white fence and waving vigorously as Lexa’s mom loads her and her trunk into the car and the Sedan inches its way out of the driveway.

“You’ll see her in August,” Abby reminds her, arms tucked over her daughter’s shoulders, “we can buy some stamps and you can write to her whenever you like.”

Clarke nods dumbly, trying not to let the whole affair feel like an awful betrayal.

When they make it to the lake two days later after a near silent five hour drive, it rains for the first time in as long as Clarke can remember.

In lieu of her best-friend, Abby has extended the invitation to her sister-in-law and her kids and Clarke stares at her cousins—five-year-old twins and a nineteen-year-old who is more interested in her boyfriend who insists on calling Clarke ‘squirt’ at age twelve-and-a-half than she is in Clarke—wondering how she is supposed to bestow the honour of her summers on people who are so clearly unqualified.

She wallows in the absurdity of it all as she is relegated to the bunk-room, watching with her stomach churning and a hot, angry thing she doesn’t care to understand clawing at her ribs as her Eden is invaded by her cousin and her Air Jordan wearing boyfriend with his stupid, unbrushed mop of hair. And even though Clarke is relatively sure a five story drop onto concrete wouldn’t do any damage to the twins—they’re dim-witted at the best of times and they paw at the t shirt Lexa bought her for her birthday like it’s something they are allowed to touch—her aunt decides it’s best if Clarke takes the top bunk, despite the fact that puberty is beginning to bring her her promised growth spurt and folding herself into the top bunk is a feat worthy of a contortionist.

The bout of water-logged days mean the boat stays in the shed and the twins grow restless in the sticky-wet heat. Clarke takes it upon herself to commandeer the role of ‘moody teenager’ two years too early and sprawls out on the wooden floors near the closed glass doors and punches the buttons of her Nintendo DS until Mario stops obeying her commands as the rain beats at the window panes. She thinks it’s pathetic fallacy, or whatever her English teacher had said when she explained the way authors use the ‘external environment’ to show a characters ‘internal emotions’, because if she could peel back a layer of herself and peer into her soul, she is sure the unhappy, slate-grey of the lake is what it would look like.

She hopes it isn’t raining on Lexa too.

They cut their trip short and Clarke is sitting with her chin in her hands when Lexa returns.

Her ponytail sticks to the nape of her neck where it is secured with an elastic, remaining stubbornly in her t-shirt and shorts even though Aurora invited them around for pizza and too cool off in the Blake’s pool—even the promise of seeing their newly acquired black Labrador puppy wasn’t enough of a bribe to get her to give up her post.

Her and Lexa have been exchanging letters once a week without fail over the eight weeks of Lexa’s session, detailing each other in on the smallest things. So much so that Clarke thinks she is the one who has been rotating through six activities a day and sounded off to sleep by Taps at precisely nine-twenty but it hasn’t been nearly enough. It’s stupid, but she needs to see Lexa again with her own eyes, as if to make sure she hasn’t disappeared into thin-air like a product of her imagination.

“Clarke!”

When she looks up, Lexa is standing three feet away from her, tanned and slightly breathless. Her mom’s Sedan is still inching its way into the drive, which means Lexa took a flying jump from the passenger door while the car was still in gear to find her. She’s wearing tiny, navy running shorts and her camp tee—slightly faded from almost daily washing and eight-weeks’ worth of sun—hangs off her teenage frame, knotted at her hip so that the hem rides up to reveal a long triangle of skin that makes a hot, aching thing build in the pit of Clarke’s stomach. Instead of deciphering it, she propels herself from her crouch on the porch to fling her arms around her best-friend’s neck, instantly recognising the way Lexa seems imperceptibly broader and stronger in her arms. Her shoulder blades flex beneath the press of Clarke’s hands as she draws her desperately closer and when Clarke prods a finger at the offending strip of skin at her waistband—teasing her mercilessly about her bare midriff—gone is the softness Clarke usually finds there when she curls into her in their shared bed at night.

Instead she is long limbs and lean muscle, her cheeks are dusted with sunburn and her hair is lighter, but the worst? Her freckles are on show and this time it isn’t Clarke who has put them there, but a girl by the name of Costia who’s neatly printed name is in the center of those scrawled on the back of Lexa’s shirt in permanent marker.

They lie on the mesh of Clarke’s trampoline after Lexa has hauled her trunk up to her room—her mom gave her four hours before she had to return next door and sort out her laundry—with cans of diet coke sweating in their palms as Clarke recounts the story of walking in on her cousin and her boyfriend being more intimate than strictly necessary on a family-friendly vacation.

“I almost barfed,” she giggles heartily, “I wanted to end it all right there but my mom talked me down from the ledge.”

“Oh, the dramatics,” Lexa sighs, grinning. She takes a sip then looks at Clarke seriously. “Was it really that bad without me?”

“I think you know the answer to that,” Clarke says softly. It wasn’t bad so much as it was empty, completely void of all of the things that made summer summer and Clarke has been left with the odd feeling that she is returning to school having not had a holiday at all.

Lexa screws her nose up and nods, “if it makes you feel better camp sucked too.”

“No it didn’t,” Clarke laughs, curling onto her side, “but thank you for making me feel better.”

Lexa piques a brow. “Are you call me a liar?” she accuses, feigning a hurt look. When Clarke shrugs, she flings a leg over her hips and pins her to the taut mesh of the trampoline with her arms by her ears and Clarke tries not to gasp at the electric shocks that skitter across her skin when they touch. Instead, she collapses into laughter, tipping her head to the side as Lexa knees her beneath the ribs, demanding ‘take it back, take it back’ in a low, teasing voice.

“Fine!” Clarke gaps, writhing against the assault, “fine!” She paws at the smooth length of Lexa’s thighs where they sit nestled against her waist. “I believe you.”

Clarke has a hard time pinpointing exactly what happens next.

Somehow she raises her head and simultaneously, Lexa goes to lower hers. The result is a cacophonous collision of foreheads and noses; Clarke opens her mouth to whine in pain and finds a mouthful of Lexa’s bottom lip instead, eyes bulging as her pulse skyrockets to a speed she thinks surely signals a cardiac arrest.

Lexa makes a noise that resembles something close to an ‘oof’ then her fingers come to Clarke’s cheek in concern. “I’m sorry,” she smiles ruefully—it’s the same lopsided, word splitting smile she has always had and it does something to quell the stagnant uneasiness that has taken root in Clarke’s spine, if not the smouldering build up of who knows what in the pit of her stomach—and runs her thumb in a practiced motion over the short, white scar beneath Clarke’s eye.

“It’s okay,” Clarke whispers. She fiddles with the edge of the tie-dyed bandana that is wrapped and knotted around Lexa’s wrist, trying not to focus on the impending sense of doom she feels as her body betrays her.

#clexaweek2019 #day 3 #only one bed #clexa fic #childhood friends #clarke griffin #lexa

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knowles-morgan · 6 years ago

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Remember our first Christmas

Paper was everywhere along with boxes from the toys the kids had open. Nora had fallen asleep trying to hold on to her baby doll and the barbies she had gotten. Your year-old son had climbed into Chibs lap and had fallen asleep holiday his motorcycle Juice had gotten him and his blanket in the other. It was a busy morning. The kids had woken up at 4 am and would not go back to sleep. Once they found out Santa had been to the house. Even if Jackie was upset Santa ate the cookies.

“You outdid yourself?” Chibs said to you as you picked up Jackie to place him on the loveseat.

“I’ve gotten better at it.” You said laughing.

“I’ve enjoyed every minute of it love,” Chibs said pulling you down to his lap.

“Do you remember our first Christmas?” You asked moving half away of his lap on to the couch to see him.

“Don’t think I could ever forget it.” He said rubbing his hand up your thigh.

The first Christmas you had was Chibs was after you had only been seeing each other for about six months. Nora had fallen in love with him right away. It actually bothered you because you weren’t sure how long he would want to stick around and play dad.

Today was Christmas Eve and you had stopped by the clubhouse that morning to give him his gift.

“Chibs, your girls are here?” Jax said meeting you as you walked up.

“You look very festive today Y/N,” Jax said laughing.

You wearing greening and red leggings. A shirt that said Naughty is the new nice. Some boots and with the jewelry you had on that had bells on them.

“I hear some jealousy in your voice.” You said laughing at him.

“You flirting with my old lady again,” Chibs said walking up and giving you a kiss

“You should wear the bells for me later and nothing else.”

“You can count on that.” You said winking at him.

“I don’t need this thought in my head. Where is Nora?” Jax said walking away.

“She’s in with your mom.”

“Mom must be giving her the gift we got her,” Jax said walking to the clubhouse

“She didn’t need to go that.”

“Love, Gemma does what she wants. Besides we all love Nora.” He said pulling you in for a hug

“Let’s go in and make sure she at least says thank you.”

Walking into you didn’t expect to see everyone got her something.

“Mommy look!” She said holding up a tea set.

“Did you say thank you, babe?”

“Don’t worry mama she was,” Gemma said keeping up to hug you.

Watching Nora and the guys play with all this little girl stuff was a blast, but what really melted your heart was when she climbed in Chibs lap and fell asleep.

“I never expected any of this but thank you so much for doing this for Nora, but I need to get her home. I have to get dinner made and her to bed for Santa.”

After all the goodbyes. With the boys putting all the stuff in your truck. Chibs but Nora in her car seat. Then we walked over to you.

“You need some help tonight.” He said playing with the bells on your necklace.

“We should be okay, but you're coming by for dinner tomorrow right?”

“I’ll be there.”

“I love you.” Chibs had fallen hard for you.

“I love you also.” You said leaning up and kissing him.

Getting into the car you could feel a headache coming on, but told yourself you would take something as soon as you got home.

“Nora. We are at home. You are going to have to walk for I can get your presents in okay.” You said unbuckling her.

“Can I play with them?”

“While I make dinner you can. Then bath time and bedtime.”

“One Christmas movie please?”

“After your bath.” You said laughing

True to your word. She played to dinner. Then after her bath and you both put on your matching flannel pajamas. You stared the Christmas movie. She loved the Barbie Nutcracker. Of course, she fell asleep while it was on. Picking her up and taking her to bed. She didn’t even wake up.

“It’s time to play Santa.” You said pouring yourself a glass of wine.

The first couple of gifts weren’t any problem. Then you decide to put the dollhouse together. It didn’t look that hard. So why were you seating her crying with a worse headache and trying not to throw up?

Grabbing your phone you picked it up and hit number two on the speed dial.

“Y/N.” A sleepy Chibs said

“Santa can’t even put together a dollhouse. My head is killing me. I’m a horrible mother and Nora is going to hate me forever.” You said crying

“I’ll be right there.”

“No. She loves you. I’m the failure.” You said hanging up

Not moving from the floor. To tried and in pain to move. Even when you heard the knock then the key being put into the lock you didn’t move. Maybe the robber can put the present together for you.

“Let’s get you to bed.”

“If her dad wasn’t a dead beat rat. He would be here helping with this.”

“Her dad is here. I should have come home with you guys.”

Pulling him down onto the floor with you.

“That kind of talk could really turn a girl on.” You said put as soon as he leaned down to kiss you. You couldn’t hold it anymore. Pushing him away. You got up and ran to the bathroom. Flipping the light on you ran to the toilet and got sick.

Chibs was right behind you holding your hair up, and rubbing your back.

“Let’s get you to bed.”

Getting up you brushed your teeth and tried to go back into the living room.

“Y/N.”

“Chibs.”

“Your bed is this way.”

“Santa needs to finish his gifts. Eat the cookies and drink the milk. Then I have to be up and have breakfast ready. Then dinner going soon after then. When you all come over. So I’m not going to bed and you can go home.” You said feeling dizzy and starting to go down.

“Come on love,” Chibs said as he caught you.

Carrying you bridal style. You wrapped your arms around him.

“She’s going to hate me.” You said starting to cry again.

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then please lay down and rest. I’ll get you some medicine then you can rest for a bit.”

As he got your medicine he helped you out of your Christmas pajamas and into a shirt. Tucking her in and before he was out the door you were sleeping.

“Mommy Mommy!!!” Was the first thing you heard but her jumping was what woke you.

Sitting up a little and seeing a sleeping shirtless Chibs next to you.

“Merry Christmas ladybug.” You said hugging her

“Santa came Mommy!”

“Did he?” You were truly surprised because last night was coming back to you.

“Can I open them?”

“Let me get dressed and wake Chibs up.”

As she ran to the living room. You could hear her talking to someone. It sounded like Juice and Happy.

“Babe wake up.” You said rubbing his chest

“You feel better?”

“I’m so sorry about last night but I’m glad you didn’t leave.”

“This is where I belong and you need Santa and his elf’s help”

“Oh lord, what did you do?” You said laughing

“Getting your Christmas pajamas back on and let’s go see.”

“You washed them?”

He winked as he got up and got dressed.

Walking out of the bedroom. You couldn’t believe what had happened. The dollhouse was put together and more presents were added.

“Merry Christmas.” Juice and Happy said

Nora was on Happy lap watching the Christmas parade being very good.

“Merry Christmas,” You said giving both guys a kiss on the check.

Walking into the kitchen you saw the cookies and milk had been eaten and the milk was gone.

“Once again Nora, Santa didn’t clean up his mess.”

“I’m pretty sure Santa just wanted to get home to Mrs. Clause,” Chibs said coming in and smacking your ass.

“I’m sure Mrs. Clause will make his home warming very pleasurable.”

“Mama!!!!” Nora said running in.

“Okay okay. Did you say hello to Chibs?”

“No Daddy is always here. Well sometimes.” She said running off.

#sons of anarchy #merry christmas #sons of anarchy imagines #soa chibs

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blouisparadise · 6 years ago

Photo

As promised, here the continuing rec list of fics where Louis is called pet names. Part one can be found here, and when it’s out, part three will also be linked here. Happy reading!

1) Tie You Up and Make Me Scream | Explicit | 2166 words

AU where Harry teases Louis and it becomes a game until they cant handle it anymore and escape to have tent sex while the rest of the boys are in the other tents.

2) Feel The Need | Explicit | 4898 words

Louis and Harry attend Liam's Halloween party. Risky Business ensues.

3) Just Stop Your Crying (It’s A Sign Of The Times) | Explicit | 5864 words

My own imagining of the inspiration for Sign of the Times. Featuring boys in love, even after all this time.

4) We’ll Stumble Through Heaven | Explicit | 6504 words

Louis likes to be a good boy for his alpha.

5) Raised on Rhythm and Blues | Explicit | 8034 words

“That look on your face makes me think you’re not cooking me spaghetti fast enough,” Louis announces as he walks back into the kitchen. Harry knows exactly where Zoe gets her habits from.

“Cooking for my two beautiful and insanely intelligent children, not for the weird bloke that sleeps in my bed and eats all my food,” Harry answers, tilting his head and wondering if he should add more sauce.

6) Forever, Uninterrupted | Explicit | 8578 words

Harry finds a mysterious picture in Louis' bag one night and drives himself crazy over it. It's definitely not what he thinks.

7) Spice Up Your Life | Explicit | 9501 words

After a conversation with his Uni friends, Harry worries that his relationship with Louis has lost it's spark.

8) Infinitely All For Me | Explicit | 10630 words

The Alpha Louis' been betrothed to since he was 14 has finally come of age and Louis' been delivered to his home.

9) Keep Holding Me This Way | Explicit | 13747 words

An English grad student, a frat jock, and an unimpressed rich boy walk into a bar. No one walks out.

10) Let’s Take the World By Storm | Explicit | 14656 words

Harry lifts his head off Louis' chest to look at Louis' face. "What's that supposed to mean?"

“I don’t know, but our sex life feels a bit boring, ‘sall,” Louis says, completely avoiding eye contact.

“Boring.” Harry says flatly. He doesn’t say anything more, and Louis looks up to see that Harry seems to be mulling it over.

“Yeah, boring," Louis says, and keeps talking before Harry can pipe up. “I mean, think about it. We’ve been dating since X Factor, and now things are starting to drag a bit. We don’t even have the time for handjobs anymore, much less actual sex.”

11) The Seed Inside You, Baby, Do You Feel It Growin’ | Explicit | 14793 words

Louis really wants Harry to get him pregnant.

12) Oops, Baby, I Love You (In That Order) | Explicit | 25344 words

The minute Louis Tomlinson decides he don’t need no man to start a family, Harry Styles literally falls into his arms.

13) Another Day Gettin’ Into Trouble | Explicit | 25619 words

Harry’s drunk when the idea occurs to him. He’s also a pop star, so sometimes his drunk ideas turn into actual things instead of just ideas. The clone-a-willy kit is one of them.

In Harry’s defense, when he first thinks about it his intention is just to buy the kit and give it to Louis to make his own dildo with, because that’s what he wants anyway, right? To have a penis filling him up?

Then he realizes that it would be weird if Louis made a copy of his own dick to fuck himself with. It’d be super weird. Louis fucking himself? That’s a weird idea. Harry’s pretty sure Louis wouldn’t like that.

Clearly the only solution here is to use his own dick for the mold.

14) Force of Nature | Mature | 25672 words

Louis is a shy, young musician who doesn't want to go to Harvard.

Harry is a confident, second year athlete who likes to have a good time.

When their paths cross while their families are vacationing at the same lake resort, what begins as a summer of fun becomes a defining journey that might just change everything.

15) Up To No Good | Explicit | 26525 words | Sequel 1 | Sequel 2

Harry doesn’t think of himself as a womanizer, not at all. Sure, he enjoys sex, enjoys how women feel underneath him, and by some people’s standards he has sex with quite a lot of people, but that’s no reason to tell him that he can’t have a female PA anymore.

It’s especially no excuse for giving him a male PA who’s possibly the most gorgeous boy in the world who won’t even let Harry look at him for too long.

Sometimes Harry hates his life.

16) Always Come Back To You | Explicit | 28862 words

“I’ll do it,” Harry offers brightly. No one even blinks. “I’ll do it?”

Louis sighs irritably. “Shut up,” he orders, tossing a pillow in the general direction of Harry’s face. This is a terrible time for jokes, especially Harry’s lame, old people ones.

Not that it was an old people joke. Just that most of the time Harry’s jokes consist of knock-knocks or terrible puns. The type of jokes old people like, Louis’ pretty sure. His nan always finds them hilarious when Harry tells her one.

Harry bats the pillow out of the air without even blinking. “Be reasonable, Lou,” he says in his most reasonable voice.

Louis is perfectly reasonable, thank you very much, and he’s also frustrated and upset and tired and he really wants to punch something. Maybe he should have held on to that pillow a little longer.

“You’re not gonna fucking do it,” he snaps. “That’s the last thing I need.”

17) Blind From This Sweet, Sweet Craving | Explicit | 31170 words

"So, I guess we'll go?" Louis asks later, when Harry has calmed down and eaten his weight in Chinese food. He plays with this chopsticks, spearing another piece of chicken and pops it in his mouth. "I mean, I wouldn't mind. We could make it an adventure."

Harry observes him, watches him seated across from him on their old living room carpet, with a container of food on his lap. He's fidgeting, avoiding meeting Harry's gaze–he probably knows that Harry's mad at him for ruining the one chance they had to get out of this situation. And he's not wrong, Harry is definitely very mad. Harry wants to strangle him and castrate him and smack him upside the head.

But he's also Harry's best friend, and despite everything, despite all the fuck-ups and the plot twists and everything just not playing out the way it should, he'd still rather be stuck in this situation with Louis than any of the other boys. He's got Harry's back, and in a weird, abstract way, he knows they'll be able to get out of this situation, together.

Harry sighs. "We're going," he says resignedly, his shoulders slumping.

Oh well. There are definitely worse ways to spend the weekend than pretending to be engaged to his best friend.

18) Cupid’s Chokehold | Explicit | 35326 words

Louis is a Cupid who tries to match up Niall and Harry. It doesn't work out as planned.

19) Mark My Word (We Gon’ Be Alright) | Explicit | 35524 words

"He’s always known that there would come a time when Harry would bond with some beautiful, quiet omega, and they would have lots of curly-haired pups and live happily ever after.

Knowing it and living it are two very different things, though. Watching the object of your affection desperately search for a mate and completely disregard you as an option is all sorts of painful, but it is what it is, and Louis is just going to have to learn to live with that."

20) Who Would’ve Thought | Explicit | 44275 words | Companion Fic

The idea doesn’t come to Louis until they’ve been at the bungalow for a couple of days. Harry has no idea that he’s going to pop a knot. He’s been living his life with the expectation that he’s going to be a beta, and Louis isn’t going to tell him otherwise.

Louis is an omega, though, and most omegas want to be filled up with a knot, fucked the way their bodies are made to be fucked, and Louis is no different. In ten years he wants to have an alpha waiting for him at home who will hold him down and fuck him exactly the way Louis wants to be fucked without worrying that they’re going to expect him to stay at home, open a joint bank account, raise a litter of babies, cook and clean and, most importantly, be submissive. For that to happen Louis needs an entirely different kind of alpha.

And so the plan is born.

21) Tangled Up In You | Explicit | 45152 words

Harry blinks once. And blinks again. And says, his voice dangerous: “Niall, did you get me a mail-order bride?”

Because what the actual fuck. It kind of looks like Niall’s just purchased a person. For Harry.

Niall blinks back at him for a few moments, before throwing his head back and howling with laughter. Harry throws a pillow at him. Hard. “No, what the fuck, Harry.”

“A prostitute then?” Harry also doesn't want a prostitute.

“Of course not!”

“A stripper?”

“No!”

Damn, he’s running out of ideas. He settles for launching another pillow at Niall’s head. Niall bats it away easily, still laughing. “Stop!”

“What did you get me, then?!” Niall must hear the tinge of hysteria in his voice, because he’s pulling himself together, trying to stop himself from laughing.

There’s still a big grin on his face, though, when he says, “I got you a professional cuddler.”

A professional…what. “What?”

22) Nobody Does It Like You | Not Rated | 58820 words

Louis isn't looking for a home, but he finds one in Harry.

23) Tug-Of-War | Explicit | 63000 words

Louis' husband dies suddenly and he is left with nothing. Well, not really nothing. He has Harry. And a St. Bernard puppy named Link, whom his late husband left behind for him. Louis takes care of Link and Harry takes care of Louis. Everything is okay until suddenly, it isn't.

24) Why Can’t It Be Like That | Explicit | 63567 words

A fashion AU with a royal twist, where Louis doesn't need a stylist, Harry's thrilled to have a real life Barbie doll, and they're both very wrong about each other.

25) Perfect Storm | Explicit | 80230 words

What do you do when your best friend asks you and your (now) ex to be the best men at his destination wedding? You can either tell him the truth, tell him you’re not together anymore, and deal with the consequences, or you can pretend you’re still together and roll with it, just pray you don’t spiral. Fake it ‘til you make it. You know, for the sake of the wedding.

Harry and Louis choose the latter.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

#bottom louis #top harry #fic recs #blp fic recs #blp

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hazelmariewrites · 6 years ago

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Ellie

I thought it would be nice to share a piece of work, so here is a short psychological horror story that I wrote my freshman year of college! I’ve come SUCH a long way with my writing since then, but this has always been a favorite of my own work. Maybe I’ll even revisit it someday.

Synopsis: Ellie’s imaginary friends helped her cope with a traumatic childhood. As she gets older, however, their intentions start to seem malicious--and Ellie is easily influenced.

Trigger warnings: Mental illness, murder

"It's unfortunate that we can't talk somewhere more comfortable," said the graying man as he opened his notebook and perched it on his crossed legs, "but everyone's very concerned for your safety."

He was referring to the handcuffs which held my hands together and my legs to the metal chair I was sitting in. The room was cold and the dim light above us flickered as if it could go out at any second. A police officer was by the door, smacking his gum at an irritating volume. Definitely not a comfortable place for me to be recounting my life story.

"My name is Dr. Wright," the man continued. "I'm here to get your side of the story, Ellie. It's important for you to be able to tell it to someone who can understand your state of mind, don't you think?"

My initial response was to feel insulted by the fact that he was, in his shrink sort of way, calling me crazy, but then I realized that I probably was so I nodded my head. With a smile, he clicked his pen and scribbled something down, then pulled some papers out of a manila folder.

"Okay, Ellie, let's go all the way back to when you were a child. I have some files which show that your father was arrested a few times for domestic abuse..." he stopped for a moment to look up and gauge my reaction. I guess I was supposed to be troubled by him bringing this up, but it didn't have an effect on me, so he continued. "What was your childhood like?"

For a while I sat there staring at the wall behind him. He waited patiently for me to begin, but I wasn't sure how. My younger years were all a giant blur, but there was one day in particular that stood out in my memory. So I told him about the only childhood I ever knew.

"Damn it, Pam, you're blockin' the TV!" my father yelled as my mother crossed his view of the football game to bring him a beer. He ripped it from her hands, cracked it open, and took a swig without a thank you. My mother hovered next to him for a moment as if she wanted to say something, but ultimately returned to the kitchen without a word.

I was in the corner playing with the knock-off Barbie doll I had gotten a few days earlier for my fourth birthday. She was missing a shoe and it looked like someone had cut a chunk out of her hair. I was too young to realize that my mother had probably fished it out of a dumpster.

My father stood up and wobbled over to the bathroom, and on his way back he stopped in front of me. "Why you playin' with this stupid doll?" he growled, bending over to grab it out of my hands. "Get in the kitchen and help your mother!"

He mocked me when I started to cry, and upon hearing this, my mother emerged from the kitchen. "Keith, what are you doing?" she asked. My father turned to her and pointed a finger in her face.

"You stay out of this Pam, you're the reason our daughter don't know nothin'. She's gonna turn out to be a good for nothin' whore just like her momma!"

My mother started to protest but her words were cut short when my father struck her across the face. I ran to my room but I could still her them yelling, so I climbed under my covers, closed my eyes, and put my hands over my ears.

A few moments later I felt my covers move back. I opened my eyes and saw a girl my age with red hair and freckles. "Sara!" I cried, throwing my arms around her. She hugged me tight with a chuckle.

"What are you hiding from?" she asked. Her eyebrows knitted together as I explained that my parents were fighting again.

"I ought to teach that dad of yours a thing or two!" came a voice from behind me. I turned around to see my friend Billy had joined us. I laughed at his enthusiasm and gave him a hug. Sara and Billy kept me company until there was a knock at my door.

"Ellie, who were you talking to?" my mother asked as she entered my room. Her face was red and swollen and there was a cut on her lip. Sara and Billy had disappeared.

"I was just singing a song, Momma," I lied. My mother sat down next to me on my bed and put her arm around me. We sat like that for a little while, and then my father called for her and she left.

"Sara and Billy were your imaginary friends?" Dr. Wright asked. I nodded.

"Some of them," I said. "There are others."

"Are?"

"Were. I meant to say were."

Dr. Wright raised a brow and scribbled something in his notebook. I swallowed hard and started picking at my cuticles to distract myself from my mistake. Three of my fingers had started to bleed by the time he stopped writing.

"How many?" he finally asked.

"Five," I replied.

"How often did they visit you?"

"They were my only friends." I explained. "They showed up whenever I needed them, from my parents fighting to eating lunch alone at school."

"You saw them at school?"

"Yes."

"Tell me about that."

"He's just mad because you're smarter than him," Sara assured me as I stared down at the large number 63 written in red across the top of my latest Biology test. "I'm telling you, all you have to do is threaten to out his little affair with that blonde bimbo in the third row and he'll get off your back."

I rolled my eyes. My eight grade biology teacher, Mr. Goodwin, definitely favored the girl Sara had in mind, but accusing him of an affair was overdramatic. I started walking toward my locker and Sara followed me, insisting on weaving through the students even though she could have passed through them with no trouble.

"What's that?" Sara asked as we reached my locker. A triangle of pink construction paper was hanging out the bottom, and when I opened the door a heart shaped card fell to the floor. I reached down and picked it up.

"Dear Ellie," it read across the front. I opened it. "You are so beautiful, but I've always been afraid to tell you how I feel. In the spirit of Valentine's Day, would you meet me on the stage of the auditorium after school? Love, Your Secret Admirer."

I looked up at Sara, a smile creeping across my face. She didn't share my enthusiasm.

"Ellie, don't do it," she begged, knocking the card to the floor. "I have a bad feeling about this."

I picked the note back up and placed it carefully in my locker. I promised Sara I wouldn't go, but I did.

The auditorium was pitch black aside from the lone spotlight shining down on the stage. My palms were sweaty and my stomach was flip-flopping all over the place, but I forced myself to make my way over. I couldn't see past the edge of the stage as I stood waiting for my admirer, but I heard a door open and close. My heart thundered in my chest.

"Hello?" I called out. My stomach turned over as I heard laughter. I began to realize that I should have listened to Sara.

"What's the matter, Ellie?" asked a girl's voice. "Have you been stood up?"

I tried my hardest to keep my composure, but as the lights turned on and I saw three girls video taping me, I couldn't stop the tears. Their cameras followed me as I fled the room, and I locked myself in a stall of the nearest bathroom.

A few moments later there was a knock on the stall door. I choked at them to go away through my tears, but a quiet voice revealed that it was Sara so I let her in. She held me until my sobs turned to sniffles, and then she pulled back with a fierce look in her eyes.

"You can't let them get away with this, Ellie," she said.

"What am I supposed to do?" I asked, my cracked voice barely above a whisper. A mischievous smile spread across her face. She opened the stall door to reveal Billy and the rest of my friends waiting with small cardboard boxes. She motioned for me to look inside.

I walked slowly over to one of the boxes and gasped in disgust as I saw what was inside. Cockroaches. I jumped back and looked at Sara in horror.

"What am I supposed to do with those?!" I cried. She walked over to me and put her hands on my shoulders, staring into my eyes with determination.

"You're going to put them in their lockers," she explained. "Just imagine their faces when they go to get their books before first period. And everyone will be there to see! It's going to be great, Ellie, trust me. They'll never mess with you again.”

I shook my head, but she held my gaze. The longer I looked into her eyes, the better the idea seemed. Before I knew it I was breaking into their lockers and laughing along with my friends as we emptied the boxes.

I got to school early the next morning. One by one I heard screaming throughout the halls as they all found their surprises. I was later called into the principal's office, but none of them could explain why they suspected me without admitting what they had done, so my revenge went unpunished. I stayed up late that night laughing with my friends, recounting how well our plan had played out. It was the happiest I had felt in a long time.

He asked me about my mother's death next. I explained that the doctors found the cancer too late, and her battle was relatively short. He asked me if I missed her.

"Well, yeah," I answered. "My childhood was rotten, but it wasn't her fault. She tried. And she really did love me."

He raised his eyebrows. "That's very mature of you."

I shrugged. "I missed her a lot at first especially. Until he got sick, I became my father's new punching bag."

"How did you deal with your father's illness?" he asked. "It must have been hard leaving school to take care of the man who caused you so much pain."

"It was," I admitted. "And I didn't always handle it well."

He asked me to elaborate.

"Ellie," my father croaked from his bedroom. I sighed and closed the book I was reading, but waited a moment before I got up to see what he wanted. When I entered his room I was greeted by the loud beeping of his oxygen machine.

"Something's come loose," he said. "The damn thing won't shut up."

Sara appeared at the doorway. She stared blankly at my father as I worked to fix his machine.

"How can you spend every day of your life taking care of this bastard after everything he's done to you?" she asked, crossing the room until she was watching him from the foot of his bed. I turned to her and tried to think of an answer, but there really wasn't a good one.

"What else am I supposed to do?" I asked her.

"About what?" my father asked. I ignored him and waited for Sara to respond. She finally tore her eyes away from my father and looked into mine.

"Leave," she said. "Come with us, we'll take care of you!"

My eyebrows knitted together sympathetically. "But you're not real," I reasoned. Her face twisted into an expression of outrage.

"Don't you dare say that!" she screamed. I winced and turned away. My father was watching me carefully.

"You're a damn freak," he declared. "Y'know that?"

"Don't talk to me that way," I warned. He chuckled.

"I'm your father, I can talk to you however I want."

I had so many emotions taking over my mind. I was frustrated that Sara didn't understand why I couldn't leave. She refused to look at me, and it annoyed me and broke my heart at the same time. But above all I was pissed. I was incredulous at my father for having the nerve to talk down to me when I had put up with so much from him, and was now his sole caretaker. Didn't he realize how quickly I could end things for him?

Before I had time to decide whether or not it was a good idea, I was unplugging my father's oxygen machine. Its usual hum disappeared and my father began to choke.

"E-Ell-W-Wha," he sputtered, unable to form even a word. I looked over at Sara, who wore a satisfied smirk on her face, then looked back at my father. I watched him squirm for a few more moments before plugging his machine back in. He gasped a few times, his wide eyes searching my face for some sort of explanation.

"Never disrespect me again," I demanded. "Understand?"

He nodded, and I followed Sara out of the room.

"How did you feel about your reaction once you had time to reflect on it?" Dr. Wright asked in typical shrink fashion. "Were you frightened by it at all? Guilted?"

"I felt good about it," I replied. "I was glad to finally see him put in his place."

Dr. Wright nodded thoughtfully. I noticed that the officer by the door had fallen asleep, so before he had a chance to ask his next question I decided to tell him something I had been keeping from the police.

"My father had been dead for a couple of days before I called anyone." I said. Dr. Wright nodded quizzically at me.

"Yes, it says that here in my notes," he said. "You were out of town with a friend, right?"

"No," I replied, chewing the inside of my cheek anxiously. "I wasn't out of town."

He pulled out his notebook, of course, and started taking notes. I continued as he wrote.

"He woke me up one night calling my name. I don't know why, but I just couldn't find it in me to get up and check on him. I went back to sleep and when I woke up the next morning he was dead. It was shocking, but honestly it was a relief. I'm not sure what kept me from reporting it, but for the next two days I just pretended he wasn't there. It was very relaxing."

Dr. Wright scribbled away at his quickest pace yet. Then, as an afterthought, he turned back to see why the officer hadn't reacted to my news. I expected him to wake the officer and make me repeat it, but he didn't. He took a deep breath and turned back to me.

"Where was Sara during all this?" he asked.

"Around," I answered. I thought he'd push for details, but once again he defied my expectations. Instead he dug out some papers.

"You started working at Holbrook National Bank not long after your father's death, am I correct?"

A chill ran down my spine and my palms began to sweat. I nodded, knowing where his question was leading. We were coming to the end.

"Is that how you came to know the deceased?"

"Excuse me, miss, I'm new in town and I'm looking to open a checking account here."

I looked away from my computer and saw a tall, lean man whose short black hair was speckled with gray here and there. There were wrinkles at the outer corners of his eyes, as if he had smiled a lot in his lifetime. The wrinkles deepened as he smiled at me with perfect teeth, and I felt my heart jump into my throat.

"Oh, Jeanie can help you with that," I told him, my finger shaking slightly as I pointed to an office at the end of the lobby. He kept his eyes on me rather than following my finger.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said. I felt my face turn pink as he laughed and winked, then made his way to Jeanie's office.

For the next two months the man came to my window every Thursday. I learned that his name was Scott and that he had moved into town because of a business opportunity that arose just after his divorce was finalized. He had a young daughter, Rose, who he saw every other weekend.

Scott's charm never ceased to disarm me, so when he showed up one Thursday with a small bouquet of roses and asked if I was free for dinner the next night, I almost forgot how to say “yes.” But I figured it out.

My friends weren't happy when they heard the news. They mostly pouted, but Sara was adamant on getting me to change my mind.

"You barely know him!" she argued. "He's fifteen years older than you! Plus, just went through a divorce, so he's not going to be settling down with anyone anytime soon. He's probably handing out flowers to girls all over town!"

"Sara, stop," I said firmly, "I'm an adult now and I'm through letting you make my decisions for me. You're not going to talk me out of this just because you're jealous that I'm finally getting along with a real person."

Sara didn't respond to this. She disappeared for the rest of the evening, and for the next few weeks I only caught glimpses of my old friends. When I saw them they were huddled together, as if planning something. I should have suspected something, but things were going well with Scott and I was glad to finally have a sense of normalcy. I was too old for imaginary friends anyway.

By the time Scott and I had been dating long enough for him to want me to meet his daughter I hadn't seen my friends for over a month. I felt normal for the first time in my adult life. I was excited to be taking such a big step in my relationship, and to finally have people in my life that my mind hadn't fabricated.

The night before I was to meet Rose I was feeling very upbeat, so I decided to surprise Scott at his house with takeout from his favorite Chinese restaurant. I used the spare key he kept under his doormat to get in. I called out to him, but there was no response. I began to worry that he may have gone to bed early.

I put the food down on his kitchen table, and as I walked up the stairs I saw a dim light pouring through the cracked opening of his bedroom door. I opened it just wide enough to see Scott sitting against his bed frame, reading by the light of his bedside lamp.

"Hey handsome, didn't you hear me?" I whispered, not wanting to startle him too badly. His expression was one of shock despite my hushed tone.

"Ellie, what are you doing here?" he asked. I just smiled and walked into the room, but my smile faded quickly as the rest of his bed came into my view. Lying next to him was a sleeping mess of red curls and black lingerie.

My mouth dropped. Sara was right: I wasn't the only pretty young thing in Scott's life. I stared at him in disbelief as he put his book down and asked me once again what I was doing at his house. No apology, not even a recognition of the fact that I had just caught him in bed with another woman. I felt adrenaline searing through my body, and my hands started to shake.

"How could you?!" I cried.

"How could I what?" he responded. I clinched my fists and charged at him. He blocked my blows and tried to restrain me, so I grabbed his lamp and crashed it over his head. He stopped fighting immediately, but I kept attacking.

Each time I brought the lamp down on his head his face changed. He became my father, the kids at school, and everyone else who had ever done me wrong. Eventually the lamp broke to the point that I had nothing left to bring down onto him.

The red head started to laugh. With the lamp broken I had no way of seeing, so I lunged over Scott's body in the general direction of her laughter. I was surprised to land on the mattress. There was nothing there. The sound of her laughter seemed to have moved to the other side of the room. I started toward it, but stopped dead in my tracks when I heard a second source of laughter, then a third, and then more until I couldn't tell how many there were.

I felt the walls until I found the light switch, and when I flipped it on I found my friends all standing next to Scott. Sara was a few steps in front of the rest, sporting black lingerie.

"Hey, old friend," she said. "We missed you."

Dr. Wright was satisfied with the information he gathered. He told me he would relay it all to my court appointed lawyer, who should then have no trouble putting together an insanity plea. He said all of this as though it should be happy news.

"What's wrong with me?" I asked, fighting back tears. I hated myself for what I had done. I hated that I let my childish coping mechanisms get out of control. I hated that I would never be normal. Dr. Wright sighed.

"There are a number of disorders that involve your symptoms," he said, "but I'll need more time to give you an official diagnosis. What's important is that they're gone. You said you don't see them anymore, correct?"

I opened my mouth to protest, but then Sara stepped out from the darkened corner where she had been listening in secret all along. She stared me down until I was too afraid to speak, so I nodded my head. The now-conscious police officer escorted me back to my cell where the rest of my friends were waiting.

#writeblr #short story #writing #horror #psychological horror #ellie #rachel greenwood #stories

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drawbauchery · 7 years ago

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Rocky’s Gift

(SUPER HECKING ADORABLY PRECIOUS FIC BY @definitelyameatbag)

Human AU - It’s the first day back at the Kindergarten, and Mrs. Perri has a present to receive from a student.

—

Perri knew a thing or two about kindergartening.

“Recess! Recess, everyone!”, she called out to the class, within a second in lockstep with the bell. Amy liked to tell Perri that she must prefer trains to planes because she’d never get through TSA with the clock inside her head. The youngsters, endowed with a rather less regulated sense of time, were still quick on the draw heading to the door out to Recess. The mass of Post-Toddlers, looking rather like a cheering, moving bed of flowers, or at least a mound of autumn leaves, was an imposing obstacle to pass in order to open the door.

Thankfully, Beth was ahead of Perri, opening the door from the other side. The two exchanged thumbs-ups as the river of tiny humanity poured outside into the chilly January play area. It’ll be Beth and Zoe’s job over the next hour to tire the tykes out enough for their nap, while avoiding scraped knees and pulled hair. Most of the class weren’t too bad in that regard, but little Alexa was on Maximum Surveillance after smacking Perri on the knee with a fire poker last year. Perri rang her parents back then, and even they didn’t know where she got it, they didn’t even have a fireplace at home.

Anyway, she had an hour to herself. This was supposed to mean time to organize the next period of activities, if she was some sort of amateur that didn’t have the activity sets pre-arranged and ready for imminent deployment, safely reserved on top shelves that could only be accessed by adults with a step ladder.

Or without a step ladder, as Pearl would often wordlessly point out.

Yes, Perri thought, the originator of the devious and psychologically manipulative (not that those had to be bad qualities) Pearl Point Board that hung on the wall behind the teacher’s desk. Perri had low expectations of her when she joined the kindergarten staff a few years ago, and they did have the odd fight over approaches to the job in the past, but a mutual feeling of respect had grown between them. They had both agreed, at least they were passionate enough about it to have such arguments, and understanding enough to learn from them.

So, Perri sat at the desk, with an hour to fill. She finished her Elevenses coffee, now gone cold, and looked over the little stack of report she’d have to fill.

“Later.” she thought to herself.

Pulling open a drawer, she took out a little ukulele. The class loved hearing a song from her while getting ready for a nap, but she might’ve gotten a little rusty over the Holiday Break, and she wanted to treat them to a classic on the first day back. She gave it a quick tuning, and plucked at the strings. She leaned back in her chair, and cleared her throat. She started to play.

“Life and death and love and birth, and peace and war on the plan-“

“Mrs. Perri?”

“AHH!”, Perri jolted at hearing the little voice. Her heart leapt at the thought of her falling back and smashing her head on the wall, but instead the chair thrusted her forwards, smacking her chest against the edge of the table. Only a moment that lasted long enough enabled her to save her ukulele from getting the brunt of the hit, which would’ve likely broken it.

Years of experience allowed herself to bite her tongue before letting out any harsher language, and she shifted her chair for a quick breath. She turned her head to see the origin of the scare.

A little girl, with long pink hair and wearing the kindergarten’s purple uniform sweatshirt, and standing beside her, looking down and seeming frightened. She seemed to be holding a small box in both her hands.

“Oh, forgive me, Rocky. I didn’t mean to scare you.”, Perri said. Rocky wasn’t her proper name, but it’s what everyone in the class called her, even Perri called her it once she was sure the girl liked it. Perri got out of the chair and crouched down to meet her eye, “Is there something you would like me to help you with?”, she gently asked. “Alexa’s done something, hasn’t she?”, she continued in her mind.

Rocky looked up at Perri, and hopped forward to wrap her tiny arms around the teacher as much as she could. Perri patted her on the back to return the hug. “Uhh, yes, thank you. Did you enjoy Christmas, then?”

“Yule, Mrs. Perri.”, said Rocky. Perri remembered, Rocky’s family were those Wiccans that ran the charm store.

“Oh right, excuse me. Did Sant– um…”, Perri thought carefully. Nothing came to her “…did, did you get good presents this year?”

“Uh-huh.”, Rocky pulled out of the hug. “Books an’ color pens an’ a rock-tumbler an’ a Barbie Doll.”

“That’s very good.”, said Perri. With most five-year-olds she would question one of those four things, but knowing Rocky she wasn’t much surprised.

Rocky bit her lip, and looked back at the floor. “Did you?”

“Yes, yes I did.”, Perri answered the girl. Cards and money from the parents, candles and spices from Bell, a bottle of wine from Yana, and such gifts from Laplace and Amy that she would not dare mention within a hundred feet of a child.

Rocky suddenly held out her arm, offering what looked like a ring box. “F’r you, Mrs. Perri.” A look of fear was in her eyes, if not fear then at least nervousness.

“Oh, thank you, Rocky.” Perri carefully took the box from her hand. Looking back at Rocky, her little eyes pleading at her to open it, she lifted the lid.

She saw inside a little green gemstone, polished and cut into a triangle, linked to a gold chain. The little gem glimmered and shined. Perri never thought much of jewels but she admired its simple prettiness.

“It’s lovely, really beautiful, Rocky, thank you so much.” Perri pulled it out by the chain, seeing it was on a necklace. “What type is it?”

“Peridot.”, came the answered, sounding like ‘Pear-e-dough’, “You’re one, too, since you said your birthday’sn August. It’s supposed ta keep away evil. The chain’s gold ‘cause it’s stronger when in gold, and your hair’s gold.”

Perri couldn’t help but smile, and she let out a sniff in holding back tears. She quickly put the necklace around her head. “I couldn’t thank you enough, Rocky. I’ll wear it every day, I promise!”

Rocky put her hands together, pleading “Don’t tell anyone, please!”

Perri was confused, “Why not?”

The girl’s cheeks burned red. “Some of them…they said I was stupid. For bringing my rocks.”

Perri furrowed her brow. She had some concern the first day Rocky brought in the examples of minerals and gemstones, but she relaxed once she knew she wanted only to show them to others, not to throw them or anything. Alexa had been warned from getting any ideas, and a few of the class seemed really interested in seeing and learning about them from Rocky, what types of rock they are, how they’re formed, and so on. Now that she thought about it, Rocky hadn’t yet got anything out today.

Perri felt a ball of sweat coming. She had a feeling that what she said next was going to be important.

“Rocky, never, ever let someone tell you you’re stupid because of something you love. They’re stupid for thinking that making others feel bad is something that isn’t for losers to do. Because when you grow up, you’ll have what you love and care about to help you be an awesome and interesting person, while they’ll just be losers that nobody’ll like. My spouses were just like you at your age. Laplace loved fish, and now she works at an aquarium. Amy loved flowers, and now she keeps the most beautiful garden. Would I marry a pair of stupid people, Rocky?”

Rocky thought about it hard, and she shook her head, “No?”

Perri smiled, “Of course I wouldn’t.”

The girl looked her in the eye again, “What…what about you, Mrs. Perri?”

“Me? You mean, ‘What do I love?’” Rocky nodded.

Perri scratched her head for a moment, and then gave another smile, before wrapping her arms around Rocky again.

“Awesome and interesting people. That’s what I love.”

#definitelyameatbag #fics #submission #human au #SO HEARTWARMING AND CUTE #LITTLE ROCKY BEING AN ANGEL #AND LITTLE ALEXA BEING HORRIBLE #alskdnf well i love this au now thank you for bringing this into the world #also #'river of tiny humanity'#akdsnfs

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azzyfree · 7 years ago

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The best thing I’ve ever done is stop caring about my appearance.

When I was 2 years old a cyst was found growing on my intestines. This may have been the start of my appearance problems. Because even if you are overweight or hairy, at least you could show off your belly button at the pool and no one would care, because it's a fucking normal inny or outty belly button. But of course that wasn’t an option for me. I have a 4 inch long scar that goes from my belly button down from the surgery. When I was little other kids had a tendency of poking it and the thing is- it's not even like normal skin where you can touch it and you feel it as being outside of yourself. When you touch the scar it feels like you are touching my guts. It’s GROSS , incredibly disgusting and painful, and it kind of makes my belly look like a butt and I HATED it. Here I am, going to a babysitters at maybe 4 years old and already I am DIFFERENT from the other kids VISIBLY. besides also speaking spanish instead of english in an english speaking nation. Thing’s got worse in elementary school. Back then I had a square face, chubby cheeks, besides being very much overweight. I was often made fun of by being called a boy or generally ignored in the playground but the worst of it was these pair of girl’s I was friends with throughout much of elementary school. The first one (I’ll call Girl A) I knew since kindergarten and she was fine,but the other (I’ll call Girl B) moved to my school. Since she was new she tried to force herself into every friend ship possible, and since we lived on the same street we were just friends by default. Now I should have you know that Girl A, didn’t come from a wealthy family, but she wasn’t poor either. Her family was on the higher end of the middle class spectrum and always dressed rather well, and got to go to all the cool sports things, and always got the brand newest of things all the time. I remember she got a gamecube first and we would all go over to her place to play it. Girl B was middle, middle class but her mother dressed her like she was born to some rich-ass family and she acted the part. Now me, back then my parent’s were just scraping by. My mother was an immigrant taking classes at the university and didn’t work, while my dad had a full time job in the government that JUST BARELY paid for the house and food. What clothing I got were usually made by my mother or my grandmother, or bought from thrift stores and the like, so very rarely I got a BRAND NEW thing. Now I don’t know if this was a fad everywhere but in my school when I was around 8 years old and it was the early 2000s, EVERY girl in my school wore a fuzzy white jacket. I don’t know how this fad started or why but for some reason it was a thing, and they were fucking ugly but it didn’t matter because that was the fad, that all the cool kids were wearing.GIRL A got her fuzzy white jacket first and I remember her coming to school and showing it off and us saying that we should all get fuzzy white jackets too. I think we thought we looked like bunnies in it or something and it was adorable. I remember going home and asking my parent’s for one but of course it was the start of the school year and we had JUST gotten me a purple sweater that I had wanted. So of course I didn’t get one. It took only a day, I swear to you, 24 hours for Girl B to get one too. I remember being so jealous. Like my family could barely afford to put food on the table but here I was wanting a fuzzy white jacket. It wasn’t till christmas till I was able to get a fuzzy white jacket. I think it was from a thrift store and just a bit too small from me. But I didn’t care cause finally I could join the cool people.I remember being so excited to show them it. I got dressed up and everything. They were going to come to my place to play with the barbie doll house my dad got me for christmas that was handcrafted from this little shop in my city. It was actually the only doll house my dad could afford as a toy for me. Apparently it was cheaper than the plastic ‘Barbie houses’ mattel sold. But I had loved that doll house. everything in it was hand painted and carved. There were picture frames on the walls that were made from beer bottles caps, and dish detergent caps. the house was three stories tall and crafted from what must have been used or old lumber laying about. I loved this doll house and Girl A and B loved to come over to play with it too.So you can imagine the excitement I must have had to show them, I too finally had a fuzzy white jacket. They came over and hurried into my room so we could start playing with the doll house. We were like a half hour playing. I remembered I had THE jacket. So I ran off to put it on and came back to show them, thinking we could finally be a squad, all wearing matching jackets.Sure I couldn’t close mine but that didn’t matter, I had gotten one! But nope. to this day I can remember their laugh and Girl B saying that I was too fat to wear the jacket. I don’t remember the rest of the night. I just remember hiding the jacket at the back of my closet and never speaking about it again. I started getting clothing that was bigger than what I would normally wear just to hide my fat. Things didn’t get much better when middle school rolled around. I had long stopped talking to both Girl A, and Girl B. But I still worried about my appearance particularly since I was the first of my friends to go through puberty cause, my body fucking hated me. It was not an easy puberty either. I would and still do get cramps that are so painful I will/have passed out from simply standing. But for appearance it did worse. I got zits EVERYWHERE. there was no down time, it was like an oprah show, any patch of skin I had would inevitably get covered in zits. At this time I tried everything to get rid of them, the doctor prescribed medication that did nothing. I remember my mom buying every brand of zit remover from oxy clear to that one that you would get mailed in the my cousin’s sore by. AND THEY ALL DID FUCK ALL. My Body would simply never rest when it came to how fucking disgusting could it make me. Not to mention I got hairy too. My legs grew thick black hair almost overnight and at that point I stopped wearing shorts all together. Cause FUCK showing off my yeti legs. I’ll die of heat stroke before people start talking about the pimple face’s yeti legs. But my legs weren’t the only thing that got hairy, so did my arms and my face, and now at this point the ‘you look like a boy’ was fucking accurate because I could so very easily give up on being a girl at this point being a boy would have been so goddamn easy. I could probably have grown a beard and a mustache. I could have done it and no one would have talked about it in a negative light. Cause when you are a boy its okay if you are hairy or pimple faced, its pretty much the ‘norm’ I was trying my best to ‘fit in’ to be ‘relatively normal’. To just pass by. That's all I fucking wanted I didn’t even care about being pretty I just wanted their words to stop. I remember hearing a conversation between some guys in one of my classes and a few girls I had known since elementary school. I was just passing by the door, where I overheard them talking about me and I quote , “Date Azzy? she’s she looks like an ape.” and can still remember their fucking laughter. One of them tried to ask me out later. I wasn’t stupid or desperate. I told them I’d never date asshole. I remember some time in grade 8 one of the girls I had known since elementary but I wasn’t friends with(I’ll call Girl D for rightful reasons) , told me I should come over for a makeover. But I’d heard her talking with the boys that other day. Again I wasn’t stupid or desperate. I could see how this would go. She would be like Girl A and Girl B, she would be like that fucking asshole in the other class. I remember I tried out for the arts highschool in my city cause I just wanted to get away from the people I had known since elementary school. Look, I was NOT good at art at this time. There were far better people in the school that could accurately depict shapes and lighting and people. Yet to my surprise I got accepted. The day I got my acceptance letter I was SO happy. Finally I could get away from these assholes and get a clean start! I remember that, that same day I was taking the bus and one of the girls from school that I was sort of friends with (I’ll call girl C) was sitting at the back of the bus in front of Girl B and Girl D. The bus starts and things were quiet except every so often Girl C would turn around and yell at them to stop. After this going on for a few more times I pull out my headphones and looked over and saw that GIRL B and D were writing ‘ fat-so’, ‘fag’, ‘slut’ and a number of other things onto tape and sticking it to her back. At this point I had nothing left at this school. It was the last two weeks of school. I was already approved to go to another school, even if I got expelled it didn’t matter. I was SO sick of their words. I put my headphones away, Got up, turned around to them and fucking yelled at them like a beast. I picked up the tape that they had stuck onto girl C’s back, and just shoved it into their faces. SHOVED. I smacked them on their foreheads with it. I told them that If I ever heard them do this to Girl C or anyone else again, I’d hurt them, and if they had any intelligence they would keep their mouths shut and arms to themselves for the rest of the ride or I’d straight up murder them. If being pretty meant being an asshole, I didn’t need it. High School is where things got weird. Since gym wasn’t mandatory I only took it the first year and then never again. I hated exercising. Elementary and middle school did that to me. I hated being hot and sweaty because I never wore shorts. I hated being in the heat. Being outside or anything that would require I take off any of my clothes. And it was some time between when I was dying of a heat stroke and paying for a SECOND try at laser hair removal that DID NOT WORK. That I realized- This is a fucking lot of money and time to look like a human being and not a ape. Such a lot of wasted time and energy that I could have been using going swimming, hanging out with actual good friends or getting better at drawing or playing tales of symphonia again. College came and that's when it started to REALLY began to sink in. Sure I may have never dated anyone through high school. But when college came I was done with ever trying to look pretty. It was a waste of time. Then I actually started to look better, My zit’s started to go away, my hair didn’t grow as thick. Everything that had stressed me out throughout the rest of my school life like just stopped. Because mentally it finally kicked in that it really didn’t fucking matter. Good looks didn’t equal you getting treated well. Good looks didn’t get you a promotion. Good looks didn’t make you feel happy. Good looks didn’t give you better grades. People will still treat you like shit when you're pretty. People will still say things about you and make fun of the things you wear. Not to mention the many passing fads. Being pretty is always changing. So then it doesn’t matter if you are skinny or fat, Have black or blonde hair, are tall or short, hairy or bald. Being beautiful is a choice and all you have to do is say you are. And you know what? I actually am happy now.

#rambles

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mairzymarzipan · 8 years ago

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More of Hat Loves Lamp

this might lead to a few subsequent bits- basically the origin of my villain’s evil and my brat’s hattiness.

“Dragon no! No! Stop it!”

There was a playful growling noise in the other room to go along with the yells, and Lyle looked up from the refrigerator. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard his twin sister argue with the dog, but it was the first time he’d heard her so upset. She sounded on the verge of years.

“Bad dog!” She screamed, almost at the top of her lungs, and the dog’s happy growls were replaced with a yelp. A second later a white and fawn furry blur of a collie went running past the boy. Dragon darted under the table and hid there.

Lyle headed for the living room, leaving the fridge door wide open. If it had been anyone else, Lyle would have checked to see if the dog was alright, but Mabel was his twin sister and she had sounded way more upset than usual.

She was in the middle of the living room floor crying, holding something in her hands. Lyle stood next to her, “Mabes? What happened?”

Unable to speak through her tears, the eleven-year-old held up the object. It was the pinwheel- the magic one. Only it was broken. The stick was snapped, and the paper torn and with bite marks.

“Oh, no,” Lyle said.

“Dragon ate Rain!” Mabel said between sobs.

“Oh Mabel, I’m so sorry!” Lyle gently touched the pinwheel. It- it was really rough. The handle was splintered in the middle, hanging to itself by the single grain. The paper in the wheel was half chewed, half melted. Any life Rain had had in her was gone, now.

“That stupid dog!” Mabel’s mouth twisted, “I want him dead!”

Lyle jumped a little at the force of Mabel’s proclamation. He’d never rage in her like this before, “You don’t mean that,” he said. Dragon was their dog. They had chosen him together after much deliberation and kisses from the entire litter. They’d raised him from when he was small and taught him all the tricks- sit, fetch, lay. Dragon slept between them on the floor at night.

“I do, I do! I hate him!”

“He didn’t mean it,” Lyle said, “Dad says he’s still just a puppy even if he’s big. He chews on everything. He didn’t know Rain was alive.”

“Someone mention me?”

Mabel gasped. The pinwheel in her hands was moving. The wheel itself bent in her direction and spun a little. It looked- better. Less chewed and more whole. Lyle couldn’t even see the break in the handle anymore. Had he actually seen it?

“Rain? You’re- OK?”

“I’m fine sugar, how ‘bout you?” Now Lyle knew he hadn’t seen things- the wheel was getting itself back shape. He didn’t know how, but the paper was unfolding and, growing back, where it had been eaten. Pretty soon it looked like a brand new pink and yellow pinwheel, just like the day they found her.

Mabel wiped tears from her eyes, “Oh, Rain! I was so scared! I thought you died.”

“Died? Ah no- a dog can’t kill a maguffin! That would be too kind, huh? Sugar- dry your eyes. I remembered another spell.”

Lyle sighed with relief but, it was strangled. He’d feel awful if Dragon accidentally killed Mabel’s friend. But there went the pinwheel off again about spells and magic. Remembering spells. Performing spells. It was all Mabel talked about these days. It used to be about cutting faces out of teen magazines and making her dinosaur books really bizarre, or playing Barbie house with her friends. Now, it was just magic.

“Oh, gosh! What’s the spell?” Mabel was jumping on her knees now. Tear streaks were on her face but seemed to belong to another person. Mabel looked like a girl who had only know happiness.

“I’d tell you,” Rain said, “but-” she turned her pinwheel toward Lyle, who sighed.

What made Mabel’s new hobby worse was the Lyle wasn’t invited to these lessons. ‘Sorry Sonny-sorcery is for girls!’ Rain had said. Lyle wasn’t a stranger to being excluded from things- he was always told he was too young or too dumb or something. But, Mabel was his twin sister. They shared everything. The hot-boy dinosaur collages, the doll tea parties, the baseball games, the bug hunts- everything.

Until now.

“Oh, Sonny?” Rain said. Lyle didn’t know why she called him Sonny like it was his name, “You can make yourself useful, you know. There’s some things your sister’s going to need.”

“Hold on,” Mabel pulled a pen from behind her ear, “OK, let me write this down.”

Rain had taken to floating in the air again, and Mabel was writing down a list of plants on a pink post it pad. It was like the pinwheel had never been devoured by a dog. Lyle didn’t know half the plants Mabel was writing down, but he didn’t ask for a clarification. When Rain was done, Mabel stood up and stick the list to Lyle’s forehead, and grinned, then went into the other room.

Lyle was about to leave when he noticed her top hat on the floor. Must have fallen off when Mabel was trying to get Dragon to cough up Rain. He picked it up and almost raised his voice to call for her but then, promptly, changed his mind. If Mabel wanted to send him to do stupid chores, then Lyle ‘accidently’ use her hat as a shopping bag for dirty flowers and stuff.

The front door opened before Lyle could get there, and his friends were waiting for him. “Ly! What’s taking you so long? Where are our juice boxes?”

“Oh, sorry!” Lyle smacked his head where the list was. He and his friends had been fishing outside, and Lyle had run in to get them drinks. “I had to help my sister,” he ran to the still-open fridge and grabbed four juice boxes. He gave three to his friends.

“Thanks, Ly,” Dustin said, “we’re going over to Allen’s house now, though. His brother finally left for work so we’re gonna play on his Nintendo.”

“OK, sounds good,” Lyle pulled the sticky note off his head, “let’s look for this stuff on the way there.

Allen’s big brother hadn’t gone to work, it turned out, and the flock of boys were chased away when they got to the house. Dustin half blamed Lyle for making them find all those flowers, but he didn’t have much of a foot to stand on. Their plans dashed, and not wanting to be in the hot sun anymore, the boys split.

Lyle carried his plants home. Rain hadn’t specified, so Lyle and the boys had snapped them at the stocks. They weren’t all flowers, and those that Lyle didn’t know about had been identified by his friends.

He struggled with the lock, which meant Mom wasn’t home yet. Mabel wasn’t in their room. Lyle dropped the flowers onto the middle of her bed unceremoniously, and that’s when he noticed Mabel’s diary, sitting wide open. Her diary, where she had been furiously writing the stuff Rain had been telling her about lately- the super secret stuff. The diary that actually locked, with a key that she kept on a chain around her neck, and always stashed under her pillow or in her backpack.

Lyle realized that if there was any chance to see what Rain had been teaching his sister, the time was now. He put the hat on the side table, crown down.

The words on the top of the page read MAGUFFIN STUFF.

Below that were words, followed by paragraphs of gibberish. Lyle cocked his head but none of this made sense. Lyle set his hand down on the hat, his fingertips resting just on the sweatband. Maybe if he read this out loud, it would make more sense? So he did that.

There was a tug from the hat. His hand was gone into it! His fingers and thumb weren’t visible, but his wrist stretched impossibly into the dark hole. Before he could say anything, he elbow disappeared into it. When the rest of his arm disappeared, his torso was tugged closer to the hat. It pulled to hard- he couldn’t fight against it! When he tried to push with his other hand, that just went inside too, like it was a black hole. Too late to scream, his shoulders and head went into the hat, and then his body and legs and feet.

Lyle was in a long, black shaft. There was a hole in front him and an empty blackness behind him. He was falling. The hole got smaller and smaller, and the walls around him got narrower, and narrower. They got so narrower they pushed up against him. They got so narrow that they squeezed him. Lyle thought they would stop him from falling, but he fell still. The wall got so narrow they were inside his body. They got so narrow he didn’t have a body anymore. He was only walls. Walls and fabric and blackness and deepness. And even now, he was falling, falling, falling.

Then he was on the side table.

***

Rain had sent Lyle to do busywork, she’d revealed, after the boy had left. Mabel had objected but Lyle was already gone. But that meant that now she and her mentor could do the real work. For this spell, Mabel would need a perfect opal. Might her mom have one in her jewelry? Mabel wasn’t sure what an opal was, but she could look!

And so she’d been spending the last hour going through her mom’s jewelry case looking for opals. She would hold a stone in front of Rain and the Rain would confirm or deny. Mostly deny. Once she found an opal, but it wasn’t perfect. But at least now she knew what the right stone would look like.

She heard a scream that made her head come up and smash into one of the open shelves. It sounded like Lyle! Mabel ran to it right away, into their shared room. But she didn’t see him here. “Lyle? Lyle?” She looked under the beds. She looked in the beds. There was a pile of flowers on her bed.

Her magician’s hat fell off the table- so that’s where that thing had gone to. “Mabel! Something’s wrong with me!”

“Where are you?” She opened the closet door and pushed aside their shirts and looked behind them.

“I’m on the floor.”

But the only thing on the floor was her hat. It was rolling around on it’s brim. It rolled around a bit, then it pushed itself up with it’s ribbons. Wait- since when had her magician’s hat had loose ribbons? It pushed itself onto its crown, then felt itself over with its ribbons. There was an ugly tear across the front of the hat that Mabel had never seen before. It opened up, revealing weird, sharky teeth.

“Mabelllll!”

That was Lyle’s voice.

“Oh my god- Lyle?”

“Of course it’s me. Mabel, something’s wrong with me!” He reached his ribbons for her, and Mabel came to kneel in front of him. It kind of twisted her up on the inside to look at him. He- he wasn’t her brother right now. He was a weird version of her hat with teeth and arms.

She put her hands on her face and tears started to come to her eyes. She knew right away- this was her fault. This was her fault and she had to fix it. Lyle had tried to warn her about using magic, but Mabel had been too caught up in it. Now Lyle was the real one paying the price.

“Mabel?” Lyle’s voice was soft, “What’s wrong with me?” He put his ribbons in front of his teeth and gasped, “I’m blue! And- my bones are gone?”

Mabel sort of hic-sobbed, “No! Wait- Lyle, you can see? Without eyes?”

“What? What do you mean I don’t have eyes?!”

There was a mirror on the door of the closet, “I’ll show you,” she got up and closed the door. The full body mirror revealed an opposite of the room.

“I can’t see myself,” Lyle said, “I’m invisible?”

“What? No!” With one hand on her mouth, she knelt, then softly she rested her hand on Lyle’s brim, “Do you feel that?”

“Yeah.”

“Look in the mirror at what I’m touching.”

There was silence for a good one, two seconds. It was- unbearable. Then Lyle said, “You’re touching your hat. But I’m not your hat,” he waved his ribbons, and paused when the mirror hat did the same thing, “No, I can’t be,” he waved his ribbon arms, crossed them, jumped up and down. Lyle screamed again.

“Nooo! I don’t want to be a hat! Mabel! Mabel! Change me back!”

“I don’t-” Mabel got her diary off the bed, and gasped when she saw what page it was open to, “Lyle- did you read aloud from this page?”

“Yes,” Lyle flapped his ribbon arms wildly, “and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I’ll never read from your magic book again, just change me back!”

“I- I can’t.”

“What?”

“I’m- I’m not a good enough sorceress.”

“Then get Rain to do it!”

“She can’t either!”

“What?”

“She said that I can’t either.”

The new voice came from the doorway where Mabel’s pinwheel was floating in the middle, bobbing and her pinwheel turning slowly. Rain floated lower, more to Lyle’s level.

“She’s wrong though, right?” Lyle said, “You’re a really strong sorceress.”

Two of Rain’s points folded, “Sonny, if I knew how to get people out of maguffins, do you think I’d still be in one?”

“What?” Lyle asked.

Mabel sighed, “Rain isn’t a pinwheel- she’s a person inside a pinwheel. What we’ve been trying to do all this time was get her out so she could teach me more stuff.”

“And now you’re a being like me,” Rain said, “a maguffin: a magical object with a human soul battery.”

“But- but- I read the spell from your diary! It was really easy!” Lyle said.

“It’s really to make maguffins,” Mabel said, “but really hard to unmake them.”

Lyle started to hyperventilate, and and then rise from the ground. He was now floating inches above the rug like the other maguffin. “But I want to be a boy! I want to be a boy!”

There was a click at the front of the house- the door being opened. “Mom’s here!” Lyle cried, “Mom will help me!” He jumped for the door, lost his elevation and sort of fell in the hall. He rolled a couple of times and landed brim-down.

“Help! I’m upside down!”

“Mabel!” Rain said severely, her wheel spinning, “Listen sugar- adults can’t see him. You have to hide him.”

That seemed extremely unfair, “But he’s my brother- and my mom is his mom.”

“She can’t, Mabel. You know what happens if adults see magic- they’ll take me away. And they’ll take your brother away, now that he’s magic, too.”

Mabel’s insides froze up. Having a hat-brother was bad, but having Lyle taken away was the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to her. Lyle wasn’t just a brother. He was a twin. Being with him was like being with herself. It was like the world made sense.

She could never lose that. Never.

“Take me away? What? I’m still upside down!”

Their mom was still struggling with the door- the lock was kind of loose and they all had problems with their keys. Mabel picked Lyle up and brought him inside the room. She set him on his bed ‘rightside up’, and looked at him sadly. Lyle’s strange looking mouth frowned.

“I’m a hat forever, aren’t I?”

“No,” Mabel wiped a tear from her eye, “just until Rain and I figure out how to fix it. I will fix it. I promise. I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s OK, Mabel. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Yes, I did,” and there was no way anyone could tell her otherwise. She’d written down dangerous spells- spells Rain had warned her over and over not to say out loud. And she’d done the worst possible thing- left her diary out, and open, where Lyle could find it.

“Lyle? Mabel?” Their mother had gotten in the house, “You guys are being awful quiet.”

Mabel got up, and Lyle said, “I’ll hide. What are you gonna tell mom?”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed.

“Don’t cry. If you cry, she’ll know something’s wrong. Tell her I’m still at Allen’s house. And when I don’t come home…”

Mabel swallowed. Lyle gathered his strength, “When I don’t come home, she’ll think I ran away.”

Mabel stifled a cry, failed, and tried to think of an excuse for it. “I watched Dumbo,” she said.

Lyle nodded, “Good, good. Now go meet her.”

“Mabel? Lyle? You around?”

Mabel walked into the hall, shutting the door behind her, “Lyle’s not here! He’s still with his friend.”

#hll #hat loves lamp #maguffins #mairzy writes

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